... And I Breathed

Jason Garner: Ha, that's correct! You know, my whole life I'd had friends who would always tell me, "Hey, you need to write a book!" but that book that they were talking about was kind of an arrogant autobiography of growing up poor, living in a trailer in Arizona and working at the flea market and then ending up working with rock stars at a great company like Live Nation. And that never appealed to me: I was always the guy behind the scenes and I didn't have a lot of interest in "pounding my chest," but as I started to get to know myself better, and as I started to study with many of these great teachers that I'd been blessed to study with, my friends started to notice changes in me and they started to say it again, "Hey, you should write a book!"

And this time the kind of book that I started to envision really made sense: a book where I was able to share my experiences from the heart, and really not a self-help book, but really a book about self-love, and my journey learning to really love myself and to care for myself. And so one day I sat down and I didn't get back up, other than to go to the bathroom and eat and sleep a bit, for 14 days. And over those 14 days, this book just kind of poured from me, and lots of tears, and it was really great therapy. And lots of laughs and joy too and, really, wonderment at the amazing gift of life in this journey that I'm blessed to be able to share with others. And hopefully my book can be a friend to people who are on a journey similar to mine.

Rachel Salaman: And it does span a lot of things including your career which is a fascinating story. As I said, you started your career working in a flea market. Could you describe that market for us to give us a picture of what it was like?

Jason Garner: Yes, it was on the grounds of a drive-in movie theater which... I laughed because lots of people don't know what those are any more, but the big screens outdoors and you pull up in your car and there would be a little speaker that you put on your window...

And so the movies happened at night, and during the daytime this 30 acre parcel of land was empty, and so, on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, we conducted a flea market on those grounds, and I was not yet a 16-year-old teenager, a high school student looking for a summer job. I had a friend who worked at the flea market and it was perfect because we could work just weekends, Saturday and Sunday, and go to school during the week. And the job paid $2 an hour more than every other job that us kids could get, and so I jumped at it. And you just have to picture this place with 800 or 1,000 individual entrepreneurs selling all kinds of treasures out of cardboard boxes, and everything from their garage sale items, to tires, to collectibles, to t-shirts, and plants and flowers and fruits and vegetables... and all the people from the surrounding neighborhoods that would drive over to get a bargain.

And so this place that started out as my after school job really turned into my business school and I arrived at that job with a storyline of poverty from my family and I graduated from that job really understanding that I really could be an entrepreneur. And all it took was some courage and then just finding something that I could buy at the right price and I could sell for a little bit more that people wanted – and that's kinda been the story of my life, that was my business school.

Rachel Salaman: So what different jobs did you do there?

Jason Garner: Oh wow, well I started, kind of the lowest job was, I was a parking attendant in the dirt parking lots, and there was one part of this large property that didn't have asphalt on it and you'd stand out there for eight hours parking cars and getting dusty, and it wasn't the greatest of jobs – and then I slowly moved up. I put out the cones in the morning to line the driveway so that people knew where to drive, and eventually I became a supervisor who supervised the people that did that. And eventually I was put in charge of food and beer sales on this patio that was at the flea market.

And that's my first foray into becoming a concert promoter, because we built a little stage on the patio and we booked local bands to play, and we noticed that when the bands played people would sit and eat a little bit more and drink a little bit more, and that revenue of the business would go up. And so that was my first foray into the concert business and by the time my time at the flea market ended I had occupied all of the jobs and I was the manager running the business and that was right before I moved into becoming a concert promoter.

Rachel Salaman: Thinking back to that time what do you think it was that enabled you to rise through the ranks like that?

Jason Garner: Growing up with my mom: my mom was a single mom and my dad had abandoned the family. You know, my mom was this really loving, hardworking woman who was a daycare teacher, but would work any job to make ends meet and so there were times during my childhood that my mom was working three jobs. She was an aide at my school, she worked with physically challenged children while I was at school, and then she would pick me up from school and she would take me to her job as a daycare teacher.

And I think there was such a strong story that money was going to bring me happiness. I looked at my mom and saw her struggling, and I would hear her crying at night trying to figure out how to pay the tax bill, and I think inside me what became clear as a young child was, I need to make money, I need to end this story. And so there was really nothing that was going to stop me from doing that.

And so when I got to the flea market where everyone was making money, for me it was just like, wow! And it blew my mind because I had no idea that normal people that didn't maybe have the best education, or didn't have some pedigree, could actually become an entrepreneur and make money. So I was really driven by that. And I think probably, in a very heartfelt way, I wanted to save my mom – I think that's probably true as well.

Rachel Salaman: Now you've mentioned how you moved into the promoting business at the beginning. Could you tell us a little bit more about that and how that side of your career progressed?

Jason Garner: One day I went to Las Vegas, Nevada, and I happened by chance to hop in an elevator and Julio Cesar Chavez, the big boxing champion, was in the elevator. And I had taught myself a little bit of Spanish at the flea market: I thought I spoke a lot of Spanish, but in retrospect I was bumbling along in Spanish and he only spoke Spanish. But I said "hi" to him and I think he was intrigued by this blond-haired, blue-eyed kid who was trying to talk Spanish. We became friends. And so through him I learned a lot more Spanish, and through him people would see me on TV in his dressing room or would know that I was friends with him. And so, when the flea market ended, along with a partner, I started a Spanish-language concert business in Northern California near San Francisco, and we started promoting all kinds of bands in Spanish.

We started off really small and we were actually doing rodeos with Mexican bands, and eventually a new pop star came onto the market named Enrique Iglesias, who is now a huge star. But at the time he was the new kid on the block and we were lucky enough to get the rights to promote his concerts, and that really kind of put me on the map as a concert promoter. I began a lifelong friendship with Enrique, who has been a dear friend, and that really was the beginning of my concert career.

Rachel Salaman: And as your career progressed, you went from being self-employed to being an employee at Clear Channel Entertainment, which is a global company. So that was an interesting transition. What did you learn from making that transition and was it difficult?

Jason Garner: I learned I hate to work for people! Hahaha! You know, I learned that there was still a little boy in me who didn't want to be told what to do and then I had a lot of growing up to do, and that process of learning to work as a team... Because as an individual entrepreneur it's hard because you're responsible for paying your own bills, but it's also easy because you don't have to really team build, you don't have to network, you don't have to give and take. And in fact, sometimes, as individual entrepreneurs we pride ourselves on being a little gritty and a little crabby or grouchy, so I had that in me and I was still very young and I was working now in a huge publicly traded company And I took some knocks, to knock some of the arrogance out of me and teach me that success really comes from teamwork, success really comes from connection. And that's really what that experience began to teach me. And as that company transitioned into what is now Live Nation, and I met my mentor and boss and someone that I describe as my first guru, Michael Rapino, he continued to hone that and refine that And he really taught me how to be a leader, and forced me to grow up in the way that I approached business and approached others.

Rachel Salaman: The importance of mentors comes through very strongly in your book. In your view, and also in your experience, what's the value of having and being a mentor, do you think?

Jason Garner: I had the disadvantage I think as a young boy of not having a dad, but when I look back it was an advantage, because I was constantly looking for that male leadership. I had a very strong mother and so I learned very much from her the values that she imparted on me, but I didn't really have a role model for what it was like to be a man. And so from a very young age, whether it was my high school teacher or people at the flea market or as I mentioned, Michael Rapino, I was blessed to learn from these people.

And I think so often we go into situations with a chip on our shoulder trying to show that we know it all. Because we're taught as children that we're good when we know things, right? What we learn in school, is the person that knows the alphabet gets a hug from the teacher and a gold sticker. And so that continues into life, and subconsciously we're afraid of not knowing it all, not having all the answers, and I think what these mentors were able to teach me is they each had gems, they each had little bits that I was able to glean. And really when I look in the mirror at my life and at myself I just see parts of these beautiful teachers that I continue to find today. And you can't separate those pieces: it's like a mosaic on a wall, it's like the mosaic is the picture, but when you look closely there's lots of pieces of glass in the thing and each one of those mentors left, to different degrees, varying pieces of glass. And in all of those lessons that I learned throughout my life, I look back now and just because my life has taken a different slant, they are all still applicable. I have moments where I can just hear a mentor whispering something in my ear and I have the answer, and that's such a blessing for me.

Rachel Salaman: You talk quite a lot about what you learnt from Michael Rapino who we have just been talking about. You say that one of the secrets of his success was his ability to weave the personal into business talk, which I thought was quite interesting. What do you mean by that?

Jason Garner: I meant that, you have a meeting with him and you really walk away believing that he cares about you. You might have done the business deal that you came to do or you might not have, but there was always this sense with him that he cares, there's always this thing where he had this ability, and has this ability, to connect on a heart level. And where so many people rush you in and out of their office and just want to talk dollars and cents, it was never his style. He taught me that we have an opportunity to touch each other's lives in the course of doing business and in fact not only is that a great personal strategy, but that's a really good business strategy because we start to care about each other.

He would always tell me, "Make sure, whether you get the deal or not, that you establish a personal investment with the person that you're talking to because you never know what's going to come down the road." And so often in a personality-driven business like the entertainment business, that would pay off. So, often I would hear, "Hey, five years ago when we didn't give you the deal, we were so impressed by the fact that we still remained friends, and you kept calling to check in on us, and now an opportunity has opened."

And you know, that wasn't me, that was Michael whispering in my ear: this idea of forming connections and really caring about people. And I think when we look at business now, there is this trend, this really positive trend in the world, where we see business really opening up, and business becoming about heart, and business caring about the lives of its customers and employees. And I just feel blessed that I learned that at a really young age from an amazing mentor and an amazing businessman in Michael Rapino.

Rachel Salaman: And early in his career you say that Michael used to work at the beer company Labatt's. Could you tell us his anecdote about the coolers, which you share in the book?

Jason Garner: I love that story, I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of telling it. So, Michael had been moving his way up through the ranks of the company, and the company was expanding into South America, and he was given the job of building the marketing strategy for that expansion. So he built the kind of strategy that you would imagine: it had neon signs and probably had beer models in it and all the things that we're used to seeing around beer marketing, and he put it into a great presentation and then he went to present it to his mentor, a man named Hugo Powell.

And Hugo listened to the whole presentation and Michael was so proud of himself. And then Hugo said, "What's the one thing that we need to be successful in this marketplace?" and Michael said, "Well that's easy, we need the owner of these little mom and pop liquor stores to give us space in their coolers." And Hugo looked at him and said, "Then why don't we spend all the money on coolers?"

And for me it was a very impactful story because it just cut right to the bone of simplistic out of the box thinking. We get so caught up in the processes that we believe are the way to do things because we see everybody else doing it in a certain way, but often behind that is a really simple solution that if we just look, we can find the coolers in every situation.

So it became a mantra for us at Live Nation. And in my personal life, as I now learn about spirituality and personal growth: that comes with a lot of tradition, a lot of things that you are supposed to do to be holy or good. I found myself going back to that story over and over again and just thinking, "The goal is to be happy, the goal is to be joyful, the goal is to be compassionate, so what is the easy solution here, that might get me there, without having to go through all the hoops, perhaps?"

Rachel Salaman: So you were the CEO of global music at Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter, and that experience led you to believe in compassionate leadership. What are the hallmarks of that type of leadership?

Jason Garner: I think, in a lot of ways, that experience led me to believe in compassionate leadership because, when I look back, I find a lot of places that I wasn't compassionate. In many ways because I lived that life, because I had that grand title that you just said, I'm going to have a different view on how spirituality and business intersects. Because I've sat cross legged in a temple meditating in silence and I've also sat in an executive desk being responsible for 10,000 employees around the world, and so for me compassionate leadership begins with compassion for ourselves.

And I think this is really key: because we often try to jump, when we hear the word "compassion," to the idea of being compassionate towards others, which is obviously very important, and is obviously the end goal. But what I found is that the times when I wasn't a compassionate leader, the times when I was a jerk, the times when I was a bully, were the times where I was being a jerk and a bully to myself in my personal life. The times when I wasn't caring for myself, the times when I wasn't giving myself space, the times when I wasn't honoring my own feelings. So I think that compassionate leadership, and then just compassion in general, begins with being compassionate to ourselves: that we are human beings, that we have desires, that we have fears, that we have things going on in our personal life at the same time that we're trying to do business – and that we just give ourselves a break! It's like, take a really deep, hhhm, haaahhh, that kind of breath. Just let it go. And we give ourselves permission to be human beings, not robots.

Then from there, I think the next step is to then look at every single person that works with us and give them the same permission. And to understand that hey, I might be the boss and that person might be the secretary, but we might be going through the exact same experience at the exact same time.

And this actually happened to me when my mom was passing and I was so caught up in my own grief and misery, pain, that I didn't realize that my secretary's mom had passed just before mine. And it really opened my eyes to, wow, there was an opportunity for two human beings to connect and to probably be there for each other, to support each other in long hours of work. And yet I couldn't think beyond my title to see that other people around me are just like me, they're human beings. And so I think the next step in compassionate leadership is I find myself in everybody that I work with.

And then, three, once we're there we now have this really beautiful connection, I'm caring for myself, I'm recognizing people around me as human beings, now we can really go out and do magic in the world. Now that invisible boundary of "you don't understand what's going on with me," and "I don't care what's going on with you," that's gone. And now you have a team operating from the heart, who is able to then take those values out into the world and touch consumers, touch customers, touch clients, whatever the business might be.

So I think that's where it begins and then I think we're starting to see in the world where it can lead, with things as simple, well not as simple, as grand as what we see the tech community doing around discriminatory laws in the United States. Where leaders like Marc Benioff, who lead from the heart, are looking out into the world and saying "I'm not going to do business in communities where there is discrimination, I'm going to make sure that women are paid the same as men, I'm going to make sure that my company reflects the values that come from my heart." And I think that's really beautiful and it feels to me like that's the future of where we're heading as a business community.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned your mother died and this was a big turning point for you. You decided that your career at Live Nation had run its course after that. Tell us what you did next.

Jason Garner: Well, I cried a lot. I actually had someone ask me a question the other day that said, "Were you embarrassed to write a book in which you were on the floor sobbing for so much of the time?" and I said "No," because I think that's humanity. I think it's really hard when our parents die unexpectedly at a young age. So I cried. I went to therapy, a lot of therapy, and I started to really understand the programing that made up Jason. I started to understand what was going on inside me.

And then I began a journey of meeting beautiful teachers, beginning with Guru Singh, who became the father that I never had, and a trip to the Shaolin Temple to study with the Zen Buddhist monks there... And a whole line of really beautiful learning experiences that are all focused around this idea of learning to understand who I am with the goal of being compassionate towards myself, the goal of loving myself, and then the idea that having filled my heart with self-love it's overflowing and I can share that and I can share that with others.

Rachel Salaman: You touched on the idea of reprograming habits. What are your tips for people who want to turn their unhealthy habits into something better?

Jason Garner: I have found that the easiest way to create new habits is to set up a daily practice. And so for me that looks like: this morning I was up at six in the morning and I start with some really deep breaths, I do 30 minutes or so of yoga and stretching to open my body, to give my body flow, to reduce the tightness. We all want to be flexible and limber and open in life and yet we have these bodies that are atrophied and curled up and we never stretch – we haven't stretched since we played high school sports or something!

So the stretching every morning is very important for me, then I sit in quiet meditation which is a quiet time for me to connect with myself, a quiet time for me to share love with myself. It's a message to myself that I matter, that my feelings matter, just as much as the busy schedule that's ahead in the day. And then throughout the day I try to put as many nutrients into my body, because one of the things that I've learned is that we look at our body as a unit, but our bodies are actually made up of billions and billions of cells, and those cells are all little mini "us"s. And so what we call our toe is 100,000 little cells, and they are all working really hard. And we tend to be really crappy bosses for those cells: we are tyrants, we just expect our bodies to move and move and move, and go and go and go, and don't rest. And then on top of it we fill the body with food that has oftentimes no nutritional value. We drink a soda and we have a burger and we go "I ate!" Well, that wasn't the fill that the body needed.

And so I really believe that nutrients are a message of I love you to the cells. So through these things, and there's many others, but through these habits, by creating things that we do every day that tell our being that we're loved, we start to reprogram, that says you don't find love from spending all Saturday getting drunk or you don't find love from working yourself to death or you don't find love from never sleeping. You find love through these areas, and we retrain our body – and that's the beginning of this healthy lifestyle that I've found just to be so beneficial.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned your daily practice and meditation. Could you talk a bit about how that fits into the idea of mindfulness and what people can gain from exploring mindfulness?

Jason Garner: I think it's just wonderful that we actually now... you can ask that question and no one in the audience will go "what?!" Everyone knows what mindfulness is. So, when we take mindfulness at its core, the word is exactly what it says, it's being mindful, it's being aware, it's being present. So there is a part of mindfulness that is sitting down on a cushion and meditating, but mindfulness can just as easily... When I talk, I tend to pace, so I'm talking to you right now walking around my house, and mindfulness can be just as much me being aware of my toes hitting the wood floor. Or it can be when you pick up a glass of water and feeling your fingers on the glass of water and then watching the glass come up and then feeling the water on the back of your throat...

And so mindfulness when we practice it, we don't have to have it always be this formal process. We can find moments of mindfulness throughout our day. And I think this is where mindfulness really becomes valuable to people with busy schedules: parents, and moms, and dads, and people with busy jobs, because we can find a moment or two where we can just become aware. Our mind starts racing, we start getting worried or we get caught up in our schedule, and we can quickly come right back to the heart by just becoming aware of what we're doing, and that can bring us back into our being and out of the illusion of our thoughts.

Rachel Salaman: So looking back at your career and everything you've achieved and experienced, what are your top three tips for people who want to make a success of their lives?

Jason Garner: The first thing is to become your own best friend and to really learn to appreciate and love and care for who you are. Because from there, from that place of friendship, we have the trust with ourselves to start to make changes.

Then I think the second thing is to then look out into your world and find people who are living parts of life, not necessarily the whole thing... We've got this idea of role models, that we're going to find a role model who embodies everything we want. It doesn't usually work that way, and so I think we can find five or six role models and look for the parts that they have and try to learn from them. And sometimes that's formal mentorship, but sometimes mentorship can be a book or listening to this phone call or whatever it is that we find is a way to get information from somebody.

So we become friends with ourselves, and we look out and we find people who we can emulate, and then to put together a daily practice that builds towards that life that you want to live. That when you ask yourself the question, "What am I building with my life?" the obvious answer is, "That life that I'm dreaming of, that life that I've identified people that have and I want to emulate."

So, friendship with ourselves, finding mentorship, people that exhibit the characteristics that we want to have in our life, and then building a daily practice to support that.

Rachel Salaman: Jason Garner, thanks very much for joining us today.

Jason Garner: Thank you so much, it was a real pleasure.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Jason's book again is "... And I Breathed: My Journey from a Life of Matter to a Life That Matters." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye