I Didn't Lose My Way All at Once
I lost it in layers. And each layer taught me something no workshop certificate ever could: the descent is the work, the body keeps score, and nobody is coming to finish it for you.
Where it started
My first business started with my dad. He discovered CBD before most people knew what it was, and he saw something in me I hadn't seen in myself. I said yes because I trusted him. Somewhere along the way I stopped following and started leading. He was my steadiest presence through the hardest seasons - and because of him, I became someone I didn't know I could be.
I went on to build multiple multi-million-dollar companies. And then I watched them fall apart - not because the market shifted, but because I didn't know how to hold complexity with compassion. Including for myself.
With my dad, where it all began
The layers I don't romanticize
In 2018, a business partner blew up the companies through a scandal I handled with zero compassion. In defending him, I became the villain in someone else's story. That person still won't speak to me. I don't tell you that for drama. I tell you because I know what it is to be the bad guy in a story I helped write.
In 2020, a friendship that had been my sense of home for twenty-five years ended in one clean sentence. I don't need to repeat it. You know the kind. Foundation gone. Nowhere to put your feet.
In 2021, I moved to Austin with my partner, hoping a fresh start would fix everything. Instead I watched us grow further apart while pretending we weren't. I abandoned businesses, friends, and family the same way I'd been abandoning myself - slowly, like a frog in water that only feels fine until it doesn't.
The opening that didn't save me
September 2021. An ayahuasca retreat in Cancun. A very late 30th birthday gift to myself.
I went looking for a spark to reignite my business. What I got was ego death, encounters with the divine I still don't have clean language for, and a reckoning with every choice that led me there.
Night one: bliss. Pure communion. Pleasure so big I didn't know a body could hold it.
The morning after: shame so heavy I could barely breathe. Guilt. Disgust. Terror that I'd never feel that alive again - and equal terror that I would.
I asked the person holding the space what was wrong with me. I asked them to fix it.
Their answer? My sacral was blocked. Try Tantra.
My response? That weird sex shit? Anything but that.
They extended Kundalini as a gentler door.
(Spoiler: I eventually found myself on the Tantra path. And it saved my life.)
Four months of hell
For months after that retreat, I tried to “integrate” alone. My partner didn't want to hear about my breakdowns. The one friend who did psychedelics used them to escape depression - he had no framework for coming home. I was wandering my apartment at 3am, Googling whether the medicine could actually make you lose your mind.
My business kept tanking. My relationship was ending. I just couldn't admit it yet. I was spiritually awake and completely dysregulated in a city where I had no roots.
I had insights. I had breakthroughs. What I didn't have was a structure that could turn revelation into a life I could stand to live on a random Wednesday.
The question that ended the rescue fantasy
I finally found a coach who understood the terrain. In one of our first calls, he asked:
What would it be like to live without hope?
It broke me open. Not because hope is bad - because I'd been using hope as an excuse not to act. Waiting for the next event. The next fixer. The next version of me that would arrive already done.
Within a month, I ended a five-year relationship. Within two months, I forgave my mother for wounds I didn't think were forgivable. Within a year, I'd started the Tantra work that finally put me face to face with the perfectionist wound I'd been carrying since childhood.
Nobody was coming. And that was actually good news. Because it meant I got to be the one who saved myself.
Why the playbook exists
I got tired of watching myself - and watching a whole spiritual scene - collect peak experiences like frequent flyer miles, then act shocked when the bank account, the relationship, and the nervous system still sucked.
Cute hobby. Terrible strategy.
The Biggest Joke of Your LifeSo Far is the strategy I wish someone had handed me when I was googling my own sanity at 3am. Sixty days. Body. Journal. A structure that stands alone. You don't need me in the room. You need to show up when Tuesday shows up wearing your old life.
Subtle Shifts is the name for that whole system. The book is the spine. Playing with the Jester - async, live, or in person - is optional, for when you want company in the circus. Not because you can't do it alone. Because real fire is more fun when someone won't let you look away.
Where I am now
I can hold bliss and terror in the same body without abandoning either. I can feel rage rise without letting it drive. I can tell when I'm performing alignment versus actually living it. I can be naked with the lights on after years of body dysmorphia. I'm still human. Still messy. I know how to hold myself together while I fall apart - and I know how to hold you while you do the same, if you ask.
That knowing didn't come from a certification stack. It came from living through my own unraveling and building a path back that didn't require me to abandon the parts that were inconvenient.
I won't
- Tell you what to do. (You already know. Your body’s been screaming it.)
- Let you spiritually bypass. (Frameworks don’t replace feeling. Neither does another retreat.)
- Rush you. (Initiation happens at the pace your system can handle.)
- Perform certainty when I don’t have it. (And I won’t let you either.)
I will
- Reflect back what your body’s saying that your mind is overriding.
- Hold you accountable to your own truth - not mine.
- Offer tools that may work, because I’ve lived them.
- Make the process as honest and as fun as I can, without letting you skip your inbox, your bank account, or your body.
The short list of receipts
I spent years collecting proof I was worthy. Now I know my worth isn't in the wall of certs. It's in my capacity to hold myself - and others - through the refinement.
Still, if you want the paper: trauma-informed and psychedelic-informed training, embodiment and tantra lineages, snake ally and ritual work, nine years as a founder and CEO across three multi-million-dollar companies, and a bachelor's in education and political science with a minor in psychology. Eat the meat. Throw away whatever bones you don't need.
If you're still here
Get the Play Book. Run the sixty days.
If you want to play with the Jester after that - or beside it - you know where to find me.
Your body already knows if this is a yes.