I am Charles Schwartz Show - G.R.O.W. from Homeless to 9 Figures - Stephen Scoggins
Episode Date: September 10, 2025In this inspiring episode, Charles sits down with Stephen Scoggins—serial 9-figure entrepreneur, author, and speaker—to explore how resilience, faith, and vision can transform a life from homeless...ness to extraordinary success. Stephen unpacks his remarkable journey from sleeping in his car to building multiple businesses across construction, real estate, and personal development. He shares the pivotal lessons learned along the way—how to turn pain into purpose, setbacks into stepping stones, and vision into a vehicle for lasting impact. Together, they dive into the mindset shifts that separate those who stay stuck from those who rise: the power of faith-driven leadership, the discipline of consistent action, and the courage to pursue a calling bigger than yourself. This isn’t just a story about building businesses—it’s a blueprint for anyone ready to break through limitations, reclaim their future, and build a life of both impact and abundance. KEY TAKEAWAYS: -How Stephen Scoggins went from homelessness to becoming a 9-figure serial entrepreneur -Why faith, vision, and resilience are the foundations of long-term success -The mindset shift required to turn pain and setbacks into fuel for growth -How to build businesses that create both profit and purpose Head over to provenpodcast.com to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. KEY POINTS: 01:15 – From rock bottom to rebuilding: Stephen opens up about his journey from homelessness to finding the courage to start over—while Charles reflects on how hitting bottom often sparks reinvention. 05:02 – The role of faith in entrepreneurship: Stephen explains how leaning on faith gave him clarity and strength through uncertainty—while Charles highlights the timeless link between belief and resilience. 08:40 – Turning pain into purpose: Stephen shares how his struggles became fuel for his mission—while Charles points out that setbacks often hide the seeds of transformation. 12:18 – Building 9-figure businesses with values: Stephen unpacks the principles behind scaling multiple companies—while Charles emphasizes the importance of aligning success with service. 16:55 – Identity drives destiny: Stephen reveals why lasting change begins with who you believe you are—while Charles ties this to the idea of becoming the person your goals demand. 21:30 – Consistency beats talent: Stephen explains why showing up daily outperforms waiting for the “perfect moment”—while Charles stresses that discipline compounds into destiny. 26:12 – Leaving a legacy of impact: Stephen closes by challenging listeners to pursue success that outlives them—while Charles reflects on how true wealth is measured in lives changed, not just money earned.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome back to The Proving podcast. On this episode, Stephen walks us through exactly how he went from homeless to running a nine-figure business, an individual who teaches you how to grow, which will make a whole lot more sense in the episode. It's a step-by-step process to get realigned and to break through all the limitations that you have. I can honestly tell you this might be my favorite episode I've ever recorded. The show starts now.
All right, welcome back to the show. Stephen, I'm excited to have you on, man.
bro dude i'm so excited to be hanging out with you man we i'm crazy i know we're traveling like
crazy we're both in different states and all kinds of stuff outside of our normal studios and
stuff but uh great conversations just need to be had yeah it's it's fun i remember our first
intro call we just kept going and going i was like this is a no-brainer this is easy so for the four
and five people out there in the world who actually don't know who you are gary got what have you
done what's your success what's your story well you know what's crazy is i'm probably most notably
We, at this stage, the game, known for being a bit of a life and business strategist.
But more than anything else is kind of the story behind the story, right?
The origin story, if you will.
And grew up in a traditionally dysfunctional environment, which created dysfunctional Stephen along the way.
I found myself later on in a homeless journey for about 60 to 90 days, and that is actually a real homeless journey.
Met my eyes in a mirror, remembered some key things that a mentor said, and that kind of, we were talking about off air, about got me unlocked.
It got me reawaken as kind of on a journey and then went on to build a nine-figure business
that had 400 team members across three states.
I've been very fortunate and very blessed to exit that company in late 2023, and now I get
to do what I love, which is hang out with amazing people and teach them amazing things.
So that's kind of my heart behind everything else.
So you went really quickly over some of that, and I'm going to make sure the audience caught
that.
You went from homeless to nine-figure company.
That's most people go, don't have it that bad.
Most people are like, hey, you know what?
I'm doing okay.
I did the normal route.
I went to college,
may or may not have gone to class.
What?
I don't know if you're,
all of a sudden,
now you're,
you're completely,
you went to come homeless
to sit in there,
having to focus on that,
so now you're running.
And we were talking to off camera
that when you're running
those environments and you create
that type of environment,
there are some insecurities
that come into play.
There are some dysfunction
that comes into play.
There are some huge things.
One of the reason I want to talk to you
is because you are as honorable
as you are.
You show out authentic and you're like,
hey, this is the truth.
So you talked about dysfunction
you talked about vulnerabilities, I want to kind of get into some of those. As you're building towards
a nine-figure business, what does that take? You know, to go from homeless to nine figures,
you know, what does that take for you to pull yourself out of that? Well, you know, it's funny.
One of the things I tell entrepreneurs all the time is presence is important. So a lot of times,
it's funny, I did this on a stage, not that long ago. We've probably had, I don't know,
a thousand entrepreneurs or whatever it was. And I was like, hey, by a show of hands,
raise your hand right now if you think you should be further ahead than you actually are and without
question 100% of the hands are 100s the hands go up yeah right so you you very quickly realize that
um we're actually not that unique our circumstances are really not that unique you might have a
situational environment like i did that was unique from you know someone that maybe went to college you
had a four-year degree or an eight-year degree or whatever so different starting points but at the
of the day, we're all facing, what I've described as the five constraints. You know,
history or statistics would tell you that lack of funding, lack of sales pipeline,
lack of poor market penetration, poor leadership, which is important. But, you know,
there's all these external, tangible things that they say have the top five or seven
things that a business fails for on a regular basis. And when I went back and looked at my
journey, right? So the only place I can, I can offer any insight from is my own journey,
where I've been, where I've come from, the experiences I've had, which include the homelessness,
it includes a suspected embezzlement, losing seven plus figures, being poor leadership,
leading by insecurity, leading by fear, simply and honestly, because I didn't know any better,
one of the things I realized very early on is I really only faced, really what I refer to as
five major life gates, right? And at the element of each of these five major life gates are really
five constraints. So if you can imagine
one of our good buddies
E.T. Eric Thomas says you got to
want it as bad as you want to breathe, right?
What we don't realize
is what's actually constricting our airway.
Right. Right.
So when we, go ahead.
So with those, what I was going to say, what are those five
constraints that most people are running into
when it kept, that is restricted in the area? Because it's
nice to say you want it as bad as you breathe.
You know, it's fun to say it. It's cute. And E.T.
does a great job with, you know, has condensed
it into, you know, you want to have something as bad
you want to breathe. But no one gets that level. I talk to people all the day long. I'm like,
what do you want to make? How much you want to do? And they're like, hey, I want to make a million
dollars, whatever. I'm like, cool. I go on a scale from one to ten, how likely is you're going to get
to that? And they give some random ridiculous number. My cool. I put a shotgun in the face of your
mother. How bad you're going to do it now. They're like, oh, my God. And they stop thinking of the
number and they start thinking of ways to do it. So we can sit and we can trigger it. But most people
don't have that proverbial shotgun in the back of the head of the lung. So when we talk about
Eric Thomas and what he's done about you bad as you want to breathe.
It's cute to say it.
It's adorable, but it doesn't get us there.
So there's no way.
There's five things that are in the way.
What are the five things did you've experienced that are constraining us?
Yeah, so I'm going to run through them real fast, and we can come back and touch on it
because any one of them we could spend a lot of time on.
So I would say that the five constraints are arrogance, ignorance, impatience, fear, and
insecurity.
And it doesn't matter where you've come from, where you've been.
I mean, literally, I see these same five things over and over and over.
And I first, again, I first learned them myself.
So let's talk about the polar opposite.
So the opposite of arrogance is teachability.
Okay.
I'm sorry, the opposite of arrogance is humility.
Opposite of ignorance is teachability.
Opposite of impatience is not patience.
It's actually presence.
Okay.
The opposite of fear historically is some form of faith, no matter what that means to you.
Right.
it's a resilience piece, right?
And the opposite of insecurity is authenticity.
Very few of us will actually or have done the work to date to discover what makes us tick.
Which are those things that makes us tick?
Can we lovingly respect, even though we may not like it very much and bring into our full
integrated self to create an authentic self to then begin to build the other five areas?
And leaders specifically, again, I've worked with eight, nine, ten figure earners, and they all,
all of us have struggled with each of those.
And honestly, I would say that you, it's kind of like, you know, from zero to a million dollars,
there's one form of battling those.
From a million to 10 million, there's another form of battling.
You know, when I got to about $30 million in top line revenue, I really, really battled arrogance.
I really did.
And in its truest form, meaning I thought I was all that in a bag of chips.
And that's when I politely went through my little embezzlement struggle and realized that I
wasn't all that in a bag of chips and even the, even the most unlikely of us can easily be
humbled really quickly, which is the, it turned up to be a blessing. I say that to say that each
entrepreneur, each achiever, each person who's stepping out in faith to build something largely
from scratch needs to focus on the inside. I like to say you can't scale dysfunction, right?
And the problem with scaling dysfunction is a lot of times the dysfunction that's actually
happening inside of our business is a byproduct of what's happening inside of us. Right. So there's a
lot of things that you went over there, I wanted to try and tap into it.
One of us is doing the work.
We talk about this all the time.
This has become a placeholder.
It's become almost a platitude.
Go do the work.
When you're scaling all those, because as you were going through the five, I was like, yep, yep, yep.
I was like, score.
I have a four.
I got a perfect score.
I have a lot.
So, you know, even though you see success, and I think everyone that I've ever worked
with, ever, you know, the high achievers that are out there, they all check all
buy boxes at some point and how we deal with those.
Because I think everyone has them.
How we deal with them, how we show it, how we pivot when that happens, be it through life-plenching us in the face and us really, you know, dramatically hurting people in our lives or embezzlement or whatever, you know, you run into.
We all talk about doing the work. Now, I know what doing the work means for me, and it's an ongoing process, and it'll probably be something I do actually after I'm dead.
That's how intense will go beyond me.
So when you talk about doing the work, what is the tangibles of that?
Because we hear it all the time. It's like, okay, high achievers have done the work. What does that mean?
Mm-hmm. You know, from, you know, it is, it is very abstract because I feel like a lot of times doing the work is very specialized.
So, for example, if I'm someone who, we'll say struggles with impatience quite a bit, right, which is, which is honestly me.
I'm still to this day, I'm very impatient with business practices and stuff like that.
I'm impatient with people, but not business. I like to see things happen quickly, right?
So the opposite of understanding that is the first of all, I had to figure out what the root cause was.
Mm-hmm.
What is the root desire?
What is the root of why I feel the need to get things done quickly?
What is my nervous system trying to say about that?
And for me, it was a matter of safety.
So if you go back in a little bit of my past, right, there was always an urgency to getting food, getting shelter.
Like, there was always an urgency to getting safety, right?
And because it was always an urgency, it became a pattern that became a subconscious pattern that kept running and running and running and running.
where it affected me in business and relationships specifically is it would cause me to rush ahead
and actually respond, I'm sorry, react to situations rather respond to situations or create emotional.
In fact, I would say it this way.
It's probably easiest way to say it.
Almost every major decision or major result that I get that I didn't want, bad decision, bad
result that I had came at a moment of the emotional dysregulation.
100%.
When there was so much anxiousness inside of me that I was just like, this is a temporary
So, okay, just do that, right?
Thinking I can, and that one decision, ironically, from coming from that place, would cause five more problems.
Had I slowed down, developed some present, sat in it, actually just got my breathing on control, making sure I was regulated.
Had I done that, then what would have happened is I would have been able to make a data-driven decision.
And I don't care who you are.
You hear all the time that if you can make a data-driven decision from a strategic vision mindset, then all of a sudden the decisions start to make from themselves.
and you start to grow and prosper and scale.
Problem is, nine, what is it,
nine out of ten entrepreneurs never break seven figures
in top line revenue, or maybe say it out of ten.
But it's a vast majority of us.
Right.
Historically, with the folks that I've worked with,
in almost every case,
there's a resistance,
a complete resistance to going inside
to figure out what makes us tick.
So I had to stop what I was doing.
I had to go and actually do some research.
I started a journal practice a long time to go.
I call what I hear you say is whether or not you believe in God is irrelevant. It's a practice
of listening rather than speaking, right? So I've discovered that starting your day with presence
will help you end the day with presence, right? If you start the day with erratic behavior and
anxious energy and just running out the door and just jumping every place, you're going to,
you're going to cause yourself problems. So I feel I feel like the starting point is radical
honesty. Right. Can you be radically honest without guilt, shame, or condemnation?
issue. Right. I think a simple example is when people are driving and I, you know, I lived in South Florida and the drivers are the best in the world, I swear, they're not a problem. It's not my experience.
So, and I would sit there and I'd be driving back from work or going to the store or whatever I was doing and listen to things like Ramstein or Metallica and all that. And all of a sudden, I'm just like, I'm going to drive. I'm going to follow you home. You cut me off. I'm to like, everybody dies. And I remember at one point, it got to, it was so bad. It was so bad.
that I was shaking where I couldn't control the vehicle.
So I physically pull over.
I pulled over and I did the hazards on.
I'm like, okay, what's actually going on?
I was like, what is actually going on?
Stopping it and going, okay, I don't feel safe.
And then having to go through to say, okay, because I'm a scuba diver and I've done this
enough when I've had just freaked out under water when you're 80 feet underwater.
Like, I'm going to drown.
I'm like, wait, time out.
Is your regulator working?
Yes.
Is your first thing working?
Do you have air?
What are you talking about?
So we have time for a safety stop.
Exactly.
And also in the worst case scenario, can you?
you spit and do an emergency ascent? If you can do that, can you spit out your rag and do an emergency
ascend? Which, please don't do that. They're not fun. I've had to do it. Not fun. So being able to
pull over and to stop and run to the checklist and go to that root cause of, okay, am I actually
in danger? When I'm on the road, am I in danger? Am I not sick? Now, okay, so is this a perceived
reality or an actual reality? Being able to stop that. And to your point, every time I've run
into problems with bad decisions, it's always driven by fear or emotional response.
Some of the most successful people I know are absolutely on spectrum.
They're being autistic or anything else because they have this disconnect between emotions and not.
Everyone else I know the high achievers out there who are not on spectrum have learned how to disconnect the emotional response to the logical response.
So since we've already discussed that, I check all five, go me.
Me too, buddy.
We've been there, you know exactly.
It's like a mirror.
It's awesome.
So when you're running into these and you have these and you're working through these,
how do you deal with the arrogance?
How do you deal with that next one?
You know, so here's crazy part is if it's deeply rooted,
so you have to realize the arrogance is deeply rooted, ironically,
in the common denominator of the other constraint called insecurity.
100%.
It's inferior.
Yeah, it's literally, I feel like, and here's, I'll tell you where it showed up from me.
And this is probably just a simple phrase.
for me it showed up in the phrase chasing worth
I felt as if I needed to prove my worth
in order to fall validated within self
and because of that
you go into you know we've been very forced
we've been in we've been in beautiful rooms
with amazing humans and doing amazing things
and you would go into the room and they would
inevitably what do you do for a living pops up
and then you know and then you kind of go down
the laundry list of your credibility markers
and yours, I started, I just, you know, I just finally decided at one point in time, I finally
got to a place I was like, every time I do that, while I've done pretty, pretty cool stuff and
been very successful in some elements, what really makes me unique is now my ability to just
to have my worth based on me. Like, I don't need to prove myself to anybody at this age
in the game. I'm out here trying to serve because I think everybody should, if I can help
someone understand things earlier at an earlier stage than it took me to, I can help them resist
a lot of pain, right? So I think in the, in the grand scheme of things, it comes a lot to chasing
worth. And in many respects, the five constraints in general are all about chasing worth
or some form of validation. Right? So you feel like, you know, I'm a nine-figure entrepreneur.
Look at, you know, I've built up business. Woo-hoo. I'm just like, no one cares, dude. I'll tell you
when an entrepreneur cares, when I've come in contact with people when they care. And again, you could
be, you know, at a school or you could be in a major mastermind or whatever, when people
cares when you're real.
Yes.
That's when people care.
Like, are you willing to share from your scars?
Like, and that kind of thing.
And I've got bazillions on it, it seems like.
And, you know, when I have an entrepreneur in front of me a lot of times, it doesn't, and I've
had some that are making, have made quite a bit more money than me.
And they're trying to salvage their marriage.
Yeah.
You know, I can talk, I can talk to them about the difficulty of the relationships and things
that I struggle with, right?
A couple of the clients were, you know, large, but very large earners, and they were searching for purpose.
Because they had gotten all the stuff and realized how empty it was, you know.
So at the end of the day, I think, how quickly can each of us stop and slow down?
I call it slow down to speed up.
There's another format that I've heard before other people say, but essentially that's what it is.
It's like, I woke up this morning, and I'll share this with you.
Now, granted, I'm a person of faith by nature, and people don't have to, obviously, I love everybody in general.
But my mantra is this, and I say it three times to myself every morning.
And this actually was one of the things that helped me slow down.
I am healthy.
I am wealthy.
I am wise.
I'm a steward of the most high.
And the most important one, which was the hardest one to say, especially staring out of mirror, was I love you, Stephen.
And a lot of people can't do that.
And it's funny you bring the I love you, Stephen, one up, because when I, I do it.
this exercise with the clients that I have very similar where I say okay who do you love the most
in the world who's that one person if you were going to die and you can you know you had to call
someone in 10 seconds who's that person they get that person whoever that is they that that space
or that's cool what does that person have to do to be worthy of your love and they'll sit there
like nothing it's nothing it's my grandmother I love him like cool what do you have to do be
be worthy of that person's love and they're like and they lock up I'm like it's the same
answer and once you get that because we have this broken equation that we're taught they're like
Hey, if you achieve these things, especially as high earners and entrepreneurs and achievers,
if you achieve this, then I'll be enough.
And if I get enough, then I'll be worthy of love.
And that's broken.
That is core.
It's broken.
Now, it's a great driver.
If you had that wall of insecurity coming into you, if you have that subconsciously feeding
your patterns, you will get into a situation where you will be radically successful.
But I had a client who, this is nine figures.
He's about to be a billionaire.
They're phenomenal.
We're out of working with our clients.
They couldn't connect with them because he wasn't showing up authentically.
And then his little girl came over and it was just a difference.
It's melted.
Yeah, he just,
she sat there and he held his little girl and she's sitting there.
She was talking about her tooth was coming out because she was losing one of her teeth.
And he's talking.
And all of a sudden, he just turns into it.
And he goes, okay, cool.
He goes, okay, I'll talk to you later.
Daddy's got to finish this.
Turns around and all of the other people that were trying to do a business deal was like,
we're not, 100%.
What do you want?
We'll give you everything we have.
Because they saw the version that he was too afraid to show.
vulnerability with, to have that type of vulnerability, like, here's who I am. And again, when you're not
in that version, you are going to push everybody away. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to
do all the things that, again, I think it's Sanskrit that word you talked about earlier. Start
with a pay, patience. That's Sanskrit. I think you're making shit out. But as you're going through
those, I think it's fed really high on this subconscious level, because everyone comes to, on coaches
like you and I, and they say, hey, I don't make my fingers. Yeah. Well, this way, go ahead.
Sorry.
No, no, no, go for it.
I was, so I had this thought, as you were sharing with that, that, that I want to
piggyback off of what you share, because what you shared is absolutely true.
What I'm discovered is whether you call it solar consciousness, it doesn't matter.
But if you're chasing worth, it's a commodity.
So it becomes a transaction, okay?
If you're secure in your worth and your alignment and your purpose and your own vision
for your life and the love for yourself and you're willing to show up for yourself,
I used to self-abandoned like crazy.
I had the caretaker program.
I would try to rescue anything and everything out of their own situations because of the pain that I went through, right?
So I didn't want the other people who experienced the pain.
But is this solar consciousness, is it a commodity or a tool of connection?
To your point, when you were just describing that story, I've seen that a lot myself.
I was at an event not long ago and a gentleman, a massive heart.
Like I saw him away from the event, massive heart.
And obviously he was one of the folks who was presenting.
And as soon as he started presenting, it was, you know, I've got this relationship.
I've got this thing.
I bought three of these.
I have four of those.
I have, and I watched the entire audience kind of shut down.
Yep.
Right?
And I just felt like I remember being my 11-year-old self in a 40-year-old body with a similar
transaction or a similar mindset.
And it just made me want to go embrace this.
guy and pull them and say, bro, man, you're amazing without all that stuff. Right. Right. And so is it a
commodity? Is it a connection point? Is it, is it something you can tie yourself to? Or are you
simply, and this is where we get in trouble. And you would ask this earlier when we first started
talking. It's like, what is the essential element, the common denominator essentially? And honestly,
it's the child at its most injured state becomes the most anchored adult. Right. So if we're 11 years old,
when that thing happens to us where we literally carry it at 11 year old through 12 13 14 15 16 30 35 40
etc until they meet someone like yourself charles who can who can who can who can like slow them down
and say hey bro let me help you and let me let me help we see yourself clearer right and the moment
you can see yourself clear without shame blame or condemnation the moment your awakening actually
begins and that's when the work begins i will say that one of the reasons i feel like the
work is not done, um, was the same reason I avoided it for decades, uh, which is I was scared of
it. I mean, you have to it's, it's, it's, they call it shadow work for a reason. You have to
confront things, uh, and bring things in your environment and, and kind of like show love to things
that maybe you dislike about yourself. Absolutely. And that's a very difficult thing. Yeah,
I learned this from the seal community. I've been blessed to be around those guys and they say,
whatever your fear is, that's your short line. That's the next thing you need to do. That will bring
you home. Find your fear. That's your home. But we don't want. But we don't
want to do that. I'd love how you brought it up. You're like, hey, I'm going to go help
everybody else because I can avoid then helping myself. And God, I do that more than I can
possibly tell you. It's something I personally work through on this day. I'm like, I know I need to
work on this, but I'm going to go do this. And a lot of people manifest, even if you're not working
with other people, people are like, oh, I need to go do this project. I'm going to go clean my house.
Because at least that makes me feel like I did something. I checked the box. So a lot of people
are listening to this. I'm like, all right, we get it, the two of you little, you know, high
achievers, fruity little.
They're going to say it.
I'm going to get the links.
It is what it is.
I want to get them also something tactical.
I know I need to do the work, but right now, I need to feed my kids.
I've got some business problems.
How do this guy do this?
Because I tell people all the time, you can probably sing happy birthday.
Please don't really easily.
But if I put a grenade in your hand and take the pin out, you're not going to sing happy birthday so well.
So there's a lot of people listen to this.
And listen, I want what's proven.
Give me something strategic.
Give me that pin that I can put back in the grenade.
so then I can go do this personal work
and do the shadow work
but right now
you know I can't pay my bills
the economy is collapsing
we've got chaos right now going on
when someone's sitting there going
hey you were homeless
nine figures
homeless
there's a lot of steps in between
because if I tell someone
hey go do the work
and go hug a tree
and go do the shadow work
and get into it
and really face your fears
and your doubts
that's great
because they can't eat
they're like
I got a business that's collapsing
dude. What are the things that in your experience, because again, you and I both know that,
I'll just say it for myself, one people do the work, the answers that they're looking for,
the tacticals, they already know. It comes out. It's because they're already inside. Yeah.
They already know. So for those of you are listening, I'm doing this for you guys because I know
you want something tactical and I'm asking Stephen to get out and say, here you go. This is the
tactical part of it. But I can tell you if you do the work, these tacticals that you already know
will already be implemented on your own if you do the work. But the tactical's,
If someone is sitting there and they're stuck and they need to start changing things because
you've been in rooms and you've been very blessed to be in rooms with amazing people,
people who far out ranked you education-wise and you still find a way to succeed, what are
some of the tactical things in business that people do right now that have proven success?
You know, it's really funny.
I think they say ignorance was bliss, but it's not true.
So step one, I think, is understanding are you in fact misaligned, right?
So because, you know, we can be talking right now and people are like, well, okay,
It's a great conversation.
What's wonderful at all, but I think I'm good.
Right.
So the symptoms of misalignment are burnout, overwhelm, and insecurity.
Now, it's interesting how insecurity keeps popping up, right?
So step one is like, just am I actually misaligned?
Because when you're not misaligned, you're in a steady state of flow, right?
You're very clear on your objectives.
You're very clear with your relationships.
You're showing up for yourself.
You're not self-abandoning, right?
So how do we go from misalignment?
to essentially a steady state of flow.
So step one is, first of all, identifying am I misaligned?
Okay.
I think step two is like, okay, what area am I misaligned in?
So I like to break things down in domains of life because I'll find that, and I'm
sure you found this as well, you'll have several folks that are really strong in their
relationships, but their business is really struggling.
Or they're very good in business, but their relationship or their health is struggling.
Right.
So I used to draw out a quadrant.
I used to call it the quadrants of conflict.
So emotional, physical, financial, and spiritual.
And you can just literally scale a 1 to 10.
1 to 10, where would I rank myself right now in my emotional well-being?
So emotional a lot of time, obviously, is how you feel about yourself, how you feel emotionally.
Do I feel out, burned out, overwhelmed?
Do I feel like I'm going to study state of authenticity?
And you just kind of use a rank.
And you say, scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest.
Am I a 7, an 8, a 3?
And what will happen is you'll all of a sudden get clarity on where you need to focus first.
You mentioned to it just a second ago with your SEAL clients and the people we work with
the SEALs in that community is the greatest place of fear, right?
Historically, the greatest place of fear will show up as the most common lowest number on
that quadrant, right?
Once you identify that, I think the next step is to actually go and get some help.
When I say help, I mean, find someone who's really strong in that category, who can give
you best practices to begin to work on that while simultaneously actually beginning to
maybe backtrack a little bit.
So I like to say it like this.
One of the tools that I use to identify my roadblocks.
So I used to use a framework called grow.
So gain perspective, recognize slash remove roadblocks, organize a plan, and work the plan.
That's literally step one, two, three, four.
So gain perspective is where am I shortcoming?
Where am I not being honest with myself?
Where do I need coaching?
Where do I need mentorship?
Where do I need training?
Where do I need information?
And where do I just need to sit with myself?
So many times the gaining perspective.
is just sitting and quiet.
So many of us can't even go to the bathroom without taking her phone with us.
Right?
So that means you need to stony.
That means your nervous system is already looking for a steady, state, state, and distraction.
Right?
Once you can get some perspective on what areas need to be focused on, then it comes
to just ask one question.
Where are the potential roadblocks?
I guarantee your brain and your nervous system will put them in front of you.
Well, you know what?
These three relationship over here, they're actually are probably not that healthy.
they're actually pulling me away from my partner.
They're operating in this environment of life.
My partner's operating this environment of life, right?
And then you organize a plan.
You get the key people around you that you need around you.
You get the key information inside of you.
And then you have to apply it, which may require prayer, meditation, mindset shifting, belief
management, you know, because limiting beliefs at the subconscious level are essentially
guiding 95% of your behavior patterns.
So I believe in focusing on subconscious matters more than conscious matters first, because I want to bring the subconscious to the conscious so I can address it, right? So a lot of times the step by step framework is obviously step one, am I misaligned? Step two, where am I misaligned? Step three, what resources can I bring in to get aligned? And step four, how can I measure my overall alignment? And step five, how can I continue the process in a simplest form? Right. So when you're going through this, we talked about purpose a lot. And I think,
is people are going and they gain awareness, so they get to the G, which is, you know, gaining the
awareness, a lot of people are going to realize some of their patterns that may have not been
the best. It's a nicest way to say this. Maybe you've done some stupid. Maybe you've broken
laws. Maybe you've betrayed yourself. Maybe you've betrayed your partner. Maybe you've done these
things and really gotten lost along the way. A lot of people get stuck there. And they don't
understand that their past, their past is not who they are. Their past was a lesson and you can
be beyond that. How do you get your clients to walk through that once you gain that awareness
because that will lock them up? And again, again, I agree with you 100% silence is a gift.
When you know, there's, I've done silence retreats. I've done completely quiet for a week. I've done
the ones where it's complete blackout. All the answers you're looking for are internal. Period.
So getting that silence. But when you get that awareness, you're like, oh, I'm whatever. I haven't
worked out enough. I haven't done what I needed to do. I've lied about this. I've betrayed these
people. I've failed here and you have all of this and this this wall of just shame, which will
feed the insecurity bug. How do you get people past that? Because I mean, again, we all have this
I'm not enough. Everybody I know, I don't care who you are. I don't care who you are. I've dealt with
people who were literally on covers of magazines feeling insecure that they weren't attractive enough.
I'm like, then you heard the magazine cover. Okay. Awesome. So when you're going through that,
how do you get past that initial? You know what? Yeah.
I could have done ABC and I am lying to myself and I'm not doing what I need to do or I have done
these horrible things in the past. How do you get them past that?
I think the key aspect is understanding you will always be limited by your labels.
Okay. So I'll give you an example. So labels, we are, we talk in forms of labels. So I've been
divorced. I've been cheated on. I've been addicted. I've lost my kid to suicide. I've like all
these, these are all labels. These are all.
things we take on, ironically, that are actually experiences and lessons, but we take them on as
identity. Right. Right. And because they're, once we understand that we're, we're limited by our
labels, we become objective to our labels. So I'll give you an example. So a quick reframe.
I can either say, I am divorced, meaning I've, I've been through a divorce and that essentially
and subconsciously will, can placate in my potential for future relations.
or I can say I have experienced divorce.
I have experienced embezzlement.
I have experienced homelessness.
I am not the homeless high school dropout that I was when that experience happened.
I'm a very different person now.
And there's a 25-year window from that moment to when I exited the company, right, with
lots of things in here.
And essentially, one of the exercises you can do is you can go ahead and list the top 10
labels that you've been living by.
And what that does is that will bring awareness to that.
And then the next part of the exercise would be to take those 10 things and reframe them.
Reframed them as experiential elements that taught you valuable lessons.
And then just like Viktor Frankl says, a man searched for meeting, it's like once you have the lesson, once you have the meaning behind the lessons, the pain, the discomfort, the shame, the guilt, everything associated with that lesson dissipates because now you have the meaning of why that lesson was so important.
And when it comes to purpose, it ties directly to purpose because I believe that the reason
humanity is so connection oriented is because we can all learn something from each other
on a consistent basis.
That means that by definition, whatever experience you've been through, whatever lessons
that you've learned that offer value to someone else becomes a portion of your purpose.
So on stage a long time ago, and Rory Vade and I used to pick on each other all the time
because we have similar quotes that have now been talked about.
I used to say the greatest purpose in life you'll ever have
is serving the person you used to be.
But it's not just serving the person used to be now.
It's serving the 13-year-old version of yourself,
the 18, the 19, the 22, the 30, the whatever age group.
But you don't do that.
Like, you can't do that until you identify the labels,
remove the limitation off the label via the lesson,
and then begin to use that lesson to empower.
and encourage other people, whether that's in your family, whether it's in your business,
whether that's in your community, whether that's at scale like we do. It doesn't, it's the same
tool. Yeah, I think there's some magic in that moment where, like, I'm not that 13-year-old
anymore. Everything I do is always trying to help at that 13-year-old version of me. I'm like, okay,
he was scared. He knew there was a way, and the running joke is Jesus didn't walk on water. He
knew where the rocks out there? I was like, where the hell of the rocks? And that 13-year-old
me was like, I knew there's rocks. I knew there's way to do this. No one's going to tell me how to
do that.
And that fear and that pain and that belief system I had to break, but I can consciously understand I'm not that 13-year-old.
Just like I'm not the person I was five months ago or three days ago or six years ago or two years ago.
We run to world.
So I think there's magic in that moment there to kind of pivot out.
And whenever someone comes to me and they say, hey, I just got divorced, I always say congratulations.
And they're like, what?
I'm like, congratulations.
Like, I don't understand.
I was like, there's never been a couple that's been like, you know what?
Oh, my God, I love you so much.
Oh, my God, I love you too.
you know what we should do today?
Yes, we should get divorced.
There's never been ever.
Ever said that in the dawn of time, ever, ever, ever.
So if you had two people that are no longer compatible,
Mazel Tov, congratulations, move on your lives.
It's great.
So you get that awareness and you pivot and you separate yourself from that.
Now we go into the R.
When someone gets trapped in the R section of Grow,
because I love this idea of Grow,
and I'm just going to double down on this because this is magical stuff.
I still leave my life with it.
So it makes it make sense me.
It's phenomenal.
I think we could just do a masterclass.
just on a growth. We could probably do a couple hours on this. So you gained awareness. You've
disconnected and understood, hey, I am no longer that person. I get that. Now let's get to the
R. How do we go through that process? Well, first of all, you need to understand you cannot remove
a roadblock that you refuse to recognize. This is where your ego and your arrogance can get
in the way in a big way. The ego side of us statistically is essentially its core design is
to keep us safe. Now, it does not have a barometer in many cases on what safe is outside of
not reliving pain, whether that's being eaten by a lion or being avoiding a divorce or whatever.
The ego, unfortunately, a lot of times will let the intellect get in your head,
such a mind, lentilike, whatever, get in your head in such a way that you will talk yourself
out of the very thing you should focus on. Like, I can come up with, and you see this happen
a lot. If you pay attention to the words that are actually coming out of your mouth, you'll see
this happen a lot. I know what happened for me. Well, if she'd have done blank, blank, blank, blank,
or if they'd have done blank, blank, or if that, that, that, that have done it. And what I thought
was so interesting about what you just shared a minute ago, that I think's powerful, is people fully
understanding that the only person that is going to rescue you is you. It's you. 100%. All right.
And the only way you rescue yourself is to recognize the radical honesty.
what roadblocks are there and then begin a progress removing it now the removing of the roadblocks
in many cases could take a year it could take a week it could take an hour depending on how
strong the radical honesty gives you kind of like the radical awareness because sometimes radical
awareness by itself was enough to shift a shift absolutely right so i would say that uh the recognition
piece is take a result a negative result that you got okay take that negative result follow back
to the action in which
recreated that result, whether that's
in my case, I made it a point
to apologize to my kids if I was wrong
rather than I'm the parent.
So no matter what I do, I'm not wrong,
right? As an example,
like, so take the result, take the action,
and then take the mindset.
Like, what was going on internally and emotionally
that made this, the choice,
or this, the core action?
Okay. That will give you like a little insight
and then say, okay, well, where did this thought,
this belief, or whatever?
come from and then sit with it in silence for i don't know for me on average it can be anywhere from
probably 10 minutes to about two hours before i'm like and you'll have little flashes of your
past that'll pop up okay and then when those little flashes of your past pop up then definitely
what you're looking for now is you're looking for what did that what did that version of me
really need what was he or she really looking for in that moment right um
You know, for me, for example, growing up early on as a father, who came back in my life around 12 or 13 years old, but was still very much a drill sergeant early on, like, why did I feel like I didn't want to speak up?
Because a drill sergeant, when you speak up with drill sergeants, you know, it comes, you know, this kind of things.
So then you end up chasing your voice.
See, these different elements will begin to show you where you're not showing up for yourself.
and I'm a big believer that most of us who are struggling in life essentially aren't showing up for ourselves.
Let me finish with this one thought and then I want to hear yours as well.
About seven years ago, Time Magazine with a Harris poll did a survey about 400,000 Americans, okay?
And they were specifically researching essentially joy, fulfillment, you know, kind of like feeling like you're living your best life, okay?
Over 70% of all Americans that responded to that survey said they were not living that.
Now, when you go through the article, you'll very quickly realize that the core reason that these folks feel like they're not living their best life is because they're not living their authentic life.
They're living the life that someone told them they should live.
100%.
So if you take that, you understand, okay, these are the elements in which I felt unsafe.
these are the belief mechanisms that were shaped by that and this is how I changed my authentic self to conform to this version of my this identity when you can come and just and again it's I wish I could say it's like crazy easy everybody could do it like overnight right it's it may be a process depending on how sensitive the issue the issue is but if you can do that journey and a lot of times you can do it a notepad and a pen and a good friend right do that journey together now you can say okay this is where the roadblock is I'll start I'll
I'll give you a perfect example.
One of my most recent roadblocks that I would, dude, I'm 40, at the time I was 48 years old.
I'm about, I'm 49 now, about turn 50 in this coming year.
At 48 years old, I had a relationship end unexpectedly for me.
We're together for about 10 months.
It ended unexpectedly.
I'm like, what the F just happened?
Mm-hmm.
And that began the journal.
And I did that same exercise with some key coaches of mine.
And when I did that exercise, I have very, very.
realized, dude, I've been trying to save people since I was nine years old.
Yeah.
So some would call that the caretaker program, okay?
That's a major roadblock given the fact that I'm trying to serve at scale.
Yeah.
I literally did this three years ago.
And instead of focusing on my own bullshit and being presence with it in sign and sound, I was like, I'm going to save all these other people.
And then if I save these people, I'll then be enough, which all it did was betrayed everyone, which was all driven by this.
Including ourselves.
Oh, a thousand percent, which was all driven by this desire, this insecurity that I had that overcompensated with this level of arrogance because all the ways was was deep down insecurity of me not being up.
I'm like, okay, well, if you don't think I'm enough, you're right, I'm better than you.
So it's this hypersecure, which was also supposed to pass on board.
So it's just this opposite loop, which just ended up betraying everybody in there, including myself.
And I think people don't understand.
When we say sit in silence, the biggest thing I would tell people is sit in silence, obviously don't have her phone.
Don't be stupid.
but sit down without judgment.
That's to me what sit in silence means.
Sit down and if you're going to have things pop up,
understand that what's going to come out of your head,
some of it's going to be fear.
A lot of it's going to be untrue.
It's okay.
You're not a five-headed flamingo.
It's okay.
Going through that and just listening and say,
okay, what does this mean?
And just writing all out and sitting with science
because what will happen is different versions of yourself
because to your point,
you're just trying to stay alive.
You're trying to avoid pain.
And it'll give you these false flags.
It's like, oh, you didn't do this.
You're never going to do this.
You're never enough.
Blah, blah, blah.
Cool.
And then you just write it down.
And then every time it says it again,
you just put a little mark next to it.
So, okay, you've said that nine times.
Awesome.
Yeah.
And just, you know, this is where I don't get into pronouns normally,
understanding that there are multiple versions of yourself and say, okay, this is what you did.
This is what you did.
We all have multiple versions.
Sitting down with it and saying, okay, this is what is.
So silence means sitting without judgment and just being present in the process.
And the, again, I've done, again, I've done silence retreats.
It will fundamentally change who you are as a human being, sitting down and going
through it. But having that awareness that you did, which would happen at you at 48, mine was a couple
years ago, where I went through going, oh, wow, I'm trying to save others to avoid doing the work on
my own, hugely profiling, hugely. Yeah. I want to add one thing if I can to that, because that's,
that's genius and absolutely true. I want to invite people to give themselves, and I can't think of any
other word than grace. Grace to experience the journey, right? So when you sit down that first time to do
the silence um the silence tool you may nine things may pop up okay so and yeah so you got these these things
that pop up and you're like holy shit now i'm even more overwhelmed than i was before because now
i've got to do all nine of these things right right and my experience has been it's like give yourself
from grace snag one work on one at a time that will create a bit of a snowball uh snowball piece right
I'm convinced that people who are living a fulfilled life
are not living a life of constant overfunctioning
and the only way you avoid overfunctioning
and trying to overcompensate and over-deliver
and just is you have to figure out why you're chasing it
right and then once you figure out why you're chasing it
you have to say is this an authentic chase
because I believe in fact that this is something
I learned during that season
when I first realized that I was in this again
we talk about having no bullshit about yourself anymore
Like, dude, I would come up with like, no, I mean, she, she had three kids, she had this.
You know, I was, I was trying to serve.
I was trying to help.
100%.
You know, all that you come up with all this, all this BS, right?
And the reality is, the truth is, is I was overfunctioning.
Yeah, I.
I was pursuing worth through.
Yeah, exactly.
I, right?
It started with a selfish desire of I.
It's, I want to help her, this person's father's dying.
I want to help her.
She just got through a bad relationship.
I want to help her.
She's never had I.
I, I.
It all starts with I.
and it's a selfish act.
And you think, oh, no, I'm helping someone else.
It's that, you know, I'm proud to be modest.
It's like, wait, what?
What do you say?
He's like, humble.
It's like, doesn't work like that.
So being able to have that awareness.
And I think, you know, something you said earlier of how fast these things could change.
And, you know, there's people who, you know, I spent eight years in a hospital
watching people die.
When you're faced with that, things change immediately.
Boom.
People have these life or death's experience and they change immediately.
If you're in a situation where you're not.
seeing radical changes. If you're going through this and you're listening to this,
when I do, I thought I was going to learn about how to make nine figures and I thought
this is what he was going to share with me. This is going to be amazing. And now you're,
you know, whatever, 30 minutes into this podcast. And you're like, what the hell are they talking
about? This is totally different. If you've gotten this far and you're like, oh, well, you know,
there's a lot and I don't know how long it's going to take and it's going to take a couple
weeks. Please, and you might disagree with this. Please understand you're completely full
of shit. You are one decision away from a completely different life. And I tell people this
all the time go go get an uber 15 20 minutes to an airport 15 20 minutes to a bus stop 15 20 minutes
to a you know a train get on it let go of everything else you will have a completely different
life in 24 hours so this because they're sitting there and they're holding no I can't make these
changes what will my wife think what my husband thinks when I can I don't care like second person
I ever coached he wanted to exit early it's the nicest way I'm going to say he decided he
He didn't want to be here anymore.
And when he came to me, and I was like, congratulations, it was awesome.
Let's do it.
He's like, excuse me?
I was like, let's do it.
He's like, what are you talking about?
I was like, congratulations, you're dead.
And he's like, wait, what?
I said, all right, what do you want to do now?
He said, huh?
I said, do you want to still be married your wife?
He's like, I love my wife with everything I have.
It's cool.
What about your kids?
He was, well, I said, oh, you don't like both your kids?
He's like, yeah, one of my really fucking can't stand.
I was like, cool.
He can get rid of the kids, chief.
He goes, I go, what about your job?
He goes, man, but I have to do it.
I go, you're dead.
You've already exited early.
It's over.
What about your job?
He's like, I hate my company.
I was like, cool.
That our job right now is to get you realigned to your point.
In the next six months, what can we do to realign with your truth, whatever that is, and exit you out.
And we exit out of the company in 90 days.
And he went and they changed all the things.
But this idea that you're months, weeks, years away from a radical change, completion.
Complete BS.
You know, we were talking about.
Before we start recording, I recently found black mold in the kitchen and my property.
Yeah.
It's gone.
I now am in a different environment and things are radically changing.
Now, whatever you want to call God, Buddha, Allah, the Big Bang, the Magic Chicken came in.
Magic.
Magic chicken.
I had it in there for you.
If you're coming in and you're an environment and that changed and the magic chicken made that happen, it forced all these other changes.
So please understand the people who are stuck.
As you're going through that process, thinking, oh, this is going to take so long, it's not.
It doesn't have to.
It doesn't have to.
It's directly correlated to how much you're willing to lean in.
In fact, the note I jotted down as you were sharing that I thought would piggyback really well with what you shared is I used a, I did this.
In fact, as I was coming out the other end, I called a bit of a rebirth, right?
So I realized I was overfunctioning.
I realized I was overgiving.
I was self-abandoning.
I wasn't taking care of self.
I wasn't showing it for myself.
I wasn't loving on myself properly.
I was giving all of that stuff away to other people, right?
I go through a radical transformation myself.
And then anytime I go through a radical life change,
I always do what most people will commonly call sabbatical.
Okay?
Sabatical is just leaving your environment,
is nothing more than leaving your environment with no agenda,
going to a different environment,
and just being present with self.
Okay, that's step one, two, three of a sabbatical.
What are you doing? Who are you doing it with if anybody? And where are you going, essentially? Okay. So I went to New Zealand for three weeks. Okay. Now, yeah, I love to use it. It's amazing. Now, most people, and I'm being honest, right, so I've been very fortunate now. I can take a sabbatical for that extended period of time and go to an exotic destination in some cases to experience that. There's a magic in that. Okay, great. What's most important is I went for three weeks to be with Stephen.
Stephen right not Stephen the business owner not Stephen the author not Stephen to speak like just
Stephen the Stephen that and I got to know Stephen so good I'm like I like this guy he actually
genuinely cares about people but he also has now learned to it's not my responsibility right
like I'll brush it off in a heartbeat the reason I say that is because most most of us will
never stop long enough to actually get the perspective
perspective, we really need to shift.
So again, we've said that in numerous times
in different ways.
Step one is stop.
Just stop.
So I discovered I've been doing the sabbatical approach for a decade, right?
It started with an hour.
Like, I'd go away for an hour.
Absolutely.
Because we always tell ourselves, well, the business or the family is going to fall apart
in the 30 minutes I'm going to the bathroom.
It's all BS.
Again, it's the ego trying to put a code keep you safe.
Right.
So maybe you go take a weekend for yourself.
especially before you make a major life decision
like before you
you know as you exit early or
or choose to desire to exit early
or choose to leave a relationship or choose to shut down
your business or like it may
it's some of the exception of exiting early
but some of those other things may be more
may be what needs to happen but at the end of the day
how sure are you how do you know
that you're making those decisions from a grounded place
So the bigger decision, the more grounded I feel like I have to be.
If I need to put my feet on the grass to sit there for 30 minutes or stand there for 30 minutes to breathe and just get centered, I do that now where I did not do that literally a year ago.
I love that you didn't say the right decision.
You said the grounded decision because there is no right or wrong.
There's just ground decisions.
And one of the things they teach, a friend of mine who's part of the IDF, people are like, oh, I can't find a moment.
I can't find 30 minutes.
they'll teach individuals who are in active combat engagements
to disconnect, to completely detach from the environment
while they're currently being shot at,
find the seconds, get the clarity and move forward.
So if you're sitting at home going,
oh, I can't do that.
I can't find 30 minutes.
These guys are fighting it while in combat.
So align to yourself, have that awareness
and understand that there is a ballgame changing
and how we do it.
So if they're going through and they're getting this awareness
and when it comes to sabbatical,
you know, one of the sabbaticals that I had,
Literally, it was a one-one efficiency in what was going to be a retirement home that wasn't opened up yet.
And I just spent a week in this environment in this not nice place.
But it was arguably the greatest gift I've ever had compared to when I was in Galapagos or anything that.
So the environment doesn't matter as much as being present and letting go and being in silence as much as you can.
And I tell people all the time, you should do silent weeks.
You absolutely once a year do a silence weeks.
If you can't do a silent week, just sit around.
I started with a day.
Thursdays used to be my silence day.
My whole team would know it, re-center, we get there.
We've gone through G, we've gone through R.
So we're getting there.
We've identified some obstacles.
We've gone through, like, sitting in silence and going there.
I think people get stuck with working the plan.
They get overwhelmed or like, oh, well, is this the right thing I'm going to do?
Or this is not the right thing I'm going to do or what's the next?
When you walk people through working the plan, whatever that is, how do you get them unstuck?
How do you keep that momentum?
Because motivation's adorable.
It's ineffective.
It's adorable.
Discipline and consistency is going to win all day long,
but that's a hard thing to get because it's a muscle you have to develop.
People are like, oh, I know I need to do 100 pushups.
I know I need to do 100 squats.
I know I need to go for a walk, yada, yada, yada.
How do you get people to rock and roll and start working that player?
I think the easiest thing for people to understand is,
and again, this is for personal experience.
I discovered I either would not take action
or would not take efficient action if I was trying to do it all at one time.
Rory, a mutual friend, Vaden, says diluted focus equals diluted results.
Right?
So I started thinking in terms of dominoes.
One of the core attributes that I look at when I go to working at this, it comes part of organizing a plan.
It's like, okay, what are my top three major initiatives?
And on top of that, what is the number one of those top three that if I got that thing, moving progress, got knocked down, that could essentially knock down the other ones behind this.
What will have the biggest effect?
Exactly.
So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's nothing more than it's, yeah, it's nothing more of momentum, honestly.
It's how do I create momentum?
You know, one of the most, well, not a recent example, but a number of years ago when I was starting the company,
the first thing I wanted to do was obviously get shelter, achieve that, okay, get consistent food, achieve that,
buy some new equipment so I could keep building the company, did that.
And then the next major one was dig myself out of about 70,000.
$1,000 in debt at the time, which is a lot of money in the late 90s, right?
It's still, it's a lot of money now.
It's a lot of money now, yeah.
Yeah.
And the only, and when I started tackling that, this is before I knew about Dave and
Sharon Ramsey and all that stuff, who are great people in their own right.
I actually went to, and I was like, okay, literally, I think, I remember one of, one of my
bills, like I had a bunch of them, right?
But, like, one of the bills was like $30 a month, but like the whole balance was like
$500.
So I said, okay, cool.
I'm going to attack that $500, right?
I'm going to have some delayed gratification for a hot minute.
I'm going to save up, essentially say, I'll keep making the minimum,
and then I'm a chunk, 500 bucks.
Well, that released, that gave me like $100 a month now
that I could then go after the $1,000 thing.
Then I saved up for the $1,000 thing.
Lo and behold, I was able to pay that debt off in a very short time frame
in the grand scheme of things.
But it was because I got singularly focused on the main thing.
Financial stability was a big thing.
thing for me. It was one of the things that generationally my family has never been really good
at. And I wanted it to change with me. And all I had to do was change my behavior with money,
how I thought about money, how I, how they, and a lot of times relationships, your life, all these
things are the core elements, which is why, by understanding the area that you're most,
unsuccessful, I'm trying to be careful with my words, the area that needs the most attention.
By understanding the areas it needs
and most attention,
you can come up with three strategic steps
to attack that one thing
until you've achieved a certain level of success
based on whatever your parameters are.
So I believe that
if the number one thing is
this preventing from actually taking action
is trying to take action at too many things
at once, the brain can't handle it.
The brain loves clarity.
If it has to spend a bunch of mental energy
and firing neuropowers and creatine it creates
and all this kind of stuff to like to chase all these things,
it's going to just stall.
Yeah.
Right?
However, if you can get singularly focused on one core objectives,
that then becomes the pivot point.
So if I have three objectives I'm trying to create,
I'm going to say which one of these will support the other two,
and I focus right there.
Right.
I always think that, like, at the fair,
when you have the little bottles that are on top of each other,
the stack of germ in,
and put which bottle should I try and knock down?
Well, if you knock down the top one,
it's not going to be effective.
Aim at the bottom and the rest of them will fall.
It's this idea of how do you eat in that,
elephant or the common thing is one bite of a time. Like, yeah, but first you're going to stop
the elephant. You got to cook the elephant from moving. So what is the one tactical thing you
can do that will have the greatest impact and start that domino chain? Because when they get
stuck, but I can only do this, I only have so much time. Cool. Knock down the one pin that's going to
knock everything else or at least start the momentum. And a friend of mine, we were at, it's called
the Renaissance Fair down here in Florida. And we were trying to knock down the pins. And we found out
later that the pins were actually had bungeys in them so they wouldn't knock over
cheating but he sat there and he was I was like what's the goal of the game and he's like he
I go to knock down the pins and he's like okay he took his shoe off and he threw it at the base
and he knocked the whole base and I was like okay technically yes so for me it's it's knocking
over that base and really getting into and and moving forward in that way so as you go through
this grow process and you're going through it and you're gaining awareness and you're
identifying the road of blocks and you're going through each and every one of these steps
I think a lot of people are going to be like, okay, this is amazing, what's next?
So if people want to track you down and they say, is this stuff in a book, do you have
this written down in a course?
Is it in a, how do people get more of this?
Because this is arguably my favorite podcast that I've done and I could talk for another
three hours.
I love you, bro, man.
Yeah, you and I can jam all the time.
In fact, as soon as we have safe haven done, you have to come out to save and hang out
with me.
I'll do it.
Absolutely.
After this, as soon as we stop recording, we're going to knock it down.
But if someone wants to track you down and how.
have more intel and to do this, where can they find your info?
How do they track you down?
How do they get more of this?
Because I think if people came in and it was the rope adope, which was a distraction of
homeless to nine figures, oh, wait, now I have a tactical plan to make changes in any part
of my life, be it my relationship, be it spiritual, bring anything out.
Now they have this grow plan.
That's only the tip of the iceberg for what you offer.
How do people track you down?
How do we do this?
Yeah. Well, if you think about the terms of clarity, right? So one of the things I've realized is people consume and change their lives with three different types of modalities. So visual. So some people like videos, some people like kid aesthetics are putting their hands on things. Some people like audio or listening, right? Everything that we've done is that can be a gained or access at some point in time in any modality they choose. I think the simplest thing where there's no major ask is we build a tool that we call the integrated alignment method.
And it's a quiz.
It's not like up a seven or eight questions.
It takes about six or seven minutes.
That gives you a detailed report when you're done kind of taking the quiz.
And the best part is, is we don't sell you.
We're not trying to sell you anything.
So it's just, this is a tool that I wish that I had for myself back in the day
that would have gotten me started sooner and got me on my path sooner.
And your audience, if they want to, can find that at Stephen with a pH.
So S-T-P-H-E-N, Skoggins, S-C-O-G-G-I-N-N-S,
dot com backslash alignment.
So stevenskoggins.com
backslash alignment.
It comes, like I said, it comes with the workbook at the end of it's 30 pages or so that
you can, really, it's how, it's basically it takes all the things that we've talked about
as concrete as we could in a very, in a podcast format and makes a lot more concrete.
And you can go step by step at your speed and your level.
And if there, if you want to partner different ways after that, that's more, that's, that's
cool.
But I mean, my heart right now is to just serve at scale and help as many people kind of get
awakened and kind of shaken loose. So I would just start there. You can obviously find me on all the
social platforms as well. And I'd love to connect with you guys. I'm probably, I'm personally probably
most active on Instagram, myself, which is Stephen underscore Skagans. Yeah. So I appreciate you
actually asking. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for coming on and having this real conversation
that most people aren't ready for and actually giving a proven framework. Like, hey, do this.
Don't worry about the other stuff today. Just do go grow. That's on any
Just go grow. Go grow. Go spend the next 20, 30 minutes, go grow. And get quiet. Turn
your phone off. Just tell everybody you have a bellyache. You have food poison. You've got to sit on the
toilet. Whatever you need to do, go grow. Just go sit there and do it. And I appreciate you so much
for coming on. Bro, I can't think for the opportunity to hang out with you and your audience, man.
I love it to death. And I hope we added some value today. Absolutely.
Many founders chase revenue, but Stephen showed that real growth comes from aligning
identity, strategy, and mindset. Stop focusing only on external tactics. Start building the
inner foundation that makes every decision, every pitch, and every partnership more powerful.
Success isn't just what you build. It's who you become in the process.