A driven personality rooted in dopamine receptor genes helped this speaker thrive under pressure, but it also made him addicted to chaos. After achieving financial security, he deliberately created disorder—buying a struggling startup, building a house, expanding his family—chasing the calm he felt in crisis. The startup failed and cost him substantially.
One of the things that made me successful was my driven personality type. And that is when we actually thrive when our backs are against the wall, we have a calm in the chaos. And there's actually a genetic reason for that. If we have the D2 or D4 gene, as well as a high level of neuropeptide Y, that actually allows us to— when other people might engage in fight or flight responses, we actually calm and go into hyperfocus mode. Which is incredibly valuable, but it can be detrimental when it comes to keeping and preserving wealth. Because when we feel that calm in the chaos, and we start to get to a place in our lives when we're safe, we actually tend to start throwing wrenches into our life. So we go out and acquire another company, we build a new house, we have another kid, we buy a puppy, we do these things to inject chaos, because we actually feel more calm and safe when we're in that chaotic environment. And it certainly came back to bite me after I sold my company, I ended up acquiring a distressed startup because I was addicted to the chaos. And I ended up losing a ton of money.
