Skyrocket to Success Podcast with Gary Coxe and Paul Neustrom

 Gary Coxe is a world renowned business and life strategist, highly sought after speaker, and best selling author of “Don’t Let Others Rent Space In Your Head.”

He is highly regarded for his ability to help his students achieve in one day what other therapists, coaches and consultants could not accomplish in one year.

His work has been featured prominently in the national media on popular programs such as The View, Inside Edition, Fox and Friends, and as a regular on Dr. Phil’s show, The Doctors. As a speaker he has shared the stage with other business and motivation heavyweights such as Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, and Jim Rohn. 

A coach to billionaires, Gary has overcome unthinkable tragedy on his road to business success. He has created The Challenge to share, for the first time ever, the strategies and tactics typically reserved for his private coaching clients.

Visit his website: GaryCoxe.com

Transcript

Paul T Neustrom: 0:00

Welcome to the podcast Skyrocket to Success. My name is Paul Neustrom and I'm honored to have as a guest Gary Cox. How are you doing, Gary? Paul, I'm doing well. How are you today? I'm very well, thanks. And you come from a really nice state of Florida. I'm up here in cold Minnesota. And I'll tell you, I would much rather trade places with you. And you're telling me you had some experience with Minnesota. Yeah, that's a chilly place, man. I tell you what it's beautiful though, in the winter, but that's, it's beautiful for a day or two for me, at least, people ask us where our cabin is and we're right on the Mississippi river. And so we love it, from like May through September, October. But Gary, I, I was really interested in talking to you because. I saw you on social media. I saw that where you were doing some really engaging reels and you're close to 60 years old. I hope you don't mind. I tell people, but I think it's admirable that men our ages that are doing this social media with all the millennials and everything. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you got going on and what your focus is and a little bit of yourself. Yeah, I just not to bore you or your listeners, but my story is a crazy one. I've been an entrepreneur all my life. I started my first business at 11. Paul, I started my second business at 15 and I was very fortunate. Shortly after that, I was doing 100, 000 a year, which is equivalent to a couple million, I guess now. And then things changed. I got married. My wife and I had a baby. Then later on, she tells me the baby wasn't mine, which obviously will change your world really quick. Then in the timeframe of all this, my grandfather and stepfather died of cancer. Not even 10 miles from here. My uncle was killed in a plane crash. I get a phone call from my mother to let me know my father had just been shot point blank in his chest, drowned in his own blood and all this and way much more by the time I was 21 years old, I was born and raised in a cult. So I left that sometime ago and when you leave this cult, your so called friends and family are programmed to shun you for life and treat you as if you're dead. So that put me$350, 000. In debt due to the mental tailspin. So yeah it's been quite challenging. And I've always, I've been fortunate that my, my early foundation that I was very successful, very young, because I knew if I did it once I could do it again, but the problem this time, the second time around. Third time around was I didn't have all this emotional baggage, which is really huge. And what happens is we often have all these desires and dreams and goals. And many times we know what we need to do to get results, but it's getting ourselves to do it. If somebody wants to lose weight, it's basically, Have, make sure you burn more calories than you take in. You want to have more money, make sure you spend less than you make. Some of these things are very simplistic, but why is it that we have such a challenge doing it? Often it's because we have so many triggers from so many things in our past. And so what I've been fortunate to do I did a three year run on Dr. Phil show the doctors were. I claim, and I don't say this in an arrogant way. I do in an hour what therapists and consultants can't do in a year. And that's why I did three years on his show where I take people and I show them how to quickly rewire or reprogram the way we think, because we all know it's all about our thought process. The output. Comes first from the input, what's in our head. And basically when you stop and think about who influences you the most, the person that influences you the most is you. And if the recording that's influencing you is off course, then you're going to continue to stay off course. And we all have some of that off course recording that we have to learn to fight. So the goal is to show people how to adjust that as fast as possible. And tune our in turn, I should say that would then get them more results. I'll tell you, Gary. That's quite a compelling story. And I was reading some of your books that to just get a little bit of a flavor for where this podcast could go and, I was just really captivated by the way that you've really poured yourself into, mastering, quieting the mind. And how you've really come back from this low spot, that kind of dark spot in your life. And, I just have to applaud you for not only, coming up from rising from the ashes, but now you're helping other people to do that as well. But my question, Gary is what importance did writing have? And you being able to heal in the process and, to be able to Initiate a whole movement and the cause behind this effort that you've done. I'm not a big journal person, but I do see the importance of writing goals down. I don't journal a lot, but when I went, go through major trauma, like major trauma is your wife telling you, baby's not yours. And she's been cheating on him with you. One of your employees who happens to be 15 years of age, that's major trauma. So you've got to do something to heal, clean, get over, et cetera. So for me, I would write my thoughts and where I'm at and it's nice to look back to see, in fact, I have certain journals, like every end of every December I write things down. Then I have on my phone an alarm to check it every quarter. To see what my progress is because I want to make sure every December I progress, am I in a better place mentally, emotionally, am I at a better pace financially? So you can't manage what you don't measure. And I think writing things down, help you manage those and then manage measuring them as well. You've have a couple of books. One of them is right behind you. Which is an interesting book, but there you go. Don't let others rent space in your head. And then the one that kind of caught my attention is how to make your thoughts disappear. And that's something that's really pretty amazing. I know that when I was a kid, I had a hard time falling asleep at night. And I, I was a gymnast and I would picture myself doing my routines in my mind, before I'd fall asleep and I couldn't fall asleep forever. Yeah. But, and my wife has trouble falling asleep. But there, there's a certain thing that, that you have to do and quiet in your mind. And I know you talked a little bit about meditation and stuff, and that, that's kinda like the no-No, as far as I personally was in a cult myself for 11 years too. And when I left, I lost my wife. Kids and everything and it was just one of the top ten cults in the world And it was just very controlling and you know a lot they managed you by fear And so yeah thing is You know, you have to be able to get on top of it because our, like you said, our biggest enemy is ourselves, our minds. Yeah. So the powerful thing, how would you speak into that to help people to be able to master that? I think the challenge with this is. We have to learn to disassociate ourselves from our thought process sometimes. We're made up of our thoughts, but we are not our thoughts. A house is made up of bricks, but the house is not a brick. So then, You hear a lot of people say when you have a negative emotion, you have a negative thought. The problem is most people aren't identifying when they're happy and excited. The only reason you're happy and excited is because you created a thought to produce that. On the other hand, when you are depressed, you created a thought or thoughts to produce that. Unfortunately, most people focus on trying to figure out what the thought is and how to change it when they're unhappy, which is fine. But I get people to understand when you're excited and happy, you're excited and happy because of a what? Because of a thought. And when we say control your thoughts, most people don't understand what that means. So in my book, how to make your thoughts disappear when a person can't sleep at night. It's a thought process. You're either overly excited or overly stimulated, like for example, if I said to you, I'm going to pick you up in the jet tomorrow morning at four o'clock in the morning, you're probably not going to sleep because you're anticipating something exciting. So that's one reason why you're not going to go to sleep. Then there's another reason is maybe worries. Something about in the future that we don't control. That's probably made up. Not true may happen, may not happen. And then that also keeps us up. So then if you put somebody at, you've seen people like kids, they're sitting there and like in a trance, if you will, and they're just daydreaming, they're conscious, but you gotta go Hey. Oh, we all do that. So if you could learn to do that, when you go to sleep, literally make your thoughts disappear. It's your thoughts that are keeping you up. And. When I left the cult I was in to go to sleep because it was so emotionally traumatic, I would literally take two glasses of wine and five Benadryl every single night. And then I had the opportunity to be invited to see the Dalai Lama. And of course that was something I could never do before because that was, propaganda, quote unquote, that we couldn't listen to. And not that I'm into the Buddhist religion by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a very open mind. And he said something about making your thoughts disappear and I looked it up and there was nothing on it and I, I researched it and I remember when I started learning to do it, it's like a wax on wax off wax on wax off. You cannot just tell somebody a couple strategies to make your thoughts disappear. And, but when you learn to do it, I go to bed every night. Like a snoring baby. I do not need any medication. I'm on no medication. I need no alcohol. When I wake up in the morning, I'm a horse out of the gates, but this is because of your thought process. So when I find out the earlier I wake up, Is the high, there's only two things that causes us humans to have the desire and motivation to succeed at anything, two things and two things... only, and it's not positive thinking and it's not goal setting. You'll have to read my book, forgetting the two things. I'm just kidding. Now here they are. Belief. We hear that all the time, but belief is not everything. If you have belief, that next thing you must have, if you don't have it, you can have all the belief in the world. You will do nothing. So belief is the other thing. The other thing after the belief is value values, the level of importance that we place on something. If we don't have a high value level of importance, we place on whatever it is that we want to succeed at. And we don't have a belief. Bottom line, we're not going to move. So you can have a very high belief and a low value. You're not going to move. You can have a very high value. Oh, I really want it bad. I want more success, but you don't believe you can do it. You're not going to do it. So one day when you wake up in the morning, you're all excited. The reason you're excited, you allowed something externally to go into your mind to increase subconsciously without us knowing it, your value and, or your... belief. Then when you get bummed out the next morning, you don't feel like doing anything. Something happened externally. It could even be a dream. You ever wake up with a dream and you're depressed and you got, you feel like you're gonna have a really bad day. You may have had a dream you don't even know about. It allowed you to decrease your value in a belief. So I show people how to manage those two things. A lot of other things, but those two things, master those two things. It's a game changer. That's amazing. Good reference points. And just listening to you, Gary is my hat hats off to you as far as mastering the ability to control your thoughts and the beliefs and values and all that. So what is it that you're doing now that really excites you? There's basically three things. I'm obsessed with aviation, very like ridiculously obsessed with it. I'm obsessed with the islands. I'm born actually born and raised in Jamaica. You'd never know it, but and I love helping people. So we have an incredible mastermind where people come down to central Florida. I put them in the jet and we fly them to Sandals resorts. That's been my 20 year sponsor. And then they have an entire day to, to pick my brain. And ultimately I create marketing strategies to show. Authors or speakers or high end business people had to take a year's worth of six figure salary and condense that literally in one day or one event. And, the theory behind that Paul is we can always do things faster. There's always a smarter way. And a lot of times. When I watch people in their business, they're not doing things smarter, for example we know his speakers or coaches or authors of books. You have to get in front of more people to get your message. If you want to, of course, reach more people and have more success. It's smarter to do one presentation in front of a million people as opposed to one presentation in front of 10 people. How do you get the excuse me? How do you get the 1 million people? That's when I did national TV show. So when I did Dr. Phil show the doctors, I'm doing one presentation and I'm in front of massive amounts of people. So in part of our entire program, we show people how to create an entirely huge section of leads where they can bring in, whether it's, large TV shows and what not. So I'm always, for example, if I said to you, Hey, you've got a helicopter and I've got a bicycle, let's go for a mile. Who's going to win? You've got the helicopter, right? So you're going to win. So by the time I get there, you give me the helicopter and we're going to go a hundred miles and you take a jet who's going to get there faster. There's always a faster way you're going to win and so on. So in business, I'm always analyzing what am I doing that I could do smarter, not harder, and what can I do to get to the next level faster? Because once I get to the next level faster, I'm going to enjoy my success and have that much more time to do it. That sounds amazing. I just have to tell you, Gary I was so excited to have met you and it's because I love aviation myself. I wanted to, this is, I'm sorry. No, I said, no way. That's cool. Yeah. This is actually a picture of my dream. Oh, there you go. It looks like a job golf stream, maybe I think it is. And I've studied with some mentors that, are like seven some are like eight figure earners. And, the thing is that I found that having a coach. Can make all the difference in the world and to be able to, and to be able to coach other peoples. I was stuck for so many years in this monastery and sleeping in church and everything. And all I really needed was a coach. Yeah. It took me seven years to write this memoir of mine. And the thing is now I coach people how to write a book in a weekend. Exactly. And you know how you can plug your stories into a framework of AI? And I was actually working to line up a group of people to go on a cruise to write a book in a weekend. And the thing is there's so many working parts to it, to where, what port and what cruise ship and what destination that Gary I would be excited to see what we could do to plug in together. To be able to do something because of VIP day, we have a program. We have a program for coaches like yourself, or we have a done for you. You just bring your clients and we co coach them together. We jump in the jet. You don't lift a finger and we do the same process. We go to Sandals resorts. And we treat these people like royalty. We literally have a police escort. They shut down the traffic. It's we give them a video and film to use it, to elevate their brand on social media. We have it down to a science. I've been doing this we call it our jet mastermind or beyond first class. We've been doing it for 30 years. So we have it down to a science. In fact, we just for some of, depending on the client, we just. Initiated where I'm picking them up and most people will come into Tampa. So I fly the helicopter, I'll pick them up in the helicopter, then I bring them over. Then the next day we fly on over in the jet. So yeah we, and it's not about the necessary, the bells and the whistles. What it does, Paul is, you can think about, for example, you have a picture there of that jet. Most people have never. Flown a private jet or at least do it on a regular basis. And when you see, feel, and touch and smell it, that's what's one of the ideas of this entire program. When you see, feel, smell, and touch this and, you're in it, you're not just, looking at a magazine, you realize, you know what, there's a. Smarter way to play this game. And there's, this is how other people live every single day. I've been in a helicopter in the last week and a half, I don't know, three times a jet, another airplane, all in a week and a half. This is how I live. And when you experience that, then what happens is your brain goes, okay, how do I make a smarter move to get this more often? And before you know it, you're making shifts. That you never thought you would make and it changes the game. And then the people, obviously that we bring on this program, they're, like myself and you, these are people who get things done. So when you give them all these strategies, they go back and implement it like crazy, and then they see the results and so on. So it's a real game changer for people. In fact, we probably, I would say 80 percent of the people that do this with us do it again. We had a just gentleman, just we just took his, he and his clients a week and a half ago, and we just got an email. He's going to do another one. He's ready to do another one and lock in the date. So it's very powerful. And I'm talking about coaching because it's so important. I was been very blessed when I was a teenager. I was mentored by two millionaires and later a billionaire. So when I work with people, I let them understand. Cause my billionaire mentor, he would invite me to spend a couple of days with him. I'd get to fly and go hang with him. And to watch a billionaire at work, literally sit right next to them and watch them work. It's a lot different than the things that people tell you. You, we hear things like, successful people don't watch TV. I watch TV every day. I love six 30 news. I love the news. People say CNN is"Constant Negative News." Everything's a perception. It's not negative to me. I want to see what's going on. He has the news on all day long. And like I wake up at 4 a. m. Typically, I don't tell people to wake up for 4 a. m. It's irrelevant what time you wake up, but What you have to do, it's not when you wake up, it's how much time you put in. So I'm going to tell you, you have to put the time in. I'm not going to tell you when to wake up because he used to wake up at eight o'clock and he'd wrap up at one o'clock, totally opposite than me. But both of us put the time in. That's amazing. So it sounds like a fantastic experience, like a dream experience, But Gary, tell me what is the result that people walk away with when they, they do like this fantastic experience of flying into Sandals resort and having a, just an ultimate weekend. They borrow my belief and see their treasure brighter than they ever have. And now they have the strategies to attain it faster. That's it. You're coaching people how to be successful then. In this case, it's more successful because most people have to be successful to get on this program with us. But yes, absolutely. Yeah. Cause I would say the majority of the people here they're all entrepreneurs. We have people from, just doing six figures to people who are doing, 10 million, 20 million. Last guy I did, and he's I don't know what he's doing. He's got a couple, he owns a couple of hotels and he came to me and, we did a program together. It's fantastic having Gary Cox on this episode of Skyrocket to Success. And Gary I just have to say that you've been one of the most interesting people I've interviewed. And the thing that, that leaves me with just a question is. With the writing that you've done, is that something that you're going to pursue and do you speak on stages or do you just basically connect with people one on one or how do you, how's your business work? Yeah, I don't do much one on one anymore. We have an actual online program that I do live and I show people throughout those Programs. There are like, a couple hours a day and I show them how to exponentially grow their business. So these, this is designed for, your speakers, coaches, authors and how they can do literally channel and felts to the point where they're doing a six figure. Five figures, six figures in one day or one event. And then for those who also want to come and do, the mastermind with me in the jet, we do that as well. I've done over 3,000 speaking engagements. So I do, in fact, I'm, I haven't been doing much in the last five years. So I'm getting back out. So I'll be doing the circuit again and being, doing a lot more speaking engagements. So on my speaking engagements, I reprogram. One of the audience attendees to show people. I have a four step process that I use to like we were talking about reprogramming. So live on stage. I will reprogram or rewire somebody's belief system without hypnosis to demonstrate to people that we all have some kind of a block. So once you identify the block for a lot of people, they don't want to admit that they have the block or don't want to identify it, but you can't change it. What you don't acknowledge. So we get to the point we acknowledge it. Then once we learn a process that gets us from point A to point B faster, and we can break through the crap that's in our mind, stop and think about it. A lot of times, we just feel in life that we're pushing a parked car. And when you feel like you're pushing a parked car, we're active, but we're active accomplishing nothing. But if we let go of the brake, just one technique, just one little technique, let go of the brakes. Boom, everything changes. So there's a lot of breaks that we have from our past that we may not be able to identify. And if we could just figure out, and that's where somebody like me or somebody like you comes in, because when you're the picture in the frame, it's hard for us to see that. That's why I even hire consultants. I hire consultants because I know I see things this way. And I'll ask a consultant, how are you seeing it? And they'll throw something at me like. Man, I didn't even see that. Sometimes I'll hire a consultant just to hire a consultant, just to see somebody else's point of view. And when you see that and you learn how to manipulate for lack of a better word, your own thought process, you're in control, it's a game changer. It's amazing. I just had a went down to a leadership conference in Texas here about a month and a half ago. And they were talking about creating I AM statements. And I went into that thinking, Oh, what am I going to really get out of this? And so I want to ask you about your IAM statements. But while you think about that is. I came away from that is that I'm abundant, I'm authentic, and I'm aware. And those things to me is like how I'm going to get to second base. And my second base was to be able to do a summit to where we have 25 to 30 influencers over a four or five day period. And I brought in the guy that's known as the summit guy and also the guy Who's known as the affiliate guy, and we're doing this thing. We're not sure when we're going to do it, probably next September, but it's a collection of where we feature some of the top people in the industry to where, how do they publish, how do they speak and how do they prosper and how do you 10 X prosper? And so Gary share with this, because I'm thinking, are you, is Gary a mindset coach or tell us about yourself. Yeah. I'll ultimately show people how to identify the strategies to dramatically grow their business. That's one thing having the strategies are great, but what about the implementation? So the implementation often comes from some type of block that we have from our past, whether it's your wife tells you your baby is not yours or whatever it is. So when we identify those two things, we move exponentially, but I have a caution for people. If I go to a gym, I work out, I don't know, five times a week, at least if I go to a gym and I see somebody bigger than me, in my mind, I want to think, wow, let me go. I don't go to anybody bigger than me and ask him, what are you doing to get that big? Why? He might be on steroids. I don't want to take steroids. He might work eight hours a day in the gym, five hours. I only do 30 to 40 minute hits and I hit him hard and I leave. That's it. I'm okay with his strategy. For example, when somebody sees somebody that makes more than you do, right? You automatically think like my billionaire mentor. I have zero desire to be a billionaire. Zero, because I have friends who are billionaires. I don't want to pay the price. So what I'm saying is just because somebody makes more than you, we think wow, let me go pick his brain. What they may not be telling you. And I say this not to be negative. Warren Buffett has a mistress. So if you're happily married and you don't want your husband to have a mistress, I don't know. Do you want some of his advice? Do I listen to Warren Buffett? I do listen to Warren, but I like some of his advice. Absolutely. But I'm not interested if I get married to have a mistress, I don't think my wife would be. So the point here is most people, if they're not careful, they don't use common sense. I've heard people say, I'll listen to everything. My coach says, then you're a sheep to the slaughter. I don't want you to listen to everything I say. Secrets. What happens is because somebody like myself is on TV or has books, if you're not careful in your mind, you will place a higher status on that person than they deserve, and then you'll listen to everything they say. Then you become sheep to the slaughter. So what you have to do is when you are bringing on a coach, you need to, okay, let's figure out what he is saying. Now it may be counterintuitive and it probably is and should be because if it weren't counterintuitive you'd be doing it yourself and wouldn't need the coach, but most likely it's probably counterintuitive as long as it fits within your values and beliefs. It's probably something you should do. It's amazing, Gary. It seems like you help people to go from six to seven figures or seven to eight figures. And, this is a process that, Getting unlocked is a real key. And so one of the things that, that I've seen, and I'm excited to, to hear your response on that is the amount of people in the industry that are getting started that just seem to struggle, it seems like 80 percent of the people online that are trying to be an entrepreneur are struggling to the point where, they're not even making, 10, 000 a month. So what would your advice be for somebody that's struggling, that's trying to make it, and just hasn't seen the light yet. Do you have the mindset to be an entrepreneur would be the first thing a lot of people that want to try to be entrepreneurs. There's just not going to cut it. There's some people that are designed to lead. Some people are designed to follow. There's some people that just, they don't have the discipline. They don't want the discipline. They don't want it bad enough. Period. The other people that do, as simplistic as it sounds. Never give up. The reason people don't succeed stop and think about it the people who are successful in business are a small percentage of people What makes those people different than the people who don't make it? There's a mindset. There's a drive What's your value and belief? You hear people say what's your why that's nonsense Because if I had a room with a thousand people who are cigarette smokers And I said to you, how many of you want to quit smoking? Majority of them, let's say, let's just say all of them for the second, the sake of saying it, they're all going to put their hand up. You give some strategies and what 5 percent may be changed. Now, if I ask them how many, all of you here, how many of you here show of hands have a why you want to change smoking cigarettes, everybody would put their hand up. So having a, why is it enough? It's the value. That's the difference between the value and belief. Again, it's the value or the level of importance you place on your why the higher that is. And the more drive that you have. And if you don't have a passion and I hear people say, you don't need, you gotta have passion because if you're not passionate and that's the first thing I ask people, let me ask you how prove to me how passionate and excited you are about wanting to succeed. And the reason I need to know that, because let me assure you, you are going to be knocked off your butt more than once, more than twice, more than three times. And if you love it enough, it's not going to be enough to keep you down. Period. So these are all things that have to be taken into consideration. I'm not the fluff person that says, you got this in you got certain things in you to succeed that I can't succeed at and vice versa. And if you don't have that tenacity to have the passion, have the value and the belief to come back up when you are beat the living daylights out, then you need to find something else. And if you think you do, then you've got to figure out what are you going to do to hang in there? Keep yourself going. Look, here's how much value and belief I have. These are credit cards, right? That I used to cash advance to run my business. I got credit cards in here, Paul from 1996, 1992, right? So some people think Gary, that's crazy. I have a credit card bill on my American express, and I'm not trying to get off the subject. I don't think I am, but again this is what belief and how valuable belief is. And here's my American express bill. I don't know if you can see it. All right. So I got an American express bill. What's it say? That 41, 000, see that 7 63. Yeah, 7 60. I got a 41, 000 American express bill. Now some people say Gary that's absurd. Do you know what kind of interest that is? I have no idea what kind of interest that is. You know why? Cause I don't. Follow, and I don't focus on what the cost is. I focus on my return. I imagine it's loan sharking, I don't know, 18 to 28%, but if I get a hundred percent, because I have so much value and belief in what I do, I'm happy paying 28 percent because I know I'm going to get a hundred percent on it. This is a type of mindset that has to be adopted. Absolutely. A jet fuel is not cheap. Is it? The funny you say that when I started flying jets, Paul, I got a phone call immediately from American express. Wait a minute. You go from here and all of a sudden it's 25, 000. Yeah, you're right about that. But it's a game changer. This has been just a delightful time to learn about you, Gary your mission and what you're doing for people. And I just wanted to ask you, how can people get in touch with you? We're pretty heavy on YouTube, so you can reach out to my YouTube channel. Now, we recently got one hacked, so you just have to type in Gary Coxe. You'll find it, the un-hacked one. There's always, Instagram, our website. My website is just gary cox.com, G-A-R-Y-C-O-X E.com. And so Gary been a pleasure having you on Skyrocket to Success. Thanks for having me on, and look forward to connecting with you in the future. Likewise, keep up the great work. You're doing Paul. Oh, thank you.