About Today’s Show
Hello, and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast! Do you want to be a millionaire? Because I definitely do! I am interviewing today a very special person. He is very knowledgeable when it comes to money, and helping people change and shift how they deal with money from the inside out. He helps entrepreneurs grow six and seven-figure conscious businesses that combine making high profit with a positive impact. JV Crum III is a speaker, coach, Huffington Post columnist, bestselling author of Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference. He hosts the top-ranking Conscious Millionaire podcast, and is the founder of ConsciousMillionaire.com, a global coaching and wealth product business. He holds an MBA and a master’s in psychology, and has built and sold successful companies. Thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the show!
Orion, it’s my privilege, and congratulations on all the success you’re having with your podcast! I know from being a podcaster, one of the most exciting things you can do with your life is to have a podcast. I love it!
Oh my God, I love it too! I was actually recording another episode today, and it was just amazing. I love meeting extraordinary people and connecting with them because I, personally, learned so much. I know that the more people who will get that knowledge, the more lives we can change. That brings me to what you’re doing, which is the Conscious Millionaire. What is the Conscious Millionaire?
That’s a great question because I made my first money by 25. I made my first million, I had a four-story home, the Mercedes, and all of that, and I made that, I would say, in a way that was not purpose-driven. It wasn’t about how much can I help people, but how much money can I put in the bank. I think a lot of people start out that way, and so I have a lot of understanding when somebody comes to me and they’re going, “Well, I want to make money,” and I’m going, “Yeah, but let’s talk about how you’re going to make that money. How are you going to feel at the end of the day?” Conscious millionaire-there are three ways I look at “conscious,” and maybe that’s the best way to answer that question. As I wrote my book, which I wrote my book seven times. I don’t necessarily recommend that, but in my case, I learned so much from writing the book and rearranging things, I finally realized I was talking about three different definitions of “conscious,” and I better define them for the reader. The first one, I think, really is the pure awareness. That can be the awareness of, what does your customer want? How does business work? How do you make money? Awareness of what’s going on in the economy-what are the trends? That’s off the psychology part of awareness. But then, let’s go a bit deeper, and I call it, “visionary consciousness.” Now, you might call it “higher consciousness.” When you think about anyone who’s a composer-if you think about Steve Jobs creating the iPhone and the Apple, every time someone’s being truly innovative and finding a creative solution that’s really going to help humanity that’s going to help their clients, that’s tapping into a bigger consciousness that, I think, resides just inside of our body. We have to kind of expand our consciousness and connect to something bigger and get insights. That’s the visionary consciousness. Then, the third wave of consciousness, and it’s something that is so big today because I’m very much involved in the renewable energy, and going to renewable energy conferences so I’m learning so much about that because it’s so critical for our planet that we give the renewable energy, and that’s a piece of social consciousness. And it’s about sustainability. How do we create products and services that solve world problems and help the whole of society and yet, we’re building profit companies? We’re making money from doing this while uplifting and transforming the world in a positive way. It’s awareness, it’s being visionary, and it’s also having a social consciousness. Each person is going to come in and have their own combination of those three because it’s just where we are at on our own evolution.
How do you see yourself-how was your own personal evolution from age 25 when you’re a millionaire, but you do not feel fulfilled, and all of a sudden, there is a shift. What was that moment that shifted it inside?
It was interesting because it’s actually just three months into buying this luxury townhouse and having the Mercedes, which were a big deal for me because I grew up in a little town of 200-300 hundred people. My family didn’t have any money. We had all kinds of financial challenges. So, at 25, to have achieved that, it was like a whole different life and a completely different lifestyle than I grew up with. Yet, it was the third month, and I was looking out one day at the bay, and I remember there were sailboats, it was sunny, there were palm trees that were blowing, and I had this really horrible feeling inside. Now, you would think you just moved into this very nice home, right? Fireplaces in Florida so you can turn up the air conditioning and turn on and burn the fireplaces. Everything-decking, hot tubs, and everything you could imagine. I said, “Something’s wrong with this picture.” I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew that inside I didn’t feel very fulfilled. In fact, I recall saying to myself, and I think this is not that uncommon for somebody in their 20’s, that I didn’t even like myself, and I was like a tragedy when it came to relationships or my personal life. I was truly the guy who figured out how to make some money, got to my goal, and then realized something was just horribly wrong with this picture. This was not what I thought it was going to be because I think somewhere inside, I just believed that American dream that if you’ve got the money, somehow all the rest of your life is magically perfect. And the problem was, the rest of my life was a tragedy. It was a mess. I said, “Something’s wrong with this,” and I really set off on an over-a-decade long journey of Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer, reading all the books, going to sweat lodges and spiritual retreats, and truly seeking what was missing with all of this, and ultimately decided I had to sell the companies that was so miserable, and go off on my own journey. I lived at a Buddhist monastery.
Wow.
I lived at Esalen on the Big Sur coast, which is a human potential retreat center, and then I went to Boulder and shaved my head. I would go out for two or three weeks at a time and go camping, and I called it “seeking and asking the universe” and going, “Okay, I’ve got all these tools. I have graduate degrees in three areas. I’ve made money, but I know that I’m here for a bigger purpose.” I know I’m here to do something important with my life so I became a seeker. To find what that was. One day, I was actually in Lake Tahoe for the winter. I was staying in Reno, and I had gone over to San Francisco. It’s about a three-and-a-half hour ride for the weekend, and I looked down, and I found my intuition very strongly, and I saw this kind of pamphlet for the Green Festival. I knew nothing about the Green Festival. I’ve never heard of the Green Festival. I brought it back, and I had this really luxurious place I was renting-I had a fireplace and I had a Jacuzzi tub. I got in the Jacuzzi tub, and I was reading this, and I looked down, and I saw the word “conscious.” I get my intuition very visually so, literally, in my forehead I saw the phrase “conscious millionaire.” I got a tingling in my spine and a sense that I can’t even tell you what it was in a sensory level except that I knew that this is what I had been looking for.
Wow. I love that.
I know how the universe works so I actually sat in the hot tub for another 40 minutes because I said, “ConsciousMillionaire.com is waiting for me. It’s not going to be taken in the next period of time so I kind of sat there and reveling because imagine that I had just spent two-three years really seeking why am I on the planet. That I knew that the only thing I knew about why I was on the planet was that it was to be of service. I just didn’t know what that service was, but I knew that I had to discover it. I knew that everything that was going to come after my discovering that would depend on that moment so this was a very transformative moment. I remembered that night after I’d taken ConsciousMillionaire.com, and for your listeners, I also happen to be a licensed attorney so I very quickly filed my trademarks because I said, “Oh, we’re going to trademark this.” I remember that night saying, “I think this is kind of my assignment,” and I was gleefully saying, “Yes!” having no idea what conscious millionaire was. I just said, “It sounds really cool, and this is what I’m going to get to do with my life,” but then I had to figure out what is conscious millionaire, and that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book so many different times. It was almost like peeling away a layer after layer after layer of understanding why I was here and how I wanted to help people, and I had been thinking for some time. Maybe I want to do a millionaire program, but at that point in time, there were so many millionaire programs, and they were what I will call kind of smoke and mirror.
Yes.
Kind of vapid, right? You’re selling the empty box-
I’ve been to those.
Yeah, yeah! We all know what that feels like, right?
Yeah.
And I said, “Well, that is not why I’m on earth-just to learn how to sell a box called “millionaire.” What I want to do is help people do something bigger with their lives. When I got conscious millionaire, I started to realize, “Oh, this is this is going to be so great because I want to help people be fulfilled and feel like what they’re doing,” because remember, I just spent time making money living this life that didn’t fulfill me.
Right.
Living a life that I didn’t think was meaningful. I wanted to make certain that as other people learned how to create their money, make their profits, and create wealth, at the end of the day, they didn’t have the same feeling I had. I think that was such a strong drive for me because I wanted people to tap into something that would be meaningful for them.
Yes, I was just listening to an interview with Tony Robbins and Marie Forleo yesterday, and Tony really spoke about the next stage of his life where it was always peak state, peak state, peak state, and now he’s taking it to a beautiful state where he finds that he wants to enjoy the moment and fulfillment, and use the word “fulfillment” as Tony Robbins’ next thing because even for him, it was all about achievement and peak states, and now, he’s going deeper or higher or connecting higher into more that’s spiritual-
Yeah, that’s an interesting metaphor, isn’t it? Is it deeper, is it higher? I think it’s deeper inside of ourselves, and I think it’s higher outside of ourselves-bigger outside of ourselves.
Right. Like you, I went to so many-I did the whole Tony Robbins’ Master University in Leadership, Date with Destiny, and all that, and Dr. Wayne Dyer. I spent some time in an ashram in India-
So, it’s kind of a similar journey.
-sweat lodges.
Yeah, and those sweat lodges are hot, aren’t they?
I love those!
Yeah, it’s no way-if you’ve never done a sweat lodge, I really want to recommend them. They’re kind of a journey to hell and back in a way, but you peel off the outer layers, and there’s no way to hide from who you are or what’s true about what’s going on with you. And a lot of healing can happen that way.
Right. I look behind you, and there’s this logo of the conscious millionaire, and it has like waves-ripple effect so it conveys your message. You obviously want to light up the world, help people, and have that ripple effect around the world creatively, psychologically, and socially on all those levels.
Right. Thank you for noticing that because that’s exactly what it is. I was actually working with a designer on our logo, and they weren’t coming up with anything. One day, I looked over on my bookshelf, and I had books kind of turned out because I tend to do that a lot, and there was this one book on transformation-I don’t remember the title right now, I still have it though-and there was a drop of water coming down. Then, it was going out in all these waves, and I went, “Ah! That’s my logo! We’ve got to have this drop of water,” and I’m a water person. I’m all about being connected to water-scuba diving, whitewater rafting, skiing. I was on the swim team growing up so everything for me is about water. It was kind of a natural connection, and I said, “That’s really what it’s about. It’s about us creating ripples that make a difference in the world.”
That’s really what it’s about. It’s about us creating ripples that make a difference in the world.
Right. I love that. Actually, I have this three-day workshop for women. It’s called The Butterfly Effect, and I have the same thing on the logo.
Cool! That’s really cool.
That’s very interesting.
And butterflies are such a beautiful metaphor because you come from this cocoon, right? And, really, that’s what all of our lives are like. At some point, we’re in the cocoon where we aren’t seeing things as clearly as we could, and then all of a sudden, our beauty comes out and we can see the world more clearly.
Right, and we experience many versions of that cocoon all throughout our lives. It never ends. There’s always the next level, right?
I know! I think of it as an endless evolution.
Right.
In fact, one of the things I’ve said to so many people is, “I don’t care what the home or the car or any of that kind of stuff was, if you told me I had to stop growing, I’m ready to leave right now.” Whatever is the next adventure, and I think it is an endless set of adventures, I don’t think there’s this one adventure, and then somehow our consciousness and being ends, I think our consciousness and being is forever, and forever expanding and connecting so if I were told I couldn’t grow anymore, I’m ready to check out of the planet Earth and go someplace where I get to grow.
Lovely! If you don’t grow, you die, right?
Well, there is nothing but growth, isn’t there? I remember one night when I was living in Boulder-I’m living in Denver now. They’re about a half hour apart-and it was kind of late at night because I’m a night person. I have to make myself go to bed at 10 or 11 so I can get up the next morning, but if left to my own devices, I’d be up to two every night. I was at a stoplight. I went out for a ride, and I remember saying to myself-there was nobody on the streets. It really was very early in the morning probably-and I said that, “Every moment, we’re either healing or resisting healing.”
Hmm. Wow.
And I think in many ways, that is our journey. I think you’ve got to bring all of that into your wealth and business journey as an entrepreneur because until you do, you really are just dealing with the empty pieces. You’ve got to understand the mechanics of making money, but the mechanics of making money without having a spiritual or conscious or higher purpose piece to your business is empty. It’s completely empty. You’re not really accomplishing what you’re here on earth to do. I think the real clue is, when you start feeling joy inside, you’re on the right path because I think joy really tells us where we’re supposed to be going.
The real clue is, when you start feeling joy inside, you’re on the right path because I think joy really tells us where we’re supposed to be going. Share on XWhat brings you joy?
What really brings me joy is helping someone else see a light bulb go off, helping them realize the truth of who they are, and giving them some skills and tools to do something up about that-to put their potential into practice and then helping guide them to a higher place. Nothing brings me more joy than that.
Right, and how do you help guide them? I mean, somebody comes to you, they’re in startup mode, and they’re struggling. They might have some idea about their purpose, what they really want to do, and how they want to help the world. How do you help them break through with their money limitations?
Yeah. Well, there are kind of multiple questions there so I think the first place to start-I call it your “big impact” vision. Your big impact vision is getting some clarity on-if you were going to play at your biggest levels, now I want to tell you, at any given moment, what you define as your biggest levels is just a reflection of where you are today.
Right.
Right? Because a year from now, we need to revisit this. But what is that biggest level if anything were possible-but it’s more than if anything were possible-if you were able to express fully, as you are. What would be that biggest impact you could create? Then, really flesh that out. What is that passionate difference you want to make for others, but also, what is that difference that you want to make for the world and for the society? We can think about-I’ll pick up my iPhone, right? I think this is a good metaphor because a lot of times in working with people who are really flushing out what is that higher, higher purpose, which I think is all about transforming the world. It gets a little nebulous. It gets a little “I’m not sure what that means.”
Right.
If we take Apple, for example. Steve Jobs created this iPhone, which really is not a phone, it’s a communication and data device that transformed how we communicate and how we gather data. Now, it’s not sold to the world, it’s sold to individuals, right?
Okay.
So, you think of that as the first level of your big impact vision-what is it that you’re going to do for your clients-the people who are going to buy from you? But then, how is it you’re going to do that in a way that, literally, can transform society? Literally, can transform more than their lives. It might be that it transforms their family life, or it transforms their children, or it transforms everybody that their business comes in contact with. Then, they’re going to be their waves going out, and they’re going to be transforming more people, and as a result, there’s a true shift in consciousness because I would say, the iPhone is, as much as anything, a shift in consciousness. Because I, literally, take my iPhone with me. We’re friends, right? I haven’t named my iPhone, by the way, but I guess it could. I think that’s the place you need to start. What’s going to happen very quickly is, now, we need to chunk down that big vision into the first piece that you’re going to do. I’ve worked with so many entrepreneurs that try to do way too much at the earliest stages, and the early stages maybe getting to $100,000 or maybe taking the six-figure business to a million, because even going six-figure to a million or doubling a million. I mean, these are the people I work with. Usually, half million to five million are my private clients. It’s really no different. Everybody wants to do too much, and as a result, it kind of cripples the journey because I talk to people who literally don’t have one product selling well, and they want to create ten.
Yeah, it’s the “shiny objects” syndrome.
Right, and you’re going, “Well, wait a minute, let’s break this down to what do you really need.” I’m a systems guy. You’ve got to look at your business in terms of systems and processes. When starting out in the earliest stages, you only need three systems. You need to understand your marketplace. You need to survey them. You need to know exactly what their top three problems are because that’s all you have to address. You don’t have to address anything more than that, and you need to create a product or service that answers that problem. But, here’s something I want to add here that’s so critical: I was talking about the big positive impact that you want to make. That big positive impact does not come from outside of you, it comes from inside of you. Now, I also have an MBA, and when I took my MBA, they’ll teach you to go out in the world, find a problem, and solve it, but what’s the problem with that approach if that’s where you start? It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with you. I made millions of dollars by solving a problem that didn’t interest me, right?
That big positive impact does not come from outside of you, it comes from inside of you.
Wow.
Which was how, in a trucking line, how do you transport something from point A to point B? I actually was not very interested. I got good at it. I kind of understood the systems. We pulled about 12,000 loads in a year. We were very good at what we did. We got things there on time, and we were very focused on the service and everything. I learned a lot of great skills, but my soul was dying inside. When you’re going out to look at what is that product or service you want to create, that’s where you have to start with your big impact vision, and then go out in the world. You probably only need to look at two or three different potential markets and go, “Well, which of these markets?” Here’s two things they need to have: One, they need to have a big problem that the difference you want to make happens to be the answer to that problem. Now, that’s a good match. But, two, they’ve got to be really eager to solve that problem, and three, they’ve got to have the money to pay for it. If they have those three things, now, you’ve got to know that upfront so if you don’t know that upfront, you can’t build your business. Right? By now, you only need three systems. A marketing system-and what’s a marketing system? In simple terms, it’s getting awareness, and attracting those people that are most likely to be your best customers. That’s what you should be doing with the marketing system. The second system is, you’ve got to get good at closing those people. That’s your sales system. No clothes, no money in the bank, nobody’s life is transformed, nothing happened. Third, you’ve got to be good at distributing whatever it is you’re selling. Now, if you’re coaching, that may be that you want to be on the internet or on a phone, but you’ve got to still have the distribution down to the basics of the information they need to know where to show up. However, if it’s a product-say, it’s a digital product or maybe it’s not a digital product-you’ve got to have a good delivery system. If you could have a great marketing system, you have a great selling system, and you have a great delivery system, and you have only one product-where, at most two, because you might want some kind of an upsell-that’s all you need to build several six-figures into your business. If you’re trying to do more than that, you’re actually holding yourself back.
Right.
Because you can’t be laser-focused on many things. You need to be focused on less, but laser-focused on it, and my whole formula for creating wealth iconscious focused action. That’s how I was able to get there so quickly. One of the big pieces is that, I was so focused on what I wanted on a daily basis and on a weekly basis that nothing else absorbed my time and energy.
That’s great. How do you keep focus? How do you take everything that you do, and all the businesses and investments and whatever you are involved in, and narrow it down and keep focusing and keep that inspired, motivated state every day?
Yes. It’s a fantastic question. My answer, and I have a specific system for that, I’m going to tell you what that is, I have a system for everything. I think of everything as a system. The way you’ve got to build your business is how you are going to live your life. Here’s my system for that: It’s that you have no more than three top priorities on any day. This is going to be 80% of your day. You’ve got to leave 20% percent of your day for all this unexpected stuff that happens, right? Like, you have 50,000 e-mails today, and somehow, you need to respond to these things-business happens, right? Or there’s something a customer needs-something that you weren’t expecting. Now, it’s okay to have one focus. Today, I’ve been only focused on a couple of things. I’m doing a webinar so I’ve been creating the emails for that, and then I had a meeting for a couple hours this morning with an organization here in Denver that’s working with climate control because it’s a passion of mine-renewable energy. We were just looking at ways that we could work together.
Right.
But, that’s it! That’s my focus. For each of those priorities, you’ve got to have a specific measurable outcome at a time certain that you wanted to achieve because this is how you stay on focus. Now, here’s the third part of this system: Only after you know what the priority is, and only after you know what the specific result that’s measurable and that’s specific you want to achieve so there’s no fluff-right?
Right.
Only then do you list out the actions you’re going to take because you only want actions on your list that you’re going to keep checking off every day. I love checking off actions. I feel like I got somewhere and I’m moving forward, right? That’s how you eliminate all of those things you don’t need to be doing. Now, contrast that to-if you’re listening to this, you might be doing this because I did it for a long time before I created this system because I said, “Well, this isn’t working.” You start the day with a to-do list that’s about a million different topics, and you’re all over the place because you’re going, “Wow, I’ve got to get all this stuff done,” but you’re not laser-focused on what’s your real priority. You’ve not taken time to figure out. This is a precious day. Every day that we have as an entrepreneur is precious, but we’ve got to use our days in a way that are going to produce the best results because when you get connected with that big impact you’re on the earth to do? You have an obligation now. It’s not just the fulfillment that you get out of it, but you’re going, “Wait, I’ve got to achieve that because my soul is not going to be happy until I am. This why I’m on the earth!” You owe it to yourself, your clients, and everyone in your life to have clear priorities, and only focus on actions that are going to get you to the results that you’ve already pre-determined the night before-because I do all this the night before-what you need to accomplish tomorrow. Then, you get up, you laser-focus on it, and you move forward. That’s how you keep yourself moving forward. You leave off the distractions. You cannot look at your email every three minutes. This is not allowed.
Or Facebook!
Or Facebook. Yeah, I mean, I have a group, and I want to comment on what people say in the group, but I don’t go there more than two or three times in a day because otherwise, I’ll just be-let’s call it what it is-playing on Facebook, right?
Right.
Yeah.
What are your three quick tips for living a stellar life?
I think living a stellar life, first and foremost, starts with you discovering why you’re on the planet. I don’t think you can live a stellar life until you know that. Then, I think you have to be true to what feels real for you so that’s your authenticity. You can discover that because as you take each step-as I talk about it, and I have a whole program called, Millionaire in Your Zone where I teach people how to do this-and the path reveals itself. Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t have goals, right? But, the path for your business-the path for your life-really reveals itself because think of, even though you have specific goals and you have, “I’m going to do strategically this step, this step, and this step,” think about how many things happen in the course of a day, especially when you go to a conference or a networking event, where, for me, I kind of laugh. I carry my book around with me almost. I go to Starbucks, I carry a cup and my book because I might find somebody to give it to or talk to about it. Your life reveals itself when you’re being real and true to yourself, right? Then, I think, the third thing is, you’ve got to have the internal discipline because that’s really what we’ve been talking about. Conscious focused action is about being disciplined to live it at your highest level and realizing you owe it to yourself and everyone else to not settle for less.
Conscious focused action is about being disciplined to live it at your highest level and realizing you owe it to yourself and everyone else to not settle for less. Share on XRight. Keep yourself to a higher standard.
Right. Yeah, absolutely, because when you do that-look, you can achieve ten times more in any day than you would achieve on your average day if you change your standards, and only do the things that are going to really matter the most.
Yeah. Thank you so, so much. This was very enlightening. How can people reach out to you and find you? I also know that you have a special gift for the listeners.
Yeah. I’m on a mission. I want to help a million people achieve financial freedom in a way that’s conscious in a way that changes their lives and changes the lives of everybody that they’re helping. My book became number one-number one, literally, on all of Amazon. We were number one in 34 categories at the same time, and we had 50,000 books downloaded.
Incredible!
I want to give everybody a copy, a digital copy, of Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference, and all we ask is just answer a few questions so we can better serve you. You can get that absolutely free. That’s the first part of what I’m giving. It’s on www.consciousmillionaire.com/freebook, and then in the book, there is a special link, and it was a $97 program that we’re going to give it to you absolutely free. It’s the fast track companion training. It has videos, audios, PDF’s, and it has a companion journal. You can get all of that absolutely free so that you can take the book, read it-there are over 100 coaching exercises-and then you have a journal to write about those, and you have videos to guide you through all the chapters.
Wonderful! Thank you so much! That’s extremely generous. I appreciate it, and I bet everybody else appreciates it too. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Yeah. Orion, I just want you know it’s my honor because like you, one of the reasons I love to be on podcasts is because it’s such a powerful way to reach out and touch people’s lives and make a difference. That’s what you’re on the planet for, and that’s why I’m on the planet. If you’re listening, I want to thank you, personally, for listening to this because I don’t think there’s ever an accident who shows up for every show. If you’re listening to this, you’re on the planet to do something big with your life. I want to challenge you to take your life to the highest level absolutely possible, create your own big impact vision, put it into action so that you can build your business, and really touch not just tens and hundreds of thousands, but, literally, millions of people. We are all capable of doing that.
Amen! Thank you, and thank you so much, listeners. Go out there, feel fulfilled, connect to your passion, connect to your mission on Earth, and have a stellar life! Thank you!
Thank you very much.
Links and Resources:
- Conscious Millionaire
- Twitter – JV Crum III
- LinkedIn– JV Crum III
- Facebook – Conscious Millionaire
- Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference
- J V on The Huffington Post
- J V’s offer: Free copy of his book and training program!
- The Butterfly Effect Workshop
About J V Crum III
JV Crum III is known for his LIVE On-Camera Trainings where he creates a Breakthrough for business coaches and consultants by helping them find $50,000 or more in hidden revenues and develop steps to put it in their bank account. Named by Inc Magazine as one of the Top 13 Business Shows to listen to in 2017, JV is host of the syndicated radio show and podcast, Conscious Millionaire, and the best-selling author of “Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference.” JV holds multiple certifications in NLP and has graduate degrees in three areas: law, business and psychology (JD, MBA, MS).
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