Failure Saved My Life—Here's How

Behind every setback is the seed of equal or greater opportunity. It's like, okay, if that's really true, then how can I use these setbacks to be a great, great gift for me? And so that was my obsession.

You seem to know a lot about psychedelics and drugs. How did you get into that space of trying it out?

Yeah, I never did them in high school or college, but When my wife was battling depression, you know, we had a 2.5-year battle where my wife's a 3-time suicide survivor from a crazy traumatic abuse, uh, abusive background. And yeah, well, it's a— at the end of the day, now we're on the other side and it's a gift. But, you know, during the season of, of trying to get her well, and that was in October 2020 when, when it started, it was pretty desperate. I was like, nothing was working. She was pretty stuck. Her nervous system was very much frozen, as we were talking about, frozen in a state of suffering. What we had to do is, uh, I, I was looking for what's the most groundbreaking solutions for depression and PTSD that are lasting cures, not just helping us manage and cope with the symptoms, which is what most antidepressants typically do. And psychedelics was— were showing and are showing tremendous potential for it. Frankly, they're considered breakthrough drug in the US, which means they have so much potential that the FDA, our Federal Drug Administration, has accelerated the approval process, and they're expected to both be approved this year for MDMA use and psilocybin. Yeah.

Okay.

And for PTSD and depression, which, you know, so because they're showing that you can essentially in the toughest cases, 93% of people will get cured. Wow. With the right guidance. And not just— Incredible. Exactly. Versus like the best SSRIs, antidepressants typically would do is like a 5% or 10% improvement versus 93%.

That is shocking. You also mentioned NAD, creatine, and many more when it comes to neurotransmitter optimization. Can you give a word for each one of those and dive into that for me, please?

Yeah. So NAD. So when I think of neuro optimization, I'm thinking about how do I get my nervous system to be truly optimized, which means am I going to show up with love? Am I going to show up with joy? Am I going to show up with that confidence and that passion to create or do or lead or speak or whatever my thing is that I'm doing at the time? I need to be able to show up at the highest level. So, one of the things I see a lot is people are really fatigued. Now, you're 19, so you may not battle this, but heck, if you go out, party really hard, sleep 4 hours, have a big fight with your girlfriend, whatever, you know, over-reliant on caffeine, all these things, you know what? Your adrenals will get burned out. So I look at the neurochemistry, I look at the relational patterns. It's kind of the core ingredients, neurochemistry. And I'm looking at like things like neurotransmitters. NAD is a neurotransmitter. It's, you know, the most valuable fuel source for your cells. So 500 cellular processes use NAD as the primary fuel source. So if you are depleted energetically, then you're definitely depleted in your NAD levels. And your brain is 3%— less than 3% of your body weight, but uses 25 to 30% of your body's energy. So your brain's really going to be malfunctioning if you are energetically depleted.

Yeah, clearly.

And so most people that are battling depression, guess what? Their brains are really— they're tired. And so therefore, their brains are really tired, and they just feel that, right? So That's a big thing. Um, and then I'm looking at like, are there blockages, like the traumas and the, and the PTSDs, or limiting beliefs, limiting beliefs, fears, doubts, anxieties that are just kind of unconsciously sabotaging, where you might be aware of how they're sabotaging and limiting you. Those are some things that I'm constantly looking at as well.

Yeah, to go back to limiting beliefs, I studied this again recently because I found it really fascinating how it's basically self-hypnosis, right? By telling yourself, yeah, I'm crap, or I'm not good in this, I'm not good in that, by extension you're just not going to be good. Because how in any world could you be good at something if you keep saying to yourself, yeah, I'm crap? But then the other way around works. Like, if I'm obviously to some extent, you're not going to be like, yes, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm going to be rich. No. It's all about convincing yourself and finding the cues to validate your thoughts. So I really found that fascinating. How do you, do you, do you use that too in a way of some kind of manifestation?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's what I found, what I didn't understand before was, you know, I thought it was all in the mindset. Well, it's much more in your energy of belief. How you think, how you feel, like what you really feel is more important than what you think. And but it's hard for a lot of us to get to our feelings. As a dude, I have a disadvantage compared to my wife who is much more able to access her feelings naturally. Now I can access them now far better than I could because I've done some of the work. I've MDMA actually really helps men access their feelings in a way that you can't even really imagine. I've heard. Yeah, because it just— it's like I had a gravel road between my heart and my brain. Now I have a 4-lane highway because of work I've done. But for a while I had a gravel road. I was like a walking head. My wife was like a walking heart.

I wanted to touch upon this, which is your biggest failures in your in your career? I've heard a rumor you lost a million in a year. Yeah, I guess that'd be part of it too. Say, what were some of your biggest failures and your key takeaways from it?

Yeah, when, when, uh, in 2018 and 2019, I lost over a million dollars over a course of about 18 months. And it was, it was, I mean, you could sum it up in, in a year, but I overall, it was, it was brutal. It was like and I also got married during that time period, so I entered into our marriage like in a really rough spot.

Let's go.

Yeah, yeah, it was not a great way to start the marriage off, but that time period, you know, what happened is I realized, you know what, I'm gonna remake myself and I'm gonna use this season. I'm not gonna waste the season to become a lot more of who I'm meant to be. And so, you know, failures, failures are gifts from above to help, help you learn and grow as long as you receive them, you know. And, um, and so I saw the— I already had a precondition to see failures as a stepping stone. And it— and the metaphor that came to me is, is like, you know, you think of a— when we hop in a, in a flight Right, we're flying from England to Scotland or whatever, right? Well, you're in a Boeing 737 probably, or one of those bigger jets, and you notice when you're taking off, you don't hit anything like visible. You're flying against something that is invisible— resistance, the wind, the air. But you have to hit this invisible thing called air fast enough and hard enough and at a right enough angle that this resistance— it's actually the resistance that forces you up into the night sky. Okay, so I looked at, okay, I hit this thing and these things are really hard. And Napoleon Hill said behind— and Think and Grow Rich said behind every setback is the seed of equal or greater opportunity. It's like, okay, if that's really true, then how can I use these setbacks to be a great, great gift for me? And so that was my obsession. And then I I read, I think, 97 money mindset books in like 2 and a half years to rewrite my relationship with money because I'm not going to let this happen again. I'm going to have developed a much healthier relationship with money as well.

What exactly happened, if you don't mind me asking?

Yeah. So I had my main business, which was my real estate venture. I had a business partner that lost his cool on my team, and ultimately they decided, hey, if he stays, we're quitting. And then I went to him and said, hey, they said this, what do you— I think we need to work on a buyout. And he said, well, what if I just stayed partners but I went away and worked on my anger issues for a year and then maybe come— came back? I came back and proposed that to the team. I didn't understand trauma very well at this point, but he had kind of traumatized a couple of the team members. And guess what? They all resigned. Uh, well, not all, but most of them did.

Okay.

Yeah. And as a result, um, I was kind of stung. I had some trauma. I actually got some trauma from that moment and didn't want to do real estate as a result. Um, is that still the case? No, I don't really— no, I've worked through the trauma, but I was kind of bored with— emotionally bored with real estate for years anyhow. Looking back, I had some PTSD from that because right 2 months before our wedding in Florence, Italy, I could see that my business was going to run out of money in a couple of months. That was not fun as a thought. Then I also had a real estate flip, the only property I ever lost money on that went really bad. I lost almost $250,000 in that venture, and that was a nightmare of a situation as well.

So, yeah, it's funny. I said I really like your metaphor, by the way, about the plane. It's really well said, because after all, failure is the best teacher. And I believe there's too many people that fear failure too much. And they don't end up doing anything, and they just become the failure inevitably. I find that really sad. So I really like your message there. It's really well said.