← How I Built My Small Business
How I Built My Small Business
Glenn Harrold - The Voice Behind Meditations That Have Helped Millions
00:49:50
Loading summary
Transcript72 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:08]
B
Welcome to How I Built My Small business. I'm Ann McGinty and today's guest is Glenn Harold, a meditation guide whose relax and sleep well recordings have personally helped me get much needed rest at times when I'm tired. But wired. Glenn is an international best selling self help author and one of the world's most successful hypnotherapists. His guided meditations and mindfulness audio titles have been streamed over 40 million times and his CD title complete relaxation is the only gold disc ever awarded by Nielsen for a self help title. Glenn's story is pretty incredible. From rough teenage years to success in the music business, hitting rock bottom and eventually founding Divinity Publishing to help bring mindfulness and self help recordings and products to a global audience. It was the deep personal challenges he faced that led him to dedicate his life to helping others break through mental barriers, find inner peace and create lasting change. You can find links to connect with Glenn in the episode's description. Glenn, I am really excited to have you here today. I listen to your recordings often, so I am very humbled to speak with you. Thank you for being here.
- [01:33]
A
Oh, you're welcome. It's my pleasure.
- [01:35]
B
So tell us a little bit about you, like where are you from?
- [01:40]
A
So I'm originally from London. I was born in London and I grew up in kind of south London place called Near Bromley, which was when I was growing up there when I was young. It was the epicenter of the sort of punk rock movement in the 70s. It spawned all that. And I was a product of a very dysfunctional household. I was young and angry and so I was kind of in the right place at the right time because that music resonated with me, you know, this angry anti establishment music. And, and so I kind of grew up in that environment, a very dysfunctional, messed up environment. You know, I was kicked out of school when I was 15, got no qualifications, but music was the thing that sort of lit me up and it was that, that, you know, I learned to play an instrument, learn to play the bass guitar and joined a band. And that kind of took me off in a more positive direction which ultimately ended me up on this path where I became a hypnotherapist and you know, a meditation teacher.
- [02:40]
B
So this all started when you were 15?
- [02:43]
A
Yeah, well, it did really because I was, you know, the classic delinquent kid. I grew up in a very sort of violent household where I was, you know, out on the streets all the time. I was, I slept on the streets when I, from the age of 12 onwards. And you know, when you've got no solid home life, especially with young men, they tend to look for another family and that inevitably ends up on the streets in a gang of other delinquent kids. And so I was very much, yeah, a product of my environment. And, you know, as I said, I learned to play the bass guitar, joined a band and we had a little bit of success in the early 80s. You know, we won a national pop competition in the UK and we're on television and we had all, you know, this excitement for a little while and. But it didn't last because, you know, I wasn't grounded in myself and the band. We didn't have a really strong connection. It all imploded. But it took me on a path where I carried on in music. And later on I was on the cabaret circuit in South London doing clubs and bars and we shared the bill with the stage hypnotist. And I watched this guy manipulating the audience and, and doing, you know, getting people up and doing outrageous things. And it just fascinated me. And I had this epiphany that I wanted to learn hypnosis because I saw the power of it there and then, but I wanted to learn it not for the entertainment side of things, I wanted to learn it for the healing potential of it. Because I knew within me, you know, for me to make any kind of progress in life, I had to clear a lot of the trauma and failure programming from my childhood. I had that awareness even then. So that was kind of my salvation because when I studied hypnotherapy, I suddenly had this tool where I could start to do that, I could start to heal from the inside out. And, you know, that's 30 years ago. And I've been doing that ever since, you know, peeling those layers away and getting lighter and further away from that delinquent little tear away.
- [04:47]
B
Was there like a specific moment when you realized that you needed to turn your life around? Like, was it, was it the music experience, reaching an element of fame and then watching that crumble or living on the streets or what part of it made you think, I need to do something?
- [05:05]
A
It was kind of a mixture of all of those things because, you know, I struggled a lot through my adolescence and into my early adult life and I kind of got to a point where I felt so heavy, you know, life was such a struggle and I had a very low self esteem back then. And, you know, I saw comfort in, you know, all the wrong things. Drugs, drinks and, you know, fast relationships and, and it Masked the pain temporarily. But I, I knew I. There was something more that I needed to work on. I had that realization, but I just didn't have the consciousness back then to really know how to get there. But I always had that desire to, you know, try and be a force for good in the world. I wanted to do that. And I think that little thing in me that wanted to do good was always there. And when I found hypnotherapy and healing, that really came to the fore. And I was so excited when I found it that I just went at it like 100 miles an hour. And I would, you know, trade therapy sessions with other therapists. And I do use self hypnosis and the Law of Attraction literally every single day and have affirmations everywhere. And I was so hungry for transformation that I just completely immersed myself in it. And little by little, my life started to change. I started to, you know, slowly and surely become, you know, more abundant in many ways and, you know, hang out with more positive people and, and just raise my consciousness to a point where I could see life in a different way. And now I'm in a good place. I'm really grateful for the past I had because it's taught me so much, you know. So, yeah, it's been an interesting journey.
- [06:56]
B
Yeah. I imagine that there are millions of people around the world who really resonate with your upbringing and the difficulties that you've faced. So maybe that's part of your magic, is that people know that you really understand what that must have been like.
- [07:15]
A
I do. Whenever I saw a client, one to one, when I was, you know, know, a full time hypnotherapist, I could always empathize at that real life empathy. Because if they had an addiction or they were struggling or they were, you know, feeling like life was so heavy, or I had a low self esteem, I knew what that was like. And I think I could always relate, you know, I'd always be able to relate. And they, I think clients would feel that, you know, that I had the real understanding of what they were going through. And, and I used to love helping as well, because I'd been in that place and I'd got myself out of it and I was on a good path. I loved helping other people. Had that passion for saying, look, if you do these things and you do this work, your life will change. And, and I've still got that. And I've kind of always infused my recordings with that as well.
- [08:06]
B
So this Law of Attraction, I know what it is, but for anybody that's listening in. Can you explain it a little bit?
- [08:12]
A
So it's where you focus on something that you want to manifest into your life. It could be a new relationship, it could be your soulmate. You want to attract your soulmate into your life, or you want to attract the perfect career, you know, a career that's really suitable for you, or you want to make a ton of money, or you want to live in a certain place, whatever it is you want. If you can create that energy inside yourself and, and you project that out into the universe with an absolute certainty that you're going to manifest that, manifest this in the real world and you meditate on it on a daily basis. You will eventually you'll manifest it in this world that we live in. Because it's all energy and frequency. You're aligning yourself with an abundant frequency on an internal level and you kind of vibrate that out. You know, it's an energy that you project and a frequency you project. And the universe is impartial. It will naturally match you up with that, you know, situations and opportunities, you know, with the frequency that you're resonating at. And when I got on the path and I started to change my way of thinking 30 odd years ago, and I realized that you could, you could create the life you wanted if you put the inner work in, you did the inner work and you also did the clearing work as well, cleared the failure programming. Because that's often with the Law of Attraction, what happens, you know, people will take three steps forward and then two steps back. And that's sometimes because they're still carrying belief systems from their childhood that they're not good enough, or money and abundance only goes to other people, or you have to work really hard to get it. It's all of those. So you can be doing that work, but you can still be sabotaging it. And I was doing that early on. In the early days, I realized I had to do a lot of clearing on that. So for me, that was a big key to the making the Law of Attraction work. It was the clearing work that enabled it to really happen.
- [10:17]
B
But you made a very conscious decision at some point to at least try this, if not fully believe it at the beginning. So when was this, Was this like when you saw that hypnotist on stage? What was the moment where you thought, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this and I'm going to try? And then was it like every day?
- [10:37]
A
Yeah. Well, I had an amazing epiphany when I was in my late 20s and at that time I was, yeah. Playing in the bars and clubs and at nighttime I was Dr. Minicab around the West End of London. Oh my God. And that was really colorful because I met. I literally met everyone from, you know, the people working on the streets to, you know, a listers and even royalty I came across. I once met a prince. Was it Prince Edward? The youngest one in. In theater. I had to pick up something in a theater and he was. He was quite young then and he was working in the theater and. And me and him were together and we were doing this little job and then I had to take it somewhere else and I was away to him. And just before that I picked up a couple of girls who'd been working on the streets and they wanted to score some drugs and I took them around and I thought, my God, I've really covered the full spectrum here, you know, from. And. And that was that. An amazing thing about that job. You'd literally meet everyone from all walks of life. And it was a really good precursor to becoming a hypnotherapist. But. Because when I became a hypnotherapist I was so used to talking to lots of different people. But yeah, just to tell you the story. So I was driving home one night at four in the morning and I was completely switched off. Just driving home tired and all of a sudden I had this. This epiphany and it was like this amazing awakening and I suddenly felt, you know, my heart opened and I. Tears streaming down my face and no thought would come into my head before. It was just this feeling. It was like a download and. And I felt just so humbled and so uplifted in this moment. It was like a spiritual awakening. And I've read about people who've had similar experiences and. And I'm so grateful that happened to me because I didn't try to make it happen. And it just hit me this one time and you know, I was at a time when I was a pretty low in my life. I was really struggling back then and from there I had this massive thirst for knowledge. So the next day I went to the local library and I got as many books as I could on spirituality and tried to understand what I experienced and. And I just wanted to learn. And then soon after I did the hypnotherapy course and doors just opened up for me and it was. It was just such an amazing experience and I still don't know what happened. It's Never. Nothing like that's happened since. Nothing happened before. But it was definitely a turning point in my life that just took me off in a much more positive and conscious direction.
- [13:20]
B
That is fascinating. What do you think that it was like? Do you have any ideas?
- [13:26]
A
Yeah, I think it was a spiritual awakening because I. I came from a very sort of cynical South London family that, you know, where there was no connection to any. Anything spiritual or conscious or, you know, when I first told them I was becoming a hypnotherapist, they thought I'd lost the plot and, you know, was back on drugs again. And it just was this amazing awakening and. And I. I've been awake ever since on that path where I've kind of been a seeker and, you know, wanted to learn as much as I could about spirituality and consciousness and, you know, kind of the unknown. And I'm just so grateful that happened.
- [14:12]
B
When you were talking, it reminded me of when my dad died four years ago, and I had a similar sort of awakening. But I wouldn't say it was necessarily spiritual because I do consider myself somewhat spiritual. It felt more like a heart unlocking, like I could connect with people in a way that was a bit deeper than it used to be, and I just felt things more with my heart.
- [14:35]
A
Yeah.
- [14:36]
B
I also don't know how to put it into words, but. So I was wondering, like, is there someone in your life who has passed away who maybe was opening a door for you?
- [14:45]
A
It could well be that, you know, I'm. I'm sure that we've got guides and helpers, you know, on the other side that are there supporting us, you know, when we're struggling, when we have difficult times. And, you know, you experiencing that profound grief, it does really take you into your heart, doesn't it? You feel the pain of it and everything, you know, like at no other time. And it does. It opens your heart and you interact with the world differently because you've had that experience.
- [15:14]
B
Yeah.
- [15:15]
A
And, you know, I was kind of fortunate when I had my big awakening that I didn't need to go through something like that. It was, you know, it was just something that hit me. But it definitely really opened my heart. That was the big thing. And I very much came out of my head into my heart and I started to be more compassionate, more loving, you know, towards myself and towards other people. And that's the real power in us all, especially men in. In this world. You can get so caught up in your left brain and be very sort of analytical and, you know, because we're sort of programmed to be like that. The world is sort of set up to, you know, keep us on that path, on the sort of left brain path. But when you open up your right brain, your creative mind and you open your up, it's, you know, so liberating. You have more empathy, you have more understanding, more creativity comes out of you. And yeah, really been grateful that I've been able to do that because like I said, I came from a family of a very sort of strong male lineage that were very, you know, stiff upper lip, get on with stuff, you get hurt, you get up, you might, you know, like I said, I was crying when I had that epiphany, but I never cried as a kid, you know, and she was taught you get on with things and that kind of thing. So it softened me and it opened me up. And whenever I saw guys in therapy that were stuck, it was often because they were disconnected from that part of themselves. And it was sometimes hard, you know, to work with them, to be able to get them there, because they just never been there. They'd grown up, you know, being tough and being brave and that kind of thing and not connecting with that part themselves, thinking that's a weakness, you know, when really it's the ultimate strength.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah. We're trained and programmed to not express and show our emotions so freely that way. Especially men.
- [17:06]
A
Yeah.
- [17:06]
B
And it sounds like you really hit rock bottom, which I've seen other friends of mine hit rock bottom. And to be honest, it's almost like what was needed. Yeah, yeah, they needed to do that in order to turn themselves around.
- [17:22]
A
Yeah, that's it. Because when you hit rock bottom, you've got nowhere else to go, so you can only go up.
- [17:27]
B
Exactly.
- [17:28]
A
When I got on that path, I had so much motivation. I would literally, you know, use self hypnosis for an hour every single day. And I'd be projecting out my goals and visualizing, you know, this abundant, positive, happy life. And to the point where, you know what? At that age, I'd always been flat broke. I'd always driven old cars that were breaking down. I'd always struggled to pay bills. And, you know, because I was hustling my way through life, I struggled to hold down a normal job. So, you know, playing in bars and driving a cab were just about it for me. So, you know, one of the first things I did, I wanted to visualize abundance. So I used to imagine that I lived in a big mansion in the uk. I had a villa in Florida, and I drove an Aston Martin car. And I was living, you know, I was a young man. I wanted to live a bit, and I was living in a tower block in South London when I was visualizing these things. So my reality was, like, really bleak and austere, but I. I was immersed. You know, I believe that I was driving the Aston Martin car to the point where I'd feel the steering wheel, I'd hear the roar of the engine, and I'd imagine the car roaring off and all that kind of thing. And it was about 10 years later that my life had changed so much that I went to buy one for cash. And I remember going up to place called Birmingham in the Midlands and buying this car. And it was exactly like I'd imagined in my visualizations.
- [19:03]
B
And Aston Martin. You got an Aston Martin?
- [19:05]
A
Aston Martin, yeah, it was a convertible. And I got the Florida villa and the villa and the house, and it was. It was just amazing. I. You know, it was only, like, 10 years later. And I remember thinking, this is incredible. I was visualizing all this when I was in that tower block, and it's come into the world. It's manifested itself, and it was just. Yeah, it was a moment driving that car back. It was just a real moment. And it was kind of, you know, I was fortunate because when I was doing that visualization and I was in that tower block and living, you know, with no money or anything like that, I was. I still had the belief that what I was doing was real. I believe that I could manifest it, you know, and I totally bought into that concept. And it really was the belief in what I was doing, what I was manifesting that took me a long, long way along that path, because I started then to, you know, I'm sure I was kind of vibrating at a different frequency because I'd meet the right people at the right time and these opportunities would come along. And I was so, you know, hungry for that, that even now, to this day, if, like, my wife says to me, she says, you know, you. You never. You always take opportunities, even now, you know, And I said, well, I'm just hardwired to do that. If something comes on the radar, I just want to make the most of it. And it is that, you know, for anyone who wants to transform their life in whatever way it is, it's the energy that you create inside that really makes things externally come into your life. And you have to have that belief and that vision and that desire. And it's the same if you wanted to, you know, go to the gym and Every, you know, four times a week and build a really super fit, healthy body. You'd have to go there four times a week and do the work. And with the mind and manifesting, it's, it's a similar process. If you build that energy up and you are disciplined with it, you'll transform your life. It's, you know, really that simple. And I think the other key point which I mentioned earlier is the clearing work. You have to do the clearing work because I had a mountain of failure programming from my childhood, you know, to the point where in one therapy session, you know, I was struggling, I was making moves forward, but then I was sabotaging things and things were blowing up in front of me. I think, why does this keep happening? And it was in a therapy session that I'd shared with another therapist and I went back into my childhood and this memory that was out of my conscious awareness came up. And it was five years of age and I saw my parents having this blazing row about money. And my dad literally ripped up money, threw it at my mum and they were screaming at each other and I was this little five year old learning in that moment that money causes these terrible rouse. So the, the amazing thing about it was in the therapy session I could revisit it from an adult perspective and clear that trauma and release myself from it completely. And that's what I did. And you know, that was one example of something I've done hundreds of times to get lighter and freer from all that trauma that I went through as a kid. And it's so liberating, it's so transformative, you know, because I've got, I've got two brothers who, you know, went in different directions and bless them, they never knew how to do the work in that way. And, and they're still kind of caught up in those struggles. And you know, you can give advice and guide, but ultimately it's got to come from within you.
- [22:37]
B
Yeah, the belief, like you were saying, I was imagining that quite a few people listening in may be skeptical and thinking, oh sure, well that worked for him, but it's not going to work for me. What would you say to somebody who is thinking that way?
- [22:51]
A
It's something that will work for absolutely anyone. If you do the work, you know, you manifest, you've got to have that belief and you've got to have your goals. So going back to your question, whatever you want to create in this world, have a really clear vision of that. So write down your top five goals that you want to manifest. You want to achieve. And that was one of the first things I did. And I had a list of these goals. And it was the car, it was the house, it was, and it was a relationship as well. It wasn't all money. And I wrote them down and I was crystal clear about them. And I have smart cards on my computer. I'd have a smart card on my bedside in the bathroom, and I'd literally every day be doing mantras. And I was also at a delivery job back then, so when I was driving, I turned the radio off and I'd be doing mantras that I'm always in the right place at the right time. Abundance comes freely and naturally to me. All of my needs are constantly met. So I was immersed in this completely in my daily life and, you know, using self hypnosis for an hour a day. And I even used to go to auction houses and sit there and watch these houses being sold cheaply, even though I couldn't have, I didn't have, you know, any money in my pocket. But I used to be in an environment where money was flying around because I'd read about it in one of the self help books I was reading. And you've got to see it like that and embrace it and enjoy the journey. It's a real fun journey when you go on this path, on any kind of transformative path, it's so much fun.
- [24:23]
B
An element of dedication, true belief, the actual affirmations, but also you took the opportunities when they presented themselves. So going and looking at houses that you couldn't yet afford is real proactive action as well. Yeah, okay, so you, you got the Aston Martin, but in order to get there, you what, you became a hypnotherapist and so you were seeing clients. When did the recordings come into play?
- [24:54]
A
So once I became a full time hypnotherapist, I loved seeing clients one to one. And after a year or two, you get better as time goes on, you come out of college and you've learned and you've studied and you've worked with other clients in the, in the classroom. But there's no substitute for practical work. And so once I got out there, you know, I'd work from about three or four different clinics and I drive there each day, you know, each day. And I got to a point where I was seeing like 25, 30 clients a week. And it was kind of, I was maxed out at that point. That was the limit because it could be quite draining because people come along to see you and they Might have seen everyone else for a phobia or to lose weight or stop smoking, and you're their last resort and they're pinning everything on the session. So I'd always put 110 into every session. And I loved it, I really enjoyed it. But it did get tiring. And it was around that point that a client said to me one day, could you record the session? And because I'd had my musical background, I'd always kept a little recording set up in a. In the second bedroom. And so I went home that night and I recorded something onto a cassette tape. And it was from a mic with a little bit of reverb on it into there, and I put some of my own music on it. And then I had this cassette and I gave it to a few clients and they said, these are really good. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. And so then I was working above a chemist shop, and I spoke to the guy that owned the chain of chemists. He had like 60 chemists. And he was really difficult to get hold of, this guy, but I must have rung him about 50 times. And eventually I got through to him and. And I said, dennis, I said, I've got these cassette recordings. I work in one of your clinics. Could I possibly put them in your clinics and just see how they sell, sorry, in your chemists? And he said, we'll try them in three and if they work with, put them in all 60. So I put them in the three chemists and they started to sell. And it was literally, I used to drive around to all these chemists and refill them with cassettes that I was printing off at home. And I was getting feedback that, you know, people are getting to sleep at night because of your recordings, and they're, you know, feeling better, losing weight and stopping smoking. And I thought, wow, if I can sell these locally, then I could sell them everywhere. And it was like this epiphany, another epiphany. And so I went to the bank and I borrowed £1,000 from the bank to get some nice display stands made, you know, then I would take them into the stores and they look much more professional. And then I got duplicating houses to duplicate the cassettes. And within about four or five years, I had five or six people working for me. And I always remember my pa, who's still my PA now, she came to me and she said, what's this 40 pounds coming out the bank every month? And I said, oh, that's the loan I took out four years ago from Barclays. So I was still paying it back and I, and the whole thing had taken off and I just got really lucky at the right time. You know, I had this mantra that I'm always in the right place at the right time. And I just got so lucky. I got into the big chain stores in the UK at the right time. I got an audible really early, I got an insight timer really early. And I've had 11 million streams on there today. And it was just, you have right place at the right time. And even I got a book deal in about 2006. I'd written one book, it was a self published book, but because my recordings had started to sell really well and in the UK at that time they used to have the audiobook chart and I was popping up in the audiobook chart sort of, you know, in the top 10 and it was J.K. rowling was always number one and there was, you know, all household names. I came to the attention of the big publishers because they're thinking, who's this self published guy in the middle there? And so the BBC got in touch with me first and they offered me a deal and in the end I cut a deal with them where I made eight brand new recordings. They wanted to buy my whole catalog, but I just cut a deal where I just did eight brand new recordings for them that worked really well. And then they said to me, look, your sales, your audio sales are so good you could get a book deal. So I thought, oh, that'd be a good idea, I'll try that. And so I literally got the white pages and I rang up a big literary agency in the UK and I said, oh, I just got cut off from your new buying department, could you put me back through? So they put me through to the new buying department and I left a message on there, you know, it's about a minute long, just telling them about my audio sales and what I was doing. And the guy that became my agent, he was walking past that answer phone message when someone was playing it and he thought, that sounds interesting. And so I went up to London, met him and he was a really cool guy, just on the level, quite new, at a university, and he was, you know, hungry and he said, look, normally I go to the big publishers on my own. He said, but come with me because we've got a good rapport. So we went round and every meeting, meeting I'd visualize, you know, filling up the room with positive energy and, you know, really feeling confident, speaking really fluently. And easily. And, and I just really enjoyed the whole process of sitting in these meetings with, you know, the biggest publishers in Europe. They were. And at the end of it, after a couple of days, I said to my agent, I said, how do you think we'll get on? You know, what do you think? It's. If we get a two book deal for about ten grand? He said, I'll be happy with that. I said, yeah, I'd be delighted. And it was over the next week, these offers were coming in from Warner Brothers and Orion for 250,000 for three books. And it was Dreamsville because they went into a bidding war. And I'm thinking, this is unbelievable. It's everything that I'd projected out there, everything I'd use the Law of Attraction for in that moment. It was there. And I ended up signing with Orion for three books and then another two and then McGraw Hill in the States. And yeah, it was, it was really amazing. It was quite an incredible journey. And yeah, just right place at the right time. And so, yeah, from being that little delinquent kid who got kicked out of school, I ended up writing eight books, you know, being a long, long way from where I'd come from, you know, the books. It was an amazing journey. But I had the choice between signing for Orion and Warner Brothers. And I said to my agent, you know which one they're both offering exactly the same deal. Yeah. And he said, well, the lady at Warner Brothers is going to be on maternity leave, so you're not going to have the continuity there. So I chose Orion. And while I was there, my editor was on maternity leave three times. So I had a different editor on each book and it, I didn't have the continuity. And so, you know, even though I had this amazing platform, a huge advance, it didn't pan out like it should. It should have done. You know, I'm proud of the books I wrote, but it could have been, you know, much, much bigger. But really my, my meditations and my hypnotherapy recordings are the thing that have always really connected with people and that's really been my vocation, you know, the thing that I'm here to do. And I always remember there was a, there's another little story on that because when I had that epiphany and I woke up, I went to. There was a little healing group in a place called Tunbridge Wells, near to where I lived. And it was this really quaint little group with about 10 elderly people. They're all like 20, 30 years older than me, at least. And I used to go there because they practice hands on healing. And I was so drawn to it. I loved it. You know, even though, like, you know, 15 years ago I've been running around with a gang of tearaways, I was now in this quaint little healing group. The guy that used to run it, he would say to me at the end, he'd always close it with a meditation and he'd always point to me and say, glenn, I want you to do the meditation. I was still really not confident and I didn't like any attention. And I used to not lie. I said, why does he keep picking me to do the meditation? But he was a psychic and he used to say, my guides are telling me, you've got to use your voice in this way. You've got to do these meditations. And when I look back and think, you know, 40 million streams later, that I was being guided, you know, through him, I was being pointed onto my vocational path. You know, when you get on that path, the universe conspires to work with you and nothing will stop you.
- [33:23]
B
You know, is it luck or is it what you're meant to do? I think we all have a path we're meant to do. It's just. It's just about finding it or maybe being open to it. Do you keep in touch with anyone from your early childhood days?
- [33:40]
A
That's a good question, because I've had some guys that I used to knock around with in, in the gang when I was young who've got in touch with me. And there was one guy a couple of years ago, he'd spent 25 years in prison and we lived in London in a squat when I was like 17, I think he became addicted to drugs and he started robbing banks to feed his addiction. And he got in touch with me after all this time and. But in. In prison, he'd actually become an artist. When you're in prison, I don't know what it's like, but I guess you're forced into, you know, looking at what's inside you and what, you know, what comes out. And you often hear stories like that where these guys find a talent that they didn't know was there. And for him it was painting. And I'd moved out to Portugal by then. He'd come out and he was having showcases in London at these galleries. Because he'd been in prison for so long, they looked at it and he turned his life around. So I thought, you know, we had that creative connection and he'd just gone off on the completely wrong path and. But yeah, it's always interesting when people catch up with you, when you've turned your life around and they see you doing something completely unexpected. So I've had quite a lot of that, especially when, when my books were out in the uk, I had, I did a lot of publicity. I did TV and you know, big radio shows back then, so people were contacting me from my past. It always made me realize how far I'd got away from that life, my old life.
- [35:08]
B
Yeah, I imagine it's a bit bittersweet in some ways because I can only imagine that you feel very proud of how far you've come, but you probably also wish it and want it for the people that you were surrounded by and for everybody in this world, really.
- [35:25]
A
You know, I can always say, look, if you're struggling, listen to this or try this recording. You know, It's a nice thing to do. And I've done that a lot.
- [35:31]
B
Yeah.
- [35:32]
A
But the thing that I'm kind of most proud about is that my oldest son is 37 and he's a hypnotherapist and he's, he's an amazing boy. I'm so proud of him. You know, everyone loves him. You know, he's got that very lovability and he loves helping other people and I'm so proud of him. And you know what, myself and you know, my ex wife managed to, you know, raise him even though we didn't, you know, go the distance. And Now I've got two younger kids who are 10 and 8. So I, I'm most proud of the fact that I could give them what I never had. I. I love, and I love seeing them thrive and blossom and, and not. Not go through all the traumas I did. I. I tell them my last night they were asking me stories. I tell them my, my stories from my childhood and you know, age appropriate and they love them because they're so colorful and it almost feels to me like it was a past life because where I am now, they'll never go through anything like that. But they can hear my crazy old colorful stories and see a little bit of a different life through them. But yeah, I'm really proud of my kids.
- [36:41]
B
Yeah, those are such beautiful lessons. And I think I learned just as much from the stories of my parents and the hardships that they faced as I did from just growing up and. Yeah. I mean, probably more than the education system taught me.
- [36:56]
A
Yeah. Because when I look at my parents, they were not good. Good parents, because they didn't know how to be. They'd been through a mountain of trauma themselves. You know, they were born during the. The Second World War and, you know, went through a lot of hardship and austerity themselves. So when they became parents, they were, you know, very stuck in their own traumas and didn't know how to break that cycle. And so I think, you know, being able to, you know, having that epiphany, becoming a hypnotherapist, being able to break the cycle was a real gift that I had that they didn't. And I think it's also the age we live in now. We're much more aware and we have a greater understanding of how we're wired up and how we work. So that's a blessing in itself.
- [37:42]
B
Yeah, but you have compassion for why your parents were the type of parents that they were.
- [37:48]
A
Yeah.
- [37:48]
B
Because, you know, what they were surrounded by.
- [37:51]
A
Yeah. And. And I think, you know, another point to that is that as I was growing up, you know, when I was really struggling and I didn't understand, you know, how to get out of that, I was. I was very caught up in the victim mentality that, you know, I was kicked out of home when I was 12. I was beaten. I was. That was always how I justified my failure. But as soon as I started to awaken and. And I broke out of that victim mentality and I took responsibility for my life and my role in things. You know, I wasn't. I wasn't. I'm not a perfect human being. I took responsibility for myself and my failings and the things I'd messed up on. And that, again, was so liberating. Even now, you know, we. I. I never go back to that old victim mentality. It so holds you in a prison. So, you know, if anyone's listening in there, you've got a sense of that or you're caught up in any of that. You know, that's something that you can work on and free yourself from because it only holds you back ultimately, if you're blaming other things or situations for your lack of success or whatever it is that just keeps you stuck.
- [39:00]
B
Yeah. And to remember that we all have free will.
- [39:03]
A
Yeah.
- [39:03]
B
So you may have really terrible circumstances or very good ones, but ultimately your free will is what you choose to do with it.
- [39:10]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Because some people have comfortable childhoods where they are nurtured and. But they still go off the rails. Their free will takes them in the wrong direction. So it can work in all kinds of Ways. Yeah, yeah. It's discipline and doing something every day that takes you further along that road. That's the key for anyone starting out. I would work on that, that part of yourself, that discipline, because that is the thing that's the key ingredient. Even on bad days or when you have setbacks, the discipline is the thing that gets you over that and gets you back on track.
- [39:41]
B
So now, are you currently working now or are you retired?
- [39:45]
A
No, I still work. I do, you know, love what I do. I love reaching more and more people with the recordings. I work here in Portugal and my business is in the UK. It's been there for like 25 years and I've got people that help me in the business, still work for me in the business. I suppose I'll retire at some point, but, you know, if you love what you do, you don't want to retire. You know, I'm not retiring from, you know, working in a bank or. It doesn't feel like work. The joy of creating new things is something I love and I'll continue to do that for as long as I can.
- [40:20]
B
And income wise, where is your income being generated from? Is it from the recordings and people downloading or the books or your YouTube page or. You have so many different places where people can reach you. Can you give us some insights into how that actually works as a business?
- [40:39]
A
Yeah, well, I. My recordings are so far and wide now. I've got them on so many different platforms. I mean, even on Spotify, I think I had 60,000 new listeners last month.
- [40:51]
B
Wow.
- [40:52]
A
Just on Spotify. So they. And these are a lot of. These are titles that I made 10 or 20 years ago. They're evergreen, but they're kind of evergreen. They've got an energy to them that, you know, and sometimes I listen to a recording that's 20 years old and the music might be a bit cheesy now and I could improve on that, but it's like, I think, well, if it's not broke, don't fix it. You're still getting good reviews. So I tend to focus on the newer recordings. I've got a membership group that I started a few years ago and we've got an app now that the members are all in. I run webinars every couple of weeks and the members run their own webinars as well. And I do live recordings on that, so I do live meditations. So when I'm on the webinar, we'll talk, I'll chat with the members and whatever the theme of the webinar is whatever comes up. I'll do a live meditation based on that. And a lot of the time the members say they like the, those live recordings with all their imperfections better than the studio ones because there's a certain energy about them. So I enjoy doing that. That's, that's really good fun. And it's funny the members now, they've got such a close group, all of them, they're coming out to Portugal later this year from all over the world, which is, I'd never planned that it was something they got together and decided to do and.
- [42:10]
B
Are you ready for this?
- [42:11]
A
Yeah. At first I thought do I want this? But then it was with such good intent and such a loving vibe that I thought, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be nice. It's going to be really lovely. There's one lady, bless her, she's 81 and her husband passed away about 10 years. She'd been with him for 50 odd years and she was so heartbroken. But she found my, one of my recordings and she said it changed her life after that point. And then she joined my members group and she's been on every single webinar, about 120 of them at 3 o' clock in the morning because she's in Melbourne. Oh my God, bless her heart. And she's flying. She went to see a doctor and she said, the doctor said I can do it, I'm gonna fly over in October and, and meet you. And I thought, wow, that is just amazing.
- [42:58]
B
Well, I, I wonder if the next step, or if there is one that you want would be doing live meditations on a stage with thousands and thousands of people and recording it and putting that out there into the world.
- [43:10]
A
Yeah, I mean maybe I, I've done a few on Insight Timer. I have little spells on Insight Timer where I've done, you know, the numbers have been 500 plus. Especially during COVID It was really, you know, you see, it's like 500 or a thousand. I think we have one week and I do live meditations there and that's been good. And when I was, when I lived in England I did a live meditation in a theater with a band called Anima. So we'd made a range of recordings based on the solfeggio tones, which are these ancient tones that Gregorian monks used to chant to invoke certain feelings. And we did a live version of that and it was really an amazing event. It really worked well. But it was, it was a funny thing. We, we Created this sort of magic this one night and you know, some lovely feedback but we just couldn't go to the next step for some reason. The guy who was making the music, he was a. He was one of the most gifted musicians I've ever come across and he created these amazing frequencies. But he found it really hard to interact with the normal world and to be around normal people. And he went off to live up in Scotland in such a remote place that you could only get there by getting a boat across a big river. And he's just completely cut himself off. But yeah, one of those just highly, highly sensitive gifted people that you know, you'll never hear about. But it is an amazing talent. So yeah, well that, that was my first and last live meditation and I'm kind of now, you know, it's talking about retiring. I can do what I want. So do I want to organize an event and you know, that kind of thing. There's too many other things involved in it. If it was just getting up on stage and someone was taking care of it, maybe. But I like the creative side of it, but not all the other stuff.
- [44:59]
B
Yeah, I know, I know what you mean.
- [45:00]
A
Yeah, they never say never. But I have written another book. I've got my eighth book that I've just finished and I'm going to be hopefully releasing that this year. And I've not got a publisher at the moment.
- [45:11]
B
What is it called at the moment?
- [45:12]
A
I've got a couple of different titles but the one I've got at the moment is called Raise your vibration and it is very much about, you know, my journey and the law of attraction and you know, how you do the inner clearing work to create a space where you can, you know, your manifestations are really powerful and there's nothing blocking them.
- [45:33]
B
So you chose to self publish this one.
- [45:35]
A
I'm not sure I'm open to having a publisher. When I got the book deal, I had to write each book within three months. I had to sit down and the thing is, the publisher at that time, their vision of what they wanted for me. There was a guy called Paul McKenna in the UK that sold a million books. He's still the biggest non fiction seller in the uk. And so they kind of wanted me to be not another version of him. And I used to say to him, look, I want to be myself, I want to do my own thing, I don't want to follow him. So anything I put in the books that was not congruent with their idea of what I should be, they'd edit it out. So that was a frustration. So now I've written the book that I want to write and, you know, with all the warts and everything and imperfections, and then I'm going to find a really good copy editor and then put it out to a few contacts I've still got from those days and, you know, see and also project out there what I want, where I want the book to go. You know, do use the law of attraction to. To make it happen.
- [46:31]
B
It sounds nice to be able to put work out there that's truly you and your voice. If you haven't yet done it, if the other books have been edited down.
- [46:38]
A
Yeah, because it was an amazing deal on the surface, but that was restrictive that I couldn't do much about.
- [46:46]
B
Well, so you've pretty much made every goal that you've set your mind and heart towards. Is there beyond this book, is there anything else left to be?
- [46:56]
A
So my biggest goal is now, you know, I'm. I live in a great place on the Algarve. I've got a beautiful family that I'm so grateful for. My oldest son lives up the road. My biggest goal now is that, I mean, I'm 62 and I want to stay as fit and healthy as I can for as long as I can to watch those kids grow up and be there. And not just be there, but be young in mind, body and spirit to do things with them. Foreign.
- [47:27]
B
Rock bottom can be a turning point. Sometimes hitting your lowest moment is what cracks you open to change. When it feels like you're at the bottom, there's only one direction left to go, and that's up. Focus on what you can control. Healing begins with radical responsibility. This isn't about blame. It's about owning your part. Your thoughts, choices and patterns so you can reclaim your power in life. Your inner world creates your outer world, so the thoughts you think, the energy you hold and the beliefs you carry shape the reality you live. Childhood beliefs like I'm not good enough or Money is only for other people will quietly sabotage your growth unless you choose to release them. Watch out for the victim mentality. Blaming other people, circumstances or situations may be keeping you stuck. Own your own story and rewrite it if you need to. Being soft takes strength, especially for men raised to be stoic. Opening your heart isn't weakness, it takes courage. Believe in what you're building. Hold the vision and let desire guide you. Whatever you want to create, define it clearly. Write down your top five goals and place them on post it Notes where you wake up, work, or make your coffee. Put these daily reminders in places where you'll constantly see them to help generate momentum, Silence the noise and speak to yourself in ways like I'm always in the right place at the right time. Abundance comes freely and naturally to me. All of my needs are constantly met. This will put you in the right frame of mind, and mindset matters, but it's just the beginning. Free will means you have to take the steps, so any action, even a small one, opens the door. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.