In 2011, Garrain Jones was 40 pounds overweight and living out of his car in California. Today, he runs a seven-figure coaching business, has spoken in 32 countries and is about to release his new Book *Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life*.

Jones's journey from the backseat of his car to the stage started with studying how successful entrepreneurs spend their day. He was surprised to find they often rise between 04.30 and 06.30.

In this interview, Jones explains:

• How to create Your Panda Power Hour
• What he learnt after studying how successful entrepreneurs operate
• His process for writing his book Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life

And lots more.

I started by asking Jones to tell me about how he got from living out of his car to running a seven figure coaching and speaking business.

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Bryan Collins:           Yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect. So, Garrain, you have an amazing backstory. You were living out of your car and now you're running a profitable business, and you're about to launch the book. Could you talk to me a little bit about your backstory?

Garrain:                Okay, so, seven 1/2 years ago, I was living out of my car for 2 1/2 years. You know, I was in the lowest point of my life. I was overweight, 40 pounds overweight, tired, broke-which was only a mind set, and I just didn't know how to… I didn't know how to get ahead in life because I was never given those tools, nor was there anyone in my life to teach me that. And so, I reached a point where I just completely went dark, I was extremely depressed. My girlfriend had just broke up with me, my daughter pretty much disowned me because I couldn't even… I didn't know how to Love myself. So there was no possible way that I could give what I didn't have. And so, for me I was just like, “I don't know how people are being successful, but I am just going to keep doing what I know.”

Garrain:                All I knew was being insecure, didn't feel value. I don't love myself and I just pretty much… the compound of me, thinking a certain way since childhood, caught up to me when I was 32 years old at 3:43 in the morning. I was living in my car and I just broke down and I screamed and I cried at the top of my lungs, “I am tired of fighting, I don't want to die like this. There's got to be more to life then… all my life, I've always focused on what I don't want. I don't want to be broke, I don't want this kind of girlfriend, I don't want to be unhappy.”

Garrain:                But this… It was the first time in my life I focused on exactly what I wanted. I want to be healthy, I want to be happy, I want to be surrounded by nothing but positive people. I want to travel the world and expire people on stages of thousands and I want to make a bunch of money. But, I want that money to represent something that I passionately believe in, that I would do for free. So that was a bit of my backstory.

Garrain:                And a week later I met a homeless man. It sounds like a crazy story, but it… the way that it happened, it was a divine calling on my life. A week later at a gas station, who asked me for money, and that homeless man, whenever I said, “I don't have any money.” He said, “change your mindset, change your life.” And that started a philosophy that seven 1/2 years I have been doing the opposite of everything that I would normally do in areas that I wasn't happy, and that completely revolutionized, transformed, my life in every single area. And now we are here. I mean, of course, there is so much more, but the just of it was, I am not the same person who I was seven 1/2 years ago. Because I started doing different things in a different way, with the same circumstances.

Bryan Collins:           And here he is about to launch a book. You know, you are traveling around the world; speaking about your story. But could you give me an example of some of the mindsets that you changed? You touched on one there about having no money. Is there anything else that you started to do?

Garrain:                Oh, man. It was pretty much everything, but first and foremost, we are domesticated as children to think a certain way. We kinda carry that out to your grace until you seek mentors, until you seek to learn more. For me, I started with things that seemed tangible for me. So, normally, I would take the stairs- I mean normally I would take the escalators, and then it was like change your mindset, change your life. So I would take the stairs. Normally I would use gel soap. Change your mind; change your mindset. So I would use bar soap. Normally, I would be lazy and stay asleep and sleep until 11 A.M or noon. And then, change your mindset; change your life, I would wake up early and then start working out.

Garrain:                Normally I would hang around negative people who always talked bad about everything, not doing anything; not goal driven. Change your mindset; change your life, I started reading books and going to seminars. And so, I started literally doing the opposite of everything. When I say everything, I mean everything; from the way that I dressed, from the way that I took showers, the way that I walked down the street. I was like, “well, normally I'd do this, so I am going to do the opposite.”

Garrain:                What I realized was, it's like, Alice in Wonderland. She didn't want to walk through that door, because she was like, “ah, it's to small.” But it wasn't until she walked through the door that it shaped to fit her size. And on the other side of that door was, the door to more. It was… it was Wonderland. We all have a Wonderland on our life, but it's one the other side of things that we wouldn't normally do.

Bryan Collins:          Not only did you start getting up early, you actually started getting up really early. Could you describe what your morning routine is like right now?

Garrain:                Okay, so, in the act of reading these books. So I started reading, I started reading about gurus and monks and highly successful people that have graced this planet. Every single one of them talked about getting up early, so your productivity rises early, because most people are sleeping. And I was like, “you know what? If they can do it, maybe I can do it.” So I tried to wake up early and that did not work. I learned how to wake up early by default. So, I started training for a triathlon. However, when I would train… when I would normally wake up, it would cut into the middle of my day. And so, I was like, “I got to get up earlier then this.” So, mind you, I had a big thing that I was working on, and that was pulling me to wake me up. So it wasn't like I had nothing going on, I was training for something.

Garrain:                I didn't even know how to swim. So, I had to wake up super early to get all of this stuff done, so that it wouldn't cut into my day. And I could do all these other things. So I built the pattern of having something that I was connected to. That I had to do early in the morning, which was pulling me up everyday. After that was done, all I had was time. I was like, “I got to do some other stuff.” So, I started thinking about, I was like, “Man, what can I fill this early time slot with, so I am not going back to my old patterns?”

Garrain:                I started thinking about how can I be really effective and how can I be really powerful? One day I was in my car. I started the engine and it took ten times the velocity in starting the engine before it settled into the drive. I said, “Well, what is my spiritual engine? What is my mind engine? What goes into my heart engine?” I started thinking about what stimulates me. So, if I was a car, how would I start my engine in the morning?

Garrain:                I created this terminology. It's called the power hour. I love pandas so I call it panda power hour. It starts in the morning and it works on your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. I would write down everything that I love. I would just look at a long list of things that I love to always amplify the emotion of love inside of me. Then, I would make another list. This is everything that I needed to do the next day. However, I don't like looking at lists so I need to make sure that when I would look at those things that I love that I could transmute that same energy to the list.

Garrain:                Now, the brain doesn't respond to big progress or little progress. It just responds to progress. On a day where you accomplish three things three days in a row, your energy level will be ten times higher than when you're not doing anything, you're not accomplishing anything. So I want to build a list that's based off of accomplishing something, whether it's big or small doesn't matter. I just want to be in a winning environment mentally. I created the list, I put everything on the list that's connected to my mind, my body, my spirit. Whether it was jumping jacks to increase the serotonin, whether it's doing push ups and calling ten people to acknowledge them for an impact that they made in my life. Eating my healthy foods or dancing around to my favorite song.

Garrain:                Whatever it is, that is stimulating my mind, my body and my soul. I had about thirty things on that list. I didn't know how it was going to work. All I know is I looked at the stuff that I love then I looked at the list. The list started taking on the same energy as the stuff that I love because I transmuted that energy by looking at a picture of my daughter, a picture of my girlfriend, a picture of my mom. Then, looking at the list of things that I'm going to do the next day. This is all before I go to bed. When we're in the list, [inaudible 00:10:15] taking on the same energy as the stuff that I love. Then I went to sleep.

Garrain:                When you go to sleep, your mind is still working. That is your subconscious mind. Whatever you do the last five minutes before bed is going to set the tone for your entire day the next day. I did it in a successful mentality, in a loving mentality, in a mentality of gratitude. Go to sleep. My number one objective is to see how much I can get done within the first hour. What it is doesn't matter. What I didn't know was even by writing the words, I'm waking up at 4:30, just writing it. I forgot to set my alarm clock.

Garrain:                All of a sudden, I popped up out of nowhere at 4:30. I'm like, “Wow, that was 4:30 on the dot.” I already knew what I was going to do, which was the 30 things that I had put on my list. It was simple things like wake up, brush my teeth, morning affirmations, contacting ten people a day, contacting ten people to tell them what I love about them.

Garrain:                It was all about giving and giving and giving. What I didn't notice, what I was giving to myself but since I already had the list and it had been working mentally … People work a job and they a quota to meet. In the last hour, they do more in the last hour than they did the whole entire month. I created something where you could have a quota in the morning. My quota is the first thing that I do for the first hour. Imagine, most people go the entire day and they might get ten things done and they're thinking about what do I need to do next? I already know what I need to do.

Bryan Collins:           I'm just curious, Garrain. What time did you go to bed at if you're getting up at half four?

Garrain:                You know what? It didn't matter. There was … Yeah, go ahead.

Bryan Collins:          Because you knew what you wanted to do the next day, or for some other reason?

Garrain:                Because I knew what I wanted to do the next day, I was excited. I was in the emotion of love and there was just this … The way that I went to sleep, even if I went to sleep at 2:00 a.m., it was the weirdest thing. I'd go to sleep at 11, I'd go to sleep at 9:30. No matter what time I went to sleep, if I set myself up for success at night in the emotion of love and not thinking about it's too late, it's too this. This is what I'm going to accomplish tomorrow.

Garrain:                When I woke up, it was just I popped up though. I didn't even try to wake up, I would pop up every single night. I'd say, “This is” …. The thing was is I got this much stuff done within the first hour and because I used to think about what do I do next? What do I do next? I was using brain power. But now, because I knew what I was going to do, there was a surge of emotion. I mean, a surge of energy and a surge of power that came along with one success building upon the other success building upon the other. Imagine, I got thirty things done within the first hour. That was me starting my mind, body and soul –

Bryan Collins:         – That's an insanely productive hour. I'm curious, if I wanted to create my own panda hour or if somebody wanted to start a business or perhaps somebody wanted to write a book, which you've just done, how could they do that? Do they need to get up at 4:30 and accomplish thirty things?

Garrain:                You know, it wasn't about the 4:30. That was a number that came up with me. I studied Steve Jobs and I studied all of these different people and they were saying anywhere between 4:30 and 6:30 a.m., where there's not a lot of people out. It's not about answering text messages and all these different things throughout the day. It's literally you with you and whatever your project is. I'd say, “Write that in the script. Write that in your power hour.”

Garrain:                So, before you go to bed, if you know you've got ten pages to write, okay cool. What is something that's going to get you started? You're like, “I'm going to finish this chapter tomorrow.” And be in full ownership over it. Then, you write that inside of your list. If I wasn't working on my book, then stuff abut my book doesn't go on my list. So, write everything that you know that you want to accomplish and get you a couple of successes before you get to that thing so that your body is used to you winning and succeeding and progressing.

Bryan Collins:          Yeah, that makes sense. Could you explain to me, panda … What does the metaphor mean, panda?

Garrain:                When I was a little kid, my mom said I used to cry a lot. She said when I saw a panda on the TV screen I'd stop crying. Then, she got a panda. Every time I would cry, she'd show me a panda and I'd stop crying. Pandas were my on my baby crib. So it's like my spirit animal and it's been following me my whole life.

Garrain:                I spoke in over 32 countries in the last two years. Every time, people just come up to me with panda mugs and panda hats and panda socks and they're like, “We know that you love it, so we give it to you.” So I just associate everything that I do with something that I love so it's tapping into my heart emotion and not my thought … Mechanical whatever is going that drives you away from the heart.

Speaker 1:           If I understand you correctly, Garrain, it sounds like a panda hour is spending an hour early in the morning working on something that you love.

Garrain:                Working on something that you love but also not forgetting … For me, it's working on something that you love. It's a project. Here's what I've noticed. Whenever I didn't have anything that I was working on and I wasn't living up to a vision or anything like that, if I would try to do a power hour … If I would try to wake up early, I would not wake up because I wasn't plugged into anything that was bigger than myself.

Garrain:                It's like a light socket. You take the socket and when you take the plug out, the lamp turns off. You plug into the source and then everything lights up. When I'm plugged into something bigger, it almost pulls me forward.

Bryan Collins:          You also described yourself as a serial entrepreneur. Have you set up a couple of different types of businesses or is your speaking, coaching and writing business your main one?

Garrain:                You know, I do real estate development. I have a health and nutrition, I'm a wellness entrepreneur, just working on the eight dimensions of wellness and bringing that to our planet. I have my coaching business and I have a book coming out. A few other real cool projects in 2020 that I'm really freakishly excited about.

Bryan Collins:         You're planning ahead. What does your writing process, excuse me, look like for the book?

Garrain:                You know what? I literally try … For any writers out there, I did it all. It took me a damn long time. Nothing beats an authentic expression of you. I tried to pay somebody to write it for me and it just didn't feel authentic so I scrapped the whole thing and spent all this money. I was like, “No, you can just write this for me. I just need help hiring a ghost writer.” It didn't feel right in my soul. Then, I hired another person to be like a buddy writer. I was like, “You know what? I'm going to have to write this.”

Garrain:                So I just buckled down and I didn't try to make it sound like anyone else other than Garrain Jones and I just wrote. And I wrote. The second that I decide to not try to make it sound like any other way or sound like or look like a formation of a book the way that a book should be written, it took me two weeks. But before that, it took me five years. I was writer's blocked and I was stuck. I was only writer's blocked because I wasn't honoring my authentic expression of myself. The process for me was, and this is for anybody who posts on social media or anything … I had years of content and the way people comment on certain things. They're like, “Oh, I really love this. This really changed my life.”

Garrain:                I went back to all of the things that I wrote from living in my car being $200,000 in debt from being a seven figure earner in several companies. So, for me, I went back to all of those things and I looked at what was touching the people's lives. What had the most likes. What had the most comments. What made a man say, “After I listened to your story, I put the gun down.” I was like, “Wow. How many people would benefit from hearing the real raw truth?”

Garrain:                I took all of that and then I took 2,000 index cards and I hit the streets. I walked up to people and asked them, and these were strangers, “If you could ask the universe a question, and it would give you an answer based off of … That would change your life. What would you ask?” Then, I took the majority of whatever they responded with and if I got a result from a question they asked I knew that I could help facilitate the world's questions. A lot of it, “What's my purpose? How do I find love? How do I find true happiness?”

Garrain:                So, my process was truly connecting with the people, talking to the people, asking them questions. Not about what I know but what people want to hear. What they're looking for. So my book is an everyday people's guide to them understanding themselves and the power that lives inside of them so that they can use and produce extraordinary results in their life. My process was truly just being amongst the people and then writing my experiences of my own personal life and just writing it. I went on Google looking writers for beginners. I started from there. From there, it became its own entity.

Bryan Collins:         What plans do you have to promote the book over the next few months? I understand it's coming out next month.

Garrain:                Yeah. I've been documenting my journey since I was living in my car. So many people said, “Man, anything that you need …” I'm talking about these are high level people that had millions of followers. They're like, “We've been seeing you grow. You've made a difference in my family's life and all this. Anything that you need, I'm here to support.” Major, major people. So, just using the support of … I never ask anybody for anything, even when I was living in my car. I was just always giving and giving and giving.

Garrain:                When you're that … When you're a servant based leader and you give and pour into people, people always want to support you. You don't even have to pay for that. You paid for it with your level of energy output. Your energy is worth more than your money. My plan was … And people already know. They were like, “As soon as your book comes out, we're ready.” There's people that are begging me to a be a part of the street team because I'm going to be giving all of this information out that I learned and the tools ad the philosophies over the last seven years.

Bryan Collins:          Something slightly different is you used Instagram extensively. I see looking at your profile yo have 150,000 followers. How has that helped you build a relationship with your followers and potentially readers of your book?

Garrain:                You know, it's … Me, I post all my own content. I respond back to all the people, for now because when it gets in the millions I'll definitely need some support. I have such a different relationship because they're not just followers, they're human beings. People are looking for a change, they're looking for a difference. So, just having the access to social media, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Instagram Lives, it just gives me another outlet to do what I know I'm here to do on this planet which is make a difference and make a massive impact in people's lives. I'll use any platform. I won't deny a platform if there's human beings connected to it.

Speaker 1:           You've also got a lot of pictures of training at crossfit and swimming and running and so on. What do you think is the link between the creative process and personal transformation and physical health?

Garrain:                You know, it's everything because your health is connected to your heart and your heart is the foundation of your life. That's why when you feel bad … When you feel bad, your heart, the way that you feel, it determines the way that you think. The way thank you think determines the way that you speak. The way that you speak determines your actions and your actions determine the outcome,. Every single thing that happened with my transformation started when I became health conscious. I wasn't trying a 30 day plan, I actually want to become a better version of myself in every aspect.

Garrain:                When I saw what happened with my mom, she had a year to live 7 years ago, was on a colostomy bag, 12 different medications, 19 back to back surgeries, now it's 7 and a half years later and my mom is zip lining and rock climbing. We still have my mom here. That started with her health and that started with her reading some of the same personal development books that I read which also led me to believe that our mind is what rots our outside. The more cleaner and healthier and loving and in gratitude our mind is, the outside is the physical manifestation of what's going on inside the brain which is connected to your heart.

Garrain:                So, all of it is connected. I'm just grateful to understand this so that I can bring it to our society.

Bryan Collins:        I like that. I like that. What were the personal transformation books that you read? That you mentioned there a few minutes ago.

Garrain:                Oh, man. There's a book … The very first book that I read was The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. I've read that book over 333 times between the paperback and audiobook. Here's what happened. I read a quote, Bruce Lee said, “Fear not the man who practices 10,000 kicks. Fear the man who practices one kick 10,000 times.” And I took that and ran with it.

Garrain:                Most people, they read books and a lot of people that I know, they have a great memory but their life doesn't look like the information that's stored in the brain. It's like it doesn't look like the information that they're spitting out. They're just saying all these different quotes. I'm like, “Yo. No, instead of committing it to memory. Commit it to mastery. And the only way to commit it to mastery is to do it over and over and over. Like you learned how to tie your shoe, like you learned ABC's. It should not be different when wanting to change your life. When I read a book, I don't just read a book, I commit it to mastery and I work on living the book so that the philosophies in the book literally look like my life.

Bryan Collins:           Of course, you have your own book coming out. Where can people find you and your book, Garrain?

Garrain:                It will definitely be on Amazon. I'll be posting it all online and it'll be on my website GarrainJones.com. G-A-R-R-A-I-N jones.com. I'm really excited to bring this, I think it's something … Actually, I know it's something that the people … I mean, all people, all nationalities, religions, could really grasp because most people don't have direction in life. This book will give them … It won't give them direction but it will remind them of what their soul already knows and it will invoke the direction that they can choose on their own merit to want to live.

Bryan Collins:          I like that. It was great to talk to you today, Garrain.

Garrain:                Oh, thank you so much Bryan. I really really appreciate the opportunity and the platform so that other people can have a chance like I did.

Bryan Collins:         Okay. Just at the start of the interview, where did you say you were living just for the article?

Garrain:                So, I live I Studio City, California.

Bryan Collins:          Studio City, California. Okay, yeah. I missed it at the start.

Bryan Collins:           Alright, that was great. I'll be in touch then in two to three weeks with a draft. Best of luck with the launch as well.

Garrain:                Okay, perfect. Thank you so much and I appreciate you again.

Bryan Collins:           Take care, bye bye.

Garrain:                Alright, bye.

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