September 27, 2022 • 58 mins
Welcome to Grit Nation, I’m Joe Cadwell the host of the show and on today’s episode I have the pleasure of speaking with strength coach, self-defense instructor, and author, Varg Freeborn.
I first came upon Varg’s unique perspective to self-defense and violence preparedness a few years ago and became a fan of his straight shooting, no BS philosophy. So, I was especially pleased to have the opportunity to talk with him recently.
We’ll start our conversation as Varg details his childhood in the shattered remains of a postindustrial Midwestern town and how growing up in a home corroded by drugs, alcohol and violence laid the foundation for him being sent to prison at the age of 19 for aggravated, attempted murder.
Next, we’ll discuss the physical and mental attributes Varg honed and the strategies he employed to endure 5 years of incarceration and how his second book titled, Beyond OODA, will help you better understand how your past experiences and the stories you tell yourself about who you are, need to be in alignment in order to survive extreme environments and situations.
Later, we’ll dig into what it means to build a genuine, authentic persona through hard work and experience and why imposter syndrome and in-authenticity are so prevalent in society today.
And we’ll end our conversation as Varg explains the concept of woodshedding and how disconnecting from social media can help you achieve a fulfilled, meaningful life.
The Show Notes
Varg Freeborn
https://vargfreeborn.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe Cadwell (00:00):
Varg Freeborn Welcome to Grit Nation.
Varg Freeborn (00:01):
Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
Joe Cadwell (00:03):
Yeah, thank you so much Varg for taking your time
to be on my show today, I'vebeen a fan ever since I heard
you on another podcast. And forthose who don't know who Varg
Freeborn is, he is a strengthcoach, a self defense and
firearms instructor and anauthor. And I just found out
that Varg you're also pursuing acareer in the trades. And I was
(00:26):
hoping Varg, you could tell alittle bit more about your
story. And we'll look into someof your books and hopes for the
future with the with the trades.
Varg Freeborn (00:34):
I grew up in a Midwestern, you know, burned out
steel mill town. And so that wasthe theme of life growing up was
that young from Youngstown,Ohio. And, and if you don't know
the story in the late 70s, inthe 80s, early 80s, the steel
mills left, and they never cameback. And it took what was a
(00:56):
very, you know, prolific andsuccessful blue collar area, and
just destroyed it, deindustrialized it and destroyed
it. And what we grew up with inmy generation was, you know, the
aftermath of all the union jobswere gone, and all the factories
were shut down, all thesupporting factories were shut
(01:18):
down, it was just a few left.
And we had these, you know,rusted carcasses of factories
everywhere, that that justliterally created the landscape
of where we grew up atit, youknow, buildings that were just
miles long, Youngstown Sheet andtube and Youngstown steel and
Warren, there was just steelmills everywhere, and that that
(01:43):
world was leaving as I wasgrowing up. And it was very
painful for you know, andthere's, there's several,
there's some towns in, you know,like Gary, Indiana, and some
other places in the Midwestexperience like Michigan, Flint,
Michigan, yeah. So so this was acommon story, you know, in
(02:05):
certain parts of the country.
But very blue collar, you know,I grew up in my my family were
steel workers and no workers.
And then when I came of age,that wasn't available for me
anymore, you know, so that, thatI couldn't, you know, they all
had decent jobs. And that wasn'tavailable, you know, so I grew
(02:26):
up in a very rough environment.
You know, there was a lot of alot of drugs, a lot of violence
in my family, a lot of criminalactivity. So it was very, very
rough. The, the younger people,my family didn't really follow.
The mother was only 16 When shehad me, so I wasn't that far
(02:49):
behind my aunts and uncles, andeverybody were very close
generationally. So they kind ofmissed out the mill thing, too,
for the most part. And so whathappened with a lot of people at
that time was, you know, thedrugs and the alcohol took over
when the reality of economiccollapse set in, and that, you
(03:12):
know, nothing was coming back.
It wasn't coming back. And therewas not much, you know, hope for
people to really be able to havethis great life that people have
lived up to that point. Andwe're talking about a time when,
you know, the 50s and 60s inthose areas, people had seven,
eight kids, and lived in twothree storey houses was very
common. That was your average.
(03:35):
That was the golden age of theAmerican dream, so to speak.
Yeah, yeah. And then where I'mfrom, you know, it's, it's
funny, because you ride up anddown the streets. And you see
these big old houses nowthey're, you know, pushing 100
years old, but back then theywere only, you know, 30, 40
years old. And a lot of thesehouses turned the century were
built, you know, at the boom ofthe beginning of the of the
(03:57):
steel mills and things likethat. And now they're all
triplex is in quad plexes. Andthey're converted into, you
know, shitty apartments, youknow, and they're basically
ghettos. And it's so amazing tothink that this was the height
of it the good life, and nowit's the the epitome of the
bottom, you know, it was justamazing. But that was, you know,
(04:22):
that that's what I grew up with.
And of course, that can tributeit to a very rough adolescence.
And, of course, I was involvedin a lot of violence. And you
know, if you're interested, youcan read my first book about
this. But, you know, when I was18, I was involved in an
incident of self defense. Itturned pretty, pretty tragic.
(04:42):
And I ended up charged withattempted aggravated murder. I
did five years in prison, andbasically from 19 years old to
24 I was in prison.
Joe Cadwell (04:56):
So and this is the book you're referring to Varg is
Violence of mind.
Varg Freeborn (05:01):
Violence of Mind.
Yeah, that would be the firstone that would that would detail
that. And so, you know, and thenafter that I decided that I
didn't want to go back to thatlife because, you know, I grew
up with a lot of my family and alot of the people we associate
with were one percenters. onepercenter motorcycle clubs. I
(05:22):
grew up in a lot of thatenvironment. And I was around a
lot of that, before I went toprison. And that type of that
type of violent lifestyle waswas, you know, something I
didn't want to go back to. So Imade a decision to move
immediately out of prison anddid what a lot of people don't
(05:43):
do. And I went somewhere where Ididn't know anyone. And I lived
in a guy that I was in prisonwith, set me up with his mother
owned a very old apartmentbuilding from the 1800s. And one
of the apartments had been shutdown for several years. And it
didn't have any electricity. Butshe said, I could rent this
(06:04):
apartment for $150 a month. Andthat she would get electricity
fixed, you know. So I came outand I went straight to the
apartment and it didn't have theit didn't have a bathtub
functioning bathtub, and itdidn't have electricity. You
know, so I got like a bathtubrigged up and ran an extension
(06:24):
cord, and ran off of anextension cord while I signed up
for trade school and I went toauto body school. I finished a
two year Auto Body program and18 months in that apartment with
no electricity. And at the sametime, I did about 20 hours
semester, per semester. So I wasdoing 20 hour weeks with the
(06:47):
school. And then I was doing 40hour weeks as an apprentice at
Body Shop, I actually was luckyto get an old school
apprenticeship with a body shopthat had been around since 49.
So it was it was a very goodexperience there. And so I
started out in tradesimmediately as soon as I got out
of prison. And worked in thatfor quite a while. About a dozen
(07:09):
years. And and I ended up owningmy own body shop mound, custom
car shop, I built custom carsand trucks for a while. And then
also owned a custom guitar shopand did woodworking and built
custom guitars, from hand handcarved, you know, the next and
(07:30):
everything just straight fromwall, everything was raw wood.
And I hand selected the wood andbuilt everything right in the
basement. That was that was funto just like generally like to
build things, create things andfabricate things. But then I
worked as a violence instructor,because the trades, you know,
there for a while got prettytough, especially the ones I
(07:53):
picked, especially the autobodyworld. They, you know, there
were some things that happenedwith the insurance companies
there. Some years within thelast 20 years where the
insurance companies basicallytook over the collision
business, the auto body businessand insurance companies, dictate
to the body shops, what they'regoing to do, what they're going
to pay their guys andeverything. So the insurance
(08:15):
companies basically run the bodyshops now. And the adjusters who
come in who have zero idea havenever gotten their hands dirty
at all. And I know every tradehas these people, these people
that come in, and they've nevergotten their hands dirty, and
they're telling you how you'regoing to do things and how much
you're gonna get paid to do it.
And so that they're the guysthat run the show in that. So
(08:37):
that got pretty disheartening.
And so I took a break from allthat for a while, started
businesses violence educator andtraining andI was actually able
to go back and get my rightsrestored, I fought the state.
And I didn't get my convictionoverturned or anything like
(08:57):
that. But they did offer me arestoration of rights. And I was
allowed to vote, sit on a juryhold public office, or possess
firearms. So all of that wasgiven back to me.
Joe Cadwell (09:09):
And this was in the state of Ohio bar.
Varg Freeborn (09:12):
Yes, that was Ohio. Yes. Okay. And so once I
got that, I went back and begantraining civilians and law
enforcement and the use ofweapons and lethal force
encounters, since that wassomething I had so much
experience with, you know,weapon based violence. I've been
on both ends of that andreceiving and giving multiple
times. And so that was somethingI had to offer. And that's been
(09:35):
that's been good. But I recentlytook a break from that with
COVID kind of shut down totraveling and I guess never
fired a backup yet. And now I'mback in transitioning back into
trades, because I really missit. And I really miss building
stuff. So I came to DaytonaBeach because I love motorcycles
and I want to build custommotorcycles down here. And so
(09:57):
now I'm down here, actuallyright now putting together my
shop and you know getting mywelding certs back and getting
everything lined up so I canstart doing things I want to do.
Joe Cadwell (10:06):
That's fantastic.
So finding an outlet to be ableto channel those creative
energies that you have. I mean,obviously, carving guitars
working with metal writingbooks, to some extent recreating
who you were after, sort of,from my understanding, a very
rough upbringing, and thenhaving spent time from the ages
of 19 to 24, you set in federalpenitentiary state, state
(10:30):
penitentiary, okay, so statepenitentiary. And, again, I
think if I remember correctly,Varg that was the particular
period of time that you were inwas a very violent era for the
state and federalpenitentiaries. And not to dwell
too long on that. But that woulddefinitely take someone who was
(10:50):
19 years old, and really presenta lot of challenges for them to
overcome. And I was hoping youmight be able to talk about what
you did to overcome some of thephysical and mental
psychological challenges thatyou were faced with on a day to
day and how you persevered andwhat brought you through that
that dark patch.
Varg Freeborn (11:12):
You know, I'm going to tell you that my life
has been extremely hard. Instarting out, you know, being
born to a single 16 year oldteenage mother, in a drug house,
I grew up in a drug house, lotsof violence, didn't know who I
could trust or when I couldtrust them when they were going
to be high drunk and becomeviolent, you know. And so by the
(11:34):
time I got to prison, I wasalready primed pretty well, it
wasn't like I was a baby andlanded in there, you know, that
there were guys like that. Therewere kids like that, and I seen
them get their souls shattered,like glass. And it was, it was
pretty tragic to watch happen.
But that, you know, I wasn't oneof those people. I should, I
mean, I stabbed somebody 23times to get there. You know, so
(11:55):
I was it wasn't like, I waswalking in the door, like, you
know, a sheep in a wolf den.
Right.
So, but it was, it wasn't easy,either, you know, so, overcoming
the adversities, you know, I'mgoing to tell you how I did it.
And I did it systematically. AndI did it through just the will
(12:16):
to achieve something.
And a lot of times thatsomething just ended up being,
I'm not gonna let these peoplefucking win, you know, anybody,
nothing is gonna beat me,nothing's gonna crush me,
nothing's gonna break me, I'mnot gonna let it happen. And I
don't care what they throw atme, they can lock me in prison,
they can put me in the mostviolent place they can take my
freedom away, you know, treat melike an animal that nothing is
(12:40):
going to break me. Right. Andthat was the will to just
survive in and conquer thosetypes of adversities coming at
you. Because I seen it breakingpeople I seen people just break
in ways that were unacceptableto me. Beginning in my
adolescence, in my early life,watching, you know, my family
(13:03):
members fall to drugs andalcohol and allowing that to
just destroy them. And thenwatching in prison, either the
system break people because itis designed to break people,
it's not designed to helpanybody. It's designed to break
and punish. And that's why youget such incredibly hard men
(13:23):
that come out of there becauseit's a factory for hardness.
It's not it's not arehabilitation center, it's it's
creates harder, more hateful,angry people. But if you don't
come out that way, you getbroken and I've seen so many
people, you know, especiallyyoung kids that tell stories
about it in my books, too, youknow, about you know, young kids
(13:44):
that come in there and theynever really experienced
anything rough in life. Theymade like one bad choice and got
in with a bad crew and ended updoing you know, a b&e or
something that got a time inprison and then they ended up
getting raped or you know, justterrible things happen in their
in they break in ways that's arepairable
Joe Cadwell (14:05):
so psychologically, oh, I'm sorry, Varg but
psychologically it sounds likeyou set yourself up that failure
was not going to be an optionthat no one would take advantage
of you. I understand thatphysically you went in a
different person than then youcame out and I in regards to
your body size, or strengthlevels, the amount of muscle
mass that you had to put on andthe weight pile of the of that
(14:29):
state penitentiary, was thatpart of your recipe to exit this
successfully?
Varg Freeborn (14:36):
Absolutely. And you know, I'm still a strength
coach to this day. So I wentinto prison in 1994 and that was
when that was my first exposureto the weight pile and back then
this is all gone now. Prisonsare not the same as they were. I
came in at the very end of whenprisons were still like the wild
west there was still tobacco.
There were still drugs. Therewas still way piles like it was
(14:56):
it was old school prison. And asI understand that they've cut
all that out now, but strengthis and was, you know, the the
key component, physical strengthand mental strength are
inextricably tied together, thestronger you are physically, the
stronger you're going to bementally. It because it takes a
(15:18):
lot of it takes a certain amountof mental anguish, it to get to
a very strong physical position.
And you have to willfully putyourself through uncomfortable
things. And most human brainsare wired to seek comfort,
(15:39):
rather than, you know,discomfort. And so when you push
yourself willfully intodiscomfort, and uncomfortable,
painful things, make yourself doit, then that makes you
stronger. And I picked up onthat very early age. And that's
one of the reasons why. Youknow, I accepted my favorite
prison and actually kind oflooked forward to because I knew
(16:01):
I was gonna get tempered. Now,looking back, I wish, you know,
very deeply that someone hadpulled me aside and talk to me
about finding better ways to getthat temperament. But I didn't
have that. So that's the route Itook. But when you when you
think about physical strength,it, it presents the opportunity
(16:24):
for growth in a way that isgoing to benefit you mentally,
as well. And there's just no,there's just no two ways about
it. So I pushed physicalstrength and everything when I
when I taught gunfighting when Itaught self defense, you know,
when I teach people aboutdealing with adversity, labor,
(16:47):
you know, dealing with beinggood at labor, you know, if
you're a laborer you want to youwork in trades. You know, I've
seen so many guys tearing theirbodies up, because they're not,
they're just not taking care ofthemselves, and they're not
strong. And then that's why youhave all these torn shoulders
and blown out backs and ruptureddiscs, because the muscles
supporting those joints havebecome weak, and it becomes a
(17:08):
weak link. And boom, one day, itjust goes, it breaks, you know,
and that's preventable. And thesad thing is that it's largely
preventable in most people, ifthey just put a little bit of
time into thickening thoseconnective tissues up, and being
stronger, you know, physicallystronger. So I put strength in
everything that I do, like everysingle thing that I don't care
(17:31):
what you do, I'm telling youthat strength can be a key
component making you better. Atthat day,
Joe Cadwell (17:39):
you had mentioned the phrase a better way to find
the Temperance. I believe thatis part of the second book that
you may have written beyondOODA. And for the folks that
don't know what it is, could youplease just give a brief
synopsis bargain on whatever itis?
Varg Freeborn (17:56):
Yeah, so ODA, largely known as OODA, was
actually developed by a mannamed Lieutenant Colonel John
Boyd from the Air Force. Andsome years ago, he developed
this concept of observe, orientdecide act being the decision
(18:16):
making loop. That happens when aperson is presented with a
situation where they need torespond to something to stimulus
quickly. And definitively. Itwas primarily initially geared
towards fighter pilots, which isarguably the fastest moving
(18:38):
decision making task you mighthave to face as a human being
Joe Cadwell (18:41):
right dog fighting in the air, yeah,
Varg Freeborn (18:44):
600 mile an hour dogfighting. So. You know, so
that was that was the beginningof the concept. But later on,
Boyd, what a lot of people don'trealize is that Boyd, spent his
time really honing in onorientation as being the center
point of everything. And thatOODA wasn't a loop but a series
of loops with also some built inbypasses, right. Implicit
(19:09):
guidance being one of thosebypasses, right, where implicit
guidance for decision makingthat automatically out
automatically plugs a decisionin when a stimulus is
recognized, rather than goingthrough the whole orient
decision part. It's juststimulus, implicit guidance,
right? So he talks about a lotof different things over the
(19:31):
course of 30 years since hedeveloped that, you know, before
his death in the 2000s. Andbasically, what I did was really
focused on the orientation partbecause I think that that is
really where the answers are.
And orientation to me is, it'swhat makes you who you are and
(19:52):
what it's what drives everydecision you make. It's your
cultural background, your callCultural influences your genetic
makeup, your experiences, yourconfidence, or lack of
confidence, like all of thesethings that go into you making
the decisions you make, you puttwo people, you know, in the
(20:12):
same airplane, one isenthusiastic to jump out and
have a great time and anotherone is scared to death, and you
might have a heart attack,right. And it's the orientation
towards the, the task or towardsthe situation, the circumstances
that causes that to happen. Theexperiences, the lack of
experience, the confidence, lackof confidence, the genetic
(20:33):
makeup, you know, all of thesethings come into play and make
you, you know, who you are andmake the decisions that you
make. And orientation can bechanged to a large extent, but
it's not an easy process, and issomething that I experienced
myself through five years ofprison, I came out as you said
earlier, a very different personthan when I went in my complete
(20:55):
orientation had changed. And mydecision making had changed
dramatically. Whereas times thatI would have been reactionary,
before, I was not reactionaryanymore, in times that I would
not have been reactionary, I wasnot very reactionary, you know,
these, these are very big swaps.
(21:16):
These are not, you know, it'snot easy for someone to change
something that they're, they'reautomatically reactionary, to,
that's innately, you know,grounded into us very deeply
through our culture and ourexperiences and what we, you
know, our, our value system,what we believe is right and
(21:37):
wrong, and, you know, thepriority of life, you know,
those things are very deepinside of our psyche, and it's
not something you can justextract and just decide to
change. And it takes extremecircumstances. And this can
happen with, say, a very suddenviolent shift, which often leads
(21:58):
to PTSD, because it's such aviolent shift in paradigm that
the person can't deal with it.
And there's often a moralconsequence, which is what you
see, in a lot of law enforcementofficers and military, who, you
know, may had a pretty goodlife, you know, follow the rules
did well, well rounded peopleand then get thrown into like a
human carnage situation, andcan't fucking make sense of it
(22:21):
in their head. And then all of asudden, there's this moral
injury that happens. And that,that that massive, sudden,
violent shift inside ofthemselves of how they see the
world and who they are in it, istoo much for the psyche to take.
So it can happen that way. Or itcan happen over long periods of
(22:42):
time.
Which is one of the things thatthe military also tries to do is
to change that orientationthroughout the time of your
training so that you don't havethat violent shift at the end.
But they can't always accomplishthat. Prison doesn't always
accomplish that either. My caseit did, but in the cases that I
(23:04):
brought up earlier of kids whoget there and get raped or
something that's a suddenviolent shift in their world,
and it just in there's there'sphysical injury and moral
injury, beyond what we couldcomprehend, if you haven't
experienced that, right. And sothat, that orientation is the
key is the point of it. Sofiguring out where where your
(23:27):
orientation is, and what drivesit, and breaking down the
components of it, and thenbeginning to work on those
things. So that if you want tomake better decisions, you don't
just practice making decisions,you start to cultivate and
change the very criteria thatyou base your decisions on. And
that's how your decision tobecome more reliably solid, in
(23:49):
in a changed form. Does thatmake sense? Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Cadwell (23:52):
And again, it goes beyond OODA is the name of the
book that John Boyd that themilitary strategist, the warrior
philosopher that, put that out,you've taken it to the next
level and really focusing inagain on that orient who you
are, as a person will decidewhich actions you are going to
take when presented withsomething that may put you in
(24:13):
opposition against someone thatis a completely different set of
orientated skills. However, theywere brought into play. Now,
having listened to your podcastnumerous times now Varg I think
one of the things that I reallytook away with is you know, you
cannot assume that because youare working in the in the in
(24:33):
what you believe are the bestinterests or you classify or
qualify yourself as the good guythat that you are going to be
perceived as the good guy, by acourt of law when when things
finally shake out or that youractions will have a higher moral
ground that will somehow bringyou through this unscathed
against someone that truly doesis a skilled operator. And can
(24:55):
you speak a little bit more tothat that the importance of
knowing who you are and reallike understanding the
limitations that you bring in toany situation based on your
upbringing and your orientation.
Varg Freeborn (25:08):
So, in beyond it, I do talk about this concept
called, the stories that we tellourselves, right. And everyone
is telling themselves a storyabout who they are. Now, some of
this is very apparent. And youcan see people become
caricatures of this, of thiscartoon that ellipses in their
(25:30):
head. That is quite, it's notreally realistic, and you can
see it right. So there's,there's, there's visible ways to
tell that this happens. But inmost people, most people are
very good about concealing it.
And they even conceal it fromthemselves. So first
understanding that you'reliving, you're living a story
(25:50):
that you're telling yourself ofwho you are, and how you fit
into the world around you. And alot of people are telling
themselves, stories that are notfactually true. Right. So they,
you know, there's a saying thatmen, you know, think they're
born knowing how to work oncars, lift weights, and fight.
(26:11):
And they typically are very goodat any of those things. So, so
there's a, there's that, thatthere's truth to that, right,
there's a stereotype there, butthe stereotype is there for a
reason, because there's atypical story that guys tell
themselves that they're good atthings like, and if you tell
yourself like, you're a manlyguy, you're good at these manly
(26:32):
things, right? And so thesenarratives that we come up with
in our head, and, you know, theyguide, they largely guide our,
our, our decision making, andthey're based on our
orientation, they're eitherreactionary, or, you know,
stemming from that, you know,systemically and what we what we
can do is, to first determineare the stories that we're
(26:58):
telling ourselves in our headactually true, right? You know,
you're you're going to, like youmeet someone, and they say, I'm
gonna build a race car. Yeah.
Can you build a race hurt? Yeah,I can build a race car for sure.
Have you ever built race carnow? Do you know how to weld a
little bit? Right, you know?
Yeah. So so we start breakingdown, like the components of
(27:20):
building a race car, and youfind out that, you know, you
have the willingness to build aracecar, and you have the
willingness to, to hopefullylearn how to do the things that
needed to be done to build arace car. But at this moment in
time, you don't have thecredentials of a race car
builder. Now, that is somethingyou need to earn to fix your
(27:42):
story, so that you can live yourstory. And now your story is
real. So the guy goes, he takessome classes and welding, he,
you know, learns how to bendsome tubing, he learns about a
little bit about metallurgy. Andyou know, which metals need to
be where and how to build a carto be up to the, you know, the
specs for the tracks. Boom, hebuilds a car. Now, when he says,
(28:05):
I'm a race car builder, he's arace car builder, he built one,
right? So there's truth to hisstory now. But there's a lot of
people out there saying thererace car builders that have
never built one. And there's nottruth to that story. And it's
very important. While it doesn'tseem like it's a big deal, it
is. And when we're talking aboutviolence, which is where I
developed these concepts fromthe person that you run across
(28:29):
the violent individual that mayattack you or your family
someday, you know, is tellinghimself a story too. And that
can be very dangerous for you,because you could be the thing
that makes his story come true.
If he's a killer, you know, youmight be the thing that, you
know, helps him realize that,that he actually is a killer,
Joe Cadwell (28:51):
killer. Killer, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Well,
Varg Freeborn (28:55):
if he kills you, then he is a killer. Right? So.
So that's, that's the problemthat you have to understand is,
what is the story when you'redealing in negotiations, or in
potential conflict of violencewith people understanding what
is the story that they'retelling themselves about who
they are, and how you fit intothat story, trying to ascertain
(29:15):
that as early as possible isgoing to help you immensely
because then you can, you canmake the choice to play into
that story, or utilize thatstory in some way or another to
help your personal goals in thatsituation. Right. And that's a,
you know, that's something thatwe did in prison a lot when you
(29:38):
have, say, you know, a potentialconflict between races or
something like that. And insteadof having this go down at a very
low level, what you have isyou've got like, guys that are
in leadership roles, and you goand you say, hey, I've got this
(30:00):
problem with one of your guys, Idon't want to, you know, I don't
want this to turn into a thing.
So I'm talking to you to seewhat you want to do about it.
Right? So there's a politicaldiplomatic way to handle things,
right.
Joe Cadwell (30:11):
Even in prison. It sounds like there's
Varg Freeborn (30:14):
most definitely in prison. Yes, it's very
structure, it's, it's way morestructured than then out here,
for sure. And it operates muchbetter in many ways, but so the
hierarchy is developed in, youknow, out west, they call these
cars and keyholders. Right, so,the car is the group of people
(30:37):
that would be like a race or agang or a group of people. And
basically, the keyholder is theleader of that group, right? So
you would talk to the guy holdsthe keys and say, hey, you know,
I got this issue with you guys.
Or we got this or your, your keyguy goes talk to his key guy,
like, however it goes down,right? But this is all based on
stories of, of whose people are,who they're telling themselves
(31:01):
they are, and who they're makingother people think they are? And
are these things actually realor not, right. And so, in those
types of situations, those thosepositions are usually pretty
well vetted out. And people whoare operating at that level have
proven themselves, not only tothemselves, but to the outside
world, that they will do what'snecessary, they'd have done
(31:21):
what's necessary to get to thatlevel. And so when you're
dealing with certain people,there's no question that you
know, that this person has donethe things that they tell
themselves in their head thatthey're, you know, they walk
around, like they're a killer,or they're, there's someone
that's gonna, you know, put ahit on somebody, or can be
raised somebody or, you know,cause somebody to, you know, ask
him out of strife. They'vealready done these things. And
(31:42):
you know, this is true, it's nota story that's untested. It's a
story that's proven. And thething I try to get across to
like, average, people that arenot living, super violent lives
in prison and things like that,is that you're also telling
yourself a story about who youare. And in order to be a
happier, more complete person,and more successful, more
(32:03):
productive, more industrious,you know, creating as much truth
to that story as possible, isthe key, right? That is the,
because if we, if we, if we'reliving a lie, and only we know
about it, but we've convincedthe people around us, you know,
that these lies are true thatwe're really this other person.
(32:25):
You're never, you're neverhappy, you're always afraid of
looking over your shoulder,you're going to be find out, you
know, you have impostorsyndrome, you are not genuine,
you're not authentic, you're notliving an authentic life. And
you're always having to dothings to kind of uphold the
lies, you know, so having a moreauthentic story is the basis of
(32:48):
like a strong life. It's the,it's the, it's the, the mental,
you know, biceps and pecks of,of your game on a mental level,
right? It's how to build yourstrength at a mental level is
having that ot this authenticitybehind you. And it's, whether
you're in trades, or whetheryou're in violence, or no, it
(33:11):
doesn't matter what you'redoing, it applies there, because
everybody's telling themselves astory about who they are. But
are you really that person? And,you know, if you're not, it's
okay. If you start to fix thattoday, and become that person,
you know, so don't just talkabout doing things, you know, go
take the classes, or get thecertifications or get the
(33:34):
experience and actually do thethings, have some failures, you
know, put some failures underyour belt and learn some things,
right? Because we know in thetrades, that the difference
between a pro and everyone elseis a pro knows what to do when
she goes wrong. Absolutely anyanybody else like you, you can
(33:54):
train people to lay paint wheneverything lays down, right? You
can trade you can train peoplethat the welds deal together
when everything goes forth. Butwhen things start to go wrong,
that's when the pros come outand say, Okay, this is what we
got to do to fix this, becausethey got that experience.
They've, they've been there andthey know how to do this, right?
So become that person, becomethat person have authenticity in
(34:19):
your story. And that's going togive you that that solid
starting point and begin tochange your orientation. If you
don't change your story firstand make it authentic, you will
never successfully change yourorientation and your decision
making subsequently will neverbe improved.
Joe Cadwell (34:37):
So So leaving the violent past behind barg and
moving into changing yourposition writing your first
book, what was the inspirationfor you to write violence of
mind? How did that come about?
How did you have a team was thissomething that you came up with
on your own, but where did theconcept come from?
Varg Freeborn (34:58):
So I had what I had went through my second
divorce. Unfortunately, I've hadtwo divorces. And, you know, the
second one was was prettypainful process. And I basically
made a decision that I was goingto change my life. And a lot of
things that contribute toadversity are often products of
(35:27):
our own doing, which are oftenproducts of our upbringing or in
our environment. Right. So thereis there's a paper trail there,
that goes back. And recognizingthat is a big problem, right? So
what a lot of people and I'venoticed this very much so in the
blue collar, you know, class oflife, right? A lot of people
(35:54):
wonder why I'm doing the rightthings. I have the right
intentions, getting up everyday, I'm going to work, why am I
not succeeding? Why do I keeplosing? Why did things keep
falling apart? I'm, I'm pursuingcertifications, I'm getting
better at my trade, I'm doingwhat I'm supposed to be doing.
But I can't, you know, hold ahome life together, I can't do
(36:17):
this. And a lot of it is, youknow, the choices we make for
associations, right? And who weassociate our self with. And
sometimes we seek out thesepatterns that we had when we
were growing up. Andunfortunately, you know, we find
those those patterns offamiliarity and other
(36:37):
relationships, and we continuethose patterns into our own life
and don't understand why itdoesn't work out. And so I made
a choice at around 2016 To cutassociations pretty much with
everyone. Because I can seepatterns in my life. Even though
I had the right intentions. Iwent to school, I've done the
things I got the certificationof multiple certifications,
(37:00):
multiple things I've done, and Ijust couldn't succeed.
Joe Cadwell (37:04):
Right. I think the saying Vargas, you know, you're
a compilation of the five peopleyou hang around most with in
life, and you were finding thatthose people weren't adding
value to your life.
Varg Freeborn (37:16):
Exactly, exactly.
And it's, you know, you and it'snot to say that there's, you
know, something inherently wrongwith those people. Sometimes
there is, you know, if you, ifyou're sitting back and asking
yourself, Why do I keep failing,but your wife is a heroin
addict, like, okay, so youmarried. That's part of your
problem, right? So sometimesit's obvious, but sometimes it's
(37:36):
not obvious, and you can'tunderstand it. But I made that
decision. And so in 2016, I wasworking for Raven concealment
systems, defense manufacturer inthe Gun, gun industry, and it
was my first big Good job beforethat. I was like working, you
know, low end jobs and couldn'treally couldn't really get it
(37:57):
together. In terms of making anydecent money, though, I tried.
So Raven, I was working Raven,and they bumped me up to over 50
grand a year, which was to me itwas a big deal back then. Right.
And I made a decision to quitthat job because it turned toxic
and the the owner turned toxic.
(38:17):
And a lot of the relationshipsthat were involved with that in
turn toxic, it just was not agood was not a good thing for me
anymore. And the marriage wasnot a good thing for me anymore.
And a lot of the familyconnections were not a good
thing. So I cut everything off,I quit my job, I cut everything
off. I went and got an apartmentin the beginning of 2017 for
(38:40):
$430 a month and this littletown called Brookfield Ohio. And
I went to work, I quit my job.
And I went to work doing likeside work, SEO work and stuff on
the internet. I was making babymaybe 1000 to 2000 books a
month, you know, and I gavemyself one year and I said,
Okay, I'm going to I'm going tosign this lease for one year.
(39:02):
And at the end of this 12months, I'm going to have a
book, you know, and that's it.
And I'm going to live on just aslow and frugally as I can, and
you know, $430 Mokume believe Ipaid that like, I look back now
and I'm like my god for 30 amonth is a two bedroom
apartment. It was a goodneighborhood. You know, and I
(39:24):
would sometimes like man, I wishI could go back to that. But
yeah, so I lived very minimally,very minimally and I had I
didn't even have a couch I nevereven had a couch the whole time.
I didn't need one. I just workedon my book and I worked out you
know I would go to the gym andthen I would there was a cigar
shop across the street that hadthis really cool cigar lounge.
(39:47):
It Cobots cigars in BrookfieldOhio and that's where violence
on mine was written in thatlounge. I spent most of my days
in lunch and I would go in thereand I would buy a cigar I'd sit
down with a big thermos ofcoffee. And I would sit in this
really cool lounge. And I wasusually the only person there.
And I would just write my book.
And I gave myself 12 months ofthat. And in the 11th month, I
(40:10):
published my book and send itout. And
it's funny because I had printedmy own copies to begin with,
because I wanted to release theinitial copies the initial
(40:31):
printing myself and have themsigned and do something special,
And I had a stack of envelopesand a black magic marker that's
right? So I had, like 300 booksprinted.
gonna fill out these addressesin Cindy's books. All right. So
I put the books up on the, onthe internet. And it's like, by
(40:52):
that night, it was like, I wasat like, 750 sold, and I was
like, oh, man, I'm this blackmarker and stack envelopes isn't
gonna cut it. So. So I went in,you know, got ShipStation and
got printing capa bilities. AndI started like becoming a
legitimate distributionoperation there for a couple of
(41:13):
months, and I shipped out 1000books.
At at $29, a book, I should havesigned to that first printing,
all hand signed, well, everyone, every one of them, I picked
them up from the printerpackage, the each one signed
each one and labeled each oneand mailed it myself, like, and
(41:36):
so that was a and so obviously,boom. When my lease was up the
next month, I was like, Shit, Iactually, I was thinking I was
gonna move to like a betterplace. And I'm like, Man, I'm
actually going to move toFlorida. This was, this was so,
so successful, that I actuallyhave the opportunity to, you
know, do something I really wantto do. And you know, so I moved
(42:00):
to Florida, and I moved on tofour acres in the country in
Florida and bought a couplehorses from my daughter's and
and for four years, I lived outthere and lived a pretty good
life, and worked on beyond Dudaand got beyond hooter done
and raved about it. For years, Ipublished beyond Duda. And, and
(42:23):
that was the boost that got meover to Daytona Beach where I
wanted to be and now I'm overhere, doing nothing but that
there was no team, there was no,there was nobody. That was pure,
100% isolation, and I'd shutmyself off from everything. I
wasn't even reading any otherpeople's information, I just
(42:43):
purely wanted to get my thoughtsonto paper. In a pure form, I
didn't want any contaminationcoming in from any other people.
So I had, I did not have agirlfriend, I did not have
friends. I did not I think I wascomplete isolation for that 12
months. And I accomplished whatI set out to accomplish. And I
did you know, by the time mylease was up, I did what I what
(43:07):
I said I was going to do, andguess what, you know, the power
that I felt when my story becamereal. When I said, I'm a writer,
I'm a guy who's gonna write thisbook, and then I wrote the book
and successful bunch of peoplebought it. Now, I felt like I
pulled power away from the sun.
You know? Like, it's amazing howmuch better you feel when your
story becomes real. So butthat's how I did it, to answer
(43:28):
your question.
Joe Cadwell (43:31):
That's fantastic.
And before we started recordingthis episode, Varga, you would
use the term that I wasn'tfamiliar with. And it was sort
of talking about your attitudetowards social media right now
and use the term woodshedding.
And I was hoping for theaudience. And for me, you could
elaborate a little bit more onthe concept of woodshedding and
how it plays into who you areand what you're doing now.
Varg Freeborn (43:55):
So woodshedding is something I talked about in
violence of mine in the firstbook in it's it's a very, very
important concept to me, and Ithink it is to other people,
too. I think it should be atleast, basically woodshedding is
it? For me, it's an old musicianterm where you you go in the
woodshed and practice and youcome out and you're this amazing
(44:17):
player and people think you soldyour soul to the devil because
overnight you became amazing,right? But it didn't happen
overnight. You went into thewoodshed and you put hours and
hours and hours and hours ofpracticing. And then you came
out but two people one day theysee you and you suck and the
next time they see you You'reamazing. So obviously think
there's like this magicaltransformation to happen. So
(44:37):
that's like the mystical aspectof the woodshed right. So you
disappear and you come backtransformed. It's the I think
it's the true essence of the youknow, the Crossroads story,
where you go and beat the deviland you sell your soul Right?
Like I think that you know,selling your soul part happens
(44:59):
over many Many, many hours inpractice, right? It's not a
magical contract, it's actuallyyou go in and you do the work.
But doing it away from people'sview, doing it by yourself, I
think there's a very important,I think there's several very
important components to that,especially psychologically,
maybe even spiritually. And whatthat means is that, if you know
(45:25):
exactly what I'm doing rightnow, I've shut my social media
down almost completely. And I'mvery, super low signal and
social media. And you know, andpeople may think, in this day
and age today, they may think,wow, he's not doing anything,
and he's just done, when really,I'm doing more than I've done in
(45:48):
a long time. And this last sixmonths, I've remodeled an entire
house, you know, I've builtfences, I've, I've rebuilt an
entire motorcycle. You know, Itook a 1983 show will hit Harley
and tore it all the way down andbuilt it all the way back up. I,
you know, have enrolled inwelding school, I'm full time in
(46:11):
welding school right now. Andright now I'm working on stick
welding, which was new to me, Iwas already a MIG welder before
and I've been trying to learntake for the past year, because
I want to do bike frames. Butnow I'm doing stick for
structural and, you know, in thepoint is, is that a doing more
than I've done in months andmonths and months, maybe years
(46:34):
in my life, right? But I'm notposting about it, I'm not
showing people everyday, likelook at my wealth, or look what
I'm learning, I look what I'mdoing, I look what I
accomplished, I look what Ibuilt. And I think that there's
a value in that, that it makesit real, it makes it real in the
sense that I'm doing this forme, I'm not doing this for
(46:55):
recognition from the world. Ormaybe it's delayed recognition
later, which is fine. But I'mnot, I don't need your approval
or your recognition today to getup every day and go after it and
keep doing what I'm doing.
Because it's authentic. It'sgenuine. You know, it's it's not
something that I'm doing for thefor the upholding of some story
that I'm telling myself that I'mcurating. I'm curating this,
(47:18):
this image on social media, thatnow I want to, you know, I get
caught up in living in thisimage. And now I want to just
keep doing things that makepeople think I'm cool. And it's
very easy to fake that on socialmedia, it's very easy to fake a
cool life on social media. And Ithink that's honestly what most
people do is fake a cool life.
(47:39):
And it's very unfortunate,because people struggle and
people are hurt. And people haveimmense questions, deep, deep
level questions about life, andyou know, how they can get
through certain things. And thenthey see people on social media
that are just perfect. It couldperfect, impeccable lives. And
(47:59):
they're like, and they fill itget because they're like, wow,
like, why can't I be like that,because he's not like that. It's
not real. The stories we tellourselves again, it's exactly
this guy's telling you a storythat he's probably telling
himself too. And it's it, thewhole thing is,
he's got an alcohol problem, orhe's got an anger problem, or
(48:20):
he's screaming at his wife, orhe's got, you know, some other
kind of issues, or he's gotfinancial problems. And he's not
telling you about that, youknow, because he wants you to
think he's got his impeccablelife. And a lot of these guys
are making money as instructorsand stuff like that. And I'm
telling you behind the scenes,that it's, it's, you know, and
so woodshedding woodshedding notonly accomplishes you going in,
(48:43):
you know, going away from publicview and getting really good at
something and giving you thatmystical aspect of one day
coming back and all of a suddenyou're magical, right? But it
actually, it cultivates anauthenticity in you, and in why
you do things. You're not justdoing it for attention. You're
not just doing it for otherpeople, you're doing it for you,
(49:05):
you're doing it because you wantyou want to accomplish a goal.
You have a vision, you know,like me, I want to you know, I
mentioned before I had a customcar shop in Knoxville, Tennessee
in the early 2000s. And, youknow, I went to auto body school
as soon as I got out of prisonand 99 graduated and I went to
(49:27):
high performance mechanic schoolfor a little while. And then I
traveled to Los Angeles and Iworked for Scott gildner and
Scott's rotten customs worked onchops and choppers out there in
LA. And then I worked for Bobbyall the way in Tennessee like I
traveled all over because thatwas my passion. I wanted to
learn I want to get good atthese things. And then I opened
my own shop. Well, myassociations, threw me off track
(49:51):
and destroyed the things I wastrying to work on. And it wasn't
until later on in my life that Icut associations out that I
started to take off like arocket and under Stand, okay, if
I create authenticity in mystory and actually go and do the
things that I need to do, and Idon't have these associations
that drag me down or keep me,it's the type of drama that
drains my energy away fromaccomplishing these things. Now,
(50:13):
here's the magic formula forthis to happen properly, right.
And so, when you get to thatpoint, and you're actually ready
to do this, and then youwoodshed, you know, it's super
powerful. It's like one of themost powerful things you can do
in your life. Because you're,you're proving to yourself the
authenticity of your vision, theauthenticity of your story, you
(50:36):
know, the genuine motivation andintentions behind the things
that you want to do. When youtake away that, that instant
gratification of being rewardedevery day by people's likes and
comments, right with thisdamaging toxic social media
thing, because I just believeit's just, it's destroying the
(50:56):
world. When you take thosethings away, you take yourself
back to a time when you had todo things, because you really
were driven to do them inside ofyour heart, because you really
wanted to do it, not because youthought that, you know, it was
going to get you and we grew upin a world where, you know, when
(51:17):
I started, when I even when Iopened my first shop, this was
20 to 21 years ago, there waslike Facebook was still just a
baby thing for college kids.
Like it wasn't that social mediadidn't exist, you know, so
fairly new construct. Yeah, andso you so the point is, is if
you wanted to get famous backthen or you wanted to get known
(51:38):
and get that reward those likesand those comments, you had to
do that get on a big scale, toget the kind of recognition that
where you landed a magazine,that was the only way you got
to, if you could get yourselflike a build a car that gotten a
magazine, that was the only wayyou were getting noticed on big
scale. And so you had to havethose intentions in those drives
to get to that point back then.
(52:01):
But nowadays, you know, anybodywith money and knows how to bolt
on parts, can literally buy afactory hot rod for 6070, grand,
you know, 800 power 800horsepower car, or, you know,
bolt some parts on. And they'relike, you know, it's like Bob
speed shop now, you know, andit's like, because they can put
(52:22):
up some photos of them, youknow, smoking some tires, or you
know, running, you know, ninesecond quarter miles, and all of
a sudden, they're amazing, butthe the thing is this, the, the
authenticity behind it is whatreally, it's what really matters
to your soul. And you can be itthe world around you as much as
(52:44):
you want to, and you can getaway with it and think it's
great, but you are never goingto feel good in your soul.
Because you can't get your ownsoul. You know, and so that's
where woodshedding comes in, isthat you cut out the, in your
you're alone with yourself, andthe things you're trying to
accomplish. And you just do themand there's no instant
(53:04):
gratification involved. It's along, hard process, and you have
to do it.
Joe Cadwell (53:08):
There's no shortcuts, no shortcuts. In
pursuit of a valued life, I pickthat off of one of the small
signatures you do have left onthe internet, and it comes off
of a website, what is what isyour definition Varg of a
pursuit of a valued life? Wheredoes that mean to you
Varg Freeborn (53:28):
living with with authenticity, and accomplishing
vision. And leaving your mark onthe world in some kind of a
positive way, you know, helpingother people in some kind of
positive way. You know, this issomething that the book I'm
working on right now that I'mworking on to a smaller booklet,
(53:51):
but the actual book I'm workingon has to do with this, you
know, I'm going to deal withjust the adversity and you know
how to be basically how to begood at being poor. Because if
you suck at being poor, you'regoing to be poor your whole
life. And if you suck at beingpoor, bad enough, your kids will
be poor too. And so when you getgood at the board, then you can
(54:16):
work your way out of it. Andthat's kind of a concept that
I'm you know, that I'm toyingwith right now. But just leaving
a mark on other people's livesthat's positive or helping them
become, you know, better, moresuccessful, more happy people in
some way or another. I thinkthat's a very important part of
(54:36):
living a valued life. Butauthenticity and your own vision
have to be the first componentsto that, because selflessness is
the path to destruction, withoutthe right amount of selfishness
to build that strong foundationfirst.
Joe Cadwell (54:52):
Fantastic. Well, Varg freeborn this has been an
awesome conversation. I reallyappreciate you taking your time
to be on the show today. Wherecan people Go if they are
interested in finding out moreabout Mark freeborn and what
you're up to,
Varg Freeborn (55:04):
well, like I said, right now my signal is
low, but I will be firing somestuff up pretty soon. I've got
some plans and visions. I wantto I've got some, you know, some
self defense, things coming.
I've got some books coming. I'vegot some motorcycle and custom
fabrication things coming. So ifyou watch my website for
frequent.com, eventually, you'regonna see something pop up
(55:27):
there. I don't know when.
Because I'm pretty busy rightnow. And like I said,
woodshedding. I don't. It's notin public view. But I have a lot
going on and it's going to comeup eventually so you can check
it out there.
Joe Cadwell (55:40):
All right. Thanks again, Mark. It's been a great
conversation.
Varg Freeborn (55:43):
Thank you.
Varg Freeborn Welcome to Grit Nation.
Varg Freeborn (00:01):
Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
Joe Cadwell (00:03):
Yeah, thank you so much Varg for taking your time
to be on my show today, I'vebeen a fan ever since I heard
you on another podcast. And forthose who don't know who Varg
Freeborn is, he is a strengthcoach, a self defense and
firearms instructor and anauthor. And I just found out
that Varg you're also pursuing acareer in the trades. And I was
(00:26):
hoping Varg, you could tell alittle bit more about your
story. And we'll look into someof your books and hopes for the
future with the with the trades.
Varg Freeborn (00:34):
I grew up in a Midwestern, you know, burned out
steel mill town. And so that wasthe theme of life growing up was
that young from Youngstown,Ohio. And, and if you don't know
the story in the late 70s, inthe 80s, early 80s, the steel
mills left, and they never cameback. And it took what was a
(00:56):
very, you know, prolific andsuccessful blue collar area, and
just destroyed it, deindustrialized it and destroyed
it. And what we grew up with inmy generation was, you know, the
aftermath of all the union jobswere gone, and all the factories
were shut down, all thesupporting factories were shut
(01:18):
down, it was just a few left.
And we had these, you know,rusted carcasses of factories
everywhere, that that justliterally created the landscape
of where we grew up atit, youknow, buildings that were just
miles long, Youngstown Sheet andtube and Youngstown steel and
Warren, there was just steelmills everywhere, and that that
(01:43):
world was leaving as I wasgrowing up. And it was very
painful for you know, andthere's, there's several,
there's some towns in, you know,like Gary, Indiana, and some
other places in the Midwestexperience like Michigan, Flint,
Michigan, yeah. So so this was acommon story, you know, in
(02:05):
certain parts of the country.
But very blue collar, you know,I grew up in my my family were
steel workers and no workers.
And then when I came of age,that wasn't available for me
anymore, you know, so that, thatI couldn't, you know, they all
had decent jobs. And that wasn'tavailable, you know, so I grew
(02:26):
up in a very rough environment.
You know, there was a lot of alot of drugs, a lot of violence
in my family, a lot of criminalactivity. So it was very, very
rough. The, the younger people,my family didn't really follow.
The mother was only 16 When shehad me, so I wasn't that far
(02:49):
behind my aunts and uncles, andeverybody were very close
generationally. So they kind ofmissed out the mill thing, too,
for the most part. And so whathappened with a lot of people at
that time was, you know, thedrugs and the alcohol took over
when the reality of economiccollapse set in, and that, you
(03:12):
know, nothing was coming back.
It wasn't coming back. And therewas not much, you know, hope for
people to really be able to havethis great life that people have
lived up to that point. Andwe're talking about a time when,
you know, the 50s and 60s inthose areas, people had seven,
eight kids, and lived in twothree storey houses was very
common. That was your average.
(03:35):
That was the golden age of theAmerican dream, so to speak.
Yeah, yeah. And then where I'mfrom, you know, it's, it's
funny, because you ride up anddown the streets. And you see
these big old houses nowthey're, you know, pushing 100
years old, but back then theywere only, you know, 30, 40
years old. And a lot of thesehouses turned the century were
built, you know, at the boom ofthe beginning of the of the
(03:57):
steel mills and things likethat. And now they're all
triplex is in quad plexes. Andthey're converted into, you
know, shitty apartments, youknow, and they're basically
ghettos. And it's so amazing tothink that this was the height
of it the good life, and nowit's the the epitome of the
bottom, you know, it was justamazing. But that was, you know,
(04:22):
that that's what I grew up with.
And of course, that can tributeit to a very rough adolescence.
And, of course, I was involvedin a lot of violence. And you
know, if you're interested, youcan read my first book about
this. But, you know, when I was18, I was involved in an
incident of self defense. Itturned pretty, pretty tragic.
(04:42):
And I ended up charged withattempted aggravated murder. I
did five years in prison, andbasically from 19 years old to
24 I was in prison.
Joe Cadwell (04:56):
So and this is the book you're referring to Varg is
Violence of mind.
Varg Freeborn (05:01):
Violence of Mind.
Yeah, that would be the firstone that would that would detail
that. And so, you know, and thenafter that I decided that I
didn't want to go back to thatlife because, you know, I grew
up with a lot of my family and alot of the people we associate
with were one percenters. onepercenter motorcycle clubs. I
(05:22):
grew up in a lot of thatenvironment. And I was around a
lot of that, before I went toprison. And that type of that
type of violent lifestyle waswas, you know, something I
didn't want to go back to. So Imade a decision to move
immediately out of prison anddid what a lot of people don't
(05:43):
do. And I went somewhere where Ididn't know anyone. And I lived
in a guy that I was in prisonwith, set me up with his mother
owned a very old apartmentbuilding from the 1800s. And one
of the apartments had been shutdown for several years. And it
didn't have any electricity. Butshe said, I could rent this
(06:04):
apartment for $150 a month. Andthat she would get electricity
fixed, you know. So I came outand I went straight to the
apartment and it didn't have theit didn't have a bathtub
functioning bathtub, and itdidn't have electricity. You
know, so I got like a bathtubrigged up and ran an extension
(06:24):
cord, and ran off of anextension cord while I signed up
for trade school and I went toauto body school. I finished a
two year Auto Body program and18 months in that apartment with
no electricity. And at the sametime, I did about 20 hours
semester, per semester. So I wasdoing 20 hour weeks with the
(06:47):
school. And then I was doing 40hour weeks as an apprentice at
Body Shop, I actually was luckyto get an old school
apprenticeship with a body shopthat had been around since 49.
So it was it was a very goodexperience there. And so I
started out in tradesimmediately as soon as I got out
of prison. And worked in thatfor quite a while. About a dozen
(07:09):
years. And and I ended up owningmy own body shop mound, custom
car shop, I built custom carsand trucks for a while. And then
also owned a custom guitar shopand did woodworking and built
custom guitars, from hand handcarved, you know, the next and
(07:30):
everything just straight fromwall, everything was raw wood.
And I hand selected the wood andbuilt everything right in the
basement. That was that was funto just like generally like to
build things, create things andfabricate things. But then I
worked as a violence instructor,because the trades, you know,
there for a while got prettytough, especially the ones I
(07:53):
picked, especially the autobodyworld. They, you know, there
were some things that happenedwith the insurance companies
there. Some years within thelast 20 years where the
insurance companies basicallytook over the collision
business, the auto body businessand insurance companies, dictate
to the body shops, what they'regoing to do, what they're going
to pay their guys andeverything. So the insurance
(08:15):
companies basically run the bodyshops now. And the adjusters who
come in who have zero idea havenever gotten their hands dirty
at all. And I know every tradehas these people, these people
that come in, and they've nevergotten their hands dirty, and
they're telling you how you'regoing to do things and how much
you're gonna get paid to do it.
And so that they're the guysthat run the show in that. So
(08:37):
that got pretty disheartening.
And so I took a break from allthat for a while, started
businesses violence educator andtraining andI was actually able
to go back and get my rightsrestored, I fought the state.
And I didn't get my convictionoverturned or anything like
(08:57):
that. But they did offer me arestoration of rights. And I was
allowed to vote, sit on a juryhold public office, or possess
firearms. So all of that wasgiven back to me.
Joe Cadwell (09:09):
And this was in the state of Ohio bar.
Varg Freeborn (09:12):
Yes, that was Ohio. Yes. Okay. And so once I
got that, I went back and begantraining civilians and law
enforcement and the use ofweapons and lethal force
encounters, since that wassomething I had so much
experience with, you know,weapon based violence. I've been
on both ends of that andreceiving and giving multiple
times. And so that was somethingI had to offer. And that's been
(09:35):
that's been good. But I recentlytook a break from that with
COVID kind of shut down totraveling and I guess never
fired a backup yet. And now I'mback in transitioning back into
trades, because I really missit. And I really miss building
stuff. So I came to DaytonaBeach because I love motorcycles
and I want to build custommotorcycles down here. And so
(09:57):
now I'm down here, actuallyright now putting together my
shop and you know getting mywelding certs back and getting
everything lined up so I canstart doing things I want to do.
Joe Cadwell (10:06):
That's fantastic.
So finding an outlet to be ableto channel those creative
energies that you have. I mean,obviously, carving guitars
working with metal writingbooks, to some extent recreating
who you were after, sort of,from my understanding, a very
rough upbringing, and thenhaving spent time from the ages
of 19 to 24, you set in federalpenitentiary state, state
(10:30):
penitentiary, okay, so statepenitentiary. And, again, I
think if I remember correctly,Varg that was the particular
period of time that you were inwas a very violent era for the
state and federalpenitentiaries. And not to dwell
too long on that. But that woulddefinitely take someone who was
(10:50):
19 years old, and really presenta lot of challenges for them to
overcome. And I was hoping youmight be able to talk about what
you did to overcome some of thephysical and mental
psychological challenges thatyou were faced with on a day to
day and how you persevered andwhat brought you through that
that dark patch.
Varg Freeborn (11:12):
You know, I'm going to tell you that my life
has been extremely hard. Instarting out, you know, being
born to a single 16 year oldteenage mother, in a drug house,
I grew up in a drug house, lotsof violence, didn't know who I
could trust or when I couldtrust them when they were going
to be high drunk and becomeviolent, you know. And so by the
(11:34):
time I got to prison, I wasalready primed pretty well, it
wasn't like I was a baby andlanded in there, you know, that
there were guys like that. Therewere kids like that, and I seen
them get their souls shattered,like glass. And it was, it was
pretty tragic to watch happen.
But that, you know, I wasn't oneof those people. I should, I
mean, I stabbed somebody 23times to get there. You know, so
(11:55):
I was it wasn't like, I waswalking in the door, like, you
know, a sheep in a wolf den.
Right.
So, but it was, it wasn't easy,either, you know, so, overcoming
the adversities, you know, I'mgoing to tell you how I did it.
And I did it systematically. AndI did it through just the will
(12:16):
to achieve something.
And a lot of times thatsomething just ended up being,
I'm not gonna let these peoplefucking win, you know, anybody,
nothing is gonna beat me,nothing's gonna crush me,
nothing's gonna break me, I'mnot gonna let it happen. And I
don't care what they throw atme, they can lock me in prison,
they can put me in the mostviolent place they can take my
freedom away, you know, treat melike an animal that nothing is
(12:40):
going to break me. Right. Andthat was the will to just
survive in and conquer thosetypes of adversities coming at
you. Because I seen it breakingpeople I seen people just break
in ways that were unacceptableto me. Beginning in my
adolescence, in my early life,watching, you know, my family
(13:03):
members fall to drugs andalcohol and allowing that to
just destroy them. And thenwatching in prison, either the
system break people because itis designed to break people,
it's not designed to helpanybody. It's designed to break
and punish. And that's why youget such incredibly hard men
(13:23):
that come out of there becauseit's a factory for hardness.
It's not it's not arehabilitation center, it's it's
creates harder, more hateful,angry people. But if you don't
come out that way, you getbroken and I've seen so many
people, you know, especiallyyoung kids that tell stories
about it in my books, too, youknow, about you know, young kids
(13:44):
that come in there and theynever really experienced
anything rough in life. Theymade like one bad choice and got
in with a bad crew and ended updoing you know, a b&e or
something that got a time inprison and then they ended up
getting raped or you know, justterrible things happen in their
in they break in ways that's arepairable
Joe Cadwell (14:05):
so psychologically, oh, I'm sorry, Varg but
psychologically it sounds likeyou set yourself up that failure
was not going to be an optionthat no one would take advantage
of you. I understand thatphysically you went in a
different person than then youcame out and I in regards to
your body size, or strengthlevels, the amount of muscle
mass that you had to put on andthe weight pile of the of that
(14:29):
state penitentiary, was thatpart of your recipe to exit this
successfully?
Varg Freeborn (14:36):
Absolutely. And you know, I'm still a strength
coach to this day. So I wentinto prison in 1994 and that was
when that was my first exposureto the weight pile and back then
this is all gone now. Prisonsare not the same as they were. I
came in at the very end of whenprisons were still like the wild
west there was still tobacco.
There were still drugs. Therewas still way piles like it was
(14:56):
it was old school prison. And asI understand that they've cut
all that out now, but strengthis and was, you know, the the
key component, physical strengthand mental strength are
inextricably tied together, thestronger you are physically, the
stronger you're going to bementally. It because it takes a
(15:18):
lot of it takes a certain amountof mental anguish, it to get to
a very strong physical position.
And you have to willfully putyourself through uncomfortable
things. And most human brainsare wired to seek comfort,
(15:39):
rather than, you know,discomfort. And so when you push
yourself willfully intodiscomfort, and uncomfortable,
painful things, make yourself doit, then that makes you
stronger. And I picked up onthat very early age. And that's
one of the reasons why. Youknow, I accepted my favorite
prison and actually kind oflooked forward to because I knew
(16:01):
I was gonna get tempered. Now,looking back, I wish, you know,
very deeply that someone hadpulled me aside and talk to me
about finding better ways to getthat temperament. But I didn't
have that. So that's the route Itook. But when you when you
think about physical strength,it, it presents the opportunity
(16:24):
for growth in a way that isgoing to benefit you mentally,
as well. And there's just no,there's just no two ways about
it. So I pushed physicalstrength and everything when I
when I taught gunfighting when Itaught self defense, you know,
when I teach people aboutdealing with adversity, labor,
(16:47):
you know, dealing with beinggood at labor, you know, if
you're a laborer you want to youwork in trades. You know, I've
seen so many guys tearing theirbodies up, because they're not,
they're just not taking care ofthemselves, and they're not
strong. And then that's why youhave all these torn shoulders
and blown out backs and ruptureddiscs, because the muscles
supporting those joints havebecome weak, and it becomes a
(17:08):
weak link. And boom, one day, itjust goes, it breaks, you know,
and that's preventable. And thesad thing is that it's largely
preventable in most people, ifthey just put a little bit of
time into thickening thoseconnective tissues up, and being
stronger, you know, physicallystronger. So I put strength in
everything that I do, like everysingle thing that I don't care
(17:31):
what you do, I'm telling youthat strength can be a key
component making you better. Atthat day,
Joe Cadwell (17:39):
you had mentioned the phrase a better way to find
the Temperance. I believe thatis part of the second book that
you may have written beyondOODA. And for the folks that
don't know what it is, could youplease just give a brief
synopsis bargain on whatever itis?
Varg Freeborn (17:56):
Yeah, so ODA, largely known as OODA, was
actually developed by a mannamed Lieutenant Colonel John
Boyd from the Air Force. Andsome years ago, he developed
this concept of observe, orientdecide act being the decision
(18:16):
making loop. That happens when aperson is presented with a
situation where they need torespond to something to stimulus
quickly. And definitively. Itwas primarily initially geared
towards fighter pilots, which isarguably the fastest moving
(18:38):
decision making task you mighthave to face as a human being
Joe Cadwell (18:41):
right dog fighting in the air, yeah,
Varg Freeborn (18:44):
600 mile an hour dogfighting. So. You know, so
that was that was the beginningof the concept. But later on,
Boyd, what a lot of people don'trealize is that Boyd, spent his
time really honing in onorientation as being the center
point of everything. And thatOODA wasn't a loop but a series
of loops with also some built inbypasses, right. Implicit
(19:09):
guidance being one of thosebypasses, right, where implicit
guidance for decision makingthat automatically out
automatically plugs a decisionin when a stimulus is
recognized, rather than goingthrough the whole orient
decision part. It's juststimulus, implicit guidance,
right? So he talks about a lotof different things over the
(19:31):
course of 30 years since hedeveloped that, you know, before
his death in the 2000s. Andbasically, what I did was really
focused on the orientation partbecause I think that that is
really where the answers are.
And orientation to me is, it'swhat makes you who you are and
(19:52):
what it's what drives everydecision you make. It's your
cultural background, your callCultural influences your genetic
makeup, your experiences, yourconfidence, or lack of
confidence, like all of thesethings that go into you making
the decisions you make, you puttwo people, you know, in the
(20:12):
same airplane, one isenthusiastic to jump out and
have a great time and anotherone is scared to death, and you
might have a heart attack,right. And it's the orientation
towards the, the task or towardsthe situation, the circumstances
that causes that to happen. Theexperiences, the lack of
experience, the confidence, lackof confidence, the genetic
(20:33):
makeup, you know, all of thesethings come into play and make
you, you know, who you are andmake the decisions that you
make. And orientation can bechanged to a large extent, but
it's not an easy process, and issomething that I experienced
myself through five years ofprison, I came out as you said
earlier, a very different personthan when I went in my complete
(20:55):
orientation had changed. And mydecision making had changed
dramatically. Whereas times thatI would have been reactionary,
before, I was not reactionaryanymore, in times that I would
not have been reactionary, I wasnot very reactionary, you know,
these, these are very big swaps.
(21:16):
These are not, you know, it'snot easy for someone to change
something that they're, they'reautomatically reactionary, to,
that's innately, you know,grounded into us very deeply
through our culture and ourexperiences and what we, you
know, our, our value system,what we believe is right and
(21:37):
wrong, and, you know, thepriority of life, you know,
those things are very deepinside of our psyche, and it's
not something you can justextract and just decide to
change. And it takes extremecircumstances. And this can
happen with, say, a very suddenviolent shift, which often leads
(21:58):
to PTSD, because it's such aviolent shift in paradigm that
the person can't deal with it.
And there's often a moralconsequence, which is what you
see, in a lot of law enforcementofficers and military, who, you
know, may had a pretty goodlife, you know, follow the rules
did well, well rounded peopleand then get thrown into like a
human carnage situation, andcan't fucking make sense of it
(22:21):
in their head. And then all of asudden, there's this moral
injury that happens. And that,that that massive, sudden,
violent shift inside ofthemselves of how they see the
world and who they are in it, istoo much for the psyche to take.
So it can happen that way. Or itcan happen over long periods of
(22:42):
time.
Which is one of the things thatthe military also tries to do is
to change that orientationthroughout the time of your
training so that you don't havethat violent shift at the end.
But they can't always accomplishthat. Prison doesn't always
accomplish that either. My caseit did, but in the cases that I
(23:04):
brought up earlier of kids whoget there and get raped or
something that's a suddenviolent shift in their world,
and it just in there's there'sphysical injury and moral
injury, beyond what we couldcomprehend, if you haven't
experienced that, right. And sothat, that orientation is the
key is the point of it. Sofiguring out where where your
(23:27):
orientation is, and what drivesit, and breaking down the
components of it, and thenbeginning to work on those
things. So that if you want tomake better decisions, you don't
just practice making decisions,you start to cultivate and
change the very criteria thatyou base your decisions on. And
that's how your decision tobecome more reliably solid, in
(23:49):
in a changed form. Does thatmake sense? Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Cadwell (23:52):
And again, it goes beyond OODA is the name of the
book that John Boyd that themilitary strategist, the warrior
philosopher that, put that out,you've taken it to the next
level and really focusing inagain on that orient who you
are, as a person will decidewhich actions you are going to
take when presented withsomething that may put you in
(24:13):
opposition against someone thatis a completely different set of
orientated skills. However, theywere brought into play. Now,
having listened to your podcastnumerous times now Varg I think
one of the things that I reallytook away with is you know, you
cannot assume that because youare working in the in the in
(24:33):
what you believe are the bestinterests or you classify or
qualify yourself as the good guythat that you are going to be
perceived as the good guy, by acourt of law when when things
finally shake out or that youractions will have a higher moral
ground that will somehow bringyou through this unscathed
against someone that truly doesis a skilled operator. And can
(24:55):
you speak a little bit more tothat that the importance of
knowing who you are and reallike understanding the
limitations that you bring in toany situation based on your
upbringing and your orientation.
Varg Freeborn (25:08):
So, in beyond it, I do talk about this concept
called, the stories that we tellourselves, right. And everyone
is telling themselves a storyabout who they are. Now, some of
this is very apparent. And youcan see people become
caricatures of this, of thiscartoon that ellipses in their
(25:30):
head. That is quite, it's notreally realistic, and you can
see it right. So there's,there's, there's visible ways to
tell that this happens. But inmost people, most people are
very good about concealing it.
And they even conceal it fromthemselves. So first
understanding that you'reliving, you're living a story
(25:50):
that you're telling yourself ofwho you are, and how you fit
into the world around you. And alot of people are telling
themselves, stories that are notfactually true. Right. So they,
you know, there's a saying thatmen, you know, think they're
born knowing how to work oncars, lift weights, and fight.
(26:11):
And they typically are very goodat any of those things. So, so
there's a, there's that, thatthere's truth to that, right,
there's a stereotype there, butthe stereotype is there for a
reason, because there's atypical story that guys tell
themselves that they're good atthings like, and if you tell
yourself like, you're a manlyguy, you're good at these manly
(26:32):
things, right? And so thesenarratives that we come up with
in our head, and, you know, theyguide, they largely guide our,
our, our decision making, andthey're based on our
orientation, they're eitherreactionary, or, you know,
stemming from that, you know,systemically and what we what we
can do is, to first determineare the stories that we're
(26:58):
telling ourselves in our headactually true, right? You know,
you're you're going to, like youmeet someone, and they say, I'm
gonna build a race car. Yeah.
Can you build a race hurt? Yeah,I can build a race car for sure.
Have you ever built race carnow? Do you know how to weld a
little bit? Right, you know?
Yeah. So so we start breakingdown, like the components of
(27:20):
building a race car, and youfind out that, you know, you
have the willingness to build aracecar, and you have the
willingness to, to hopefullylearn how to do the things that
needed to be done to build arace car. But at this moment in
time, you don't have thecredentials of a race car
builder. Now, that is somethingyou need to earn to fix your
(27:42):
story, so that you can live yourstory. And now your story is
real. So the guy goes, he takessome classes and welding, he,
you know, learns how to bendsome tubing, he learns about a
little bit about metallurgy. Andyou know, which metals need to
be where and how to build a carto be up to the, you know, the
specs for the tracks. Boom, hebuilds a car. Now, when he says,
(28:05):
I'm a race car builder, he's arace car builder, he built one,
right? So there's truth to hisstory now. But there's a lot of
people out there saying thererace car builders that have
never built one. And there's nottruth to that story. And it's
very important. While it doesn'tseem like it's a big deal, it
is. And when we're talking aboutviolence, which is where I
developed these concepts fromthe person that you run across
(28:29):
the violent individual that mayattack you or your family
someday, you know, is tellinghimself a story too. And that
can be very dangerous for you,because you could be the thing
that makes his story come true.
If he's a killer, you know, youmight be the thing that, you
know, helps him realize that,that he actually is a killer,
Joe Cadwell (28:51):
killer. Killer, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Well,
Varg Freeborn (28:55):
if he kills you, then he is a killer. Right? So.
So that's, that's the problemthat you have to understand is,
what is the story when you'redealing in negotiations, or in
potential conflict of violencewith people understanding what
is the story that they'retelling themselves about who
they are, and how you fit intothat story, trying to ascertain
(29:15):
that as early as possible isgoing to help you immensely
because then you can, you canmake the choice to play into
that story, or utilize thatstory in some way or another to
help your personal goals in thatsituation. Right. And that's a,
you know, that's something thatwe did in prison a lot when you
(29:38):
have, say, you know, a potentialconflict between races or
something like that. And insteadof having this go down at a very
low level, what you have isyou've got like, guys that are
in leadership roles, and you goand you say, hey, I've got this
(30:00):
problem with one of your guys, Idon't want to, you know, I don't
want this to turn into a thing.
So I'm talking to you to seewhat you want to do about it.
Right? So there's a politicaldiplomatic way to handle things,
right.
Joe Cadwell (30:11):
Even in prison. It sounds like there's
Varg Freeborn (30:14):
most definitely in prison. Yes, it's very
structure, it's, it's way morestructured than then out here,
for sure. And it operates muchbetter in many ways, but so the
hierarchy is developed in, youknow, out west, they call these
cars and keyholders. Right, so,the car is the group of people
(30:37):
that would be like a race or agang or a group of people. And
basically, the keyholder is theleader of that group, right? So
you would talk to the guy holdsthe keys and say, hey, you know,
I got this issue with you guys.
Or we got this or your, your keyguy goes talk to his key guy,
like, however it goes down,right? But this is all based on
stories of, of whose people are,who they're telling themselves
(31:01):
they are, and who they're makingother people think they are? And
are these things actually realor not, right. And so, in those
types of situations, those thosepositions are usually pretty
well vetted out. And people whoare operating at that level have
proven themselves, not only tothemselves, but to the outside
world, that they will do what'snecessary, they'd have done
(31:21):
what's necessary to get to thatlevel. And so when you're
dealing with certain people,there's no question that you
know, that this person has donethe things that they tell
themselves in their head thatthey're, you know, they walk
around, like they're a killer,or they're, there's someone
that's gonna, you know, put ahit on somebody, or can be
raised somebody or, you know,cause somebody to, you know, ask
him out of strife. They'vealready done these things. And
(31:42):
you know, this is true, it's nota story that's untested. It's a
story that's proven. And thething I try to get across to
like, average, people that arenot living, super violent lives
in prison and things like that,is that you're also telling
yourself a story about who youare. And in order to be a
happier, more complete person,and more successful, more
(32:03):
productive, more industrious,you know, creating as much truth
to that story as possible, isthe key, right? That is the,
because if we, if we, if we'reliving a lie, and only we know
about it, but we've convincedthe people around us, you know,
that these lies are true thatwe're really this other person.
(32:25):
You're never, you're neverhappy, you're always afraid of
looking over your shoulder,you're going to be find out, you
know, you have impostorsyndrome, you are not genuine,
you're not authentic, you're notliving an authentic life. And
you're always having to dothings to kind of uphold the
lies, you know, so having a moreauthentic story is the basis of
(32:48):
like a strong life. It's the,it's the, it's the, the mental,
you know, biceps and pecks of,of your game on a mental level,
right? It's how to build yourstrength at a mental level is
having that ot this authenticitybehind you. And it's, whether
you're in trades, or whetheryou're in violence, or no, it
(33:11):
doesn't matter what you'redoing, it applies there, because
everybody's telling themselves astory about who they are. But
are you really that person? And,you know, if you're not, it's
okay. If you start to fix thattoday, and become that person,
you know, so don't just talkabout doing things, you know, go
take the classes, or get thecertifications or get the
(33:34):
experience and actually do thethings, have some failures, you
know, put some failures underyour belt and learn some things,
right? Because we know in thetrades, that the difference
between a pro and everyone elseis a pro knows what to do when
she goes wrong. Absolutely anyanybody else like you, you can
(33:54):
train people to lay paint wheneverything lays down, right? You
can trade you can train peoplethat the welds deal together
when everything goes forth. Butwhen things start to go wrong,
that's when the pros come outand say, Okay, this is what we
got to do to fix this, becausethey got that experience.
They've, they've been there andthey know how to do this, right?
So become that person, becomethat person have authenticity in
(34:19):
your story. And that's going togive you that that solid
starting point and begin tochange your orientation. If you
don't change your story firstand make it authentic, you will
never successfully change yourorientation and your decision
making subsequently will neverbe improved.
Joe Cadwell (34:37):
So So leaving the violent past behind barg and
moving into changing yourposition writing your first
book, what was the inspirationfor you to write violence of
mind? How did that come about?
How did you have a team was thissomething that you came up with
on your own, but where did theconcept come from?
Varg Freeborn (34:58):
So I had what I had went through my second
divorce. Unfortunately, I've hadtwo divorces. And, you know, the
second one was was prettypainful process. And I basically
made a decision that I was goingto change my life. And a lot of
things that contribute toadversity are often products of
(35:27):
our own doing, which are oftenproducts of our upbringing or in
our environment. Right. So thereis there's a paper trail there,
that goes back. And recognizingthat is a big problem, right? So
what a lot of people and I'venoticed this very much so in the
blue collar, you know, class oflife, right? A lot of people
(35:54):
wonder why I'm doing the rightthings. I have the right
intentions, getting up everyday, I'm going to work, why am I
not succeeding? Why do I keeplosing? Why did things keep
falling apart? I'm, I'm pursuingcertifications, I'm getting
better at my trade, I'm doingwhat I'm supposed to be doing.
But I can't, you know, hold ahome life together, I can't do
(36:17):
this. And a lot of it is, youknow, the choices we make for
associations, right? And who weassociate our self with. And
sometimes we seek out thesepatterns that we had when we
were growing up. Andunfortunately, you know, we find
those those patterns offamiliarity and other
(36:37):
relationships, and we continuethose patterns into our own life
and don't understand why itdoesn't work out. And so I made
a choice at around 2016 To cutassociations pretty much with
everyone. Because I can seepatterns in my life. Even though
I had the right intentions. Iwent to school, I've done the
things I got the certificationof multiple certifications,
(37:00):
multiple things I've done, and Ijust couldn't succeed.
Joe Cadwell (37:04):
Right. I think the saying Vargas, you know, you're
a compilation of the five peopleyou hang around most with in
life, and you were finding thatthose people weren't adding
value to your life.
Varg Freeborn (37:16):
Exactly, exactly.
And it's, you know, you and it'snot to say that there's, you
know, something inherently wrongwith those people. Sometimes
there is, you know, if you, ifyou're sitting back and asking
yourself, Why do I keep failing,but your wife is a heroin
addict, like, okay, so youmarried. That's part of your
problem, right? So sometimesit's obvious, but sometimes it's
(37:36):
not obvious, and you can'tunderstand it. But I made that
decision. And so in 2016, I wasworking for Raven concealment
systems, defense manufacturer inthe Gun, gun industry, and it
was my first big Good job beforethat. I was like working, you
know, low end jobs and couldn'treally couldn't really get it
(37:57):
together. In terms of making anydecent money, though, I tried.
So Raven, I was working Raven,and they bumped me up to over 50
grand a year, which was to me itwas a big deal back then. Right.
And I made a decision to quitthat job because it turned toxic
and the the owner turned toxic.
(38:17):
And a lot of the relationshipsthat were involved with that in
turn toxic, it just was not agood was not a good thing for me
anymore. And the marriage wasnot a good thing for me anymore.
And a lot of the familyconnections were not a good
thing. So I cut everything off,I quit my job, I cut everything
off. I went and got an apartmentin the beginning of 2017 for
(38:40):
$430 a month and this littletown called Brookfield Ohio. And
I went to work, I quit my job.
And I went to work doing likeside work, SEO work and stuff on
the internet. I was making babymaybe 1000 to 2000 books a
month, you know, and I gavemyself one year and I said,
Okay, I'm going to I'm going tosign this lease for one year.
(39:02):
And at the end of this 12months, I'm going to have a
book, you know, and that's it.
And I'm going to live on just aslow and frugally as I can, and
you know, $430 Mokume believe Ipaid that like, I look back now
and I'm like my god for 30 amonth is a two bedroom
apartment. It was a goodneighborhood. You know, and I
(39:24):
would sometimes like man, I wishI could go back to that. But
yeah, so I lived very minimally,very minimally and I had I
didn't even have a couch I nevereven had a couch the whole time.
I didn't need one. I just workedon my book and I worked out you
know I would go to the gym andthen I would there was a cigar
shop across the street that hadthis really cool cigar lounge.
(39:47):
It Cobots cigars in BrookfieldOhio and that's where violence
on mine was written in thatlounge. I spent most of my days
in lunch and I would go in thereand I would buy a cigar I'd sit
down with a big thermos ofcoffee. And I would sit in this
really cool lounge. And I wasusually the only person there.
And I would just write my book.
And I gave myself 12 months ofthat. And in the 11th month, I
(40:10):
published my book and send itout. And
it's funny because I had printedmy own copies to begin with,
because I wanted to release theinitial copies the initial
(40:31):
printing myself and have themsigned and do something special,
And I had a stack of envelopesand a black magic marker that's
right? So I had, like 300 booksprinted.
gonna fill out these addressesin Cindy's books. All right. So
I put the books up on the, onthe internet. And it's like, by
(40:52):
that night, it was like, I wasat like, 750 sold, and I was
like, oh, man, I'm this blackmarker and stack envelopes isn't
gonna cut it. So. So I went in,you know, got ShipStation and
got printing capa bilities. AndI started like becoming a
legitimate distributionoperation there for a couple of
(41:13):
months, and I shipped out 1000books.
At at $29, a book, I should havesigned to that first printing,
all hand signed, well, everyone, every one of them, I picked
them up from the printerpackage, the each one signed
each one and labeled each oneand mailed it myself, like, and
(41:36):
so that was a and so obviously,boom. When my lease was up the
next month, I was like, Shit, Iactually, I was thinking I was
gonna move to like a betterplace. And I'm like, Man, I'm
actually going to move toFlorida. This was, this was so,
so successful, that I actuallyhave the opportunity to, you
know, do something I really wantto do. And you know, so I moved
(42:00):
to Florida, and I moved on tofour acres in the country in
Florida and bought a couplehorses from my daughter's and
and for four years, I lived outthere and lived a pretty good
life, and worked on beyond Dudaand got beyond hooter done
and raved about it. For years, Ipublished beyond Duda. And, and
(42:23):
that was the boost that got meover to Daytona Beach where I
wanted to be and now I'm overhere, doing nothing but that
there was no team, there was no,there was nobody. That was pure,
100% isolation, and I'd shutmyself off from everything. I
wasn't even reading any otherpeople's information, I just
(42:43):
purely wanted to get my thoughtsonto paper. In a pure form, I
didn't want any contaminationcoming in from any other people.
So I had, I did not have agirlfriend, I did not have
friends. I did not I think I wascomplete isolation for that 12
months. And I accomplished whatI set out to accomplish. And I
did you know, by the time mylease was up, I did what I what
(43:07):
I said I was going to do, andguess what, you know, the power
that I felt when my story becamereal. When I said, I'm a writer,
I'm a guy who's gonna write thisbook, and then I wrote the book
and successful bunch of peoplebought it. Now, I felt like I
pulled power away from the sun.
You know? Like, it's amazing howmuch better you feel when your
story becomes real. So butthat's how I did it, to answer
(43:28):
your question.
Joe Cadwell (43:31):
That's fantastic.
And before we started recordingthis episode, Varga, you would
use the term that I wasn'tfamiliar with. And it was sort
of talking about your attitudetowards social media right now
and use the term woodshedding.
And I was hoping for theaudience. And for me, you could
elaborate a little bit more onthe concept of woodshedding and
how it plays into who you areand what you're doing now.
Varg Freeborn (43:55):
So woodshedding is something I talked about in
violence of mine in the firstbook in it's it's a very, very
important concept to me, and Ithink it is to other people,
too. I think it should be atleast, basically woodshedding is
it? For me, it's an old musicianterm where you you go in the
woodshed and practice and youcome out and you're this amazing
(44:17):
player and people think you soldyour soul to the devil because
overnight you became amazing,right? But it didn't happen
overnight. You went into thewoodshed and you put hours and
hours and hours and hours ofpracticing. And then you came
out but two people one day theysee you and you suck and the
next time they see you You'reamazing. So obviously think
there's like this magicaltransformation to happen. So
(44:37):
that's like the mystical aspectof the woodshed right. So you
disappear and you come backtransformed. It's the I think
it's the true essence of the youknow, the Crossroads story,
where you go and beat the deviland you sell your soul Right?
Like I think that you know,selling your soul part happens
(44:59):
over many Many, many hours inpractice, right? It's not a
magical contract, it's actuallyyou go in and you do the work.
But doing it away from people'sview, doing it by yourself, I
think there's a very important,I think there's several very
important components to that,especially psychologically,
maybe even spiritually. And whatthat means is that, if you know
(45:25):
exactly what I'm doing rightnow, I've shut my social media
down almost completely. And I'mvery, super low signal and
social media. And you know, andpeople may think, in this day
and age today, they may think,wow, he's not doing anything,
and he's just done, when really,I'm doing more than I've done in
(45:48):
a long time. And this last sixmonths, I've remodeled an entire
house, you know, I've builtfences, I've, I've rebuilt an
entire motorcycle. You know, Itook a 1983 show will hit Harley
and tore it all the way down andbuilt it all the way back up. I,
you know, have enrolled inwelding school, I'm full time in
(46:11):
welding school right now. Andright now I'm working on stick
welding, which was new to me, Iwas already a MIG welder before
and I've been trying to learntake for the past year, because
I want to do bike frames. Butnow I'm doing stick for
structural and, you know, in thepoint is, is that a doing more
than I've done in months andmonths and months, maybe years
(46:34):
in my life, right? But I'm notposting about it, I'm not
showing people everyday, likelook at my wealth, or look what
I'm learning, I look what I'mdoing, I look what I
accomplished, I look what Ibuilt. And I think that there's
a value in that, that it makesit real, it makes it real in the
sense that I'm doing this forme, I'm not doing this for
(46:55):
recognition from the world. Ormaybe it's delayed recognition
later, which is fine. But I'mnot, I don't need your approval
or your recognition today to getup every day and go after it and
keep doing what I'm doing.
Because it's authentic. It'sgenuine. You know, it's it's not
something that I'm doing for thefor the upholding of some story
that I'm telling myself that I'mcurating. I'm curating this,
(47:18):
this image on social media, thatnow I want to, you know, I get
caught up in living in thisimage. And now I want to just
keep doing things that makepeople think I'm cool. And it's
very easy to fake that on socialmedia, it's very easy to fake a
cool life on social media. And Ithink that's honestly what most
people do is fake a cool life.
(47:39):
And it's very unfortunate,because people struggle and
people are hurt. And people haveimmense questions, deep, deep
level questions about life, andyou know, how they can get
through certain things. And thenthey see people on social media
that are just perfect. It couldperfect, impeccable lives. And
(47:59):
they're like, and they fill itget because they're like, wow,
like, why can't I be like that,because he's not like that. It's
not real. The stories we tellourselves again, it's exactly
this guy's telling you a storythat he's probably telling
himself too. And it's it, thewhole thing is,
he's got an alcohol problem, orhe's got an anger problem, or
(48:20):
he's screaming at his wife, orhe's got, you know, some other
kind of issues, or he's gotfinancial problems. And he's not
telling you about that, youknow, because he wants you to
think he's got his impeccablelife. And a lot of these guys
are making money as instructorsand stuff like that. And I'm
telling you behind the scenes,that it's, it's, you know, and
so woodshedding woodshedding notonly accomplishes you going in,
(48:43):
you know, going away from publicview and getting really good at
something and giving you thatmystical aspect of one day
coming back and all of a suddenyou're magical, right? But it
actually, it cultivates anauthenticity in you, and in why
you do things. You're not justdoing it for attention. You're
not just doing it for otherpeople, you're doing it for you,
(49:05):
you're doing it because you wantyou want to accomplish a goal.
You have a vision, you know,like me, I want to you know, I
mentioned before I had a customcar shop in Knoxville, Tennessee
in the early 2000s. And, youknow, I went to auto body school
as soon as I got out of prisonand 99 graduated and I went to
(49:27):
high performance mechanic schoolfor a little while. And then I
traveled to Los Angeles and Iworked for Scott gildner and
Scott's rotten customs worked onchops and choppers out there in
LA. And then I worked for Bobbyall the way in Tennessee like I
traveled all over because thatwas my passion. I wanted to
learn I want to get good atthese things. And then I opened
my own shop. Well, myassociations, threw me off track
(49:51):
and destroyed the things I wastrying to work on. And it wasn't
until later on in my life that Icut associations out that I
started to take off like arocket and under Stand, okay, if
I create authenticity in mystory and actually go and do the
things that I need to do, and Idon't have these associations
that drag me down or keep me,it's the type of drama that
drains my energy away fromaccomplishing these things. Now,
(50:13):
here's the magic formula forthis to happen properly, right.
And so, when you get to thatpoint, and you're actually ready
to do this, and then youwoodshed, you know, it's super
powerful. It's like one of themost powerful things you can do
in your life. Because you're,you're proving to yourself the
authenticity of your vision, theauthenticity of your story, you
(50:36):
know, the genuine motivation andintentions behind the things
that you want to do. When youtake away that, that instant
gratification of being rewardedevery day by people's likes and
comments, right with thisdamaging toxic social media
thing, because I just believeit's just, it's destroying the
(50:56):
world. When you take thosethings away, you take yourself
back to a time when you had todo things, because you really
were driven to do them inside ofyour heart, because you really
wanted to do it, not because youthought that, you know, it was
going to get you and we grew upin a world where, you know, when
(51:17):
I started, when I even when Iopened my first shop, this was
20 to 21 years ago, there waslike Facebook was still just a
baby thing for college kids.
Like it wasn't that social mediadidn't exist, you know, so
fairly new construct. Yeah, andso you so the point is, is if
you wanted to get famous backthen or you wanted to get known
(51:38):
and get that reward those likesand those comments, you had to
do that get on a big scale, toget the kind of recognition that
where you landed a magazine,that was the only way you got
to, if you could get yourselflike a build a car that gotten a
magazine, that was the only wayyou were getting noticed on big
scale. And so you had to havethose intentions in those drives
to get to that point back then.
(52:01):
But nowadays, you know, anybodywith money and knows how to bolt
on parts, can literally buy afactory hot rod for 6070, grand,
you know, 800 power 800horsepower car, or, you know,
bolt some parts on. And they'relike, you know, it's like Bob
speed shop now, you know, andit's like, because they can put
(52:22):
up some photos of them, youknow, smoking some tires, or you
know, running, you know, ninesecond quarter miles, and all of
a sudden, they're amazing, butthe the thing is this, the, the
authenticity behind it is whatreally, it's what really matters
to your soul. And you can be itthe world around you as much as
(52:44):
you want to, and you can getaway with it and think it's
great, but you are never goingto feel good in your soul.
Because you can't get your ownsoul. You know, and so that's
where woodshedding comes in, isthat you cut out the, in your
you're alone with yourself, andthe things you're trying to
accomplish. And you just do themand there's no instant
(53:04):
gratification involved. It's along, hard process, and you have
to do it.
Joe Cadwell (53:08):
There's no shortcuts, no shortcuts. In
pursuit of a valued life, I pickthat off of one of the small
signatures you do have left onthe internet, and it comes off
of a website, what is what isyour definition Varg of a
pursuit of a valued life? Wheredoes that mean to you
Varg Freeborn (53:28):
living with with authenticity, and accomplishing
vision. And leaving your mark onthe world in some kind of a
positive way, you know, helpingother people in some kind of
positive way. You know, this issomething that the book I'm
working on right now that I'mworking on to a smaller booklet,
(53:51):
but the actual book I'm workingon has to do with this, you
know, I'm going to deal withjust the adversity and you know
how to be basically how to begood at being poor. Because if
you suck at being poor, you'regoing to be poor your whole
life. And if you suck at beingpoor, bad enough, your kids will
be poor too. And so when you getgood at the board, then you can
(54:16):
work your way out of it. Andthat's kind of a concept that
I'm you know, that I'm toyingwith right now. But just leaving
a mark on other people's livesthat's positive or helping them
become, you know, better, moresuccessful, more happy people in
some way or another. I thinkthat's a very important part of
(54:36):
living a valued life. Butauthenticity and your own vision
have to be the first componentsto that, because selflessness is
the path to destruction, withoutthe right amount of selfishness
to build that strong foundationfirst.
Joe Cadwell (54:52):
Fantastic. Well, Varg freeborn this has been an
awesome conversation. I reallyappreciate you taking your time
to be on the show today. Wherecan people Go if they are
interested in finding out moreabout Mark freeborn and what
you're up to,
Varg Freeborn (55:04):
well, like I said, right now my signal is
low, but I will be firing somestuff up pretty soon. I've got
some plans and visions. I wantto I've got some, you know, some
self defense, things coming.
I've got some books coming. I'vegot some motorcycle and custom
fabrication things coming. So ifyou watch my website for
frequent.com, eventually, you'regonna see something pop up
(55:27):
there. I don't know when.
Because I'm pretty busy rightnow. And like I said,
woodshedding. I don't. It's notin public view. But I have a lot
going on and it's going to comeup eventually so you can check
it out there.
Joe Cadwell (55:40):
All right. Thanks again, Mark. It's been a great
conversation.
Varg Freeborn (55:43):
Thank you.
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