In short
Jason Graystone (investor, entrepreneur, YouTuber, and author) explains how his childhood in South London shaped his drive for security and how he learned to treat money as a tool. He describes a “security vs chaos” mindset formed amid instability (father leaving; bailiffs; being cared for by the Pile family, linked to London gangster lore) and a turning point at age 13 when a weekly lottery syndicate made adults’ faces “light up,” contradicting their negative talk about money. He then raises money for a BMX by washing cars, scaling to a small car-washing operation. Later, after becoming a father at 22, he quits work, builds businesses, and loses about £50k in speculative markets before becoming consistent.
Key claims
congruency (living authentically, no hiding) drives opportunity; financial freedom is “always free” (mind, movement, money enabling choice); avoid shortcuts and volatile bets (e.g., crypto) until your life is aligned; pain is a stronger motivator than comfort.
Notable examples
BMX fundraising, online poker/options losses, property development SPVs, and a Dubai “next target” story about chasing arbitrary numbers.
Guests
none—this is a solo interview with Jason Graystone (host not identified in transcript).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOEarly Influences and Childhood Experiences
0:46 to 3:41
Jason shares his challenging childhood and early influences on his drive for security.
The Spark of Entrepreneurship
3:42 to 7:26
Discussion on Jason's early entrepreneurial experiences and realizations.
“Those adults around you that had gone into the syndicate for those six, seven minutes had maybe a false hope.”
The Spark of Entrepreneurship
7:27 to 7:44
Discussion on Jason's early entrepreneurial experiences and realizations.
Navigating Challenges and Achieving Contentment
8:12 to 14:00
Jason discusses the challenges he faced and his journey to find fulfillment and happiness.
“So important to share that though, right?”
The Illusion of Financial Freedom
14:00 to 14:42
Exploring the concept of financial freedom and its true implications on happiness.
Achieving Congruency for True Happiness
14:42 to 18:01
Discussing the importance of congruency and authenticity in personal fulfillment.
Defining Success Beyond Materialism
18:01 to 20:55
Examining personal definitions of success and the role of experiences over possessions.
Overcoming a Victim Mindset
20:55 to 23:15
Advice on moving past negative experiences and adopting a growth mindset.
The Importance of Movement and Routine
23:15 to 26:06
Understanding the role of physical fitness and a structured routine in personal success.
Investing in a Life You Love
26:06 to 28:00
Discussing how to build a life that doesn't require escape and the mindset behind sound investments.
“Everyone's looking for a shortcut, aren't they?”
Show all 13 chapters
Finding Purpose Beyond Success
28:00 to 29:40
Explore how personal happiness and purpose can redefine success.
The Concept of 'Always Free'
29:40 to 31:44
Learn about the philosophy behind the author's book and its significance.
Understanding Money's Role in Happiness
31:44 to 33:24
Discuss the nuances of money as a tool for fair exchange in life.
“With all the experience and the wealth of knowledge you've got, I can't wait to read it.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00I've been looking forward to this. So have I. Tell me, who is Jason Graystone? Jason Graystone is primarily an investor, entrepreneur, and these days a YouTuber, and now I'm an author. So proper evolution there. Yeah, I know. I never thought I'd be called a YouTuber. A nice man, isn't it? Well, I never thought I'd be sitting here talking to you until just a couple of years ago. But take me back to where it all began, those sort of early who and what influences. Growing up, I grew up with my mum. my dad had left um and we grew up on a council estate in south london called hatfield mead my earliest memories were just bailiffs knocking on the door for electricity you know hiding behind the sofa so i didn't know he was in um to make ends meet my mum kind of left me uh being babysat by a family called the piles jerry pile and shirley pile just turns out that he's like one of the most renowned london gangsters you know ronnie craze best man and all this stuff and my earliest memories were just like being shut in a room smashing plates you know all i could hear and and really what i think i was i had this perception of a lack of security i was you know there was no certainty in my life as a childhood it was like dad's gone you know i'm left with these people there's all people knocking on the door all the time and i guess that just kind of shaped who I am on this drive for security um and there was there was a coincidental moment in my childhood that kind of changed the way that I looked at things and that was every Friday um the the parents on our block used to kind of congregate on these steps at the foot of our block and they used to talk about the week and I was a nosy 13 year old kid and I remember them moaning about money and moaning about you know my boss and they just kind of had this negative view towards money and i wasn't particularly looking out for that but the reason i i picked up on it was because at half seven this guy called roy would come down and take everyone's money and go and do a syndicate lottery and for the next 10 minutes their faces would light up they'd be like yeah they'd be like oh it's so good my life would be amazing and i just remember thinking but you've just said money's bad you know you're associating money with evil or whatever and now if you won the lottery you'd have an amazing life like and i just remember thinking it was weird and coincidentally that year i want really wanted this this bmx for my for my birthday my 14th birthday the mongoose sniper chrome and i put all these photo um you know photo prints of it around uh my mom's flat just to give her hints and she said look we can't afford the bike but if you can raise half we can put half towards it her and my stepdad so i was like that's a deal you know so i went out and started washing the cars on this triangular green and I washed one car for this lady called Lynn she gave me five pound plus two pound tip and I remember being in my room that night thinking I'm gonna have this bike in no time you know I told my friend how excited I was and all this and he said I'll help you and I was like well I don't really want to pay you but anyway my stepdad came in he said I'm going to the shop do you want anything from the shop and something made me give him everything I learned that day to get another bucket and sponge but the next day we washed four cars between us and then within four weeks i had four friends washing cars and i wasn't washing cars i was just doing all the fun stuff knocking on the door collecting the money booking for next week you know going block to block to block and i just remember thinking like i'd discovered fire at that point it was like this must be why people struggle with money because if you use it this way it's amazing you can get what you want and do less of the things that you don't want to do and do more of the things you do want to do and i just remember that was a big like aha moment for me.
3:40Well, that was your hope moment as well. Those adults around you that had gone into the syndicate for those six, seven minutes had maybe a false hope. You were in control of your destiny at that point. You've unlocked purpose in your brain and you've unlocked a whole kind of knowledge of being an entrepreneur. That was your early journey from entrepreneurship. I guess so, yeah. I mean, I didn't know what entrepreneur was. In fact, the first time I was told that I was entrepreneurial where I went, oh yeah, it was like when I was like 37 or something by my accountant. you know and he was like oh you're you're you're uh you're entrepreneurial well let's carry that journey on because from from that realization and kind of finding fire creating fire which is entrepreneurial you had people working for you you had money coming in take me through the kind of journey you went through to be someone now so kind of free if you like yeah so i mean as i say i believe that our our values are shaped when you're a child so whatever you perceive to be missing most becomes your highest value and or you can take the other side and accept that that's the reality you know the apple never falls too far from the tree or you just go i'm not having that you know i want the opposite as we were speaking about off camera but that was me and i guess subconsciously you just guide your way towards what you value most which for me it was security it was just stability i just want to know where my things are i want no chaos you know no disruption no confrontation i just want a smooth and easy life and i've obviously navigated the world and found that money provides a lot of that security so money was like a tool money was a means and i've always used money as a tool so i've seen money for not good or bad it's just a thing that if you use it correctly you can get it can liberate you give you more options it can you know and so so going into work you know i always had this drive to become financially independent and then um they had some unexpected news when i was 22 years old that was going to have our first son and that just kind of put a rocket up my backside you know it was like right i keep talking about it keep you know and at the time i was really fascinated with microsoft money which was this kind of tool like a flowered up excel sheet that they sold as a program and i remember putting all my you know my income into there and doing all these nice charts and projections and i remember looking at it thinking so if i save 10 of my income at 10 per year it will match the return from that will match my income in 20 years and i just remember thinking that's weird you know they teach you to go to school and work for 45 like imagine if they just taught that but then i wanted to take it a bit further and i kind of become obsessed with shortening this time down so that i could spend as much time with my son when he when he came you know because i felt like i was a failure when i found out i was going to have a have our first kid all that rushed through my head was like my dad leaving not being a great dad and i didn't feel ready i was a kid myself i suppose and um i thought i've got to do something about this you know so it just drove me and i handed in my notice my the company i worked for we'd just moved into a bigger house and um and it was kind of back against the wall accountability to make make it work and uh and yeah it became very stressful because i started to build a business to control my income i was paying myself as much money from the business as possible to become financially you know into the pots and uh and then it was a sinking ship basically so at the last stage of that i tried to look at higher speculative things that would just increase the return but without too much volatility so i was looking at like online poker and um and options trading and all that anyway after over a period about three years i blew about 50 grand in financial markets and learned a lot of lessons and you know after that three years thankfully i became consistent and i saw yeah came good so teens share everything that may include the bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease known as meningitis even if your teen's been vaccinated in the past they could still be missing meningitis vaccinations.
7:44Ask your teen's doctor or visit meningitis.com today. Sponsored by GSK. Trying to be a bit more mindful of things you buy for you and your family? Well, when it comes to laundry, choose All Free Clear. 100 % free from dyes and perfumes. All Free Clear uses only essential ingredients that tackle tough stains and odors. And it's gentle on the skin. It's a powerful clean you can feel good about. So go on, pick up a bottle of All Free Clear for your next laundry day. So important to share that though, right? Because everything I've seen, listened and watched about you now, which is recent, is a very smiley, happy Jason.
8:27And I actually want to come back to that word, happy, actually. but there's graft there's risk taking this failure along the way to have learned the lessons that then have allowed you to streamline to where you are now and zero support like people start turning on you you know even my extended family and and people they start doubting you what you're doing and you know and that's real tough that's tough to deal with but if it's if it's important to you and you believe in it you just have to go for it and then if you what i've found in my life is the more you lead by example and do what you say you're going to do, people get on board, people trust you more.
9:04There was a period of time where my wife, I'd be like, right, I'm going to do this. And she'd be like, what? You can't, you know, crazy. And then I'd do it the second time and she'd be like, okay, you sure? And now I can take the biggest risk. She's just like, what? Because there's confidence there. You've built a track record. Track record. Which probably extends to yourself as well, right? There's probably, there's always, I'm a fellow entrepreneur as well, right? There's an element of starting something, trying something, but there's a nagging there's a voice in your head saying i hope this works yeah and actually the back against your world and some of the the factors you said about actually what really drive me and another thing is visualization going right back to the bike you remember the model of the bike you wanted right back when you were a kid and that whole either running towards something you really want or running away from what clearly was a really stressful um high anxiety environment for you have you ever worked out which one's stronger because i've got a bit of both we wouldn't be talking here now if i hadn't had all sorts of pain and stuff that didn't go right for me to then have a proper pivot i was like what do i actually get fulfilled from what do i want to do um to then run towards that as well but i was running away from something that i really had you know pain from if you like yeah i think for me pain's always the strongest driver so like i'm at a very complacent time in my life now where I'm not driven to make money or make sales you know and that was actually that was important because when I was younger I had an idea of what my dream life would look like and when I got there I was really content and and now you know I have no goals or aspirations really not not that I strive for and if I do they are deliberate and aligned with who I am whereas I see a lot of people they don't really have an idea they don't exercise gratitude when they get to the point of what you know imagine years ago you could say you're going to live this life today you would you'd kill for it it'd be like that is a dream life right so I had this idea of what my dream life was when I reached that it was like I'm happy you know if I'd lived every day like this now for the rest of my life I'd die a very happy person that's where I'm at now that's where you are now yeah so there's an expression the comfort zone is where dreams go to die and I had something I felt was my happy place about eight nine ten years ago where I've built a business up there's income coming in because of the way it was a property development company in multiple projects you've got a disproportionate amount of money that would come in as you kind of close down these SPVs and so on and so I didn't have to do too much having grafted and built a team and built relationships a lot of that then was sort of cookie cutting and I thought I'd I thought I cracked it but actually I got rusty I got um I wasn't match fit when things then didn't start to go well and things had changed outside of my control from COVID to the Grenfell Tower disaster that affected specifically kind of the town centre apartments and it doesn't feel like you've got any of that going on in your head but for me I then had to come back into a place where I wasn't I wasn't ready I wasn't kind of prepared to deal with it what are you doing to keep yourself almost above that you've got a book coming out for example you've got things that are happening but what are you doing kind of here whereby that happy jason won't be disrupted or won't get distracted yeah i want to do something else for sure um just really being um strict on congruency of who i am and anything that i do has to align with who i am as a person and then any milestone that i tick off as a result of doing that just seem the magic is like when you're not trying to do stuff it's almost impossible not to have more opportunities like it's almost like an energy thing right the fact that i'm on this show with you is is not something i was like i've got you know i've got to get here i've got to get i've got to get on there it was just put out your love creativity your energy and things just happen and importantly you chose that so you're you're very much completely in control of your your destiny know your decision making you chose to be here today no one told you to be you choose what you're doing later tomorrow that's a key part of being happy isn't it yeah and I always make sure that you know there's a great saying you value your time more than you value money you'll end up with plenty of both and I always make sure that uh you know my calendar is filled with things that I want to do and are aligned with who I am as a person and everything just works out like the fact that I've written a book.
13:30Yes, I'm going to get that might unlock other opportunities, but it's not something I'm going, right, I've got to get this many people. We've got to get this, you know, got to do that, got to do that. It's just happening now. And I was, I was in Dubai a few weeks back and there was a guy, a business owner. He said, right, next target for us is 50 million. And I was like, oh, right. Well, why 50 million? It's a bit of a round number. And he was like, oh, you know, it's just the next, the next number. And I was like, you know, you've got to put in a lot of effort and sacrifice to get to that now probably a couple of years for you really pushing and building teams maybe your wife would get upset your kids would get upset and and it turns out that the 50 million was just to like prove an ex wrong or like an old boss you know and i thought it's not freedom like you're a slave to someone else's thoughts and uh when you hit it you're not really gonna care they won't they don't even care and and it's like he's the guy that will then set the next target for 100 million right he's never he's not going to be he's not going to be happy constantly sacrificing today's happiness for tomorrow's profit and before you know it you know tomorrow never comes no and it's gone congruency which i think it's not talked about enough for me that's the over a to z of the whole kind of there's no missing bit there's no uh part that you're kind of hiding from if you like or not being genuine and authentic and i can really feel that authenticity coming through i was going to ask you before we sat down if you're happy i can feel it wow i can see it it resonates off you so a lot of people that will be watching listening or already kind of follow if you like will be like how do i get to that i'm not i'm not saying you're the answer but how can people take steps towards building clearly what is financial freedom that allows you to be free which you could argue is happiness happiness yeah i said just yesterday you know you've become a lot more free making sure if you're doing what you enjoy than you would trying to bet on a crypto coin or something you know you just structure your life so that you feel like you're not working you feel freer and congruency is the key congruency to me is is like this internal voice that makes sure that you're on your path and the way that i always explain it is like imagine a camera on you 24 7 in your house um you know is there anything that you wouldn't want the outside world to see and and if there is then that's probably something you don't love about yourself or something or you're bitching about someone who you know you're bad mouthing someone well they shouldn't be in your life or they you know deal with that um and and if you are trying to hide something then you're not congruent because you're saying one thing or doing one thing but showing the world another thing and if you can just iron out all those little bits and pieces you you end up with a really congruent message you're not trying to hide you're not restricted from scaling because you don't want to or don't want them to hear that or don't want them to see that post or you know that's not authentic right exactly you're cherry picking a little bit and then the congruency part has just dismantled the whole thing i think and you're doing really well with your social media uh growth and audience there and i think I'm certainly now just craving authenticity, trying to find the people that I can learn from that have got the congruency rather than there's a bit there.
16:40Then you see somewhere else, they're doing something completely different, saying something, you're like, you called it out, right? Yeah. I mean, the reason I invite people to my house, you know, I bring my son, my son's here now, you know, on this shoot so that everything I say, you know, I can't hide anything. My son's sitting there, you know, he lives with me, he's watching me grow up and just things like that i think if you if you're true to yourself you'll have the best life you'll unlock the best life because you're being who you want to be you're doing what you want to do and you know the financial element is really just kind of how much time you could buy into the future should you wish to or you need to stop doing what you're doing because when you're in that position you don't subordinate to the idea of retirement or escapism it's just like i want to do this every day for you know i don't want to go to bed sometimes i'm like there's not enough hours in the day i just want to love that i just want to keep going but um you know the financial element's almost the least important bit actually it's just what underpins the other freedoms and allows you to stop if you need to look after a loved one or if you need to take your foot off the gas for whatever reason but if you if you do need that and you want that now then that is a that's a signal that you're not quite doing something that you should be doing or there's some little niggle you know some chink in the armor somewhere that you need to you need to deal with and own and love or get rid of put the time into it yeah you mentioned the fact you can't do a lot of what you are doing without having built that financial freedom with the knowledge and the experience you've got now and i'm thinking of there's there's a program isn't it in the us where they kind of send a billionaire out into some unknown town with no nothing and he's going to kind of almost start again is there one key part of building financial freedom that you would lock in on is there one aspect and is there one thing you would do again it all like the biggest problem that i see with people not achieving financial freedom is again looking up to pleasing and appeasing other people social pressures social idealisms again moving you away from congruency and who you are buying things to impress other people you know making sure that whatever it is that you're spending your money on is building your future and something you want and being spent on things that are meaningful to you rather than meaningful to the ex you know because you want to show off or meaningful to dave next door because he just bought the second ferrari or you know whatever it might be but and and don't get me wrong i know people love cars and yes they should spend money on cars because that's a thing but a lot of people that are buying things it's just to look the part and then what i look at if there's something that i see that i think you know you've just spent that much money on that i just look at it as time but how much time could that buy you based on your living costs right now you know how much what are your monthly living costs and what is that a multiplication of your living costs you know because if you just put that into buying time you'd have all that freedom and yeah I love that so I want to bring this back to you so you've achieved this kind of freedom that you could argue everybody craves and you will have your investments you'll have your sort of financial structure to be able to fund you and you'll have a timeline on that what do you do to treat yourself are you past all that are there things that you know is it experiences is it still some shiny things that actually make you enjoy your money yeah um i like you know if i meet people who are up to great things i like to invest in that i like to invest in um experiences still from my family you know really that's it we've got like tiny little time on the earth now i just want to i want to see some things i want to experience some cultures i want to go places and that's probably the majority of my costs um and other than that you know guitars you know so there is a guilty pleasure that's where i wanted to go that's probably it yeah i've i've got too many guitars but um i love it yeah i actually love music that's that's my thing so i ask everybody that comes on each of my stories what their definition of success is what's yours being who you want to be like that is it it's just i know it's so simple no but i love it it's there's the repetition's good like just do away with other your own ego ego other people's opinions and thoughts being who you want to be is such a simple phrase right but if you it's a sort of phrase that you could like sit and meditate on study you know and really just get to grips with being who you want to be like your daily actions are they aligned with who you want to be you know the way you speak one of the questions i ask business owners is like what would your business look like if you didn't need money you know what what products would you build who would you put up with as clients who would you sack off as clients you know how would you treat your staff how would you treat your team and and it when you put it that way it comes from a place of like your own inspiration your love who you are as a person being true to yourself and if you're not doing that you know why then then why because money you shouldn't need money to to do that you're off path you thought you'd end up here but you're here that's such a powerful message in that and this is something we briefly talked about off camera much I want to bring up now going back to you only really touching it but your upbringing was hard it was tough you know and there wasn't really a mentor certainly a father figure that for you to draw upon and a lot of people will have a sort of victim mindset you know I was born in the wrong postcode you know I didn't come from money so it was never going to be something I could have when you clearly firstly kind of blown the doors off that and showing that you can what advice would you give to someone and that might not even be a young person that might be someone that's still got that mindset yeah don't subordinate to what things that you label negative affecting you in the past like that doesn't dictate your future um something i said the other day on on another podcast was like imagine you come home and find your partner cheating on you right uh at the moment in time it's like the worst thing the worst thing ever happened you know you get a fear of going out dating trust issues all that kind of stuff 20 years later if i asked you if it was the worst thing you'd be like no it's the best thing that happened right i met this person had these kids traveled this built this life so imagine if it didn't take 20 years imagine if you could just see the thing for the event that it was and it's gone from the worst event to the best event so you know it was just an event right so every time you feel like you've got something going against you try and see the lessons in it try and see the positives in it and the same goes for every time something really goes your way you know don't get too cocky just see the downsides in it and the drawbacks and something you might be missing and it'll just keep you level it keep it will keep you poised and you'll see things what they truly are rather than being a victim or you know life is happening to me and you'll be a driver instead of a slave to life a passenger a passenger yeah i love that's good advice and a key part that goes almost sort of hand in hand with wanting to be the best version of ourselves which of course in in context of that freedom element is uh financial side of things and then you talk about movement um and i want to sort of just open that up about um your fitness you're clearly in good shape right and so i want to know there's countless podcasts books uh you know uh successful people if you like that talk about the morning routine up at four in the morning running a marathon meditating where do you sit with that because i can see you keep fit so we know that is good for mental fitness but what works for you movement is about um not for me it's so morning routine yeah i i get up and spend an hour just in thought um i have one of few people that i know have a thinking time blocked into my calendar like it's a real thing and what time is that uh usually around 5 a.m i get up at 4 45 5 a.m you know i try not to have coffee until an hour hour and a half after i've woken up so that time is really just spent just thinking and intentional thinking about like you know what's happening what i want to do am i totally undistracted yeah just undistracted no social media nothing like that no no nothing um and then i do my check my market check the you know my investments and trading and stuff like that and then i go to the gym and then the rest of the day is honestly just pretty clear like i'll well now we do youtube videos and stuff like that but it's uh yeah we just i just tinker about i'm a big fan of the the saying all the gear no idea i just want to keep learning new things tinkering around you know constantly expand my mind and curious yeah just the best way to be yeah so that's that's my day but movement freedom is to me is yeah being in a healthy fit state but also your your day-to-day tasks like how you how you you operate on a daily basis are you doing things that are uninspiring or are you doing things that are inspiring and most people spend 80 percent of their time doing you know things that they're not inspired by and a great exercise that you can do for that is a time study i always recommend time studies of the week you know note down every hour what you're doing and and then you get a list of how you're spending your time and then you can just start delegating or changing the things that you don't like doing and you're not good at and then spend more time doing things you are good at and then you move more freely you feel more free in your movement yeah do you get a lot of people coming because you're out there as someone that is effectively um showing a sort of almost like a mentoring way of how to do it do you get an outpouring of people asking for advice and is there one key kind of question that just keeps coming up yeah um what stock to buy no i mean it's a joke but it's a serious thing right when people ask me what should i invest in what can i get you know what can i sometimes it's from people who are just looking to diversify but most of the time it's for people that want to escape they want the quickest way and i say to them the best freedom you're going to get is just sorting your life out you know making sure that you don't want to escape the life if you want to escape the life you're going to make bad investment decisions anyway you know you're going to try and get the i always talk about bitcoin bitcoin's only ever gone up but how many people lost money on bitcoin thousands of them how because your mindset can't keep up with the volatility of it it can't you know you don't understand that you put too much in um so you want to just build a life that you don't need to escape from and then you can start learning about investments after that because then you're making sensible poised decisions and that is what I, you know, probably the most important message.
27:29Everyone's looking for a shortcut, aren't they? It feels like everyone wants a quick win. I think social media doesn't help. I mean, fair play you and Ethan making, your son making these videos. They're so educational. I've watched a lot of them. They're, you know, it's where I won't lie. I had to kind of quickly Google congruency. It was like, God, we're going to bring that up and I've got to remind myself. And then I'm like, yeah, that really makes sense. So it all links into trying to be that best version of yourself that allows you to then make those decisions to choose how you invest there's a huge lack of ego with you as well right we could talk about all the things you've achieved and done and you could sort of almost put them into numbers if you like but that's clearly not of interest we wouldn't do that anyway right but the point is that's not of interest you know what i mean you go to some of these particularly sort of high profile business things and there's a guy that wants to really wants you to sort of ask him about his business that he sold and then the numbers how do you manage that because hand in hand with success is often ego but you've you've got that well managed i think one of it was just having an idea of what my dream life looked like when you achieve that you know it doesn't have to be like extravagance it can just be i just want to you know match 70 grand a year or 60 grand or whatever it is important to you right you match that and you're doing what you love then it really you gain a confidence that you just don't have to prove anything to anyone don't have to prove it i love that you know and that's really it it's just having the having the confidence to to be happy in your own skin and not have anything to prove and also there's many ways that you can achieve you know i don't i don't think i'm right i don't think i'm wrong i just did it my way but it works for you and it's that's all that matters and people need to do what makes them happy yeah i like this visualization element without you even necessarily perhaps even meaning to there's an element of like you almost sort of wince with your eyes and you go to a place where you can see it and then crucially then you're probably working out the steps to take to get to that and then and then by default that must be one very satisfying and also it's not like you're like we talked previously not then trying to go again okay no that worked and then there's other things you might start hence being naturally curious i'm conscious of time i could probably ask you another 50 questions but so to wrap up your book's coming out what's it called and why did you write it uh it's called always free and that used to be just a saying that i you know when whenever our friends would be like i'd want to go to the cinema do you want to go out for a meal soon and i would just my aunts would be like yeah just let me know i'm always free you know and it would all be down to their calendars kind of thing and after a while they're like what how are you always free you know what is this and it was kind of a bit of a joke but you know they sort of said are you drunk you're dealing drugs or you know all this kind of stuff and um after a while after the kind of humor died down it almost became an affirmation like free from societal opinions societal idealisms and pressures and pleasing and appeasing mum and dad or keeping up with the joneses financially free you know and it became this this thing this real tangible thing and then there was a time where i was hanging out with a lot of entrepreneurs did a lot of networking and I met people that were born into wealth and they were they had enough money to do whatever they want go wherever they want but they were unhappy and they were unhappy because they had no purpose no mental freedom you know no drive and they were like unanchored you know and and I would meet people who are really good at earning money this is really common entrepreneurs raking it in every month but had no money I had nothing to show for it and it was like this constant next month we've got to hit the next month we've got to hit the thing you know and then i met people who are really spiritual and really happy in their own skin they love their job but they had no money and and you know they weren't earning money and i realized that freedom is about being free in mind movement and money and mind is first you know having the mental freedom to actually be who you want to be and then building a life and a vocation and an income around an extension of who you are so that it doesn't feel like work and at that point you're free right the financial freedom is the last piece that allows you to stop if you have to and that's what always free goes back to choice yeah yeah so always free is about choice having a empty calendar that is put together or inspired by you and a bank account big enough to or investments or assets that allow you to stop if you wish.
31:54And that's it. Awesome purpose behind that book. With all the experience and the wealth of knowledge you've got, I can't wait to read it. I've got one last question. The whole term money doesn't make you happy. Where do you sit with that? And I guess there's different ways you can go with it. But, you know, there are, you said it, there are very, very wealthy people, whether they're self-made or not, that are not happy. There are people that seemingly have nothing. And they have the biggest smile. how do you sort of almost sort of make that whole saying make sense in our conversation money um is a so look money is a tool for that was created for fair exchange that's it humans are the only people that believe in money and there's only one way to get money and that's from another human being and there's two ways to get you to beat them at a skill in a sport and there's a competitive environment and there's agreed to be a winner and a loser or you serve them which give you fulfillment and they pay you in fair exchange for that and that is the medium of fair exchange that's what money was created for really i believe that if you can serve people in a way that's inspiring to you and means something to you and they're paying you then there's no you don't see money as a as a good or bad it is actually a fair exchange you know you feel fair and if you feel guilty for taking money off someone then you you're not serving them to the highest level that you could possibly serve them.
33:17I love that. That's brilliant. I've never... I've never heard anyone say it like that before. I had no idea what you were going to say, but that's... That's powerful. Right. I said it already. I could keep talking to you, but thank you. Thank you. The conversation that I was looking forward to, this has been... It's been awesome. Thanks, mate. Thank you.
From the publisher
In this episode of Extraordinary Life Stories, John Reynolds talks with Jason Graystone.
Jason Graystone started his first business at 22 years old. Since then, he has built multimillion-dollar businesses online as well as the service sector.As well as a successful entrepreneur, Jason is a professional investor, speculator and angel investor. His love for investing allowed him to become completely financially free by the time he was 30 years old.




