Questions Arise After Death of Coaching Guru's Student
After a coaching guru's long-term students ends up dead, more questions arise than answers.
On May 29th, 2025, a young man was found dead in his Bentonville, Arkansas, apartment. A few days later his coaching guru made a series of bizarre personal attacks against him on Instagram, raising many questions.
Be Scofield is a prominent cult reporter who exposed Love Has Won, which led to the hit HBO series. She is the author of Hunting Lucifer: One Reporter's Search for Cults and Demons. Her work is cited by the NY Times, Rolling Stone, People, and more and turned into an episode of "Unwell" on Netflix.
By BE SCOFIELD
7/15/25
"The only way for him to make an effect on the world was to die," wrote coaching guru Ryan Mintz a few days after his long-term student, Erich De Zoeten, was found deceased. In a puzzling Instagram story, Mintz belittled him and used his death to validate his teachings. It was one of several incidents that his ex-members allege were cult-like.
In the post, Mintz called De Zoeten "hyper selfish," saying he was "constantly seeking approval and validation." He accused him of "harvesting attention through wrongness" and "not granting" himself "identity and desire." Mintz referred to him as a burden. "Erich was a negative anchor for me; I am both free and heartbroken that he is gone." If you had been like Erich, you would have "died having never let yourself live," Mintz wrote.
After Mintz began pressuring students to live near him, De Zoeten relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2022. On May 29th, 2025, authorities found him deceased in his apartment. Govinda, his roommate and fellow follower of Mintz, was out of town at the time of De Zoeten's death. There are now at least eight students who have relocated to the town to be closer to their coaching guru. De Zoeten was one of Mintz's longest and most dedicated students, making the personal attack even more puzzling.
"Erich was a negative anchor for me."
Mintz claims that if everyone followed his teachings, the world would "advance to an unfathomable level of glory." He says that through his work, "we can completely reshape the corrupt world system we currently have to deal with."
Despite the uncertainty of how De Zoeten died, Mintz proclaimed in the Instagram story, "His heart failed after a seizure." The county coroner said the results could take months. Was Mintz trying to control the narrative of his death? In his Instagram story, he said De Zoeten's death brought him "deeply into the idea that no one dies without choosing to die."
"Erich was like my child," Mintz said in a message to a follower who had called him out for his posts about Erich. "The local Keyholders were his family far more than his biological family was."
The Higher Ideal
"By stepping digital foot onto this land you will experience more depth of understanding about your reality in one week than in all of your decades of study combined." - Ryan Mintz
Followers pay between $250 and $1,250 per month to attain Keyholder status in Mintz's Higher Ideal group. He runs the program with his partner, Annie Earholt, primarily using Discord and Zoom. "Annie was a client long before I dated her," Mintz wrote in a Discord post shared with me. Together, they guide students through a transformative process, charging as much as $100,000 for a year-long coaching package. Their on-camera presence is reminiscent of Jeff and Shaleia from Twin Flames. Mintz has even recently announced he's launching a new course on relationships.
"These aren't your typical teachings," the Higher Ideal website states. "These lectures dive deep into territory rarely discussed elsewhere: the mechanics of consciousness, inner alchemy practices, advanced energy work, and the hidden patterns shaping your reality." Mintz's Instagram feed is filled with "edgy" takes such as "I hate gratitude." His marketing material includes buzz terms like "ancestral trauma," "money scarcity," "New Earth," and "consciousness expansion." The Higher Ideal program pulls from the controversial Landmark Forum, ideas like inner and outer ego from the Seth teachings, and new age concepts like "Your consciousness creates your reality."
Ryan Mintz spent 16 years as a fitness trainer, where he coached elite gymnasts. His first online program was called MintzFlow Method, a movement system that drew from his time training with Cirque du Soleil, strength and conditioning techniques, and skillful movements. His background in fitness has attracted many students who are personal trainers or interested in health and wellness.
De Zoeten's journey toward Higher Ideal began in 2018 after a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat and transformative experiences with LSD, which shifted his focus from geology to personal training. During a 3-day retreat in 2019 in Joshua Tree, called the Emptiness Project, he met Ryan Mintz, who was serving as his mentor. The following year, Mintz launched the Freedom Teachings coaching group, and De Zeteon joined it.
"Your life WILL change. It will change SO much and so deeply, becoming enriched beyond your wildest dreams." - Ryan Mintz
"We were close before he got involved with Higher Ideal," his family told me. They said he used to come over for dinner every Friday. The deeper he got into Mintz's program, the more estranged he became, however. They said he began rejecting medicine and became obsessed with a healing technique known as colorpuncture, which Mintz heavily pushed. One Christmas he even bought his family members colorpuncture tools. "He thought colorpuncture would fix everything," she said.
Colorpuncture utilizes a "light pen" with a crystal tip that emits different colored light. The therapist applies it to "reflex zones" and acupuncture points. They cost around $600 each and up to $1,300 with the attachments. Practitioners believe that color possesses a healing power, effectively treating everything from depression to headaches and more.
Erich De Zoeten's family described him as "very smart, introverted, and quiet." He received a master's in geology from the University of Kansas and played Division 3 soccer. They said that he didn't drink alcohol and took excellent care of his health.
The family noticed a shift in him as he began to integrate Mintz's teachings. "He began writing bizarre things online," they said. He started using a lot of new jargon as well. His family once read one of his posts about mothers withdrawing love, which they recognized could not have been written by him. De Zoeten even told his family, "Criticizing your parents can improve your relationship with them." Mintz, according to the family, taught him this concept.
"I am a cult leader"
In 2023, a student named Rebecca (alias) shared her thoughts about a book she had recently read in the Discord group. Mintz quickly advised his students against reading any self-help books. "It's not beneficial," he stated. "It's never helped you. You're better off enjoying fiction." He then posted a lengthy diatribe that criticized other books.
Mintz had told the same thing to a former student named Aubrey (alias). "I mentioned I had been reading other sources, and Ryan said I need to get rid of any other teachings," she told me. Ironically, one of the teachings was that of Ashayana, a spiritual channeler from the 1990s. "Ryan used to be a student of her work," she said. "He told me he liked her content." Mintz even named one of his programs, the Freedom Teachings, identically to Ashayana's.
"You claim to be the only clear mirror in the world," Rebecca wrote as the Discord conversation devolved over the books. "I am right 99% of the time," Mintz proclaimed. She accused him of running a high-demand group and a cult. "I am a cult leader," Mintz responded. "I teach my students how to think and behave." He went on to say the word "cult" wasn't derogatory until "recent propaganda" shaped it that way. "If someone doesn't agree with you, you say it's their programmed identity talking," she told him. "There's literally no way to express a thought not sanctioned by you."
Rebecca and other students left the group as a result. Mintz later acknowledged the fallout in the Discord group: "There are a lot of keyholders that got super triggered this week and ran away." He blamed the powerful nature of his teachings. "The more potent my work becomes, the more it brings out people's demons," Mintz wrote. He attacked Rebecca, saying she was "miserable" and had a "demonic energy." He blamed her "agent program" for her behavior. Mintz said he must have "created too much change" in her before "color" could regulate her.
One of the mechanisms Mintz used to control was colorpuncture. "You JUST ordered color," he said to Rebecca in the Discord chat. "You don't yet realize the magnitude of what that means in your life. Of COURSE this shit is coming up." Students would sarcastically shame others based on their experience with the modality.
He attacked Rebecca, saying she was "miserable" and had a "demonic energy."
Mark (alias) told me he left after witnessing Mintz and his followers launch their attack on Rebecca in the Discord chat. "It was such a weird vibe I was getting from the group," he said. "Ryan was put on a pedestal by his students." He said Mintz was controlling. "If someone mentioned how they could do something to add to the group, like breathing exercises as a complement, Ryan would shoot it down." Mark said Mintz would angrily reply with something like, "How dare you go into my space and offer your service!"
Mintz claimed he didn't make money from the sales of colorpuncture tools, but Mark said he purchased his tool for $810 directly from Mintz. He also bought red light infrared panels from Mintz. He said in both cases Mintz nearly doubled the prices as he looked up the products later. "The colorpuncture had no real value," Mark said. "I think it's more of a placebo."
Aubrey said she first connected with Erich De Zoetan through Instagram in mid-2022. After receiving coaching sessions from him, she signed up for Mintz's Immortal Mind Stage 1 program. Aubrey found the program to be of little use and found him aggressive in his Instagram posts. "You could praise something that Ryan does, and you'd have no idea if he'd get mad about it or he'd be cool," she told me. "He will praise you and then tear you down," she said. Aubrey described him as "unbalanced," rude, and capable of going "ballistic" in the Discord chat.
"I am giving you the keys to the universe; DO NOT BOTHER ME about anything. These teachings are TEN TIMES THE SIZE OF THE BIBLE." - Ryan Mintz
“I watched Ryan cut into a student and tear her down,” a former member named Krista (alias) told me. Her experience echoed Aubrey's. They both said there were "two Ryans" and that he would flip. “He love-bombed me and then got mean.” Krista said, "The closer you got to Ryan, the more you were in the realm of his ego. When you were brought in, he was going to break you down.” He once called a woman struggling with anxiety an "annoying rag," she told me. "He is above everyone and knows better than anyone," Aubrey said.
Aubrey recalled an instance when Mintz's students combined his face with an image of Jesus and presented it to him. "We love you; you are the coming of Jesus," they told him in a somewhat sarcastic manner. "But that's what they actually think about Ryan," Aubrey said.
Searching for Something
De Zoeten struggled with severe insecurity throughout his life, something that eventually led him to Ryan Mintz's Higher Ideal. "In high school, I had a lot of anxiety and discomfort with social interactions," he writes in a bio. He would frequently turn red and blush in groups.
"For a college summer, I went by myself to Alaska to work and backpack in Denali National Park," De Zoeten writes. "I also went by myself on a three-month bicycle tour of the Pacific Northwest." He later realized that he was using nature to "escape the dissatisfaction" of his life. "I used these adventures as a temporary escape," he writes.
"Throughout childhood I heard that it was important to take the 'safe' career path," De Zoeten says. As a result, he got a master's in geology from the University of Kansas and interned with Conoco and Exxon. His plan was to pursue a career as a petroleum geologist. He later realized this option prevented him from "showing up fully" and offering his "unique gifts and medicine to the world."
In college, De Zoetan experimented with meditation to make his "mind clearer and less cloudy.” He also began following Sam Harris' work and listened to Alan Watts. De Zoeten describes his first 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat as "extremely challenging, epic, and life-changing." He notes that it gave him more perspective. "I gained more awareness of my emotions and body sensations and trained myself to objectively notice them rather than instinctively react with aversion from pain and craving for pleasure."
Erich De Zoeten was a young man in search of something: meaning, purpose, confidence, or perhaps existential freedom.
Like many other seekers, his quest led him to experiment with LSD several times in 2017. "I didn’t enjoy the way my mind operated and my fear and insecurity that was preventing me from enjoying social interactions and from fully showing up in my life," he writes. "I thought that there must be a way to make life better. So I tried using psychedelics to fix that." He said it helped temporarily, but the main function was to show him the possibility of altering his mind in some way.
His explorations led him to a new career path in health and fitness. "I was so fearful of my parents' and my thesis advisor’s thoughts if I quit this petroleum geology route for a less-esteemed job like personal trainer (that I wasn’t confident I could even succeed at) that it took me a long time to finally build up the courage to shift," he writes. He took LSD one night with the intention to "build up enough courage" to tell his family and advisor about his new path. It worked.
Moving back to Dallas in 2018, De Zoeten pursued life as a personal trainer full time. His parents paid for their friends to have expensive coaching packages with him to help launch his new career. They were very supportive of his endeavor.
"I still had considerable social anxiety and insecurity," he writes. "I was insecure about everything I did... exercise selection, small talk, jokes, selling, posting on social media, etc. I had anxiety going into every one-on-one training session. I felt much better about my work and purpose, but I was still very insecure and socially uncomfortable."
Not surprisingly, De Zoeten found himself at a 3-day retreat in Joshua Tree called the Emptiness Project in October 2019. "On the first day, I stated my intention to 'Open Up' to the entire group," he writes. The event provided him the space to overcome his fears around intimacy. "Extremely significant was meeting my future mentor, Ryan Mintz," De Zoeten says. Mintz was a leader on the retreat. "He helped dramatically increase my awareness," he writes. He says Mintz showed him how "we have a bunch of narratives we believe and tell about ourselves and about how reality works." The idea is reminiscent of Landmark Forum, which Mintz draws from.
De Zoeten opened up to Mintz about the fact he had never had sex and the deep shame around it. "He helped me retell that story," he says. It was on the Joshua Tree retreat that he also had his first experience with colorpuncture. "Coming back to the gym after this event, I had much less insecurity and social anxiety." He says he cried tears of "joy and appreciation" with how healing the event was.
The following year, in 2020, De Zoeten enrolled in Mintz's program, the Freedom Teachings. "I learned so many lessons and grew so much that year," he writes. He says he evolved out of money scarcity beliefs and gained a "tremendous amount of awareness around" how his "consciousness and reality work." He says he became empowered to change himself and create the life he desires.
He writes that in September 2020, he started "going through the Transmitter Relays colorpuncture program" with Mintz. He noted it "included the strongest colorpuncture treatments available." The treatment was apparently effective. "Each treatment brought up different insecurities to learn and grow from, helping me to see and grow out of childish insecurities and to become a more and more empowered adult," he writes. "It was an epic period of growth."
De Zoeten faced his fear of intimacy and had sex for the first time on the last day of his color relay treatment. She broke up with him three days later, and his old fear of abandonment resurfaced. He described it as a "rollercoaster of experiences and emotions." De Zoeten said the journey through it all was a "priceless experience" that led him to be much more free in many areas of his life.
He then relocated to another place known for self-transformation. "I packed up my car and moved to the beautiful and magical Sedona, Arizona," De Zoeten writes. He launched Fully Show Up, a life coaching business, and ran a 12-week online program. "I have personally gone through the transformation from disempowered to empowered," a profile of his states.
Bentonville or Bust
After spending time in Thailand studying a form of Thai Chi, De Zoeten decided to relocate to Bentonville, Arkansas, to be closer to Ryan Mintz. It was 2022. De Zoeten stayed with Mintz and his girlfriend, Annie Earholt for the first few weeks. Aubrey remembers having coaching calls with De Zoeten while they were in the background. She said he seemed a bit nervous with them around but also happy. He had said he wanted to be with community.
One of the draws for De Zoeten to move was a promised role as a teacher in Mintz's new online school. When he arrived, the offer vanished, however. Mintz had told the group there'd be a special key holder’s meeting once a month, but he later canceled it. These incidents were a typical pattern, former students said. Mintz would offer intriguing opportunities or new levels, promising profound breakthroughs. It'd end up being the same recycled content with predictable outcomes.
Mintz told his students in the Discord group that he would be able to tell if any of them had ever been raped.
Mintz struggled to determine if he was friends with his students. "I am not my student's peer," Mintz wrote in the Discord group. "My students are not in the 'group of people whose opinions I value.'" Despite this claim, Krista said that Mintz would always hang out late in the chat groups to socialize. And his girlfriend was one of his students, so she was clearly enough of a "peer" for him to value her. At social gatherings in public, Krista said the group would always stay together in a clique.
Aubrey noted a big shift in De Zoeten once he arrived in Bentonville. "He just kind of parroted Ryan,” she said. Other students did the same in how they mimicked his style, including bleaching their hair like Mintz. One even wanted to get his excess breast tissue removed just as Mintz had done.
Mintz could become volatile, lashing out, especially when something like a call for donations yielded low results. "The selfishness is insane," he wrote. "Everyone has been DMing me with victims energy, leaching validation for their 'efforts.' It’s pure vampirism and selfishness, constant attention harvesting and validation seeking...It’s ok if they think I’m mean or harsh or repulsive. My identity and choices trigger people who are identity scarce...I get so much satisfaction out of hitting the ejector seat button on people." He told them, "I am not here to give it to you for free and hold your dick for you."
In the months prior to his death, the family said De Zoeten told them he was leaving Mintz's group. "He was getting ready to buy a house, and he liked a girl," they said. "After his last visit at Thanksgiving, he seemed to be coming back more to his usual self."
We know Mintz had a propensity to demonize and gang up on students who wanted to leave. Krista said the group would "talk about ex-members like they were a dirty word." Mintz attacked Rebecca as "miserable" and said she had a "demonic energy." As Mintz's longest-serving student, De Zoeten likely had a variety of experiences, including negative or manipulative ones that Mintz would have preferred to keep hidden. "What infuriated me the most was the contradiction in Ryan's speech, telling Erich to do things a certain way one year and next year telling him to do something different," Aubrey said.
Former students said Mintz framed disagreement, dissent, and discomfort as ego or shadow. "There has NEVER ONCE been a time where a heated student said, 'You're not seeing things clearly,' where it was me and not them who had a distorted vision," Mintz wrote. "I am NEVER angry with you, I'm never defensive. I have nothing to defend, I am just a lantern and a mirror."
The family told me that one of De Zoeten's clients called the police after he missed two training sessions. On May 29th the police performed a wellness check and discovered him deceased in his Bentonville apartment. "He was found with his hands at his chest, which indicates a cardiac event," the family said. There were no obvious signs of foul play or suicide. Govinda happened to be out of town. "He never goes out of town," the family said.
By all measures, De Zoeten was young and healthy. Like his fellow members of the Higher Ideal, he was into health and fitness and had been a personal trainer. When asked what the cause of his death could be, the family offered a loose suggestion to his roommate, Govinda. De Zoeten had a very mild seizure disorder, and the family mentioned it to him. "The worst incident he ever had was briefly putting his head in his hands and having slight confusion," the family told me. It was not a serious condition. Govinda mentioned it to Ryan Mintz, and then Mintz publicly proclaimed on Instagram that De Zoetan's "heart failed after a seizure."
What explains Mintz's bizarre personal attacks on his long-term student just a few days after his death? De Zoeten had been close to his "mentor" for nearly six years by that point. How had he become a "negative anchor" for Mintz? In some ways, this behavior serves as an act of distancing, which is a common tactic for individuals who may feel responsible or guilty. They want to separate themselves from the subject at large. Given that Mintz refuses to discuss Erich or his personal attacks on him, it leaves us with more questions than answers for now.
Ryan Mintz and Govinda refused interview requests for this story.