Truth and Transparency: My Financial Past

Transcript

The following is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: My Financial Past, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.

For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.

Hello Dear Friends,
Today, I am going to be sharing with you my financial past. Particularly ways in which I was not honest, in which I was operating outside of truth, outside of transparency and outside of integrity and in ways that are not in alignment with my belief systems today. Now, of course, when it comes to finances in general, my belief system today is wildly outside of the financial system that exists. The whole monetary system is way outside of integrity and truth. And I’ve spent the last … over a decade … 13 years, removing myself largely from the monetary system. But even when I was working within the monetary system in, sort of, the way that so many of us are accustomed to, there are many ways that I was operating that were very out of integrity, that I knew at the time were outside of truth and outside of transparency. In my earlier days as an activist and as a servant, there were ways in which I was still attached, in which I was into that system, so I’m going to be sharing about that today as part of this entire series of truth and transparency, bringing my entire life into a place of truth and transparency. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to watch the Introduction video for this series because that’s going to share my intentions of why I’m doing this and help you to get more out of this, help you to understand me more and help us to be on this journey of truth and integrity together, because I’m not sharing this for gossip and fun. This is for a deep meaning of bringing my entire life into truth and integrity and with one of the mediums for that being transparency. So please do watch that Introduction video before watching this.

Now, before I share the lies, the areas where I was not truthful, I’d like to just go back a little bit to my childhood and give you a small window into the foundation of my life in my relationship with money. So, I grew up in a pretty low-income situation. It was us four kids and our mom and we didn’t have the support of dads really. There were three dads and one, I think, might have paid child support, but two were not really supportive at all. So we grew up pretty low income. We grew up on food stamps. We got a lot of help from the government and I basically from a young age always felt very ashamed of our poverty. The paint was chipping from our house and there was rust on our car and, you know, I didn’t have as nice of clothes as some of the other people and I felt very ashamed. From a young age, I wanted money. And the reason I wanted money is because I thought it would be the way to fit in, to belong. In elementary school, I started Kool-Aid stands, where on a good day we’d maybe make $10 or something like that. Me and my friends would, a couple of my friends … no actually just one that I can think of, and some siblings … we would collect cans on the weekend and the areas of lacking integrity started very early on. We would actually steal cans from the “Cans for Kids” bins. We were kids, but it wasn’t for us and we would even put rocks inside of the cans because it was per pound of aluminum. I also had a paper route starting in around sixth grade. And that, to my recollection, I delivered every paper and did that in a place of very high integrity. And I remember, as a young kid, counting the money in piggy banks of my friends. I loved money. I thought maybe I’d want to be a banker even, and it was very, very foundational to my life. I had … before spreadsheets … I just had journals where I wrote down every dollar that came in and every dollar that went out and I was working from a young age at being financially independent in order to be able to follow my dreams and become who I really wanted to be and I saw money as on that path. I got a job as early as I could. I think my first job was a job at Hardee’s. I got, I think, $5.15 an hour was minimum wage then. I got fired from that job actually for prank phone calling the place mostly, but also I was stealing a lot of food. Hundreds of dollars of the food, giving it away to whoever came in. I also had jobs as a lifeguard and a swim instructor. The lifeguard job, I would often not go to work but still clock in and get paid, because I was working the system. I had a job at a gas station that, you know, there was not much … I was not operating from a place of integrity there. So, in all of my earlier jobs that I was doing just to make money for the most part, although I liked being a lifeguard and there was some meaning and purpose in having a job, I was there to make money and I was willing to just, to a large degree, get what I wanted out of it and not really be there to be of service. I can’t really talk about this topic without my earlier relationship with stealing. I actually grew up with a dad who was a … I don’t know if he was actually a kleptomaniac, but he did use those terms and I watched him stealing stuff all the … I watched him stealing stuff very often. I learned by watching him how to steal. He never told me to steal or encouraged me to steal or anything like that, but I saw him do it so many times. If we wanted to go to the zoo, we would sneak in. To go to the movies, he would have us sneak in. It never felt wrong, it always felt like just kind of what we did. It was actually about freshman year I saw one of my friends steal when we were on a soccer trip and I saw him steal something and that’s when I started stealing. So that, at that age, I was stealing a lot. I would steal packs of gum, lots of gum. I would steal a lot of fishing lures from Pomida and Walmart. I had a tackle box that was so full of fishing lures and the majority of them I was stealing. That’s something I saw my dad do a lot. And I learned how to steal lures really effectively from him actually, I would say. I remember stealing some clothing, a hat or so, at Maurice’s, and I would have stolen all the clothing, except that was one that I was afraid to get caught. Now, I was mostly just stealing from big, more like corporations, like Walmart and not so much local stores, but I do remember stealing from … it was called Dawn’s Bait at the time, and I would steal some lures from them. And I remember feeling guilty about that and I think not doing that. I remember, at one time, I thought the woman saw me, so I put the stuff back before I walked out. When I had a job working as a lifeguard at Splashland, I would … there was an alcohol closet … and I would steal a couple bottles of alcohol while I was at the end of many of my shifts. I got fired and they knew about that.

When I was in band, we went on a trip to Disney World, maybe around my junior year, and I stole over $500 worth of stuff from Disney, mostly all to give away. I was hanging out with some girls that were a couple grades older than me and I basically said to them, “Whatever you want, I’ll steal it for you.” I was a sophomore and they were seniors, I believe. And, you know, again, I was meeting my need for belonging, to be loved, to be liked, etc., and I had the skill of stealing, and that’s what I did. Snow globes and necklaces and all sorts of things. Then also, in poker, I cheated a lot. That’s an area where I actually cheated friends because this was friends I was playing poker with, and me and another friend would stack the deck and shuffle in a certain way where we’d, like, give each other an ace. So, I was cheating my friends in poker.

One other thing that I want to mention that I did as well is I had what was called the Walmart borrowing system that I learned from my dad. We would get things at Walmart, use them, and return them. We took it pretty far. We actually did a trip together in Florida once where we rented … it’s … we also called it the rental system. We got a canoe, fishing poles, lures, anchor … everything we needed. It was like $900 and we put it on a credit card. We used it and we returned almost everything, even the lures. We put them back in their packages. I think it ended up being maybe $100 of the $900 we didn’t get back for fishing in the Everglades in and around Florida for a week or two. And also, I just remembered. I remember one time we even stole a paddle boat in Iron River and fished with it for a few hours and then took it to Duluth and sold it. That was the first time that me and my dad maybe actually stole something together. That was in high school, I think. And the Walmart borrowing system continued into my college days and beyond. When I was first living in San Diego, I would get a 60-inch TV and I could use it for 90 days and then return it and then get another one. And I did that multiple times.

From childhood all the way into my mid-20s, I was cheating a lot; I was stealing a lot, and that meant I was lying a lot as well. But I also remember in college, I actually, when I was drunk, stole a bike once or twice, just to ride home drunk from the bar. So there was even stealing from people and there was a lot of dishonesty. There was a lot of, you know, sort of just this kind of “damn the man” mentality, but then there was also just a lot of lack of integrity and that, you know, that’s a bit of the introduction to how I was relating to money and my lack of integrity around stealing and honesty and truthfulness. I would say that I was not a very truthful person. I cheated in school a lot actually, in high school and in university.

So that was a big foundational part of my life starting out. Now, in university, my freshman year, I was recruited and I applied to work for a company called Southwestern Company as an independent contractor, and I sold educational books door to door, my summer after freshman, sophomore, and junior year. So for three years. We would work for about 80 to 90 hours a week. My first summer, it was a minimum of 84 hours a week that I worked, knocking on doors, selling books door to door. I actually really liked the books. They were really useful resource guides for helping with schoolwork. During my summers, I made about $18,000 in three months, working really hard. And I did that for those three summers. I really … I would say, found a lot of connection in it, a lot of growth. It was a very meaningful time in my life. I do remember something that was very poignant. I remember selling to a single mom and knowing that she didn’t really have the money and sort of pushing like the sales point of, you know, education being important to the children. And I just remember kind of being, I would say, more of, like, manipulative and just getting what I wanted and there were moments in there where I felt, you know, some real sadness, I would say. Growing up with a single mom myself, where I could see that. We actually had a vacuum salesman come over when I was a kid and we wanted that vacuum so bad, and he was really trying to get us kids to convince it … I think it took me back to that.

So yeah, after selling educational books door to door my last summer, between my senior year and then my second senior year, I started selling advertising directly to businesses. And I was in Chicago for that. That’s where I started to go out more on my own, independently, and into this marketing world, this sales world, the advertising world, that I had been in for the last three years, but taking it to another place. Now, I want to share some of my areas in which I was lying and cheating and stealing. And that related to using credit cards and insurance. So, one of the things I did in college is sometimes I would get drunk and spend hundreds of dollars on a credit card and then just call the credit card and say it was stolen and have a free night of buying drinks for friends. That was something that I did intentionally and knew that I was doing. In 2010, I did something like that, but to a much bigger level, and that is, I got a credit card specifically because it had insurance fraud. I bought everything that I wanted for the trip new because that way I’d have receipts for it and I did the research of where people get robbed the most and how it happens. And when I was in that place in Indonesia, I pretended that my bag was stolen with all of these valuables in it. I went to the police station. I told the story of how it was stolen following “The Narrative” of how things do get stolen and reported it. So that’s credit card fraud or insurance fraud, and that was in 2010 and that was probably for a couple thousand dollars.

In around 2011 or 2012, I had an iPad or a computer stolen from my apartment and when it was stolen, I just said there was much more stolen. So that was another example of, I believe, insurance fraud, I think, is what that would be called. So I was also just generally working the system, some ways that were totally within what the system allowed. So I’d get a credit card just to use it to get miles for getting free flights. I didn’t feel bad about any of that at that time. I felt good about it, you know, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase and the insurance companies. The reality is that they are a part of an incredible fraud upon humanity and they … so much of what they have comes from pillaging and stealing. So I didn’t feel bad about it at the time, but it certainly was not something I was truthful about. It certainly was not transparent and there’s certainly major elements of integrity there, and so that’s part of what I’m doing, just sharing truthfully my past and putting it all out there to bring myself to an empty place of having nothing to guard and nothing to hide, and these are things that I’ve been holding in.

Now, and I have notes behind me that I’m using because I want to make sure I fit it all in and remember all the things that I want to share to get it all out there. Now, after I was doing the marketing sales in the summer between junior years, when I came back from my world trip, I continued doing that with … there was this guy that was my manager who had recruited me to work for a company called Star Carts, and basically he had pitched the idea of me going out to San Diego with him and his partner to start a market up there. Or the other guy had already started there, but to join in building up this marketing company. So I joined them out there, and we were selling advertising on shopping carts at grocery stores and also on the back of the receipts at grocery stores. And I was very excited to be doing this. I was independent; I was now in San Diego, I was making good money, and at the same time, I knew what I was selling was junk. I also had very big questions about whether what we were selling actually really worked. But what was really the thing that was a big thing for me was that my partners that I was working with, or my manager … it was kind of a manager, kind of a partner type of thing, is that I could see that they were existing way outside of a state of integrity. They were … both … well, the main guy I moved out with … he was in debt and he was doing whatever he needed to do to get out of debt. He had overspent, and I think this was probably around the 2009 market crash. He lost a lot, so they were operating from a place of very, very low integrity. And I would sell things and then we didn’t deliver. And it hurt a lot because it meant a lot to me that I delivered on my word, at least.

So after some months, maybe six months, I left them and I started my own company, and that was called the Greenfield Group, and that was in 2011. So I would have been 25 years old at the time. So I parted ways with them because I wasn’t willing to be operating in that low integrity. If I was doing this stuff, I was going to make sure that I was going to deliver on my word. At that time, I had a goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30. So I was very focused on money and, at the same time, the whole concept of money was dissolving because 2011 is when I woke up and I realized that the American dream is the world’s nightmare and that the whole financial system is one that’s based around such lies, such lack of transparency, such exploitation, and destruction. The whole monetary system I learned … I wouldn’t call money the root of all evil because there’s people behind the money that are utilizing it, but what I learned is that the whole financial system was based on such a lacking of integrity, such a fallacy, such a delusion.

With my marketing company, I continued selling advertising on shopping carts and register tape receipts for a while … maybe a year, maybe two years or so, and I joined “1% for the Planet” right away and was donating more like at least 10% of our revenue to environmental nonprofits. So part of the idea of being a millionaire was that I wanted to make a lot of money to use it as an effective tool for change. This was when I had started my environmental activism and I was doing Eco Adventures. But at the same time, my ego and my identity was very wrapped up in being the person sharing these environmental adventures and such. So there was a healthy dose of integrity and a healthy dose of ego and a healthy dose of a lack of integrity and truth and transparency in these areas. At the same time that was happening, I, in March 2012, took all my money out of my investments, my Roth IRA, my life insurance that I had maxed out for a few years, and was divesting from the whole system demonetizing my life, embracing relationships with the Earth, with my community, becoming more self-sufficient, opting out of most corporate products.

2014 is when I really started to lose my desire to be involved in money. 2014 is when I took my money out of the banks and I was very much transforming my business. So that’s the backdrop of what was going on from 2011 to 2014. Now in 2013, a man who I had met in Burbank, when I was doing my book sales, he was what I thought to be a millionaire; he approached me and asked if he could work for the Greenfield Group. And it was really … for me, being a Wisconsin boy who had just started my own company, it was a really like, “Wow, this guy wants to work for me!” It was very confusing; it was very interesting, and it’s a long story, but I’m not going to dive into it. But the part of the story is that he ended up introducing me to a man who came down and visited me in San Diego. He rolled up in a Rolls Royce. I think that was the first time I had ever seen a Rolls Royce or at least been associating with someone who had one, and he pitches me on this idea of how I can make … I believe it was like $26 million dollars was the number that he shared, that I would make if I took part in this plan. And this was the area that resulted in me making the most money I had made. And this was money that was used in with my environmental adventures. This was money that was used to help me get my message out there and build my online presence. So it really plays a large role in my activism and becoming me and a person who reaches a lot of people who … this money may play a role in the fact that you and I are here right now. You hearing my message and that you followed me, this money has played a central role in me being able to share my message early on in that 2014 to 2016 time frame. And I really trusted this guy.

At the same time, from the beginning, there was always this kind of question of “What? Is this legal?” “Is he, you know, am I getting all the truth?” The part of me that questioned whether it was legal and if it was all the truth, I didn’t necessarily want to know. I didn’t dive too deep into it because I wanted to keep my mental state that it was all legal because I trusted him and I believed that I would make millions of dollars. I think at the time, I believed that I might make that $26 or $24 million dollars, I think is what it was. So, the idea was investing in medical marijuana. I think that’s how he first pitched it; I don’t recall, but that was basically the idea; investing in medical marijuana through investing in companies, investing in corporations that he was starting. And what I did is, I gave him around $90,000. And the idea was that for that $90,000, I bought shares of this company, or multiple companies, I think, which is a pretty standard thing to do … to buy shares of corporations.

So, if I recall, I got something like 20 million shares of these corporations for this $90,000. First, how I got that $90,000 was I got this money from my marketing company. I believe I might have maxed out a credit card, but I also borrowed money from family and friends. And I told my family and friends that they were investing in my marketing company, which to some degree was true. But really, most directly, I was putting that money directly into this investment. So I lied to my family and friends in that scenario. And I gave them 100% interest. So some invested $2,000, some invested $5,000, maybe someone invested $10,000; I don’t remember. A handful, maybe 10 or so people invested in me, all getting 100% interest. So basically, what these companies that I got these shares in turned out to be was shell companies. They were created specifically, I believe, to put on the penny market. Then what this person did was create press releases that they would release and that would pump up the shares, and then we would do a controlled selling of shares. And technically, I owned the shares and was able to … could have sold them at any time that I wanted to, but we only sold them at the direction of this person.

So, what would happen is that the money would then go through the account of a company that I started. I don’t remember what it was called; maybe the Greenfield Fund. The deal was we or I, the company, would keep like somewhere around maybe 10% of the funds and then the rest would be distributed, and that way this person was profiting and a portion would go to us, and then, I think, well, the money would not go through their account so it allowed to create that separation. I remember I brought in about $250,000. $90,000 of that was loans, which I paid back. Everybody got their 100% earnings that I said that they would. But if I brought in $250,000 and I was getting 10%, that means that I might have brought in over $2 million into my accounts. So we might have, or I might have, shuffled over $2 million into that account, and then 90% of that was going off to this other person and something in that realm … it was at least a million dollars … it might have been more than $2 million. The way that it was set up, though, is that the person who was working for me actually was a middle person, and so I had almost no communication whatsoever with this other person, and that allowed me to not know and thus not be maybe technically breaking the law because I didn’t know, and it allowed for a degree of separation between me, who is on the account, and that person who was running the whole operation.

So the whole idea, if I recall, was that I was going to make like a quarter … like 24 or 26 million dollars. That never happened. This person was not accurate in that way, but it ended up being a quarter million dollars, of which about $180,000 of that was profit. So this was in around 2014, and as this was happening, I was served papers by the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, I think maybe in the spring of 2014. Just before I was about to launch my second bike ride across the country on a bamboo bike. And I remember as I’m biking across the country, the SEC was calling me to schedule an appointment so they could ask me questions about this whole operation. They wanted to have me in, but, and I remember being on the phone, and the guy’s name was Bert, if I recall, and I would say, “I’m biking across the country doing good deeds,” just letting them know how good of a person I was during this whole time. And eventually, I ended up going into the SEC. I think that might have been more like 2015 when that finally happened in Los Angeles. And it was very stressful. It was a three-hour … I don’t know if I’d call it an interrogation, but a questioning. I remember just saying a lot of “I don’t know”s and “I don’t remember”s, and there was some truth to that because a lot of the thing was set up so that I wouldn’t know, probably for this very reason. But also, there was a lot of saying, “I don’t recall” or “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know,” something along those lines, when I actually did. So there was a lot of dishonesty there. So it was a scary time, but I was always reassured by this person that everything would be okay.

Now, so this is, if we go to 2014, when I was living in the 6’ x 6’ closet in my apartment, I had over $100,000 in gold and silver and $100 bills, maybe more like $150,000, in the floor of that 6’ x 6’ closet, so if you ever saw that video, which still exists, there was maybe $150,000 there. And then, when I lived in the 5’ x 10’ tiny house, I had over $100,000 in gold coins, silver coins, and $100 bills buried underneath that tiny house. So I certainly was not transparent about having that huge stash underneath my tiny house. I didn’t lie about it. I never said that my finances weren’t what they were, I don’t think, but it’s an interesting thing, you know, the amount of money that I had at that time. So what I did with that money … a lot of that was money that was used to launch my environmental initiatives and my adventures. Much of it was given away to different initiatives. I paid … so I was using it primarily as a tool for positive change. That was absolutely my intentions and my objective and what I was doing. I also paid off my partner at the time, her debt, her credit card debts; I think it was about $15,000, but she actually ended up working that off for the nonprofit. And then I was down to about $15,000 in 2015, and that’s when a new chapter began. Now, one of the reasons that I held back from telling these stories quite some time ago was because, you know, the possibility of going to jail for this last one. The insurance fraud with my credit card earlier on and then what I’ve just described with you, to you, whatever exactly you would call that, I would say that there was potential risk of going to jail. So that was and maybe there still is. I actually did not look up, but I’m not waiting; I’m absolutely sharing. So that was one of the reasons that I didn’t share this some time ago. I’ve wanted to share it for a long time. I’m not against going to jail for things, however, if I’m looking at how to be of best service, right now going to jail for that, I don’t think would be my best service to the world, to humanity, to the plants and animals that we share this home with.

Now, on April 8th, 2015, is when I took my first vows of bringing my financial life into deep truth and integrity. So there was that window of time in 2015 when things really changed. I can’t think of anything to report really after that. That’s when I committed to earning below the federal poverty threshold for life, donating 100% of my media earnings to nonprofits, practicing a very deep financial transparency, which is on my website, and committing to not paying federal income taxes for life, not contributing to that injustice. I live without a bank account, without a credit card, without investments and savings. I have $800 to my name. You can learn about my net worth. I write about that on my website. It’s been a huge shift in that earlier time of my life to the way that I’m living today, so far outside of the monetary system and in, not perfect integrity for sure, but I have nothing to report since that time frame of anything that’s really outside of truth and integrity as far as my finances. Nothing that I can think of. I’ve made these lifetime vows, and I have very much stuck with them, and I’m very happy to be in this place and intend to be for the rest of my life, largely removed from the monetary system. I do share about my struggles with integrity with bringing in money for the nonprofit in another video within these series, so that’s something that I explore as well.

So, dear friends, this is some truth and transparency from my financial past. I have pretty much just shared the facts. I haven’t shared my opinion around things very much; I’m just putting it out there. That’s what transparency is, just sharing the reality of the situation. And when we operate in transparent relationships, then people get to make educated decisions about the relationships they’re in with corporations, with politicians, with government, with individuals. So that’s my objective: to operate in complete transparency so we can have deeply meaningful, deeply connective relationships, where we know what we’re getting and where we can be operating from a place of integrity and truth. I think transparency, financial transparency, is so incredibly important from our corporations, from our governments, from our politicians, from our businesses, from everywhere. So, I’m grateful to have this opportunity to dive deep into transparency with all of you, to practice this, to embody this, to show that another way is possible; to be honest about the past and to take responsibility for my life and my actions and move forward with the highest level of truth and integrity that I can.

So I’m grateful to be on this journey with you all. I love you all very much and I’m looking forward to sharing more with you in this video series and in the many years ahead. So, it’s become a habit to end these videos with a deep breath. The battery is about to die, so it’s not quite as relaxed as I’d like to be. We are on this journey of truth and integrity and transparency together, my friends. I love you all very much, and I’m so grateful to be here with you and thank you for your continued support and for loving me just the way I am. Just the way I am …

Articles referred to:

My Commitment to Financial Transparency
My Vows to Humanity 2024-2028
My Experience with Nonviolent Communication (NVC) / Compassionate Communication

The above is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: My Financial Past, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.

For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.