May 22, 2026

From Spiritually Bankrupt to Joy as a Baseline: A Conversation with Omani Carson and Joe Polish

Apple Podcasts podcast player iconYouTube podcast player iconYoutube Music podcast player iconSpotify podcast player iconOvercast podcast player iconiHeartRadio podcast player iconAmazon Music podcast player iconAudible podcast player iconRSS Feed podcast player icon
Apple Podcasts podcast player iconYouTube podcast player iconYoutube Music podcast player iconSpotify podcast player iconOvercast podcast player iconiHeartRadio podcast player iconAmazon Music podcast player iconAudible podcast player iconRSS Feed podcast player icon
Season 1

If you have ever built something successful and still felt like something was off, this conversation is for you. Joe Polish sits down with Omani Carson, the founder and chairman of Carson Group (a national wealth platform managing over 50 billion dollars in assets), the founder of Omya, and the co-founder of the Dreamweaver Foundation.

What makes this episode different is not what Omani has built. It is what he has been willing to question.

Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation:

  • Why Omani says he was “spiritually bankrupt” while everyone else thought he had the most amazing life on the planet.
  • The exact moment he realized no number in his bank account was ever going to make him feel safe, and the moment he finally stopped sprinting toward the next one.
  • The eleven-year-ago turning point that finally cracked open the only operating system he had ever known.
  • The three-year separation from his wife Jeannie that nearly ended a 44 year marriage, and the work they each did to come back together.
  • Why the medicine is never the medicine, and the post-experience work that most people skip and then complain that nothing changed.
  • The bag of ingredients practice Omani uses to decide what he carries forward in life and what he gives grace to and leaves behind.
  • Why he says joy is now a baseline, not a peak experience, and what that has actually done for his ability to run a multi-billion-dollar firm.
  • Why the last 60 days of business at Carson Group produced more than the first 30 years of the company combined, and what that has to do with frequency.
  • The Bert Weiss trick that has saved Omani thousands of yes decisions he would have later regretted (PLUS: the f*** yes or f*** no filter he and Jeannie run on everything).
  • The Six Most Vital Ones discipline and the 30 year goal blueprint that gives you the ability to act when motivation is not present.
  • The Dreamweaver Foundation, the 1.6 million seniors it has already served, and why end-of-life dreams might be the highest-leverage charity work there is.
  • Wu Wei, the Tao Te Ching idea of flow not force, and what it actually looks like to run a multi-billion-dollar operation on it.

If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at https://geniusnetwork.com.

Show Notes

Becoming Tate Omani (The Name Change Behind the Conversation)

  • Ron Carson, now Omani Carson, took the Lakota name Tate Omani from indigenous chiefs he hosted at his Nebraska healing ranch. The translation is “walking into a stiff wind.”
  • The part he was afraid he would lose by killing off the old identity was his drive. What he discovered is that the drive moderated, but did not disappear, and a whole new world opened up on the other side of it.
  • Omani now lives in what he calls “creator mode,” outside the savior-victim-perpetrator drama triangle, and treats every choice as an ingredient he decides whether or not to carry forward.

The Money Treadmill: $10,000 to $100,000 to $1,000,000 to Nothing

  • Omani grew up on a Nebraska farm during the farm crisis. He watched his father cry for the only time in his life when the family went broke. He decided on the spot he was never going to be poor.
  • First it was 10,000 dollars in the bank. He got there. He felt the same. Then 100,000 (he still remembers the exact balance, down to the cents). Then a million. Each number arrived, and each number meant nothing.
  • He kept sprinting anyway. He was in the office at 4:00 or 4:30 am. He worked seven days a week. He told himself he was doing it for the family. Jeannie tells him now: that was not the truth.

The Loss That Cracked the Old Operating System Open

  • Eleven years ago, Omani's mother died. She was the one person whose love he believed he could not lose no matter what he did.
  • When she was gone, the floor went out from under everything that had been keeping him propped up. The marriage couldn't hold the weight of it. He and Jeannie separated for three years.
  • Both of them, separately, did the work. They worked with the same therapist out of Chicago, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and reentered the marriage as different people.

Karosh, the First Medicine Journey, and the Chocolate Bar on New Year's Eve

  • Dr. Laura referred Omani to a man named Karosh in Venice, California, for a week of unplugged, no-phone, no-business inner work. On the way out the door on day five, Omani asked Karosh whether he would be a candidate for plant medicine. Karosh's answer: “The medicine will call you when it is ready for you.”
  • On New Year's Eve, the doctor sent Omani a psilocybin chocolate bar to try in a quiet moment. Omani ate the whole bar, then asked the doctor whether that was right. It was not. He spent the next hour with his fist down his throat trying to throw it up while his wife drove him to Walgreens looking for ipecac.
  • His first formal journey in January: 14 grams of mushrooms, 120 milligrams of MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT. He walked out lighter than he had felt in his entire life.

The Real Medicine Is the Work That Comes After

  • Omani's framing: the medicine is not the medicine. The medicine just lets you taste what is possible. The actual medicine is the integration work, with a qualified person who has been trained to hold the container, and with a community that can keep holding you afterward.
  • Joe quotes his friend Dr. Dan Engle, on his 250th ayahuasca journey: “The medicine does not do the work for you. It just presents to you the work you need to do.”
  • Both Joe and Omani warn against pushing the experience on other people, against people who run it casually on weekends, and against treating peak experiences as the goal. As Omani puts it: “like having sex. You can have sex, but then you have to raise the baby.”

The Bag of Ingredients (Creator Mode vs. the Drama Triangle)

  • Omani carries around a metaphor (and, he says, a literal bag) of ingredients. Every so often he dumps the whole bag out and asks: what do I actually want to carry forward, and what do I give grace to and leave behind?
  • Creator mode is what he calls the place outside the savior-victim-perpetrator drama triangle. From there, every ingredient that goes back into the bag goes in by choice, in alignment, on purpose.
  • When you live in personal integrity with yourself, you stop trying to attract everybody. You attract a very few souls, but the connection is real, and so are the opportunities.

Joy as a Baseline (and a New Definition of Winning)

  • For the last 11 years, Omani says he has woken up most days the way he and his sister Rhonda used to wake up on Christmas Eve as kids: like nine year olds on the happiest day of the year.
  • Joy is no longer a peak event tied to a deal closing. It is a baseline. The platform he operates from.
  • His new definition of winning: every day you show up content, joyful, in personal integrity with yourself, with patience you did not used to have, and with no need to get high when great things happen or low when things do not go your way.

The Six Most Vital Ones, the Bert Weiss Trick, and Fuck Yes or F*** No

  • Every night before bed, Omani lists the six most important things he has to get done the next day, in priority order. All six are tied to a one year goal, which is tied to a 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 year goal. That blueprint is what lets him act when motivation is not present.
  • Bert Weiss, the current CEO of Carson Group, taught him to evaluate every future commitment as if it were tomorrow. Present self over-commits future self. Pretending the yes is tomorrow kills most of the regret before it can happen.
  • He and Jeannie run a parallel filter on everything: if it is not a fuck yes, it is a fuck no. The yeses in the middle eat the bandwidth that real opportunities need.

Dreamweaver, Conscious Capitalism, and the Goodest Good

  • The Dreamweaver Foundation, which Omani and Jeannie co-founded 14 years ago, has served 1.6 million terminally ill seniors. The vision is to build a Make-A-Wish for the elderly nationwide.
  • Most of Omani and Jeannie's wealth is going to fund these services. As Buffett's principle put it, they want to leave their kids enough to do anything but not so much they can do nothing. They believe in the gift of struggle.
  • Omani's macro frame, informed by Raj Sisodia and John Mackey's Conscious Capitalism: a business that takes care of internal and external stakeholders, including Pachamama (planet Earth), produces greater profit over the long run, even if it costs something to equalize and balance in the short run.

Joe's 2015 Ibogaine Story and the White House Synchronicity

  • Joe was the first person in the world to have before-and-after brain scans done by Dr. Daniel Amen for an ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT journey in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2015, with Dr. Dan Engle and Dr. Martin Polanco.
  • He later introduced both Tim Ferriss and Tucker Max into the space.
  • The White House for the MAHA Report introduction with Dr. Daniel Amen, Bryan Hubbard, and Danica Patrick, talking about ibogaine, Joe received a synchronistic text message from a friend in the exact same 30-minute window. He called it bizarrely weird. He also called it not coincidence.

Wu Wei, Glyphosate, and Staying Centered When the Old World Tries to Pull You Back

  • Omani stays grounded with morning silence, alone time, meditation, and a strict refusal to let external circumstances dictate his internal state. He does not get high when great things happen or low when they do not.
  • The real-world conversation Joe is wrestling with right now: he just spent four days at AgInMotion in Saskatchewan, the biggest farming convention in Canada, hosted by the largest seller of glyphosate in the country. He came back with footage, charts, and a hard question about who is actually telling the truth about the food supply, the doctors, the influencers, and the farmers (who, as Joe found out, do not really talk to each other).
  • Omani's parting principle and Joe's pull from the conversation: it is the expansion of happiness, not the pursuit of it. And it is Wu Wei, the Tao Te Ching idea of flow over force, that lets a multi-billion-dollar operation actually run without breaking the operator.

Resources Mentioned

Subscribe: thejoepolishshow.com | Episode show notes: thejoepolishshow.com/56