Losing The Magic & How To Get It Back

I want to tell you the very personal story about the last year or so of my life, how I had the magic sauce, lost it and found it again. How I got through probably the worst depression slump I have ever had and lost a ton of friends in the process.

In a world of “hey look at me”, pose next to the Lambo and rent the mansion to make your sales video, this is the very real chronicles of a modern day entrepreneur and the shit we go through finding out our path.

Have you ever seen someone that just moves through the world differently? Someone who just seems to have all the “luck” and things always go their way?

Most people call this luck, that word to me is cheap and stupid. What it represents is calculated belief, inner trust, planning, and of course execution.

I don’t want to take away from this “magic” let’s call it that these people have, I know because I too have had this magic. There is some sort of primordial goo that when one has it, folds time and space itself to deliver you what you want.

Let’s rewind the clocks a bit to last year, I was starting a coaching company with a friend who I am not sure is still a friend but I love him all the same. We were business partners, which in hindsight was really dumb, more on that later…

Things were going great, we were vibing on this whole concept, I was writing everyday, FB posts, email swipes, copy- you name it, I was in my glory. See I love writing and when it’s on a topic I love, it’s easy for me to almost do it day and night. Plus that just fuels the rest of my creative spark and other things come through me that turns out to be pretty epic sometimes too.

I ended up writing a few hundred pages probably in total over those 8 months, we did tons of work setting up a few funnels and then we hosted an event which was absolutely amazing.

The funnels we never really got a chance to test out because we sort of ran out of money, since I was already out of money, he was “footing the bill”. This was a big mistake by the way, it puts unfair pressures on both parties and ends up turning into a flat out mess.

Anyway, the event went great everyone seemed to get a lot out of it and have some fun along the way. We brought out our head of sales and a videographer from California so the stage was set to make an epic sales video and trailer video that would surely sell these things for years to come.

This is where you could say I was at the peak of “having the magic”, things were just lining up- not without challenge but they were happening. I had the vision, I knew where we were going and how we would get there.

All that came to a screeching halt quite quickly actually…

The epic sales video never happened, after coming off the high of the event the distance between myself and business partner got further and further. I think the live in situation as well as covering 100% of the financials started to weigh in on him.

Not just this but the videographer went MIA, he showed up back in May of this year, 9 months after the job and delivered only the actual training session recordings and a short trailer video.

So needless to say things fell apart pretty quick, then I figured out I had overstayed my visa in Australia after being pulled over for bad tags on an illegal drift car I was driving back from the gym exactly 3 KM from where I was staying.

To make it worse, I had no ID on me at all, in fact no wallet. I was arrested and then taken to the station while customs decided what they wanted to do with me. Meanwhile I texted a friend to come and pick up the car that I left on the side of the road that they wanted to impound, ya he had no idea till later. Opps…

So they basically gave me like a week to get out of their country and now I faced a return ban. Oh I almost forgot a really important part of all this…

For the last few months I had been dating this woman who I fell madly in love with, and I think due to the pressures and realities that were going on with me, being deported, basically broke etc it was too much for her and we split.

That last week of being in Australia was very interesting, I would wake up middle of the night gasping for breath, rolling around day-by-day almost in a haze, at this point my business partner and I weren’t really talking but I was still also trying to put together a plan for some quick cash.

Nothing really worked and I was soon in Bali, Indonesia feeling completely dazed and confused. Most people that met me on the first night I came in, thought I was on drugs because I was so out of it, I told most of them later I was mere seconds from having a full blown panic attack.

The deeper reality is I wanted to crawl up into a ball and cry, but I buried that shit deep down which was another mistake on my part. You should NEVER suppress feelings, it’s far easier to express them, clear it out and move on.

During this time when I first got to Bali, I was invited to act in a small role for a viral video they were making to do work for this non-profit. It scared the shit out of me so I was in, it turned out pretty good too.

So finally after a few weeks of posturing and attempting to have it all together, I broke down and pretty much cried daily at different points and started my swing in and out of depression.

Thank god I had people in my life that helped me out, not only financially but also with just simply being there for me. They knew that I would turn it around and be on top again but right now I was just sad.

During this time I got into some really destructive patterns, I was sleeping around with all kinds of women which I don’t do and hate even admitting, more than the having no money thing. Most guys think this is “cool” and would give me dap but it’s not who I am at all and only contributes to women’s warped image of their actual value.

Anyway, I eventually was dating a complete disaster of a women who had no idea what she actually wanted and since I didn’t either we made it work for awhile. Hey sex was crazy so I was in…

Ok reel it back in Jameson…

Blah blah depression, feeling super down and doing really stupid shit on a motorbike after only learning how to ride a few weeks earlier. Ya guess some of the shit I claimed to be an expert at like speed learning did in fact work! Especially considering I rode a dirtbike home on Halloween night while high on Mushrooms feeling like I was one with the wind.

I had to turn this around so I decided to sell (of all things-haha!) a speed learning and confidence workshop that lasted 6 weeks. I ended up having 4 people enroll and from the feedback I got it pretty much changed them.

I am a firm believer that helping others sometimes has the power to save us, and this training did just that, I mean some weeks I had to drag myself thru a quick meditation to beef up my own confidence and get on these calls for a few hours to help these other people with their own shit.

The point I always remembered was that what I had to say and train them on could in fact save one of them that day. I use the same mental technique when I speak in front of groups. Try it out!

This on and off continued, I fell off working out which I NEVER DO, my diet was pretty shit, I had no supplements or nootropics to help bring me back and eventually was hotel hoping barely holding on in Bali. This is pretty hard to do actually, it only costs a few dollars US per day to live out there.

But I just couldn’t reel it back in, I was so drifted off in some other world, then my Grandma passed away. I remember at first I felt nothing I was so numb already, then a few days later I woke up one day and just cried in fetal position for what felt like hours.

It was time to go back to America and do the funeral and proper send off, the only issue is I had like no money, no magic and had pissed off most of my close friends by that point by straight up just asking them to give me money.

I used to HATE when people asked me that so that probably explains why so many of them ignore my Facebook PMs now.

I started to pick myself up off the floor, after all I had too. Daily calls with my dad helped me during this time, everyone else I felt like really didn’t understand what I was going through and just acting like they did or completely ignoring me at that point.

All I really wanted was for someone to give me permission to take the mask off and be sad, angry, happy and helpless until I cleared it all out because I was still trying to act like I had it together.

As the days and weeks went on, I started to turn up the heat and put together money to fly back to the US. I had a deadline that I had to fly out by to make the funeral.

Oh missing a small point, I completely repeated the same shit I pulled in Australia and overstayed my Visa in Bali which they don’t play games with apparently. I had to hire people to help me get through all the red tape and once again clean up a mess I had created which could have landed me in jail!

I got out safely and just in the nick of time, 36hrs later I was passed out on the floor of the Detroit airport waiting for other family to fly in so we could all head out together.

I woke up the morning of the funeral to a vision of my Grandma telling me it would all be ok, that she loved me and I was here to do important things. I started crying uncontrollably, later that day at the service I said nothing when the time came. I dreamed of an entire conversation between her and I, I had said my peace and felt like more words just weren’t necessary.

I have been back in the US now for about 4 months, and I have completely had to rebuild my physic (which you can checkout more of over on my instagram), fought off disease and illness, rehabilitated my back and left rotator cuff.

Besides that I had to completely rebuild my daily agenda and productivity because I didn’t have a schedule or daily routine at all when I came back.

I would say that I have dipped in and out of the magic sauce probably dozens of times and have some amazing things in the works.

I am writing more, working on a book, have something called the Japan Experience coming up in November which is a Drift experience over in Japan for entrepreneurs who want to get away and have some fun doing cool shit- oh and want to learn how to drift, like really fast!

So I will be using the now refined speed learning principles on them along with some good old hypnosis to help them pick up drifting really quick.

I have been helping a friend with his startup that was quite stalled out and that is about ready to launch which makes my heart happy because he is an awesome dude.

I am still cleaning up my messes that were left as collateral damage along the way and those will be wrapped up by the end of the year.

Lastly I have been working at rebuilding some of the friendships which I feel I asked too much of last year and earlier this year during those hard times. That is going ok…

Key Takeaways

I want to leave you with some takeaways that I have had as an individual after this whole thing…

First off, I am not looking for sympathy in anyway and by no means am a hero. I am just a regular guy who is trying to figure shit out for themselves.

I can say that I know what it’s like to have everyone go from believing in you and looking to you for the light, to trying to lock you in the basement and screaming from the rooftops that you’re a scammer and a fraud.

Just look at what happened to Lance Armstrong, in the end everyone turned on him and pointed the finger. Those were the same people who cheered on the sidelines for him while he was winning.

There is an interesting and very toxic tendency most of us have when it comes to belief and other people in our life.

I have tuned back into the important work I feel I am here to do, repaired my self image and have been reminded that deep belief is the element to attaining and keeping the magic.

Remember those that don’t believe in themselves will always find ways to chop you down and bring you down to their level.

I also recognized that it would have been easier to just admit that I lost the magic vs chasing it and then go and work for someone else who had the magic and was looking for a genius like me.

One thing I will say is my belief in my abilities never wavered during all those events, that was the one thing that I refused to let go of. I believe we are all geniuses, just because someone else cannot see that, doesn’t change my mind.

Lastly it was really dumb to go in as business partners for both of us, he wasn’t ready and neither was I. There is a really bad habit in the internet marketing world that says we have to partner and JV on everything instead of working off a more traditional structure.

We all have our own bullshit and when you partner on something it’s like marriage, your BS becomes theirs and vise versa, in the end the load usually becomes too much for at least one to carry.

I will stick to the one thing I can control and that is ME!

In Closing

As I am writing this I was watching the Dark Knight Rises and I guess in a lot of ways I feel like Batman when he was broken and hit rock bottom only to return greater and better for the next chapter of the story.

That is where I am at in a lot of ways. I have been reading a lot of James Altucher lately and I can say that I thought I had made all the mistakes one could possibly make but think he is up there too. The important thing to remember is that stories are medicine for all of us, we may not all get along at the end of the day, have varying beliefs etc but reading a great story can influence us to do almost anything.

If this story has impacted you, comment, share it with your friends and family, email it off to those you think it will help and help keep storytelling alive.