The BIGGEST Mistake Entrepreneurs Make | Doug Brackmann’s Powerful Lessons

You are wired differently, and that's both your greatest strength and your biggest challenge. Science shows that some people are born with a brain that makes them restless, impulsive, and always chasing the next big thing. But what makes you unstoppable can also make you self-destructive if you don't learn how to control it. In this interview, Doug Brackmann explains why driven entrepreneurs like you struggle with imposter syndrome, boredom, and self-sabotage, and how you can turn your natural wiring into an advantage. He shares that your brain is built for risk and adaptability, but that same wiring can leave you feeling alone, misunderstood, and never satisfied. He reveals why traditional meditation often doesn't work for you and how learning to stay fully present through high-focused activities like shooting or movement-based practices can help you take back control. He also challenges you to own your wolf instincts and become a shepherd instead of a predator using your power to lead rather than destroy. Success alone will never be enough. Mastering yourself is the real game, because if you don't, you'll tear down everything you've built. Special thanks to Jeff Hays for partnering with us to release this content exclusively on our YouTube channel. And if you make it to the end of the video, put a hashtag #Believe in the comments below and we might feature you here in a future video.

Believe. Doug, very much looking forward to this, uh, this conversation. We started to have it before we turned on the cameras. We're like, no, stop, we got to save this for the audience to listen to. So, uh, so thanks for being here.

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited.

So let's talk about your background first. Uh, you've got a PhD in what?

Yeah, way too much education. It's a testimony to how insecure I actually am. So I had— actually have two PhDs, have a a dual doctorate in both clinical psychology and industrial organizational psychology.

That's an interesting one. What does that mean?

So IO psych is a— it's really understanding team dynamics within an organization and testing. And so it's a lot about personnel selection, was real heavy. So it's a lot about understanding how to measure people. And so it combined with the clinical degree. It was an incredible education to come out of a politically correct clinical course, and, you know, everybody's real careful about everybody's emotions, and then you go into an org psych class and it's just about reality, KPIs, about making money. So it was a really nice— and this was early '90s, mid-'90s, so it was before the whole, you know, PC went crazy. It was starting to, and it It gave me a very realistic expectation about what, what to expect in the coming years in my profession. So it's been, it's been a great education.

What made you want to go in that direction in the first place?

No matter what any psychologist ever tells you, people get into psychology to figure out their own shit.

Okay.

And so I'm a high school dropout, lived in a car for, for a minute, and figured out pretty quickly that Left to my own devices, the impulsivity and this ADD spectrum thing that I am could, could kill me and would kill me. And so I quickly at 18 figured out that that was not the path I wanted to go down. And so jumped into education, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. And so it, it's been an amazing experience the past 35 years. Wow.

Now, in the entrepreneurial circles, you're known for a lot of things, but one of them is the book Driven. Talk to me about Driven. Why did you write it and what's that about?

So, it's a culmination of 25, 30 years of basically trying to understand myself and this addictive personality and this understanding that there's a reason why there's variance within the herd of human beings. And some of us, you know, somewhere between 3, 5, 8% of us have a genetic biological neurological difference that is real. And so in 1991, the year I entered graduate school, they came out with the Time magazine article of, you know, the alcoholism genes and we found it. And within 3 or 4 years, they quickly deduced that that was the dopamine receptor number 2, DRD2-A1 allele gene. This was before the field of epigenetics, and this was, you know, the argument about nature versus nurture. It was still pretty strong, meaning that they assumed that genetics played a huge role in how we, how we turned out as human beings. Now we find, you know, that it really is— is it nature versus nurture? The answer is yes. Yeah, take them apart. But back then, they were looking for the causes of why You know, genetically, you know, there, there's this continuation of addictive personalities and addictive genes. But that dopamine receptor number 2, within 5 years, is gambling, eating disorders, entrepreneurship, and, you know, high-performing athletes. And so they're like, wait, wait a second, what the hell is going on? As I I, you know, was just diving into this and feeling personally, you know, since I was second grade, third grade, that I knew I was different. I knew there was something different about me. And, you know, the second grade experience I always talk about is sitting there in second grade and not understanding why the rest of the class didn't see how stupid it was being trained to be an assembly line worker. Like, I didn't get it.

Right?

Like, why are we memorizing math, you know, math tables? Like, this is not going to serve me. And so that curiosity and feeling like I was different started to have some real explanations in the '90s as they cracked the human genome. But since that time, it's just been a phenomenal time to be a psychologist. So, you know, that started this exploration for myself of really understanding and all of that landed in Driven.

And it's so in Driven, and your co-author was who?

Randy Kelly, who's still in my world. He's finally escaping California and moving out.

But like you did?

Yeah, I did 4 years ago.

Yeah.

And so it's a— he is, um, so what I was— he was a Bujinkan. He was a martial arts instructor of mine, and we were becoming very fast friends. And, you know, explaining to him my theory, and he was a, uh, you Navy SEAL sniper. And I had been a long-time competitive shooter. And so, Randy, I got this idea of let's integrate long-range shooting and meditation. And he's like, I'm in. So he was coming out of grad school at the time. So we started taking entrepreneurs to teach them really the power of meditation and how to hone this skill, this gift that we have as Drivens is what I call them. So it evolved into, you know, and really trying to rebrand myself away from being a typical psychologist.

When you say, you know, you use that term, you call them Drivens. What does that mean? What's that description?

So it's a— I always throw out to Tom Hartmann, who a book I read early '90s, he wrote a book about his kid. And he talked about how his kid, profound ADD, ADHD, just didn't fit into school, was having a had a hell of a time at school. And as a dad, was concerned and wanted to normalize it. And so he started talking about, in his theory, that he looked at germs, and within a population of germs, there's always 3, 4, 5% on the fringes that are anticipating rapid change in the environment. And so they're prepared for, you know, temperature goes up, temperature goes down. They're not as effective in that environment But if the environment changes, they're the ones that are going to survive. And so you think about entrepreneurs, we are the ones who will survive when the next ice age comes.

Is that resilience, adaptability, kind of all the above?

So, yeah, part of this constellation. So let me just give you driven. And here it is. 4,000, 5,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution really started to take off. Prior to this, most human beings were running around in little family groups of 40, 60, 80, and we were jack of all trades. We had to be able to pack, we had to be able to hunt, we had to be able to sew, we had to be able to do all these things. But as the agricultural revolution took off, job specialization and also communities, these massive communities started to develop. And my theory is the brain started to adapt along with it. One of the most profound continuous features of ADD, ADHD, you put normals in a functional MRI, you have a very nice active and connected executive function in the frontal lobe. You put us, you put the Drivens in a functional MRI, very interesting, the back of our heads light up. The occipital lobe becomes much more dominant and we have this hypofrontality. It's not underactive, it's just differently active. Frontal lobe. And so very simply, you know, driven use eyesight to go through the world. And then we have this, this frontal lobe that encourages multi-thinking, meaning that we, you know, an executive function of the brain literally is a linear experiential machine that tells you what to do next, right? And if you think about a farmer Hunter versus farmer theory, the hunters are constantly looking for opportunities, where the farmers are literally looking for the next thing they need to do that will increase their likelihood of survival. You put your finger in the ground, you put corn in it, you cover it up, you water it, you patiently wait, and then it grows. And then you save enough for next year. And so all of those qualities As the society grew and grew and grew, you see that in the most— that is what's typical in the normal population. And you look at a W-2 job, and that's my joke, is I'm unemployable. I can't sit in a cubicle and do the same thing every day because it makes my brain frazzled, where 90-plus percent of the population, they find comfort and predictability in that.

So, the entrepreneur are the drivens as you're describing it. Literally neurobiologically seem to behave differently.

And it's— yeah, my— so that is the primary feature, is that they, they have a different brain structure. The reward system is, is also different, and that's the DRD2 gene, and that, that's a boredom gene. And, you know, what is boredom is there's, again, this physiological arousal that triggers the neocortex telling us that there's something missing or wrong. And the more interesting one, because it settles in me a little bit more, is this dopamine receptor number 4. I call that the FOMO gene, the fear of missing out gene. Time magazine did a phenomenal article on— or not Time, National Geographic. They called it the wandering gene. And so that's a much older genetic— it goes back 40,000, 50,000 years. They can trace it And it's this gene that kicked in. You have this huddle of people in the middle of Africa. This gene kicks in and it tells this physiological system that there's more woolly mammoths over the next hill. The grass is greener somewhere else. And so, entrepreneurship, this shiny object syndrome, always chasing the next thing, is the core of what we are. But— and where I get most of my clinical work now— And the clinical side of my, you know, the clinical side of my psychology is that the sense of self, if you think about what a farmer is when they come into this culture where jobs are designed for a very specific and unique quality. So you have, you know, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers and the brain to support that. And so this is what I do and this is what I am. And that's my joke about entrepreneurship. You ask an entrepreneur who they are, it's a path to hell because you can't figure it out. But underneath that is this chronic feeling of discontent. That there's something missing or wrong. And that something missing or wrong turns into a potential ball of shame. And there's something missing or wrong with me. And you hear very commonly imposter syndrome where it— The outer world literally is better than it feels. And so, you know, it's my joke about my doctoral dissertation. Jim Spira, first time ever to be called doctor. Congratulations, Dr. Brackman. My inner experience was, haha, he bought it.

Wow.

My multi-thinking brain can think about every little corner I cut and every, you know, because I expected it to feel good and I didn't.

So this is— and I'm relating to a lot of what you're saying. It's— and I guess that's why the book, I think, helped, you know, entrepreneurs to understand their experience.

That was my hope of the book, is to really normalize what we are, you know, that we're not broken. We feel broken.

Yeah.

And, you know, we walk into a farmer psychology office and we look crazy. Because we're all over the map, we're impulsive, we're this, we're that, we never feel like we're good enough, and we don't have a sense of identity that they relate to.

I'm actually working on a book right now, and one of the chapters is called Identity is a Bitch. And it is, right? So, so we'll put that aside for a moment. But the idea of feeling different than everybody else is common to the entrepreneur. And in some ways, It's a badge of courage, right? They're like, hey, we're a special breed. But in some ways, it can be self-defeating.

And that was my doctoral dissertation, was self-sabotage. Oh, OK. And so it is part of every entrepreneur's story. And if I can get them there, that the only real problem most entrepreneurs have is themselves. And being able to own and, you know, not master yourself, but be on a path of mastery to where you are really owning, owning what you're doing and why you're doing it, you know, and what you are. And that piece, you know, we are, we are the ones that went west. We are the ones that— and no matter how you feel about it, this is what you are, right? Well, make me normal. Make me like one of them. I hear that not as often as I used to, but it's still this, you know, I don't want to be what I am.

Right.

And it's not a choice. I mean, this is what we are.

Well, and also from the psychiatric standpoint, you find kids who are ADD, ADHD, and they're, you know, they're putting them on Ritalin. You know, they're looking at it as abnormality and maybe even psychopathology, you know, and saying it requires medication. you know, to solve. So, you know, so they've got that all wrong, completely wrong.

And that's the new book I'm working on, is, is the importance of actually, you know, as we are grouped— AI and all of this new rapid change that's happening, back to what Hartmann said, you know, we are the ones who are adaptable. Yeah, we are the ones who are going to make sense of these changes in the world. And just coming through COVID, you look at what most people did was they retreated to a narrative that made them feel save, right? We're driven. We don't do that. You know, we, we see through it. You know, one of the things that we do, we hate hypocrisy. Yeah, we are made, literally made, to see through people's games, and we're also the ones playing them on people.

So it's—

we, we are both the solution and the curse. So it's, it's— and that, that is the core of this new book that I'm writing.

What's the title of the new book, if you have it?

So it's, it's Sheep Wolves and Shepherds.

Okay, so what's the, what's the theme like?

So part of my journey has been trauma, trauma healing. Walked into, by accident, literally by accident, walked into Peter Levine's world back in the early 2000s, you know, in graduate, right after I graduated, got my PhD, and absolutely blew my mind.

And who's Peter Levine?

Peter Levine is one of the most famous trauma, trauma experts in the world. He wrote, I don't know how many books he's up to now, half a dozen or a dozen books about very specifically how trauma is held in the body, released in the body, and restores goodness. It is a— he does— he calls it somatic experiencing, but it's a way of actually rewriting the genetic imprint of trauma in the body. It is incredibly powerful. And, you know, the model I use, all of the models I use in therapy for changing people, is based upon his, his research and his training. So understanding that, that who's really in charge of us— and, you know, I teach a very specific model about— I'll give it to you. Um, the Buddha, who was just a wacko psychologist, noticed very much that human beings are like an Indian elephant with a whole bunch of monkeys up on top trying to control this elephant. This comes out of my doctoral dissertation. This is why January sucks at the gym. Yeah, because everybody's monkey mind has temporary control over the elephant.

Yeah.

And you got a gorilla up here beating the shit out of the elephant going, go to the gym, go to the gym, go to the gym. But you got other monkeys up here. You got little cheerleaders, you got other ones up there. That are, you know, the sit-on-the-couch monkey. And this ability to actually discern the difference between the monkey and the elephant is the core.

And what's the nature of the elephant?

That's our flesh. That is this— it is the reptilian and low-base mammalian brain. It's literally everything below your nose. So you touch a hot stove, every cell in that nerve pathway remembers that experience. Hits the spine, right? And the spine, the original brain, original mind, sends back an impulse to contract muscles, right? And that all the muscles remember that. And so if you think about getting burned on a stove, you can feel a little bit of that trauma stuck in the body.

Yeah.

And it kept— it keeps us alive. But it is, you know, human beings are operating in two different worlds. One up here and one down here. This was my doctoral dissertation, was really who's in control of us.

Okay.

And so this, this elephant, you know, seems to have a mind of its own, but most of the time— and this was back in the early '90s, when mid-'90s, when I was writing my dissertation— huge argument about, you know, self-will and who's really in control and the unconscious. And did it Functional MRIs and all of that have put this to rest. The elephant's really in charge. So the classic Buddha question is, where are you? Are you the monkeys or are you the elephant? Do you know?

And so now the question is— and that, you know, back to identity thing.

So the identity piece, and this is the key of it because it steps into spirituality very quickly because it's— the answer is both, obviously.

Yeah.

And neither.

Well, who's observing them both?

That's the piece, is that observer. So, we have 50,000, 80,000 years of writing about this of mind, body, and soul.

Right.

And that's my joke. Anybody ever tell you they got the soul figured out, run, it's a cult. But that is this shift, that if I can get the entrepreneur, get the drivens— and drivens seem to know this very very well. Where, you know, sheep— coming back full circle— and trauma— what my theory is, is that most people, you know, are out of their body. And, you know, when does trauma come up? And that's the key to this. And, you know, why, why don't zebras have ulcers? Is because they go back into a safe herd. And, you know, Sebastian Unger and tribes and all of that. Our safe herd's gone. And so what do we come back to is we come back to a herd that's resonating on a similar level of trauma. And then we come up with a monkey mind narrative to keep that trauma stuck in a loop. And then we live in these echo chambers of hate and anger and frustration, keeping us stuck.

Is that at the root of the self-sabotage many times?

That is the root of self-sabotage, is that, you know, these, these operating systems want two very different things. This thing up here can imagine cell phones and, you know, the world we're in where this thing wants the familiar.

Yeah.

And so you get too familiarly good. What happens is you sabotage back to baseline. You get, you know, too much of a show. You get your life together to a point.

And it's almost self-sabotage in the entrepreneurial world is almost cliché, right? I mean, it's like Everybody has that experience, and the question is, you know, are some people able to get past it and some people just stay in the cycle of destruction?

Well, that, that is the core of this soul awareness, because the soul, or this observer, observing ego, whatever you want to call it, has the capacity to actually see reality through the less emotional eyes. I'll say it, you know, that you can see the other side of the cup. And that's the classic example I always give— cup and handle, you know, with it. We're all living in different realities. Yeah, from my side I don't see the handle, from your side you do. If I hate cups without handles and I'm stuck in my emotion and you gave me this cup, there's no way to actually have a relationship. So I have to be able to step out of my emotion, see that. You apply that to sabotage and And, you know, as I say every day to all my entrepreneurs, good enough is not a feeling. Because nothing will ever feel good enough to the entrepreneur, to those with these genetics and this curse. Turns it into a gift. Because what is good enough?

Is that a reason why so many people, when they succeed, they really don't even take time to celebrate? They're just on to the next thing?

And I could have called the book, you know, The Shame-Based Personality Type. I wouldn't have sold very many. I could have called the book, you know, The Trauma-Based Personality, because Peter Levine calls us globally high actives, that no matter what, we are globally in this central, you know, sympathetic arousal and just driven constantly. Why? Because when we slow down, we actually— the trauma starts to come up.

Uh, so it's another form of addiction in some respects. You're trying to just cover up for trauma.

It is addiction.

Wow.

And so is it, you know, what makes it a problem? Well, addictions are bad. No, we wouldn't be here watching all of this if somebody wasn't addicted to making a better camera.

Right.

And so it's a gift and a curse. It's when you can't slow down, you know, and have the observer strength or the, you know, soul strength to be able to manage what's happening in the body.

Is that the virtue of meditation then? Is that where that comes in? So you do this weird— sorry for the characterization— unusual thing. I was going to say weird. You probably call it weird too, but where you meditate at gunpoint, I think you call it, right? So talk about what—

that's my tagline. I teach people to meditate at gunpoint. Right. Very simply, there is no recoil in the present. And so discernment between the monkey and the elephant and being able to experience the elephant, anticipating recoil— it's a flinch, right? Golf, it's a hitch. I worked with pro golfers for a long time. And being able to actually be present, feeling that hitch, and then the more present you are, it goes away. There is no sabotage in the present. There isn't, right? There's no emotion in the present. And so that ability to actually feel that resistance or impulse melt is meditation. And I always teach meditation is so misunderstood. And most meditations are created by farmers for farmers where— tell an entrepreneur to close their eyes and imagine a peaceful field. I mean, it literally sends them to hell. Because they can't. Yeah, you know, it doesn't. So it's always eye-open meditation, and more importantly, it's applied. So meditation is about reality checking your central nervous system. Is what's happening in my— in the elephant an accurate reflection of actually my immediate reality? And it's an impossible question to answer, but in the curious exploration, as you look around, you'll feel a byproduct of this practice is a calming of the central nervous system. It'll calm down to the edge of your bandwidth. You know, and I worked a bunch with the Navy SEALs, Navy Special Warfare for a long time. And you'll calm down to the point where dropping my guard is no longer safe, even though it is safe.

Right.

But I don't feel safe. And that, that once you can get that massive insight, safety is not a feeling. What is safety? Safety is reality in the present moment. Like, where is safety? It's right now, right here, nowhere else. And that—

yeah, but my—

that's because most people's elephants are being dragged around by a whole bunch of monkeys. If you're an entrepreneur, you've got monkeys up here that are chronically discontent and chronically looking for the next shiny thing over the horizon, dragging the elephant all over the place, and you'll miss life.

So is there, I guess, the points where there's— mind over matter can be a virtue, but it can also be a vice?

Exactly. And that, as I say, it's a gift and a curse. More importantly, we are needed in this world. It's a call to action, this book I'm writing, because it is a call to action to really own what we are. We are special. We are unique. We are needed. For this rapidly changing world.

We're needed in what way?

So shepherding the sheep. Well, literally, because it's, you know, Drivens, as I affectionately call us, are also the problem in this world because we become addicted to power, we become addicted to money, and we put that in front of the betterment of humanity. And it is the battle between the wolves and the shepherds is really what I see coming.

Just so everybody's on the same page, the sheep are the general population. The wolves are the entrepreneurs. And the shepherds are maybe the evolved entrepreneurs or mindful entrepreneurs.

So it's an entrepreneur that owns how much of a wolf they can really be.

A self-aware entrepreneur.

Self-aware. And it's owning your wolf and working on it. You know, that's the trauma healing and, you know, the medicine work that's just rapidly evolved, which medicine is not work. The work comes before and after the medicine. So I always throw that out.

We did a whole documentary series on psychedelics, Psychedelics Revealed, and everybody who knew what they were talking about said exactly what you just said.

Because it's trauma healing.

Yeah.

And what is trauma healing? Trauma healing is the ability to sit with the horrible sensations coming up in your body, but stay in reality with the observer knowing that you're safe. And so one of my teachers always said, this is 100 million years of organic intelligence. For me, 55 years of fucking it up. So it is. And it's that ability to get out of the way. Yeah. Of what your body already knows how to do.

Right.

That is meditation. And meditation is not sitting and relaxing. It's about being with and staying here in safety.

So not to get too philosophical, but I think this requires some philosophical premises. Is conscious— is there consciousness in the body in the way that you're talking about it? Or is it just bringing awareness to what the body experiences?

So it's called interioception. And so we have perception of the outer world, then we have interior or internalception.

I love that phrase. I never heard that term before.

Yeah, it's body awareness. And so if you're a 20-year meditator like me and you're familiar with Chinese medicine or traditional Chinese medicine, I can track energy paths through the meridians of my body and feel that, you know, the hitches and everything. It can get pretty remarkable what you can become aware of in your body.

Yeah.

And so is there consciousness in the body? And that, that is, um, good question. Yeah, I think it's, uh, expanding consciousness, and I think consciousness is unlimited. You know, I'm very Jungian in my understanding of consciousness, that consciousness is a independent entity. I think it's life itself. Yeah, is what I truly think it is. I think it's a universal force of life. Then you have a universal force, opposite force of death or decay, right? And they're in perfect balance, tension with each other, is kind of my understanding. Yin-yang of God.

Yeah, so it's a kind of entropy and centrality.

Yeah, there is.

So it's, it's fascinating Here's what you're doing that's unique, which I think is why people love your book and your books and your presentations, is that you're identifying the idiosyncrasies of an entrepreneur. And I'm inferring, and tell me if I'm wrong, that in your model entrepreneurs are born, they're not developed.

For the most part. Yeah, my imposter syndrome is so bad and has been forever.

What is imposter syndrome?

So it's feeling like I'm a phony, feeling like I'm not truly an expert in anything.

So what people believe about you and what you believe about yourself are just different?

Yeah, the inner world experience of being me is not matched with the outer world experience of what people see when they look at me.

Does that have to do with volition at all? Meaning, are you trying to be an imposter, or are you just observing that this is the dynamic?

It's the dynamic. And it's just part of what it means to be reward deficiency. I think it should feel different, which is crazy compared to worms. I mean, so it's nuts. But because of that, the gift of it, so insecure, I actually created a driven assessment 55 questions, validated it across the United States. And I was scared to death, like, holy crap, what am I going to find? And I got the results back and it's like, oh, it's real. We really are different.

And no matter what anybody tells you, it doesn't matter. You still have that internal experience.

And I'm not alone.

No, I don't think you are at all.

And so it was so relieving to see, and are we different? And it's 10 different areas, and big picture thinking and resilience and all of these adaptability, these qualities that we have. Are we born with them? Yes. Are they— is it nature versus nurture? The answer is yes. And my childhood fostered a lot of impulsivity, and a lot of my parents were very afraid to parent. And so, and I had older brother, two younger brothers, and we were nuts. I mean, we were just ADD bombing, going crazy. Um, it was an amazing childhood, but it led to, you know, path of destruction very quick, like I said, you know. And so someone else who has, you know, entrepreneur— and I, I do podcasts and interview all these entrepreneurs, and, and what was your childhood like, right? And every once in a while you find an evolved a, you know, driven parent that gets their kid and gives them the freedom they need but teaches them that you— it is a farmer's world.

Yeah.

I mean, it— you— most people are not like us. And so if you— you got to learn to, to fit in at least well enough to not stick out.

And do you, uh— and you said, I think 4 to 7% is kind of the estimate.

It's— it depends how you define it, somewhere in there.

And is it probably higher as a percentage in the United States than other places just because of who came here?

It's literally, you know, we are the ones who got on the boats. We are the ones here. I got a bunch of Viking clients. I got Viking blood in me. It's like, no shit, you have eaten mushrooms and going out and conquering kingdoms. And so it is, but it's what we are.

Right.

You know, so it is just, and there's no matter how you feel about it, this is what we are.

Yeah.

And can it be honed? And can it be, you know, can you have it all? I often hear that, you know, or question that. Well, you know, yeah, you can. Yeah, you really can.

Yeah. And I think actually in my book I wrote about this because one of the bad premises I adopted from mentors as a young entrepreneur is that success required sacrifice. So every time I wanted to succeed more, I had to look for what I was going to sacrifice to succeed in a sense. I had to change that premise to you can have it all, but it's not easy. You got to—

It's work, but it's work in the right way. As Drivens, we hate wasting time, but we're the most time-wasting people on the planet. This efficiency thing of meditation, when you really learn how to just chop wood or just return emails and just work within what we are and hone our gift. It is a farmer's world. We're wired for a world that's impossible to survive in. We're wired for woolly mammoths and cave bears, and here we are in this world where it's never been safer. So we are fish out of water. But we don't have to make our lives hard because of that.

Well, and that's sort of the question that's occurring. For me is most entrepreneurs, and I'd say myself included in this particular statement, we actually like the idea that we're different. We think normalcy is something that would be just like the most terrible. That'd be hell, you know? And but is there a childhood side of that that creates trauma, you know, that that is the trauma that might be?

So I get in trouble for this one. So there's two wiring systems. Within the body, and one is up here, runs through the inner ear, comes down through the jaw, through the larynx, across the vocal cords, into the heart, and it's the ventral vagal. And then we have the other branch, the dorsal vagal, runs down the back, goes into our guts. This is for herding animals, H-E-R-D animals, and it's fight-flight. And so sheep, most herds You know, what happens when a cheetah runs into a herd of gazelles is they scatter, right? And you're on your own.

Yeah, every man for themselves.

We're driven, you know, the pack animals. We are, we are like a wolf pack. And what happens when a bear attacks one of the wolves is, I've got your back, right? And I, you know, I've sat in those groups where, you know, missing man formation in the Navy SEAL team is one of the hardest groups I've ever sat in.

What does that mean?

They'd lose somebody. I mean, the bonds that are made within a driven wolf pack are unbelievable. Like, we truly will kill for each other. But the entrepreneur that has experience after experience of experience of partners and employees and, God, why don't you have my back? I'd give the world for you. And yet when things got tough, you out of there. And so often, you know, entrepreneurs just give up on people.

Yeah.

And that trauma that comes from that of really being alone in this world and also feeling like you're— and, you know, you see entrepreneurship, you know, I've got a host of people that I've lost, you know, suicide. It just, you know, because it's, it's hard to be an entrepreneur. You know, combined with this inner world experience of aloneness, you know, we are really— that is one of the hardest neglected traumas out there.

My personal experience is how true what you're saying is about especially the wolf pack. I was in an accountability group with 4 other guys, and sometimes it was, you know, 4 of us or 6 of us all together. And that was the whole point. We were committed. It was the number one priority in our weeks was that we're going to be together on that call every single week, but was also when I, at one point, was having a pretty significant challenge in the business I was running then. One of the guys, the questions asked, who had special expertise in solving my problem, he was on a plane from Dallas to New Jersey and was in my office the next day. We would all do the same for each other. Somebody came to call, they had a particular problem, we dropped the agenda and we all just So it was that experience, and that was probably one of the best experiences of my life and just gave me all those things that you're talking about and how important that was. And the commitment to each other in that way kind of transcends the way that we experience the world generally. And it gave meaning to everything, saying, wow, I have a purpose, and I'm serving other people. And I know that they got my back too.

Yeah. And that, that's, that is true shepherdom, you know. And it, it's as having people's back that don't have your own. It's, that is a hard one.

Yeah.

But that's a shepherd.

Yeah.

And, you know, anyone who professes to be a shepherd, you know, run. It, it is, you know, the people that, you know, and I, I worked with tens, if not hundreds, of entrepreneurs that create unbelievable companies. Yeah. That even though their employees don't have their back, they create this model and culture within it where that is at least expected and least talked about.

You're right.

And it— over time, you know, you see the cream rising to the top, and you'll see this, this group of people that really give about each other, and it's rare. But I think in this culture now where everything is splitting up and everybody's fragmenting, that call to action of really coming together is what— and that is entrepreneurship. And that is where we, as Drivens, have the opportunity to see it.

Well, you're referring, I believe at least, that the world is in a pretty compromised position. You know, uh, you know, we've— it's exciting, right? Look at all the problems we get to solve.

Exactly. Great time to be alive. Impending doom.

In the meantime, you know, a lot of us are also, you know, buying our bug-out ranches, you know. So we're hedging.

Yeah, I know where I'm going.

Me too. So, but given that, because I just want to make sure I'm interpreting what you're saying, is that there are significant problems and these problems aren't going to be centrally solved by a government or big corporations. It's entrepreneurs that need to figure this stuff out. Is that kind of accurate?

Driven. We see through the— 'Just wear your mask' or 'Don't wear your mask.' It's why they're attacking Joe Rogan. Because he's not trying to say anybody's right or wrong. This isn't good or evil. I don't know what's good or evil, but let's ask some experts. Let's figure it out. And that is so threatening to people who are pitching the narrative that are trying to control the sheep. And they scare us so we buy things is the classic model. And I'm hoping it's not only 4 or 7%. I'm hoping that we can get this mass of people that actually are able to see really what's happening here and do something about it. And well, what are we going to do? Talk about it. Create the community that it's safe to talk about and that escape velocity. Kind of that where you build a big enough community that the powers that be and the power-addicted drivens can't take it away from us.

So it sounds like the best way you could serve the world right now and what you're intending is teach the wolf to become a shepherd, in essence, or teach the wolf to manage their trauma and other such things so they can contribute to the world and unleash their superpower, if you will.

Exactly. And it's own your shadow, as Jung said, own your wolf. You know, that there's— in every human being there's evil, you know, and every human being is beauty. And that ability to actually own the evil part. And, you know, one of the reasons I'm a psychologist is, um, I was actually pre-med in undergrad, and Phil Zimbardo classic guest lecturer from Stanford came down and taught my Psych 100 class for a week. He did the Stanford Prison Studies and was putting people in skull caps and making them prisoners and putting people in uniforms and making them— and this was back, and they had to stop the experiment. And he's looking at, um, at, you know, how, how did the Nazi death camps come about? And those are just normal people. Everybody can be influenced in that way. And the malleability of people is terrifying. And so as shepherds, you know, it is understanding that and which way are we steering the sheep and what are we doing.

Do you think the sheep find the characterization pejorative? You know, are they—

I've looked for a damn good name for that.

Because the reality is you're saying the masses kind of move together.

Sheep.

Yeah.

And that, that part of that driven— it's— we all succumb to the narrative. We're all captured by a monkey up there that just wants a simple explanation so I don't have to deal with it.

Yeah.

And so we're all sheep. We have the potential to actually wake up more and more and more to this observer soul level, right, and gain soul strength to not buy the narrative. Or not get captured by the narrative. But when you don't get captured by the narrative and you become present, it's very uncomfortable because your trauma comes up. Yeah. And if you don't know what to do with it, you very quickly jump to another narrative. So I think this, this education that needs to be brought to the world is really, you know, how many sheep are on the fringes that are just waiting to get this message to actually open up into their awareness, right? You know, I think it's— I think that is the opportunity. But to categorize that you're a sheep, brother, don't kid yourself.

Yeah.

And so that's the way— that is the truth. Thinking that I'm not, right, makes me a sheep.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you really got to own it all.

And that's actually— well, my mentor was Dr. Nathaniel Branden. I don't know if you know his work, but He was kind of the godfather of the self-esteem movement. He was Ayn Rand's intellectual ally. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing is—

Positive psychology.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Predate. Yeah, I know.

Exactly. Psychology of self-esteem and six pillars of self-esteem. And, you know, in his workshops, when he used to present, he had these six pillars of self-esteem. One of them was the pillar of self-acceptance and And he distinguished self-acceptance from forgiveness, meaning that you don't have to necessarily forgive, but you have to accept that this is true, this is reality. And when a lady once said to him in one of these workshops, "Am I supposed to just accept to have lousy self-esteem?" And he looked at her and responded, "Yes, because you can't leave a place that you've never been." Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, and it strikes me that that's really what you're talking about.

That is, that captures it well. You know, the way I do it is this: we drop, drop trying to figure out who you are, right? That's a, that's a circular loop, right? But accept what you are, you know. And the first premise, we're all Homo sapiens. Yeah, we're monkeys. Yeah, period, full stop. You know, whether loving creatures from a loving God, or, you know, we're you're just an animal is a fact, right? And then understanding our biology and understanding how trauma works and understanding what the neocortex is doing gives us the ability to actually own what we are and then change it. Yeah, you know, and that efficacy, the ability to affect yourself and knowing that you're not trapped or the victim. Yeah, and that is something that Drivens for the most part have massively way too much internal locus of control. We think everything's our fault, right? And it's not everything is your fault. Yeah, some of it, but there are no victims either, right? You know, and so that, that ability to, to really just accept what you are and be there, like you said, I mean, that rolls right off the tongue. Yeah, but it, it is a practice. And, you know, that gently And gentleness is not an attitude, it is a practice of actually doing. It's not a feeling, it's being gentle. And so making your life easier and being gentle on yourself is making your life easier. It's not having a monkey up here and doing the Stuart Smalley "you're good enough, smart enough" crap.

And that's sort of the kind of— I don't know if I'll call it contradiction or paradox, where I'm going to use your terms now, driven entrepreneurs, where they can be gentle with other people, but they're rarely gentle on themselves. Rarely.

The biggest asshole in the room is always me. And it's a habit more than anything else. And it's a bad habit. But if I'm not hard on myself, I won't work as hard. And that, you know, I don't want to give up my fear because if I give up my fear, I won't achieve as much. And it's accepting that as a lie. And what you're replacing this urgency— as I always say, urgency is sabotage. Because there's nothing as urgent. Nothing. You know, it's nothing. And even if it's on fire, you've got to slow down enough, you know, Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And so that freneticness is what we got to drop. And being able to be with, and then as I say, you know, just be in reality. And reality is not what you feel.

We've been talking generically about driven, but that's almost always like ascribed to a man or to males.

The evil patriarchy is in place.

Yeah, exactly.

Driven Women are driven, the book, 2018, very male-focused.

So the energy is very masculine.

Very masculine. Very do, do, do, do, do and achieve, achieve, achieve. And that is enforced in their culture. Driven women. And my podcast co-host, Megan Williger, she's 6'4", was number one pick for Ohio's volleyball. Wow. And just, I mean, driven and has opened my eyes to being a driven woman is unbelievably challenging. And we talked about the aloneness. And you talk about—

now they're more than even the males, they're, they're a smaller subset.

And I've got a 14 and 16-year-old daughter at home, and girls are mean to each other. And, you know, and I spend a lot of time really understanding the differences between a masculine, male-driven which it's way easier to survive. And the qualities of being driven, well, he's just a guy and he's a man's man and da, da, da, da. But these driven women, the challenge of really being what they are is so near and dear to my heart. My youngest daughter, Megan, is driven. I mean, she, at 4 years old, she was the first one to the top of the 12-foot rope in gymnastics class and little monkey going, I did it, you know. Um, and how do you embrace that? You know, as a dad, I'm like, yeah, but all the other little girls, you know, because it's— enculturation for women is much more social and much more part of the herd.

Yeah.

And so needing to fit in, and, you know, that's where I see the eating disorders and the, you know, the, the dark side of the drivenness come out. And the addictive qualities, you know, the impulsivity. And those communities of where I see driven women and, and really anchor themselves into— because you talk about lone wolves in this world. I mean, entrepreneurship for women is incredibly lonely.

Wow.

And so yeah, those communities are starting to really pop up.

What's the— yeah, so what's the advice that you have when you have a driven female as far as saying here's some, some practical things you might want to do to help.

And, and driven— a driven meditation for women is different. Driven practices are different for women. Um, typically yoga, typically a movement meditation, right, where they're feeling, you know, stillness in action. Women are much more fluid than men, much more emotional than men. And finding other driven women is heritive, you know, because they, they— so they find them on the other— basically they've got to have a wolf pack around them.

Yeah.

And their capacity to trust is very different. And it takes years for driven women to really trust other women.

Takes them longer.

Takes them longer. But the bonds that they make are deeper. And so, you know, man, we're— yeah, you know, don't see each other for years and we hug and everything's good. Driven women need that sense of overtime connection, and it's slower, but as it develops, it is. I see some women that are— and that's my hope, as I always say, if we had 1,000 driven women actually working together, they'd own the world because there's not a man in the world that would go against them.

Yeah. And why is that?

Women are Women are connected to reality way more than men.

Really?

Yes. Men, we, we live in an ego tunnel. We live in a spotlight of focus, largely because we have a narrower corpus callosum. Women have this much greater corpus callosum, so left and right sides of the brain talk.

So they're literally wired for it.

They're literally wired for, you know, floodlight, combined with the big picture thinking of driven, combined with this, you know, ability to track multiple targets at the at the same time. These driven women are unbelievable. Wow. And how they can navigate the world, and they see everything. And as a man, yeah, as a man, you're like, you see that? And I teach all of my driven entrepreneur men, once they get a good driven woman and they start to feel their value, they're like, come on in. It's the women that struggle. It's like, why does he want me so much? What is my real value, right? And so their shame is, is, you know, it's, it's much more fluid and deep. But as I always say, men are light switches when it comes to emotion. Narrow corpus callosum, when it takes us a lot to flip the switch. But even with 20 years meditation practice, I can still break myself up, so I can—

I lose it, right?

Where women are dimmers. They're always in their emotion, but But once they get control of that and they actually can calm themselves, they're the most powerful, powerful creatures on the planet. They truly are. I mean, I am in awe of what I've discovered in the last 5 years with, with women. But having them own their value and really come together as a wolf pack is— and I've struggled to create that. And it's, you know, they sabotage in different ways. But having a group of driven women now on the other side of it and really soul strength identified, they're becoming great teachers of creating this around them. So it's possible. It's really amazing to watch. But driven, you know, and I feel for my daughter and I help her the best I can, but it's a farmer's world and a bunch of farming women that are worried about your your shoes and your hair color and everything else. And, um, where, you know, most driven women just roll their eyes at that. Are you kidding me? And they hang out with the men. So it's, it's a different challenge.

Yeah.

But, you know, I think, I think the unity of driven women is really the secret to change in this world.

So many, um, like, things that you've picked up along the way in your study, you're your thesis, even your doctoral thesis sounds fascinating, these books that you keep coming out with. Do you have a limitless well of things to investigate when it comes to this world of entrepreneurs? I mean, are you as stimulated today as you've ever been around it?

I've never been this excited. The more you learn, the less you know. And so it is in that process of really being Just being alive.

Right on.

It's a—

I love being driven and I hate it. It almost killed me and I've hated it on and off throughout the years. But it's— I've embraced the qualities of what I am. Sometimes it's good. I'm careful who I surround myself with because not a lot of— there's a— yeah, a lot of non-drivens. Have an issue with my impulsivity and my exuberance for what I am and my discoveries and my endless pursuit of every hobby, my obsessiveness and all these qualities. I love it.

Yeah, it's so great. Well, Doug, I appreciate you coming and sharing all this. I'm excited to read your new book when it comes out. It sounds really fascinating. And in the end, every time I either read what you write or listen to what you're saying, you know, it just brings more self-awareness, you know, and with that comes, I think, more meaning in my life. So I appreciate you giving that to me.

I appreciate you, Pat.

Iman, thanks for taking the time to be here.

Thanks for having me here.

So let's talk about your story, getting to your background a little bit. How did you become an entrepreneur? What kind of challenges did you have getting started?

How I became an entrepreneur. I feel like I was an entrepreneur from when I was 9 years old, maybe a little bit younger. And I realized that because I was too lazy to want to go shopping for my mom. We were living in a place that was up the hill, and my mom always used to cook stuff. At the very last minute, remember, oh, I'm missing tomato paste, or I'm missing this thing and that thing, right? But already the food was cooking, like, was halfway through. And then she would come to me and she was like, hey, you know, like, can you go and get me tomato paste? And then I had to go down the hill, get things, and then walk up, right, for like 25 minutes. And I was like, this doesn't work for me, like, right? But I was like, okay, you know, what if I actually go and get stuff that I know that she needs on short notice and keep them in my closet, right? And then when she comes to me, I was like, well, we have two options. You can get something from me that I have in my closet with a little bit markup, or I can walk down there and get things. And I knew that she was always in a rush, right?

So you started out selling your own mother?

Wow. Well, but here's the thing. As an entrepreneur, I identified a need. I identified the urgency of the need. Right. And although I was the one who was going to do the work, right, but I was like giving her options, right? You can get this for like $10 or I can go and get it and you pay the $7. Right, right. And I mean, kind of like started from there, but The reason I'm actually bringing that up is because I feel entrepreneurship is something that is a way of living and thinking. It's not just a person wakes up and says, I want to make millions of dollars, so let's go become an entrepreneur. It's something that the person either develops over time or the person has it from the very, very young age. Age. I think many entrepreneurs that I talk to, they started doing something when they were 5 years old, 6 years old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old, right? They had a lemonade stand that they were like, they were doing something that they were turning a need, any type of need, into, into something that they could get paid for. And depending on their situation, that was so the very first company, though, I registered it when I was 18 years old.

Well, let me just ask, where did you grow up?

I grew up in Tehran, Iran.

And when did you move to North America?

I moved to North America when I was 25 years old. So my first company was in Tehran.

It was in Tehran.

Yeah, it was in Tehran, Iran. It was on my 18th birthday. Usually in Iran, people go and get their driver's license. I went and registered the company. That was the first day that I could actually legally register a company. And, and so I went and registered the company and that was my first company and it went awfully bad. Like, like awfully bad, right? I lost everything because I'd inherited some money and I lost everything in 3 months in that company. And then the next day I started my second company.

And but so don't go so fast there because how do you shake that off? You inherit some money. You decide— you said you were 15?

I was 18.

18, rather. You're 18. You decide that you're going to start a company and you take this money and you lose it in months.

Yep.

And what was it inside you that says, well, I guess I'll just start another one?

Because what was the other choice?

Getting a job? Just not even in your mind to do so?

Yeah. You see, like, that's the thing. Like, sometimes you just so unemployable that you don't even see that as an option, right? Like, for me, the way that I think is how to change the systems, how to look at things that are not working properly and, and rearrange them in the way that they work better, right? So like, if I go to a job and like they say, okay, here is what we do, all I'm thinking about how we can do this better, right? And then how we change things. And then when you are new in a company, nobody wants you to change anything. And then in my brain I'm like, well, let's change this. And I'm not willing to do stupid things to— for you to get my trust. And then 4 months later you want to trust me enough to change the systems. Let's change it. Right? So I'm absolutely unemployable. Like, absolutely.

And you figured that out at 18.

Oh yeah, I knew that. I knew that when I, when I was 18, right? I had a job, kind of a job when I was 16 years old and it was in my dad's company. And even then, like at that, like very basic thing, I just needed to change everything and rearrange them and make it work better. And, and I was like, you know what, if I need to jump through so many hoops to do things in a more effective way. I just don't want to waste my time here. But with that part, actually, there was one piece. When I lost everything that night, I got lucky because one of my dad's friends just very randomly came and knocked on our door and said, you know, do you want to come and grab a coffee with me and just let's have a conversation. Let's see what you're up to, right? So I went and had a conversation with him and I said, I closed my company today. I said, why? I said, well, because I lost everything. And, and he said, well, do you want to have a company? And I said, yeah, I want, I want to have my own business. And he said, well, I'm happy to mentor you, to teach you how to do it. And I said, well, I don't have any money. And I said, having a business has nothing to do with having money. Having a business has to do with making money. If you are willing to do what it takes, I'm willing to show you how to run a business profitably. And so he took my hand and helped me to build the business from scratch. And I built that company and sold the equity in the company when I was 23. And then I decided to become a marketing consultant.

Well, this becomes interesting. So what did the first company do, just out of curiosity, the one that failed?

We were producing industrial things.

OK.

So anything from nuts and bolts to tractor pieces to weird, weird things, right? I had zero experience with that. The only reason that I went there was because there was an opportunity, and we I knew people that had the expertise around me, but I had no expertise around it. The way that we lost the money actually was because we had a client that said, if you produce this for me, I'll buy a ton of it, right? So I spent a ton of money investing in R&D and creating the mold for that thing. And then when we were like, yes, we can produce this, I went to get the contract. They're like, oh no, we're going to get it from China. And they actually never ordered a single one. So it was my lack of experience of getting contracts first, getting prepayments first, and then go create it because it was like, well, these people want this, so let us create, let us produce it.

What did the second company do with the—

The second company was an IT company.

Okay.

So started as a hardware company. Money, and then we added more things to it, and then we added software to it and networks.

So in this— in your particular story, how, how important is a mentor, right? Because so many— so often I hear a mentor enters the picture and that's what gets things going.

Absolutely. The mentor— here's the thing, the mentor can never promise you to succeed, but what they can give you are systems that is based on their experience. And probably as an entrepreneur, you would change those systems, but they would give you a little bit of lay of the land, a little bit of, hey, here is the, you know, here is the way that works better, right? Here is a way that you can, you can do things differently. Right. And, and having that support, having that path makes huge, massive difference.

Right. Yeah, for sure.

The bigger part of my story actually starts from the time that I moved to North America.

And how old were you then?

I was 25.

And what— so what got you to want to move to North America?

So my wife at the time and I sat together one night and we said, what do we want from our life? And I said, I want to become an international professional public speaker. I was looking at people like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Oprah. Was looking at the way that these people are building their businesses and making a massive impact in the world. And, and they're on the stage and they're shining and all of those things. And at the time I was also doing public speaking and, and I was like, you know what, I'm doing everything and I'm doing it on a smaller scale. I want to really get myself on the stage and bigger stages and make a difference. And, and so we said one of the pieces in that is that we need to be in a place that we can speak English, right? So we have an extended audience. And also, with an Iranian passport, it's really hard to travel because you need to get visa for many, many countries. So you can't just get on an airplane and go to US. You have to apply for visa. You may get approved, not get approved, wait for 4 to 6 months, right? So I wanted to move to a country that I have a passport that is more powerful passport to travel with. Right. And we had this opportunity to move to Canada. We could easily move to Canada. So we decided to move to Canada and we were like literally in 7 months we were in Vancouver, BC. And, and then, and then that's where our, my journey in North America started.

And because that's very disruptive too, right? I mean, you know, you grow up in a country or Right. Very different culture.

Yeah.

And then now I get another entrepreneurial thing to do and I'm going to move. I'm going to move to a country that I maybe visited before. I don't know. But never was. Never even before.

No one ever was.

I'm going to show up and we're going to start a business and we're going to, you know, that, you know, it's a, you know, it's a very daunting thing.

It was actually worse than that because, because we decided to move so fast and we moved so fast. I actually never got the opportunity to learn English properly. So when I—

I assumed you probably spoke English fairly well.

No, no, that was one of the reasons we wanted to move, because I wanted to learn English in kind of like environment that I can learn proper English, right? Which I still can't speak proper English, probably with the accent.

It's a lot better than my Farsi.

So like, when I landed, the immigration officer said, how's it going? And I got offended because I was like, I'm not an it and I'm not going anywhere. I just arrived. Like, why are you behaving with me this way, right? That was my level of English. Wow. I could say, how are you? And I could say, I'm doing well.

Like, how's it going?

I was like, I'm not going anywhere. I just arrived. Like, what are you talking about?

Right?

And so, yeah, so that was my level of English when I arrived here. And then we were hoping that our money follow us. And there were some political unrest at that time in Iran. This is an interesting thing. Not the time that I got on the airplane, but 2 days after my airplane landed. So I had some properties and then my mom was going to sell those properties and send the money to us. And then the situation wasn't in a way that she could actually sell those properties anymore, like a couple of days later.

Wow.

So we immigrated. I had $12,000 in my pocket thinking that I'm going to receive like hundreds of thousands of dollars and that's going to be good money for the foundation for giving us a few years, maybe a couple of years. For me to learn English and my wife to get, you know, settled and everything else. And then 2 days later, we realized, okay, we're not going to get our money.

Wow.

So we have this $12,000 and we have to figure something out, right? And, and we looked at each other. We're like, okay, we have a dream, want to bring that dream to reality. And we started working for it. And we said, okay, let's get a job, right? And we never had a job. Now, she could speak English. I couldn't speak English properly. And but she was going through school full time, right? And she was studying like this really, really, really hard course. So she had to study 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in school and then 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., 10 p.m. doing the homework. Well, it was a very expensive course. So we were like, okay, so you continue studying. And I'll try to find a job. I don't know how many resumes I dropped off, but 2009 was right after 2008 recession and there were tens of thousands of people out of work. Everybody was qualified, they could speak, and they spoke English. Yeah, they had like connections and everything else. And so, um, I just wasn't able to even land single interview. Wow. And we got to this point that we were 17 days away from becoming homeless. And that day I woke up and, you know, that I realized that second what it means that when I say that when, you know, people say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but when you are in it, you don't realize it. That morning, like 17 days away from becoming homeless, I woke up and I really realized it was like, wait a second, for the past 11 months I've been looking for a job, one after another, after another, after another. I've been dropping off resumes as janitor, as cashier, as like as everything. And I'm not getting a single job interview. Who says in the next 17 days I'm going to get an interview, I'm going to get the job, and I'm going to get paid?

Yeah, right.

That is the definition of insanity. Like doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But when you are in it, you don't see it that way. You're like, I don't have a job. I really need to get a job. So you're applying for one job after another, after another, hoping to get a job, right? And then that morning I was like, okay, here's the thing. We are already homeless and we don't know it yet because this paycheck is not going to come in the next 17 days. We're not going to have the money to pay the rent. We cannot do anything else. Right. And that day I said, okay, I'm going to start my own business. And I decided to start a web design business. Now, there are so many things with that. One is that I'm not a visual person. I had no idea how to design a website. The only thing I knew is how websites work. Well, I have MBA in online business, so I knew how websites work. I knew how to increase the sales of a company by a website. Right. But I had no idea how to design a website.

Right. Or program it.

Or program it. I had no idea about that. Right. I just knew that, you know, if you give me a website, I can draw it for you and say, like, change your website to this, right? It's going to increase your sales, right?

Right.

But I didn't know how to design and program anything like that. But I was like, okay, so this is something I can sell, right? And then that day I decided to go get a haircut. And what does your hairdresser ask you when they see you for the first time? Right? They're like, well, the first question is like, who cut your hair last time? Right? But then the second question was like, what do you do? Right? And I said, I help people to increase their sales from the internet. As of this morning, it didn't matter, right? I'm like, well, that's what I do, right? And so he looked at me, he's like, well, can you explain it? And I had no idea what to explain, right? I'm like, well, I'm like, I can't explain it here. When you're finished, then I can explain to you. Let's go to cashier, get a pen and paper from you, and I'll explain it to you. Right. And I started thinking, it's like, okay, so how am I going to explain this? Because like, what do I want to do?

Right, right.

So anyways, he finished cutting my hair 20 minutes later, and then we go to the cashier, I get a pen and paper from him, and I start interviewing him as if he's an actual client. I'm like, well, so what's your unique selling proposition? Why people want to come to you like this and that? What are the best-selling products that you have here? Like, how do you make money? And then as he was talking, I drew his website for him on a piece of paper. I turned it back toward him. I said, if you design this website, it will increase your sales. And he looked at it and said, you don't know this about me. I'm a very, very connected person and I love online marketing. I know most online marketers in the city. And not a single person was able to explain this to me the way you explained this to me. Well, I was like, yes, he's going to buy a website, right? And he did that. And he was like, well, give me— I don't remember how much the haircut was, but I remember that I chose the cheapest haircut in the area, right? The cheapest haircut, right? 3 days later, he called me and said, Iman, I have a person here that has been trying to sell her stuff online. For the last 3 years and she hasn't been able to do it. Can you talk to her right now? I said, sure. So he passed the phone to her and she said, well, I have time right now. Can we go grab a coffee if you're around? I'm like, yeah, I'm around. So I went and grabbed a coffee and she wrote me an $1,800 check.

Wow.

To design a website for her to increase her sales from internet. And that money literally paid for the rent of the month and bought us food. And then I was like, okay, now we are in this. And from the next day I started going to networking events and I'm an extreme introvert. I'm an extreme introvert. So I started learning like how as an introvert, go to networking events and meet with people and connect with them, right? And I would go to networking events and book appointments to talk to people about how they can increase their sales from the internet. So there was this place at 550 Broad Street in Vancouver. There's a Blendz coffee shop in that area, like in that address, and it started being Iman's office. 9 a.m. every single day I was there and I had appointments back to back, 9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12, back to back. I would meet people from 9 to 5 or 6, and then at 5 or 6 I would get up, would go to a networking event, 6 9:00 and find people for the next day appointments. And then at 9:00 PM, I would go back home, have dinner, and then start learning web design and start designing things that I just sold. And from 10:00 PM to like 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM, 4:00 AM, I would just learn web design and would deliver and design the things that I'd promised. And that's how I learned web design. Started growing the company. And, and a few months later, like, took that company to a six-figure business and was able at that point to afford hiring team members and sales team and other things. And so that's how I built that web design company back in 2009, 2010, 2011.

There's so many lessons in it, right? I mean, your backups— your back was against the wall. You're, as you said, 17 days or whatever from homelessness, and it finally occurs to you, it's actually, we're homeless now, we just haven't gotten the eviction notice yet, but you have to do something different. And I think that's kind of important, right? And it's, perseverance is sort of this weird thing because in some respects perseverance is a virtue and others it's not. You might say, well, I'm gonna keep going on giving resumes out I'm going to keep trying to do what I've been doing. And that would have been the wrong idea, right? The right idea is say, I got to completely go out and do something differently. So that company obviously grew and succeeded. So where did that lead you? What kind of work are you doing now?

OK, so you said something interesting. So that company grew and succeeded. That company grew, but succeeded is what I learned next. Because the word success is very subjective.

Indeed.

So here's what happened. As I was building that company, one morning I woke up and I was bleeding internally and I was rushed to the hospital and doctors realized I've lost 60% of my blood. Wow. In a matter of very short time. And when you lose more than 30% of your blood, you're at high risk of stroke and death. And I lost 60%. I lost so much blood that they couldn't even perform a surgery on me to stop the bleeding because I didn't have enough blood to survive the surgery. So they said, we can start giving you blood transfusion. And, and then, but we can't do anything until your blood level comes higher so we can perform a surgery. So good luck because we don't know how fast you're bleeding and if the blood that we are giving you is faster than blood that you're losing.

Yeah.

So in a matter of a few hours, I found myself on my deathbed waiting there to see if I'm going to have the stroke and die or if I'm going to survive this. And then they can save my life. And as I was lying on my deathbed, I started thinking about what happens at my funeral tomorrow and how people are going to remember me. And I realized that people are going to come to my funeral and say Iman was a nice guy. And I hated that. That second I realized to that point of my life I was alive, but I never lived. I never lived through to my heart. I never lived through to what I actually wanted to do. And I was like, I don't want to die a nice guy. I don't want people to come to my funeral and say Iman was a web designer. He was a nice guy. I want people to come there and say, Iman made a huge impact in my life. This guy changed my life. And I was like, so why aren't you living that? Why are you stuck with this web design company that is making you money but never— but is not letting you live your true life?

So you obviously survived.

I survived.

So you had the realization. Would you change?

So that was the third question I actually asked myself on my deathbed. I said, well, what would you change if you get a second chance?

Right?

And I said, if I get a second chance, I'll make a life purpose for myself and then live true to that. And the night before my 27th birthday, I was released from the hospital. So that was like a birthday gift to me. Like, like, that was the most amazing birthday gift. Like, it was like, your birthday gift is the rest of your life. Yeah. And I was like, holy crap.

Okay.

Like, I actually am getting the rest of my life as a birthday gift here. And like, every single day of this is an opportunity, is a gift, which, I mean, couldn't happen more perfectly than that, right? And I said, okay, so here's what I'm going to do. I want to make a difference in the lives of 100 million people before I die. And I said, well, how do you want to do it? And I said, I don't care about the fame of it, but I care about the impact of it. And I'm good at one thing. I'm good at marketing. I'm good at teaching people and showing people how to do marketing. And, and marketing is like an amplifier. You add marketing to something good, you create more good. You add marketing to something that's bad, you create more bad. Right. Right. I was like, okay, so who do you want to work with? Because you can add your marketing to anything you want, right? And you can create more of that, right? And I looked at different things. I said, like, who are you passionate about? Who do you love to work with every single day? If you work with them 24/7, if you have these people as your friends and the family members, people that you have in your home, all of those things, who would you still be passionate and excited? Right. I said, I really love working with coaches, authors, speakers, therapists, like people who are working at behavioral changes in people and people who are helping them with overcoming addiction, people who are helping people with living a healthier life, people who are working with people on, you know, things that make a massive difference. So I said, okay, So why don't you create something that helps these people to amplify what they do? And I started doing that. And this is an interesting thing. You know, there's this thing that is called the gifts.

Like, we—

every single one of us are born with gifts. And the reason that they're called gifts is because you're really good at doing them for others. Right? But you're not good at using them for yourself. And that's why we call them gifts. So for example, like you go to a party and you see everything is messy and you stand up and you start like cleaning up and taking everything to the kitchen and people look at you and are like, oh my God, like your home is totally clean. And you know that your home is a mess, right? But every time you go to a party, you help people to clean. And you wonder, you're like, why can't I do this for myself? Because you have a gift of service. You see something that is at service for others, you can do it for them, but you cannot do it for yourself. Some people have gift of teaching. They're really good at teaching others something, but they cannot use it for themselves. And then that causes imposter syndrome because people are like, oh, I cannot teach this. I cannot work with people on this. Because I haven't done it for myself.

Right.

But you have the gift of it. And this imposter syndrome, I mean, depending on what it is that you're doing and how you're marketing it, but you're— this, this imposter syndrome is actually not real because if you think about this, the best basketball coaches in the world are not the best basketball players in the world.

Right.

You can put the team of basketball coaches against the team of basketball players. Who will win? The players win. Sure. But then who are coaches? Who are coaching these players? Are the coaches, right? So we all know this, that to be a good coach, to be a good trainer, you don't need to actually be the best at implementing it. You need to be the best at, at doing coaching.

Right.

It was long story short, I had the exact same things for myself. So I created this package, was $197 and nobody bought it. And I was like, how can I not sell this? Right? And I created a $97 package and nobody bought it. I was like, okay, I really need to learn how to do this. Now I'm selling hundreds of thousands of dollars in web design. Yeah, but I can't sell a $97 program that teaches people how to market themselves. That doesn't make any sense, right?

You couldn't market your own program.

I could market my own.

You can market other people's businesses, right?

Right.

I could totally market other people's businesses. I was helping everybody. Why couldn't I market my own program? So I decided to teach this class for free for 8 weeks. I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get 8 people to come to my class for 8 weeks and teach them my online marketing knowledge and just see what happens, see what they want to learn, see what— like, what's the result of it, right? But here's an interesting thing. Knowledge doesn't change people's lives. Knowledge mixed with accountability and support and the resources that a person has, right, behind them make a difference. So when I started working with these 8 people, they got my knowledge and they implemented it based on the resources they had. And I had this guy in my class that the biggest class that he had done ever was like 12 people, and then he added my marketing knowledge to it. And in 8 weeks, he put together a, what, a 534-people event. Well, he went from 12 people to 534 people, and 137 of them purchased his program. So like, his life changed, right? But it all started from me wanting to give the value and just see what happens. And I think that's the real core of entrepreneurship. When I go back to my web design days, when I didn't know how to design a website, one of the things I did, I was going through a class. It was an entrepreneurial class, which, by the way, they didn't want to let me in that class because they said, there is— we don't think you're going to succeed as an entrepreneur. You should go get a job. Right. And I fought really hard to go to this class that was funded by the government. So they didn't even want to allow me in a government-funded program because they said, we don't see a way for you to succeed.

They didn't think you had it. Yeah.

I was like, I was like, no, let me actually— if I qualify for it, let me go for it.

Right.

So in this class, I stood up and I said, if anyone wants a website in the next 30 days, If you give me the content in the next 30 days, I'll design your website for free. So in 30 days, out of the 10, 8 people gave me their content and I designed their website, which became the samples of my job.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Here's the thing. One of those people— I always laugh about this, like, I mean, like at this point of my life, right? Because one of the people to say thank you to me, took me to a restaurant and bought me a burger. And I always laugh at this. I'm like, I designed a website for a burger. I practically, like, when I started my business, I designed a website for a burger, right? It was a $16 burger, and so I designed a website for a burger, you know, but that gave me a sample of job that gave me an opportunity to learn how to design a website. They gave me an opportunity to talk to people. That gave me a testimonial. Many newer entrepreneurs just stand back and they're waiting for everything to go based on their plan. Right. But then when I look at my career, my— like all the companies that I've built, all of them, we started from scratch. All of them, we built them in, in, in, in like with, with challenges. And in every single one of them, the biggest thing that I can say that we did or I did, depending on the company, we looked at the biggest problem that was there and we asked ourselves one question: what's a massive radical action that we can take against this problem? So when I saw my web design company, I knew that I don't have samples of job and testimonials. So the massive radical action was design 10 websites as fast as you can. So you have samples of jobs and you've learned how to design website and have testimonials, right, to get it all seeded.

So given all this and given your own story, are you, are you fulfilled now? Do you feel like if you're on your, God forbid, on you know, your deathbed again at some point in the future, are you going to feel better about the answers to your questions?

Absolutely. So in my TEDx talk, I actually talk about this concept of living a life with no regrets. And I ask myself quite often, if I end up on my deathbed, is there anything that I would regret? And if there is anything on that list I will do everything in my power to change it. I do everything in my power to change it.

So the practice is to make sure that you are constantly asking the question, and then you can change whatever it is along the way rather than wait until it is too late.

Exactly. Because lots of people say, do I regret anything? And they are thinking a lot, like, really materialistically.

Yes.

The essence of that question is related to living true to your heart. If it comes to living true to your heart and today's your last day in this planet, would you regret anything? Was there anything that was true to your heart that you always wanted to do and you didn't? And I feel like that puts you on different journeys. In life. Like for me, at one point it was creating success, right? And then after that, it was happiness. And then after that, actually it was success. And there was fulfillment. Like I created success, financial success, other things. But I'm like, are you, are you fulfilled? And I'm like, no, I'm not fulfilled. That created success and fulfillment. I'm like, but are you happy? Like, do you have—

What's the difference between happiness and fulfillment?

This is an interesting thing. So fulfillment, from my point of view, is when you are doing things that you're meant to do in the world every day. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you are living a happy life. There is a chance that your work is giving you that fulfillment. But you step out of that work and then you suddenly have lots of other issues. So there are many things that we have in our life that can block our happiness. So many people, including myself, from time to time in my life, have used work as a way to run away from things that, that don't— that stop me from happiness.

Right.

You know, and sometimes even our work isn't a solution to our happiness. Right. So you can be totally fulfilled but not happy.

Yeah.

And, and the majority of times many people talk about like being successful and then they're like many people have been successful and say we were successful but not fulfilled. But there were actually a couple of times in my life that I was successful and fulfilled. But I wasn't happy. And that happiness came from different things, and lack of happiness came from different things, right?

Can you give me an example, like something that brought happy— or a thing that you did that brought happiness when you felt like you didn't have enough? Yeah.

So one of the things for me, for example, was living true to who I was based on the things that I felt. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation if you share your true feelings, you're being judged in the ways that you don't want to be judged. And then you are like, okay, so I'm going to not share it. And every day that becomes a bigger and bigger and bigger issue. But when you are, when you are so concerned about your success or when you're so concerned about fulfillment, maybe you're too busy to actually really realize that. But then when you have the success and fulfillment down and then you're like, I have done all these things in my life, I have achieved all these things, I deserve to be myself, right? And yet if I want to share this, I can't.

And that would make you unhappy, and that stops you from being happy.

You're successful, you're fulfilled, but you're not happy. You know, it's an interesting journey because when you go through that happiness, there is a chance you end up losing so many things that were the foundation of that that fulfillment. Yeah, but you rebuild your life again. But now this time you have the happiness and you have— you recreate that success and you recreate that fulfillment. It's— I personally feel like this is an amazing thing for us humans because we can, we can go through all these experiences. Yeah, we can go through all these experiences. And when we learn to do this once, we can recreate them for the second time and the third time and the fourth time. I used to think there is a destination and I learned there is no destination. Numbers always can grow. You have a six-figure business, you can have a seven-figure business. You have a seven-figure business, you can have an eight-figure company. You have an eight-figure company, you can have a nine-figure company and so on and so forth. And the number of— and how many figures you have in your company is 7, 8, 9. Makes zero impact on your happiness, right? Like sometimes people say, you know, it doesn't matter like what you're driving. If you are unhappy, you're unhappy. And people say, I can be crying in a Hyundai or I can be crying in a Ferrari. I prefer to cry in a Ferrari, right? And I tell you, even if you're crying in a Ferrari, you're still crying.

Yeah, it's a good point because you have the old adage, you know, money can't buy you happiness, but sure makes misery a lot better. Yeah, but to your point, I guess you're saying you're still miserable, you know? So it's, it's not like it's okay.

I remember one of the worst days of my life was when I was in a really good hotel in Vegas in one of the best suites in that hotel. I was laying on the bed and I didn't even want to leave the hotel room. And it didn't matter for me at that point if I was in that bed, in that suite. I don't remember even how much it cost a night, but like thousands of dollars a night cost. And it really didn't matter if I was there or if I was in a tent.

It almost could be that it amplifies it, right? It's like, because you're almost like sitting there saying, here I am in this big suite that I should be enjoying and I can't enjoy it. It almost makes it worse in some respects, I'd imagine, that saying that, hey, if you're in a tent in nature, maybe you'd connect somehow.

Actually, last year in 2021, I got on my bicycle. I shrunk my life so everything that I need in life just fits on a bicycle.

Wow.

And rode that bike from Seattle all the way to San Diego from Pacific Coast Highway. 2,000 miles. Wow. At 200— I'm 270 pounds. With 270 pounds and not being ready, to ride my bike.

What caused you to do that?

It was easier to be on a bike than— and, and just have those things around me than dealing with the feelings that I was feeling in a multimillion-dollar house that I was living in. That bike felt more comfortable than living in a multimillion-dollar house and driving a luxury car and all of those things.

Wow.

Had a tent and like slept on campgrounds. And at one point of this, actually, like, it was like, you know, I'm going to do this for a physical challenge. And it became just much, much bigger than that. You know, at one point of this thing, I actually fell and hit the ground face first and broke a tooth, dislocated my nose, got a hairline fracture to my left wrist. And a cop came and was looking at me. It's like, do you want me to call you an ambulance? And I said, what does the ambulance want to do for me right now? And he was like, I don't know, like, take you to a hospital. I'm like, so to do what exactly? I had the scraped knees and I got a bandage, bandaged my scraped knees. I put a bandage around my wrist, asked the cop because my, my wheel had turned a little bit. So I asked the cop to fix that for me. So I unscrewed it and just like, can you fix this for me? Because I can't do that because my wrist is broken. So he fixed that for me. And put my nose back in its place right there on the side of the road and sat on the bike and continued riding the bike. And I always think about that, why, right? I was thinking, well, because if I had stopped, it wouldn't mean anything. Like, what did they want to do? They wanted to take me to the hospital and they leave the bike on the side of the road. They couldn't take the bike.

right?

And that bike was all I had, kind of, in a way. Like, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank account, but at that moment— but that bike meant more to me than anything else. I, I wanted to continue riding the bike because I was safer. I was more comfortable on that bike than being anywhere else.

So you kept going and then you made it to— you went to San Diego.

I made it to San Diego. Yeah, I made it to San Diego.

So how did your life change after doing something like that?

Well, my life changed actually drastically. In the middle of that bike ride, I actually asked my wife to separate, went through a divorce, and we— and then so many other things. But this is an interesting, interesting thing, Patrick, because we're talking about entrepreneurship. I actually always wanted to know, as entrepreneurs, what's the equivalent feeling of the hardship that an entrepreneur feels if you want to compare it physically, right? Because I knew, like, I knew that I have gone through so many hardships as an entrepreneur, and I never had felt that amount of hardship physically, right? And but then during that bike ride, actually, I figured it out. And I'll tell you what it was. So the day that I fell and broke my tooth, got a hairline fracture to my wrist, both knees scraped, dislocated nose, all of those things, I always started riding my bike with empty stomach because I didn't want to eat and then ride, right? So and that day I was riding through Big Sur. 100 miles. It's called the Century Ride. It's a century ride. It's 100 miles through Big Sur, about 5,700 feet going up and 5,700 feet coming down. There are two mountains there. Anyways, now I fell right before my lunch, so I started at 8 a.m. and I fell around noon, which I'd ridden bike about 50 miles at that point. And I fell. So I was hungry and I broke my tooth and got blue to my face. So after I continued riding my bike, I went to eat a little piece of food and I realized I can't. I can't eat, right? Because my front teeth were broken. And I continued riding the bike for another 50 miles. With a broken wrist and started getting cold.

Yeah.

And it got colder and colder and colder. And I went to get my gloves. I realized when I fell down, my gloves also fell. But because I also had a fractured wrist, I couldn't open my bag to get my warm clothes out of the bag. So I was riding with shorts and a t-shirt. Was about 44 degrees. And with all of those things, I was still riding the bike. I was like, nah, entrepreneurship is harder than this. I honestly felt like I have done things in entrepreneurship that was harder than that. And then it became dark and it became foggy. I had lights on my back, but I was not sure if the cars can see me because there was fog. It was really bad. That, right? Pitch dark. And at that point I realized this, this is the equivalent to the hardship that we experience as an entrepreneur. At any given second, we don't know who is going to hit us from the back. We also don't know where we are heading. I could only see 10 feet ahead and I'm riding on the side of this road. And I have this flickering light right in front of the bike. And my wrist is tired. One is broken, one is tired, and the knees are scraped. And I'm like, yeah.

And you're still going.

I still went. I'm like, what would I do? What would I do? Stand by the side of the road. So what? Right. The only way was getting myself to the hotel and hope that the hotel has soup for me to eat because I couldn't eat solid food. Well, and I got myself to the hotel and the soup and the hotel had soup. So they looked at me, the hotel people at the hotel looked at me, but I was bloody like I was bloody everywhere, right? Because my nose was bleeding like my hand, my knees, everywhere was bloody. And they looked at me and they were like, what can we do for you?

I'm just, give me soup.

Just give me soup. And I actually, I think I got 2 bowls of soup that night and just went and got a hot shower. And everywhere was burning, like everywhere. My face, my nose, my chin, because I kind of scraped my chin as well. And, and then rebandaged myself and I went to sleep. I don't know how long I slept. I slept a lot. And then that, that day I rested. And then the next day I had to ride another 70 miles, I think, to get myself to a city that had a dentist that I could go to, just to fix my teeth. And then, well, and then fix my hand and fix everything else.

But So let's summarize all this. So, you know, because your life, you know, at least up to this point, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, starting with your first experience being a failure, you know, then getting a mentor and figuring some things out, and then moving to a foreign country. And then, you know, again, I think your metaphor about saying, you know, you don't know if somebody's going to hit you from the back, you know, there's political unrest, and, you know, that's, uh, you're properties aren't going to sell and be able to get you the money that's getting hit from the back. Right. But somehow you got to keep going.

Yeah. And I mean, in day to day of the business, like when the pandemic hit, was it like hitting from back? Like, like somebody just hit you from back. Many people, many restaurants lost everything.

They lost everything overnight.

Like when you are an entrepreneur, you wake up one day and there is a chance of something coming at you, right? —Yeah. —It's just the way that it is.

—But in the end, it's about getting to fulfillment, getting to happiness, right? And certainly if you're in survival financially, you got to get past that so you can work on these other things, right? And so now here you are this many years in and asking yourself the question about Do I have regrets right now or do I not have regrets? So summing it all up, now you're the person that can be or is the mentor, I'm sure, to other entrepreneurs. How do you frame this up for them in saying, if I'm going to mentor you, here's the things that I care about?

Well, the biggest thing for me is knowing your life purpose and knowing that you're living your life true to your purpose. I always tell people, I never look at sales as sales. I always look at it as an invitation. The programs, the packages, everything that you have, everything that you offer is something that can make an impact in people's lives. And you are inviting people to work with you to make that impact. You're going to work 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15 hours a day. You might as well do it on something that fulfills you. Yeah, you might as well do it on something that is aligned with your life purpose and what you want to create in this world. And you want to work with people that you're passionate to work with. No, if you're hanging out with the people that you work with from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and then at 10 p.m. you want to go for a walk, and one of those people says, can I come for a walk with you? You don't think, oh, I'm tired of looking at these people's faces, right? You say, I would love to.

Yeah, I've had it both ways. I know.

Yes, it's a huge difference. Now, you might be an introvert and say, hey, you know, like, I need a little bit of time to myself and not want to walk. Not because you don't like this person or these people, because you just want to have your alone time. And that's, that's a different thing, right? Yeah. But, but you love the people that you work with. You love the impact that you are making in the world. And you are living true to your heart every single day. And that's the important thing.

I think that's great advice. Well, I very much appreciate you coming here and openly sharing your own story and your own thoughts and what you've understood about your life as an entrepreneur and how it might impact other people who are watching us right now. So I appreciate you making this trip and being here. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm really glad being here. Thank you very much for this interview. Not lots of people talk about this side of entrepreneurship. I already talk about, you know, the multimillion-dollar houses and the cars and everything else, which I mean, that also is part of this life, you know. But also many people who had all of those things, could lose them overnight, you know, and have lost them overnight, you know, and rebuilt it. Yeah. And, and did it better and with, with better results, with being more aligned.

And yeah, and they got to learn who they were without the car in the house. Exactly. Yeah.

It's just important. It's not about destination. It's about the journey and enjoying the journey and knowing that If you are not doing this, you were doing something. You were doing something. Might as well enjoy the journey that you chose to follow.

For sure. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. For another amazing Entrepreneur Brain interview, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

Every single person can choose to be someone who's entrepreneurial, even if they don't have creativity as one of their traits. If it's about who you know more than what you know, then how do you even go down that pathway?

Especially because at school