I started my career in commission-only, door-to-door sales. The conditions were brutal and rejection was constant, but at that stage of my life hustle was not a philosophy, it was the only option. I learned to grind, to push through discomfort, and to believe that outworking everyone else was the answer. For a while, it worked. I made good money, put myself through school, and became a top performer at a young age. Effort felt like the solution to every problem, and I carried that belief with me into everything that followed.

I moved into tech and started as a business development rep, cold-calling leads and working my way up. Within a few years, I hit President’s Club and closed enterprise deals with organizations like the NFL, Volkswagen, and government agencies in both the U.S. and Canada. On paper, I had made it. The income was strong and the career path was clear, but the reality of a high-performing nine-to-five still felt limiting. I wanted more ownership, more autonomy, and ultimately to build something of my own.

That desire led me to my first company, an e-commerce dropshipping business. Sales came quickly and volume looked promising, but profits never followed. The model was flawed, and eventually the business collapsed. That failure took more from me than I expected. Burnout set in, followed by a period of depression, and I found myself back in a cubicle selling software again. It was my first real lesson that building companies requires far more than effort alone.

I tried again, this time with better judgment and sharper execution. Within 24 months, I exited my second startup, made my first million before thirty, and checked every external box of success. I helped my parents, bought the things I once dreamed about, and achieved what I thought was the goal. But the win did not feel the way I expected it to. What mattered most was not the money, but the impact of building something real and useful. Founders began reaching out, and I started mentoring, investing, and sharing what I had learned along the way.

That path led me to co-found Novobeing, a therapeutic VR company designed to help patients in hospitals. We co-developed the technology with Harvard, raised capital, and built a strong team around a mission that genuinely mattered. Yet despite the progress, I fell back into familiar patterns. 10 hour days, non-stop meetings, constant pressure, and another cycle of burnout followed. I had improved my outcomes, but I had not fundamentally changed how I was building.

The real change came when I stopped optimizing for hustle and started designing systems. I focused on building companies that could scale without my constant presence and decisions that did not require being online at all hours. I built Guide IQ, an AI-powered marketing system for founders, left Vancouver for Mexico, and redesigned my life around freedom rather than output. My businesses now operate more effectively with less effort, not more. Today, I build from the beach and help other founders do the same by creating companies that support their lives instead of consuming them. Systems over hustle is no longer a belief, it is how everything I build works.