Episode 010: JV Crum III

Intro: 00:01

Hi, I'm Rock Thomas, the founder of M1. The tribe of healthy, wealthy and passionate people, also known as fulfillionaires. You're listening to the I am movement podcast where we believe words that follow I am follow you. Join me and the world's greatest thought leaders as we discuss the power of transformation and making success a part of your identity.

Rock: 00:32

Welcome to the I am movement podcast where the words that follow I am follow you and the power of your identity. One of the strongest forces is this desire to remain consistent with how we describe ourselves, but what we do know is that you will never outperform your own self image. Today we have an awesome individual if you want to become a millionaire high-performer stay tuned. Named by Inc magazine as one of the top 13 business shows, JV Crum. The third hosts the conscious millionaire podcast, our radio network with over 2000 episodes and heard in 190 countries. That's right, 190 countries. JV is the number one bestselling author who made his first million by the age of 25 very impressive. He is a mindset and strategy expert who mentors small and medium sized conscious entrepreneurs to grow a high profit business by making a difference. Please help me welcome none other than JV Crum, the third.

JV: 01:36

Rock I am so excited to be on your podcast and a huge hello to everybody who's listening cause I already know you are super smart person if you're listening to Rock because stupid people don't listen to people like rock cause rock knows what he's doing. And he's also a mindset expert. So it's kind of fun to be here today with you. And I just thank you for having me on. This is great.

Rock: 01:56

Well, you know, if you can't see us, it's two bald guys here having a chit chat and we're um,

JV: 02:03

We've gotten the hot new look. That's what it is.

Rock: 02:06

You know, people are emulating us in more than one way, hopefully. So let's, let's dig into the whole podcast is, is about interviewing thought leaders and experts, but specifically dialing in to how they overcome some of the limiting labels that life offers us. So let's talk a little bit about where you grew up. And some of the labels you were given. And today, now you're this, you know, thought leader that helps people become abundant and conscious about it. So give us a little bit of the backstory.

JV: 02:37

Yeah. So we're going to pull back the curtains and this is stuff that I realized, I haven't even share it on my own podcast. It just, it never just came up. Right. So I love the fact that you've got a podcast where we can all kind of get out there and go, Hey, this is me now, but this was me before, right. Because I don't know about you, but there is no chance I'd want to live that grade 1 to 12 again because it was, in my case, a horrible experience, a terrible experience. I felt like, so let's do an I am, I am an outcast. I never was in the in group. I wasn't the popular guy, you know, and um, and I hated even going to school early because I didn't have anybody to talk to because I didn't eat it. I had horrible social skills on top of that. I mean, it's so funny what we end up doing, right. So we'd like overcompensate like crazy. So I am unpopular. I am an outcast. I'm, I am somebody nobody wants to have lunch with. I was that guy and it was miserable. It was painful. And you know, so as I, and I am an introvert, I was definitely an introvert. Now I still have a lot of introversion in me. So like in my personal, my private life, it's not that it's private and I'm trying to keep it from anybody else.

JV: 03:58

I just want a lot of personal time. That's all. So I actually today still have trouble on the weekends, wanting to spend time with friends. I have a lot of friends. I'm really fortunate, I know a ton of people. Um, and, but I need personal time. So I still am living out. Uh, sometimes, uh, the, the imposter thing is when I was in the seventh grade, I, you know, I was labeled as stupid.

Rock: 04:30

Okay.

JV: 04:31

And I was put in all remedial classes because I had grown up out in the country where it was two or 300 people. And so I went to a red brick school house with six rooms with sixth schoolmarm, sixth grades. As I go, the Waltons look like a big metropolis compared to us. And, and I look back, I go, wow, how did this happen? I'm going, well you know, let's just be honest. They weren't that smart. Okay. I'm just saying it and I was bored. So by noon I had finished my work. Not very well cause I was bored. And then like in the fifth grade, I'm actually kind of proud of this one. I am the kid who gets sent to the office. I got sent to the office nine times in the fifth grade and it actually takes a little bit of art and science to figure out how to get set that many times. Right. I don't remember one time the principal told me, Dean Kels, I'm sure, I'm sure he's dead by now, so I can just say Dean Kels told me it was something, he'd read an article and I thought, boy, talk about pre-internet days that by the sixth grade you were going to, you were supposed to have learned like 68% I remember it to this day.

Rock: 05:42

Wow.

JV: 05:43

Everything you were ever going to learn in your life. Thankfully that wasn't true for me. Most of it came later. You know,

Rock: 05:51

I would stop you there for a second because you're dropping so many beautiful things. And thank you for I am in this. You said I am stupid. That was something that was, was how do people come to the conclusion? What were, because it's either references, it's an inner narrative or it's an outer confirmation. So what conclusion, where did you get the source of I am stupid.

JV: 06:14

Well, because when we moved into the city, and let's put that in context. So it was a place with 20,000 people, but for us that was the city. Right? And so they looked at my grades and I came from the country. So they said, this guy's obviously stupid. He, you know, he has all these seas, right? So they put me in all these remedial classes for an entire year. But what's interesting is that one of the most important seasons of my life was an I am decision now that you've brought this up Rock, because at the end of the seventh grade, I was just bored beyond belief. Aye. You know? And I said to myself, basically, I don't like this story. Yes. And I said, I am going to figure out the trick. I called it a trick today. I'd call it a strategy, but a trick, you know, to making an egg. I'm going to figure it out. And you know what? Back then that's, it's gone back and forth. But junior high went through ninth grade. So I had two years to figure it out. How do you make an egg? How do I study for it? How do I take notes? How do I write papers? How do I take the test? Can make an egg first semester of high school? I got my semester report card and I had a 4.0 and I.

Rock: 07:27

Well somebody that's stupid does not get a 4.0.

JV: 07:29

Because I changed the I am statement.

Rock: 07:32

Aha!

JV: 07:32

Between seventh grade and in the ninth grade.

Rock: 07:35

What did you change it to?

JV: 07:37

I am going to figure out how to make an egg.

Rock: 07:39

Nice.

JV: 07:39

And I just decided I was going to figure that out. So the fast forward, what's interesting is I graduated 4.0 was valedictorian was a 4.0 school student and college at 19. I was a senior at 20. I was a 4.0 student top of my class in graduate school because this is the power of what we're talking about. Rock.

Rock: 07:59

Yes.

JV: 07:59

I changed my I am statement and I go, what if I had never changed my I am statement.

Rock: 08:06

Now was it a little, was there a little bit of fuck you in that?

JV: 08:09

Yeah, absolutely. I was not going to put up with this. This situation was not good for.

Rock: 08:16

The label you are given the context you are given.

JV: 08:18

I didn't like it. I didn't like the way people were treating me. Uh, I didn't like the classes I was in. I didn't like the teachers. I had a,

Rock: 08:26

Now you may be familiar with this, but maybe not all the listeners. Are you familiar with the Pygmalion effect?

JV: 08:32

Yes. Yup.

Rock: 08:33

So let me just explain it for the context here is you, you can take a classroom and tell the teacher that, you know, these students are excellent students, these students are average and these students are struggling and they will teach generally to the expectations of that. And the results have been proven that whichever students the teacher expected to do well they did well. The ones they expected to do average did exactly average and the one they expected to be on the slow learning or the dis disabled learning, whatever you want to call it, they treated them as though they were a student, a stupid, and they got that result. So you were told that you belong to that particular class and initially you might've bought into it, the teachers bought into it, but something inside of you was stronger. You fought through it and you were able to pull yourself out of it, which a lot of people live their entire life with one label shaping the filter that they look through, the world, the lens they look through the world without being able to fight that system. And my question for you is, what was the inner narrative for you that allowed you to extricate yourself from that label?

JV: 09:46

I think the inner narrative was that I'm going to F the inner narrative and it's actually served me. It served me, you know, to this day I'm going to figure this out. So what's actually happened is any situation I look at rock, it's not arrogance,

Rock: 10:05

It's a confidence.

JV: 10:07

It's confidence that I go, I can do this better. I could figure this out better, you know, you look at what I've done with the podcast, nobody trained me how to do this. You know, we've got 12 million listeners, but the first year I tell people I got up every hour during the night, 15 times a day on certain times. I looked at all my numbers and I changed my marketing on a weekly basis and I, you know, and we're going through all that again now because now I want to get massive engagement with everybody who's listening, coming to our Facebook. So I'm working on strategies to get, you know, just this great deep engagement so that,

Rock: 10:42

Where does your hunger come from? Where does your hunger come from?

JV: 10:47

Oh, that's, that's fantastic. Uh, actually I think in some ways I was born with it in some ways I was born right?

Rock: 10:55

Okay.

JV: 10:55

Uh, because by the time I was four I, I had learned a strategy. I was an only child, so I didn't have any brothers, which in a way I always wanted other children, but we were literally so poor. It's probably good. We didn't have any, cause it was bad enough for me to get a gift anyway, but I kind of learned this strategy by the time I was four that you just tell your parents what you want for your birthday and Christmas and you choose one thing, but you harp on it. You never shut up every day. That's all you talk about. And I realized that if I did that, that on my birthday or Christmas they were going to show up with that gift because I was just harp on it.

Rock: 11:38

Brilliant.

JV: 11:38

So I wanted a pup tent because I grew up out in the country and of course we didn't have a lot of games. And you know, it's a different era, right? For um, I, so we paid a lot of Cowboys and Indians. So I wanted my pup tent cause it fit that cowboy. I was always the cowboy, right? So we had a, we had a tangerine tree, big tangerine tree, and we had an acre we lived on and my grandmother lived with me. So I said, you know, in the household there were plenty of fights over money because when you don't have much money that ends up being a fight all the time. Right. And so I told my grandmother, I said, let's save up the ache cartons. It was the only thing I could come up with. And I, we took one day and we squeezed tangerine juice all day and I put my pup tent up near where the high school kids got off their bus. And I rationed to myself. Yeah. That these high school kids had jobs and I was going to sell them my tangerine juice. Now mind you, this is the 60s. So you know, Lucy was selling psychiatric help for nickel, but I sold them the tangerine juice for a dime, which was actually a pretty big deal. I was like, I was proud,

Rock: 12:53

Yeah.

JV: 12:53

I said yet, right. And looking back, I'm sure they all threw it away. I'm sure nobody drank the tangerine juice, but I sold tangerine juice and then that was the start of everything. Everything I could get my hands on. I was the only kid for some reason. And that little town of two or 300 people who had this kind of initiative, I sold cards, I sold candles. Um, my mother stopped me from doing this because people called the house and were asking if we needed some money. Uh, she took me one day. I was maybe like seven to the city. I remember 20,000 people where there was this one major department store and I saw this fancy soap and it was all in this tissue with a little ribbon around it. And I said, kind of even then I was going, well I could do that. So I went home, I talked to my grandmother and I said, you know, grandma, do you have some ribbon that I wouldn't got toilet paper for the fancy paper. And then I got the cheese grater and then I took all the bars of soap in the bathroom and I graded them up with the cheese crate grater, tied him up in little packages and went around selling them.

JV: 13:58

We had a lot of retired women whose husband died and they moved there. And um, but that got stopped when one of them called my mother and asked her if we needed some help, if we needed stuff. I was coming in and my mother was furious. Uh, but uh,

Rock: 14:13

You are very entrepreneurial, you were very creative.

JV: 14:15

I was and I didn't even know I was entrepreneurial. My dad had a hundred acres and in the summer he'd grow peanuts, which is just the South. So if you don't live in the South, you may not understand that people in the South eat boiled peanuts. It's a big deal. So he would help me in boil the peanuts and then I'd put them in bags and I would take them around town twice a day and I'd sell my bowl peanuts to everybody.

Rock: 14:37

Why were you're not afraid? Afraid of being rejected of not,

JV: 14:42

It's interesting actually wasn't, uh, you know, that's the number one fear sales people have in sales.

Rock: 14:47

Right.

JV: 14:47

And um, I was just driven and at five, you know, I go, Buddha was sitting under the Lotus tree, but I was sitting next to the, standing next to the kumquat tree because I remember when this happened because I thought to myself, my parents had trained me, my mom in particular, when we went to the grocery store, not to ask for the candy bar. Now that was not because she didn't want me eating candy bars. It's because we didn't have any money and she didn't. And she reasoned, if I asked him, she said no in front of people. People would think we didn't have the money, which was in fact the tree, the cat truth. What's the truth? You know, and I'd actually pray to God that mommy would put some candy on the grocery list.

JV: 15:30

Cause if it wasn't on the grocery list, we weren't getting it. So I was sitting there and I said, well this gotta be a solution to this problem. And I said to myself, Rock, so this is in this poor town. Nobody has any money, everybody's broke. And I said, I know I'll grow up and be a millionaire. And I actually ran into the house and told my parents as if I had discovered Eureka, I discovered water, you know, that I was going to grow up and be a millionaire. And I never once doubted that.

Rock: 15:56

And you're five years old.

JV: 15:58

And was five years old.

Rock: 16:00

So it's interesting.

JV: 16:01

The joke is that I became a millionaire so I could buy the candy bar. But that's actually the case.

Rock: 16:06

Yes I get it.

JV: 16:06

That's what motivated me to do it.

Rock: 16:08

I get it. I had the same thing. I was a little slower than you is that 14 years old. My brother beat me up and I wanted to get out of that quandary. And I remember saying to myself also, I will be a millionaire. I remember the moment I remember the words, I remember the feeling. I didn't really know what it meant, but I knew it was my get out of jail free card but you do that at five.

JV: 16:27

Yeah, I figured. I figured. And of course I got there at 25 and really what started the path to conscious millionaire. I didn't know it at the time because conscious millionaire didn't even come to me and I was like 43, 44 something like that. But, um, I got the money, I got the four-story home, I got the Mercedes, I was on the water and it only took me three months to realize that I was still miserable.

Rock: 16:50

Yes.

JV: 16:51

And, and you know, and I think that's the mirage that we have, especially in the United States more than any other country. We have this mirage that if you're famous or you get money or you get, you know, all, all of these external things that actually are nice because you can buy experiences, but we think they have all kinds of value to you that they don't have it all.

Rock: 17:14

Yeah.

JV: 17:15

And it had nothing to do with being happy or fulfilled or having a meaningful life.

Rock: 17:20

No, they make your life a little bit more comfortable. You have a few more choices. But the internal journey, the emotional journey is the work still needs to be done. I get it. So tell us how, like, so you are entrepreneurial, you are very decisive, you are bold, you are creative, you use a lot of the things I talk about. Say yes, figure it out later when I'm committed and creative I can achieve anything. Those are the principles I teach. You're obviously living them. How has the things you learned as a child have served you as an adult?

JV: 17:53

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so I would like to be able to tell you, but maybe not. Uh, because I wouldn't be the person I am today. So I have this strong belief that everything that's happened at our life brought us to this particular moment. And I constantly of a mindset that everything big I'm ever going to do in my life is ahead of me. You know, like I, no matter what I accomplish, I always go, there's still a scratch. It's just scratching the surface. You haven't really, you know, you're still getting to the big stuff. Right. And that's part of the reason, just to digress, that in August and September, in six weeks, I went camping for 24 days. 10 we're in grand Teton national park and I took my first ever personal retreat.

Rock: 18:42

Wow.

JV: 18:43

Bought a new mole skin. I'm a mole skin attic. I got so many molds, heads in different colors and this was a Harry Potter mole skin and the outside paid up five bucks extra for this. And I took it with me and I wrote about the next five years of my life in the next five years of my business, Conscious Millionaire. And then as a bonus, I have a global nonprofit, but I had pulled back because I wasn't quite sure. I didn't have it sharpened in and in one five minute writing I got, I got the nonprofit, I went, Oh, that's what we're going to do. And since then I've just known, okay, now it's time to start doing those projects. I did projects with youth in 10 countries. I want to be in a hundred countries and we're going to be working with 18 to 25 year olds which funny, that was the first group I worked with the first year, but I just did.

JV: 19:33

It was almost there but not quite dialed in. You know how you're close but you're not quite there and once I got clear, I want to help them become the next generation of conscious leaders. But I kept telling myself the last couple of years you've got to have one and only one thing your nonprofit does for it to be big. And then I got it. I'm going to train them to become conscious leaders that go out with one outcome to create a world in which everybody can win.

Rock: 20:02

Beautiful.

JV: 20:02

That's the world that I want to leave as my legacy that I contributed to helping us have a world in which everyone can actually win and so any qualities and systems go away, but people are still called to have person responsibility for standing up and doing it. I think that's an important part of that equation.

Rock: 20:24

It's beautiful. I want to ask you a couple of interesting slash tough questions. Is that okay?

JV: 20:30

Well, I thought we were doing the tough part. She's still ahead.

Rock: 20:35

So as you know, I am similar to you is I help people become millionaires. What has been your personal journey? Because I recently realized that I would take couple of hundred thousand dollars a year and play on the stock market and as I've become better at tracking the different streams of income, I realize that I don't do very well personally in the stock market. It's more of a game and because I have so many other things, sometimes I make a decision. I don't look at it for a week and I'm, Oh, I lost $40,000. When we had the fires in the middle East. The one investment I held went down 40 grand overnight because they decided to bomb the oil rigs in Iran or wherever it was. It was all, yeah, Saudi Arabia, nothing I can do about it. It happened. So I've decided to take that off the table and delegate it to somebody who's a professional. What does being your, um, money cycle, you became a millionaire at 25.

JV: 21:33

Yeah. It's interesting.

Rock: 21:33

Would you be candid and tell us a little bit the flow till today as transparent as you'd like to be.

JV: 21:39

Yeah, no, I will be. Um, I've actually gone through three cycles and now I'm on an upcycle. Uh, that I think is going to be a forever up cycle. What I've learned from going through these cycles. So like I traded in the market and I did such things. Uh, I was actually pretty good at it. I like, I'm a good one trade made 100,000 in a day. Uh, ultimately lost money because I was not paying attention to risk. My trades were good trades, but I wouldn't say using stop losses cause cause you, you know, the stop loss can, can save you forever. Uh, what I learned and, and I'll be very transparent cause I did this show, uh, last year was that when I was growing up, I was sexually abused. And so I've looked at how many things that has influenced around worthiness. So I found that aisle that I've had a patch, a pattern in the past and I, and I think that I'm, I'm now working through it and healing it. I'm consciously working through all of this. Is that when I would get to a certain place, it'd be different. But I got to, you know, place a financial success. Um I would sabotage it.

Rock: 22:53

Yes.

JV: 22:54

And when I went back and looked at it, it wasn't a lack of skills or strategies. Those were good for sure. It was inside feeling on worthy of all this. Right?

Rock: 23:06

I am unworthy, I am unworthy.

JV: 23:08

So I've had to do a lot of work around I am unworthy.

Rock: 23:12

Yes.

JV: 23:13

Amid of this, and I think for a lot of people, I see conscious millionaire journey as a spiritual journey. I think as a modern digital journey, because it's all about making an impact. It isn't. We don't teach people how to do trans-actions that make money. We teach people how to make impacts that make money. It's just a different mindset for certain. A lot of the mechanics are the same, but it's a very different mindset. And so I've had to look at go, what's going on with you? And this last year I've looked really deeply and had to make decisions around, okay, what are you really doing and why are you doing that? And look, I call it the Zen mirror. Look in the Zen mirror really deeply and go, Oh, that's the pattern. And then make decisions to heal that pattern and go, okay, what needs to be healed here? And what's that taught me? It's interesting, the work I'm doing with people now, which is more effective than anything I've ever done. I'm doing as much as 80% of the work with every client is on their internal world because I've realized that wait a minute, all these external strategies are great and I'm good at strategies. I'm good at execution, but until you clean up this stuff, you can't play as big as you're on the planet to be the play and everybody has this stuff going on.

Rock: 24:43

Yes, I mean really well said and I want to just underline that for the listeners because this is a big core part of my belief system and changing lives is a lot of people are trying to control the outside world by, you know, the type of job they have, the type of business they have. If their inner world is fragmented, we've all gone through some form of abuse or trauma or neglect or emotional distancing, whatever fear we want to belong. We want to connect, we want to matter. Our parents were busy working, maybe not on purpose or sometimes my mother used to take me for walks and then she was very extroverted and she would lose me at the age of five or six and I ended up at the police station. But I attached a meaning of her not caring. And then when she would come to pick me up,

JV: 25:28

Or abandonment either.

Rock: 25:29

Totally. And then she would come and pick me up at the police station and she would flirt with the police officers and ignore me. And it was not like, Oh there you are son. It was like, Oh mr officer, how are you? And then you know, I would be grabbing her leg and she'd be like, yeah, yeah, in a minute son. So I have this feeling even today when I go to my mother who's 83 years old, when I walk through the door, if she doesn't turn around and kind of go, Oh, there you are. I feel a little something because that's what I crave is for her to see me and to notice me. So people don't realize that we recreate on the inside the results on the outside and the sabotage is so crucial.

JV: 26:13

Absolutely, I found it in my life. I find it in my clients life. Um, and one of the reasons that I've moving forward this time and just looking at everything is, and I, I think this may be different for everybody Rock, but I just reached a point that I was fed up with dealing with all this stuff and I said, I know it's just time for the sexual abuse that I didn't realize how much I was carrying it around with me. Um, you know, doing a show and telling the whole world actually started liberating these up.

Rock: 26:47

Is that the first time you publicly spoke about it.

JV: 26:49

Yep. Yup.

Rock: 26:50

So how is that feel?

JV: 26:52

Uh, well it was interesting. I felt, I, you know, I had the heart attack last year and I did the show a month later and I felt really called to do the show and I didn't do it with any intention that I was going to get anything from it. That's what's so interesting. And yet I got so much from it, so I didn't talk about, um, I did it with Cynthia Ruiz who had also been and sexually abused. So we had a man and a woman on the show. We chose not to talk about the events themselves. We talked about the healing journey.

Rock: 27:20

Right.

JV: 27:21

We'd each fed through. What I didn't know was that the day it came out was going to be one of the most healing, liberating moments of my life because now there was, this was the secret I had kept from everybody, like five friends knew, nobody knew. And the moment I told everybody, but I did it to help people because I was realizing, you know, a lot of, I'm not alone here, you know, what can I do? I've got a platform. And so I'm constantly asking myself, okay, you're fortunate you have this platform these big. How can you use it for the good of other people? How can you bring, sometimes I bring special shows and fortunately my, my, my, my listeners tend to like them. And uh, so, you know, so I said, okay, this is a special show. And I said what it was about, you know, if somebody had been want to listen, they didn't have to listen. You know, it's like I gave the parental, you know, uh, you know, statement upfront, almost like, you know, we're going to have this conversation today within 24 hours for the first time in my life. It began to be something that happened in the past.

Rock: 28:28

Nice.

JV: 28:29

And now it's really something that happened in the past because I did some more work this summer on it. Um, you know, after an amount healing, trying to get controversial, people can make up their own mind about Michael Jackson. But after leaving Neverland came out and I watched that several times, uh, and Oprah special about it. I went, wow, there's still work to be done because it brought up all kinds of stuff for me. And I said, do the work. And by July I had done it and it's really in the past now. And I said, you know, this has controlled so much of your life. It's messed up relationships, you know, it's done all this. And I said, I'm not willing for that to happen anymore. And when that happened, I didn't realize that I'd been depressed over,

Rock: 29:18

Yeah,

JV: 29:18

You know because when you're in that you don't feel it. But now I can look back and I go, shit, you know, I was depressed, I was anxious. Um, and all that's gone. It's just gone. And it's really in the past. And so I encourage you, if you're listening today, if there's something like that for you that you've been, you know, hiding. And in some ways I didn't realize I was hiding it from myself, but it was my obsession every day. I thought about, of course, every day and now I, you know, I'm bringing it up, but it's like, it's not even part of my world. It's like that was some other guy. And, and so the liberation was choosing, part of it was going and writing my next five years and I went, wow, this is so much more exciting than thinking about somebody abused me and I just let go of it all. I just let go of it off. But I was ready. I was ready to let go.

Rock: 30:11

Good for you and thank you for sharing that.

JV: 30:13

Oh, I want to do an I am statement. I am healed, right? Because I feel like I am healed. I am liberated because I faced the truth and I told the world the truth and I decided to go on.

Rock: 30:27

Yeah, beautiful. You know there's a saying that I, I learned from one of my coaches, you're as sick as your secrets and we have this desire to be transparent and to be seen for who we are. Yet most of us are covering up our weaknesses or the things that we have shame around and Brittany Brown said this is that when you can share your shameful story amongst a witness that has compassion, you heal yourself and that's probably what happened to you. And this is I think a great message for all the listeners is that, many of us have have little secrets things we're ashamed of, things that make us worry about our biggest fear of not being enough. I got a DUI in 2012 after I got divorced and I hit it for years because I'm Rock Thomas. I'm a coach. I'm, I'm a leader of Tony Robins trainer.

Rock: 31:20

I'm supposed to not make mistakes. I'm supposed to be able to change my state without the need of alcohol. And, but I was weak then. I was, I was in a weak moment. I behave and you know, without wisdom at that moment. And I wanted to hide it cause I wanted people to think I was better than I am. And the reality is I shared it with a group of men. And when I did, three other guys stood up and said, thank you for sharing. Me too is not the me too movement. But I also had a moment and one guy stood up and he goes, well, you guys don't know this, but I was in prison for two years for armed robbery. And we all turned around, looked at him and like, that's actually pretty cool. And so many people got to tell these things they were hiding because they were afraid they wouldn't be enough. So I think you're, you're giving people permission to get rid of the things that they have. Shame around and it's so fricking liberating. So thank you for having the courage to do that.

JV: 32:20

Well, thank you for acknowledging that and, and what was interesting is that I didn't do it for those purposes.

Rock: 32:27

Right.

JV: 32:28

That was the aftermath. That's like, Oh my gosh, I'm really liberating. And that was, and then you think about in the course of time that all my life, this had been, you know, my hidden secret.

Rock: 32:41

Yes.

JV: 32:41

It only took like a little over a year and just feels healed. It's like I've gone on, it doesn't have anything to do with my life now. It doesn't have anything to do with my intimacy or my relationships and I just want to be whole and complete in everything I do. So that's why I've been able to look at, Oh, well why would you, why were you sabotaging yourself every time you had mega success financially it's like, Oh, doc didn't feel worthy. I didn't feel like I observed it.

Rock: 33:12

And everything that goes with the loss of control, of being in a situation that you can't control all contributes to the psyche and what we deserve and what we can affect in our life. So I mean now today,

JV: 33:25

I want to add one thing is because you know I talked about how now with my clients, every client I'm doing the work that I just did with myself. Yeah, I don't even advertise. That's what I do, but it's who I attract and their healing as well and becoming more successful. And so if you're listening and you're going, yeah, but I went through this pain, what I can tell you personally, and you've read it and heard it other places I'm sure is that the pain and the adversity and the healing path, as horrible as some of it was as painful and difficult as some of it was. I'm talking for myself and I'm sure it is for, for you if you're listing on the other side of it, I just want you to know there is light and that you will have ways that the universe will show up and give you ways you can use that wisdom to help other people. And that's one of the biggest joys you can have because now you have more tools and you wouldn't have had the tools if you didn't have the wisdom that came from going through that experience.

Rock: 34:34

Yeah. Life's not happening to you. It's happening for you if you choose to look for the lesson and everybody are teachers. So we could probably talk for another couple of hours about a whole bunch of stuff and time has flown by. So if people want to follow you, the best thing I guess is to lock, lock into your conscious millionaire podcast show. Are there other ways that they can connect with you?

JV: 34:57

Sure, absolutely. If you could have consciousmillionaireshow.com you can sign up for the show on iTunes on stitchers. We're, we're six days a week. And, uh, I look at every one of our episodes as a training to help you on a mission to make an impact, make that impact and turn that impact into your first million and get the fulfillment you want. That I found only comes from doing something that's in your heart that really you feel like you're on the planet to do it, but do a profitably so that you're growing financial success and impact together. And if you'd like a copy of my book, I'd love to give it to you. It's conscious millionaire, grow your business by making a difference. Uh, when it came out, I am, I'm a numbers geek. I'm a tax attorney, so I'm always playing with numbers. It was the number one book on Amazon is number one in 34 categories and we had 50,000 downloads in three days. So that was fun. And I'd just like to give it to you and you can get that book. It's a whole handbook on how to consciously grow your business conscious millionaire.com forward slash free book. Again, it's conscious millionaire.com forward slash free book.

Rock: 36:09

So I like to end the show with you doing an I am statement. I'm going to give you a little bit of time to think about it while I remind the listeners that there is this force within you that is undeniable, is the way you describe yourself consciously and unconsciously. So the work that I believe is really important is for you to start to look at the labels that have been given to you, suggested to you, confirm to you by the outside world and that you've taken on and you continue to live through so you can change them. You can go from working hard to working smart, from being dyslexic to being a number one selling author. It doesn't matter. You could go from like JV did from being stupid to being a 4.0 you can decide that you're going to run your brain differently than the world is offered for you. And it starts with the I am statements in my opinion. That's the core. Build it from the inside out, romance, that new higher version of yourself. Surround yourself with people that are going to confirm that for you. And then watch it happen. It's happened to me. It's happened to JV. So JV, who are you?

JV: 37:16

Well, this is exactly what came up. I am love manifesting abundantly.

Rock: 37:23

Beautiful and you are an amazing podcast or you're a very generous person. You're a person who cares deeply about the welfare of other people and you dig in deep on a daily basis to make a difference in people's lives. And we appreciate that, uh, that part of you. Thank you.

JV: 37:40

Thank you Rock and thank you for showing up and listening to Rock and I and for showing up and listening to the I am podcast.

Rock: 37:48

So this is the I am podcast. If you like it, please write us a review and share it with other people. We look forward to seeing you in the episode. And one more time. Thank you JV for showing up.

Outro: 37:58

This is the #IAmMovement podcast. To find out more about how you can join the #IAmMovement and take your life to the next level, go to GO M1 dot com, GOM1.com.