Love, Loss and Leadership with Joel Brown

He found God at the height of his success, then everything he believed got tested. Sensitive content warning - This episode discusses stillbirth, pregnancy loss and miscarriage in detail. If that is not for you today, come back to this one another time. Joel Brown built Addicted2Success into one of the largest personal development sites in the world, reaching over 146 million views. He was on stages, in films alongside Tony Robbins and Jack Canfield, and turning down seven-figure offers before he was twenty-five. He describes arriving at all of it and feeling a gaping hole in his chest that none of it filled, until a woman standing in the water on a beach in Tulum asked him a question he had never been asked. The conversation turns to what came after. He and his wife lost their daughter at thirty-eight weeks, two weeks out from a planned home birth, with no explanation any doctor could give them. Two miscarriages followed before their son arrived. Joel talks about the anger, about watching his wife pull away from God and find her way back, about the box they carried home from the hospital, and about what he means when he says he has become friends with grief. It also covers what he sees in the men he works with. The Superman complex, the midlife squeeze Ray Dalio describes, why men hold things until something breaks, and what fatherhood taught him about capacity that fifteen years of high performance never did. This one is for anyone carrying a loss nobody has been able to explain to them. "I've become friends with grief. I've learned how to sit with it more than I ever had." — Joel Brown KEY TAKEAWAYS Why success at twenty-four left him feeling empty The question on a beach in Tulum that started everything What losing a baby does to a marriage, and what held theirs The midlife squeeze, and why men hold things until they break What grief actually feels like years later What fatherhood changed about capacity and time FEATURED IDEA A belief only becomes yours at the point it costs you something. Joel came to faith through argument. He studied apologetics and theology, read his way in, and describes being able to sit with his wife and answer the hard questions when she was still working them out. Losing his daughter moved the whole thing out of the realm of argument. After it, the only question left was whether he would still stand on any of it with nothing in his hands to show for it. What he describes finding on the other side is a faith he no longer has to defend, and a capacity to sit with other people in the worst week of their lives. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Welcome, and how they know each other 3:12 - Building Addicted2Success and what it cost 5:24 - The stardom years and the emptiness under it 7:45 - A question on a beach in Tulum 9:53 - Coming to faith too hard, then finding balance 14:34 - How he met his wife, and what changed first 22:46 - What culture gets wrong about marriage 26:52 - The Superman complex and the midlife squeeze 31:28 - Losing their daughter at thirty-eight weeks 36:05 - Going home from the hospital 40:51 - Becoming friends with grief 45:32 - Finding meaning without forcing it 49:31 - What he says to people who message him now 51:54 - Fatherhood, capacity and regulation RESOURCES AND CONNECT ABOUT JOEL BROWN Joel Brown is the founder of Addicted2Success.com and a coach, speaker, and host known for turning mindset work into measurable change. Featured in the Think and Grow Rich film, his podcast has passed 7 million downloads. He has coached more than 12,400 people worldwide and is known for pairing high-performance strategy with practical neuroscience tools that help people rewire how they think, lead, and execute. Addicted2Success: www.addicted2success.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjoelbrown Follow/Reach Sarah - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahblackah Email: [email protected] Mentioned in the episode - Think and Grow Rich, the film Joel appears in Ray Dalio, Principles, and the midlife squeeze he describes Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning This week, if you know someone carrying a loss that nobody has been able to explain, send them this episode without a message attached to it. Joel says the thing that helped most was another father who had been there first, and who said nothing clever at all. #TheReceivingEdge #Stillbirth #PregnancyLoss #GriefAndFaith #JoelBrown #Fatherhood #MensMentalHealthSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.