Ep 96 The Joy Molecule: Unlearning Success and Reclaiming Inner Peace

Welcome back to Morning Cup of Brand Spark, the Mirror Conversations. This is a place where things slow down and we talk about the moments that quietly and sometimes unexpectedly change how we see success, happiness, and ourselves. Today I'm joined by Larry Kesslin, entrepreneur, author, and chief connector of Five Dots. Larry's work blends personal development

spirituality and lived experience. And his newest book, The Joy Molecule, explores what happens when we get clear on our what, who and our why. But the moment that shaped this chapter of Larry's life didn't happen in a boardroom. It happened during a month in Africa in 2012, an experience that completely transformed how he understood success, joy,

and presence. This is conversation about unlearning old identities and reconnecting with what matters and redefining what a well-lived life actually looks like.

Hello, Larry. Thank you for joining me today.

My pleasure, Gina. It's a pleasure to be here.

So what's in your cup today?

My cup

is always filled with water. I drink a lot of water. My daughter and I used to have a competition about how much water we could drink in a day. So that's most of what's in my cup. I'll drink coffee periodically, but it's not my drink of choice. Water is definitely my drink of choice. And I would say I love fresh squeezed juice.

I think that is such a healthy competition to have with your daughter. I wish I could try that with my 12 year old son, but he will roll his eyes at me and say, water is the most disgusting thing on the planet.

good filter will help, especially in Amsterdam. The water definitely has some challenges, I think.

We're recording on a Friday and quite often I record earlier in the week. So I have one question for you before we get into your mirror story or all of your journey. If you had to describe your week in one word, what would it be?

I would say alive. I mean, this week has been filled with lots of opportunities for learning. And to me, that is life. Is that God keeps giving us lessons every day and we have the opportunity to learn them or to ignore them. And if we figure out the lesson, we get a new lesson. And if we forget the old lesson, we get it back. So it's kind of how I see the world every day.

I've had lots of lessons and lots of opportunities for learning this week.

That's amazing. So before we talk about your mirror moment, or should I say your mirror trip to Africa, before that happened, how did you define success for yourself back then? What was your identity built around at that time?

So at 28, I went to a personal development conference and they said, start to define some words. And one of the words was success. And it's funny because my last book before this book, is called Success Redefined. So I actually defined success at 28 as the ability to do what I want whenever I wanted to do it. And I did that. And that led me to a super enjoyable entrepreneurial journey.

started in 1993, probably didn't make a penny until probably late 90s. Probably took me five to six years to figure out how I was gonna make money on the journey I was on. But from I say 2005 to 2015, I made a very good living. I had the choice to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And my seminal moment was that trip to Africa in 2012 where I...

literally was working with a nonprofit that was bringing computers to rural villages in Eastern and Northern Uganda. And I got on an airplane at the end of July in 2012 and landed in Istanbul from New York. We had four suitcases. We flew from Istanbul to Entebbe and we get to the airport and there's a person at the carousel saying there's a list over there. Make a list of what?

Hmm.

A

list of all the bags that didn't make it onto the plane. the first four names on the list were Kesslin, Kesslin, Kesslin, Kesslin. So I'm a family of four and all four of our suitcases were stuck in Istanbul. Six days later, they got delivered to us after three meetings with the country manager from Turkish Airlines and $1,200 he gave us.

And normally people don't get money for missing bags, but I'm a good salesman and we, ended up working. We got 1200 bucks and ended up in this village in Eastern Uganda. And I met this young man, his name is Armstrong and Armstrong was 24 at the time. And the woman who brought me there said, he's the smartest kid I've met since coming to this country seven years ago. And he needs a thousand dollars to take a pilot's test. Do know anyone who could help? And here's an American who just got.

Mm-mm.

Mm-hmm.

a thousand

dollars plus from an airline. I didn't really use it because the guy we stayed with who ran the nonprofit that hosted these computer centers had plenty of clothes. So we didn't need to buy any clothes. So I talked to them, my now ex-wife, and I said to her, I met this kid. He's really super smart. He was talking about the Bible. He's 24 years old and he's preaching. He's educating me on everything about Judaism. And he's this really smart kid who walks miles every day.

So you didn't need it

and has all this time to think and process and just wicked smart. And I'm like, I just met a kid, first of all, his name's Armstrong. If you're an American, Armstrong, mean, first man on the moon, flight pilot, come on. It's meant to be in my life. And I just got this thousand dollars from an airline, so I ended up giving it to this kid. And that was 2012.

Yep.

And boy, didn't you change his life with that at that moment.

I'm a Mazunga, a white man in Africa is a Mazunga. So I hand this kid $1,000, 10, $100 bills. I found out a couple of years later, because the story gets really fascinating. I ended up investing in Armstrong. So when we got back from our safari two and a half weeks later, I see Armstrong at Wilson Airport, Nairobi. And he's like, Mr. Larry, Mr. Larry, I passed my test. Like Armstrong, that's amazing. And he says, now I money for flight lessons.

Yeah.

Huh?

So the last 13 years has been an investment in Armstrong. He now lives in San Francisco. I moved him to the United States in 2014, February 6th. I picked him up at the airport in San Diego. He had never been off the continent. I shouldn't say that he walked to Israel at 16, whole nother story. But the reason that Africa changed my life is because I met people that had nothing that were happier than anybody I've ever met

And it rocked my world. It really did. So I get back to United States. I fly from Nairobi to Cairo, Cairo to New York 30 hours later. And I'm sitting at JFK and I'm sitting there. I'm like, I'm successful. I can do whatever I want whenever I want to do it. And I've met people that are happier than I am by far and they have nothing. What is wrong with this picture?

Yeah, it's unbelievable even. It's amazing.

and they have nothing, Yeah.

So it took

me about 18 months. So January of 2014, I did my first TEDx talk called the disconnected connected world, which is the precursor to the book success redefined, which is the precursor to the joy molecule. And it's this whole life journey to what did I really see? And the disconnected connected world is all about the more disconnected we become technologically, the more emotionally and spiritually disconnected we become. And that's been my thesis.

When I went to Africa, I thought purpose was our destiny. And I was all about purpose and I was throwing the purpose hammer everywhere. Like when you see a nail, everything's a hammer and I'm a hammer and I'm like purpose, purpose, purpose. And I realized after that trip that purpose is not my destiny. Purpose is a doorway and the question is the doorway to what? And then on this last 13 years, I have just learned that we as humans crave connection and purpose.

Yeah.

Yeah.

where the joy molecule came from is this concept of conscious connection plus purpose equals joy. And I wrote that in Success Redefined. And my writer looked at that and said, C2P, conscious connection plus purpose equals joy. C2P equals joy. So if H2O is the water molecule, then C2P must be the joy molecule. And I'm like, that is really cool. That was a decade ago,

⁓ makes sense. Yeah

did nothing with it for 10 years because I wasn't ready. The crazy part Gina, I get back from Africa in 2012. And in 2013, I decided to pull my kids out of school a year later to go take a trip around the world. And during 2014, I was in an industry I didn't like. I was doing peer group. I was bringing together business owners of small IT companies to help them compare to each other, learn how to grow their businesses. I made a bunch of money. I helped sell a couple of companies.

And I hated what I was doing. My business found me. didn't find it. So at the end of 2014, I literally walked away from my own company that had made, I don't know. We did close to $3 million in 2014. We did $50,000 in 2015. And I was done. And my partner at the time says, what are you going to do? I said, I just can't do this anymore. I don't want to get on airplanes anymore. was industry known. Everybody knew me. And I just, I ghosted the whole industry for a decade, but that decade.

Mm.

It stripped so much from me and gave me so much.

it really helped you to unlearn your old identity as well. And you let go of a lot, didn't you?

them.

I didn't know who I was because I was the CEO, founder and president of for-profit, And I had no identity other than that. And the last 10 years has gone, I've gone from making the most money I ever made in 2012 and 13. And I've made less money every year since then. And now the last year is starting to change because I am me. I'm no longer the identity that I was taught. no longer, I have this thing in the joy molecule, it's called the 20 something rule.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was it.

And I say, from birth to 20, the world teaches you what it wants you to be. And from 20 to death, you get to choose. Am I going to live out what the world taught me to be? Am I going to figure out who I was born to be? And I also say that maybe one out of a thousand is taught to be the person they were born to be. So the other 999 of us schmucks got to figure it out on our own because we were not taught to be the person we were born to be. So if that's the truth, then who are we?

Most of us.

better question is, what are we? define joy at the end of the day as inner peace, as synonymous with joy. And inner peace comes when you know what you are, who you are, and why you are. And I have a lot of really smart friends. And my gift in my world is connection. I teach it, I live it, I meet lots of people, people come through me. I'm a vessel for connection. And I could tell you story after story of people that said, Larry, I'm looking for this.

And that shows up a week later and I make the introduction. It's not just a resource. It's the resource to do what needs to get done. And I just trust in my instincts now to do those things, but stripping away an identity. there's five lessons in the joy molecule, eight stories of people I've met since 2012 Armstrong is the first one. So the whole story about losing the luggage and where the money came from, it's all in there. And Armstrong coming back and asking for money for flight lessons and

and how I built that relationship with him. Every other Sunday morning, I'd played volleyball on the beach in San Diego at eight o'clock in the morning. At seven o'clock, I would call Armstrong. And we built this relationship over years. And it's crazy because our culture, I mean, you're born and raised here, but you live in Europe. When I travel internationally, the first question I get internationally is who are you and why are you doing what you're doing? And the first question in the United States is,

Yeah. What do you do? Yeah. 100%. Yep.

What do you do? Because people want to put you in a box. They

want to figure out whether they can make money from you or you're going to sell them something or whatever. I don't know what it is. So when people ask me, what do I do now? I say, I'm a dad. I'm an athlete. I love sport. And I happen to be an entrepreneur and a coach and an author. And if you want to know how I make money and why, then why are you asking that? I hold potluck dinners, part of my business model. I coach.

I help people figure out the ones that are super smart. I love really smart people that are successful based on our definition of success, but not happy. They know there's something inside missing and it's not a lot. It's not a lot that's missing. But you asked me how I define success before Africa, but I haven't shared is how I define success after Africa. And it took me a while, but the book definition is the ability to do what I want whenever I want to do it while being part of something greater than myself.

So many are like that.

Hmm. Yeah.

So when I

was sitting in JFK airport, I said, I'm done with success. I need to be significant. And what I didn't realize is that success without significance isn't success at all. So that's been the journey for me is that significance by itself is not the destination. Significance is part of the journey. And I've been finding this inner peace of, so a big part of my life has been meditation. So somebody asked me when I coach,

part of

What is it that I'm really trying to help people do? And I'm helping them learn to be present that the only moment that matters is right now. That our belief system is made up of stuff that we don't even understand. Because in my opinion, and I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a street kid. I did not go to school for any of this stuff. I just lived through the school of hard knocks. And to me, my belief system is made up of everything I've experienced in my life.

touch, taste, sound, smell, all of it. And it's not actually what happened. It's my interpretation of what happened. So if it's my interpretation of what happened in front of me, and I'm one of eight billion creatures on this planet, and I'm experiencing one eight billionth of what's happening in that moment, how could that be my truth? And the middle chapter, the middle lesson in the book is called the identity illusion. And from the time we're born, our identity is being formed.

And it's not us. We are the seer of the identity. We are the being behind it. I tell my clients, like, you're 007 and you're put in this machine. And your job in this lifetime is to figure out why this machine was given the skills, natural gifts, and the learnings that it has. What breadcrumbs did you need to follow in order to live out the purpose of this life? And I'm the seer of my thoughts.

I am the feeler of my feelings. I am not my thoughts and I'm not my feelings. Yet everybody that I talk to, majority of people I talk to are so attached to their belief system and their belief system doesn't serve them. It serves their mind because in my opinion, the mind wants control of this vehicle, but the true controller of the vehicle is the same spirit that's inside of you, that's inside of me, that is experiencing this world through

8 billion different vehicles.

Perspectives, yeah. Yeah.

in every perspective

is different and we are all love and we are all hate and we are all joy and we are all pain. We have all of it in us. And for some people life is easy, for some people life is challenging, and for other people life is hard.

It's been fascinating finding, cause I don't know, I have some really good friends and one I've known since 2003, I think he became a client of mine. I hired him as my coach, he lives in Florida and I went to see him in March and he's like, how does it feel not to have to perform anymore? Cause he noticed the difference. He's like, you're just being you, you're not performing anymore.

It's huge. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm like, that is really fascinating for someone to notice and somebody else noticed it's cause some stuff happened in the last, this has been the most transformative year of my life. And it's been fascinating to realize that I'm more than what I thought I was. And when you realize that the whole world starts to change is that I'm no longer my thoughts.

It opens up for you, doesn't it?

And for who feels, maybe they feel successful on paper, right? Or they feel, I've had 25 years of experience doing this and this is where I am now, but maybe I feel some sort of disconnect inside. Or I feel unfulfilled in a way, or I feel this isn't the legacy I wanna leave behind.

Yes.

Where would you invite them to start? What is the first step? You they always say, how do I consume something so big, right? You eat an elephant one bite at a time. So if you approach it in that way, what's the first small step you would recommend to them?

Stop looking outside and start looking inside.

The problem and the opportunity is not outside of us. The challenge is all inside of us. It's an inside job. mean, I can say all the quotes that you ever could imagine from my favorite is Michael Singer. I mean, The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, and Living Untethered, three great books. And then he had this audio series that saved me during the pandemic called Living From a Place of Surrender. And his line is the line that I hold onto every day.

As the world is unfolding perfectly every moment of every day, the problem is it's not meeting our expectations.

So the journey is about aligning truth.

So many people would rather be right than happy. And so many people would rather be the answer than solve the problem. So it's all about ego and identity. So I didn't talk much about, but I'll walk you through the five lessons for me. Eight stories in the book, amazing people. One of my friends said, Larry, you've met some of the most amazing people. Most people don't meet anyone like the ones you've profiled in the book and you've profiled eight of them. And there's a hundred more that I could talk about that I've been blessed.

Yeah, please.

to meet in my lifetime. And the first lesson is circumstances not to find your joy. You can have joy anywhere. If you know what you are, who you are and why you are and you focus on your who and your why, and don't worry about the what, then I think you find more joy. The second lesson, Carrie Rich handed $2 million at 26 to go change the world. Amazing woman, she's now 39, three kids, just a gift to humanity. That chapter is all about my work needs to matter.

It's called redirecting capital, but my work needs to matter. I can't just make money for the sake of making money. That doesn't work for me. It did for years until I got it. And then it's like, okay, I feel empty. So work needs to matter. The third one is to me, the key, the identity illusion, three stories about three different challenged athletes. One who's blind, who I did a 640 mile bike ride from San Francisco to San Diego, spent hundreds of hours on a bicycle with Jeff Mata.

The second one is moon Tucker lost her arm in a motorcycle accident and she watched her body bounce down the road and her spirit just separated from her body. And she realized her belief system was a pot of crap and she could just let it go. in 30 seconds, her life changed. then Joe Delegrave, who's going to write the next book with me called the identity illusion. And Joe is the coach of the U S Paralympic wheelchair rugby team. And he'll be in LA in 2028 and he's coaching the team. He's amazing.

Wrong. Yeah.

But he broke his neck in 1967, 260. And he also didn't make the Olympic team in 2016 because of some politics. So his identity got ripped from him twice. So everything I talk with him about is identity illusion. The fourth lesson is all about persistence, perseverance and patience. That you can't quit. You just got to keep moving forward. And the last lesson is the next book that I'm going to write myself, which is called The Enough Academy. And when we have enough as a society, which in the United States we do,

And I've been to places that don't. honestly, I got back from that trip in Africa and seven weeks later went to a conference and I was asked three questions when I got to that conference that changed my life. So the trip to Africa and this conference seven weeks later, foundation of redesigning my life. And the three questions were, what is poverty? Who gets to define it? And why are we trying to fix it? And I realized that

What I saw was not poverty. What I saw was impoverishment. Americans are poor emotionally and spiritually. The reason that we get to define it is because we think we're better than. And the reason we want to fix them is to make us feel better that they look more like us and not like their natural selves. That's my interpretation. I'm not saying I'm right and right doesn't matter. This is what brings me peace is that these people were so beautiful, so beautiful.

and they had such a way of being in the world that I wanted what they had. And everybody kept telling me, I bet you can't wait to go back to Africa. And I'm like, yes, I haven't been back in 13 years. I don't want to go back to Africa. What I want is what they had in Africa in my life here. That's what I want.

wow. Very inspirational though. I love the Where can people find your work? where can they find you? Where can they get your books? All of that.

Well, the book is on Amazon. So the joy molecule easy to find I Love talking to people so you can reach out to me. My easiest email address is larry at Kesslin .com my name My website is five dots five dash dots calm and the reason it's called five dots We can have a conversation about this Steve Jobs commencement speech in 2005 at Stanford can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards

You have to trust that everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to and that somehow the dots will connect whether it's karma or whatever you need to know and believe that everything's going to happen exactly the way it needs to. My life is an opportunity. Somebody asked me the other day if I could have one gift, I would say a really good breadcrumb detector. She's like, what are you talking about? I said, life is about following breadcrumbs. So if I knew exactly which breadcrumbs to follow, life would be simpler,

Where am I supposed to go next? Yeah, where do I go?

That's the fun of the game. So if we

Yeah. ⁓

look at this as a game and the game is to figure out why we're here, I can't imagine we wake up every day to go to work to make money so we can go home, cook a meal, kiss our partner or be alone and die. That can't be it.

and then die at some point.

No, no, and that's not the legacy we want to leave either.

No, we're part of a machine. And some of us separate from the machine and we create separate ways of being. And for me right now, I just love my life. I love, I have two 20 something kids. Um, have a beautiful relationship with a woman in San Diego that I met nine plus months ago. And I am blessed.

I love talking to people about their life and helping them understand that we have an opportunity to be impactful in other people's lives yet we're insignificant.

for sure.

And you can tell when you meet people, I think the word angst is the best word these days. And Jonathan Haidt wrote the book, The Anxious Generation. I think there's a lot of anxiety in our society. And you can hear it in people.

Somebody told me to read

Guess that's my next book. I guess that's the next one I have to read. Well, Larry, I thank you so, much for joining me. Thank you, Thank you.

Crazy.

My pleasure, Gina.

Well that was Morning Cup of Brand Spark with Larry Kesslin. A reminder that joy isn't something we earn later, it's something we reconnect with when we slow down, when we let go of old definitions, and when we come back to what's true to us. If this conversation invited you to question how you define success or happiness, then share it with someone who might need that little reminder today too.

Until next time, keep your coffee warm and your mirror close.