Garrain Jones: From Homeless & Serious Debt to Wealth & Joy #MindsetSeries

And the magic of life is in the calm. It's not in the confused. It's not in the mundane. The magic of life is in the calm. That's what nature does. It flows like nature. So you align yourself with all of creation when you are intentionally at peace.

I recently read a book that I enjoyed so much. I said, how quick can I get this guy on an interview? The author's name is Garon Jones, and he authored the book Change youe Mindset, Change youe Life. The thing that stands out to me about Garon and why I wanted to bring him to my community of entrepreneurs is because Garen is just so him, he's so himself. He embodies this thing that I want, which feels like real freedom. It feels like the permission to just be yourself. And as a result of doing that, money and opportunity just sort of flows. I crave that. I envy that. And I know for my community of entrepreneurs, we often are on screens so much, and we're so in our heads and being so logical that we forget who we are, that we forget to tap into the internal power of ourselves, the internal knowing of what we want. I know that sounds woo woo and airy fairy, but. But it's. It's. It's the knowing of who I am and who I want to be. And Garen embodies that. And being around him makes you feel more like yourself. And that's why this was such a gift for the people who were there, live in this audience. I hope that this conversation has the same impact on you as it had on those who were there in person. So, everybody, this. This is Garon Jones. Garen, thank you for being here.

Now. Thank you for having me.

We. We've met before, but I know very little about your business. Yeah. And someone that I trust reached out to me and said, would you like to have Garrin Jones on the podcast? And I've never, ever, in 10 years of having the podcast, accepted an outside recommendation for podcasts. Never. And so I told that person, I said, actually, Garen and I met three days ago at someone's house.

So funny how that worked.

It was. It was really ironic. So he said, do you know Garen? I said, well, no, but I met him three days ago at. At a birthday party. And he said, can I send you a copy of Garen's book? And I've always heard of people reading a book in one sitting. You know, that's always. And I have always thought, like, who reads a book in one sitting? No one ever does. And I did do the whole thing in one sitting, but about two thirds, I couldn't put it down. And so I said it'd be a really good opportunity to have it here in front of this group, especially while we're doing this mindset series@capitalism.com. so, I mean, I can comment on the book, but I know very little about your work, so I was hoping that we could start there. Tell me why people come to you and the transformation that you take them on.

I would say one of the biggest. First off, thank you for being brave enough to create platforms like this. So stories like mine have a home. That means a lot, because for a long time, I didn't think my story mattered. So I just want to say thank you.

You're welcome.

I'd say one of the biggest. The biggest things that I'm known for is being able to.

Live life in such a way that people discover their own freedom inside of themselves. Permission to be that little kid that they left when they were, like, 5 or 6 years old. It's like spreading that joy. But what it takes to actually do that in this mundane world, it's work, work, work, work over compensation. My job is my identity. People forget how to play, how to love themselves.

None of us can relate to any of that, I'm sure. Yeah. And so entrepreneurs and business owners come to you to reawaken that part of.

Themselves is that all the time they. They see me on the podcast or the TV shows or the documentaries, they're like, no, there's. There's something different. I've seen, you know, somebody. A successful person, there's something different. But then when you see, you know, me on stage or any kind of groups that I cultivate, the cultures that happen and what happens inside of those people.

There'S a difference because you can see the result and the ripple effect of somebody coming into a container and then leaving and then remembering, oh, my God.

I remember I used to love to sing. I abandoned that part of me. And then when that person starts singing, all of a sudden they book more jobs. All of a sudden.

The gateway to their sexual intimacy opens up. And why is that? Because they're tapping into the deepest reaches of their heart that was probably blocked off or stuffed down since they were a little kid.

Yeah. And I think we were talking over the last two days about this type of a setting and how it sort of removes all ego. And in most business settings, we feel like we have to put our best foot forward. And so you're actually connecting on the ego Rather than actually connecting to who you are. And that is so common and prominent among entrepreneurs because you're projecting something out to the world that's supposed to succeed in the marketplace.

Yeah.

And so we obsess over data and conversion numbers and upsell numbers. We optimize for numbers, which isn't really ourselves. But it's been at least my belief that if you can remove that and project your authentic self into the marketplace, the real authentic part of other people also resonates with that and creates more of a response than optimizing for the wrong things. So what do you see happen when you awaken that in, in a business person or an entrepreneur?

Well, I'll tell you, it's what you just said as far as. And then they'll see what's authentic is because what comes from the heart goes into the heart.

Yeah.

And so when it's like all over the place and then all of a sudden it doesn't go into the heart, it goes into the thoughts, it goes into the ego and all those things. And I just want to briefly tell you a story of how I even got to this understanding inside of my own body and nervous system. Twelve years ago, almost to the date, I was living in my car, $200,000 in debt, but I was living my living in my car for two and a half years. Ex convict. My daughter pretty much disowned me, my girlfriend had broken up with me.

Because I couldn't get my life together. And my mom was dying in the hospital. All of this was happening at the exact same time. Talking about rock bottom. It was like the rock bottoms rock bottom. And I remember it was November 2011 at 3:43 in the morning. And I just yelled out. I've always talked about what I don't want. I don't want to date this kind of person. I don't want to be broke. I don't. But I would always attract it. Then one day I just cried out, okay, I'm tired of fighting. I don't want to. I don't want to fight anymore. I want to be healthy, I want to be happy. I want to be surrounded by nothing but positive people. I just want to inspire people and I want to make a bunch of money. But I want the money to represent something that I passionately believe in, that I would do for free. Just show me a sign. I didn't know what the sign was, but a week later I'm at the gas station with my last $2. Anybody who lived in LA in 2011, 1 gallon of gas was pretty much the same as what gas is now. It's $4.59. Couldn't even get one gallon. Homeless guy walks up to me and asks me for money. And I said, you have more money than me. And he said, change your mindset. Change your life. So I just want you to bookmark those words because I've heard personal development words my whole life, but something about those words and the energy behind it almost created some. It's like a conscious interrupt and made me think about my whole life. You remember the movie Sixth Sense?

Yeah.

When he didn't know he was dead. And then the moment he found out, his whole life flashed. So my whole life of lies flash right before. So maybe my life is this way because of how I'm thinking. So I trained myself. And this is going to lead right into the question you asked. How to do the opposite in areas of my life where I'm not happy. That's how I got into personal growth. That's how I got into, like, just all the business. Entrepreneurial. It's all the stuff I would never do. So my life is a direct focus. Flip from where I was 11 years ago now. I was so far removed from who I was as a little kid, which is where I was the most happiest. The opposite was instead of. Instead of doing all these things that I was doing where I wasn't happy. Anybody can. And make money can. How long can you keep it? Anybody can have a friend for a moment. How long can you keep them? There was something that I was missing, and my wife has this thing. When you're stuck, back it up, see what's in the gaps. What was in the gaps is what was missing in my life was everything that I loved to do as a child. I left it. I love to sing. I love to dance. I love to motivate. I love fashion. And I loved running. So I started running, singing, dancing. Not for cool points, just because it did something to my heart. The heart is most powerful, gives off the most powerful, one of the most powerful frequencies in the world. So when I did that, I became the essence of what was in my heart. And that joy, when living in that joy was my. That was my own personal freedom. And then by me being inside of that, other people were like, I want that, too.

Yeah.

No matter how much money you make, I've seen somebody with all the money, all the girls, all the cars, put a bullet into his brain. One of the perks of living in Los Angeles, you're around celebrities all the time. I said, maybe I should rethink what success is, what happiness, what. What joy is. And this is where that whole childlike was birthed.

Yeah, it's interesting. We. Most of us would say that freedom is one of our highest values. Would you. Would you agree with that? Most of us got into the game of entrepreneurship or business or investing because we were after freedom. And one of my friends and mentors, Jesse Elder, likes to say that freedom is. Is the return to the childlike state. And that's what most of us mean when we say that we want freedom is we grew up and we had safety and freedom, and then we become responsible adults. And that means working for somebody else or producing or transacting or looking a certain way in order so one day we can return back to what we believe is the natural state, like the childlike state.

Welcome home. And.

And what compels me about some of the things you talk about is the return to that now, at 43.

Awakening that rather than pursuing that, because I think it's the pursuit of that that almost makes it elude you. So would you walk us through how you cultivate that in someone? When someone comes to you, what do you do to awaken them?

What's funny is you're using the word awakening and the name of, like, I've done tons of retreats, but the name of my retreats are called Awaken. The artist within the artist is the little kid before life lifed you and.

You life, life do. Yeah, yeah.

So you're passionate, driven, taking risks, full of energy, dreaming, confident. Yeah. So I know how to teach people how to tap into that main line. Because when you unlock that little kid inside of you, it unlocks a power. And the name of my company is called Artist Power Collective. So it's like artist Power. So what I do is I'll ask somebody. I was like, what did you used to love to do as a kid?

There was a client that I had the other day. She was like, you know, I have the husband and I have the money. I'm doing really well. Something is missing. I was like, you got kids? Yep. Okay, if your daughter goes, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, for 20 years, what would the relationship be like?

What would the relationship be? Not very good.

Why?

They haven't been listening.

They have no connection, no emotional closure. I said, so whatever you love to do as a kid, whether you like it or not, say, for instance, you loved. You loved swimming, and you gave up swimming 20 years ago. But every time you watch The Olympics. You see a swimmer, that little itch you like. Man, I used to love swimming. Let's just say the little kid inside of you is going to mom, mom, mom, dad, dad, dad, dad. And that little kid is. It's like. It's like a spiritual umbilical cord that's connected to source. And it's going, mom, mom, listen to me. But if you don't listen to a kid, after too long, it'll turn to yelling, it'll turn to rage, then it'll turn to silence.

Let's just say your inner child, you abandon that little kid that's been going, mom, listen to me. And then I told her, I said, that's what's missing. You forgot about yourself, so you're not connected to your spirit, the spiritual aspect of yourself. She starts dancing. I said, just do it once a week. Once a week. And pretend like you're just embodying the energy of that. What that used to give you the most joy and freedom when you were a kid. Don't just go dancing, because take your little kid out on a date. It's like, you know, that's. That's the artist date. You take that little kid on a date, she starts doing that within six months, she's like, I've never felt so free in my life. There was no amount of success that could give me what you did. When you changed my life, I was like, I didn't change your life. I showed you a new perspective. You changed your own lives.

There's a part of the book that really resonated with me, and the book is called Change youe Mindset, Change youe Life. And the part that really resonated with me was you were talking about that in our young life, we have these sort of graduation points, and we go through middle school, then we go through high school, and you have 9, 10, 11, 12th grade. Then you go to college, and you're a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. And then you graduate. And our perspective is there's no more checkpoints. I know so many people who say that once they graduate, it was like, there's no path anymore. I always knew what the next thing was. And the next thing was. And the next thing was. But what you said is that that's like the first test. There are next checkpoints. It's the next level of growth, the next level of life. And if you're spinning your wheels, then you have outgrown or are still getting the lesson of that grade.

Absolutely.

You're still getting the lesson of being a Sophomore in life. And you're not getting it.

Yeah.

And there's. And. And it's learning that lesson before you can go on to 11th grade of.

Life showing well, you can comprehend the stage that you're at.

That's right.

Yeah. No, it's. Wherever you're stuck at in life, it doesn't matter. You can have a lot of money, but you'd be stuck with a relationship with you and your daughter. You know what I'm saying? Wherever you're stuck at is your school. And if you keep failing the same test by approaching the same way, same attitude, life has a mysterious way to make you pay the same price over and over. Why does it feel like every year around this time, this same thing keeps happening? Because you probably keep failing the same alcohol test, porn test, sex test, drug test, insecurity test. And what I've learned is every time I've done the opposite even no matter how difficult it was when I walked down a different path after getting, you know, I didn't physically get jumped, but if you walk down the same street and you get jumped, you probably deserve to get jumped. You keep walking down the same street. But if you walk down a different path, what's a guarantee is that might not happen. So the. The school thing just supports me in understanding this whole scientific. Because I don't have the big words, but I do love patterns, and I do love paying attention to signs and putting puzzle pieces together. Every time I was in a jam, things were slow, I was stuck. I would always look at what am I holding on to that I just won't let go of. Am I trying to hold on to third, wanting to go to fifth grade? But this is the reason why they don't put third grade. Third graders in fifth grade, you must pass tests along the way.

And that resonated with me because you can see it in other people when they're running up against the same test over and over again. Seeing it in yourself. Difficult is a little bit different. Is why those of us who have struggled with the same thing over and over again sometimes give great advice that it's the advice we need to hear.

Yeah.

Because we failed at this test over and over and over again. We're just not taking the advice themselves. So how do you walk somebody through seeing those blind spots?

This is why I don't have. Yes. People in my corner that I don't have. People that just tell me great stuff all the time. Oh, you did great. You did. I look, I look. And these. This is this. If I could give anything to any entrepreneur out there, any leader out there. This is the scary place that most people won't go, but this is where you get your peak performance and your edge from. After everything that I do, I always ask for feedback, but I don't ask the easy person. I asked the person that's looking at me like this. I'm like, so what did you like? I would love. I don't call it feedback. I call it feed forward. Because I'm always going to take it and move the conversation forward. Inside of me, when people are afraid of hard conversations, I dive right into the heart of the belly every single time. With my wife, with my business partners, I'm like, oh, okay, what is it that you want to share? And I try to stay as neutral as possible. So for me, you can't see the picture while you're in the frame. So ask people who can actually see the frame of your life, which is people that are close to you. Ask your kids. Ask your wife. Oh, yeah. Ask your spouse, you know, and ask somebody who won't just tell you, oh, no, you're doing great. Oh, it's great, and it's great every single time. I don't keep a lot of those people in my corner because, you know, there's a reason why exponential growth happens in every business I touch. It's because of the company that I keep and the way that I choose to lead other people. And it's a culture of feedback and feed forward so that we can stand for each other's greatness.

Funny you use the word greatness. There was a. There's very. There's a few books that I can point to that I felt this way about. But as I was reading through yours.

I paid less attention to the words and more how the words were making me feel, which was a very different experience for me, which is why I couldn't put it down. And you're nodding like you know what.

I'm talking about, because I did that on purpose.

Okay, so tell me about that.

Well.

I could write a book at the level of my thinking, and I've done a lot of work. Spiritual psychology. Fifteen days, completely dark. Ten days, silent retreat, mastery and transformation. You name it, I've done it.

You reach 2% of the people when you speak, when you're not speaking to the masses. So I said, well, most people don't like to read, so how can I write a book that's coming more from my feeling than how educated I can make my words sound?

Yeah.

So I Wrote that book from the feeling. The feeling was the secret. That was the thing. And every time I would write and it would get away from the feeling, I'm like, okay, something's off. Let's. Let's. Let's bring it back. Let's find a way to bring it back to the through line of. I want people to read and feel something about not just my life. Like, I want you to reflect on your own life.

Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

The. The reason that lands is there's. I've never been quite able to articulate it because I don't know that it can be articulated. But there is something about the resonant feeling when you create something, which is why, you know, like, Lee, I think you're an example of this. Like, when you. You solved your own challenge in your own problem, and that's why it can go viral very quickly. And, Evan, you had a personal challenge. And what. You've heard me say this on podcasts before. This is why I don't recommend that people look at Amazon data to pick what product to sell. Right. Because there's. That's all in your head. There's no resonance to it. And I can't explain it. I can't explain it a way that would logically make sense, except, I mean, Annie, you developed something for you, something that resonated with you. And these are three examples of products that picked up customer bases that grew very quickly. Whereas somebody who just creates the product because it's an opportunity is coming from a heady place. And I can't quite put my finger.

I'll put a figure on it, but.

Put your finger on me. Garren.

I have a very, very structured wife, and I'm very floaty and spontaneous. I manifest everything that I think about. She's not like that. She's got just like on this day, color coded PowerPoint and this. And I look at that. It's like looking at the house of a thousand knives.

Yeah. So that's entrapment.

So. So if I'm in my feelings and she is heady, it is breakdown in the communication every single time when I'm in my feelings. If you want to communicate with feeling, you got to go into the feeling. You meet the little kid in the feelings of the mom.

Mom.

You don't be like, well, I think you should.

You say, I've made that mistake before.

Oh, baby, what's wrong? And you tell me this and what else? And he told me this and what else? Is there anything else? And you tell me, is there Anything? No, this is the same thing. Because that same little kid is inside of every adult. So my wife super structured me super, like flowy and loving and compassionate. She's got compassion, like rub off on each other. So now I'm doing like PowerPoints and stuff, like a five year old.

So I know that if she's in the head, it's not a heart conversation, it's a head conversation. Now we're speaking the same language. She's in the heart and I'm trying to have a logical conversation. She's not there. That's Japanese and Spanish. But if she's in the heart, all of a sudden I sink my shoulders. I'm like, oh, baby, I noticed that you, that you're sad right now. I am so sorry for what I did, even if I didn't do it. No, because it's, it's all about meeting her in her emotional state, saying, I'm so sorry for what you feel that I did. Because her feelings are valid and they get to be acknowledged. So by meeting her into that. But that's what I did with my book. I wanted to reach the hearts of people, not the heads of people. So I didn't write a heady book.

So you wrote it from the heart.

I wrote it.

Which. Which often comes out in much more plain language than, than something heady and logical.

Absolutely. And I, I could, I could do that if I wanted to, but that's not the angle I was going. Yeah.

I mean, if you compare that to somebody like a Jordan Peterson who's very heady and very logical and his audience is heady and logical people or people who enjoy having that stimulated.

Yeah.

Right. So there is, there is definitely something to. However you are, whatever place you are communicating from resonates with that in someone else, that same part of them. Which is why I think that when you create a business or make an investment decision from that place, it sort of resonates with a very deep part of you and other people. Whereas I used to make almost all my business decisions logically and in my head, and now I try to make almost none of them from that. Or I will use my brain to evaluate the emotional decisions that I want to make or like spot check them rather than be the first decision maker. And I think that that is the kid, like childlike state.

Yeah.

That we're seeking.

Yeah.

And I would guess that when you're working with somebody, they're so used to being in their head and making decisions from that place that dropping into their core needs and Desires is something that's completely foreign to them. Is that the case?

Yeah. And I'm never. I work with so many adults, but I never see the adult the whole entire time. I'm really focused on the kid. That's why I'm so good with kids. I got so much practice with the kids inside of the adults. And then I work with the kids and I'm like, oh, this is. This is the source, you know? But since you're talking about business, it's interesting because, you know, a lot of people, they're just like, well, how. Like, how do you get business to go? How do you get, like a startup to go? And there's so many people that fail in startups because they're trying to make this startup and they're trying. And I'll give you this is a live example at one of my companies called Artist Power Collective. I started in June. All of a sudden, I was like, man, like, people come to me for speaking and coaching and learning how to be on stage and all of these different things. I was like, I was in a deep meditation. I was like, man, what am I? What am I really here to do and to bring to people? I've created a lot. I've spoken in 75 countries all over the world, you know, independent books. So right at 100,000 copies, all of these things have happened. And I felt like something was missing, so I had to take my own medicine. And when I went into that meditation, I said, I. I was like, I. My intention is for my ancestors. It's like 400,000 people had to die just for you to be here. Their DNA is still encoded inside of you. For my ancestors to use me to communicate a message to humanity. So I drop in and all of a sudden it was revealed to me, garen, I want you to look back and all the things that you did that you did not have to, nobody taught you that. Every single time you did them, great things would happen, would happen with people. So I'm in the meditation. I used to model for Ford and Wilhelmina, one of the highest paid back in 2001, African American models. And after I was done, I taught guys and girls Runway, taught them how to move and how to be confident. And the result was they took more risks, they were more expressed, they were more confident. Boom. Then I worked with LA models, new faces, ages 13 through 18. I would do six hour workshops teaching these people who did not know how to be on camera or confident, how to be fully embodied and really represent who they truly are. Deep down on the inside, instead of what they're faking. Next thing you know, people are like, oh my God, what'd you do with my daughter? I've never seen her this confident. It's only six hours. But nobody taught me that then. As someone who was had a speech impediment in high school, middle school, and was diagnosed with a learning disability, who now speaks globally, I created speakers boot camp. Teaching people how to truly own the words that come out of their mouth and move crowds.

But nobody taught me how to do that. And good things happen. They said, garen, you'll be at a party with 300 people. Somebody say, what do you do? I'm a transformation coach. And then you'll pick up a drum or you'll sing. Next thing you know, 300 people are dancing. Garen, lead with the art, then take them to transformation. And I was like.

Oh.

My. Met the thing. I've been telling people. I haven't even faced my own art and really embodied little Garen because that's the one that was fueling everything. But I've never went to the new. Nobody runs to the Batman symbol. They don't run to the thing that's out here. They've run to the actual source, the light. Where it comes from, I never faced. I love this. I love this art. I love what if I create something and all of a sudden it goes awaken the artist within. It just drops into the meditation. I create the retreat. Two weeks later, 52 people. I no paid ads. It was just, where are they coming from? Oh, this guy owns 1-800-got junk. Oh, he's multi billionaire, this person. Like, where did they come from? Oh, I saw you in this. You were playing drums. And I'm like, so all of the different variations of people. The through line was I actually want confidence to be myself and not overcompensate. And then that turned into something else. To a mastermind that turned into another retreat that turned into a very high ticket mastermind. And now since June, we're already 1.7 million. Like we gross 1.7 million with three teammates. So it was strategic momentum that came from the well of the deep passion and love, which is what you were talking about, that if people could put that same energy inside of anything they do, they will experience a return like they. That's beyond human.

Yeah. Can you. Can you guys all think of those moments of inspiration that ended up building years worth of momentum? And I think we all want that all the time. I mean, if we could or at Least more of the time. Make it so it's not 1% of my experience, but 10% of my experience. What a wildly different life experience we'd have. Yeah. So what? And I've fallen to them accidentally.

Yeah.

And so I have one mentor who says just milk them when they happen. But no, I want them more. I want them more often. So what do you do to tap into that or get someone that's working with you to make that more of their experience?

Well, I'll tell you for me.

And I'm sorry, I'm sorry. One of those things.

Yeah.

Is a multi million dollar breakthrough.

Yeah.

Like 1.7 in a matter of a few months for you. I mean there's people in here who have 10 million dollar businesses that came from a moment of inspiration.

Absolutely.

I want more of those.

Garen, I'll tell you this. Peculiar things happen when you quiet the mind and you allow yourself to be with yourself for long enough.

So for me, my form of meditation is running. It may not be someone else's. I wake up at 4:30am every single morning and I'll go run 10 miles. There's no lights in Barton Creek. There's just dark and then noises. So I go running. But see, I don't go running for the sake of abs or to prove something. I'd be like, look at me, I'm running at 5:00 o', clock, 5:00am Club. Like I go and this is all for me. But then the part of me that then starts to take over.

Is. It's. It's like the heavens opens up and a portal opens up and downloads every single day. Songs, book ideas, everything. Because it's my form of moving meditation and everybody has access to it. You just got to be able to seek yourself and learn why. Why you're so joyful. You go swimming and all of a sudden you're like, man, every. Every time I go swimming I have a better. I just feel good. Try swimming all the time and, and see what happens when you're subconscious mind starts trusting you again. Because when it starts trusting you and then it's connected, you become aligned. Now what happens is it's almost like plugging yourself into nature. Anything that's a part of nature benefits from its resources. So.

Roundabout. You're like. You want to ask.

Well, you mentioned this idea of quieting the mind. Yeah, right. And. And most of us are run by our monkey minds most of the time. I think what something we've experienced in this room is. I know this was true for me. Tell me it was true for you. How many of you, first day had monkey mind going, like, what are people thinking of me?

Or whatever?

I don't know what this group is. What did I even buy?

What are we doing? And I'm sitting here going to the bunk beds, and there's towels, and everybody's going to think I'm a freaking idiot. What even doing here? Why did I launch this? That's my monkey mind. Okay, but day. Day two, like, end of day one, middle of day one, and definitely today, it's like I'm just settling in, right? We're just hanging out with, like, our people now. Do you guys feel like that two days in? Yeah. We get three years of this. How cool is this? So. So there's this.

There's.

Now the mind is starting to quiet, the monkey mind starting to quiet. And now are you guys getting just a bunch of ideas, I could do this. I could do this. And all of a sudden, the fear part of my mind that's worried about what people think of me or is this thing going to work or looking good publicly, it's turned off. And now I'm just starting to feel like, what would be fun? Oh, that would be. That would be a good idea. Oh, I should partner with so and so on this thing.

Oh, we could collaborate on. That would be cool.

It'd be really cool for us to connect and do this thing. And that is the. That is the real authentic self starting to go. Hey, Dad, I got an idea.

And here's the thing. If you don't honor the little kid who comes home with a report card wanting gratification, wanting instant gratification, you wait five days and you walk by the report card. You keep walking by the report card, and then you say, oh, by the way, congratulations on your A. That kid will be deflated. Same thing happens to your nervous system. But one thing I wanted to touch on is a big practice of mine is breath. Breath. Your breath is your life force. And a lot of times we take it. You know, we take it for granted because we breathe every day, but it is actually your life force. So what I tell people, hold your breath. Don't let go. And I want you to experience in your body what it feels like when you hold on to your ideas, when you hold on to your gifts, and you hold on to your secrets. When you hold on to that book idea, when you hold on and hold on. We weren't created to be keepers. We were created to be givers. That's why we have holes all over Our body. Sweat comes out, blood comes out, poop comes out, like throw up, it all comes out. So when you hold on, what you feel, if you held your breath for a minute and 30 seconds is actually what's happening to your life. So I will share that so they can get that physical embodiment of what it's like.

That's a really vivid analogy.

Yes. Yeah, I will, I will share that. And then I will say, now you know the power of the life force inside of you that is designed to flow like nature. So I train breath. So most people, they'll go, oh, I'm going running. I call it breath training. Because what I do, instead of thinking about the running and all the other stuff, what I do is I'll breathe for the first three miles just through my nose. But count three, two, three. Count three going out. And it's difficult. But if you can maximize going.

While you're running, by the time you're done to your regular breath, the, the, the, the how calm you will be is. It's. It's second to none. So I train. I have a cold plunge that's at 36.3 degrees. As soon as I'm done, I go in there for six minutes. But you go in there, you're like. I go 2, 3, 2, 3. That go in the sauna. 2, 3, 2, 3, 1. My. Me and my wife are at it. 2, 3. So I take myself, and this is how you learn range. I take myself intentionally through all of these different scenarios. So when it goes back to my regular breath under every state, I can always be calm. And the magic of life is in the calm. It's not in the confused. It's not in the mundane. The magic of life is in the calm. That's what nature does. It flows like nature. So you align yourself with all of creation.

When you are intentionally at peace.

Beautifully. Beautifully put.

I have to ask, how'd you get.

$200,000 in debt and then how'd you get out of it?

It would have been more, but I don't know what it's like now. They don't get you to after seven, seven years when you don't pay taxes. Okay, yeah, so I didn't pay taxes for 10 years. Oh, no. It's crazy, bro. I was on the run and I.

Did not pay taxes. How did you do that, Garen?

How did you not pay taxes? So I didn't, I didn't know. I used to go. Go by a different name. So all they had. All they had was my first name and I, so my middle name is Stefan. So when I had this house in Jersey City, New Jersey, I was going by my first name, Garen Jones. Well then from that point on I just used Steph Jones, which was an alias for everything for the, like the next 10 years. So they'd been looking for Garon Jones, but Garon Jones could never be found because that was Stephon Jones. I didn't know any of this was happening. I was just living my life. Went to prison for two and a half years, slept on different girls couches and trying to figure out my life for maybe six, seven years. I was just lost. And, and, and, and all of those things were happening. But those 10 years, all those years that I was in, in modeling, I never, I never paid anything. I didn't, I didn't even understand how.

How or why somebody would pay taxes on a spinning planet. And like in a gallon, could you make enough for us to do a.

Product about how to not pay taxes with? Garen, this sounds like something we should teach.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm, it's different now because I got myself educated, but when you're, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And so I'm coming out of high school and I was like, this doesn't make sense to me. So I just didn't do it. And even when I was making money during modeling, I just like, now I just want to keep all the money. I just spent it all. So that's how ultimately it happened. And then there was like credit card debt and, and I had, no one knew where I lived because I always had a mailbox that was, it was just a off, off location mailbox, like PO Box, but it had an actual address. So anything that they would send, it would send there, but not where I would be floating around. So that's ultimately how it happened.

How did you get out of it?

How did I get out of what?

Out of the debt.

Well.

So I.

The whole change your mindset, change your life theme and a theory that I still live by.

I would never read books, I would never go to self development seminars. Change your mindset, change your life. So when somebody invited me, I said yes. And when I said yes, there was somebody on stage. We're like, leaders are readers and saying a lot about reading books. I'm like, I hate books.

But the lifestyle that he was talking about something just I wanted that. I don't come from money. And I'm like, but I want the house, I want the cars. But I don't want to do what my friend did who put a bullet in his brain. I wanted a different way. And the way in which he was speaking.

I tried to disregard it. But there was something about it that my soul was connected to. And so I just started reading the books I was paying attention to. John C. Maxwell, Jim Rohn, Napoleon Hill. There's a book called Think and Grow Rich. But then there's another book that a lot of people don't really know about called Grow Rich with Peace of Mind. I was like, I'm actually more drawn to like grow rich with peace of mind because if I ever make a lot of money, I actually want to be peaceful and humble. And it taught me all these formulas. So by me doing that and being introduced into the health and wellness community, which I wasn't healthy, nobody in my family was. My mom was obese, my, my, my brother was overweight and obese. Like everybody except for my aunt, but she wasn't healthy. Nobody knew anything about nutrition. And so I was introduced to people that were speaking different, moving different, thinking different, talking different, reading different. And I'm like, I don't, I don't know nothing about this health conscious anything. And then I did, and then I ended up losing 37 pounds and then putting on 19 pounds of muscle, then taking my body fat from 16.4% down to 6% at age 32, when I thought my life was over when it came to health, because that's what happened to my whole family, I genuinely just got excited because I was healthy. That affects your heart. There's a lot of people, they got great business, they got great this, great that I can, I can tell you what your life like, if your health is not a priority, hundred percent. Because when you deny yourself and overcompensate out there, what you're saying is, I'd rather build this roof, this house without a foundation. And because I started with foundation, I learned foundational, foundational principles on how to love yourself, how to take care of your nervous system. And then the entrepreneurial entrepreneurship came and then I started learning about business because of the culture and community that I stayed around, every culture that I stayed around, every community I stayed around, I grew in and started doing what they did. However, I've always been an out producer in anything. Getting women, stealing cars, breaking into houses, I always produced high velocity. I just never knew where to put that energy. So the second it was like, oh, you can get as many clients as you want, you can make as much money as you want, you can grow and evolve as much as you want. I took the same energy.

Transferred that laser beam to personal growth, really learning about myself, learning about my past. People say, oh, leave the past in the past. Not if you didn't get the lesson, because you know your, your future is going to be a recreation of your past. Learning about my past, learning how to clear and let go of resentment, all of that. So that fed into business, fed into leadership. And anybody who was on my team was learning the same philosophies that I was learning when it comes to success driven cultures, creating family with teams, the way that I lead, because a lot of people lead followers, they don't know how to lead leaders because they're hard to hold. So leading leaders who create other leaders, sometimes you as a leader got to get out of the way, teach them how to take your spot, and then you go lead somewhere else. So that created exponential growth in the health and wellness community. That's how I made my first million in the first two and a half years. And then after that, I was like, well, I can always make more millions. That was that. It was. My life wasn't easy, but that first million for me was easy because I was surrounded by a community of people that wouldn't let me fall because I wasn't no longer trying to do it by myself.

When you said you got excited and that was good for your heart, I felt that energy. That's what I felt when I was reading your book. And it reminded me of when you can tap into that. Everything can feel easy. Relationships feel easy, business feels easy. It's just so rare that we tap into that. But when you allow that or when you're around somebody that calls it out in you, that's. That's when it. Life feels really effortless.

Now you're experiencing why people come in this direction. It's that I cultivate that. I'm one of the co founders of one of the largest men's group here in Austin called Empowered Brotherhood, with my buddies Stefano Sifondos and Preston Smiles do the same thing there. And all these men start coming and they're like, oh, my God, it's. I feel so free and expressive. But then 95% of my audience is all powerful, driven women that want to learn a different version of masculine, which is a reflection of, you know, another masculine inside of themselves that they're growing. It's all the same. I'm coming from the same place. Yeah, they're just coming for a reason. Learning about that aspect of themselves and Seeing me as a reflection of what's inside of them.

Beautiful. I want to turn over to you guys. Do you have anything that you want to run by Garen? Go ahead.

Did you get the homeless man the $2?

No, I didn't know, but he gave me the million dollar idea and I went back and looked for. I feel, I feel in my frame of thinking that that was my angel 100%. I was like, ain't nobody just going to look at you and be homeless and be like, change your mindset, change your life and then walk away.

But that was, that was the name of my, my first company. So every time I would write somebody a check, it would say, change your mindset, change your life. And it was like the gift that just kept giving and giving and giving.

That's cool. Good.

Deep meditation vision that you got you.

Did you go into that meditation of.

Asking your higher power, asking the universe for some of the answers that to.

Some of the questions. So I would say it was a psilocybin journey. I just.

Sometimes I'll be like, deep meditation, deep psychedelics.

Yeah, right, okay, yeah, solo, solo deep meditation. But it's all about your intention. My intention was to discover one what was in the way of me being able to express myself fully. I always want to meet what's in the way. And I'd be like, hey, I want to be successful. No, I want to know what's in the way of why I'm not there now. And then it took me straight to a moment when I was 4 years old. And then my mom, my mom said, pick which parent you want to go with. When my parents were separating and I remember dreading not making decisions. So in that moment I realized, oh, that's why it's difficult for me to make decisions, because it's associated with dreadful energy. So once I met that, and then I said, you know what? I forgive myself for holding on to this energy my whole life. All of a sudden it opened up my channel to be able to receive like divine information and ancient, ancient wisdom. And then once that opened, that's when the, you know, the conversation, my ancestors then start tapping in. But I really wanted to know, like, use me to communicate a message to humanity. And the intention is the big thing. You know, people, so many people focus on the result.

When you focus on the intention, now you know what car you're driving in to even get to your destination. The seed. The intention is the seed that takes you, you to the result. And so I would say the, the more specific the Intention that is meaningful to you will have you get your intention every single time.

You're welcome.

Good, Evan.

Thanks, Gary.

There's a lot of different ways to sit in silence. When you said that.

Where did you learn it? What is your process for sitting in silence?

Do you have.

It's a good question.

I'll tell you. Because I, I, I sat in silence for 10 straight days and dark, so that I see nothing. No, that was completely unplugged. So completely dark, completely silenced. But when you do that, after a while, your mind starts formulating different pictures than the ones that you see when you scroll on your phone and, and you, you do all of that. So when I was sitting in silence, it came all of these different variations of what, what silence means. Like when I'm swimming, it's silent for me. It's like, but it's not like human context silence. There's something that happens when I swim and I feel like I'm in my mom's womb about to, there's like a birth about to happen. So there's a different frequency that I carry when I'm swimming. You know, I've done like, Ironmans and all kinds of things like that. And it's like when I'm in that water for three miles or two miles or, or even in my backyard, ideas start flowing through. So I think finding and like, really seeking is like, you know what? I feel driven to go to go and go to this art art show. Or I feel really driven to go paint and see what happens when you don't have music, you don't have your phone, you don't have tv, or you're scrolling and it's just you yourself in the art. And they start communicating because they start communicating, what happens inside is like the overflow. I pour, I pour water into that, and I keep pouring. It'll eventually reach its tipping point, and then it'll spill over into the next container.

Silence in something that's really connected to your heart does the same thing with ideas. But most time, people pour in, they pour out. They pour in, they're like, oh, no, that won't work. Oh, no, that. Pour in, pour out. But if you just be the observer, you start noticing, like a little kid, you're like, oh, wow, yeah, I can climb 10 miles. And you really approach the thoughts while you're intentionally choosing to be in silence.

And you start observing and getting curious without doubting, as, oh, we don't have enough time. Oh, no, no. But what would that look like if we did have time?

It's a peculiar sense that when you're only in that space, you'd be like, oh my God, I would have never thought about that if I didn't take time to have this time for myself. So it can look like picking flowers, it can look like walking every morning, but not with your headphones on and putting more stuff in your head. It can look like just sitting here for five minutes and trying to have white, white space. It can look like climbing a tree by yourself. It's just you being curious. I watch my one year old, she gets into everything and I do not stop her. And then I look at her, I'm like, holy crap. You have more rhythm than most humans. I know. Because we allowed curiosity to lead her to the thing that's having her channel whatever she's do. I've never seen a one year old do what my daughter is doing right now. Now, because that curiosity and the willingness to discover and not allow someone else to stop you also lives inside of you. So I think if you get really curious and don't make it mean anything other than, huh, I noticed this. I think it's going to start communicating a different message to you.

We'll do one more.

Annie, I know you talked a lot about inner child.

Acknowledging your inner child.

Child. How would you address.

That's my favorite.

So.

I don't typically use the word trauma. I think, I think the, the people who created words knew exactly what kind of spells that they would cast on people when they created words. Because then they say, even in the Bible they say in the beginning there was the word. But the Greek meaning for word is sound and vibration, feeling. And I think that if you can go underneath the actual word and go to the feeling.

What I typically do when it comes to things that have happened. I was molested when I was 13 years old. My dad touched me when I was 4. I learned about porn when I was 4. My brother used to bully me all the time. Every time I was trying to be myself. And his friends would, would like take interest of me being myself and my brother would beat me up. So what does that say then? It's not okay to be. Be myself. So I'll get, I'll get beat up. So I'm gonna be what everybody else wants me to be. So I had to deal literally with all of that. I think that people don't understand the value of what it's actually doing to their life. By not.

Letting, letting go and allowing yourself to forgive whoever did what, forgive yourself and letting go of Resentment. And I'm going to share a quick story. A few years ago, my face was the size of Thanos's from Avengers. And I went to the dentist. And I'm like, I don't. It was the most painful thing ever. And then. And I said, what happened? There's like, you got to get a root canal. I said, how is that possible? I already had a root canal 15 years ago. They said, whoever originally did the root canal didn't get it all the way to the root. So you've got 15 years worth of infections that is showing up on the surface. So while the most pain in my life, I'm having the biggest epiphany of my life. I'm like, that's why she broke up with me. Because I haven't cleared that energy with my mom, because I still resent my dad. And it just carries over in different variations. You pluck a weed from the top, it's going to grow right back. You pluck it from the root. Now you can plant something else. So when it comes to the trauma word, what I do is I'm looking for things that could be blocking me from experiencing.

A very fruitful and expressful life. But the way that I treat trauma, as I call it, that part of me that I have never allowed myself to play with, and it's on a playground. And if there was a bunch of kids on a playground playing, and you see a kid that nobody wants to talk to, would you go and talk to him? You go talk to him. Hey, what's wrong? And you'd be get curious. What's wrong? Nobody wants to talk to me. Why doesn't anybody want to talk? Well, I want to talk to you.

No.

Excuse me? No, I don't want to talk to you. What. What happened? Well, he did this. And you get curious, and you come from a place of compassion, not wrongdoing or you did this or blaming or shaming curiosity. And you're so. A lot of times we work on from the adult. We work on the little kid, but we rarely work from the little kid. The energy of the little kid.

To the adult. So what I do is I teach people how to go into the energy of the little kid. When you stuff this down with alcohol and drugs and sex and porn all these years, maybe you didn't release. You didn't express what you really always wanted to express. When I found out about my dad, man. And he's been. He was murdered when I was 12 years old. But let me tell you something. When I found out about what he did two years ago.

I gave him everything. But not the adult little me. You effing. I can't believe you sick bastard. You touch little kid. I expressed and I just allowed myself and my body to release those pent up emotions because that clogs your channel. Your channel is clogged and you're blocking all kind of opportunities to manifest. So by releasing and letting my body get used to that range of emotion and then saying, and I forgive you, and I forgive you, you didn't know any better. I'm sure your life was 10 times worse. And what if that was the 10 times better that he gave you or she gave you? And by coming and of course it's a longer process. So I'm telling you in a short stance by really taking time to spend time with your little kid and then love her for who she is and who she is not and whoever committed that.

Impact on you, loving them for who they are and who they are not and then learning how to forgive them and let go of resentment. I'm taking more time on this because this is really important. Especially a lot of people in the workforce, they do not do this work. That's why I make all the big money, because they all come to me. It was like, how do I get my head together? And we work specifically on this. I'm gonna share with you one thing. I'm at a speaking engagement, 5,000 people at the very end. Some guy keeps looking at me and looking at me. I'm like, man, what's up? He's like, man, I just want to apologize. I'm like, for what he said, Man, 20 years ago, I.

I went to prison for attempted murder. And I just got out yesterday and I was going to murder the man who snitched on me tonight. But I saw you and I saw what true forgiveness was like. Because on that stage I forgave the two men who murdered my father truly and wholeheartedly on stage. So I'm having a whole moment. And he said, I saw what true freedom looks like. And that's not the kind of life I, I want to live. I'm not going to murder him and I'm going to change my whole life. This dude is doing so well in his life right now. But so just imagine when you free up, when you free up that energy, it creates space to make room for blessings, it makes room for new levels. Is that helpful?

Darren, thanks for being here. Get up for Gary.

Damn, that was good. Do you feel like you can do anything right now you feel like you can run through a wall right now. Do you feel like you're just a couple mindset tweaks away from everything that you want? That's how a lot of people said that they felt. They felt like now they had permission to go after exactly what they wanted, not just what they feel like they had. That's the power of being around people who think this way, who are ahead of you, who are entrepreneurs. It's why I'm so in on building community, not selling products or courses. It's why we do in person meetups for our community, not just zoom calls. It's why we prioritize capcon, which is our annual event as the super bowl for us as a company. It's why we launched the NFT community called the Capitalist pigs, because now we have a group of people who, who have aligned incentives to serve one another. They're all in it together. We're all pursuing this thing together. It aligns our interests to actually build community. That's the power of what happens when entrepreneurs come together. And that's what we do here@capitalism.com I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. I'm the founder of capitalism.com, thank you so much for watching the video. I'll see you next time. If you found that value in this podcast and you're ready to go Deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. One, you can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits you can get plugged in@capitalism.com 1. And third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell, you can work closely with us inside the Capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do over at capitalism.com Inc. That's capitalism.com Inc.