A man raised by parents who struggled with scarcity spent years chasing high-paying jobs, believing money would make him happy. A Brazilian woman's invitation to move shifted everything: he realized wealth could feel easy instead of painful. Now he wishes he'd learned this decades earlier.
Got to the point where all my money was gone, but I got this call from a girl I was loosely dating and she said, I just had this dream that you and I moved to Brazil. She was from Brazil. And I thought, yeah, why not?
Rhett Taylor is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Ned, a Boulder-based natural remedies company known for premium CBD products. He built Ned to offer honest, nature-based alternatives to pharmaceuticals and now focuses on helping others live with more purpose and connection to nature.
Both my parents grew up in scarcity. That was that moment where I decided, yeah, no more. You just go out and get the best grades you can, and then you get the best job you can, and then you make as much money as you can and fuck everything else. And that'll make you happy. That will make you happy. Ugh, the cost of all those years spent chasing money. I wish I had known that earlier. I always idolized the hardest worker in the room, the first one in, the last one out. You know, all these stories.
That 10-year-old kid. Yeah. In the bus station. It's hard to get money and I can do hard things.
Yeah. Yes, yes. And now I've completely flipped that 180 degrees to money should be easy. It can be easy. I feel wealthier than I ever have been. I really wish I had known that. I would pay millions of dollars for that, that learning and growth. So what did you learn? Oh, Mike, so much.
