Today we’d like to introduce you to Garrain Jones
Hi Garrain, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Garrain: I was born in Houston and raised in Missouri City, Texas. It was me, my brother and my mom. My mom had to play the role of my mom and dad because my father was murdered when I was 12 years old. I went in and out of juvenile detention, breaking into cars, breaking into homes, and hanging out with the wrong groups of people.
At that time, I didn’t yet know what influence was and how you are the five closest people that you hang out with. I pretty much hung out with anybody that would accept me because I didn’t quite feel accepted at home. I knew that I thought differently than other people. I knew that I was a little weird because things that I liked, like choices in clothes, how I wore my hair, how I wore long socks and wore a big yellow backpack was vastly different from everyone else I grew up with. So I got picked on for that. As a result, I basically clung to anybody who would accept me. That just happened to be people who got in trouble often.
Eventually I moved to LA in my 20s. When I was going through that whole process, even when I was a little kid, I always knew that I wasn’t supposed to stay in the town I grew up in. And I would say it to everybody. Even when I was eight years old, I’d be like, “I feel like I’m not supposed to live here. One day I’m going to move away.” People would be like, “Yeah, right.” But I would always say it.
As I got older, I’d say, “I feel like I’m supposed to move away.” Every time I would say that people would say, “Oh no, but you’ve got family here and you got friends” Then on the last time I was like, “No, I know I’m supposed to move away. I think I’m supposed to move away somewhere far away where no one doesn’t know my name. Some place completely different from where I grew up.”
Let me tell you something, the bird will never know how far it can fly until it actually leaves the nest. And that’s the nest of your own comfort zone. I didn’t even know that because you can’t see the picture while you’re in the frame. That in my comfort of staying where I was comfortable around who I was comfortable with was actually limiting and stunting my growth. So when I moved to Los Angeles, it was actually the hardest time I’ve ever had in my life. But every time I would come back home, I felt quicker. I felt faster. And everything like the geography, even the geography in Texas, it became more and more flat, more and more I was in the hills and in the mountains in California. I didn’t know what that was, but it was just me expanding my horizon.
The entertainment industry was somewhere I felt I needed to go. My mom, she was a jazz DJ growing up and she’d play all kinds of music for us around the house. Whenever I encountered Michael Jackson’s work, I was like, “I feel like I’m supposed to do something like that, like make a difference in thousands and thousands of people’s lives.” I didn’t know how. So the only way I could relate to it is based off of what first sparked that inspiration and it was Michael Jackson.
Once in LA, I started making my own music. I put out a song that became an underground classic, “Mr. Ordinary”. I took on the stage name Steph Jones (my middle name is Stephán) and I ended up getting signed to Disturbing the Peace Records at Def Jam. I also started writing music for artists like Chris Brown, Ludacris, The Wanted, and 2 Chainz. Some people may remember me for playing Beyonce’s love interest in the Destiny’s Child music video for “Jumpin’ Jumpin’”. Things seemed like they were going great– except they weren’t. While my work was getting noticed, the money had not caught up. I fell into trouble with debt, drugs and homelessness, even though I was portraying something completely different on social media.
That was when I knew that something had to change and that maybe entertainment wasn’t where I could truly make the impact I wanted to make on the world. I realized that I always felt most authentic when I was motivating others. Even when I was in music, I noticed myself creating more content related to inspiring and motivating people than music.
That was the beginning of what I have now built into a multi-million dollar company helping others find the personal transformation that I found after leaving entertainment. It’s led to writing a bestselling book and speaking on stages around the world.
In 2020, I moved back to texas. I thought I was never going to move back to Texas because at the time, in 1998 when I moved away, I was thought, “I need something that’s much more fast-paced.”
But what I also knew was that my values have changed so much from when I was an 18-year-old who partied and lived a very fast life in Los Angeles.
I thought of Texas with the same values that I now have in my forties as a devoted husband, devoted father, and successful businessman.
When my wife, Blair, and I got married, she asked me, “Do you want to raise kids in Los Angeles?” I said, “Absolutely not.” I said, “But I don’t know any other place where there’s entertainment and it’s culturally diverse and there’s lots of entrepreneurs, there’s moving energy.” And she was like, “How about Austin, Texas?”
I thought, “No way. There’s no way I’m ever moving back to Texas.” But I didn’t know anything about Austin. My brother lived in Austin, and so did a lot of my friends, but I never really inquired about it because in my mind, all of Texas is exactly the same. So I was an absolute no. But her fight to want to move out of Los Angeles during COVID was stronger than my fight to stay in Los Angeles. I decided, “Fine, I’ll come out to Austin and check it out.” When I came out to Austin, I said “Oh my God, I hear music. Oh my God, there’s the people. Wow, there’s the moving energy. Wow, there are all of these entrepreneurs.”
I realized, “This feels like how I always wanted Los Angeles to feel.” But there’s a home type feeling. It’s like people don’t ask you what you do first. They want to know who you are. I fell in love with the feeling, the energy of family and connection. When people say, “Hey, let’s do lunch,” they actually mean it. I wasn’t used to that in Los Angeles, so I was like, “Man, let’s get out of here and let’s go build a family.” That’s exactly what we did.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
traumas of not feeling worthy and then seeing the true value of wealth inside of myself. My way of looking at life as a broken boy wasn’t sufficient to be able to grow into a divine masculine man. I didn’t even know what that was. There were no models for me. So I was still a boy trying to be a man.
I grew to be able to learn how to love all parts of little Garrain, because adults are deteriorated children. I started doing a lot of emotional intelligence work and healing work so that I could basically balance myself out and be empowered by what I see when I look in the mirror.
Number two was how I feel about women. When I was younger, I had this drive that I wanted to have sex with everybody. When I started having kids, my first daughter is 22 now and I have a second daughter who is two and a son who is a few months old, I didn’t know how to be a father to her because there was never really a father around for me. I was just me being a broken boy to this girl who only wanted love, who wanted to feel seen, who wanted to feel heard, and feel like she mattered.
So I gave myself an affirmation after going through a 10-day silent retreat: I am the most powerful representation of who my daughter will marry one day.
Being able to see myself different in that relationship with her changed my relationship with all women. I no longer saw women through my dad’s eyes. I saw women through my daughter’s eyes. So because I started seeing women and honoring them and cherishing them and speaking to them with respect, they started to gravitate towards me and say, “Wow, I’ve never felt this safe in the presence of another masculine man who doesn’t want anything from me.”
Those were two of the biggest things that have shaped who I am today.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Garrain: My company, Artist Power, truly serves the little kid inside of humanity who wants to feel seen, heard, and like they matter in the world. The artist is the little kid who remembers. Once you tap into that energy of what’s always been inside of you, the bigness, the bravery, the genius, the creativity, once you tap into that energy, it unlocks a power.
Because I’ve used that same formula to completely re-parent my life and allow little Garrain and big Garrain to harmonize into embodiment, I now teach and train that for thousands of people all over the world. It has me on stages and traveling all over the world. So in a way, I’ve become my own version of Michael Jackson like I envisioned as a kid; a multidimensional creator that wants to see the world in a better place. Artist Power, serves to restore the heart back into humanity by way of a fully expressed little kid inside of each adult. That is my role on this planet.
Our next retreat is November 1-5 in Wimberley, Texas. It will host about 85 people on an enchanting journey of healing, transformation and personal growth and artistry. We do activities that activate creativity like painting, dancing, drumming, and chanting. It’s really the permission slip that the little kid inside of you has always wanted.
We also have our Tribe of Creators, which is our online platform to support creators and help them live their art. Most people do their art and they have another job that pays the bills, but they don’t know how to make their art an entire lifestyle. This is what we do and we show others how as well.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Garrain: The willingness to learn, lead, and grow simultaneously.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://go.artistpower.com/garrain-jones
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garrain.jones/
