From Material Success to Soulful Purpose: Breathwork, Creativity & the New Meaning Economy with Leo Marrs

✨ Episode Summary:
In this mind-expanding episode, Jenni sits down with Leo Marrs — serial entrepreneur, breathwork pioneer, and upcoming author — to explore his powerful journey from early financial success to profound spiritual awakening. From building million-dollar businesses in his 20s to opening the first breathwork studio in the U.S., Leo shares how a spontaneous enlightenment experience redirected his life from ego-driven goals to deeply aligned service and creativity. He dives into the power of breath as a gateway to presence, explains why we’re entering a new “meaning economy,” and drops actionable tools for reconnecting with your true self. If you’ve ever wondered how manifestation ties into your soul’s purpose, this episode is a must-listen.

🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Leo’s powerful backstory of building wealth and success — and why he walked away
• What really happened during his spontaneous altered state in Alaska that changed everything
• How breathwork unlocks creativity, clears trauma, and activates aligned manifestation
• The difference between ego-based success and soul-led purpose
• What the “new meaning economy” is and how creators can thrive in it
• A practical tool to identify your next aligned step (Leo’s “Meta Question”)

📲 Connect with Leo:

Try Leo’s breathwork app: ETHR – 7-Day Free Trial
Explore more of Leo’s work & upcoming book: www.leomarrs.com
Instagram: @leomarrs
Website: www.leomarrs.com

🌟 Connect With Me, Jen:
Instagram → @manifestationandmoneypodcast
Join the Manifestation Playground → www.manifestationplayground.ca

Episode Transcript

Jenni (00:00):
Welcome to the Manifestation and Money Podcast, Leo Mars.

(00:01):
And that really continued on, , throughout high school. I was working part-time and then had businesses part-time and going to school full-time. , my senior year was a first day of class my senior year, and it's almost like serendipity. I had chosen this kind of elective class, small business and entrepreneurship, and I'm sitting there in the first class of the first day of my last year of high school, and the first thing they did was they put, the teacher put up.
I said, how much money do you make? And he told me, and I told him how much money I made last year and it was more than him. And he's like my dad's age, right. I was like, I appreciate you, , encouraging me to go to business school. I'm out. So I dropped outta high school and continued on. . I did a number of different things.
It was, , still kind of old school business. It was a commercial, , basically a printing company and digitization company. And, , invested in a couple of, , Albanian immigrants and, , they hired their whole family and they're very scrappy and we just kicked ass. , and then about 18 months later, I.
And then at 27 years old, , I was. Two years into running that venue and I was visiting my father in Alaska, not far from you in Southeast Alaska, just taking a week away, and I slipped into an altered state in the shower, totally unexpected.
oh, just kind of genie out of the bottle type of feeling was this sense. I had this knowing and there were no thoughts going on, but I had this like just felt knowing that I could exhale a universe into existence just effortlessly omnipotence,
I love this so much because you came from a materialistic kind of ego place, right? You were just building for bigger and better, and you had the money. And more than some of your peers, it sounds like, and didn't really know what to do with it. For me and manifestation, sure, you can try to grind it out and manifest from a place of ego, a place where you want more, but it's kind of hollow.
Mm-hmm. I don't often see it through that lens, , because what happens for me is sometimes when I get caught, like I. Went to that place too soon and then manifested kind of what felt like a wrong reality. So I was like, oh, I got, , after that experience in the shower, I was like, what did I do?
And what brings all that together on a practical level is a combination of creativity and . Peeling the false layers of the self. And I used breath. I opened the first breath studio in the US , back in 2018, but peeling away the layers of the self to get to what you were just reflecting on that, like truly authentic self.
It's like, I wanna go back there. That felt amazing. , I like to call it active breathing. And so active breathing is just , an intentional manipulation of the breath to a certain, hopefully benevolent or or beneficial end. ,

Leo (00:10):
it's, it's a bit of , a wild card. Mm-hmm. To be honest. Was there content underneath the crying or was it just, did it feel purely emotional? Energetic?
We're constantly getting, , inundated with information. We've got all sorts of, , bills to pay and different things that are pulling on us. Responsibilities, children, all the things. And, , you drive across town and you're getting cut off in traffic or flipped off or whatever, and , it's stressful.
One is. Agony. The other is ecstasy. So you'll have a lot of facilitators who are more inclined towards, , processing trauma and emotional, , self-regulation and things like that. All breaths do those things. And then you'll have breath work teachers, which are. My favorite, and which I'm more in the ilk of that are like, , ex , rave DJs and like, they're now older and , they still like to get that buzz and feel amazing, but they don't like to pay for it.

Jenni (00:13):
Yeah. I love that because , I truly think that creativity is the spark. It's our compass that helps us navigate this world. And so often, you even run into people who are like, oh, I'm not creative.
Like I have some successes and , I'm a respectable human being. , I've done , some good things in my life. , but I'm like, why? Why am I just fundamentally. In a sense, like not approving of myself, like I always gotta be better. Mm-hmm. And I realized that through the propagation of that, I would say like idealistic, , you could say like worldview or philosophy, , personal philosophy of like evolve constantly.

Leo (00:15):
I mean, it's really kind of on the basis of , we all know we've been in the attention economy for well over a decade, 15, probably 20 years we've been in the attention economy. We're shifting from as this deluge of content now with AI lop amplifying, everyone's grasping for attention, for, , ad revenue or just feeling good about themselves.
But the new creator is one who is connected, as you were saying, I think before we started recording, , connected to that root core, soul level self. And is coming from a place of, , I like to reference Ikigai quite a bit, almost as like a north star, right? , coming from a place where they have done , the deep inner work, the self-reflection, and the contemplation , and the self work , to know where their strengths are.
So we can sit in our giant living room, , and drink champagne. , that gets boring. , there's. Deeper call for us in our lives. And so , this book is really about, so it's called The New Creator Working title, rise of the Mindful Artist in a New Meaning Economy. And it's to illuminate that, , meaning, and you could say After modernism, which was accidentally rejected, mythology, which is context, , matters of ultimate concern, which you could say is spirituality.
And so I believe, and in some of the developmental models that I've studied, spiral dynamics, for example, that technology is essentially. Accelerating and amplifying us into this next tier of, , staged stages of development, , in which, , we're gonna see the return of meaning in a very big way.
Yeah, well it's probably been in the works for about 13 years, 14 years. But, , I didn't have enough life experience to write it the first go around, , under a different name. I'd started writing this book. In 2009. But, , yeah, so that's in the works. It's not published, , it's forthcoming.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, my first recommendation would be develop a breathing practice. Um, 'cause , it's the fastest, most reliable way to clear the static and get to the signal. And , anxiety, stress, depression, it will literally, uh, uh, alleviate all of these conditions.
, entities on the planet. , a LLMs have surpassed us, like, so, most of us, at least , the IQs. So we're moving into an era where, what I would call PQ or like presence quotient. , these soft human skills are going to become basically like I. Just like that's gonna separate you. 'cause not only does that allow you to kind of process, , life more, , tactfully and gracefully and powerfully in your power, , but it also allows you to process more information and make decisions from a felt somatic sense with wisdom and from a place of, , trusting 13.8 billion years at least, that made us right.
, and so they can actually kind of dig into what I'm getting at. But, , there's also like breath awareness, so you can use, and it's been talked about for centuries. You can use your breath to return to the moment, and once you're in the moment you can then listen to your body and move towards whatever feels like yes.
, it's like, whoa. He's been talking about this for 20 years. A lot. , so that would be the first thing is , go down the rabbit hole of that and actually don't think that it's some woowoo thing. It's so practical. Mm-hmm. The breath is only ever happening in the body in this moment, and that's the only place it ever lives.
So that can get you out of any rep.
Basically, if you sign up to my free email, , there, I'm sharing snippets and insights and experiments from the book before it's released. You can sign up there and then if you wanna check out the breathing app, it's called Ether, that's ETHR. And the URL is et HHR one e. There's a free seven day trial you can sign up there and that's essentially accessible on all devices,