Between his popular Mind Vitamin videos that have touched the hearts and minds of millions, his global speaking engagements, online courses, and private coaching, Jesse Elder has worked with people worldwide to upgrade their lives with his teachings of self-mastery, radical self-acceptance, and inspired action.
“The greatest gift that any of us can give is the gift of our wellbeing and the gift of our own joy and our bliss and our own happiness. And since no one outside of us can determine what that is, that means that the responsibility is on us to find out what makes us happy and live according to that. Every day.”
Sean: All right, Jesse. I am so grateful that you are on The Lucrative Society with Mindie and I, and I just wanted to kick this off right away by saying you’re a dear friend, I love who you are on the planet, but I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck you do.
Jesse Elder: Welcome to the club. I myself am in that club. And so the feeling is mutual on the love and appreciation side, although I have a little more sense of what you guys are up to and I’m just stoked to be here. When Mindie reached out, it was like, yeah, man, this just feels so good. So excited to see what unfolds today.
Sean: Good. So what the fuck do you do?
Jesse Elder: I seem to be a sort of catalyst for people’s best ideas. I didn’t create that, that was a title or a description that was given by a client after we spent some time together. And in his words, he said, I just forgot to be a dick. He said, I just forgot to be afraid. I forgot to be overwhelmed. It just, everything just seems so clear. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I knew exactly how to do it. And it was as if I had sort of talked to my future self and came back with all the information that I needed. A lot of the stuff that I do talk about is firmly in the realm of science fiction until it starts to produce results. And then people swear by it, they go and they burn their entire personal development libraries and they’re like, Holy shit, I am the power. This is pretty cool. See ya never. So my retention is terrible and I’m cool with that because it means that I really can be a one-stop-shop for people in the personal development space.
Sean: You know, when you say this, the first thing that popped in my head, Mindie had me read a phenomenal book at the end of last year, and I somehow feel like you’re one of the characters in this book.
Mindie: Which book?
Sean: Illusions.
Mindie: Oh, totally.
Sean: Have you read Illusions?
Jesse Elder: Richard Bach?
Mindie: Yeah.
Jesse Elder: Yeah. Amazing author.
Mindie: Yeah. You’re basically in the book. It’s funny how you defined that because when I was talking earlier to Sean about this interview, he said, well, I don’t really know what Jesse does… I think he’s a time traveler. And you just essentially said that. So, yeah, we’re going to have an amazing conversation today. One of the things that I’d love to talk about with everybody is a little bit of the path that they took to get to where they are today. It’s really sexy and fun to talk about what’s going on right now, but none of us were an overnight success and we all took different journeys to arrive at wherever we have currently landed.
Jesse Elder: 100%.
Mindie: I’d love to learn a little bit about your journey to right now.
Jesse Elder: By my parents’ own admission, I was sort of an experiment. My childhood was an experiment in extreme permissiveness. They were very good about creating safe boundaries as far as physical safety. Although by today’s standards, they would probably be considered negligent and maybe have child protective services called on them. I was talking to my dad a couple of, about a year and a half ago about this and he said, you know, we didn’t know what we were doing. But you seemed like you knew what you were doing. So we did the best we could to stay out of your way. And I teared up when he told me that, because I remember being a kid, little like two, three years old and going for these walks on the on the coast or wherever we were, and just looking back and they were way off in the distance and they’re just kind of giving me a thumbs up and just seeing what happened. And that led to being homeschooled. And then that led to a fascination with martial arts. And I was nine, ten years old and then that led to doing these competitions. And by the time I was 20 years old, I was competing in these God awful illegal bar fights that were in San Antonio, Texas. No rules, no weight limit, no time limit, no safety equipment. It was like fight club except you could talk about it a lot cause you tried to sell tickets cause you got a portion of the tickets. And I learned very quickly what was theory and what was result. And I learned to be incredibly skeptical of anything that sounded good, but didn’t produce a measurable result because the consequences were severe and they were immediate. So I developed a very healthy relationship with curiosity.
At the same time, I didn’t have the temptation of getting too far into something that couldn’t produce a result on Thursday night when I fought. And so as I began to find ways to quiet my nerves, I got into meditation. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for days before a fight. So I learned all of these ways of calming my brain and becoming more, you know, just more reflection. And then those, I did pretty well. I won most fights. I lost two in spectacular fashion. One of which best, absolutely the best physical experience I’ve ever had. It was a glorious beat down. The dude outweighed me by like 40 pounds and his corner had covered his whole body in Vaseline so I couldn’t take him down with jujitsu because they knew that’s what I was going to do.
They’d been watching me fight all season and I weighed like 145 pounds. Same thing I do today. I couldn’t beat this guy and he lit me up. I was eating punches like crazy, hundreds of people watching. It was the worst beating of my life. And I went to the hospital afterwards, I had a collapsed lung, I had a concussion. I was messed up. But that was the night that I really got it experientially that I have a body, but I’m not my body. And I am, and I think we all are, extensions of consciousness that for whatever reason, chooses to individuate itself in these physical 3D forms so that we can experience duality and choice and free will and all that cool, sexy stuff. So I wouldn’t trade that night for anything because of the experience that it gave me. And this is something that’s a huge part of the work that I do now. Everybody’s got their version of that. You know, everybody’s got traumatic experiences. I personally think being born is the most traumatic experience because before you get here, you got room service 24/7, it’s warm and it’s dark, and you got the best house music in the world, you know?
Mindie: Heartbeat, yeah.
Jesse Elder: Right, exactly. And then, all of a sudden, you’re just like what the fuck’s going on? And you just pop out. It’s cold and bright. And I think that probably had to be pretty traumatic. So I think we’ve all had things that maybe we wish we didn’t, but ultimately, I don’t subscribe to the immutability of linear time. I think it’s a very useful illusion. But I don’t think it’s an absolute, I think it’s more of an agreement, a part of the code of this game that we’re playing. So that being said, the past isn’t real. Only thinking about it now is. And so that’s informed my approach and it’s informed my philosophies and I’ve managed to shorten my time horizons down to almost zero to where I don’t know what I’m going to say next. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
And it’s really expanded a sense of presence. All of that led to me building a martial arts school. And then I applied the same sort of results-only philosophy. And I became super skeptical of marketers that would come in and tell me, Oh, place an ad in the yellow pages. Remember those? And I’m thinking, Oh, then I’ll be successful! Here, take $800 a month for 36 months. That’ll do the trick. [Laughing] Instead, I had to keep living with my dad. I did graduate homeschool when I was 17 and moved out. That’s how you graduate homeschool. You move out. I went back for my master’s in homeschooling at 21, moved back in with my dad, but I kept applying all of this, Hey, if it works, I’ll do it. If it doesn’t work, I’m out. And the school was successful. I ended up opening another one and eventually training my students how to teach and how to market and how to sell.
And it got to the point where we had eight schools and a consulting company. And that’s actually when I first became aware of you, Sean, because I was sort of connected to Joe and Dean a little bit through the podcast. And then I started to be more involved with more people that know you. Kevin Thompson became a great friend and one of my first clients actually. And so there started to be all this overlap and I was like, wow, I still felt totally outside the marketing world. I still do very intentionally. It’s more art at this point. But I ended up opening all these schools and one day I just, I was actually laying naked in Burning Man, just in the middle of the desert with nobody around me. I thought, what am I doing? This life is over. It’s not me anymore.
So, I sold my schools and had no idea what I was going to do in 2013. One day I made a video, put it on Facebook. I had like 300 friends on Facebook and most of them were my actual friends and about 10% of them had my actual last name. So, it’s like when you send out an email and the first person to buy is like a relative, you’re like, yes! Oh… It doesn’t count. So I made a video and that video ended up getting more shares than I had Facebook friends. And it was just one of those… You know, it felt like it was time. So I started making videos. Since then, I have developed a pretty fulfilling consulting practice and have written tons of programs around mindset and ethical cult building and how to sell through Facebook lives, which I still have no formula for, but I invite people to watch a breakdown.
We’ve done some multiple six-figure launches with all organic advertising on three days’ inspiration. Like, Oh, let’s do this thing and then I’ll make a couple of posts, do a video. And next thing you know, a lot of people are happy. So I still don’t know what I do. I just recognize that we all operate on a certain frequency and for whatever reason when I get together with people who are cool, who have some sense of what they want and who are willing to test some theories and judge by results, pretty interesting things tend to happen.
Mindie: I totally love all of that because it’s so resonant with how we think and who we want to be in the world. I especially loved, in your bio, I was reading it earlier and saw that you had the same notion that I did at one point in time like, Hey, I’m really good at what I do. Where are all the people?
Jesse Elder: Right!
Mindie: Why don’t they know that I can help them? So amazing! When I first became a coach that was my thing. I was like marketing… No, I hate it. I don’t want anything with it, being slick and salesy. And so I very much resonated with that. So thank you for sharing that.
Jesse Elder: Love that. Well, you guys roll on the same frequency. I mean you guys have your own way of being yourselves in the world and I really respect that so much because I think in a society that’s engineered for conformity, to live authentically is actually to exist in a sort of permanently altered state. And so you just automatically have this, what Dan Sullivan would call an unfair advantage. You just have this way of being in the world that people want. And at that point it really doesn’t matter what you do, what they want is who you BE because it reminds them of what they want to be. And when they show up, you bill them.
Sean: Yes, exactly. I have a question that’s got four parts to it. It’s based on an acronym HERB.
Mindie: I love that you turn British when you say that word.
Sean: Herb or herb, however you want to take it. So H stands for habits. Can you walk us through some of the habits that you have stuck to, to help you create happiness and wealth in your life?
Jesse Elder: Brilliant frame. I’ll give two real quick. One is a physical habit and one is more of a philosophical habit. A physical habit, without question, is taking time every day to sort of go into the void and to step out of this, you know, sights and sounds of the world and just get still and silent and in solitude. And so whether that’s meditation or just kind of sitting there by myself and just thinking my thoughts. Not moving. There’s no particular pattern or formula for it. I do have a meditation that I have found that I like a lot, but it’s more about making that a dedicated practice. And if I miss that or decide that something else is more important, things get weird. So I’ve found that that’s a very rejuvenative, very creative, very powerful place to be, is in that silence every day. And philosophically, there’s a great gift that I think we all have the ability to give. And it’s sort of pushed aside as if it’s not that valuable or if it’s some sort of luxury. But I think the greatest gift that any of us can give is the gift of our wellbeing and the gift of our own joy and our bliss and our own happiness. And since no one outside of us can determine what that is, that means that the responsibility is on us to A) find out what makes us happy and B) live according to that every day. And sometimes it means that you are not going to get approval or you’re going to experience criticism, but anybody critiquing us because they don’t like the way we’re doing things is just demonstrating their own lack of emotional mastery. That they’re expecting us to behave different so they can be happy. That’s like some sort of weird emotional metaphysical terrorism. You know, I’ll feel good if you do this. So philosophically, I found that to be a very useful habit. The greatest gift is the gift of our own happiness. And I think along with that comes granting people the freedom to just have their own experience and not feel the need to deviate from our center just to appease somebody else.
Sean: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I really believe that that term unfuckable-with.
Jesse Elder: Right! Yes!
Sean: When you are completely disconnected…
Mindie: Isn’t it unfuckwithable?
Sean: Unfuckwithable?
Jesse Elder: I think they’re interchangeable.
Sean: I have it right here cause I was looking at it and I want to make sure that I get it.
Jesse Elder: Well, I do want to get a tee shirt for a girlfriend that just says I’m with fuckable.
Sean: Yes, exactly.
Mindie: That’s a whole different deal when it goes that way.
Jesse Elder: I’m gonna push this into censorship territory as far as I can. It won’t happen with you guys, I’m sure.
Mindie: This is us. It’s already there. What you’re saying goes back to what you were saying earlier, just about being authentic. It’s you doing you and allowing other people to do whatever they are going to do and just being totally cool and rock-solid with that.
Sean: Yeah. So it’s unfuckable-with.
Mindie: No, read that.
Sean: Oh, this is my dyslexia. I have really bad dyslexia. Unfuckwithable.
Jesse Elder: Oh!
Sean: I’m unfuckwithable, OK. When you’re truly at peace and in touch with yourself and nothing anyone says or does bothers you and no negativity or drama can touch you.
Jesse Elder: Wow. Please tell me that’s in Merriam Webster or something.
Sean: Yeah. Right?
Jesse Elder: That would be so awesome.
Sean: Yeah, it definitely probably should be in… What’s the other one? The ghetto dictionary?
Jesse Elder: The urban dictionary.
Sean: Yeah. So moving from the habits into the E, which stands for environment. What do you intentionally put in and take out of your environments? And by environments, I mean, where you live, where you work, what you drive, who you hang out with, like your environments. The stuff that you surround yourself with.
Jesse Elder: This is awesome. I literally this morning just recorded an episode for my podcast on this exact thing, freedom of location. And having emotional freedom within your environment. Same page. Shocking. So I found on the work side, I mean I’ve had team, you know, last year we had nine people that were kind of working on things and we tripled revenues and it was really cool and got to experience scaling for the first time, which previously I thought only happened when you were fishing. Apparently, it’s a marketing thing. That was cool, but it also got in the way of the art and it got in the way of the person that I was helping or the people that I was helping. So environment, for me now, currently at the time of this recording means that everything that I do professionally must be able to be done on my phone. It does not require a laptop, does not require an iPad, does not require a microphone, does not require an external camera.
Everything that I’m doing can be done from my phone. And if it can’t be done on my phone, I don’t allow it to be introduced into my business. That is an experiment that I’m running. It seems to be working very, very well because it allows me minimal interference between myself and the audience. And so I feel a clearer signal and a much more intimate connection that way. So environmentally, for me right now, that’s very important. And that also allows me freedom of location. So I’m alternating right now between being nomadic and having a home in Austin, which is where I am right now. And I think because this ties into all of these other forms of wealth, you know, wealth is not just financial, it’s emotional and it’s having the freedom to go and explore things and go and experience different foods and different people. Environmentally, I think anybody listening to this has their own unique flavor of what that means to them. And so if you’re not living in a place that that fires you up, well then make it so that it fires you up. You don’t need to move places, you’ll be taking yourself with you, but maybe get rid of some of the shit that’s in your closet. Maybe put a little free library in your front yard and stock it with books that you don’t want any more. Trust me, they will be liberated. Just make your place the way that your future self would be proud of. And that doesn’t require spending a ton of money and moving. Although my experience is that by living in this flow and living in this way of appreciation and upgrading my environments, I found that more and more resources flow in to travel and to upgrade and to live wherever I want to live. Not bound by money. If that makes any sense.
Sean: Yeah. Well, and you teed me up perfectly because from environment, the R in HERB is resources. What are the books, courses, programs, videos… What has really, what have you steeped yourself in? What is made up your way of being that you would recommend other people check out?
Jesse Elder: Yeah. Around wealth and happiness… One of the first authors that I was exposed to was a Stuart Wilde and one of my first mentors recommended it. I read it. I was like, this is some weird shit, but we test it. So I read it, I tested it, and I was like, Oh my God, this is really good. And that really affected my trajectory. And then I’ve done a lot of… I’ve been exposed to a lot of stuff that’s out there in the world. A lot of it I found cool and useful. Much of it, I found very gimmicky and very kind of manufactured. And as I’ve gotten more involved in the industry, so to speak, I just started to see a discrepancy between how people were on stage and who they were 3 margaritas in at the bar in the hotel. And I’m like, wait a minute, but… Oh shit. And I was very disillusioned because I never wanted to be that way. And now here’s some people that I allowed myself to put on a pedestal. I was like, Oh fuck. Everybody’s just human. That’s cool. But, at the same time I was like, you know what, I’m going to just do my own thing for awhile. So the biggest source information and inspiration right now is in reading transcripts of live talks that are in flow because it’s all stimulated by the audience. They ask questions, answers are coming in… And the answer is sort of born on the back of a few decades of training and sales and marketing, all this stuff. But I get so much juice and so much energy from reading everybody’s dialogue with each other in the Facebook groups and all of that. So that’s not a big recommendation, but I think we all leave trails behind us of genius and wisdom and if we can maybe investigate those a little bit more, I think there’s a lot more gold there than a lot of people give themselves credit for.
Sean: Do you have a book that you would tend to really align with the terms of your life? Like is there a book that you’re like, Sean, if you read this one book, you would get my soul?
Jesse Elder: I’m writing it so I’m working on it.
Mindie: Nice.
Jesse Elder: When it’s done, you guys will know. But a couple of years ago… A couple… This is more like 12. My mom, of all people, said, Hey here’s this CD. I think you should listen to it. I was like, okay. And it was not one of the Abraham Hicks books. Well, it was an Abraham book, but it was like a trilogy. It was like written for kids and it was called Sara, friends of a feather or some shit like that. I don’t remember the exact title, but I remember hearing that and then I went back and got the book. I was like, Oh my God. I feel like I’m reading my own life. Like I’ve always had the sense that, Hey, everything’s cool. Like don’t stress out. Everything always works out. And I’m reading the story, which is very simply written, very accessible, and I’ve recommended a couple of people and they’re like, it can’t be that easy. I’m like, okay, sign up for the 90-day program and I’ll charge you a bunch of money. And then I just basically tell them the same things are in that book. And they’re like, I get it!
Mindie: When they pay, they pay attention.
Jesse Elder: Totally, totally!
Sean: Most people think that the solutions need to be as complex as the problems.
Jesse Elder: Dude. Yes! Amen to that. And it just ain’t the case.
Sean: Yeah, I boil it down to problems are perplexing, but solutions are simple. It’s just how it works.
Jesse Elder: I might just have that tattooed onto my brain.
Sean: There you go. So rounding out this question, the B, this one is going to be I think really hard for him.
Mindie: I can’t wait to hear his answer on this one.
Sean: The B stands for beliefs. What are some beliefs you have about yourself or the world or humanity? What are some of the beliefs that make up Jesse Elder?
Jesse Elder: If I had to pick one, this is the one that I would pick and just live the rest of my life with. And I alluded to it earlier, and that’s around time. I’ve had some very interesting experiences with time, with memory and imagination and I have come to believe, based on results and based on experience, that this whole idea of past and future are suggestions. They’re agreements, but they’re not fixed realities. And so I live my life continually aware of a future version of me that is the optimal, ideal version. Except I don’t believe that that is a separate, not happened yet, thing. I think that what we call the future really is happening right now just elsewhere, in a different part of our awareness and that that dude is every bit as real as I am right now. Through this uniquely human miracle of imagination, I can imagine what that guy’s doing and I can actually see decisions he’s made. I can see the life that he has is very compelling. And this is where it gets weird and cool.
Sean: Oh, this is where it gets weird? [Laughing]
Jesse Elder: Yeah, now it’s going to get weird. Now.
Mindie: Bring it on!
Sean: It was already weird and it will continue to be weird.
Jesse Elder: Yeah, well we’re about to get 10X weird. I can imagine that dude in the future that is the best possible version of me. And there’s an energy there. There’s a very compelling, like, you know, preview of coming attractions kind of thing. However, I can also remember, and I can think back to when that version of me was in the sweaty nightclub, smelled like beer and tiger balm and blood and grossness and I was getting my ass beat in this no-rules fight. And I can remember that. But even the night of that fight, I could imagine myself thinking forward to the future and wishing that I could have all these dreams come true. Well past, present and future… Three very seemingly distinct different ideas. But then I started to play with this and I started to wonder, well, if that version that I was, was imagining who I am today and if I, right now, can think back and remember to who I was, what if that is the same thought being received from a different direction? What if it’s actually the same thought? It’s like if music is playing and you can hear it in one room, and I can hear it here, and you guys can hear it there… Well it doesn’t matter who pressed play, the music’s playing in both rooms. If we hit play right now, you’d hear it there in your house. I’d hear it in mine and it doesn’t really matter who hit play. If I’m representing the future and you guys represent the present, if I press play and that song, that thought, that emotion starts playing and perhaps that vibrates at a level higher than the agreement of linear time, so me, in the future, thinking that thought is a memory. I’m remembering you in the present or are you in the present imagining me in the future?
Well, I think that maybe there’s no difference. And so the greatest, most effective belief that I found is that it’s all happening right now. And if I can just chill the fuck out on my logic and I can use logic as the app that it’s intended to be, not the OS that we’re taught that it is, then I can actually receive information and start to get inspiration on demand. I can make my intuition tactical so that I can start getting hits and ideas and nudges from this best possible future version of me who I don’t believe is in the future. I think he’s alive and kicking right now and he’s always there. I can always connect with him. He’ll always tell me exactly what to do and I’ve chosen to live my life according to this. I’ve been split testing paradigms since I was 19 or 20 years old and this beats the control every fucking time.
Mindie: I love it. Talking about that idea of stacking time versus linear time, it’s like you took Dan Sullivan’s version of the gap and closed it. It’s like your ideal, best self is out there somewhere in the future and you’re like, why not now?
Jesse Elder: Right.
Mindie: That’s awesome.
Jesse Elder: And Mindie, that’s really, really brilliantly expressed. Well first of all, anytime I can be mentioned in the same sentence as Dan, it’s like fanboy, but the feeling that it’s actually happening right now really suspends a whole bunch of disbelief. And I’ve talked to people in the NLP world who were like, Oh, the timeline therapy. Okay. I don’t think it’s a therapy. I don’t think it’s a concept. I have a very real sense of all of these selves. I don’t know that that’s not the case. And luckily, I’m not having to publish papers that are peer-reviewed and that I have to defend a thesis and all of that. Massive respect for people that have. I’m just a dude who found some shit that seems to produce really cool results and clients fly in, we do this whole time piercing thing, and it just displaces all of the murkiness and cloudiness and wondering and all other people’s unqualified opinions and all that shit. And then there’s just like, Oh. And they make the call, they do the thing, they propose marriage, they do all this stuff and they just immediately merge. It’s like changing channels or changing songs. You know, if I’m listening on my phone to country music for some unknown, ungodly reason… Not to make fun of country music. And I’m not trying to denigrate anyone who likes country music. And if you like country music, denigrate means to put down.
Mindie: I didn’t know this was going to be comedy hour, too.
Jesse Elder: So if country music’s playing on my phone for some odd reason, I don’t take my phone to the Apple store and say, Hey, something’s wrong with my phone. You know, it’s playing the wrong music. I think it’s got really deep-seated issues, probably dating back to the factory. The Apple tech will look at you and go, okay, what do you want to hear there, buddy? I’d be like, not country music. Okay. We get you. What do you want to hear? Well, not country music! It’s been playing country music for 20 years. Okay, so what do you want to hear, buddy? You know, I actually just want to hear a little Coltrane. You know, I just want to hear a little jazz and they’re like, okay, hold on. They take the phone, they get on Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, whatever, and they go John Coltrane and they press play and the thing starts playing. Because the music is not in the phone.
The phone is a receiver and a transmitter of vibrational frequency that is in the cloud. So all of these versions of ourselves, first as the thought, then as a feeling, then is a belief, then as a behavior, then as a result… We can just blink those versions in and it doesn’t require, in my experience, facing our fears. It doesn’t require getting outside our comfort zone. You just stopped being uncomfortable with the stuff that you used to freak out about. And I’ve seen people do this with everything from intimacy to, one dude forgot to have cancer. Those were his words. He said I just forgot to have cancer. I went back for a checkup. The doctor’s like, what happened? He’s like, what do you mean? They’re like, you’re cancer-free. So yeah, I’m not a doctor. I don’t have any education actually. I’ve never taken a test in my life except for my driver’s license. Failed that the first time. But perseverance. I just care about people and I care what works. And I also recognize everybody’s free to do whatever the hell they want to do. And that’s why I don’t spend money on marketing. That’s why I don’t try and force it. I don’t promote myself. I just talk a bunch and I figure the people who this stuff resonates with will find it. And those who don’t, cool. I’m not interested in chasing them. Sean, that was a long-ass answer to your question, man. That’s the belief that I found most useful is that time is a very useful illusion, but it is not real.
Sean: Gotcha.
Mindie: Hell yeah. So, I want to talk money. This is a two-part question. One is how do you define wealth? And secondly, regardless of what that wealth looks like, I want you to talk about money because I read this thing on your website, how to stop screwing yourself over financially. When I read things like that, I think, why didn’t I know him 20 years ago?
Sean: You did, according to him.
Mindie: You probably don’t know this, but my story is huge financial chaos with bankruptcy, foreclosure.
Sean: She checked off all the boxes.
Mindie: Everything bad with money. I did that. So then I read these things, how to stop screwing yourself over financially. And I’m like, yes, let’s talk about that because so many people get stuck there. So first I want to know your definition of wealth and then let’s talk about not screwing yourself over in that camp.
Jesse Elder: Cool. Yeah, it’s a very important topic. Wealth, in my study and observation of it, in my own experience and then the experience of others, I think is having expanding options and the energy to execute on the best next thing. And so that includes, but it’s certainly not limited to, money. Some of the wealthiest people that I know are literally gig to gig. They’re musicians or artists or Uber drivers or whatever. And they’re just like, I dunno. The money is somewhere else. It’s just in somebody else’s account and I’ll get into my account soon enough for what I need it for. And they live very carefree, very happy lives. They don’t focus on retirement. And that I realize that may be scary for some people, but for them, operating as self authorized entities requiring permission from no one, they’re actually living very wealthy lives.
Their options are expanding in proportion to their imagination and the resources to execute on those options are showing up right on time. So I think that that’s wealth. I stopped attaching wealth to money when I began to observe so many people, clients, and eventually, friends, who had a net worth of 9-figures and who had family members that took their own lives, multiple family members taking their own lives. And so this person is emotionally just devastated. And so, I don’t see that money has any energy to it at all. I observe human beings have a lot of energy around money, but money by itself is an emotionally neutral resource. My dear friend and often mentor, Ron Lynch, is a phenomenal mind, marketer. He’s the guy that took GoPro® from like 600,000 to 60 million in a couple of years.
And he taught me a lot about money as an emotionally neutral resource. And he said, when you’re driving your car and you see the fuel tank getting low, you don’t have a freakout. You don’t worry about your limiting beliefs around gasoline and you don’t go back to the origin of when you first started to run low and what did your parents believe about fuel? No! You go get some more fuel. And so not having a lot of emotion around it. In my case, there was a lot of fear, a lot of judgment. We didn’t have very much money growing up or hardly any, but it didn’t matter. We never felt poor. And so it wasn’t until I was like 18, 19, 20 years old, that I started to want more things and allow myself to want them.
That’s when I felt frustrated that I didn’t have the money to do it. So wealth is again, I feel an expanding set of options and the energy and the resources to execute on best options that are available to you. That being said, screwing yourself over financially is, first and foremost, an emotional experience. And when I observe anybody, including myself a lot in the past, that other version of me who’s broke as fuck and cursing the fact that he’s broke. Man, I send that dude love like every chance I get. I’m like chill out, man. Like, chill out. You’re okay. You are not your money. So just chill out. And what I found is that because everything that we touch, everything that we do has an energetic component to it, it has our energy in it, and people’s energy is drawn to what we put our energy into. And this is again from Stuart Wilde, you put your energy into this stuff and people are going to show up and when they show up, bill them. I mean have something to sell because it’s not about you. It’s not like you’re going to keep the money, you’re just steering the money. And so when we’re screwing ourselves over financially is when we’re wrapping our identity up in how much money we have. And just in the last three years, I guess, what is this? 2019? Yeah, last three years there’s been twice that I’ve had no money. Like $4 and 86 cents in my checking account.
Mindie: I’ve been there!
Jesse Elder: Yeah. And my ego’s like, Oh my God, you’re supposed to be this teacher and coach and all this. I was like, Oh I have exactly as much as I give a shit about. And one time I flew back to San Antonio after being all nomadic. I went through really like a Shakespearian breakup, it was like ugh, and dealt with it by traveling. That was my coping mechanism, I’m just going to travel, I’m gonna get outta here, that’ll work.
So I’m traveling the world on American Express points, didn’t have much money. Ended up flying back to San Antonio using the last of my AmEx points for Uber, which Uber is taking and getting back to the house and friend were I was staying at. I had gotten a care package from Baby Bathwater Institute, which is an amazing group of entrepreneurs. It’s actually the only mastermind that I’m invested in. I love those dudes. And they sent a care package that had some swag in it like a beef jerky bar, athletic greens and I ate swag for dinner. And this is like 2016 and this is hilarious to me. And I look at it now and the last launch that we did, we did a little over $150,000 in 2 hours and 47 minutes. All profit. Cause there’s no ad spend, there’s no team to pay for, there’s no other investments. It was all profit.
And I’m just thinking like, I feel kind of the same way about that as I did eating that beef jerky and drinking athletic greens. That’s a neat part of the game. But it doesn’t define me. It’s like watching a TV show where a character dies. You’re like, Oh, that’s some great acting. Is that a Starbucks cup? But the feeling of getting all emotionally wrapped up in money, that is the biggest way that we can screw ourselves over. Somehow making the classical, culturally approved of mistake that you are your money and it’s absolutely false. And so separating oneself from money, not by not having it, but by just repeating over and over, I have money, but I’m not my money and the amount of money that we have at any given time is the perfect reflection, the perfect proportionate reflection of what we have been expecting.
And this is where you start to get a little, you know, The Secret and get all law of attraction. I don’t not believe in the law of attraction, but I’m an equal believer in the law of traction. And so as you get inspired and all fired up, great, let that go until it combusts and you get your ass out the door and you go do something in the world. I think that’s a really powerful way to attract money is to go and ask people to participate in what you’re doing. And if you can’t do that because you lack self-confidence and self-worth. I think Joe says this, that confidence comes from evidence. He probably got it from you, Sean, but I’ll give Joe a little credit. But the idea of waiting until you feel confident is absurd.
It doesn’t happen. Confidence is a reward, not the prerequisite. So where does money come from? I ask people this all the time in trainings and everybody says the weirdest answers. Where does money come from? Hmm. Alignment. Okay. Where does money come from? Hustle. Where does money come from? Hard work. Where does money come from? Value creation. I’m like, cool. I don’t think any of those are inaccurate. I think they’re all incomplete though. Where does money come from? Other people’s bank accounts. And to my observation, that’s the only place it comes from. So instead of meditating mmm-money and waiting for the money to drop on you, how about get your ass up and go and learn something useful and put your energy into it with an attitude of, Yes I can. And why not? I mean, I just don’t think I can’t do something and it’s weird that this world has a way of reflecting that back. And I know that might not sound very valuable for somebody who feels stuck financially, but if you feel stuck financially, it’s because you’ve been tricked and addicted to reality. You think reality is real and it’s not. Reality is residue. What you see and hear and feel and taste and touch today is the echo of your previous M-O, your previous manifestational output. What you were seeing and thinking and feeling and expecting. And then you wake up, you see the same bank account, you’re like, I knew it. Not knowing your casting a spell that you’re then going to pick up tomorrow. I see people do this all the time. They turn their financial lives around in like 20 or 30 days by noticing their improved frequency around this thing that humans call money. And little things like just affirming that, Hey, there’s plenty out there.
Getting a coach, getting a mentor, you can sort of you can borrow belief from them. You might not think you can do it, but they think you can do it. You’re like, okay, I’ll trust you. And next thing you know, you’re closing sales like crazy. Then you have some evidence. So there’s a whole lot of ways of doing this, but it all comes back to the same thing that screwing yourself over financially, screwing yourself over in terms of intimacy, screwing yourself over in terms of your own mental clarity, that’s all an inside job. In any moment, you can begin to shift your frequency. You can begin to reach for a better feeling thought. Practice what I call strategic ignorance and just ignore anything that doesn’t fire you up. One of our students in the Ultimate Minds, a program that I have, he coined the best word, he calls it blissipline. You just have blissipline where you have this sort of dedication to making bliss your boss and not taking orders from anything else. And, man, I love that. I wish I’d come up with it.
Mindie: Awesome.
Sean: I was just curious, Jesse, if you resonate with a concept that I have had at times. I’m open to letting it go if you think there’s another concept that could be greater for me, but I’ve felt like there’s a portal that gives me access to divine wisdom that doesn’t come from me, but through me. And I feel like there are times in my life that portal is wide open and like, just the shit that’s coming out on my mouth, I am learning from myself because it’s coming through me, not from me. And then there’s times where it feels like the portal is really closed down. And everything I say sounds trite and ridiculous and other people are saying it, and I don’t even like what I’m saying… And I feel like I’m always trying to figure out how to get that portal back open. Is it meant to close and open or is it just a concept in my mind? What is your thoughts on this portal and see, see how you could either upgrade it or confirm it.
Jesse Elder: Yeah, I can 100% confirm it in my experience as well. I think there is that… And I love that term, portal. Man, it’s so kinesthetic and visual and it’s so just real. I’ve had some memorable experiences around the portal. I’ve asked for it and I’ve been like flattened on my back and just all of a sudden feeling like, Oh shit, this must be what a Tesla feels like when it’s getting over the upgrade. I’m like, ah, it’s a weird, weird feeling. And it is so rich in information and you just know when you’re just in flow and you can do no wrong and you’re just invincible. And it is not addictive, but it’s incredibly attractive. I mean, to live that way. Come on. Who wouldn’t want to live that way all the time?
Sean: It’s intoxicating.
Jesse Elder: That’s a perfect word, man. That’s exactly it. It is intoxicating. And in my experience, when that sort of dissipated and went away, I started freaked the fuck out. It was like, no! It was like, there’s a horribly sad, beautiful book called Flowers for Algernon.
Sean: Oh yes.
Jesse Elder: You know that book? I wept reading that book. You know, this guy’s getting smarter. And then he starts losing… And so I felt like that, you know? I felt like the dude in the book who, you know, I’m like, Oh no, my losing my manifestation powers. I’m losing access to God, the source. And eventually, I just stopped fighting that and I started thinking about it more as breathing. You know, the universe is just breathing and when it’s inhaling and then there’s that inspiration, all of a sudden, here’s the ideas.
Okay, all right, let me get a journal. Let me go change. Let me book a tour and let me do a Facebook live. Let me get some clients, let me be the me that I’m supposed to be in this zone. And then when it, when the waves go back out, I don’t try and chase them. Those are the times that I just get busy playing piano. I do my best rendition of a slug and I just kind of lay there and read or go out in the world and do relatively mortal, normal things. And I just have learned to trust that the flow always comes back in. The one thing that I have found is that the more that I’ve gotten used to sort of playing with this power and allowing myself to be as much of a conduit for it as possible, there is a definite… This is weird, man, I don’t really talk about this. You guys are doing something to me. Yeah, this is very private. Every time I give a talk, a tour, a speech on stage or whatever else, everything I do is in flow. I don’t use PowerPoint. I don’t have a script. I’m not aiming for certain things. I do spend time with the audience or the company or the individual, so I can kind of feel where they’re at. But once I hit play, once I get on stage, it’s not me anymore. It’s that thing, that power and I get to be there with it. Every time, when it’s over and I step off stage, hit upload on the video, and then you wait, then you hear that magical “ding” your Facebook live is now on Facebook. Okay, good. Every time it’s over, I just get really still, and sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes I don’t, and I just wait and every single time I get one of two experiences. I either feel… It feels very parent-like. Like a pat on the back, like good job. You did it. Very affirming. And occasionally there’ll be the absence of that and there won’t be any judgment. There won’t be any I should have done something different. It’s just kind of nothing. And those are the times that I know that I was trying too hard. I was aiming for an outcome. I was using some NLP to try and get an outcome for the audience and acting all benevolent on their behalf as if that’s my fucking job.
So it’s either that absolute affirmation or the absence of that affirmation. This is then a very interesting experience because I’ve taught thousands of hours live. I’ve taught something like 40,000 classes, martial arts, mindset, meditation, sales, marketing, et cetera. And every single time. And when I think back, that’s always the experience. That affirmation is there or it’s not. And as I’ve learned to trust whatever’s supposed to happen to come through, not in a disassociated way where I don’t take responsibility for my powers of communication because I recognize that I do have that. You have that. We all have that. But I can ask for that portal to show up. I can ask for the clarity that I want. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know what to do next and so I’ll just sit down with a piece of paper and I’ll just write out a few times and say, I want to know what I want. You know, I just want to know what I want.
Sean: Jesse, I’ve just got to say this. You are my spirit animal. I want you to know that. And you are a commercial for homeschooling.
Jesse Elder: Thank you, man.
Mindie: So, Jesse, as we wrap this awesome time up, we’ve so enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to many, many more. One of the things we like to ask all of our guests is if you would just close your eyes and allow that awareness to drop down into your heart… And my favorite thing about podcasting is there’s always somebody out there that is just hanging on every word that you are saying and just really needs whatever you’ve got to give them. So I would ask you, what would you say to that person right now? Just straight from your heart.
Jesse Elder: Yeah, right after this podcast, go take two or three minutes and go look in the mirror and allow yourself the excruciating luxury of making unbroken eye contact with yourself for at least two minutes without judgment until you reach a space of unconditional self-acceptance. Unconditional appreciation for the being that’s looking back at you from behind those eyes. Because far more important than who you are, is what you are. And that is a question worth asking.
Mindie: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Jesse Elder: Thank you, guys. Wow. What a gift to share the space.
Mindie: We look forward to spending more time together in the future and to those listening, thank you so much. We’ll look forward to seeing you on the next episode of The Lucrative Society.
[…] Thompson: You know, I’ll tell you what. Jesse Elder has been really instrumental in this for me. And you know, some of the things that he has said to […]