Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.106: From Ego Death to Entrepreneurship: The Making of a $10M Founder w/ Neal Thakkar | The Ambitious Podcast

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EP.106: From Ego Death to Entrepreneurship: The Making of a $10M Founder w/ Neal Thakkar | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

0:00
Hey, become like a multimillionaire in 90 days.
0:03
You have no idea what you're doing basically ever, at any
0:06
phase of entrepreneurship. I was so clueless and I was in
0:09
so much pain. The.
0:10
Death of the dream. You're so emotionally, mentally
0:13
invested. You're grieving this vision that
0:16
you saw for yourself. I believe that it takes at least
0:19
five years for you to really know at all what you're doing as
0:22
an entrepreneur. Nothing in my life that has ever
0:24
been in a bushmitter that ended up being something that brought
0:27
me fulfillment came from me having a plan for it first.
0:30
When there's an agenda, we can limit ourselves for what we
0:32
think is possible. You're not racing with anybody.
0:34
You're certainly not racing with yourself.
0:36
You're not running out of time. You're exactly where you're
0:38
supposed to be. Hello you guys and welcome back
0:41
to Ambitious. Today we are talking with an
0:43
incredible guest, Neil. And today's episode is really,
0:47
it is so real, it is so raw and it was just such a deep
0:51
conversation that I think is going to be so incredibly
0:53
powerful for you. We talk all things success,
0:57
failure, and also what it truly looks like to rebuild after a
1:01
failure. And today being joined by Neil,
1:04
I just have to tell you a little bit about him because he's
1:06
absolutely incredible. He is an entrepreneur,
1:08
performance strategist and the founder of Integrity First
1:11
Funding, one of the fastest growing capital consulting
1:14
companies, helping entrepreneurs to secure 50,000 to $250,000
1:19
plus in business funding. What makes Neil's story so
1:23
powerful isn't just what he's building now, but truthfully, it
1:26
is everything that he has gone through.
1:28
He has forged through adversity. From Division One soccer career
1:32
that was cut short due to an injury, to battling addiction,
1:35
overdosing, and to becoming and building A7 figure supplement
1:39
company that eventually went bankrupt due to predatory
1:42
funding. Neil has lived through the kind
1:45
of losses that I'm going to be honest in today's story, you
1:48
know, would make most people quit.
1:52
And instead of staying down, he rebuilt his life and business
1:55
from nothing. And that season shaped the
1:58
values that define his leadership today, extreme
2:01
ownership, humility, discipline, compassion and relentless
2:05
commitment to excellence. And so I want to tell you a
2:08
little bit in listening today what you're going to get because
2:12
this conversation was incredibly moving for me.
2:15
And I literally so much so that I came back and watched this
2:19
episode myself after the recording because I found it so
2:22
incredibly insightful from the things he shared.
2:24
There's so many 1 liners in it. Why the moment you win in
2:28
business doesn't actually feel winning at all, and the painful
2:32
truth about what it actually feels like when you hit your
2:35
first million. His perspective shifting insight
2:38
that you can do anything but you can't do everything.
2:41
And why ambitious people really struggle the most with that
2:44
reality. We discussed the hidden danger
2:46
of taking extreme ownership and why you are responsible.
2:50
You are also having to say you were responsible and what the
2:54
cost truly is of playing big. We talked about the physical
2:57
transformation of literally changing his identity after
3:00
addiction and why he gained 90 lbs as a bodybuilder and became
3:04
a completely different person, not just physically but
3:07
mentally. He discusses the leadership
3:09
lesson that most entrepreneurs miss.
3:10
The difference between leading people of inspiring intrinsic
3:14
motivation versus managing people such as organizing tasks
3:18
and why confusing the 2 is often capping people's growth.
3:22
And we also discuss his brutal wake up call about predatory
3:25
funding that cost him a 7 figure business, where he talks about
3:29
that he owed $2000 just for waking up in the morning and how
3:33
pain actually became his mission to help other entrepreneurs to
3:38
avoid the same trap. Neil, I will say, is somebody
3:41
that I had the absolute pleasure of meeting in person.
3:44
I got to be able to meet him at an event and to see his energy
3:48
and share small parts of his story there, but really be able
3:51
to go into it in such a deeper level in this episode.
3:54
This is an episode you will walk away inspired, moved, and truly
3:58
in a deep state of reflection as I was, which caused me to come
4:01
back to it. So with all of that being said,
4:04
I can't wait for you to meet Neil and I will see you in the
4:06
episode. So without further ado, let's
4:08
get started. Hello you guys and welcome back
4:18
to Ambitious Today. I am so excited for today's
4:21
interview and today's guest in general because I was just
4:24
saying to him before we press record that I was diving into
4:28
his story. And while he has a lot of
4:31
incredible highlights and accolades, his story and the
4:35
actual journey I feel like on how he got to this place and the
4:38
insights and takeaways along the way are gonna be so insanely
4:42
valuable for you. And I just, I can't wait to dive
4:44
in. So, Neil, welcome to the show.
4:46
Hello, how are you? Thanks for having me.
4:48
Yeah, I'm excited to dive in. I, I feel like, and I know I was
4:52
just saying this to you, I think, you know, when anyone
4:56
researches you, they're gonna see this highlight what you see
4:59
in a newspaper, in a magazine of 10 million.
5:01
And they go, OK, whoa. Like, and instantly I feel like
5:04
that can feel really impressive, of course, as it is.
5:08
But I think there's a lot of context before that and there's
5:11
also a lot of context after that.
5:13
So I guess I want to rewind first to talk about you in the
5:18
early stages, you growing up, because I think that when we see
5:23
these big numbers or big achievements that anyone's been
5:25
able to do as you have, most people wonder like, is he just
5:29
why you're different? Did he, did he have, you know,
5:32
an upper hand? Did he have a hand out from
5:34
somebody? Like, what do I need to be?
5:36
Do you have to achieve what he's done?
5:40
And I'm curious, like growing up, what did that look like?
5:43
Did you have kind of this knowing that you were going to
5:46
be this incredible success or you know, what did that look
5:49
like when you were growing up? That's that's a really
5:52
interesting question. That's actually a really cool
5:53
place to start, right? Because like, yeah, like when we
5:56
look at anything someone accomplishes like, like their
5:59
hat, there is a story behind that, right?
6:01
And that that 10 million is, is obviously what I've sold with
6:04
myself and the company, which no longer exists.
6:07
But I mean, like, I think that anyone and, and can you, you
6:11
correct me if I'm wrong, but like, I think anyone that that
6:13
becomes an entrepreneur, like kind of has a knowing that
6:17
there's something a little different about them.
6:19
So I think growing up, I always knew that I had something
6:21
different about me. Now was it that like that
6:25
special gene, if you will? No, it was probably a lot of
6:28
doubt, to be honest with you, a lot of like fear, a lot of like,
6:32
what if I'm not good enough? But there was also this like
6:35
this persistence that I always had.
6:36
And like, I think personally, the, the thing that's attributed
6:40
to any success I've ever had has, has not really been a
6:43
particular like talent OR a particular skill set, but more
6:46
so just a like a unquenchable, if that's a word, desire to, to
6:51
just keep going, right. And so I think, I think just
6:54
being younger, I, I always kept going.
6:56
Even in my adulthood, I just always keep going.
6:58
But did I, this is a fascinating question.
7:01
Did I know there was something different?
7:02
Yes, But I don't think it was like anything that most of us
7:06
entrepreneurs don't believe we have, if that makes sense, you
7:09
know well like. Your family was your family, I
7:12
guess like obviously looking at the success you've had or just
7:16
like frankly the opportunities that you've been involved with,
7:19
was that something that when you grew up your family had talked
7:23
about it was really normal or was this kind of like, for me at
7:25
least, my upbringing was like the classic five step plan.
7:28
Like you go to school, you get a degree, you go, you go get a
7:31
job, you make 6 figures, white pick a fence, husband, dog,
7:35
kids, boom, you're done. Like that was what you made it.
7:38
If you achieved that. I think for me, I never even got
7:43
curious about anything else because I just was OK, that's
7:46
the way. And I kind of feel like for me,
7:48
I was indirectly along the way. Slowly these pivots put me in a
7:52
different path because none of the traditional stuff, like I
7:55
wasn't traditionally smart when it came to, you know, university
7:59
and things like that and the traditional school system.
8:02
I was very creative, very like, just like innovative, kind of
8:05
wanting to do my own thing, which now has served me very
8:07
well. At the time, that was not like
8:10
entrepreneurship was not something that I ever thought
8:12
of. But I realize now looking back
8:14
that the skills I gained during that time or like, I guess like
8:19
my yeah, my skills are my gifts of what I saw at the time to be
8:23
something that was limiting me were actually the thing that was
8:25
pushing me toward entrepreneurship.
8:26
But I think it came from my parents pushing this agenda on
8:29
me and me being like, no, this feels like it doesn't fit.
8:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, and that's,
8:35
that's I, that's like a common story is that that
8:37
juxtaposition, right? Where it's like you're pushed
8:39
down a certain path, I think with so much pressure, if you
8:43
will, that like you can see that that's not for you.
8:46
Now, for me personally, that wasn't actually the case.
8:48
So my father was marked to be an actor and a singer when he was
8:51
in India. He ended up marrying my mom and
8:53
coming to here and just for whatever reason that that dream
8:56
didn't work out. But he was always someone who
8:58
supported me chasing my dreams. So like when I went to college,
9:02
I ended up getting a corporate job that after six months out of
9:05
college, I quit out of encouragement from him.
9:08
So I have to say like I actually had the support to just pursue
9:11
whatever I wanted to. And so there were many seasons
9:15
where I was wandering, I think because I was so supported in
9:18
doing whatever I wanted. So I was not forced to do
9:20
anything, which almost like had its own challenges in itself
9:23
because we were not pushed in One Direction.
9:25
You kind of you kind of wander. But what I will say is whether
9:28
it was like a conscious, like encouragement or just like the
9:31
subconscious, kind of like things that were spoken in
9:34
between. My father always wanted me to
9:36
just pursue my dreams, do what I wanted to.
9:37
I think because he never got the chance to up until now.
9:41
He's now in his 60s and he has an album coming out on the 14th
9:45
of December. So he he decided to pursue his
9:48
dreams after after he saw his kids do that, which is cool.
9:50
But yeah, I mean, and, and I have to say I'm so grateful for
9:53
that because I find that most, most kids are pushed to a
9:57
certain path, to a certain agenda.
9:59
But no, I was, I was, you want to be an athlete, go be an
10:02
athlete. You want to be an entrepreneur,
10:03
go be an entrepreneur. You know, and I think where that
10:05
really was the most touching to me was after I had failed.
10:09
And then when I had failed big my my father still was like,
10:11
Nah, like you're not going to your job, you know?
10:13
So that was that was cool. That was really cool.
10:17
And like, do you feel like maybe when you were younger, you knew
10:20
you were just going to do something big, but you didn't
10:23
know what it was? Or like, when you like, you know
10:24
how when kids are young, they're like, oh, I want to be a
10:26
teacher. I want to be a lawyer.
10:28
Like when you were younger, what did you see for yourself?
10:31
Or was that maybe too open? Because you're like, technically
10:33
the world is your oyster, so I could be anything.
10:36
Yeah, so, so fortunately I fell upon soccer.
10:38
I was actually really good. I thought it was going to be a
10:40
professional athlete. You know, I played Division 11
10:42
soccer, which is behind the collegial level.
10:44
So I thought it was going to be a professional.
10:46
So I was pretty narrow minded with with that.
10:49
So, you know, like ever since I was six years old, I was kind of
10:52
the same thing for for up until I was about 18 was professional
10:55
athlete. I was that was the goal.
10:57
I think before that was astronaut, but then once.
11:01
OK. Yeah, yeah, I.
11:02
Love it, I love it. So you end up in soccer and what
11:06
happens from that point? So I was pretty good.
11:09
I was pretty good. I didn't have it here mentally.
11:11
Like when I reflect back now, I realized I was never going to go
11:14
pro because I didn't have the right like mindset or mentality,
11:17
but I was, I was very good. No, this is kind of like a
11:21
common recurring theme for me is because some such a young age, I
11:24
always had that thing that I was so laser focused on in seasons
11:28
where I don't, I get lost and like I become a liability to
11:31
myself and everybody around me. So I ended up kind of losing
11:35
that professional dream. And like for anybody that's
11:38
like, had like an ego death or like lost their identity because
11:41
it's so wrapped up in a thing. Like, that's such a common pain
11:45
that I've observed happens with like high achieving people, high
11:49
performing people. And so at the age of 18, I, I
11:52
get injured, you know, the whole professional dream doesn't work
11:55
out and I get caught up and wrapped up in the wrong things,
11:57
you know, so, so young, young boy, you know, top of the world.
12:01
My egos is huge because I'm, I'm AD 1 athlete.
12:03
And then all of a sudden, you know, I believe I'm nothing,
12:06
which is obviously not true, but at the time, that's what you
12:09
believe. So ended up getting wrapped up
12:11
in addiction and I see this happen to a lot of people where
12:14
they lose their identity and they just like kind of fall into
12:16
a world of sin, which was really, it was a very painful,
12:20
painful period for me. But I think out of that is where
12:24
entrepreneurship was born for me because I end up cleaning my
12:26
life up after that point and, you know, I get into new
12:30
tropics, which are brain supplements.
12:32
So that was kind of like a turning point in into
12:34
entrepreneurship for me. But yeah, that's kind of the
12:37
story, you know? Well, like when you had
12:39
obviously you have this vision of being a professional athlete
12:41
and to have just life whatever in whatever circumstance shift
12:46
gears for you when you said like obviously your identity, I think
12:50
that that happens in different flavors in a lot of people's
12:52
lives. Like, I think for even my mom
12:56
was a single mom of four and her vision was, OK, great, we're
12:59
gonna have this beautiful family, both have great careers.
13:01
And then she ended up raising us all on her own.
13:03
It was like this, aggressive, like life pivoted her path.
13:06
Yeah, yeah. Without necessarily her, there's
13:09
nothing she could do about it. It was just like, or for you,
13:11
like getting injured, like. It just was the reality of the
13:13
time. Yeah.
13:14
But I think that process so painful because we talk often,
13:19
her and I, about the death of the dream, which is that you're
13:22
so emotionally, mentally invested, like this is who I'm
13:26
going to be. This is the life I'm going to
13:28
have. And so then when something
13:30
happens, you're grieving this vision that you saw for yourself
13:35
or like for you, you're like, I'm going to be an athlete.
13:37
And it's like to not have that vision.
13:39
And you're like, OK, this dream has to die.
13:42
How was that period for you to say, OK, Like who is Neil now?
13:46
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, and to that point, like I
13:49
when I talked about the identity, really like, like
13:51
losing yourself and that ego death, like you nodded your head
13:54
like like really understanding. So it's one of those like
13:56
painful experiences that unless you go through it like it's,
13:59
it's, it's almost impossible to characterize because it is, it
14:03
is so painful. And that's why like right now my
14:06
whole mantra is who, not what? Like it doesn't matter what the
14:09
vehicle for me is anymore. It matters like who I've become
14:13
in the process and the journey because like that's the whole
14:16
thing is like these dreams and these goals could be taken away
14:18
from us at any moment, right? And like we look at our favorite
14:21
professional athletes, like their careers are so fragile.
14:25
Like, and that's the thing I realized, like anyone dream can
14:28
be so fragile. You know, I'm in the banking
14:30
industry right now for the finance industry.
14:31
Like God forbid, like everything tightens up and regulations
14:34
tighten up and I can't get people business funding like
14:37
that could go. But it's like, do I have the
14:39
lessons of the discipline of the mental toughness, of the
14:43
resilience of the resourcefulness, right.
14:45
So like back then, I was so clueless and I was in so much
14:49
pain. But I think as I pulled myself
14:52
out of it, I made this recognition like it doesn't
14:54
matter what I'm doing, it matters who I'm becoming.
14:56
And that's where my fascination with transformation of the ego
15:00
came from. But let me ask you, have you,
15:02
have you had an experience like that where you've like just
15:05
completely lost your identity and, and and and.
15:08
Yeah, so I wanna hear about it. Well, OK, so you know, you know,
15:11
you know George, and so I actually, which is it's very
15:15
recent for me because I until I started coaching with him,
15:20
didn't realize how my like literally my entire identity was
15:24
wrapped up in my business. And what I mean by in the
15:26
business was like in its financial success.
15:29
Yeah. And I was so deeply detached
15:33
from myself. And because I grew up, I have
15:36
kind of a weird roundabout story, which I'll summarize very
15:39
quickly. But basically my parents
15:42
divorced when I was young. My dad's parents who were
15:46
immigrants from Croatia and Germany, they won the lottery of
15:48
$7,000,000. And so that created a lot of
15:53
divide in our family. So for me, I I didn't
15:56
necessarily have a lot of access to those funds nor.
15:59
Did my mom? And so as a result, what it did
16:01
is it created this thing of like, I saw my mom struggle and
16:04
really struggle to provide. And then she did everything she
16:06
could. But she was also a single mom
16:07
before who worked at a bank. And on the contrast, I had this
16:11
other side of my family who had like abundance of resources.
16:14
And then here I am smacked up in the middle.
16:16
So I think for me, I was like, OK, like, I don't want, I don't
16:20
want. And I'm not going to get
16:21
attached to their millions. I'm going to go make my own.
16:23
So it was like, head down, get to work and rewrite this life
16:29
for my mom, who's now 70. And I think because of that,
16:33
like I just never looked up. I wasn't connected to myself.
16:35
I didn't think about anything other than like, OK, just get
16:37
the money, get the money. And if you're good in that
16:40
bucket, you'll be good in everything.
16:41
And I didn't realize that like physically I was not crushing
16:46
relationship wise, not doing great and everything else was
16:50
just like, can't deal with this. Like this is this is the North
16:52
Star. So when I started coaching with
16:56
George, as you know, he does business strategy, but he breaks
16:59
your brain typically in other areas much more, which
17:03
ultimately dominoes into your business.
17:06
And so I remember we did an intensive and I just, he kind of
17:10
the only way I can explain it is like, you know, obviously as a
17:13
series of different exercises he does, but he lifted the veil.
17:18
And I remember I came home from that intensive and it was like,
17:21
I have no idea who I am because I realized I am burnt out and I
17:26
am not motivated for the right reasons.
17:28
And I am, you know, the dude in my relationship and I am like,
17:31
all these like, boom, boom, boom, all these levels of
17:33
awareness starts to happen. And it was like, he broke my
17:38
brain. He broke my identity in that
17:40
intensive. And it was like, OK, like, see
17:42
ya go home. And, you know, let's build this
17:44
business. And so over the last two years,
17:49
I've been in this really truthfully, the same
17:51
transformation, which is who the hell am I?
17:55
And why do I do what I do? And to your point of like, it's
18:00
not what you achieve. It's about who you are.
18:04
I truly think, which is crazy to say at 33, I don't even think I
18:09
even have known who I was until two years ago.
18:12
I was just like a shell of a person living life of what I
18:16
thought was the right thing to do.
18:17
Say, you know, experience. And it's been very painful
18:22
because should not feel at home in yourself is a very unsettling
18:27
feeling like to just be by yourself.
18:30
You can't get validation from other people.
18:31
You can't get validation from your work anymore.
18:33
You can't get validation from the dream or the status or the
18:36
achievement. It's just you.
18:39
You have to feel really at home in yourself.
18:41
And I think for me, there was no way like over it, under it,
18:45
around it. I was like, I have to go through
18:46
this of like, who the hell am I? And really, truthfully
18:49
rebuilding myself with the new version that released all these
18:54
other pieces that I thought were me.
18:56
Yeah, yeah. That's that, that's fascinating.
18:59
That is, that is I think the whole idea of sitting with
19:03
yourself, it is so important for, for like I think everyone,
19:07
like everyone needs to be able to do that.
19:09
And like one of my like barometers to just like see if
19:12
I'm OK just as a human being or not is like, can I sit with
19:15
myself for 5 minutes without my phone, without anything and just
19:19
be OK? Like not even great, not even
19:21
you for just be OK sitting right there.
19:24
And if I can't, then I'm not OK. So that's thank you for sharing
19:29
that. Yeah, that's really interesting.
19:30
And you mentioned during that era, which I also think, you
19:34
know, I want to hit on, you mentioned that there was an
19:36
aspect of like addiction, which even as you say that I, I think
19:40
that that shows up for, maybe I don't know how it showed up for
19:43
you, but I think it shows up for people in a variety of different
19:47
ways. I think that when we hear
19:49
addiction, there's probably a lot of people who don't realize
19:51
that addiction can take a lot of different forms when you're
19:53
trying to what I would technically coin, like self
19:56
soothe this internal battle that's happening inside of you.
20:00
So like, I definitely experienced that in my own
20:03
flavor. But for you, you know, what did
20:05
that look like during that time when you're now at this place
20:07
where you're OK, great, this dream is not gonna happen.
20:10
Now you're left with Neil. And so how do you navigate?
20:14
Like just taking a step forward while obviously navigating all
20:17
these emotions that are coming up through that as well.
20:19
Yeah, I mean, I think that the biggest thing is like, choosing
20:22
not to deal with those emotions is like mistake #1 like, that's
20:25
like the biggest mistake any of us could go through or, or, or,
20:29
or subject ourselves to. And I think that just the pain
20:33
and the shame, I think there's a lot of shame.
20:34
Shame is like probably the number one most negative
20:37
emotional, spiritual human experiences that a person could
20:40
have. Because what with shame is it's
20:42
not just pure grief. Like there's a lot of like
20:45
reorientation of stories in your own mind about like what
20:47
happened. And like, I think the reality
20:50
that I was not good enough to be professional, that was the most
20:54
painful thing for me to face. And like even up till now, like,
20:57
like just with the recently, like I couldn't say those words
21:00
without feeling so much negative emotion associated with it.
21:04
Now I can because I realized like that was OK because I
21:07
learned what it was like to become good enough to get to a
21:09
certain level. And then I also learned what it
21:12
was like to OK, I wasn't good enough.
21:14
Like what was the next level I needed?
21:16
But I mean, like that, I think that was the truth that I was
21:18
really trying to run from that I was not good enough to be a
21:22
professional soccer player. And that was OK, right?
21:25
And so I think that like that second part and that was OK.
21:28
That took me so many years to just really be OK with, right.
21:32
And so like I, it ended up being drugs for me.
21:35
I ended up telling myself that OK, I'm a college student, I
21:38
have to be successful. So I started taking Adderall,
21:40
but I loved how I felt on it. And I think what was even more
21:43
important was not just how I loved how I felt, I also loved
21:45
how I didn't feel right. I loved how I didn't feel the
21:49
shame. I loved how I didn't have to
21:51
really tell myself that story over and over again.
21:53
And all I did was focus on, on, on school work, which really I
21:57
was just medicating, medicating the shame away.
22:00
You know, you wake up 2 1/2 years later after a seizure,
22:03
after taking, you know, like 60 pills for cocktail
22:06
pharmaceuticals. You're like, whoa, hold up, Two
22:09
years ago, three years ago, you were you were about to play a
22:12
college soccer game and now all of a sudden you're in a
22:14
hospital. What the hell is going on here?
22:16
So that was that was my wake up. You know, God looked over me,
22:19
washed over me. And, you know, it really
22:22
cascaded a series of positive events in my life.
22:25
But I think that was the turning point when I overdosed.
22:28
But like talking to that Neil now, it's like I understood why
22:31
I did what I did. Sure.
22:33
Like it's funny you say like addiction shows up in many
22:36
different forms. Like it could be anything such
22:38
as just doomsprolling on your cell phone.
22:39
It could be sugar like, it could be anything that you use to not
22:43
feel your feelings right so. Well, I think even as you say
22:46
that like, think how many of us, and the worst part is, which I,
22:51
I think is also a factor in it is like, just because something
22:55
as an addiction is more culturally acceptable, doesn't
22:57
make it less of an addiction. So I think, you know, sometimes
23:00
when people hear things that are not as culturally talked about
23:03
or societally talk about, it feels like it's like more of a
23:07
shock factor when someone says addiction.
23:09
But to your point of scrolling, there's this cultural acceptance
23:13
that at night we spent two hours scrolling TikTok.
23:15
There's like this joke amongst, you know, different generations
23:19
of like, Oh yeah, we're just like spending the night
23:20
scrolling social media before bed.
23:23
Well, that's still, to your point is an addiction.
23:26
Like, I think about how many people watch TV and 10 minutes
23:31
in or like, I gotta scroll my phone because I'm not getting
23:32
that dopamine the way that I need to be.
23:35
Or at night they have this routine or like, you're
23:37
literally going to the washroom and you're scrolling on your
23:39
phone. Like you can't even just go to
23:40
the washroom, but that would be on your phone.
23:42
So I think it's also an invitation to look at what are
23:47
things. And this was, you know, Kelsey,
23:49
who we both know, we were talking about this, her and I,
23:52
and we started to really understand like what truly is
23:55
something that has a grip on us? And it's really anything that
23:57
you couldn't release tomorrow without feeling it like, and it
24:01
could be caffeine, it could be food, it could be social media,
24:05
it could even be healthy things like we were her and I were
24:07
talking about, you know, the gym people also are addicted to
24:11
working out or addicted to tracking their macros or
24:14
addicted like hyper fixated on things, which is typically I'm
24:19
gonna control here because I can't control over here.
24:22
So there's not really this aspect of of surrender.
24:25
And for me, I know it like the worst point in my business, it
24:30
was just food. Like I was just constantly with
24:34
my entire thing that I've had to rewire is that when I'm upset, I
24:37
eat. And so it was like, OK, great.
24:39
That's not something that's going to serve me.
24:41
Can I self soothe this feeling of unease with something
24:47
healthy? And then that got me into the
24:49
high performance era of like ice baths.
24:52
And I remember when I met George, I was like having a
24:56
stressful week and I was like, I have to go ice bath.
24:58
And he came to this point where he goes, you realize the ice
25:01
bath is not actually resetting. That's actually a crutch for
25:04
you, right? And I was like, what?
25:06
And so I start to realize I'm having baths twice and three
25:09
times a day. This is not a oh, I have an ice
25:13
bath because I love to start my day this way.
25:14
This is actually the crutch. That's the only thing getting me
25:17
back to neutral so I can continue to move forward today
25:21
versus something that's actually helping me to grow.
25:24
That's so. And when you call that out, were
25:25
you irritated or were you like, like, thank you beyond?
25:30
Beyond. Yeah, because what you're seen.
25:36
I was pissed because he caught me.
25:38
That's why I think about it. It's like you see me now and now
25:40
I can't hide in this thing any longer.
25:43
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah.
25:45
I mean, I think that's one of the most triggering things is
25:47
when a person that cares for you that, that, that loves you, like
25:51
sees an attachment that you have that doesn't serve you, it
25:54
actually is very, very triggering.
25:56
But like, that's like such a good point that you're, you're
25:58
kind of bringing up as like, if you can live free from
26:00
attachments to anything, like you're ultimately free.
26:03
And I think that's like the whole premise behind medicating,
26:06
right? That was for me that the premise
26:08
behind medicating is I had an attachment to who I thought I
26:10
should be. I was so addicted to that goal
26:13
and that dream that I couldn't let it go.
26:15
And because of that, I was compulsively medicating, right?
26:18
Because the pills turn, the pills turns to other things as
26:21
well, right? I was, I was addicted to
26:23
anything and everything at the top point in my life, right?
26:25
So yeah, for sure, for sure. And how did you at that time,
26:29
when you talk about the aspect of shame, because I think a lot
26:31
of people have those in indifferent flavors, how did you
26:36
get to a place where you could make peace with it?
26:39
Like, I think there's a lot of people who could have had that
26:41
moment and when you said that you had, you know, the seizure
26:45
who could have very easily minimized.
26:48
Oh, it was a one off. It was an accident.
26:50
Like there could have been a lot of ways you could have easily
26:52
seeped back into old patterns. What did it look like for you to
26:56
be like, OK, like, no, we're not.
26:57
We're not doing this Like we're, we're going down a different
27:00
path. Yeah, it's so so this seems like
27:03
almost like Hollywood, like very, very cinematic.
27:05
But like, I actually looked in the mirror and I was like, bro,
27:08
who are you? Like you're not, you are not
27:11
them, right? And, and some could say that
27:14
there was like a judgement, but like, you are not a drug addict,
27:17
like that is not who you are. And when I looked in the mirror
27:19
and I saw myself, I'm like, you're an athlete.
27:21
You're you're a scholar. You're someone who who's curious
27:25
like, like just everything that we think of when we think of
27:29
it's an old drug addict. Like I was like, that's not me,
27:31
right? And so there was almost this,
27:34
like this recognition of my own identity and it didn't resonate
27:38
with anything that addictions to for, right.
27:40
And so in that moment where I actually looked in the mirror,
27:42
which by the way, like I advise anyone where if you feel lost,
27:46
like do that, like look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and
27:49
return back home to who you are. And so then I mean, it's just,
27:52
it was just step by step, day by day, you know, like, like the
27:56
only thing that I focused on was not using drugs that day.
27:59
That's it. That was that was it.
28:00
I didn't focus on getting anything done.
28:02
I didn't care about accomplishing anything.
28:04
I didn't care about becoming anything.
28:05
All my focus was after the seizure was just not using
28:09
drugs. And I did that one just one day
28:12
at a time, just just go one day at a time, one hour at a time.
28:15
And that turned into six months. And in that six month period,
28:17
like I started filling my time with more productive things.
28:21
But the lesson that I learned from that specific experience
28:25
was that like anything that we do is just one step at a time, 1
28:29
break at a time, one day at a time, you know, and that's like
28:32
the wisdom that followed me from that period.
28:34
But I think that it was just like, OK, look in the mirror,
28:37
realize I need a transformation of my identity.
28:40
And we're going to do this one brick at a time.
28:42
Because even as a soccer player, like I played from the age of 6
28:45
all the way to the age of 18 and I played 5 * 6 times, almost 7 *
28:50
a week, some weeks, sometimes more.
28:52
You know, it was an everyday thing.
28:53
It was a step by step thing. And so like, it's it's kind of a
28:58
somber thought, I think. But like we don't get too many
29:02
things that we get to do in this life.
29:04
Like if we want to be really, really good, so we have to pick
29:07
them wisely. And doing drugs was not one of
29:09
those things that I want to be really good at.
29:11
You know, I want to be really good at other things that were
29:14
way more constructive, so. Well, you, you also in that I'm
29:18
hearing like held to your point of it's about who you are.
29:21
It's not about what you're doing or what you're achieving or
29:23
accomplishing or what it looks like.
29:25
I think in that moment, like when you're saying you're
29:26
looking at yourself in the mirror, there's also this
29:28
ability to just know what your values are.
29:31
And I think that for a lot of people, knowing your potential
29:36
is one thing, but to be like, OK, like what are the values of
29:38
who I am as a person? To your point where you're like,
29:40
this is not me. Part of that, I think also came
29:42
from the fact that you're like, I know what my values are.
29:44
Like being Neil and having the life that I want is going to
29:48
fall into these like 5 buckets of like the kind of man I want
29:51
to be, the kind of person I want to be.
29:53
And so I feel like that's a huge piece because it's less of OK,
29:58
like what am I going to do? It's more of like who am I as
30:01
the question? And then saying, am I showing up
30:03
in those values today? And that in itself will kind of,
30:07
you know, turn things in the sense of pathway that you go
30:10
down. And when you say step by step,
30:14
that lands so deeply because I, one of the things I've struggled
30:18
with so much in these moments where you become lost is all you
30:22
want is someone to be like, here's how it's going to all
30:24
work out. Like here's, here's all of how
30:26
it's going to work out. And you feel terrified to take
30:30
that step because you go, Oh my God, how is this going to
30:32
happen? Like what's it going to look
30:34
like? That's one path.
30:36
Or you have the other path, which is someone says, like, Oh
30:38
my God, I'm just overwhelmed. I don't want to take any step
30:40
because thinking about this different path feels entirely
30:43
overwhelming. And I remember, you know, the
30:45
whole motto of like bite by bite was so frustrating because I
30:51
thought, well, that's nice to say.
30:52
But like, my whole life is on fire.
30:54
And I need a plan here because for me, the plan was kind of
30:58
connected to feeling safe. So for you, when you're in this
31:03
moment, you're like, OK, I'm not obviously living this life
31:05
anymore. I know that these are not the
31:07
values that I want to live by. How long before it was bite by
31:11
bite did you kind of start to see the vision of OK, actually
31:14
this is where I think I want to go.
31:16
That's such a, that's such a cool question.
31:19
And, and so like, just like kind of going to the point of like
31:22
values, right? Like the first value for me is
31:25
extreme ownership, right? I am responsible for anything
31:28
and everything that happens to me at all times, always.
31:30
I said this to myself a million times a day.
31:32
Maybe that's exaggerating, but a lot of times a day, right?
31:35
And so then, like when I recognize, OK, like I'm putting
31:38
this pill in my mouth, so I'm also responsible for taking a
31:41
step into my car even when it's cold or driving to the gym,
31:45
right? So, you know, during the time
31:47
when I got clean, I had a lot of time on my hands.
31:49
And so I ended up just really, really going to the gym.
31:53
And it was something that I love doing and ended up becoming a
31:57
bodybuilder during that period, right?
31:59
So you know, like it, I think when did I start to feel better?
32:04
Like the few weeks, few weeks into a few months into it,
32:07
right. And I think the beautiful part
32:09
about being a white belt, the beautiful part about being a
32:11
rookie, like the beautiful part about just being a bodybuilder
32:14
without, without having any like any ego attached to it, right,
32:17
Because when I was a soccer player, I was Division One.
32:20
I was this, I was that right? Being a bodybuilder was brand
32:22
new, you know, like fitness was, was brand new for me, at least
32:26
in that form. And so I was, I was able to
32:29
become whoever I wanted to. And I mean, I think within a
32:31
year, like my whole entire body changed.
32:33
I gained 90 lbs. I, you know, I, I, I, I became a
32:37
different person. I saw myself as a different
32:39
person. I felt like I was a different
32:41
person. And then 90 lbs later, you're,
32:43
you're like, you're big, right? And so I, I genuinely physically
32:48
felt like a different person. So like, that's like my advice
32:51
to anyone who like wants to actually make a change in their
32:53
identity is like literally physically change yourself.
32:56
Like if you can physically become a different person, like
32:58
you could change your entire identity, you could change your
33:00
entire story. But I would say it took about a
33:02
year for me to see myself as just a totally different person
33:05
than than than The attic for sure.
33:08
Well, the interesting part about that that I see is that you took
33:11
the action and you took the step by step or the bite by bite and
33:15
then the identity came. Whereas I think for a lot of
33:18
business owners or a lot of people in general, they're like,
33:21
I want to feel the identity as a download and then I'm going to
33:25
go. So, you know, if you're even
33:28
like, OK, I want to be an entrepreneur.
33:29
It's like you don't become an entrepreneur because you think
33:31
about becoming an entrepreneur and then eventually you start
33:34
taking action on it. Most people become an
33:35
entrepreneur because they have this like scrappy to your point,
33:38
they are the the underdog. And so they're literally just
33:42
doing anything they can. And over time they go, Oh my
33:44
God, I'm building a business. A lot of they, you know,
33:46
ruminate of like, I'm a business owner, I'm a business owner.
33:49
There's an A piece there which for you was like, you literally
33:52
started taking movements in motion and before you knew it,
33:56
you look up and you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm a different person.
33:58
But I think some people get it the other way, which is that
34:00
they're like, OK, how like you could have easily sat and
34:03
manifested future Neil and not done anything about it.
34:07
So I'm curious for you, like, do you feel like the how did the
34:10
identity to action kind of correlation there work for you?
34:13
Because obviously previous to that you had a big identity
34:17
paired with action and now you're in action to create an
34:20
identity, if that makes sense it.
34:22
No, it makes total sense and and and if I may ask a question to
34:25
you. So like like what is your next?
34:27
What is your next version in terms of of of your identity?
34:32
It's a great question. I would say like off the top of
34:36
my head without judging myself, the only thing I think of as
34:40
like a new version would be being in flow a lot more.
34:46
I think I've been living deep in my masculine for a very, very
34:49
long time. And so I think being more in
34:51
flow, releasing the need to have all the plans and all of the
34:57
steps of how it's going to work out and push, push, push, and it
35:00
constantly being more and more and more.
35:02
And I think for me, it is a very difficult thing to flex because
35:09
I realized that I have a lot of like trauma and upbringing that
35:12
was all centered around like control and me in the driver's
35:15
seat. And I think in this next season,
35:18
I'm trying to figure out how to lean into a life of surrender,
35:22
which thus far has been has proved to be very.
35:26
Difficult. Yeah, yeah.
35:27
No really, really cool. Really cool no.
35:29
And I just. I just asked that out of
35:31
curiosity because I, I, you know, I definitely don't have
35:34
all the answers that that's for sure.
35:36
I think during that period, what was so beautiful is like, I
35:39
actually didn't really have any goals, right?
35:41
I didn't really have any like any tangible goals.
35:44
I think the only goal that I had was to find a goal that was
35:48
worthwhile, right? That was kind of like my next
35:50
step, right? But because I was not like
35:52
married or attached to anyone outcome, I just said what like,
35:56
what is my inclination? It wasn't even a passion.
36:00
It was just like, what is my inclination that I could
36:01
cultivate? And then I just did what I felt
36:05
like doing. That was the right thing that I
36:06
knew was the right thing, right? Because I had such a powerful
36:09
rubric for what the wrong thing was at that time that like now I
36:13
was like, just do the opposite, which is to not take drugs,
36:15
right? And going to the gym, I felt
36:16
like the right thing meditating. I meditated a lot.
36:20
I meditated like an hour a day for seven years.
36:23
And, you know, and actually when I lost that practice was when a
36:26
lot of things in my life started to go downhill as well.
36:29
But yeah, I mean, there was no identity that I was really
36:32
attached to in the 1st place. And so I just took the actions
36:35
that felt right. I think sometimes when there's
36:37
an agenda, we can limit ourselves for what we think is
36:39
possible. But when we don't have an
36:41
agenda, we just allow ourselves to be who we truly are is when
36:45
there's no need to to be working towards anything specifically
36:48
because we are for meant to be. So if we want to talk about the
36:51
ultimate flow state, like that was a period where I had the
36:54
ultimate flow state, you know, so I mean, what comes first, the
36:58
identity or the action? I think the action, I think the
37:01
action. I have to say that that's what
37:03
life has proven to me. But perhaps someone has a
37:06
different model? Yeah, I think I agree because I
37:09
think that nothing when I reflected on it, nothing in my
37:12
life that has ever been an accomplishment or that ended up
37:14
being something that brought me fulfillment came from me having
37:17
a plan for it first. Like I every single thing that
37:21
was such a blessing, I was like, I could have never seen that
37:23
coming. I had no idea that I'd be an
37:25
entrepreneur, had no idea that I would have this business, had no
37:28
idea that I would, you know, leave an engagement.
37:31
Like I none of that was on the vision on board per SE, but it
37:35
was something that obviously landed me here.
37:36
And so it, it made me realize that like the desire for control
37:41
is just this or the desire to kind of be like, OK, this is the
37:44
vision. This is who I'm going to become.
37:45
And having this crystal clear of what that's going to look like.
37:49
It's just this perception of that's what would make me feel
37:51
safe. But the reality is, to your
37:53
point, you were like you're tuning in and you were intuitive
37:57
with yourself, which I think to your point of meditation is
38:00
something that a lot of people don't do.
38:01
Like when you were saying you're doing an hour a day and when you
38:04
stopped doing that, there was this kind of cause and effect
38:06
that happened. I attribute that to be when I
38:11
hear that, that I think that we hear ourselves when we create
38:15
enough space to actually listen. And many times when people don't
38:20
listen inward, they go outward to listen.
38:22
So it's like, hey, dad, mom, what should I do?
38:25
Hey, friends, what should I do? Hey, business mentor, what
38:28
should I do? And so you have a lot of
38:29
external stimuli in this pursuit to find, OK, like, what's my
38:33
truth? What's my truth?
38:35
When really, if you turned off TikTok in your phone and you
38:38
just sat with yourself, you get this.
38:41
For me at least, this rushing clarity of it's all right there.
38:45
And one of the things that even for me, I've been taught in
38:47
therapy, she's like, Kate, we're not doing more sessions.
38:50
We don't need to talk about this.
38:51
You need to sit with yourself. But to your point of that being
38:56
a practice, that's something that a lot of people can't do,
38:59
like a lot of people cannot. Do yeah, absolutely.
39:03
By the way, I'm I'm really happy for you that like that's a
39:05
realization for you because like anybody that knows you knows,
39:08
you know, like super high power and in the best way, like you
39:11
have the answers, right? And it's like the question that
39:14
I asked myself is like, why do I believe that this person knows
39:17
more than I do about where I should be going, right?
39:20
And anytime I like don't trust myself.
39:24
It's not that I have a problem trusting others, but it's that
39:27
anytime I don't trust myself or at least don't ask myself the
39:29
right questions is when I end up getting lost, right?
39:33
And so that was the thing about meditation was that it gave me a
39:36
space to figure out who I truly was.
39:39
It gave me a space to figure out, OK, what did I actually
39:41
stand for? And it gave me a space to figure
39:43
out what I don't stand for, right?
39:44
And I think just the art of thinking in itself is a lost
39:47
art, right? Like if you ever give yourself
39:50
just an hour to think, like, not like possibly think, but like,
39:54
say, OK, like I have this problem that I want to think
39:56
about the solution to, right? Like that's also something that
40:00
in that phase, I gave myself a lot of space to do.
40:03
And lately right now, because I've been struggling with an
40:06
identity shift right now, I've been saying, OK, just give
40:09
yourself a little bit of space to think about it and give
40:11
yourself a little bit of space to let those answers answers
40:13
come to you. So yeah, I mean, like, I think
40:16
you're right. Like most people don't know how
40:18
to sit with themselves. And our society is becoming
40:20
tougher and tougher with so many more distractions and just
40:24
things flying at you is so normalized, it's almost scary,
40:26
you know? Well, I think that question is
40:28
so powerful, which is why do I think that this person has the
40:32
answers for me? And that's something I think
40:36
that everyone should sit with because I even for myself, I got
40:40
called out because I was doing the exact same thing, which was
40:42
that I was like, OK, like, hey, mom, what do you think about
40:44
this? And to my sister, what do you
40:46
think about this? And hey, George, what do you
40:47
think about this? And literally having multiple
40:51
people who are very deep into personal development as well,
40:54
who just said, I think you need to ask yourself this and just
40:58
tune out. Like stop talking to people
41:00
about this because it's just giving you more confusion.
41:04
When you sit alone with the data, you've added sixty other
41:07
data points to your sorting where you actually had six if
41:10
you hadn't asked all those people.
41:12
And for me, I realize I'm like, I'm like creating my own misery
41:16
basically, when asking constantly for other people,
41:19
it's like, what's my vision? What's my vision?
41:21
Instead of realizing that that question in itself is the
41:24
invitation to your point to go inward.
41:26
And so for you, you take this space and you start taking the
41:30
bite by bite. You start taking the action by
41:32
action. And obviously, the end of the
41:34
year, you're like, OK, you're into the bodybuilding community
41:36
now. You're starting to feel like
41:38
you're seeing this identity shift when you're at this place.
41:41
How do we go from here into getting into entrepreneurship?
41:45
Yeah, for sure. And so, so like, I think when I
41:48
saw myself transformed so quickly, I got fascinated by
41:51
this idea of transformation. And so I like asked myself like,
41:56
where does it actually start from?
41:57
I think part of part of it was me wanting to take a different
42:00
angle. I think part of it was me just
42:03
wanting to create something of my own.
42:05
But ultimately, how did I actually get into
42:07
entrepreneurship? I was working at Johnson and
42:09
Johnson in their, their pharmaceuticals department and I
42:12
didn't like it, so I quit. I had a friend, he worked for
42:15
ADP, which they did payroll. He, he called me one day.
42:18
He said, hey, Neil, I know in college you talked about being
42:20
an entrepreneur in your 30s, right?
42:22
Do you want to like Fast forward that 10 years?
42:23
Like why? Why do you say that?
42:25
Well, because for me to get my year end bonus, I need to get
42:28
one more company on payroll, right?
42:30
I'm like, OK, cool. So he's like, I'll pay for your
42:32
LLC, I'll pay for your state fees and all that.
42:35
And then you could be an entrepreneur.
42:37
How does that sound? And I'm like, OK, sounds good.
42:40
So I had an LLC and so my girlfriend and I at the time
42:43
were like, well, we have a business so we might as well go
42:45
do something with it. So that's like the actual story
42:47
of how it happened. That's crazy.
42:50
Yeah, so, but I was in the gym and I loved supplements.
42:53
You know, I took supplements, I would sell supplements.
42:56
So I kind of got into the supplement industry that way.
42:58
I had an LLC and so my plan was let me create an online store,
43:03
generate enough revenue, reselling other people's
43:05
supplements and then take the money and start my own
43:07
supplement brand. You know, at the time there was
43:09
a company called Amazon, I don't know if you've heard of them or
43:11
not, and I realized that online store was probably not a good
43:14
idea. It took me about a year to
43:16
realize that, but that was kind of what the original plan was.
43:19
That didn't work out. So I ended up taking a loan and
43:22
I started a supplement company that ended up really taking off
43:26
after some time. So that was that was kind of the
43:29
story there is it all kind of landed by accident, which is
43:32
really interesting to your point, because when I think
43:34
about all the beautiful things that have ever come in my life,
43:37
like they've all been accidents, right where I like, I'm
43:42
expectant of something beautiful to come to me.
43:44
Like even right now, I'm in a position where I expect
43:46
something great to come to me, but I don't know what it is.
43:49
I have no idea what it is, you know, but that's, that's the
43:52
story. It's so funny because I feel
43:55
like everyone has like interesting entrepreneur stories
43:57
in the sense of like how they fell into the thing that they're
44:01
creating and interesting. Interestingly enough, most
44:03
people were never like, you weren't 18 being like, I'm going
44:06
to be a supplement giant in this space, right?
44:09
Like this is not something that you that was like a pre
44:14
determined vision. And I think that that's really
44:16
important for people. And even for me, it was the same
44:18
thing. I kind of fell into fell into
44:19
entrepreneurship because I think it also releases kind of back to
44:24
your earlier point of like the vision and constantly knowing
44:26
exactly where we're going. Entrepreneurship, I think is
44:29
probably one of the biggest testaments to bite by bite
44:31
because there's literally no road map.
44:34
Like even if we think about in this moment in time, you know,
44:38
AI and things that are changing with online marketing and all of
44:41
these pieces, there's no road map as to exactly what AI is
44:44
going to look like for all of us in business in the next 15
44:46
years. So to think about, OK, but like,
44:48
here's all the things I'm going to do for you.
44:50
You were like, hey, I've got this LLC.
44:52
I wonder what I could do with this.
44:53
Like there was also this undertone I feel like I'm
44:55
hearing of in your journey, curiosity.
44:58
Like there was this kind of constant seeking to get curious
45:02
about what was next. So I, you know, it's this
45:05
beautiful observation, by the way, like, like I, I think that
45:08
there's a few experiences in the human, just in the human
45:12
experience that are such a blessing that are so beautiful.
45:15
They fall in love. I think experiencing beauty, I
45:18
think curiosity is one of those experiences, right?
45:20
Where like you just ask questions and you just figure
45:23
stuff out. And like, I know you know this
45:25
all too well as an entrepreneur who's gone gotten as far as
45:28
you've gotten, there have been problems that you've solved.
45:30
And the only reason you solve them is because you just stuck
45:33
with them for a place of persistence and curiosity,
45:36
right? And you just like say, like, how
45:38
do I do this? All right, let me, I get it
45:39
wrong, I get it wrong, I get it wrong, I get it wrong until I
45:42
get it right. And so like that was definitely
45:45
a prevailing experience for me. And even now, like if I ever get
45:49
down on myself, like that's the place that I go to was like,
45:52
what problems can I solve, right?
45:53
Because then I'm just like, this whole thing is just a game,
45:56
right? This whole, this whole
45:57
entrepreneurship thing is actually just a big game.
46:00
And yeah, like I, I really didn't take it that seriously
46:03
back then, you know, and I find even now, like when I take
46:05
myself too seriously, when I take entrepreneurship too
46:08
seriously is when I get right, you know, so, so I mean, you
46:13
know, it's all too well, right? It's like when you're having
46:15
fun, when you're playing, when you're playing the game, it's
46:18
it's things move because you're just playing a game.
46:20
And it's, I think also, you know, not to get woo woo about
46:22
it, but I think it's also like a frequency thing.
46:24
People really underestimate like to your point of just like the
46:27
joys in life, your business like it.
46:30
Obviously I always tell people it's hard work, but it's not
46:32
complicated. So like, I think, you know, just
46:34
like anything, if you go to the gym, it's hard.
46:36
There's a lot of days you don't feel like working out.
46:38
But there's also there should be this enjoyment to the fact that
46:41
you can move your body, this enjoyment of like the pursuit of
46:44
like, OK, well, yesterday I lifted 30 lbs Today I'm going to
46:47
try for the 40s. It's like there should be this
46:49
kind of curiosity city paired with fun or excitement in the
46:53
pursuit of that. And I want to I guess unpack
46:57
because obviously most people in business have this initially
47:02
pursuit of something, I might say superficial, which is this
47:06
number. A lot of the people that I talk
47:08
to you in business or say, OK, well I want to hit 7 figures or
47:10
I want to hit multiple 7 or I want to hit an 8 figure
47:12
business. And so you build the supplement
47:15
business and obviously it's wildly successful.
47:19
So in the mention of identity, because every single person
47:23
listening is probably thinking to themselves, Oh my gosh, I
47:25
could only imagine being able to generate something that big or I
47:29
can only imagine being able to be behind something so
47:31
successful. So to even be able for most
47:35
people to hear from someone like yourself who's reached that and
47:38
the truth of, you know, what it took, but also the truth of how
47:42
it felt when you got there because you are someone who's
47:45
very self aware. What did that look like?
47:48
Because I have a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be
47:52
what everybody might think it feels like or what they think it
47:55
might look like. Absolutely, absolutely.
47:58
OK. So here's kind of the first like
48:01
rule of winning that took me about two years to figure out,
48:04
OK, is that when you're winning, it does not feel like you're
48:08
winning. Oh my Lord, every day is hard.
48:13
Like when I hit, when I hit a million, a million revenue, top
48:16
line revenue was when every day became hard.
48:20
That like that was when every day became hard, right?
48:22
When I hit three, OK, that was where every day became
48:26
excruciating, right? And you know, I think that was
48:30
one of the things about winning that took me so long to come to
48:33
grips with was that it's not going to feel like this, like
48:37
this joyful experience in any way, shape or form.
48:40
It's problem after problem after problem after problem after
48:44
problem after problem after problem that you're solving all
48:47
of that every day. And it didn't feel good at all.
48:50
I think now going into this next venture, I'm aware of that and
48:55
all of the lessons I had learned from back then.
48:57
I realized I think the other thing was like, you have no idea
49:01
what you're doing basically ever at any phase of
49:04
entrepreneurship. Like there are people that can
49:06
help you, coaches, mentors, like that's great and it's absolutely
49:11
necessary to get them. But in your specific individual
49:14
situation, there is no road map for you out with your current
49:18
conditions, with your current resources, with your current
49:21
chess board. And so I think for me, one of
49:25
the hardest things was year one, nothing, Year 2, nothing, year
49:31
3A little something, but really not too much.
49:34
It took me about four years to get any type of real traction
49:37
with my business. And I was working full time as a
49:40
personal trainer for those 4-4 years.
49:43
And it was just patience and persistence and keep going.
49:47
And I don't know, for me, I believe that it takes at least
49:50
five years for you to really know at all what you're doing as
49:54
an entrepreneur. Like it takes a lot of time.
49:57
And so yeah, it was not an overnight success.
50:00
It took me starting for most people.
50:02
Right now, see hey, become like a multi millionaire in 90 days
50:08
kind of thing with, you know, online marketing.
50:10
And I, I think that it's really refreshing for someone to hear
50:14
because I think what ends up happening when people see quote,
50:16
UN quote, overnight success is that we think something's wrong
50:20
with us. If you are someone who sees that
50:23
and you think that hasn't happened for me and you think
50:26
what's wrong with me? What's wrong with my business?
50:28
What's wrong with my strategy? What's wrong with my work ethic?
50:31
And to your point earlier about shame, we shame ourselves that
50:34
we're like something is wrong. And I think to hear you say like
50:37
it was about persistence and patience and that the momentum
50:41
started four years later. The question I have around that
50:44
is like how like your mindset in that waiting period, like in
50:49
that kind of obviously you're not sitting idle waiting for
50:52
this, you know, success to fall upon you.
50:54
You're still working. But I guess how did you hold
50:59
what's possible when you feel like you maybe aren't seeing
51:02
that evidence of momentum? Because I think a lot of
51:05
entrepreneurs, when they don't see in year 1 or year two, OK,
51:08
wow, we're really blowing up. They think this is not going to
51:11
work. This is not, you know, clearly
51:13
I'm not making the moves that I need to be making.
51:15
Should I throw in the towel? Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
51:18
It's, it's a it's a really cool question.
51:20
You know, I'll say two things just #1 is when you're
51:25
meditating an hour a day, you are so present in everything
51:28
that you're doing that I almost didn't care about the outcome,
51:31
which sounded so crazy. But the only time I started to
51:35
care about outcomes was when I actually started to get outcomes
51:38
right. So like I was more afraid of
51:40
losing the million than I was of making the next million, right?
51:44
Like, and that was the thing. But when I didn't have any
51:47
success, right, or any tangible material success, I didn't care.
51:51
You know, I just, I just did what I was supposed to do, which
51:53
was go to the gym, train my clients, work on my business,
51:57
right? Whatever that look like, make
51:58
some content, put up a blog post, learn how to run ads, any
52:01
of any of that. When I didn't have any, any
52:06
tangible material success, I didn't know what it felt like.
52:09
So I didn't even have a reference point, right.
52:11
And then just one day I wrote a landing page and ran some ads
52:14
and was like $300 in one hour worth.
52:18
What's going on? Is this is this legal?
52:20
Something's broken. Something's broken.
52:23
Yeah, yeah. And and that's like, the thing
52:25
too is like, like, it's really not about getting lucky.
52:28
It's just about trying enough times till you run out of
52:30
unluck, right. That was that was like the, the,
52:33
the thing that I realized after that.
52:35
So I think for for anybody that's like getting down on
52:38
themself, like if you could somehow detach yourself from the
52:42
outcome and just fall so in love with what you're doing in the
52:45
present and just like understand that you don't have to do
52:48
anything. You get to do it right.
52:50
And you just come from that, that perspective.
52:52
If you get to build this thing and you're not racing with
52:54
anybody, you're certainly not racing with yourself.
52:57
You're not running out of time. You're exactly where you're
52:59
supposed to be. Like it's OK.
53:01
And the skills that you're learning from not being able to
53:03
do it so easily now are going to translate.
53:06
And I'll say this not as a brag, but as kind of a testament.
53:09
It took me 7 years to build that first company.
53:12
I have a new company that in six months is on a 7 figure run
53:15
rate, right? It took me 6 months and I took
53:17
the same playbook and I applied it to a different business and
53:20
I'm able to build it back quickly.
53:22
So whoever you become is something that will stick with
53:25
you forever, right? I did not lose that.
53:28
That's who I am. I could build a business at any
53:31
time now, and so that's enough inspiration for me to go through
53:34
whatever grind I'm going through now because I've seen it at work
53:36
before, you know? There's so much in that because
53:39
I think even too, when you experience, for me at least,
53:43
when I experience these things where I'm like, there's no way I
53:45
know how to solve this. There's no way I'm gonna be able
53:46
to overcome this. And then seeing what at the time
53:50
felt like I was facing Everest in front of me.
53:53
And now that that would look so small by comparison to a problem
53:57
today. I think what it does is it
54:00
builds this, these reps of mental toughness.
54:04
And I think that you hit on something that's so important,
54:06
which is I often talk about the fact that growing and scaling a
54:09
business, people often say like I want to have a 7 figure or
54:12
multiple 7 figure and eight figure business.
54:14
And there is to your point earlier, I think this perception
54:17
that when I achieve XI don't have any problems.
54:20
I'm sitting on a beach drinking a Margarita and I don't like 7
54:24
figures, less problems, multiple 7 figures.
54:26
I delegated this. I have a system for that.
54:28
And I'm like, it's actually not the case.
54:31
The problems that you experience at a six figure a year business
54:34
to A7, to a multiple 7 to an 8, there's problems in all of them.
54:38
I think that the difference is perception or perspective
54:43
because I think before when I was, you know, say like a six
54:47
figure business, one problem would rock my day.
54:52
I'm spiraling for like 3 days on this tiny little thing, which
54:56
now I'm like OK, 30 seconds, deal with that, boom, next
54:58
what's going on, right? So I think the problems, I
55:01
literally think about them like working out.
55:03
They are literally reps of strength and you can't build the
55:08
strength to lift the heavyweight, which really is the
55:12
big business without working your way up to that weight that
55:16
you want to be able to carry the load of.
55:18
And so I think some people want to skip ahead as in like I want
55:22
to, you know, build A7 or a multiple 7 figure business or
55:24
they want to have an 8 figure business.
55:27
But there's this, you know, well, I have all these problems.
55:30
The biggest experience shift of high experience to my to your
55:33
point or the process of my business that changed is that I
55:37
don't see problems as this big overwhelming thing.
55:42
It's the emotion is to it is not nearly as deep as it was before.
55:47
And I think that the perspective is if I don't have problems, I'm
55:51
worried because it means that lack of problems or lack of
55:54
resistance means literally, if you think about like a car,
55:57
you're not moving. So there's no resistance because
56:01
you're not making any momentum. So I almost now look at again,
56:04
you want to be conscious of what problems you have, but generally
56:07
speaking, if you have problems, it's also this picture that you
56:10
are in fact in some capacity moving the needle.
56:14
Absolutely, Absolutely. Yeah.
56:15
I mean, like, do you play the game to play the game?
56:17
You don't, you don't get into the game to not play the game,
56:20
right. And so like, that's actually a
56:22
beautiful perspective. I'm taking that with me is, is
56:26
this is good, These problems are good.
56:27
I get to have problems, right? You know, I'm I'm in the game to
56:30
play the game, you know, and I don't I don't know if you found
56:33
this to be true, but like I've found like there have been two
56:36
really like tough, tough just wreck revenue numbers is like
56:41
zero to 10 KA month is a really tough place to be.
56:44
I think that's the toughest because like you have no idea
56:46
what you're doing. You don't know anything about
56:48
anything like it's just to get that initial activation energy,
56:52
that initial momentum, I think is one of the hardest.
56:55
And then I think like when you have anywhere from like 8 to 12
56:59
people reporting to you, that can become very difficult to the
57:04
first time you become a leader, that could be become very
57:06
difficult or you have to go from just self leadership to like
57:09
leading other people, you know. So I, I've found that those are
57:12
the two experiences that have been the toughest for me.
57:15
I. Completely agree.
57:16
I completely agree because I think at the beginning you have
57:19
no evidence to say that you should trust yourself.
57:23
So when something in the pursuit of getting to 10 KA month or
57:27
anywhere around that, you have no proof of concept.
57:30
So it's not like I'm taking this risk and like last time I took a
57:33
risk, it worked out for me. There's no evidence to say that
57:37
anything that you're going to do is going to work.
57:38
So you have to be really comfortable with failure to be
57:42
able to do literally anything because otherwise you're
57:44
paralysed by what if this happens, what if that happens?
57:47
I think when you then Fast forward and you're deeper in
57:50
business, I think the reason that people that have bigger
57:52
businesses make decisions quicker and people go, Oh my
57:54
gosh, like how did you just decide, yeah, we'll spend 50K on
57:56
that, Yeah, sign that 100K contract.
57:59
We're like, pardon, like you took 20 minutes to think about
58:01
that. The reason is because I think
58:03
you just over time again to reps like you build up so much
58:07
evidence inside of you that the the process or the filtering
58:11
that you have to go through, it becomes shorter, shorter,
58:13
shorter. And as a result, you develop
58:15
this like, you know, perfect speed at which you can
58:18
integrate. But I agree because even with a
58:20
lot of clients that I help going to seven figures, you can go to
58:23
seven figures pretty much on your own in the sense of like
58:27
using your own skill sets. Leading to your point yourself
58:29
as the main thing there is this big issue with people wanting to
58:33
go from 7:00 to multiple 7A year.
58:35
Because to your point of leadership, I don't think people
58:39
understand that at a certain point when you want to have a
58:42
multiple 7 figure business, you're not in the business of
58:44
you anymore. You're in the business of other
58:45
people. And so when someone's like,
58:47
well, I don't want to deal with these people and I don't want to
58:49
manage people and I don't want to lead people, that is your job
58:52
if you decide that you want to build a business that big.
58:56
And so IA 100% agree. And I'm, I'm curious for you,
58:59
like, what did that threshold look like to be able to
59:02
breakthrough that for you? Yeah.
59:04
So it, it was OK, it was a lot less painful for me then I think
59:10
for a lot of other people. And, and the reason I say that
59:13
is because I genuinely, genuinely, truly love people.
59:17
I love people. You know, I, I think it's almost
59:19
cool to say that like, like, oh, I hate people or I don't love
59:23
people. Like, I almost feel like people
59:24
sometimes wear that as a badge of honor, but like, I love
59:28
people. And so a skill that I didn't
59:30
even know was a skill was that like, I just love talking to
59:33
people. So as I hired people on my team,
59:36
I just asked them how they were doing.
59:38
And that was so weird to them because they never had a boss
59:40
that ever asked them how they're doing, which was weird to me
59:44
because I just care. Like, like, what do you mean you
59:48
don't, you don't care? Like, like you have to, how can
59:50
you not care? You know, So that like
59:53
leadership is and was a lot of fun for me.
59:56
Now there comes a certain point where you could also get very
1:00:00
frustrated and you could also get very resentful because
1:00:02
people don't do things the way that you do.
1:00:05
But like, the way that you could get people to do things, not
1:00:08
just the way you do, but even better than the way you do, is
1:00:10
like find out what makes them tick right now.
1:00:13
At first, this came naturally to me.
1:00:17
I think the leadership side of it came natural to me.
1:00:19
Where I struggle was the management, right?
1:00:22
And so it was even just identifying the difference
1:00:25
between the two, where as I called leadership like, OK, how
1:00:28
do I get a person motivated, inspired, you know,
1:00:31
intrinsically driven as opposed to extrinsically driven, right?
1:00:35
That's what I consider leadership.
1:00:36
And then management was like the organization of tasks to get a
1:00:39
project done. The latter I was horrible at,
1:00:42
but I think that even just recognizing what the difference
1:00:45
between the two was was really important for me as well.
1:00:48
So I mean, I, I think like anybody just like watching this
1:00:51
could ask themself, like when it comes to people and, and hiring,
1:00:54
like, are you good at leading them?
1:00:55
Are you good at inspiring them? Are you good at managing them?
1:00:58
Where do you fall short? Having self-awareness and then
1:01:00
and then working on that specific thing.
1:01:03
And the one thing that I love about business in general is
1:01:07
that it's such a fair audit of how you're showing up as a human
1:01:11
being. So if you're not leading
1:01:13
yourself. Yeah.
1:01:15
Somewhere in your business, that's going to show up, right?
1:01:17
If you're not being compassionate to yourself,
1:01:19
somewhere in your business, that's going to show up.
1:01:21
So, you know, I always remember, like if something's not going
1:01:24
well in my business, something's not going well with Neil.
1:01:26
Like, that's just how it goes, you know?
1:01:28
I think a lot of people think they're distinct and that
1:01:30
they're separate as I'm like, OK, like I have my personal
1:01:33
life. I have like I know that that's
1:01:34
on fire, but I'm going to park that and I'm going to go thrive
1:01:36
in my business. And I do think that there's a
1:01:39
lot more time than we think. And I love the accentuation on
1:01:43
team because even when I train people's teams and we're working
1:01:47
with them, I'll say so, you know, like Steve, what's Steve
1:01:51
motivated by? And they're like, I mean, I
1:01:55
don't know. And I'm like, what do you mean
1:01:57
you don't know? Like is it financial security?
1:01:59
Is it the fact that they, you know, they love words of
1:02:03
affirmation? Like one team member could be
1:02:06
really motivated by increasing their salary.
1:02:09
And then I've had other people who are like, I don't care about
1:02:11
like that at all. I just want to know, like, am I
1:02:12
doing a good job? Like how am I growing my role?
1:02:14
Like, can I get better results for you?
1:02:16
Like one person's very much about like, are we thriving in
1:02:19
the results and the outcome? Someone else might be like,
1:02:22
well, if I hit this number, that for me is like, I'm good.
1:02:24
I'm like beyond committed to, to the vision, right.
1:02:27
So I think that not knowing what people's motivators are really
1:02:32
ultimately means that you're trying to say their motivator is
1:02:35
blue, but you're working in the operation of purple.
1:02:37
No wonder there's like a misalignment, right?
1:02:40
And so it was even for me, I remember having personal
1:02:45
interpersonal conversations with people about like, OK, like, how
1:02:47
are things at home? Like, are you, are you, how are
1:02:50
things going? Are you sleeping?
1:02:51
And you know, someone was experiencing something
1:02:53
stressful. I said, do you need a week off?
1:02:54
Like, and they're like, this is weird that you're at you care
1:02:57
about me as a person. But The thing is, if you don't
1:03:01
like the people that are doing the work are still people living
1:03:04
their lives. So the way that I see it is
1:03:05
like, yes, you know, they have a role, there's a position, but if
1:03:09
the person, it's like the hierarchy of me, if the person
1:03:11
is not poured into, they're not going to perform for you in
1:03:15
whatever it is that you're looking for them to do.
1:03:16
So the more that you pour into them as the person, the more
1:03:19
they thrive in the position of whatever it is they're doing and
1:03:23
they feel seen, which I think in a lot of companies is not an
1:03:26
experience that most people have.
1:03:27
Absolutely, absolutely. One of the first questions that
1:03:30
I ask anybody that I bring into my company is like like 5 years
1:03:34
from now, like where do you want to be and how can we help you
1:03:37
get there, right? Like, and, and, and that's the
1:03:40
deal. I said, I'm going to make you a
1:03:41
deal, right? Is I'm going to like, as long as
1:03:44
you make this a priority and as long as you do your very best,
1:03:47
OK, I'm going to do my very best to help you get to wherever you
1:03:51
have to get to in five years, right?
1:03:52
And we don't have to sit here and act like you want to work at
1:03:55
integrity first for the rest of your life.
1:03:56
Maybe you do and you're more than welcome to if you perform.
1:03:59
But we don't have to pretend that like, I just want to know
1:04:01
where you want to be and how this role is going to fit into
1:04:04
us getting closer to that. And I think that like the
1:04:07
tighter you hold on to sand, the faster it falls away, right?
1:04:10
Where it's like if you try to hold on to employees and force
1:04:12
them to become something that they're not meant to become,
1:04:15
that's when like really the problems arise when you say,
1:04:17
look like I'm invested in you, like you are more important to
1:04:20
me than any agenda that I have for you, right?
1:04:24
Like people really can feel, feel that.
1:04:27
And, and when you're sincere about it, it really, really does
1:04:30
help. Really does help.
1:04:32
And so obviously with team, you have this supplement business
1:04:36
and you know that's growing and it has great success.
1:04:40
How do we get from the supplement business to the
1:04:43
funding business that you have and the financial business you
1:04:46
have today? For sure, for sure.
1:04:48
So I, it's the, you know, it's, it's a story of, of success and
1:04:52
a story of failure, you know, so I, I ended up really needing a
1:04:55
lot of external capital to, to help the company grow because
1:04:58
for inventory purchases and all that, end up hiring ACFO, who I
1:05:02
personally didn't train properly at all.
1:05:05
You know, it was the first time I was ever hiring a partner.
1:05:07
I was hiring quickly, you know, he, he really didn't know how to
1:05:10
raise money, whether it's debt financing or through investors.
1:05:14
So we ended up taking a loan from called a merchant cash
1:05:17
advance MCA. This is predatory financing
1:05:20
basically and just. For anybody who, because I
1:05:22
remember saying this to somebody, that was a a really
1:05:24
interesting part of your story and they said what is predatory
1:05:26
financing? If someone's thinking, what does
1:05:28
that mean? Yeah, yeah, it's, it's
1:05:30
basically, it was interesting when I had filed bankruptcy for
1:05:34
the company, the lawyers were like, oh, you got into loan
1:05:36
shark loans. So essentially it's a loan that
1:05:39
is meant for you to default or a loan that puts you into such a
1:05:43
tough spot that you're, you're doing anything and everything to
1:05:46
pay it back. 40% interest rate, for example, right?
1:05:49
So if you borrowed 100,000, you had to pay back 140,000 within
1:05:53
six months or within nine months, right?
1:05:55
Just these like daily or weekly payments that they squeeze the
1:05:59
cash flow out of your business. So you know, there was a certain
1:06:01
point towards the end where just waking up in the morning, I owe
1:06:05
$2000. So even though the business was
1:06:07
doing over 300,000 a month of revenue, like just for waking up
1:06:11
and brushing my teeth, I owe 2000 dollars, $60,000 a month.
1:06:14
Just take it away just for existing.
1:06:17
So I was so squeezed. There was just so much pressure
1:06:19
every day that, you know, I could, I have saved the
1:06:22
business. I, I don't know.
1:06:23
I, I think my, my spirit was also pretty crushed.
1:06:26
So yeah, I mean, I, I, I took my story of addiction and created a
1:06:31
brain supplement because I wanted to create a safe
1:06:33
alternative to Adderall. I took my experience of
1:06:36
predatory financing and losing a business and what I had built.
1:06:40
And I said, I don't want other entrepreneurs to deal with that.
1:06:42
So now what we do is we help founders get low interest
1:06:46
capital. It is a very strategic approach.
1:06:49
You know, I've raised a lot of money for myself and so I know
1:06:52
exactly what to do. I know exactly what not to do.
1:06:54
And so it's just really a mission that was born from from
1:06:58
a failure, you know, to scratch my own itch.
1:07:00
So that's that's where the story, you know that that's how.
1:07:03
Interesting. It really does all tie to our
1:07:05
point earlier. If you can't see the vision of
1:07:06
how it all comes together, it really all does.
1:07:09
Like your whole story now kind of comes to a point where it all
1:07:13
makes sense in the sense of like all the experiences you had, all
1:07:15
the insights you had, all the lessons that you learned are
1:07:18
like this incredible toolbox that you have today to be able
1:07:21
to lean on in this, in this business, to take all those
1:07:25
insights and to be able to apply them.
1:07:27
I think people hearing that story, there's so much to
1:07:30
unpack, but I guess one of the curiosities that I have just
1:07:33
like selfishly is like knowing what you know now and I'm
1:07:38
thinking of the person who's listening, who you know, is
1:07:42
inspired, but I'm sure also feels very seen because I think
1:07:44
a lot of people don't talk about the hard parts of business.
1:07:48
There's a lot of highlight reel available anywhere you want to
1:07:51
view it. But I think, you know, to have
1:07:53
someone say, hey, like this is something that we achieved
1:07:55
comma. And here's what it also kind of
1:07:58
look like. If you could go back and tell,
1:08:01
you know, Neil, who was growing that business and you're
1:08:04
starting to see momentum at year 4 and you know, you start to
1:08:08
take on this financing, what would you want to tell him or
1:08:12
what do you wish you could tell him in that phase?
1:08:15
What a cool question, what a cool question.
1:08:18
I'm going to ask that question back to you too, because I think
1:08:21
I think so much wisdom in in, in, in hearing the answer to
1:08:25
that, but it kind of all happened perfectly because I'm,
1:08:29
I'm happy where I'm at right now.
1:08:30
But like the advice that I would give him is slow down, slow
1:08:35
down. OK, that's the first thing.
1:08:37
I think the other thing is, is that I needed to learn how to
1:08:40
fire right truly to, to be, to be fair, is is hire slowly fire
1:08:47
quickly. That was definitely some advice
1:08:50
that I, I, I really needed. I really like to give people a
1:08:55
lot of chances, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad
1:08:58
quality. But at the time, that one
1:09:01
mistake was pretty pivotal and that was not something that I
1:09:04
should have accepted or allowed because it put everybody at
1:09:07
risk. And ultimately the business
1:09:08
ended up failing because I had the wrong people in the wrong
1:09:11
seats. 100% my responsibility, 100% my fault.
1:09:14
I have nobody else to blame, but I needed to learn how to fire.
1:09:18
I also needed to learn how to just put people in the right
1:09:20
places as opposed to try and force people into boxes.
1:09:24
Because I think that was something else that I did was I
1:09:26
tried to force people to be in certain boxes just so they could
1:09:29
continue to be a part of the vision.
1:09:31
And that didn't serve me. That didn't serve the other
1:09:33
person. So I think that's the biggest
1:09:35
thing. I know that if I didn't have
1:09:39
certain people in certain spots that I would be able to scale.
1:09:42
And I realized that I kept hitting certain inflection
1:09:47
points where I couldn't keep pushing beyond because the wrong
1:09:50
people were in the wrong seats, right?
1:09:52
So that's the advice that I would give myself is don't try
1:09:55
and force anyone to be in any, any, any positions that they're
1:09:58
not meant to be. Trust your gut and slow down.
1:10:01
Just slow down just a little bit, you know, Think, think
1:10:04
before you act. Yeah, it resonate with the slow
1:10:06
down one for sure. Yeah, what about you?
1:10:09
That is it you know in in your because this works in the last
1:10:12
two years like go back going ball 2 years.
1:10:14
What? What would you advise?
1:10:16
Advise yourself? I mean, definitely the slowing
1:10:18
down piece I think is huge. I think there's this also
1:10:22
duality I've realized of like there's a lot of people not
1:10:26
willing to do the hard work, but also in scaling hard work
1:10:28
doesn't always fix everything, so.
1:10:31
Yeah. There's this kind of like it's
1:10:33
not a black or white, which is why it's always tough for me to
1:10:35
describe. But I think there's a lot of
1:10:38
people that are frustrated by the fact they can't scale.
1:10:40
But I recognize like there is just a level of work ethic that
1:10:43
you just can't deny. It doesn't matter who you are or
1:10:45
what size you are. Like to your point, if there's
1:10:47
always problems, there's always work to be done and the work
1:10:49
doesn't go away. But I think that there was a
1:10:52
phase where I was just bringing a candle at both ends and I was
1:10:55
up at 4:00 in the morning and I would work till 1:00 AM and I
1:10:58
would just like push, push, push, push, push.
1:11:00
But truthfully, I was trying to at work something to your point,
1:11:04
that was just like a broken model.
1:11:06
And I think that it only survived because I was holding
1:11:10
it all up physically myself. Whereas I think one of the
1:11:14
biggest lessons I've learned is like stepping back in your
1:11:16
business shows you where your business is really at.
1:11:18
And like if your business truly relies on you to function every
1:11:22
single day, you will know it when you take a week off.
1:11:24
And so I think, you know, scheduling in like, you know,
1:11:28
once a quarter to try to be less in the weeds of the day-to-day.
1:11:32
I think it's a really great way to to kind of pressure test your
1:11:34
business. And that was a great insight
1:11:35
that I learned. But I think to the model piece,
1:11:39
you know, something that kind of was actually the start of the
1:11:42
last two years was that I had a lot of success, but I had a lot
1:11:45
of success building someone else's vision.
1:11:48
I had, you know, coaching that it's, it's even hard for me in
1:11:54
coaching businesses because I, I know myself on the client side.
1:11:57
And it literally comes back to what you said earlier, which is
1:12:00
like, who's to say that this person has the answers for me?
1:12:03
I was in and it's not anything to the coaches as to your point
1:12:07
earlier, like it's 100%. I take full ownership for
1:12:09
everything. So it's nothing to do with the
1:12:10
coach or the program or any of that, but I had been in coaching
1:12:13
and I was so desperately like someone tell me the path to
1:12:16
success because like I again have this background of family
1:12:21
stuff that I didn't realize. Again, lack of self-awareness
1:12:24
was even my motivator until very recently.
1:12:27
So I'm like, I have to make this multi $1,000,000 business like
1:12:29
this has to happen. Just tell me how to do it.
1:12:31
And so, you know, one of the first things that we're we're
1:12:33
taught is like learn from those who've done it before you.
1:12:37
But I think that the distinction I didn't have at the time, which
1:12:40
I'm very conscious of now, is that I learned what the
1:12:43
principal was. I don't learn the specific
1:12:45
process of how they did it. And I think I was so latched on
1:12:50
to the process of what it had to look like versus what's the big
1:12:55
value, to your point earlier, with values like what, what was
1:12:59
the big value that I need to take away from this as a
1:13:01
business owner that I can put in my toolbox and see when I want
1:13:04
to use it, how I want to use it? Does it feel like it's the right
1:13:07
tool for me at this moment? And I think I just saw so many
1:13:10
people that had the success that I wanted.
1:13:12
And so I thought, OK, great, screw my ideas, screw my vision,
1:13:15
screw how it feels, you know, screw whatever.
1:13:19
I'm not going to focus on anything.
1:13:20
Me, they know they've achieved it.
1:13:22
I'm going to park my thoughts, feelings, experiences to the
1:13:25
side. I'm just going to absorb this.
1:13:26
And that's going to be the way that I hit success.
1:13:29
And then I met George actually at a conference, and we started
1:13:34
talking about business. And he asked me a very simple
1:13:36
question. And he just said, you know, what
1:13:37
would it look like if you did business your way?
1:13:40
And I remember in that moment, I instantly started crying, which
1:13:43
is a very dramatic reaction. He was like, whoa, like, didn't
1:13:46
realize what I had on there kind of thing.
1:13:49
He was not prepared for that. And so he was like, OK, there's
1:13:51
something there clearly. But it triggered me because I
1:13:54
think I knew on, like, a deep level that I was building
1:13:59
someone else's vision. And I think the hardest part of
1:14:02
all of that is that it was successful.
1:14:04
So it's not even like I'm building someone else's and I'm,
1:14:06
you know, miserable and I'm not getting what I want.
1:14:09
Like the business was doing very, very well.
1:14:13
And I really had to completely audit the entire thing front to
1:14:17
back to say, OK, what if this is not actually mine And you know,
1:14:21
to your piece of, of team, like there was ways in managing, you
1:14:25
know, this aspect of don't get personal with your team members.
1:14:28
Like don't talk about personal matters.
1:14:31
Like you don't want to mix business and life and that kind
1:14:33
of stuff. And so in the last two years,
1:14:36
it's literally been, you know, what offers do I like and what
1:14:39
schedule do I want to have? And like, does this decision I'm
1:14:42
looking to make support that or not?
1:14:44
Or, you know, even with team, I've become way closer with my
1:14:47
team in the last, you know, two years than I ever had before
1:14:51
that because before it was just like business outcomes to do
1:14:54
lists. And now I'm like, hey, like,
1:14:56
how's your son? And like, how are you feeling
1:14:58
about X? And those are questions that I
1:15:00
just don't think I felt. Permission, I think is what it
1:15:03
comes down to. I gave myself permission instead
1:15:05
of seeking that from other people.
1:15:06
To your point earlier. That's so great.
1:15:09
Like that's so crazy for me to hear because like when I, when I
1:15:12
heard you speak in, in Montana, like there was a sense of
1:15:16
originality to what you were sharing.
1:15:18
Like obviously it was, it was a culmination of all the lessons
1:15:21
that you've learned from others, but also like your own
1:15:24
experience of testing and trying things and thinking for yourself
1:15:29
in this presentation. That was, you know, just a, a
1:15:32
small representation of your originality and your own genius.
1:15:36
And so to hear that for so long that you didn't allow yourself
1:15:40
to see that. And then like, it's so beautiful
1:15:43
that you finally did. And now you're at a point where
1:15:46
you're sharing that with, with people is, is it's crazy for me
1:15:49
to hear. It's beautiful for me to hear.
1:15:51
I have to say congratulations. And whatever that factor is of
1:15:55
like, like leaning into yourself, I would encourage you
1:15:58
to, to, to keep going literally. Stillness.
1:16:02
There you go, there you go. I think we're off to meditate.
1:16:06
I I was so deep in my masculine and I went to Montana for my
1:16:13
intensive and we went in like a side by side up a mountain.
1:16:16
I remember going on the top of this mountain, it was just
1:16:18
complete silence. Like we're not talking.
1:16:19
There's no birds, there's no anything.
1:16:21
You're so high up that there's just air.
1:16:24
Like it was just like the energy got sucked out of the room and
1:16:27
you couldn't hear anything. And it was overwhelming coming
1:16:31
from like a Toronto area where you've got like alarms going off
1:16:33
and dogs barking and all of his constant stimuli.
1:16:35
And I remember someone saying like, you just need to go sit in
1:16:38
a field. At the time I thought, what the
1:16:40
heck are you talking about? And so I went to go sit in this
1:16:43
field and I remember like my whole body reacted.
1:16:46
I was like, I don't feel safe. This doesn't feel good.
1:16:48
Like I've everything came up that had already been sitting
1:16:50
there, but I had never been silent enough to hear it.
1:16:54
And so I think to your point of your meditation practice, that
1:16:59
for me looked like, am I actually listening to myself or
1:17:04
am I just constantly distracting to never actually have to sit
1:17:08
with myself? And so the thing I will also
1:17:11
preface, which, you know, I don't know about you, but it was
1:17:16
not like pretty like it wasn't like a, you know, meditating in
1:17:20
the corner, like feeling euphoria like this was like me
1:17:25
feeling so scared to sit with myself, which is such a weird
1:17:29
feeling, but like uncontrollably crying.
1:17:32
And I thought, what is this awful anxiety of just like my
1:17:36
body shaking And I'm like, OK, just sit through it, like work
1:17:39
through it. And I remember just I said to
1:17:41
George, we joke about it now, but I was like, you literally
1:17:43
opened the floodgates. And now I can't close it because
1:17:45
I am quickly crying all the time or like, I'll quickly, you know,
1:17:49
speak to an emotion because I'm way more in tune now than I ever
1:17:53
have been. But now it's an OK process.
1:17:56
Now it's an enjoyable process. There's still hard days when,
1:17:58
you know, things are stressful. But at the time, it was so messy
1:18:04
and ugly and truthfully painful that I thought, is this what
1:18:08
people talk about when they say sit and stillness?
1:18:11
Because it was. There's a lot that in general in
1:18:14
us, we're navigating that we never allow any light to show.
1:18:21
And so then when you create that space, like for you and
1:18:24
meditation or for me with, you know, stillness or with ice
1:18:27
baths and things like that, it's so present saying, but you have
1:18:30
to also be, I think just as much in the, the vision and the
1:18:33
what's possible and what I could do with my life.
1:18:35
It's so beautiful and exciting. There's also this dark part,
1:18:38
which is the fear, the overwhelm, the stress, the
1:18:42
limiting beliefs, the programming.
1:18:44
Like there's also just as much to the beauty that's sitting
1:18:47
inside you. There's also this other darkness
1:18:49
side of like, what are things that I really have been
1:18:52
struggling with that I haven't given any time or attention to?
1:18:55
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
1:18:57
I, I like, we all have that and it has to get dealt with, right?
1:19:02
And, and for me, like one of the first signs of like me not
1:19:06
dealing with it is I get pains in my fingers.
1:19:07
I get really bad pains in my fingers, right?
1:19:10
Which is nobody's ever heard that.
1:19:12
But when I have like unprocessed emotions, I like my, my hands
1:19:15
literally start to hurt. So when that happens, like, OK,
1:19:18
you, you have a ways to go. And after my, my company evolved
1:19:23
Air, the supplement company, after it went bankrupt, then
1:19:26
after I folded that, I realized I was running for three years
1:19:31
trying to save it, trying to get out of whatever it was in then
1:19:33
going through the process of liquidating all of that.
1:19:35
And my, my hands were just so much excruciating pain.
1:19:39
And only now the past couple months have I been able to cry
1:19:43
for for what had happened for three years because I was
1:19:46
holding it, was bottling it up. But like, yeah, to your point,
1:19:49
like, it, it it is so messy. If you especially if you let it
1:19:54
sit there for so long, and if you let it linger and you don't
1:19:56
deal with it, it will it will eventually come up.
1:19:59
It will eventually shackle you and chain you.
1:20:01
So like, you got to deal with your yourself.
1:20:04
You have to deal with your emotions.
1:20:05
All right. Yeah.
1:20:07
So agree, so, so agree, Neil, obviously everything you shared
1:20:10
today, there's like, there's just so much.
1:20:12
I feel like everyone needs to come back and listen again
1:20:14
because it's just, there's so many Nuggets along the way.
1:20:17
You obviously have achieved a lot.
1:20:19
And in the essence of the literal name of our show,
1:20:22
ambitious, one of the things that I would love to ask you is
1:20:26
just like what's been a hidden cost of ambition for you?
1:20:31
So the reason I ask is I think that when people hear stories
1:20:37
like yours, they see accolades like yours, they see
1:20:40
achievements like yours. All of us can really anchor on
1:20:43
to that highlight reel. We can really anchor on to OK,
1:20:45
like, great, I want to be able to achieve this number or to
1:20:48
achieve the status and achievement.
1:20:50
But I think that, you know, today you've experienced and
1:20:53
you've gone through a lot and you still ended up on top.
1:20:57
But I, I'm curious, with all of the story and with everything
1:21:00
that you've learned and gone through and all the insights
1:21:02
you've collected along the way, what would you say to the person
1:21:06
who is very ambitious, who wants to achieve a lot, is probably
1:21:10
something that you would say has been the biggest cost to all
1:21:14
that you've achieved and done? Really, really cool question.
1:21:18
I got 2, I got 2, two that really come up immediately.
1:21:22
Number one is you can do anything, but you can't do
1:21:24
everything. I think with ambitious people,
1:21:27
like we have a lot of aspirations, a lot of
1:21:30
aspirations to do a lot of things.
1:21:32
And what I realized is that like right now, I cannot be a
1:21:35
professional fighter. Like I love kickboxing of jiu
1:21:38
jitsu. That's the season I'm in past
1:21:39
five years. I can't be a professional
1:21:42
fighter. Do I want to the idea of that
1:21:44
sounds kind of cool, but if I want to build an 8 Figure 9
1:21:48
figure business, which is ultimately what I want to do, I
1:21:50
can't, I cannot be a professional fighter.
1:21:53
And I think that's one of the most painful pills to swallow
1:21:55
for people is you could do anything, but you can't do
1:21:59
everything. So like in the name of
1:22:02
stillness, sit with yourself, figure out where you want to go
1:22:06
and pursue that right? And then figure out how all
1:22:09
these other pieces of your life will integrate, fit together to
1:22:12
create that perfect life. But like, you're not going to be
1:22:14
the best in the world at two things.
1:22:16
It's just not going to happen. Maybe you know, if you're like,
1:22:19
it gets extraordinary exception to the rule, but for most people
1:22:23
like you can, you can't do everything.
1:22:25
You can do anything, but not everything.
1:22:27
I think the second one, and I would actually say this is the
1:22:30
bigger 1, is when you say that you are responsible, you are
1:22:36
risking having to say that I was irresponsible, which is a lot
1:22:40
more painful than saying I was not responsible, right?
1:22:43
So if you're going to take full ownership of something in your
1:22:46
life, if you're going to say, hey, I want to win big, you're
1:22:49
going to risk losing. You're going to risk having to
1:22:51
say, yeah, I messed that one up. So just know that if you're
1:22:54
going to go in the arena and play a big game, you also may
1:22:57
lose big and it may hurt like a lot, like a lot a lot.
1:23:01
So that. Last one, I'm like, I'm gonna
1:23:05
come back and journal on that one.
1:23:06
That's huge. That's huge.
1:23:09
And just like the simple, it's always a simple wording that
1:23:11
gets us, but the simple wording of that is massive.
1:23:15
It's massive because it's true. People talk about take radical
1:23:17
responsibility. It's like, but there's also the
1:23:19
other side of that coin. That is also something you're
1:23:21
accepting the process. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
1:23:25
Yeah. So good, so good.
1:23:26
Well, Neal, if somebody wants to connect with you more and just
1:23:31
to kind of get more access to you into your world, where is
1:23:34
the best place for them to reach out to you?
1:23:35
Yeah, Instagram is great. Neal dot Thacker Neal dot
1:23:39
THAKKAR Neal dot Thacker DME on Instagram.
1:23:44
Amazing, amazing. Well, I will say just for you
1:23:47
listening, you know, today was a really just an incredible story
1:23:51
and such amazing just like insights and shares and lessons
1:23:54
and like 1 liners. I feel like there's a lot of you
1:23:58
have a lot of quotable things that need to be on a T-shirt
1:24:00
just saying, just saying, but to a lot of really quotable moments
1:24:03
today. And so I also wanna just invite
1:24:05
anybody who is listening right now to reach out to Neil.
1:24:08
One of the things that I think is so powerful when we have
1:24:12
these aha moments or we have these like these quotes or these
1:24:14
lines that resonate with us is to also to share those and to be
1:24:18
witnessed within those because it really does allow that
1:24:21
insight and that aha moment to land even deeper for you.
1:24:23
So Neil, thank you so much for coming on today.
1:24:25
This is amazing. Thank you.
1:24:26
That was so much fun. Thank you so much.
1:24:28
Of course, of course. Well, guys, we will see you on
1:24:30
next week's episode. And, as always, stay ambitious.