your friend /tej

your friend /tej

I’m a world class failure. Or at least, I would’ve been. And that’s because from 14-20, I started and failed at over 10 different businesses (with a few successes in between). From record labels to clothing companies to social networks to dating websites. I was a total idiot, heading nowhere fast with stress induced lines on my face. And an empty bank account. 

Meanwhile all my peers and cousins were chasing degrees and climbing corporate ladders, making bank. This only made me feel worse. Yet I could never join them and that’s because the conventional path made me want to head-butt a knife.

Conventional Path: Wake up to an alarm clock, do shit society tells you to do, repeat until you’re too old to work and die.

It started with my first and only job at McDonald’s. From the first shift, I knew I wouldn’t last long. I was right. The same day they gave me my uniform, I returned it. And never went back. But from then it only got worse. Life was an open book with empty pages. And I had no clue how to fill it. I tried walking the straight line and following the conventional path. Even enrolled in business school. Got my act together. And graduated with an Accounting Degree and a 3.87 GPA. 

But thoughts of becoming an Accountant or Investment Banker died the same day I saw people working in the profession…
CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
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"Kill. Me. Now. Please. Somebody." Their facial expressions said. I didn’t understand how they could spend 40+ years of their life doing dull work, all the while working to make someone else rich. (No offense accountants or IB’s – some of my dearest friends are in these professions today lol). But nobody else saw anything wrong with that. They only saw wrong in me.

My parents saw it. Friends. Siblings too. I couldn’t blame them. They were right. I never did fit into the mold society carved out for me. But I didn’t care.
My personal philosophy had always been: I’d rather be a massive failure than a mediocre success any day. Ever since I was a youngin, I always wanted the whole world or nothing. 

“Top of the world or bottom of the ocean – F the middle.”

Problem was… I was moving towards becoming that massive failure. And with each new sunrise, it was becoming clearer and clearer. Yet my goal for life didn’t change: I viewed life as one big joke. As I laughed at the odds with the goal of living so incredibly well that death would tremble to take me.

Or at least, I tried. Some days, it grew too hard. And I would break down late at night with crippling thoughts of… "Maybe I’m delusional. And I’d be better off throwing dirt over my dreams and living an ordinary life."

But every time I had these thoughts, I would quickly snap out of it… and realize a ‘mediocre’ life wasn’t the life for me. My highest values had always been ambition, laughter and adventure. And the one goal I’d always had was to live a full life. I just wanted to leave the world thinking… "I did it. I lived a grandiose adventure." You know? So I refused to conform. Instead, I set the limits even higher. And dared to reach them. I started more businesses and took more risks. And because of my pigheaded discipline, I eventually started to win. Slowly at first with the odd copy promotion taking off with the poisons of failure laced in between. But then more quickly and consistently as the money started compounding more and more and I was making in one day what had previously taken me a year (or more) to make.

Since then, my overall journey has evolved from:

Stage 1 - DTC Copy Freelancer
Stage 2 - Agency owner (client basis)
Stage 3 - Agency owner (launching brands)
Stage 4 - Owning and running my own offers

Today I run 1 consultancy, 2 skools, and a hedge-fund style operation with a partner where we build and scale info/ecom brands.

When I’m not building and growing businesses, I write, go on long walks, make YouTube videos, record podcasts, discover the secrets of the Universe and act an overall fool because I believe life is one big game and I’m just here to play to the fullest! 🚀

Want more?

Check out these podcasts I've done with my good friend Danny Miranda who has the GOAT podcast (highly recommend)