Napster Co-Founder Jordan Ritter on the True Meaning of Success | Motivation | E15

Summary

Miracle Mentality with Tim Storey

Episode 15: Napster Co-Founder Jordan Ritter on the True Meaning of Success

Release Date: November 24, 2025
Guests: Tim Storey (Host), Jordan Ritter (Guest)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Miracle Mentality features Jordan Ritter, tech entrepreneur and Napster co-founder, in a candid and wide-ranging conversation with Tim Storey. The discussion moves beyond the surface of technological innovation and financial success, turning inward to explore resilience, personal growth, the value of relationships, and the lessons of self-discovery. It delves into the behind-the-scenes truths of Napster’s creation and collapse, but ultimately, the focus is on redefining what it means to succeed, lead, and love—in business, family, and life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jordan’s Early Life and Educational Journey

[01:31 – 07:05]

• Childhood Move: Grew up in Northridge, California, before moving to Texas at age 2 due to his parents’ divorce.
• High School Experience: Identified as a “band nerd” and International Baccalaureate (IB) student, highlighting early passion for music and education.

  “I fancied myself to be a musician as a career…I just loved playing music.” — Jordan ([03:20])

• Educational Drive: Credits his mother for advocating for his enrollment in gifted academic programs.
• Resilience and Confidence: Candidly shares the emotional challenges and turbulence of his teenage years, living far from school, and the impact of familial estrangement.

  “I kept surviving and I kept succeeding and I kept living. And so at some point, you build this myth that you are invincible.” — Jordan ([07:45])

• Innate vs. Learned Resilience: Explains how both his physical and emotional resilience were forged from necessity and experience on a farm.
• Tim Storey’s Framework: Tim reframes this as the tension between “recovery” from past pain and “discovery” of new potential.

  “If you’re not careful, you’ll get so caught up in the recovery zone that you’ll miss your discovery zone.” — Tim ([09:39])

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The Story of Napster

[11:30 – 17:57]

• Napster’s Birth: Jordan joined the Napster team at age 19 after a small but formative success with a security startup, bringing the technical skills and boldness of youth.

  “We were just nerds sleeping under our desks.” — Jordan ([14:16])

• Cultural Context: Recalls how the late ‘90s tech world did not yet idolize engineers and start-ups as rockstars.

  “At the time that we were doing Napster, engineers were not yet considered rock stars…We were still a couple years prior to that.” — Jordan ([15:09])

• Real Impact vs. Perception: Despite Napster’s massive cultural impact, Jordan emphasizes that it was not a financial windfall—the lawsuits and music industry backlash meant “no one really made a ton of money off it.” ([16:45])
• First Taste of Success: His “success” from a buyout was $25,000—life-changing for a farm kid, but modest by Silicon Valley standards.

  “Making 25k after a year and a half’s worth of work was actually really awesome.” — Jordan ([18:36])

• Financial Wisdom: Shares a strategy he learned about “selling a little bit every month” to manage stock options and entrepreneurial income for long-term security. ([19:31])

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Redefining Success: Money, Identity, and the True Rewards

[22:04 – 26:09]

• Money is Not Identity: Despite accumulating wealth, Jordan rejects the notion that money defines him.

  “That’s not my identity. Like I don’t ever tell anyone that.” — Jordan ([22:04])

• Relief over Excess: The main emotional result of achieving financial ease was relief, not indulgence—more sleep, more energy, time for self-improvement, and real relationships.

  “Those were always at the top of my list. And those were never things you could buy with money.” — Jordan ([24:13])

• Using Wealth Intentionally: Jordan used his resources to invest in others, gather new experiences, and expand his enjoyment of life “not by going overboard but by enabling the life I wanted.” ([25:24])

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Leading with Love, Self-Acceptance, and Motivation

[26:09 – 33:46]

• Foundation of Love and Service: Traces his values to a mix of childhood pain and deliberate emotional work (including therapy and personal development seminars):

  “The thing that came out of that was… really learning how to love myself.” — Jordan ([27:43])

• Self-Acceptance: Recognizes the importance of fully embracing both strengths and flaws for healthy relationships with oneself and others.
• The “I Suck, Now What?” Mindset: Tim and Jordan agree that true greatness includes feeling “undone” or struggling with self-doubt even at the height of success.

  “My answer to that was, I suck. And I love myself still. Indisputably. I still love myself.” — Jordan ([32:08])

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Legacy, Fatherhood, and Life’s Meaning in the Present

[35:14 – 38:25]

• Pride in Parenthood: Jordan’s main excitement in this life stage is fathering his two young sons—being present, patient, and loving is his primary mission.

  “If I come home and…I haven’t had a chance to see them …I get a pang in my heart. I’m like, dang it, I really wanted to see him…It is one of my favorite things.” — Jordan ([35:53])

• Teaching Resilience: He purposely lets his sons make mistakes and learn on their own, reflecting his belief in the growth that comes from adversity.
• Tim’s Validation: Tim affirms the spiritual and practical blessing of “keeping your priorities straight,” referencing his own theological background and Covey’s principles. ([37:19])

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Embracing Calling, Challenge, and the Future

[38:13 – 41:10]

• Responding to the World’s Needs: Jordan feels most “motivated, curious, and sometimes anxious” about life’s big callings, but always trusts his ability to “figure it out.”
• Stages of Life: Drawing on Tim’s life-stage framework, Jordan observes that each decade brings profound changes and new motivations—and that “even in my worst failures, I have recovered.”

  “Excitement and curiosity mixed with moments of panic and anxiety moderated by…always being able to figure it out.” — Jordan ([40:33])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Surviving and Building Confidence:

  “I built this myth that you are invincible…As a young man, you kind of think that way…We don’t often say that out loud, but we do think that way.” — Jordan ([07:45]/[11:22])

• On Lasting Value:

  “Love, kindness, friendship…those were always at the top of my list. And those were never things you could buy with money.” — Jordan ([24:13])

• On Self-Love and Acceptance:

  “Part of being a whole person was accepting the whole you, the good and the bad, and integrating it all and learning to live with it.” — Jordan ([28:26])

• On Relationship with Success:

  “Success is never a straight line.” — Jordan ([21:01])

• On Mental Health & Growth:

  “I suck. And I love myself still. Indisputably.” — Jordan ([32:08])

• On Family, Legacy, and Joy:

  “It is no longer about correcting my own childhood experience anymore. I long to connect with these boys and teach them.” — Jordan ([36:38])

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Segment Timestamps of Interest

• Jordan’s High School & Band Life: [02:39] – [05:12]
• Honest Discussion on Confidence & Family Struggles: [06:31] – [11:22]
• Creation & Culture of Napster: [11:44] – [16:45]
• First ‘Success’—Money and Lessons Learned: [17:57] – [21:04]
• Money, Identity, and What Matters: [22:04] – [26:09]
• Therapy, Self-Acceptance, and the Journey to Self-Love: [27:23] – [32:08]
• The Paradox of Success and Self-Doubt: [32:08] – [33:46]
• Fatherhood and Meaning in the Current Stage of Life: [35:14] – [38:25]
• Facing Life's Big Callings: [38:13] – [41:10]
• Reflections and Closing Sentiments: [41:17] – [42:48]

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is deeply personal, candid, and reflective. Tim Storey maintains his encouraging, motivational style. Jordan Ritter is forthright, authentic, occasionally humorous, and earnestly philosophical—always returning to the importance of relationships, growth, and humility. The episode leans far beyond tech entrepreneurship to illuminate the universal journey of self-worth, love, and living with intention.

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Conclusion

Listeners are left with the sense that miracle mentality isn’t about dramatic external wins, but about the quiet, repeatable work of self-acceptance, resilience, leading with love, and a willingness to keep growing—no matter how “successful” you become. As Tim closes, “You may not be what you want to be, but thank God you’re not what you used to be.” The extraordinary, this episode suggests, often hides inside the ordinary human work of becoming whole.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, my name is Tim Storey. Welcome to Miracle Mentality.

[B]

Remember, rooftops, drawing spaceships on the ground.

[A]

It's for the dreamers, the doers, the believers in something greater. In each episode, I'll invite you to rise above the mundane, to push past the messy and learn to live boldly in the miraculous. Every episode will have practical wisdom, spiritual insight, and my guests will explore what it takes to activate your miracle mindset. Remember to subscribe, follow. And like, I think this is going to be one of my favorite guests. I've been studying him for the last three days. His name is Jordan Ritter. He's a tech entrepreneur, engineer, innovator, and he is a person that I like him because he's resilient. He finds a way to bounce back. At a young age, he helped create something called Napster, which a lot of us have heard about. We'll talk just a little bit about that. It literally changed the way the world experienced music. And then what happened with Jordan? No matter what setback he went through, he found ways to reinvent himself. He's curious, creative, committed. I want to talk about what he's doing now, what he's doing next. Originally from Northridge, California, ladies and gentlemen, Jordan Ritter. Hi, Jordan.

[B]

Pleasure to be here, Tim. Thanks for having me.

[A]

How long did you stay in Northridge?

[B]

Oh, I love telling this story. So I was born at epicenter of the last major earthquake. That's Northridge in la.

[A]

I know it well. That's why I was going to ask you about that.

[B]

At the ripe old age of 2, I decided to had enough of LA and I moved to Texas with my mom. My parents divorced and we went to Texas.

[A]

There was too much temptation coming out of Hollywood. Too much at two years of age. You said, I'm out of there. So did you. Did you miss the big Northridge earthquake?

[B]

Yeah, they missed me by a couple.

[A]

Years because I remember it, I lived not so far away. And that was like some heavy, heavy stuff.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Okay, so take me to childhood.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

In high school, your freshman year in high school, we used to have, like, the Stoners. Those were the guys that got high. We had, like the jocks.

[B]

We had the Goblins.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So what was kind of your group that you were hanging out with?

[B]

Well, there were two, and they were a strong overlap. I was an International Baccalaureate student, so I had been gifted schools throughout my life AP back in middle school. And so I entered as International Baccalaureate student. So I was a nerd. And probably even more important to my identity, I was a band nerd. I played several different instruments. I fancied myself to be a musician as a career. I can't say whether it was good or bad that I didn't end up being a musician. But I played jazz band, jazz ensemble, symphony. I played everything. I played in the halls of my high school alone in the evening because there was this nice little echo after practice. I just loved playing music. Music.

[A]

Let's go to those two things. Let's go to education and then how you were introduced to music, because both of them are very big. So the education side was that your mother, your father, a teacher, a sibling who got you into education? Because that's very, very interesting.

[B]

So it's interesting. My first year in high school is when I stopped living with my mom and I moved in with my father. I think they both were big on vacation. But I have to give credit to my mother that she was always fighting for me to be in gifted programs because I was always so bored and, you know, always reading at an advanced level. So most credit to my mom for that.

[A]

So your mother got you into it. And then Jordan. I think that in with most students, they start to get pulled away and distracted by other things.

[B]

How did you kind of.

[A]

How did you kind of stick with it? I mean, because, you know, you're going to now start liking girls. Oh, boy. Start doing stuff.

[B]

IB teaches you a lot. It does not teach you moderation. So I basically did it all. And I carried that right into college too, which we can talk about in a minute. But like, I did everything I did. I was president of Key Club. We started our own volunteer organization called Hammer to Nail. You know, IB is a magnet program, so it sits inside of a public school. So we got to interact a lot with the public school institutions and teachers and do stuff for them. Yes, very service oriented. I had a girlfriend right through the end of high school. IB had its own sort of social structure. It started out, I think, with about 125, 30 people. Only 100 made it to the end of four years and only 75 graduated IB. Everybody graduated high school, but IB was like a layer above AP. So there was that group of people and we were very service oriented, very intellectual oriented, and we were also musical as well. Lots of us were in the same organizations.

[A]

After high school, you ended up going to what college?

[B]

I did something you're not supposed to do. At least I don't think you're supposed to do it. I applied early acceptance to more than one school. I always wanted to go to cmu, Carnegie Mellon. So I had the one state school. I lived on a farm. We weren't that rich, so you couldn't apply to many places because they all cost money. So I applied to my state school, University of Florida, because I was in Tampa Bay at the time. And I applied to cmu and then I applied to Lehigh because my uncle had gotten his undergrad there. I think it was undergrad or it was his postgrad. I can't remember. It was for ceramic metallurgy. So he was a rocket scientist at that school. I went and visited him both. I got into both. Lehigh's gorgeous. It's on the side of a mountain. Cmu. It's got some nice parts to it, but it's not my favorite city, I'll say that. Apologies to those that love it, but Lehigh is this beautiful mountainside campus. And CMU gave me, I don't know, 18,000 of whatever the annual tuition was. And Lehigh gave me basically a full ride. So it was more beautiful school. I really connected with New England itself and I basically went to college for free. So I chose Lehigh.

[A]

That was pretty awesome.

[B]

It was.

[A]

What was your confidence level? And then where did you get it? I wrote a book called Utmost Living, and I talk about almost most. And utmost. Almost means nearly, Sort of. Almost most is like at a high level, but not quite utmost. For you to have kind of the boldness and the courage to go after these schools. I'm trying to figure out where you got that kind of courage and confidence.

[B]

Well, I'm going to tell something real personal and somewhat vulnerable and real honest, which, you know, the truth is never perfect.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's never tidy. It's always messy. I was estranged from my mom at that point. That's why I went to live with my father. And I lived on a farm and it was the furthest. I lived next door to the bus depot, so we were the furthest away you could be from a school. So I got on the bus at like, you know, 5:45 in the morning, arrived at 7:30, and I was last to get off the bus. And, you know, it was this very, very different experience for me coming up in high school. And you know, look, I had a lot of rage issues as a young man with my mom constantly moving a lot with my father not being present in my life until that point. And that was a source of energy that was sometimes positive, sometimes negative. But consequentially, I think a lot of young men relate to what I'm about to say at least once they've Made peace with their lives. Yeah, you kind of push your limits and try to prove that you belong on this earth, and you do it in stupid ways. I now have two sons, four and five. I can already see it's about to happen. I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to keep them alive. My dad did, too. But, like, I literally, without trying to kill myself, I basically put myself in danger all the fricking time. And part of it was this really brokenhearted, somewhat fractured personality of a person trying to figure out their place in the world and do they belong at all. And I kept surviving and I kept succeeding and I kept living. And so at some point, you build this myth that you are invincible. And, I mean, I've been hit and run over by cars and I got back up. Like, I have been. I've gotten car wrecks and not a scratch on me. Like, I've. I was a young man, AKA stupid, and I did a lot of stupid things, and I survived them all. And that, plus my intellect and my way of always being able to think myself out of anything or really, truth be told, be able to figure anything out, that sort of. My technical ability came from like, oh, how does this work? How does that work? Can I take it apart? Can I put it back together? Does it still work? And when you live on a farm, if you break something, you gotta fix it. So, like, you can't pay a mechanic to come because you broke. You gotta take the brake housing off. Oh, it's a drum rotor. I gotta take these pads off and I gotta jack it up this way and put these back on in a certain way, and you learn all of that. So it's this very complicated story of a human being who is kind of dealing with a lot of emotional issues, under a ton of pressure educationally, and kind of just testing themselves against the world in some of the worst ways and somehow not dying. And so that made me really confident.

[A]

You're saying that. Well, Jordan, because, I mean, this is what I do for a living. I work with people one on one as a counselor and a therapist. And thank you for being so open about it, but I teach this thing where you go through recovery and discovery at the same time. Yep. Recovery is our past, but recovery is also things from our present. And if you're not careful, you'll get so caught up in the recovery zone that you'll miss your discovery zone. Because it could have been so easy for you to look at how things did not go well in your childhood and just Kind of just sit in that recovery zone and not do anything about it. But the resilience, do you think it was innate or is it learned behavior or was it a mixture? I want you to really think this, think this through.

[B]

I did a ton of work in my 30s to think about this exact question. It's part of me. I feel part of it is a physical innateness and part of it is a mental one. I think physically, physically, I grew up kind of built like a tank. And certainly that memory where I got hit and run over by a car kind of solidified like, oh, wow. I am physically resilient. I can take a lot of damage and get right back up when I realized that and I put it together with like, oh, my God. Like, I went through all this trauma in my early childhood and in my teenhood and I kept going like, no, this is actually I've been. Some of it was learned in that if you didn't, you'd die. And the rest of it was, I didn't die because I had it. You know, And I don't mean to sound so serious and so like, big about dying, but like, as a young man, you kind of think that way. We don't often say that out loud, but we do think that way.

[A]

I think you're saying what's on people's minds, but you're correct that they don't usually verbalize it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what's gonna happen here is that Napster is gonna, is going to be birthed when, you know, you have a tribe of people and you are part of this group.

[B]

Tribe. It was a tribe. Absolutely. Tribe, yeah.

[A]

Innovative, creative pioneers. This happens when you're only how old? Oh, boy. Probably 19.

[B]

You see, I'm a college dropout. I didn't finish, but.

[A]

But do you know how young that was, that now you are already? It's like you joined the Rolling Stones. Okay, so let me read out of my notes here. Okay, so what is Napster? It says here it let users search for and share MP3 music files over the Internet for free. Does that make sense?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. That's what it was then.

[A]

It says it revolutionized how people access music. All right, so there was a movie about it, documentaries. People talked about it. People know you, Jordan about it. When you're in the middle of creating greatness, do you know you're creating greatness? I've been able to talk with Steve Perry from Journey and said to him, well, you guys were creating Journey. Did you know you were creating Journey? He goes, tim, to Be honest with you. We knew we had something, but we didn't know how much we had. I've talked to Quincy Jones. When you're doing Thriller, did you know Thriller was going to be that big? No, I just knew we were onto something. So when you're creating Napster, did you think you guys were onto something? You were only 19. You probably had very little facial hair.

[B]

No, I've kind of had this kind of goatee thing going on for almost my entire life. I think most people would attest to that.

[A]

Don't be a bragger. Don't be a bragger.

[B]

I definitely didn't have all the hair that young men had at the time. I was blonde. So if I had it, you couldn't see it. It's fine, no biggie. Look, I would actually say the exact same thing. I think there's my opinion and there's other people's opinion who are also in it. And everybody's opinions are equally valid from their own standpoint. I think for me and most people like me, we knew something was going on. We were being sued by the federal government. There were musicians coming to our outside of our office and holding press conferences and lots of people showing up and great support. And occasionally we would be young men and women and go out to clubs and we would be treated like rock stars, even though we were just nerds sleeping under our desks.

[A]

I remember those days. Were you in la going to clubs?

[B]

No, this was San Francisco. What's really keenly interesting about that is this is right before the dot com bust. So dot com is still going up and there's this migration happening. A lot of people don't talk about this as context, but when I first arrived in San Francisco, you did not build companies in San Francisco. No one who is technical lived in San Francisco. They lived on the peninsula, lived in South Bay, lived in East Bay, but not San Francisco, since San Francisco had its own thing going on. You go to San Francisco today and you think it's the seat of power of Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley was not sf, it was South. And so we started to venture into San Francisco to party up from San Mateo and Burlingame and and so on. It was like we were starting to bleed into that cultural scene there, but it was still fairly new. And so there was the newness of tech entrepreneurs showing up. It still wasn't a thing at the time that we were. This is another important cultural context setting thing. At the time that we were doing Napster, engineers were not yet considered rock stars. It wasn't until a couple of years later when Google came out and popularized the engineer and fired, famously fired all their managers, that engineers started to be put up on pedestals. We were still a couple years prior to that doing a lot of things that Google ended up doing with cheap hardware and cool technical innovation. But we did it before we were actually recognized. So we're kind of like the kids sneaking out at night and kind of having all these weird crazy experiences and then people are recognizing us and we're like, what is happening here?

[A]

So what I find, because I live in a very cool life where I've been to 82 countries now, so whether I'm in Sweden talking to like creatives or Switzerland or even Nigeria, wherever I am, everybody has an idea to create something like a Napster and they think that, you know, if it hits then oh my gosh, this, you know, money's going to flood in, it's going to keep flowing. Was there a time where money came and you went, holy shmoly, we're onto something?

[B]

Yeah, that wasn't Napster. That was definitely not Napster. Those were the days.

[A]

Tell me about that because I don't know that part. I've only seen the movie.

[B]

Well, again, to put it in cultural context, at the time, late 90s, when you started a company and you worked at a startup, you made 60k, that was your starting salary. You can't afford a place in San Francisco on 60K at this point. But like that was the standard. There were executives who got to make a hundred plus. But again, remember Google hadn't really hit the scene yet. So the whole idea of people making six figures right out of college hadn't started yet. And I had walked away from a job offer a year or two prior down in Pennsylvania for 33k. Who lives off of 33k? Turns out a lot of people, but just not in San Francisco. But any case, like there was not a whole lot of money flying around. So the promise of it was a big allure back then. Right? There weren't six figure, big six figure salaries you'd go by working at a tech company back then. So you literally either went to work for a big company as a cog in a machine or you worked for a startup hoping to hit it big. That was a real dream back then. I don't think it really exists much anymore in the way that it did back then. But we never hit it big. We, we impacted the industry, we impacted the world, we impacted culture, we impacted innovation, but no one really Made a, a ton of money off. And after we got sued into oblivion.

[A]

A lot of people don't know that. All they know is that they were getting music and that was exciting to them because I don't even remember my son turning me on to, to Napster and what it was and what it could do for you. Okay, so when do you get your first success as far as finances? Explain that one for a minute. And then how did it make you feel to maybe come into a fair amount of money?

[B]

Well, everybody's definition of a fair amount of money is different. I'll say my first taste of success.

[A]

A fair amount of money.

[B]

For Jordan Ritter, For Jordan ritter at age 19 was when his security company, NateCT, got bought by a public company and he got given golden handcuffs, which is where I got all the free time to then work on Napster with Sean Fanning. And that was. I got like a 25k exit. That's nothing, right? People buy that for a car. But if you're a kid who grew up on a farm, of course, went to school for free and then dropped out, because that doesn't Sound right. Making 25k after a year and a half's worth of work was actually really awesome. There were people who made more than me, but like, I wasn't a founder, so that was my first taste of it. I was like, okay, this thing could be real, but Napster wasn't it. I've had a number of like, cash in, cash out type of things. You get some money out and then you immediately put it back in. You get some money out and you pull it back in. One of the best strategies I was ever taught by a number of people, but in particular this one, credit where it's due came from Alex Edelstein. He was an, I think an executive in tomi. He shared me this story about how every time he got a stock grant, he would just sell a little bit every month, period, end of story, up or down. He would just constantly. And he'd get more, but he keeps selling it. And in that way, you just kind of got a constant income coming. You're making more, but you're always usually buying on the up if the company's successful. And it was a really successful strategy for him. So I've been doing that my whole life. I was doing things on the secondary market, which I'd only learned about from side conversations with people. Now it's a big thing. There are companies built around secondary markets and selling your insider stock. But back then it was not A known thing. But I was always wanting to let as much of it ride as possible. So I didn't take a whole lot out. It wasn't until a company sold that I get a big exit, the biggest exit I ever got. I mean, I worked my whole life. I never really took breaks. Even when I'd take a vacation, I'd work on the vacation. I took two and a half years off of my life. I learned to race sale, I learned to fly airplanes. I did all these playboy esque things that at the time were just me gathering new hobbies. But that wasn't until later in life I've just been going at it, having ideas, executing, bringing people together, bringing products to market, hopefully making money, navigating the mess of it all, because it's always a mess. It's never clean, it's never easy. Success is never a straight line.

[A]

Thank you for watching the Miracle Mentality podcast. So many of my friends are texting me, DMing me, speaking to me and saying, tim, thank you for these great guests that you're bringing on. So share it with somebody, a friend, a family member, a colleague. And then make sure and reach out to us imstory official and let us know that you love what we're doing. Thank you for being a part of this movement. So the vantage point or perspective of Jordan is different than the vantage point or perspective of mine or the things I've read about you. Because when I look at my notes, it says here that you're a tech entrepreneur, engineer, innovator. But it also says that you have amassed a lot of money.

[B]

I mean, look, I have made a lot of money, it is true. But I'll turn around and invest it. I'll invest it in other people's companies. I'll build my own new companies. I got a couple side companies right now. But like, that's not my identity. Like I don't, I don't ever tell anyone that.

[A]

No, but that's one reason I'm saying that to you, because you're such a down to earth guy, right? Like if I talk to John Paul Dejora, who sold patron for around $5 billion, right? And he's a really chill dude and I consider him a real friend. He's not really like thinking about that that much because that's not really who he is. That was a good, a good move, a good deal. But he's a lot about humanitarian work, changing people's lives, right? When you got a certain amount of money, don't tell me the number, but A certain amount of money. What was the feeling like? Because I'm going back to the kid, Jordan Ritter, who's raised on a farm. Your family is going through challenges like a lot of us, right? Scarcity, mindset. As Carol Dweck says, not so much a growth mindset, kind of a fixed mindset. But now Jordan Ritter is doing okay. Johnny Manziel, I just saw a special on him the other day. He said he kind of went crazy with what he had. He had all this money, he had all this power, he had all this fame. The football player in college, and he kind of went wild with it. A lot of the guys that I life coach and I'm their therapist, they kind of went wild. But for Jordan Ritter, what was that like to finally go, oh, my gosh, I could go to the bank and draw money out. I can go into that dealership and literally buy that car. I can look at that house and most likely buy that house. What was that like? I want to know.

[B]

Yeah, I think to understand my answer, first, I have to say that due to my upbringing and the experiences I had early in life, relationships were always the most important thing to me. Love, kindness, friendship, consideration, compassion, connectedness, intimacy. I'm a very intimacy driven man. Those were always at the top of my list. And those were never things you could buy with money. So not having money, having money never really influenced my ability to get the things that were most important to me. Now it could be, you could totally make up a story how a farm boy who didn't have a lot of money, went to school only because he got a free ride and still quit, is desperate for money, and the moment he gets it, he loses his mind and he buys everything. And then he loses it all. Because that's how that story always goes. None of those things were ever important to me as much. I think the biggest feeling I ever got was a feeling of relief. It was with one particular exit. I started sleeping better. I found I had a lot more energy to go to the gym, so I started going to the gym. Then I was like, okay, well, now I've got time to go learn some new hobbies. And now I got time to go spend more time with people. And at the time, I was single. So I started dating a bunch of different women because again, that was what I wanted. I wanted connection and relationship with people. I wanted experiences, but I didn't. And I might have had like two or three really expensive dive trips to Indonesia and exotic places and whatnot, but I didn't really Go overboard. I used the wealth to enable me to live the life that I wanted. I got to do a lot more advisory work. I was able to, like, when I would come across somebody I really believed in, I could cut them a check and invest in their companies. And that really meant a lot to them and it meant a lot to me. And like, you have to understand what I care about in order to understand why I didn't go to the dealership and buy a big car.

[A]

This part of the reason I was excited about talking to you because I have a movement called lead with love. Lead with love because I spent three decades of my life working with some very powerful people and continu to work with them who don't lead with love. Everything's a transaction. Everything is what's in it for me. And I think some, I had mega influence on some not so much because their motives remain the same, that they just wanted things for themselves. Okay. So this idea of leading with love and wanting to also reach out to other people and it not be just about the Jordan Ritter life. Right, Right. Does that come from your grandmother, your grandfather? Does that come from church? Does that come from synagogue? Where the heck does that come from? Jordan, don't you love this? I don't ask. I don't ask the typical question.

[B]

This is a great question. No, it's a great question. And it's. It's not often I get asked a really deep question I haven't already thought about. So thank you for that. I think that couple things happened in order to that led to this person. The first is a lot of damage as a child. A lot of feeling not loved, not cared for, or actually having an alcoholic mother who loved me really well and didn't at all, and never knowing. So that uncertainty of love created this sort of love anxiety and this intimacy anxiety in me, but it didn't make me bad at relationships. And then that's sort of that rage as a young man that you kind of have to. I don't even know if you have to have a terrible childhood to have that kind of testosterone driven rage in you. But a lot of us have it and we just don't talk about it. But then I did all this work on myself in my early 30s, my mid-30s, I mean, seven years worth of individual therapy, couples therapy, group therapy. I did this thing called the Human Awareness Institute. High phenomenal organization. And the thing that came out of that was, came out of the first two sort of three day off sites I did with them was really learning how to love myself. I knew I loved people. I knew I really would show up for people. I was a good person. But there was always a gap that I couldn't acknowledge or admit between me and other people because I didn't love myself fully. There were things I didn't forgive myself for. There were things that I hated about myself. There were parts of myself I thought I needed to cut off and get rid of, and that wouldn't have made me a whole person. And what I learned through this work was I needed to be a whole person. And part of being a whole person was accepting the whole you, the good and the bad, and integrating it all and learning to live with it and manage it. And once I did those things, that put me in a position to really feel true love for other people. Now, I was always oriented, as you say, leading with love. I was always oriented towards relationships to other people and wanting to be of service. And I think the initial motivation for that, I would say, was wanting to correct my own experience, my childhood and teenage years and my young adulthood, wanting to create an experience for others that was better than the one that I had. And that is not a bad motivation. It can't be the only one. But that was a decent motivation. But the good motivation was once I did all that work in my 30s, I was like, I can really appreciate the complexity of everyone else. This person standing in front of me doesn't matter who they are. They might be a good person or bad person, but I know those good people have all sorts of fractures and problems, and I know those bad people have these really complicated parts of themselves. And I've learned to love mine. And so I can appreciate and connect with. I might not accept it, but I can appreciate and connect with someone else's. You know, sometimes we call them shadow cells or dark, dark parts. But like the whole you. Once I was able to appreciate that myself, that up leveled me in my relationship with everyone else.

[A]

Jordan, I love what you're saying because I think that, yeah, I've been working with people since my early 20s in counseling them. And I have found that people that we really look up to and that are quite bright all feel slightly undone. I did this thing that you would appreciate. I went to several people, actually, it was 20. This was 10 years ago. And I said to them, at the top of your career, whether it was a famous, famous actor or famous football player, famous, you know, soccer player, I would say, in the midst of your fame, did you ever feel like you sucked? All the time. All the Time. And that's exactly what they said. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

All the freaking time. Yep. I went to one that broke, like, so many records in sports. Everybody knows his name, but I can't divulgi because I was his therapist, and I said, like, how often did you feel like you sucked? He said, tim, the whole damn time. Because I. I was dealing with this situation and that situation and a relationship with a woman situation and a relationship with a child, and I felt like I was too busy. I felt like I let my family down.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And, yeah. So I created this idea called I suck now what? Because now that you know you suck now what? And, Jordan, I think that that's what you've done.

[B]

My answer to that was, I suck. And I love myself still. Indisputably. I still love myself. You forgive. It doesn't mean you forgive your failures. It just means that, you know, you love yourself. You've got yourself. You're going to take care of yourself, and you're going to do better. So, you know, you asked earlier, like, where does that stuff come from? And some of it was innate, and some of it was learned. When you finally learn them, you're like, that makes a ton of sense. It's common sense. Not really common, but good sense. Tools to like, okay, so I just messed that up. Good job, Jordan. Now what? Now you're asking. Well, I'm going to. It's okay, buddy. I got you. Now let's figure out what the right thing is to do. What is your definition, by your own values and morals of being a good person in this situation and be true to that. And most of the time, that's the right answer. Sometimes you got to do the hard thing that you don't want to do. And so it doesn't always align with what you want, but most of the time, being true to yourself. If you've done that thought process and you're clear on what you're about and you know that it's. There's some people who have that process, and they're like, I like money and I like to transact, and that's all I'm going to do. And, like, good for you. And it's not always the right thing to do, but within sort of, you know, the lens of current cultural and common values and accepted moralism, like, what is the right thing to do? And then you love yourself and you. And you help yourself through that experience. You're not just there. You're a bad. You screwed up, you're terrible, you're wrong. You have to have that conversation, but that's only a piece of it. You have the pieces, but you're still a good person. And there's a reason for you to repair and pick yourself back up and move forward.

[A]

It's all about the mindset, because this is what we're talking about, the miracle mentality.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So, Jordan, watch what I do with this now. So I still see you as young. Okay. There are different stages of life. There's birth to 20. That's stage one. Track me. 20 to 40 is stage two. 40 to 60 is stage three. 60 to 80 is stage four. Okay, 80 to 100. It's stage five. Now they've added a stage six, because so many people are going past that. 100 to 120 is stage six. Now, what we are finding as people who are therapists, psychologists, doctors, that a lot of people, when they really thrive, Jordan, you're going to love this. Is in the 40 to 60 range because we have been challenged. We've been through things. We've had setbacks. We've had comebacks. We fell on our face. We had some great victories. In this stage of your life, tell me what you're excited about because you're talking to a lot of people right now. Okay. What is Gordon Ritter excited about?

[B]

I go back. So the first answer is the most telling. I'm excited about a lot of things, but I go back to that. To understand my answer, you have to understand who I am as a person, that I value people and relationships and connection and intimacy of all kinds of. And I am most excited about my Two boys, age 4 and age 5. They just turned 4 and 5 this last month. And one of them looks exactly like me at that age. Platinum blonde, long curly hair down to here, blue eyes. And the other one looks exactly like my wife did at that age. Straight brunette hair, beautiful sort of hazel green eyes. And the latter one's the older one. The blonde one is the younger one. Young one's built like a tank. He walks around like a little baby gorilla. And if I come home and I haven't had a chance to see them and they're in their bedtime routine, I get a pang in my heart. I'm like, dang it, I really wanted to see him. I wanted to smell him. I wanted to squeeze him. I wanted to touch him. I want to kiss him. I want to hold him. I wanted to tell him I love him. And it's no longer about correcting my own childhood experience anymore. It's like I long to Connect with these boys and teach them. And it's. And by the way, it is not easy to teach my sons. They are both my sons and I was strong willed and hard headed. And then there's just the boy thing and then there's the developmental, like age 3 to 5, they're getting testosterone spikes. And testosterone's a hell of a drug. It's incredible what it causes us to do and how crazy it makes us. And then I'm having to think about like, I need to let my son fail. I need to let him pick himself up. I need to, I need to let him bruise himself. I need to let him cut himself. I need to let him hurt himself. Mom's hovering, she's like, no, no, no. And I'm like, hold back, mom. And go ahead, son. It's absolutely the wrong thing to do, but I know you're not going to listen to me, so go ahead and it's time to learn. And like, this is the experience I am engrossed with right now. And it is one of my favorite things. I don't think anyone would expect me to say that because of my background and career in the context of this conversation, but that is my first answer, is being a great father to my two sons.

[A]

I love that answer. And I think that when you honor that way of living, because I come from a theological background, there's a blessing that comes on you where grace comes on you in such a certain way. One hopes that God helps you, God helps you in so many other areas of your life. So I think that in keeping your priorities straight, that that does a lot for your life. Stephen Covey did a great job with that, with seven habits of highly effective people talking about this whole idea of core values. Okay. When you think about the future of your life and the assignments that God has given you because life, life is calling you to big things and you get big, do you get more intimidated.

[B]

Or.

[A]

Do you get more motivated when I say this? Calling you to big things is because the world is in trouble and it.

[B]

Needs better and it's our responsibility to put them there. Got it?

[A]

1, 100%.

[B]

Yes. I'm definitely not intimidated. But to be fully honest, I think we all, no matter how old we get, have moments of anxiety, momentary moments, you know, periods of anxiety. But for me it's never permanent, which I'm grateful for. I get a lot of curiosity as a 13 year old boy. I had a dream and it stuck with me for the rest of my life. And that dream was that I was not going to live to see 21. In fact, it informed a lot of my choices as a young man. I was like, it's not going to matter because I'm never going to make it. And then I made 21, and I had another dream. I was really. That night was a really crazy night for me. I made 21, and I woke up the next morning like, ooh, okay. And I. Then I had. A week later, I had another dream I was going to make it to 30. And so I live my life a certain way. I've had that experience a bunch of times now, and I've realized that I'll always be able to figure it out. Even in those moments where I feel deep anxiety about, and I don't always feel that, but even in the worst moments where I feel that, I'm like, this too shall pass. And then I get curious because my life has been so different so many times. And you're like, okay, there's these five stages and maybe there's the sixth stage. And I'm like, yeah, I can see that. Although I'd argue, like, stage one starts at 13. Like, there's our childhood and then there's the beginning of adulthood to 30. But, like, I would literally say my 20s were very distinct. My 30s were very distinct. My 40s have been very distinct as well, and. And lots of different experiences in between. And I just know that's what stands ahead. So I'm excited and curious. Motivated is just something that's sort of internal and intrinsic to me. Like, for example, I want to be a great dad. Motivation. I want to set a good example. Motivation against my worst parts. Because we have those moments where we lose our grace and we lose our patience and maybe we lose a little bit of our minds because we're still human. And there's counter motivation to that. Like, okay, this boy is watching everything. I was watching everything my parents did. And we know the stories. We lived those stories. And so there's all kinds of motivations that I live in a soup of them. But the thing that lands for me is excitement and curiosity mixed with moments of panic and anxiety moderated by a regular experience of always being able to figure it out. Not taking that for granted. It's an active action of figuring it out, but building confidence from a track record of life, saying, even in my worst failures, I have recovered and I'll be able to do it again if that ever happens again.

[A]

I love this. Hey, Jordan, just as friends now, what did you like about this conversation?

[B]

Oh, I love its Philosophy. I think when I get asked, when I do podcasts, usually I get asked about Napster and then the conversation will turn towards what made it great. And I won't talk about technology. I'll talk about culture. But at the root of culture is still always people. I love talking about people and people's stories and their experiences and how they become human beings, how they go from being one kind to another kind, how they evolve and how they grow and what makes great relationships between people. This is a completely different conversation that has allowed me to talk about some of that same stuff in a completely different way. So I really appreciate that.

[A]

Yeah. Because, you know, as I started studying you, I started really seeing like Jordan, the 12 year old.

[B]

He's still around.

[A]

Yeah, he makes 12 years old there. That look in your face in the. When you would laugh and you would smile and yes, I'm, I'm, I'm proud of you. And it's excellent to see what your priorities are about with your family, your children, and life is still good in the midst of all that we face in life. So I want to just say to the people that are watching today, either you're watching or listening, what a great conversation today with Jordan. He truly is an entrepreneur, an engineer, an innovator, but more than that, I think just a quality man.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

But I want to just say this to all you that are watching. You may not be what you want to be, but thank God you're not what you used to be. Don't you ever put yourself down. Life is still very good. Thank you for watching and listening. Thank you for sharing space with me on this episode of Miracle Mentality with Tim Story. If today sparked your courage or helped you understand why you're created for success, I invite you to carry that miracle mentality forward. Visit [e-mail] that story with an EY on the end. Until next time, walk by faith, embrace possibility and create your own comeback story.