I Put Down the Eraser and Almost Lost Everything

The brush of an eraser moving across a white board in a high school classroom sounded like a freight train to me. Two and a half years of education… and I was already burnt out. This wasn’t the life I wanted, it wasn’t the life I could survive. So when the eraser sounded loud and irritating, I knew I had to let go of it.

My passion has always been coaching, teaching, pastoring, supporting people into becoming better, more educated versions of themselves. Surely, I thought, with that skill set I could figure out how to make enough money to have a roof over my kid’s heads and food on the table. At least, if I was doing my own coaching and teaching, I could also charge what I want and make what I was worth. I’d just finished an emotional intelligence program: regimented, powerful, and life-changing.

I learned to chart my own course, that I am a limitless, authentic, transformative leader.

But, sitting in my classroom and telling the assistant principal I was going to leave the job, I could feel the fire all through me. The fire in my brain telling me that this was stupid, that everyone would think I was a lunatic, and that I would wind up losing custody of my girls if anything went wrong.

I felt the fire in my belly, telling me that I was making the right decision. I felt the fire in my chest, my passion yearning for a more fulfilling life.

I left teaching in May of 2024 and started a men’s coaching business and, Fortunately, I had funding from the teaching job through September. I’d started gathering a business plan and implementing what I had learned from my business coaches, ready to conquer the world.

As Instagram would have it, I ran across someone in the online sphere who had a significant following. Smart guy, dedicated, and pursuing the same goal that I was: getting men to discuss and connect with their mental health. We joined forces with gusto and signed a light contract written by ChatGPT. The plan was simple: develop a curriculum, get people involved in a community, and start coaching them. The funnel looked like it was built by experts, because at that point, I’d learned a lot.

On paper.

I built a system for this business to grow and thrive, all the while not seeing any return. Oh, but I was relentless. I learned everything there was to know about the system I was using. I became obsessed with automations, funnels, templates, and all the stuff that most people hate. I kept bringing my business partner in and telling him how good the system looked, and that we just needed to leverage his people so we could start selling. The more we talked, the more it seemed like it was going to work… but, people weren’t showing up. He and I met less and less.

By the end of June, I didn’t hear from him anymore. Time went by, weeks blending together like chocolate protein and bananas and equally as murky. I labored, fell off of the labor, played a bunch of Pokémon the trading card game with my girlfriend’s kids, and made a grand total of seventy-five dollars… all while spending three hundred a month on the CRM I was using.

It was an utter and tragic failure.

I had no idea what to do next. Get a job? I don’t have the credentials to work at a corporation. There were no back doors. I had to make it work.

September.

October.

November.

December.

Those four months are a blur. I wasn’t paying my mortgage.
I worked for one of my business coaches and I failed at that too. The mortgage was bad enough, but the bills, the groceries, the gas… it felt like the ceiling was collapsing on top of me. I just needed air.

Turns out, you can ask your mortgage company for a pause on your mortgage for a little bit.  It wasn’t ideal. I felt gross, I felt like I let my children down… like I let everyone down. 

My romantic partner paid for my groceries for a month. It was sweet but I felt frustrated, scared, and a little hopeless. Even through the shit that felt overwhelming… I didn’t give up. I couldn’t. I had made sure that I was going to build a business… or, I’d lose everything.

If I didn’t make a payment on my mortgage in February of 2025, they would foreclose. 

January 28th, 2025. I had nothing. No income, no way forward, and almost no home. But I declared, on that day, that I would be fine. Even if I truly lost everything, declared bankruptcy, lost my kids, my partner… I would still have me. I would still be a limitless, authentic, transformative leader. And that gave me the confidence to try one more thing.

On my 10,000th try, it stuck. My romantic partner (literal goddess, by the way) recommended that all the work I was doing on the back end of the systems I was working for should be put to good use. She’d been gracious enough to kinda hire me to do her back end work. And I did pretty well at it. She asked me why I don’t offer the service to other people.

I felt immediate resistance; like pushing up against a brick wall. I couldn’t offer that service, what credentials or authority did I have to do such a thing? I didn’t want to run something on my own either, that sounded like so much work that I wasn’t ready for.

When you aren't ready is exactly when you're supposed to move.

So, I leaned into the resistance instead of fighting against it. 

I finally listened to her and started offering a back-end software and set-up all together. I had a VA, then two VA’s, then three and a couple project managers. 2025 was the year I built a business that was able to not only sustain me and my family, but support five other people in building something that mattered to them inside and outside of the business. An investor supported us, allowed us to grow, and in January 2026 we had our biggest month yet, with February on track to do even better.

The lessons I learned through all of this can fill a book. But the one I want to leave you is this:

• I survived not because I was resilient and kept going. I succeeded because I trusted where I had to let go, where to find support, and when to lean in. I let go of what I knew wasn’t for me anymore.

• I got support when I felt like a failure. I leaned in when it felt deeply uncomfortable and almost impossible. 

• I was trying so hard to make sure that I figured everything out. But I forgot that I can’t figure everything out on my own:

• My coaches, friends, failed and successful business partners, my loving partner, my family, my team. It was because of my journey with them that we triumphed.

So… I don’t worry about having enough to pay my mortgage anymore.

I don’t know what stage of your journey you’re at. But wherever you are, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Maybe you need to keep making mistakes and calling for support. Maybe you need to just do the thing that’s holding you back. I don’t know what will work for you.

But if you put down the eraser… who knows what could happen.

God Bless

Do What You Love. 2026. All rights reserved.