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Dan Martell What was your childhood like

Name: Dan Martell What was your childhood like
Uploaded: 2023-03-01T17:00:41+00:00
Duration: 1 min 36 s
Channel: Tyler Wagner
Description: In this interview excerpt, Dan Martell recounts a turbulent childhood marked by his mother's addiction, a frequently traveling father, and an ADHD…

1 Mar 2023 · 2 min

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1:36

In this interview excerpt, Dan Martell recounts a turbulent childhood marked by his mother's addiction, a frequently traveling father, and an ADHD diagnosis at age 11. By 13 he entered foster care after anger issues, experienced his parents' divorce, and was introduced to drugs. By 17 he had been incarcerated twice and attempted a suicidal high‑speed chase with a handgun, ending up in an adult prison in Eastern Canada. After release, he entered a year‑long rehab program at Portage, which helped him rebuild family relationships and heal trauma. While cleaning a cabin at the center, he discovered an old computer and a Java programming book; following the tutorial, he successfully ran a "Hello, world" program, marking the beginning of his transformation from a troubled youth to a tech entrepreneur.

Chapters

Before all this, what was your childhood like? I know it wasn't the easiest of childhoods, I guess you could say.
I grew up in a really challenging environment. I'm the second oldest of four. My mom's struggle with addiction and alcoholism. My dad was in sales, so just traveling a lot to try to make ends meet with four kids. And I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 11. Honestly, from that age onward, I always felt like there was something wrong with me. I was broke. When I was 13, I got taken out of my home just because of some of the anger issues I had in the environment I was in. Got put into the foster care system. When I was 13, my parents got divorced. I got introduced to drugs, and then my life just spiraled out of control to a point where I had been in a prison twice by the time I was 17 and tried to take my life in a high-speed chase where I had a handgun sitting next to me and told myself when I stole the car that I was going to pull the gun and let the police do their job and ended up crashing the side of a house. And when I went for the gun, for whatever reason, it got stuck. And I woke up sober the next morning in a jail cell, kind of wondering what my life was going to look like. So I was 16 at the time, I believe. I ended up doing 6 months in adult prison due to the severity of my crime in Eastern Canada. Eventually got released to a rehab center called Portage, this incredible place that saved my life. It allowed me to rebuild my relationship with my family and heal a lot of trauma and wounds that had been built. And after a very long program, almost a year, I was helping Rick, the maintenance guy, clean out one of the cabins because it was built on an old church camp. And I found this old computer with a book on Java programming sitting next to it and opened it up and I followed the instructions, chapter 1, this yellow book, and I got the computer to say, "Hello, world."