[Jeffery Ross] ​​​​​​​Journey from darkness to the light

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary success.

Hello and welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success about those sliding door moments. And today I have an incredible guest with me, and I'm going to welcome Jeff Ross. Hey, Rick. Jeff, how are you going?

I am absolutely fantastic. Thank you for asking.

Look, Jeff is a trailblazer in personal growth, community empowerment, and purpose-driven leadership. Now, he's the visionary founder of Laptop Lifestyle Dads, LLD, and Today's Discipleship Community, TDC. So he's got two hats to wear. And with over 16 years of expertise in network marketing and social selling, Jeff has dedicated his life to helping others design extraordinary lives through servant-hearted leadership, which is an incredible term, I love it, and innovative strategies. Now, from equipping parents to create flexible, fulfilling lifestyles with Laptop Lifestyle Dads to fostering faith-based connections through TDC, Jeff seamlessly blends storytelling, connection, and cutting-edge AI mastery to inspire transformation. His passion for building personal brands and empowering others is second to none. He serves his community in contagious way. He calls himself the caffeinated kangaroo. And having joined Jeff on one of the platforms that we've connected on, the LA Tribune Podcast Network, I have to say he just brings the energy every single time he turns up. So I can't wait to get into this with you, Jeff, because one of the things that the listeners here are, are all kind of looking for is sliding door moments and sometimes moments that they miss in their life. And so this podcast is to inspire them through other people's stories and going, hmm, maybe that could have been me. What have I missed and what do I look for for the future? So I'm going to throw it to you. What was a significant sliding door moment for you in your life?

I love it, and thank you very much for that intro. I appreciate you. Um, that's such a powerful question, and I've got a few, but if I reflect back, especially over the last sort of 16, 20 years, um, the one that's probably a big milestone that I I thought when I was going through the whole experience, it was like, it was a bit of a, why is this happening to me? It was a bit of a, you know, it caused a bit of depression in the conversation, and I essentially lost my identity with what happened. And what happened was I had a horse jump on my neck when I was 26, and I ended up with 3 crushed discs in the back of my neck and ended up, you know, a few years later after that injury sort of really sort of progressed I didn't heal properly, you know, young, and I went back to work too early. Um, it ended up getting worse and worse, and to the point where, you know, a couple of years later I lost the mobility of my right arm because the, the, the discs were pinching on the nerves in C3 and C4, which controlled my right arm. And I ended up having chronic pain. So the doctors pretty much, you know, what felt like overnight put me onto a disability pension. They said, there's not much we can do. Yeah, yeah, you're done. They're pretty much like, that's it, we'll put you on this disability pension. Here's your pain meds, that's your lot in life. Go, go live it. It's like, well, at this time in my life, I'm newly married, we've just started a family, and I'm thinking, oh crap, what am I going to do to provide for this family we just started? And it hit me like a ton of bricks, like everything that I'd done up until that point was I was a, I was a jackaroo. I was a, you know, I worked on horse studs. I was a laborer. I was a farmhand. And, you know, like, I left school early. And so that's what my identity was wrapped up in. And, and, uh, when that was taken away from me, you know, and I was brought up in a house where, you know, the man provides the income for a family and all that type of thing, and so I went reeling. I went into a pretty deep, dark depression off the back of that.

Yeah.

And to the point where I actually tried to kill myself, you know, and this only probably, you know, about 10 years ago now, um, my— probably 11 years, 10 years ago now. And I think, but you know, the, the crux of this story, um, my relationship, my marriage was breaking down. I was severely depressed. I was in a lot of pain. I was very angry. And, you know, we're on the verge of divorce. We're on the verge of bankruptcy because of the financial pressure and all of that sort of thing. My kids at the time, Harrison was 2, Lachlan was like a baby. They didn't want to come near me because they were scared of me because I was just yelling and screaming at Sarah all the time and not proud of the fact, but I was probably a bit abusive in verbal that way. And it was a dark time in our lives. But in that, I learned how to, you know, after that episode of trying to kill myself, I was like, well, I've got to take ownership here. You know, what's like, what's going on here? And in that space, and this is where I actually found God. At this time, I was an atheist. And, you know, I did find God in this whole conversation because I tried everything that the world had to offer and it didn't work for me. So I went looking for something else. I didn't realize at the time that's what I was looking for. Yeah, I was looking for love. I was looking for connection. I was looking for community. I was looking for that safe space to heal and come back. And, and I found that inside this space. And, you know, over the last 10 years, I've been doing a self-discovery journey on, on how I've been created, you know, loving the warts and all the good, the bad, the ugly, the self-awareness of my strengths and my weaknesses and, and learning how to embrace all of that and learning how to love myself, learning how to love God, learning how to love my beautiful wife, my family and neighbors. And, and on the other side of that, finding myself and finding my purpose in life. And really now reflecting back on that whole situation as a blessing in disguise, because if I didn't think— if I had that moment, I probably would have stayed stuck, as you say, in the matrix and just stayed, stayed in my lot in life.

I mean, such a powerful sliding door moment because you can't miss it, right? You have this, this injury. And, you know, it's interesting, um, you know, when I think about my, my father, he, he had a similar background to you in the sense that, you know, he was a farmer, farm laborer. And at the age of 14, his dad said, we've got enough money to send one of you to university, or both of you can finish school, your choice. And my dad said, well, I guess I'll work the farm. So 14, he went home and worked the farm and, and was passed around through, you know, different family families who needed him working their farms. And, uh, and that was his lot. And when you've kind of been defined as that, and, and a physicality of that job, and your physicality, um, is affected, and that's your identity and your worth, you know, that, that deep reflection point a lot of people don't come back from. And obviously, you know, you took yourself to the, the bottom of, of that That, that moment where you found God, or, you know, you, you were looking for everything, can you just take me to— was there someone who introduced you to it? Did you pick up a Bible? Did you go, I've tried everything else, maybe someone has up there is looking after me? Like, what was that?

That's a really great question. Thank you for asking. So as I'm going into this, this seeking journey, it's actually— I'll share a quick story before I come back to that. Sarah could see that I was reeling, and she didn't actually know that this episode, like I tried to kill myself, had actually happened until quite a few years later. And I was free and comfortable enough to talk about it. Um, there's a couple of things here that unfolded. So I now see that God used my 2-year-old son as, as a way to help to interrupt what I was about to do. So as I was about to, you know, finish it, I had the bottle of Jameson's, I had the bottle of pills in one hand, I was about to just, you know, do the action and overdose essentially. My 2-year-old son at the time, he's a sound sleeper, never wakes up during the night. He woke up, he'd come into the bathroom and looked at me up and said, Dad, what are you doing? These big brown beautiful eyes. And that stopped me in my tracks, and, and I fell to my knees and I just hugged him and embraced him and realized what I was about to do was so final. And, um, so I, I stood in that moment. And then a couple of weeks later, Sarah, growing up in a Catholic family, you know, she was reeling and trying to figure out, you know, ways to save our marriage and ways to you know, help her and all that sort of thing. So she took me to a Catholic church, and at that time I was so angry and bitter and everything. I actually went there, and 20 minutes into that and into the sermon, I got up like a 3-year-old, shouted at the top of my lungs and said, that's it, I've tried this, I've done this, I never want to hear any more of this God stuff ever again in my life, and stormed out, dragging, kicking the screaming kids out. And then 2 weeks after that whole event, I'm introduced to a beautiful friend at the time who was my business coach. I'd been working with for the last 6 months and I just opened up to her. Celine was her name and I just shared the story of what's going on. And she said, right, you probably don't know it. I'm a Christian. You need to come meet my friend Tim, who's the senior pastor of our church, and yeah, share him with your story. Tim took me under his wing and he— I basically said to him, I said, mate, I don't know much about this God stuff. I'm an atheist, but I'm willing to open up to explore who this Jesus fella is. And can you help me? And, uh, so he took me under his wing. He met me where I was at, and he started going through just basic Bible discovery. And 6 weeks later into that conversation, I said, right, well, this is what's missing in my life. I've got to give this a go. And so I gave my life to Christ.

Wow, gave my life to Christ. I've got goosebumps. Oh, so much through this conversation. I— Jeff, thank you for going to that dark place and just exploring that a little further for us, because I'm sure there's a lot of people who've listened to this who have been or are considering or at that point where they're like, there's nothing else. And it may not be Christ, it might be, you know, the face of your child, or there might be something that pulls you back from that moment and gives you that, you know, I have it, I have a choice. I am the predominant creative force in my life and there's a choice here of how I can orientate differently, even though you're in it and it doesn't seem like that. And, you know, I recently, I grew up Catholic and in, you know, a beautiful relationship my mother had introduced us to the church and to the priests and, you know, to the— I think the wonder of it, you know, that it was always the wonder of, you know, the faith that got me. But as an adult, you kind of move away from it and, you know, you don't have that connection. And I had started reading Neville Goddard's work recently. And I was sitting there because I was reading Think and Grow Rich, you know, Napoleon Hill and the contemporaries, you know, he's writing at the same time. And I had just finished reading the recently reduced or released book by Napoleon Hill of Outwitting the Devil. And that conversation, you know, the reason that it hadn't been released for 60 years was they were so scared that the churches and the governments and the schools would wreck their businesses if they actually called them out for the matrix that had been created. Just Neville Goddard's work where he basically says, I think it's 76 times or 70 times in the Bible that says I am, I am God. And when we talk through our different modalities of transformational kind of teachings and works that people have, that sense of your self-referential, you are the creator in your life, or your focus creates your reality. All of these things come back to it's up you.

Yeah.

And you took that self-responsibility to something that you were an atheist and didn't believe in. Like, was that— what was the challenge that you went through then in doing that kind of that flip? Like, because imagine your friends and family knew you were an atheist and all of a sudden you're like, I've given my life to Christ.

Yeah, you know, it was, it was a real rub, you know, to the point that my father, who, you know, we grew up in an atheistic family, my father really doesn't speak to me much anymore. Uh, so there's a whole conversation around that for another time. But for me myself, I come to realize that growing up in that environment, I adopted my father's point of views, and I, I took them as, you know, that's what we do, like, as we do as kids.

Yeah.

And I come to realize how ignorant and how, you know, how naive that I was on this whole side of this conversation. Like, my, my atheism card was exactly that. It was a card that I used to, to to repel, to close down, to shut down the conversation. And it was a weapon, it was a tool. And, uh, when I decided to—

um, yeah, it was right, it was a wall, it was a wall.

Like, here you go, like, I'm an atheist, don't talk to me about this. So when I decided to actually drop that wall down, and, you know, I'm not the person who does things half-assed, I go all in, and, uh, you know, really start to unpack it. I came across a book that it's just one of these powerful books that is sort of just made sense. And the author's name is Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel is, uh, a two-time award-winning Pulitzer Award— yeah, the investigative journalism award, uh, the Pulitzer Award. So he's a two-time award-winning Pulitzer Award winner. And so investigative journalism, and he was an atheist as well. And so he wrote a book called Cased for Christ. And so I'm reading this book, and so he went on a mission to debunk Christianity to prove it wrong and go down where this is going to go, right? Yeah. Go down the rabbit hole of you're all a bunch of loonies, sort of thing. And as he's going down this journey, he came to the conclusion that God is real. Jesus is real. He did die on the cross and there's evidence to prove to the point. And so he went into right into the logistics of it all, the logic sense, but the emotion of it all and the experience of it all and relationship of it all. And it just all made sense. This book's been turned into a movie now as well. So it's a really powerful tool for this conversation. And, um, it's something that I refer to all the time for people to, you know, on the self-discovery journey.

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And for me, I like to say to people that, yeah, look, I'm, you know, I'm like church planner and pastor now. And I say to people that I'm probably the most furthest thing that you can think of, a religious type person. I have a faith, I have a relationship with Christ, but it stops there. You know, everything's experience, everything's relationship. And essentially, you know, bring it back to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. You know, in the Bible we're taught to, you know, follow the great commandment, which is to love. And it's very badly, poorly, poorly paraphrased. But we're essentially taught to love ourselves, to love God, and to love our neighbors. So to be of love. And that is, you know, that triune— you see that the tri, you know, the God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, you know, the I Am conversation throughout it. All right. So if I'm going to love God, well, I've got to love myself because he created me and vice versa. And then, you know, to be a representative and ambassador of Christ, well, essentially as an ambassador of love. So I've got to be reflective of that love and help others to do the same. And that's the Great Commission component, essentially teaching everybody to obey the commands that Jesus left us, which really ain't that many when you look at it. It's pretty simple. And teaches how to apply his ways to our life, discipling people of all nations. So, you know, become a disciple maker. The way I like to reframe it is I'm not the hero of the story. I'm a hero maker. And so I teach other people to be hero makers as well. And that's sort of given me a sense of purpose and a joy and a peace in life around that.

Oh, so many things I wanna touch on there. But you know, you, you've just finished off on two beautiful words, which is purpose and peace and actually having purpose and having that sense of why am I here? You know, I really, I really relish that. And you know, going to us as children, we know that, you know, we, we as gifts to the earth in humanity came down with this need to know how things were here. And we looked to the fathers and the mothers and the teachers and the brothers and sisters who said to be safe, to be loved, to be heard, you need to do this. You need to comply with atheism, or you need to be the little one in the corner that doesn't speak, or you need to be good at school. And, you know, all of these things to get love or the shorts. And we form these opinions as a child. And it's this childlike, you know, I'm a ticket member of the club of whatever my parents or those with the most influence told me to be, or me rebelling against what they are. And we hold that so strongly. But I love what you said with the purpose of I am, you know, I am God. I am, I am, you know, I have a purpose of what I want to bring to the world. There's a peace to it.

Yes, there is. And that was the big thing that was missing. Yeah, that was the big thing that was missing in my life was the peace and purpose and, and, you know, the, the reason for being. Like, you know, the way the secular world, the Western world, and when I look back at it all now, is essentially very paganistic. And it's, it's very— the secularism of it all is, is meet, uh, basically be happy. And, and so be glad and happy and merry. You know, live each day for the day. And, and I tried to do that, like, you know, and so much so I had a bad gambling problem, you know, and I wasn't necessarily an alcoholic, but I drank way too much and binge drinking and social parties and stuff and whatnot. And it was just living for the moment. And, uh, it's very empty, it's very superficial. And this whole keeping up with the Joneses conversation is just a recipe for failure in my eyes. And there's— there is no joy, there is no peace. And so I got to a point in my life where everything— I didn't meet the expectations of what I thought the world had on me and what I'd self-imposed expectations. And I thought I was just a massive failure. And so I got to a point where I thought life was hopeless and there was no point to it. And so much so that, you know, why I felt like I was going to need to kill myself was I convinced myself the stories that I had with myself that my family would be better off without me because I'm the root cause of all their problems. Yeah, that was the conversation I was having with myself. And now I realize, you know, basically what was missing in my life was hope, was love, was peace. Like, I had people loving on me, don't get me wrong, but I'd shut that out. I became hard and callous to it. Yeah. And, um, pushed everybody away because I was hurting.

Amazing story. And, and I just want to bring us to now, like, you know, what you're doing now. You've you've got two businesses. One is this beautiful business that empowers, you know, parents in particular. I know that's your, your messaging and what you love and the love you have for your boys, Sarah, you know, as well. But that's Lifestyle Laptop Dad. Like, you allow people really with heart and integrity to bring their message and monetize what they need to do to have, you know, wealth and financial abundance in their life. I'd love you talk to that value-based kind of marketing and how you teach that now?

Yeah, cool. Thank you. I'm a big believer of community-based marketing and living with— you heard me talk about servant heart leadership and heart-centered, purpose-driven mission and all that sort of thing. And it comes back to when we don't make the sale about us, when we don't make it about how can I get the sale, how can I pay a bill, how can I become rich and wealthy in that space? And we come back to the heart and the purpose and the intense, the impact that we're gonna have on the greater good around us. You know, and this is where I read books like Think and Grow Rich and, you know, Start with Why by Simon Sinek and all of the other greats in that space. They're all talking about leading with heart and purpose really when you read the crux of it all. And when you can operate out of that space, then it, you know, going through the hard, going through the messy, going through what I call sucksville is just part of the journey, right? You've got to do the work to get to it.

It sucksville at some stage in life, right?

And every level has its devil, right? So every time we climb a new level, there's a new sucksville.

Yeah, as its devil.

Yeah. And I like to think of life as a Mario Brothers game. You know, we're jumping through them, you know, as jumping on the mushrooms' heads, we're jumping on the big bosses' heads. And, you know, the job of it is just conquer the big boss to get to the next level. So yeah, every level has its devil. And so leading, coming back to helping people to figure out what makes their heart sing and operate out of that space, then we'll do what we need to do to get through the muck, to get through the grind, to get through the personal growth, to, you know, to go through the hard, the hero's journey side of the conversation to get to the other side of that, to then see the fruit of awesome town. A lot of people give up. It's like, you see that meme that's been floating around for years, like that 3-foot-from-gold conversation.

Yeah.

And a lot of people give up because what they're attached to of their expectation around success. And I feel like if you're attached to your success viewpoint of I've gotta have sales, I've gotta have those wins come into the door all the time, then yeah, when you're not meeting those expectations, when you're not meeting those goals, then it's very easy to get deflated, disempowered, and give up.

Up.

But when you're attached to something that's bigger than that, when you're attached to the heart and the purpose and the mission and the intent, then those things just become lag measurements of how we guide through the journey and how, you know, on what impact we have. So for me, sales, like sales is an important conversation to have. If we're not selling, money's like oxygen, right? If we don't have sales, you don't have a business. So it's a tool and we need to understand it, but it's what our attachment to that tool is. So I'm attached to the impact, I'm attached to the purpose, I'm attached to the mission transformation and the transformation and the results and the sales is just reflective of how I'm playing that game.

Yeah, beautiful. And I know I've heard you also talk about in your online pastor community on, you know, global community, you talk about authentically issues that people are facing without fear and shame. Like, you've brought up some very deep things here that— here, you know, do you feel that people have that, um, they've got that wall up, that heart wall up that says, I can't go there to that vulnerability? And how, when you turn up in that space, you know, are you seeing people transform? Are you giving them permission to do that?

Exactly what's happening. I think Brené Brown from The Atlas of the Heart says it well. When, when as a leader can lead with true vulnerability through raw, real emotion, and we can sort of lead in that space and meet people in that space. So like give them permission to be in that space as well. That's where the real growth really starts to happen. So I lead transparently and authentically and raw and real with my own vulnerability as a way to help, you know, say to people, it's okay, it's part of who you are. And to meet— and that's what I look around, meet people where they're at. And that's when I read the, you know, the book through the Bible and how Jesus did things, right? You know, and I always come back to, you know, as Jesus being the ultimate leader, the ultimate teacher, you know, the ultimate marketer, if you will, even. And, uh, you know, what did he do?

Sales, right?

Yeah, right. And that whole conversation, what did he do? And so like, he didn't go and judge and can make people condemned or feel them, you know, less than. He met them where they're at. He listened to them. He shared stories that helped them to— people to emotionally connect and resonate. So that's what I do. I share stories from my own experience, from Sarah's from other people's experience to help people to meet them where they're at and then authentically journey with them, partner with them. It's like, it's not our job to take someone's burden off their shoulders. That's their burden, right? We're not God in this conversation. That's between them and God. But it is our job to walk with them, to support them emotionally, spiritually, mentally. And, you know, that's that footprints in the sand conversation. You know, we're not here to be God in the conversation. That's, that's God carrying the other person. Yeah. For a recent example, right, I just had a friend who I've been mentoring for the last 2 years go through some real financial pressure stuff almost to the point. So he lost his job 6 months ago. We've been working on building up his online digital marketing business, but it just hasn't taken off as quickly as we first thought it could do. And, you know, for other reasons and whatnot. But so it's got to the point where he hadn't paid his rent for the last 6 weeks and he got hit with a rental breach but saying, if we don't get this sorted out, you're going to be homeless just before Christmas. Now, like, that's a hard thing to deal with. And so we can't take that burden off of those person's shoulders, but what we can do is we can rally around them. We can say, look, I hear you, I can see your pain, you're not alone in this. We can pray into this, we can talk, we can give you a safe space to be able to be that sounding post to talk things through. And, you know, bring the peace in that space and help them to get out of their chaos and the monkey brain chatter that's going on in their head and be that sounding board for them to, you know, get through that chaos, through that storm. And then one thing that we did, one of our people said, oh, well, how about we start a GoFundMe account and see what happens there, you know, off the back of that. And then that spurred the community to another level, and they rallied, and we raised $1,500 in a week for room. Then on the other back of that, he's now able to reach out. I help mentor him and help guide him to the right conversations with Housing Connect and a few other things. So now he's got solutions happening there and now he's got some breathing room where Housing Connect have stepped in and said, right, well look, we'll reduce your rent, we'll help you to cover 50% of that for the first 3 months while you get yourself a job again. And now we're working with him to get his truck license so he can get a job. And so we didn't take the burden off him. Yeah, but we walked with him and we supported him and empowered him, equipped him to be self-sufficient in that conversation. So, but he didn't have to do it alone. He had community rally around him.

I love that. I love that. It's just, um, so many dimensions. And, and as you say, you know, it's all about marketing, and, and we're all in sales every day. We're selling ourselves, and it may not be a physical product, but we're selling ourselves to, you know, our family, You know, to get the kids to, to eat dinner, like sales is everything. So look, I really appreciate that. Now before we go, a couple of things. I want a fun fact. What's a fun, unusual fact that most people won't know about you or would surprise them?

Well, I think this one's pretty shocking compared to what you see today. But back in my early 20s, I used to ride bulls in rodeos.

What? Okay, I can imagine that probably inspires a few stories or sermons.

Yeah, yeah. One of the ones is around resilience for sure. When old Bushman used to say to me, he said, Jeff, you don't know how to ride a horse or a bull for that matter until you've learned how to fall off 1,000 times.

Right. Okay. Resilience. We love this whole resilience resume, building up your resilience resume. Well, thank you so very much. Jeff has very kindly offered the listeners of Exit the Matrix a 45-minute free call with him where he will go through a game plan and a 90-day action plan around who you how you could create a business opportunity and explore that in your own life. So I really appreciate that, Jeff. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest and sharing your sliding door moment.

Thank you very much for the opportunity and blessing me. Yeah, this has been an amazing conversation. Really appreciate you.

Well, before you go, guys, please head over to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Go to ExitTheMatrix.io, subscribe so we can tell you about about when upcoming, uh, podcasts are going to be released. You're going to get a free gift when you do that. And also, let's crack this algorithm and get more people out here listening to great stories like Jeff's story. So go to Spotify, Google Podcasts, go to LA Tribune Podcast, or go to Apple and leave us a review and tell your friends about it, because I'd love for you to pass this on. And as always, I want you to know that we have gifts here for you. So please head over to exitthematrix.io jeff, J-E-F-F, and you can sign up for that 45-minute complimentary call with Jeff, which is amazing. So thank you so very much for that gift. And as always, we are here to support you. And until next time, here's to your success. Bye for now. Bye.

Bye-bye, Finland. Thank you for listening to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Make sure you subscribe to future episodes at www.exitthematrix.io. Until next time, here's to your success.