Jared Gainham, lead trainer, self mastery for men, also affiliated with Tony Robbins.
Tell me about your vision.
Yeah, so it was 2018-19 and I had just been through a divorce.
I had just been through basically bankruptcy of my business.
I was doing really well at the time and I just kind of hit rock bottom.
It was one of those moments where it was like I felt like I was failing in every single
category as a man.
And I knew that I had potential but I didn't know how to let it out.
And what I decided to do was like if I can literally help myself out, if I can figure
a way out of this and master myself in some way, I'm going to turn around because it can't
just be me.
There's other men that are feeling this way.
If I can turn around and turn my life around in a positive way, I'm going to dedicate my
life essentially to turning around and helping other men do the same thing.
That's awesome.
Well, that's awesome.
And I say that as a man who was also divorced February of 2018.
So the silver, a good friend of mine, John Whaley, fantastic consultant, calls it the
silver road of progress instead of the silver lining.
And I was like that is so spot on to know.
So you went through that divorce.
One of my friends said, Jackson, I'm not worried about you because you don't drink.
And I was like, well, you got a good point.
What was it like for you though?
There were some really hard aspects of that.
How did you get through that?
Was it easy?
Did you have falls?
Did you skyrocket to success immediately?
No, I think I hit every branch on the way down.
I think that's what happened.
So I'm the type of guy where I'm a coach.
I help people and my ex-wife had a ton of problems.
And I was like, well, if I can't save her, then who am I as a coach?
So I kind of went down with the ship.
I had addiction issues.
And it took everything in my power to actually end up leaving.
And I finally did.
But when I did, I was 80 pounds overweight due to all the stress.
I was close to six figures in debt because simultaneous, when it rains, it pours.
My biggest client at the time, I was doing large scale video production in arenas, like
MMA events, UFC fight pass.
I had camera cranes and instant replay and I had production.
So I had high overhead.
My biggest client stops paying me.
It goes on.
So now I'm on the hook for all of this overhead.
And I have no place to stay because I'm in significant debt.
My parents let me stay at their condo, but it was an over 65 community and they weren't
living there.
So I was getting threatened to be evicted.
So I had to hide in the dark essentially from that.
So it was really, really bad.
And I just thought though, like I'm a man, obviously.
And it's one of those things where it's like men think that the most obvious thing is the
solution.
The solution was, well, if I just change my environment, if I get out of the bad relationship,
it's going to heal everything.
But it didn't, right?
Because wherever you go, you go with you.
I still had all my own stuff that I hadn't dealt with.
I'm like, okay, well then maybe I'll work on some strategies or tactics.
So I'm going to try to build a business or I'm going to try to go to the gym.
What I found out though, and this is actually what transformed it for me.
It was like, I told you it was 3 a.m. and I'm figuring this out.
I realized that every problem in my life came down to either a decision that I had made
or failed to make.
So a decision that either to stay or the decision to not set a boundary.
And then I said, okay, well, every decision that I've made or failed to make is because
of my thought process.
And I go, well, where does that come from?
That comes from my conditioning, from how I grew up.
And I go, okay, well then so what is conditioning?
And I go, oh my God.
It's what I believe I am.
I go, everything in my life, I might not have liked it, but at some level, I believe that's
either what I deserve or that's how I'm identified.
And so I realized I go, you don't get what you want.
You get what you believe.
I'll say it again.
You don't get what you want.
You get who you believe you are and you get what you believe that you deserve.
And so what I did was I go, it's not about changing my environment.
It's not about tactics or strategy or trying to get the latest magic bullet fix or something
like that.
I need to literally change my self-concept and what I believe myself to be.
And if I can get a handle on that, everything will change almost by osmosis.
And when I really got a handle on that, what happened was I still had to do the work.
I still had to go to the gym.
I still had to start a business and things like that.
But because the perception, the identity had changed, everything that used to be like pushing
a boulder up a hill was suddenly very easy.
And I was able to get out of debt very, very quickly.
I was able to turn around.
I'm in a different relationship.
I turned around that aspect of my life.
My business was doing great.
I'm doing six figures again in a different business helping men.
But everybody focused on the tactics and the strategies and what's the cool thing of the
day when it's really the principles and the energy behind it which makes a difference.
I love that.
There's so many principles of wisdom that you talked about on that path and that journey
to uncover your next levels.
I'll add a little color commentating to it.
New perspective and you feel free to challenge it.
The process of growth is to mathematicians, right?
Writing on chalkboards and realizing, oh, wait, his formula.
Oh, his formula.
You get to share that stuff.
So Jared, one of the stories that came to mind as you talked about that that I think
is often overlooked in the coaching world though is the story of Job.
Now granted, I believe the story and happen to have that belief set.
But with Job, here's this man that was deemed perfect who all the variables in his life
were correct.
He was following the principles.
He was doing the tactics, doing the strategies, doing everything that he needed to and yet
even still everything in his life that was outside of his internal control was going
completely south.
And when his wife said, why don't you just curse God and die?
And basically all his friends said, hey, this is all your fault.
You're the bad guy in this situation.
He came back and he said, God giveth, God taketh away.
And I'm not going to give up on my internal commitment to who I am even though the external
is not showcasing the results, so to speak, that the world can easily judge and say, oh,
man, that guy's awesome.
Look at what he's done.
So how does if that maybe you believe the story is a myth, but my question for you is
how does your process align with that or is it truly, no, if you do A, B will happen?
It's not if you do A, B will happen.
I've had to reverse engineer this because as I was doing it, it's like unconscious competence.
I'm just doing it.
And now that I've had the benefit of some time away on the other side of it, I'm able
to look back at it with a fresh set of eyes.
I'm like, well, what really made the difference?
And the one thing that made a difference in all of it was I had a tremendous amount of
purpose and you can call it faith, right?
It's not necessarily a faith in a particular religion or anything.
I just believe faith has a definition, it's action and a belief.
There you go.
So what I came to was I somehow I adopted at a very early age, everything for some reason
is happening for my highest benefit.
What can I learn from this?
And I had a purpose and even since I was a child, my purpose was how can I help people?
How can I serve people?
And even when everything was falling apart, the question was how can I use this to help
other people?
So I created a framework.
It's a framework, right?
Like everybody has a framework, but I'm just sharing with you mine.
It's been useful for me.
I call it the seven levels of self mastery and everything is important on this list.
And what I've noticed is the head of the list tends to pull the train.
And so what it is, is number one above all is your purpose or your mission, your spiritual
vision, right?
I'm going to have you pause and reveal this on the full show as well, because this is
fantastic.
I definitely want to hear the framework.
They're super important for the sake of segments, though.
We're going to put a pin in that one.
I do want to, I might tie these things together.
So if we look at, if we go back and we look at the story behind your why, and I still
want to tie it back to this angle though.
Your why's, you have a lot of them, I can tell that.
You're super deep.
And that's a huge thing because you got a structured set of reasons and purposes for
why you do things.
So as you think about the stories behind it that have propelled you to where you are,
I'm still going to tie that back to that question of, okay, so you've got these principles that
you're now, you've now gravitated.
You've got your purpose.
If all of the, if all of the accolades and all of the life accomplishments, the byproducts,
the variables that you associate with the effort and the work that you put in, were
not happening, would you still have your commitment to stay focused on doing the right things,
so to speak?
Where would you take that?
Yeah, because I think one of my number one values is congruency.
And for me, the reason why I even tried to improve my life in the first place was because
I knew there was a version of me as a man, like not an accolade or a thing, but my own
inner potential and my own blocks and barriers.
And so it's called self mastery for men.
It's because I did it for myself.
It's like, I know there's a version of me.
How do I get that out?
And it's all about potential and self actualization, really.
So it doesn't, I really don't, I don't know if you can tell by my energy.
I don't care about accolades or, or esteem or massive outwardly success.
You need that, especially in the world today.
But for me, this has all been an inward journey of just discovery and doing the right thing
and congruence and being true to your word.
I think what's cool about what you said is, and I'm with you on this, it doesn't actually
matter if I can tell or not, right?
It matters that you were there with that.
And at the same time, that's why I ask you hard questions.
Cause I'm like, this guy's got it.
So I'm making this a little deeper than most people because you're, I'm like, I want to
eat into the very best of what Jared has to offer and you're crushing it for me.
So thank you for teaching me a lot.
You're welcome.
And thank you.
And you mentioned the story of Joe about a friend of mine.
He's awesome.
He goes, you know, be careful what you wish for it.
Cause you literally, you will literally get it.
And he said that in a good way though.
And I remember cause you mentioned Tony Robbins, you mentioned Job.
I was at a Tony Robbins seminar.
It might've been 2017 or 16 and my life was going well.
You know, I had a good business.
I was still married.
The woman I was married to was my college sweetheart.
It wasn't perfect, but things were good.
I'm like, man, things are really good.
What's the next level?
And like, you know what, man, Tony's on stage.
He seems like he has his act together.
I want mastery at that level.
That'd be awesome, right?
And I just thought it would be you learn and grow and the universe is like, Hey, congratulations.
Everything's falling apart and now you have to figure it out.
But I would have never gotten to the path I'm on now had none of that stuff happened.
So I always look, you can only connect the dots looking backwards sometimes.
And I would have never been here if none of that stuff happened.
I look at it that way.
Super, super well said.
Tony Robbins, again, 2017.
That's when I watched I Am Not Your Guru.
I watched it with a notebook and took notes.
And one of the most important notes I wrote in there was a goal to be the best husband
I possibly could be the best I could at that.
And I hadn't done that before.
I mean, I had been the best father.
I had been a good husband, maybe even a great, but not the best I could.
And he inspired that.
And it led to me realizing how I could be a better leader in all my relationships and
show up the right way.
So huge shout out to that grateful to hear that you've been involved.
I only watched the Netflix version of it.
You've been involved in a much deeper level.
So I can really appreciate that.
We're going to go to a couple more questions.
One, where are you going with your vision from here?
Where I'm going is I want to help as many men as possible transform their lives in a
positive way.
With masculinity, there's like two camps right now.
It's like people that are super, super nice guys, and they've kind of abdicated their
power.
But then there's the pendulum where it's that goes super hyper alpha masculine and uncaring.
So what I've discovered is if you can integrate that, you got to have both a little bit of
a backbone and you got to have your heart online at the same time.
And so I'm all about helping men authentically become their masculine self, not for power
or but so they can have internal power in a healthy way.
And then not only that, but I want to really help people set free from their own perceived
limitations.
Because of my own limitations in the past, I've had to discover the most rapid ways of
helping somebody overcome them.
I've developed a process that's called a breakthrough session.
It can really help somebody get rid of a lot of negative conditioning in a very short amount
of time.
So I help men with that.
I've been getting more speaking opportunities.
I've spoken for Tony, which is a full circle moment.
Thank you, man.
When I was in my parents condo 3am, I'm like, one day I'm going to go from where I am now
to maybe I'll speak on stage for Tony one day.
And it actually happened.
And I was like, oh my god, this is really happening, which is nuts.
And so I'm getting a few more of those.
And so I just want to start to build the vision even more and flesh it out and help even more
people and bring it to a much, much larger scale.
That's awesome.
Do you have a goal for being on the show?
The goal is to awareness, put myself out there, share with people, share my story, hopefully
inspire some people, make connections with you.
You know, Joe, Joe's a great guy.
Joe's a connector.
It's a skill that I don't necessarily have.
I'm more of a.
I'm out to results for Joe.com.
Joe gets that guy.
Yeah, amazing.
Yeah.
So I mean, Joe is he's a connector.
And it's not necessarily a skill that comes easily for me.
So I'm looking forward to, you know, getting to know you better and opportunities that
come from it and so on.
Oh, man, Jared, I might fire hose you a little too much.
I am a connector through and through that is my super power.
So let's yeah, feel free to leverage that.
All of you listening to this to same thing.
I love connecting great people.
That's what I like.
Oh, cool.
You can be great with this person.
And I hope things come of it.
So we're going to dive into.
If that was a segment for the show, I was telling you that me and you personally.
Right.
But if you wanted to give me an answer for the show, I'd have to give you an answer for
the show.
Oh, well, I mean, that's I think it's great how it was for the show.
You're cool.
You're cool with that?
Yeah, totally.
OK.
Yeah.
Anytime the little prompts on there, we're going to use all those segments as their own
podcasts.
OK.
We literally have already filmed five or six podcast episodes.
OK, cool.
So we're going to go to the next one.
This is the last one.
Double headed question.
Feel free to hit back.
This question is obviously leading the witness.
And therefore, if you don't agree with it, let us know.
Why do leaders hide from funding their visions and how can leaders lean into funding the
vision?
Why do they hide from funding their vision?
Number one would be uncertainty.
Number two would be lack of faith.
They talked about identity.
You have a purpose and a vision, which is strong.
But if you don't believe you're the person that can fulfill it, you won't do it.
There'll be hesitation.
There'll be procrastination.
You won't have faith in it.
You won't put money there.
And so people, they do affirmations.
And I believe this and I believe that.
And they try to hype themselves up.
But no matter how much you hype yourself up, if you don't internally identify as the person
that can fulfill the vision, you're not going to.
Right.
So I think a lot of it is just it's fear.
It's uncertainty.
It's not having enough faith in themselves.
It's not having the internal identity.
And how can people overcome that?
I just talked with another coach.
Ironically enough, like I'm a coach that helps men and coaches enjoy working with me because
they feel like I get it.
And I had a coach and he works for a prestigious coaching company.
And he's like, I want to work with you.
I'm going to pay in full right there.
I didn't even have a sales call with him.
He just goes.
I'm going to say real quick.
There's actually no irony in that.
LeBron James has like 40 coaches.
So I hear people say, I don't I already have a coach.
I'm like, oh, you have somebody who's toxically hanging on to you for dear life.
We need lots of coaches.
So good.
Keep going.
You're the best in the world.
And coaches have coaches.
So he saw me on social media.
He knew what the offer was.
He sent me a message on Facebook like maybe three months ago.
He goes, I'm in.
Let me save money.
He called me today, paid in full.
I never had a full enrollment call with him.
Nothing.
And I seriously I asked him, I go, what was it that made you decide to do?
I go, you'd be surprised, man.
A lot of people say that they want to do stuff, but they wait six months a year.
They never do it.
I go, why?
Why now?
And he's like, I'm booked up until August.
I'm going to book you now for August.
So that way it's in.
And I'm like, what?
Tell me your thought process here.
He goes, well, I'm a coach and I know the number one thing in my clients is resistance
and they put stuff off and they don't do it.
And he goes, you end up manifesting or mirroring in your clients what you don't heal in yourself.
He goes, if I'm going to expect people to overcome their limitations, limiting beliefs,
I have to take bold action myself and schedule things and get over my resistance.
So I'm paying you now.
And I'm like, wow, that's amazing.
It was a lesson for me.
Super wise.
Yeah.
So that just happened this morning too.
So it's an ironic question.
So it's one of those things where you go first, you do it scared.
There's a situation one time I told you previously I had a video production business.
Before I had the video production business, I worked minimum wage at a radio station doing
video.
So I was completely redundant and unnecessary.
But I would video the guests when they came in.
I got married to my ex that I told you about.
I went on my honeymoon for a week.
I came back.
They realized that I was redundant because I wasn't there and they fired me after my
honeymoon.
And so I sent out my resume to a whole bunch of different companies and video production
companies.
The one that got back to me was an international MMA production company where I was going to
be the head of production.
It was way above my pay grade as a small scale local videographer for a radio station.
And I was terrified.
And I remember I had a two bedroom loft apartment with vaulted ceilings.
And I'm standing in one room, but I can see the refrigerator.
And I got the call.
And everything slows down.
And I go, this is way above my pay grade here.
But then I go, they're hiring a head of production.
Either I do it or someone else is going to do it.
And I'm going to see this on TV.
If I see this on TV, I'm going to be complaining I could have done it better as an ego thing.
I go, so I'm just going to do this and do it.
And I'll figure it out on the way down.
And it made a principle for me.
I go, anytime I'm in a situation and it's scary, but it's an opportunity and it's for
my best good and it offers a lot of growth.
Even if I don't know how to do it, I take it because I'll figure it out.
I love that.
And those of you listening in, this is not an uncommon reality.
This is a super common reality for those who make success happen.
When I was at my first job in Austin, when I moved as a married man with Spoon Chapman,
and they asked me in the interview, I was going to do Spanish surveys for evaluating
benefits packages.
And she said, do you know how to do PowerPoints?
I need somebody to do this.
And I said yes.
And I went home to my wife and I said, how do you make a PowerPoint?
So she taught me right there on the spot how to do it.
I knew what it was.
I just didn't know if I knew.
And I knew I could figure it out.
So I spent the whole night learning PowerPoint.
And while that was just for a mediocre job that I may have made minimum wage part time,
it's the principle that has driven me to get to where I don't know how to do a podcast.
I just did it.
You know, let's just make it happen.
So leaning in, it was a fantastic example, Jared.
Thank you for that.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.