Episode 197 – Dr. Fred Moss

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Dr. Fred Moss  0:00  

It’s something like meeting people where there are all kinds of people from everywhere from a crack house to a mansion, I’m able to be with nearly everybody and to start with wherever they are. And maybe it’s in the form of empathy, but it’s at least in the form of curiosity and friendship, or at least willingness to see the world from another person’s eyes and give them the safety to know that they can share their world with me. I think there’s something to that. I think I have that in a way that’s maybe beyond what the average person has and that has mold well, I’m very interested in each and every person I run into. And in fact, when they’re outside the range of we’re already outcast, or having been disenfranchised in some way, they’re even more interesting to me. And I like standing and being with those people. And I think they like standing and being with me and delivering their truth in my space.

 

Richard Matthews  0:56  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what, I can fix that, I can help people, I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success, and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

Richard Matthews  1:51  

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I have the pleasure of having Dr. Fred Moss. Are you there Fred?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  1:58  

I am, good to see you.

 

Richard Matthews  1:59  

Awesome. Glad to have you here. We were talking a little bit ahead of time you’re near me in California right now you’re up in between Reno, is that what you said?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  2:08  

Yeah, a little bit north of Reno and Sacramento and a cool little city called Grass Valley, Nevada County, California. And also what we do share is living in the foothills of this long stretch of Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:20  

So are you above or below the snow line? 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  2:22  

I’m just below the snow line actually. Good question.

 

Richard Matthews  2:26  

That’s where my dad is, just below the snow line, you could drive up 10 miles, you’re in the snow. No snow, it’s just perfect.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  2:33  

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

 

Richard Matthews  2:35  

Cool. So what I wanted to do before we get too far into this is just briefly cover some of your bio information for my audience who may not know who you are. So Dr. Fred Moss, you’re training professionally from Northwestern University Medical School, you’ve been working for four decades in the mental health field with over 40,000 patients there, is that right?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  2:56  

That’s right. I mean, you have to count a patient, someone that I’ve entered a chart node on because some of these patients, I only met for a few seconds because they didn’t know how to talk or something like that. But I had to call them patients because I certainly got credit for seeing them as a patient.

 

Richard Matthews  3:11  

Nice. And now you are the founder of Welcome to Humanity Movement and host of The True Voice Podcasting Mastermind and Methodology. So what I want you to start off with is, tell us a little bit about what you’re known for? What your business is, and who do you serve, what do you do for them?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  3:26  

Yeah, so my whole life has really been committed to the notion that conversation, communication, and human connection are the source of all healing. And I’ve been enchanted with communication since I arrived on Earth. Actually, I had a couple of older brothers and my parents, and I remember watching them from the playpen and really just thinking that they were up to something because they would just bark stuff at each other. And then they would somehow do something. And that was aligned as a result of that type of conversation. So I became really just interested in how conversation moves the world, and I was never one to be low on a conversation. There’s no elementary school teacher that I’ve ever had that has forgotten having me as a student, I’m quite sure. And as I went through school, I kept getting really wanting to learn how to communicate better, learning how to communicate more. And each time I graduated to the next level, I found out that wasn’t a place to communicate more. So I kept on looking forward and forward. And eventually, we fast forward a little bit to the idea that I dropped out of college a couple of times because that sure is how wasn’t going to work. And then after getting a job at a state hospital for adolescents, that communication, again, was being called for and was useful and was not only healing them, but it was healing me. So I went back to school to be a psychiatrist actually, I had no problem for only another 11 or 13 years. And I went back because I didn’t like the way psychiatry had been treating my kids and I thought if I went to psychiatry, I could really learn how to communicate. At the time that was the essence of psychiatry. Of course, while I was in medical school there was a big left turn made in this drug called Prozac and it was introduced to the world. And when Prozac was introduced to the world that changed the whole way psychiatry was contemplated, it changed the whole way that we even thought of mental health or mental illness. And discomfort in and of itself was now thought to be a pathology. Well, this was disturbing to me. I mean, after all, but I’m a psychiatrist and had already bought in some sunken costs that had already been laid down. And it was time for me to actually see what I could do as a doctor. But over the years, as a doctor, we really got constricted and contracted over time, restricted from what we could say. And I, in fact, became sort of a doctor, instead of a healer. I was doing what I could do, doing what I should do, doing what they wanted me to do doing what was called for, and I wasn’t doing what I knew was right, on a frequent basis, I was doing what I had to. So eventually, I found myself through 40,000 patients. And frankly, Richard, the reason that I have so many different patients is that I quit a lot of jobs. I mean, I got hired hundreds of times in different places, and I was looking for the perfect place where I could actually heal, use my skills as a communicator. But they’re few and far between in the field of psychiatry. So eventually, I decided that I would start doing things a little differently. Some people call me the Undoctor. Because I undiagnosed people, unmedicate people, and then undoctrinate people, and really take them out of the system when they’re ready. And I noticed when I undiagnosed, and unmedicated people are people naturally get better. I’m kind of in it for people to get better. I feel like that’s a good reason to be doing this kind of work. But the system isn’t necessarily geared towards people getting better, unfortunately. So I began to look at other ways to do things through telepsychiatry. I got pretty good at using computer technology for communication over the last 10 years. And then I started being a coach transformational coach or sort of coach taking people from an unoptimized, or a sub-optimized life to an optimized life through communication. And then, of course, fast forward a little bit, I got to be a podcaster, I love podcasting, why not and excuse me loved having great conversations with people. And now I was free to be a teacher again. So I now have backed down entirely out of the conventional medical system. And I no longer practice psychiatry in any kind of conventional way. I don’t do any diagnosing. I don’t do any medicating. But what I do is really take a major stand for people to find their authentic message and deliver that into the world. That’s really what I’m interested in is helping people find that authentic message, it’s there with all of us. And delivering that effectively in the world seems to bring some major power and freedom to those who are pursuing that. That’s why I teach a course. And the course is The True Voice Podcasting Mastermind.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  7:58  

And the methodology is twofold first, I give people access to their true voice, access to that authentic message, and then give them what I think is the best platform ever created in humanity in order to deliver that message, and that would be in the form of something you are quite an expert at. And that’s in the world of podcasting, podcasting as an unmonitored, unmitigated, uncensorable, uncancelable platform where you own your own conversations, and then can deliver it to a population that’s eager to listen to it. There’s never been anything like that, that has this far reaching that this does, and can be laser sharp stealth aimed at exactly who you want to listen to. And there’s never going to be anything like that, unfortunately, at least not in the near future. So it’s really an honor to be involved in this field and to be assisting people to communicate effectively using the best platform that I think has ever been created to do so. And that’s why I’m here.

 

Richard Matthews  8:57  

Yeah, I love it. I love your origin story, how you started in learning how to communicate and get into psychiatry and then moving into the podcasting platform now and for me personally, I love podcasting. We use it for small businesses as a way to communicate to prospects and create leads and create authority in their space. But that’s not the only way it gets used. It’s just one way that we help people use it. And there’s nothing like it. It’s a very leveraged platform. And it’s a great way to build expertise, to build an audience and get your message across to deliver your value to your people.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  9:35  

Absolutely, really great. Yep.

 

Richard Matthews  9:37  

Yeah. So with regard to your origin story, learning how to communicate, and moving from a psychiatrist into someone who teaches communication for a living. How did you find that transition just professionally to be going from a doctor or practicing medicine essentially to being someone who is Teaching communication professionally?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  10:02  

Well, I think that I’ve always been extremely interested in healing and doing something effective. And what really happened is I became disenchanted with what psychiatry was providing. So the idea of diagnosing someone as if they’re abnormal, when in fact, maybe they’re not abnormal, maybe they’re just having the experience that they’re having led me to the next branding, which was a brand called Welcome To Humanity, and I am the founder of Welcome To Humanity. I’ve had that for a number of years. And what that really is, is embracing all of humanity as being exquisite, including the parts that are terrible and including the parts that are unspeakable, I mean, really, including the parts that are totally unacceptable, all of it, the whole experience is exquisite. I began to see that having all this experience, I’ve had been around the world quite a bit and done psychiatry and multiple, as every arena available in the United States, I’ve had at least a taste of I’m pretty sure that this was going to bode well, with these 40,000 conversations, and really learning about people from the ground up, it was very possible for me to see that communication, it was like, in fact, obvious to see that communication and connection is at the Soul of all healing. And since it is at the Soul of all healing, what else was I going to do? And it was an opportunity to what would a psychiatrist do if he was backing out of the field? He would certainly at least if he was me, lean on communication and connection as a source of healing and begin to actually teach what I had learned over my years on this planet.

 

Richard Matthews  11:39  

Yeah, I really like the idea that the entirety of the human experience is exquisite. I have a similar phrase that I use and started describing life that way since we’ve become travelers and full-time travelers. And that is the texture and contrast of life.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  11:56  

Exactly. 

 

Richard Matthews  11:57  

And most people are trying to get their life so that it’s always close to the median line. And that just makes for a boring life. And since traveling done everything from standing on the side of the road and screaming to the night because you’ve broken down hundreds of miles from nowhere. And wondering how you’re going to keep your family safe the next day to standing on the edge of waterfalls with your kids and diving off into crystal clear pools with your kids like you have the extremes. And the extremes on either side are what make life interesting and fun. And something that you’re excited to be a part of and that includes, to your point, the bad stuff.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  12:43  

Yeah, it does. The bad stuff is just another portion of some of the experiences that are available to us as humans. I had mentioned to you beforehand that I have these three cats, Despacito, Winston, and Valentino and they’re beautiful, they’re so fun. And they’re such a reminder of what life can be. I mean, no human I’ve ever seen relaxes, as well as all three of my cats do every single day and nearly every single minute of every day. So relaxation is really important. But to tell you the truth, no one plays as hard as my cats do, either. No one has more fun and no one is more in the present as these three cats and these three cats are no different than other cats perhaps but they really get that all the worries about the future or all the regrets about the past or concerns about how things might go down or resentments with other people in our species are kind of unnecessary and not that fun, but they sure are part of the essential space of being a human being. And it’s fun to even be able to review or view the cats as a way that could be and to incorporate that into the idea that all of life is really just a major circus spill of all the many ways that we can enjoy or not enjoy love and hate and regret and resent and fear and be anxious, all that, it’s all part of the same pot that allows for beauty and ecstasy and wonder and miracle and curiosity. They’re all in the same soup together called being a human.

 

Richard Matthews  14:24  

Yeah, and it’s that wonderful duality of life like you can’t define good without bad. And you can’t define life without death. 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  14:35  

That’s right. Exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  14:37  

Because there are contrasting elements, and they wouldn’t exist without each other. You can’t have a man without a woman, that kind of thing. And so you may not want to have bad experiences. You may want to try and minimize some of them but they’re all part of the experience. They’re part of this thing we call life. And sometimes they suck really, really bad.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  14:57  

Yeah, that’s right. They do sometimes they really suck really, really, really bad. And that’s what I want to be very careful to convey to our listeners under no condition, am I suggesting that those experiences need to be diminished in their power or their tendency to leave us paralyzed or leave us just hopeless or helpless, because even being hopeless, helpless and paralyzed, fall into the category of what we’re talking here, I bet the idea is you’re getting the whole taste of everything of what it means to be alive. And there’s, it’s not like I’m looking forward to my next miserable experience. Far from that, I hope to have no more miserable experiences ever. Except I’m likely to have a miserable experience or to if I hang around for a while, and it might as well look at it as being a precious piece of life. Don’t tell me that while I’m going through the misery that’s not so easy. But at the same time, we can back out and really see that misery, in and of itself is a central aspect of being a human being.

 

Richard Matthews  16:02  

Yeah, it is something that everyone has experienced. 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  16:06  

For sure. 

 

Richard Matthews  16:07  

And none of us like it. But we can all connect over it. Assuming we live through it.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  16:13  

Yeah, I mean, last I looked, and I’m not so in tune with the story. But last I look, the guy who sat underneath the Bodhi trees, and he just sat there and sat there. And when he got up, he only had like, one thing to say, and that’s suffering is part of the gig here. And that’s what he said. And that’s what he learned after he cleared off everything else. So the likelihood that suffering is part of the gig for me is pretty high. I give him some credit for discovering that.

 

Richard Matthews  16:41  

Yeah, so I want to talk a little bit about the superpowers you may have discovered in your own life over the course of learning what you have with communication. We talked on the show, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect or super strength, or the ability to call down thunder from the sky. In the real world, hero’s have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that we’re born with, or you develop over your career that really helps to set you apart and help you slay the villains in your customers lives. And the way I like to frame this is as you look at all the skills that you’ve developed, you probably have a common thread that ties all those skills together, the one thing that always comes back to and that common thread is where you’d find your superpower. So with that framing, what do you think your superpower is that you’re either born with or have developed over your career?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  17:27  

That’s a great question. And while I think about it, I’m just gonna praise you. I’m really actually thinking about it while I’m spitting this nonsense at you for praising you for the beauty of the question. But you should know that while I’m actually speaking to you to give you this praise, I’m trying to come up with a very good answer really, in the background. And so, I think what we’re talking about here, the superpower that I have is something like meeting people where they are all kinds of people from everywhere, from a crack house to a mansion, I’m able to be with nearly everybody and to start with wherever they are. And maybe it’s in the form of empathy, but it’s at least in the form of curiosity and friendship, or at least willingness to see the world from another person’s eyes and give them the safety to know that they can share their world with me. I think there’s something to that. I think I have that in a way that’s maybe beyond what the average person has and that has Bode me really well, I’m very interested in each and every person I run into. And in fact, when they’re outside the range of already outcast, or having been disenfranchised in some way. They’re even more interesting to me. And I like standing and being with those people. And I think they like standing and being with me and delivering their truth in my space.

 

Richard Matthews  18:54  

My best friend has that superpower, I definitely call it empathy. And it’s the ability to just really see the other person for who they are and for their value and the value that their story and their experience brings to our world. And not everyone has that because not everyone can see beyond themselves well enough to really see the other person and it’s definitely a gift.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  19:18  

Yeah, let’s see what I was reading yesterday. I was just reading this yesterday. I’m in a Seth Godin course alt MBA, and I think it was in this project somewhere. And there’s something like all the travels that you and I have done, I’ve done a fair amount of travel as well and would have called myself a nomad for about 12 years up until recently. So I’m at least an ex Nomad at this point is that travels like you were saying from the peaks to the valleys, really offers the possibility even in the necessity of being able to meld in with the community that you find yourself in on any given morning when you wake up and you don’t even know what country you’re in, you got to put that together first, or at least what city you’re in or what the rural or the suburban or the urban setting that you find yourself in your bed. It takes something to get up and find out where the bathroom is, or find out where the breakfast is, or find out where to go next, or the directions out of town, or where’s the museum or like really getting an idea of where safety is or where to avoid. And in order to do that there has to be a connection made with different people from different walks of life in different cultures. So by necessity, I think we broaden our base when we travel, it’s not a bad way to get around. These days, our travel sometimes just includes taking Zoom calls at odd hours in the night that are consistent with Asian time zones or something, and then you get to hang out with Thai people. Or if you want to take Australian timezones you can hang out with New Zealand, kiwis, whatever.

 

Richard Matthews  21:04  

Yeah, it’s definitely interesting. I know, I have definitely had the experience where I wake up in the morning and have to open the window and look around to see if I can remember where I’m at.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  21:12  

That’s right, it’s wild.

 

Richard Matthews  21:14  

Yeah, which is always fun. But to your point, one of the things that I’ve learned over the course of traveling is that the human connection is not like an option for us to be healthy and to enjoy our lives. So when you’re traveling, it could be very easy to have no human connection, because you’re always new wherever you’re at. And so we’ve taken to the point now, where it’s like if you don’t take the opportunity to say, Hi, now you’re never going to have that opportunity again, especially with the group of people that you’re around. So we have made some of our best friends in the world by just taking that chance and saying hi to a stranger. And inviting them over to dinner the first time that you met them, which does freak people out occasionally because that’s not normal

 

Dr. Fred Moss  21:55  

I’m glad you do it. 

 

Richard Matthews  21:58  

Yeah, that’s how you build connections and move forward. And I think to your point, it takes a bit of empathy to meet someone where they’re at, and start creating relationships right off the bat.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  22:09  

Well, in the world of empathy, much like you said, inside the world of duality, bad and good, man and woman, light and dark, all the dualities that are out there, one have to get that the other side of empathy is an exquisite amount, an extreme amount of selfishness. And I know how to be selfish, too. So I’m really quite familiar with being so self-absorbed that I can’t see past my own nose. And that goes with the two things. So the value of the two is I get a life that’s really interesting, when I’m empathic, and I get a life that’s kind of like a dead end when I’m selfish. And I still have a tendency to choose selfishness every so often. But when I do it, it doesn’t work out pretty reliably it maybe hedonistic pleasure seeking or something works out for a moment. But ultimately, the whole thing just breaks down drastically. Then there’s a possibility of me reaching out to be with others as a way of redefining and then resetting myself.

 

Richard Matthews  23:08  

Absolutely, which is, I think, a great transition to talking about the next question, which is about your fatal flaw. And the fatal flaw is always the flip side, generally of your superpower. And just like every Superman has his kryptonite, and Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets victory without going mad. Your flaw is something that’s probably held you back, it’s something you struggled with to grow your business. For me, I struggled with a couple of things. I struggled with perfectionism for a long time, like not shipping products, because I could tweak it just a little bit more. And I struggled with self-care for a long time where I didn’t have good boundaries with my time or with my clients and overworked myself, but I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so you can continue to grow your life and grow your business?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  23:54  

Well, if I had to pick this fatal flaw, I think what I would pick is, when I was a child, somewhere in third or fourth grade, growing up in the Detroit area, I remember on the edge of a dictionary, I was sad one day and I wrote something and I remember writing it because this dictionary actually stayed with me all the way through all years of college actually, which is a lot of years. And it was said sensitivity shows foolish stupidity. And I think a third grader wrote that I am pretty sure I wrote that when I was in third grade, and there’s something like really being so sensitive to maybe negative criticism, or I think it’s more than that I think it’s being to be especially how back for fear that when I do something outside the box, and I’m going to be seen as having done something wrong or bad as I go out of the box and not only is am I not seen for the heroic measures I’m attempting to do but I’m actually seen as a damager or, a bad person or someone who needs to be ostracized. And that whole phenomenon is very difficult for me always has been.

 

Richard Matthews  25:13  

How have you worked to overcome that?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  25:16  

Well, 40,000 patients are one way to overcome that. And some of them have actually given me their feedback or negative feedback. So even as I work now, I mentioned the Alt MBA or other spiritual growth that I’ve done in the world of religious growth, or in the world of the secular growth, and also growth and development courses that I’ve done or trained or taught. And there’s nothing more valuable than just straight experience. So getting the feedback for what the feedback is, or even being misunderstood for the value of being misunderstood. It’s a trick, but it’s a high-level trick. It’s an evolution, it’s like my first response is to cringe. My first response is like what a cat does, and then my second response can be human, which is, hey, that’s you cringing, you recognize that it isn’t the only way to approach this, can you listen to this for the value that’s fair? Can you let your sensitivity be a tool, rather than being a barrier, could it be a tool rather than a vulnerability or maybe not vulnerability like a tool rather than a curse, Then generally am able to incorporate it as long as I am honest with myself and stay sensitive because people actually really did attract at some levels to sensibility some do. Others treat it like a Piranha, but in general, some people really appreciate sensitivity. And I think I get to know that now that I’ve been around the world, now that I’ve earned my stripes. Now that I’ve got my years, now I get to say that I got my hardcore experience. Now, coming back sensitive seems to be a space where I’m more insulated to bring out sensitivity and I’m not even positive that my whole life hasn’t been built to do exactly that. Go get every freaking thing I can do so that when I come back, and you accuse me of being blah blah, I can at least know that I’ve really over the world done some shit before.

 

Richard Matthews  27:30  

Yeah, it’s an interesting feedback loop too because you don’t want the, I’ve done something outside of the box, I’ve done something different, you get negative feedback for it and you realize that a lot of times, it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad that someone accuses you of bad things, or, in the world of business, you’re like, when you take that risk, and it goes horribly wrong. And it doesn’t go the way that you want, and you end up in a place you didn’t want to be and you get back from it, you build back from there, and you’re like, oh, it really wasn’t that bad. And you build that muscle up through your idea, you said of the experience, you realize that like I can take on anything. It gives you almost another superpower.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  28:14  

Exactly. It’s exactly what it does. And I think that’s the essence of it all. Now living here, putting down a stake in the ground. I haven’t traveled much, although I did just take a road trip from Grass Valley all the way to St. Petersburg, Florida for about 22 days, that was a pretty fun trip. We went to the southern route and went through Dallas and Austin and Mississippi, Louisiana, and you know that way 

 

Richard Matthews  28:40  

Been that route several times.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  28:41  

Yeah, I guess you have and got to Tampa and got to St Petersburg and then came back but ultimately, what’s here now is an opportunity to just kind of hold my ground and to allow myself to be a healer, and in healing and in listening, there is a receptiveness that has to take place. And in order to be really, honestly, receptive, all my receptor sites have to be open. In order for that to be the case, I need to be somewhat sensitive. And in order to be sensitive, I need to let go of this concern that I need to protect myself from being sensitive.

 

Richard Matthews  29:17  

That makes a lot of sense. So I want to talk a little bit about the clients that you actually work with nowadays and talk about your common enemy. Every superhero has an arch-nemesis, it’s the thing they have to fight against in their world and in the world of business. We like to put it in the context of your clients. And it’s a mindset or it’s a flaw that they have that they’re struggling with. That is holding them back from getting the results they come to you for that if you had your magic wand and they came to your first podcasting course or they get on the phone with you get your magic wand you just bop them on the head and help them find their true voice right away. What is that common enemy that you constantly have to fight against with the people you work with?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  29:52  

I think the common enemy is sort of something like people being attracted to familiarity and a prevailing conversation without asking questions or to the viability or truth or, even the value of what it is that they are now saying and doing so people fall into a way of being that is just consistent with making sure that they can continue to belong in a group, rather than really accessing what they know to be true if it might be different than what the homogenous group is saying. So people tend to throw out their individuality as being weird or different like we’re talking about, actually, the sensitivity and foolish stupidity, people tend to really throw that out and instead just kind of look around for what’s being called for and then sort of morph into being that without any reliance on what they know to be true. And that level of duplicity leads to so much pain and discomfort and disease, that if we could actually cure that if we could actually do something for humanity and take away their tendency to do that this world would be an instantly different place totally.

 

Richard Matthews  31:02  

Yeah, that’s almost a perfect description of what’s been happening politically over the last couple of years, is they are molding themselves into one group or the other and forgetting the individuality of what makes them themselves what makes them human.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  31:17  

That’s right, I know, it has and you brush up against political issues, and you brush up really start seeing that it’s true in your families. And it’s true in your interactions with nearly everyone in everything, and these days while we’re bombarded, this is what makes podcasting so interesting is while we’re bombarded with social media, algorithms, or with repetitive news items, or whatever the media has so much access to what it is we take in as truth. And it’s done enough social experimenting to know how to make us feel like what we just read or saw is the truth, that we’re throwing ourselves out there to the meat grinder to believe that which is coming at us and we don’t really necessarily without a fair amount of effort, have the capacity to undo ourselves from the idea that what we just were told is true might not be and so we just become that which we hear and it’s a pretty scary time along those lines because individuality is being sci-fi.

 

Richard Matthews  32:23  

It’s repeated enough. It’s true. Because what they’re really doing is they’re altering your perception of reality. And for everyone, perception is reality. So since perception is malleable, you can change the way people see the world.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  32:39  

Absolutely. And this is kind of yesterday’s news isn’t Richard, I mean, it’s not like the future where someday they’re gonna do that. 

 

Richard Matthews  32:49  

No, they’re doing it now.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  32:51  

They’re doing it now. It’s happening right this very second. 

 

Richard Matthews  32:55  

Yeah, absolutely. So if the common enemy is losing our individuality to the modulus group. The flip side of that is your driving force. So if your company is what you fight against your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Batman fights to save Gotham, or Spider Man fights to save New York or Google fights to index and categorize all of the world’s information, whether or not we agree with him doing that’s a different section entirely. But what is your mission with what you do now?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  33:22  

Well, I’m a firm believer that there really is something called the true voice. And although some people have brought up counter viewpoints of that, that are worth listening to, I really treat what they say to be a true voice as well. Meaning that once you become aligned with that, which is really important to you the opportunity to live life from an empowered standpoint that far exceeds anything that’s duplicity that was there by default, when you were living a life different than what you knew is true. When you live a life different than what you know is true, life kind of sucks. It just does, you got to remember everything you do, you got to be miserable with doing shit that you wish you weren’t doing. You got to say stuff that you don’t actually believe that is like a pain that is like a huge pain. So there’s an opportunity to really find what you have to say, to actually be what you have to say, to actually own what it is your true voice to live that life. And that’s what I’m after. And it’s a quick fix. You don’t need 23 years on a psychiatrist couch and you don’t even need any drugs. Although I suppose some of the mind expensive drugs might be helpful in that area. But it’s not really bad. It’s like, all we really need to do is move the things that are in the way out of the way to recover, to re-discover our true voice which has been sitting with us the whole time. And frankly, each of us has some access to our true voice and for me revealing that and giving people the opportunity to say what they mean before they die, is what I’m after.

 

Richard Matthews  34:55  

Absolutely. And it’s one of those things that the more people understand their value, the value their story and their experience bring to other people. And the more they actually share that the better our world gets.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  35:06  

It’s really true. And it’s almost any story, it doesn’t have to be a story of like, having conquered the dragon, it can be any story, it can be the story of just being stuck for two years, five years, whatever, it can be a tragic story, as long as the stories coming from your heart and coming from an authentic base and authentic source, the value of authenticity, far-reaching as it creates a space for everyone around to consider their own authenticity and not necessarily have to be you.

 

Richard Matthews  35:37  

Yeah, it definitely makes the world a better place.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  35:42  

I think it does.

 

Richard Matthews  35:43  

I tell people all the time, we’re a story born people. And part of being a story born people is that you have a story and your story has value to other people.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  35:52  

It does, it simply does. And I maybe have some pretty cool stories, and I’m sure you do, too, when you travel, you get some pretty great stories. And it doesn’t have to be a story that is so riveting to 1000s would sit down and listen to it. Because all it really has to be is coming from an authentic source. And frankly, you could tell a story about last night eating popcorn watching Netflix, that would be so riveting. And you wouldn’t even have to make the Netflix show be the center of the ribboning. It could be simply your experience while you’re sitting there watching Netflix eating popcorn and once authenticity gets tapped. That’s when people become so magnetic so compelling. So riveting.

 

Richard Matthews  36:34  

Absolutely. So I want to shift gears and talk about something a little more practical, we call this the hero’s toolbelt. So just like every superhero has their gadgets, like Batman has his batarangs, or Spider Man has his web slingers. Talk about the top one or two tools you use in your business that you couldn’t live without, it could be anything for your notepads to your calendar or something you use for your product delivery. Anything that you think is essential to getting the job done? What is one of your favorite tools? 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  37:02  

Yeah. My ears. 

 

Richard Matthews  37:08  

Why is that?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  37:10  

Because if you don’t listen, you can’t learn and then you have nothing to speak to, it’s really important to listen, it’s really important to hear what’s going on in the world, it’s really important to listen to have your ear on the ground. I don’t think I always knew this, I used to think that communication was essentially about speaking and then waiting until the other person was done. And then speaking again.

 

Richard Matthews  37:31  

Yeah.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  37:32  

And I think that most people actually treat speaking like that like this guy is talking a little bit loud, I wouldn’t mind if I could talk again. And you’re not even listening to what the other person is saying. When I started really having the space to begin to try to hear like to begin to set my world aside enough so that I could be curious about what someone else’s experience was, that’s when I became a super healer. That’s when I really got access to my adult wisdom, that was when I started being able to not be a doctor, but to be a healer, that’s when I got to be the Undoctor, that’s when I really got to be one who could be with everyone from the crack house to the mansion, or from here to I don’t know, Tel Aviv, Bangladesh to Auckland, Tokyo and back, like they allow for learning. If I don’t listen, I won’t learn anything, I’ll just bop around the shit that’s already in my head. And that’ gets old pretty fast. And so that’s what I think is the biggest skill.

 

Richard Matthews  38:46  

One of the things that crack me up about that is a couple of weeks ago, my son comes running up to me, we have an agreement that he gets an audible subscription for Christmas every year. And every other credit he gets to spend on a mind-expanding book rather than just fiction, which he likes to fiction stories, too. But he comes running up to me the other day, and he goes, Dad, and I was like, yeah, and he goes, did you know that we have two eyes and two ears and only one mouth, which means we should listen and we should look more than we speak and I was like, I did know that, looks like it would make me really happy that he had picked that up. But to that point. One of the things that I think is fascinating as a skill for learning how to listen is just going right back to the stories, I mentioned a minute ago we’re story born people, and learning how to listen and learn how to engage in a conversation is really learning how to listen to the other person’s story, and see how their story connects with yours. So that when they’re done telling their story, you can turn around and tell them some of your stories. And it’s the exchange of stories that build relationships, which is what all we’re doing here on this podcast, it’s an exchange of stories and that’s how you build that listening muscle and how you build that I call relationship hacking.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  40:06  

Yeah, each and everything we say is actually a story. Even the stuff we think that we’re saying that is factual is actually just another story. And what we know to be true is just another story. And what we really know to be true is just another story and what we’ve no come on enters that stuff. That’s really true. Well, it turns out, that’s really just another story too. And so the idea of getting that if I was you, I would be seeing the world just says you do and it’s really worth attempting to understand what it’s like to be you. That’s a pretty fun exercise to get through the day with respect to listening.

 

Richard Matthews  40:45  

Absolutely. 

 

Richard Matthews  40:46  

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Richard Matthews  42:24  

So I want to talk then briefly about your own personal heroes. So every hero has their mentors Frodo has Gandalf, Luke has Obi-Wan, Robert Kiyosaki has his Rich Dad, even Spider Man has his Uncle Ben, or if you watch the newest movie, it’s his Aunt May. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers, or authors, maybe peers who were just a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished in your business?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  42:48  

That’s a great question. I really appreciate this question. So I always noticed that there is something about my heroes, the ones on the earth with us, the ones who were here that were re-alive and then became either men mentors who are role models included people who are such at the top of the game, that the only person in front of them was them, like actually the best in the world at whatever they do, having done it in ways that no one had ever done it like them, and nevertheless achieving results that exceeded anything that anyone had ever done. I’m always been super interested in those people. So those people in the sports world would be like Jordan, or Gretzky or Tiger Woods or Federer, there are people who are way out there. They’re so far out there, and yet, they get better, and they don’t get better chasing somebody, they get better just taking on what it means to get better. I’ve always been super interested in that. Go ahead.

 

Richard Matthews  43:44  

I was gonna say, yeah, those are the people that expand what we believe is possible about human capability.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  43:49  

Yeah, that’s right, exactly. And then we start looking in the entertainment business. When I was a kid, I loved the Beatles. They were so critical for me, so critical in 1964, they’ve really just completely changed the world. And it was so much fun to be a Beatle fan at six years old. But ultimately, Bruce Springsteen, when he entered my life was a major influence. I saw him one night when I had never heard of him and I’m an audio file, and I was invited to go to a concert to see this guy who was supposed to be the next Bob Dylan. I spent four and a half hours in a show with Bruce Springsteen as a 16 year old and he was a major player for me, he brought out the possibility as well. Dave Letterman brought out the possibility I’d never seen anybody who was so so fucking hilarious on an improv, that dude could bring on any single conversation. He had me in tears, I just loved how funny he was. And then there were others who I think that people who break through the mold and then do so excellently another athlete would be like Larry Bird. It’s like, how does that guy get this done? What is that? Or now Brady is another one is just like, dude, how do you do all that it’s so interesting. So those are the people alive, I think the people who are not alive also meet the same criteria. So recently, I came in touch again with Johann Sebastian Bach. And I was like, that guy had nobody before him. And that’s what he created, and it’s unaltered And absolutely the best music that we can ever think of ever existed. And it’s 500 years old, and no one has improved on it or needed to. And he didn’t have recordings or studios. He didn’t get to. It was like, Who is that? What an amazing character. I love amazing characters.

 

Richard Matthews  45:50  

I really know some of his music too

 

Dr. Fred Moss  45:52  

That’s true. 

 

Richard Matthews  45:53  

Yeah, the stuff that’s famous is only a small fraction.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  45:59  

And he wasn’t just a musician, either. I mean, he was just a major rock star, just like Leonardo da Vinci is the same kind of thing or Michelangelo’s the same kind of thing. Some of these people who are there, who are extraordinary, drives me forward to get that maybe if I continue to push myself past excellent. I can find a space that’s unique and make a contribution that not very many people have made before and why not get there?

 

Richard Matthews  46:28  

It’s that whole idea that they’re the ones that make you question what people say is possible. 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  46:33  

That’s right. Exactly 

 

Richard Matthews  46:33  

One of my friends was telling me this earlier, we were talking about this. He’s like, so we have this box that’s like what we know this is like, what we think the human potential is. And then outside of that box is what really real human potential is. But we don’t know what that box looks like. Because we’re inside this box. We can’t see outside of it. No one really knows what actual human potential is what we’re capable of. And it’s those outliers that show you that the box we’re in is probably a bit small for what our capabilities are.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  47:03  

Absolutely. When you look at Gandhi or look at Mother Teresa, or you look at Martin Luther King or JFK, or if you want to look at Nelson Mandela, all these folks are really interesting. Another one who really made a big difference a little less well-known is a guy named Samuel Hahnemann. So Samuel Hahnemann is the father of homeopathy. And as a doctor, I think I might have actually been him in the past. He’s a pretty amazing guy, he really took aside the whole idea of the nonsense of medicine at the time, the way medicine was gone, and all the crap that was being called, like, curative, but really had secondary gain all over it. And he changed our whole field and created something that made so much more sense and incorporated spirituality, and all sorts of human traits that made homeopathy what it was. And homeopathy was what it was until it got destroyed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So that we now have this thing called allopathy, which also doubles by a name called like the industrial medical complex, which has its flaws, for sure.

 

Richard Matthews  48:05  

Absolutely. And that’s an interesting discussion, we probably spent a whole podcast just talking about that. 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  48:11  

Yeah. 

 

Richard Matthews  48:12  

But I want to talk a little about your guiding principles. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he always just brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we get near the end of this interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you live your life by, maybe something you wish you’d known when you started out early in your career.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  48:34  

I say it with some degree of like, do I really believe this? So it’s still an idea, but this idea of all of life being exquisite, that it’s all resettable, that eternity is reality, that there is such thing like this is going to keep going long past when I think it’s going to end that ending is a myth so that the possibility that there’s something here to actually take into the next world, and therefore what’s here what I think it’s here and significant or threatening, or like, threatening to my soul isn’t really necessarily threatening to my soul. So there’s something about taking care of the temple, taking care of my body, taking care of others, giving it my best try, even when I make human mistakes, and then resetting this idea of being able to reset, regroup and return to take on life again, like I get to do that. Shockingly, sometimes I’m back at that starting line again. Yay. Like, yay, oh, good. I thought I was long past the starting line. But now I get to choose from the starting line one more time. I do love that.

 

Richard Matthews  49:45  

Yeah, that is fun. And it’s definitely like you get through certain points in your life. You’re like, Oh, I feel like I’m starting over but you’re starting over with all the experiences you have up to this point. And so you move faster and better and make better choices. Experience builds on itself.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  49:59  

Exactly. It does. And there is something I think that’s when it starts being wise. That’s when I earned my white beard.

 

Richard Matthews  50:05  

Might have a couple of gray hairs.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  50:11  

There you go. You’re getting there. 

 

Richard Matthews  50:13  

I got a few here and a few here. Like all those toddlers falls out there.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  50:17  

Yeah, you’re on your way. you’re well on your way to the white gray beard sage.

 

Richard Matthews  50:22  

Yeah. Cool. So I think that’s a good place to wrap our interview. But I do finish every interview with something I call the hero’s challenge. And I do this to help get access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own because not everyone’s out there doing the podcast rounds like you and I do. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine and why do you think they should come to share their story on our show? First person that comes to mind for you. 

 

Dr. Fred Moss  50:46  

Sanyika Street. 

 

Richard Matthews  50:48  

And why do you think they should come to share their story here?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  50:50  

SANYIKA ‘THE FIRSTARTER’ STREET comes from the Washington hood, Washington DC who is a man who’s six foot eight, a gentle giant, and perhaps one of the smartest, most creative people I’ve ever met. He’s a coach of mine, a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, a brother of mine, and just another human who is too much fun and too valuable to drop off. He’s a great interview. He’s totally articulate. He’s got great laughter he’s six foot eight. And he’s brilliant, and creative, and handsome, and fun, and smart and intuitive and strong and present and growing and curious. And he even knows how to rap and he’s now a dad who’s recently got married. And he’s just a brilliant entrepreneur who’s just kicking ass on his way to seven and eight figures. And he’s just a coach for men who want a real coach, and he’s a great person to interview.

 

Richard Matthews  51:51  

Awesome. We’ll reach out later and see if we can get him to come on and say yes to the interview. They don’t always say yes, but sometimes when they do we get great stories.

 

Dr. Fred Moss  51:53  

He’ll probably say yes, he got stuff to say.

 

Richard Matthews  52:00  

So in comic books, there’s always the crowd at the end, who’s clapping and cheering for the acts of heroism, as we close our analogous to that is, we want to find out where can people find you if they want your help in the future? Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, hey, I would love to get your help with finding my true voice. And I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of people to reach out and actually light up the bat signal?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  52:22  

Well, I think the people who should light up the bat signal are people who really know, there’s consultants, coaches, and leaders, people who are doing a lot of caregiving people who know that there’s a life out there, because they’ve been helping everybody else find theirs, who know that they’ve been muted or muffled in their own voice, for whatever reason, havesomething wrong with them because they’re uncomfortable. That is so sad. It’s like the saddest n’t been able to deliver that voice freely into the world. I think that’s what I’m mostly aiming at. Or the parents of those people, sometimes you might find that it’s the parents of those people who also have been allowing or growing their children to be so inquisitive, perhaps even someone of my generation, those are the people who are super interested in delivering this true voice that has been locked away for years. And I think that another group that’s along the same line, very similar are people who have become at least marginally convinced that there’s shit ever, actually, and the people who are reaching the point where there’s something wrong with me because I’m uncomfortable, those people should come to talk to me before they do anything rash, like go enter the industrial medical complex. I don’t think that’s a very good plan, actually. But there will be another group as you call me. If you’re just interested in podcasting and learning how to podcast from zero to 60, or if you really just want to find that True Voice and find a platform to deliver it, then the best way to get a hold of me is by email. My email is called Dr.FredWelcomeToHumanity.net. And another place to find me now is in The True Voice Community that’s in a newly designed Facebook group. And we’re having a summit, I don’t know if that’s going to be after before this airs. But in late February, on the 19th 20th of this year, we’ll be having a summit and we’ll be having them periodically. So even if this is after then when it airs, the next summit is already being prepared. And those are summits where you can learn a little bit more about how people found their true voice and get inspired by people who have found their true voice and delivered effectively into the world or people who are there to assist lands into the real world and that’s really all that’s left for me to do. I don’t have much left to do than to really just help others find their true voice and then delivered it effectively.

 

Richard Matthews  54:51  

Awesome. Well, make sure we get the links to all that into the description below this episode. So if you’re interested in finding your true voice want to reach out to Dr. Fred his contact information will be in the show notes for this episode, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story. It was fascinating to hear your experiences in the way that you approach some of these problems. So appreciate that. You have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Dr. Fred Moss  55:12  

Well, not really, I don’t know. I’m sure we could go after one of these superheroes, for sure, when I was growing up, the superhero that I came in touch with every single Tuesday night was dadadadada, Batman, and on Friday night, we had the Green Hornet. But Batman was the first superhero I fell in love with I knew all the characters and all the villains. I love the villains. I would love to meet all the villains. And so that was there when I was growing up, and it’s pretty fun that he’s lasted all these years as being the one that you would choose in your podcast as your prototype. So I love Batman, and thanks for having me on.

 

Richard Matthews  55:51  

Thank you for being here.