“Unlocking Success with Ray Martin: Mindfulness, Mentorship & Mastery

Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? This your boy CJ Moneyway. Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show. The podcast that brings you stories behind success. Today we have on the show my man Ray Martin, entrepreneur, speaker. He's also a writer, coach. Hey, how you doing today, Martin? Ray, how you doing, man?

Yeah, I'm good. Thanks, CJ. I'm enjoying a little bit of rain in England right now, but pretty good.

Okay. So I'm glad that you can come on the show today, man. And, uh, took some time out today to help us out and give us some insight on the things that you're doing. So hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, man, and about your background.

Yeah, I'm from England. I'm in my early 60s. I've been in the business world my whole life, really. I had a vision when I was a young boy to be a successful and respected businessman, and I became the Daily Telegraph Business Leader of the Year in 2002 when I was just turning 40, and, uh, so I— and, and that was for a company I founded. And so I felt very proud at that stage that I'd kind of accomplished the vision I'd set out to do. Then a couple of really unexpected and terribly difficult events happened. My business partner, who was my wife, left, and my dad died, and that caused me to take stock and go on a 6-month sabbatical in 2005. I left England for 6 months to travel around Asia as a backpacker. To take a fresh look at life in my mid-40s, but it didn't go according to plan, CJ. I ended up living out of my backpack for about 14 years, and that journey of reinvention really changed my life and also led to me writing and publishing this book here, Life Without a Tie, that has become a huge talking point in my life, and that has opened up a kind of completely new part of my life. Having new conversations about the things in that journey. But now I work as a leadership coach and a mentor for people in the business world and outside of it, people who want to be extraordinary leaders, the best leaders they can be. And that's something I'm very passionate about because we really need good leadership in the world right now. There's never been a time where brilliant leadership is not more needed, I would say.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. And as I tell everyone else that's out here doing a service, not only for themselves, but to empower a younger generation or a group of leaders so that not just so that you can be empowered, but that you're taking your knowledge and your wisdom and understanding and to also empower others. It's not all about us a lot of times. It's about the next generation that's coming up and the generations after that. Because once you pour down wisdom to one, then they can pay what they call pay it forward and, you know, give it to somebody else. Because as you say, in this day and time, leadership is very, very vital to society right now.

So, I think so.

Right, you talked about, and you know, you can go into it as much as you want or as little as you want. You talked about your business partner was your wife and you left the UK and the company that you founded. Yeah, what was the turning point that actually made you leave the company?

Well, you know, I was a founder and owner of the company, so, and it'd been my dream to build a business as successful as that one. And so my wife, who'd been on that journey with me for 10 years, and she decided to quit, it kind of was a bit like a balloon bursting energetically. I'm talking about energetically, you know. It's like all the energy was generated out of our partnership. And so I just couldn't, honestly, I couldn't see a way forward with a new business partner. It wouldn't be the same. We were like ice skating champions. We just had a movement and a rhythm together, which was probably going to be impossible to replace, I felt. And I'd been in that field for like 25 years and I felt I'd given a lot to it. And I really wanted to make a new start doing something slightly different. And I wasn't sure what. So the turning point was when my dad passed away shortly after we separated, because he'd always said to me, Ray, you know, you work so hard your whole life, you know, when are you ever going to get to travel or see the world or really get a life outside of work? And I'd never really listened to him that much until he went. And then one of my friends I hooked up with in Australia on a visit, and she told me that she'd been on a 4-year sabbatical traveling around the world and how it changed her life. And suddenly I thought, yeah, this is something I want to do for a few months. So that was the turning point, really.

And that turning point turned into 14 years of living out of a backpack.

Yeah, because, you know, I, I never ever remember— well, I went to Thailand first, and of course when I arrived I was, I was a tourist in the beginning, and I had a backpack and a laptop and that was all. And for the first few months, I was just enjoying not working every day and not having targets and obligations and all these kinds of things I'd had my whole life. But it also felt very weird. I felt scared about the future, very anxious. I was still feeling a lot of guilt and shame about having been a failure as a husband and not living up to this image I'd had as being a great leader and person, but in my own life, it wasn't the case. And so I was agitated, even though I was in a beautiful setting, on the inside I felt very unrestful and agitated. And someone said to me, why don't you do a 10-day vipassana retreat? And I said, 10-day what? What's vipassana? I literally had no idea what that was. They said, oh, you go into a Buddhist monastery for 10 days and you sit and meditate with the monks in silence, you know, it will change the way you see things potentially, and you can't be a lot calmer, etc. Anyway, I thought it was— the timeliness of the guidance was perfect, and I got a confirmation signal from the universe to say that was the right thing to do. And so I went into that monastery, and that completely and utterly blew my mind, CJ. It really It's like someone got hold of the volume knob on the outside of my head, which was up at 9 or 10 out of 10 for noise, and they turned it right down to 1 out of 10. And I felt like I was in a place of real equanimity, calm, peacefulness. I suddenly realized what being mindful meant and how to live more mindfully and be aware of my own thinking and my emotions and things like that. And I felt much more grounded. And I thought, you know what, I don't really— I'm not ready to go back to a new start in England yet. I'm going to stick around a bit longer and do a bit more of this mindfulness practice and meditation. And I want to just develop that practice a bit more. So I stayed another year. And then in that year, I found an elephant sanctuary in Thailand and an orphanage in Nepal where I'd been trekking in the Himalayas. And I wanted to help, and I wasn't sure what to do. So I decided to raise money by, by running a marathon. I was about to turn 50, and I thought— I never run in my life, by the way, CJ— and I thought if I could run a marathon as I was about to turn 50, I could ask people to make donations and sponsorships, and I could raise money for these causes, and I could put it into a foundation which I created called Calling All Angels Foundation. And so just by a stroke of luck, I put my name in the ballot for the New York Marathon 2009. I got a place first, first shot. I got a place in the New York Marathon. So I knew it was the right thing because that never would have happened otherwise.

Wow.

And I met someone on my travels who had run 6 marathons, who was 10 years younger than me. His name's Matt Campbell. And I asked Matt if he would train me how to run a marathon and I told him why and what I wanted to do, and he said, sure, you just have to live here in Chiang Mai for 6 months now. I'll train you how to do it. And so I said— I shook his hand and said, right, it's a deal. So on 1st November 2009, I ran the New York Marathon, managed to raise about $15,000 from friends and businesses all around the world. I was on the phone night and day for a year and took that money to the elephant sanctuary and back to the orphanage in had things done and built and used the money so until it was all gone. That adventure took me about 2 years, and I, and I've since, I've run 4 more marathons since then and raised in total about $50,000.

Wow, wow, that, that's amazing, man, to be in your 50s running marathons.

Yeah, my last one, well, I was 57, you know, the last marathon I ran. All of the story of the, the fundraising and the training and the elephant sanctuary and the orphanage, all of those stories I've captured in, in the book Life Without a Tie. So if any one of your listeners is wanting to know more about those stories, they're all in the book.

Wow. So Ray, tell us, man, what is it like to be trapped in a life that others expect of you?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I can say what it's like for me, but before I do, the time I started really deeply reflecting on this was the time when I was in the lowest point, where I was on my own. My ex-wife had gone, my father had just died, and I was reading a book by a lady called Bronnie Ware. And I'm saying this so your readers can get a copy if they want. It's called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying., and it's a very popular book, sold millions of copies around the world. This is an Australian nurse who works in a hospice, and she asks every person in there who's in the last days or the last weeks of their life, what do you most regret about your life? And she said they all say the same 5 things, whether they were a janitor, CEO, a millionaire, uh, didn't— doesn't matter. They all say the same 5 things. The number 1 thing is I wish I'd lived my life true to myself, not the life that others expected of me. And I immediately resonated with that when I was trying to figure out what to do. When I read that, I thought, wow, it hit me like a punch between the eyes. Because even though I was a very well-respected CEO and I was very competent in that role, honestly, CJ, I just didn't enjoy being in that role. I could make myself do it, but it took a lot of energy and effort for me because I felt I was always slightly pushing uphill doing that kind of work, and it wasn't me, what I call, in my element. This is a term Sir Ken Robinson coined. He's a brilliant educator, and he said, when you've got something you really are brilliantly skillful at and you've got something you really care about, you're passionate about, if you can find something that those two things combine or overlap, then you're in your element. So when I was using my business skills and my sales skills to run the foundation to raise money for the orphanage, I was right in my element. You know, it's like that was me at my absolute best, using my God-given talent to do something I really care about.

Yeah.

And, and so that, that for me was like a great example of being in my element. And I wasn't in my element as a CEO. I was spending a lot of time doing things I don't enjoy, especially on the legal and financial and the business management side. I like working with clients to change their lives and improve their lives. I like the actual conversations which are transformative. But I was involved in a lot of sales negotiations, contracts, legal blah blah, and, and that just meant I hardly ever got to do what I really love to do, even though it paid me very, very well. And I have to say, I'm truly grateful for those years because the business was profitable and was able to build a foundation of a good life financially. But it was— I wasn't in my element. So that was what made me decide to quit doing that.

Okay. So, and I get what you're saying, being in your element. Sometimes you want to stay in your lane. I can do certain things, but life is about— it's not a lot of times not about the money. It's about enjoying what you're doing to make the money. You know, I never forget my father told me back in the day, Ray, he say, Get you an education so that you can have a career and enjoy getting up in the morning.

Yeah.

Doing what you doing instead of just having a job and having to force yourself or like, ah, I gotta go here today. So I mean, I know it's different, but it's the same. Like you didn't want to be the CEO, but you did the job, but it didn't fulfill the happiness that you had. But doing what you doing now or what you just started doing with the Elephant Factory, Foundation, like you said, that was— I get up every day, I get up every morning like, oh man, I'm excited to do this, you know.

I had endless energy. I could have done it 24 hours a day. Although I have to say, you know, it depends on one's values, I think, CJ, because I coach a lot of leaders and people in the business world. Every day of my life I'm talking to people in that world, and everyone's got a slightly different view because of the values they hold. Like, for me, I have a value have 4 core values like freedom, integrity, love is one of my values, and exploration. It's one of my 4 core values. And so for me to live a life where I feel fulfilled, I've got to be constantly exploring, like exploring new frontiers, going into new things in my life where I'm right on the beginning or the edges of learning. For me, that's vital. If I'm not doing that much, I'm feeling quite dead and sluggish. A bit stuck, you know. I like to shake my own boat quite a lot and check things out. But no, I know other people who have different values, who are driven and motivated in different ways. And so I'm not saying to anyone who's listening, that's what you should do. It's just what you should do though is really listen to your own inner compass and inner guidance. And I wrote a lot in the back of the book about how do you build a strong foundation inside yourself. That means things like, how do you identify what's your purpose, what's your mission, what are your values, what's most important to you on a daily basis, you know, where are— what do you— what are you doing when you're in your element? These are things to, to do some deep self-reflection around, to build yourself a picture of a vision and a set of values and a life that you are going to want to get up in morning, like you say, and be really energized every day. And that's most of the work I do in coaching leaders, is to help them create their own vision and map that's really, really going to take them forward like that.

So, Ray, you said something in the statement. You said that you like to shake the boat, you know, like, yeah, I do. You like to explore and do things and get the juices flowing in a different direction. If not, you know, you just don't feel like yourself. So with that being said, How do you find your own path amidst the noise, chaos, and the pressure to conform?

Yeah, that's the subtitle of my book. I don't know where you got that question from. How do you find your path? Well, you've got to be willing to do quite a few things. You know, one is to be without self-awareness and the reflection that's necessary to gain self-awareness. Awareness, you haven't got much of a chance, I would say. I mean, that's a really, really big part of the journey. So getting to know yourself, building your self-awareness, getting a set of skills that you can then use to actually take the actions necessary to bring about the vision that you have. So if you see yourself wanting to go in a certain direction and do a certain thing, a project, etc., You've got to acquire the skills and knowledge to be able to do that as well, and that's part of it. And then making sure you've got what the commitments that you need to yourself and to others to be willing to deal with all the obstacles that will come where life will try and kind of see if you really have the intention to do it, to shake you out and sort of, you know, a lot of people I think find it difficult, so they default to the mainstream choices, you know, to get a job they're not 100% happy with, but they need to find a way to pay the bills. And yeah, I think, you know, I, I don't really know what I truly want to do, so I'll do this for now. Yeah, thinking that they'll maybe find something else that they'll do, but eventually life overtakes. They've got other things— kids, friends, you know, house to run, etc., etc.— and you never really find the time to get back to that. I'll do— I'll work out later what it is I really want to do. So it takes a kind of commitment to yourself to be willing to do that.

I agree with you because you hear people— I don't deal with leaders all the time like you or people all the time, but you hear people all the time or a lot of times say, I only wanted to be in this job for 1 or 2 years because, like you said, I needed something to do. Then they wind up retiring from there or been there for 20 years. I only came here for an intern, but now I've been here for 20 years. Now, like you said, because things happen, life moves on, bills need to be paid, kids, friends, and so you just get stuck in the situation now that you become content with certain things.

Yeah. Another thing that I did, CJ, I don't know if this is going to work for everyone, so I'm not saying this is what what to do. But another thing that I did was I changed my orientation when I left to go on the sabbatical, because up until then I'd been a very results-driven CEO. And so I sort of kept setting these 1, 2, and 5-year plans with financial targets and then driving at these targets to achieve them no matter what. And so I was kind of constantly pushing out of the way other things in my life that were getting in that were blocking my focus on achieving those goals, those financial targets. And I did that so much I missed a lot of my life, you know. I missed birthdays, events, family dues. I met a lot of friends, drifted away. I got the targets, but I lost a lot in the process. And I eventually lost my marriage as well too. Wow, that was heartbreaking. So after that, and I seeing that what it had cost me to be so focused driven on singular set of targets, which I thought those, if I achieve those goals, that will bring me happiness. And that was a mistake in my belief because they didn't. Achieving those goals didn't bring me happiness. It was quite an unhappy experience. And so I thought, what is happiness really based on then? And I started to realize through doing meditation and other things that happiness was much more based on living peacefully and fulfilled in the present moment. And just making sure you enjoy every moment that God gives you, irrespective, you don't need a target, but just knowing that you're always in a place where you can be happy because it's a choice. It's not based on the belief, you know, I'll be happy when, it's a belief that most people have. I'll be happy when I get a new partner or I'll be happy when I get a rise or a promotion or I'll be happy when I get my house cleaned out. There's always a happiness is always postponed until an event outside happens in the future. And so we, we kind of push our happiness onto the outside world and we don't take ownership for it. I'm a big advocate for saying you can be happy now. You have to take 100% ownership of your life and know that whatever circumstances you're in, those are the ones that are facilitating your growth and your development. And they're also the conditions that you've co-created. And a lot of people don't want to face into that and lean into that and say, well, how come the conditions I'm in are rubbish? You know, how, how could I have created— why would I have created these for myself? And there are some plausibly good reasons why we do that, but we don't often take the time to look.

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To me, that sounds like a lot of times we don't want to take the accountability, as you say, to ourselves and take the accountability for, you know, why we in this situation, or we always want to put the fault or the blame somewhere else.

So exactly.

So Ray, you said that the last question was like the subtitles to your book.

That's right.

So you've been talking about the book Life Without a Tie. So what inspired you to write this book?

That's a great question. Well, I never had the thought of writing. When I left England, I was, I was basically a broken man, you know. I was heartbroken, grieving the loss of my dad and the whole life I had to leave behind. And so the journey for me was a journey of healing and a journey of reinvention. And it was just me being curious and wanting to learn and grow. And I was traveling quite a bit. And so I met other travelers, love to talk to each other in the evenings and, you know, on both buses and trains and airplanes. And so I always constantly was in long conversations with other travelers who often said, so Ray, how long have you been traveling? I'd say, oh, 2 or 3 years. They go, 2 or 3 years?

Wow.

How did you, how did you, why, how did you manage to do that? You know, And I said, well, this is what happened. I told them about the divorce and my dad and all the things we're talking about and some other stories of some of the adventures I'd had because I started doing marathons. I acted in a play in Australia and did all sorts of strange things I never dreamed I would do. And yeah, yeah, I mean, many things. And people always used to say at the end, during those conversations or at the end of those conversations, something like, they say, oh, it's lovely talking to you, Ray. And then, by the way, are you ever going to write a book about your journey? Because if you do, I'd really like to read it. So can I give you my email address so that if you'd ever write a book, would you tell me? I said, I laughed in the beginning. I said, no chance. I'm just doing this for myself. I don't want to write about it. But then I got to about, after 3 or 4 years, CJ, I got to about 50 people who who had said that, and I had quite a long list of email addresses. And then about 2 more years, it was like 100.

Yeah.

And I thought, oh my God, I really thought, wow, the universe wants me to write a book, and it's just telling me over and over again the same thing: Ray, write a book. So in 2011— yeah, 2011, which was 6 years after I left England— I decided I'd have a go at writing a book. Now, I didn't know anything about writing a book, so I went on a 5-day writer's course, which was running in Chiang Mai in Thailand, by the way. A woman from New York, a literary agent and a published author, a big shot, was coming over from New York to do this 5-day course. And it was really, really expensive. Like, I couldn't afford— I was on a— I wasn't earning any money. I was doing charitable work and I wasn't earning any money. And she said, it's 5 days, it's $1,200. I wrote to her and said, I can't afford $1,200, can I do it for $500? Because I could cobble that together from my savings and stuff like this. And she said, yeah, okay, you can do it. And so I took that as a confirmation signal. I always look for these confirmation signals with this. And so once I get a confirmation like that, then I know it's the right thing to do. And so I did this 5-day course and I was able to walk away from that 5 days knowing I wanted to write a story, a memoir. A true story about my own journey rather than a fiction or a novel or a fantasy or something. And I started writing, but I didn't do very much. And it wasn't until 2015, which was another 4 years later, that I actually sat down and started writing the book proper. And it took me from that day, it took me about 6 years to finish it because I was still in the journey. I didn't come back to England until 2019. And I was still in the journey then, and then it took me 2 years when I returned to finish up the writing and get it published.

Yeah, I know about everything you just said. Not knowing how to write, not knowing the first thing about it. I didn't take a course, actually. What I wrote, somebody, they just edited it because I wrote like I talked. And I didn't know that in literature, it's a certain way that you got to talk, it's a certain way that you got to present your story. You said the date 2015, that was actually the year my first book got published in 2015.

Oh, great. Congratulations.

I was on that book, man. Like I say, it's a journey. I was writing that book for 13 years before it actually got published.

I love it.

It's not an easy process, as you were saying. It takes a lot of time and a lot of organization that goes within it.

It does. Very— I suppose fortunate is the wrong word, but when I got back to the UK in 2019, within a few months the pandemic had started and everyone was in lockdown. And so there was no work, it was all canceled. And so I actually had this period of like being locked down at home, able to do a lot of writing. And so it was a very— it was just very fortunate timing for me to get it done.

Like you say, couldn't go nowhere.

Yeah, and I was writing about my own story, so I didn't, you know, I knew what the story was, but I did a lot of research because I wanted to bring into the story, you know, some factual references from the outside world around. Like, say for example, you take a concept like minimalism, because I got rid of all the contents of my home. I either gave away or sold, and I got rid of everything I owned, so I owned just a bag of clothes and a laptop. And when I started researching into that trend, I found out— I didn't know, but I found out that minimalism was a, was a thing, was a trend. In fact, there was a big documentary on Netflix by Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn, who wrote a book called The Minimalists. And there's a whole movement about being a minimalist, owning minimal amount of stuff. And these guys, they took the entire contents of their apartment, they put it all in boxes in their hallway, and then they just took out what they needed for one month, what they actually needed. And they said they used about 2% of all the things they owned. And so they realized they were hoarding loads of stuff that they didn't ever, ever really need. And I think that's, you know, in England and in America and these developed countries, people pay money, CJ, like tens of thousands of dollars a year to rent a storage unit because they've got so much stuff they can't even fit it in their house. They have to rent an additional place to store stuff.

Yeah.

And it just, you know, how have we got to this place in the world, you know, where we're so obsessed? Well, it's because we're, we've become a nation of consumers, and that there's a whole mindset around consumption which we're largely unconscious about. And so I, so I started to research into this so I could write about that trend in in my own story and sort of illustrate from my own journey how these trends are changing and shifting.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. But like I said, I'm laughing because I just put up a shelf in the garage the other day, and so we wanted to rearrange some stuff and get rid of some stuff. Like you say, like hoarder, that's why I'm like, no, we throwing that whole thing away. Away, you know, the whole thing. We throwing it away because it wasn't nothing but toys in there. So it's just like, you just keep stuff that you really don't need. Like, we probably should have threw it away last time or got rid of it last time. But like you said, yeah, consumers, and just, you know, just keep holding on to things that you don't even need anymore.

So, exactly.

So yeah, so I get exactly what you said with that. So, right, one out of six rules that you learned during your 14-year journey, and how did they shape your life?

Yeah, I mean, I can talk forever about these because they're really important. We've touched on one already. The first one I'd say is build a solid foundation inside yourself before you step out into the world, which means knowing what your vision is for your best life, what you value, any sense of purpose that you have. You know, like for me, for example, When I look back at my life, even though I've done lots of different jobs and lived in different places, there's been one common thread throughout all of it, which is I've always wanted to have greater consciousness and raise my awareness and encourage others to do the same. So I sort of feel like my purpose in the world is to be a torchbearer for greater human consciousness. And so I'm always talking about it nonstop. Whether it's work, not work, socially, with my family, friends, everybody. It's one of the subjects I love talking about more than anything. So that's my purpose, is to bring more light into the world and shine a light on greater human consciousness. And so every choice I make, everything I get invited to do, I ask myself, does that sit well with the purpose I have, or would that be something completely the opposite? And if I make that choice to do that thing I'm being invited to do, does it sit well with my values of freedom, integrity, love, and exploration, or does it violate those values? Does it not really serve those values? And so I've now got a mechanism to be able to check every decision and choice I make. And the more choices we make in alignment with that core foundation that we have, the more we choose to do every moment in alignment with those things, the more powerful we are, the more happy we are, the more settled we are, the more at peace inside ourselves we are, the more well we are, and the more we shine. In the world, you know. So that's why that's important. The second rule is 100% ownership, which means fully owning everything that happens. You know, I know it would have been very easy for me, for example, to say, oh, my life's bloody ruined, you know, my wife, it's all her fault, she walked out, you know, poor me, everything was going well until then, and now it's a complete mess and there's nothing I can do about it. And those kinds of mindsets where we, where life's happening to us are not serving us very well to be reaching our full potential. Everything's happening for a reason. And generally everything's happening because we've been complicit somehow in that event, in those events, even the ones we don't like. Like if someone dumps us, we have to look and say, well, when I was in the relationship, what was I not doing enough of? That made that person feel that way. Because there's always a co-created part of it, always, no exceptions. And so I spend a lot of time in my coaching work kind of gently encouraging people to look at the co-created part of the mess they're in sometimes, or the situation they're in that they don't like. So that's one, taking up full ownership. Another is building sustainable, powerful, and Purposeful relationships. I could speak for ages just on this one alone. So I'll give you an example of the principle. You know, when I had my own business, obviously had people work for me, and one of the young, very young people that worked for me as a coach and a consultant was a sort of training to— I knew she'd become very successful in her life in years to come because she was very bright. And when the business was sold, in 2008 and we shut it down. I helped her find another job in another organization because the end of the path in my business was there. She, she couldn't go any further. And so I went out of my way because she had been so loyal to me. I went in secret, but with her permission, in secret, I went to a rival and I said, we've got this really good person. I think you'd be crazy not to hire her because, you know, she's been such a loyal and fantastic member of our team. I think she's a future star and you can have her on board and she wants a job too. So she joined that company and she was very happy that I'd helped her get the next step and that the people who took her on were really happy. They got a really great person. Everyone was happy. And I was happy because it was my way of thanking her for what she'd done. Now, about 13 years later, CJ, I was back from Asia because I'd met a woman from Poland and I was living in Warsaw. I saw in Poland. And for anyone who's not that hot on geography, Poland's a couple of hours by plane to London. So suddenly I was within reach of working back in London, a place that I knew very well. And so I reached out to this lady just to have a personal update and let her know where I was and what I was up to. And I hadn't spoken to her for like literally all those years, but we've been very close friends. Yeah, she'd had a couple of kids and stuff. And I said, what are you up to professionally? She said, oh, I'm me and this person who was also at the company that she joined, we're going to start a new organization to help emerging leaders develop. And this is what it's going to be called. It's not open yet, but we're on the drawing board and we're going to open it in a few months. And I said, she told me about it and I started getting goosebumps. I thought, oh, this is really in alignment with my values. The kind of work I want to do is exactly the kind of freelance work that I'm looking for. And I said to her, I said, you know, would I be able to join the team of coaches you're going to put together? I'd really like to do that. She said, only if you don't mind me being your boss instead of you being my boss. I said, absolutely not. I don't have any problem with that because my mindfulness practice had helped me become, have the humility to accept that and have no problem with it. I don't think I could have accepted that 10 years before., but now it just didn't make any difference. I was just very grateful to the universe for providing me a chance to do some work I love. And so I said, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. And she called me about 3 or 4 months later and said, right, we're off. We've got first project. You're on the team. And that came out of the fact I built this purposeful, sustainable, powerful relationship with her years before and have maintained it. And I've done that my whole life. And every invitation or opportunity I've ever had has come from a relationship that I've built like that. I've had a lot of what looks to the outside world like you're just very lucky or something. Yeah, but it's not really luck. It's like you're doing the work, but it doesn't bear fruit sometimes for quite a few years.

Yeah, exactly.

And anyway, you don't do it to bear fruit. You do it because you just love being a kind person. That's the reason for doing it, because it's just the right thing to do. That's why I do, because it because it has an integrity, and integrity is one of my core values. It has an integrity of its own. Being kind has integrity. So I do it for that reason. But generally, it always usually brings gifts to me that I never expected. Always. It has done for years.

So I do want to ask you one more question though. Yeah, I do want to ask you one more question. Where can we find a book at so everybody can read The Rules and go get the book?

Yeah, I mean, the book is on Amazon, obviously, in the US. That's— there's a lot of people on Amazon buying the book. But I also have my own website on it where if people want a signed copy of the book, because I still have a few, they can just reach out directly. And the website is called lifewithoutatai.com.

Lifewithoutatai.com. Okay, cool.

Yeah, because that's the title of the book.

My last question, right, why is there no need for fear of failure even when you do actually fail?

Because We learn more from our failures than we do anything else in life. And everybody who's a growing being will fail. You know, it's absolutely guaranteed. And in fact, you almost want to have the kind of relationship where you welcome it because that's where you really learn when you fail. When you, you know, I failed at businesses, I failed at relationships. In fact, it's through failing that my marriage had such a big impact to motivate me to want to learn and improve in my own life that I'm almost— it's a weird thing to say, but I'm almost grateful for the events that happened because I feel like I'm such a different version of me than I would have been if I'd never had those failures. And that's why we should never be worried because life is an adventure. It's not something to get right. It's an adventure and failure is part of it. And if you look at all the big stories, like the archetype stories, there's always a hero who goes off to conquer his demons and slay some conqueror and he fails and then has another go and succeeds and returns to the old world with the new insight. And so the hero's journey, this is what I'm talking about, the Joseph Campbell work, hero's journey. You know, we're all heroes in our own journey. We all need the successes and the failures to be growing. Yeah, so that's why no need to fear it.

I agree with you too. It's a lot of times even in, you know, failures and places that you don't want to be, there's, there's a skill set at times that's being developed that you don't know, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Doing the different things that you're doing, you're like, I hate this, but it's something that can be propelling you to the next level and you don't even know it. It's just, you have to go through this in order, as you say, I had to go through this, although it didn't feel good, I didn't want this to happen, but I felt like if I didn't go through this, then I wouldn't be who I am today. You know, that's life. That's just how it is, man. So I appreciate you coming on the show, Ray, man, and giving us your wisdom and your insight, man, and being transparent, telling us about your journey. Is there any other endeavors that you have coming on the horizon that we can look forward to?

I'm just working away coaching, you know, a few different people here and there. And I may start in the new year. I may start working on a second book. I've got a couple of ideas, but I'll have to keep you posted. I've got nothing super clear at the moment around that.

No, that's cool, man. If you do start on that new book, whenever you get it published, man, make sure you come on the CJ Moneyway Johnson Show. And CJ, supporters, man. I really appreciate it. Hey, check out my man Ray Martin. Check out his book. Don't tell me— I got it sitting right here. lifewithoutattie.com. You can get it on his website. He said that he has some more books and he'll give you a signed copy. You have been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with your boy CJ Moneyway and my new friend Ray Martin. We out of here.

Thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends, leave a comment, and drop a review. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday for more inspiring journeys. Who knows, your story might be next.