From Billion-Dollar Tech To Jungle Gayborhood: Shelby Clark’s New Mission To Heal Queer Souls
What happens when a Harvard MBA and founder of Turo trades boardrooms for bamboo?
You get Jungle Gayborhood—a soul-charged retreat center in the Costa Rican jungle where queer people come not just to relax, but to reconnect.
In this episode of Pride Nomad Unleashed, Ken goes deep with Shelby Clark, the Silicon Valley disruptor turned spiritual entrepreneur. Once the brains behind Turo (the “Airbnb for cars”), Shelby now builds spaces that heal, awaken, and empower queer folks through sacred plant medicine, sex-positive experiences, and jungle-born adventures.
This is not your average gaycation. It’s a full-body, heart-forward revolution.
We dive into:
Why he left Turo after building a billion-dollar startup
The truth behind his psychedelic awakening in Bali
How Jungle Gayborhood became a queer sanctuary (and yes, a little “gay womb”)
Sacred retreats like Jungle Fag, embodied adventures, and plant medicine journeys
The wild power of living in flow—and why success without alignment is just empty
✨ Plus: Get $100 off any retreat using our Pride Nomad community code (link in show notes)!
This isn’t just an episode—it’s a permission slip to rethink success.
Watch the Episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
From Billion-Dollar Tech To Jungle Gayborhood: Shelby Clark's New Mission To Heal Queer Souls
Putting it back on. Let me ping you or spotlight you. Let me spotlight me because I'm so sexy. Awesome. Beautiful. Hi. If you could pop your camera down a little bit so that we can see all of you. Not all of you. If you want to, that's fine.
Hold on, let's see. I can check this up a little bit better.
Is that a plant coming down from the top, or is that a wire?
It's a plant. I can move it. Vines are growing into the space. That's funny.
That's awesome.
Full jungle. Should I pull it out of the way?
It's distracting, but probably. You're doing it, so it's okay.
It’s sort of funny. They're getting a little unreal, honestly, but I sort of like it.
You know what? It’s nature.
It's nature.
Maybe a little intrusive nature, but it's okay. It is still getting attention.
In the early morning, something was hitting my head. I was like, “What is that, a bug?”
I had that. That's good. Are you fully naked right now or just the top?
I'm wearing a sarong.
Okay.
Should I put a shirt on?
It's up to you. Your brand is, you know. You will be the first person on the podcast who is shirtless, and it's all good. When we get down there and we record stuff, we're both going to be shirtless.
This is authentic. That's how you'll find me. I got a sarong, and that’s it.
I still can draw up the dress, but that's another conversation. When I get down there, I will be shirtless. I never did adopt sarongs that much, only because I didn't want my legs covered, but I do love them.
I've now made my common crop tops sarongs, and cut a sarong in half, so they're to my knees.
That’s better. I can live with that. That's actually a good idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that. It’s easier to get around, too, because moving is a bit restrictive on the legs, a little bit. I'm trying to remember. I think I learned how to do a sarong better in Bali when I was there.
That's where the inspiration came. It was in Bali. I went to a hotel, and it's called Bambu Indah. Every cabin had a sarong in the bedroom out there. We would like to do that at some point. I haven't gotten there yet, but it'll happen.
It's wonderful. Let me quickly do an intro, then we can roll into this, and then we can do other stuff afterward.
Before you dive in, I'd love to recap what we are talking about today. Where are we going? How long are we chatting for?
The podcast, typically, is 25 minutes or so. I have to hard stop it, but whatever. I can go as long as we want to go. I rarely ended it at 25 minutes, only because we had a good time, but I’m mindful of your calendar.
I've got the hours, so I've got until two hours.
Let me double-check. I'm good for an hour.
I am recording a podcast, so if you and Jose can try to be quiet, please. I appreciate that. I had it framed here. You can feel free to walk around whenever you want. Should I have some sexy men walking around naked in the back?
I think that's totally on brand, so bring it.
It would be authentic to have men walking in the background.
It’s completely authentic.
Can you remind me? Your audience is nomads. These are people who are thinking about how to travel. Talk a little about our plans for the community and the offerings we have for nomads and things like that.
Yeah.
I probably should have planned something else a little more because we're considering some longer-term stays, but haven't launched anything yet.
This has longevity. There's nothing that's in stone, meaning that if you want to do another episode in a few months or whatever, then I’m having you back. It's not an issue. Remember, these things last for a long time, so it's going to be a check back situation because you're evolving, as are we. I’m writing a book right now. I'm telling people in the book, “This is written on quicksand because the rules that were in place six months ago, certainly for the United States, are dramatically different. “If you're trans, good luck” type of things. I don't want anyone to think that just because it's in print or on a video that it's forever. Nothing in this world is forever.
I think it's reasonable to say that we're planning both the community and longer-term stays. If you want this to be a place where you live a couple of months a year or full-time, that's an option. If you would like to take a week to a month and come, be a nomad, co-work, swim in waterfalls, take some zooms, and do your thing, that's also an option.
It's a terrible option. There’s a bright tomorrow, and I think Spirit Airlines is still flying down there. I haven't heard anything different. For a while, you can get a Fort Lauderdale flight.
I'd recommend that somebody come down and do a retreat and then stay for a month. I'm going to recommend that. Come down, have a huge experience, and then integrate. Allow yourself to ebb back in, continue to swim in the waterfall every day, and continue to be in nature. Okay, I got it.
I think that makes so much sense. It's one of the things that I'm talking about a little bit in the book. It is the idea that if you've got an event to do, you’ve got a convention, conference, or whatever it is, someplace, then stay. Either go for a few weeks before. Stay for a few weeks after. Typically, whenever I would do an event or whatever, it was either going in a day or two earlier or a day or two later. I love that water mug you have. That is the best.
It's the best. I would definitely come down and do the retreat at the beginning. They can be a powerful experience. It would be almost disorienting to be here, and then do your retreat and then leave, but if you came into the retreat and then gave yourself a month to integrate, that would be the ideal experience.
Yeah, I agree. I thought I'd want to talk to you right now because I want to get you back on camera so we can use this stuff.
Okay, sorry, I'm going to the bathroom.
It's okay.
I was realizing I wasn't like, “Let me be totally present.” Do you have anything you need?
I took care of that before we got on. Mama always said, “Before you leave the house, make sure you go.”
Okay, I'm almost back.
I do love the casual way. I know that you are very intentional, but your presence is very casual.
Thank you. I think it's important to be intentional, but not take ourselves too seriously. Seriously enough, but not too seriously.
This is business, but it's also a lifestyle. It’s the same thing with this. If people aren't enjoying what they're doing, they should be doing it. It comes down to that.
I think for us, how we show up, the vibration that we live in is what we're selling, if you will. If we're not authentic and we're not doing it ourselves, then I don't know what. People notice that. You feel it in your body, so we've got to integrate this into our lives as well if we want to express that and create that experience with people.
Yeah. I learned this a long time ago. I was training in Australia. I was in front of the room, and I was putting on my smiley, I'm a great person, I love myself. I'm happy face. They were like, “You're so full of shit.” It's something that we have to get over. It’s that facade, because people know.
Okay, I'm ready.
Good. I'll do the quick intro, and then we will formally but informally roll head. Let me go see in front what I did for you, because I haven't looked at the updates thing. Here we go.
Meet Shelby Clark, the tech founder who traded Silicon Valley for the Costa Rica jungle. After building Turo into a billion-dollar car marketplace, he realized success wasn't about disrupting industries, it was about transforming lives. Now, he runs Jungle Gayborhood, a slice of paradise where the LGBT community can reconnect with themselves while investing in companies that expand human consciences, from psychedelic therapies to mental health breakthroughs. This is Pride Nomad Unleashed, where entrepreneurial success means spiritual awakening and every conversation opens new possibilities. Hello, Shelby Clark.
Hi, Ken. It’s nice to see you. Thanks for having me.
Don't you love the way we do our openings?
Absolutely. Very welcome. Thank you.
Unveiling Jungle Gayborhood: A Sanctuary For Connection And Healing
I'm glad we got this organized. If we're going to start formally, let's talk about the journey that got you here. Before we get to that journey, since people are seeing our first hot guy, half-naked in our podcast, let's talk about Jungle Gayborhood. What is this thing? They probably have already checked out the website a little bit, I assume, because it's almost a soft porn website. It's fabulous. It's beautifully designed. It is very seductive. Tell everybody what Jungle Gayborhood is and what the journey was to even get it started.
Jungle Gayborhood is an LGBT-focused boutique hotel and retreat center in the heart of the Costa Rican jungle. We had built this place as a home for the LGBT community to heal, connect, and shine. What does that mean? I think that to heal is to take a look at the stories that we're telling and to be able to release the stories that are no longer serving us. All of us have picked up so many ideas and constructs throughout our lives that society has imposed on us. Some of these things are very helpful to help us understand ourselves in the world, and some of these things may not be serving us. Often, we don't know.
It's difficult to tell what's going on in there. It's an intentional moment to pause and reflect on what story I'm telling, what story I want to tell, and what I can leave behind. I think that many people live very disconnected lives, moving very fast. We're very busy. We got social media. We have lots of connections, but maybe some of these connections aren't deep, meaningful, or profound. Maybe that's in the beginning with ourselves, to pause and have a moment to deeply connect with ourselves, to feel our bodies, to feel our emotions, to pause and say, “How am I doing? What is going on in there?” Not, “How should I be doing or what am I supposed to feel?” but authentically, “How am I doing?” From that place of connecting with ourselves, how can I connect with people around me in my community?
We create this beautiful, intentional community down here. We have meals together, and we go to the waterfall together. We're seeing people for consecutive days, or hopefully longer, and building some meaningful connections, and also connecting with nature. We are in one of the world's most biodiverse places, and our architecture is this beautiful bamboo architecture. I can show you around mine a little bit. This is where I live. There are no walls anywhere. We live a completely open-air lifestyle. The guest cabins are surrounded by mosquito nets. You're not completely open elements, but you're protected. What that means is that we are outside all the time, and we are in a place that is thriving and is one of the world's most biodiverse places.
There is a symphony of life that is vibrating all around us. You feel that in your body every day. It brings vitality and connection. It is inspiring. When much of the world feels like it's on fire, to have this experience of connection to thriving nature is medicine. It is a beautiful experience. The last thing is to shine. Remember I said, Jungle Gayborhood is to heal, connect, and shine. As we were able to heal some of our past and create this sense of connection, we're invited to shine, to step into our most authentic selves, to find out what turns us on, what I'm excited about, what I love doing, and to create practices that cultivate these things. That doesn't have to be overdone or expensive, but just finding some practices that are like, “I love this. This is the thing. It is the highlight of my day.”
Can I create a couple of moments to connect with these things, finding out our passions, our purpose, and to step into our passion and our power? We create all different experiences for people to step into these things. We do a lot of retreats. We've got three main types of retreats. We have sacred plant ceremonies. These are using different types of plant medicines. We can dive more into that. We have sacred sexuality retreats. This is Tantra, or our relationships with our bodies and sexuality. We have what we call embodied adventure retreats. This is going out into nature, waterfalls, ziplining, canyoning, getting out in queer community and adventure.
As we were able to heal some of our past and create this sense of connection, we were truly invited to shine and step into our most authentic selves.
Sometimes, we throw a good party or a festival. All this is also available as a boutique hotel, meaning that you don't have to come for a structured experience. You can come to just relax, do yoga, eat delicious homegrown organic meals, and lie by the pool. We're considering some longer-term nomad-style stays. Hopefully, by the time this is launched, we'll have those available, so stay tuned. That was a long rant about who we are.
The Jungle Fagg Festival: Celebrating Community And Authenticity
I'm sitting here listening to you, and a little bit familiar with it before we got this thing started. I feel like it's a gay womb that you've created. It landed for me now even more intensely than in previous exposures to it because it's so important. I've done Tony Robbins stuff over the years. I've been to Kripalu in Massachusetts, where I took a training called Men in Yoga. It wasn't gay men in yoga, it was men in yoga, which was transformative for me. It has now evolved into something that is a fabulous prize. If our audience has not yet been to Costa Rica, certainly the Costa Rica jungle, it is some place you have to go. It's magical. If you've been to the National Park in Manuel Antonio, this takes it to another level.
That's super important, just that environment, being away, not necessarily off the grid, because you do have Starlink there, thank goodness for those of us who are digital warriors. To be in that space where your intention is heart-based, it's easy to be a yes, you're sex positive, and you've got some programming that is sex oriented, it's far beyond that. I think people need to get that. I got the sense of that with this dialect, but I want that to hit home for people because that's, to me, important. We're taking this to a whole other level here.
I also have a lot of similar experiences on my past in non-queer settings, and I have experiences in queer settings, so jamming those together with vision here. Before I dive into a little more of the story about how this all came about, some of the journey, one experience I want to talk about, because I think it brings a lot of this to life, what we were just talking about. One event that we hosted and plan to do it again is a little retreat festival called Jungle Fag. It's very on-the-nose branding. This is a bunch of faggots living their best lives in the jungle. It's a four-day festival. We approach this with a lot of intention, but not taking it too seriously. I think about meeting people where they're at, creating an experience that's accessible. We bring people in.
There's an opening circle to start connecting. These are opening up. We have yoga, but we've also got world-class DJs. We have incredible music. There's a sensuality temple, a temple of desire, a temple of connection and desire, and it gets people in their bodies, connecting and being able to ask for what they want, understand, and communicate their boundaries with consent. For some people, this may come a little bit naturally, but the rules are a little fuzzy. It's getting clear on like, how do we do this? How can we do it together? Taking this out of the dark and bringing it into the light with connection and intention. The same thing with a party. I think that we had a party. It was great music, and it went until dawn. There was an intentional, optional medicine circle that began.
People set an intention for their evening, and we shared medicine together. Instead of people doing things secretly in the dark, it's like, “How do we do this with connection and intention? How do you meet them where they're at and do things safely?” We also had people by if anyone needed anything in terms of support or processing, and they used them. People went to these things during a party to talk about what was going on. This was also happening in January, it was right after or during the tail end of the fires in Los Angeles. A number of people came from Los Angeles, and their words were literally burning. It was on the eve of the Trump inauguration, and people were feeling not okay. They were able to come down. They were invited to be themselves. They were invited to play.
They were invited to embrace authenticity, to paint their toenails, to get sexy with people in a connected and intentional way. The comments that we got were so powerful and important to have these experiences of connection, to take these things that could happen in the dark and bring them into the light with intention and connection. To do it playfully with the right amount of taking it seriously enough but not too seriously, people were marked on how transformational this was.
For me, whenever we began doing this work, I don't want to say that I wasn't surprised that we did things like psychedelic retreats, that it was super transformational. These are intended to be that way. What I think I was surprised by was how impactful some of these more lighthearted experiences were to bring people into a festival, and for them to explain how this transformed them in meaningful ways. I think that it's this alchemy of ingredients that we talked about that can be profound, playful, and even transformational.
Aligning Business With Passion: A New Paradigm For Success
As I'm listening to you, my mind is spinning in a few different directions, and certainly, coming down there, the idea is to still the mind a bit. At least my experience is that when we still the mind, magic happens. Wisdom is a space between words I say. For those who are beginning their Pride Nomad journey, I'm thinking maybe the beginning of it should start there. This may violate the intention a little bit, but if we start with, “This is where we're our first stop, grounding you for your adventure around the world, so that as we get you centered with yourself.” At the same time, people need to understand the money side of things because we straddle both income, or financial, as well as travel.
If we leverage your experience with what you did with building Turo, that's super important, along with the spiritual journey and the recognition that the income that we're creating, in my vision anyway, has to financially be synchronistic and aligned with who you are. That way, you're no longer working. You're loving your life. It's very different than what people have been taught in school, for sure, but I'm thinking what a cool place to run a training and event, a transformational business journey, if you will, that gets people grounded into how to, without bullshit, build a business, but build one that you love and that isn't consuming you.
The word that I would use is alignment, to be able to tap into what I care about. What makes me passionate? What feels exciting in my body? If I get out of my head and I get into my experience in my body, if I can be guided by pleasure and delight, what about that? What if I were guided by pleasure and delight? What felt right in my body? If I stopped at the pro and con, the to-do list, what am I supposed to be doing? If I let that all aside, I put aside my five-year plan, what if I'm guided by my body, by what feels right? Where does it take me? Can we create some space to allow people to explore that?
I certainly want to acknowledge people's needs for income, and these are important. I do think that it is possible to say, “What do I care about? Can I do work that is in alignment with the things that I care about so that it feels easeful?” Not easy. There's a difference between easy and easeful. Easeful means that it flows, that it feels natural. It is worth working hard because I care about this. I'm passionate. I'm naturally compelled forward as opposed to grinding up a hill, doing the stuff that I hate, because I think I have to do it.
It's that piece of you blinked your eyes, it was 10:00 at night, now it's 3:00 in the morning. Time went like that, but you're having a great time. Nothing wrong with that. In a lot of cases, and we probably want to address this at some point as we get philosophical here, a lot of people that I respect are saying that business or a passion in life is not necessarily one that's balanced. I'm writing a book right now. I'm up at 3:00 in the morning because I'm on a deadline. I got to get the damn thing done. I shouldn't say that. It's a pleasure. I'm excited, but finished it so I can get on to the next stuff I want to do. That's not balanced at all. When I'm done with it, I can spend more time at the pool. How do we manage that and not feel guilty about it at the same time, and love that?
I'd love to dive in on this. I think that what you're talking about is flow. You're talking about tapping into flow states where things become easeful. I'm not sure how much people know about the science of flow. These are whenever you're able to tap into something where time disappears, and you are in your natural state. You're challenged enough, but not too much. You're not figuring things out as you go, but you're in the zone of competence, and you can just flow. I think there's a lot of prep to get into these phases. As you can tap into these flow states, it can be a 10X in terms of your output because you're at your best. I want to back up for one second as well. You talked about the concept of stilling the mind.
I think that there is some importance to meditation, to being able to still the mind and be present. I also think that's not my concept of meditation. This is my favorite meditation text. This is called The Radiance Sutras. This is a very loved text. This is a tantric love poem to life, tantric in the sense that it's a full-bodied approach to experience and spirituality. It's engaging the senses, the body, the breath, and the most ordinary experiences, and finding the things that bring you to life, so that the result is the same as being focused and present. It's less like, “Shoot, my mind is wandering again. Wait, I'm supposed to bring it back. Am I supposed to bring it back? Shoot, I'm thinking again. God, I'm doing this wrong. I'm so bad at this meditation.”
No one would think they're bad at meditation. Instead, what are the things where you get lost in the moment? What are the things where you are completely consumed in your body, the feeling, the breath, and the emotion, to where you're present? Not because you're beating yourself up and staying present. You are so engaged in it. This is the highlight of your day that you couldn't possibly take a moment away from. How do you find those things that are different for every person and every day? How do you have a collection of practices that are like, “This is my thing. Can I make fifteen minutes in my day to create this practice and to connect with this?”
Integrating Mindfulness Into Startup Life In The Jungle
That’s fine. This is Unleashed, babe. Let's tie it into reality. That's your mindset. You're running a business now. It's different than Turo. I'd like to get down to that at some point. You're running a business. You're growing this business. It's been a startup. It's been around for how long now?
We're in our third season, so our third year.
How then are you integrating that mindfulness into running a startup and growing it?
For me, there are a lot of periods of reflection in terms of how I'm doing and how things are going, trying to be conscious in the way that I approach my priorities in the business, doing a lot of writing and journaling, and building in these periods of mindfulness. Can I take a break and catch my breath? In all of our team meetings, we start with a deep breath. It's this reset. It's always surprising to me how big a difference a breath can make.
You can leave behind all of the stress and things that were swirling beforehand. You can take a moment to be present and to connect. As you do that in a group and everybody does that, it's this moment of presence. I think that there are lots of little things and little practices that we can do to bring this mindfulness and connection into our work, integrated in authentic ways.
Other than breathing, how are you managing the stresses that go with a startup, with being in Costa Rica, with being in the jungle, with being in a very Catholic community, that, mind you, they're supportive of us legally, certainly, which is important? You do not have an easy position there. It isn't easy. It looks beautiful, but if you're living there, it's a very different conversation. Coming from a tech startup guy who built a billion-dollar company, this is a little different.
I think it's being real about the challenges, allowing them, feeling whenever they're challenging, and speaking honestly and openly about it. One of the things that we do is we have a regular heart circle with the team. This is coming together and allowing people to express their emotions. What's coming up for them? What's challenging? It's not just the good stuff. How do we consciously create space for things that are challenging and talk about them?
Sometimes, it's going to be crunchy because this is interpersonal dynamics. Sometimes, it's more global, the challenges of running a growing business and figuring things out. I've never built a hospitality brand or a recruitment center before. There's a lot of learning for me here. I think there is a need to be aware of what's going on and being able to safely articulate these things in a way that we can collaborate on this team. It goes a long way.
What if I were guided by pleasure, by what felt right in my body? Could we create a space for people to explore that?
Shelby Clark's Journey: From Tech Titan To Spiritual Seeker
What lessons did you take from building Turo? Before I get to the lessons, explain to everybody what Turo is and what that whole piece of your life was.
Maybe I can do a little bit of the journey, and I'll include that along the way. I'll do my best to keep it concise. For me, it goes back to the beginning of my story. I grew up in suburban Denver and Aurora, Colorado, and child of the '80s. I grew up a queer kid in a very straight world. I did not have any gay influences in my life until after I graduated from high school. Growing up, I certainly got teased and made fun of by other kids before I even knew that I was gay. I think it led to me not being able to accept more parts of myself, to actively hiding who I was. The way that I dealt with that was by overachieving. It's probably a common story in the queer world. I was a perfect straight-A student. I was the valedictorian in my class.
I was an all-American swimmer, went to college on a swimming scholarship. I continued this overachieving and got a great job out of college. I started down a path of entrepreneurship. I started a company. I went to Harvard Business School to get a fancy MBA. While I was at Harvard, I started a company. I had the dream of starting a billion-dollar unicorn startup. I started a company, which is now called Turo. Turo was the world's first, now the largest peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace. That's like Airbnb for cars. If you have a car and you're not using it, you can rent it out through our platform. People make money. I started the company in 2008, and the company has grown and evolved into a big and thriving company. In 2025, we'll do several billion dollars in revenue.
The majority of that money goes directly into people's pockets all around the world. It's helping to create economic vitality. It's doing great things to help the environment. Providing access to cars reduces the need for car ownership. It’s counterintuitive, but it does. It reduces vehicle emissions and driving. It's been exciting to see that grow, but that's also been challenging. It's challenging personally as well. In about five years, I was pushed out of the company by my investors. That was challenging. I think for me, this was a lot of my identity, who I was. I was this entrepreneur. The company was doing great. We were getting a lot of publicity and press. I was very much the face of the company. It was very much my identity.
I was pushed out of the company. I'm going to call it even traumatic. That was challenging. Who am I without this? What do I do? My story was as an entrepreneur. I'd gotten all this validation in the world, so I guess I'll start another company. I started another company, and then that company failed. This was in 2016. What do I do now? Do I start another company? At this point, Turo was doing quite well. Is it going to do better than the first company? What does that even mean? Is it about the money that we make, or is it how big of an impact we can create? When is it enough? What is the end here? I don't know.
The amount of time spinning my wheels, trying to create a five-year plan, what I was going to do, and who I was, I was trying to solve these things with my mind. It just was not working. Honestly, I was being pushed forward by the societal pressures of being successful and getting this validation that felt good. That was working, honestly. It's this hamster wheel of never-ending. I was always in this step to get somewhere else, so that one day I'd be happy. When is the day to be happy? When is the day to be filled?
You had money because you still had shares in the company. When you were kicked out, you were kicked out in a leadership position, but not economically. Is that right?
That's right. The way that startups work is that you own lots of shares. One day, hopefully, you hope that the company is either bought or it's called going public. This is where the stock is sold on the New York Stock Exchange, and then you can sell your shares. That's at least with a tech startup. I still had a lot of shares, but the company has not been sold or gone public. There's some ability to sell certain shares, but it hasn't had a big windfall. It was not liquid. I wasn't able to access it. It's only needed to be earning money, but on paper, I was doing very well. The paper I had, I started a company that was worth a billion dollars. I guess not by 2017. It was doing well, but it hadn't.
The good distinction for our audience, because people see tech exit versus being kicked out. He wasn't sitting around with $4 billion in the bank. He still had to manage his life like the rest of us.
Bali, Psychedelics, And Awakening: A Pivotal Turning Point
On a bit of a whim, in 2016, I decided to do a yoga teacher training. I just knew that when I was in my body, when I was moving, I felt good. I called my sister, and I was like, “Let's go to Bali to do yoga teacher training.” She's like, “I don't want to be a yoga teacher, Shelby.” I was like, “I don't either. Let's go to Bali.” “Okay.” We put it that way, “Let's go to Bali.” I think I expect to learn many yoga poses. To my surprise, I found spirituality again. I grew up in a Christian household, and growing up gay, I completely rejected the church. I think I threw the baby out with the bathwater. There are some important elements of spirituality. What I found was that the yoga teacher training gave me these practices to get in my body, to start moving my body. It was yoga and ecstatic dance.
I had this story of being a bad dancer, and ecstatic dance was this moving meditation where you get in your body, and you dance. I loved it. I loved chanting and mantra, meditation, and breath work. Eastern philosophy resonated with me. It was all this training, and it was finding things that brought me to life. At the end of this, I did my first soul assignment journey, magic mushrooms. I had done mushrooms many times, different psychedelics, at music festivals with giggling with friends, but I had never done them intentionally. A small group of us got together, set an intention, sat and meditated with this medicine until the world dissolved around us in a way that could be very scary.
If you can surrender to that, my experience is that it yielded into ultimate sense of connection with myself, with others, with nature, a flow, a sense of ease, and a connection with myself in a way that I could feel a ton of compassion and self-love. It changed everything. It completely changed the way that I viewed the world, that I view myself, and connected with myself when I was being motivated in these positive and enduring ways. It knocked me out of my depression. I think it was a profound experience for me. After that, I was like, “What do I do with this? I'm going to stick around Bali for a couple of months.” I can't go back. I can't just go do my tech consulting, what I was doing at the time.
Allow yourself to connect to your body and be guided more by what you are feeling than by what you are thinking.
I needed to have a pause and say, “What happened, and how do I integrate this into my life?” What I did was I started looking around for inspiration. Who were the people around me who were interesting and inspiring? What were they doing? What could I learn from them? Can I even help them? I made a couple of interesting connections while I was in Bali. The first one was when I met a yoga teacher on Grindr. He was telling me about this vision he had to open a yoga retreat in Costa Rica, and beautiful nature. They'd found this incredible property, and he had these two partners, but he was just getting started. I was like, “I'm an entrepreneur. I know how to build a company that needs help.” He's like, “Sure.” I was like, “Great. I'll help you guys with this thing.”
I never planned on getting too involved, but it was like, “Let me help out a little bit.” I also met one of the world's leading bamboo architects. This incredibly brilliant woman named Elora Hardy runs this bamboo studio called Ibuku. I was so inspired by what she was doing. I ended up volunteering my time to help her with her business. I didn't know where any of these things would go. For the first time in my life, I was guided by what felt inspiring to me. I ended up going back to the States, began teaching yoga and meditation, much to my surprise, and continued down this path of growth and exploration. I continued to do yoga, yoga trainings, breathwork, and meditation, and continued learning and growing.
I realized there was an entire world of psychedelic therapy that was emerging. How can I get involved and help with this? Eventually, the yoga retreat failed. We couldn't get people excited at this obscure yoga retreat, which they had no connection to. In the meantime, I had met somebody else who had a vision of building a plant medicine retreat, community, and nature. We have this beautiful land, and this person is looking for land. As the yoga retreat failed, I was like, “Maybe we should do this.” This person named Michael was running a retreat down in Costa Rica, at this inflection point of the other thing was failing, and what do we do? I was able to come on that retreat, and we did a ceremony on the property.
Building A Queer Retreat: From Inspiration To Reality
I got to experience people having an experience of plant medicine on this property and coming out of their shells, living their best lives, and having profound experiences of community and transformation. It was a yes. It was a clear yes. This is how I want to be living in community, in connection to nature, doing this work, and let's do it. As we're having this experience, it was January 6th, 2021. It was the day of the Capitol riots. It was chaos in the States, where it's like, what is going on up there? In contrast is this beautiful experience of connection and community. I was like, “Wait a minute. Am I supposed to go back, fight, do the thing, and make change? No. What I'm supposed to do is I'm supposed to be here and work on other models, to create other spaces because we need them. This is how I can show up.”
I ended up helping this friend of Michael to build the first iteration of Holos, which is a plant medicine center and community here in Costa Rica. As we were launching this and I was being able to see people coming to the land and experiencing the work, I recognized I was the only queer person around. That was a consistent story I'd had. You mentioned Kripalu, and I went to similar retreats at Esalen. All these retreats that I was going to, I was usually the only queer person there. It's not that these were unsafe spaces. I never felt judged. For me, a lot of the work that I was doing was healing the trauma of growing up gay, these wounds of having experienced not being able to accept myself, and leaving that behind. I could do that in a group of straight people, but it wasn't the best spot for it.
They can't relate to us.
I was like, “What if we did this but for queer people, for us, by us? Let's do an experiment.” I called a bunch of my friends, different facilitators, but also people who were on a journey and a path. I was like, “Let's try this thing of a queer retreat.” We did it in June of 2021. To do these similar practices, but in queer community, acknowledging the queer journey, what does that feel like? The answer was, “Great.” We ended up taking another corner of the property and building what's now the Jungle Gayborhood as a retreat center for the queer community. If I look back at what this was, this was a major shift for me in terms of being guided by the head, in terms of being guided by the heart.
If I'm more specific about that, here's an analogy. When you build technology now, almost all technology that you see, all apps and everything, software is built by what's called agile technology. It's different from how it used to be made. In the '90s, Microsoft was building things, and they would use what's called the waterfall approach. What that means is you would have a very clear plan of, “I'm going to do this step, and then this step, and then this step.” These are all dependent on each other. The reality of what was happening was, you built a piece of software, you would think it's going to take you here, but it actually takes you here. The next step is a little bit different. It just didn't work. It was challenging to know all of the steps and be able to plan this out well in advance.
Now, what we'll do is called agile. What that means is we know we're going over here, and this is our intention. This is where we're trying to get to, but we're only going to take one step at a time. We're going to do this first piece of work. At the end of this, we're going to reassess and say, “What's the next step?” You do it one step at a time. Engineers will never commit to a whole timeline. It's this dynamic process of taking a step and reassessing. This process felt like an agile approach to life to where it was like, let me take a step and reassess. There might be some wrong turns over here. I don't know what's going over here. I'm going to do experiments, be willing to make mistakes, and be guided by what feels right in my body.
That shift was profound. It was very different than the approach of starting Turo, which was like, “I know what I'm doing. I have a plan. I'm confident. I know what's going on, and I'm guided by my intellect.” It's not all or nothing. I think that you do need to be incorporating or including all aspects of yourself, the head and the heart. The balance for me from when I started Turo to what I'm doing now has shifted greatly to now having incorporations of my heart and my head. One of the lessons that I have learned in this is allowing yourself to bring in the connection to your body and to be guided more by what you're feeling as opposed to what you're thinking.
It's logical. I'm speechless all of a sudden, which is bizarre for me, because it makes sense. I think what so many of us do, certainly in business, is we live up here and we don't often live in here, which I think mitigates the level of success we can reach. When we are aligned with everything together, magic happens. There are no accidents. That energy is managed in a better way. It's synchronistic. People show up out of the blue. Why? I don't know, but because the energy is there. You and I are going to have a conversation about how we can integrate that in that environment because it makes so much sense to have that piece put together.
The journey of Pride Nomad, I got to finish my book the way it is, but there may be another chapter that's the hidden chapter of soul alignment. We're calling our methodology nirmana, which is the Buddhist word for transformation. That whole methodology ends with the final A, which is activation. It's taking action after you do all that grounded stuff. That's wonderful, but if you don't put it into action, you can't just sit down, be a monk, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya. You have to do something and make a difference in the world. What I was thinking about for you is that while you don't want to be the activist in Washington or whatever else, what I see you doing is being the place where the activists gain their strength.
This is the fortress of solitude for those who need to make or take that journey because we need those folks. I was talking to Kierra Johnson, who is the Executive Director, President of the National LGBT Task Force. I'm teaching people to travel and effectively leave the United States, but we need fighters, too. At the same time, the whole world is a tinderbox. As we travel and people see us and recognize that we're not a threat, we dance better, we have better parties, we dress better, and they want to be us. Amazing how that works. We're not a threat. We're set to the status quo, perhaps. If we're able to do that, we serve that purpose.
Number one, leaving is not a bad thing. Leaving is a great thing to give us perspective. I watch this train wreck all the time, and it's certainly demoralizing, but inspiring people to be able to get the strength and the power internally, not just economically, which is a big function of what we're about, but internally, so that we can at least dance with it. We can at least go a little bit. It's just like what a bamboo does. It has solid roots, right?
Absolutely. It's flexible. I think that being able to take a moment to do some of this deep reflection work and then going into a deep work period could be great. I would love to welcome members of my community down. In an ideal world, people will be able to come down for a retreat and then stay. If you could come down for a plant medicine retreat or one of these more introspective retreats where you can be connecting to your story, your passion, your purpose, they can knock you open. If you can stay here for a month and co-work, we can talk about integration. You have these peak experiences, and if you don't integrate them into your life, they can be fleeting.
The impact and the transformation may not stick, but if you can tap into integration, they can be profound. If you have some time to stick around and some spaciousness to continue the practices, to continue the reflection, to be in nature, to relax and allow things to unfold, that's where the real magic is. I'd love to talk a lot more about that, and hopefully, we can design some programs and things. I guess one thing I'll mention is I think we'll create a promo code for you guys so that anybody from the Pride Nomad community can get $100 off in one of our retreats if they want to come down. Hopefully, we'll be releasing these longer-term stays and can bring forward what can be most supportive to this community.
Joining The Nomad Journey: Integration And Transformation In Costa Rica
What we're going to do is we'll put that promo code in the show notes. Make sure that when you do make your reservations to come down, saying come down as opposed to go down, I used to live in Costa Rica, so I still think of myself in that space, see what's going on, because by the time you tuned in to this episode, odds are that Shelby and I put together a program. I expect that's going to happen.
Let's do it.
Look at what's going on. We'll be talking about that inside the newsletter as well and inside our community. As we land this plane, because Shelby and I both have places we need to be shortly, I want to be sure that you guys are connecting with us both on a much deeper level, because this is about shifting the way you run your life. That's what being unleashed is about. Why should we be tied into anything other than what is our own true north?
Having lived a longer life than Shelby at this point, I can call him a young man, wisdom of recognizing that my being and doing my life is more important than doing my life for somebody else. I want you, as our audience, to do your life for you in any way you want. Shelby is doing something unique and passionate, and it's amazing. Who would have thought in 2015 or 2010 that you'd be living with no walls?
It was not on my side of the plan. I did not see this. I did not see it coming. In retrospect, it's obvious. It's perfect, but I could not have planned this out.
It's something new to Pride Nomad. This is not work. I'm up at 3:00 AM to write a book because I want to give this to the community. Now, I finally sense where I need to be. For you, it's the same thing. I want everyone to be able to enjoy that, rather than, how many people have we seen that have been successful executives and by the time they're at age 40 or 50, they're like, “Fuck that, I'm going to be a baker.” The money is not the issue. It's the fulfillment, but with the fulfillment, that's wealth. Money is not the issue. Money is the grease that makes the wheels turn. There are so many people that are multimillionaires that are freaking miserable, and they're on antidepressants. That's not wealth. Shelby, any final words you want? There's nothing final that we're going to have here.
Pura vida! That's the slogan of Costa Rica. It's pure life. It's pura vida. Ken, I'd love to have you and members of your community down. Let's keep the conversation going. I feel a lot of alignment. Thanks for this opportunity for the conversation. I'm sure we'll be in touch soon.
Thanks for joining us, Shelby. Sit tight for a second. Everybody, see you on the next episode. Whenever that's going to be, you'll see it somewhere. We're shooting this before we formally launch, so I have no details, but by now, you're in for a big treat.
Awesome. Thanks a lot.
