The Code To Winning - THE POWER OF CONNECTION: BREAKING FREE FROM ADDICTION || JOEY STONE || EPISODE 49
Episode Date: August 27, 2025From the battlefield to the American corporate , and through the darkest valleys of addiction, Joey Stone, has lived a journey of breaking walls and rediscovering true connection. An Army Veteran, IT ...Expert, Speaker, and Business Owner, Joey now leads a movement that’s changing lives: ReFind You. In this powerful episode, Joey shares: * His personal battle with addiction and how he found freedom through connection. * Why disconnection is often the root cause of addiction—and how reconnecting with yourself, others, and God can heal. *The creation of ReFind You, two powerful 3-day immersive experiences designed to help people break free, release what’s been weighing them down, and step into a life of deeper meaning and purpose. * His mission to show that transformation is possible—no matter how broken your past may feel. *This conversation is about more than recovery—it’s about hope, healing, and human connection. 👉 Join ReFind You: Experience the life-changing immersives that help you rediscover who you truly are. (Parts 1 & 2 held 30 days apart.) If you’ve ever struggled with addiction, disconnection, or feeling stuck , Joey’s story will show you that you are not alone, and freedom is possible.
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The tools that I have been taught actually work.
My brain is different.
In the past, when, and I'm going to go straight at it, okay?
Because that's just who I am.
You'll notice that about me.
If I saw a woman I thought was attractive, my brain, that lust thing would take over.
And images or thoughts of being with her, maybe romantically or sexually or whatever else,
would come into my mind absolutely unwanted.
I didn't want that.
And yet, my brain would just trigger and trigger and trigger and go there and go there.
I want to talk about the tools for a second.
One of the greatest tools I ever found, because what is happening in my brain as I understand this,
and the ability to rewrite the neuroplasticity and the grooves, what's called them, the grooves in your brain,
that have been there for a long time if you're an addict.
It's all of these triggers kick in, and every one of them shoots you into this big ravine that's dug,
and it's like, go look at porn, go get sexual gratification, go whatever,
because that will take you out of pain the fastest.
your brain is only wired to survive
and it tells you if I don't do this, I will die.
Like it's, I have felt those moments
where I cried in a ball on the floor
where I'm like,
I don't want to hurt my wife
by looking at pornography anymore.
And it's like, look at it or you will die.
Which to most people,
if you're not an addict and you haven't struggled with this,
man, they don't get it.
They don't get it.
It's not just like, stop looking at it.
What am I think of that?
You know, it's this compulsion that takes over your body in such a way that you feel like you will die.
And there are like two or three simple things that you can do.
And the number one that most people don't understand is that connection is the healing force for addiction.
It's not sobriety.
Sobriety is a byproduct of connection.
And when I get triggered, which is incredibly rare these days, it happens.
but it's incredibly rare because I've been consistently doing the work.
The co-to-winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow.
Today we have an amazing guest that's joined us in the studio.
I'm going to give you a brief introduction of who we have as our guest today.
He goes by the name of Joey Philip Stone.
He's a business owner.
He's an IT expert.
He's an army veteran.
facilitator, founder of Refined You, which is rooted in feedback, self-discovery, growth, and personal
development and achievement as well.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it's going to be an amazing interview.
If you are curious about understanding and learning a bit more about overcoming addiction,
recovery, finding your true self as well, this is the episode for you.
And we're grateful to have him in the studio today.
So without further ado, our amazing guest,
Joey Philip Stone.
Joey Philip.
Here we go.
Can I tell you I got the Philip from?
LinkedIn.
That's hilarious.
Philip is my first name.
Really?
Yeah, it's Philip Joseph Stone.
There's a whole story there, and we're so not going there today.
Okay, but that sounds so British.
It looks like you're from like a place called Manchester in the United Kingdom or something like that.
In the army, they called me Stone Phillips, because you go by your last name.
Exactly.
Sergeant Stone.
Oh, wow. Now, we'll go into it a latest time. I want to know, can you just, let's start off, like, just straight into it. You spoke about the army, obviously, when you spoke about your first name as well. You served, obviously, in the military. What initially drew you to enlist and how did that chapter shape your identity today?
So diving into the army for me was it was almost an ultimatum.
I was just doing nothing with my life.
High school dropout at the time.
I ran away from home at 16, lived on my own since then.
And one day I called my mom or she called me.
I don't even know how she got my number because she didn't even know where I was at.
And she said, Joey, you need to either.
go on a mission or you need to join the Army. And I thought, well, I guess I could join the Army
because I was not like church material, that's for sure. And so I looked up the recruiter's phone number,
gave him a phone call, went into the office, and I said, what job in the Army can they hit you?
Like, I want to go through the most hardcore training, which one I don't want to be afraid anymore.
that's what I said to the guy.
He's like, oh, you want special forces,
but you got to score good on the ASVAB.
I'm like, I don't even know what the ASVAB is.
And that set me off down my path.
And actually, it's funny because it really started way before that.
As a kid, I played Army endlessly.
I grew up with a creek behind my yard.
And we had rope swings and we had obstacle courses.
I would build obstacle courses for my sisters or the neighbors.
and I would dig like two foot holes.
This is so messed up.
I'm going to say this out loud, but I totally did.
This is my life.
I dug like holes and I would cover them with sticks and then with dirt so it looked like the ground.
And then they'd have to crawl through barbed wire and swing across the creek and kids would go running down and fall in two foot holes and have to fight through.
And I mean, I always wanted to get rid of bad guys.
So, I mean, that's that was it for me.
And which years were you active?
Let's see.
I joined in 2003 and I got out in 2009.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wasn't that the period of time where the Afghanistan kind of like post-9-11 like?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Okay.
There was a handful of operations in there, but the one that I went to Iraq for 15 months,
originally we deployed for 12.
and at month nine, they called us all into this meeting and said, we're extending three months.
So we thought we had three months left and we were going home.
We were seeing the end and all of a sudden we had six months left.
Man, I was pissed.
I was so pissed.
We had an on-post gym and I went in and just beat the living crap out of a punching bag for like 20 minutes because, I mean, if you think about it, I left home and my son was six months old.
And when I came home, he was two.
So I wanted to go home to my son.
Do you regret not choosing the mission route,
or were you grateful that you chose the Army route?
Oh, so grateful.
Changed my life.
Changed my life.
I don't know what I missed for the mission.
But the Army gave me purpose and direction
and the ability to accomplish incredibly hard things,
no matter what's literally being thrown in my face.
I love that so much.
And I've noticed that usually veterans and people that have enlisted and served as well,
there's a certain level of aura and discipline that they take out of that as well.
Of course, there's a lot of trauma as well when you get your experience and see what you end up seeing.
But if there's one thing that I've taken, whenever I keep watching those army sergeant speeches,
if you want to change the world, start by making your bed, you know?
Yep, absolutely.
And I want to know what was the, what would you say was one of the best lessons that you learned from serving?
and what would you take from that that you apply today?
Man, that's a loaded question.
For me, so many things.
But the one that's just ringing in my head
is that I can and I will.
That there's literally nothing stopping me
from doing what I want to do when I'm ready.
And it doesn't matter hell or high water
or enemy forces or anything else.
when it's time to go, it's time to go.
And there is no force on this earth that can stop me from going there.
That's powerful.
That's powerful.
And I don't know, I always, some of my favorite movies are always based on a true story,
war-related movies.
I think I watched one with like Chris, Chris Hemsworth, a 12th strong, whatever may be.
I just, one of the things that I like the most is the mentality of never leave a man behind
the fraternity that's involved there, the teamwork, the brotherhood.
It just gives you chills every time I keep watching.
Would you say it's very similar to those movies,
like the experience you end up witnessing
while actually being in the field?
Yeah, there is.
There's a great deal of that.
In fact, as I have talked to more and more veterans
that are no longer in the military,
the one thing that I've noticed most above anything else
is that missing feeling of brotherhood.
It didn't matter if you were from the Bronx in New York
and you were like a...
You were in gangs coming up
or if you were a country boy from the middle of Kentucky
or you were, you know, a hippie from somewhere on the West Coast up there.
Man, when it was time, we came together and it didn't matter.
And we were brothers and sisters and it didn't matter.
It didn't matter about race and it didn't matter about anything else.
but the person in front of you and the person to your side and the person on your back.
I love that very much.
Do you have a story that sticks out to you that you feel like what's kind of life-changing for you while you were in the Army?
Oh, dude.
We could do hours on this.
I have, I guess you could say, an idactic memory or whatever.
And so I nearly remember everything.
I can remember what people are wearing and all of the feelings and the emotions and the,
expressions. And so my brain works in videos. And I have tons of videos stocked up, man.
You know, the one I'll dive into is this one. And it kind of touches on spirituality and
my belief in a God for me. And so I was in special forces training. And I was doing an advanced
land navigation course. So they teach you, to give you some context, they teach you,
how to find a 10-digit grid coordinate anywhere on the earth with a map, a compass, and a protractor.
And that's kind of as far as I'll go into that.
And then they throw a 65-pound rucksack on you and say, do it.
And you've got to find all these locations in the woods by yourself through the nighttime and through
the daytime.
And there was one particular area, and I had mapped out on my map where I shouldn't go, kind of some
boundaries.
land navigation is all about boundaries,
finding where your stop points are.
You know if you get this, you're too far.
If you go to this on the right,
you're too far to the right.
You go to this far,
and you kind of bounce off of points.
At least that's how I did it.
And I knew that I should be able to walk.
Have you ever been to North Carolina?
Yes, Raleigh.
We went to the beach there, me,
a friend, and a bunch of beautiful girls.
Yes, that was not my North Carolina experience.
I'll tell you right now.
Mine was the swamps and the spiders and the vines, man.
I think there are about seven different types of thorn bushes and thorn vines in the, in the, what's called a draw.
So in, especially in North Carolina, a draw is on a map where the land comes together like this.
And in North Carolina, that means moisture.
And moisture means plants, okay?
Always, always, always.
Just crazy thick.
You could call it jungle.
It wouldn't be considered jungle, but it's forest.
and just foliage like you couldn't imagine.
And so I had this point.
It was like my third point that I needed to navigate to.
And I knew I only needed to go like 200 meters across this little draw
and get to the other side.
And my point should be right there.
And so I started walking.
And as I went into this really thick, dense forest,
I did the number one mistake that I know of in,
in land navigation. I stopped looking at my compass. Now you don't stare at it because then you'll be
way off, but you set a point, you make sure your azimuth's right, and you go there. And then you
set a point and you go there. And I stopped looking and I started following the path of least resistance.
And so instead of going straight across this draw, I started sucking my way into the draw to the very
worst part of the entire map, this massive, massive swamp. And I'm fighting and I'm fighting and I'm fighting and I'm fighting.
And there were literally times where I'm walking five, six feet off the ground on fallen logs across like just.
And again, you always have your 65 pound rucksack on.
And there finally came a point where I felt so lost and so alone that I screamed, which you're totally not allowed to do.
Hello!
Is anybody out here?
Crickets.
Nothing.
And I'm like, freak.
And all of a sudden, my mom's voice came into my mind.
and it was just like, what do you do when you're lost?
And I was like, all right, God, will you hook me up, bro?
I'm super lost.
Will you please help me?
And I literally had a voice in my mind say, turn around at exactly 180 degrees.
So I turned around.
And it said, start walking and follow the path of least resistance and I'll lead you out.
And I started walking.
And now, mind you, I had been lost already for two hours.
It was about 45 minutes later, I popped out of the woods about 10 feet from where I walked in.
And about 50 meters to the left, there was a path right across the river straight to my next point.
And the lesson that I learned, because you asked me what lesson did I learn, like what was the greatest lesson?
And there's tons.
But this one is, never stop looking at your azimuth.
Don't ever take your eyes off where you're going.
that's how you get lost.
And when you get lost, don't do it alone.
That's both so powerful.
And obviously in our spiritual beliefs,
we understand when life gets too hard to stand,
kneel, ask for proper guidance from a higher power.
Whether you're Christian or not,
you believe in a higher power,
that there's somebody out there that's bigger than you
that's willing to help you as well.
And we know in our religion,
it's our heavenly father as well.
So thank you so much for that.
Absolutely.
I appreciate that.
there's a lot and I want to try and like transition with this because I loved all you shared.
I really appreciate that and I think it's a big lesson we can learn from there.
And how do you navigate the transition from military discipline to civilian vulnerability,
especially through addiction and recovery?
Yeah.
So to be clear, I am a recovering addict.
Recovering addict from drugs, alcohol, sex, all of it, like all of it.
And I will tell you this, by far, you know, people get this misconception.
So let me just, let me just nab this for a second.
And I'm about to go way off of your question.
I want you to go in depth.
Yeah.
There's this misconception, or at least I feel like there is, about what a sex addict is,
that it's like, I don't run around hump and telephone poles.
It's not like that.
That's not what's going on.
Okay, I know.
Weird image.
Weird image.
It's how we do in my brain.
And what it actually is, is it's the drug of choice in the moment to cover the pain that
you have in your life.
That's what addiction is.
That's what I've learned it to be.
And whether it was alcohol to numb the pain or to numb the shame or whatever it was
or drugs or lustful images or lust towards other people, it's all intended to cover
the pain.
and so not dealing with the root causes of the pain
perpetuates the problem endlessly
because there is no mask that will take care of it for you
that just doesn't work and so to kind of come back to your question
the transition out was hard
is hard I'm I'm a disabled veteran you know I've got my
disabled status like 50 or 60 percent
or whatever it is from PTSD, from war, and other things.
And I'll tell you the cost is that my family has had to grow up with a dad
that sometimes they've got to be afraid of.
Not that I would hurt them or whatever,
but that some moments are scary and hard.
And when I get triggered, in fact, I've had one safe Fourth of July
since I've been out.
I've been out for almost 16 years,
and I would go and hide under a beanbag chair,
believe it or not, in my basement for seven hours
to numb out the sounds of the fireworks.
And we started finding out we could go to the mountains
because there's not as a lot of bombs in the mountains.
And I know it's not bombs,
and I also don't know that it's not bombs, you know,
and gunshots and other things.
And so the cost is,
if I didn't do my work, the cost would have been my family, but I've been doing my work.
And so the cost is, guys, dad's not okay right now.
I love you.
Leave me alone.
I'm in the basement.
And my kids are like, cool, love you.
We'll bring you ice cream.
And we communicated our house.
So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's where we went with it, at least for now.
I appreciate you sharing that.
And when you spoke earlier on about addiction is usually.
avoid that people end up using to try and cover the pain that they're experiencing.
Obviously, studies have even revealed and concur with what you're saying over time
with the biggest problem that men are facing today is the new drug of pornography
and like that dopamine that's been released and the dopamine that's been exposed,
like that men seem to be, you know, be able to possess and the shame that the
that the world seems to paint like as you made that example of what
a sex addict may potentially be, is also what's, you know, keeping men in that bottle where they
are afraid to actually expose and, like, you know, come to truth with, like, what their struggles
are going on about. And that's why I like what you shared, because I feel like right now,
it's Satan is using that shame, like, for his own, like, purpose and drive to try and bring
down, because you know as soon as men can overcome that, like, that lustful thought and
all those different stuff, then he's unconquerable.
Would you want to add on that as well?
Oh, dude, so many things.
So many things.
Here's what I know.
The tools that I have been taught actually work.
My brain is different.
In the past, when, and I'm going to go straight at it, okay?
Because that's just who I am.
You'll notice that about me.
If I saw a woman I thought was attractive, my brain, that lust thing would take over.
and images or thoughts of being with her maybe romantically or sexually or whatever else
would come into my mind absolutely unwanted.
I didn't want that.
And yet my brain would just trigger and trigger and trigger and go there and go there.
And you talk about the shame spiral.
Well, I want to talk about the tools for a second.
One of the greatest tools I ever found because what is happening in my brain as I understand this.
And the ability to rewrite the neuroplasticity and the grooves,
was called them the grooves in your brain that have been there for a long time if you're an addict.
It's all of these triggers kick in.
And every one of them shoots you into this big ravine that's dug.
And it's like, go look at porn.
Go get sexual gratification.
Go whatever.
Because that will take you out of pain the fastest.
and your brain is only wired to survive and it tells you if I don't do this I will die.
Like it's, I have felt those moments where I cried in a ball on the floor where I'm like,
I don't want to hurt my wife by looking at pornography anymore.
And it's like, look at it or you will die, which to most people, if you're not an addict
and you haven't struggled with this, man, they don't get it.
They don't get it.
It's not just like, stop looking at it.
What didn't I think of that?
You know, it's this compulsion that takes over your body in such a way that you feel like you will die.
And there are like two or three simple things that you can do.
And the number one that most people don't understand is that connection is the healing force for addiction.
It's not sobriety.
Sobriety is a byproduct of connection.
And when I get triggered, which is incredibly rare these days, it happens.
But it's incredibly rare because I've been consistently doing the work for years now, nine years, daily, minute by minute sometimes.
And the trigger comes in.
Look at pornography or lust after a woman or whatever it is.
I pick up the phone and I call one of my buddies.
Like, dang, I just got triggered.
I got way triggered.
Here's what happened.
Saw this woman and for whatever reason.
It just was like, I want to go talk to her.
Like that's the trigger now instead of like, I got to sleep with this person or whatever, right?
And I'm not saying I ran around and slept with tons of people.
That's not what I'm saying either, to be clear.
And that's the progression of addiction, though.
That's what happens undelt with.
And instead, I pick up the phone and I'm like, dude, Eric, I'm having a rough time.
And with you as my witness, I surrender to God or your higher power, whatever it is,
I knew guys in recovery that they know gravity is a higher power than them.
And so they're cool to surrender to gravity.
And when I think surrender, I want you to imagine that this is how I do it,
because I see the world in pictures and videos vividly.
And I imagine I'm holding this most horrible thing that my brain wants to do right now
to not be in pain anymore, the pornography image or the thought or whatever it is.
And for me, I'm handing that to God.
I'm handing that to my Savior
and I'm saying I'm giving this to you
because no amount of holding on as tight as you can
no amount of holding on as tight as you can
saying God take this from me
has ever worked for me
or any of the guys, the hundreds of guys
that I've worked with an addiction.
It's a surrender.
It's giving it up to a higher power.
And that heals your brain.
It changes the chemistry of your brain
and the more you reach out and connect
and connect and connect and connect rather than going down into the addiction cycle your brain heals
and the triggers don't happen anymore like the triggers literally don't happen anymore which i thought
was impossible impossible five years ago i i just thought i was destined to go to hell
that's what i believed because of my religion and because because of the mistakes i had made
i'm a piece of trash i'm destined to go to hell might as well give up might as well give up
over and over. That was the lie Satan told me.
And just to add on that, it might slightly be off topic, but it's something very similar to that.
When I served on my mission, the last six months when I was with my mission present, I was like
their assistant and stuff. And there was a time in our mission where my mission president's
wife, amazing, amazing woman, she decided to teach when we would go with them, my
companion eyeing to all like the zones. She was teaching the law of chastity differently than before
because obviously you grow up your entire life, especially like within like our church and you keep
hearing the don't, don't, don't, don't do, don't do, don't do. And I've always had that like perception,
obviously when you're super young, when you tell Simba don't go to the elephant graveyard or the
medically like, what the heck is over there. But when she got up there, she taught the law of chastity
of the beauty of it, the beauty of preserving yourself, the beauty of the intimacy that brings an
emotional connection between your husband and wife, the beauty of creation, the beauty of bond.
And then I remember her teaching it to all the different zones. And then I realize that the more
you start teaching positives about something so sacred and beautiful, then it's easy for people
to fully give heed and obey such a commoam. I know it's slightly different to what you were saying,
But I actually think that that changed perspective completely as well.
Can you add on that real quick?
Yeah, it all ties in briefly.
That's a statement my wife and I have.
What I learned was sex is optional.
That's a crazy statement for somebody in this predicament.
Did you know that sex is optional in life?
You won't actually die if you don't have sex.
I didn't know that.
I didn't believe that.
And it's true.
And one of the phrases that we kind of live by at this point is that we connection.
So let's see.
It's funny.
It's ingrained into my soul at this point.
My wife and I will check in whether we feel safe to even be sexually intimate with each other at this point.
And sexual intimacy is a byproduct of connection in my marriage now.
I don't use my wife.
I couldn't say that in the past, sadly.
But I can say it now.
I will say no if I'm not safe.
So we can deal with the emotional things going on.
And then if we decide to be sexually intimate,
it's like, boom, game on, brother.
You know, but so anyway.
And now this ties in, you know, addiction often isolates people.
What helped you reconnect yourself during your first recovery?
Because, you know, connection is so important.
What helped you reconnect yourself from your first recovery?
You know, it was eye-opening for me to find out I was an addict.
That was the best news I ever heard.
And I heard that news nine and a half, ten years ago in Houston.
We lived in Houston.
And I was at another crossroads because, like you said, isolation.
I was deciding whether to divorce again for however many times, which had nothing to do with my
incredible level 10 wife, had everything to do with the broken child that was still trying to
run and the shame and the spirals and all the things.
And I'm sitting in front of my bishop, who's a religious leader, and I said, I don't know
what's wrong with me.
I just must be destined to go to hell.
I don't know what's wrong with me.
I don't want to do this stuff.
And I'm sure there are going to be people that are like,
Hey, he's just a weak son of a bitch.
And it's like, it's gone to Ruck March.
Find out how weak I am.
And that's not it.
That's not it.
It's like something was fundamentally out of alignment for me.
And I didn't understand how to find the healing balm.
And my bishop said, best, best bishop I ever had,
probably and if my other bishops are watching you're cool too.
No.
And he said, I don't know how to help you, but I know someone who does.
And he sent us to a therapist.
And the therapist said, oh, you're an addict.
And I'm like, an addict, what is that?
I didn't even heard of that.
I'm from Lehigh, Utah, back when it was a farm, dude.
I grew up with like pigs and goats and sheep.
Like my brother slept with a pygmy goat in a,
his bed or like that's how we grew up man and so I didn't know what an addict was and I went to this
recovery meeting for the very first time and I see this group of people laughing these men it was
all a men's a men's group and I'm sitting here and I'm like this is the worst day of my entire life
my world is ending everything is horrible and you assholes are laughing how could you be laughing
right now in this room.
And then I found out, after years of recovery, I found out there's joy.
There's somewhere beyond addiction, if you'll use the tools that work, that have worked
for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of other people.
And I think it's that shame.
Often people don't want to get associated with the term like addict.
They often because of society has just painted that as like degenerate or, you
paraplegic or like you're not human and I think that shame is what draws people because I've had a loved one
struggle with perfection to the point where it took them and I think perfection sometimes when
is a Satan's tool to try and play in your head that you are less than what you currently are and you can't see
beyond the then and then you just see yourself in this critical and painful moment as well yeah and it only happens you
start realizing when this heads close to home that how crazy it can actually be as well with
the perfection. Have ever struck with a bit of perfection yourself?
Perfection is not enough. Mine was always not enough. I'm, I'm, my, my, heck, we'll pull the
covers off of even refined you and one of the processes we do in Refind You. It's a part two process.
So you already, you got to go through part one to get to this part two process. But you, you
you work through and identify this alternate name that you've been calling yourself or that you live by.
It's almost this underlying set of phrases that everyone so far that I've ever met that have come
through the training has. And mine were stupid, useless pervert destined to fail. Those were,
those were running my life until I did something to get them out of my body because they were stuck
in my very cells.
And those are the processes we do inside of our training,
is we get rid of those freaking lies that people are carrying around.
Because from my experience, and I'm not a trained therapist, right?
That's not my profession.
But from my experience, and I'm kind of delving off of your question soon.
If we want to come back in, okay.
No, no, please.
From my experience, as a child, every one of us have experiences,
as children. And mom says something or dad says something. And maybe you experienced a real abuse,
like, you know, and you were abused. And as a child, kids don't rationalize things. Well,
mom's just doing her best. No, as a five-year-old, as an eight-year-old, you don't say mom's doing
her best. It's, I'm sad. There must be something wrong with me. And I feel a certain way based on what
mom did or dad did and I create a belief about myself or I cut a part of myself off because of this
thing I experienced and I'm still running my life with that same exact belief I must just be
too stupid I didn't do math right in third grade I literally Joey got up ran out the fire escape
and ran home in third grade with a teacher yelling at me I actually posted a funny video about
that. I shared that story online and, and, you know, yelled mean things at the slow teacher behind
me. That was the kind of kid I was. And I just decided I was too stupid. This is one of my beliefs
until I got rid of that out of my body. So I don't not remember your question whatsoever.
That's where we're at right now, man. That's the co-to ending.
Love it. That's the way this works. So I got to give all of you as just
a brief introduction, where I'm talking about, what I'm about Oscar right now. So I met Joey,
actually for the first time this weekend, a friend of mine had the most amazing transformation
from the small time I've known her, and like she experienced a baptism, and it was probably
the most emotional testimony I've heard after she was baptized and stuff from her, considering
her life experiences as well, which is kind of going to what I'm saying. And these friends of
mind have been inviting me because I've personally experienced grief. They've been inviting me
to refine you for quite some time. And when I spoke to Joey, I loved how he changed my perspective
because I've always struggled with the fact that I am not less than, I'm not labeled as a struggling
person. I've always strived to just feel like, listen, I don't need no support group because
I've always thought those to be one of those A.A. anonymous. Hi, my name is KG. Hi, KG. I'm a recovering
alcoholic. So that's why I want to give a brief introduction of that as well. So that's why when I met
you and you kind of like really went in depth of what we find you is, when I experienced group
with the first person I spoke to, I was obviously my dad, my bishop, my psychologist, therapist.
I've got it all prepared in advance and try and tackle it. But what I realize is that some
times with grief you run away from the problem. You end up finding voids. You end up finding things
to fill it out. And then it comes in waves when it hits you because you can never fully be okay.
It's going to be a different life. But when they kept saying something like, no, you face it,
I was being very confrontational with them. I'm like, no, what do you mean? I'm not going to face it.
I worked very hard to where I am. Like, no one can ever tackle it the way I have. I'm proud of
myself. She's like, yes, but you have to face it. You have to feel it and you have to understand it.
And I want to kind of touch in and talk a bit about like this whole process and refine you if you don't mind.
Can we go into that right now?
Can you just touch a lot about this facing it?
Yeah.
I want to, a mentor of mine taught me this.
And I'm not going to share their names.
We're not in good graces anymore.
But the lessons this person taught me were invaluable.
Changed my whole life.
Changed my whole perspective.
and there's this concept of understanding being the ultimate method to deal with your problems.
If I could just understand it, there is massive room for understanding because without any
understanding, we're lost anyway. Yeah? And when you understand something only, there's no healing.
understanding doesn't create healing and let me explain if i understand forgiveness i'm guessing most
viewers of this understand some level of forgiveness forgiveness forgiveness is about who by the way
who is forgiveness about for you yeah it's entirely for you it's definitely for you it has nothing
to do with the other person forgiving someone else for for something they did it also doesn't mean
you jump back into relationships you don't someone stole from you you don't give them your checkbook like
It's not that.
That's not forgiveness.
Forgiveness is saying, I'm unchaining myself from this past thing, and I'm reclaiming my power.
And you're going to do you.
And the only reason I know for someone to not forgive another human is to try to punish them.
And the only person you're punishing is yourself.
And here's the deal.
A person who understands forgiveness and doesn't forgive has no benefit of forgiveness.
and a person who doesn't understand anything about forgiveness
but knows how to just forgive
gets every benefit of forgiveness in their life.
And it's the difference between understanding and becoming.
And that's how I would say that.
Forgiveness sometimes can be very hard.
It really can, especially when there's a certain level of trust.
And I found a point where I realize that sometimes
by holding away a grudge and just like putting your pride aside, it's easier say than
actually done because sometimes you get hurt by the people you trust the most. And that's a
hard thing. That's why I've got to learn that it is about you. It doesn't mean necessarily accepting,
taking back, but it means you are throwing that thing away, you know, and it's hard. I'm not going
to be hard. It's coming here and stand and say, oh, no, forgive and forget. It's like, gosh, dang.
Sometimes I want to go out there, get some punching bags and say, let's see.
Yeah, mate, you know what I'm saying?
That's part of our process.
We may have punching bags sometimes.
I don't know.
So here's the crazy thing.
So I was in, this was, I don't know, over a year ago.
How to a business endeavor go really bad with some people.
And heartbreaking.
I saw these people as more than just friends.
They were family.
And it just ripped my heart out to,
to be treated the way I felt I was treated and and one day be all in and one day the next day be all out.
Heartbreaking and painful.
And I made those choices too.
I own my choices and I chose it was no longer a place for me, no longer a safe place for me.
And the pain there was massive and the promises were massive that were promised to my wife and I and yada.
And I decided, what if I could learn to forgive this guy and this guy?
What could be possible in my life?
And so I went to work.
So I went in my closet and I pictured every single one of this guy's family members
and him.
And I thought about his life.
And I sat there in that space of him as a human,
probably doing the best he could probably i don't know um and i prayed for every single one of those
people all the things that i want for me peace and love and connection and happiness and success
and the things that i want and i pictured and imagined these people's family members
and every time i felt resentment and anger towards them i would go find a space and i would pray for them
all the things I wanted for me.
Pray for them to have all of these things,
regardless of the resentment and the hate and the anger.
And it healed me.
And it didn't happen in one day,
but the hate's gone.
The resentment's gone.
And the forgiveness is real and permanent for me.
Because it's just not about me.
We all made choices.
And at the end of the day,
forgiveness for me is unchaining myself.
from something rather than say, no, I'm standing right here and I'm not going to move.
And you remember that story from, tell me if this sounds familiar.
When I was a kid, I totally did this, okay?
My mom was mad at me for something.
I probably broke a window or something like I should get in trouble for you.
And I'm a little kid.
And I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm going in my room and I'm not going to eat.
I'm not going to eat dinner.
Ha, that'll show her, right?
And I'm sitting in my room and I'm sitting there like,
mm-mm,
she is being punished right now.
I'm not going to eat dinner.
And then I'm sitting there a little longer and I actually thought to myself.
And this legitimately,
I remember this as a child multiple times doing this.
And you know what?
I hope I die.
Because that will really get her because she will really feel bad about being mad at me.
Because that's what not forgiving is doing to your soul.
you're sitting there starving.
It's not about giving permission to somebody.
It isn't.
And that's the fear.
Most of the time the fears I hear about forgiveness.
Because we dive into forgiveness in part one.
That's day two.
Second half of the day,
I have about a 30-minute thing about forgiveness,
but you already just did a whole bunch of real work
to get that crap out of your body in the first place.
Catharsis.
We do a lot of catharsis and stuff.
And so very guided, very, very, very powerful.
and what people experience is when they go back around mom or they go back around dad or they go back around brother or sister or whoever it's like that energy that i used to have towards my mom just wasn't there i was waiting for her to say the same old thing she always says and me to get pissed like i always did and it just didn't happen
what did you do and i'm like what did you do you did it i'm not a freaking magician you healed yourself you did that by doing the work that's it
It's not about me.
So anyway, way off topic.
But man, this stuff lights me up.
If you can't tell, I'm a person who's walked it and implemented it.
And I live it.
And I don't hide and lie and pretend that I'm some perfect coach or whatever bull crap that I see out there.
I hate that.
I hate that.
It causes me pain.
It's like, bro, do you know how successful you would be if you were.
just real. Just be like just show up. Show up and be vulnerable and watch what happens.
Watch the like tens of thousands of people rather than the dozens of people that will be ready
to learn some things from you. At least that's been my experience. And I don't know,
maybe maybe some people wouldn't be like that. I don't know. But that's been my experience.
This perfectly segues actually to the next topic that I want to touch on. Well, we already spoke
about. I refined you.
I want to know what inspired you to start refine you.
And how does that particularly differ from the traditional self-help and therapy that we are more accustomed to?
Yeah.
So to be clear, I've done therapy for, I did therapy weekly for eight years.
I did, man, I did weekly EMDR.
And if you know what that is, I did that for almost five years straight from all the trauma.
That's trauma work.
And anyway.
And it was powerful and helped.
and I couldn't get over the last phrases that were stuck in my body.
And I went through a training program that is very similar to what we do.
At least the processes are the way they do it.
What we spoke about on Sunday?
Yeah, the way that they do it is not the way that I do it.
I feel ours is way more powerful because what I did was go out and find more processes that work.
And I measure my results, my results everywhere.
and I don't make it about me.
Many organizations make it about the trainer
and worship the trainer and yada, yada.
We don't do that.
It's about the people connecting with each other
way more than anything else.
And so my wife and I were in another organization
and I was trained.
I did thousands of hours of volunteer time
to become a trainer in this other organization,
non-paid.
I got paid one time when I went and did a solo training myself.
and they started going down a path I wasn't interested in.
And I'm very careful.
I have no desire to ruin their reputations or any of that crop.
I just don't care.
I like that.
That's not why we're here.
And they went a direction I wasn't interested in.
And the direction was far more about money.
And so what started happening was we would get people into these incredible healed.
Healed.
That's a stupid word.
people would have these incredible experiences of getting rid of these masks and getting rid of
having to do it their way or his way or that way or the perfect way or the whatever way.
And then these people would try to sell them into $30,000, $90,000 programs.
I wasn't cool with that.
I just wasn't cool with that.
And when I brought it up, that begun the fall.
And so it was months later after we were no longer in that organization where I knew I had to do this.
I mean, from day one, this is just, it's who I am.
It's funny, one of the other lessons I learned in the Army, you asked me that earlier.
One of the other powerful lessons I learned in the Army is that me and the Army don't get along.
Man, I love people.
People deserve a fighting chance to have.
have the life they want. And I've got some awesome tools to help people on that journey
because these guys taught me how. And I am very grateful for that. And it was, I'm going to give
you the like down and dirty version of how we decided to start, refine you. These processes,
they've been around since like the 70s. I didn't develop them. The way I do it, the method that I do,
it, the extra tools and extra processes that I've brought in from outside sources to make it
a massively powerful event. Yeah, I've included those, but these processes work. They work
powerfully. And I'm sitting on my couch and a cousin of mine calls. So we were separated from this
other company. We're really sad, lost nearly all the friends we thought we had. And it became this, like,
threat battle and all this other crap like not going to go there um and and so me and me and a couple
other people prayed and wrote down tons of names like if we were to start a company what would
we call it and we went through all these names and all these names and all these names and all these
names and then i was like we need to pray again and we prayed and it was like boom re-find you
and it's about being refined, but it's about refining that child.
When you were two, two years old waking up in the morning, bright-eyed, ready to go.
The sun's out.
I want to play.
It's time to play.
There was no barriers there.
There was no decisions about yourself that you weren't good enough.
The two-year-olds don't care about that.
It's, I want to go to the store.
I want a piece of candy.
Yeah.
And so I'm sitting on the couch and this refined you kicks.
It's like two days later.
and a cousin of mine that I hadn't talked to in years calls me up.
Can I come talk to you?
I was like, yeah, come on over.
We're home.
And she comes over and we're talking, and she's just telling me this horrific story of her life
in the last 10 years.
She was locked in basements by husbands and boyfriends and abused and just horrific stuff.
She tried to take her life a few.
I have permission to share her story, by the way, from her.
And she had tried to take her life multiple times,
and she couldn't kill herself.
It wouldn't work.
It wouldn't take.
That's what she said.
She kept saying that.
And she just pauses all of a sudden.
We're sitting on the couch and my wife is there and I'm there and we're just in tears like, sis, I'm so sorry.
You know, and she says, I just need to refine myself.
And I like jumped out of my chair and I was like, you just said my word.
You can't say my word.
What do you mean?
Because we had said nothing, like nothing about it.
And it was like, this is it.
And I said, okay, I got, you need to refine yourself.
Okay, here's the deal.
I got this training thing.
And she's like, what are you talking about?
It doesn't matter.
In three weeks, you're coming to this thing.
We're going to put it on.
We're going to gather as many people as we can and we're going to go.
And I'll just fast forward to the end of the story.
At the end of part two, there's a moment where people share about some of the
breakthroughs and things.
And she's standing up in front of the room.
She's telling this story.
And she said, Joey tells me, you're coming to find you.
And she said, and the day before, I get a random text from Joey that says,
Hey, sis, can't wait to see you tomorrow.
She said, I picked up my phone and I said, F you, Joey, F you won't see me.
I just took a whole bottle of pills.
She took a whole bottle of pills and drank a whole bottle of alcohol the night before the training to kill herself.
The night before.
And my wife said, I think you should message your cousin.
And I was like, that's a great idea.
Hey, sis, can't wait to see you tomorrow.
And then she went, God, if I'm supposed to say,
still be here, then let me wake up in the morning. And she probably said it with that much sass
because this girl is fire, dude. She's awesome. And she woke up in the morning. It came into training.
She told none of us this story. It was two months later that we found out that she had tried to kill
herself. And then she stood there and she looked at me and she's like, you can't, eth and believe I'm
saying this. And then she screamed, I want to live. I want to live. It's my. It's my.
turn and her trajectory has just been a whole new world she called me up and said my my old highs are my
new lows and it just keeps growing and this is two years later it's been two years that we've been in
business with refined you and she's like this this is insane how is this possible and she just got
rid of the shit it's crazy it's crazy and you mention all this because I wish it's
would have helped like a loved one that I know, you know, it's every time just talking about it,
sometimes I zone out just thinking what could have been, what should have been, what could
have been done. And I love your and new stories because it shows change and change always
begins with the choice. You have to decide as well. And that's why I've always loved your approach
the whole when you're already thinking because you've seen when people have fully invested
themselves into something they are willing to change a certain pattern or a habit that they may be
accustomed to that there's not like in the right path as well oh gosh i don't even know i even have
this thing you're just like you're so many questions that is in work i'm all i am so passionate
about what i do man um and and i'm glad you mentioned like those two parts i know that
refine is not as informative it's more like transformational
there's no like summarize.
I want to know exactly for our views out there.
There's part one, this part two.
What is the difference between both those parts in Refined You?
That's a great question.
So it's impossible to describe this to people because every person's experience is so unique.
And human behavior, which is what we're dealing with, goes in every angle and in every direction at any given time.
and we're equipped and ready to deal with that in the room.
And so, for example, one of the first questions I ask,
excuse me, one of the very first questions that I ask is, why are you here?
I literally say that.
And we get all kinds of, my wife made me come.
And we don't shy away from that.
It's like, okay, so your wife made you come.
Well, that got you in the door.
That's not going to keep you here.
This isn't a raw, raw seminar.
you're not going to leave here and in three days all your hype is gone.
This is like, this is work.
This is hard.
It's as if you smash a bunch of self-help books together and then do it, not not think about it.
You know what I mean?
I want you to ask me your question one more time because I want to give that a fair answer.
Yes.
Say it one more time.
So I kind of, I said, I know Refine is not necessarily one of those informative, motivational stuff.
It's more transformation.
I've seen people become like transformed over that.
And then I asked, is there a way we can try and break down what part one is and what part two is what the difference between the two parts?
Yes, absolutely.
So part one is way about, let's see, how do I say that?
Part one is mainly focused on all the masks you're currently wearing.
almost everybody that I ever meet is running around as an inauthentic version of themselves.
Who am I supposed to be?
Who am I not supposed to be?
How am I supposed to dress?
What should I drive?
How should I show up or not show up?
How close or how far away?
And all of these rules that we have about who we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to be.
And those get developed in the young childhood years.
We start making decisions about all of these things that we're supposed to be.
and not supposed to be.
Part one is about taking off the masks,
and it doesn't happen through talking.
It doesn't happen through talking.
In part one, you will know what you want in life.
If going through Refind You,
something that you can ask any person
who's ever been through Refind You,
you can say, who are you?
And they have an answer to that question.
What do you want?
And they will have an answer to that question.
And it's funny because the people,
People who think they're coming in because they want more money and they want more this and they want more that.
What they find is that what they're looking for is connection with themselves, with the higher power and with the other people around them.
And when connection is set, everything else takes care of itself.
It's about becoming connected.
I love that.
And then you don't have to hit rock bottom, right?
Sometimes just people that are trying to find them like their purpose and like their direction, right?
Yeah.
We've had billionaires in the room.
And then we've had single moms who just try to take their life and veterans and everyone in between.
And so part one, part one is entirely about who you're not.
And getting rid of that whole concept that you have to show up a certain way for all the people around you rather than just what's right for you and who you are.
And part two is entirely about who you are.
And it's not a bunch of lectures.
It's a bunch of processes that are designed to give you very clear feedback about how you're doing in life.
We dive into trust, how you do trust in life, who you trust, who you don't trust, who trusts you, who doesn't trust you.
I'm watching this in real time.
The race divide, the fear between black people and white people and Asian people and all of this other stuff.
And I'm watching it in real time in that room.
And what people find out is people are freaking people.
and that's it and we're just people and we got taught some things that are screwed up along the way
and and then we're just people after that and so you get to dive far into um to give you a little
more context on part one day one you're going to dive into trust you're going to dive into how you
do life and how you go to war with other people there's a simple game that we play that gives you
directly how you literally go to war with other people and we talk about a whole new way which
is called a unilateral agreement, which means I decide how I'm going to show up in the world.
And that's how I show up regardless of who's doing what. I don't have to punish people.
I just love people. And it's like, oh, I really don't want to be around you. I love you.
I don't like who you are as like how you act. It's weird. I don't. And then we dive into by that
very first night. We're diving into feedback. You're going to get direct feedback on what stops me
from wanting to connect with you. You will get direct feedback about that.
from other people in the room, your buddies, your peers, and you will give them direct feedback
of what stops you from wanting to connect with them? And then by day two, we're diving straight into
what's the pain? Where does it come from? And you're going to go through dealing with the pain
with mom, with dad, with anyone who's ever hurt you, and then the anger and rage and shame that you
have towards yourself. We're going through it. We're not going to talk about it. We're going to go
through it in a cathartic way, where it gets it out of your body. If you've ever read the book,
um, the body keeps score, fantastic book. And there's just too much science now that says if you
store the crap in your life in your body and you keep it in, you keep it in, you keep shoving it down,
that's disease. That's the cancer. That's, I mean, there's just too much evidence. Um, and,
and, and yeah, there's other causes of cancer and there's other causes of disease. And there's just
so much evidence that buried emotion turns into these autoimmune diseases and everything else.
And I don't have evidence, so call me on it. I don't care, but that's, I watch it. I watched a guy
who had a stroke four years ago and couldn't speak almost at all, come through Refined You.
And by the end of Refined You, he could talk like 20 times faster than he could when he started.
because he could understand everything we were saying,
but he could only speak like that.
And by the end, he was speaking like this.
And his wife messaged me and said,
what did you do?
And I was like, sounds like he had some stuck emotions, man.
It's crazy.
And then by the end of day two,
there's so much.
There's so much that would pack in to three.
you imagine three days part one is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for for three days. Like legit,
you're in that room. We go on breaks. We eat lunch and stuff. But then you're in there.
And I'm not lecturing. You're going through processes to get feedback and to get crap out.
And then part two is, oh, I actually want to say this part one at the end of day two.
You're going to find out what it feels like to be all in, all in with every,
everything you got at a 10 as a child. No walls, no, no barriers, no limits to how you can show up in
front of a room of people. It's great. Healing like you couldn't imagine. So anyway, there's,
there's kind of a snippet of what part one is and part two is just the math that we have most
of the time. Most people think they reach what they consider as a 10 by the end of part one.
It's like, this is my 10.
How am I ever going to top this?
And it's like, no, don't top this.
Make this your new nine and go be like out in your world.
And then they come to part two and they find out that part one was only a one.
And they reach another 10.
So you imagine what you could do in your life if you up level 20x.
I don't like those cliche sayings.
But that's like if I were to give one, it's like you're exponentially increasing your ability to show up
because the masks are gone.
And you're showing up as who you are
rather than who you think everyone else needs you to be.
That's life-changing.
That's amazing.
That's transformation.
This next question, I actually want to read it
because I want to make sure I get everywhere that stuff.
How did becoming emotionally connected change your relationships,
especially with yourself?
That's one of my favorite questions.
I want to ask it again if you don't mind.
I just want to reiterate every single term over there.
How did becoming emotionally connected change your relationships,
especially with yourself?
You know, my transformative process for me,
I didn't believe that people could actually be happy
for more than a few hours at a time.
I didn't believe.
I didn't believe that was true eight years ago, six, six years ago.
And I had done the therapy and I had done the 12th step.
And I wasn't acting out anymore in my addictions and I was sober, but I hated myself.
And I thought I was garbage no matter what I did, no matter what tools I was using, no matter what I was doing.
and and I'm in a therapy session and I'm like, dude, I just hate myself.
I'm sick of hating myself.
And he said, he just kind of stopped and he's like, well, what do you think you should do?
And in that moment, I got a direct connection with God again.
I have those in my life.
They're undeniable for me.
And he said, call this person.
and I was like, well, God just said to call this person.
And he's like, I would listen to God, which was a funny statement.
And I walked out of my counseling office and I called this person and they said,
you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I have your name written on my whiteboard right now.
I was going to call you tomorrow.
And I'm like, why?
I said, I'm struggling.
Here's what I'm struggling with.
Why am I calling you?
That's what I said.
And he said, I just went through.
this program and it does exactly what you're looking for. He said, I've spent hundreds of
thousand dollars on personal development. And nothing has changed my life like this. And I said,
Kay, we're in. What, you're in? Don't you want to know about it? God told me to call you. You're
telling me that there's a program and it's exactly what I'm looking for. I don't need an explanation.
Let's go. When do we go? Like, when is it start? That's how I do my life. Like, that's just how I do
my life when it's time to go it's time to go um and i said and my wife too she didn't know she was
signed up by the way which is funny um that's another story for another day uh and and we went in
after part one is a training similar to mine like i said and after part one for the first time in my
entire life and and i'm answering your question in this long-winded answer i assure you but after
part one i was it was three days later and i was walking by the mirror in my bathroom and for the
first time in my entire life, I looked in the mirror and I double took. And I'm like looking at
myself and I'm astonished. And I'm like, Ashley, yell in my wife's name. Get in here. And she's
like, what? What is going on? I just kind of slackjawed pointed at the mirror and said, I like
myself. And tears are streaming down my face. And she's like, oh, like she didn't get it.
Because how do you share that with somebody else?
And it was like, cool.
I got like the food's burning, you know?
And I just stood there, mesmerized.
And the COVID hit.
And we had to wait nine months between part one and part two,
which is not common.
You normally wait 30 days.
That's it.
And I wasn't going to go.
And someone called me the night before and said,
Joey, if you knew what I knew,
you would move mountains to get to part two.
That's what they said.
And, and, and we did.
we moved mountains and went to part two that next day.
And it was three days later again, the weirdest thing.
I don't know why.
And I was walking past a mirror, the same exact mirror in the same exact way.
And I saw myself in the mirror.
And I double took.
And this time I wept.
Because for the first time in my entire life, I loved myself.
I love myself.
And reconnecting to me and that little boy and making it safe.
for him and for me and my the way I think about myself.
Dude, that's changed everything.
It's changed the way I show up at work.
It's changed the way I show up for my kids.
It changes the way I show up for complete strangers
who are having a rough day because I love me.
And I know my needs are met.
That changes everything.
And it's not something I can give in words
because it's, it's personal.
like it's a personal journey that happens through doing the work to get the lies out.
And man, and it hasn't changed.
It's only, I don't know, have you ever seen the, this one's going to get us some negative
comments.
You ready?
You ready?
At least me.
Like, I think they like you already.
It's going to get me some negative comments.
If you've ever seen the movie, really, I'm going to forget the name of it.
now, Pearl Harbor.
It's like a two-part.
We bought it back when it was a two-part DVD.
You had to put the DVD, and then you'd have to take that one out.
No, Tom Cruise is not in it, but Ben Affleck is in it.
Ben Affleck, I keep confusing the two.
And there's a part, there's a part on that movie where one of the side characters
looks in the mirror and he says, I am one good looking son of a bitch, you know?
I do that.
I totally do that from time to time.
It's not an arrogance thing.
It's not.
It's just like, man, I love me.
What is this?
How is this possible?
And I want that for everybody.
Because it's not about arrogance when you accept you and love you.
Man, the world changed.
Imagine what could happen if we're not competing to try to get love because we've got it filled by ourselves.
You know, when you just said that I was speaking with.
Lars because I was, yeah, I looked at that picture and I'm like, gosh, dang.
There's something about that guy.
Then, like, you know, Lars and I were making a joke.
But I think also when it's like genuine and it's felt and you know that there's something.
And I think it's rooted deep in what you genuinely believe.
And it's something that's good for you as well.
You know, and I often don't like when people start saying it's arrogance.
It's this thing.
It's like, no, like why do it?
which goes back again to like the two-year-old young kid.
And I loved it so much from your daughter.
She stole like the show from the minute she entered there.
And I love seeing that in kids so much
when they thrive from their existence and like their self-belief as well.
And every time I attend conferences and I see like just young,
eight-year-old kids just out there, just being themselves is the greatest thing ever.
And I've tried not to like lose it because I was the same way when I,
I would be the first to bear my testimony
like when I was in primary
because I'm like
I want to quickly go up there
I want people to know that I have a testimony
kind of thing and over time
life can hit you when you're in teenage years
everything but maintaining that
seeing that from your daughter
she was probably the biggest example
like when she was singing on Sunday
and just out there being herself
like saying listen I'm unapologetically myself
was one of the most important traits
that human being can possess as well
so that's really fine to you
that's what we do because that's it that's why it's transformative we're not trying to make somebody
some other version where we all look the same and have the same watch and have the same car
it's how do you become the best version of you well um yeah no that's that's powerful i wanted to ask
I know we're close out of time right now, but just one last thing.
You know, you dropped out of high school and you have an MBA.
How the heck can you explain that to our views?
What happened there?
Oh, man.
That's one last question that I need to ask.
I know we went on this powerful thing, but I can't not ask that question.
Let's dive in.
So me and school did not get along as a kid.
Like, that is not my idea of a good time being in school.
and I had a massive belief that I was too stupid for school.
And I had tons of teachers tell me I was stupid.
They would lock me in closets.
I mean, you name it.
That was happening for me.
And so I took off.
I dropped out in 10th grade and ran away from home.
And it's funny because what a lie that I'm stupid.
What a freaking lie.
And to believe it.
To believe it, that's probably one of the most astonishing things that I remember about myself from time to time is that I'm smart.
And, man, there's, I can't pinpoint some great massive revelation, but I was like, you know what?
I refuse to stay working at a corner store out of the army.
So what do I got to do?
Because like, guess what?
When I got out of the Army, I applied for more than 250.
I didn't have a degree yet, actually, out of the Army.
I had my GED, which I went and took.
And then I had all this experience on how to, you know, be a force.
If you don't know, like, the purpose of special forces training or the purpose of military training in the way that I did it, the entire purpose is to become a force multiplier.
Now, to be clear, I did not become a Greenberry.
I have a whole other story about that that's pretty cool.
But I did most of the training.
And those skills are not transferable to a tech industry.
They just are not.
They're not looking for me to train infantry.
That's not a skill I need.
And as I got out of the Army, I applied for more than 250 jobs around the U.S.
And I got one phone call, one, middle of nowhere, Texas.
And I could fill you with stories from that experience.
But what I found out was, it was time to go to college.
What I also found out was, I'm damn smart.
And so I doubled and tripled up on classes.
And I had a full-time family, a full-time job, and double full-time college and knocked out my bachelor's degree like that.
And then UVU has an awesome program for MBA students.
I love the people at UVU.
They're super cool.
They're really trying to stay in the front.
There's a commercial for them.
But no, for real.
And right before COVID hit, I was like, you know what?
Step it up.
Let's do this.
Let's do an MBA.
And my wife and I have been entrepreneurs forever, especially my wife.
I'm usually the guy lugging all the crap around for my incredible wife.
And the NBA just launched me on that path to be able to understand business and the parts I do and do not like about business.
And one thing I want to add on that is when we fully, obviously, in our belief or a higher power,
when you believe, in our belief, we believe that we are literally the offspring of our heavenly father.
And we know he's infinite, he's eternal, he's everlasting from everlasting, and he's a perfect being.
And so that's what we strive to become.
But because we have inherited those qualities, we are capable of achieving everything we put our minds to.
And so when you said, I am darned.
and smart. It's a belief that you have and you know you are and nobody can tell you you're not
because and that you just proved him. And so I want to thank you for, I can't believe it's been
close to an hour and a half, but I guess we'll have to invite you for part two because we're not
even halfway done with these questions. Oh man. I want to thank you so much for your experiences,
for your army experiences, for you find you for the lessons that are going to be given to our
viewers. And I would encourage you guys to please give heed to the instruction. And before we go
as well, I want you to let people know where they can get a hold of you as well and stuff like
it. But before then, I always ask our guess this is the last question. We always ask because it's
the coat to winning and your people need insights today to seize the world tomorrow. In your
definition, what does the term winning mean for you? Connection. Boom. That's a mic drop. Can I
remove this mic? Mike Ross is dropping on the floor. Human connection is the answer to everything you're
looking for.
Self, higher power, and the people around you.
It's the freaking answer to everything you're looking for.
To making more money, to having peace, to having love, joy, all of it.
All of it.
It's connection.
Authentic and genuine connection, right?
Yeah.
Powerful.
Joey, if you could let our viewers know, if they want to get a hold of Refined
You, if they want to be able to be able to.
able to reach back to you, what are the websites or like social media that get a hold of you as
well? Can you let our viewers know?
Yeah, absolutely. So the website, all of this is a work in progress, but the website is refindu.
org. That's R-E-F-I-N-D-Y-O-U.org. Lots of cool stuff. I'm giving away so many free tools.
In fact, I'll link up with you after this to send out my very first.
tool completely free to everybody that changed the way that I'm able to connect with
myself. It's the tool that started me down this path of connection in the first
place and we'll give that to everybody. Wow. Well ladies and gentlemen, the
Coda winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Joey
Philip Stone. Thank you so much. Yes sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
