I remember sitting alone in my detached office, screaming into a towel, feeling like God was breaking me apart into the man I was supposed to become. I listened to Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie on repeat. “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn? Well, that’s alrght because I like the way it hurts.”
My marriage was in shambles. My daughter was struggling in ways that terrified me. I was fighting multiple lawsuits. I had walked away from a profitable business that made me feel empty to go all-in on something I believed could become much bigger.
I’ve missed payroll. I’ve faced foreclosure. There were unpaid taxes and certified letters arriving at the house. I borrowed money from friends and family to keep debt at bay and basic expenses paid. I’ve fought with the DOJ and more federal/state agencies over regulations that I can count. I remember staring at numbers on a screen and picturing the faces of the people who depended on me. There were days when I genuinely didn’t know how I was going to make everything work. I suffered in silence.
But I knew one thing:
I wasn’t quitting. I remember screaming at God to give me more.
If this was what I had to walk through to rebuilt, then give me more. Because there was no way I was giving up on my girls, my business, or myself.
I had spent my life building things, and somewhere inside me I knew this was part of my journey too.
So I learned how to stay (mostly) calm above the water while kicking furiously underneath it.
When the doubt, anxiety and panic became overwhelming, I put it somewhere productive. I lifted heavier. I worked harder. I focused on making progress every single day. And when everything else felt uncertain, I poured myself into my daughters and tried to make sure their world remained as safe and normal as I could make it.
There were voices around me telling me I had lost my way, betting against me:
“You’re reckless.”
“I can’t support this behavior.”
“You’ll never provide a stable life.”
“You live beyond your means.”
For a while, those voices rang in my ears.
But they were wrong. And it fueled me.
Not because I had all the answers.
I didn’t.
They were wrong because they couldn’t see what I could see. Most can’t and that vision is one of my greatest blessings.
There is something difficult to explain about being a builder. Sometimes an idea clicks and you can see the business, the brand, the people, the opportunity and the path long before any of it exists.
To everyone else, it can look irrational.
To you, it feels inevitable. It is just a matter of time, capital, and if you can survive that long.
And sometimes you have to be willing to look completely wrong for a while before you can prove yourself right. Boy, was I right.
