Birth of Full Potential

I was born in 1983 to Jim and Cathy Stinson in Ocala Florida. They almost named me Albert. And even though I was the second child (my brother’s name is Anthony) I took on the same name as my father.

When I was born I had glaucoma in one eye.. my parents were fast to see something was wrong, and the doctors operated and saved it.

I still had a stray eye that would stray towards the light, that was most prominent when I was in school it seems, unfortunately for my dating life.. but it made me more aware and focused, as that was the only way to overcome the challenge and strengthen my eye. So every challenge carries the seed of equivalent benefit.

Toddlership in Ocala

My first known memory in Ocala was at this time as they were putting a pool in our backyard in Ocala Florida. I was on the couch with my brother looking at the back yard where the new pool was going in.

Early Childhood Visions

The story begins with a boy who was doing finger paintings and a lemonade stand..

Ever since I was a little kid I thought I was going to be a priest.. I was born into that space started to walk that path. It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realized the Catholic Church didn’t contain the whole truth that I was looking for and decided to go on my own path.

I had a vision of changing the world long before I ever started taking action on it. When I was 5 I had a mystical vision that told me I was chosen for something. And when I was 14 I have memories of when I would bounce from mirror to mirror in my parents bedroom affirming that I would be one of the most positively influential men the world has ever known.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do.. I just knew that it was going to be huge.

I recall creating diagrams of the kind of island I would live on, the farms growing food, the helicopter to get around to all the different properties, the books I would write, the movie productions, speaking from stages and all of it.  Some has come true, some is yet to come into fruition yet.

I was like I was living in a parallel universe for a while.. Exploring my dreams and astral projections by night, and doing the best I could to figure out this life and my purpose in it, in the day time.

I always had a knack for entrepreneurship, and was always doing something to make money .. from a lemonade stand and finger paintings at age 4 in our drive way (selling out to my mother) .. to also sold baseball cards, candy bars, chocolates from candy machines, buying software for reselling, buying speakers for reselling, stuffing envelopes (and getting scammed).. I really started to get traction when I learned how to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for my father’s business and learned HTML (a basic coding language for web sites) when the web was first starting to take form.

Little Entrepreneur

Before kindergarten started a lemonade stand.
Was so successful I earned my first $60 to buy my own Piano keyboard

Middle Childhood Misadventures

We were still living in Ocala, Florida during this time.

I remember one day I decided to throw a glass bottle on an ant pile and I threw a rock at it.. And the glass broke and a piece of glass hit me in the face, right above my eye.

I was fortunate it didn’t blind me.

On another occasion I was in our grandma’s home in Michigan and I was acting like a bull and charged my brother and hit my eye in the same location.. Bloodied it up really good and almost blacked out.. Thankfully my mom ran down the road with me until they could get me to a hospital and get me stitched up!

Active Childhood

I remember as a youngster growing up in Ocala, Florida at a time when there was no internet and very little technology .. other than Nintendo and Game Boy that came out around this time.. We were all very active in the neighborhood. On our bikes, climbing trees, making up games with each other.. I am very grateful to have had this kind of active childhood compared to most kids today.

Challenges of Relocation

We moved to Diamond Valley, Utah near a volcano
I remember taking a bus 15 miles each way to go to school
And adjusting to a new school and new friends in 2nd grade.

I remember having my 10th birthday party in Diamond Valley, all the kids came and we climbed the volcano (dormant) near our house.

The Snow Canyon

I remember living near Snow Canyon and a dormant volcano.. An amazing landscape that we would go hiking in all the time. I remember my dad being very active with us when we were young, hiking around and enjoying nature. I really loved those times.

Horses

I remember renting horses with Larry this crazy guy who I think was a veteran from WW1 or something. He was missing a couple of fingers. He would let us race the horses at full speed across the desert landscape, it was so exhilarating! It never occurred to me that it was quite dangerous for young, inexperienced kids to race horses at full speed, but there we were.

HALLOWEEN IN DIAMOND VALLEY

I remember loving Halloween so much that I always wanted to go out trick or treating every year, even as I became an adult. One Halloween things didn’t work out with friends and it was just me and mom going door to door on a cold October night, but it was special and I really appreciated her support during that time to do something I really wanted to do.

Personal development, Bullies and Drama

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT REALLY BEGINS

Around this age I really started to learn more about personal development and spiritual growth. First with Think and Grow Rich, then a Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. My father also bought Tony Robbins 30 day Audio Program and I would listen to it every morning when I woke up. In fact I started waking up at 4 am just so I could start my morning routine and complete it before school even started. This routine included writing my dreams down, meditation, planning and lots of listening and doing of personal development.

LEARNING TO FIGHT BACK

I believe this is the age I was in 6th grade. I remember having a rough time with some of the kids, being bullied was a fairly new concept for me and even though I was scared I would take on the kids much bigger than me. On two occasions I remember fighting right off the school bus with a kid name Casey and another time with a kid named Tobey. I even brought my German Shepherd Bear to the fight as I thought she might offer some kind of protection but it wasn’t really that effective.

I think this is around the time Braveheart the movie came out as well.. One of my all time favorite movies about liberation and freedom from oppression.

FAMILY DRAMA & GOING WITHIN

I remember my parents were also in constant drama around this time. I didn’t really feel stable with anything going on in my external life but somehow I managed to learn how to meditate and seek stability from myself and nobody else.

A MAJOR CAR ACCIDENT

My friends and I decided to rent movies one night when they still had movie rental places. On the way back from the rental place a car struck the side of our vehicle going full speed .. it was later determined that he had been driving while intoxicated. I was fortunate to be in the back left seat, away from the main impact. My friend Chris on the other hand was right where the car made impact and suffered extreme injuries that put him in intensive care for 2 weeks. The mother and girl were also both badly injured. One with a massive head injury and the other with neck injuries that would later require screws.

On the positive side everyone made out with financial settlements from the accident, except me because I only needed some general check ups and apparently I had a bruised kidney.. I needed a bigger medical bill to justify a settlement and at the time I was stubborn about receiving any outside assistance. I wanted to succeed financially on my own merits and not through any kind of settlement or outside help!

Conscious Awakening

I began to deep dive into astral projection, meditation, lucid dreaming, reiki and so forth. I was really an avid experimenter in naturally altered states of consciousness. My family, on my mom’s side, in Michigan got me into Reiki and showed me another world of energy work.

Before long I was able to record hours of notes going into detail on my dreams, upon waking in the morning. I would have to wake up an hour or two earlier before school just to record everything. But lucid dreaming and exploring these states of consciousness became a kind of escape for me. At a time when school and home life seemed to be uncontrollably falling apart.. I could reliably dive into my meditation or dream exploration and have a sense of adventure and control over my reality. Imagine what a 14 year-old kid would do in his dreams if he had complete control over his reality? You guessed it.. I would get into all kinds of ‘trouble’ in my dreams and wake up with no consequences. Except the one time I dreamt I got into trouble and went to jail and thought I had really messed up on knowing whether I was dreaming or not. But I did eventually wake up and thankfully I wasn’t in jail!

I stopped by explorations into the astral realm sometime at the age of 15 when I started to have experiences of the astral realms ‘blending’ into my waking life. There were a few times I witnessed creatures in the room or heard noises, or felt a presence .. and one time I ran into my brothers room I was so scared, and 5 minutes later the stereo was blaring and the door knob was rattling even though it was late and everyone was sleeping. I sat up and everything stopped.

There was another time I had a dream while I was sick of cells dividing.. At first it started out very slowly but then they divided more and more and there was a slight noise in the background but as the cells began to divide faster and faster and get into the billions the sound also grew increasingly louder until it was just a roar and pictures were flowing through my vision field so fast I couldn’t keep up. Then I woke up and the visions and sounds did not stop. It was very scary for me at the time as I had no basis for what I was experiencing.. Now I can relate it to all the energy work I was doing.. Yogi’s explain of all kinds of phenomenon occurring as you develop your energies / Kundalini rising. I’m not saying I’m enlightened or that I raised my Kundalini all the way.. I’m just saying that weird stuff started happening as a result of whatever I was doing.

As a result of these strange, unexplainable and increasingly unavoidable experiences.. I backed off on my spiritual explorations and I began to focus more on the material world and getting free from the obligations of money.. By earning enough to where I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

8TH GRADE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS

During my 8th grade year we all moved to Islamorada in the Florida Keys as a family.
We lived on the water in a high rise condo. I think it had always been my father’s dream to live in a place like that.

I remember starting out as a new kid that nobody really knew or liked and ended up feeling like one of the most popular kids at the school as I liked to challenge my teachers, be the class clown and was pretty fearless in football. Plus the 7th and 8th grade was smaller. Whereas my brother was connected to a much bigger school and wasn’t the oldest in the school, many of the kids there had come down from Miami and were a bit more cruel than at the school I was going to.

I remember running by his school one day on my way home for lunch (breaking the rules that I should stay at school for lunch).. And one of the kids at my brothers school just looked at me as I ran and said “You better run or I’ll f*ck you in the a**” .. That was the kind of energy around his school.

FOOTBALL IN THE KEYS – THE BUCKEYES

I used to love football as a kid. Watching all the Dolphin games and even going to many of the games in Miami with my dad during this time.

It’s no surprise that I had dreams of being a quarterback and a National football star. It’s just nobody informed my DNA that I needed to be about 100 lbs heavier and 5 inches taller to really compete at the highest level.

When given the opportunity to either play on the Junior Varsity league (just 8th graders) OR join the Varsity team and play at a higher level, I chose the bigger challenge (mostly 9th graders). This was a mistake. While the JV league was apparently more organized and better coached, the Varsity team was being coached by a felon. His first objective was to make sure all the kids got toughened up as quickly as possible with exercises like “Hamburger hill” where we would literally just line up and smash into each other as hard as we could. It didn’t matter if you were a 100 lb guy going up against a 200 lb guy. Or a quarter back smashing up with a line backer.. You were going to get tough as nails in this drill. Unfortunately the unfair match ups had their limits on the human body, and rendered some kids inoperable for the rest of the season. Kids were limping out of these sessions, bleeding, quitting. I felt like a freaking gladiator during these drills and refused to give up.

It wasn’t long though before kids started complaining and parents stepped in to ask for a different coach. Pretty soon the convicted felon was out and a nice dad with very little coaching experience stepped in to get us kids ready for our first game.

I remember playing the role of Quarterback which was always my dream role, but for whatever reason being in a negative headspace about my abilities. I used to be so good at the QB role but for whatever reason I was having a hard time with all the drama swirling at a new school, a new league etc. and the cooperation between individual players was terrible. We weren’t a unified team but a divided group of individuals who could barely agree on much.

Our team was so small that we had to play both offense and defense, against better organized and larger teams. We were doomed from the start.. Losing games with scores like 0 to 56. After several games with more players quitting, we dwindled down to where we couldn’t even manage all the positions, even while playing both offense and defense and eventually the Varsity Buckeyes of Islamorada just dissolved.

Good Days And Bad Days Of Adolescence

I was deeply interested in how to have more good days than bad days. I would have a calendar that I would write G for Good and B for Bad .. and then I would note down the reasons why I had a good day or the reasons I had a bad day until I could start discovering the root causes of my good days and have more influence over them.

At first it was as simple as thinking maybe the shirt I wore that day impressed made a good impression on people etc. and later I realized that it was pretty much the way I perceived the day that was having the biggest impact on whether it was good or not. My ‘positive attitude’ and ultimately my influence on the day, determined good or bad days.
This helped me realize my own personal power.

This was the beginning of my journey of discovering what it takes to live a Full Potential life.. And has grown into a far more advanced methodology now for energy and empowerment in the 7 major areas of life: physically, mentally, spiritually, socially, emotionally, financially and environmentally

It was around this time I began encountering teachings of Napoleon Hill’s Success Principles, Brian Tracy on Goals, Tony Robbins 30 Day Personal Power program and books like: Success through a Positive Mental Attitude, and Think and Grow Rich. I also started listening to hypnosis audio programs every night for confidence and unleashing my full potential, and they began to rewrite my mental operating system.

I also started learning SEO and actively pursuing my entrepreneurial path online.

I also knew at this age I did not want to go to college, I wanted to start business right out of high school. I can remember the day I was walking from one class to another during 7th grade and I looked at my watch for some reason and just thought, I still have 5 more years of school and I have no desire to go to college, I don’t see why I need it.

Early Business Ventures and Hearthaches

I started out in business very young.. At the age of 16 I was trading domain names while going to middle school.

During this year I also experienced my first GREAT love and massive heart ache in the same year, her name was Carlyn 🙂

I was still finding my way through various business ventures everything from the Success Connection Newsletter, to Stone Castle Software, to Up After Dark Computer service, Candy machines (chocolates), to domain registration and selling, to web hosting to eventually a landing on a web design and hosting business

I enjoyed playing soccer and football and I was quarterback for most of my life growing up and two years of Junior High and in High school when the ball got bigger and my hands did not, and I could not control the football as well, my dreams of being the high school quarterback soon and sadly, faded and I turned my focus to business.

ASHLEY

We kids were just learning how to drive and a dear friend of mine in high school was inside a jeep that turned over and her neck broke instantly and she died. This was my first major brush with death at a young age and I remember going to her funeral and seeing her body so lifeless there on the table, crying family members all around.

Ashley and I used to have this silly thing we did as kids flicking each other’s nipples and teasing each other. I remember the smile on her face and our laughter during gym class. I just couldn’t get my head around how fast someone can be in your life and have so much future potential and then gone the next. I made a promise in a prayer I would do my best to make my life count, as a way to honor her.

SWARMED BY POLICE

My friends and I were always getting into some kind of mischief. One night I was asked to drive them to a convenience store, not really knowing what they intended to do, one of my friends came out running with a 24 pack in each hand. As soon as they all jumped in he said go! So I took the truck and started driving .. in a huge circle around where I lived, and came in a back way just in case anyone had gotten my license plates.

As I was pulling into the house, headlights flashed on and soon more headlights.. It was an ambush. Before you knew it we were surrounded by police in front of my house and my poor mom was there to witness it all, talk with the parents of the kids who were called up to pick up their kids. We were all given tickets but too young to seriously prosecute, we had to do some classes and community service.

CARLYN

I met my first major and true love Carlyn when I was 16 years old. It started with some playful eye staring games on the football field and it turned into a deep love. I remember how excited I was to see her every day, especially in the same drama class at school. We went very deep very fast in the first 3 months of our relationship and then got separated when her father needed the family to move up north for a job opportunity. I still drove the long distance to see her any chance I could get and she would come to see me any time she came into town, for a while. Then it felt like we grew apart even though the earliest memories of her would remain in my heart to this day.

My First Office

By age 17 I had my computer service business and I was hiring kids from my school to hand out flyers for me .. and by 17 and a half years old I had graduated high school early a half-year early so I could focus my computer service and web design business.

I even got a little 250 sq ft office across the street from my old elementary school playground. I spent more than one night in this office while trying to figure out how to make enough money to survive. I remember many a night walking the grass where I used to play and looking at the office from across the street thinking one day I will remember this struggle and appreciate my great successes.

The funny thing about the office, is it was like the setting of a sitcom.. With a whole cast of characters that lived around my office or that would come to visit me.. While I was working towards my future.

Everything from a guy named Richard who used to model in Hollywood, married an Heiress, owned a helicopter company and did developments .. but was now living in poverty due to some poor choices. To the landlord lady that would come down into my office, in a bathrobe and curlers and ask me if I could open a jar of pickles.

The Turning Point In My Business

I was very determined to succeed.. After my parents split up I really had no choice.. My dad left to Cuba and my mom was getting remarried and living in Las Vegas. I had a shared house with two other friends, a $450 a month rent payment, food payments and I was out of school now. I struggled for hours on end at the office trying to just figure things out.. I had no idea what I was doing.. I had no mentors, I had no training, I had no degree.. I just spent hours and hours in the office forcing myself to figure it out.

I did the math one time and calculated I was earning about $2/hr working for myself. I was very tempted to quit and get a ‘real job’ like everyone was telling me to do. In fact I did leave my business for two weeks to earn money in a call center.. I was one of the best new trainees to sell enough to make $1,000 in my first week or two which was some serious money for me at the time. But I felt something was not right about the company I was working for.. And even more emotionally impactful.. I remember driving by my office with the lights off and realized.. That my dream could fade away if I didn’t get in there and focus no making it work. Nobody else was going to make it happen for me.

So I went back to work figuring things out.. Slowly going into more debt.. Convincing credit card companies to give me a little more and then a little more capital to work with. Telling friends that I’ll either go bankrupt or figure things out.

One day I got an email from yellowpages.com and it included a contact for strategic alliances at the bottom of the email. I knew I needed to start getting clients outside of little old St. George, Utah where I was growing up at the time. I decided that getting on a national yellow pages would be a way to get my name out there to a wider audience. The only problem is I didn’t have that much money. So I contacted their VP of Business Development with an idea: let me get listed on their top 20 metro city listings and see how it goes.. I can pay them a percentage of each sale and I will transparently record the sales activity that I’m having. They have 0 to risk because they already have the online inventory.. So it’s a way for them to create more revenue from otherwise digitally dormant space.. And it’s a way for me to earn more from an international clientele.

Thank god they accepted my offer.. It was a turning point in my business. Calls started pouring in from all over the country. I was started to sell web sites left, right and center.. I needed to hire an assistant, and then a project manager and then eventually a sales team to help handle all the leads.

And I went from just the top 20 metro cities to nationwide .. on the bet that if I was successful in the 20 metro cities I could do it all over the country with this now proven marketing channel. I took a big bet to do this.. I converted the advertising from a pay on performance basis with them to where I agreed on a $6,000 a month marketing budget which was enormous for me at the time.. Thankfully after 2 months of chasing my tail to try to make ends meet I got them to agree to lower it for a long term agreement of $2,200 a month.. Which was still considerable but I now had a nationwide footprint in the #1 position on the top yellow page service provider in the country. This was the leg up that I needed to start taking on bigger projects ,pay off my debts and establish myself as a successful web design firm.

Around this time I visited and revisited Encinitas, California and fell in love with surfing. I would soon leave little old St. George, UT to what felt like a huge change, moving to Encinitas California for a few months at the age of 20.

I was ready to expand, did a deal with Yellow Pages and started getting leads from all over the country.

Also as a naive and prospering young man I lost my first $4k to a guy that promised to be a marketing genius and turned out to be a real con artist. He was also an old gay man and tried hitting on me in our first business meeting. Very uncomfortable for me staying overnight while we discussed the possibility of creating hundreds of web sites that never materialized.

I started out quite naive and trusting and this would be the first of many situations where I was taken advantage of.

Running Business Remotely

By this time I moved from what had been my home town for 10 years in St George, Utah to Encinitas, California. I was running my web design business remotely with an office and sales team in Utah and a web development team out of India. I was a workaholic and pushed myself to work 7 days a week for a while until my Mom and new husband informed me that was a recipe for burn out.

I wasn’t quite sure what burn out was but I was fired up to liberate myself from the ‘money thing’ so I could focus on what I really wanted to do.

Encinitas and Gold

ENCINITAS LEARNING TO SURF

I learned how to surf in Encinitas through sheer will. I got a board and would go out religiously every day for a couple weeks before I even stood up the first time. It really took patience, passion and persistence. But boy when I started catching waves was I ever happy I stuck it out!

ENCINITAS BURRITOS

There was a burrito place in Encinitas that I would go to all the time .. they did something to make the burritos addicting, I think it was the fried plantains.

THE WINE LADY ROOM MATE AND A DOG OF A DEAL

The first place I moved into in Encinitas was with a room mate.. Private dwellings seemed out of my budget, or at least I was unwilling to pay the high cost of living in one of the best cities in the world. So for about $750 a month I had a roommate, a private bedroom and a space for my dog.

My room mate and I hit it off while we room mated together, often hanging out while she drank wine every night. She was fun, a nice lady. Her boy friend offered to watch my dog while I was in India. 3 months later when I tried to track him down he was nowhere to be found. I guess he loved Gold as much as I did and didn’t want to give him up. I was quite devastated but somehow got over it. Gold if you’re reading this from heaven now, I still love you.

UNDERAGE NIGHTS IN OCEANSIDE

I remember craving to socialize and meet new people and I was still too young to go to bars or clubs etc where there was drinking. But in Oceanside there was a club that allowed people younger than 21 to come and dance and connect. It was only once a week. I would go every week and at the peak of these parties I remember just having a ball and thinking about my friends in St. George if they had any idea what they were missing. I felt like I had really thrust myself into a new life and a new way and I was enjoying my freedoms and escaping from a small town.

TIJUANA TRIP

San Diego is on the border of Mexico and my adventurous self felt the call to go to Mexico one night. I only had $20 in my pocket but I thought what’s the worse that could happen.. I had no idea how much it costs to get around Tijuana but I figured it would be part of the adventure.

I made it to the border that at the time was surprisingly easy to pass through into Mexico.. No customs officials, no showing a passport, nothing, just a turnstyle gate!

I met up with some kids that were shocked I was going into Tijuana by myself at night. They invited me to share a cab with them (thank goodness) because the cab itself to get to the main downtown of Tijuana where the action is cost $20.. We all split it. I still had some money for a drink and some tacos and we all shared a cab back. I spent exactly $20 and had an amazing time.

Unfortunately when I got back it turns out my car got impounded for improperly parking somewhere .. this would cost me hundreds of dollars I didn’t really have at the time and strand me for a few hours until I could sort it out. Fortunately I was on the US border side.. As the sun was rising and I still reflected on how much I enjoyed the adventure of making it in and out of Mexico my first time for $20.

My Stay in India and Philippines

MY TRIP TO INDIA

By 21 I was ready for more excitement and decided to turn my desire for new experiences into a business adventure by going to India to establish more streamlined development operations with the top companies I had been outsourcing with.

I flew to India and was determined to crack my first million before 21. I set up office in Noida, India in a giant warehouse we started renovating.

It was a breakneck pace of 16 hours days and exhaustion every week .. with my good friend Kyler Glauser who came with me from Utah to watch the adventure unfold.

But it was very fulfilling as I got more done in a few months than most people do in years. I recall one time where we put an ad in the India times.. Looking for ‘freshers’ .. students fresh out of college to come be part of our new “SEO” division.. And learn how to do search engine marketing. My thinking was that the field was so new and information changing so rapidly in about 3 months time we could have experts helping us at a very low cost.. Freshers at the time were earning just $100 – 200 a month! How could you go wrong?

The half page ad in the India Times generated a line that went up 3 stories and around the block. I remember sitting there with Sandeep (my new Indian partner) and his team interviewing people for what seemed like a never ending day .. and hiring 40 people to start work the following week at our new office.

We had found and renovated a 4,000 sq ft office that used to be a warehouse.. So we still had plenty of room.. we were going to go big time, or so I thought.

MY SCOOTER STORY IN DELHI

I purchased a scooter and drove it around in Delhi.
The streets were insane with chaotic flows of traffic.
In one particular instance I nearly crashed.. An ox cart was making its way across the lane I was in and there was cars to my right and fruit stands to my left. The ox cart cleared my path just as I was about to hit it.. Ripping off half of my left handle-bar, but somehow I managed to maintain control of the scooter and breath a sight of relief.

MY STORY IN GOA

I was enjoying my freedom in Goa .. traveling around by scooter and going through what felt like ghost towns until finally ending up at some black lit cave on the ocean around a bunch of tripping people who felt like they had been stuck there for a while.

On one occasion in Goa I picked up on a dude that looked like a girl and it only became clear when I got back to the room it was a dude.. I shockingly returned the he-she to where I had picked her up and thought that a less understanding patron might have been less forgiving than I was for being deceived.

I loved walking the beach in Goa feeling like I was in the middle of some far away place, all by myself. While some might fear this, I felt elated. An experience of total freedom with the world as a playground.

SETTING UP OFFICE IN DELHI

I located a 4,000 square foot warehouse in Noida, India and spent what little capital I had getting it ready for the huge amount of business I knew would be coming. Unfortunately it never did and most of what I invested into the warehouse was a sunk cost , never to be recovered.

I sped up most of the office implementation by offering bribes and paying people off to move things along faster.. I was always about doing things FASTER.

PARTNERING WITH MY ELANCE CONTRACTORS

At the time before Odesk or Upwork there was Elance. And I found all my contractors on there, so when I went to India, I picked my two best contractors Saurabh and Shubie and convinced them to join me and merge offices.

HIRING FRESHERS

When I heard that college graduates in India earn just a couple hundred dollars a month I realized that with a well trained team on the latest advances in tech at that time, around SEO, it would be hard not to be successful with them.

I put a half page ad in the Indian times and we had a line going around the block, as if they were attending a rock concert.

ROCKET VS BICYCLE

At one point my Indian partner Saurabh and I were having a discussion with my friend Kyler present, and we were talking about the difference between a rocket ship and a bicycle. Saurabh was very slow but efficient, I wanted to be very fast and it consumed a lot of energy but it went much further. While I admired the bicycle approach, I wanted to be a rocket ship and thats probably why we burned through all our resources in just a few months.

MY MISPERCEPTION ABOUT INDIA

Before going to India I had no idea what I was in for.. I thought everyone lived on dirt roads in extreme poverty and I expected people to be grateful to even have AC. Perhaps some were, but I realized my perceptions were completely off.

BUYING NICE CLOTHES IN INDIA

I decided to dress up a little more while in India and so I went to a few nice clothing stores and splurged on pants and shirts.. Very Indian style. It felt like it was too hot to even wear them during the time I was there. Who wears pants in 200 degree weather?

TRADING A BED FOR SOME CASH
The heat in Delhi during the summer made it almost unbearable to sleep. Add to that we got a little dog that always had ticks on her and you can imagine the scenario. Heat, ticks, straw mattresses .. we were really roughing it.

Something happened to my bed and I had been sleeping on the floor , vulnerable to the wall of ticks that would surround me at night. I offered Kyler $20 or $40 for his bed that still had a bed frame and he agreed, as his money supply was dwindling and he needed funds to last the entire 3 months we were there.

THE INDIAN RAID

One day early in the morning while I was at the park doing some exercises, a truck load of Indian security forces drove in front of our house and about 6 Indian troops or police (I couldn’t tell) ran into the house. I thought for sure Kyler was going to be taken to an Indian jail or worse.

After the same forces jumped back into the truck and drove off, I went inside expecting the worse. Kyler was just sleeping as though nothing had happened and everything in the house seemed fine. To this day I still don’t know what that was about.

SURVIVING ON RADISSON BUFFETS

When my friend Kyler and I first got to India we were very excited about all the new things present and we even had a cook named Kahn! Khan was a muslim chef who knew how to do one thing very well, make the spiciest damn food you’ve ever eaten in your life.

After about a week of constant spices our stomachs were begging for a break. Going to the bathroom had become a difficult task.. Hurting and squirting on the way out.

Khan promised to tone down the spice levels, his toning down was unnoticeable. We ate out at Dominos a few times until we got really sick from it. Other street options were out. Pretty soon even though we were on limited budgets we found ourselves eating at the Radisson buffet all the time, it was the only place that felt like a ‘home’ we could trust in. It was like the modern world thrust into the setting of a very developing India. Thankful to have the Radisson buffets or we may not have survived.

By this time I thought that I was set financially. I had a team in place in St. George before I had left to India, and I had cracked a few big deals that gave me about $50 k in my bank account. I had no concept of money so when I left for India I would carry a brief case around with lots of cash in it and use it for food, for massage, for fun.. And thought it would never end.
It’s amazing how you use money when you have on concept of how much is enough. After setting up the office and sustaining the operations team in the US, and getting too lazy to do sales myself.. Up until that point I never saw money go out the door so fast. It never occured to me I could go back to ground zero so quickly.

All the new overhead that I have established without creating cash flow stream to support it meant all my savings from the business would evaporate in just 6 months. I ended up having to do a complete 180 on the office in India and tell my partners that I could no longer support it financially.

This turned out to be a whole fiasco as many clients were complaining their sites weren’t being built fast enough and my Indian partner Saurabh promised to complete them, but when the office could no longer be sustained he said he had to quit and go look for other work and I was left holding the bag on a lot of refunds that drained what little I had left.. And I even got one lawsuit filed against me, so I decided to take everything down and stop the web design business while I started focusing on creating a call center business.

—

THE PHILIPPINES

Thankfully when I had made my trip to India, I also decided to take a little side trip to the Philippines..and visit my friend Beau Rudd. He and I had grown up together in high school and he was thick in the call center business.. I thought it would be interesting to see him, explore a new country and see what other opportunities might be out there. I was basically looking for excuses to travel and also support it with my knack for business.

I also realized during my time in India there was no way I could live there long term. 3 months was my maximum and I was ready to get out of there.
Somewhere along the way I had read a book that said I should look for 3 things in a business: Residual, Scalable, Good Margins

So while I was visiting India and the Philippines and got exposed to call centers, I realized that they had all 3 things. I also knew that based on my experience web development was not really any of those things. I’d spend all this time and energy to win a client, complete their web site and then the relationship would be complete and I’d have to find a new client.

At least with call centers you could work with the client for potentially years and they might even grow with you.. And I was right, my oldest client has been with me from the beginning for more than 15 years! That would never happen in website development world I was living in.

—
SHARING A STUDIO CONDO

When I first moved to Manila at first I shared a studio condo with a friend and business partner, we lived on less than $10 a day for food and another $10 a day for rent. Thankfully where I had chosen to establish a business was also very inexpensive to live at the time.

I thought it would only be a year before I was able to establish the business and move. It turned out it would take four more years before I could even think about leaving and letting the team run things.

LIVING WITH ROB & CHRIS

During this time I had a blast.. I moved in with friend and investor Rob Rawson who I had discovered through his profit puppy newsletter. And his friend Chris Jankulovsky and soon to become my own Soul brother of a friend, moved in with us. 3 bachelor men in the Philippines for 6 months, one of the best times of my life.

Completely blown away by the fantasyland I was living in as a young kid growing up feeling like Tom Cruise in a Philippines culture that had not yet fully experienced having foreigners coming into it.. But for some reason were very drawn to the young American men such as myself living in that environment.

SPIRITUAL FOCUS

For the first few months of being in Manila, in spite of my pleasure seeking ways, I was also very spiritually focused. Practicing deep relaxation, lucid dreaming / astral projection. I created some sign boards with things like “it’s all Maya” or illusion on them, as a way to remember that it’s all an illusion. Enjoy it.

ALMOST CALLING IT QUITS IN THE BUSINESS

Yes it was wonderful to experience a completely new way of life.. And to be in business for myself but it was extremely difficult at the same time. I was plagued with technical challenges I had no idea how to solve .. never having been in the call center business, it was way harder than I imagined! On more than one occasion I wanted to quit. I can distinctly remember the moment I was ready to throw in the towel and tell my clients that’s it, life is too short.. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing..

I was at a coffee shop enjoying myself after a very long and hard week and I get a text message of yet another emergency.. I was at the end of my rope.. That’s it I’m done.. I saw myself going in there and telling everyone that I was through with the business.. But instead I finished my meal and went up there to solve just one more problem. That was the fine line between success and quitting for me that would surface several more times over my business career.

Date With Destiny

Around this time my good friend and investor Rob Rawson informed me that he had some tickets to a Tony Robbins (Date With Destiny) seminar at a discounted rate than usual.. $4,000 instead of $5,000. It was all I had at the time but I was such a big fan of personal development and Tony Robbins that I decided to book my trip to the Gold Coast of Australia where he would be holding his 7 day seminar at the Conrad Hotel.

It was one of the most significant experiences of my life at that time, totally shifting my values and life in ways I did not expect and that still ripple through my existence to this day. I became healthier and happier after the seminar and continue to explore ways to live in the most optimum state.

One thing that I remember is that after the seminars I had this incredible love for so many people that I went through the journey with.. And I came home with such terrific energy in my heart I actually didn’t know what to do with it all. The day after the event when back in Manila, I went to the bookstore and buried myself in books to try to avoid what I was feeling in my chest as I didn’t know how to handle it.. And it seemed to work. More on this heart work later.

APPRECIATE THE DETAIL

On one of my trips to visit my Mom and her husband Ken in Michigan, I recall after the recent death of a family member, begging to God to please give me some direction so I didn’t waste my life. I would rather know what I was meant to do when I was young and not wait until I’m too old or dead before I completed the mission. With tears in my eyes I prayed for this clarity.

That night when I went to bed I found myself in a dream.. Walking the streets with someone else as if I owned the town. It felt like I was a member of the mafia or something with the way I was walking. Then suddenly out of nowhere comes two guys with guns and they shoot me and the person I was walking with. I could literally still feel the bullets ripping through my body and experiencing the realization that I was about to die right there on the street.

The next thing I remember is being lead through a dressing room with all kinds of characters getting dressed up. Two men in suits that didn’t say a word were taking me to a back room. Most of the characters were turned towards the mirror fixing themselves up but one of them stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me with wide eyes and said, “WOW, You’ve gotten so BIG!” I wasn’t sure what they were talking about but I feel like I met this person in later life and we have quite the spiritual connection.

Then as I’m in the back room the men in suits , still not talking, instruct me to feel the brick wall.. I recall just running my hands across the bricks. When they were satisfied with that, they injected me with something into my arm and suddenly I find myself back on the street where I had been ‘killed’ in the previous scene. Now suddenly I realize that EVERYTHING in my reality is teaching me something, so I start watching very closely.

It all feels so real, cars going by, people walking, the leaves of the trees.. The simulation feels so real! And suddenly a car hits a man on the bike at a slow speed, knocking the man down to the ground. He starts yelling at the man in the car and the man in the car starts yelling back. Then I see a spiritual man walking towards the scene, slowly, gracefully, but with direction. He walks towards the man on the ground, grabs some clay or something and rubs it across the other man’s face. The man goes instantly quiet and surrendered in the arms of this spiritual figure, that looked like a Jesus or something. I’m watching very closely as I know there is a lesson here. He looks at me and says “You see, this is what most people miss.” And I suddenly have a flashback of being in the room with the men in the suits, running my hands across the brick wall .. and I say, “The detail!” .. and he nods his head and says, “That’s right, the details”.
And with that .. I suddenly feel like I’m being sucked into a vortex of some kind that is ripping me along at faster than light speed, millions of miles an hour before suddenly I land back in my bed, my head still spinning.

I have taken this dream to be the answer to my question: instead of a direct and clear objective of what I’m supposed to do in this life, I’m mostly meant to be very PRESENT to the little details and not miss them. That has profound shaped my life, my level of awareness and presence and allowed me to relax my mind more often.

Writing My First Book

The Garden of Life

Before I left the Philippines, I was determined to write a book that I would use to help launch my speaking career. I forced myself to go to Puerto Gallera, an island in the Philippines I would normally vacation at, and told myself I could not leave until I finished the first rough draft of my book: The Garden of Life.. at first I thought it might only take me a week or two with dedicated writing, but that was the problem .. I had never written a book before and I was far from disciplined in my writing schedule. It was only after the first 10 days had passed that I realized, I either need to get more serious about writing this book or I will have to leave this island a failure. I doubled down on my commitment and started writing more aggressively and finished it in about a month after that. Still way more than I thought, but at least I got it done!

A RELATIONSHIP WITH YAME

During my time in Manila after a couple of years of playing around, I finally settled into a wonderful relationship for a couple of years with a girl named Yame.. I broke up and got back together with her 10x before things ended.. She was a lovely girl who could have brought me great care and peace, but I was having a hard time committing to anything.
On the positive side, this break up would be the start of a journey that would be the start of a new freedom.. An adventure that would take me around the world.

I looked in the mirror one day and I could see I wasn’t going to get any younger. And the business was still far from automated and perfect.. But if I didn’t leave soon I would end up spending most of my youth in Manila.. Not somewhere I wanted to be for the rest of my life. I decided that even though I might be taking a huge risk and I could lose everything.. I was going to venture out into the world and leave the people I had in place in charge of everything. I pre-signed some bank forms .. I added people onto accounts and put them in direct communication with clients.. I became extremely vulnerable to betrayal.. And some did take advantage. But surprisingly, none of the actions were fatal to the business and I began the new chapter of managing the business remotely. And more importantly I suddenly had more freedom!

In a short time I also brought my brother on from the US, to come help run things onsite.. Even though he didn’t have the call center experience, I knew he was someone I could trust to be my eyes and ears .. and that I could help him with training and skills needed to run the business.

Unleash Your Full Potential

My Time in Cebu

I remember after my break up with Yame on the 10th and final time, to move to Cebu and explore my options there. I connected with a model girl that ended before it even began as I was avidly going out and meeting other girls.

I remember being part of a tight knit group of rich kids and business owners for a little while in Cebu. We would go to the best hotel in the area and play volleyball, drink and enjoy nice meals there. One lady in particular who was said to be ‘richer than god’ was quite taken by me and invited me to join her on her Yacht. She was about 50 years older than me and so I declined the offer. Although now just out of curiosity sometimes I wish I had seen what that path would have looked like!

Leaving the Philippines

When I did finally leave the Philippines.. I toured all across Europe by train for months and I began writing my second book Unleash Your Full Potential.

I never felt ready enough to pursue my career in Speaking that my heart was calling me to do.. I even joined the National Speakers Association, went to a few of their national conferences and met some wonderful speaker friends.. But I never really joined a circuit or actively promoted myself as a speaker.. Though I wish I had.. Deep in my heart I just wanted to speak from a stage and share valuable insights.

Around this time I had applied for the BIG GIVE reality show.. Oprah’s first reality show. I thought who better to partner with to do big things in the world than Oprah. My mom, bless her heart.. Went with me to the auditions in New York.. we waited in line in the snow and freezing cold for 3 hours just to get inside. The panel that was interviewing everyone asked me a few questions and seemed impressed enough to invite me back for another screening, this time with the cameras rolling. After the 2nd screening, they seemed impressed enough to invite me and 19 others to come to Los Angeles for a week to meet with all the NBC and HARPO (Oprah spelled backwards) executives for the final selection .. the top 10 would get to be on the show.

It was a very odd time because none of the potential contestants for the show were allowed to talk to each other. We all knew we were there for a special reason but we could only look at each other.. We couldn’t talk. I remember how awkward it felt to come down and eat and and see everyone but not know who they were, why they were there or what their story was.

I recall meeting with the HARPO executives first and meeting the founder of the Amazing Race and telling them my story and getting philosophical with them. The next day I recall meeting with the NBC executives and sharing why I felt like I would be a great candidate on the show. The two ladies that would often come to my room and be impressed by my insights and positivity seemed like they were rooting for me all the way. At one point they excitedly came to my room to share the good news, I was going to be on the show!! Only to tell me about an hour later, that some changes were made and sorry, I wasn’t going to be on the show.

I couldn’t believe my ears I thought for sure my dreams of meeting Oprah and the entire cast was cemented in my mind.. It was GOING to happen. So when they told me it wasn’t, it was heartbreaking to say the least.

But I didn’t stop there.. I regrouped back home at my mother’s house in Las Vegas for a little bit before deciding to travel with my friends Rob and Randal to Columbia. It was nice for a while until it felt like a war was going to break out between Columbia and Venezuela.. Apparently some laptop got stolen or there was some intelligence mishap and there was troops and tanks massing on the border. I told my friends they could stay if they wanted but I wanted to get the hell out of there. And there was a guy on the plane ride to Columbia that said I would love Costa Rica..especially because I loved surfing. So I told them, lets go to Costa Rica!

We landed in Costa Rica.. toured around a few days.. When I arrived in Jaco I told them I had found home and while they wanted to go and see the rest of the country for a while.. I decided to stay behind and get settled. My goal at this point was to finish 3 other books I still had inside me ..

LIFE IN COSTA RICA

This was one of the most liberating times of my life. I was living very simply.. Less than $400 a month rent.. I’d go surfing every day with the beach a block away. I was fasting and writing my books, beginning to lucid dream and meditate a great deal again. Writing my dreams down in detail once again.

It was during a 3 day fast and meditation I had one of the most incredible mystical experiences of my life. I had completely relaxed my body.. Projected out of my body.. Found my energy body drifting above the bed back down into my body and when it landed ever so softly, I opened my eyes.. And there was a residual LOVE feeling coursing through my entire being. I will never forget it. I thought I had truly done it.. I had become enlightened and this was going to my state for the rest of my life. I was like this for about 2 hours before I decided I would break my fast and have a delicious meal.. Interestingly as soon as I had my first piece of food (some fish), the energy I was experiencing dissipated and I have never experienced the same love feeling for that duration again. It was enough for me to know that LOVE truly does exist, we just have to be light enough to perceive it fully.. And focused on making ourselves light.

—

At this time I had decided I was finished with business, and that I would focus on personal development a dream I had always wanted to commit myself to. I had enough money in the bank and I was living simply.. I felt so happy. I was living like this for months and never going back to obligations again. Or so I thought.. About 3 months into the most free time of my life, I learned that I had a few major fires to put out in the Philippines that really needed my presence, and a major lead that could turn into a big deal if it was handled right.

So I returned to the Philippines with the major fires I needed to put out.. So big in fact that I almost lost the business again. There was the big bust, the microsoft license fiasco, a improperly terminated worker dispute – all kinds of fun things to deal with that pretty much drained all the reserves I had built up over the first few years of business.

One day I thought I was sitting pretty in Costa Rica and in no time flat it felt like I was almost back to square one. Thankfully I was able to fight through the challenges and salvage the business from going under, it took me a year or two more in Manila before I was able to free myself again.

The Big Bust

When I was visiting the states at approximately 26 years old.. I got the call one day from my brother that the equivalent of the Philippines FBI was busting our office for having some unlicensed versions of windows (installed by the former head of IT that was now reporting us so he could get a bounty and steal our clients).

As the police raided our office and took out the over 200 computers we had, I had to think quick to save the business. It was late, the banks were already closed and there wasn’t much time for delay as business operations would be starting soon and clients would be very upset if there was a downtime.

I asked my brother and the team to call up all the computer rental companies in Manila and find out how many computers we could rent and how quickly could we get them, to replace the over 200 that we lost.

As the computers were being taken out by the investigations team, new arrivals (the rentals) were coming in by various trucks from all over Manila and being setup by our IT team at the time, simultaneously while they were taking the other computers out of the office.

Once I felt like things were being handled, I went to bed expecting the worst when I woke up. Amazingly, and impressively, the IT team was able to have most of the rented computers setup and operational by time the business day started and only a couple clients suffered downtime. This was a major victory and demonstrated our resilience in the face of crises! I am still amazed to this day.

Unfortunately the saga with the Investigation and Microsoft would end up costing over $200,000 .. between the rental fees, and eventually having to replace all the computers, place an ad in the newspaper apologizing to Microsoft and paying Microsoft a fine.. And when I finally recovered the computers they had taken, they were mostly stripped of anything of value, so I only got the computer shells back. It was a major learning lesson and speaks volumes about hiring people with integrity to head important roles. And also how you can’t predict everything that will happen while you’re trying to build a business.

FUN TIMES WITH THE TAX AUTHORITIES

In addition to a major bust by the Philippines NBI , I had several run-ins with the tax authorities. They would always trump up some non-compliance, heavy penalties and then offer to reduce it for under the table payments. This is how they operated with a lot of businesses in Manila, which explains why many of these third world countries get stuck in a 3rd world country status – corruption is only good for the people at the top of the food chain.

Costa Rica

Around this time I moved to California again, staying in an awesome vacation spot on mission Beach. Living on the beach had always been my dream. And now my life had become a vacation. Cruising up and down mission beach on my bike, driving a sexy Hyundai Tiburon and having enough money to go out regularly – it was a new golden era of freedom and blessings for me, after all that hard work! I was living the life of Peter Pan.

It wasn’t long before I got into another serious relationship with a lovely woman named Shereen (which literally means sweet in Iranian) and left my beachfront condo on mission beach California for us to pursue a life together. We traveled all over the world, worked trade shows together, toured Europe, settled in San Diego for about a year going back and forth from Costa Rica. Eventually we split up because she wanted to settle in Oregon with her family and I was getting the strong call to Costa Rica.

FINDING A PLACE IN COSTA RICA

Around this time I invested in a beachfront property in Costa Rica that would serve as a wonderful home base no matter what happened. It was in my favorite spot in Costa Rica where I had so many incredibly blessed experiences. I was still with Sheren at the time when we broke in this new condo on the beach. It was a blessed experience to be able to run out my front door and go surfing any time I wanted.

I realized after a while it wasn’t about the place at all and all about my intention and appreciation for the life I was living.

PORTLAND OREGON LIVING

Shereen and I got a subsidized apartment living in Portland, Oregon, Her brother was on student housing subsidies and we stayed there for a month or so while figuring out our next moves and he could use the money for the rent while staying with his girlfriend at the time.

COLLECTIVE OFFICE

Her brother was starting an office called “The Collective’ where individual work nomads / freelancers gathered to be in the presence of each other.. It was a melting pot of projects in the basement of a coffee shop. Interesting idea and cool vibe for sure. Though it seemed to be more of an excuse to socialize as he was quite the extrovert.

HAPPY HUBS

Right before Shereen and I split, I invested in a house that I would call “Happy Hubs” to serve as a nomadic work center / retreat center .. for digital nomads like me to live and work and play together in Costa Rica.

HALLOWEEN CORN MAZE

I always loved Halloween as a kid growing up. I especially remember the haunted corn maze in Washington fields, where they really went all out to scare us kids. I remember taking my younger brother and sister from my dad’s third marriage out to the corn maze and Giovanni being terrified of the haunted maze.

HEART CLEARING METHOD

The break up with Shereen opened something significant in my heart .. I had intense dreams and started to feel my heart again on a deep and profound , almost mystical level. Shortly after returning to Costa Rica I could sense my ability to see right through people’s eyes and into their heart and even shared what felt like a psychic sense to know what was going on in a person.

I created a method I called “Heart clearing” and began working with anyone that wanted heart clearing, which would eventually take me on a “heart clearing world tour’ from Hong Kong to Dubai, to Amsterdam to Londo and beyond. This tour eventually led me to the invitation to France for TED Talk “How to Clear the Heart of the World.’

JENNIFER

It was around this time I met a wonderful being named Jennifer who would become a great ally in moving the ball forward on the heart clearing world tour, setting up workshops at various high end resorts and then we’d go host them together. She would also be a lover and an extraordinary person who taught me a lot about love and how to be a better communicator.

We would connect with each other on and off over a period of 3 years or so as I would travel back and forth to the Philippines. She was 10 years older than me and yet youthful and such a bright energy.
We had talked extensively about inviting other women into our relationship and yet after meeting Zenith at the Zen Awakening festival I made the mistake of inviting Zenith to Bali before consulting with Jennifer.. And Jennifer was devastated and wanted nothing to do with me after that. I realized my insensitivity to her feelings had cost me a great relationship and it wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, as I still had much maturing to do when it came to love and relationship. And I still believed strongly that a three or more relationship configuration could work.

TONY

At various times I would try out different leadership to oversee the call centers in the Philippines. I’ve been extremely blessed to still have the first business I started more than 17 years after founding it. Survival has been a key point – no matter what, if you can hang on when times are tough, you can keep going.

At one point I had a dramatic turn of events with the CEO I appointed named Tony. At the time we were growing the business and needed to expand to another office. We had a seat leasing arrangement with a man who took advantage of the fact that Tony liked shiny things and I was thousands of miles away. I’m sure I’m greatly simplifying his motivation to do what he did, but in short they went into business together and tried to take the whole business, which at the time was all 200 staff and clients, over $200 k in monthly in revenue.

The story was that we were going bankrupt and that all the clients and agents had better sign with the new company or they were risking their jobs or their uptime as clients. Because I had entrusted communications with the core team and I was mostly hands off, serving as chairman / advisor as needed – the clients already had close relations with the team, and the team had close relations with the leadership. So it was pretty easy to shift everything over to new contracts and I was left with about 10{31ced4f22ad0b4b17f69bbc989398e45e16e6a0c2440a4e5a62635a12fdac828} of the business I started with.. The people that were still operating out of the old office that trusted in me and remained loyal to me.

Perhaps the best decision I made was not to panic or get angry. At the start of the year I had said that we as a company should aim to exist at a level 10 energy and culture.. And that as long as we remain focused on the intention to be the best energy possible, whatever happened to us in the 3d was part of that process. So when this all happened, I remained calm and said that I trust its part of the process. Many couldn’t believe how calm I was about losing the majority of the business. At times I wondered if I was also too lax about the situation as I didn’t really want to tie things up in court or go after anyone.

Thankfully I had some resources in the bank and they didn’t steal the funds that they had access to and I was able to secure them pretty quickly – this added to my comfort, but make no mistake I had lost the majority of my income after years of building up to that point and I was disappointed in the betrayal, but I had such high trust that it negated the downward energy I could have gotten caught up in.

THE SWAN MIRACLE

It must have been about 3 or 4 months after Tony and his new partner had everything under control but somehow, karma was at work. I started receiving messages from an insider saying that they trusted in me and they belonged at Global Sky. That power moves were being made at the new office that were making people concerned about their jobs. Some key people had been let go, promises had been broken and I had remained firm in my story, my position.. That I was just glad they all still had jobs and if they were being taken care of that was top priority.

I would also copy some of the messages I received and send them to my largest client which was about 130 agents at the time and just share that if they needed any help at all, I was available and ready to figure out any solution.

This SOFT approach eventually worked.. the new business started to unravel, which on some level isn’t surprising when the integrity of the business is off from the start. The client asked me how fast I could move them back to a new office under my guidance. I couldn’t really believe what was happening, on the surface it seemed very unlikely that everything would come back to me. But indeed it did. And for whatever reason I was being TRUSTED to make it happen, from thousands of miles away in Costa Rica. I called on Ron, whom I now call Master Ron as he is the master of the details, to help make it happen as he swore to me after the whole fiasco if I ever needed anything to let him know. He was deeply sorry to have been involved in the initial move and that he had been deceived, and he wanted to make it up to me.

On exactly April 1st, (April Fools day) we (he and the team) completed the move exactly 7 days after the client had requested it.. At a new office, in a new location, even while missing some equipment that had been held hostage by the former company.. Yet he truly came through and made it happen without months of planning or the usual amount of time getting a new office ready for such a large client. I call it the Swann Miracle. I am sure that by trusting in something greater and not bad mouthing the client or anyone on the team, I held space for something even more positive to occur and it did!

CORAVIDA

The idea of the Happy Hubs, a nomadic work resort, evolved into a heart-based healing retreat center called Coravida .. which continued to evolve into a space for the heart’s expression: an artist / creator space, where I too have continued to my heart’s expression through music, art and retreats.

I noticed that my life and projects seem to evolve as I do, for example the space of Happy Hubs becoming Coravida, and that as I evolve rapidly so do the projects I’m working on. The things I want to work on change relative to WHO I am as a being..

The only thing that hasn’t changed as much is the call centers, which thankfully due in large part to the teams there, has been a reliable source of income to pursue the many other things that call to my heart.

FIRST AYAHUASCA EXPERIENCE

It was around this time I had my first Ayahuasca experience. It was not as ‘enlightening’ as one might expect.. First of all the setting was an extremely large group of 40 + people gathered in a large circle. Secondly it was in a neighborhood surrounded by other houses. Thirdly, while I was on the plant medicine, the shaman was nowhere to be seen and I was several dimensions beyond this one in my consciousness – challenging fear, challenging death, challenging everyone around me that might be related to fear or death. I was running around the yard naked and singing .. eventually the police were called, not because I was being loud but because I was naked and apparently in Costa Rica it’s a bigger sin to be naked than to yell or sing at the top of your lungs.

I danced like a wild man, I was handling fire without getting burned, talking in poems, feeling like I was in a movie, thinking I was going to be assassinated at any moment, challenging every fear that came up, to the point I was going to eat bugs and drink dirty water.. I was even afraid of the sun – thinking it to be fake. I was ready to die under a lime tree until Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Spielberg or someone else met me to discuss how to change the world.

From what I’ve heard, my experience was unique. I felt a little embarrassed after my first day’s ceremony and was ready to leave. They invited me to stay for another one, where I went a little deeper into myself instead of being so externally expressed. It was much milder .. and although the whole ceremony was meant to be 3 days, I didn’t stay for the entire 3 days because if nothing else, I realized I didn’t need the plant medicine for my ascension anymore.

FIRST BURNING MAN

I experienced my first burning man festival and fell in love with a girl named Phallon. I was expecting Burning Man to be a total liberation of our culture and something from another planet. I was excited by the possibility of that, but shortly into my first day I could see that it was just a modification of our culture, not as radical as I was expecting. People still followed the rules, BLM police still patrolled to make sure nobody was doing anything bad. And people still spoke in English and acted like their personalities from the outside, just wearing different outfits.

I discovered Phallon at Pink Heart after a small heartbreak that same day with another girl I had connected with. Our romance lasted a couple of months but my heart was all in! So the break up was quite difficult and reminded me of why I really wanted to create a healing center that nurtures the heart of people who have lost someone or something they deeply love.

ZEN AWAKENING

At some point during this time I got the intuitive call to go to Florida for a Zen awakening festival. This is where I would meet the future mother of my son, Zenith. At the time she was known by Laurie and would later change her name to Zenith , which means ‘the highest point’ and truly for her spiritual wisdom, love and strength, Zenith is a fitting name for her.

BALI TRAVELS

I traveled to Bali for the second time around and spent a few months attempting a three-way relationship with Kelly and Zenith, which probably wasn’t the best time to explore something like this as Zenith was pregnant and it caused her unnecessary stress adapting to this way of life. While I was very grateful for the love and care that I experienced from both women during this time, I regret that I did not focus more on the baby and what would be best for him and the mother.. Which would have been to have a more relaxing passage into this world.

MY SON IS BORN

On Sept 8th, 2018 my son Zen James was born at home, with complications. During labor the mother had difficulty in the final minutes getting him out of the birth canal and due to lack of oxygen he was ‘dead’ when he was born. Thankfully Zenith thought quickly to give him CPR and I sang to him.. And his little body came back to life!

Although Zen suffered brain damage from his lack of oxygen, and may never be the standard of ‘normal’ that other people use as a measure, I believe it was all planned and he is a great spiritual master and teacher using non-traditional methods to convey his truth. His loving presence is felt by everyone and I learn from him every day.

Age 35 is when I started this journey of really sharing the story you are reading here. I had my 35th birthday just 5 days after Zen was born.

THE JOURNEY OF ZEN

Zen’s complications would send him to the hospital right after he was born. They immediately started giving him vaccines which I feel further complicated his condition. This would begin a journey of long hospital stays and being in and out of the hospital for the next few months.

I felt helpless in my attempts to see Zen or get him out of the hospital. Once a child goes into the healthcare system in Costa Rica, he is basically like property of the state. And while I deeply appreciate the medical care he received, I also felt frustrated in my inability to father him the way I wanted. Or even see him as long as I wanted.. Limited to just 1 hour hospital visits per day in the beginning!

Zenith accepted the situation with grace and was always there for Zen, spending countless hours nurturing Zen at the hospital day and night until we were able to get an amazing Nanny named Luisa who would become like Zen’s second mother, literally – she later got temporary custody of Zen as Costa Rica’s healthcare system thought he was underweight due to neglect.

She continued living at the house and being the best nanny ever to Zen while we made the best of the situation, living in one house while still carrying on with Coravida and the quest to grow the retreat center together.

My 36th birthday started with a bang. A huge celebration at my house in Costa Rica with friends and family. I had one friend give me a small hit of LSD and it sent me to the moon. I am extremely sensitive to drugs and plant medicines as you might have read earlier, and so this was definitely a next level experience for me. The only other time I did LSD was at Envision Festival the year before and I wound up going on stage during a speaker’s performance and being part of it.

SEPARATION FROM ZENITH

Age 36 brought with it many challenges including the separation of Zenith and I. I was still adamant about having an open relationship and would on occasion connect with girls. This proved to be too much strain on our relationship and shortly after my birthday she separated and went to our condo in Jaco while I stayed at the house in Manuel Antonio.

We would still see each other on the weekends and an unconditional love was still blossoming.

She decided to leave for Miami to take Zen to other specialists in the states. The plan was that she would be no more than a month and then return. The time in Miami was longer than anticipated and on November 12th I had a flight to Miami, but she needed more time to process everything.

CONNECTING WITH REBEKAH JOY

On that fateful day I connected with Rebekah Joy for the 2nd time, since our first chance encounter at the Envision Festival in Costa Rica. The first time we met I had just finished a drum circle where I had been deep into drumming and chanting and she was just coming out of her tent as I was bring drums back to the car. The lit up and the first words out of her mouth were something to the effect of “You have such amazing energy’ .. she recounts the story as if spirit moved her to stand in front of me and say those words , not by choice since she just woke up, but as if the whole thing was orchestrated by spirit.

We never exchanged information as I continued on my way to the car. But through mutual friends she would eventually make her way to Coravida that same year to be part of meditations lead by Unity Grace, but I would be gone, leaving to do my TED talk in France.

I supported the meditations that Unity Grace was doing for a couple months, believing they were so profound and portal opening that it was only a matter of time before we were visited by aliens or a 2nd coming, or whatever miracle was about to occur.. I felt it was very close and so money wouldn’t matter anyway.

This has been a recurring theme with Coravida, me supporting people from my heart while we ‘activate the energy field’ for whatever is the great work that is to be done.. At one time supporting 18 people myself.. And realizing many thousands of dollars later, that sometimes supporting people is also enabling them, and that the key to all this work we are doing is to find a way to be more sustainable and ideally out of the money system itself through efficient use of resources, farming, lower cost shelter, solar panels etc. which is the direction we are going with projects like Cora Nation and Tiny Developments.

CORONA VIRUS CHANGES EVERYTHING

It was in this year the Corona Virus hit and changed all our plans. Instead of coming back to Costa Rica, Zenith got stuck in Miami and Costa Rica closed its borders. The future uncertain I decided to leave Coravida and move into a property compound deeper in the mountains and less populated. Beka, I and our friend Violet held up for a month in this way and then decided it was better to be in community. We relocated closer to Tinamaste / Diamonte Valley at a place called Lagunas. I continued to connect with friends and family remotely.. Even urging everyone to come to Costa Rica before the borders closed.

The Corona Virus would change the way people related and worked for the rest of this year and into 37.

We have been making the most of being in Costa Rica with our secondary family, a tribe community that gathers regularly, lives together and continues to explore our spiritual evolution together in Costa Rica, not able to leave because there is no guarantee of a return.

I have done my best to remain connected with everyone back home until the borders re-open, yet that feeling of longing is still there in everyone’s heart.

I just turned 37 which seems like I’ve been alive a long time now. Longer than I anticipated. I have begun to take my health even more seriously than before with all kinds of supplements, health coaching and optimized routine. Thanks to Beka who has been an important part of my health coaching as well.

We have also been optimizing our relationship routine together and evolving as a couple. Zenith and I are still on good terms, though she has had a hard time accepting Beka’s new position in my life, understandably.

I have been trusting my heart and having faith that being all-in for love leads to the best path, no matter what it looks like. Having compassion for the social pressures to be in a family unit and be a ‘good father’ have been key themes I’m working through. I feel very close with my mother, Zenith and Zen as we have continued to do weekly video calls over Zoom and touch based often. I am as supportive as I can be financially sending money every month and paying to have a full-time Nanny. The ideal for me would be to have Zen and Zenith living in the same tribe family when the borders reopen, yet I know Zenith is her own person and her choice is to now move to Dominican Republic (where she’s originally from) and raise Zen in Punta Cana.

Again, I trust in the path so long as we are all-in for love.. Even though we never really have any idea what this path will look like in the 3d.

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GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

While I navigate my own personal life in the 3d through personal relationships and projects, I have also been focused on creating a better global system through Cora Nation & Cora Media. The app has been in development for over 2 years which has given me a lot of time to think about the WHAT & WHY of a new system. To compare communism with capitalism and innovative ways to share & distribute energy and resources that might be more efficient than our current way of doing things.

It is my hope that I can be what I imagined myself to be from the earliest part of my life “The most positively influential human I can possibly be’ .. this is why I was called to speaking at an early age, writing books and Full Potential. This is why I’m called to invest a great deal of time & energy into the creation of the Cora Nation app and the Cora System. The greatest challenge of investing in the unknown is you never know if it’s going to ‘pay off’ or not.. All you know is that it feels good if it feels meaningful and you hope that it adds value in some way. It could be a significant impact on the world or nothing more than a fantasy vision of changing the world – either way while you’re working on it you have no idea until it becomes unleashed and adopted by the masses. This is the great challenge of innovation .. the fear of failure is also the fear of losing valuable resources on something that turns out to be nothing. Yet I have faith that it will become something more valuable than what I am putting into it on an individual level.

I am thankful to the development teams, the management teams and the teams of people and believers around me that help me cultivate even more trust in them, myself and the visions of a better and brighter future!

ZEN VILLAGE CHAPTER

I have made it my mission now with the rapid transformation of our world during this pandemic to create a more sustainable way of life in the development of eco villages (what will eventually be known as Cora zones as part of the Cora Nation) beginning with Zen village, a 45 acre property in Costa Rica.


We are planting food, creating communal centers, lower cost & off-grid housing. Its been almost a year now since we started and I will continue to update about our progress.