A few months ago, I decided to stop working on EQNMT as its CEO. Making this decision was difficult. I decided to build a business in the psychedelic therapy space primarily because I thought building a mission driven company would make life more meaningful. I thought it would make me ‘happy’.

The book Stumbling on Happiness, written by Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist outlines the science supporting the fact that we humans are incredibly bad at forecasting what will make us happy. I thought I wanted to revolutionize mental health because that would make me happy. Apparently, I just want to build an online retail company.

After leaving Elevate Brands in Jan 23’ to build EQNMT I also started an Amazon reselling business (Steidland Brands). I know this model intimately and it was a way for me to generate income while figuring out EQNMT’s business model. Steidland immediately started performing well and in July 23’ I raised capital for it. The idea was to bring on a team to run it so I could fully focus on EQNMT. However, by December 23’ Steidland’s performance was poor so I jumped back into it to help right the ship.

Amazon reselling is straight forward. It’s essentially a trading business. We buy well known branded consumer goods and sell them on Amazon. There are a lot of details in the execution but to be successful, one basically just needs to buy the right inventory at the right price. The ‘secret sauce’ of the business is supplier relationships i.e finding people you can buy brands like Nike at wholesale prices. In December I allocated around $2 MM USD of capital to profitable inventory. Great news. But even more surprising to me was that I was happier and more present than I had been the entire year building EQNMT. I described this epiphany to my friends, family and therapist as an “identity crisis”. I left the Amazon world to pursue a mission driven company! Wasn’t pursuing something greater than oneself supposed to bring me greater fulfillment day to day? Apparently not. Apparently, I get my rocks off by trading.

I think happiness lies at the intersection of pursuing a goal that is sincerely exciting to us and where the day to day work necessary to complete said goal increases the amount of time we spend in a flow state. This is exactly what I experienced in December. I was present trading and analyzing inventory opportunities all day and excited because I could / can see a path to building a $1 BN company.

The other (obvious?) realization I made is that money is fungible. As humans we do have a desire to contribute something greater than ourselves and I am not throwing the baby out with the bath water. My path to doing so is just different than what I thought. I have been in distribution and e-commerce for over a decade. I am an expert in this space. If I can make a ton of money leveraging this skill set I can deploy that capital to its highest good for society on the back end. Same goal as EQNMT, different approach.

I was inspired to get into the psychedelic space after reading the book How to Change your Mind? Its appropriate then that I am exiting it (for now) because I am changing my mind. Doing so (as with the psychedelic experience) has been incredibly challenging. We humans have a consistency bias. I have made a bunch of very grandiose statements and actions relating to EQNMT and my ego really didn’t like it when I was wrestling with changing course. However, all we can do is try to make the best decisions we can with the available data we have. So that’s what I’m doing. For now, trading on Amazon and attempting to build a $1 BN business is what makes me happy. At least I think it is…