In this candid monologue, former physician‑entrepreneur Luke Murray recounts two pivotal moments when he chose to abandon highly lucrative paths. The first occurred in January 2020 while he was in a hotel in Gambela, Ethiopia, attempting to launch a medical school that combined international medicine with entrepreneurship. Exhausted and sleepless, he realized he no longer cared about practicing medicine or medical education; his true passion was building businesses efficiently. The second moment came in early 2021 when he stepped away from a business generating millions of dollars a month for him personally, with over 1,000 employees, forfeiting an estimated $5 million in profit. He explains that the decision was driven not by financial loss but by a spiritual fatigue and a desire to focus on work that felt meaningful day‑to‑day. Murray critiques the common ambition narrative that equates success with reaching a summit, citing spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Michael Singer, and argues that true fulfillment comes from loving the daily work itself, not the imagined prize at the top. He invites viewers to reflect on what they would rather be doing and whether they are staying out of comfort or genuine desire.
Chapters
So it was January of 2020, and I was lying in a hotel room in Gambela, Ethiopia, sweating my butt off and not sleeping. And I was there to start a medical school. I'd met this group at a medical conference about a year earlier, and the vision was to combine international medicine and entrepreneurship and medical education, which was basically every sentence I'd written in a personal mission statement for the previous several years. Since early in medical school, I'd built my entire career around the idea that I was going to be this globetrotting physician, entrepreneur, educator guy. I had learned French on my own. I learned Spanish, like, not perfectly, but like, I spent a good chunk of time doing that. And I did every international rotation I could get my hands on. I worked in an ICU in India. I spent time all over Africa and Ecuador, Mexico. And I applied to Doctors Without Borders like right out of getting out of medical school debts. And I made it all the way to orientation before They said, you know, they just didn't want me because my personality, I guess. Anyway, I was really committed to being an international do-gooder and starting this medical school and combining those loves. The plan had always been to get out of med school, or get out of med school, get out of residency, get out of debt, work for Doctors Without Borders, and then start some kind of medical education company. So starting this school in Ethiopia felt like skipping forward to like the end, like the good part. And I thought I was going to be doing it for a long time. Like, this is where I wanted to end up, and I got to get there basically when I started. But lying in that bed, sweating, staring at this fan, not sleeping, I had one of the more embarrassing, or I guess important, realizations of my adult life. I didn't actually care about international medicine, or at least not the day-to-day practice of it all. Like, honestly, I didn't care about medical education either. What I actually gave a shit about was business. Medical education was just the problem that I wanted to solve through business. Specifically, I wanted business to be done as efficiently and effectively as possible. And I traveled to a country where I didn't know the customs, I couldn't speak the language, I wasn't even a citizen, and I'm trying to run a medical school, which is one of the most bureaucratically difficult things to do even in my own company. And so this just wasn't the right environment for that. I always knew that this was going to be a season, you know, like traveling the world and doing, I don't know, international medical do-gooder stuff. But lying there, I was finally able to see that this season was over and I'd already gotten what I actually came for. I paid off my medical school debt. I practiced as the only doctor in genuinely high-risk settings across the rural Kentucky. I ran an ICU by myself. I'd just proven all the stuff I needed to prove. I could have applied to Doctors Without Borders again and published medical papers or gotten more degrees or more certifications, but none of that was the mountain that I cared to climb anymore, so I just stopped climbing. If you don't know who I am, my name is Luke Murray. I'm a former physician. I've been an entrepreneur for about 20 years, and I've done over $100 million in revenue during that time. My current portfolio does about $3 million a year, and I make these videos because I would like to have ambition without the bullshit, and I'm guessing you would too. The second time I walked away, it cost me a lot more than just a change in direction or my, I don't know, academic pride. Around March or April of 2021, I had a business that was doing millions of dollars a month to me personally— not revenue, not profit, into my pocket. I had over 1,000 employees working for me as either employees or contractors, and my deal was a percentage of profits. So I didn't actually have to keep making— I don't know, I was— I didn't, I didn't exist on the org chart, let's just put it that way. So I was just collecting money, and I mostly stopped working. And I'd built it, but I just didn't want to keep maintaining it, and I was tired. Not like I need to take a nap tired, tired in a way that I'd never been in my entire life. It wasn't physical. It was like spiritual. And so I knew I needed to stop, sit still, meditate, stop in a way that I hadn't stopped since I was in like 4th grade. So that's what I did. It sounds like something you say right before like a LinkedIn post about going back to basics, but it was actually where my soul was at the time. And it was clear, more important to me than, I don't know, making another million dollars. And sitting still during that period of my life was like the most uncomfortable thing I ever did. So I went to my partner and I started saying, hey, you can have my percentage. I don't think I'm earning it. And here's the part that should sting. I did this in early 2021. You've forgotten this, but that's before the Delta wave and before Omicron. So it probably cost me, I'd say, $5 million. On the low end, but I would still make that same call again because again, I already had a few million bucks. Like, what did I need with a few million more? What I actually knew that I needed at that time in my life was the same thing, or was just as clear as the message in that hotel room in Ethiopia. The most important thing was to admit that this just wasn't important to me. So the obvious lesson here seems to be just trust the pull, like be brave enough to walk away, and when you're done you should leave. But that's actually not what I'm trying to get at, because it almost inverts the real lesson. Because right now I'm in something I've tried to walk away from like multiple times, and every time it gets hard and I'm like, oh, this stinks, I, I— which is often— I'll try to go on a vacation or, you know, take the weekend off. And every time I've actually gone and looked at what else I could be doing gone to some fancy party or some beaches or some mountain resort or some fancy mastermind. I actually miss this. And I don't miss being a doctor, and I don't miss managing a 1,000-person company. The trap here is thinking that the reason to stay is that you want what's at the top. And you don't. I don't. Nobody does, really. Every serious spiritual tradition in the history of the planet has been trying to tell you And every other ambition— ambitious person for thousands of years. Eckhart Tolle wrote a book about it. Michael Singer wrote a book about it. Ambitious people read them, nod them, and go right back to chasing the summit. The completion you're building towards is a mirage. And I finally find that out because I've stood in the middle of those mirages more than once. Once you get there, there's not like, oh, now there's happiness, now I've arrived. There's just another there to go to. So what I actually want is to do the day-to-day of this particular climb, and that's why I keep coming back. I don't miss being a doctor again. I don't miss managing that big company. Um, it was a flash in the pan at that time. It was awesome, but when it was over, like, I don't wish that I'm back there. What I'm building right now is way smaller and growing way more slowly, but it's being built with intention, and the actually daily work of it feels right in a way that the other 2 just didn't at some point. So that's the signal, not like the prize at the top. It's whether you want to do the work that's actually in front of you. So when I feel the pull to leave now, I don't ask, is this hard or is this uncomfortable? It's always hard. It's always going to be uncomfortable. I ask something that's more honest. Out of everything that I could be doing, what would I actually rather be doing, and what am I willing to pay the price for. So where in your life are you trying to walk away from something right now? And be honest with yourself, have you actually stopped wanting to do the day-to-day, or you just want out because it got uncomfortable? I'd love to know in the comments, and thanks for watching. Bye.
