Brainwashed To Be Broke

Living someone else's dream is the quiet trap most high performers never notice, and Bashar Katu spent years inside it before he broke out. He escaped the Iraq war at 16, watched his father lose a thriving factory, and then almost got programmed into becoming a doctor because that was his mother's vision of a good life, not his. This conversation exposes the conditioning that scripts your career, your money, and your sense of what is even possible.

We get into why your environment determines your future far more than raw effort, how the American dream is a lie that sells comfort while quietly keeping you broke, and why your circle determines your future income whether you admit it or not. Bashar breaks down the beliefs around money, wealth, sales, and freedom that he had to unlearn, the ego that blinded him for a decade, and the deprogramming it took to stop living someone else's dream and start building his own. If you have ever sensed your goals were handed to you by family, school, religion, or plain social programming, this one will land.

In this episode, you will discover:
- How conditioning from family and school quietly installs a life script you never chose
- Why your environment determines your future more than talent, willpower, or a degree
- The doctor trap that almost cost Bashar the entrepreneurial life he actually wanted
- How he went from Iraq war survival to building toward a billion dollar exit
- The ego and fear of regret that keep smart people stuck and broke
- Why chasing passion is a trap and what to chase instead for real freedom

If this conversation helps you see your programming more clearly, subscribe to Brainwashed to Be Broke, like the video, comment with the biggest belief you are questioning now, and share this with one friend who needs to hear it.

Adam's socials:
Website: https://www.brainwashedtobebroke.com
X: https://x.com/adam_rother
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rotheradam/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotheradamlive
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rotheradam

Guest:
Bashar Katu
Founder of BJK University, serial entrepreneur
Facebook: Bashar J Katou

Chapters:
00:00 The life script you were programmed to follow
01:50 Escaping the Iraq war and moving to America
03:16 Almost brainwashed into becoming a doctor
04:25 Dropping out to follow his father's path
06:30 Your environment determines your future
10:03 Life in Iraq when survival was the only plan
12:32 How school and culture program you for a degree
14:56 Ego and overconfidence as the first obstacle
21:24 The Jeff Bezos regret story
24:56 Focus and beating shiny object syndrome
35:18 Forget passion, chase money and helping people
39:08 BJK University and impacting a million lives
42:36 Why brick and mortar beats online coaching
52:01 Change your circle, change your life

#socialprogramming #conditioning #moneymindset #freedom #deprogramming

Money isn't real, and that one fact might be the reason you feel stuck, broke, and exhausted no matter how hard you work. In this raw conversation, entrepreneur Josh Forti exposes the most invisible piece of social programming most of us carry: the belief that the dollar in your wallet is actually money. It isn't. Legally and literally, it stopped being money a long time ago, and that quiet switch is a big part of why you're broke even while doing everything right.

Adam and Josh dig into how hard work got sold to us as the only path to wealth, why inflation is stealing your time and life energy without your consent, and what real freedom looks like once you separate being rich from being free. They unpack the conditioning around the money beliefs we inherit from family, school, and religion, the day a handful of men rewrote the rules of money in secret, and why sound money would change everything from your finances to your relationships to your health. Money isn't real in the way you were taught, and this is less a finance lecture and more a deprogramming session for anyone who suspects the game is rigged.

In this episode, you will discover:
- Why your dollars quietly stopped being money and what that does to every paycheck
- How inflation works like a hidden tax that steals years of your life
- The real difference between being rich and being free, and why most people chase the wrong one
- The 20 apples example that makes money printing impossible to unsee
- The secret meeting that changed what money meant without a single vote from you
- What sound money is and why it could flip the entire system back in your favor

If this conversation helps you see your programming more clearly, subscribe to Brainwashed to Be Broke, like the video, comment with the biggest belief you are questioning now, and share this with one friend who needs to hear it.

Adam's socials:
Website: https://www.brainwashedtobebroke.com
X: https://x.com/adam_rother
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rotheradam/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotheradamlive
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rotheradam

Guest:
Josh Forti
Entrepreneur, founder of The Golden Mic Method, and follower of Jesus
Website: https://www.joshforti.com
Facebook: Josh Forti
Instagram: @joshfort
YouTube: @JoshForti

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome and why the truth sounds controversial
02:35 The brainwashing story that keeps you broke
04:27 Is a 20 dollar bill actually money
05:04 How they changed the meaning of money 100 years ago
07:48 Money is stored energy, so what are you working for
12:56 Rich vs free, what real freedom means
16:25 Why Bitcoin is the only real money
19:43 The 20 apples trick, how inflation steals from you
21:25 How printing money steals years of your life
25:14 You cannot prove your money is in the bank
29:34 Why prices should fall but never do
44:03 Jekyll Island and the greatest money heist
47:18 Going all in, out of the US dollar
49:25 How Elon Musk and the pursuit of truth changed him
61:17 Raising kids to live in truth

#moneyisntreal #socialprogramming #soundmoney #freedom #deprogramming

What if everything you were taught about money, work, and success was designed to benefit someone else?

That is the conversation at the center of this episode. Adam Rother sits down with Brendan McAuley, business coach, systems strategist, and author of Clients for Coaches, to unpack the financial conditioning most people carry from childhood into adulthood without ever questioning it. Brendan cashed out his 401k at 27 and chose entrepreneurship when his own father was worried enough to send him to a psychologist. Ten years later, that decision looks a lot less reckless and a lot more like clarity.

The episode opens with a blunt question that most people never stop to ask: who actually benefits when you have no financial literacy? The school system teaches ledgers and balance sheets. It does not teach wealth building, generational wealth, or how to create your own personal economy.

Brendan and Adam dismantle one of the most persistent beliefs in modern culture: that a job is safe and entrepreneurship is reckless. Adam flips it. Relying on one employer for your entire income is a single point of failure. Build a business with three hundred customers and lose one, you still have two hundred ninety-nine. The system is not broken. It was built this way, rooted in Industrial Revolution thinking that needed workers, not owners, not thinkers.

Adam's socials:
Website: https://www.brainwashedtobebroke.com
X: https://x.com/adam_rother
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rotheradam/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotheradamlive
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rotheradam

Guest: Brendan McCauley
Connect with Brendan👇
🔗 Facebook: Brendan McCauley
🔗 Website: coachuntangled.com

Chapters:
00:00 Why Adam Started This Show: Programming Passed Down Through Generations
02:21 The Federal Reserve, The Creature from Jekyll Island, and Financial Conditioning
04:02 One Income vs Many: Why Entrepreneurship Is Actually the Safer Bet
05:52 Designed to Go Through the Motions: School, Church, Corporate Path
08:38 What Business School Actually Teaches About Money and What It Misses
10:53 Risk Tolerance, Cashing Out the 401k, and Trusting Your Own Judgment
13:49 The Authority Protocol: Synergy, Systems, and Scalability
17:42 Building a Business Around Your Life, Not a Job Around Your Business
19:19 The Authority Ecosystem: Making Noise, Capturing Leads, and Recurring Revenue
27:06 Brendan's Childhood Programming: Divorce, Binge Eating, and Self-Esteem
29:10 The Flea Jar: How Conditioning Caps What You Think Is Possible
30:02 Invest in a Coach: The Shortcut That Changes Everything
36:31 People Without Goals Die Young: Who Benefits from Your Complacency
37:05 The Dog on the Nail: Why Pain Threshold Determines When You Move
44:41 Why School Never Taught You About Money and Who Really Benefits
46:23 Money as Value Exchange: Learning to Charge What You Are Worth
48:13 Generous Givers and Excellent Receivers: The Belief Blocking Your Income
53:14 Gratitude, the TEAR Framework, and Rewiring Your Morning State
56:00 Final Thoughts: You Get Paid Based on the Value You Bring

#socialprogramming #conditioning #moneymindset #freedom #deprogramming

The victim mindset is the single biggest gap between people who stay broke and people who build real wealth, and in this episode Tyler Wise makes that case without pulling a single punch.

In this episode, you will discover:
- Why the victim mindset is the single biggest gap between people who stay poor and people who build real wealth
- How Tyler replaced a year's salary in six months using Facebook organic traffic and affiliate marketing with zero ad spend
- The social conditioning installed by school and family that programs most people to fear leaving the 9 to 5
- Why Facebook is the most underrated platform for organic reach right now and how to post 20 to 40 times a day without burning out
- How AI tools replaced Tyler's setter team and turned his DMs into a 24/7 sales engine
- The deprogramming mindset shift that separates entrepreneurs who break through from those who give up at the first wall of negative comments

If this conversation helps you see your programming more clearly, subscribe to Brainwashed to Be Broke, like the video, comment with the biggest belief you are questioning now, and share this with one friend who needs it.

Adam's socials:
Website: https://www.brainwashedtobebroke.com
X: https://x.com/adam_rother
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rotheradam/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotheradamlive
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rotheradam

Guest: Tyler Wise
Connect with Tyler👇
🔗 Facebook: Tyler Wise
🔗 Instagram: @tylerwise

Chapters:
00:00 The Victim Mindset Is the Real Problem Between Poor and Rich
01:44 Welcome to Brainwashed to Be Broke: Introducing Tyler Wise
03:09 Tyler's Story: College, Best Buy at $13/Hr, and Going Broke the Right Way
05:39 How Affiliate Marketing Replaced a Year's Salary in Six Months
07:53 Selling High Ticket vs Low Ticket: What Actually Converts Online
09:07 Coaching, Closers, and Why Tyler Closes 80% but His Team Closed 30%
10:36 Why Facebook Organic Traffic Beats Paid Ads for Beginners in 2025
12:18 Developing Thick Skin Online: How to Break Through the Wall of Hate
14:17 ManyChat Automations, Funnels, and Building a Business That Runs Itself
17:26 Why Facebook Is the Best Platform Right Now and What Changed in the Algorithm
19:52 Instagram Carousels vs Reels: What Is Actually Getting Reach Today
22:15 Posting 20 to 40 Times a Day: Tyler's Content Backlog and Repurposing System
25:49 Provide Value or Entertain: The Only Two Ways to Build an Audience
30:07 How School and Society Condition You to Be a Sheep
34:49 Victim Mindset, Accountability, and Why 80% of People Choose to Stay Stuck
39:25 What Video Games Taught Two Entrepreneurs About Not Giving Up
41:32 Breaking the Beliefs: Everything Is Possible If You Decide It Is
44:12 The Stigma Around Gamers and Why It Is the Same Conditioning
46:22 The Only Three Things Every Business Needs to Make Money
49:44 AI Is Changing Everything: How to Use It Before It Passes You By
53:52 Replacing Human Setters With AI DMs That Work 24 Hours a Day
57:07 Where to Find Tyler Wise and Final Words on Not Following the Script

#socialprogramming #conditioning #moneymindset #freedom #deprogramming

Why smart people stay stuck in safe lives comes down to social programming most of us never chose, the quiet conditioning from parents, school, and culture that teaches you to aim low, blend in, and never rock the boat. In this raw conversation, a sales trainer who coached over 6000 people breaks down how that programming around money, beliefs, and success quietly runs your life.

We get into why smart people stay stuck chasing how they look instead of the results they could create, why your money beliefs were installed in childhood before you could question them, and why playing it safe is the riskiest bet of all. You will hear how to spot the social conditioning, why fear is meant to fuel you while self doubt holds you back, and what it takes to finally bet on yourself and start deprogramming the script you were handed.

In this episode, you will discover:
- The hidden reason successful people stop caring what the neighbors think
- How school and parents quietly program you to stay small and play it safe
- Why money is only a tool and chasing it for status keeps you broke
- The failure rule that doubles your success once you understand it
- Why right and wrong are mostly made up beliefs running your decisions
- How to recognize your own conditioning and start betting on yourself

If this conversation helps you see your programming more clearly, subscribe to Brainwashed to Be Broke, like the video, comment with the biggest belief you are questioning now, and share this with one friend who needs to hear it.

Adam's socials:
Website: https://www.brainwashedtobebroke.com
X: https://x.com/adam_rother
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rotheradam/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotheradamlive
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rotheradam

Guest:
Llewellyn
Sales trainer and therapist, former head trainer at Seventh Level
🔗 Facebook: Llewellyn Lyon

Chapters:
00:00 Why Successful People Stop Caring What Others Think
01:53 The Trainer Who Coached Over 6000 People
03:33 From Private Banking Burnout to Waking Up
05:44 Why Money Is a Tool Not the Goal
06:55 Getting Fired and Why Failure Doubles Success
10:26 Getting 10000 Sales Hours in a Single Year
16:14 Building a 20 Million Dollar Upsell System
18:50 Why People Set Their Goals Too Low
20:54 Fear vs Self Doubt and Betting on Yourself
22:13 How School and Parents Program You to Stay Stuck
29:15 Sales as a Petri Dish for Human Psychology
33:32 Why Smart Students Stay Stuck and Complain
38:30 Why Right and Wrong Are Made Up Beliefs
44:46 The Last Message You Are Smart Enough

#socialprogramming #conditioning #moneymindset #freedom #deprogramming

Success is 80% psychology and only 20% strategy, yet almost everyone runs it backwards, pouring time and money into systems while ignoring the inner work that actually drives results. In this conversation on Brainwashed to Be Broke, host Adam Rother sits down with high performance coach Jake Kauffman to expose the social programming and conditioning that quietly cap how much money, success, and love you believe you deserve.

If you keep hitting the same plateau, the problem is rarely your strategy. It is your beliefs, your identity, and the upper limit your nervous system will tolerate. Jake breaks down why you self-sabotage success the moment it arrives, how childhood experiences write the money beliefs you still run on, and why self-sabotage is really just self-protection. This is a deprogramming conversation about wealth, relationships, health, and the freedom that opens up when you finally heal the pain underneath the pattern.

Because success is 80% psychology, lasting growth comes from raising your upper limit, not stacking another tactic on a shaky foundation.

In this episode, you will discover:
- Why success is 80% psychology and 20% strategy, and what most people get completely backwards
- How your upper limit silently caps the money and success you allow yourself to keep
- The real reason you self-sabotage right when things finally start working
- How childhood experiences quietly become the money beliefs running your life today
- Why more money and the next level never fix the emptiness on their own
- The difference between a real breakthrough and an epiphany that changes nothing

If this conversation helps you see your programming more clearly, subscribe to Brainwashed to Be Broke, like the video, comment with the biggest belief you are questioning now, and share this with one friend who needs to hear it.

Adam's socials:
Website: https://www.brainwashedtobebroke.com
X: https://x.com/adam_rother
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rotheradam/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rotheradamlive
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rotheradam

Guest:
Jake Kauffman
High performance coach and business mentor to entrepreneurs
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjakekauffman/
Facebook: Jake Kauffman

Chapters:
00:00 Success Is 80% Psychology Not Strategy
01:58 Meet Jake Kauffman, Healing For High Performers
02:48 From 2008 Grad To Founding A Brewery
07:51 Building A Healthcare Tech Startup Before AI
10:32 Why Personal Problems Show Up In Business
18:22 Mindset Is Only The Surface Level
20:06 How Childhood Experiences Create Your Beliefs
25:11 Performance Anxiety And Your Nervous System
29:17 Why Awareness Is Easy But Change Is Hard
33:55 Success Is 20% Strategy And 80% Psychology
38:05 The Upper Limit That Caps Your Success
41:34 The 50K To 250K Self-Sabotage Trap
45:22 Become The Person Who Attracts Money
53:14 Why Success Feels Empty Until You Heal

#socialprogramming #conditioning #moneymindset #freedom #deprogramming

She was bedridden for 18 years, married three times, and convinced God was furious with her. Then one belief broke and everything changed.

Victoria Moore-McDowell grew up with the same script most of us were handed: work hard, suffer hard, maybe you'll earn a decent life. By her 40s, she was almost completely bedridden, stuck in an emotionally abusive marriage, financially controlled, and carrying decades of religious shame.
This conversation isn't a hustle story. It's an identity story.

The real friction wasn't just her marriage or her body. It was the inherited programming that you have to grind for money, that God is disappointed in you, that wealth is somehow ungodly, that the systems around you are designed to help you. She had to unlearn all of it before anything could shift.

A few turning points she walks through:
- The day her hands started hurting on the highway and her old life ended
- Discovering grace through Pastor Joseph Prince after 15 years in bed
- Leaving the abusive marriage seven years ago at age 51
- Falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole that exposed how banking, identity, and trusts actually work

In this conversation, you'll learn:
- Why "work hard for money" is one of the most expensive lies you've been sold
- How religious guilt and condemnation quietly sabotage your finances
- What identity actually has to do with healing — physically and financially
- How "sovereign citizens" vs. "living humans" are treated differently under banking law
- Why staying silent about what you know is selfish, not humble
- The hidden financial infrastructure school refuses to teach

Guest: Victoria Moore-McDowell
Connect Victoria👇
🔗 Website: faithfreedomandfinances.com
🔗 Facebook: Ian Norton
🔗 She’s moving everything toward: You & Victoria (YouTube)

🔔 If this episode stirred something in you, don't ignore it. Share It with someone who needs to hear this. Subscribe, leave a comment and remember, you weren't born to follow the script, you were born to be free.

Most people think they need more confidence. Ian Norton thinks they need something simpler — and most of us were quietly trained out of it.

Ian is a confidence coach who has worked with royalty, celebrities, and business leaders. But before any of that, he grew up gay in a strict military family at a time when it was still illegal in the UK — taught from age nine that something was "wrong" with him and needed fixing. Chasing a sense of belonging, he fell in with a glamorous London crowd, ran a few "dodgy" packages without realizing what they were, and ended up serving four months in one of the country's most hardcore prisons.

That's where the script flipped. Everyone else wanted out. Ian asked to stay — so his friends could visit. And somewhere in that cell he found the one thing he now builds everything on: the trust that he'd be okay no matter what happened.

A few turning points from the conversation:

- The moment in prison he realized nothing else in life could really scare him again
- Walking into Kensington Palace to coach Princess Diana — who wanted to hear about prison
- Why he says "I am enough" is one of the most damaging things you can tell yourself
- The reframe he gives clients who blame themselves for everything: "Who do you think you are?"

In this conversation, you'll learn:

- Why your nervous system reacts to a product launch the same way it would to a predator attacking
- The "GOOP" trap (the good opinion of other people) that's secretly running your decisions
- How people quietly rig their lives to make winning impossible and failing easy
- Why "what if it goes wrong" and "what if it goes right" are equally true — so pick one
- How to tell the difference between real danger and just doing something new

This one goes deep on the programming we mistake for personality — and how to start writing your own lines instead.

Guest: Ian Norton

👇Connect with Ian
🔗 Website: iannortoncoaching.com
🔗 Facebook: Ian Norton

🔔 If this episode stirred something in you, don't ignore it. Share it with someone who needs to hear this. Subscribe, leave a comment, and remember, you weren't born to follow the script, you were born to be free.

What if the version of you that ended up broke was never really your fault — just a script you were handed and never questioned?

Richard Lloyd Roberts grew up outside London with a hard childhood and a father who wasn't kind. He failed every subject in school, escaped into the merchant navy as a galley boy, and spent years convinced that "get a job and grind" was all life had for him. Then he chased money the wrong way — selling watches out of a car window across Europe — and when he finally made it to America, the whole thing collapsed. He ended up broke, homeless, and drinking, all at the same time. He says he could have died. That was how close it got.

The thing that turned it wasn't a windfall. It was a book about the conscious and subconscious mind, and the realization that the limiting voices in his head were running the show.

This is a conversation about the programming underneath money — the difference between saying "I want success" and living from "I am," why he hated himself most when he was richest, and how he kept rebuilding from zero more than once without giving up.

A few moments that stuck with me: the night he walked into a room of 80 "successful" people and discovered every single one was just as scared as he was. The lighting contract that made him real money and left him empty. And the coffee-shop moment, dead broke again, that became a million-dollar company.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

- Why "I want money" is the exact phrasing that keeps people stuck — and what to say instead
- How chasing money directly made him miserable, and what he changed the year he flipped the script
- The simple way he kills anxiety and self-doubt before going on camera or into a room full of "bigger" people
- Why becoming the person comes before doing the work (the be-do-have order most people get backwards)
- How he turned imposter syndrome into his biggest advantage at a Tony Robbins mastermind

Guest: Richard Lloyd Roberts

Connect with Robert👇
🔗 Website: The Soulpreneur Agency, thesoulpreneur.agency
🔗 Facebook: Richard Lloyd Roberts

🔔 If this episode stirred something in you, don't ignore it. Share It with someone who needs to hear this. Subscribe, leave a comment and remember, you weren't born to follow the script, you were born to be free.

What if the "safe path" everyone pushed on you is actually the riskiest move you could make?

Eric Thayne grew up in an extremely traditional family — college, get a job, work the job. Everyone around him followed it. He didn't. He started his first real business at 13, designing graphics for bands on MySpace and collecting $20 payments through a brand-new thing called PayPal. By the time he "learned" graphic design in college, he already had 11 years of paid experience and realized the classroom couldn't teach him what real reps already had.

Eric has since helped scale multiple seven-figure brands with organic content that's pulled over 500 million views. But this conversation isn't a flex reel. It's about the programming most of us never question: that a job equals safety, that failure is real, and that grinding yourself into the ground is the price of success.

The friction runs deep. Eric pushes back on the idea of "risk" entirely — arguing that every decision carries a possible future you don't want, so the imagined downside is just a story you're making up. If you're going to make one up, why not a good one? And the real way to shrink risk isn't to play small — it's to stack skills until the deck tips in your favor.

A few moments that turn the conversation:

— Why a full-time job can leave you with less control, not more
— The reframe that quietly erased "failure" from his vocabulary
— Why he refuses to schedule mornings and works with his body's rhythm instead of fighting it
— The final-message gut-punch: realizing the "need" to be successful was never real

In this conversation, you'll learn:

- Why "stable" jobs can carry more hidden risk than starting a business
- How to reframe failure as data instead of an ending
- The skill-stacking approach that makes risk shrink as you grow
- Why peak mornings + free-flowing blocks beat the 8-hour grind
- How hustle culture is engineered to scare you into buying and burning out
- What it actually means to teach kids (and yourself) how value is created

Guest: Eric Thayne

Connect with Eric👇
🔗 Website: ericdain.com
🔗 Facebook: Eric Thayne
🔗 Eric’s book: createdontcapture.com

🔔 If this episode stirred something in you, don't ignore it. Share It with someone who needs to hear this. Subscribe, leave a comment and remember, you weren't born to follow the script, you were born to be free.