How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett - Stop Settling TODAY! How to Crush Self-Doubt and Attract the Special Woman You Deserve — Featuring Garrain Jones

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Have you ever settled—in love, life, or both? It can leave you feeling stuck. Garrain Jones knows what it means to be stuck. He grew up poor without a father, who was murdered, then served time in prison on drug charges. But he refused to settle. Garrain transformed his life, becominga bestselling author and renowned coach who now inspires millions. Oh, and along the way he landed his dream girl—his wife, Blair! In this episode, Garrain joins dating coach Connell Barrett to help you become the best version of yourself. “To attract a high-value woman,” he says, “you need to become a high-value man.”Here’s what you’ll learn in Connell and Garrain’s powerful conversation:3:50 How to Bounce Back from Rock Bottom15:30 The 5 Books Every Man Should Read21:33 Why Women Want Authentic Men, Not Fake, Toxic “Alpha Males”32:00 Why Playfulness Is a Man’s Secret Flirting Weapon—and How to Use It39:42 The Biggest Dating Lesson Garrain Learned Before Meeting His Wife, Blair40:44 A Flirting Move You Can Steal: How Garrain Used to Get Women to Approach HIM at Bars52:07 How to Become the Charismatic Man Women Want to Date58:45 The Jaw-Dropping Truth Bomb Garrain Told Blair on their First Date60:03 Garrain’s 3-Step Formula for Never Settling AgainIt’s time to stop settling and start thriving! Your dream relationship awaits. Listen now.LEARN MORE ABOUT GARRAIN JONES’S INCREDIBLE STORY:https://www.garrainjones.com/TO APPLY TO HIS “ARTIST POWER” PROGRAM:https://go.garrainjones.com/apply-artist-power-leadership-programREAD GARRAIN’S BESTSELLING BOOK, “CHANGE YOUR MINDSET, CHANGE YOUR LIFE”:https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mindset-Life-Transformation/dp/1734155507FOR A FREE STRATEGY CALL WITH CONNELL TO LEARN HOW TO HAVE GREAT FIRST DATES:http://www.datingtransformation.com/contactTO GET FREE ACCESS TO “THE FLIRTY 30,” CHARMING QUESTIONS TO ASK WOMEN ON DATES, ON THE APPS, AND WHEN YOU APPROACH:http://www.datingtransformation.com/FLIRTY30WANT A FREE COPY OF CONNELL’S NO. 1 AMAZON BESTSELLING BOOK, “DATING SUCKS BUT YOU DON’T”? EMAIL CONNELL AND WRITE “FREE BOOK” IN THE SUBJECT LINE AND YOU’LL GET IT INSTANTLY:[e-mail]

you must become the kind of man that matches that high-valued woman. So if you're not a high-valued man, you don't stand a chance. All right, welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast. I'm your host, dating coach, Conal Barrett. I'm here to help you flirt with confidence, get a great girlfriend, and do it by being authentic. No sketchy pickup moves needed. And also doing it with a lot of heart.

And heart is a great word to transition into my special guest today, because this man has a lot of heart. When he was four years old, someone tried to kill him by putting him in a dryer. When he was 10 years old, men tried to drown him. By age 12, his father had been murdered. And later, my guest today went on to prison for drug charges. But now, after hitting rock bottom a couple times in his life, he is at the top. Garen Jones is a best-selling author. He's a thought leader.

And he has helped millions of people change their mindset and change their lives. As the creator of Artist Power, his Artist Power programs, Garen helps people reconnect with their authentic selves. I'm all about that. And he's helped them unlock their potential to achieve extraordinary life results. And on today's episode, Garen is going to share his remarkable journey to give you some actionable insights to help you become an even better man. And by becoming the best man you can be, that's how

you're going to get a great girlfriend who's going to fall in love with you. For more about Garen, you can go to GarenJones.com. That's G-A-R-R-A-I-N Jones.com. Garen, welcome to the show. It's a privilege to have you. Thank you so much for having me on. It's always, whenever I'm hearing somebody do an introduction, I try to pretend like I'm not me so that I can be a neutral party listening. And I was like, I would probably want to listen to this guy. Hell yeah. Well, you came from a rock bottom and we're going to talk about that because a lot of men have rock bottom moments in their lives, their dating lives.

By the way, stick around to the very end because at the end of the episode, Garen's going to share with you his formula for attracting an incredible woman into his life and how it can help you. He has an amazing wife, and he's going to talk about his formula that you're going to love. So stick around till the very end. So here's how I love to kick off, Garen. I was listening to your book at the gym yesterday, your audio book, which you narrate. The book is called Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life, a fantastic bestseller. And I want to do a short, dramatic reading of a section of your book. I can't do it as well as you did, but I want to tee you up to talk about something. I want to talk about rock bottom moments. Here's what you write in the prologue to your book.

One day, I was sitting in a parking lot on the corner of La Brea and Hollywood. I was at rock bottom. The worst part about it was that I blamed everyone else for my situation. I felt like a washed-up singer, model, and person. It was August 2011 at 3.43 a.m., and I was experiencing cold sweats. It was raining, and the right side of my car window was busted out from someone breaking in the night before. All that blame finally caught up with me.

I threw my hands up in a moment of surrender. Take it from there if you would. Tell us more about that rock bottom moment and what happened to you and who you met later. Well, I didn't know that that was rock bottom. I just knew that it felt at that time, I tried everything. And for some reason, I could not move forward in my life. And meanwhile, I would see less talented people than me flying all over the world and doing extraordinary things. I'm like, this is not making sense. And at that time, I wasn't doing a lot of self-help and

learning interpersonal skills and things of that nature. And so I was like, these people just got to be lucky, but it doesn't make sense. So in my darkest moment, which I now know is my rock bottom, that's when I remember saying either I die in this moment or I do something about it. The moment I said do something about it, new thoughts started to enter my brain because typically we're habitual creatures by nature it's like why does this keep happening to me why is this because you probably keep asking the same question but when I gave myself a new like commanded statement either I die or I do something about it it was as if it told the innate nature of my body that I had another option.

So in that split second, I'm like, what could I do about it? Well, I can't. I blamed everybody else. I blame my skin color, the news, the weather, the president. I blame everybody for the situation that I was in. But what I realized was not one of those people said, hey, don't write that book that you always said that you were going to write. Hey, don't do that. That was all me. So it was in that moment, I realized I was the bottleneck to my life because I never blamed myself. I never took radical responsibility for where my life was.

So when I took radical responsibility, I started thinking, well, what could I be responsible for? I was responsible for being overweight, responsible for having a negative attitude, responsible for gossiping and trying to tear people down, complaining. I was responsible for all of the things negative in my life. That's when I threw my hands up and I'm just like, oh, I'm tired of fighting. I don't want to fight anymore. I want to be healthy. I want to be happy. I want to be surrounded by nothing but positive people. I just want to inspire people and I want to make a bunch of money and I want to be surrounded by nothing but positive people. I just want to inspire people, and I want to make a bunch of money, and I want that money to represent something that I passionately

believe in that I would do for free. Just show me a sign. Show me a sign. Show me a sign. A week later, I'm at a gas station with my last $2, and anybody that knows anything about los angeles gas you get a gallon for like four dollars four dollars and 59 cents right you can get a gallon last two dollars putting what i can in there homeless person asked me for money and i said you have more money than me and he said change your mindset change your. So that statement right there took a life that would have gone on, I probably would have been dead within a year, and created a conscious interrupt that made me think, wait a second, what if my whole life was a lie based off of how I was thinking? Okay, so let me start thinking the opposite and doing the opposite

in every area of my life where I'm not happy. And there started the trajectory of the man, of the devoted husband, of the devoted father, of the extraordinary businessman that you now see who did not grow up with any model of who I'm representing standing here as a man right now. Incredible. So would you say that rock bottom was a good thing for you that you needed? For me? Yes. I don't think that everybody needs to hit rock bottom if they know what to look for. I didn't know what to look for. And I was hard headed and I wouldn't listen to somebody.

And so rock bottom is what I needed to hit. Because as soon as you can bounce on the ground, then all of a sudden it's it's it's one of those things where I just needed some, something to just slap me up. Yeah. And I've, in the past I've always been hardheaded, but again, I want to say you don't have to do that. If you know the book to read the mentors to have the podcast to watch.

I didn't know that at that time. So it was like basically me against the world to watch. I didn't know that at that time. So it was like basically me against the world. Amazing. I agree that you don't need to hit rock bottom, but boy, when it happens, it can be a gift if you turn it into one. Sounds like for you, you turned it into a gift. That just kept giving. Yeah, exactly. My rock bottom moment wasn't nearly as intense as yours, but in my own way, it was pretty painful for me, is I was very lonely and largely dateless well into my adult life. And I settled for the one woman who liked me and who wanted to be with me, even though we were not in love with each other. We were both settling. But we chose each other out of a place of scarcity.

And then nine weeks after our wedding, she dumped me. She left me for a cool, handsome guy in a Harley. The one thing you don't want to hear during your honeymoon period is, oh, hey, I saw your wife on the back of this guy's Harley. Not a good sign. And as I was driving my red Honda Civic back to Dillard's department store with my back seat filled with wedding gifts to be returned for store credit, I remember thinking, I've got to get me some dating options. I've got to stop settling.

So that was a rock bottom moment for me. And luckily, it turned into something powerful. So I guess back to you garen for that guy out there who has who does have a rock bottom moment or maybe he's trying to avoid a rock bottom moment what what advice do you have for a guy who has hit bottom or is afraid he might what does he need to do first the one the the thing that i didn't realize was as valuable as it actually is, is a community of forward-thinking, goal-driven people who are living in the direction that you want to live in. I had no idea just how powerful the right comp being around the right combination of people. Cause I was a lone wolf and, um, you know, I had friends, but in my mind,

I was a lone wolf and I was selfish and it was just my, my ego. I allowed my ego to just take take over and i would say which would make sense why just even our our government tries everything they do to try to separate us from actually coming together as a community whether it's black white gay straight like man woman the trans cis community that everything is like pull them apart pull them apart pull them apart, pull them apart, pull them apart. You can clearly see it. And I'm a gamer, so I can see games played all day long. And when somebody is really wanting to evolve or avoid hitting rock bottom, I'd say accountability is one of the single most things that you can sort out. You don't need it. You don't even need money for it. There is accountability groups all over Facebook. You just, your energy is worth more than your money. You just got to know what

to look for because it wasn't until I, I was overweight. I was negative. I didn't have any money. I wanted to make a difference in my life, but I didn't know how to. I went into a community that was, they focused on health. They did personal development every day. They inspired their community. They were making a difference in the world. I just stayed in that environment. So naturally, you become the sum total of the people that you hang out with the most. I started getting healthy. I started feeling better about myself. I started sharing that wealth, which is health. I started motivating people. I started reading the same books because it's a form of language the frequency that you're continuously in and what when you're around two or more people it amplifies the frequency

so when you stay in those environments that are continuously growing you cannot not grow because of how energy works speaking of reading is do i have this number right did you read the power of positive thinking 282 times it's now three 300 i think i'm probably on 367 okay wow uh memorize you probably memorize it at this point yeah well the thing about it is it's like that that movie Jumanji remember whenever that they were turning the pages and then there was like the pages started growing with the reader things started happening as you were changing if you read a book properly that is meant to teach you something you are actually called to apply and then you apply, that insinuates you grow. If you go back to read that same book, you will not be the same person. So every time I kept reading the book, I kept

getting these really cool results in my life. So I said, so why would I stop reading the book? And I was going to these free leadership seminars and they said, if you ever find a really good book, never stop reading it. Always keep it in your back pocket. So I just kept reading it. And meanwhile, I go to a friend's house. He's got this whole shelf. He's like, look at all these books that I read. Meanwhile, nothing in his life resembles mainly any of those books that he read. So what that told me was he read a book,

he reads books from memory. And I would read book for mastery, not knowing what that was. I would read a book until it started reading me, meaning my life was a replica of the information that was stored. If you see my bookshelf right now i literally i'm gonna show you i literally have three books on the shelf one of them is the power of positive thinking the other one is my book and another one is called boiling energy that has to do with community healing while using music and you know you come over there like yo you only have three books and i was like ask me how many times i've read that book, though. Well, let me put you on the spot then.

For the listener, the man who is working on his dating life, maybe he's lonely, maybe he's got some self-doubt, mindset issues. He just wants to feel better about himself, dating or otherwise. What's at the top of your reading list for our listener? For that? For a man listening who wants to rework his mindset. Other than your book and my book, we'll put those two aside. I don't remember the author, but it is a really, really beautiful book that I think every man should read.

And it's called No More Mr. Nice Guy. Oh, Robert Glover. So No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover. man should read and it's called no more mr nice guy oh robert glover yes so no more mr nice guy by robert glover the magic will start to triculate in the third read do not settle for the first read oh i got it no you want it to triculate and so after the third read all of a sudden you'll start absorbing and then you'll start remembering things that you didn't even realize that neurons were shut off when you were like five years old. You just keep reading over and over and over. So No More Mr. Nice Guy is a really, really, really good book. And there's three that I would recommend.

The Power by Rhonda Byrnes. She also did The Secret. But The Power, listening to the audio book, was recorded in the frequency of the heart. So even if you're not listening for memory, it's restructuring your being. And so it's all about mindfulness, loving yourself, honoring yourself, and then activating a part of yourself that most men shut off because boys don't cry. When some of the toughest men I've ever met in my life are so strong that they're not afraid to shed vulnerable tears. So that's number two book. Number three book is by Napoleon Hill.

You've heard of Think and Grow Rich, but he wrote another book that's less popular because people took Think and Grow Rich out of context. And it's called Grow rich with peace of mind that is one of the powerful most powerful books that i've ever read in my entire life on giving you the whole spiritual context of bringing your full embodiment while experiencing the the wealth of life and maintaining peace simultaneously. Those are great. I'll throw one more to your list.

I'm a big fan of David Data's The Way of the Superior Man. Yeah, that's a great one as well. I would have every man and every woman read that book because not every man harnesses the masculine energy and not every woman harnesses the masculine energy and not every woman harnesses the feminine energy so if you think in terms of masculine and feminine energy everybody deserves to read that book thinking in terms of energies not the structure of man and woman and then a lot of women can understand themselves even more by understanding their energy.

Yeah. I just love how your teaching is so much about mindset and energy and thinking, thinking the right thoughts. I tell my clients or I tell men who want to work with me, and I put this in my book, dating success is 80% mindset, 20% mechanics, what to say, how to flirt. Those are important things, but they're not as important as being in tune with your authenticity, offering a lot of really authentic, genuine value, and giving women what they want from a very resourceful place of love and kindness and giving. Could you talk a little bit about why the right mindset is going to bring success to men in all areas of life and just make them feel more fulfilled? Because a man who doesn't know where he's going will never lead a prosperous life. So it takes the right kind of mind to know who you are, how you are, and where you're going. That is a leader.

And if you don't know how to lead yourself, no one's going to follow you, not even your dreams. And so you will always get and attract your level of worthiness, not what you show people, but when you look in the mirror and the truth shows up and nobody else is around. You will always, because we're the most powerful magnets in the world, and so you won't attract what you want. You'll attract who you really are. So if you cannot stand what you keep attracting, it's an opportunity to take a good look in the mirror. And if you want to keep shying away from that, well, then the riches of life and money with money being the least of all value is going to keep shying away from you

because you're repelling all the things that you want because you're not able to pour into your own cup. That's why mindset is important because mind, body, soul, you can't be embodied unless you embody your full self. And I can tell you this from personal experience, no high-valued woman wants a weak man who doesn't know himself you can pretend all day long but she'll snuff it out and if she doesn't get it from you she's going to get it from someone else so well said that's why guys it's mostly men who teach the toxic pickup artist thing pretend to be an alpha male, pretend to be somebody you're not, use these lines. A good line is only going to go as far as the man who is saying the line can take it. Women have incredible bullshit detectors.

They have bullshit detectors like a polygraph in the yeah in the nypd it's like i can tell when you're full of shit that's why you just gotta lean you can't fake this you got really have to be your best most badass self if you want an amazing badass woman yeah and if you're being really really really honest you know i tried to be the overly overly masculine person that shit didn't work. It was like, I feel like you're hiding something. I'm like, yeah, there's this really sensitive side of me that I don't want it because it's associated with soft. And then you know what I realized?

That sensitivity is the same sensitivity that has had me inspire millions of people because I'm sensitive to how broken the world's heart is. And so I have a sensitive to the world's suffering. And so that same sensitivity has my intuition at a very high level. So all of the non-physical world things that are so, so like wizard-like and magical, I have a sensitivity to pick up on those things to be able to utilize and feel when I'm walking in a room and you can feel the energy bodies of everybody around. So if I don't embrace what's naturally inside of me, I can't be authentic. So it's not necessary for me to overt myself to be this overly masculine person when I'm not. You know what people tell me now? I love how safe I feel around you. I've

never felt this safe in the presence of another masculine man who didn't want anything from me. And in a drop of a heartbeat, I'll protect and provide my family. That's easy for me. And in a drop of a heartbeat, I can be so soft with my daughter, who's three, when she's crying and she's just like, she's redlining and I'm just holding her and holding her and being the space that can hold for all of her tears and being the space that can hold for when my wife is angry to be the space to hold for all of it. That takes a special kind of man who knows himself that won't get lost in all this other, all these other identities, but the true self when fully accepted, oh my goodness, you have sweetness of life on the horizon for you. I love that. Sweetness of life. What a great phrase. Another phrase you

said about a minute ago was, the world's heart is broken. I'm paraphrasing. There's a lot of brokenness out there. And there's also a crisis of your words, crisis of authenticity and a crisis of confidence in people today. Can you talk about that crisis and also how you can help people with that crisis heal? Yeah. Well, I mean, we got to, anytime I talk about something, it's important to talk about the context. You know, it's hard to blame out when we talk about adult or deteriorated children if you take this suffering or people lacking confidence or let's just say the number one fear in the world even more than death is public speaking right okay i can hear that but why okay let's take it all the way back to when i was five trying to sing and express myself when there's parental intolerance.

It's like when parents are just sleep deprived and everything. Can you just shut up? You're too loud or too much. They turn that impact into the same thing that they turn the impact of the beginning state of language. ABCs turns into words, sentences, paragraphs, essays, books, libraries. All right, cool. The beginning of impact of shut up, you too loud you're too much me singing in front of my whole family and they're like oh garen you can't sing you can't dance i wonder where my lack of confidence came from it's possibly because when i was learning how to express i didn't even know what puzzle pieces were in this box i was learning learning. Maybe it was a little messy, but I was five. So when we're little, unconscious parenting will try to, they even have a song,

Hush, little baby, won't you cry? Think about what that's actually saying. Your expression, I don't want to hear. If I could rewrite it, I would do it just like this. Cry little baby, won't you cry? You get to express what is in your heart. And if no words is still your truth, so no more hushing what's real for you. Cry, little baby, won't you cry? Cry, little baby, won't you cry? I would sing that.

Amazing. That was incredible. That was incredible. This is what I sing to my kids Amazing. That was incredible. That was incredible. This is what I sing to my kids. No, keep crying because we don't know what that is. So I'm not going to put my parental intolerance off on your precious new expression where we don't even know what that is. It's got to come out. That's where it comes from. I just got chills, by the way. You brought me back to being four years old and my mom

scratching my back and singing that song to me. You have a better voice than she did, but wow. That was incredible. Thank you. I really appreciate it. But this is where it comes. This is why I do inner child work as well. There's work for everyone out there. But for me, I'm the reason why we're able to get so deep because I never keep, I'm looking at, I'm like looking at little Garen. I'm looking at little Connell. I'm like looking at little Brady and I'm just zoning in and saying, Hey, you have a friend. You're not alone. What is it that actually makes you happy? I was listening to you on Ed Milet's podcast last year.

It was a great spot. You got, you two were talking about this very topic. You were talking about that inner child and getting in touch with that playful, inner, younger you and helping that younger version of you to come out, in a sense, come out and play as adults. And you and Ed talked about that. It was really a fascinating chat. Can you talk a little bit about how to do that? How do we get in touch with that inner child but also still be a man? Yeah. Well, the thing about it is that child is inside of you already. We just let it, you know, we say, oh, be a man. What exactly does that mean when we have been

groomed? Boys don't cry. We don't share tears. We don't express our feelings. And I wonder why the rate of men committing suicide is growing every year. I wonder where that comes from. Possibly because they don't know who to share or feel safe enough to share their deepest, darkest, most precious, vulnerable secrets that maybe a tear or two could probably just have cleared your nervous system. So this is a very deep conversation. And the best way I know how is to remember something that you used to love as a child. Just remember anything. It doesn't matter.

G.I. Joe's building sandcastles, looking up at the sky, running, jumping, singing, dancing. Even if it's really you think it's really small. And I want you to once a week. I don't have enough time for yourself. That's probably the issue. You have not carved out time for the most important thing in the world, which is the self. So let's just say five to ten minutes.

If you can't carve out five to ten minutes a week for yourself in your heart you probably deserve everything that's currently happening in your life five to ten minutes a week and take yourself on an inner child date yourself alone don't bring anybody else whether it was the playground the seesaw playing football whatever and just allow imagine what it was like whenever you used to hit that baseball or go swimming and just be in the energy of that and allow yourself to just feel that and be like, ah, I love you little G. That right there can radically transform anyone's life. Why? Because the EKGs of the heart take the most powerful frequency in the world.

So when you use it, it just might have special gifts for you. And what I learned was, oh, my goodness, the little kid is the one with the boundless energy. The little kid is the one with the endless creativity. The little kid is the one that always had these big aspirations of life. Where did it go? You struggle with dating, right? Sure, you have a good job and cool friends, but you just aren't sure how to flirt. The apps don't work for you. And sometimes women put you in the friend zone. It's frustrating. Hey, I struggled with dating too. As an introvert and a total nerd, I didn't just live in the friend

zone. I owned real estate there. But I escaped using the dating philosophy of radical authenticity, which I've used to help thousands of men in 17 countries find love. It's what I wrote about in my best-selling book, Dating Sucks But You Don't. And radical authenticity is why psychology today called me the best dating coach in America. And now I want to personally help you attract your dream girlfriend. So go to datingtransformation.com and book a free call with me. On our call, I'll tell you how my one-on-one coaching will help you find your dream girlfriend, and you'll be doing it by flirting with confidence and authenticity.

No creepy pickup tricks needed. So go to datingtransformation.com, book a free call today, and let my personalized coaching help you get a great girlfriend. I love it. You just reminded me of one of my favorite tips about how to flirt, how to talk to women, because that's probably the most common question I get as a dating coach. How the heck do you talk to women? What do I say? And my two-word answer is, here's how you flirt with women. Let's play. Let's play like little kids. Let's make it light and playful and let your inner child come out at first. You

can get sexy, you can get masculine, you can have the intimacy later, but when you first meet that woman, let's play. Let's keep it fun and light. That is so, I think it just hits a chord inside of other people that makes them want to be with you. So I say, don't worry about the perfect pickup line. What's something playful you can say to make her giggle, make her smile, make it innocent, but light. You can get sexy later. Yeah, no, that right there, easy. Like me and my wife, that's in the beginning, we were like wrestling. I'm like, no, so hot. And she's like, he's so hot.

And that's when we had the best sex. And I didn't even know that was going to happen. This was like a thing that I fumbled upon. But it was something about this act of play that heightened the frequency. I dated a woman years ago. We're not together now, but we dated for a while. And we were three or four dates in, and I had met her by approaching her.

She was walking outside of a women's clothing store in New York City, and I approached her with a very light, playful little icebreaker. It cracked some kind of a joke. And I said, by the way, what was it you liked about me when you met me? And I was fishing for a compliment. I was hoping she was going to say, oh, you were so witty, or the thing you said was such a good line. She didn't say that. She said, it was so innocent. You came up to me with innocence. All these other guys were catcalling

her and making it about her body or her looks. And I came up in a playful, childlike way. And she said, I just love that. And that's what got me. And I never forgot that little feedback she gave me, that inner child is somebody you can have in your dating life. Yeah, and then one thing I want to tell men, just make sure that you have range. Because if you always stay in that,

then it'll be the point where when the dynamics of because the dynamics of the woman is always changing you can never grasp what that is that's like trying to really contain the waves of the ocean if you just stay in that and she's in a different mode yes then over time she'll be like oh i just feel like you're my i'm mothering you or something and and so like make sure that when you're in the play you also have and you work on having um a range where like say for instance you're walking down the street and there's like it's like a dark alley and there's like, it's like a dark alley and there's like three other men and they're drunk. Like literally, baby, hold my hand to the right, look down straight ahead. Boom. I got you. Like there's, that's not a time to play. So

right. He also wants to feel that, oh, this man can also protect me as well. Yeah, absolutely. The range. Persevere. That range is so important. To me, it's like music. And I'm not a musical expert. You are. You're a professional musician. You worked with Ludacris. You're obviously a brilliant musician with a great singing voice. But I just recently started taking piano lessons, literally four months in. So I'm a total noob. But what I've noticed is how songs are so powerful when they have range. There's the soft, sweet part. There's the loud part.

There's the power chord. The reason the power chord is so powerful is because that minor chord sets it up. Similarly, when you're in a relationship or courting, dating a woman she wants to she wants lots of different chords yeah absolutely yeah absolutely i love that i love i love because i never thought about in a way where you think about songs that have like um range one of my all-time favorite favorite songs as far as musically is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. And the level of range of where that song goes, I'm like, what? The first time I heard it, I was like, what is this?

And it just takes me on an entire journey. I love now you gave me something to think about, something that I embody every day inside of my marriage and inside of parenting and leadership as it pertains to business. I had a first date once with an amazing woman named Eileen. We dated for about six months. She was my girlfriend. And our first date was like a great song. I just remember we were silly. We were cracking jokes. But also there were some really vulnerable were cracking jokes, but also there

were some really vulnerable, not serious, but vulnerable, genuine moments. There was laughter, there was sincerity, there was flirting, a whole range of things. And she texted me that night on her way home and she said, I just have the most incredible floaty feeling right now. And to me, that was like, again, i didn't think about the music analogy but i remember thinking wow it's kind of like how we feel after a great song that high the highs the lows the counterpoint is just yeah to me a great first date can be show her lots of different chords you can play oh that's good that's so to speak back to you though in your dating life let's talk about your your dating past or your relationship whatever you'd like to discuss i'm in whatever whatever question you want to ask

great what what was it before we'll get to your uh partner now your wonderful wife i'm sure i've never met her but she seems amazing i mean i'm sure she is but when you were last single what were some of the whatever it might be moves what moves, what worked for you, what didn't work, what lessons do you learn in dating that our listeners can take from a guy like you who has been with some pretty incredible women? So interesting because a girl in seventh grade rejected me named Ashley Bostrom at the skating rink. She led me on the whole year and I was deathly afraid to ask her out And everybody's like just ask her out

She's going to say yes I asked her out and she said no Because I'm in love with Roswell Which happened to be one of my best friends at the time And the level of crush My soul The level that my soul Was crushed in that moment

I said I will never in my life Put myself in a position to be rejected like this again. So in some weird way, I developed all of these skills to be able to position myself to be seen so that they can see me. And so women, I would find a way for women to always find attraction and come to me, come to me, come to me. One time I was in a nightclub and I would never approach a woman. And I was in a nightclub and I brought a book to a nightclub and I was reading the book in the nightclub. Okay. And the most beautiful that every single person in the club was trying to holler at came to me. She was like,

she just sat down with this weird look. She goes, why are you reading a book in a club? And I lied to her and I told her, I said, because my friend dragged me here. I don't want to be here. And I said, if and I told her, I said, because my friend dragged me here, I don't want to be here. And I said, if I'm going to be here, well, then I'm just going to be here on my terms. And I was just reading this book. She was like, so what are you reading? And so it was just

something that was out of the ordinary that they're not typically used to. So I got really good at finding ways to be seen. That's probably why I'm a really good salesman and everything that I do sells out because I know how to position value. So thank you, Ashley Bostrom, because you gave me a great gift. But in my past, I never approached a woman. They would always approach me based off of what I was wearing, what I was smelling, that I was different than everybody in the room. If I would see everybody do one thing, I'm like, well, I'm not going to do that thing. I'm going to observe the masses and do the opposite. So I get really good at that. But I would not get really good at picking the kind of woman that I actually wanted to be with.

So I would pick, you know, what I thought was my picky list. Oh, this exotic woman with nice legs. So I get this exotic woman with nice legs, but she'd have a fiery attitude and she wouldn't know how to make money. And I'd be broke, too. So we couldn't figure life out. And I, it was the same thing over and over and over again. I was like, why do I keep attracting the same kind of women? Really beautiful, very exotic, nice legs. And there's nothing else to show for. So that was my past. And I slept with, I had cheated on every girl I'd ever had. I slept with so many women.

And there wasn't, you know, in my young boy mind, I'm like, score and count. Like, I slept with this many women. This would validate my worth and things like that. And it'd be like, oh man, amongst the guys, I became cool because I sleep with all these women. I had no idea how unworthy I felt. I had no idea at that time that I was a broken boy trying to be a man with no real role models on how to actually be a man.

Yeah. Cause even the men were all doing the same things even when they were married so i had no role models of the kind of man i actually wanted to be like so i just settled for what was there and so that was my dating in the past. It wasn't good, but it gave me data on when I did find the right one, who I was not going to be, because I then found worthiness in myself. And you often treat people how you treat yourself. Let me ask you this. Speaking of the younger Garen, if you could go back in time in 20 years or so, 25-year-old Garen, or roughly that age, if you can go back in time and give your younger self one piece of dating advice, what would it be? if I would give them one, because it's a weird question because I would not want to change anything or alter anything that happened because one degree different than most likely I would not be here.

But if I could keep the same life that I have right now and nothing changed, then let's play in that possibility. If I could go back, because I would not like, I got baby chief, I got soul, I got a relationship with my 23-year-old daughter now, my beautiful wife. I'm like, no, I'm not trading that for nothing. So if I can keep everything I have the way that I have it now, then I can go back and I can give little Garen, young Garen, broken boy Garen, trying to fill a hole that he didn't know was bottomless, advice. About dating, I'd say,

you must learn how to work harder on yourself than you do on anything outside and anything else outside of you and then i'd be like well what does that look like all right so let me give you this book yeah you know give me give you this book called the four agreements well let me give you this book yeah called the power of Thinking, but I want you to read this book from the context of where you're in now, learning about how to love yourself, learning about how to respect yourself, learning them what you give yourself. And if you give beyond what you give yourself, you're ultimately going to lose it because that energy is not a matching frequency and like attracts like. And so over time, you'll lose what you're out of resonance with. And so I would teach him about how to be in resonance with self. I would teach him how to build a strong foundation of self. I would teach him about leadership because if you don't know about leadership, you're definitely never going to lead a household.

And so I would teach him about resonance, strong foundation, self-respect, dignity, honor. And I would get him around some healthy men who are devotional husbands, who are devotional to their marriage and parenting and find a way to get him exposed to that environment. That's what I would do. That's great advice because so many men are saying, hey, what are the tactics? What are the things to say and do? And don't get me wrong, I love tactics. I'm going to ask you for a couple of your tactics back in the day if you have any you want to share. But I'd much rather tell men the truth and I'll say, look, I can teach you all the best dating tactics in the world, but if it's coming, if those tactics that you're quote unquote using on women aren't coming from a really big-hearted, authentic man who's evolved into

the best possible version of himself at that moment, how well are those tactics going to work? Not very well. So what I love about what you would tell your younger self is, this is what I heard you say, basically is, just keep working on yourself. Become a better version of you. Aristotle said the same thing. Aristotle wrote a book called The Nicomachean Ethics, which is not a really fun read. I'm not saying you need to, but I'll give you the TLDR version. He basically said, we are here to achieve eudaimonia, which is a fancy word that just means to flourish and to become the best version of ourselves and to be in harmony with our inherent character. We all have an inherent character. We're all meant to be a specific version of ourselves.

And there's, we want to keep growing into that version of ourselves. And to me, your answer was basically aligned with Aristotle, which is just be the most amazing version of you. And that's going to be, that's going to attract you some incredible women in your life, regardless of what you say and how you flirt with them. I love that. I love that. Yeah. So your book is way more fun to read than Aristotle's.

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Go get your flirty30. Yeah, let's finish up with a few fun dating questions. So back from your single days, or just from things you see out in the world, let me back up. Let me ask you this. What are some of the dating mistakes you see or have seen men make that make you go, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that.

Mistakes that men make. What makes you want to grab a guy and say, don't do that, man. Come on. If you are in a professional setting and a student comes in your professional setting and somehow you have fallen for the student and then somehow you end up in her vagina. That is the ultimate no,

no. True. And it's taken advantage of your power. And this happens in music. It happens in entertainment modeling. It happens in the spiritual communities with facilitators and head coaches and things of that nature, because when you're on this pedestal, people almost like shrink and it's almost like they'll do what you say. And and then it becomes this wave of, oh, no, that's leaky sexual energy. And so if you cannot contain yourself with discipline, honestly, you won't be like truly respected. And so there'll be this like low shadow hanging over what people think of you and then who you really are. And those two are going to eventually bottleneck,

and it will never work in your favor because that's how energy works. So that's a major no-no. Were you about to say something? No, go ahead. You're great. Okay, yeah. That's a major no-no. I would say that trying to overcompensate and make your life look like something that it's actually not. I'm like, bro, lying for the sake of approval is a hurt little boy, not going to work in your favor. I think one of the biggest things,

I want to speak about what I think all men should strive for. Do your best to live a life of integrity. And truly, if you truly want to attract the woman that your soul is craving, not the one you settle for, you must become the kind of man that matches that high-valued woman. So if you're not a high-valued man, you don't stand a chance with a woman who knows herself. So I need you to know yourself. Like, what are you up to in the world?

Like, don't get in a relationship and then be like, oh, can you pay for me? I can't. I need you to take care of me. So baby is like an iteration of a baby over and over and over and over and over again. And what women look for, and 94% of my clientele are powerful, driven women. So let me give you a cheat code. Great. They are looking for, because a lot of women, not all women, but a lot of women, they have this vision of being married, having somebody that can wrap their arms around them so where they can actually just not have to protect themselves. They had to protect themselves their whole life from predators or people

wanting something from them their whole life. So they want somebody that they can feel safe around physically, mentally, and spiritually. So knowing yourself, what you're up to, where you're going, and you can effortlessly communicate that is going to create a notion of safety inside of her womb and when you are when you have some aspect of physical stature i'm not saying that's the the end all be all these are just conversations that i work with women on and i ask them what is is your dream person? And it's like someone who I feel safe walking down the street with. So you being in your feminine and you want her to be in her feminine, that right there, there's no polarity. So either she's in her masculine, you're in your feminine, or you're in your rightful state and she's in her rightful state and then you

can experience what the what the infinity sign actually represents this coagulation of this where two becomes one type energy they are looking for somebody who can hold them and all of their emotions, no matter how crazy, no matter how rangeful, because as the little kid who is just learning to get all of the stuff out, women have also had their voices stuffed. So imagine that woman being a little girl that's times 10, never had an opportunity to really express what's in there. So it might in the beginning come out as rage and why do you have to be so angry? And women are associated with angry,

especially black women. So it's like, if you don't have confidence in yourself to know that and communicate, I can hold for all of it it i signed up for all of it that right there is what's missing in most men is they blame they blame the very thing that's actually needed to expand them like a woman's rage, once you allow yourself to hold, will expand you a thousand times greater than you sit right now by yourself. That's fantastic. That was so good. As my improv teacher never says to me,

I have no notes, nothing to add. That was great. Two final things, Garen. I'll let you go. You just mentioned what women want in men. And you have a pretty amazing seeming wife named Blair, fitness instructor who you met at a personal development seminar. When you first met her, whether it was your first date or the first interaction you had with her, do any moments jump out at you as a moment that stands out that helped you to,

for lack of a better term, get the girl? Every single time I had any point of connection, whether it was text, whether it was FaceTime, in person, there was this energy that just goes, I was like, what is that? And I was, I don't, I don't know, but it was just so, there was something so alive. Like she awoken aliveness inside of me before I even knew what that term was. And it just never stopped. And on our first date, I saw something I'd never seen in my entire life. With every girl I'd ever dated,

I'd never saw past the next week. And how I would just end up, because I settled for the girl, what would happen was, I'd end up dating a girl who was trying to be a woman to then need enough evidence outside, outside evidence and enough time to then see if she qualifies to be a wife when I didn't even know what a wife was, what wife material was. So this is just this bottomless pit with Blair. There was like this portal opened up. This was on our first date and I saw what I'd never seen before in my life.

What was your first date? What did you do? We went to, she asked me on a date. She asked me on a date. Nice. She's like, Garen,

is any woman ever asked you on a date? I was like, no, Garen Jones. I'd love to take you on a date. And I was like, all right. I was like, no. Garen Jones, I'd love to take you on a date. And I was like, all right. I was like, well, when you mean date, when you mean like we're going to eat or we're together? She was like, I think it's like I take you on a date.

I pay for it. You take you on a date. The next time you go. And I was just like, I've never. This was a conversation I'd never heard in my life. And so as I was Sadie Hawkins day,, this was a conversation I'd never heard in my life. And so as I- It was Sadie Hawkins day. She asked you out.

As I closed, we went to Mr. Chow's in LA and we went to Mr. Chow's in LA. And then I saw, because I wasn't thinking about, no, I'll take you out. I was like, this is something new, but I'm open to it. I saw my future. I saw her being the mother of our children. I saw her being my wife. And I told her that night. The night of your first date. On our first date. Wow. But I wasn't like punching above my weight class. Yeah. There was something that took over my whole body, and I was willing to express it in its full, raw, vulnerable truth. And if it didn't work out, I was willing to take it didn't work out.

But at least I was honest. How did she respond when you said that? She did like this. Went to the bathroom, called her best friend, I found honest. How did she respond when you said that? She did like this, went to the bathroom, called her best friend, I found out, and told her what happened. And then ultimately, what I saw is what happened. I love that story. Not only did you not, quote unquote, play it cool, like those so-called experts say, Oh, don't let a woman know you're into her be mysterious. I think that's bullshit. I love that you were so vulnerable and open with her and look at the two of you now. Yeah. And I'm saying is this might not work for the next person, but it worked for me. Let's finish up with that little dating formula that we teased at the top.

You mentioned, oh yeah, let's talk about a formula for dating or for attracting the kind of girlfriend, the kind of woman you want. What is that formula? So you write three columns. First column, write the attribute that you want in a woman and be as picky as possible. Typically, I wrote two attributes. This time I decided I was going to be as picky as possible and I had 62 attributes on there. Loves God, masculine, can easily slip into her feminine, can make her own money, but loves being taken care of, loves to travel, loves personal growth. And I was writing down, if this were a Build-A-Bear, I'm being so picky. I wrote down 62 attributes. And then right after that, wrote down how I wanted to feel

in the relationship. Next column. How you want to feel in the relationship, but how I wanted to feel in the relationship. Next column. How you want to feel in a relationship, but how you want to feel is also what you should mirror. If you're going to meet your mirror. And I wrote down, I want to feel seen and heard. And I want people, I don't want to have to communicate things and for people to just like know when I need help and support and love and things like that. So I wrote that down in its entirety. Third column, the top five places where you would meet this person that you don't typically go to, circle and star the one that you feel the most connected to that has the most attributes connected to it so if you look at your attributes column and then

you look at where you'll meet this person make sure mine was literally circled and starred personal development seminar. Interesting how I met my wife who loves to read, who loves personal growth, who can make her own money, but loves being taken care of. And that was the one that had the most. And that was the one I circled and starred. And that's where I met Blair. So you have those three components. Now, here's what's going to happen. Just like you put a specific address in a GPS system, you are putting a specific address in your soulmate's GPS system.

And how that works is when you do that in a car, it will give you five different ways to get there. The long way or the short way. So when I wrote down my list, I didn't know that I wasn't half of those things on that list. Wow. So it took three years for me to develop into the person that was actually the reflection of that list. When I actually the reflection of that list. When I became the reflection of that list, that's when I met my mirror. I love it. That is a hell of a formula.

Here's the last thing I want to say. Fire away. When you look into the mirror, you're not seeing what you actually look like. You're seeing a reflection of what you look like. In order for you to see what you look like, you literally got to take a selfie and then turn the photo, flip the photo. You can see what you actually look like. So a mirror reflects the opposite of what you look like. So sometimes you're like, this person is just like me, not going to last because there's no friction to develop. It'll last in the settling of it, but there's no friction

that can help you climb that mountain. So Blair is of the similar makeup, but she's the opposite of everything that's my genius. It's her weakness. Everything that's her genius is my weakness. And that's what creates. So she's my mirror of the opposite part of me. Beautiful. I love how elegant and nuanced that is, but also practical. Yeah. Super, super practical.

Okay, let's finish with this we're done you've been amazing thank you so much garen before we before we go i would love for you to talk a little bit about your artist power program okay and how this is creating some pretty amazing results and the people who take part in it um what's the concept of artist power and how is that helping your clients? So the artist is the little kid, the one that I never take my eye off of. And we're all creators. We all started off as creators with big energy living in your bigness. And when you tap into that energy, it unlocks the power. So that's where my company, Artist Power, was birthed, was thinking about how can I create

a world where adults feel safe enough to remember who they've always been deep down on the inside, where all their magic is, where all their energy is, where all their creativity is. So everything that I do has an ingredient of an inner child inside of it, whether it be the masterminds or the leadership. I've got a high-level leadership CFOs and founders program that I'm doing starting January for 12 weeks, and then we're going to retreat in Costa Rica. But I'll be teaching the range of man, leadership, entrepreneur. But then also all of that is coming from the iteration of who are in the container, the right combination of people. Then we'll go to retreat. And then in June, I have another retreat that is open for anyone that's over 18.

And there's a whole interview process. And that is all about play and activations and, and painting and dancing and singing and drumming and chanting and truly activating your soul's permission to full self-acceptance so that you can be who you were actually called to be in the world and not part of who you're called to be. I love it. You can find out more about this program at his website, garenjones.com. Again, that's G-A-R-R-A-I-N, jones.com. And your book is fantastic. Thank you so much for being here and sharing so much of your hard-earned wisdom. It's inspiring to see how you went from rock bottom to the apex mountain where you are now. And you deserve it.

Thank you so much. And thank you for the work that you do in the world as well. And I just want to acknowledge you for being brave enough to create platforms like this. So stories like mine have wings. I know that it's not easy. So for you spreading these messages, may you and your family just be enriched 10 times over in an effortless way for all of the value that you're putting out in the world. So thank you again for this opportunity. You got it, man. All right. I'm going to go to the club tonight with my favorite book. See if women come up to me. Thank you so much for being here. Stick around one

second, Garen. And by the way, for you listening, don't forget your dream girlfriend. She's out there and she's going to love you. She just has to meet the real authentic you. So go out there, take courageous, authentic action, and carpe datum. Seize the date. I'll see you next time.