2280: The Humble Alpha: Finding Your True Identity & Redefining Leadership with Steven Kuhn

Welcome to the show. This is Jason Hartman, your host. And every 10th episode we do something kind of special, kind of different. What we do is we go off topic. So regardless of which show it is on the Hartman Media Network, whether it be one of the financial shows, economics, real estate, investing, travel, longevity, all of the other topics that we have, every 10th episode we go off topic and we explore something of general interest, something of general life, success, value. And so many of our listeners around the world in 164 countries have absolutely loved our 10th episode shows. So that's what we're going to do today and let's go ahead and get to our guest with a special 10th episode show. And of course, on the next episode, we be back to our regular programming. Here we go.

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartman media.com.

So.

I closed out last month on the real estate side, sold three houses, got.

Two more under contract.

It's been a long time coming. But all that stuff that Jason and the rest of the team and I have been working on since Jacksonville, all coming through. So all good stuff.

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Welcome to episode 2280. I am in Santiago, Chile and on the way to the airport to go to Easter Island. Yes, very exciting, very exotic place, can't wait. And wanting to do this trip for a lifetime. And I'm here in an Uber with Javier, my Venezuelan driver who moved to Chile about eight years ago. And his English is fantastic, much better than my Spanish. And I was asking him, you know, his view of the world, of the political environment and all the crazy stuff that's going on in of course Venezuela, but also in the U.S. javier, thanks for joining me.

It's a pleasure, sir.

You are a new star. Anyway, you know, so I was asking you earlier what you think of Donald Trump and obviously he's making a big splash on the world stage and he's making a lot of people very upset and a lot of people very happy. What does a Venezuelan who is living in Chile the last eight years think of the, the Trump revolution?

Well, I think that the old people to all the Venezuela people live in Chile. He like, they like Trump.

Yeah, yeah.

Because we are out of Venezuela, you know, and for, for of like an immigrant out of Venezuela for the dictators in Venezuela. And for me, I like Trump because.

They hate the dictator, you know. Yeah.

So you were saying you like Trump because he took a hard line on Venezuela and the government there, the dictatorship. And Obama and Biden were very soft.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, yeah.

So Trump stands up to them, right? Yeah, yeah.

Like Obama and Biden because they broke the, the work that Trump makes in your first presidency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They buy again oil from Venezuela and that's, that was basically supporting that the dictators are broke in Venezuela.

Right.

And Obama and Biden, when Biden come pay again buy again oil in Venezuela.

The dictators, they're giving them money. Yeah, right.

I believe.

Yeah. But so the typical Venezuelan though has sort of a double edged view of Trump. Right. Because some of them don't like Trump because you know, Trump is control the borders of the U.S. right. And maybe they want to go to the U.S. and Trump makes it harder.

But Trump has only.

Care your country. You know, I think that, that they, I, I think that he, he think that all immigrants know not bad people of a person, you know. Yeah. Maybe he deport lots of people, but not, not, not all.

Yeah, right, right.

Like I have a lot immigrants and rich, really good people.

What else do you want to say? Do you want to talk about Chile? And I am so impressed. And we talk about this, how beautiful Santiago is. I was here before years ago, but I didn't remember it being so, so pretty, so clean. Yeah, it's very nice.

It's really, really, really clean.

Yeah. I mean has your life been good since coming here? Eight years ago.

It's Santiago changed. Okay. One thing for, for good and another for bad, but it changed it the last six or eight years. But right now Santiago is a beautiful city. It's really keen how to say that is really expensive, you know.

It is really expensive.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

For me and for all people.

Right.

10, 10 million people live here in Santiago. B.

Right. To me it's inexpensive. I think Santiago is very reasonable. But it just has where you're Earning your money and where you're spending your money, you know, that's always, that's, they call that geo arbitrage. Right. You know, a lot of, a lot of people move to just save money and have a, have a more economical life. So this country has an interesting history of also dictators. You know, you had Allende Binoche. I mean, it's got a pretty interesting history, but, you know, would you say the economy is good here? Is there a lot of inflation? If someone wants a job, can they get a job okay, or what is that like?

There is inflation, but the, all countries in South America have.

Yeah.

You know, but when you live in Chile and you work, you can survive. Okay? You can live tranquilo.

What does that mean?

Traquilo is easy.

It's easy, okay?

Very easy. You, you work, you pay, you live.

Okay?

There is inflation. Yeah, yeah. But all countries have, but Chile, slow inflation is not like Venezuela, you know.

Right.

Not like Argentina.

So Argentina and Venezuela have had some insane amounts of inflation. We all know the history of that. Tell us what that was like, living with inflation in Venezuela, I have Shreky Hart. Would you just seek to spend it right away because the money keeps going down in value? Yes.

Tell me about that. You have $10, but in Bolivar.

Today you can pay, I don't know, a phone pay here. You go to the store, you say that, you lose the phone, you say, oh, how much? $10. Okay. Oh, I come tomorrow. When you go to, when you come tomorrow to the store, they say, ah, not 10, any or 20.

So it double. You would double. Unbelievable.

Yeah. And the next day 40. And the next day 10, 100.

But what would the employers do? Because everybody would probably just say, I'm not going to work unless you pay me more and more and more. Right.

10 million of people out of Venezuela and 10 million people send $1 per day to Venezuela. $10 million into Venezuela every day. You know, and so when you work in Venezuela, the, the money, no, no El canca.

So the money in Venezuela would not keep up. But the foreign money coming in, the what they call remittances, for example, I.

I, I can send today $50 for my, my mom or my dad.

You know, they're in Venezuela still. Right.

They live with that.

Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah. And that's, that's how it works out. But not all people have family members sending them money from another country. Right?

One. Well, Venezuela have 40 million of people and 10 live outside, outside of the U.S. yeah.

Right, right. Yeah. Okay, good. Well, Javier, thank you so much for jumping on with me. I really appreciate it. It's great to have a driver who speaks good English and who I could talk to. Your English is much better than my Spanish. And we are at the airport now, so I've got to head out. But be sure to get your tickets for Empowered Investor Live that is coming up and it is going to be great. And remember, with your Empowered Investor Live ticket purchase, you get a free ticket to Rebel Capitalist Live, which is about a month and a half later on the other coast. So one event, our event, Empowered Investor Live, is in Irvine, California, and Rebel Capitalist Live is in Orlando, Florida. And you can go to both. Two for the price of one. Go to empoweredinvestorlive.com and let's get to our 10th episode show today. Here we go.

It is my pleasure to welcome Steven Kuhn to the show. I was introduced to him by a great mutual friend of ours. He is the author of Unleash youh Humble Alpha, Own youn Presence in Life and Become the epic leader you are meant to be. Steven, welcome. How are you?

Hey, thanks so much, Jason. I appreciate it. I'm doing great.

And just for geography, you are located in Turkey, right? Indeed.

Right on the Mediterranean, actually. I'm looking at it right now.

Fantastic. Well, I am in Bogota, Colombia. So we are a world apart almost. You know, I listened on audio to about a third of this book so far, and it's really fascinating. Give us kind of the, the elevator pitch, if you will, and then we'll dive deeper.

Sure. So Unleash your Humble Alpha is. Is all about creating an operating system for your life. It's based on five core models in which I live and that anyone can live. Each chapter has a few stories, lessons from that story, and then the exact action steps you need in order to put an operating system in your life. So that when just like a laptop, it's always the same operating system. You might have, you know, viruses or uploads or downloads or whatever, but the operating system stays the same. And a lot of times we don't know our identity and who we are and what we're all about. When you know that the rest of the world falls into place.

You know, as you were saying that, Steven, you reminded me of some of learnings and research I did many, many years ago. And I'm sure you're familiar with this too. Really distinguishing the difference between context and. And so many people and so many programs and so many gurus out there teach people how to change the content of their life, whereas they don't really look at the context which will either support certain content or kill certain content. Would you say that's what the operating system is like?

Yeah, I would say that. Because it doesn't change, right. Obviously it can shift and it can, it can be added to a virus, virus, antivirus or whatever you want to call it. But in the end, once you know your true identity, it can shift over time. But once you know your true identity, that amplifies your purpose and amplifies your identity through your purpose. So whatever purpose, whatever purpose you have at any time in your life, it's still, you know, amplifying that same identity. And that is of course the cause of everything. If you ask anybody, you know, who they are, they'll say, well, I'm a CEO. No, that's what you do. Well, who are you? Well, I'm a father. No, that's what you do. You know, if you ask somebody who they are, 99% of the world can't.

Even tell you, well, that's a very good point. And you know, who am I? Like when people try to answer that question, the first answer they'll give is their name. The second answer they'll give is some of those role you mentioned. Well, I'm the CEO of such and such, or I'm, I'm the husband of so and so, or I'm the, you know, father or mother of so and so. Right. That's not who they are. Right. So what is the answer to that question?

Well, the answer to that question is you got, you got to do the work. You know, and some people who've read this book, and there's been quite a few, we had for instance, a colonel from the United States army that got out after 30 years. It took him three months to find his identity. Going through the workbook. Other people find it in a few hours. And so basically what it is through, through going through the workbook, we ask you questions that you ask yourself and then you ask friends around you and people around you, and you come with almost like an identity statement of what you're about, who you are. And then we boil it down to a two word moniker. And that two word moniker gives you who you are at this time in your life. For instance, me, I'm the powerful connector. Doesn't sound very amazing. But when you think about it, when I bring people together, I, I, I inject power into the relationship and I'm the conduit between the two, ensuring that both parties are getting and Receiving what each, each other said they were going to get. And I ensure that everybody's going to win. And when I realized that, I got to tell you, my life changed completely when I, when I said, you know what, if I look at my life, I've always been connecting people and I've always power into it, but I never really made it into like a business. Well, at that point I made it into a business and now I make millions of dollars just connecting people, making deals, doing deals, connecting through not only two people, but then ancillary services and people and whatever it is, I'm known as the guy to go to to connect people. That only came to me once. I crystallized it in my own, in my own mind when I, when I did all the work myself.

Okay, so powerful connector is your two word moniker. Can you give us some examples of some of the people you coach or you know, have mentored over?

Sure. Well, I've worked with people like, and I don't want to say I've coached them, but I've worked in their businesses. I'll do some name dropping here. I worked in their businesses and helped them, let's say optimize. And one was Andrea Bocelli, the famous tenor.

What is his business, if you will?

His business?

You don't think of, you don't think of singing as a business, right?

Well, no, he's. Well, his business. He has a bunch of artists on his label.

Oh, okay.

So he's got a bunch of artists on his label and they have a lot of, they have the Andrea Bocelli foundation, which is, helps children in Haiti. There's a bunch of ancillary businesses that he has on there.

Right, okay.

Olivia Newton John, she had a business that I helped over three years. She had a natural, natural herbal business. They ship sustainably, harvest herbs from the Amazon in the United States, unprocessed, unfumigated, direct from the Shipibo Indians. And through this company we would go out and sell the products all over the world. I launched her company in six countries in Europe and we, every 10% of everything we generated we gave back to the Shipibo Indians. They then through that were able to purchase the deed for their land in the Amazon. So they actually own the land that they live on now as opposed to typical indigenous is they're allowed to live there until of course, the government needs the wood. So now they actually have it. So those are some, some of the big ones. Other ones are, I'm working with a, a group from South Carolina. They own four companies, which we just funded for 94.5 million, and we're helping them expand internationally. Now, a lot of that has to do with, I'm American, I don't know how to do international. That's sort of what they think. And in order for them to expand their. Whatever they're doing in the States, they have to understand what it means to, you know, communicate in the rest of the world. And sometimes as it doesn't matter if you're American trying to communicate to America, to Europe or the other way around, it's just different, the cultures. So how do you do that without changing who you are? And how do you do that still being solid in who you are? And it all comes down to one thing, and that's certainty. Certainty in my abilities to deploy my genius or my talents in any given situation. Certainty allows me to let go of, of the how I'm going to do anything, because if I'm certain, I know it's going to happen. So for instance, if I'm sitting here right now, hurricane comes, or the SWAT team breaks into the room, I. I know I can deal with it. Like, I have zero, zero doubt that I can deal with that. That certainty is what people buy into, that certainty is what people follow.

Yeah, well, that's certainly true. Pardon the pun. Yeah, certainly true. Certainty is a big part of it because, you know, people. People want. They look for places in their life where there will be certainty in a very uncertain world. So there's no question that that is an attractive quality no matter what. But let's back up a little bit. Let's start with Olivia Newton John. She was my crush for many, many years. I love Olivia Newton John, and it's sad to see her a few years ago. But what was her moniker, for example?

You know, we. We never got to the moniker. She's a very, very tough woman and a very straightforward woman. She was someone who was a perfectionist in delivery. And that doesn't matter if it was her product or her voice or even a stage where we were presenting the product. It had to be lit the way she wanted it, the way she took pictures, the way people angled cameras. She was an absolute perfectionist so that the people watching, the people who, who were looking at her, can enjoy the entire full spectrum of what she was doing. So ever sat down and did her tour moniker. But we got to the point where we knew that that was one of her strengths, and we used that to our advantage when we did the tour. All around us, all around Europe and I brought her and introduced her to ambassadors, and when you're walking around with Olivia Newton John, you can basically get in front of every. Anybody. And so that's what we did. We got in front of anybody and everybody.

Bocelli, for example, did you, you know, work with them on their operating systems or discover their operating systems as you were working with them?

I worked with their artists on their operating systems, yeah.

Okay. Interesting. Okay, cool. So why did you call it the humble alpha? Because most people think of the alpha dog. Right. The leader. There's a lot of coaching in the men's world about being an alpha man. Right. You know, that is definitely not humble. There's nothing humble about being the alpha, usually. What do you mean by it?

It means alpha on the inside, humble on the outside. If someone's an Alpha, they're not. They're not out there yelling it. They're not out there saying it. They're not out there projecting and pounding their chest, screaming and yelling. Sleeve tattoos, long beards and big hats. You know, it's. It's not. That's not what it's about. A true alpha doesn't have to turn around to see if people are following them. They just do. And people follow. A true alpha fills a room when they walk in without saying a word. That's where that certainty in oneself comes from. And so the humble part is on the outside. That's it. So you. Well, you know what I'm talking about. You've, you know, you. You're in a room, all of a sudden, everyone turns and looks. Who just walked in? Why did they turn and look when someone walked in and say a word? Well, it's because he fills the room or she fills the room.

Right, right. But how do you do that? I mean, you know, everybody wants respect and attention and, you know, impact. Right. That's a typical kind of human desire. How does one do that just by.

Well, it depends on your realm, because unfortunately, the world wants. Right now, they want that sales pitch of the. The alpha male. So there's people that are taking advantage of that and playing that game. I mean, there's guys out there acting like military veterans wearing little short shorts and talking tough. Never been in the military, but they're using it to their advantage. Right. That's just the way it is. But why? You gotta ask yourself. And this is where the HIT principles come in that are in the book. HIT stands for Honesty, Integrity and Transparency. Honesty with yourself. Why you do say and think like you do. Transparency is how you step into the world with that honesty. And it's your ongoing reputation. The byproduct is integrity. Integrity makes you authentic. Authenticity allows you to dictate your market value. Why does someone feel the need to say anything about who they are and what they're about, what they've done? Because they need that. They feel insufficient. They feel like they're better than the other people there, so they got to prove themselves. Why is that? Because they're not happy with themselves. They don't have a full certainty in who they were. If they did, they wouldn't have to say a word. Look, even I slip up sometimes. You know, I'm. I'm a. I'm a humble alpha. That's what I do. And sometimes I'll go into the realm of the world, and there's people out there, they're talking and they're talking. Excuse my French, but getting all this respect because they're just booming and they're like, I'm loud and I'm proud, you know, and. And so you just want to stand up and say, man, this guy's so full of it. But why would I do that? The only reason I would do that is to prove something to myself. Why would I prove something everybody else about myself, which I'm really proving, is that I'm insecure. That's all I'm. That's all I'm proving.

Right.

That's why people always want to make sure that people are looking at them in a positive light. Well, just be who you are. Own your presence, own your identity, and be certain of your abilities to deploy your genius in any given situation. And people will look at you, how you are seeing people look at you, how you see yourself. As simple as that. If you see yourself as insecure, which most people don't see it consciously, that's how other people are going to see you. If you're dishonest to yourself about why you do the things you do, other people are going to feel that dishonesty.

And I think part of it has got to be, you know, some people will get it and some people won't. And you probably shouldn't agonize about that, right?

No, you shouldn't at all. Because everyone has their journey. It's too early for some, maybe too late for others. I doubt it. But maybe there isn't too late out there. But maybe it's too early for some people have to go through this process. I'm 57 years old. It took me 54 years to get there. Yeah, I'm still not There, you know, it's a constant process, and when we stop learning, we die. So, I mean, you know, but I.

Didn'T, I didn't mean from the perspective of you wanting to be the humble alpha. I meant from the perspective of the people you're trying to influence and impact.

Oh, yeah, okay. No, no. There's some people that just don't get it. You're right.

Yeah.

They won't embrace. What I typically see is when we go through process, it's a three, it's a three month program that they go through with me. It's one hour a week on Zoom, and then in between, we're connected on WhatsApp and we, you know, we do deals, we do it, you name it. Like, I throw them into the deep end. We all throw them in front of deals for a billion dollars. Hey, let's do this. And they're like, you know, just sort of shocking them into owning their presence, owning who they are. And, and some people, they get, get it and they dive right in. And other people, they're just, they just don't get it. They have, they have such, say, a personal conviction that they aren't good enough, that it's almost impossible to break through in that moment. But what happens is over the months and years after, they'll call me and go, wow, I know what you, I, I totally get it now.

I totally get it.

And we get back together, then we get back together and we go through it again. So it's, it's, it's pretty cool to see how some people get it. And other. And what I see is the younger, younger people get it quicker because they don't have as much luggage baggage that they have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you know, the older you are, that's the old saying, dogs and new tricks, right? You got to unbreak your bad habits, right, to something new. There's no question about that. You've said a lot of things about these different qualities and traits. Can you share any examples of, you know, maybe additional examples of famous people that we all know? It could be celebrities or politicians or business moguls. You know, doesn't matter. But some of these people we all know, so we can kind of understand what we're emulating here.

What do you mean? As far as someone that I've worked with or just someone in general?

No, it doesn't have to be someone that you worked with, just in general, you know, like, you know, I'm dying to say, you know, how does like Elon Musk or Donald Trump Come. You know, like, those are the current figures that we're all paying attention to. Right. But anybody. You know, it could be Bezos, Jeff Bezos, or anybody.

Well, it's difficult to see, because once you have something, it's easy to be that, you know, once you have, you know, a couple billion dollars on your belt, you don't give a. About what anybody says or.

A couple hundred billion dollars.

A couple hundred billion dollars?

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, you just go, yeah, whatever. I'm gonna do what I want to do. And if you don't like it, tough. That's not owning your presence. That's just saying, I have enough not to care.

Yeah, right.

So that's a big difference.

They got there somehow, right?

Yeah. Well, we're not talking about money right here. I'm talking about a building, a foundation of your operating system here. So, you know, of course they got there. Who knows how they got there? There's. There's a million ways to get there sometimes. Like, if you talk to any billionaire, I'd say most of them say between 40 and 60% of everything to do is luck, coincidence, and opportunity.

There is no question in the world that luck plays a part. I mean, it's just. You can't. You just can't deny that there are opportunities in life that are presented to some and not to others. But the tragic thing is Earl Nightingale's old saying, luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. And the opportunities always kind of come into everybody's life, but if you're not prepared, you can't seize them, so.

Or see them, even.

Or see them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's. That's a season is great. I like that. But that's the biggest problem that people have. They're so busy trying to figure out what they're doing in their life right now that they miss all the opportunities. And the biggest mistake that I see is someone says, you know the old saying, put your nose to the grindstone. What do you see when you put your nose to the grindstone? You see the grindstone. You miss.

You're too close.

You miss everything. You miss everything else. All the other opportunities and chances out there. There's not a deal that I do. There's not a business that I was in that wasn't somehow able to be connected to something else that I was doing. There wasn't one business in my entire life, and I've owned over 20 businesses and cocktail bars and nightclubs and insurance companies and construction companies, and I've actually operated those Most of them in Europe. And it wasn't one that wasn't crossed over with another. There wasn't one. And so if I'm in a business and I'm looking at that business as only that business that I'm missing out big time. And that's where the expansion comes and that's where this connection comes into other worlds. And these crossovers, like with Bocelli, perfect example, his artists were classic guitarists, two classic guitars on stage. Boring, right? So it's nice for a couple songs.

That's it.

Well, I put them together with Fetty Legrand from, from. He's a, he's a house music guy, a couple other house, really famous house music people. And they, and they did some crossover music which went crazy. Right. So what can you do that you're already doing that someone else is already doing, but just in a different genuine or a different space? And how can I expand that? And, and then through that you're like, wow, you know, I'm actually better than I thought I was. I'm actually, I'm able to do more than I thought I could. It's a never ending expansion of everything that you do. I could go on forever about this because this is the biggest thing that I tell all my, my clients. They come to me for help and I said, we're going to do deals, so get ready. And as soon as I find any deal, which usually takes a couple weeks, where they can add their value, doesn't matter what it is, even if it's just a connection that they have, I'm bringing them in. I want to submerse them in the world of deal making and deal making, I mean, companies that need help growing and scaling, funding expense, whatever it is. And even if it's buying land or property or whatever, I will always bring these people in. All of my clients turn into deal makers. And that's because we're connecting the dots constantly in the world around us. And it's effortless when your awareness is there and you're certain of who you are and your abilities.

Okay, so back to the question. And you know, I know I'm putting you on the spot here, but can you think of any famous people that we all know that embody any of the examples of any of the traits that you were talking about here?

Well, I don't know many personally. I have one politician that most people won't know who aren't other politicians. The name is Sven Van Storsch and he's a German. And this guy is the strategic Advisor to everyone from Trump to Bald de zanero to the 15, 20 world leaders. You'll never hear his name in public. You'll never know who he is, but he's probably one of the most influential conservatives on the planet.

Interesting.

He's a very good friend of mine. That's why I can say that about mine. We've been. We've been, you know, together since 2003 as friends, and we've done business together and we've done organizations together. Actually funded, founded a few organizations together. That's a perfect example. You'll never hear him talk about himself. You'll never hear anything. Or let's say this. The Duchess of Oldenborg, right? So, very good friend of mine. Her family is the Czar family of Russia. Now, that's something to say, like my family were the, you know, the Romanovs. Yeah, Never mention it.

Asia. Yeah.

Never talk about it. Never mention it. Never talk. Never show it. Never use it for leverage. Nothing. They operate on who they are and not what they've done or what they have. And so there's two examples of people that I know personally. If I look out into the world, it's hard to say if, you know, if. If I would look at Elon Musk, for instance. Like you said, I don't know him from Jack the way I knew him, the way I saw him before. I thought he was quite humble, eccentric, of course, but like I said, if you have a couple hundred billion dollars, you can do whatever you want anyway. So is that really who they are, or is that just who they've become through the money? It's just.

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to tell. That's. That's a good point.

Most of the people that have that, you. You won't know who they are anyway, because they won't tell you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What haven't I asked you that you want to share with the audience?

This has all been about the. The surface stuff, about the operating and stuff like that. You know, what it really comes down to is. And it says, owning your presence, Right? So these. These books are really hard to put a title to. How do you encompass something that's going to change your life, turn you into the person that you've always. You're always supposed to be? How do you put that on the front cover? You can't. So it's something that goes through. I would say if we were in a longer conversation, a lot deeper with how I got there, why I even chose to go this, into this journey and what it means for me to help the others get there as well. I was always been a high flyer. I was in the military for eight years, went to Iraq, got a bronze star, got out, started a cocktail bar. Everything, everything was gold. Everything I did was amazing. Until 2008 when I crashed and burned. And I had a lot of people.

Crashed and burned around that time. That was the Great Recession.

Well, I crashed and burned in 2007. And then in 2008, mid 2008, I had a suicide attempt. And I disappeared from society for about eight months. No one knew where I was except for my mother. And I went to the monastery, into a monastery in Austria in the mountains with the Benedictine monks. And there I changed my life by finding out the core of who I was. And it wasn't just. That wasn't my intention. My intention was to disappear from life.

So you were going there to escape, not really to work on yourself, right?

Yes, I was there to escape. It was just the world was too loud and too noisy and too dangerous for me at that time. Or maybe I was too dangerous for the world. I don't know.

And so what do you do there? I mean, did you just meditate all day? Were you silent all the time or what?

Well, the first two weeks, I'm like. I walked in, I'm like, hey, Mr. Monk, here's my problem. This is what happened. This is what I feel like, what's the solution? And he's like, just go walk in the forest.

I'm like, yeah, right.

Yeah. You know? And so it took me about two weeks to calm down. And the silence in between the meetings, Silence in between lunch and dinner and breakfast, lunch and dinner. You had nothing to do. There was no tv, Internet, no cell phones. Nothing to do. So what are you doing? There's nothing to do. You start thinking, right? Well, after a while, that calms down and it slows down. And then it starts reversing, and you start weeding out all the BS that you have in your mind, the programming that you have, then it sort of solidifies even deeper. And then you start feeling the connection of the heart, mind connection. And it's a beautiful thing when. When you can, in seconds, connect your mind and your heart and feel what you're thinking and think what you're feeling, you know? And. And that's what I did. And I would just, literally, I would sit down in the forest sometimes, close my eyes and open them. It was eight hours like that.

Wow.

It was incredible.

That was not. That was not sleeping.

No, no, no, no.

No, no.

I can tell you stories that no one believes. What happens when I open my eyes sometimes in the middle of the forest and what kind of animals were around me without fear. I literally became one with nature. Nothing surprised me. Nothing shocked me, nothing. You know, if a deer walked up to me, it wouldn't surprise me because obviously it would. I'm part of. I'm one of them, you know, And. And so it got to that point where I was just so Zen that I wasn't even fit for society anymore. I was just, you know, and I just. I spent most of the time just thinking. And then I started to write. That's the first time I read Joe Dispenza's book, Rewire your mind or whatever it's called.

Joe's been on the show before. I love his work. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, Joe's amazing. That's the first book I read. It was a 550 page book. Oh, there was a guest house in. In Austria, they're called. It's. I guess it's like a. It's like a family owned restaurant and Pension. Little hotel.

Yeah, pension. Yep.

Yeah. And I would sit in the cafe there and I drink espresso and I'd read. Well, they started calling me a professor because I never talked to anybody. I just sat in the corner and read. And it was a family owned grandma, grandma, mother, father, kids. And they had had weddings every weekend at the back side of the. Of the monastery. And so I found a job there just to pass time. They had 300 guests and of course, 300 sets of silverware that was in a big vat like this filled with water, and they needed to be pulled out and polished. So I said, huh, let me do that for him. I said, do you mind if I help you? And they're like, no. So I just sat there on Saturdays and I polished about 300 sets of silverware. And it was almost like meditation, just all the knives.

You know, there's that. There's that old book from decades ago called chop wood, carry water, which is about that, you know, finding the sort of the Zen moment and doing these menial tasks. Right?

Yeah, it was beautiful because I got to know the family quite well and I realized what kind of a different person I'd become. Because before I would talk about myself and what I did and where I went, no one knew anything about me and no one asked. They'd say, oh, you're American. What are you doing here? I'm just relaxing in the monastery. That was it. And in the past I would be like, well, you know, I did this and I. That I'm military, all this kind of stuff. It was a beautiful thing because they knew that I knew who I was and that was enough for them. They didn't need to ask when I, when they asked me what was up and who I was, when I just said, I'm an American, I'm here relaxing for a while, that was enough for them. The presence that I had, the ownership of who I was, the way I was showing up for them in their life when they didn't even know who I was was enough for them to say, we can trust this guy. We like this guy. And they were, they were giving me food and making me dinner and all. I was like, no, it's fine, it's fine. Thank you. It was amazing. I actually gained weight.

Interesting, interesting stuff. Well, Stephen, the book is available in all the usual places. Of course, I'm looking at it on that main site we all have heard of. It's got great reviews. Do you have a website you'd like to give out as well?

You know, I have my business website, but my. I have on my personal website the Seven Factors of Success. It's a 30 minute free class that anybody can take. It's just a presentation for me and it goes through a lot of the stuff we went through in more detail. And that's stephen-kuhn.com k u h n steven-kuhn.com Go ahead, shoot me your email and your and and click go and you'll be led to the 30. It's a really useful 30 minutes.

Excellent. Good stuff. Stephen Kuhn, thank you so much for joining us.

My absolute pleasure. Jason, thank you so much for the invitation.

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