From the Brink of Death to the Triumph of the Human Spirit: James Guldan’s Story

If you're limited to being kind to others by your kindness to yourself, you're limited by your happiness. You're limited by a lot of these soft skill factors that don't really come into shape until they do. Like most things, unless the pain outweighs the problem, very few people proactively do it.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

This episode. This is going to be a good one. Strap on in. I want to listen back to it and I'll probably do that after I record this. I just finished recording it too. This one is with my new friend James Gulden and he's the owner of Magic Agency. They are, they build funnels and a whole bunch of traffic strategies for clients in the information, product, physical product space. They've generated over a billion dollars for clients like the Dalai Lama, hello, Peter Diamantes, Frank Kern, tons of others. And on top of that, so he's scaled things to the moon, has grown teams and tons of clients. And then at the same time, and this is what really got me, is how he has found joy through an intense illness, multiple illnesses, I guess. I mean, he had 72 different emergency symptoms that completely sidelined him, laid him out. And you'll hear in great detail for four years he couldn't do the stuff that he knew he could do or in business. I mean, this is where it completely changed everything for him. And then he came out with a brand new perspective. He was wishing for death many times along that period. He'll tell you about this and this is where he just got so vulnerable. And why I feel like this is so good is it's in line with the way that I'm taking this show. The Hustle and Flowchart podcast is to highlight two entrepreneurs, specifically the folks that are so driven. We're so driven, yet sometimes we ignore what matters most and our health is right there. Our family, all these other factors that sometimes we take for granted, we just ignore. We push on, we control. We feel like we can. Well, let's just have James tell you his perspective. And I think you're going to walk away here with a whole different perspective and a whole bunch of tools that, that you can also use to think about your own situation. You might not relate to totally what James is saying, especially with all the different symptoms he had, but know that he was able to fix himself. And I don't know if cure's the right word or anything like that, but I'm going to have him tell his story and how he's gotten better. It's incredible. So I'm going to leave it there. And this one made an impact. I hope it does for you as well. I'd love to hear from you about that and wait till the end of this too, because he's given you some really cool offers to reach out and support anyone who might be relating really close to this. So wait till the end. I'm going to leave it there. Please enjoy this episode with my new friend, James. James, we're recording now. Wanted to save all the good stuff for this recording. I appreciate you so much for joining today, man.

Absolutely, man. Thank you.

Yeah, shout out to Kevin Thompson too, for making this happen.

Yeah, thanks, Kevin.

There was something I said in there. He's like, you and James got to talk. He's got to be on the show. And just for the brief, like, couple minutes we've been chatting here right before hitting record, I'm already like, oh, my God. Pins and needles. I don't know what's coming, but it's gonna be good. It's gonna be eye opening, let's just say. So just starting it off on the surface level, successful business owner, you know, a high, high level agency, helping a lot of big name clients with. And the Dalai Lama, which was interesting. I saw.

Yeah, Cool, right?

Yeah, super cool. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, okay. Marketers and some.

I feel like a lot of people could say they've worked with like Tony Robbins. A lot of people can say they've worked with like Peter Diamandis and like, you know, the Internet marketing crew. How many people can say that they have done a launch for the Dalai Lama, you know, like.

Yeah. So I mean, like, from all that, you're crushing it. Obviously, you know, you got a team. It's all well put together. Magic Agency, you have like the coolest domain name too. Magic Agency. I'm like, yeah, nice. But obviously there's a lot more to the story that's not so surface level, which is really the reason why we're chatting here, but also to be maybe an eye opening moment for a lot of entrepreneurs going through something difficult right now in their lives and maybe they can kind of approach it a little differently with your perspectives here. So I guess I'll leave it there for a second and give the floor to you just to say a couple words and maybe I don't know where we kickstart this man, because there's a lot.

I mean, you want me to go into the health journey? I mean, I think that's, that's kind of where like a lot of it started. So I had like the context for the health journey is that there are, I was explaining before this, there's 300,000 people a year who have mystery illness, typically around environmental illness, and it's very difficult to treat. I had my agency for a long period of time, about 10 years, and grew it up to this beautiful thing where I kind of had to work like 10 hours a week. And what a synchronistic event where I got very sick. So I was going through a divorce in Austin, Texas, and I moved back to Phoenix and I started to, my throat started to close up once a day. Doesn't sound like big thing, but it's, it's very scary. It was about 60 seconds a day where my throat would close. It's just, it's very scary when you don't, your, you know, your, your throat would close and you wouldn't be able to breathe. So I had that for, let's just say a couple weeks. I mean, I think it was weeks where I was like, you know, everybody thinks, oh, it's going to get better. I don't have the time to deal with it. I, you know, I have all these other things going on. Like, man, I, I must be some food or something else I ate. But after a couple of weeks I was like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this checked out. So I went in to go get it checked out and it was just a nurse practitioner. She did some blood work and it was like, hey, we don't know what this is. Like, it'll, it'll probably just go away. So, you know, I just left it there. And throughout the next couple months, I started to get really sick. Like a flu and like months having a flu, which is, you know, a super red flag. And especially when you can't work or do anything else. Like you're, you know, getting 12 to 14 hours a night of sleep and still exhausted in the morning. So I ended up going in again to get to go, hey, like, this is affecting my work and a lot of other stuff. And let's, let's get this tested. And so for some reason they did an X ray. Like they, I just asked them to do a bunch of stuff and for some reason, like one of the things was an X ray. No, no. Have you ever been to a. Getting diagnostics done and, and you leave and they call you and they go now, hey, can you come back? And you're like, oh, no, we'll just schedule for whenever. I have a, I have an appointment on Monday. No, no, can you please come back? And you're like, okay, you just, you know, I'm driving and I'm kind of having like a small anxiety attack and you just kind of tell me what's happening. Like legally we can't. You have to come in to be able to discuss it. You know, you park and you cry and you think about the worst case scenario. You're like, okay, I'm feeling well. Like, what is this? It showed up and my left had lit up like a Christmas tree. And it was like, okay, interesting. Hopefully this will solve whatever I have. And so they'd said, you know, had a bunch of holes in my left lung and they didn't know what caused it. They didn't know what else was there. They had an idea, like the first idea was, was lung cancer, which, you know, wasn't my most ideal component, but also it was like, you know, a radiologist who I think maybe shouldn't have made that comment, if I'm going to be honest with you. And because it started, you start to get the worst in there. But after that I went in for more. Like I went to go see a couple pulmonologists. And that's actually a funny story out in Phoenix. It's actually difficult to get to see a pulmonologist. So through my healthcare, it was a three month wait before I could see somebody after I had gotten, you know, that. So my doctor had told me, go into the ER and referral to the ER to a pulmonologist and maybe that'll help. And that got me to two months where I could see it. And I'm like, yeah, I don't really don't want to wait two months. So my entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and I'm like, why don't I just call a couple pulmonologist places. And just. So I offered the receptionist five grand. Hey, I'll venmo you five grand if you can just get a pulmonologist. Like, just get your boss to take a look at this for five minutes, right? First one said no, just thought it was a weird offer and didn't want to get involved. Second one was a hell, yeah. And they basically said, you know, they got me on a call immediately with the doctor. He gave me his email, and I sent him over the X rays. And he's like, oh, you have something called valley fever. And I was like, amazing. That's awesome. Like, that's all I needed to know was it wasn't cancer, it wasn't anything else. Like, thank you so much and beautiful to get, you know, at least something tangible. This solves all my problems. And so we started to treat for the valley fever, and things got really bad. So it was like, the meds for it are fluconazole and intracontazole. And they kept giving me more and more, and it wouldn't work. And, you know, nine months in, I'm taking, you know, double the maximum dose. You know, I'm peeing blood, My eyes are turning yellow. You know, it's, you know, start of liver failure. And, you know, you call the doctor and you're like, hey, my eyes are turning yellow. Like, is that bad? And they go, how yellow? And you're, like, yellow enough that I'm calling you, right?

Freaking out. Yeah.

And they're like, oh, well, just keep going, right? Let's just keep going on this system. And in the meantime, I'm having, like, a lot of these weird symptoms, right? Like, the left side of my body go numb or my ears went out. Like, my hearing went out. My eyesight went out for a little bit. I had a testicle that, like, grew the size of my hand. I would have electrical storms, like, throughout my entire body. That'd be incredibly painful. I had brain fog and brain fatigue to the point where I couldn't drive anymore. So I was having, like, all these weird symptoms. I figured it was just a side effect of the meds. And, you know, they're like, just, let's just keep going, because it's going to get worse before it gets better. But it never did. And so after about nine months of treatment on this, you know, I had some significant symptoms that were related to it. And I talked to. We talked about this. I had talked to a friend by the name of Mike Dillard, and he goes, hey, man, have you. You Gotten tested for mold. And I was like, what is that? And he's like, yeah, I have a mold issue. You know, symptoms sound pretty similar for what we're going through. Like, have you ever tried testing it? And I said, no. So I ran a test, and I still remember the text that I got. He said, welcome to the club. And it was like, mold. There's quite a few different types of mold, but there are types that are very difficult to get rid of and very aggressive and types that aren't. I had quite a bit. My stuff was pretty bad. And it was. So I got the house tested that I was living in. Cause my house and my office were, like, right next to each other. Like, most entrepreneurs, like, very efficient on my time.

Yeah.

But it was spending a significant amount of my time in this area where they found about 20 of those big black bags of mold. Oh, yes. It was like, okay, so I gotta move out. And so that's. It's a lot tougher than people think, especially with mold, because it's environmental. So you gotta throw away all your stuff. Right. And you.

This is in Austin, right?

No. So I'd moved to Phoenix after my divorce. I was living with my brother, and this was a place him and I rented together. And so it was. It was a rental property. Thank God I didn't own it.

Yeah.

And so they found quite a bit of mold. I contacted the place. They were like. They were super kind about it. I think they were just scared of getting sued and because I think it's a. You know, it wasn't negligent in any way, shape or form on their end. It just happened to be a sprinkler system. Was watering the. In Arizona, very rarely will you find mold because it's such a dry climate. So it's not something that people look for and understand too well out here.

And that's why I want to bring that up, too, because I remember Mike Dillard because he was on the podcast and talked a lot about this. And he's out in Austin. I think it was in his building or something like that.

Yeah. Well, Texas has a lot more humidity. It's not like in Midwest. It's not very rare. Like, Colorado and Arizona are the best places to live if you have a mold problem.

Ah, okay.

But it also leads into, like, once you have that, your adrenal system just gets tanked. Your limbic system is just off the rails. Like, it would just. You know, I would start to have these symptoms where my. I would have these things called cytokine. Storms where you just start throwing up and just your body would have zero energy. And it was, it was terrifying for, you know, years. It was like a year and a half of just massive, massive symptoms. Then I had brain edema that showed up.

So what is that brain?

So it's like a swelling in your brain, which is scary because it has weird symptoms. Right. The weirdest symptom was that I had vertigo. And it's like, it's scary when you first get it. You're like, what is this? You know, you're just, you're real spinny and wobbly. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, what, what, what is happening? Right. And like after all these other symptoms, it's just, it gets very scary. It's a very anxiety producing which then creates more symptoms and it gets worse and worse. It's called a limbic loop. And you get down this process of just being in this constant state of just being terrified. And you know, at that point I had lost kind of my ability to walk, my ability to. I had. They had me on one of the meds that you're not allowed to put more than 50 pounds of weight on any tendon and otherwise it explodes. And I didn't believe them. So that's busted my ankle and my L5. So I was out for about a year.

Dude. So you couldn't even walk. Yeah.

Without being able to walk. Yeah. And so it was. You learn a lot with disability, especially with asking for help. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are very resistant to one, submitting to the universe that you don't control everything and going, okay, I need to just sit in this and really, I don't need to understand it. I just need to make sure that I'm here to support myself and two, to really sit with it and understand that hey, I am at my abilities and, and really sitting in that space. So yeah. And then basically went through like quite a bit of like I had a great network of people, which was very valuable to me. Debate talking about this because it puts me in a higher socioeconomic status. Like having money and network saved my life. So a lot of it was, you know, I explained what I was going through to a few people. Well, first I. I decided like, you know, I had some KPIs key performance indicators for whether or not like after years of going through significant trauma and it not getting better and over 200 doctors telling me that they have no idea what's happening, it gets a little disheartening. So I had gone through a stage where I had talked to my wife about killing myself. And, you know, basically my story at the time was that the world wasn't kind enough to kill me. And, you know, when you have significant disability and it's. I mean, it was 50 grand a month just to stay alive, it's a lot. And when you're not producing the amount of income that you could, it's very scary because now you're putting your family at stake. You're putting. I mean, it's also a lot of time and attention. My wife had to quit her job. Her sole job was just to contact the insurance company to try to fight them on getting reimbursements. And so almost nothing was reimbursed. So it was me, a couple million dollars out of pocket. None of it is covered. So it's. It's a lot. And you keep seeing doctors that, you know, your hope goes up and down. And now at this stage, it's more doctors that have zero guarantees. And they're not.

They're just kind of hoping and throwing something out there. And.

Yeah, you've never been sick until you bought a prayer rock, you know what I mean? And like, just been like, this is. This is. This is my thing. This is where I'm at. The good news is, you know, I. Over my course of time, I had bought, like, an infrared sauna. I had bought. Gotten into red light therapy. I got in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I'd gotten doing everything, the cryotherapy. I'd gotten into PMF mats, I had gotten into, you know, major, major supplement stacks with, you know, yoga and like, a lot of other things that I could do at the time in order to handle the mental health component of it. And I'd also been blessed with dealing with. Dr. Annie Hopper has a system called DNRS, Dynamic Neural Retraining System, which is about changing the neural pathways. Yeah, specifically good. If you have any sort of mcs, which is multiple chemical sensitivities or anything that's involving your brain freaking out.

Well, that's what I remember from Mike Dillard. It was almost. He said it, like, felt like a switch was just flipped on in his brain and he couldn't turn it off. And it's just go, you know, terrifying.

Right? And like, there's so many things like the methylation process for the body is incredibly complex. And when you start screwing with it and taking away certain pieces and adding a lot of stress and anxiety and a lot of other pieces to it, it does not help. It does not help. And it makes it worse and worse and worse. And at that point, most of your symptoms are what's called psychosomatic, meaning that your brain is creating the symptoms because it can't understand or help you. Your brain doesn't do anything that's against what you want. It's just doing what it's doing to help you and save you. So anxiety is a friend, depression is a friend. Like a lot of that's built in there as systems to kind of help you out. And it's just terrifying when you're going through it. And so I talked to a lot of paraplegics at the time because in my mind that was somebody who had it worse than I did, right? Somebody who was born with paraplegic component to them. And that's where I kind of got a lot of empathy and understanding and understood the positivity of paraplegics. Man, they're an amazing bunch of people. And really got my understanding for my value of life and what that is and quality of life. And if I couldn't have the quality of life, that really made life beautiful and also put my life in my wife and my family in harm. Like, it isn't, I think clinging to this world isn't as powerful. Like, most people are just scared of their stories, right? They don't want their stories. But I was, at that point, I was really looking forward to death. Oh, man, was I looking forward to it. Like, I talked about every day of like, oh, I wish today's the day. I really. There was a 90 day cycle where I would go to bed and I would just black out from the, the brain stuff. And I'd be like, this is it, this is awesome. And then I wake up the next day and it would be like, it's this terrifying cycle of being back in it again. Yeah, yeah, the high highs, those low lows, man, are, are low. And so I decided to make, to commit to KPI of, okay, I'm gonna take 30 days, you know, talk to my wife about it. And she's like, all right, let's. I'm in, right? Let's take 30 days to stop healing. Let's stop going to the doctors. Let's stop doing all this other shit. Let's make a list of the people that you want to have really impactful conversations with. And you know, let's do a bucket list. Let's do like all this stuff. Let's spend 30 days and at the end of the 30 days, we'll make a decision. And I thought that was Just so beautiful. And so we did. I wrote my letters to everybody. And one of the cool things was one of my psychologists at the time said, do not send those letters after you're dead because it puts a lot of pressure on your wife to answer those. And why not do it right now? Send those letters to the people that you love and then have a dialogue with them. Like, what's the downside to it?

Yeah, man.

And I thought that was incredible, right? Like, you send these letters out and, you know, you get to have these deep conversations that. Like real deep conversations where there's no. There's no hindrance. There's just pure vulnerability because there's no. There's no ego with death. Right. It's. It's a totally different mindset when you're in it to explain yourself and to really show appreciation for what somebody's done versus, you know, have this future version with them.

And this is nice because it seems like it takes you out of your loop too. Like, it's not you're giving appreciation to others and showing how valuable they are, which always be doing. But like, especially in times of pain like that, it's probably some of the hardest things to do until you actually maybe do it and then realize, holy shit.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sitting in. I call it the dojo, right. So suffering is a great dojo for understanding how the world works. And it's this beautiful place where you get to build who you actually are. You don't show up at your best, you show up at your worst.

Yeah.

And that's where you get to put in the real reps on neuroplasticity. On. Positivity is a skill, not something that you're born with, and it's something that you reinforce over the course of time. And that's. I mean, that's been my. My secret sauce of getting better was really understanding the energy frequencies of gratitude, positivity, how you talk to yourself, the kindness that you, you know, that you show to yourself versus others, how you really show up in a way and how you position what. What happened. Right. It happened to me not. Or is it happened for me? Not to me. Right. And I think when you have a victim mindset, man, is it hard to get out of. It's a great. The low road is sometimes great, but, man, does it get you stuck in it.

It can get you stuck and it obviously can lead to. Like I mentioned to you, my father did take his own life. And I don't know why, you know, exactly, but. And you said There's a. It's almost like a respect, I think is what you said, you know, to people who.

I have a huge respect for people who've ended their lives. It's not. It's not easy, right. And I was under the maximum amount of suffering. And it's hard because you get one shot before people lock you up. Like a lot of people don't talk about. This is when you actually go to the practicality of killing yourself that most people mess up with a gun. So they shoot through their occipital lobe or they shoot up because they're under so much pressure. And usually there's alcohol or state change medications involved. So you miss and you end up in a worse position than you're in because you get one shot before they lock you up, before you get voluntold that you can no longer do it. And if you do medications, your body's built for that. Like your body will throw up a majority of them if you overdo it. So it's very difficult to do that the right way. Hence why Seattle has a beautiful euthanasia center for self assisted suicide where they have systems put into place and obviously they check you to make sure you're not having a bad day.

Yeah, I hope so.

But it's a. It's a quality of life thing and I'm a huge advocate same.

Yeah, dude. I mean, that's where. And I think even in California here, I've heard of some folks, you know, some. Some older, I know one of them that have pills. It was assisted suicide and all checked, done well. And when I heard about that and the scenario just kind of knew. I was like, that's fucking beautiful. It's beautiful. And yeah, I'll never know what he went through or whatever, but we all have our own thing. And it's beautiful the way that you look at this and the fact that you approached it this way. And now it's the empathy, like you said earlier, it's this newfound empathy that you have for people. But also I'm sure your scenario and just life in general, it's an interesting refresher right here because speaking to someone like yourself, because I haven't heard of anyone speak of it in this way. Hey, I wanted to pause this and give a quick thanks to my friend Greg Merrilies and his team at Studio One Design. They're the ones that built my website over at hustle and flowchart.com. i couldn't be happier. They nailed it. It looks so professional. They basically read my mind. On the vision, and they executed it beautifully. I now have a perfect offer to display. It looks super clean. I've already been getting a lot of people asking all about it and I've been referring everybody to Stu. So they actually put together a quiz for you if you're looking to optimize your current website or build a new one as a full quiz that gives you a ton of results on how to improve and optimize what you're doing. So go complete that quiz@studio1design.com Joe that is studio, the number one design.com Joe it'll give you a free report after you finish that quiz. He's also given away some cool bonuses, so go check it out@studio1design.com Joe in terms of entrepreneurs, like asking for help and realizing what might be off, I think that's, this is why I've taken this show and kind of turned this direction. We've had, we've had some chats like this. Mike Dillard's one of them and some others. But it's always been tactical. Hey, let's scale, scale, scale, you know, like, do the business thing, hustle, grind, whatever. But there's a point where it's like, you got to check yourself, man. And so would you, would you say, like, were there any indicators or like anything prior to that, you would now, in retrospect, going through all this, that you would look back?

Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. I think most, like most entrepreneurs get into it for. With a chip on the shoulder, right? That it's, it's a point to prove and it's not out of love or kindness. So what gets you to a certain stage won't get you to the next stage, right? I mean, we've done billions of dollars through our funnels. I've seen, you know, help customers scale hundreds of times to, you know, these insane numbers. But the reality is that everybody has a similar ethos. You know, unless you really understand your purpose or what you're here to do and really understand that your best asset and that being kind to yourself, you're limited to being kind to others by your kindness to yourself, you're limited by your happiness, you're limited by a lot of these soft skill factors that don't really come into shape until they do. Like most things, unless the pain outweighs the problem, very few people proactively do it. And granted, there's a, you know, a transcendental meditation, There's a lot of different things that people get into that solves some of these problems. But man, the intimacy that I have with the spiritual component of my life right now and the joy I have for, you know, I have a new son and he just turned a year. And man, changing a diaper is a life changing experience for me. It is the most beautiful thing on the planet to be here, to be committed to it. My commitment to life is much, much more than most people. And my, my capacity for joy is insane. It's something that I feel through and through every single day. So you gain a skill set with suffering and it's, you know, the trauma Olympics don't exist. I think a lot of people go, oh man, you've been through that. But it's all relative, right? Like, a lot of people don't accept the fact that they've been through trauma and don't talk about it. And that's tough, right? To not give yourself permission to feel something like. Especially financial trauma. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who've gone through bankruptcy or gone through like, financial trauma is tough. It's very, very, very tough. Health trauma is easier to talk about than financial trauma. But both of them feel like fighting gravity, right? I mean, there's relationship trauma, there's a lot of different parts of trauma, but ultimately how you handle them, it's, it's the dojo, man. It's, it's, it's the test that you get to be able to really understand how much you appreciate life. And everything's doing it for you, not to you. And, and really listening to the lessons. Entrepreneurs are very tough at submitting to the universe and going, you know, let me, let me listen to what you have to say versus them trying to control it. And most entrepreneurs, they do, they control 2%, 5% more than most people because they're in control of more things in their life. But they think that extends to all these different aspects. The universe is way too complicated to control a lot of it. And, you know, I'll tell you a secret that nobody gets out of this alive, right? So it's like we get this beautiful life to be able to put our time and attention to. And why grow a business without understanding why. And you know, my main goals after I got healthy. So I had my first 90 days of consecutive health. My tattoo here was last January, which for me, I got to double down on my business, right? And go, okay, why is this here? I think when I came back to the business, I got rid of about 60% of our clientele. Cause I didn't think they were doing what I wanted in the universe. And how I wanted to show up. And that's where the Dalai Lama reached out to us. You know, it was like, you know, we had super big hitters reaching out to us, being like, hey, you know, heard about your story or heard about something that you're doing and would love to get your help on doing some stuff. And it just, it's such a cool space to be in when you have a different attitude about business. My business is not my primary identity anymore. You know, my primary identity now is an amazing father and husband. And I get to show up for this beautiful situation that I live in that, you know, without a business, you know, that's okay too. Right? It's. Your primary relationship is probably one of your biggest significant components for helping you through some really tough times. And, you know, not putting time and attention into that for me is unacceptable. And it's something where I'm very clear on my boundary setting for business versus my boundary setting for home. And you know, what, what I do and I've been blessed with. My wife had a really tough postpartum and she also had her major health challenges too, very similar to mine, which I got to show up for her in that situation. And that was really cool to be able to see the other side of the equation and show up for somebody who needed massive, massive support from a life or death situation in a long term capacity. And I got this amazing ability to show up for my son. For the first six months my wife was physically out of commission. I don't think a lot of guys get to create that relationship with their son or daughter. And it's just. Oh, man, it's cool.

Yeah, it's true, man. I have a three and a half year old now and. And ironically, she came weeks after my dad passed. So it was this crazy boom. Boom.

Yeah.

And talk about confusion. But also the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me is, is seeing that newborn and now realizing it's like circle of life, you know, it's like I got a new response.

Yeah, you had two of the biggest transformations. So, like, usually when your father dies, that's a. Usually an eye opener for a lot of people on the mortality of, okay, somebody I know or somebody I'm very close to has passed away. Now I need to kind of dig into this and then you get this catalyst for change when you have a child of going, okay, I created a life. Now I have real responsibilities. And yeah, you had, you had a trifecta of.

Yeah. Of fun. Yes. What you're talking about, there's so much overlap to, you know, I didn't go through that. Your kind of trauma, but we all have trauma. It's like Gabor Mate's new book, Myth of Normal. Highly recommend it and if you haven't read it, definitely check it out.

Oh, I know Gabo very well. Yeah. Yeah. He's incredible. He's. He is probably one of the best psychologists of our time and he has gotten into the, the con. Yeah. If you have not read that and you're having a tough time, it is a beautiful book on self discovery. They talk about, you know, a lot of the things that talk about entrepreneurship, adhd. Like, he is an expert at a lot of these beautiful components of understanding the mind, the soul, the connection, the kindness, the empathy to understand. Like. Yeah, he is.

Yeah. Compassion. Yeah. And. And advocating for yourself and health care, you know, and, and the system and, and not being a pushover and kind of just. I mean, I'm just thinking of your story here and like you just kept pushing. It's like offering the five GS to the why I.

So I had 30 people. Well, again, I don't believe there's good or bad in the world. There just is. Right. So it's you. I had 30 people in my group that were going through similar health challenges and two of us survived. Right. Which isn't good or bad. It just is. Right. Some of them got out of a very bad situation. Right. I mean it was. I was not the worst one. I promise you. I was not the worst one. And they had some tough stories. Some really tough stories. When you start losing your family, when you start losing your mind, when you start going into homelessness, when you start doing a lot of that, that is, that's tough, you know, because you're. It's a lot of trauma all at once and it does not get better, especially as resource management goes through and the system isn't built for it. So the kindest thing you can do is kill yourself at that stage. And that's what a lot of them did. But it's also really figuring out. Yeah. What. What the stage is there and dialing that in.

But yeah, man. Yeah. And the approach, I just keep thinking that like self talk for, for a lot of driven entrepreneurs, it's that we have this obviously this internal dialogue and you were mentioning changing that for yourself. That's something that I focused on massively. And you know, I have some techniques of the way I, I like to approach it. It's almost like a third person approach. I'll speak to myself that way. You. Joe. Joe's the man. You know, kind of. It's an interesting. I don't know, and a lot of it's in written form for me. But is there, Are there any tactics or ways that you approach it where you kind of rewire yourself?

Yeah, I mean, it's a daily practice, Right. And so how it started for me specifically was it started with a love letter to myself, right. And it was tough. It was like, hey, I love you for this, but I wish you could do better. Right. Like, most entrepreneurs are really hard on themselves, which means that they can't not be hard on others around them, them. And with that comes great success. But ultimately, at what cost? It's. It's very difficult to grow a very strong business without having a lot of pain and a lot of other things, because that's your main focus. You're. You're very motivated by negative behavior and where you should be. That's kind of like the David Goggins approach, right? I've never met David, but like, the approach that he has is very. No nonsense, like, let's be really tough and let's. No matter what happens, let's do it. My approach is a little kinder than that, is, you know, writing. You know, I started by writing a love letter to myself and man, now I can go two hours by writing. Yeah, I could go all day writing a love letter to myself and. But also, it's like gratitude journals, right? Like not just, not just being gracious to others and thanking people, but coming up with 20 things a day. But you, your first, right? What are you grateful for? Yourself first. And that's just continuing to build a path of positive reinforcement on being your biggest cheerleader. You know, nobody is a bigger cheerleader than yourself for you. And you end up in a different part of life where money doesn't matter as much. Right? Like, different things change and the goalposts change, you become a lot happier, you become a lot more resistant to change, you become a lot more well adapted. Your emotional regulation becomes a thing that you couldn't touch before. Most entrepreneurs have terrible emotional regulation because it serves them so well in those startup phases of kind of being unpredictable and irrational is so great. But, you know, once you get to, you know, 10 million, your business is built on unit economics and calm, cool, collected thoughts. So it's just, it's a different. What got you there will absolutely tear apart a business after certain stages. So it's just being very careful on your best resources, which is your conversation with Yourself and being very, very intentional. Most people would never talk to another human being the way they talk to themselves.

I think that's the key right there is. Is how we're speaking. And it's. Would you say this to your best friend or. Or would we speak way to each other here? You know, it's like the answer is no. And yeah, it's a daily practice for me as well. And. And it's. Wow, there's. It reminds me of another guy I had on the podcast here, Kamal Ravikant, who, you know, it's Naval's brother, and wrote an amazing book. Love yourself like your life depends on it.

Yeah.

And it's. Amazing book. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, I read it like three times or something and. And yeah, it starts with love letter and it's exactly it right there and then goes on from there. Yeah. And it's just so powerful. I mean, there's so many stories like this. For a lot of entrepreneurs that driven this, I feel like, can just lead us into dark places, could lead us to dis. Ease disease or. You know, Gabor talks a lot about that as well. Could even be if you're just being, you know, just kind of going with emotions, getting almost pushed around a little bit by life and not taking a stand for yourself is what. Well.

Oh, that's what I was going to mention earlier. Yeah. So my. My life philosophy is that you don't delegate three things. Finance, legal, and health. Right. So it's unforgiving if you do. Right. So, for example, if you have an accountant that you're not checking on that is doing certain things, you're still liable for it. So know that you can still go to prison for stuff that you're negligent of. Legal, very similar. Read your contracts. Like, read everything as if you need, like your life depended on it. Because a lot of the time it does. Like, in the beginning stages, it may not. Contracts are very good. And in health, never take a doctor for their word. Right. Like, the big thing with healthcare that I learned is that just like any other industry, there's 1% at the top and there's 99 of people who just got by. And even the specialists. I mean, most of the pulmonologists that I talked to didn't believe in mold. They're like, that's not real. And you're like, holy. You're like, this is. Yeah. You're like, is this a real thing? And they're like, yeah, no, this. You're making this up. And I'm like, like, okay. Cool, cool, cool. And even they wouldn't take me at. They wouldn't take me at the Mayo Clinic because they didn't believe in mold. And I'm like, okay, okay. Like, I mean, this stuff is like 20 years behind. And so it's just very difficult to find. And, and, you know, not feel like you're going crazy the entire time. But also it is. If I were to delegate to the doctors, I'd be absolutely dead. And not a fun way because it's just like every time you go somewhere, they go, oh, you're fine, you're fine. It's all in your head. It's all in your head. And take these antidepressants. Just take these antidepressants. You're going to be fine. Stop my heart twice, right? You do not take the antidepressants. Like, you do not do a lot of this stuff. Like, most of the time they want to cover it as depression, where the reality is, like, you have some functional massive problems that they just don't understand because most of them really, really know their part of what they want. And like, you know, family doctors, they're used to the family stuff. You know, the pulmonologist, they're used to a very linear skill set. Most of them are not looking at holistic philosophies or understanding how the body works. They understand how they're part of the body works, but they do not understand how the mental, physical and spiritual side of the business works. And it can be very scary. So what I would do is I would have all of my stuff in spreadsheets with, you know, my wife would help me with this. She was a kindergarten teacher, and I was her 29th kindergartner. But she would help me with kind of mapping this out and going, okay, we're going to talk to this doctor about this specific question. So you, you, when you talk to the pulmonologist, you ask them specifically about the lung system and how that works. And, okay, this is there. Then you go to the gastroenterologist and you talk about your stomach and your lowering testin, like, okay, how does this work from a gut biome standpoint? Then you talk to, you know, you talk to the neurologist. Then you talk to, you know, so you're basically using them as, like, business consultants to figure out the whole system. Sometimes you'll get lucky. I had a doctor, Dr. Glick, who was here locally, and he was from John Hopkins University, the Longevity Institute process. He was incredible. But very rarely will you find somebody that's like super aligned. And I, due to my connections, I had JJ virgin, had. I don't know if you know who that is, but she's like in the healthcare space. She had helped me reach out to find the best mold doctor in the world, which is Dr. Neil Nathan. He does not take on clients. So he got me connected to Dr. Ryka in Chicago and she saved my life. She's one of the smartest mold doctors in the world and they found out I had mold lymes, H. Pylori sibo valley fever. So it was a bunch of stuff that wasn't getting better because I was treating the thing that needed to be solved last instead of treating the thing that needed to be solved first. And my immune system couldn't handle it. So it's like none of the meds were ever going to work.

So what are some of these treatments? Because I'm curious of the ways that you approached it. Obviously you know, you're, you're going down the list, you're getting a lot of information, but it's not a fast recovery, you know.

Oh yeah, it's years. So it's tough mentally, right? Like the first thing is mental fortitude. Emotional regulation. And mental fortitude is the biggest skill no matter what you're dealing with. It is a skill I highly recommend in business because in business it's the same thing. How fast you can scale is based on your emotional regulation. How well can you handle problems? Because the problems, they don't get easier, they get much more difficult as you scale you end up with legal issues like other, other problems that come at scale that you are not even close to ready for and, and you get veteran the hard way. So it's like the emotional regulation skill was probably the best and that was through, you know, three or four hours of meditation a day and really dialing in that conversation with myself and my conversation with the universe. It's also dialing in your spiritual side, like doesn't matter, you know, what the, what the religion or universe or what, what it is. But really understanding that you have a bigger view of the world and the universe than what you have right here is a very powerful aspect to healing. Psilocybin was very powerful for me. So I would do a hero dose of psilocybin. It's great for submission, submitting to the universe. So doing not like a friendly dose, not like a haha one you do with friends, like a lot.

This is like 8 grams or something like that. That is a hero.

More than that depends on which kind you're doing. So it's like, like anything more than five, you get, you get a, a very personal journey and you, you end up going through this and then you're using. Psychedelics have been beautiful for me. You know, ayahuasca is great for multi generational trauma. LSD is amazing for serotonin, dopamine receptors. MDMA is incredible for depression. You know, there's so many. Ketamine is beautiful for depression and it's a safe alternative, but there's a lot of alternative paths that most doctors will never tell you about that are so beautiful. And it's, it's all in the brain. Like, if you can control your, your brain can control so many different aspects of your health that the methylation process is insane. Like, it's very complicated. But most of that comes from the brain. And you can solve things that they don't think are solvable by just meditating on it, controlling the conversation, your limbic system, controlling how your brain controls your, your entire metabolic system. There's a lot that you can do when you get down into the dojo and you have to. But ultimately, like, really figuring out that mental side was very impactful. Also doing the fundamentals. Like, a lot of people don't understand that we live in a world that's a lot different than it once was. So hot cold therapy, it's incredible for circulation, circadian rhythm. I mean, there's tons of health benefits to doing cold therapy. Also the mental side of it, doing hard stuff every day. Train for those tough decisions and you'll be ready for them.

So with cold, cold and heat, are you doing like cold in the morning, heat at night, or, you know, kind of sleeping?

Depends on the day and what I'm trying to do. Right. So I have a, several different saunas. So it depends on what I'm there for. I have light therapy, like red light therapy. I have pmf. I have had hyperbaric. That became less fun. My wife hates that. I'd rather go into a place because she, she just thinks it's very scary and she doesn't want to make the news when it blows up.

But, you know, I don't know much about that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. If you're pushing pure oxygen into a hard chamber, like you make the news, man, you don't like that isn't something where just I go. That's like, you know, the neighbors are, are in a significantly big problem. They're. Yeah. Okay, so it's like figuring that out plus then it's, you know, doing More yoga, getting more in touch with just your body in general and, and not just like weightlifting, but also doing weightlifting and like really taking care of yourself in a big way is just such a beautiful gift you can give yourself. And it's not about longevity, it's about quality of life. And when you have a different conversation with yourself, you care more. You're a lot kinder to yourself in the way that you, you're a lot kinder to the way in which you take care of yourself. You're not like, oh, you fat fuck, you gotta get up on it. You're like, oh man. You get this blessed meal today and you get to be able to eat these amazing green stuff that make you feel incredible. And you know, alcohol doesn't really serve me in the way that it once did anymore because I, I don't need the dopamine hit. I don't need that. It's a very short term solution. It's an amazing state change medication in certain ways, but it's a very long term problem. I don't need these state change medications. I can do them in a different way. And so cool to show up for the world in sobriety. And it's so easy to work out because I feel better. I can show up for my son better, I can show up for my wife better. I look great. I can do all these things. And you do it because you get to, not because you have to. And it's a totally different conversation yourself. You know, a lot of people, the intermittent fasting was a big thing and that's tough because a lot of people in the weight loss industry think that is like negative because a lot of people have a poor connotation, would just stop eating. But you can have such a beautiful relationship with yourself and you know, in a relationship with food. It's such a psychological one.

Well, it's a conscious now, you know, if you're, if you're doing that kind of regimen to yourself in a healthy manner, you're now conscious of how you're consuming food and, and the timing and all these things.

Yeah, it's, it's just pattern interrupts to go about your day for not unintentionally doing anything.

Yeah.

And now you get to intentionally take over your life again. And it is one of the most beautiful concepts I've ever got to experience was being intentional about how my time is being spent. And it makes my work life easier. Because people like working with emotionally regulated people.

They do.

They love working with people who are positive versus negative. You're going to find some people that you're going to polarize the wrong way. But I promise you they're not a good fit. They're in a different stage of their, their life where they need to solve some items and you may be a mirror for them in the wrong way, but ultimately you gain an insight to what matters. And also you end up doing things that like letting people go. A lot of people think that that's like a really hard thing. It's one of the most beautiful experiences on the planet. Like it's obviously doesn't work. So you know, how I let people go now is I find a new position for them that is going to be better than where they're at. And I have 100% rate at this point. We lead up the company in December. I let go of 25 people and every one of them is, was at least making what they were making here at a different company. And it's like you do stuff like that, just improve the, you feel like you improve the world and you get a different self talk. You end up getting this like, you know, leaning up. A lot of people would see that as failure. Instead of being like, no, my wife's having a tough time. My time goes to my family and to my son. It is absolutely not taken up by work or anything else. I have an incredible skill set at making money. If at any point I need more money, I can deal with that or I get blessed with the opportunity of suffering poverty and that's okay. But ultimately your time is your best weapon and where you can spend your time and energy and it really shows up, your value system shows up in a big way.

Yeah, I'm a big believer too that we control our time. We can create time and just through this awareness mentally the self talk time is very abundant.

Time is incredibly abundant. Energy is abundant. It's all money's abundant. I mean, I don't think there's any resource on the planet in the universe that isn't abundant. It's how you see it and how you show up for it and really getting a different perspective around what that looks like. I think a lot of people have, you know, especially in the entrepreneur life, they have financial fear, a really big financial fear where go through bankruptcy once and you end up getting rid of that. You know, whatever, whatever you fear shows up in your life because you're giving it time and attention and how you talk about things and what matters a ton. And the universe will teach you some very valuable lessons. A lot of times the hard way, man.

So with. Just to wrap it up a little bit here, man, this is because I could keep. Yeah, there's so many other rabbit holes, I'm sure.

Yeah. Like threads to pull.

Yeah, totally. I mean always. And I love these conversations where. And thank you for being so open and sharing because I genuinely think that there's, there's so many entrepreneurs struggling in some way be exactly to this. But you know, if it is, then hey, there's some resources. But either way, like it's the awareness of things, awareness of ourself and what's going on in here and how that's radiating from us into the business, into our clients, our team. I mean now it just sounds like you're going to attract maybe not more team team but like clients that are, that are more in tune with how you operate and how you see business and you're creating this ripple effect that will extend further than just you do. But you know, this, this moment, man. And I feel like all of us have a choice and an opportunity to, to change however that is showing up in our lives. So man. So how can we, how can we leave people here? Is there maybe. Obviously I want to shout out the magic agency. Yeah.

Well, I have two, I have two calls to action. So my first one is, is my most important one if, if you're having a tough time. I do a support group for terminal patients. But also I do a lot of calls if somebody just needs empathy or understanding around specific pieces and just need somebody to talk to, love to extend that resource. My email is jamesgoulden.com james@J-A-M-E-S G-U-L-Da-n.com I have a lot of love for people going. Hitting rock bottom is such a beautiful place to be and it's such an amazing spot but it can be very overwhelming and I understand that and I do make myself available for anybody who needs some help. And I also have a property here that has. I pretty much have a full hospital at my home. So if anybody needs do some healing, I mean I've already invested the money, just let me know and I can probably make something happen. If you're local here in Phoenix, I do a get together for everybody once a month and that's a big deal to me to make sure that everybody has access to doctors and a lot of stuff that they normally couldn't get access to. So number one, that's a really big deal for me me. Number two, if you're in the info Product or E. Com industry. And you are between 1 and $10 million and are looking to massively scale. Reach out to me. That email address is James Magic Agency.

Love it, bro. James, I love it. And I love your passion, how generous you are, and cheat. When I'm in Phoenix, maybe I'll. I'll give you a pin.

Oh, dude. Come by, man.

Diego, I'm not far.

Yeah. If you're ready to sit in the power or get the gift of uncomfortableness, this is it. We got some people here that, like, one of the guys that we do, he's running a hundred days across Antarctica. And so he's training for it and he trains here and we do. We try to see how cold we can get. Like, the cold stuff, he'll spend like 30 minutes.

Well, you have the whole plunge, I'm sure, right?

I have several of them. So I have. Depends on what. So I have five. And so just like one of them has cbd, one of them has magnesium. One of them can get colder than 30. You know, which. With. With salinity and other stuff I have. You know what I mean? They each have different purposes, but the cold is a. Is. Oh, it's my favorite, dude.

Okay. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna visit. I'll pay a visit.

And we also have doctors here who give IVs, right. Like, a lot of people don't know what methane blue is, but it's like one of the most healing factors. So methane blue, we've ozone treatments, we have prolo. Prp. There's like a lot of other treatments that you normally can't get. And I'm not going to mention all of them on here, but a lot of them are FDA approved.

I'm sure.

But we have some other cool stuff here as well, dude.

Okay, well, you're gonna get some takers.

And.

Yeah, rightly. Rightly so, man. You're helping. You're changing lives. And. And again, thank you for sharing. And. And I'm gonna. You'll be hearing from me. Just know that.

Appreciate you, man.

Thank you, James.

All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others the way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.