Show notes as a general guide below. Somewhat in order and not written in perfect grammar because we want you to actually listen to the show!

Topics Discussed

• The Toxic Truth About Fashion: Why the industry that clothes us is quietly the second biggest polluter on Earth.
• 80% in 18 Months: The fast-fashion cycle most people don’t realize they’re feeding.
• Microplastics on Your Plate: How the clothes you wash end up back in the fish you eat.
• 51 Years of Self-Silence: The self-ridicule Jeff didn’t realize he was doing to himself.
• The 33 Words That Changed Everything: How one stranger’s blunt honesty at a party sparked an entire brand.
• Turning Down a Million Dollars: Why Jeff walked away from a deal that would have saved his company financially, but cost it its soul.
• Create For Yourself First: The design philosophy Jeff swears by, born from years of failing to find the perfect tee.
• Regenerosity, Not Sustainability: Why Jeff believes “sustainability” is just a nicer way of saying “stay the same.”

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SebastianNaum.com

Below is a transcript of the video podcast created by Seb’s Robot buddy, Zekton. He tends to make mistakes so please forgive him if you find errors or some funky sounding sentences. For the real deal, watch the video or click on your favorite audio Podcast platform above! Enjoy!

Seb: Jeff just asked me if I have a chicken story, because we all have a chicken story. All right, my chicken story, we used to go to this barbecue place in Argentina, in my hometown.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: And barbecue where it’s like a whole… you eat different cuts of meat for an extended period of time, they’re bringing you different cuts of meat. And we would with the kids, we would kind of get like it’d be like a long experience for our parents would be like drinking wine, eating meat, all that.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: So we’d go outside and start playing soccer. And they had there was like a little like grass area. And all the chickens there was chickens there that would run around, and we’d always be like, oh, like these chickens are alive because we’re eating the cows in there.

Jeff: Hold on.

Seb: That was the first chicken story.

Jeff: That’s a chicken story.

Seb: So what’s your chicken story.

Jeff: My chicken story dates back to the early 2000s.

Seb: Okay.

Jeff: And I was uh had an some incredible love of like love relationships in my life. One of them was with the woman named Lori Levinfeld, and she worked for Robert Redford

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: um for Sundance. And so I got blessed for several years to go to Sundance and basically have the sticky pass and be able to go into movies and

Seb: Mmm. Fun.

Jeff: and it was unbelievable. And one of the movies that we went to um was a story of a a boy who very obscure, odd sort outlier boy who had this chicken farm. His family had chicken farm. And um midway through like the first 10 minutes of the movie, um he takes the one of the chickens and he puts it in his mouth and he starts sucking on the chickens head.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: And I’m like, what the fuck? And I lean over to Lori, I’m like, what the fuck is this? And she goes, oh, that’s the way you make a chicken come. What? And I’m like, what did you just say? And and she’s like and someone in the back’s like shh. I’m like, so the entire movie for 2 hours, I’m watching various sequences of this guy like you know this boy, you know the 14-year-old boy who’s who’s making chickens come. And I’m like, this is the I got like this is this is outside I this is outside of my edge.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: You know.

Seb: And I feel like your edge is pretty wide, it’s far out there.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so so after the movie, everybody’s congregating um in the uh in the lobby and everybody’s like, oh my god, that was so amazing, that was so fantastic. And Lori’s not there yet in the circle. It was all her friends, and and they’re like they’re like, what’d you think of that? I’m like, I’ve never even heard this is the most this is no. It’s just a no for it’s a no, dog, for me. Like I don’t want to watch a movie of, you know, 2 hours of watch of a boy making chickens come. And they’re like and then they’re like, oh, and then and then Lori walks up, and they’re like, what’s going on? And I they’re like they’re like, well, yeah, I’m just telling him that it was just so weird, this boy’s making these chickens come. And she goes, no, dummy, I said that’s the way you make a chicken calm.

Seb: Oh my god, the whole fucking time.

Jeff: Oh my god.

Seb: Oh my god, I mean, I guess it could go in that order

Jeff: I mean

Seb: from come to calm.

Jeff: From come to from come to calm. You know, we just we just nailed the name of the episode.

Seb: Wow. I, you know, I used to start these uh

Jeff: No. Actually delete. Control alt delete. That’s not the name of the episode.

Seb: Well, I used to start with uh asking people like a little random question to kind of do an icebreaker like

Jeff: Oh.

Seb: and things like that, but I think I’ve just switched my entire strategy into just asking people what their first chicken story is from now on.

Jeff: You can’t do that, because Sebat- Sebastian may actually get upset.

Seb: Because

Jeff: As a matter of fact, I I probably will get blackballed for even being able to go there as a guest now, because I just revealed like the deepest, darkest, you know, inner back-circle truth that everybody has to come with a chicken story. So, Sebastian, all love to you and Petite, and my apologies.

Seb: That’s funny as hell.

Jeff: Sorry not… sorry not sorry, actually not sorry.

Seb: All right, well let’s we’re going to shift into a little bit of your story, fashion, regenerative fashion. A lot of cool stuff that we’re going to talk about today, but um…

Seb: When I think of, when most of us think about toxic industries, we think about oil and gas, and we think about transportation, and construction, and drilling, maybe, you know, farming, really shitty farming practices that just crush the soil. But then in 2015, I saw a movie called The True Cost, Jeff. And that actually, it actually, I would say, I don’t know if it changed my life, but it definitely changed my view about a lot of things in life. It was a big shocker. And the first thing I learned in that movie was that the clothing industry is the second biggest polluter in the world, just behind oil and gas, and it blew my mind. Why is clothing so toxic?

Jeff: Well, there’s, there’s, there’s two things to unpack there. One is, how is it so toxic? And then, and then why? So let me, maybe we’ll, we’ll talk about just quickly the, the how. I mean, there’s 80 billion new articles of clothes made every year. Believe it or not, 80% will wind up in a landfill within 18 months.

Seb: Within 18 months?

Jeff: Yeah. Somebody’s going to toss them, they’re just going to throw them away.

Seb: 80%? That kind of sounds gnarly though. Fast fashion?

Jeff: Fast fashion.

Seb: So you’re saying most people that are buying a lot of their clothes are just tossing it within 18, like a year and a half, they’re getting rid of it?

Jeff: They just get rid of it. It’s just like…

Seb: Donating it?

Jeff: Donating it, but it’s, it’s not cycling through in a beautiful way, and that’s why you see these, if, if anybody wants to actually, you know, just do a sense check on this, just do a Google search and say like, trash, trash mountains clothing, you know, and just watch what comes up, because the imagery, you will, it will blow your mind. Less than 3% of those items that are thrown away are made with natural fibers. Mostly plastic. If you, so, so the clothes that go into…

Seb: Polyester’s plastic, yeah.

Jeff: Polyester’s plastic. It goes into the soil, and then ultimately, it leaches into the ocean. 38% of the microplastics in the ocean come from the clothes that we not only toss…

Seb: Guy, I didn’t know that.

Jeff: …but also wash. So you may have that, that polyester thing that you keep and you, you run in your cycle, well, every, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s thousands and thousands of micro plastic particles that are, that go, and then those waters go into the soil, and go into the waterways, and go into the ocean.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: And just to, not to do the sky is falling kind of thing, but you know what, what is falling from the sky now, studies show that it is actually raining in certain places of the world microplastics, or excuse me, nanoplastics. Because what happens is, just very quickly on the science and what’s happening, is that so the microplastics are in the ocean…

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …38% of them…

Seb: Because a lot of it is washing off from when we’re washing the clothes or because it’s been tossed.

Jeff: And then, um, it goes into the fish, we eat that.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: Um, that’s why studies show that we are actually ingesting, could be ingesting up to a credit card of plastic in our bodies…

Seb: Per year?

Jeff: No, it’s like per month, or even worse. Point being is it’s not good. But what’s really, um, scary is, um, remember, um, um, you know, um, the meatball, you know, Chance for The Mighty Meatballs and raining raining meatballs, whatever, it’s like could be raining, um, nanoplastics, because what happens is is that the microplastics arise in condensed, break down into nanoplastics, they rise in condensation, and then actually we’re seeing some studies that show that it is raining from clouds microplastics. So there could be a real world scenario…

Seb: Wow, man.

Jeff: …where it becomes the boiling, um, pot with the frog, or we don’t even realize what’s happening. Just like the frog that enters the pot that’s not boiling, and then it starts to boil, and long before, um, that frog, um, uh, is aware of it, it’s in boiling water. And this is the reality of what’s happening, and clothing is actually, um, that is that that that is how it’s happening. Um, the why it’s happening is that there’s a…

Seb: Which, by the way, just to touch back on that, so we’re, we’re looking at something where now we’re even destroying areas that we weren’t even destroying anyway because like let’s say we have some reserved lands or farm lands that are actually being taken care of, all of a sudden now the rain’s fucking that up.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: Like, that’s wild. I, I actually didn’t know about that.

Jeff: Suzy Amis Cameron, who’s one of the great environmentalists, you know, kite surfer, and she’s a she’s a big, um, talker, you know, she she actually talked about this notion around that there could be a real world scenario in the next 50 years where all of a sudden we’re checking, you know, when it’s raining out…

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …instead of being like, “Oh, kids, go play in the rain,” it’s like, “No, get inside, because we need to the toxicity ratings of what’s coming from the clouds is not…

Seb: Damn.

Jeff: …actually like cleansing the Earth, it’s actually poisoning us.” So look, here’s the thing that I realized though, is that the reason this is happening, the why, is that there’s a race to the bottom on price, um, and, you know, that there was a there was a time that clothes was craft.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: And, um, and then what happened, you know, during that process is, um, it became, “Well, how can you do it cheaper?” You know, clothes became, um, not even a commodity, it just became, um, um, a chaotic mess where it was just like, “Hey, let’s just clothe ourselves with the least amount of investment possible.” And within that fast fashion, um, what happened was not just a poisoning of the planet, um, but a pillaging of the people. I mean, how do you think that you get to that $10 shirt? What were the conditions of the women and the children within that in that Third World country that are making that item? And so, um, I’ll be very, you know, transparent. You know, when I first started One Golden Thread, this was the story that I had to tell. I had to, because it was just it it was it was obliterating my senses of of of fairness and and what’s right and integrity and character, and, you know, you could just go down the line. Um, with that being said, you know, I still believe that the most potent thing that we can do is what I learned in the second grade from my father and my dog, Sam, in terms of how we do conscious business. Do we need to talk about the problem, or do we, as Peter Crone says, do we dissolve the problem? We dissolve the problem by going back to craft, by going back to the consciousness of creation, and doing it in a such a way that, um, that we’re reminded that our largest organ is our skin…

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …and that we can actually wear something on our body that not just looks good, but feels good, but reminds us that we’re this sensorial, um, synesthetic, um, um, being that gets to be in biomimicry with nature. And so, um, and the story with my with my dog, Sam, was my dog, Sam, had worms when he was, you know, when I was in second grade. My dad never missed a teaching moment, took me to Sam’s bowl and said, “Hey, how do we give Sam the pill? Because Sam needs to take a pill. He’s sick.” And I’m like, “Oh, hide it in his food.”

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: My dad’s like, “Well, you can’t do that, because dogs are smart, and they’ll spit it out.” And so, he said, “You wrap it in something sweet.”

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: “And then the dog will swallow the pill.” Well, the world gets to swallow a beautiful pill, and I think that what we all can do is just make a beautiful, delicious, better product…

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …that inspires people to to see life through a lens of like, you know, self-respect, shared awareness, and within there, we can we can come back into coherence. Um, and to make that, you know, as accessible as possible. You know, we I also had another choice point when I started as in like One Golden Thread, a few choice points. One was, um, I don’t believe in sustainability, you know, as a as a metric, a model, a method. Um, if I asked if I asked 10 people here, you know, “Well, what does sustainability mean?”

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: You would get some some look eyes looking up, and maybe someone would say, “Don’t use plastic straws,” or…

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …maybe someone would say, um, um, you know, um, um, leaving the world in the same place it is. Well, the world in the same place…

Seb: Yeah, yeah. Well, it literally means to sustain, to remain.

Jeff: To sustain. It’d be like…

Seb: To remain the same.

Jeff: Well, yeah, exactly. And the sea of sameness we’re in…

Seb: So, that’s bad. Yeah.

Jeff: …is like, and by the way, you can’t, it’s, you can’t do that if, unless everybody does that.

Seb: Right.

Jeff: Because then you’ve, then you’ve got something that’s Hopi Koyaanisqatsi, which is the Indian word for out of balance. So, so the most beautiful, you know, thing, it’d be like sending your kid to grade school and say like, “Hey, Johnny, go get yourself a C average today.”

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: Not very inspiring.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: As opposed to, you know, from day one, and I, and I got to tell you, one of the saddest days in my life was when I went to the, um, the United Nations in 2016. I was invited after the Global Sustainability Conference that really injected, you know, um, some, some, and even that within that, I’m like, “Global Sustainability Conference, what does that even mean?” And the whole time I’m like, “There’s something wrong here.” And you, and, and, frankly, it was a lot of white older men up there talking about sustainability, and I’m just like, “This is not landing for me.”

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: “We need to give back more than it takes to create.” There was just, I mean, and this is not a new concept. Regenerative food systems, regenerative agriculture, these, the, the, this is already there. From source to connect to our source and then back to source, that’s not sustainability, that’s regenerosity. And that is what I believe, and that’s what I believe we all can be. So, this is a honor to sit with you today, because last week we just crossed a threshold, um, as from day one for every item sold that comes from a beech tree, and we can make 108 of these, we plant a tree, and we’ve now planted just over 200,000 trees. So we’re on our way to a million, and then we go from there. But this isn’t, this isn’t about…

Seb: Amazing.

Jeff: …One Golden Thread, it’s not about me, it’s not even about we, it’s about the broader aura, and, and that philosophy, if we all imbue that in our businesses, to see business as a collective force for social good…

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …to see that we can actually take a stand, um, for giving back more than it takes to create. And I think that’s where we all are, and I, and I’m so excited to see the adoption curve is Moore’s Law right now. It’s, it, it, it is, it is, it is already happened, and so…

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …so we’re here to wrap the world, you know, to wrap the world with a golden thread and have it be sweet and delicious, and…

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …and to remind us that, um, clothes, uh, are not here to close us off from feeling, it’s really to open us up to well-being.

Seb: I love it.

Jeff: And within there, um, you know, the cost per wear…

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …actually becomes like pennies versus dollars.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: Because I’ll tell you one last thing, is that I would love for you to go into your closet and look at those things that maybe you paid a fraction of value for because it was focused on price. And if you actually did a cost per wear, it would be fascinating for you, because I, it would strike me that something that you maybe paid more for, that you wear on a consistent rotation basis, if you actually do the math, it would be pennies…

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …versus dimes or dollars.

Seb: Well, for me, I, I love clothes in general. I mean, I love fashion. It’s a way of, uh, how we represent ourselves, it’s a way of, you know, having your body as a canvas and you’d be, you get to be a little artist every day, and, um, and, um, I love what you said about the, sort of the, the coating it with something sweet or, you know, putting it into something sweet, because ultimately, I think it does come back to business, it does come down to business, cause we can, you know, get into the philosophical aspect of everything, but at the end of the day, for things to, to take off and scale and grow, and if you want those regenerative, you know, methods to be able to scale, they have to be able to, to be done in a successful business. That’s why I think it’s so powerful, that’s why it’s so powerful in business to have these concepts. Were you, was young little Jeff, um, an environmentalist entrepreneur, like a little entrepreneur environmentalist, or was it something that just, that became as you, as you grew older?

Jeff: Yeah. Such a good question, such an interesting question, because, um, the answer was, uh, uh, yes, hiding in plain sight.

Seb: Mm. How was that? Why?

Jeff: I mean, my father was a naturalist, I was conceived on the banks of a river, I was, he took us into nature, he’s an Eagle Scout.

Seb: Makes a lot of sense, by the way.

Jeff: My mother… By the way, it’s my Playa name, River.

Seb: I love it.

Jeff: Um, uh, my mother was this fine artist who had a very interesting take about nature and us as one. She was obsessed, and she was 90210, I mean, she was the Beverly Hills.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: She never camped before she met my father. But her art was always about like, the trees as the limbs as the skin as we breathe, limbs coming, you know, out, and she would do these realistic and surrealistic interpretations of art and nature and humans form as one.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: As a matter of fact, there’s a there’s a painting for those who, um, will visit us in our Abbot Kinney flagship, um, in the dressing room, and…

Seb: Love the story. Amazing story.

Jeff: And my mother 30 years ago, I didn’t even see this piece until after I’d already formulated One Golden Thread, and there’s a woman, she looks like Mother Earth Art Nature, and she’s got golden threads with with with, um, with flowers, with green in her hair.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: Like, so all this was hiding for me in plain sight, and no, I was not, um, a tree-hugger environmentalist growing up. I mean, I I hiked, I got into nature, I I appreciated it, um, but it was all, frankly, hiding in plain sight, and there was some, you know, I I was though a, um, after I cut my teeth in advertising, like a serial entrepreneur.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: The interesting thing was it was always amplifying somebody else’s visions, values, vibrations, dreams, never my own. So I I…

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …like I re-, I rear-naked choked my own creative expression for 51 years. Which is another great, you know, reminder that wherever you are, whatever age you are, you know, it’s never too late to, um, to follow your dreams and your destiny, and and, you know, um, receive your manifestations.

Seb: Absolutely. Yeah. What do you think at 51, you brought in as an, really as an outsider in fashion,

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: …that perhaps an insider in fashion wouldn’t really see, because they’ve been in it for so long?

Jeff: Such a good question. Naivete is is is magical.

Seb: Mm. Naivete.

Jeff: Yeah, and, you know, I never would have done this if I, I, I, um, one of the most powerful things I I I learned was, you know, when I wanted to create for me the world’s perfect tee, I always loved T-shirts,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: and I never could find one that that was that really would in, just, yeah, empower, accentuate, right? And so I had this dream to create for me the world’s perfect tee, for me. And so one of the great lessons that I I received, and it’s actually in the in Drops of Gold, the book coming out, is create for yourself first.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: Many of us have read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, and he certainly speaks to this as well, but I, it was, this was 2016. Because prior to 2016, if I would have said I’m going to create the world’s perfect tee, I would have said, “Who the fuck, can I, can I speak French?”

Seb: Well, you already started speaking French.

Jeff: I did, I did.

Seb: Yeah, you didn’t ask for permission, as you shouldn’t.

Jeff: You give yourself permission. Another key, another key tenant in Drops of Gold.

Seb: Haha.

Jeff: Um, uh, I would have said, “Who the fuck are you to be a designer? Who the fuck are you to do a spoken word piece around self-love? Who, who the…”

Seb: Where the fuck are you not, right?

Jeff: Well, what I, what I realized was that the ridicule that I was, I was realizing that this, that this, the entourage in my mind was telling me wasn’t from you to me, it was from me to me.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: Let me say that again, because it was so fucked up.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: It was self-ridicule. It was self-, it was all the self-talk. It wasn’t somebody else, nobody was, nobody was stopping me, it was only me. So for me to create for myself first and do it from a place of wonder, joy, and curiosity, and also with no experience. You know, I am not a technical designer.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: I do not sketch.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: I sketch in my mind’s eye, and I play, and I cut, and I, you know, I’ll do things and and see things on on on, and and I also broke another rule probably in the book. Because I created for myself first, I was the fit model at the beginning. That’s still the case. It has to, it has to pass me first, because what I realized about my 5-foot-10-and-ish and 175-ish…

Seb: You are.

Jeff: …is I am right smack dab in the middle between you and you and you.

Seb: You are, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff: It’s funny, it’s wild.

Seb: It’s actually quite…

Jeff: And so if it fits on me, it fits on we. I’ll do that, that’s actually good.

Seb: There you go. Rub, rub bars. I love it.

Jeff: Um, so I think curiosity, curiosity, naivete, and and then going back to some of the true, and this is important because, um, you’ll notice like some of the things that, um, that are hallmarks around like pockets that exist places that pockets maybe wouldn’t normally be, or reversibility, I love reversibility, like, you know, two things in one, whether it’s thermodynamic, which we’ll talk about, whether it’s whether it’s a different look, silhouette, different pockets in certain places, two jackets in one, two T-shirts, you know, two pant, so that all came from my mother. You know, my mother, um, uh, my mother was an, uh, with her art, she would hang, uh, she taught me to put for abstract art to put frame hooks, you know, it’s like, “Oh, this is the way the artist presents it, the frame hooks are here, here’s where the wire is.” No. Also put it down there, flip it around, turn it in, you know, flip it, see what happens. Um, my first boss in advertising, you know, first piece of advice, I was working on food accounts. Um, shout out to Armour hot dogs back in the day.

Seb: Is that one of your big food accounts?

Jeff: Crazy, crazy, that was my first. Um, and no, you don’t want to watch the way the hot dogs made. Anyway.

Seb: Definitely don’t.

Jeff: Um, but he, he said something to me I’ll never forget, because it’s a metaphor for you. Play with your food.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: Play with your food. Just whatever that looks like, and whatever you do, play with your food. See what happens.

Seb: You know, I like something you said, Jeff, about creating for yourself first. It’s something that I will often forget, and I keep, it’s a reminder, I keep coming back to that as I’m writing my book, and what I’ve noticed is when I’ve gotten in moments of stuckness for a while, I realize that I’m getting away from creating for myself. Uh, I’ve done the same thing in terms of like, let’s say it’s a, I want to create content or videos that are short, digestible, and it’s, you know, little golden nuggets for people for takeaways, wisdom, etc. I realize that it, it is always, it is important to create for them in the sense of you want to give people value, absolutely. But what I’ve noticed is that I give people more value when I give myself the value first, and then I’m giving them the most value, because it’s the most authentic way to do it, as opposed to trying to find what they’re going to take away first. So…

Jeff: Yeah. How can you be that… How can you be that if you’re doing it for, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re outsourcing your agency?

Seb: Totally.

Jeff: You can’t.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: And, and it also sniffs out as, um, insincerity. It’s like, “Oh, I’m actually just…” Now, what’s powerful is when you share something, and it, and it, and it broadens into the field and allows somebody to self-enroll and make it their own.

Seb: Mhm. Of course.

Jeff: That’s amazing.

Seb: Right. Well, that’s, that’s…

Jeff: Give me the, the…

Seb: That’s the golden ticket. That’s, that’s ideal.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Otherwise, we’re just, you know, contemplating our navel and doing a circle jerk with ourselves, and…

Seb: That’s right.

Jeff: …nobody, nobody wins with that.

Seb: Nobody wins with that. Jeff, you started, you, you were traveling the world, um…

Jeff: Sorry. Visuals.

Seb: You know, the man is a poet, an, an authentic poet, in more than one way. Uh, you, you would put these, the golden bracelets, which, by the way, this is actually how we met. You put this golden thread on my wrist. Uh, this was a, I think it was about two years ago when we met. Um, it’s still on. And when you put it on, I, I usually, I don’t really, for whatever reason, it hit when you did, and I was like, “I’m going to keep this thing on,” cause I wear bracelets, too, and I’m like, “I’m going to keep this golden thread on and just pay attention, one day it’ll fall off.” Hasn’t fallen off. It’s been two years.

Jeff: It’s crazy.

Seb: Yeah. So, I’m paying attention. Um, what, what was it that you were doing? You were traveling the world, you were putting golden threads, cause that, that sounds more of like a, a self-discovery journey before you were trying to become an entrepreneur kind of thing?

Jeff: It was. Well, I mean, I was an entrepreneur, I was a five-time entrepreneur. I chose to leave a partnership where I was, um, um, I mean, so much love for this individual, but, you know, we were, um, misaligned in terms of the way that we just saw, um, moving, um, in the world. And, and so, um, this thing was burning inside me, which was this Life 2.0 letter, this humanifesto, and I knew it was about the gold that resides inside us as the thread that unites us, and, and, and I, and, um, a perfect stranger obliterated my own self-sabotaging story around this, you know, that I, I buried this humanifesto, um, this spoken word piece for about a year and a half, and circumstances were such in New York that I shared it, and this is the, this is the spring before 2016 that led me into going around the world and tying golden threads and doing this spoken word piece, but I, I shared it with him, the only second time I’d ever shared it, and, and…

Seb: Please share it.

Jeff: You want me to share the humanifesto?

Seb: Why not?

Jeff: Oh, right, right here, right now?

Seb: I mean, if you want.

Jeff: All right. All right, well, it’s 4 minutes and 44 seconds, so…

Seb: Is that right?

Jeff: …so buckle up.

Seb: Okay.

Jeff: All right, so it’s a three-part story of intention, integration, and ignition. And it simply begins where we always begin, which is to rise and realize that there never was an enemy inside. To quiet that inner riot is to live life alive. Right here, we each get to choose to choose freedom and liberation from our resistance to our fear. To now swim in our dark with open eyes, years of fears rise to wisdom sparked from an open heart. Right now, we each get to choose to breathe with our pain. Life lessons revealed our most treasured human gains. Each and every moment we choose to choose love, kindness, and soul, our inner ego shines as our quiet hero. A river, our life flows, letting go. Pain to pleasure, imagined failure euphoric once again. Chasing the light lost in the dark, this day, we choose to receive all those highs and lows as illusions just the same. Our past stuck stories that self-judge and criticize, we now see the truth that they were lies in disguise. And each and every moment we get to choose to choose our current experience as the master guide of our why. So that’s our intention. Well, how do we integrate it? And for me, it started in 2010 with five simple words scrawled on the wall of a dusty temple on the Playa: Love thyself, embrace your shadow. I now allow myself to see and be seen, thus I see you and you see me. Our minds unlocked, our hearts unblocked, our voice reclaimed, those three keys released. The alchemist search for answers in others may cease. Opening me and we to just be free. And within that golden vibe, we know our inner lighthouse shines from inside. And if we stray, and when we stray from our way, the gift of our birth is returned grateful from our inner nature and the green and blue grace of Mother Earth. So that’s how we integrate it and embody it. How do we light it, ignite it, and express it? And it starts, hm, with just remembering that this is all one tribe. Every one by one, open, unified, electrified, a planetary magic carpet ride. Outrageously courageous, we are ready for this right here, right now moment in time. Your self-love invites and ignites a shared love. Whatever your chosen energy source, feel that beacon course through you as your life force. This emotion is our devotion in motion. I love the way we love, because we love to live and we live to love awake, always in the chance. And when we stumble, perfectly imperfect, we make it part of our dance. In our world, just be surrendered in love, because we trust the trust. It resides inside us, amplifying all around us. The love that we are is the love that we are. We are all golden, better connected, always as one golden thread. So lead with love, be joyful, live curious, adventure to discover, embracing our lives as animals of life, always playful lovers.

Seb: Man, that was, that was fantastic. That was beautiful, Jeff. Thank you for sharing that. Wow, that’s powerful, brother.

Jeff: So I’ll tell you what I’m not doing is sweating my balls off, which is what I was doing in the March of 2015 when I shared that for the second time with this perfect South African stranger at Danny Clinch’s super cool kids new block, kids on the block, he’s a rock and roll photographer. Yeah, he had his anthology exhibit. I was like, everybody else was like a rockstar, and whatever, and he, he just invited me along. So I’m in this room of like these magic makers, and this South African dude turns to me and he’s like, says whatever he said, and I said, “What kind of beautiful magic are you up to?” “Well,” he says, “Well, I’ve, I’ve come from a dark place, but I’m igniting.” That’s my shitty South African accent. And, and I’m like, “Did you say igniting?” I said, “I’ve, I’ve never in my life heard anybody use that in a sentence. I wrote this thing, it was a three-part story of intention, integration, ignition.” I didn’t think he was going to say what he was going to say right after that. He goes, I just said, “It’s such a coincidence.” He goes, He goes, “Oh, I want to hear it.” And I’m like, “No, dude, it’s way too deep, not for a party environment.” And I literally was like sweating, I’m like, “I, I no.” And, and he’s like, and he drops his glass, he goes, he goes, “I want to hear it now.” Like this motherfucker’s like an angel, just like, “I’m not, you’re not getting out of here.” No Houdini exit, because I was a master of Houdini. And, and I shared it, you know, as fast as I could get through it, certainly not like taking my time the way I just did. And, um,

Seb: Dude.

Jeff: …and he says to me, “What are you going to do with this?” And I said, I said, “Nothing.” And he said, “No, you’re not listening to what I’m saying. What are you going to do with this? This is too important not to share.” And…

Seb: Wow.

Jeff: …and I said, um,

Seb: Goosebumps.

Jeff: …and I said, uh, “Nothing.” And I said, “And who am I to share? I’m just Jeff.” I’m just like a fucking crybaby now, like these are just like right I’m right, no, I’m right back there. I’m I’m, and he, he looks at me… And, um, and in 33 words, obliterated my entire lying construct, and these were the 33 words he said: “We are each on this planet for three reasons: to learn, to love, and to share. And if you’re not sharing your gifts, you’re being selfish.” Poked me in the chest, he’s, “Quit being so fucking selfish.” He turned and walked away.

Seb: Wow.

Jeff: I’m standing there like in this pool of like, like self-loathing misery, like, like, “You, you pussy, no longer.” Like, and I just was like, I felt like, you know, not to, not to visualize some AI thing, but I literally felt like I was like catapulted or pulled through into this golden tunnel of like, no longer.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: No longer. And because I, what I realized, and this is the most important fucking thing I’ve ever learned in my life, is when we are holding back our expressive gifts, I thought that was being kind,

Seb: Polite.

Jeff: polite. Well, I wasn’t being kind, I was being nice. Um,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: I thought I was being, if I, I thought that if I was, graph-, if I was speaking, that I was being selfish, egoic, or narcissistic.

Seb: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: And the opposite is true. By you sharing, you’re inspiring somebody else to step into their truth.

Seb: Mhm. Mhm.

Jeff: Anything other than that, we are enabling the suppressive, compressive, um, non-expressed world that we live in, and I, I’ve come to believe that, um, you know, for those that understand the chakras and, you know, that, uh, um, that, that the throat chakra, you know, if you are expressed as a human to be, see, that’s being seen, valued, and heard,

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: um, everything else opens up. And the irony of all ironies is, um, I used to get really sick in my 40s before, you know, and, and, and the moment that I started expressing, my health improved.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: Um, and it always, it used to always start my throat chakra, drop into my lungs, and, yeah, so, um,

Seb: That’s powerful.

Jeff: …that jettisoned me on this journey where I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing, but I’m going to go on this social experiment, and then I started being invited by like absolute angels, you know, um, um, when I knew that it, that there was a, that Olivia Steele was one of my first angels, you know, she invited me, shout out to Olivia, um, soul sister, such a beautiful artist and creator and, um, also somebody who really is a word artist in her own, in her own way with the, all the neon expressions in the world, and she invited me out to Berlin, um, for the first time in public to share what I shared with you. And, um, that was on my birthday in 2016. And then Maoi Crome, you know, and Chris Kish and Seth Bunting and Christopher Pitcher, you know, we, we all created the 108, and then Maoi Crome brought it to life, um, which is the, before there was clothing, there was this expression, which means the world to me: self, community, and planet 108. And anybody who understands the mystical nature of the, the, like 108, this isn’t woo-woo bullshit, it’s like literally like perfect math, Fibonacci-esque for the universe, you know, and, and that’s what I believe in inner being, interconnecting, this biomimicry, synesthesia, all these things that roll into this, and, um, yeah, and so this all led into, um, going around the world, doing a spoken word piece on the humanifesto, tying golden threads on people’s wrists, and, and part of the remarkableness of this social experiment is every single person that I tied a golden thread around their wrist, I’d ask the exact same question, worded the exact same way, and to this day…

Seb: What was that?

Jeff: …no two answers are ever the same.

Seb: Mm. And what was the question?

Jeff: Got to tie the golden thread on your wrist again.

Seb: Let’s do it.

Jeff: Yeah, you want to go, so, inner peace or inner power? Just throw one out.

Seb: Well, let’s go inner power, you know. Since I’ve got the inner…

Jeff: All right.

Seb: …had it for two years.

Jeff: Let’s go. And by the way, this is pretty cool because this is the original rope. Um, there’s nine golden threads all tied in this rope, and nine represents completion for those that understand numerology, so this is cool, I brought one of the OGs. You have one of the OGs from 2016. All right, look at this. All right, so grab this side. All right, so this is a Each one comes with a blessing, and by the way, this means you are powerful, which is your, you know, which is always emanating peace, so, um, this isn’t about like one or the other, but you got one on your, your left wrist, which I’ll do the quick blessing for the inner peace, because you already got one, so visualize in your mind’s eye, Sebastian, with so much pride, that feeling inside of all the work that you’ve done to let it all gold. To release all the past-stuck stories, your soul, to embrace that feeling of revealing that always invites you and ignites you to receive love first and foremost from yourself first, because you know your self-love is what invites and ignites a shared love. Breathe it in, breathe it up. Exhale. All right, so the, the blessing for the inner power is fucking cool because it’s a visualization. You’re an athletic guy. You climbed some fucking badass mountains in your life, right?

Seb: Right.

Jeff: All right. Doesn’t matter if it’s a hill, mountain, visualize in your mind’s eye the most beautiful mountain you’ve ever climbed in your life. You got it?

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: Okay. All right, so this blessing is about all the things you’re looking to manifest, I want you to keep that mountain in mind, because all the things you’re looking to manifest for yourself, for your loves, for your community, for your family, for the planet, for the four-leggeds, all of it, amalgamate into that beautiful mountain you’re visualizing right now. You got it?

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: Okay, you’re halfway up that mountain, well, the birds and the bees and the trees and you’re breathing liberated and free, and you’re right in the heart, right in the middle of that mountain. You look up to the head, the summit, and like all summits do, it looks down and says, “Yo, you got, you got, you still got a halfway to go.” But then you zoom out, and you look back at that mountain, and you smile. Smile, because you see the truth that you are that mountain.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: There’s nothing to do outside of be, breathe, liberated and free, and just receive with ease and redeem all those dreams. Breathe it in, breathe it up. Exhale. All right, make, open your eyes, make it real. All right, so put your hand…

Seb: Love it.

Jeff: …put your hand over your heart with the golden thread. I mean, you got two golden threads, you could do whatever. All right. So this is the question. What does it mean to you, Sebastian, to live life golden?

Seb: Mm. To live life golden to me means, um, to live freely, fully, fully trusting, which is something that’s been very difficult for me to always to trust, to when I was thinking about this mountain, one of the most beautiful mountains, I remember being on the top and feeling like the, the biggest feeling of trusting the unknown. So for me, being golden is trusting the unknown in order to be in my highest capacity of a human being to bring the, the most to this world.

Jeff: That’s amazing. Trusting the unknown.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: So fucking cool. Thousands of people have I’ve asked that question, nobody’s, nobody said it.

Seb: Nobody said trusting the unknown?

Jeff: No, nobody.

Seb: That is wild.

Jeff: And that is, that is the coolest social experiment, because that is the message, that each individual has this goldenness inside, and that’s the, the gold that’s inside each of us is the thread that unites us. And it was that inspiration of the golden thread, and, and I’ll tell you, the, the, the uniqueness of what happened is that, and this will happen, now you’re wearing this on a wrist without all your other jewelry, at some point, somebody’s going to see you, and they’re going to look at that and say, “One Golden Thread?” and they’re going to have a golden thread on their wrist.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: And they, and, and that’s the way it started. I started getting text from people all over the world doing this, showing the points of connection, and that’s what inspired when I said, “I want to design for me the world’s perfect tee, and there’ll be a golden thread weaving through it.” And because the original dream I had was to literally wrap the world with a golden thread. I thought it was going to be that way, but now I’m realizing, 200,000 articles of clothing later, on the way to a million, that’s the way we’re doing it as well.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: So it’s a yes and, porque no los dos.

Seb: I love it. I love that. I love that. Jeff, how do we get this from this beautiful message of everybody having a golden thread inside of them that unites all of us, how do we get from there to creating a product that people will buy and keep coming to, and because there will be people that will be like, “Yo, like I don’t, I don’t want to hear your woo-woo shit, I don’t want to hear your poetry,” which, by the way, it’s fantastic. You’re clearly a natural, you’re a, I actually want to ask you that, it’s like, have you always been a poet? I mean, you’re a a spoken word poet, you are. You, that whole thing, you weren’t even, you didn’t know you were going to say it today, I asked you to just recite it. That was a 4-minute and 44-second, that was wild, like that’s clearly a, a something that’s inside of you.

Jeff: Well, I’m not a poet. I, I am a flow-et.

Seb: Okay.

Jeff: I’ll take that.

Seb: Okay, there you go.

Jeff: I’ll, I’ll leave the poetry to Rumi and…

Seb: Okay, okay.

Jeff: …those…

Seb: Flow-et.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: Okay, I like it. So how do we go from poetry to to creating a product that people will buy and keep coming back to?

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, there was a, there was a lot of, of finding out and fucking around, and find in and a along the journey, and, and the, the, the message never wavered, but how it was delivered, um, got simplified, simplified, because the very first thing I wrote was like, “You are golden, we’re all connected as one golden thread.” That’s still who we are.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: That’s it. And we can wear things on the outside that remind us what’s going on on the inside. We don’t have to talk about any of this. It’s it, it speaks for itself, and that’s what’s happening. And so we have, um, you know, we have, you know, all kinds of humans, from soccer moms to rockstars, you know, wearing One Golden Thread. I, I, I will say this, there is some oddity that, that has occurred. I’ve never met an asshole wearing One Golden Thread.

Seb: Really?

Jeff: Never. I have not met one asshole. I don’t know, maybe, maybe there’s, maybe there’s, maybe… Maybe there’s something, I don’t know, but it’s like, there’s, there’s, or maybe they’re, they’re like, “Yo, it’s like I’m, I’m putting this on, and I know it represents me, it represents the best of me.” I don’t know, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. I just know I’ve never met an asshole wearing One Golden Thread. Um, but point being is that, you know, the, the, um, the Saint-Exupery quote is, is what I go back to time and again, which is the art of craft is not when there’s nothing left to add, but nothing when there’s nothing left to take away.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: And that’s why this reductive, you know, we don’t have to talk about the problem, we don’t have to talk about always everything in terms of the thread count and the weaving and the this, you just get to experience it.

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: So, there are some people that will enter One Golden Thread via the lens of, “I want to have more eco-sustainable fashion.” Some people like, “It just fucking feels good.” There’s some people that says like, “My woman can’t keep her hands off me.”

Seb: Right.

Jeff: “I like the way I look.”

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: “I like the way I feel.” Um, and, you know, I, I, I will say that there’s a lot of people that get really jacked, turned on about like, “Yo, I’ve planted like 44 trees.”

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: “And it becomes a conversation piece,” and maybe that’s spelled p-e-a-c-e.

Seb: I love it. I love that, that’s great. So you’ve gone from…

Jeff: So, choose your, choose your on-ramp, but point being is like, we’re, we’re getting, we’re getting…

Seb: You don’t have to believe in the, the deep poetry behind it, it’s like, “Hey, look, at the end of the day, you still got to create a great product that’s going to look good, feel good, and all the other stuff, like you don’t even have to be shouting it at the top of the mountain,” kind of thing, right?

Jeff: No, not, yes, yes, truth. Um, and, um, I mean what I say that, like when I, when I say like, “You are the art, and these clothes are the frame.”

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: Like, that’s the coolest thing we can do. That’s why we’re not doing big, flashy logos. It’s like you, if you know, you know, you know the silhouette, you know the, you know, a couple little things, you’ll see the 108, but it’s very much of like the story of you, and that the clothes get to amplify. That’s why I mean what I say when it’s like, “These are not look-at-me clothes, these are see-right-to-me clothes.”

Seb: That’s cool. I love that. Did anything get lost, Jeff, when you went from a few hundred thousand dollars in sales to multi-million dollars in sales? You start to scale, you’re looking to continue to scale. Is there anything that gets lost? How do you keep everything together?

Jeff: Mm. Mm, it’s such a good question, because I think for any, for any of us, you know, the, um, and I even had investors that say, “You’re going to need to make compromises along the way.”

Seb: Right. How do you keep, how do you keep a mission with investors as opposed to this becoming a pitch deck?

Jeff: Well, I think that as long, okay, so, um, so you know the, the, the three concentric circles of, um, that people always talk about, the, the how, what, why, you know, and Simon Sinek and…

Seb: Yeah, that’s right.

Jeff: Okay. Um, I think that there’s a, um, a different way that I, I like to slice and dice that up, again, going back to like take it apart and put it back together, you know, um, and, um, what’s in the middle? What’s in the heart? What’s in the core? Right? And, um, and most people would say like if it’s ecos, ethos, and mythos, if that’s it, you’d say, what’s at the core is the eco, like what are you, what’s the product, what are you providing, and then the ethos might be, um, um, what’s the, the, the regenerative mission beyond that. Okay, you plant trees, that’s the ethos about generosity, and we’re all connected as gold, and then, and then there’s a mythos, you know, that’s on the outside that you might get to at some point, and there’s a whole story around like you are all, you know, you’re all golden and that there is this, this, this, everybody gets to be expressed and there’s this light. Well, I believe you flip, the way you, you, you, you ensure that there’s no compromise, you flip the script on all that shit.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: What’s in the middle is the mythos. What’s in the middle is like the core of like, of, of, you know, there’s that Maya Angelou quote, you know, “I won’t, they won’t always remember what somebody says, but I’ll remember the way they made me feel.” What’s the feeling? And the feeling might be spelled f-i-e-l-d-i-n-g. What’s the fielding? Like what’s that thing that’s so rooted, suited, and booted that’s in the middle of that’s at the core? That’s the mythos, right? Um, then the ethos is right where it, right where it sits in terms of the, the mission around it, and then the ecos is what’s, what is the first thing that you see. That’s why we don’t need to talk about it. But what’s at the core, you’re like, there’s something deeper in, inside here. So what’s at the core is that molten lava of what’s that thing that, that, that, that makes you, um, uh, that somebody could copy or imitate you, but they could never steal your soul,

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: right? The soul’s in the middle. So, um, that’s what I see and what I believe is, is, is the way that, you know, you, you, you live and breathe that without compromise, and those things become that. And I’ll also say like, um, you know, we, um, we don’t put any plastic bags, like polybagging is what it’s called,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: um, which is actually one of the things, forget about the product, the packaging matters, too,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: right? And so we, we’re still doing like we did from day one. You’ve got these, um, no plastic bags, we put things, even our warehouse in downtown LA, I’m really proud of it, we’ve got these recycled big boxes in, that, that are already pre-rolled with a golden thread wrapping around it, um, as opposed to, um, you know, as opposed to stuck in these plastic, plastic bins or, or, um, and then, and then individually wrapped with plastic. So everything is, is, is, is sealed, protecting from dust, and then when you take it, we put in these organic muslin bags that people reuse, so there’s no waste. And so I believe that that’s another example that we’ve been doing that when we were, um, uh, when we were, less than 100,000 in sales, and we’re still doing that when we’re $8 million top line…

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …last year.

Seb: To go, to go back to the question that I asked you about your investors, this seems to be just a natural thing where this is so rooted, you know, in that middle point that you’re talking about, between all the, the, the kind of the Venn diagram of all the circles, where you’re not going to have to change to, to make your investors happy. Ultimately, you’re just going to attract the money that aligns,

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: …right, with, with that vision?

Jeff: Well, anybody that’s raising money, um, it’s important to remember that money is energy, and what is the energy around that money?

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: And, um, to have a clean cap table, um, isn’t just the, the, the, the metrics around it, it has to be about the energy around it.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: And so, um, you know, say who you are from day one and then let people, um, see that, that, that they align. And I’m,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …so honored, um, by the investors who, um, who invested in One Golden Thread, like I don’t, I, I think, frankly, if I was to say, “Yeah, we’re going to save money by polybagging,”

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …um, they would say like, “You’ve lost, uh, you’ve lost our, you’ve lost our collective plot.”

Seb: Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: Wouldn’t happen.

Seb: Yeah, yeah, that’s good advice for anybody raising money in general, cause ultimately, you’re just going to, you know, you’re going to sell, sell yourself out if you just take the money just cause you’re desperate.

Jeff: And I had one, I had one opportunity when we were literally on the razor’s edge,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …and I had an offer from, uh, it was at the time a big check, it was a, you know, multi-million dollar, it was, well, it was a million-dollar check, and it would have, in, in the, um, scheme of things, at that time, it would have saved us, or at least the perception of scarcity that I was, that I was

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …teetering on feeling into, and, um, and I said no. I’d rather go down in integrity

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …than rise in, um, uh,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …in something that would be leaky energy.

Seb: And that probably opens something else up.

Jeff: And it opened something

Seb: Like right away.

Jeff: …immediately. The moment that I said no, no, no, no becomes the dopest yes.

Seb: That’s wild, man.

Jeff: Trevor Tuddle, that is your quote.

Seb: Haha.

Jeff: Got it.

Seb: Uh, I love it. Uh, a flow-et. We’ve got a flow-et on the show today. I love it.

Jeff: Flow-et on the show-et, let’s go.

Seb: I love, haha, there you go. Jeff, uh, as we, as we begin to close things out here, you, you got a book that you’re writing.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: You want to share a little bit about that?

Jeff: Yeah, well, it’s, it’s kind of, it’s pretty cool, because it’s, um, it’s, um, this is a, I’ve been writing for decades,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …but I learned something about, um, for me, you know, writing is like, well, all things are like, you know, um, like water, and without banks to the river, it gets to be a, you know, a planetary mess, or a world, a mess inside your world. And so my writing was like that dude from Memento, I don’t know if you remember that movie, but writing was everywhere, it was notes, it was, and, and that’s what was happening for me. So it wasn’t until New Year’s Eve this past year,

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …um, that I locked myself in a self-imposed writer’s dojo,

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …in Joshua Tree, and I said, “I will not leave here without the structure and, and, and…”

Seb: I just did that, Jeff.

Jeff: Oh, my god.

Seb: Two weeks ago.

Jeff: It’s the best.

Seb: I just locked myself in Joshua Tree. I had a place in Pioneer Town for three days, digital detox, got everything out, and I said, “I will not leave this place without the framework to my book,” cause I’ve been writing, I’ve got so much, and I was missing this framework that tied everything together. Dude, I just did this literally two and ahalf weeks ago. And it was magical! Like, just to put, just to set that intention and go into this place, and, and, and say, “I’m going to, this is my intention,” turn everything off, all the digital stuff off, I bring my journals, I bring my books, and I bring everything, and then within the first day, everything just came. Everything just came to me.

Jeff: Fuck yeah.

Seb: It was epic.

Jeff: That’s epic.

Seb: Yeah, so much clarity. I felt clarity that I never felt in my whole life.

Jeff: I love it, I’m so happy for you.

Seb: Yeah, thank you.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. It’s so cool.

Jeff: No, it, it’s so cool.

Seb: That’s, that’s funny, so you did the same thing.

Jeff: First of all, you know, one of my favorite chapters in the book is “Save Your Sorrys.” Uh, sorry, sorrys are sacred, save your sorrys.

Seb: All right, fuck the sorrys.

Jeff: Well, when you, when you need them, and you call on them, they’re fucking beautiful.

Seb: Right.

Jeff: Sorrys is sacred as love, but, um, beautiful as love. Um, so yeah, the structure, um, literally I just started laughing, it was like 3 AM and I just started laughing, I’m like, “Oh, remember that humanifesto, Jeff? Hiding in plain sight? The structure of intention, which is our remembrance, integration, which is our embodiment, ignition, which is our expression, that’s the structure. There’s going to be 108 codes in the book divided into three sections, three acts, 36, 36, 36. There will be an origin seed that will be your story, there will be a golden mic drop, which is the title that led you to it that was either created, co-created with the universe or inspired by somebody, you know, that deeply touched. There will be in with within that 108 most powerful things learned. There will be a code, there will be, um, there will be about all of us, which is what that origin seed led into in terms of how to track it, and that will be exactly 108 words, of course, and then there’ll be a, the golden dig, which will allow you to have a self-inquiry question, a shared conversation outward with another,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …and then a path to live it.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: And it just was like, that’s the structure, and from there, all of a sudden, all the writings was like, just drop that, and it just became such a joyful process.

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: There’s no, I’ve said the last eight months has been the biggest sacrifice that isn’t a sacrifice, such a surrender into joy, and it’s been an emptying. So the other thing that came out

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …of that self-imposed writer’s dojo is I said, “Whatever it takes, on my birthday,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …June 25th, 2026, I’m going to fly to Phoenix with a one-book printed manuscript,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …with my 94-year-old father, who is one of the tributes in the book. We’re going to drive up to Sedona,

Seb: Love it.

Jeff: …Oak Creek Canyon, where he took me for so many times with on on the creek with family and my dog, Sam, and my sister Jessica and my mom, and and on the morning of my birthday, I’m going to present him…

Seb: Love it. That’s so special.

Jeff: …a book. And this is it.

Seb: That’s so special. Wow, you…

Jeff: And this is it.

Seb: Beautiful.

Jeff: So it’s bibliomancy, so just maybe like, well, we’ll just, we’ll see what opens. Let’s…

Seb: “Stop Doing the Most.”

Jeff: That’s a good one.

Seb: “Years later, sitting in a showroom in Lisbon, surrounded by exquisitely restored vintage Land Rover Defenders, I heard the same wisdom through a designer’s philosophy: ‘Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’ The human condition often mistakes more for better: more words, more features, more thoughts, more noise. Yet simplicity is where truth becomes visible. Sometimes do less. Sometimes say less. Sometimes explain less. Sometimes think less. The artist’s job is not always to add. Often, it is to remove, to distill, to reveal. When we stop doing the most, what matters most finally has room to breathe.”

Jeff: Shout out to Victory, that one was inspired by Victory, and then there’s cards that go with, will go with the book. So each one of these is going to be 108 drops of gold, so let’s pick one out and see what lands for you.

Seb: Beautiful. Let’s see. Let’s see. “Complicit silence emboldens the weak.” Funny, because right before we started the show, we were talking about shirt designs.

Jeff: Yeah, see, see what…

Seb: And I told you that I didn’t want to tell you what I think would be a great design for the brand, and you were like, “Don’t ever hold a chip back.”

Jeff: Never.

Seb: “Like you got to tell me anything.”

Jeff: Never, never.

Seb: “Complicit silence emboldens the weak.”

Jeff: Yeah, I think that that’s just, um, about where is our silence enabling bad behavior in the world,

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …um, and, uh, um,

Seb: Very prevalent right now.

Jeff: …yeah. Very prevalent. You want me to pull one?

Seb: Yeah, yeah, your turn.

Jeff: All right. Oh, cool. We get to do do this. I mean, that’s what, this one’s for you: “Sorrys Are Sacred, Save Them.” There it is. It’s cool. It’s cool, like, you know, we, we’ve lived our life saying like, “Sorry, can you pass the salt? Yeah, yeah, sorry. I’m sorry.”

Seb: I actually started noticing that, uh, recently. I started noticing very recently, Jeff. Just, uh, like little things in, um, saying sorry, just simply for like little movements or something, or like just to like sit, like I’m like, well, excuse me would have made more sense here than saying sorry. Why am I saying sorry instead of excuse me? I started noticing that.

Jeff: Think about if you get on a flight, and people are always like, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” And sure, excuse me is nice, excuse me. You want to see, you want to, you want to really fuck, fuck people up in a positive way? The next time you bump into somebody when you’re getting on a flight, you know, say thank you. Haha, thank you. It trips, it completely like re-, unwires, and all of a sudden, they’ll smile. It’s like, it’s like Treg Kelly, who’s, who’s rolling around the world just wearing Kind, and all of a sudden, the people are just like, “Wow, thank…” like, this, what, words cast spells, we can choose our spellings wisely. So this book is called Drops of Gold. It’s going to come out, uh, this fall, we’re going to do a broader release on 108 of course, January 8th, and it’s a blessing, because it’s not about me, it’s not even about we, it’s about the broader ecosystem around, you know,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …and it’s a field guide, you know. It’s not a book to read cover to cover. It’s, um, it’s more like that conversation piece to awaken your inner power, and you can spell peace p-e-a-c-e if you get it.

Seb: Love it, Jeff. You’re doing some beautiful things, brother. Absolutely.

Jeff: Oh, you want to, you want to feel what the cover’s going to feel like? Let’s feel.

Seb: Oh, that’s so nice.

Jeff: You know what that is?

Seb: Oh well, it’s probably T-shirt, one of your T-shirts is my guess.

Jeff: Well, we don’t do T-shirts, we do tree-shirts.

Seb: Tree-shirts, this is tree-shirts.

Jeff: A body gift, huh?

Seb: Hell yeah, thank you, Jeff. I’ve never exposed my, uh, my torso. Get out of here. Thank you, Jeff. Let me do it. Let’s do the thing.

Jeff: Now do you want, this one’s thermodynamics, so do you want to go, uh, cozy side? You’re wearing, that’s the cozy side versus the cool side.

Seb: Well, it is hot right now, so maybe I’ll just go cool side.

Jeff: Well, then you want to turn it inside out.

Seb: Turn it inside out?

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. They’re getting like a little peek of your, your, your six-pack, it’s kind of, it’s kind of…

Seb: I got to like flex. Flex.

Jeff: You are the flex. That’s funny. Yeah. So now, yeah.

Seb: That side.

Jeff: Okay, so this is going to be, this is going to be nice and cool, cooling.

Seb: That’s wild that a reverse-, I’ve never had a reversible that is cooling on one side, and, uh, well, I can already tell that it’s cooling. It really has, and super soft, too. Did I put it on the right way?

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: Yeah. Super soft. It really is cooling. God damn.

Jeff: Feels fantastic.

Seb: Smells nice, too.

Jeff: Yeah, we dust, we dust.

Seb: You dust?

Jeff: We dust.

Seb: Like this.

Jeff: Yeah, what’s the feeling of the feeling?

Seb: Calm.

Jeff: Mm.

Seb: Calming, really. If I’m going to be honest, calming. Feel very at peace right now. Jeff…

Jeff: I had, uh, a

Seb: What? Yeah.

Jeff: I was just going to say like, um, I, I really like the unpack of what, um, Wim Hof said, he said he said, “Tree silk, your tree silk fabric,

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: …calms my nervous system, and it, it also invigorates my senses.”

Seb: Mm.

Jeff: And that was interesting to me, I said, “Say more about that,” and he, and he explained it in a way that, that was very, you know, relevant for what I feel, like this isn’t just about calming, I just, I feel there’s an aliveness to it as well.

Seb: Mm, that’s beautiful.

Jeff: So, that’s what we can do when we’re wearing nature on our back and planting trees and

Seb: Love it.

Jeff: …dropping in the gold, and, um, reminding ourselves, just keep about it.

Seb: Keep doing it, brother. Yeah. Thank you so much for my gift. Appreciate you. One last question.

Jeff: Yeah.

Seb: Aware With Seb podcast, what is something, just one thing, we should all be more aware of right now?

Jeff: Mm. One of the big things we all, that, that, that’s, um, a talking point for humans who are on this journey is having self-awareness,

Seb: Mhm.

Jeff: …and, um, you know, be self-aware, know thyself. Thank you, Andrew, you know, um, for his beautiful podcast, and, you know, and, and this. And I believe in self-awareness. I think sometimes, um, what we get to ensure that we are in clear coherence with as well is shared awareness. How are we moving in the world? How are we, um, received in the world? How are our actions or inactions or our words, um, um, imp-, impacting around us? And are we as shared aware as self-aware? And I think that the harmonizing of those two things is something really to be aware of, so. Aware is a beautiful thing, and I think that what’s it, what we can be more aware of is, is our shared aware. And within that shared aware is really where self-aware becomes, uh, even more golden.

Seb: Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you for that, Jeff. You’ve been awesome. Keep doing you, brother. Keep bringing love and gold to the world, and, uh, I’m just proud of you. This has been a pleasure and an honor.

Jeff: Well, I, I just, I got, it, it has to be, you know, like Garen Jones says, “You spot it, you got it.” And, you know, I’ve been admiring you and, and the way you, um, hold the spotlight, uh, to really shine onto others, and, and I’m,

Seb: Thank you.

Jeff: …and I’m, I’m genuinely thrilled to hear that you are, for what you’ve done so much for others, you are doing for yourself, you are stepping into your own spotlight,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …sharing your gifts, your love with the world, and, and, uh, and so, uh, deeply resonant, and, uh, yeah, maybe we’ll flip the script and we’ll have you on Drops of Gold.

Seb: Let me do it.

Jeff: Let’s do it.

Seb: Thank you so much.

Jeff: Should we finish with the Viking handshake?

Seb: I don’t even know the Viking handshake, dude. How do we do a Viking handshake? I’m such a rookie.

Jeff: Ah, come on, kids.

Seb: How do I not know her, haha.

Jeff: All right, we got to kind of like move the, it’s, it’s left, it’s left, left to left. So, uh, how would we do this? Go a little high. Yeah, we could do that. We could do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, so you go here. Yeah, but it’s better if, if you, it’s standing up because what happens is, here, you know what, fuck the mics. All right, here, okay. Here, it’s like this.

Seb: This is the Viking handshake? I like it.

Jeff: So there’s a couple things that are happening here. One is,

Seb: You got some strong forearms, dude.

Jeff: Haha. There’s a couple things that are, that are happening here. One is, um, is, it’s, um, your thumb and my thumb are both on our, on our artery,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …so it’s like you actually can feel your, some, the other guy’s pulse.

Seb: It’s nice. It’s actually kind of a nice massage.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Haha. So the second thing that’s happening, which is, which you can’t see, is that like, left eye to left eye,

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: …which for those that are like, you know, fully like ensconced in this, seat of the soul, seat of the soul. Left eye to left eye is like where you actually can see something. And then, um, and then proximity. This is like, it’s not that bro hug,

Seb: Right, right.

Jeff: …and it’s not this handshake from, from back here.

Seb: Yeah.

Jeff: It’s kind of an interesting proximity. It’s like, I see you. But then the other thing that makes it the Viking handshake is that back in the day, like if you were carrying a knife, if I’m like, or if I’m feeling like your pulse is quick, I’m like, “This guy’s probably carrying a knife.” Boom.

Seb: No way! Haha. That’s great. Good stuff, brother.

Jeff: That’s it. That’s all I got today. That’s, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m out.

Seb: We cut there.