Transcript

G.R.O.W. from Homeless to 9 Figures - Stephen Scoggins

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 59 min · 13,580 words · 213 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "G.R.O.W. from Homeless to 9 Figures - Stephen Scoggins", an episode of The Proven Podcast published September 10, 2025 (59 min, about 13,580 words). It mentions 54 people, works and ideas, including Five Constraints, Shadow Work, Eric Thomas, Authenticity, Radical Honesty.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Five Constraints, Eric Thomas
  2. – 10:00: Authenticity, Emotional Dysregulation, Eric Thomas, Five Constraints
  3. – 15:00: Metallica, Radical Honesty, Ramstein, South Florida
  4. – 20:00: Five Constraints
  5. – 25:00: Shadow Work, SEAL community
  6. – 30:00: Authenticity
  7. – 35:00: Man's Search for Meaning
  8. – 40:00: Authentic Life, Harris Poll, Radical Honesty
  9. – 50:00: New Zealand, Sabbatical
  10. – 55:00: Discipline, Sharon Ramsey
  11. – 59:31: Integrated Alignment Method, Renaissance Fair, Safe Haven, Stephen Scoggins

Notable quotes from "G.R.O.W. from Homeless to 9 Figures - Stephen Scoggins"

  • The end of the day, we're we're all facing what I've described as the five constraints. You know the history or statistics would tell you that lack of funding lack of sales…
    about Five Constraints · at
  • Five constraints. So if you can imagine one of our good mut good buddies et Eric Thomas says you gota you got to want it as bad as you want to breathe.
    about Eric Thomas · at
  • That means to you, right? It's a resilience piece, right? And the opposite of insecurity is authenticity.
    about Authenticity · at
  • Result that I get that I didn't want bad decision bad result that I had came at a moment of emotional dysregulation 100% when there was so much anxiousness inside of me that I was just like this is a temporary okay just do that.
    about Emotional Dysregulation · at
  • Going to you're going to cause yourself problems. So I feel like the starting point is radical honesty.
    about Radical Honesty · at
  • You have it's it's they call it shadow work for a reason. You have to confront things. and bring things in your environment and kind of like show love to things that maybe you dislike about yourself.
    about Shadow Work · at
  • And then just like Victor Frankle says, A man's search for meaning. He's like once you have the lesson, once you have the meaning behind the lessons, the pain, the discomfort, the shame, the guilt, everything associated with that.
    about Man's Search for Meaning · at
  • To hear yours as well. about seven years ago Harris Time magazine with a Harris poll did a survey of about 400,000 Americans. Okay. And they were specifically researching essentially joy fulfillment, kind of like feeling like you're living.
    about Harris Poll · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Eric Thomas — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Sharon Ramsey — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. and the only and when I started tackling that, this is before I knew about Dave and Sharon Ramsey and all that stuff, who were great people in their own right. I actually…
  • Stephen Scoggins — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Connect with you guys. I'm probably I'm personally probably most active on Instagram myself, which is Stephen Scoggins. yeah. So, I appreciate you actually asking. Thank you.
  • Charles (Podcast Host) — Person · 1 mention
  • Dave Ramsey — Person · 1 mention
  • Rory Vaden — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Metallica — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Driving back from work or going to the store or whatever I was doing and listen to things like Ramstein or Metallica and all that. And all of a sudden, I'm just I'm going to…
  • Ramstein — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Driving back from work or going to the store or whatever I was doing and listen to things like Ramstein or Metallica and all that. And all of a sudden, I'm just I'm going to…
  • SEAL community — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. I learned this from the SEAL community. I've been blessed to be around those guys and they say, Whatever your fear is, that's your short line.
  • Harris Poll — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Beacon Press — Company · 1 mention
  • Brand Builders Group — Company · 1 mention
  • ETA LLC — Company · 1 mention
  • Perigee Books — Company · 1 mention
  • Ramsay Solutions — Company · 1 mention
  • Stephen Scoggins Companies — Company · 1 mention
  • University of Vienna — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • South Florida — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Right. I think a simple example is when people are driving and I you know I live in South Florida and the drivers are the best in the world. I swear they're not a problem.
  • New Zealand — Place · 1 mention · first at
    You doing it with, if anybody? And where are you going? Essentially. Okay. So, I went to New Zealand for 3 weeks. Okay.
  • Renaissance Fair — Place · 1 mention · first at
    At least start the momentum. And a friend of mine, we were at it's called the Renaissance Fair down here in Florida. And we was we were trying to knock down the pins.
  • Galapagos — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome back to the Proven Podcast. On this episode, Stephen walks us through exactly how he went from homeless to running a ninefigure business. An individual who teaches you how to grow, which will make a whole lot more sense in the episode. It's a step-by-step process to get realigned and to break through all the limitations that you have. I can honestly tell you this might be my favorite episode I've ever recorded. The show starts now. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Stephen, I'm excited to have you on, man. Bro, dude, I'm so excited to be hanging out with you, man. We It's crazy. I know we're traveling like crazy. We're both in different states and all kinds of stuff outside of our normal studios and stuff, but uh great conversations just need to be had.

Yeah, it's it's fun. I remember our first intro call, we just kept going and going. I was like, this is a no-brainer. This is easy. So, for the four or five people out there in the world who actually don't know who you are, Gary, kind what have you done? Where's your success? What's your story? Well, you know what's crazy is I'm pro probably most notably at this stage of the game known for being a bit of a life and business strategist. Uh but more than anything else is kind of the the story behind the story, right? The origin story, if you will. Um and grew up in a a traditionally dysfunctional environment which created dysfunctional Steven along the way. Uh found myself later on at in a homeless journey for about 60 to 90 days and that is actually a real homeless journey. um met my eyes in a mirror, remembered some some key things that a mentor said and that kind of we were talking about off air about

got me unlocked and got me reawakened as kind of on a journey and then went on to build a nine figure business um that had 400 team members across three states. Um been very fortunate and very blessed to exit that company in late 2023 and now I get to do what I love which is hang out with amazing people and teach them amazing things. So that's kind of my heart behind the everything else.

So you you went really quickly over some of that and I'm going to get make sure the audience caught that. You went from homeless to nine figure company. That's most people go don't have it that bad. Most people are like, "Hey, you know what? I'm doing okay. I did the normal route. I went to college. May or

may not have gone to class. What I don't and come through that all of a sudden now you're you're comp you went homeless

just sitting there having to focus on that to now you're running and we were talking off camera that when you're running those environments and you create that type of environment, there are some insecurities that come into play. There are some dysfunction that comes into play. There are some huge things. One of the reasons I want to talk to you is because you are as vulnerable as you are. You show up authentically. You're like, "Hey, this is this is the truth." So, you talked about dysfunction, you talked about vulnerabilities. I want to kind of get into some of those as you're building towards

a nine figure business. What does that take, you know, to go from homeless to nine figures, you know, what what does that take for you to pull yourself out of that?

Well, you know, it's funny. One of the things I tell entrepreneurs all the time is uh presence is important. So, a lot of times, it's funny. I did this on a stage not that long ago. Um we've probably had I don't know thousand entrepreneurs or whatever it was. Um and I was like, "Hey, by show of hands,

raise your hand right now if you think you should be further ahead than you actually are."

And without question, 100% of the hands up. 100% hands go up. Yeah. Right. So you you you very quickly realize that um we're actually not that unique. Our circumstances are really not that unique. You might have a a situational environment like I did that was unique from, you know, someone that maybe went to college, got a four-year degree or an 8-year degree or whatever. So, different starting points, but at the end of the day, we're we're all facing uh what I've described as the five constraints. You know the history or statistics would tell you that lack of funding um lack of sales pipeline uh lack of poor market penetration poor leadership which is important but you know there's all these external tangible things that they say the top five or seven things that a business fails for on a regular basis and when I went back and looked at my journey right so the only place I can I can offer any insight from is my own

journey where I've been where I've come from the experiences I've had uh which include the homelessness It includes the uh suspected embezzlement uh lo losing seven plus figures um being poor leadership leading by insecurity leading by fear um simply and honestly like I because I didn't know any better. One of the things I realized very early on is I really only faced really what I refer to as five major life gates right

and at the at the element of each of these five major lifegates are really five constraints. So if you can imagine uh one of our good mut good buddies et Eric Thomas says you gota you got to want it as bad as you want to breathe. Right.

What we don't realize is what's actually constricting our airway. Right. Right. So we go ahead.

So those I was going to say what are those five constraints that most people are running into when it come that is restricting the area because it's nice to say you want it as bad as you breed. You know, it's fun to say it. It's cute. And ET does a great job with, you know, has condensed it into, you know, you want to have something as bad as you want to breathe. But no one gets that level. I talk to people all day long. I'm like, you know, do you what do you want to make? How much you want to do? And they're like, hey, I want to make a million dollars, whatever. I'm like, cool. I go, on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely is you're going to get to that?

And they give some random ridiculous number. I'm like, cool. I put a shotgun in the face of your mother. How bad you're going to do it now. They're like, oh my god. And they stop thinking of the number and they start thinking of ways to do it. So, we can sit there and we can trigger it. But most people don't have that proverbial shotgun in the back of the head of their lung. So when we talk about Eric Thomas and and what he's done about bad as you want to breathe, it's cute to say it. It's it's adorable, but it doesn't get us there. So there's no there's five things that are in the way. What are the five things that you've experienced that are constraining us?

Yeah. So I'm going to run through them real fast and we can we could come back and touch on because any one of them we could spend a lot of time on. Um, so I would say that the five constraints are arrogance,

Mhm. ignorance, impatience, fear, and insecurity. And it doesn't matter where you've come from, where you've been. I mean, it literally I see these same five things over and over and over. And I first, again, I first learned them myself. So, let's talk about the the the polar opposite. So, the opposite of arrogance is teachability.

Mhm. Okay. The I'm sorry, the opposite of arrogance is humility. Opposite of ignorance is teachability. Opposite of impatience is not patience. It's actually presence.

Okay. The opposite of fear historically is some form of faith. No matter what that means to you, right? It's a resilience piece, right? And the opposite of insecurity is authenticity.

Mhm. Very few of us will actually or have done the work to date to discover what makes us tick.

Mhm. Which of those things that makes us tick can we lovingly respect even though we may not like it very much and bring into our full integrated self to create an authentic self to then begin to build the other the other five areas and leaders specifically and again I've I've worked with eight nine 10 figure earners um and they all all of us have struggled with each of those and honestly I I would say that you it's kind of like you know at from zero to million dollars there's one form of of battling those from a million to 10 million there's another form of battling you know I and when I got to about $30 million in topline revenue, I really really battled arrogance.

Mhm. I really did. And and in its truest form, meaning I thought I was all that in the bag of chips,

right? And um that's when I politely went through my little embezzlement struggle and realized that I wasn't all that in a bag of chips. And even the even the most unlikely of us can easily be humbled really quickly, which is it turned out to be a blessing. I say that to say that each entrepreneur, each achiever, each person who's uh stepping out in faith to build something largely from scratch um needs to focus on the inside. I like to say you can't scale dysfunction.

Mhm. Right. And the problem with scaling dysfunction is a lot of times the dysfunction that's actually happening inside of our business is a byproduct of what's happening inside of us.

Right. So there's a lot of things that you went over there. I want to try and tap into it. One of you said join the work.

We talk about this all the time. This has become a placeholder. It's become almost a platitude. Go do the work

when you're scaling all those cuz as you were going through the five I was like yep yep yep. I was like score I fart.

I got a perfect score. I got a perfect score. So you know even though you see success and I think everyone that I've ever worked with ever you know the high achievers that are out there they all check all my boxes at some point and how we deal with those because I think everyone has them. How we deal with them how we show how we pivot when that happens. be it through life punching us in the face and us really you know dramatically hurting people in our lives or embezzlement or whatever you know you run into

we we all talk about doing the work now I know what doing the work means for me uh and it's an ongoing process and it'll probably be something I do actually after I'm dead that's how intense will go beyond me so when you talk about doing the work what is the tangibles of that because we hear it all the time it's like okay high achievers have done the work what does that mean

you know from you know it is it is it is very abstract because I feel like a lot of times doing the work is very specialized. So for example, if I'm someone who um we'll say struggles with impatience quite a bit, right, which is which is honestly me. I'm still to this day I'm I'm very impatient with business practices and stuff like that. I'm impatient with people but not business. Um I like to see things happen quickly, right? Um so the opposite of understanding that is first of all I had to figure out what the root cause was.

Mhm. What is the root desire? what is the root of why I feel the need to get things done quickly? What is the what is my nervous system trying to say about that?

Um, and for me it was a it was a matter of safety. So if you go back in my a little bit of my my past,

right? There was always an urgency to getting food, getting shelter, like there was always an urgency to getting safety. Right.

Right. And because it was always an urgency, it became a pattern that became a subconscious pattern that kept running and running and running and running. Where it affected me in business and relationships specifically is it would cause me to rush ahead and actually respond,

I'm sorry, react to situations rather respond to situations or uh create emotional in fact I would say it this way. It's probably easiest way to say it. Almost every major decision or major result that I get that I didn't want bad decision bad result that I had came at a moment of emotional dysregulation

100% when when there was so much anxiousness inside of me that I was just like this is a temporary okay just do that right thinking I can and and that one decision ironically from coming from that place would cause five more problems had I slowed down developed some presence sat in it actually just got my breathing everything under control, making sure I was regulated. Had I done that, then what would have happened is I would have been able to make a datadriven decision. And I don't care who you are, you hear all the time that if you can make a data driven decision from a strategic vision mindset, then all of a sudden the decisions start to make for themselves and you start to to grow and prosper and scale. Problem is nine, what is it? Nine out of 10 entrepreneurs never break seven figures in topline revenue or maybe eight out of 10, but it's a it's a vast majority of us,

right? Historically with the folks that I've worked with in almost every case, it's there there's a resistance, a complete resistance to going inside to figure out what makes us tick. So I had to stop what I was doing. I had to go and s uh actually do some research. I I started a journal practice a long time ago. Uh I call what I hear you say is whether or not you believe in God is irrelevant. It's a it's a practice of listening rather than speaking.

Right? And so I've discovered that starting your day with presence will help you end the day with presence.

Right? If you start the day with erratic behavior and anxious energy and just running out the door just jumping every place, you're going to you know you're going to you're going to cause yourself problems. So I feel I feel like the starting point is radical honesty.

Right? Can can you be radically honest without guilt, shame, or condemnation? Right. I think a simple example is when people are driving and I you know I live in South Florida and the drivers are the best in the world. I swear they're not a problem.

It's not my experience. So, and I I would sit there and I'd be driving back from work or going to the store or whatever I was doing and listen to things like Ramstein or Metallica and all that. And all of a sudden, I'm just like, I'm going to drive. I'm going to follow you home. You cut me off on like a little fish on fire. I'm like, that's it. You're dead. Everybody dies.

And I remember at one point it got to it was so bad that I was shaking where I couldn't control the vehicle. So, I physically pulled over. I pulled over and I threw the hazards on and I'm like, "Okay, what's actually going on?" I was like, "What is what is actually going on?" Stopping it and going, "Okay, I don't feel safe." And then having to go through and say, "Okay,

because I'm a scuba diver and I've done this enough when I've had just freaked out under water when you're 80 feet under water like I'm going to drown." You're like, "Wait, time out. Is your regulator working?" Yes. Is your first stage working? Do you have air? What are you talking about? Just what? So,

do we have time for a safety stop? Exactly. And also, in the worst case scenario, can you spit and do an emergency ascend? If if you can do that, can you spit out your rag and do an emergency ascend, which please don't do that. They're not fun. I've had to do it. Not fun. So, but being able to pull over and to stop and run through the checklist and go to that root cause of, okay, am I actually in danger when I'm on the road? Am I in danger? Am I not safe? No. Okay. So, is this a perceived reality or or an actual reality?

Being able to stop that. And to your point, every time I run into problems with bad decisions, it's always driven by fear or emotional response. Some of the most successful people I know are absolutely on spectrum. they're they're be autistic or anything else because they have this this disconnect between emotions and not everyone else I know the high achievers out there who are not on spectrum have learned how to disconnect the emotional response to the logical response.

So since we've already discussed it I check all five go me um when you're running

Me too buddy. Yeah we've been there and you know exactly it's like come here it's awesome. So when when you're running into these and and you have these and you're working through these, how do you deal with the arrogance? How do you deal with that next one?

You know, so here's crazy part is is if it's deeply rooted, so you have to realize the arrogance is deeply rooted ironically in the common denominator of the other constraint called insecurity

100%. And if you're not Yeah. It's it's literally I I feel like and here's here I'll tell you where I'll tell you where it showed up for me. This is and this is probably just a simple phrase for me. It showed up in the phrase chasing worth.

Mhm. I felt as if I needed to prove my worth in order to feel validated within self. And because of that, um, you go into, you know, we we've been very fortunate. We've been in we've been in beautiful rooms with amazing humans. They're doing amazing things. Yeah. Um, and you would go into the room and they would, you know, inevitably what do you do for a living pops up and then, you know, and then you kind of go down the the laundry list or your credibility markers and your I started I just, you know, I I just finally decided at one point in time, I finally got to a place I was like, every time I do that, while I've done pretty pretty cool stuff and been very successful in some elements, what really makes me unique is now my ability to just have my worth and based on me.

Like I don't need to prove myself to anybody at this stage in the game. I'm out here trying to serve because I think everybody should um if I can help someone understand things earlier at an earlier stage than it took me to, I can help them resist a lot of pain. Right? So I think in the in the grand scheme of things, it comes a lot to chasing worth and in many respects the five constraints in general are all about chasing worth or some sort or some form of validation.

100%. Right. So you feel like you know I I I'm a nine figure entrepreneur. Look at, you know, I built a business. Woohoo. I'm I'm just like, no one cares, dude. I'll tell you I'll tell you when an entrepreneur cares.

Once when I've come in contact with people, when they care. And and again, you could be, you know, at at a school or you could be in a major mastermind or whatever.

When people care is when you're real. Yes. That's when people care. Like, are you willing to share from your scars? Like, and that kind of thing. And I've got bazillions of them, it seems like. And you know when I have an entrepreneur in front of me a lot of times doesn't and I've had some that are making have had made quite a bit more money than me

and they're trying to salvage their marriage. Yeah. You know I can talk I can talk to them about the difficulty of the relationships and things that I struggled with right of you know a couple of the clients were you know large very large uh earners and they were searching for purpose

because they had gotten all the stuff and realized how empty it was you know. So at the end of the day, I think how quickly can each of us stop and slow down.

You they I call it slow down to speed up. There's another format that I've heard before other people say, but essentially that's what it is. It's like I woke up this morning I and I'll share this with you. Um, now granted, um, I'm a person of faith by nature, and people don't have to, obviously, I love everybody, um, in general, but, my mantra is this, and I say it three times to myself every morning. And this actually was the one of the one of the things that helped me slow down.

Um, I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am wise. I'm a steward of the most high. And the most important one, which was the hardest one to say, especially staring at a mirror,

was I love you, Stephen. And a lot of people can't do that. And it's funny you bring the I love you Stephen one up because when I I I do this exercise with the clients that I have very similar where I say okay who do you love the most in the world who who's that one person if you were going to die and you could you know you had to call someone in 10 seconds who's that person okay they get that person whoever that is they that that space cool what does that person have to do to be worthy of your love

and they'll sit there like nothing it's nothing it's my grandmother I love them like cool what do you have to do to be be worthy of that person's love and they're like and they lock up I'm like it's the same answer

and once you get that Because we have this broken equation that we're taught that like, hey, if you achieve these things, especially as high earners and and entrepreneurs and achievers, if you achieve this, then I'll be enough. And if I get enough, then I'll be worthy of love. And that then it's broken. That at its core is broken. Now, it's a great driver.

If you have that wall of insecurity coming into you, if you have that subconsciously feeding your patterns, you will get into a situation where you will be radically successful. But I had a client who uh is nine figures. She's about to be a billionaire. Phenomenal. We were out working with our clients. They couldn't connect with him cuz he wasn't showing up authentically. And then his little girl came over and he it was just a difficult melting.

Yeah. He just he sat there and he held his little girl and she's sitting there. She was talking about her tooth was coming out cuz she was losing one of her teeth. And he's talking and all of a sudden he just turns into it and they stop and he goes, "Okay, cool." He goes, "I go, "Okay, I'll talk to you later. Daddy's got to finish this." Turns around and all the other people that were trying to do a business deal was like, "All right, we're done. We're not 100%. What do you want? We'll give you everything we have." because they saw the version that he was too afraid to show up vulnerability with to have that type of vulner like here's who I am and again when you're not in that version you are going to push everybody away you're going to make mistakes you're going to do all the things that again I think it's Sanskrit that word you talked about earlier starts with a p patience that's think you're making [ __ ] up but

as you're going through those I think it's fed really high on this subconscious level because everyone comes to on coaches like you and I and they say hey I don't want to make nine figures Yeah. Well, think of it this way.

Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. No, no, go for it. I was So, I had this thought as you were sharing with that that that I want to piggyback off of what you shared because what you shared is absolutely true.

Um, what I've discovered is whether you call it soul or consciousness, it doesn't matter.

Um, but if you're chasing worth, it's a commodity. So, it becomes a transaction. Okay? If you're secure in your worth and your alignment and your purpose and your own vision for your life and the love for yourself and your willing to show up for yourself. I used to self-abandon like crazy. I had the caretaker program. I would try to rescue anything and everything out of their own situations because of the pain that I went through. Right. So, I didn't want other people to experience the pain.

But is your is this solar consciousness is it a commodity or a tool of connection?

To your point when you were just just describing that that story, I've seen that a lot myself. if I've you know I was at an event not long ago and a gentleman massive heart like I saw him away from the event massive heart and um obviously he was he was one of the the folks who was presenting and as soon as he started presenting it was you know I've got this relationship I've got this thing I bought three of these I have four of those I have and they you just I watched the entire audience kind of shut down.

Yep. Right. And I just felt like I remember being my 11-year-old self in a 40-year-old body with a similar transaction or a similar uh mindset and it just maybe it made me want to go embrace this guy and pull him in and say, "Bro, broke, man, you're you're amazing without all that stuff."

Right. Right. And so, is it a commodity? Is it a connection point? Is it is it something you can tie yourself to? Or are you simply and this is where we get in trouble and you had asked this earlier when we first started talking is like what is the what is the essential element the common denominator essentially and honestly it's the we it's the child at its most injured state becomes the most anchored adult

right so if we're 11 years old when that thing happens to us we're we literally carry that 11 year old through 12 13 14 15 16 30 35 40 etc until

they meet someone like yourself Charles who can who can who can like slow them down and say, "Hey, bro, let me help you. Let me let me help you see yourself clearer."

Right? And the moment you can see yourself clear without shame, blame or condemnation, the moment your awakening actually begins and that's when the work begins. I will say that the one of the reasons I feel like the work is not done um was the same reason I avoided it for decades, uh which is I was scared of it. I mean, you have it's it's they call it shadow work for a reason. You have to confront things. uh and bring things in your environment and and kind of like show love to things that maybe you dislike about yourself.

Absolutely. You know, and that's a very difficult thing. Yeah. I learned this from the SEAL community. I've been blessed to be around those guys and they say, "Whatever your fear is, that's your short line.

That's the next thing you need to do. That will bring you home. Find your fear. That's your home." But we don't want to do that. I love how you brought it up. You're like, "Hey, I'm going to go help everybody else because I can avoid then helping myself."

And God, I do that more than I can possibly tell you. It's something I constantly work through on this day. I'm like, I know I need to work on this, but I'm going to go do this. And a lot of people manifest, even if you're not working with other people.

People like, oh, I need to go do this project. I'm going to go clean my house because at least that makes me feel like I did something. I checked the box. So, a lot of people who are listening to this are like, "All right, we get it. The two of you little, you know, high achievers, fruity little work." They're going to say it. I'm going to get the links. It is what it is. I want to get them also something tactical where they're like this. I I know I need to do the work, but right now I need to feed my kids. I've got some business problems. How did this guy do this because, you know, I tell people all the time, you can probably sing happy birthday. Please don't. Really easily.

But if I put a grenade in your hand and take the pin out, you're not going to sing happy birthday so well. So there's a lot of people listening to this saying, listen, I want what's proven. Give me something strategic. Give me that pin that I can put back in the grenade so then I can then I can go do this personal work and do the shadow work. But right now, you know, I can't pay my bills. The economy is collapsing. We've got chaos right now going on.

When someone's sitting there going, "Hey, you were homeless, nine figures, homeless. How what the there's a lot of steps in between like because if I tell someone, hey, go do the work and go hug a tree and go do the shadow work and get into it and really face your fears and your doubts."

That's great. But if they can't eat, they're like, "I got a business that's collapsing, dude." What are the things that in your experience because again you and I both know that

I'll just say it for myself when people do the work the answers that they're looking for the tacticals

they already know it comes out because they're already inside. Yeah. They already know.

So for those of you who are listening I'm doing this for you guys because I know you want something tactical and I'm asking Stephen to get out and say here you go. This is the tactical part of it. But I can tell you if you do the work these tacticals that you already know will already be implemented on your own if you do the work. But the tacticals, if someone is sitting there and they're stuck and they need to start changing things because you've been in rooms and you've been very blessed to be in rooms with amazing people, people who far outranked you education wise and you still found a way to succeed. What are some of the tactical things in business that people do right now that have proven success?

You know, it's really funny. I think um they say ignorance was bliss, but it's not true. Um so step one, I think, is understanding are you in fact misaligned? Right? So, cuz you know, we could be we could be uh talking right now and people are like, "Well, okay, it's a great conversation. It's wonderful and all, but I think I'm good."

Right? So, the symptoms of misalignment are burnout, overwhelm, and insecurity.

Now, it's it's interesting how insecurity keeps popping up, right? So, step one is like just am I actually misaligned? Because when you're when you're not misaligned, you're in a steady steady state of flow, right? You you're very clear on your objectives. you're very clear with your relationships. Uh you're showing up for yourself. You're not self-abandoning. Right? So, how do we go from misalignment to essentially a steady state of flow?

Mhm. So, step one is first of all identifying, am I misaligned? Okay. I think step two is like, okay, what area am I misaligned in? So, I like to break things down in domains of life. Um because I'll find that and I'm sure you found this as well. you you'll have several folks that are really strong in their relationships but their business is really struggling or they're very good in business but their relationship or their health is struggling right so we I used to draw out a quadrant I call used to call the quadrants of conflict so emotional physical financial and spiritual um and you can just literally scale of 1 to 10 1 to 10 where would I rank myself right now and my emotional well-being so emotional a lot of time obviously is how you feel about yourself how you feel emotionally do I feel out burned out overwhelmed do I feel like I'm in a steady state of authenticity and just kind use a rank and you say

scale of one to 10, 10 being the highest. Am I a seven, an eight, a three? Mhm.

And what'll happen is you'll all of a sudden get clarity on where you need to focus first. You mentioned to it just a second ago with with your SEAL clients and and the people we work with the SEALs in that community

is the the greatest place of fear, right? Historically, the greatest place of fear will show up as the most common lowest number on that quadrant.

Right? Once you identify that, I I think the next step is to actually go and get some help. When I say help, I mean find someone who's really strong in that category

who can give you best practices to begin to work on that while simultaneously actually beginning to maybe backtrack a little bit. So I like to say it like this. One of the way the tools that I use to um identify my my roadblocks. So I use used to use a framework called grow. So gain perspective, recognize slash remove roadblocks, organize a plan and work the plan.

That's literally step one, two, three, four. So gain perspective is where am I shortcoming? Where am I not being honest with myself? Uh where do I need coaching? Where do I need mentorship? Where do I need training? Where do I need information? And where do I just need to sit with myself?

So many times the gaining perspective is just sitting in quiet. So many of us can't even go to the bathroom without taking our phone with us,

right? So if that means you need a sty that means your your are your nervous system is already looking for a steady state of distraction.

Mhm. Right. Once you can get some perspective on what areas need to be focused on then it becomes just ask one question. Where are the potential roadblocks I guarantee your brain and your nervous system will put them in front of you.

Well you know what this these three relationship over here they're actually are probably not that healthy. They're actually pulling me away from my partner. They're they're you know they're they're operating this in this environment of life. my partner's operating in this environment of life. Right.

Right. And then you organize a plan. You you you you get the key people around you that you need around you. You get the key information inside of you and then you have to apply it which may require prayer, meditation, mindset shifting, belief management. Um you know because limiting beliefs at the at the subconscious level are essentially guiding 90 what is it 95% of your behavior patterns. Mhm.

So I believe in focusing on subconscious matters more than conscious matters first because I want to bring the subconscious to the conscious so I can address it. Right? So a lot of times the the step-by-step framework is obviously step one am I misaligned? Step two where am I misaligned? Step three what resources can I bring in to get aligned? And step four how can I measure my overall alignment? And step five how can I continue the process in its simplest form.

Right? So when you're going through this, we talked about purpose a lot. And I think as people are going and they gain awareness, so they get to the G, which is, you know, gaining the awareness,

a lot of people are going to realize some of their patterns that may have not been the best. It's the nicest way to say this. You know, maybe you've done some stupid, maybe you've broken laws, maybe you've betrayed yourself, maybe you betrayed your partner, maybe you've

done these things and really gotten lost along the way. Mhm. A lot of people get stuck there and they don't understand that their path their past is not who they are. Their past was a lesson and you can be beyond that.

How do how do you get your clients to walk through that once you gain that awareness because that will lock them up like again I agree with you 100%. Silence is a gift when you know there's I've done silence retreats. I've done completely quiet for a week. I've done the ones where it's complete blackout. You every all the answers you're looking for are internal period. So getting that silence, but when you get that awareness, you're like, "Oh, I'm whatever. I I haven't worked out enough. I haven't done what I needed to do. I've lied about this. I've betrayed these people. I've failed here." And you have all of this and this this wall of just shame which will feed the insecurity bug.

How do you get people past that? Because I mean, again, we all have this insecurity. We all have this I'm not enough. Everybody I know, and I don't care who you are. I've dealt with people who were literally on covers of magazines feeling insecure that they weren't attractive enough. I'm like, "Then you're the magazine cover. Okay, awesome. So, when you're going through that, how do you get past that initial, you know what, yeah, I could have done ABC and I am lying to myself and I'm not doing what I need to do or I have done these horrible things in the past. How do you get them past that?

I think the the key aspect is understanding you will always be limited by your labels.

Okay, so I'll give you an example. So, labels, we we talk in forms of labels. So, I've been divorced. I've been cheated on. I've been addicted. I've um lost my kid to suicide. I've like all these different these are all labels. These are all things we take on um ironically that are actually experiences and lessons, but we take them on as identity.

Right. Right. And because they're that once we understands that we're we're we're limited by our labels, we become objective to our label. So, I'll give you an example. So, a quick reframe. Um I can either say I am divorced

meaning I've I've been through a divorce and that essentially in subconsciously will can plate in my potential for future relationships or I can say I have experienced divorce.

I have experienced embezzlement. I have experienced homelessness. I'm not you I am not the homeless high school dropout that I was when that experience happened. I'm a very different person now. And there's a 25- year window from that moment to when I exited the company, right? With lots of things in here. And essentially, one of the exercises you can do is you can go ahead and list the top 10 labels that you've been living by,

right? Um, and what that does is that'll bring awareness to that. And then the next part of the exercise would be to take those 10 things and reframe them.

Reframe them as experiential elements that taught you valuable lessons. And then just like Victor Frankle says, "A man's search for meaning." He's like once once you have the lesson, once you have the meaning behind the lessons, the pain, the discomfort, the shame, the guilt, everything associated with that lesson dissipates because now you have the meaning of why that lesson was so important. And when it comes to purpose, it ties directly to purpose because I believe that the reason humanity is so connectionoriented is because we can all learn something from each other on a consistent basis.

That means that by definition, whatever experience you've been through, whatever lessons that you've learned that offer value to someone else becomes a portion of your purpose.

Right? So on stage a long time ago and Rory Vade and I used to pick on each other all the time because we have similar quotes that have now been talked about. But um I used to say the greatest purpose in life you'll ever have is serving the person you used to be. But it's not just serving the person you used to be now. It's serving the 13year-old version of yourself, the 18, the 19, the 22, the the 30, the whatever age group.

But you don't do that. Like you can't do that until you identify the labels. Mhm. remove the limitation off the label via the lesson and then begin to use that lesson to empower and encourage other people. Whether that's in your family, whether that's in your business, whether that's in your community, whether that's at scale like we do. It doesn't it's it's the same tool.

Yeah. I think there's some magic in that moment. We're like, I'm not that 13-year-old anymore.

I'm everything I do is always trying to help out that 13-year-old version of me. I'm like, okay, he was scared. He knew there was a way. And the running joke is Jesus didn't walk on water. He knew where the rocks are. I knew that there were rocks out there. I was like, where the hell are the rocks? And that 13-year-old me was like, I knew there's rocks. I knew there's way to do this. No one's going to tell me how to do that. And that fear and that pain and that belief system I had to break, but I can consciously understand

I'm not that 13-year-old just like I'm not the person I was 5 months ago or 3 days ago or 6 years ago or two years ago. We run to where So, I think there's magic in that moment there to kind of pivot out. And whenever someone comes to me and they say, "Hey, I just got divorced." I always say, "Congratulations." And they're like, "What?" I'm like, "Congratulations." They're like, "I don't understand." I was like, "There's never been a couple that's been like, you know what? Oh my god, I love you so much. Oh my god, I love you, too. You know what we should do today? Yes, we should get divorced."

There's never been a couple that's ever said that in the dawn of time. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. So, if you had two people that are no longer compatible, masleto, congratulations. Move on their lives. It's great. So, you get that awareness and you you pivot. You separate yourself from that. Now, we go into the R. When someone gets trapped in the R section of grow, because I love this idea of grow. And I'm just going to double down on this because this is magical stuff.

I use it. I still lead my life with it. So it makes makes sense to me. It's phenomenal. I think we could just do a master class just on a grow. We could probably do a couple hours on this. So you gained awareness. You've disconnected and understood, hey, I am no longer that person. I get that. Now let's get to the R.

How do we go through that process? Well, first of all, you need to understand you cannot remove a roadblock that you won't that you refuse to recognize. This is where your ego and your arrogance can get in the way in a big way. Um the ego side of us uh statistically is essentially its core design is to keep us safe.

Mhm. Now it does not have a barometer in many cases on what safe is outside of not reliving pain whether that's being eaten by a lion or being avoiding a divorce or whatever. Um the ego unfortunately a lot of times will let the intellect get in get in your head such and mind le intellect whatever get in your head in such a way that you will talk yourself out of the very thing you should focus on.

Mhm. Like I can come up with this and you see this happen a lot if you pay attention to the words that are actually come out of your mouth. Um you'll see this happen a lot. I know it happened for me. Um well if she'd have done blank blank blank blank or if they'd have done blank blank blank blank or ifa da da had done. And what I thought was so interesting about what you just shared a minute ago that I think is powerful is people fully understanding that the only person that is going to rescue you is you.

It's you 100%. All right. And the only way you rescue yourself is to recognize through radical honesty what roadblocks are there and then begin a progress removing it. Now the removing of the roadblocks in many cases could take a year.

It could take a week. It could take an hour depending how strong the radical honesty gives you kind of like the radical awareness because sometimes radical awareness by itself was enough to shift a shift.

Absolutely. Right. So I would say that uh the recognition piece is take a result a negative result that you got.

Okay. Take that negative result follow back to the action and which recreated that result. Whether that's in my case I used I I made it a point to apologize to my kids if I was wrong. rather than I'm the parent so no matter what I do I'm not wrong right um as an example like so you take the result take the action and then take the mindset like what was going on internally and emotionally that made this the choice or this the core action okay

that will give you like a little insight and then say okay well where did this thought this belief or whatever come from and then sit with it in silence for I don't know for me on average it could be anywhere from probably 10 minutes to about two hours

yep before I'm like and you'll have little flashes of your past that'll pop up.

Okay? And then when those little flashes of your past pop up, then what you're looking for now is you're looking for what did that per what what did that version of me really need? What was he or she really looking for

in that moment, right? Um, you know, for me, for example, uh, growing up early on, uh, as a father, um, who came back in my life around 12 or 13 years old, but was still very much a drill sergeant early on,

like why did I feel like I didn't want to speak up? Because a drill sergeant, when you speak up with a drill sergeant, you know, it comes, you know, this kind of things. So then you end up chasing your voice.

See, these different elements will begin to show you where you're not showing up for yourself. And I'm a big believer that most of us who are struggling in life um essentially aren't showing up for ourselves. Let me finish with this one this one thought and and then I want to hear uh yours as well. Uh about seven years ago um Harris uh Time magazine with a Harris poll uh did a survey of about 400,000 Americans. Okay. And they were specifically researching um essentially joy fulfillment, you know, kind of like feeling like you're living your best life. Okay. Over 70% of all Americans that responded to that survey uh said they were not living that.

Mhm. Now, when you go through the article, you'll very quickly realize that the core reason that these folks feel like they're not living their best life is because they're not living their authentic life. They're living the life that someone told them they should live

100%. So, if you take that, you understand, okay, these are the elements in which I felt unsafe. These are the belief mechanisms that were shaped by that and this is how I changed my authentic self to conform to this version of my this identity when you can come and just and again it's I wish I could say it's like crazy easy everybody could do it like overnight right it's it it may be a process depending on how sensitive the issue the issue is but if you can do that journey and a lot of times you can do it with a notepad and a pen and a good friend right do that journey together now you can say okay this is where the roadblock is I'll I'll Give you a perfect example.

One of my most recent roadblocks that I would do I'm 40. At the time I was 48 years old. I'm about to turn I'm 49 now. About to turn 50 this coming year. At 48 years old I had a relationship end unexpectedly for me.

Okay. We're together for about 10 months. It it ended unexpectedly. I'm like what the f just happened?

Mhm. And that began the journal. And I did that same exercise with some coach some key coaches of mine. And when I did that exercise, I very realized, dude, I've been trying to save people

since I was nine years old. Yeah. So, some would call that the caretaker program. Okay. That's a major roadblock

given the fact that I'm trying to serve at scale. Yeah. I literally did this 3 years ago and instead of focusing on my own [ __ ]

and being present with it and science on I was like I'm going to save all these other people and then if I save these people I'll then be enough which all it did was betray everyone

which was all driven by this including ourselves a thousand%. Was which was all driven by this desire this insecurity that I had that overcompensated with this level of arrogance because all it was was deep down insecurity of me not being enough. I'm like okay well if you don't think I'm enough you're right I'm better than you. So this hyper secure which was all so it was just this opposite loop which just ended up betraying everybody in there including myself and I think people don't understand when we say sit in silence the biggest thing I would tell people is sit in silence obviously don't have your phone don't be stupid but sit down without judgment that's to me what sit in silence means sit down and if you're going to have things pop up understand that what's going to come out of your head some of it's going to be fear a lot of it's going to be untrue

it's it's okay you're not a fiveheaded flamingo it's and going through that and just listening and saying, "Okay, what does this mean?"

And just writing it all out and sitting with signs because what'll happen is different versions of yourself cuz to your point, you're just trying to stay alive. You're trying to avoid pain. And it'll give you these false flag facts. It's like, "Oh, you didn't do this. You're never going to do this. You're never enough." Blah blah blah. Cool. And then you just write it down. And then every time it says it again, you just put a little mark next to it. Okay, you've said that nine times. Awesome. And just,

you know, this is where I don't get into pronouns normally. Understanding that there are multiple versions of yourself and say, "Okay, this is what you did. This is what you did. is fine. We all have multiple versions. Sitting down with it and saying, "Okay, this is what it is." So silence means sitting without judgment and just being present in the process and the I've done again I've done silence retreats. It will fundamentally change who you are as a human being, sitting down and going through it. But having that awareness that you did which happened at you at 48, mine was a couple years ago where I went through going oh wow I'm trying to save others to avoid doing the work on my own. Hugely revealing hugely.

Yeah. I want to add one thing if I can to that because that's that's genius and absolutely true.

I want to invite people to give themsel and I can't think of any other word than grace.

Mhm. Grace to experience the journey. Right. So when you sit down that first time to do this the silence um the silence tool you may nine things may pop up.

Mhm. Okay. So and yeah. So, you got these these things that pop up and you're like, "Holy [ __ ] now I'm even more overwhelmed than I was before cuz now I got to do all nine of these things,

right?" Right. And my experience has been it's like, give yourself some grace. Snag one, work on one at a time. That will create a bit of a snowball uh snowball piece, right? I'm convinced that people who are living a fulfilled life are not living a life of constant overfunctioning. And the only way you avoid overfunctioning and trying to overcompensate and overd deliver and just is you have to figure out why you're chasing it,

right? And then once you figure out why you're chasing it, you have to say, is this an authentic chase? Cuz I believe um in fact that this is something I learned during that that season when I when I first realized that I was and this again we talking about having no [ __ ] about yourself anymore. Like dude, I would come up with like no I mean she she had three kids, she had this, she you know I was I was trying to serve. I was trying to help

100%. You know, all you come up with all this all this BS, right? And the reality is the truth is is I was over functioning.

Yeah. I I was pursuing worth through Yeah. Exactly. I started with a selfish desire of I. It's I want to help her. This person's father's dying. I want to help her. She just got through a bad relationship. I want to help her. She's never had I. It all starts with I.

And it's a selfish act. And you think, oh, well, no, I'm I'm helping someone else. It's that, you know, I'm I'm proud to be modest. It's like, wait, what? What? What did you just say? Be humble. It's like doesn't work like that. So, being able to have that awareness and I and I think, you know, something you said earlier of how fast these things could change.

And you know, there's people who, you know, I spent eight years in hospice watching people die.

When you're faced with that, things change immediately. Boom. People have these life or death experience and they change immediately. If you're in a situation where you're not seeing radical changes, if you're going through this and you're listening to this like, "Dude, I thought I was going to learn about how to make nine figures and I thought this is what he was going to share with me. This is going to be amazing." And now you're, you know, whatever, 30 minutes into this podcast and you're like, "What the hell are they talking about? This is totally different." If you're if you've gotten this far and you're like, "Oh, well, you know, there's a lot and I don't know how long it's going to take and it's going to take a couple weeks." Please, and you might disagree with this, please understand, you're completely full of [ __ ]

You are one decision away from a completely different life. And I tell people this all the time.

Go go go get an Uber. 15 20 minutes to an airport, 15 20 minutes to a bus stop, 15 20 minutes to a

a you know a train. Get on it. Let go of everything else. You will have a completely different life in 24 hours.

So this because they're sitting there and they're holding, oh, I can't make these changes. What will my wife think? What will my husband think? What will my I don't care. Like second person I ever coached, he wanted to exit early. It's the nicest way I'm going to say it. he decided he didn't want to be here anymore. And when he came to me and I was like, "Congratulations, that's awesome. Let's do it." He's like, "Excuse me?" I was like, "Let's do it." He's like, "What are you what are you what are you talking about?" I was like, "Congratulations, you're dead." And he's like, "Wait, what?" I said, "All right, what do you want to do now?" He's like, "Huh?" I said, "Do you want to still be married to your wife?" He's like, "I love my wife with everything I have." I said, "Cool. What about your kids?" He goes, "Well," I said, "Oh, you don't like both your kids?" He's like, "Yeah, what if I really [ __ ] can't stand?" I

was like, "Cool. Get rid of the kids, chief." He I He goes, I go, "What about your job?" He goes, "Man, but I have to do it." They're like, "You're dead. You've already exited early. It's over. What about your job?" He's like, "I just I hate my company." I was like, "Cool. Then our job right now is to get you realigned to your point

in the next six months. What can we do to realign with your truth, whatever that is and exit you out?" And we exit out of the company in 90 days and he went, they changed all the things. But this idea that you're months, weeks, years away from a radical change, complete,

complete BS. You know, we were talking about before we started recording. I recently found black mold in the kitchen in my property.

Yeah. I It's gone. I now am in a different environment and things are radically changing. Now, whatever you want to call it, God, Buddha, Allah, the big bang, the magic chicken came in.

Magic the magic chicken. So, I I added in there for you. If you're coming in, you're in an environment and that changed and the magic chicken made that happen. It forced all these other changes. So please understand the people who are stuck as you're going through that process thinking, "Oh, this is going to take so long." No, it's not.

It doesn't have to. No, it doesn't have to. It It's directly correlated to how much you're willing to lean in. In fact, the the note I jotted down as you were sharing that that I thought would uh piggyback really well with what you shared is uh I use a I did this in fact as I was coming out the other end. I call it a re a bit of a rebirth, right? So I I realized I was overunctioning. I realized I was overgiving. I was self-abandoning. I wasn't taking care of self. I wasn't showing up for myself. I wasn't loving on myself properly. I was giving all of that stuff away to other people, right?

Um I go through a radical transformation myself. And then anytime I go through a radical life change, I always do what's most people commonly call sbatical.

Okay. Sabbatical is just leaving your envir is nothing more than leaving your environment.

Yes. With no agenda, going to a different environment and just being present with self. Okay. That's step one, two, three of a sabbatical. What are you doing? Who are you doing it with, if anybody? And where are you going? Essentially. Okay. So, um I went to New Zealand for 3 weeks. Okay. Now, yeah, I love New It's amazing. Now, most people, and I'm I'm being honest, right? So, I've been very fortunate now. I can I can take a sabatical for that extended period of time and go to an exotic dec destination in some cases to experience that. There's a magic in that. Okay, great.

What's most important is I went for three weeks to be with Stephen. Stephen, right? Not Stephen the business owner, not Stephen the author, not Stephen a speaker, like just Stephen, the Stephen that and I got to know Stephen so good.

I'm like I like this guy. He actually genuinely cares about people but he also has now learned to it's not my responsibility,

right? Like I'll brush it off in a heartbeat. The reason I say that is because most most of us will never stop long enough.

Yeah. To actually get the perspective we really need to shift. So again, I we've said that numerous times in different ways. Step one is stop.

Just stop. So I I discovered I've been doing the sbatical approach for a decade, right? It started with an hour. like I had to go away for an hour and just

because we always tell ourselves, well, the business or the family's going to fall apart in the 30 minutes I'm no it's not,

you know, going to the bathroom. It's all it's all BS. Again, it's the ego trying to quote unquote keep you safe,

right? So, maybe go take a weekend for yourself. Mhm. Especially before you make a major life decision

like before you, you know, as you exit early or um or choose or desire to exit early or choose leave a relationship or choose to shut down your business or like it may it some of with the exception of exiting early, but some of those other things may be more may be what needs to happen, right? But but at the end of the day,

how sure are you? How how do you know that you're making those decisions from a grounded place? So the bigger the decision, the more grounded I feel like I have to be. If I need to go put my feet on the grass and sit there for 30 minutes or stand there for 30 minutes to breathe and just get centered. I do that now where I did not do that literally a year ago.

I love that you didn't say the right decision. You said the grounded decision because there is no right or wrong. There's just grounded decisions. And one of the things they teach and friend of mine mine who part of the IDF people like I can't find a moment. I can't find 30 minutes. They'll teach individuals who are inactive combat engagements to disconnect

to completely detach from the environment while they're currently being shot at.

Find the seconds, get the clarity, and move forward. So, if you're sitting at home going, "Oh, I can't do that. I can't find 30 minutes." These guys are fighting it while in combat. So, yeah, quit lying to yourself. Have have that awareness and understand that there is it's a ball game changing and and how we do it. So if if they're going through and they're getting this awareness and when it comes to sbatical, you know, one of the sbaticals that I had literally it was a one-1 efficiency in what was going to be a retirement home that wasn't opened up yet and I just spent a week in this environment in this not nice place, but it was arguably the greatest gift I've ever had compared to when I was in Galapicos or that. So the environment doesn't matter as much as being present and letting go and being in silence as much as you can. And I tell people all the time, you should do silent weeks.

You absolutely once a once a year do a silence weeks. If you can't do a silent week, just sit around. I started with a day. Thursdays used to be my silence day. My whole team would know it.

Recenter. We get there. We've gone through G. We've gone through R. So, we're getting there.

We've identified some obstacles. We've gone through by sitting in silence and going there.

I think people get stuck with working the plan. They get overwhelmed or they're like, "Oh, well, is this the right thing I'm going to do or this is not the right thing going to do or what's the next?" When you walk people through working the plan, whatever that is,

how do you get them unstuck? How do you keep that momentum? Because motivation is adorable. It's ineffective. It's adorable. Discipline and consistency is going to win all day long.

But that's a hard thing to get because it's a muscle you have to develop. People like, "Oh, I know I need to do 100 push-ups. I know I need to do 100 squats. I know I need to go for a walk." yada yada yada.

How do you get people to rock and roll and start working that plan? I think the easiest thing for people to understand is and again this is from personal experience. I discovered uh I either would not take action or would not take efficient action if I was trying to do it all at one time.

Um Rory uh mutual friend u Vaden says diluted focus equals diluted results. Right? So I started thinking in terms of dominoes. Uh one of the core attributes that I look at when I go to working at this it comes part of organizing a plan. It's like, okay, what are my top three major initiatives? And on top of that, what is the number one of those top three that if I got that thing moving progress, got knocked down, that could essentially knock down the other ones behind it.

Yes. What will the biggest effect? Exactly. So, it's it's it's momentum. It's nothing more than it's uh Yeah. It's nothing more momentum, honestly. It's how do I create momentum? Um, you know, one of the most re, well, not a recent example, but a number of years ago when I was starting the company, uh, the first thing I wanted to do was obviously get shelter. Achieve that. Okay. Get consistent food. Achieve that. Buy some new equipment so I could keep building the company. Did that. And then the the next major one was dig myself out of about $70,000 in debt at the time, which is a lot of money in the late 90s.

Right. It's still it's a lot of money now but yeah. Um, and the only and when I started tackling that, this is before I knew about Dave and Sharon Ramsey and all that stuff, who were great people in their own right. Um, I actually went to and I was like, "Okay, literally I think I remember one of one of my bills, like I had a bunch of them, right?" But like one of the bills was like $30 a month, but like the whole balance was like 500.

So I said, "Okay, cool. I'm gonna attack that 500, right? I'm I'm gonna have some delayed gratification for a hot minute. I'm gonna save up essentially say I'll keep making the the minimum and then I'm g chunk 500 bucks. Well, that released a that gave me like a hundred bucks a month now that I could then go after the thousand dollar thing. Then I saved up for the thousand thing. Lo and behold, I was able to pay that debt off in a very short time frame uh in the grand scheme of things. But it because it was because I got singularly focused on the the main thing. Financial stability was a big was a big thing for me. It was one of the things that generationally my family has never been really good at. Um and and I wanted it to change with me.

Mhm. And all I had to do was change my behavior with money, how I thought about money, how I how beh And a lot of times relationships, your life, all these things are are are the the the core elements. Which is why by understanding the area that you're most um unsuccessful, I'm trying to be careful with my words. the area that needs the most attention. By understanding the areas that needs the most attention, you can come up with three strategic steps to attack that one thing until you've achieved a certain level of success based on whatever your parameters are.

So, I believe that if the number one thing is that's preventing you from actually taking action is trying to take action at too many things at once, the brain can't handle it.

The brain loves clarity. If it has to spend a bunch of mental energy and firing neuropowers and the creatine it creates and all this kind of stuff to to like to chase all these things, it's gonna just stall.

Yeah. Right. However, if you can get singularly focused on one core objectives, that then becomes the pivot point. So, if I have three objectives I'm trying to create, I'm going to say which one of these will support the other two? And I focus right there.

Right. I always think that like uh at at the fair that when you have the little bottles that are on top of each other, the stack them in and people which bottle should I try and knock down?

Well, if you knock down the top one, it's not going to be effective. Aim at the bottom and the rest of them will fall. It's it's this idea of how do you eat an elephant? The common thing is one bite at a time. Like, yeah, but first you got to stop the elephant.

You got to keep the elephant from moving. So, what is the one tactical thing you can do that will have the greatest impact and start that domino chain? Because when they get stuck, well, I can only do this. I only have so much time. Cool. Knock down the one pin that's going to knock everything else or at least start the momentum. And and a friend of mine, we were we were at it's called the Renaissance Fair down here in Florida. And we was we were trying to knock down the pins.

And we were having we found out later that the pins were actually had bungees in them so they wouldn't knock over. I was cheating. But he sat there and he was I was like, "What's the goal of the game?" And he's like, "He I to knock down the pins." And he's like, "Okay." He took his shoe off and he threw it at the base and he knocked the whole base. And I was like, okay, technically, yes. So, for me, it's it's knocking over that base and really getting into and and and and moving forward in that way. So, as you go through this grow process and you're going through it and you're gaining awareness and you're identifying the roadblocks and you're going through each and every one of these steps, I think a lot of people are going to be like "Okay

this is amazing. What's next?" So, if people want to track you down and they say, "Is is this stuff in a book? Do you guys do you have this written down in a course? Is it how do people get more of this? Because this is arguably my favorite podcast that I've done and I could talk for another three hours. This is just

I love you, bro, man. Yeah, you and I you and I could jam all the time. In fact, as soon as as soon as we have safe haven done, you have to come out to save a haven and hang out with me.

I'll do it. Absolutely. Give after this as soon as we stop recording, we're going to knock it down. But

if someone wants to track you down and have more intel and and and to do this, where can they find your info? How do they track you down? How do they get more of this? Because I think if people came in and it was the the rope a doe which was a distraction of homeless to nine figures all of a sudden like oh wait now I have a tactical plan to make changes in any part of my life be it my relationship be it spiritual be anything out now they have this growth plan.

Yeah that's only at the tip of the iceberg for what you offer. How do people track you down? What books what how do we do this?

Yeah. Well if you think about terms of clarity right? So one of the things I've realized is people uh consume and change their lives with three different types of modalities. So visual, so some people like video, some people like kesthetics or putting their hands on things, some people like audio or listening, right? Um everything that we've done is that can be a can be gained or accessed at some point in time in any modality they choose. I think the simplest thing um where there's no major ask is we built a tool uh that we call the integrated alignment method and it's a quiz. Uh it's I think about seven or eight questions. It takes about six or seven minutes. Um that gives you a detailed report when you're done kind of taking the quiz. And the best part is is we don't sell you we're not trying to sell you anything. So it's just it's a this is a tool that I wish that I had for myself back in the day um that would

have got me started sooner and got me on my path sooner. Um and your audience if they if they want to can find that at Steven with a ph. So s t ph p ph p ph p ph p ph p ph p ph p ph p ph p ph p h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h e n skggins s o gg i ns.comalignment. Um, so stevens.comalignment. Um, it comes, like I said, it comes with a workbook at the end of it's 30 pages or so that you can literally it's it's how it's basically it takes all the things that we've talked about as concrete as we could in a in a very in a podcast format and makes a lot more concrete and you can go step by step at your speed and your level. Um, and if there if you want to partner in different ways after that, that's more that's that's cool. But I mean, my heart right now is to just serve at scale and and help as many people kind of get a awakened and kind of shaken loose. So, I would just start there. You can

obviously find me on all the social platforms as well. And I'd love to connect with you guys. I'm probably I'm personally probably most active on Instagram uh myself, which is Stephen Scoggins. Uh, yeah. So, I appreciate you actually asking. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you for coming on and having this real conversation that most people aren't ready for and and actually giving a proven framework like, "Hey, do this. Don't worry about the other stuff today. Just do go grow. That's all I need you to do. Just go grow.

Go. Go. Go spend, you know, the next 20 30 minutes go grow. And get quiet. Turn your phone off. Just tell everybody you have a belly ache. Tell them you have food poisoning. You got to sit on the toilet. Whatever you need to do, go grow. Just go sit there and do it. And I appreciate you so much for coming on,

bro. I can't thank for the opportunity to hang out with you and your audience, man. Uh I love you to death and uh I hope we added some value today.

Absolutely. Many founders chase revenue, but Steven showed that real growth comes from aligning identity, strategy, and mindset. Stop focusing only on external tactics. Start building the inner foundation that makes every decision, every pitch, and every partnership more powerful. Success isn't just what you build. It's who you become in the process.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "G.R.O.W. from Homeless to 9 Figures - Stephen Scoggins"?

In order: 0:00 Five Constraints, Eric Thomas; 5:00 Authenticity, Emotional Dysregulation, Eric Thomas, Five Constraints; 10:00 Metallica, Radical Honesty, Ramstein, South Florida; 15:00 Five Constraints; 20:00 Shadow Work, SEAL community; 25:00 Authenticity; 30:00 Man's Search for Meaning; 35:00 Authentic Life, Harris Poll, Radical Honesty; 45:00 New Zealand, Sabbatical; 50:00 Discipline, Sharon Ramsey; 55:00 Integrated Alignment Method, Renaissance Fair, Safe Haven, Stephen Scoggins.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

54 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Five Constraints, Shadow Work, Eric Thomas, Authenticity, Radical Honesty, Emotional Dysregulation. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "G.R.O.W. from Homeless to 9 Figures - Stephen Scoggins"?

The episode runs 59 min; the transcript is about 13,580 words in 213 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.