Here's What Happened To My Health, And Why I'm Making Some Important Changes To SelfMadeMan Tomorrow... Hey Mark R, well this might just be one of the biggest and most personal updates I've ever had to write and share with you...
Over the past few months, I've vaguely mentioned that I've been dealing some significant health challenges, but I haven't gone into any real detail.
Well today I'm going to bring you up to speed, because it's forced me to make some significant changes to Self Made Man as a business that will take place tomorrow.
I'm planning to do an entire podcast about what I've been going through once I'm back to normal and have a full story to share, but in the meantime, here's the short version…
Six years of insane amounts of stress finally caught up with me on June 13th of last year, and it basically broke my nervous system, putting it into a fixed state of "fight of flight".
As a result, I felt a little click in my brain one day, and lost my ability to physically fall asleep from that point forward.
And when I say lost my ability to sleep, I'm not talking about difficulty, or even chronic insomnia. I'm talking about a physical inability to actually sleep no matter how tired I got.
In fact, I went five straight days and nights without sleeping for a single minute no matter how many supplements or over the counter sleep medications I tried.
Sleep deprivation is actually used as a form of torture by agencies like the CIA because the human body can only go 7-10 days without sleep before dying. And I got to that point.
I can remember laying on my couch 5 days in, and realizing that if I couldn't figure this out in the next 2-3 days, I'd be dead.
Imagine how you've felt when you haven't had sleep in 24 hours. Now imagine if that continued for a second day, and then a 3rd, and then a 4th, and a 5th… All without a single minute of sleep.
I can tell you that the fear and frustration is maddening and incomprehensible.
Thankfully at that point, my primary care doctor put me on a few medications like Xanax and Ambien which allowed me to get about 1-2 hours of "blackout" sleep a night, but I'd be up again as soon as they wore off.
It wasn't real, restorative sleep though. It would allow my brain to turn off for 1-2 hours, but my body and nervous system were still firing away as if I was running away from a lion 24/7.
By the second month, I was scared to death that things hadn't gotten any better.
I spoke to doctor after doctor, and none of them had ever seen anything like what I was experiencing. I searched YouTube and Google for days, and once again, I couldn't find any answers or stories from others, which made things even worse because I felt completely alone and helpless.
Hearing, "I've never seen anything like this before" from five different doctors isn't something you ever want to hear.
I was afraid that I had incurred some kind of brain injury that was going to make it impossible for me to ever sleep again. Depression and the first thoughts of suicide I'd ever had started to creep in.
If the problem continued, I had to come to terms with the fact that I'd probably end up disappearing from the world, and living with my parents, unable to function in any kind of normal capacity.
And then in a moment of complete serendipity, I met a sleep doctor named Kirk and his partner Krisstina at Aubrey Marcus' house.
It turns out that Krisstina had gone through the same thing 5 years ago. After 20 years of practice, she and I were the only two people Kirk had ever seen who had experienced this condition.
It quickly became apparent that we were both cut from the same cloth.
Our drive, ambition, and competitiveness drove our bodies past the breaking point.
She felt a click in her head after speaking at an event, and couldn't fall asleep again for over a year. She ended up being hospitalized and nearly died as well.
At some point, she'll join me on the podcast to share her story, but that night was a huge turning point for me, because she eventually found her way back to health, and back to sleep. I broke down in tears that night because meeting her gave me hope for the very first time in months.
Since then, I've gone through neuro-biofeedback therapy, Trans-cranial Magnetic Stimulation therapy, 9 ketamine IV sessions, float-tank therapy, nightly meditation, hypnotherapy, MDMA therapy, traditional counseling therapies, dozens of blood tests, EEG's, NAD+ therapy, and all kinds of diet and nutrition regimens.
Thankfully, things got a little better after the Ketamine sessions.
I was able to work my way off the pharmaceuticals, and replace them with a combination of supplements and CBD products that have allowed me to get around 3-4 hours of light sleep per night.
After talking to Krisstina and Kirk during these challenge, there wasn't a silver bullet that "fixed" her. It was a slow process of many different therapies that finally reset her nervous system.
Today, I'm almost 9 months into what has been the single most difficult challenge of my life.
For the most part, I've had to live as a hermit the past year, giving up any form of social life, selling my race cars, and doing everything I can to keep my employees paid and the podcast alive.
But it has also been one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had, because it was truly an intervention that finally forced me to deal with habits and traumas that put me in this condition.
Without this experience, I'm confident that I would have never stopped the life of constant adrenaline and stress I'd grown used to for decades, which would have eventually led to a heart attack.
It's forced me to give up caffeine, and alcohol. It's forced me to realize that life isn't about business, and it's forced me to change my habits and stories when it comes to success and money.
As of today, I still haven't been able to fall asleep one single time without a handful of natural tranquilizers to calm my nervous system, but I've seen a good amount of progress the past few months.
We'll be doing a brain MRI in the coming weeks to make sure there isn't anything serious such as a tumor that's behind all of this, and I'll be starting a few new therapies that should bring some positive results.
At this point, my mind is mostly back, I can write the occasional email like this one, or record a short video, and I finally have enough energy to venture out of the house and take a short walk during the week.
The work that I've done over the past 9 months will allow me to come back better, clearer, and stronger than I ever was before, just as it did for Krisstina, but I'm not there just yet.
So what does this have to do with SelfMadeMan and the business?
Well my vision for SMM when I started creating the platform and the classes two years ago, was to build it into a significant media/education company like SkillShare or Udemy.
But the stress that I put myself through to bring EverGrow, and SMM to life almost killed me.
So I've had to let go of that dream, and create a new one that acknowledges where I'm at today, and what I've been going through.
Simply put, it is much more modest, but also more personal and meaningful.
I'm letting go of the dream of building a $100 million publishing company, and getting back to doing what I love to do most… Personally learning, creating, and teaching.
The single biggest joy and reward that I've ever had in life, is walking down the street, or through the hall of an event, and having someone walk up to me and say, "thank you, your book/course/videos changed my life".
Sharing what I know so it can help others is what I'm here to do, so that's what I'm going to get back to.
So what does that look like, and what does it mean for you?
Well, the first thing that will be the most obvious, is that we're nuking the current SelfMadeMan.com platform next week.
We spent over a year and $1 million building a completely custom platform that was designed to support millions of users.
That platform costs around $30,000+ per month to maintain and develop, which isn't sustainable or necessary anymore. (And that's not including the content production which was about $10,000 per class).
So we've spent the past three months migrating it to WordPress and ClickFunnels.
From the outside, the platform will look 95% the same.
Same format, catalog, class and podcast pages, etc. If I wasn't telling you about this, you probably wouldn't notice the difference.
But it will take our development costs down from $30,000+ per month, to about $3,000.
The biggest change that you will see, is that we're going to host the platform at MikeDillard.com, instead of SelfMadeMan.com, starting tomorrow when it goes live.
Why the change?
Well, my goal with SelfMadeMan was to build a brand and a company that I could eventually sell.
That's why I'm not in any of the classes.
But moving forward, all of the content I'm planning to produce will be done by me personally.
I can't wait to get back to creating and contributing to the world. I have three books I want to write. I have over 100 YouTube videos mapped out, and a new course that I'd love to produce at some point this year as soon as my health allows for it.
Everything I'm going to produce is going to be done by me, for you, so it only makes sense to build those assets and equity under my personal brand, because I'm never going to sell that work or the platform to another person or company at this point.
If it's your name on the book, or you in front of the camera, you want to use that work to build your personal brand. Not a separate entity like SelfMadeMan.
So that update will take place tomorrow, and you'll also notice some additional improvements…
If you own List-Grow, 7FSP, or my Crypto course, those Master Classes will finally be available to you on the platform instead of through separate websites. You'll have one login, and access to everything in one place.
Second, we're going to end all active monthly and annual subscriptions as of March 1st.
We have 4-5 more classes that we're going to release once the new platform is up, and if you're currently a paid member, you'll be getting access to all of those.
If you have a monthly or annual subscription in place, that will be cancelled on March 1st, so you'll never be billed again, but you'll continue to have access to all of the classes on the platform.
Moving forward, we'll be offering them for sale individually, or as a complete bundle.
Now as a part of this migration process, we'll be importing your contact information into the new system if you're a current customer.
That means you're going to get an email tomorrow with a new password that you'll need to use to login.
Obviously this is going to be a massive undertaking and I'm sure there will be a bug or two along the way, but we'll get those fixed as soon as possible.
So that's what I've been dealing with for the past year in a nutshell.
It's been an absolute nightmare in many ways, but also the single best thing that's ever happened to me in others, which I'll save for another chapter in this story :)
Thank you for your patience, your understanding, and your support.
Sincerely,
Mike Dillard
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