Kickoff Sessions
Weekly podcast episodes with the sharpest minds in the world to help you live a richer & more fulfilling life.
Previous guests include Luke Belmar, Justin Waller, Sahil Bloom, Gad Saad, Peter Schiff, Stirling Cooper, Jack Hopkins, Sadia Khan, Matt Gray, Daniel Priestley, Richard Cooper, Justin Welsh, Arlin Moore and more.
Kickoff Sessions
#282 Ryan Moresby - Why Most Men NEVER Reach Their Goals (Fix This Now!)
Watch This NEXT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlK2P76_ZZs
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Most entrepreneurs never scale…
Not because of strategy.
But because of something much deeper.
They read every book. Buy every course. Push harder. Grind longer.
But still feel stuck.
Why?
Because you can’t out-market the internal work.
That’s the truth Ryan Moresby-White dropped on our latest episode of Kickoff Sessions.
This isn’t about journaling and candles.
It’s about removing the emotional ceiling that’s quietly capping your business.
The men Ryan works with aren’t weak.
They’re dangerous.
But they’ve had to heal the boy inside — the one chasing validation, running from pain, building from scarcity.
Only then can you build a business with actual power, peace, and presence.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Healing as leverage, not therapy
- Emotional mastery for leadership
- Balancing energy without losing your edge
- Rewiring the internal blueprint driving your business
- Scaling yourself so your business can scale with you
If you’ve hit a ceiling in your biz, it’s not your strategy—it’s your state.
Fix the internal game, and the external results will follow.
(00:00) Preview and Intro
(01:21) The Real Reason High Achievers Feel Stuck
(03:04) How Childhood Shapes Your Mentality
(06:14) The Boy-to-Man Journey
(07:25) What Is Trauma
(10:23) Big Trauma vs. Subtle Daily Trauma
(13:27) Ryan's Story: Feeling "Too Much" for His Parents
(16:14) How Childhood Beliefs Limit Your Success
(21:54) Dealing with Entrepreneur Overwhelm
(23:21) The Consequences of Unresolved Trauma
(25:16) The Burn of Drive: Ambition or Avoidance?
(30:51) The Habits and Vices We Use to Cope
(32:34) How Emotional Unavailability Shows Up in Love
(38:27) Understanding Your Attachment Style
(46:56) How Emotional Stress Can Kill Intimacy
(49:46) Boundaries, Focus & Masculine Leadership
(57:28) Will Healing Kill Your Drive?
(01:02:26) The Cost of Being Too Logical
(01:06:24) Pain Tolerance and Entrepreneurial Growth
(01:09:19) Want vs. Need: Creating From Inspiration
(01:12:01) Why Entrepreneurship is a Journey of Self-Discovery
Most men are in business and operating in business from the consciousness and the energetic capacity of a little boy. Because when it comes to trauma, I'd invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on myself for my journey, all of it Intellectually understood trauma, I understood healing, I understood personal growth, personal development. But beneath all of that was still this little boy. He was yearning for something outside of him to feel good.
Darren:He was yearning for a relationship to soothe him and regulate him and support him emotionally Every man reaches a point where a strategy isn't the answer, where no amount of success can fix what's broken inside. In this episode, I sit down with Ryan Moresby-White, a high performance coach, helping men heal, evolve and lead from a deeper place. We talk about healing the boy so the man can rise, the internal work that creates real peace, not just more achievement, and why the next level of your life won't come from doing more but from becoming more. If you've been carrying silent weight for too long, this podcast is for you. I think there's like a very clear line between when an entrepreneur starts, when he grows and when he scales, and it's usually not the business model, it's not the products, it's not the leads they need. Usually it's themselves. How have you found limiting beliefs, internal beliefs, holding high achievers and entrepreneurs back?
Ryan :Yeah, look, I'm not a business coach and I also have coached some highly financially successful men, and typically they come to me when they're starting to recognize this sense of disconnection from themselves.
Ryan :And every time, time and time again, even especially through my own journey and the path that I've been on to creating the success that I've created so far has come back to my own internal dialogue and my self-image, like how I see myself, my identity.
Ryan :So, with that, beneath all of that is the limiting beliefs that men hold about themselves as to what they believe is possible, truly possible, what they can create, but for the most part, possible of what they actually believe they're inherently worthy of. And that's been the biggest disconnect I've experienced in men and myself especially. And the more I focused on me, coming back to those parts of myself that felt disconnected from the abundant nature of who we are, like one in 400 trillion chance of us being born, like the fact that we're here alive today. You look at a child like they ask for their needs. They ask for what they want, they dream big, they go after what they want. They'll fight for what they want yeah, because they know deep down in their core they're inherently worthy of it and at some stage we disconnect from that and it's coming back to that original nature of knowing that who we are, inherently at our core, is worthy of everything that we want and more.
Darren:Do you think that everyone is inherently abundant? But then they become scarce, scarce resources, scarcity, true time and then they have to rework that, because people would look at an entrepreneur and think, oh, they're the ones that are most needing of things.
Ryan :Yeah, I would say a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, have been the ones who have been most wounded and they've needed to fight their way through life, or it's typically our core wounds is how we then show up in the world. Like you look at some of the most successful people in, like, the YouTube space, or, you know, have the most followers on Instagram or whatever. I'm sure at some point there was a core wound of them wanting to be seen right, and they've turned that core wound into purpose, right. Or the core wound of, you know, not feeling good enough to then creating a level of success, you know, financially, to finally feel good enough.
Darren:Yeah, but is that core wound across everyone? That's the thing, right, is that? Do we just look at the outliers of success of the guys who've gone and done it and maybe solved their own internal problems, or does everyone have this, but the guy that works in Tesco? He does not have his wounds being held or being solved right and he's like is this something that's inherent? Just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes? Because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year.
Ryan :thank you yeah, look, we're supposed to be wounded in childhood, and reason being is because that initiates us onto the journey of becoming whoever it is that we need to be in order to be the person who's going to actually uh, to come back to being that person that they were actually placed on this earth to be.
Ryan :Yeah Right, so overcoming those core wounds is actually going to shape you into the person that you were placed on this earth to be, and so overcoming those core wounds is actually going to shape you into the person that you were placed on this earth to be. And coming back to your question there, I believe it's the power of environment. Right, when you're around the right people, around the right environment, have the right information, the right resources, the right tools, those are the people who actually lean in and go on their hero's journey and turn that pain into their purpose. But so many people, so many men, just live life just day by day and they don't truly actualize their potential, they don't truly discover what it is that they could actually create in this world If they really face themselves. Why is that?
Darren:Cause it's painful and why. How do they soothe? How do they work? How did do they suit that wound externally? What is it to do? Is it drink drugs? Because I have a background in that and we can talk about that in detail too right, even my own perspective on it, yeah, but would you look at those things as the surface level bandits that people are utilizing versus changing environment, going to bali and moving here, restarting, regoing, looking at your life like, how deep does that go?
Ryan :the theme here of what I feel that we're speaking into is men wanting to create a level of success and not having the self-image, the self-belief and the willpower within themselves to actually go out there and create that. Now, this is really the journey from boy to man to leader in business. Business is one of the most spiritual journeys that you will ever go on, because in order for you to actually face your potential and become the man that's going to create that level of success or that level of impact in the world, it takes you to fucking face yourself, and the more depth a man is willing to uncover and the more a man's willing to face himself in his depth, that's where he's going to come face to face with his potential. Now, as I shared, like the boy to man to leader, most men, most people I'm speaking of men specifically most men are in business and operating in business from the consciousness and the energetic capacity of a little boy in business.
Ryan :From the consciousness and the energetic capacity of a little boy, because when it comes to trauma, until we resolve that unresolved energy in the body, it stays stuck and frozen in the body. That's what energy is, that's what trauma is when we didn't have the safety for that emotion to be felt, to be processed, or we didn't have the tools and the resources in our environment to process whatever it was that we're feeling, or if we didn't have our core emotional needs met, we become stuck and frozen in that state of consciousness. We don't progress past that. Reason being is because we're taken out of our childhood. And when we're taken out of our childhood we don't gain the strengths we were supposed to gain by just being a fucking child what would you determine as trauma, like, what is the the line there?
Darren:or even if there is a line like when is a trauma versus what's the line? Let's walk through that kind of philosophy because I think, I would think, that a lot of guys struggle with identifying that something in their childhood is traumatic, speaking from someone, as I mentioned to you before, who's gone through extremely traumatic things that I pretended to myself was not true Physical abuse, emotional abuse, manipulation, psychological warfare all these things that I had gone through as a child, that I had just presumed was normal, until I had left ireland, gone through the process, gone through I gave up alcohol, I gave up drugs, I went through all that process and then I had it got hit in the face, being like, hey, seven year old, 13 year old, 15 year old, that is not okay. And then for me, then there's this clash which is was that trauma or was it not? Am I should say, should I say that? Should I not say that?
Ryan :one of the biggest issues when it comes to trauma, especially developmental trauma that happens over a period of time in childhood, is we don't know the difference between emotional abuse and love. That's the problem, because we don't have any other reference of what love actually is or safe love actually is. We only know because of what we've received. We only know emotional abuse and we think that that is normal. We think that's what love actually is, until we realize it's not.
Darren:Can you explain?
Ryan :that. So let's say, and there's two kinds of trauma there's big T trauma, which is a very specific event that happened, like a death, or maybe you witnessed someone die or maybe you were and not in a natural disaster, something like that, where it's a big event that happens, of capital t trauma. Then we have the lowercase t trauma, which which is this subtle trauma that happens over time and sometimes that can be worse because you can't put your finger on it.
Darren:Well, this is the thing, is the fact that I have a lot of very successful friends, yeah, uh, and friends network, whatever I want to say and I know guys from america, because america has a lot of stuff in extremities. It's just extreme, right that you know they grew up with like, uh, let's say, a fodder that beat them silly, all this kind of stuff. That's very obvious. You know, seven $7 a month, like very, very extreme cases. So then, when you take that into a setting, let's say in a more developed country, a neurodeveloped country, people can't say that they had that level of severity. So therefore, it's not traumatic, right, it's the small, subtle things. It's like not being tended to, it's the passive, aggressive comments, it's all these little things, which is literally what happened to me, by the way.
Darren:It's like these compounded things, but you know, x person helps you out in this way, so they were good to you know, and that's the problem that I've had, you know personally, which is you have a I learned this from hermosy and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this which is, the positives and negatives of someone is not mutually, is mutually exclusive, is mutually exclusive.
Darren:Someone can do something nice for you. They can bring you to football practice, they can take you to the library, and it stacks over here. But then they can do a bunch of bad shit to you over here and that stacks here too. These are mutually exclusive and that person still does all the bad things. So it's why one of the reasons why people get back into a bad relationship with an ex because they're like, oh like, she was so nice to me, she was so good, she used to bring me coffee in the morning, but she was also like X, y, z, and people only remember the good parts and they don't remember the bad parts. And then you get back in a relationship. You're like Jesus Christ so that's a hormosy phrase to me around like parents and family and broader family, which is like, yeah, they did good things, but they also have a mountain of bad things that they hit you in the head with.
Ryan :No one escaped childhood without a few cuts. We all got wounded in some way and exactly what you shared there, that is exactly what I was speaking about. Where it's we don't know any different. We don't know the difference between emotional abuse and real love because we don't have any other representation of what that is, until we're faced with that and we go, oh wow, like that actually wasn't okay, that actually wasn't healthy, and like I shared that small T trauma is this subtle trauma that happens over time. But basically what trauma is is an event or an experience where it's too much, too fast, too soon for our nervous system to process or to complete the emotion that's seeking to be felt, and it's an overwhelming experience for our nervous system to process or to complete the emotion that's seeking to be felt, and it's an overwhelming experience for the nervous system. So we go into shutdown, we go into fight or we go into flight and we stay stuck and frozen in that. We're stuck in a state of survival from there onwards.
Darren:In terms of stuck in the state of survival. In what way Does that mean? You mean like for decades, for years?
Ryan :so in that moment and I'll share my journey, mike's story and how this has played out for me was imagine for a moment this little boy that just had so much passion, energy and love to just to give. As a boy, I gave my heart. I loved asking, loved asking questions. I was so curious, I was so expressive, I was passionate about everything I did and because I had so much energy, that was a lot for my parents and I get that. They had a lot going on. We migrated from South Africa to Australia.
Ryan :I couldn't even imagine the stress that they were going through to try and make it here in another country and with that amount of energy that I had as a boy, bringing that to my parents after they've had a big day at work.
Ryan :It would get shut down and it'd be too much for them. So this little boy, right over a long period of time, starts to feel that who I am, my expression, who I am on my core, my love, my heart, is too much and it's going to continuously get shut down, right or rejected or it's not going to be received by the people I love most. So I'd minimize my expression because I felt that I was too much so in that moment. I'm not in that moment, but over that period of time my nervous system started to feel that this is where we become, stuck in a state of survival. It's more important for us to be loved, liked, accepted by our parents. Our parents are God to us. They are the sole representation of love of God right. We, as children are solely dependent on them because we don't see life through our own eyes as children, we see it through our parents' eyes because we are a reflection of them.
Darren:So when they bring aspects of scarcity, you know, inadequacy, lack of x, lack of y, we perceive that we bring that into existence yep.
Ryan :So I perceived my parents emotional overwhelm as if there's something inherently wrong with me. So I must change myself and be someone other than myself in order to be loved and liked. What that looks like in business is me being inauthentic to myself and just trying to be like every other fucking coach in the entire world instead of just being myself there's so much thing about this man, I think, particularly on the belief side, like that's when the person, the entrepreneur, whoever it is, they inherent.
Darren:all of those limiting beliefs in terms of like money is not scarce and you need to struggle and you need to work super hard, you need to over index on hard work, versus like being intelligent and learning things, and just even the simple things like systems and leverage, just that's not given to us, which is obvious. But I mean, I literally taught that money was impossible because I never had anything right, and I taught that it was just impossible. And then it was only until the last couple of years where I was like, oh well, on the internet you can do this and it will create that, that I had broken all the beliefs. So the stuff that I thought was true all became inaccurate, right, and that could start with the business side. It could start with the friendship side who's in your corner, who's not in your corner, who's holding you back? Right, an issue with the parents, then with the friends, a lot of dude you could double tap on, like even the things that you're being told by the government, even things that are being passed down by politicians.
Darren:I just had believed a bunch of these things and then, when I had seen them for myself or discovered it for myself, I realized it was all bullshit. And in similar relationships, my wife now, who was my girlfriend once upon a time, she literally said it to me that the way that I was carrying myself, that I'd learned from my parents, it wasn't normal. It's not normal to have these arguments, it's not normal to have these scream fests. And I had just observed, through my environment and through, you know, ireland's very similar to Australia, dude, like it's same culture just drink, drink, party, scream, right, it's the same concoction to the degree that I had to believe that stuff was just true until I had pulled myself completely outside of it. You know, yeah.
Ryan :Yeah, with that. I feel there's so much there around. So, beneath the limiting beliefs that we have in business, around money, around creating success, around our paradigm of what's possible is typically the unresolved. Either shame of the little boy who feels that he's not enough, that he's not good enough, that he's not worthy to actually create that, or the childhood that that little boy didn't have, where he gained the strengths of being able to be in his curiosity and like.
Ryan :Think of the energy of a child. They're curious, they try things. They don't care if they fail. They just try again. Right, they go after what they want. They're curious about the world. Like they, they will. They're very intuitive. They have a very strong felt sense. It's like the. These are the strengths that we don't gain when we are taken out of our childhood because of this unresolved trauma. So then you get into business and you have to start working through a lot of these limitations that are actually preventing you from going out there and creating what it is that you want. Because, like you, you look at some of the most successful people, some of the stupid, like the most dumb people, you know, because they don't think they just act right and when we overthink things.
Darren:Typically, that's the protection within us that's fearful of what's going to happen if we fail do you think that there's an argument for people over over, analyzing, overthinking, overworking on themselves that's actually prevented them to actually just execute? Yes, yes.
Ryan :And typically that. So typically, someone who overanalyzes, overthinks and feels like they have to keep doing the work on themselves is potentially that little boy who feels that there's something inherently wrong with him right or his brain had to constantly look for threats all of the time. So he becomes a man who's so stuck in his head right, who's so hypervigilant of all of these potential things that could go wrong, where his whole life is just a state of fear. He's living in such a state of fear where he can't actually just enjoy what it is that he's building or whatever it is that he's creating. So, like, beneath all of this is the unresolved, like the trauma of the boy. And until we actually go back in and complete that because that's what trauma is right it's an incomplete process, it's a motion that's stuck in the body that hasn't had the safety or the space to actually be felt and processed. So when we go back in and actually complete the process of the unresolved pain that we store in our body, then we overcome that trauma and it no longer has power over us. And the beautiful part about that as well is your life has been built upon the foundation of that trauma. Everything that, every decision you've made. Everything that's led you up to right now sitting here in this chair me sitting right now in this chair has been from the foundation of the boy, because that little boy was once you. That little boy was once me, and every single moment since I was a child like that's led me up to right now sitting here in this chair, that little boy was once a part of you and is still a part of you. Right, we were once him and our life has been built upon the foundation of that. And until you resolve that unresolved trauma of that little boy, your life will continue to be on the foundations of that little boy.
Ryan :And this is why men lack the emotional capacity in business. They get stressed, they get overwhelmed, they feel like no matter how much they do, it's never enough, or they feel like whatever they actually want to create is just not achievable. Because, let's say, the unresolved when a little boy didn't receive the love and the nurturing and the safety that he needed in childhood to be in his own emotional experience, he doesn't develop the skill set of self-soothing and regulating his emotions. So he then builds a business where he's extremely stressed out every single day and he has no idea what to do with those emotions or that built up stress or overwhelm or frustration. So typically he leans on a relationship to make him feel better. He leans on a woman or a partner and gives them the responsibility of making him feel better. This is where he seeks for things outside of him to feel better.
Ryan :Caffeine, vaping, smoking, drugs, drinking all of this it's a quick outlet, but if you think of like a feel better caffeine, vaping, smoking, drugs, drinking all of this it's a quick outlet.
Ryan :But if you think of like a pressure cooker, that thing is building pressure over time and eventually needs a release, otherwise it'll just explode and those things are just a release on the pressure valve of the pressure cooker but nothing's actually happening because you release the pressure and it builds up again, again, again and then you get to the breaking point of you got to release that pressure.
Ryan :When we go back and actually discharge the energy of the unresolved trauma in our body based on what we experienced in childhood, what we're doing is we're going to the wall and we're flicking it off on the wall and we're unplugging the pressure cooker. Going to the wall and we're flicking it off on the wall and we're unplugging the pressure cooker, so that pressure is no longer unconsciously building beneath the surface, which then leads to this overwhelm in business or in relationships. How do you heal that trauma? Great question creating a safe enough space for a man to go into the parts of himself that he's been resisting or pushing away or neglecting his entire life and for me that's been my deepest teacher has been me leaning into, feeling and facing my grief.
Ryan :The grief of the love that I didn't receive, the grief of the childhood that I didn't have, the grief of everything that's happened because of this little boy who felt that who he is at his core is inherently broken or there's something wrong with him. The grief of that of wow, like you know, that's really sad. Before we go, any further.
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Darren:So check that out out right down below. What's the levels, or what's the level of problem awareness? Because one thing I even like maybe observing myself is that I don't necessarily feel a lack, but I feel, like you know, a never-ending burn of drive. Like I, I don't take breaks, nor any knee breaks. I'm not really like clinging for the next penny, but I do it from more of an infinite game perspective which is like I just like what I'm doing, I like building, I like doing it every day.
Darren:Now, is it difficult? Yes, is it tiring? Yes, is it stressful? Yes, but I mean, I couldn't imagine myself sitting in Batuba, long Beach just chilling, right? Yeah, it's not inherently there, yeah, so what's the levels of problem awareness? To be like? Oh damn, that's not something that's been resolved, right, because question for you is like what if you don't solve the problem but you become incredibly successful without it?
Ryan :I've worked with men who've exited their company for $500 million A few months later, lost themselves. They come to me. I'm riddled with anxiety. My relationship, my marriage, is breaking down. I've lost myself. I'm reactive, I'm shut down. It's like my life's imploding.
Ryan :And it's because he finally got to the end of what it was that he thought he wanted and realized that at the end of it, beneath all of it, his entire life, the drive behind all of it was this little boy who was still seeking his dad's approval. So he exited for 500 million dollars and it wasn't it. It just didn't feel like anything. It didn't feel like it was enough. And beneath that was that unresolved trauma and energy.
Ryan :Now here's the thing when you're operating from the consciousness of the wounded boy, you're in a state of survival. So let's say you're building a business from the place of this little boy who feels like he needs to prove himself in order to be loved, or that he needs to create a level of success in order to be seen or validated, or to feel like he has some value and worth in the world. In childhood he didn't have his core emotional needs reflected back to him right. He then gets the end of the path and the whole journey has been built on this. It's, it's fear, so he's, it's operating from a place of fear every single day. He's living in a state of survival and activation. Right then he gets to the end, and then that happens.
Ryan :Now the difference is here, is that and I feel like a piece beneath your question of what you're asking is you mentioned. You know, I don't just want to go like sit on the beach and chill, like I still want to drive, I still want to have this drive, I still want to create success. So what's the point of healing this if you know I'm going to lose that?
Darren:it's almost how. How does someone identify that they need that help? Because it's levels of problem awareness. Yeah, we chatted earlier about your business. Yeah, I can look at it like like it's like a mathematical equation, but it's very difficult for someone to look at themselves that way and also, there's no scorecard or scoreboard as how things are operating internally, especially up here or here. There's no dashboard, right, so someone has to come.
Darren:So the whole logic with this is you have to hit rock bottom.
Darren:People hit rock bottom to realize this stuff, but you don't need to hit rock bottom to make those changes. And guys come to us for their business and for their content when they've hit rock bottom, but it's like you don't have to be in extreme pain to fix the problem. Yeah, that's my kind of idea, because I always look at things through levels of problem of awareness, because for a lot of guys listening this to me, like, oh, I'm fine, but they're deeply insecure, they have these deep wounds, they're not, they don't know how to make the shift. And then if you put, if we put together a plan which you will for people, they don't know, they don't know that they need it, right, and it's kind of like it's like to keep it very simple. It's like when you speak to someone who's overweight and they don't have that level of awareness for you, but it's literally in the mirror. So if they can't see that, then I think a big challenge you have is to get people to see it inside of them.
Ryan :Yep, so as you've created a level of success. I've created a level of success. And then you also know that probably the most successful people that you know as well that have created massive success, majority of that is the more that they've actually worked on themselves. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah. So, by listening to this podcast, this is the invitation. This is a subtle invitation because here's the thing the universe will whisper at you before it fucking yells at you. Right, and this could be a whisper.
Ryan :And here's the thing people know. You know there's things, you know that there's things that need to be worked on, that you've been like I know someone listening to this right now. They're like, oh, there's that one thing that I know that I've been doing for so long. It's a habit, it's a behavior, it's a reaction, it's something your partner tells you. It's like you know the thing, you know the crutch, you know the void, you know the fucking vice. And this is your invitation. This is the subtle whisper from the universe.
Ryan :The fact that you're listening to this, that you and I so you know we connected here in Bali like all these synchronicities have happened for some, for this podcast to happen, for someone to listen to it, to receive that subtle whisper from the universe to go wow, you know, maybe I should look at you know why I have this dependency on these things to make or a relationship to feel good, or why I feel anxious or reactive in relationship, or why I feel so overwhelmed and stressed and like nothing is ever enough in business? This is the imitation, this is the whisper, because you can change from a place of pain and suffering and desperation or inspiration, or from a place of choice. Because, when it comes to the hero's journey, we are always receiving subtle invitations and callings to adventure to go on our own hero's journey, and most people wait until the universe is screaming at them or they get hit by the truck to then listen. And this is me speaking from losing relationships, losing a lot of money from me.
Ryan :Uh, you know, either achieving something and getting to the end of it and then wishing I could go back and tell people hey, this isn't the path, this isn't the way, like I've been down that road and you know you don't. People don't have to. And also, who? Who is it for me to say people, uh, what road is that? They can or can't go down it? That's up to them, that's part of their journey. And if I didn't go through some of my karmic paths and journeys, I wouldn't be here today sharing what I'm sharing, what was some of the biggest absolute blow-ups in your face relationship.
Ryan :What was that? I'd been in the personal development space for close to a decade now and I went through a relationship where I'd done the work, I'd invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on myself and my journey, all of it Intellectually, I understood trauma, I understood healing, I understood personal growth, personal development, I understood business, understood healing, I understood personal growth, personal development, I understood business. But beneath all of that was still this little boy. He was yearning for something outside of him to feel good. He was yearning for a relationship to soothe him and regulate him and support him emotionally. And then it took for me to be so dependent on that where I got into a relationship with someone who was emotionally unavailable. And here's the thing. That's what we do, because that's what was familiar to me, right, what I thought was love was emotional unavailability. I didn't know the difference between true love and someone who is emotionally unavailable. So that emotional unavailability that I experienced in childhood, that's emotional abuse. That is actual emotional abuse. Over time it's very subtle, but to not have it reflected back to you, your core emotional needs of love, nurturing, care and connection, that's emotional abuse. And if that's what you think is normal and familiar to you, you would then get into a relationship where that's normal and that's familiar. Now, in that situation, the little boy within me got super activated and he returned to the survival strategies that he used as a boy to get his needs met his survival needs met of love and connection. We will do everything in our power to get our core emotional needs met. We will become whoever we need to be to get those needs met.
Ryan :And what it took for me to be in a relationship where my sole source of love, which was this woman, this relationship, for her to physically abandon, like I got home one day from the gym, she was packing her stuff, she was going, she couldn't do it anymore. It was too much, it was too overwhelming right, and you can probably now see how. When I shared before earlier my story of the little boy who felt like he was too much for people, I didn't receive those subtle signs over time because I thought this emotional unavailability was normal. So what I thought was normal was this person who was out of arm's reach. That's what was familiar to me, and I lost myself in that because I felt what was normal to me based on childhood, was in order to be loved, you have to prove yourself, you have to overextend yourself to get your emotional needs met, and in doing so you also have to minimize yourself as well. So you're not too much.
Ryan :So in doing so, I completely lost myself, lost touch of who I am as a man, and in that my business was suffering. Everything was just going downhill, and it took for that sole source of my love and connection to be stripped away from me for my heart to break, to crack open. But it wasn't my heart breaking and cracking open from that relationship, it was my heart breaking and cracking open all that relationship. It was my heart breaking and cracking open all the grief that had been caked around it, based on this little boy who had to protect his heart because it wasn't taken care of in childhood. Does that make sense?
Darren:makes perfect a lot of sense. It makes perfect sense and I think I think I was just very fortunate to find my wife, who kind of like realigned me Was like you know, like this shit's not okay, like the way that you're acting, the way you're doing it's not okay, and she like helped me kind of walk through that process and kind of identify that in me being like you know, you're too much like this, you're too much like that, and even giving kind of more tactical examples. It's almost like seeking approval, seeking, yeah, approval, permission, approval continuously in microcosm examples and then and almost looking for acceptance. Right, so it's. I'm extremely lucky the position I'm in because, like my wife never, never quantifies our quality of a relationship based on a success externally. So, like we got together, I was super broke, she was super broke. Uh, it hasn't changed the dynamic of the relationship. She's super proud and she's really proud of, like what we've, what we've got to, what we've built together and how she supported me. But it's never changed the nature of the relationship.
Darren:And we talk about this regularly you know how regularly of the relationship and we talk about this regularly. You know how regularly how like we don't need the cash. Yeah.
Darren:We don't need the house, we just need a few of our dogs hanging around and a bit of chicken and rice.
Darren:That's why you have money, exactly, and that's why it's opened it up to be like much more of an exploration. But what's important here is that I kind of met a woman to almost improve me in that regard, because I had been in like destructive relationships in the past whereby it was like, okay, that person that I had been running from is who I attracted, which messed me up in a certain regard, because I was always and it wasn't the person that messed me up, it was just the habit that messed me up and I think, as I gave up alcohol and gave up partying, that put us on a new path and I was able to find to kind of fine tune it from there. Now I wanted to ask you about the support mechanism. So surely not all romantic support is bad, right? Surely there's a component of having a romantic partner that helps and aids the pursuit that that you're on. So how do you draw that distinction between someone who is dependent but who is actually supportive?
Ryan :yeah, to be in relationship is to two things. There's called, it's called relational um reciprocity, right. To be in relationship, it's giving and receiving. It's this dance of being in the middle. Now, to be in relationship is giving and receiving. It's this dance of being in the middle. Now, to be in relationship is to be dependent on someone and to allow yourself to be dependent on someone and also to be independent, right. So here's the thing, here's how this becomes.
Ryan :An issue is when we don't get our core emotional needs met in our dependency stage in childhood, we get stuck in a state of survival where, as an adult, we become dependent on relationships or overly independent on relationships, because that's our map, that's our embodied sense of what relationship is. We don't know what healthy connection is because we didn't have that safety. So this is how we become adult children in relationship. Who is seeking to have those core emotional needs met through a relationship as an adult? And until we actually go back and you learn how to hold that boy who didn't get the love that he needed, right, you learn how to really hold yourself in that where you can be solid in your own frame of energy as a man, while also allowing yourself to depend and rely on a partner as well. So, yes, it's both. It's being yourself to depend and rely on a partner as well. So, yes, it's both.
Ryan :It's being able to depend and rely on someone, right, that's what relationship is. And this comes back to. This is what attachment styles are. If you've ever heard of attachment styles, we've got anxious attachment, we've got avoidant attachment, we've got disorganized attachment, avoidant attachment, we've got disorganized attachment. So those are the styles. Those are the styles. Sorry, I should say those are the strategies.
Ryan :So our attachment styles are the strategies that we developed in childhood to either keep love at arm's length, to create distance, to protect our heart, right, or the strategies that we develop to gain closeness and connection. So the anxious is think of, like reaching out energy, like I need, I'm dependent on you to fulfill something that's missing within me. Right, there's something inherently missing within me. I feel that at my core there's something missing and this is where, at the core of it, growing up, throughout childhood, throughout the rest of a man's life, he just feels this deep core sense of loneliness. That's where it comes from. Is this love that he didn't have reflected back to him? So that's the anxious. And then the avoidant is love was such a painful place, right, where he was either shut down, ridiculed, criticized, passive aggressiveness, right, or he was either loved and then he was met with like harsh energy or whatever, or he didn't receive the emotional connection that he needed through his parents having a calm, regulated nervous system.
Ryan :Because, as children, we're communicating nervous system to nervous system. That's how we communicate with our caregivers. Your ability to regulate and soothe your nervous system and your emotional capacity in relationship is directly correlated to your parents' nervous system and their ability to be with their own emotions. So take a look at what you experienced in childhood and then think about how that then has reflected within your nervous system, because that's your only representation of emotional regulation and connection, because that's what your nervous system, because that's your only representation of emotional regulation and connection, because that's what your nervous system was first and foremost connected to in childhood. Dude, that's crazy. So, coming back to the attachment styles, this is where we, when we become wounded in those stages, this is where we don't allow ourselves to depend on a partner right, and they will feel that. They'll feel that there's there's that there's something that's blocking me loving you. There's something around like you're not letting me fully in, right, or it's the other way around, where it's like they have zero boundaries and it's just a shit show.
Ryan :Yeah a shit show. So, yes, in relationship there is a healthy level of support of actually allowing yourself to depend on a partner, to depend on them, because you're also independent within yourself. So it's what we call interdependence, it's the middle. Now there's that. And then there's also, especially for men, a level of emotional support that they go to their brothers for, not their partner.
Ryan :When a man brings his problems, his challenges, his frustrations constantly to his partner and he's leaning on her emotionally for emotional support because he doesn't know what to do with the overwhelm or the frustration of his business not going the way he wants it to go right think of the energy of like a, like a pillar leaning on another pillar. How's your partner supposed to lean and depend on you emotionally as a man, right, if you don't have that solid frame of energy within yourself? Like I said, it's the ability to, in a healthy way, rely and depend on your partner emotionally. And there's certain things that you bring to the men. There's certain things that you sit in circle with other men and discuss with them and whatever comes up for you. In that, yes, you can bring the awareness of that to your partner, but you're not bringing the problem to her, for her to try and solve.
Darren:The majority of my guests run content businesses. They've used content as the main element of their business to drive more revenue and build their influence online. We've been doing this through a podcast for many years. We have many guests, clients and even customers use a podcast as their main source of driving more revenue for their business and building their influence online, and we're offering a handful of spots to book in a call with our team to learn how you yes, you can leverage a podcast to generate more revenue for your business and drive your influence online.
Darren:Many of our clients and customers start from nothing, but each one of them are action takers and they want to learn more about how to build a podcast and a brand right around their business. So if you want to learn more and you're really interested in building a podcast, check out the link down below and book in a free call with our customer success manager and he will guide you into how you can build and generate more revenue from your podcast this year. Can you give examples, Because I've worked on that deliberately? Just for a bit of context, I think in the beginning of my business, like many years ago, me and Elise lived in Singapore together.
Darren:It was just kind of me and her and I'd be like Jesus Christ, like this is on fire, this is on fire, and then it would kind of almost be at the boy that cried wolf. It would just kind of come to the point whereby it was one not valuable for me and then two not valuable for her because she doesn't understand, right, yeah, whereas I joke saying people don't need co-founders, they need better friends. Because, like, in theory, if you just have a good network of guys or we have a very good team, that if something explodes, I get on a call and I'm like, right, guys, this is fucked, but we'll do x, y and z, yeah. And then often to my wife, then if she's like, oh, how was it, I just come along like, yeah, it's fine, whatever.
Darren:And I I've found that I have developed a lot more uh, with extreme scenarios, like just really extreme things that explode all the time, uh, than my wife, because I just carry more responsibility in terms of just like, literally like people that are that work with me, money, that we manage everything, that a lot of times I feel now that I've just kind of got to the point where, by things just kind of go off my back. I'm like, ah right, you know, because I've I've spent many years doing this, you know, and I have scares all down my back and right through my face, yeah, of uh, betrayal, everything that now, if I was to explain some of these things to at least she would blow up. But I just I'm like it's chill, it happens, it's happened, it will happen again, yeah, you know, yeah so yeah.
Ryan :So let's think of it from the lens of that where you shared.
Ryan :If you're in relationship as a man and you're bringing to your partner this energy of overwhelm, stress, frustration, this closed offness where she can't feel you and she can feel this.
Ryan :And here's the thing when you don't have the support of brotherhood and men to bring your challenges and your frustrations to, because when you don't have that, you'll carry that on your shoulders and you'll bring that into your relationship and she'll consistently feel this sense of close-offness or overwhelm. And how it typically it plays out is her request for quality of time quality time will be overwhelming for you because you have all of this stuff on your shoulders or her request for intimacy or connection. Or her request for yeah, let's just say intimacy and connection will be too much. It's like I've got so much shit going on right now I can't even think about that or you or she can just feel that you don't actually have the capacity to hold my emotional expression. So the most toxic trait, I like to say the most toxic trait of the masculine, is him expecting his partner to hold him and support him emotionally, yet he doesn't have the capacity within his nervous system to meet her basic needs of creating safety have you?
Darren:are you familiar with sahil bloom's work? No, dude, be an awesome, very free to connect to it. Yeah, happy to do the intro as well. You get on really well. Yeah, I know, sahil, have you seen the Sahil at all? No, oh, dude. Yeah, he has a new book called Five Pillars of Wealth, which is like the full spectrum of health, wealth, relationships, time and freedom.
Darren:He's a friend of mine which I'm very proud to say. He's very, very famous and the reason why he's famous is because he was in San Francisco working in private equity or across America, whatever, and then he moved all the way back to the East Coast of America to be with his family because he wanted to value time and he knew that his parents were getting older and the amount of time he's going to spend with them decreases, and he does a lot of analysis of time. So, basically, quality time over quantity of time. So you could be with your partner for 15 minutes a day, but that time is super quality, spent where you're. You know capturing these needs and you're addressing these needs, so that you can go off and be in an office for 22 hours a day.
Darren:But it's about understanding the parameters of it and then also like what is a wealthy life in the context of everything that you want. So it speaks a lot to this because I think, as I explained to you in my house, like I, I I have tried to engineer this because this openness and attentiveness and conscientiousness was always missing for me until I had learned a lot of this concept, because the fact was, just because me and Elise worked from the same room didn't mean we were connecting. So that's why I have the dungeon, which anyone who knows me or my podcast. It's like an iconic thing, which is like I go into a room that's black and I leave when it's over. And that could be.
Darren:I can take breaks, right, but I leave when it's over and then I go back and me and Lisa are like okay, what's going on? She has this issue with the dogs and so on, and I'm just there and I might only be there the room for two hours, but then when I come out, I'm in this and I've tried to put those extreme hard borders on, like the workers in the office, or the dungeon as I call it, and they were talking about x, because I have, I have to do that because, if I don't, then I'm just like oh, I'm on slack and someone's pissing me off because that's what happens on my laptop.
Darren:Someone's saying something that's gone wrong, so it's about having those extreme harsh borders. Now he doesn't talk about that, but I have to add that on me because I've seen this seep in and out. Yeah, and like I famously don't have a sim card, you can't contact me if I'm not on my laptop. It's not possible. I don't have, I don't have data, don't have a sim card, I don't have a phone number, I don't have a, I don't have an email address on my phone, you can't contact me. So I have to get to my laptop to be able to contact me, and I'm always on my laptop, but that's because I'm when I'm working. I'm working, um, yeah, so like that's an indirect way.
Ryan :It's boundaries, right, it's boundaries with everything yeah, and that that's more of an on a like individual level.
Darren:Absolutely, it's like you being super intentional with your energy and that's like masculine self-leadership when I won, because I think what's ironic is it's ironic because I think Elise wasn't familiar with this, yeah, and she was just kind of chilling where she could be on the couch and I'm like, come, we might be working and she didn't really consciously think about this, yeah, but I had noticed, noticed, I'd observed it wasn't an issue, but I'd observed that we weren't spending quality time together, yeah. So I had kind of I have very, uh, intentional rules, which is like if we're at the table, you'll find this interesting. I'll tell you this. So I grew up in a chaotic, chaotic house, bro chaotic, and I lived in the middle of nowhere. That a big thing. It was so fucked up. A big thing that would happen is that people in my house would play music really loud or play the tv really loud to create this sense of atmosphere super fucked up.
Darren:So then, when someone came in, it was like oh, there was something going on in the house that you weren't proud of. My parents were never together, they were separated, but we were too poor to get a divorce, so they were separated, separated out of the house. So what that had meant for me is that I had grown up resenting television, because it was this noise distraction.
Darren:So Naomi, my wife, we have lunch together, breakfast together, dinner together, no TV, no sound, no phone. So, as you came into my house earlier and you're like, dude, this is the quietest place ever. There's no sounds in my house because we have to converse and my phone will be in the office as well. And when we're having dinner, like I'm like how's the dog doing, how is this doing, how is this doing? And I'm genuinely interested in it. And then I get up and I'm like I'm gone and I gotta go. You know, and it's because I've had those like things from childhood that, you know, if I hear the TV on in the background or something, to me it triggers those things. Yeah.
Darren:Which meant, you know, pushing people away and so on and so forth.
Ryan :Yeah, pushing people away and so on and so forth. Yeah, the the things that we value most in life now were based on the void that we had in childhood. So the things that we didn't have in childhood typically become the things that we value most. So that that's very much where, like our highest values derive from. Is that way, money would be a highest value? Yeah, for sure For me. Learning and growth. You know something growing up was learning was not my strong suit in the schooling system. That was, and because that was something I didn't have cause I felt dumb, I felt like I I couldn't learn, I felt like there was something wrong with me. It's become one of my highest values, where every single morning, I'm either reading or now I'm learning and I'm growing's like my highest, it's like the thing that that lights me up the most is learning and growing and developing, like my knowledge and my skill sets. And, yeah, it's because that was a big void for me, uh, in childhood you'll find this interesting.
Darren:So I was a. I was very sick as a child. I was like chronic asthmatic. So I was always out of school and because I was out of school so much when I was in school, I obviously missed, like I miss everything there's my ABCs.
Darren:I miss everything. So I was termed like extremely dyslexic as a child. So I was in like a separate class, which is why I hated going to school, so I'd never go to school, all this kind of stuff and with that and then that mark of being dyslexic was handed into every class, every high school. I went to my high school exams. I was told not to do them because I was too dyslexic, but I should have someone who writes my stuff. I write every single day.
Darren:Everyone, a lot of people, will message me asking for my copywriter in my company. I will tell them it's me. People ask how do I send seven emails a week? I write an email every day. I say it's me. I've written every sales copy myself, every single thing, every LinkedIn post, every Instagram bio. I write myself because I love writing and I'm now, lo and behold, I'm good at it, right? So I literally say that I am actually not dyslexic. I was told I was dyslexic and then everyone just believed it. Yeah, it's crazy, and I'll wake up on a Saturday, I'll write for two or three hours on a Saturday, and it's just super ironic, right. Yeah.
Darren:Because often and this is quite interesting is because even when I was 20, 21, 22, I did software engineering in school, a variation of it. Um, I wouldn't do the applications for companies cause I felt I couldn't write Yep. And even in jobs I wouldn't write requirements for X, y and Z. Yeah.
Darren:Um, and then it was only when I built my business and my podcast. Actually it was funny enough cause I started. You'll find this funny funny. I started a podcast because I thought I couldn't write and then I end up writing every time, every day, to promote the podcast. Okay, so then when I built my business, I was like, oh, this is fucking, I like to write.
Ryan :So, as you said, everything that happens in your childhood, uh, it comes up in some sorts of experience in your adulthood and this, right here, is exactly why men fear healing, or they don't want to heal, because they feel that they're going to lose that drive. They're going to lose that determination, they're going to lose that part of them that that was built from, because that was built from a wound right, everything that's gotten you up to like the writing, the podcasting, that was from a core wound, emotional wound. And men think that that if they heal, they're going to lose that drive to build the thing that got them to where they are. But the thing is is like what was and this is coming back to what I mentioned before around either like sitting on the beach or building the business. Men think that if they heal these core emotional wounds or um reconnect with these unmet needs that they didn't have in childhood, they think they're going to just be like, oh, I don't need anything, I don't need anyone, I'm just going to go lay on the beach every single day Like I'm good.
Ryan :No, you get to receive the gifts that you've developed along the way, the gifts that you've cultivated and received because of the man that you had to become, because the man you are today is exactly the man that you were placed on this earth to be there are no coincidences but those strengths that you've gained and developed. No longer you can integrate those, but no longer from the fear or the unresolved trauma or the wounding or the guilt or the the uh, the shame that's beneath that. So it no longer has to be from a place of pain and suffering and from shame and from this unconscious need to do something, from a place of survival. Now it gets to be done from a place of deep meaning, purpose and inspiration, where it's got more depth to it.
Darren:So you become better as a result, and that's the big unlock, right? I think it's everything. I have a ton of work I still need to do and I'm actively working on it and everything, but at the same time, the work that I have done has allowed me to get to different levels and has allowed us to. It was interesting. I was at will brown's mastermind on sunday and at the end of the day it was nine o'clock at night. He went around the table and he was like what do you want to achieve? And I wrote about this in my 29 lessons.
Darren:From turning 29 years old, I've said that I've achieved absolutely everything that I've ever wanted to do in my twenties already. Now I'm simply playing for bonus points, and everything else from here is amazing. I'm married, I have an amazing wife, I'm fit, healthy, I've made more money than I would ever do, and because I had a goal that I wanted to make a million dollars by the time I was 30. And I think I hit it when I was 27. All right, so I think it was like three years ahead, ahead, even though that's not how I think but now it's all like bonus points from here on out, basically and that's not to say that I'm not ambitious.
Darren:So when I said it to Will, who's made like 35 million dollars online, he thought about it and then I thought did he think that I was kind of checked out? And he came back at the end of the night he was like you know what I'm actually the same. He's like I got everything that I need. Now I'm just playing like creativity. So it's creativity, fulfillment, enjoyment.
Darren:I still have a ton of stuff I need to work on 100%, but I think, at the very least, if you can think about it through that lens, that you will therefore start building better things. Like all right, let's fucking go. And it's allowed me to take better risk. Yep, even in the business, bro, simple things like this Spending money to make money, spending money on education, spending money on ads, spending money on better content, spending money on travel Right as in like going somewhere for a podcast I just like, alright, what do we got to do? Okay, it's like 3 in my relationship to risk opportunity as someone who is risk on, as an entrepreneur, it's allowed me to take more calculated risks, not just aimless risk, which I would argue that if you don't do the work, you take aimless risk.
Ryan :And when you don't do the deep inner work, as in a way that you have, like imagine if you were still building your business or creating what you're creating, if you didn't actually lean in and resolve a lot of that unresolved trauma that you experienced in childhood. Yeah, like that, that also played. I'm sure it's played a big and I'm sure it has it it has, because I hate to say it, but which is also true.
Darren:But the things that have happened to say it, but which is also true, but the things that happened to me as a kid is the reason why I'm a good entrepreneur. Yep, you know, I can be a savage, I can be extremely rootless, I can be extremely clinical, like as you've seen. Like you know, we've built a good relationship. You can see, I'm like extremely numbers orientated, high logic, high on like competency because of that. But then I've tried to reshape that and be like all right, let's fucking go, let's use it in the right way, so like that's allowed me to get to a very strong point, but not look back with fear yeah because, like bro, I've been faced with it like I've been hitting the head over it.
Darren:as I said, it's like I call it the born identity walking through the tower and getting hit with all like trauma bombs or like PTSD bombs, but like dude, actually sitting in it and then also avoiding it at times, like I was going to run ultras in Vietnam and then I got dengue and it swiped me out. So, yeah, I've done the avoidance, I've done everything and again, I'm not saying this as if I've done it 100%, not thing. And I'm again, I'm not saying this as if I've done 100, not, but it's a good, actually. It's actually. It's a good reminder for people to know that I've done a little bit of work and it's helped me tremendously. So if you were to sit with you, do a lot more work, that would help you at an with an exponent that we talk a lot about, leverage on my podcast asymmetrical returns. That has an asymmetrical return. Yeah, 100, yeah. So that's what's funny, right? It's not about input output, it's about input equals a hundred x output.
Ryan :yeah, absolutely what you just shared then around the childhood and how you've had to. You've become so analytical and clinical or in your head and like being a really good problem solver or being really good at seeing the threats or the you know, the potential. Um, like like all the tiny, small, little intricate things that most people don't see, like that right there is preventing a man from being in his heart and that disconnects him from his felt sense and people feeling him. When he's so caught up and stuck in his head, you can feel that disconnection between his head and his heart. People want to feel you.
Ryan :The reason I blew up on social media is because people could finally feel me. They could feel the essence of my soul. The most successful musicians in the world you can feel their soul in the music and it's about bringing that soul back into your work, because no one will do it better than you. No one will do it better than me, right? But when people try and do it as you or just like you, they're being inauthentic to themselves and you can feel that they're disconnected from their soul, their own unique essence.
Ryan :So that's what will happen is when you're so caught up in your head, because what happens is we actually become decapitated from the head down, sorry, from the chin down. We become decapitated. What I mean by that is, as humans, we do everything in our power to avoid feeling. Pain Makes sense, and if your emotional expression, your emotional experience was a painful place to be in childhood, you'll disconnect from it. So, men, they disconnect from the chin down. They have no fucking clue what's going on in here at any given moment and because they're unaware of that, they're disconnected from their intuition. They're disconnected from their deeper truth of like what it is.
Darren:they know deep down in their gut where they can live from that, that that place I'd love to share with you a newsletter I wrote on saturday, um, like afterwards, and you can like say it's right or wrong, but, like I would, I would say that a component of someone who's going to smash it, or like inevitably going to win, is someone whose desire, or someone's ability to stay in the pain threshold for as long as possible. So there's a famous ultra runner called Courtney Delwater. She calls it a pain cave and she goes into the pain cave when she's running 250 mile races. She actually goes blind from the dehydration and she still runs because she's able to stay in that like pain threshold. And then I would I can get the line for you, but specifically how I wrote it was pain was like time in the moment multiplied by the rate of revelation rate of revelation or iteration, whichever to get better and then that is quantified by pain. And then the pain then is equal to the outcome.
Darren:Because, like I've worked with just a lot of entrepreneurs I you know some of your famous, like YouTubers we do their backend and like I can tell you like the person is different depending on where they are to sit, with problems and pains and delayed gratification, everything. You see it right, you just see it, it just appears right, and I think, like that's just been a very big thing for me, is the fact that maybe it's because of my past that I'm able to sit with something that's so painful for so long. But then I don't think that's also true, because you know, someone in a third world country who doesn't have a lot of resources also has a lot of pain. Yeah, but in a different, in a different method.
Ryan :Yeah, so this is where I'd ask someone for for what purpose and from what place are you doing?
Darren:it from Funny. You said that because I said it's from the purpose of an asymmetrical return. Yes, it's because if you work sort of a job that was terrible and it made you miserable and painful, then you would just be like fuck this, I'm out. But if you're doing it to build I'll give you an example to build a startup, like a tech startup, is the ultimate highest form of leverage because in theory, the guy built uber, or, like elon musk, if he builds tesla over 10 years, that has the highest form of leverage because it is the highest form of multiple, whereas someone who's working a job, no, obviously right. So that's why that's actually a point that I made specifically, yeah, which was for us as business owners. There is an infinite upside which I find very difficult to see, why people who commit to the game don't stay in the game yeah I find it.
Darren:I always talk to people about this, but I find it very difficult to resonate with people who don't do the work, who have committed to this lifestyle. You know they have a business, they have employees, yeah, and they're not doing the work. I find it very hard to understand why this?
Ryan :because it's about them. It's about them. They make it about them. And here's the thing I believe when you're on mission and you're on purpose, with what it is that you're supposed to be doing here on this earth, that's got something to do with either helping the planet or helping other people in some way. It's not about you anymore. This is where you become selfless. This is where you transcend self. It's not even about you anymore. It's about the people that you're here to help and impact. That's why I wake up every fucking day. It's not about me. It's about the generations that have walked behind me and the ones that are to walk in front of me. You know, and what it is that I'm here to leave, this lasting legacy and the ripple effect that I'm here to leave, this lasting legacy and the ripple effect that I'm here to create in this world. I know it's beyond me and there's a podcast I did with your good friend, Tom and I actually spoke about this where I had a plant medicine journey to where I had a direct conversation with God. That's probably quite a big thing to throw out there for most people, but you can go listen out if you want to hear that journey. But in that it was very, very clear why I'm here. It's not about me. I am a vessel, I am an instrument of something that's greater than me and that's why, dude, I shared with you.
Ryan :I legit had barley belly yesterday. I'm here doing a podcast. It's beyond me. I'm here to share my message. I'm here to show up every fucking day and do what I need to do from that place and not from the place of I need to prove myself, I need to prove myself, I need to be good enough. I'm not enough yet. It's not enough yet. It's from a place of yeah, and I'm the same, Like I've got everything I could want, and more financially right now. Like I don't have to. I, you want to, I want to.
Darren:And I get to. And that's the big. If you read 10 X, these are in two X, like there's a whole paragraph on needs versus. If you need something, it's from anxiety, insecurity. You'll take the shitty client, you'll do the bad work, you'll cut corners, you'll fuck someone over. If you want it, it inspires enthusiasm, creativity, an infinite game approach. Yeah, then it's like alright, let's try this thing. And it wasn't until I had done some of that work and also, I have to say, until I've achieved some sort of financial success yeah, done some of that work. And also, I have to say, until I've achieved some sort of financial success to be able to play cards like that.
Darren:Because James Kemp taught me about this and he just says he just experiments, he builds things, he runs email campaigns. He just looks at it like a scientist and he's like, ah, that's funny that it didn't work, let's try this one. Ah, it's funny that it did work. Let's look at that. And I think he's done insane amount of work. Be a good guy for you to connect to it. He was divorced. He went through an extreme divorce. He took care of his kids after the divorce Apparently, there was lots of things going on and then he had to spend two years rewiring all his hardware, why he felt like he was always chasing, chasing, chasing. And now he's making $300,000 a month with one employee at 97% margin.
Ryan :Yeah, I know of him. I don't know him Speaking of my mastermind bro, oh, amazing.
Ryan :And I can almost guarantee that he's done some inner child work in some way, in some form for him to have that shift and transformation where he got to a point that his life was built upon the foundation of, and now he's completely switched things, where it's like now he gets to live more on purpose and on mission, where it's, it's not from that place anymore and um, yeah, what one one thing I wanted to touch on there around um, what were we just speaking about before, james?
Ryan :um needs versus wants and, acting from that position of I need this, I want this, you said I have everything we need or it's important for someone to fully own where they're at in their season of life right now, when my business wasn't making any money, it's I needed money, like Like I was operating from a place of survival. And when we look at the, if you go look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, the first is safety, survival right. And once we get out of survival, then we can get into self-actualization. And this is like that's the spiritual journey in business and within business. We can get to that point of self-actualization where it's like, yeah, you know, I can try things now. I can like have more freedom and flexibility with what I do, um, where I make it better, and it makes things better.
Darren:Yes, I always say that, like, entrepreneurship is a journey of self-discovery.
Darren:This guy's on the path of profitability because it makes things actually better when you do it that way. You know, and I've. It's ironic because I had limiting. You'll find this interesting. I had limiting beliefs of bringing people together and doing events and doing dinners and everything, and I always know that I should do something when I have internal resistance. But then I know on the external, I'll not be good at it, but I can do it. So I'll give an example.
Darren:That's how I started my podcast. I was like I should do this, I should do this, I should do this, and it was that driving force that made me, when I didn't want to do it, to do it. And then I started to do this with client dinners. You'll find it, these are done for you clients. They don't know each other. I would bring them together in Dubai, in New York, in Bali. And then I was like whoa, this is amazing.
Darren:Then we started running masterminds. Then we ran our last one and then I had a lot of resistance. We were running our next one and I was like I don't know, can I do it? I don't know, can I do it. And then we started doing it and we started, yeah, and it's always that point whereby you think it's not going to work when it's like okay, that's when you should be doubling down.
Darren:What was the limiting belief? It's I heard this from my public speaking coach is that when you say things like like and right and you have all these filler words, it comes from a place of insecurity in school that you were so afraid of asking a question and the teacher not responding that you would fill in the word. I have that sense of insecurity about when I start something, because I used to think that if I started a program it'd have to be full on the first day and everyone thinking I'm a loser if I'm not. But then I'd learned that because I'll run a lot of programs, bro, uh, I'd learned that customers have an inverse relationship to what you want. You want loads people in your program. They want no one, they want just them, they want one or two. So that would give me a lot of peace to know that if I run a mastermind and one person shows up, they're gonna have the best weekend of their life three days of me and my entire team.
Darren:And then I had, and then we have cracked the company masterminds whereby we bring our people, and I'll do it. But I wanted to try something with guests and because I'm, you know, paying my guests, I wanted to make sure that had a good what's the word, a good guest list or good guests of people. And then I had the fear again being like what if I bring these people and then no one comes? Yeah, and then we had ran it and then everyone was like yeah, this is sick, let's go.
Darren:So again. It's always me thinking on the counter of being that kid in school who put up his hands and everyone laughed at and see like that that one core emotional wound shows up in so many different ways and different forms.
Ryan :And it will still show up in different ways, but there's levels to it now there's levels.
Darren:Yeah, because you know, when we had our dinner the other night, um, me and elise showed up at 6 50, then it was at 7 and elise was like what, if we're the only person here, we're going to be like the pablo escobar meme. You know him sitting on the bench and I was like don't worry. I was like it's chill, they're gonna come, because I'm so used to doing it, you know. And she was like I don't think anyone's gonna come. Did you make sure you put the right restaurant? And I was like, chill, they're gonna come in 10 minutes. And five minutes later, dude, there was so many people there, it was overwhelming, exactly you know yeah, yeah, but like that, that's.
Ryan :That's it. Like those core emotional need, those core wounds that we experienced in childhood will continuously show up in so many different ways, in different forms and different levels. So you don't just do the healing once. That little boy who experienced what you experienced in childhood is a part of who you are. That's never going to disappear. Good point, and it's an integration of that, it's a welcoming of it. When we go yeah, go, yeah, fuck that, like you know I don't need him when we push that younger part of us away, whatever we resist will persist and that pressure, that weight will be heavier instead of going. Good point. Hey, what did that? Hey, little darren yeah see you, bro.
Ryan :How are you, brother? How are you? And like and holding that younger part of you in what it was that he needed in that moment, which was and what you experience is a sense of safety in your nervous system to go ah cool, you know, the, the, the charge is gone, where you don't have to hold that unnecessary weight on your shoulders of the pressure of that boy, you know, worried about things going to fuck up or no one showing up.
Darren:Big thank you, brother. This is amazing, thank you.