How Joel Bein Helps Startup Founders Dismantle Their Inner Barriers to Success

Entrepreneurship often looks glamorous from the outside: freedom, creativity, and the thrill of building something from scratch. But behind the scenes, many founders battle self-doubt, burnout, imposter syndrome, and the relentless pressure to perform. These inner struggles can quietly sabotage even the most promising ventures. Joel Bein, founder of Human Liberation, believes the real key to success isn’t working harder or adopting more productivity hacks. He feels it’s healing the subconscious beliefs that hold entrepreneurs back.

Through his company, Bein helps startup founders identify and permanently release the deep-seated mental blocks that fuel anxiety, overwork, and self-criticism. Using a belief-clearing process inspired by the work of Morty Lefkoe, his approach focuses on subtraction rather than addition, removing limiting beliefs instead of piling on new routines or frameworks. In this interview, Bein shares his personal journey from educator to mindset guide, explains how Human Liberation works, and offers insight into the emotional side of entrepreneurship that too often goes unspoken.

Tell us about yourself and your business.

I’m sort of on a mission to heal humanity so people can come alive and thrive. This stems from a mindset of radical curiosity that I’ve cultivated since around age 19 (I’m 37 now). By constantly asking “why” and “how,” I’ve come to understand the roots of the cultural systems in which we find ourselves. Asking those questions about the nature of the school system – a big one – led me to leave my career in the K-12 system and pivot into the startup world, connecting to a fast-driven education entrepreneur (Isaac Morehouse) and his company, helping people with a creative mindset when it comes to career launch (e.g. “burn your resume!”). 

But ultimately, my constant curiosity and personal growth-seeking (stemming from a less-than-stellar childhood) led me to what I do now, which is helping liberate startup founders from the harsh and self-hating voices in my head (most of which came from school and my parents growing up). 

I had done tons of other personal growth from IFS therapy, deep journaling, sentence completion exercises, books, podcasts, and psychedelics. They all contributed to my journey, but none were as rapid and swift as the tool I use for Human Liberation now.

The method I use is second-to-none (in my biased opinion!), based on the principles of Morty Lefkoe, a pioneer in this left-brained, rapid belief-clearing approach. My personal style is fusing in tons of empathy and compassion throughout the process.

With this approach, you can rapidly relieve mental blocks in any bucket of life (self-worth, inner critics, money anxiety, relationships, overworking) by clearing out negative beliefs in the subconscious. You can take a belief like “I’m not good enough,” (which is tragically common), and through a series of questions, you can let it go permanently in about 10-15 minutes.

If you want to learn it yourself, I actually teach openly how to clear beliefs in a simple guide at https://thehumanliberation.co/guide

How does your business make money?

1:1 “uncoaching” services. Founders work with me for 1 hour/week for 12 weeks as we shave down patterns of self-doubt, imposter syndrome, anxiety, inner critics, etc. Very simple.

What was your inspiration for starting the business?

The inspiration is the effectiveness of the method. Once my friend shared this approach with me and I experienced removing the belief “I’m not enough” in about 15 minutes, I was hooked. I wanted to learn it myself. I ended up teaching myself the method and clearing beliefs daily for 2+ years, just by myself. As I started facilitating others, I felt a deep sense of flow state and meaningfulness, and authenticity, which fueled me to create the business.

But the “Bigger Why” is that this appears to be the fastest possible way for humans to heal and to create new paradigms of wholeness and unconditional love. This is the world I want to help cultivate. 🙂

How and when did you launch the business?

I soft-launched it as a sub-brand of my previous company, the career mindset media company Career Hackers, where I found some early clients. It was in the spirit of “let’s try this and see what happens,” which seems to be one of the best ways for creativity to sprout.

How is the business funded? 

Since going “all in” with this in 2025 as my own LLC, I have a generous angel investor offering $25K to help this launch, for which I am grateful.

How did you find your first few clients or customers?

I launched the sub-brand of Career Hackers and started pitching free gift sessions to readers of our newsletter. I also pitched sales leader Scott Leese on a gift session, and once he experienced the value, he offered me to do a workshop with his community, where I picked up a few clients.

What was your first year in business like?

I guess I’ve never had a true “first year,” since after the soft-launch in late 2023 I was still focused on that overall career company brand, and then after that full business model did pan out I sort of “pressed pause” and followed my curiosity to create an opportunity to work with children age 7-12 as an elementary Socratic guide at an innovative private school in 2024, following my passion to create new paradigms in education. Honestly, I was also a bit out of fuel from working in startups for 4 years, and I needed a breather from that life (not that the private school was a true breather, haha). 

But the Human Liberation business I gently nursed on the side and took a lot of reflective time to dial in my true ICP. I settled on finding 6-7 figure startup founders because I loved the creative energy of founders and wanted to solve for the mental health struggles (see the Founder Reports survey on this). 

I generated new momentum by going on bigger podcasts and then pitched my angel investor to help go all in. I took the leap to leave the school job in July 2025, and here we are (writing this in September 2025). Just focused on building systems for the long-term foundations of the business. 

What strategies did you use to grow the business?

Trust-based relationships, meaning partnerships via “borrowing other people’s audiences.” Newsletter swaps, workshops for business communities, and podcast appearances. In a cluttered market, people respond best when the person they already trust as the leader in a community, and that leader brings you on as a guest.

With newsletter/lead magnet swaps, the best approach is to create a legendary-level personalized pitch email to a creator who is adjacent to me (similar audience but not same niche), anchoring them with genuine celebrations of their body of work and emphasizing shared values. This isn’t one line of personalization; this is 3 paragraphs plus screenshots/direct quotes in an authentic, playful, fun way. Boy, it’s refreshing for people to receive them. We’re so saturated with boring cold emails, why not make business human-based, fun, and genuine?

Another way I’ve offered people value up front is to gift people belief-clearing sessions, e.g. I sent video pitches to “influencers” for free sessions. Those who accepted created a deep connection between us after I facilitated their healing. Then they provided introductions and/or testimonials to help with my business.

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

Probably dialing in my ICP and ensuring I’m connecting to the right base of potential customers/clients who are ready to invest in themselves. I’ve had some calls with people who weren’t a good fit financially. Also, just monitoring my physical energy so that I’m sleeping/resting/socializing without being in business mode more than necessary. Sometimes my excitement and eagerness and purpose-driven energy has had me going out of balance.

Outside of that, it has been the personal development process to continue to go deeper into my psyche, and continue to free myself from beliefs and blocks so that as many layers of fear can be liberated. Since I’ve cleared 1200+ beliefs at this point, I suppose I’m in the “advanced” stage of the process. But it’s sort of like cleaning out a closet: once you take out the biggest boxes of junk, then you start to notice the dust on the floor, and you want to sweep that up, too. But yeah, all in all, I believe that all our desires can come to fruition the more we heal. The Universe/God wants us to thrive, we just need to allow it.

What have been the most significant keys to your business’s success?

I’ll speak in 1-word sentences:

Authenticity. 

Relentlessness.

Curiosity.

Consistency.

Self-belief.

Trust.

Care.

Generosity.

Persistence.

Creativity.

Growth mindset.

Delegation.

Audacity.

Self-love.

Spiritual development.

Self-Development.

Tell us about your team.

Right now we have a part-time partnerships person, a social media manager, and a video/podcast editor that I contract out, plus me. Everyone is remote/around the world. I love collaborating with people remotely.  

What separates your business from your competitors?

Most self-development is additive. More habits, more routines, more mindsets, more advice, more frameworks. What we do is just subtract the negative beliefs. We unlearn the core roots, and then freedom and aliveness automatically happen without effort. The Imposter Syndrome or Fear of Failure or Procrastination doesn’t have to be tamed or managed or re-framed or “overcome” or (my favorite) “conquered.” It just vanishes.

What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs?

Let go of hierarchy dynamics in your org. You’re not “above” anyone. You work with people, they don’t work for you. Flip the frame even, how can you work “for” your colleagues? In the end, everything is value exchange; it’s not about control. Sure, you may own the business, but the consciousness you bring to it is your choice. Read Reinventing Organizations by Frederick Laloux.

What is your favorite quote?

“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

― ee cummings

What are some of your favorite books, blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels?

OH man where do I start … I’ve been influenced a lot by philosophy and psychology, so shout-out to creators like Brett Veinotte, Wes Bertrand, Stefan Molyneux, and Isaac Morehouse for their bodies of work (podcasts and books) and devotion to truth and freedom. Brett’s pod was the School Sucks Podcast, which I listened to with dedication for its full lifetime, 2009-2021. That show was the anchor point of my life to not only understand the psychological dynamics that conventional school often creates for kids, but also SSP was a place where I learned to re-ignite my intrinsic motivation, interests, and my creative and entrepreneurial spirit. There were so many positive and constructive shows about critical thinking, self-development, financial intelligence, health and fitness, and entrepreneurial thinking. Growing up with public sector parents who didn’t have the entrepreneurial spirit, I wasn’t exposed to business. So the entrepreneurial shows SSP shared were seeds planted in my 20s that were essential for me.

Nowadays I read/listen to more spiritual teachers like Neville Goddard, Florence Scovel Shinn, Abraham Hicks, and Bashar. 

Plus, my favorite comedian Mark Normand. ; )
You can find books I’ve read with short reviews on my website joelbein.com/books.