Limiting beliefs are what holds you back from creating the life of your dreams. Overcoming it is challenging, but the reward is you get to unbecome yourself and live in your own terms. Mark Crandall, LMSW, LCDC, breaks down the reasons why anyone should embrace their past and use it to influence others positively. Mark is a therapist, transformational life and business coach, workshop facilitator, and keynote speaker. As he shares the seasons of his life, take hold of gold nuggets about trumping limiting beliefs. Author of Embrace Your Past Win Your Future and the host of Purpose Chasers Podcast, Mark reveals what happens when you get out of the scarcity mindset and choose to chase your purpose.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Unbecoming On Purpose with Mark Crandall

On this episode, my great friend, Mark Crandall, is coming in hot. If you have ever felt held back by your story, your past or your limiting beliefs, this is for you.

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I have such an amazing episode underway for you ready to go. It is with a great friend of mine, Mark Crandall. He is an amazing human being. First, I want to give you a little bit of an update on my life and what’s going on over here. If you have been following along with the Unbecoming Community, if you are inside of our Unbecoming Facebook Group, you will know that Unbecoming has been picked up by the radio. We are being broadcasted across eighteen to nineteen AM/FM radio stations across the country. We got picked up by the DC Radio, which is so exciting. It is so impactful and important to me because that is where I am from. It means a lot that my friends and family can actually listen on 96.7 every Friday at 11:00, which where we are broadcasted across many other cities. I am so excited. This is a huge victory for our community.

I am over the moon excited. I know everybody in the Facebook group that we had talked to has been so excited. This victory is a victory for me, for us, for the concept of unbecoming as a whole. I couldn’t be more proud and honored to be leading the charge for all of us. Unbecoming is such an important practice and I am somebody who gets to introduce this to more people. Thank you for all of those who have been sharing. It’s exciting for me to release this, which is very appropriately timed because if you’re not fired up by this, I don’t know what will get you fired up.

If you have not yet downloaded our Unbecoming Success series, you will want to do that. It is basically a six-part audio series that I created in response to so many people that I knew that had asked me, “What is unbecoming? Why is it important? What is the process? How do you do it?” Rather than giving it to you in nine months’ worth, which is what I do with my clients, I decided to shrink it down into bite-sized audio chunks so you will be able to access that for free. If you are in are Unbecoming Community, you can find that in the Facebook group. Or if you are not yet in and you just want to test the waters, you can head over to UnbecomingPodcast.com/success. I have extracted some of the most impactful exercises and prompts that work, of course only if you do. I would recommend that you grab your pen and paper or your Notepad app, whatever works best for you, and I look forward to seeing you inside our free audio series, The Unbecoming Success series.

I am dying to get into this interview because I think you are going to leave so fired up. Mark Crandall and I have become very fast friends. Both of us were attending an event. I was speaking and moderating a panel all about podcasting. It was the Outlier Podcast Festival. I had heard from several different people, “Here’s who you have to meet. You’ve got to meet this person.” We’re just general networking. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I see this guy beeline right for me. He says, “I’ve got to know you.” I’ve retold this story to a couple of our friends and especially his wife. I can’t pretend. Actually, he encouraged me not to pretend that it wasn’t a little bit creepy. Of course I was like, “Sure, we can totally grab coffee and lunch, as long as it’s in a public place and with other people around.” We did that and totally hit it off.

Human beings are absolutely unstoppable and are only limited by the thoughts in their mind if they believe them. Click To Tweet

He is an amazing person and I’m so glad. You’ll know more about how his intuition has led him to make important decisions, how it’s led him to actually completely doing a 180 shift and changing his life from inside prison. This is a super impactful interview. It’s someone that I’ve been excited to introduce you to because in the very short time we’ve known each other, he has completely changed my outlook and gotten me to play a bigger game. It’s pretty cool what we’re creating here. I’ll tell you a little bit more at the end about what he and I are creating together, which if you know, I’m a little burned out on partnerships, if I’m being honest. This one is something that I could not be more excited about.

I want to introduce him formally because he is very humble, although sometimes it doesn’t seem like it. He owns his space and he owns what he does for people and what he stands for, which I so appreciate and his directness, I find refreshing and I’m sure you will as well. I don’t even know what all these acronyms mean to be honest, but he is LMSW and LCDC. He is a therapist, transformational life and business coach, workshop facilitator, keynote speaker, author of Embrace Your Past, Win Your Future and the host of the Purpose Chasers Podcast.

He went from a lost little boy with countless traumatic experiences to drug addiction, prison and an undying self-hatred to building multiple six-figure coaching practices and leading life-changing workshops where he empowers others to break free from their limiting beliefs towards creating the life of their dreams. As you will see, there is so much overlap with what I’m doing, which is why it feels like a natural partnership. It’s something I will continue to do so and I am very excited about this. Because I like to make sure that I keep this really personal, I like to go in the direction of personal and see where this goes and we don’t talk about business strategy. I like to leave that for the rapid-fire after hours just so I can really drill down on who he is and extract that so you can see the greatness of him.

I also know he’s sitting on a wealth of business knowledge. I don’t even think he says it in this episode, but I know his first five months into business as a coach, he made $120,000. If that doesn’t get you fired up, I don’t know what will. In our after-hours, we talk about the biggest mistake that he sees entrepreneurs making in the early stages of their business. These two, I’ve never asked anybody but they came to me in the prep for this interview. The first one was, “What is one action item readers could take in the next 24 hours that would get them into massive momentum?” I could have scripted something better. His answer is really good and impactful and will get you into action. The other one is, “What is the most common exercise you run people through in order to get out of their own way and accomplish more?” If you are somebody who finds yourself in your own way, you find yourself stuck or burnt out regularly and you want to start accomplishing more, then you’ve got to tune in to the rapid-fire after hours with Mark Crandall. You can find that UnbecomingPodcast.com/mark.

I could go on about all the amazing things that we talked about, but what I want you to pay attention to this interview. His vulnerability, his authenticity and the transparency that he uses to describe his experiences in a way that I haven’t heard, even though I’m reading his book and it is amazing. I would recommend that you go out and get that. Oftentimes in pretty regular stories, it’s easy for me to see myself in their story. In his specifically, I found myself feeling like I was on the outside. We talked about this quite a bit in another interview. Actually, he interviewed me on his show, Purpose Chasers Podcast, and we talked all about how sometimes we get lost in the details. We get lost in the details of somebody else’s story and how that doesn’t sound like ours. What I want to turn your head to is how can you see yourself in his story, not in the details, but in the core thoughts and feelings and emotions? If you’ve never felt misunderstood or confused or hurt or sad, then I don’t know what kind of life you have been living.

 

This is a triumphant tale. As you read right from the beginning, he is a man of inspiration, of action and somebody that I look up to. As we move through a transformational space, there is so much noise in the marketplace at the moment that it gets a little repetitive. It gets a little frustrating and he is a breath of fresh air. We go into his recovery, we go into him being in prison, how he got himself out and the one pivotal moment that changed everything for him. I’m not going to go into all the details, but I would love for your feedback on this. If you love it, please share it. That is how we continue to spread our message about unbecoming. Without further ado, here we go with an interview with the wonderful, the inspirational, Mark Crandall.

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I’m excited to bring on and welcome a great friend of mine, Mark Crandall. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I’m beyond grateful to be able to come and share a message and further than that, have a continued conversation with you.

We have had many conversations and I want to start this off with a little context outside of your intro that I have given. We met at the Outlier Podcast Festival. We can talk a little bit more about how that exchange first happened because it caught me a little off guard. When I was speaking and then running this panel and then you came up to me. I had heard of your name. A couple of people had mentioned to me that you and I should meet and then it was a fast friendship. We have since brainstormed. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I’m telling my audience that we have brainstormed a whole bunch of things that I’m excited to get into. For people who don’t know you and maybe people outside of you, all your licenses and all this great bio that you have, I always like to start off with a first softball easy question. Who is the real Mark Crandall?

The real Mark Crandall is a man who has spent the last twelve years of his life unbecoming and has spent I’ve spent the last few years since 2007, neck-deep in transformational work. Just uncovering a lifetime of stories that I created surrounding who I am to find out who I actually am and who I actually am as a caring human being that is absolutely unstoppable and is only limited by the thoughts in his mind if I believe them. I stand for transformation in the entire world and empowering all humans to take the actions that they’ve been called to take in this life.

If you can't stay sober in prison, how are you going to stay sober in the real world? Click To Tweet

I do want to jump on the unbecoming train, not just because this is my show. It’s a concept that I know means a lot to you and that was one of our first conversations. Sometimes I have to explain it to people and for you I felt like you got it. It was like, “That makes a lot of sense.” It’s something that’s been a practice in your life and something that you’ve spent a lot of time working through. For me personally, unbecoming is what I talk about on the show is the practice of releasing judgments, expectations, beliefs, past conditionings that are holding you back from living a more meaningful life. For you personally, does it have that same meaning or is there another meaning that you associate with unbecoming?

No, it has a very similar meaning as the meaning that you’ve given it. I believe my experience of being a therapist and being a coach and all the stuff in my bio is most individuals are looking for this really quick fix. They’re looking for the easy solution. Our society has embraced that like the six-minute abs, all of these really quick fixes. What I found was that there is no quick fix. I’m going to go out on a limb and say all of the work that is to be done is internal. I sent you a video clip of a man that I look up to and consider a mentor. The conversation is all surrounded around how most individuals who don’t take actions based off of what they believe other people are going to think. In my experience in transformation and unbecoming is those people that I’m scared of what they’re going to think if I take these actions. If I write my first book or if I release the second book, what they’re going to think. They’re not even thinking about me. They’re thinking about what I’m going to think if they take the actions that they want to take. It’s the cycle that we all live in. They’re not thinking about me, but yet I’m consumed with what their thoughts are.

I find that the more introspective work that I do, the deeper that I go. Honestly, the higher level that I play at in coaching and speaking and facilitating workshops and all of the work that I’ve been called to do in this life, I need to continue to raise the bar for myself. As I continue to raise the bar for myself, higher level clients come in. When I started doing trauma work, when I first broke out into entrepreneurship, now I’m doing a whole lot of work with individuals that are in business based off of the actions that I’m taking in my own business and the organization that I have in my own business.

I’ve talked a lot about the perception of their perception. It’s like, “What do I think they’re going to be thinking about me and how limiting that is?” That was a large part of my life, early on in my twenties, late twenties. Even now, I still struggle with some of that. I appreciated the link that you sent me and it was exactly what I needed to hear. When we’re hiring anybody in business, if we’re hiring a business coach or life coach, health coach or whatever, our success is directly proportionate to the amount of work that person has done. I think that we can’t hire somebody who hasn’t been where we want to be.

The deeper that we go as coaches, the more success that we’re going to have. Just even hearing your story, and I do want to dig a little bit deeper because in getting to know you better, there were a couple of things that surprised me about your story. Now, I’m reading your book and I’m enjoying it and glued to every page. Who you are now is so radically different from the person that I’m reading about in this book. I talk a lot about seasons, seasons of life, seasons of business, seasons of purpose, seasons of love and all of that. Can you give us a better picture, a better snapshot of who you were? If you had to break it into a couple of seasons, what seasons would those be?

Confusion would be season one. I would say it’s probably three seasons. Anger, season three and then suicidal ideation would be season four. It went from my story, for those of you who don’t know and I’m guessing most of you don’t know because I’m not as big of a deal as my mind sometimes tells me that I am. I was taken by the state at the age of three and my mom, after DCYF took my sister, kidnapped me and took me to New York. I was later handcuffed and locked in a closet and burned with cigarettes. I was placed in foster care. My bio parents were in and out of my sister and I’s life with no consistency. I was so confused as a child that I lashed out. I got suspended in first grade for two weeks for throwing a desk at a teacher. I was so confused and angry and lost.

I found drugs and alcohol, which gave me some internal relief. I found other things that gave me internal relief and really lived in this dark place. I would say from the age of 17 to 23, I was on a mission to try to end my life. Phoebe’s reading about it, she knows a lot about it. I spent four years of my life homeless. I spent seven years of my life incarcerated and to speed it up, on August 23rd, 2007, when I was released from the New Hampshire State Prison, the two years that I was mandated to stay there gave me the time needed to reflect on who I was, what this chance that I was given was all about.

The long and the short of it is I woke up one morning in prison two weeks before I was to be released to this long-term drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. I had this thought of this anxiety and fear come over me. The question was, “If you can’t stay sober in prison, how are you going to stay sober in the real world?” The fear intensified. I created this panic attack within. I was walking to the chow hall that morning to go get crappy toast and hard-boiled eggs and this thought came over me and it was, “Go to the one place in the library that you’ve never been.” I know when you say prison, you get this television show flashes of what prison looks like. What prison looked like for me was an absolute waste of life.

I read hundreds of books while I was in there. I wrote a ton of poetry. I drew a lot, I played a lot of Skippo and Cribbage. I literally tried to do everything that I could to keep my mind off of the fact that I was in prison. On top of that, I was consuming drugs the entire time I was in there. This thought was random. I went to the library that morning once the yard opened up. As I stood in the entrance of the library, I was looking around confused. I’m surprised I didn’t get handcuffed because they were like, “He’s about to do something sketchy.” I was like, “Where’s the one place in the library I’ve never been?” It was the spirituality, self-help section. No one ever went there. There were piles of dust on these shelves.

I walked back there not knowing what I was searching for, which is a metaphor for life. I walked back there and the first book that I saw was of a man and he had an orange and red robe on, glasses, shaved head and the smile on his face like I don’t think I’d ever seen in my entire life. I picked this book up and it was a book by the Dalai Lama. I went back to my unit and I read half of it that day. That night, after taking my sleeping medication, I wrapped the towel around my head and attempted to meditate. It was the first time in my life that I believe that I received some relief outside of all of the other things that I had reached for. That moment was a huge turning point for my existence. I continued to chase it. It’s quite a bit of backstory, but a clip of me.

Nobody needs help. All people need is someone to stand behind them and say, 'You can.' Click To Tweet

I have chills listening to that story because I know the work that you’re doing. It’s hard for me to imagine somebody who is destructive. Based on your story, it’s that confusion. I think you said season one was confusion, then anger, then these suicidal thoughts. What would you say season four was?

I believe I’m in season four. I don’t know, I could be wrong, but I believe season four is the embracing of all of the things that happened to me. Maybe that season four. Maybe I’m in season five. I’m having an awakening on this interview. I’m titling the seasons as we go. I believe season four was the embracing of everything that happened for me and the identification that I’d lived my whole life, believing that all of these things happened to me. I lived my whole life from this victim mentality of all of these things happen to me. If you had the life that I had, you would do the same things. All the stories that I had created were preventing me from tapping into my greatness. Maybe I’m in season six, but we’ll say season five, is using all of the things that happened for me to show the individuals that are presented in my life that they can achieve anything that they want. Check out all that I’ve done with the cards that I was dealt.

There are a thousand directions that I want to go in this. You get out of prison and then what happens? I know personally from some of the work that I did in the prison system in California, which does not hold a candle to what you’ve been through. I want to acknowledge that the training and support that I witnessed from some of these people that were getting out. It was this real fear about getting out and then once they’re out, where do they go and what do they do? When you got out, what was that next step or next season or next period of time? What was that like for you?

I started to explore the transformational world. I was doing some meditation. I was doing a lot of other things. I was reading some books in the personal development world and I tapped into this, thanks to that one piece of guidance that I had that morning in prison. Everything shifted for me when I met this man named Rob, who was my first mentor, coach or whatever you want to call him. I shared my story with Rob and he said to me, “Mark, how unfortunate?” I go, “I know, right?” I was so used to people going, “I can’t believe those things happened to you. No human should ever be treated like that.” Rob says, “How unfortunate.” I was gearing up for the coddling that was going to come based off my life circumstances and the cards I was dealt with. Rob said, “How unfortunate that you, as a 24-year-old man, you’re living your entire existence as a seven-year-old.” I was like, “What?” It was new. He goes, “What is it like to continue to play the victim?” I was like, “What do you mean?”

Of course, I go right to the aggression, the anger. That’s what I would use to protect. Other humans, they go introverted, so they shut down and they don’t respond. However we respond to these uncomfortable situations, but this time was different. Instead of leaning away or running away, I leaned in. I was like, “What do you mean by that?” He explained and it literally all unfolded for me. My entire life at that point I had been blaming all of the things that I haven’t fulfilled on based off of things that happened in the past that I had no control over. He said, “Exactly. Mark, those things happened to you and you can’t change them. When you embrace them, you can start to see how they happened to you.” I just kept leaning in. I’m like, “What do you mean by that, Rob?” He’s like, “Those things happened for you. What did you learn? You need to evaluate everything that you learned.” How do you evaluate being handcuffed and locked in a closet at three? What is there to evaluate?

 

I learned how to be a parent from that moment. People are like, “What do you mean?” I was like, “I learned how to parent. I know exactly who I don’t want to be for my child, the same with my father.” What did my father give me? He tried to give me all kinds of trinkets and all kinds of things. What did I really want from my father that I didn’t receive? Time, presence, commitment and consistency. I spent so much of my life viewing all of the negative and using that as an excuse. When I started to embrace that all of these things happened for me and what did I learn from these things that happened to me, I started to share that with the world. I haven’t stopped. That shift in perspective led to the pivotal moment of my existence to date.

This was when I started to chase purpose, if you will. Back when I was eighteen, my mom sent me a book by a man named David Pelzer. It’s titled A Child Called It. It was the first time that I’d ever read anyone or heard anyone share experiences around their adoption and around the bio confusion that I had. It was in that moment reading his book that I made a declaration that I was going to write books and I was going to share my confusion and I was going to have a triumph story. At that time, I didn’t have a triumph story. I just had like the end. I was like, “Mark lays in his bunk and cries himself to sleep. The end.”

I didn’t have a triumph story. He was speaking as well and I want to be a speaker and I’m going to impact people. It died down. I get called to that as I’m in recovery. It was around 2009. I was painting and drywalling, which I had been doing for most of my life because it was an easy means of money. At this point in my life, as you know from listening to me, I had four felonies on my record. I was released from prison. I didn’t have a work history. I had a GED that they forced me to get while I was in prison. I make the statement every time I speak that the New Hampshire State Prison rehabilitated me. They forced me to get my GED or they weren’t going to let me out. I’m so grateful that they did that because it catapulted my entire life. Painting and drywalling, I absolutely hate it. I’m feeling really unfulfilled. A lot of transformational gurus or personal development people call it the dark night of the soul.

I’m in this place and I’m doing my meditation one morning and I started crying. There’s this skin that’s about to be shed and this new life that’s about to be born, but I don’t know. I’m crying and I’m confused. I’m saying like, “What am I doing? There’s got to be more to this life.” Some of you reading may be experiencing that now or you may have experienced in the past or you may be about to experience it in the future. My challenge to you and what I took on was, “What is this?” I’m going to lean into this like, “What is this?” I had an experience that’s similar but not as intense but I woke up and it’s cloudy in Austin. I had these thoughts, these feelings and then I did what I do to evaluate and to overcome. That’s what I did that morning in meditation. I had these tears and this confusion and this frustration. I leaned into it and I said, “God, Universe, whatever, what’s next?” Clear as day, “Go to college.” “What does that mean? I have a GED. I’m never going to get into college. I’m not smart. I dropped out of high school. I didn’t even have a 2.0 in high school. What is this thought?”

Instead of listening to my mind, which is the number one hindrance of any success that I may have in life, I leaned in. I was like, “Okay.” I went to the greatest resource that we as humans have today outside of spiritual practices, Google. I typed in, “How do I go to college?” Literally, that’s what I Googled. I had no clue. The Google search came back and there were some ads that were running and there were online schools. I clicked on them and got on calls with two enrollment counselors. I felt like I was getting guidance to go to school for business so I could start my own painting and drywall and company. I get on the phone with the second enrollment counselor. She was really good at building rapport and she says, “What do you want to go to school for? What do you want to focus on?” I said, “Psychology.” She’s like, “We have an amazing psychology program.” I’m like, “What? Psychology? What is this?” I asked and now I’m receiving. I’ve got to show up. I did really well online. I was getting a 4.0. I was reading a book. I found a mentor and he challenged me to go to school face-to-face and he said, “I teach at this university. You should start attending.” I enrolled, I got in. I was getting a 4.0 online. There was no longer like, “You’re not smart.” I was barely applying myself and getting a 4.0. I went to school online, asked this mentor out to lunch. He said, “Absolutely.”

If you just told yourself that you could and tried, you may. Click To Tweet

I shared my story with him and I said, “I need guidance. I want to get into the field of human services. I want to empower people. I don’t believe that anyone needs help. I want to empower them. All they need is what I’ve found and that’s an individual to stand behind them and say, ‘You can.’” When you think about Thomas, The Little Engine That Could. When he’s going up that hill, he’s not saying, “Maybe I can.” He’s saying, “I think I can.” He had support behind him, “Come on, Thomas. You got it, Thomas.” My whole life I’ve been like, “I think I can’t,” but I was trying to go up the hill and I lacked that support.

He gets me a job interview. I nailed the job interview. I got hired. I spent nine years working with Runaway and Homeless Youth and it got boring to me. It was really easy. I wanted a challenge. A job opened up within the state to work at DCYF, which was the Department of Children, Youth and Families. My mentor said, “You’re never going to get that with your criminal record.” Everyone around me said, “You’re never going to get that with your criminal record,” but I had adopted The Little Engine That Could, and so I’m like, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” I’m like, “If I’m not going to get this, I’m going to find out.” I have a lot of experience coaching and practicing therapy and working with individuals and working in group settings. I’ve worked with a lot of humans, but the only thing stopping them is that they’re like little Thomas, the Debbie Downer engine that couldn’t. If you told yourself that you could and tried, you may.

The worst thing they could say is no.

I’ve been telling myself that anyways. That’s not even the worst that they could say. Maybe they say no, but then they don’t tell themselves all the other stories that I’ve made up about myself. I’m going to speed this up. I applied, I got an interview, I nailed the interview. I got a second interview. I crushed it. I got offered the position and I took the position and I told them about my record and they said, “No worries. We want to hire you.” I got hired. That wasn’t the moment that changed everything for me. This was the moment. I’m going to speed it up. Six months into working there, the union leader, which is this gossip-fed newspaper, contacted me to print an article. I was told, “No, don’t interview with them. They’re going to slander you.” I didn’t. A couple of weeks goes by, my mentor at this time said, “If they call the facility on Friday asking for you, know that they’re about to print it in the Sunday paper, front page.”

Sure enough, a couple of weeks later they called on Friday, “I can’t talk to you. Thank you.” They printed the article. Saturday night, I’m trolling the internet waiting for it to see if it’s going to go live. It sure does. I read it and I become anxious and all of my limiting beliefs crop up again. The one thing that I’ve really found that I don’t believe is I know that Phoebe and I both believe this. There’s so much hype out there, “Overcome your limiting beliefs, smash your limiting beliefs. Step out of your limiting beliefs.” Your limiting beliefs are in here. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. I hate when people say that. The bad news is your limiting beliefs are never going to go away. The good news is that you can make friends with your limiting beliefs and they can become your greatest resource. That’s what I’ve done.

 

I wake up Sunday morning, I go to this convenience store, I buy a copy of the paper and I run home. I read it and I show my wife and the headline reads, “Convicted Burglar Counsels Youth.” The article was decent. It made me look pretty decent. My wife reads it and she was like, “How are you feeling?” I get goosebumps right now as I’m saying this. I became so empowered and it was like everything I’d been thinking about doing with my life came full circle. I said to my wife, “This is it, babe. This is my calling. This is what I’m meant to do.” She’s like, “What do you mean by that? That article’s not that good.” I said, “Yes, it’s not that good to you and it’s not that good to society, but can you imagine what an individual that has been telling themselves that they can’t do certain things based off of things that they have no control over? If they read this article and they see convicted burglar two years from prison gets hired by the state, what that’s going to do to them?”

That was the turning point. I know what they were trying to do in that article, but what they did was light a fire within me, which you got to experience at the Outlier Podcast Fest and more now that we’re becoming friends and doing much more. My calling in life is to use my past as a mirror to show individuals the steps that I’ve taken and the steps that I’ve been trained and developed and all of my credentials and all of this other stuff that I’ve stacked up to try to create meaning and self-worth. None of that matters. The experience that I’ve gained from doing all of this is what I’m using to empower other individuals to achieve what they’ve been called to do, even though their mind may be telling them that they’re not going to get hired, like mine was.

The thought of how you reframed that whole scenario. What they were trying to do versus what it actually did for you is so empowering. That goes to show all the work that you did, obviously in prison and reading and since you got out and up until that point, it wasn’t all for naught. It was all for a reason. Everyone’s like, “Everything happens for a reason,” but when you actually stop and realize that when we look back on our lives, we can see why all of these things happened. I think what it sounds like is that moment was connecting of all the dots for you and a path almost like a flashlight looking forward of like, “This is what’s going on. Here’s what I’m going to make this mean,” and we get to choose that. I love that story.

One of the things that I pick up in your story, in your book and everything, is the way that you allow and embrace your intuition. That is something that I don’t think enough people listen to. I know you from our friendship and watching the way that you move through life and through your business with such integrity. You turn people down on your show if it’s not a right fit because you’ve heard stories. Reliable sources have given you information about people. I think it would be really valuable for people that are reading this story to know more about how intuition plays a role in your life and not just that, but how you continue to build on that and how you use that to further your life and your business.

That is another softball question for me. I appreciate the softballs or the layups, if you will. One of the things that I found in transformational work that I wasn’t aware of was that my entire life had been ran and/or dictated from a scarcity mindset. It’s this mindset that I’m not going to get, that I’m not going to have, that’s not going to happen. I would make decisions subconsciously without even being aware of them to try to obtain all of these things that I wasn’t going to get or I wasn’t going to have. Leading my life that way forced me into relationships that didn’t align with my heart and my core values and led me to places that I didn’t want to be and at events that I didn’t want to be at and doing things that didn’t feel clean. They felt dirty.

Water seeks its own level. Click To Tweet

My entrepreneurship journey was I made a decision early on in business that I was going to operate my business and everything that I do from a mindset of abundance. That I was going to seek to bring value to those individuals that I felt aligned with and ended up bringing value to those individuals that it would be reciprocated and relationships would be built and new connections would be made. I didn’t need to do anything dirty. I didn’t need to give referral fees or any of that. The scarcity mindset moves that a lot of people make and that’s just it.

At the same time, I take a stand. I stand for my values. I had invited an individual onto my show and then found out that the way that they were navigating at some events and things that they were doing doesn’t align with me. I’m not about what they were doing and I didn’t follow up on the interview. I find that not making moves off of scarcity, which is scarcity move would have been like, “That’s so unfortunate. I’m going to interview him anyways because he’s got some reach and he has a following. I’m interviewing people on my podcast to get listeners so that I can grow my business.” It’s like, no. I’m interviewing people on my podcast not to grow listeners, but to create transformation for people.

If I’m showing up on my podcast and interviewing people out of integrity and not aligned with my heart center, then my interviews are going to be not aligned with my heart center and out of integrity. The people that I’m trying to wake up are going to sense that I’m a fraud and it’s not going to work. Transformation doesn’t work like that. Water seeks its own level. If I’m navigating my business as a fraud or as a dishonest human or as an individual with a scarcity mindset, those are the clients that I’m going to attract. They’re the ones that are asking for refunds and they’re the ones that are canceling calls. They’re pains in the booty.

Your approach to business is so refreshing. I remember our first meet up outside of the Outlier Festival. We met up for coffee. The way that you operate your business is refreshing. It feels clean and we all know the saying, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” I feel like in such a crowded marketplace, with so much noise online, but people need to make more of a stand for what they actually believe in. The whole concept of this show is to create what you want by being more of who you are. If you don’t turn the dial up on who you are, then how are you ever going to attract those people? I believe exactly what you said, that those people that are not in alignment with who you are in your heart center and what you actually stand for in the world and what you’re out to create. Those are the people that are asking for refunds. Those are the people, the tire kickers, the ones that are screaming the loudest. The other people who are in alignment with who you are, are the ones that are falling into line. Those are the people that want what you have because they see value in who you are. I love watching the way that you navigate your business because I wish I read this when I started mine. I needed a little bit of time and space to figure that out.

I’m going to share this. It’s a Sun Tzu quote, “A wise man learns from his own mistakes, but a genius learns from the mistakes of others.” There’s a quote that my first mentor, Nathaniel, shared with me and that is, “Every man or woman has a price for their integrity.” He would follow it up with, “I haven’t seen the check gets cut yet.” I got goosebumps as I said that because I’ve seen so many goods, amazing humans chasing financial carrots to their own exhaustment crumbling. Somebody will walk into my house right now and be like, “Mark, we’re from Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola wants to sponsor your podcast. We’ll give you $10 million right now to sponsor your podcast.” I don’t drink soda. I don’t believe soda’s healthy. For those of you that do, these are my views. I don’t like that, but it’s $10 million. It’s in those moments that you truly find out who you could be. Many people are like, “I could take this money and I could do all of these things.” I’m not as concerned with doing as I am being.

 

I don’t know how to follow that up. Let’s talk about online or entrepreneurs in general. If everybody was operating from a place of clean integrity and being more than doing, what do you think would happen?

We would have this amazing helping society and there would be way less individuals doing this work because the carrot wouldn’t be chasing and they’re scared to go within, which is what this whole journey is all about. The industry feeds off of this competition, “Phoebe has more followers on Instagram than me. I need to get those engine things that you can get fake followers.” They’re not fake, they’re real people but it’s like you’re trolling like follow, unfollow. I’ve thought about it, “Maybe I should get one of those and I’ll have more stature.” I would much rather do the slow process of building a community that’s following me because of what I’m talking about and what I’m doing, than having a massive community of people who don’t have a clue who I am. There are so many people that are so much more focused on the number, the amount of likes, the amount of downloads, the amount of clicks, the amount of this, the amount of that than they are putting that energy that they’re using to get clicks and downloads and this and that into actually producing meaningful content. I’m going to say it. Most of the people that are out there, if the industry changed the way that you shared, it couldn’t generate content worthy enough to draw in an audience.

I think the biggest heartbreak for me is when I meet people in person that I know online and you’re like, “That gap is huge.” I only know that because that was me for a long time. One of the things I want to get to something that I’m excited about, I’m passionate about because this for me totally came out of nowhere. I know we have both talked about turning down other opportunities for partnership and being burned and having all these experiences. I want you to tell this story because you told it on your show and I thought it was impactful. When we went to breakfast, waited an hour for breakfast tacos and then what transpired from there?

I don’t know if your audience actually knows the whole story. As Phoebe and I started connecting and it happened a lot fast. She’s actually come over and broken bread with my family because my wife’s intuition is usually more dialed in than mine. When I’m being guided to make a move, I want my wife to get a read on the situation. For those of you, I don’t want to keep you hanging. She blessed Phoebe. She’s an amazing human. Phoebe and I were both sitting with the idea of potentially doing some collaboration. We didn’t know what that looked like. Also, we were both super resistant to the idea. I was really resistant to it. I’m like, “No. My mentor said no partner, “You don’t need a partner. You can totally continue to do what you’re doing. You’re launching a book, you have all of this movement. You’re getting paid speaking gigs and you’re facilitating workshops and you’re turning down coaching clients.” There was something there and it was bigger than me, bigger than my little vision. I sat with it and Phoebe sat with it and we sat with it for two weeks in meditation.

We kept putting it off and being like, “We’re going to sit with it for another two days.”

A wise man learns from his own mistakes, but a genius learns from the mistakes of others. Click To Tweet

I would text her and hopes that she would say, “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I’m like, “I’m feeling the same way.” Even though I wasn’t, my mind was saying, “Bailout. Don’t do it.” Anyways, I kept texting her. We’re sitting there, drinking coffee. She’s looking off into space. I looked at her and I said, “Are we going to do this or what?” She looked back at me and said, “Yes.” I was like, “Let’s go. Let’s stop pretending like it’s not there. You and I have both been resisting this. It’s clear that there’s something there.” We went back to her house and mastermind for five hours and created what is now titled The Unbecoming on Purpose Coaching Community. We’re about to launch this epic six-week coaching program. I already had an outline written out for and that Phoebe already had an outline written out for. It’s literally like putting this program together. I made this analogy and I thought it was brilliant. It’s like your zipper’s unzipped and one side’s me and one side’s Phoebe and when you zip it up, it fits together so perfectly. It also blocks parts that shouldn’t be viewed.

I think the important part of this story is what you said, which is that it got zipped together. It’s been on my heart in the background on a simmer. My analogy has always when you’re playing jump rope as a kid and you’re waiting for that moment to jump in, that’s how it felt. Finally, I was like, “I don’t know why this is happening. I’m going to trust it,” which I think is very appropriate, talking about intuition and letting that guide you. This is something I’m excited about. I feel like, “Are you nervous? What’s going on?” We’re riding high on excitement fumes and couldn’t be more excited to get this out into the world and to show up in a way that creates transformation for people in life and in business. Let’s start with your life and with one area of your life that really means something that can then propel you. We talked about limiting beliefs and how those should not hinder you but rather propel you into the future, into having this awesome life.

If you’ve been following this show, you know that I feel unstoppable and to meet someone else who meet me at that high place where Mark is unstoppable at the moment. Your success has just been so fun to watch, just even since being friends. Your momentum and your movement forward is inspiring. I’m excited about this. You can go to UnbecomingOnPurpose.com and find out all the details. We’re excited. I’m on his show. He’s on my show. It’s going to be really fun. I’m going to hop off that now and ask, where can people find you if they want to learn more from you other than Unbecoming on Purpose? Where can people find more and learn more from you?

MarkCrandall.net is where I house all of my things. Also, Purpose Chasers Podcast is where I house a lot of my thoughts in transformational developments and tangents.

The last and final question that I ask everybody is if this was broadcasted to the whole world for the next 30 seconds, what would you say and what message would you have?

 

I would say that no one lacks motivation. What humans actually lack is the belief in themselves to fulfill the things that they want to create in life. There’s so much hype out there around goal-setting and not enough hype out there around mindset and developing your mind and embracing your limiting beliefs so that you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in life.

Mark, I want to thank you for being such a huge part of my life. I’m honored to have you here to introduce great humans like you to the people that I love and care about. I couldn’t be more proud of standing beside you moving forward with this program and as your friend. Thank you truly for who you are in my life. I cannot wait to move forward and see what’s next for us.

I am beyond excited and grateful and honored. I have to acknowledge you having me on because you, as I, hold your community very near and dear to your heart. I want to acknowledge that I know that it means a lot to you, this community and your work here and it means a lot to me to be invited on. Thank you so much for introducing me to your community. If your community is anything like you, I have so much excitement and joy to begin to work with some of the individuals in your community partnered with you.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

—

Was that not such a good interview? He has me lit up. I love this conversation and I could have talked to Mark for more hours. The reason is, to be honest, that is how our relationship has been since the beginning. We have been texting and talking all the time because we are so in alignment with what we’re doing. As you saw at the end, he and I are partnering on a brand new program called Unbecoming On Purpose. We are over the moon excited about what this means for anyone that is being held back by their own stories, their own beliefs, their own conditioning. As I think we alluded to, neither one of us was looking for this and neither one of us wanted any type of partnerships. We’ve both been burned in the past. I love the visual he gives of being a zipper and zipping us right up. We both had the programs written out.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, you can go to UnbecomingOnPurpose.com. If you are lit up by what he’s been saying and you to want to learn what he has integrated in the last couple of years, what strategy that’s had the most significant impact on the growth of his business. If you want to get an insight into one action item that you could take to push you into more consistent momentum and also how you can get out of your way and accomplish more. The last question was what I always ask on these, what is one thing that my community can do to help spread your message? If you want to help spread his message, I will encourage you to head over to UnbecomingPodcast.com/mark. Thank you so much for being here.

Important Links:

• Mark Crandall
• UnbecomingPodcast.com/success
• Unbecoming Facebook Group
• Outlier Podcast Festival
• Embrace Your Past, Win Your Future
• Purpose Chasers Podcast
• UnbecomingPodcast.com/mark
• Runaway and Homeless Youth
• A Child Called It
• Department of Children, Youth and Families
• www.MarkCrandall.net
• https://www.Facebook.com/mark.crandall.37 – Personal Facebook Page
• https://www.Facebook.com/MrMarkCrandall1/
• https://www.Instagram.com/purposechasers/
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/mark-crandall-lmsw-lcdc-570b1280/
• https://Podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/purpose-chasers-podcast-author-transformational-life/id1364129923

About Mark Crandall

Mark Crandall, LMSW, LCDC, is a therapist, transformational life and business coach, workshop facilitator, Keynote Speaker, Author of Embrace Your Past Win Your Future, and the host of Purpose Chasers Podcast.

Mark went from a lost boy with countless traumatic experiences to drug addiction, prison, and an undying self-hatred to building multiple 6 figure coaching practices and leading life-changing workshops where he empowers others to break free from their limiting beliefs towards creating the lives of their dreams.