Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Wellness Entrepreneurship: Turning Yoga Culture into a Global Brand with Ian Lopatin

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Wellness Entrepreneurship: Turning Yoga Culture into a Global Brand with Ian Lopatin · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome back to the Growth Class.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And today we are talking with a founder who understands the power of total commitment and validating your market before you scale.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ian Low Patton started his career as an entertainment lawyer in LA, but left it behind to build One Yoga, one of the country's uh pioneering yoga studios, which he successfully built and sold to Lifetime Fitness.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: But while running that studio, he and his wife Vanessa noticed a massive demand for the custom yoga-inspired t-shirts that they were printing.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: They took that validated concept and turned it into Spiritual Gangster.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Under Ian's leadership as CEO for a decade, they scaled the brand from a studio house label into a multimillion dollar global movement distributed across more than 200 wholesale partners.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: In 2023, the brand was acquired by Unified Commerce Group, and Ian successfully exited this operating role.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's the co-founder of Of Course Sanctuary and his first book, The Way of a Spiritual Gangster, coming out in 2026.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he's here to talk about driving growth, building community, and what it really takes to scale a brand and connect with consumers.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So please welcome Ian LePatton.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ian, thank you for taking the time to come on.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Phil.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to be here with you.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you give us a little bit?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know I touched on a little bit of your background, but I don't think I did it justice.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you sort of give us a little bit of flavor of who you are?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up in Detroit, and I had two very distinct parents.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I had a father who was a lawyer, and my mother was very spiritual, but she also had a lot of health conditions like narcolepsy, cataplexy.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: So she got very into alternative health just to kind of figure out what's going on with her.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we were always, we had like Wayne Dyer books and gurus or teachers coming to her house.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought she was like a little crazy at the time.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to college in Nashville and then ended up going to law school in uh California.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I really was looking for ways to manage my stress.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was like, after, you know, when I was in college, my I worked at the White House for Clinton for a while.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad said, you know, if you go to law school, I'll pay for it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: At least I know you won't be pumping gas for a living.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so my first year of law school, I was like really stressed out.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a super really competitive environment.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to a yoga class.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the first class I went to was like felt amazing.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to visit my mother in Florida, and she gave me a yoga book.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And flying back from Florida to LA, this Indian guy with a satin jacket and a tiger on the back sat next to me and his wife.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we just talked casually.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And about two hours in the flight, I opened up my yoga book.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, You do yoga?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I am bhikara.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: I said, You want my book?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I got my own book, two million copies.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I I started going, you know, I landed, and at the time they still had Borders bookstores.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a few today, but I landed and I picked up his book, and then I would start going to his class before and after yoga.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then I ended up going to I was at UCLA so I could take some business school classes as well.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrote a business plan on a chain of yoga studios because I was, you know, I would see yoga booming in LA and I'd see it in New York, and I'd go other places on vacation.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: One of them was Arizona, and I'd look for the best yoga studio, and it was like in the basement of the Motel 6, dirty, grimy, and it just didn't exist yet.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So meanwhile, you know, I was finished up law school.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I had like a top entertainment law job in LA.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when studying for the bar, I ended up, you know, raising some money and opening up yoga studios in Arizona through a whole nother story of synchronicity and serendipity.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: But never did it occur to me that I actually was going to move to Arizona and be a yoga teacher.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: But soon after I, you know, had the yoga studio up and running, I was back in LA.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would be working as a lawyer on the weekdays and flying on the weekends to teach yoga and going back.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I just really came to understand that my business was never going to work without me there.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I quit my law job in December and uh in January 2000, moved to Arizona and then ended up teaching yoga in Arizona.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: We built up a chain of yoga studios that we sold a lifetime fitness, but then I got to teach yoga all over the world.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I would teach at like these big music festivals, sometimes with like two, three, four thousand people at Bonnaroo, at Rothbury, and have like live musicians.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, one of the things that when I built the yoga studio, we really changed the way yoga was taught.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to use like hip-hop rap music and loud beats and get the entire room moving as almost like a school of fish.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we'd have hundreds of people in classes, and a friend of mine came up to me after a class one time and she said, You're like a gangster.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What are you talking about?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, A spiritual gangster.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, that's great.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so my wife Vanessa was running our store.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were also one of the first yoga studios to have a boutique there in a store, and we would dress people for yoga.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And my sister created a clothing company called Be Present.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we started selling the t-shirts that said spiritual gangster in the store.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then after about 13 years, we sold the yoga business to Lifetime Fitness.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And spiritual gangster was more of an expensive hobby.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: But we were, you know, at we had a bunch of other serendipities.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were in Equinox, one of their first customers.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: We got all doors at Bloomingdales really early on.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So then we decided to focus on, you know, the spiritual gangster movement and really create a global brand using a lot of the touch points and the wisdom and the things we learned in the yoga studio, but really scaling it more than just in the local community.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great brand name, I gotta tell you, especially for that uh genre, you know, it's a fantastic uh name.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love the I love the name.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny when I was young, uh, you know, I was a I was a teenager, I was an athlete in in in high school, and you know and I remember w we uh I grew up in New York, but my mother on the weekends we would go up to this town, Sugarloaf, New York, which is sort of like it was like this hippie community, sort of like Woodstock, except not as far.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a candle maker and a furniture maker, and you know, all these people that sort of moved into this area after the Woodstock Festival.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I remember there was this woman who she used to have this yoga studio in the back, and this was, you know, this was the 80s and there weren't a lot of yoga studios around, but she was a really uh good-looking woman.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, so I said, I'm gonna go and try and do yoga, not because, you know, I didn't know anything about it, but uh just because there were all I just saw all these women and I was, you know, I was a teenager, so what the heck?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I did it like a couple of times, and I thought it was great.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was great for athletics, I thought it was great for like my body.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I always felt great walking out of there.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I continued to do it um off and on throughout throughout my life.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I understand exactly what you're talking about when you were saying, you know, you were in a high stress environment and uh it helped you out.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I can relate to that too.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I first started going into yoga in LA, there was like me and like two other celebrity guys in a room full of women.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I told one of my friends, I said, uh, you know, this is great.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm gonna meet my wife in yoga, and then I ended up meeting Vanessa in my yoga class in Arizona.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: But at the time it was like definitely mostly women.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it also just allowed for me.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to run, I was surfing, but I couldn't do anything to sort of let the pressure out.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And just, you know, when I found yoga, it had this incredible ability to just, you know, allow you to be calm, relax, move your body.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing, too, when we were started, we moved to Arizona and we were opening yoga studios, no one knew about yoga.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like we really brought yoga to Arizona.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But people were like, oh, you're opening a yogurt studio.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's so mainstream, but it was really funny to kind of see, you know, in the early 2000s, even after the 80s, you know, and yoga was much more like granola, hippie.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's like mainstream, you know, it's doing it.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's really evolved to become a part of like, you know, the zeitgeist, but back back and then it wasn't at all.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's um I think every gym now has yoga in the gym and everybody's doing it.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think from a it it has so many different benefits.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, certainly there were a lot of when I first saw it and first got exposed to it, it was definitely a very hippie sort of you know culture uh dealing with it.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But now, I mean, I I think that they found so many benefits for athletes uh because it's less injuries.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you stretch your body that much, that then it's not as tight and you and you're prone to you know less injuries.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so you see all these professional athletes, whether it's NFL, MLB, or whatever, doing yoga.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there's so many benefits to it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's fantastic.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's amazing.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there were a lot, we had a lot of professional athletes we worked at.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the greatest things is we had Shaq come to our studio and he was with the sons, which was really fun.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: We had to get a bigger yoga mat.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: But just just, you know, even all these great athletes, you know, yoga was challenging for them because they're not used to it in that way.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it was uh, but it was it was great.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know, we definitely had the opportunity to work with like um some incredible athletes who, you know, would put them into into their, you know, even I worked with Luke Longley and he brought it to the Australian national team early on.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's it's great.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you have a book coming out.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: You do you have it?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So this is my book.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: My first book is called The Way of a Spiritual Gangster, and it's it's a fiction book, and it's I tell people it's sort of a mix between the alchemist and I pre love, and it's a fable, and it's you know, it's it's based on a little bit of my life experience, but it's about um a man's journey from a real suffering state to to finding his way through life.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh the main character I named after a friend of mine who died of cancer, Josh.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: But Josh in the book has, you know, he has a cancer diagnosis, he gets divorced, he doesn't like his job as a lawyer, his father dies, and his grandma, whose name's Joy, gifts him a trip around the world.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Joy took a trip when she was younger and she kind of found herself.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then on Josh's journey, he meets a character called Ray, who's kind of based on me, who introduces Josh to all these teachers, you know, a guru in India, a grandmaster in Japan, a rock star based on my friend Dirk Spentley, an NBA guy, a rabbi.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And through Josh's journeys, he really learns how to tap into joy and live in joy and work with the magic and synchronicity of life.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then he winds up in Mexico with his grandma and Ray.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a really beautiful journey.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I initially wrote it to try to get some of these lessons to my kids.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I started it like seven years ago, even before the pandemic, and then it just was like a really a labor of love and a rewrite and a rewrite.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I feel so grateful to be able to share with everyone else.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and it's really about everyone's journey, your journey, you know, and everyone can relate to different different parts of it.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really about growth and opening up and learning and and really expansion, but learning how to like live and enjoy life rather than suffering or struggling through it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that sounds like a fantastic sort of way going about it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad you wrote it as as a fable.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably more engaging for people than just, you know, this is who I am and this is who this is.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think those books get to be tired after a while.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you've done all these great things.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's next for you?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like what are you trying to accomplish now in the second part of your life or your second stage after after doing all this?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because you see.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like it's, I mean, I'm in act four, maybe, you know, or even five.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think MV, and you know, the the what we're really focusing on now, we've built this live event business called, of course, sanctuary.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we're bringing people together and we're teaching meditation, yoga, breathing, a lot of mindfulness, but we're really creating a high-frequency container to allow people to get out of suffering states.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things we turned is stress sober.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm sober from alcohol a couple years, but what I really realized, it's not necessarily like, you know, alcohol and drugs are more of the symptom or the mask, and the root causes are thinking.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, I realized, you know, I spent six weeks in India with two amazing teachers, Krishna G and Preetajee from the Oneness movement.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got there, I was in a real suffering state.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of when I was exiting spiritual gangster, and I was, you know, we had some health issues.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Our oldest daughter had cancer twice, and I was just going through a lot of stuff of suffering.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized when I got there that it wasn't this person or that person or this was going on.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was all my own thinking.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it was all my own thinking about myself.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what I realized is look, you can change these things, and there's practices that you can share, people share with people that I've been doing.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I lead a meditation on Zoom every day at 6 a.m.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: But my my next chapter is all about creating community to wake people up, to allow them to live in joyful, beautiful states, to be free of stress.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think stress is the greatest addiction in in our lives.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And most people wear stress as like a badge of honor, like I'm so busy, I got all this going on, but it's really an addiction and it's a dis-ease.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, my goal is to allow people to live life more magical, mystical, abundant, and enjoy it now versus suffering through it and and waiting for some moment in the future where you think you're going to enjoy it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a lot of achievement, and on paper, I had a life where, you know, it would look from the outside that everything was great, but the more that I achieved, the more stress I got in.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't being creative anymore, it was defending this or worrying about that.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I I tell people lately, worry is the worst use of your imagination.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: But as I built all this stuff and achieved, I was either looking to achieve more or grow the business more.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't really enjoying, I wasn't enjoying it at all.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was like part of my journey.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: So my my real purpose in life now is to help people get free of stress, you know, and help them get on the path to enlightenment and wake up.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think the other thing I realized is the people who got the worst version of me were the my family and the people closest to me because I'm out doing all this achievement.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I'm on vacation, I was on my phone or being distracted.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I just really wasn't living the way that was possible and enjoying my life.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so all the sort of scar tissue that I've gotten through, you know, 30 years in wellness and mindfulness and studying with all these gurus and traveling all over the world, I've I've distilled it in a way, sort of what I did with yoga.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was able to take yoga and repackage it to, you know, almost white Republicans in uh Arizona.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But taking all these mystical teachings and all this wonderful information and putting in a way where people who are, you know, I'm at midlife now, so I'm 52, 53 years old.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people realize, you know, when when you get to midlife, the things that worked in your 30s and 40s really don't work anymore.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: So giving them a whole new toolkit, but for me, it's about learning how to live a life free of stress and then free of suffering and sharing that with people.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's really my mission on the planet.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the book has a lot of the lessons in this, but what I realized is, you know, it's hard to do it unless you get people together in person.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think with all the technology and, you know, connection to me is the antidote for addiction, for depression.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's really connecting people and creating a field of posity.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're doing with, of course, Sanctuary, you know, where we're leading these stress sober events to really get people to love, love their life and wake up and live in higher frequency.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's uh that's a great uh it's a great mission.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: At that that meditation class at 6 a.m., is that Pacific time or Eastern time?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: 6 a.m.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Arizona time.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So for East Coasters is nine, and it's it's every day.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I've been doing it now for two years, and I think I missed three days just because I couldn't get a Wi-Fi signal, but it's non-negotiable.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do it for free or do you we do it for free, so we can offer the link up to anyone listening and they can join and they couldn't.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can you send me the link?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to join.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to have you on there.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's 23 minutes, and I've been meditating for almost 30 years.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is the most user-friendly meditation.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, now, you know, up to this point, the only way you got on there is I would invite you.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this morning I think we had 90 people on there from all over the world.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fantastic.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, I stopped drinking years ago, and not because I I didn't have a problem, I didn't go crazy with it.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just, it just I thought to myself, you know, what the hell am I doing with this?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't do anything.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that it does that enhances my life, and there's nothing that it does to, you know, uh uh make my life better.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So why am I doing it?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a social aspect when you're hanging around with people, but even then, I don't I you know, I I I just don't like it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I remember in my early youth, one the first business I started, it was like you.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just was, I I needed to achieve, you know, I wanted to get stuff and buy stuff and houses and cars and all these things.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, you realize, I think, I realized that none of it, it just becomes complication.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like the more you get a second house, and now you don't have to worry about one house, you have to worry about two houses.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you have like a bigger car, then every time you take it in for service, it's stressful because they hit you for like three thousand dollars every time you bring it in for service.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And all these things just don't uh do anything.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you the the event that hit home for me and my wife was COVID when we were all stuck in the house and we couldn't really, you know, nobody was going anywhere because there was nowhere to go.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: The create the kids weren't going to school, and we were all just stuck together.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was still working, my wife was still working, but you know, we were all still stuck together, and we realized that like all those things that we have in our lives that we couldn't use during COVID, we just don't need.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we were perfectly happy.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we were happier the fact that every night, you know, we'd have dinner together and then we'd go take the dogs for a walk and go hiking or whatever.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it just made for a, even though it was a stressful time for everybody, COVID, it was actually, I think, a relief almost because there were things we didn't have to deal with anymore for a period of time.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I I agree, I think, you know, for me, COVID was one of the best periods of our life.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: We actually had a place in Mexico and we got to live there, but we got so much time with our family.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, our business, that was the best spiritual dance we ever did because online business boomed.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it also really, you know, you got it made like the right things the priority.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think for me, when coming out of COVID is really when I started to suffer because then I got pulled out again.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I can relate so much to like you're accumulating all this stuff, multiple homes, multiple cars, and all then you just end up taking care of it.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and then instead of creating more stuff, it's it's worrying about it, or defending it, or working.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it was just not for for me, it was not a frequency for happiness.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was really kind of got me spiraling down.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I had to make some real changes in my life to get to where I am now.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it was, you know, letting go of who I was and letting go of my identity of other things.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's interesting the cover of my book is a butterfly, and then the even the picture behind me, but it's it's like you have to transform and you're like the caterpillar has to completely dissolve and then go into the chrysalis to come out of it.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I just can completely relate to what you're saying, and all these other things that were, you know, that that were priority weren't important for me anymore.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to make a lot of shifts in my life.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, one of the greatest ones was stop drinking.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for me, a drinking was habitual.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had all my buddies in college, all my buddies in all of life, and even YPO and all these other, you know, drink was a part of every meal, a part of every function, a part of everything.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it just become became so conditioned into how we connect and relate.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I it was funny when I first stopped drinking, they said something like, you know, I went to somebody said, you know, 40% of the people in the United States don't drink.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, really?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think I met one of these guys.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was just so part of my world.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, now that I'm up, you know, I'm coming up on two years um sober next week, but it's just amazing at how much more clarity I have and how much more energy I have, and you know, just how unaware of of the toll it was taking.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: On every part of me.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm super grateful.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then congratulations to you.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, one of my other goals with what we're doing with like being stress sober, and of course, is helping people have a high bottom.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think everyone needs to, you know, you get the messages as you go along, and you don't need to get hit over the head till you wake up.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we're helping people kind of have a higher bottom to make these changes and shifts by creating an environment and the right support and getting the right information.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the other thing is it's not so much what you know, it's really what you do.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So giving them practices like doing the meditation every day.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it doesn't work.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's even worse if you know it and you don't do it, but getting the real tools to embody it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what you know what my life purpose is now.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man, that's a great life purpose.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I uh uh I think it's wonderful.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think you know, alcohol or you know, alcohol and drugs, you know, it it you're 100% right raising the bottom because I think people, you know, they just keep going and going and going, even though they know they have a problem.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: But they rather than trying to deal with it when you can, when you're in a position to, they they wait, I think, too late.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I I have a friend of mine who, you know, just kept going with the alcohol to the point where, you know, he div his his wife couldn't take it anymore, she divorced him, lost his job, you know, had to move back in with his family, and the guy is, you know, he's in his 50s, and uh then he had to go to rehab and it finally sunk in that he was doing this for alcohol.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And another guy that I I don't personally know him, but I'm connected to him through an uh a group, you know, he he was an alcoholic and just wound and knew he had a problem, just kept getting DWIs.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: One night left a bar in Ocean City, Maryland, driving.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Cops tried to pull him over, he decided to run from the cops, wound up killing a guy.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: 17 years in prison.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you know, it's just not worth it.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't see what I I started to look at it because it was uh just like you, the social piece, EO, YPO, whatever.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're going out to dinner, you everybody's drinking, you stay after, everybody has a drink, and then you know, you go to the baseball games and you're drinking, and and it just to me, I would look at it going, what am I doing?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's this for?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not enjoying the baseball game anymore because now I had three beers, four beers, and now I'm half in the bag.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so I, you know, just does and I don't want my kid, I didn't, I think the bigger thing was I didn't want my kids to to sort of look at that and say, oh, that's positive behavior, because it's not.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I stopped when they were young enough, and you know, none of them, none of them really drink.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: They went through college and and you know, my daughter's, she was out at UCLA and she's out, you know, you know, on Friday night, she's like, oh, it was up late.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Where were you?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Out with your friends?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, we were we were trying to find the crocheted frogs that they hid in the in the field in UCLA.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, okay, that's really, you know, that's that's how she is.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So she doesn't, she's like, I'm not spending$10 on a drink.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Forget that.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it's so amazing because you know, I have a 17-year-old, and it's funny.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to UCLA for law school.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: My son went to summer school, he's a junior in in high school, but at UCLA this summer.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it was great to spend some time with him.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: But now my son, you know, he's like, Dad, I haven't had a drink in six months.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't from anything I said, but it was more of modeling my behavior because, you know, there was a time when he was in eighth and ninth grade that he would see me in the golf course and all this other stuff.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's how he thought is what you behave.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: But now he kind of sees the difference and sees how I am, you know, and without even it's it's much easier to model the behavior.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like the kids are so smart, right?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: They don't, they never listen to what you say, they watch what you do with their eyes wide open.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been one of the best benefits for me of just watching sort of my kids have a different relationship, you know, to drugs analysis.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was a lawyer and he used to say, you know, you drink when you win, you drink when you lose.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just a part of his the life back then.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think for me, it was just became, you know, I I, you know, was um a day chair for two YPO events last year, young president's organization.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the lady told me who was like the the chapter chair, she goes, Ian, these are the first two events we've done without alcohol in 15 years.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so it was like really cool to like show like, hey, we can gather without alcohol, right?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just become, I think, something that people are so conditioned to and they don't think about it.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, it was just, it was not, it was so habitual and it was ingrained in everything I did.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And at first it was really hard, but you know, now it's just been, you know, a massive win and you know, one of the things that I'm the most proud of.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, that's great.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations to you.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I think some of these events should be alcohol-free.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: My my my wife works for uh a fairly large company, and she's a uh SVP of technology and marketing.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they always have these events, right?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: The hotel, you know, you go to the hotel for two days, speeches, everybody's giving a speech, laying out what the plan is, blah, blah, blah.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: But at every single one, somebody gets too drunk and does something stupid, and they wind up losing their jobs.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they the senior leaders finally said, Hey, you know, we we don't need alcohol at these events.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're losing people because of it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: People can't control it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: For whatever the reason they can't control themselves or they get in, we we don't need it.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so they started this year to to ban alcohol because, you know, what do you need it for?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a company event.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can socialize afterwards.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody has to sit at the bar all night until two o'clock in the morning, and you know, you wind up getting yourself in trouble.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't pay.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Good for them.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just think, you know, people are waking up to, I think, you know, now more people are are not drinking.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, I just didn't realize how much I was poisoning myself, right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I could live this spirit, you know, spiritual life and have all the success.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I want to share too is just, you know, my how my mindset has shifted.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for so long, I was like, oh, I could finish top of my class of law school, the best entertainment job.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I was teaching yoga, I didn't really drink because it didn't fit with that lifestyle.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: But as we grew spiritual gangster and coming out of COVID, you know, I was drinking more and more and more.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, well, you know, I can show up half in the bag and still do better than 95% of the people.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what I realized is that's not a badge of honor.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a massive blind spot.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens if I give 100%?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And how how much of my potential can I tap into?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's been a big shift, but it was something where before I'd be like, oh, you know, you can do this higher drinking and still do great, but it wasn't great.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a big shift for me of like, okay, let me give it my full effort and let me do it awake and aware and alert.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's uh I always relate that to the um Wolf of Wall Street, that scene where uh what's his name is on the phone and he goes out and gets in his car and he's driving home and you see the way he gets home, and then and then after White Lambo.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just and then like in his mind he made it home and he was driving fine and all that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you look at it, the car's mangled and well, it's such a distortion of of our perception of reality, and that's what I you know, and you don't I think the thing about it, and the people who struggle with it, you know, like you the two stories you told, and I mean I've got countless examples of it, is when you're in it, you don't see your insanity and the destruction you're causing, not only to your life, but the people around you.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the other thing too is like what I got in India was like all my suffering was like this obsessive self-centered thinking.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're in the throes of addiction or any sort of thing, you're only thinking about yourself, and you're you you're not honest, and you're doing things to kind of you know, my mom of blessed memory, it was just uh her yurt site, the date of her death yesterday, and it's been eight years, and then I might getting sober would coincide, you know, two years ago on the date of her death.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: But she always used to say, she had a lot of great sayings.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Was one of them is said, Ian, there's a reason why wellness starts with we and illness starts with I.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the biggest shift of what I've really understood is like when we can focus on the others, and even what we're doing with the course of helping the other people and raising the frequency, you know, you're really well.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, when you when you focus on the I, you really get it's dis-ease.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that, you know, our shift, and especially my shift right now is how can I help other people, you know, raise them up.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that the more that I put it out there and help other people, it comes back a hundredfold.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great story, man.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's like one of the best entrepreneurial stories I've heard in the last five years of doing the this of my TV show.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I I I love it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I admire what you're doing.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I can't wait for your book to come out.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, please share the link for your meditation, and uh I think that would be fun to join.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on today.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, we're out of time.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I could probably talk to you for two hours.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Phil.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me and great to be connected and appreciate what you're doing.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Keep it up.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing a great job.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And where can people find you if they want to find you?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: They can find me at IanLepayton.com and at of course sanctuary.com.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have all our events.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: We can almost find me on Instagram at IMEANLOPAyton.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the book comes out 1010 on the new moon of October 10th, The Way of the Spiritual Gangster.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: So pick it up.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And where will it be?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Everywhere?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Barnes and Nick.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be at Amazon.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um is probably the best place to buy it in a lot of independent bookstores.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully it'll be at Walmart as well.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Rob Walton, the uh the one of the founders of Walmart, his father and his CEO, wrote my uh wrote one of my uh testimonials on the cover.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully we'll be able to you'll be able to buy it at Walmart as well as Amazon.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's great, man.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming on and uh thanks for having me.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure, and we will uh see you guys next time.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you again.