In my end is my beginning…

“In my end is my beginning,” T.S. Eliot writes in the East Coker section of Four Quartets.

It stands in as a reframing of the theme of the circularity of time and of the spiritual journey of humanity.

As one must die to be born again.

As one takes the Eucharist for Christ’s end was but the believer’s beginning.

As one actuality closes a potentiality but opens a multitude of potentialities, to put it in the Aristotelian sense.

It is in this sense I wish to frame it.

A month ago my business failed.

I now have a 6 figure lawsuit to settle.

I’ve been reduced to no income.

This coming after a year of totally being in the red, throwing money I didn’t have to try to fix a business I shouldn’t have been in.

Lessons are worth their weight in gold, but the experience of obtaining them can be overwhelming. 

But let us begin at the beginning.

I didn’t just wind up in this spot through a wild series of random events.

No.

As with most good stories I met a girl.

I was in my last year of my PhD when I met her.

I had already made the decision that my dream of being a professor wasn’t exactly what I had signed up for.

I felt like I wasn’t really adding anything of value to the world in a real way and as the saying goes money follows value in the marketplace.

In short I was poor.

Although looking at it now versus the situation I find myself in currently, I was far richer. 

I wanted to make money and fell head over heels for a girl who I knew only cared about money.

We were from different worlds and wouldn’t have ever worked out, but when you’re in love you easily replace reality with the fantasy. 

I spent the summer after graduating trying to read as much as possible on how to make money, how to make it fast, and how to make a lot of it.

I came across these people who were called direct response copywriters.

They made some exorbitant claims about the money they were making but I became obsessed with it nonetheless.

I read everything.

However, I didn’t know anything about sales or marketing.

Hell, I couldn’t even think about selling because that involved another person and I was so consumed by social anxiety that even thinking of a social interaction would send me into a full blown panic attack. 

A few of these copywriters I was reading had been in the door to door sales profession.

They claimed that it was the thing that allowed them to operate at such a high level because they learned all the necessary sales psychology from doing door to door.

I looked at door to door jobs on Craigslist.

I lived in Vegas at the time where the sun shines year round and the power bills skyrocket in the summer so there were a lot of door to door solar jobs. 

A few days later I ran into a friend who’s business had been destroyed from COVID which we, at the time, were only little by little emerging from the lockdowns.

He told me he was doing door to door solar and told me how much some of the people in the office were making in a month.

I got an interview.

I started knocking doors that following week. 

Now if you’ve never done door to door it is one of the hardest professions in my opinion.

It is truly the armpit of sales,  but you can make a lot of money if you’re good at it.

I sucked at it.

The first day I went out by myself to sell I couldn’t bring myself to get out of my car to go knock on a door.

I was stuck.

Paralyzed by fear.

For 6 hours. 

I eventually was able to find some success and worked myself into a manager position.

That relationship with the girl ended in the worst breakup I’ve ever been in after I brought her into the door to door industry and trained her.

She went to another solar company and I began this crazy competition with her to show her I was better than her (she’s way better than I am at selling). A crazy competition that only I knew about, as if she cared.

I ended up setting records and winning completions and managing the top installing office in the nation for a large solar sales organization.

My business partners and I signed a 7 figure contract.

Meanwhile my personal life was a mess.

I was living in my mother’s basement.

At times I couldn’t get out of bed or respond to text messages.

I was so depressed I’d only be able to force myself to shower once a month.

And I’m obsessed with winning this made up competition with my ex. 

In my end is my beginning. 

I’m not a quitter.

I never have been.

I have that dogged persistence that is both a trait that has won me success and achievements but it can become that sword that cuts me down.

I couldn’t get out of that toxic relationship and I couldn’t quit this career because then she would have won. 

Then my business collapsed.

In one day everything changed.

I found myself on the outside of a career I never wanted to be in, in which I dreaded every day.

I began showering everyday.

My mood immediately picked up.

I was waking up earlier, excited for the day.

And that crushing obsession with my ex, that competition that only I knew about, was gone.

All of that is fine and good but I still have a six figure lawsuit and no income to speak of.

So I returned to that time of reading about copywriting.

I built a sales page and then a funnel.

I got it wrong so I built another sales funnel on a different website.

I bite the bullet and signed up for another website and built another funnel.

Then I realized my offer wasn’t the best so I revised and expanded all of that.

I bought a low priced course to figure it out, and then another one and another. 

When someone orders something off a website, there has to be frameworks to get the product to them, so I learned how to build workflows and triggering events and email marketing sequences.

Once everything was in place I needed to get traffic to it so I bought another course on facebook advertising and built an ad campaign. 

And here we are today.

I turned on the facebook ads and watched as my money spent racked up, and impressions grew and website visits increased.

But nobody bought. 

I was sick to my stomach.

A months worth of work and not one single sale. 

But in my end is my beginning, and my beginning is my end.

In this last month I’ve been happier and more excited about life than I’ve been in over 5 years.

That is the point.

In the past, I’ve made more money in one month than people make in a year.

And I did it while hating everything about life.

Today I made nothing and I am so excited to try it again tomorrow. 

• Content Marketing Failures: Why Your Strategy Isn’t Working
• The Brutal Truth About Losing Everything—And Why It’s Necessary
• The Insidious Truth About Door-to-Door Sales: Mastering Rejection, Fear, and Power
• You’re Broke for a Reason: The Truth About Money and Value
• The value proposition of the offer in a shifting marketplace…

If this nudges something beneath the surface—something raw, real, or quietly true—step into Emotional Intelligence / Poetic Intelligence. It’s not just about understanding feelings; it’s about navigating power, presence, and perception with depth. For those ready to lead from within. Read Emotional Intelligence / Poetic Intelligence: The Hidden Cost of Low EQ (Why You’re Failing in Business and Life) 

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