Transcript

Alicia:

The Mind of Business Success podcast is the place for high growth business owners to fill their mind with game changing strategies and principles for success in life and business. I'm your host, Alicia Cramer. Enjoy today's show. Welcome to the Mind of Business Success podcast. I'm your host, Alicia Cramer. Our guest today is Brent Freeman. He's a serial entrepreneur and advisor and a keynote speaker, but most importantly, has so damn much experience that this is going to be an incredible conversation about what's really at the root of business mindset.

Welcome to the show, Brent.

Brent Freeman:

Awesome. Thank you, Alicia. A pleasure to be here. Really excited to chat.

Alicia:

Let's start by talking a little bit about your backgrounds because it does set the stage for, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about.

Brent:

Yeah. Where how far back do you want to go? Because there's a lot there.

Alicia:

'll I'll let you give us the sort of the highlight reel, so to speak, with the good, bad and the ugly.

Brent:

Yeah, yeah. So born in the Bay Area, grew up in the first dot com bubble to a father who's a cinematographer, a director, and I'd have to be in the cinematic art world and to a stepmother who was an entrepreneur. And my mom, my birth mom passed away when I was seven years old and obviously, it really changed the way that I looked and viewed the world.

And I grew up seeing the dichotomy between the hustle and grind culture of entrepreneurship and the art and creation culture of of the artistic world. And my dad was and that really shaped how I viewed the world because I didn't want to be in the work at all side of things, and I didn't want to just be in the, you know, hope and pray side that things will work out.

I really wanted to be kind of in the middle, and when I went to college, I got the opportunity to to really kind of put those things to test and join the entrepreneur program at my college. And I got really involved with the Entrepreneur Club and reaching out to mentors and eventually started my first business at the age of 22.

It was a money chase to just make as much money to pay back my student loans as much as possible. I went to the University of Southern California, very expensive tuition, and actually my folks went bankrupt. My freshman year in college. And so I graduated with about a quarter million dollars of student loan debt. And I used entrepreneurship to try to get myself out of that debt.

And chase the money. And for two years worked hard on a — it was an international commodities import export business in Dubai and Los Angeles, random course of events that brought me into that industry. But at the age of about 23, 24 closed a $10 million deal. And I remember feeling completely hollow on the inside. Afterwards, I was expecting this like full body fulfillment that you get when something's intrinsically motivating.

And I didn't get that. And then the global financial crisis hit and what was millions became hundreds, and then 100,000 became tens of thousands. And that business ended up failing. And I only walked away with, you know, maybe 40 or 50 K when it was supposed to be millions. Still a lot of money, but the opportunity to take those learnings and apply it and I was still very young and so I realized that money wasn't the motivator for me.

It was about impact. And that was always something because, you know, when my mom died, I always said this happened for a reason. And it kind of gave me a gift to say, I'm going to I'm going to live every day, not quite like it's my last, but with purpose. And so I had, you know, I got away from myself in that venture in the commodity side.

And so I came back to center and said, I want to do something that makes an impact and a profit to bring those two worlds together. And so I built a an Etsy-style platform, an online marketplace, but for socially-conscious brands. And we were on a really passionate mission early on to prove to the world that you can embed cause into your COGS.

And we did that and we got a lot of press and. Forbes and you name it, we were all over the place. It was, it was really wonderful, except but we didn't have a good business model ourselves. A lot of learning lessons, being a digital entrepreneur early without having a tech background, and that business ultimately ended up failing after about five years.

Um, we can go into more of that later, but there was a lot of learnings that came out of, out of that. But I was really, really, really passionate about using business to create social impact. And so I dedicated my life actually about 13 years ago to doing just that, using business grade, social impact. And so then I went on to start my current company, which was not a venture backed company.

It's called Stealth Venture Labs, and we are a accelerator, an incubator for e-commerce and consumer brands, and we teach that to low-income disadvantaged youths as well in our own nonprofit and this business that I mean now Stealth Venture Labs, we've incubated over 20 of our own brands, co-founded tons of brands, some of which are in the tens of millions of revenue and some are out of business.

And what we found kind of all along the way is that, you know, as you go, it's not about the destination. It's really about enjoying the journey because we're not promised the destination. And and so, you know, my background kind of high level is really about failing forward and using failure as a stepping stone to create the foundation of future success.

Alicia:

Thank you for sharing that. I think it is a beautiful story. And I also think that you said something that is so incredibly good that I sort of want to take a highlighter and and really bring it back to life and so you made a comment about enjoying the journey because we're not guaranteed the destination. That is not the mindset that most people have, not even just business owners, but just humans in general.

I've found in my many years of working with people that there is this common theme. People have this expectation that when I get the thing, then I will be happy, then I will be fulfilled, then I will feel financially secure. Then I will feel loved and worthy. And that just simply doesn't work. So I'd love for you to expand upon that, because I know that you have been deep in the trenches of inner work and because you so gracefully just ceded that truism.

In there  — talk on that a little bit more because we have an amazing audience. These are truly heart centered, conscious entrepreneurs that are looking for the edge. They understand the importance of working on their mindset on the inner game, as well as the outer game of business. But there's still that tendency, that tendency to always be reaching for something else, to sort of heal that inner wound, neutralize the discomfort.

And in my my years of working with individuals at all different levels of success, it is so common for someone to come to me and say I achieved the goal. I get the money, I hit the target. And I just I don't enjoy it. I don't feel happy. So what are your thoughts on this?

Brent:

Oh, let's go. We're going to unpack some good stuff here. So life is all about the journey. And I have learned that both the easy and hard way. And what I mean by that is the easy way is in my own experience, the hard way. It's my own personal firsthand experience. The hard way was actually through dealing with a lot of of loss and death from an early age.

My mom, my grandparents are very close with had been to more funerals than weddings by a factor of like five by the time I was 20. And so when you're when you're exposed to that much loss from an early age, things just kind of shift a little bit in terms of how you view the world, whereas when you're typically younger and you're insulated from that, you can kind of think, Oh, we're immortal.

We have forever, we're going to live forever. And then when you start to see how things can shift and change, and that's not the case, your, your, your mind shifts a little bit. And so I remember when I was in seventh grade, I would make decisions to be like ten years from now, what am I going to remember?

What am I going to regret? Like, who does that in sixth, seventh grade, right? Like me, apparently. Right. And it was this mindset shift early that life's a gift because I saw firsthand and you know, how that how that can be taken away, as I got older. You know, it's interesting. We we are so programed by society, media, our parents, you know, the the our peers, are colleagues what everyone says is the definition of success that we don't realize that our subconscious minds are so, so, so hypnotizable of all at an early age.

In fact, our brains don't even really fully develop into what we call consciousness until about 11, ten, 11, 12, and the whole range of the beta brainwave side of things. And so basically from zero to about ten years old, we are just sponges at being. Soaked in all the media, all the things of what success. Everything we're hearing is being programed into our subconscious mind.

And as we get older, how that plays out is, oh, success is this success is having the house, the car that this that all these different things. And you are actually living a life of the program, the matrix, if you will, right? Of like going after something that everyone tells you is going to bring happiness, including in entrepreneurship, making the money, having this having a certain amount of revenue.

Once I get this, once I do it, once I sell my business, I cannot even tell you how many friends I have that have either sold their business, gone, you know, gotten a lot of money or whatever it may be. And they get to that point. They're unhappy, including myself. And, you know, I woke up one morning about four or five years ago with all the material things, but none of the internal things.

I was going through a divorce, I was overweight. I neglected my health. I didn't feel like I had thriving community that I loved and supported me at the time. And, you know, instead of being grateful for all the material things, I looked out and was contemplating suicide and and it was a aha moment for me, obviously a rock bottom that says, wait a second, there's something else going on here in this world that I'm missing and I'm focusing on the wrong things and and as I as I had that, there was actually like a Tuesday morning. And I looked at a live in San Francisco at the time, and I looked at at the at the fog and clouds passing me by live in a high rise building. And I remember seeing these clouds and I had tried to meditate a bunch before and couldn't get it to stick. I couldn’t — ADD. Dyslexia. Too many anxieties going on.

And then I see this cloud that I remember a meditation technique called noting that says, you know, your thoughts are really like clouds. They're always passing. They're only temporary, and the sun is always shining behind them. And when I sat there and had this dark kind of Tuesday morning of the soul and I looked out at the clouds and I saw this, you know, I saw these clouds passing.

I was like, man, this is like my thoughts. The sun is shining behind, but I have to I have to get to that. And so I realized that I had neglected everything that had actually brought me joy, and I had chased things that everyone told me would bring me, quote unquote, happiness. But I hadn't actually done the things that was that made me actually happy from the inside out. And I had find joy is what makes you smile from the inside out. And so that night I went and watched a sunset at the beach and I hadn't done it in years and years. And I cried and I was like so emotional about like, what? You know, why did I get so far away from my inner joy that I made a pledge to myself that day that I wouldn't I would never stray so far from my joy ever again. And I would invest into things that brought me joy every single day, even if they were small. And then I'd be like, Well, what the hell brings me joy? And so I had to sit there and I wrote a list, and that was hard because I had been I've been so focused on the program of chasing what everyone else said would make me happy or what society does or I thought would make me happy.

That was this preprogram. Rather than saying, oh, actually, like sunsets, bring me joy, Italy brings me joy speaking Italian mountain bike right? These things that had nothing to do with work and I hadn't done any of them because I was saying, well, one day when I get there, one day when I get there, one day when I get there, that one day happened.

I was 30, 40 pounds overweight. I was going through divorce, you know, all of a sudden. But I was living in a high rise apartment and I had a fancy car and all the things and a company in a seven digit run rate business. But I wasn't happy. So what does it matter if we get there and we're unhappy or we're not surrounded by the things and people that light us up?

And so about four or five years ago, I every single day I invested to joy. And the return on joy has been like astronomical in terms of the transition of my life, because now I'm doing things that make me smile from the inside out, even if it's a small thing, like just cuddling my dogs in the morning before getting out of bed or taking a minute to sit and have my coffee, watched outside my window what I call life TV.

Just taking a minute. It doesn't need to be big things. It could just be little things like fresh falling snow or a beautiful song or the breeze on your face. You know? It's just like these little things of getting more in touch with with joy allows you to start to enjoy the journey, and not one day becomes today.

And, you know, you said something I think really astute is that we put and I was very guilty of this we put so much weight on. Once I get there, then I'll have this. And when I get there, I will then be able to feel this emotion. And in the world of of kind of the law of attraction, which goes all the way back to Napoleon Hills and Think and Grow Rich, and of the thoughts you put out there, thoughts become things.

And if no if any entrepreneur are listening to this or entrepreneur or early stage entrepreneur or aspiring author has not read the Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich book. I could not recommended higher. It is not just about financial riches, it's about riches, whatever you define it, and it's all about the law of attraction of how you put a thought out there and the thoughts become things and then training your subconscious mind.

The one thing that he left out in that was what we now know to be neuroscience, which is you can't just put the thought out there. You actually have to put an emotion in, attach an elevated emotion to that thought now before of having that thing or whatever you're trying to create, otherwise you're actually turning the magnet around and you're you're you are repelling what it is you are trying to attract because you are feeling lack or scarcity or sadness or depression or inferiority or non worthiness.

You are feeling that. And so even though you're putting something out there as a thought of what you're trying to create when you are in those low vibration emotions and you you start to actually repel away — people say the law of attraction does work. It doesn't work. Does work well, typically it's because they are waiting for the thing to be feel the emotion and the trick is to actually drop in, get quiet, could be meditation, could be prayer. It could just be a moment in nature walking, drop it and say, let me visualize what would it feel like if I were to have that thing now and actually feel that emotion now in the high an elevated emotions and in gratitude and love or you know and in this beautiful space of like, wow, I want to build a family one day.

Would it feel like to like hold my son or my daughter would, wow, I'm going to feel that now. I'm going to feel that emotion even though it's not happened. And what that will do is that emotion attached to the thought is the key to unlock the kind of the boomerang effect. Because I thought out there and having it come back to you and in the neuroscience side of things, all you're doing is if your brain doesn't have a sense of past, present or future, it's all now.

Right. And if you even get into like the fifth dimension quantum stuff in quantum physics, it's all happening, right? And and your brain doesn't know past, present or future. And so if you are actually dropping into an emotion of gratitude, let's say, and you are feeling truly feeling gratitude for something that hasn't happened yet, your body doesn't know that it hasn't happened yet.

You're feeling it now. That's why when you get pissed off about something happening in the past and you want to, you know, you feel it now like it's happening in front of you, we can conjure up these emotions and we actually are reliving the trauma of the past now when we feel it and we carry it forward. And so we're going to take that same energy.

We're going to flip it and we're going to add an elevated emotion and say a future event or thing or whatever I'm trying to create. That's a goal to me. I'm going to add an emotion to it and I'm going to I'm going to bring that emotion into it. Now I'm going to feel the future now in the Dispenza community.

They call it remembering your your your future doctor go to spends a brilliant doctor and neuroscience researcher and meditation guru that talks a lot about the things that we're talking about. Him and Bruce lived in a bunch of others. Just really cool stuff happening around there. But basically the side of this is that your brain is you're tricking your brain to feel the emotion of a future now.

And I know this can sound a little bit opaque, but how does that relate to enjoying the journey? Well, if we are waiting for one day to get there and that one day never comes, we've wasted our entire life hoping and praying that that one day gets there. And I got bad news. The majority of people I know that once they get there, they say, is this it is that it?

And like I did, I had it early on. I got there and I was like, That's it. I feel empty. It doesn't because there's extrinsic motivating things that is intrinsically motivating things. And if you're not moving on, what's intrinsically motivating you from a sense in a place of joy and you're not enjoying the journey and you're not feeling that feeling now you are going to — one day will never come.

And so, you know, my message to the world is how do we make one day to day and how do we how do we really focus on getting back to ourselves internally and reconnecting with our inner child and the things that bring us joy by making an annual, sometimes twice a year annual list of joy and then building off of that into something I call priority pillars, which is typically health, family, career, community and faith or spirituality and then using those priority pillars of your life, these are my priorities in my life, but building them out of the things that bring you joy, now you've you've got to do.

So these are my priorities. And the things that fill up my health are the things that bring me joy. So now working out is no longer a task. It's I love mountain biking, I love this, so I'm going to go do it. And then taking those priority pillars and turning them into goals that you then subconsciously prime and all that means is why you set goals.

The reason most of our goals and things fail in a new year is because they're not intrinsically motivated. They're extremely motivated. We think we have to do this. And so the subconscious priming based off of the things that bring you joy, is about setting goals that every night, every morning you look at your goals that you're trying to achieve.

I like six month increments. I think 12 months is too long. And then attaching an emotion right now to what you're trying to create. And that and as you say, well, how do I do that? I don't know what it would feel like. Well, if you when you get there, you say, oh, I don't feel like love or gratitude.

I feel so proud or I feel so happy. Okay, great. The little hack is think back to a memory in your lifetime where you felt one of those emotions deeply full body drop into that. Close your eyes, feel it, feel the breeze on your face, whatever. And just feel it. Full body and feel that emotion of the past now and then open your eyes and read your goals.

What you're doing is you're tricking your brain to feel that emotion based off a past memory, which it doesn't understand is in the past or happening in the present to attach it to goals you're trying to create in the future. And so this is something that I'm starting to write a book about kind of tying in all the entrepreneurial side of things with the neuroscience, with, you know, with kind of the meditation and the eastern philosophy with the point all into one.

Because when I stood there on my window, that kind of dark Tuesday of the summer, I felt so lonely and I felt so trapped. And I felt so misled. And I had to dig in and kind of do the work. And I'm still in the work to to discover these things, to create a framework to help me kind of pull out of it so I can change the trajectory.

It's not just about money. Obviously, there's a certain amount that makes you happy, but it was about me living a life of fulfillment because we're not you know, there's no dress rehearsal in life. And we're we're not promised we're not promised a destination. So that's, you know, my long winded way of explaining to you because there's a lot there to unpack.

So I had to kind of give you kind of the full, you know, the full story of kind of how I operate.

Alicia:

There's a lot of gold in what you just shared, and I'm going to encourage people to actually relisten to this interview because you shared so much in such a short period of time. One of the things that I want to focus in on just just for a moment, because this is something that I've been doing with my clients for many, many years.

It's not often talked about in sort of conventional business type of training. But now if you go into the works of Napoleon Hill and many of the other sort of more esoteric thinkers, like back to back to the real basics, like you'll, you know, not the, the kind of stuffy, conventional, close minded set goals, you know, hustle, grind, mindset stuff we're talking about like the, the stuff that really successful people ultimately often stumble upon.

There is and I and I love Dr. Despenza for putting this information out there in such an accessible way and so many people are teaching it that once you start to get down the rabbit hole, you're going to be bombarded with. It really is everywhere, but there's understanding of how the universe operates. His understanding of the law vibration, the law of attraction, and we're not talking about concepts, we're not talking about theory.

This is law-based as as fundamental as the law of gravity. I suppose that's when you are able to create within yourself the emotion and you're able to feel that you are. And I love to bring back the brain science part of this as well. It's not just feeling good. You're simultaneously reprogramming your brain. You're simultaneously reprogramming your mind.

So each and every time you get yourself into that, that mindset, that vibrational state, that emotional state, you are feeling it as though you're experiencing it. So it's still yeah, it's in your mind. But just like you said, you can remember something that happened back in fifth grade, you know, Sally, Sally tripped to you and now you're still so butt sore over it.

Brent:

You know how you're fragmented from it because you're reliving that trauma of the past. Now, your body doesn't know you're actually bringing it back up. You know, I think people don't realize how powerful our body is in terms of, you know, we are the smartest living computer on the planet in terms of in terms of a of an organism.

There's no battery pack to us. We are powered by some sort of innate intelligence. Doesn't matter what you know, what you call that. If it's the universe or if it's God or whatever you whatever your belief system is, there's something that's powering us. I mean, each of us have his own unique soul inside of us that creates unique personalities in this unique organism.

And we have for so long, Eastern eastern philosophy has been espousing everything we're talking about. But now what's happened is the neuroscience and the scientific back, the research is showing what's happening to our bodies physically when we do these things like programming. And it's been written off for so many years around like, oh, it's, it's woo woo, right.

And, and, you know, now it's true woo, right? And now it's one of these things where it's like, okay, it is physically shown that when you drop into meditation and you calm your mind, all of the positive benefits that it has for your mind, body and spirit and what's happening in your brainwaves of going from this high stress analysis paralysis is down into kind of like this calm heart and brain coherence, where things start to be in rhythm and your body can can relax and your autonomic nervous system can actually take a breather for a second.

And so when it as it relates to entrepreneurship and as it relates to running your own businesses, I think, you know, one of the most toxic things to ever happen to our entrepreneurial culture is this hustle and grind, work, work, work. And I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality because it doesn't have to be like that. It actually propagates on itself.

If you take that in saying this is the only way to success, well, first of all, let's define what success actually means by going into a living, a life of joy and enjoying the journey. And then secondly, saying there's got to be a better way. We don't need to be living in constant reptilian amygdala, firing high cortisol all day because all that does is lead to burnout, stress and disease.

Right. Short term, great. There's something called you stress, eustress. Eustress and then stress. This distress. Right. Eustress is motivated to action. Got to land on the savanna. Got to go. Right. Distress is a is a state of chronic stress over time that leads our bodies to shut down because when cortisol is pumping through our system, it's not a time to, you know, to have all their bodily functions work and eat.

It's like everything is right being being taken over by this cortisol. Now, when you get out of this stress and you say, okay, I can be in eustress, EU again, eustress, I can actually get into a state of like, Oh, I need to pay attention that I'm going to go do it and I'm going to come back into neutral.

And what that means is that as we design our companies and our entities, it takes more energy and effort to intentionally design your company, your business model, and, and your processes and your procedures so that you can maintain a work life balance that is reasonable because this is one of the most stressful jobs on the planet, being an entrepreneur.

And and so if we aren't taking the time to recharge, I shut my email off. Now, I didn't used to always do this but this but part of the problem and I show my email often at 7 p.m. and I don't turn it back on my on my phone and all my notifications, all my every single one of my notifications on my phone is off.

I don't have any red button, so I had to manually do all that and it's because I want to manage my inputs. You wouldn't go every single day at McDonald's three meals a day and expect your body to be healthy. And so the inputs into our mind and how we take care of our our mind and our body is the same.

So news and social media and your inputs of being on defense creates this constant state of cortisol to where we're not creating things out of a space of of joy and love. It's typically out of space of scarcity. And now have there been examples of people who have created billion dollar enterprises out of it? Yes, but I'm not sure that that's who we want to model off of moving forward.

If we're really trying to optimize to enjoy the journey and live a life of joy and have that return on joy just because somebody has quote unquote made it so in financial side of things. I mean, we've seen time and time again rock stars and successful entrepreneurs who have drug overdoses and mental health issues. So we are at a point in time where we now understand more about what's happening to our bodies due to chronic stress than we ever have.

And as job creators, entrepreneurs, I think the number one most socially conscious thing we can do is make sure that we are creating an environment for our staff, our team, their families to be safe, protected while taking care of and focus on our mental health and still achieve high levels of professional success and commercial success. It is possible I am doing it. I have multiple eight figure businesses that that you know, that run with that mentality. But it does require intentional design from the beginning and a little bit of patience to understand that you're not going to see a lot of people right now modeling. Similarly, you start to see more and more. But it's it's we're on the front edge, the bleeding edge of this kind of a work revolution.

Alicia:

So good. And this is the perfect segue way for you to share with our listeners how they can connect with you.

Brent:

Yeah. So the best, the fastest way we check the email I'll have is brent.freeman@stealthventurelabs.com. Our website is StealthVentureLabs.com. That's kind of our whole website my personal is brentfreeman.me and I'm on Instagram Brent double underscore Freeman Brent underscore Freeman reach out in any of those channels happy happy to connect.

Like I said, I'm in the process, the early stages, you know, I'm running a lot of businesses, but I'm in the early stages of kind of codifying all of this into a book and framework to share with the world and hope to be sharing more and more of this over time with with the public.

Alicia:

Awesome. Well, you are a wealth of information. We probably could have done a full, full day seminar just letting let's share this has been fantastic and I do encourage our listeners to re listen to this one. There is so much so much wisdom that you just kind of like to do like skate it over so quick. It really, really is a pleasure having you on and I appreciate everything that you shared with us today.

Brent:

Brent Thank you for having me, Alicia. I appreciate it.

Alicia:

And of course, thank you to all of our listeners. You know that we're doing this for you. If you haven't already subscribed, make sure you do so. And until next time, we will see you in the next episode. You've just listened to the mind of Business Success podcast Connect with me on social media. You can find all of my links on my website at Alicia Cramer dot com.