Divorce, Bankruptcy and Devastation to Success in E-Commerce with Neil Twa

Dr. Brad Miller 0:00

Today with Neil, he is all about

Dr. Brad Miller 0:04

launching and operating and acquiring e-commerce brands focusing

Dr. Brad Miller 0:09

on Amazon FBA and other aspects of marketing. But he also

Dr. Brad Miller 0:14

comes from a background of having some challenges and some

Dr. Brad Miller 0:17

financial struggles in his life. And he has some things to teach us

Dr. Brad Miller 0:21

and lead us in this area. Neil Welcome to Beyond adversity.

Neil 0:25

Wonderful. I'm honored. And thank you for having me on. Dr. Miller.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:27

It is good to have you on here and to teach us a little bit

Dr. Brad Miller 0:32

about what you're about. And obviously, you're successful in

Dr. Brad Miller 0:34

the business world and Amazon FBA and e-commerce and

Dr. Brad Miller 0:38

you've had some exciting opportunities in that area, we're

Dr. Brad Miller 0:41

gonna get to that in just a little bit. But it hasn't always been

Dr. Brad Miller 0:43

the case. I know that to be from talking a little prior to our

Dr. Brad Miller 0:47

conversation here today hasn't always been the case, and

Dr. Brad Miller 0:51

you had some struggles and some challenges in your life.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:54

Just tell us your story about some of the adversities that you

Dr. Brad Miller 0:56

face that led you eventually to do what you're doing now.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:59

But what are some things that you had to face in your life?

Neil 1:01

Yeah, thank you for that. And I appreciate you asking that question.

Neil 1:04

I'll try to keep it as small as possible been on target.

Neil 1:09

I've kind of lived a couple of lives. I'm only 46. But I've reinvented

Neil 1:12

or restarted multiple times from scratch, and had to go up and

Neil 1:17

down and learn some very hard life lessons in the process. And

Neil 1:21

in simple terms, I learned how to kind of make my own way a little bit.

Neil 1:23

My dad worked as a mechanical engineer, I guess is the best way

Neil 1:28

to put it, although he was more of a shop guy worked for

Neil 1:31

a company and had come out of the Navy has been eight

Neil 1:33

years in that and was a hard working determined guy he

Neil 1:36

dropped out of high school and life was for him was a bit tough,

Neil 1:39

but he did the best he could. And it meant we didn't really

Neil 1:41

need anything, but anything we wanted, wasn't really available.

Neil 1:44

So I quickly learned that I needed to go make some additional money.

Neil 1:47

So I set out to start mowing lawns in the neighborhood. And they

Neil 1:51

gave me some additional cash in my teens, to kind of do a little

Neil 1:54

extra of what I wanted to do. And I didn't really have a business

Neil 1:58

background. And again, my father was more on the technical working

Neil 2:00

side and a very strong blue-collar guy who spent 30-plus years of his

Neil 2:04

life working very hard and doing very well. But I didn't have that

Neil 2:08

business and knowledge. And that's something that I wanted to glean.

Neil 2:10

I very much wanted to go into the military and follow

Neil 2:13

sort of in my dad's footsteps. So I decided to go to the Air Force.

Neil 2:16

And as I got through high school, which for me kind of felt sort

Neil 2:19

of easy. I kind of cruised through high school, not really learning

Neil 2:22

how to learn, as it turns out, as part of my story will tell you. But here

Neil 2:26

In the end result, I didn't really want to go to college,

Neil 2:29

I actually wanted to go in the Air Force and become a

Neil 2:30

fighter pilot. And so I was set to do that I went to the recruiter's office.

Neil 2:34

Turns out in six foot-five will not fit in an F-16 pilot and that dream

Neil 2:38

was squelched. Because I had a music background.

Neil 2:41

And I've been playing since the fourth grade, jazz and

Neil 2:43

classical trumpet and had gone off-state a couple of times,

Neil 2:45

I had scholarships to go to college, almost full, right?

Neil 2:48

So I decided to go ahead and go to college, I had choices

Neil 2:51

across the country to go to and I ended up at a little liberal

Neil 2:54

arts college in Iowa in the middle of the cornfields where

Neil 2:56

I found three years of nothing but trouble, fell

Neil 2:59

out of college twice had to be reinstated. I did not want

Neil 3:02

to be there, as you probably heard me say a minute ago.

Neil 3:05

And I was trying to find my way through it. But in that process

Neil 3:07

as technology and internet started to come on board,

Neil 3:10

and suddenly machines were showing up. And I was like

Neil 3:13

fascinated about how that worked. And nobody else knew.

Neil 3:15

So as soon as I could, I went down and got my $4.25 seven

Neil 3:18

hour job at the computers, whatever you want to call it down

Neil 3:23

at the computer lab, I guess, learning how to build these

Neil 3:26

machines, put them together and network

Dr. Brad Miller 3:27

Oh is this in the college campus?

Neil 3:28

On college campus, we didn't have a computer room

Neil 3:31

yet. And that's part of what was getting set up.

Neil 3:34

We started with the DX 280s. And eventually, when the

Neil 3:36

Pentium showed up, that was a whopping big deal.

Neil 3:38

And when those three one came on, everybody's

Neil 3:40

freaking out. So I learned how to do that through the

Neil 3:43

time that I was studying, I discovered I had sort of an interest

Neil 3:45

in the computer technology side of it and what was really

Neil 3:48

possible like nobody truly knew just yet, but there was a lot

Neil 3:51

of opportunity. But I also realized, at some point, I didn't want

Neil 3:54

to stay in the academia world per se, I had that opportunity.

Neil 3:57

And I had a great life, doing the, you know, the aspects of

Neil 4:00

learning it, which were cool. But I also knew there was a lot

Neil 4:03

more and again, I didn't really want to be there. So I was

Neil 4:05

always looking for a way to kind of get out of that. So my

Neil 4:07

third year of college I dropped out, I realized that, you know,

Neil 4:10

to stay in that would be go to computer science beyond a

Neil 4:12

green screen and live my life behind a programming desk.

Neil 4:15

And that was not my aptitude. I was too inclined to do other

Neil 4:18

things. And the creativity of the music and stuff in me was

Neil 4:21

just like that's too linear, too structured, I need something that

Neil 4:23

flows and more creative, more intuitive and you know, can be

Neil 4:27

changed. So I knew that business and internet and the

Neil 4:30

E commerce world was something I wanted to get involved in,

Neil 4:32

in business around I just didn't know how. But I went out and got

Neil 4:35

a little consulting gig, because I knew enough to network. And so

Neil 4:38

I was helping to network computers inside of banks up in

Neil 4:40

Lee's Summit, Missouri. And the guy took a chance on me and

Neil 4:43

it was an opportunity to learn. I taught myself some programming

Neil 4:45

at that time. It was just HTML. And then I started to learn database

Neil 4:48

programming, ASP pages. I taught myself how to do that and

Neil 4:52

eventually got better contracting jobs where I was being

Neil 4:55

paid 10$ to $25 an hour. And that led me to an opportunity

Neil 5:00

To make a Hail Mary pass from a contract job in sprint to

Neil 5:03

what was becoming sprint PCs as division for the launch of the

Neil 5:07

first mobile phone, and they were hiring people across.

Neil 5:09

And so I threw my Hail Mary in there to see what what happened.

Neil 5:12

I got picked up to be one of the people who was managing

Neil 5:15

the customer support rep knowledge base. For the first phone

Neil 5:18

launches, sprint PCs, the big brick phone. We take it for granted

Neil 5:21

today. But that was a one hour charge phone. And we thought

Neil 5:23

this was the most amazing thing that ever happened. And it

Neil 5:26

was so fantastic. So I was like the 5020 Something employee,

Neil 5:30

literally, to be hired full time into sprint. And to oversee the

Neil 5:34

knowledge meant we had about 50,000 web pages that this

Neil 5:36

little team was saying. And eventually I became manager over

Neil 5:39

that team, there was about four or five of us, of all walks in ages.

Neil 5:42

By that point, I was about 21, I was making more in a year than

Neil 5:45

my dad made at that stage. And taking off got to watch.

Neil 5:50

You know, within that five, six years of sprint, we went from

Neil 5:52

5000 employees to 80,000 employees, we went from 2500 Call reps

Neil 5:56

that were within our knowledge management to full artificial

Neil 6:00

intelligence knowledge systems and 25,000 reps to support

Neil 6:04

and I was flying around the world helping to support them.

Neil 6:07

So by the time I turned 25, I had a lot of success in that venture,

Neil 6:10

because I was one of the first in the door and got to see a lot.

Neil 6:12

And I learned something very quickly. It's who you know,

Neil 6:14

that gets you there. And it's what you know, that keeps you there.

Neil 6:16

So a lot of these things I had to learn on the fly. Sometimes

Neil 6:19

I was staying up till 11 o'clock and midnight at night, learning

Neil 6:21

the things that I was trying to apply on my job the next day.

Neil 6:24

And so as I did that, and got some success out of it

Neil 6:27

and just learned along the way. One of the partners

Neil 6:30

that came in from an IBM consulting group that came to help sprint,

Neil 6:35

do kind of what we were doing but at a larger level and

Neil 6:37

trying to take the lessons that had been learned from what

Neil 6:39

was the first knowledge management implementation at a

Neil 6:41

corporate level, and move it out to other places in the corporate world.

Neil 6:44

And IBM wanted to lead that up and sprint said, Sure, come on and help.

Neil 6:47

So for a year, I got to work very closely with a group of guys

Neil 6:50

from IBM made friends with one of the partners got to fly

Neil 6:53

out to Armonk, and got into IBM on a handshake.

Neil 6:56

So here I am, college dropout, no degree, working for IBM.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:00

You sure fast track all the way at a very young age.

Neil 7:03

I was moving very hard, I was willing to take risks, I was

Neil 7:06

okay with failing big and seeing opportunities to win large

Neil 7:10

and taking some chances within that I didn't quite play.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:13

Were you a single guy at this time?

Neil 7:15

I was married to a woman that I met in college when I was 19.

Neil 7:20

And that leads to some other adversity commerce and part

Neil 7:22

of your five ds that you mentioned.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:25

We talk about it, I just know that for some people hard

Dr. Brad Miller 7:27

charging young people just get in, there's not a lot

Dr. Brad Miller 7:29

of other obligations and hit it hard.

Neil 7:33

Why? And and responsibilities during that time as well.

Neil 7:37

But I understood the level of risk I was willing to play there

Neil 7:40

was maybe feeling a little different than others. And I was

Neil 7:43

willing to risk some of those things to see the potential of the

Neil 7:46

reward because I knew what was possible. And I was willing

Neil 7:48

to push myself to see what I was capable of doing. And so

Neil 7:51

because of that I operated a little bit out of fear, I guess less

Neil 7:54

of fear, to be clearer, and more of just pure ambition, quite frankly.

Dr. Brad Miller 8:01

Ambition drove you and eventually, some things went south it sounds well.

Neil 8:08

yes, my ego and pride overtook my common sense.

Neil 8:14

And in the process of that, well, I fell in love with this girl

Neil 8:18

somewhere in the first year or two of our marriage,

Neil 8:21

she fell out of love with me and didn't mention it. And in the process

Neil 8:25

of that while traveling and doing the business, she decided to start

Neil 8:28

a second life without me. And as I would learn that later on,

Neil 8:32

she really started an entire life without me she was traveling

Neil 8:36

around the country when I wasn't there. When I was traveling,

Neil 8:39

she took on a new name, a new identity, different set of

Neil 8:42

credit cards and really became a whole different person.

Dr. Brad Miller 8:45

So we're not talking about someone who's just kind

Dr. Brad Miller 8:47

of fantasizing or whatever about this.

Neil 8:49

she went in the real world I discovered it returning from

Neil 8:53

a trip one time when I was walking through the parking

Neil 8:55

lot going to pick up my car and notice there was another

Neil 8:58

car there that looked exactly like mine. And as I was walking

Neil 9:01

past that car, I thought okay, the license plate is even looking

Neil 9:03

like mine. But in that euphoria moment in that displacement that

Neil 9:07

occurs in that shock, you're questioning the reality of what you're

Neil 9:12

looking at your questioning the reality of the situation, because

Neil 9:14

at that moment you're trying to process the shocking reality that

Neil 9:17

something is very wrong about why it's completely disjointed.

Neil 9:21

It's completely just joining your reality fractures for a moment

Neil 9:23

in my reality fractured into two splits the one that I had known

Neil 9:26

in that moment and the one that it is just split into and the

Neil 9:28

moment I realized that car was there and it should not have

Neil 9:30

been there. It did for a moment. Yeah, it shocked me, kicked me back.

Neil 9:35

And to the point where I didn't know what to do. So I went

Neil 9:37

on home and kind of you know, did life for a little while, trying

Neil 9:41

to wonder how that actually worked out. Only to learn you

Neil 9:45

know, later as my suspicions would no longer be squelched in

Neil 9:49

my reality was fractured and my cognitive dissonance was broken.

Neil 9:52

And all of a sudden I was faced with learning the reality of my

Neil 9:55

life as I had not understood it to what I was now understanding.

Neil: 10:00

You know, I had to realize that she had an entire relationship

Neil: 10:03

with multiple men a different language and cell phone pictures

Neil: 10:05

and all kinds of stuff, I discovered that that really solidified the fracture.

Neil: 10:10

So we've spent the better part of a year, getting divorced.

Neil: 10:14

After two years of separation and dealing with those issues as

Neil: 10:18

they came out over time, I was willing to reconcile

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:20

Were their children involved as well?

Neil: 10:22

Thank God, there were no children involved.

Neil: 10:24

So that made the break a little bit easier, although this was

Neil: 10:27

a girl that I had fallen in love with. And I was very much

Neil: 10:32

dedicated to making it work, to the point that I was willing to

Neil: 10:35

jeopardize my job, my financial status and other things to get

Neil: 10:38

counseling to help her out, only to eventually come through the

Neil: 10:42

mourning process of waking up and realizing and anger

Neil: 10:45

process and getting through the reconciliation and coming

Neil: 10:48

to the last stages, that she never wanted to be a part of it.

Neil: 10:52

And the lie started from the very beginning, I just didn't

Neil: 10:55

realize that I was born to it. And yeah, so that was quite a wake up call.

Dr. Brad Miller: 10:58

Your world kind of came crashing down. Did you maintain your career or shift?

Neil: 11:03

I maintain my career only because I threw myself into it.

Neil: 11:07

And only because it gave me the opportunity to be moving

Neil: 11:09

because I was traveling three times a week to different locations,

Neil: 11:12

week by week, almost 200 travel days in the year, I simply

Neil: 11:18

let the apartment go, I put all this stuff in a container and I

Neil: 11:21

lived as a road warrior for almost a year. So I lived out of hotels, I was moving, I was shifting.

Neil: 11:25

So your marriage was ending, your hard charging, traveling a lot living,

Neil: 11:31

strode myself into the work.

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:32

Just threw yourself into that.

Neil: 11:34

While having to deal with divorce papers and legal stuff in the process.

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:37

Did any other crashes come along, you know, knew the parts of your life?

Neil: 11:41

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that wasn't the first.

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:45

I just know from my experience that many times one crash

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:49

of a divorce or something like this is exacerbated by other

Dr. Brad Miller: 11:53

aspects. Sometimes its physical health, sometimes its.

Neil: 11:55

Mental flaws and your personality, stubbornness, and arrogance

Neil: 11:59

and pride, those things can kick other parts of your life

Neil: 12:03

upside down. The issue there was I had kind of reconcile

Neil: 12:08

that and decided to be a part of that. And that was when

Neil: 12:10

I threw myself into my career for a while. I did met a person

Neil: 12:15

who became a friend because I was not looking for anybody else.

Neil: 12:17

And I eventually woke up to that person about a year after

Neil: 12:21

meeting them, that there was more there because I was

Neil: 12:23

blinded by life and the divorce and I met this very wonderful

Neil: 12:26

girl from from Oklahoma, and we hit it off isn't that we're

Neil: 12:26

great friends. And then one day it snapped and was like, Hey,

Neil: 12:31

she's more than a friend. That's it took about a year later

Neil: 12:33

for that to kind of kick in. But that sent us on a different path I

Neil: 12:37

had pulled unfortunately, due to the divorce, a lot of debt

Neil: 12:41

and other things along with me, in order to get out of it.

Neil: 12:43

I had a business on a side hustle that was doing great that

Neil: 12:46

ended up crashing, she ended up going on the warpath

Neil: 12:48

and pretty much destroying everything from my 41k to my life

Neil: 12:51

to my credit score. I didn't know my car I owned

Neil: 12:53

what was in it, I was pretty much starting over from zero along with.

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:56

So your former wife devastate you financially or

Dr. Brad Miller: 12:58

was it a part of your financial devastation as well?

Neil: 13:00

After the six months of trying to get divorced under one

Neil: 13:03

name with the name that she originally was married under,

Neil: 13:05

we had to redo the entire divorce again, when it was discovered

Neil: 13:08

in the court during the day with a judge that she had a

Neil: 13:10

completely different identity. And we had to redo the whole

Neil: 13:12

thing all over again. So we went after six more months of that.

Neil: 13:16

And in that process, something changed in her and she decided

Neil: 13:19

to not play the victim and instead went after everything I had.

Neil: 13:22

So when I walked out of it in order to get divorced to leave the

Neil: 13:24

whole thing behind and start over I came up with nearly zero

Neil: 13:27

and my bank account, I own all the debt. I own the Bank

Neil: 13:30

of Ripsi itself failed credit and nothing. But the suitcase

Neil: 13:35

and the stuff in the car that I didn't know.

Dr. Brad Miller: 13:38

If you had dead you're a little less than zero then weren't you?

Neil: 13:40

Well, I get Yeah. So I met this girl and got back into life.

Neil: 13:43

And I continued to start paying down the debt. And I still had

Neil: 13:47

my job. And so I was working forward through that point and

Neil: 13:50

the relationship extended. But later on, a lot of that financial

Neil: 13:53

burden unfortunately got dragged into that new relationship.

Neil: 13:56

And then we eventually got married and to a very different

Neil: 13:59

person than the one I had originally met someone who is

Neil: 14:02

willing to fight by my side, someone who knew what I went

Neil: 14:04

through and was willing to take the debt on with me and

Neil: 14:06

make a plan to fix it. She had just finished her Bs in nursing.

Neil: 14:11

And she was working and doing great. And between that

Neil: 14:14

in our jobs we were quickly come overcoming the debt

Neil: 14:16

unfortunately, I got very successful, I'm gonna say this then

Neil: 14:20

run the wrong way in some online media and mobile

Neil: 14:23

advertising that did very well. And then I processed

Neil: 14:25

suddenly, we were very flush with cash. And the change

Neil: 14:29

led me into an investment strategy, a bit of naivety

Neil: 14:32

sucked in by a friend that caused me to invest way too

Neil: 14:35

much into that and the output of that was I got too

Neil: 14:38

leveraged into the business before I realized that they were

Neil: 14:41

messing with investor funds. The SEC could get involved

Neil: 14:44

there was a whole lot of things going on that

Neil: 14:46

got discovered with that

Dr. Brad Miller: 14:47

Sound it got ugly got legal and some things like that.

Neil: 14:49

I got indemnifiedand bailed out and my indemnification

Neil: 14:53

of component was to file bankruptcy. Bankruptcy in the

Neil: 14:55

business and my personal life in order to be indemnified.

Neil: 14:59

From what was coming from the investors.

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:02

Just to tick off a few things here. You've had a divorce,

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:05

you've had all the middle anguish with that.

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:05

You've got remarried, you've got trying to build a life you've

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:12

had super success, which can be an adversity of itself.

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:18

And and then you also had a crash of your business and financial.

Neil: 15:23

Correct. So I'm with a wife now and three children

Neil: 15:26

with a fourth on the way and we're filing bankruptcy

Neil: 15:29

And her medical conditions and got bad enough,

Neil: 15:31

she could no longer work. So we had no income.

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:34

So you have some medical issues as well on top everything.

Neil: 15:37

Yep, she has some terrible medical issues discovered during.

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:39

You've a period of time when things were a bit of a mess sounds like.

Neil: 15:42

For about 10 to 12 years, life was a big mess for me.

Neil: 15:46

Yeah. Partially created by myself partially circumstantial,

Neil: 15:50

I take my responsibility, of course, and then just a series of

Neil: 15:52

bad luck events, I guess, is how you wouldn't say, it was stupid

Neil: 15:56

on my part, I'll take responsibility. But the end result

Dr. Brad Miller: 15:58

You've found some ways to start to maneuver out of that you.

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:02

A lot of people stay stuck in that state, you know, they just

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:06

keep cycling through. Pardon me, and cycling through bad things.

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:10

I call it the malaise of mediocrity or the malaise of failure

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:13

is keep doing the same thing. expecting different results.

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:17

Sounds like you were a bit of a risk taker, an entrepreneur,

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:21

and sometimes you got burned with that.

Neil: 16:24

I still hadn't fully let go of my pride and ego,

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:27

The poeple I know, myself included, that's part of their DNA

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:30

is kind of the keep trying thing. So what do you do?

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:34

What kind of things do you try? What kind of actions

Dr. Brad Miller: 16:36

did you take to start to maneuver out of this mess you found yourself?

Neil: 16:39

Well, for my for the fact that the medical issues occurred,

Neil: 16:42

start with my wife when she got pregnant. In the first year,

Neil: 16:45

we were married, she ended up having her first transient

Neil: 16:48

ischemic attack, which is known as a mini stroke, which

Neil: 16:50

legally left her incapable of driving. And so she went on to

Neil: 16:53

bed rest, which forced her to stop working. During that process,

Neil: 16:56

we were trying to discover why these things were occurring for

Neil: 16:59

her the taxation of the baby on her body, and we couldn't quite

Neil: 17:02

figure it all out. And we spent a better part of a year in the

Neil: 17:04

medical community trying to discover that issue, which was making

Neil: 17:07

it very difficult for her as she got through that first pregnancy.

Neil: 17:11

And we started to discover some of the issues medically, we started

Neil: 17:14

overcoming some of those challenges in the process of dealing

Neil: 17:17

with that, and then into our second and third children. We had to

Neil: 17:22

really kind of fight all these problems and demons, and even for a

Neil: 17:25

short time had to go on, you know, subsidies and Medicare subsidies

Neil: 17:29

and stuff, which was very, you know, humbling. And I think what I was

Dr. Brad Miller: 17:33

what's happening here to where you are at one time, you were flown

Neil: 17:35

Very much so terribly humbling terribly, like in me as a fighter,

Neil: 17:39

knowing who I am, I'm not a fighter fight, personnel fight,

Neil: 17:42

even if I'm not sure I'm right, I'm still gonna fight. So at the

Neil: 17:45

end of that it was not going to give up. And I knew this was

Neil: 17:47

going to be something I'm on temporarily. And someday, it might

Neil: 17:49

be my story, but I'm not staying there. Like, I'm going to do

Neil: 17:51

whatever it takes to get off. So what ended up happening,

Neil: 17:54

though, the documentary was I could not get a job because of the

Neil: 17:56

medical conditions that my wife had. She couldn't be left alone,

Neil: 17:59

we had small children. And so I was there.

Neil: 17:59

What ended up happening

Neil: 18:02

was, in my opinion, God sat me in a place

Neil: 18:04

and in the storm and just said,

Neil: 18:06

Be quiet. I got this and just sat here and

Neil: 18:09

like, pushed my arrogance and pride

Neil: 18:11

out of the way, because that is what

Neil: 18:13

led to those other decisions that

Neil: 18:14

made financial ruin and caused problems.

Neil: 18:16

So for a period of almost a year

Dr. Brad Miller: 18:17

And so that painful, that's probably what you need

Neil: 18:19

Extremely painful, I had to be Dad and Mom, we had to work

Neil: 18:22

through those issues. It got even worse after the third pregnancy.

Neil: 18:26

But God miraculously showed money, things and opportunities,

Neil: 18:29

I couldn't get a job to save my life. I wish I had all the credentials

Neil: 18:31

in the world and couldn't get a job got rejected by everyone.

Neil: 18:34

Business and entrepreneurial stuff just would not go and literally,

Neil: 18:38

money still showed up, even down to the penny, which I know was

Neil: 18:41

completely God. She needed one month $1,859 And like 33 cents,

Neil: 18:45

and it showed up to pay our bills and keep things going. But I can't

Neil: 18:48

remember exactly how it showed up. It just did.

Neil: 18:51

So for a while I had to be Dad and Mom, things got worse.

Dr. Brad Miller: 18:54

With the caretaker I'm sure as well part of that process

Neil: 18:57

All day long. Because we had five kids

Neil: 18:59

with four kids and four and a half years,

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:01

It's like you also had to do some caretaking of your wife a lot

Neil: 19:04

And my wife as well. And so as we got to that last child she had

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:08

A lot ofpeople who are kind of type A people aren't

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:10

necessarily inclined to be caretaker types, there are more

Neil: 19:19

Not typically, it was very strange

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:23

Saying you know, there wasn't kind of

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:25

where you would have seen yourself?

Neil: 19:26

No, not per se no. The guy that was in was very much

Neil: 19:26

driven in the corporate ambitious world and thought

Neil: 19:26

my kids would go to college and do this thing and

Neil: 19:26

become these people. And I've since you know very

Neil: 19:30

much changed that guy to a very different one.

Neil: 19:31

I was humbled greatly

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:32

So you were humbled and then a part of this process for you.

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:35

Neil was somehow connecting with your spiritual side

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:38

or your your faith story. So let's go there for just a minute

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:42

about how that's it. You've mentioned a couple of times how

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:45

this was a part of the deal for you. It sounds like it was

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:48

not so much a part of the process for you when you were

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:51

hard driving guy, but now you bet humbled. So what was

Dr. Brad Miller: 19:55

kind of a pivotal aspect of spiritual ascpect to this, which

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:00

was helped you to get through this time and move

Dr. Brad Miller: 20:03

on to what you're doing now?

Neil: 20:04

Well I mean, in simple terms, I had a relationship with

Neil: 20:06

God and I always had I grew up in a what do we call a

Neil: 20:08

Christian home, however, the belief and understanding of

Neil: 20:10

God and then Jesus Christ is the one true light. And the

Neil: 20:13

one way, was not something I had learned until much later in life.

Neil: 20:15

So I had a relationship with God, but not Jesus.

Neil: 20:17

And so what he constantly wanted me to do was wake up

Neil: 20:20

to that and have a realization of a life saving grace.

Neil: 20:22

And he gave me stumbling blocks that would put, he was

Neil: 20:25

put in my path, to cause me to fall in order to reach a

Neil: 20:28

point where I would where I would surrender.

Neil: 20:30

And so that happened, and the moment where we had,

Neil: 20:32

you know, for children, no money, a looming bankruptcy,

Neil: 20:35

and no way to make money, I was at the very bottom. And

Neil: 20:37

as they say, when you get the bottom, there's nowhere to go,

Neil: 20:39

but up, you look up. And in that moment, I looked up

Neil: 20:41

and I surrender all of it to him, I said, I don't know how

Neil: 20:44

I'm gonna do this be dad and mom make money,

Neil: 20:46

do this work, I can't get a job. You know, all that. So I'm

Neil: 20:49

giving it all to you. And I'm just going to go and see

Neil: 20:51

what happens next. And so as I surrendered that and

Neil: 20:54

humbled that a faith, believing and understanding of

Neil: 20:57

Jesus Christ, He came to my heart, and in a matter

Neil: 21:00

of conversion, I accepted Jesus, not through some prayer,

Neil: 21:03

or some mechanism or other person through just a conversion

Neil: 21:07

moment, a true conversion moment, and unlike anything

Neil: 21:09

I would have experienced in the past, and from that

Neil: 21:11

things changed dramatically.

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:12

You went through what I call my teaching your kind of,

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:15

you know, your wilderness moment, you know, your

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:17

wilderness. And most time, Neil, for most of us, that's

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:21

not exactly a moment, like a week or two, it is a season,

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:26

you know, it's more of a, the biblical metaphor is 40

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:30

days or 40 years. I mean, you know, you got no one

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:36

the Ark and Moses on the mountain. And Moses on the

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:39

promised land. So is what I'm trying to get at. And you

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:45

kind of had to hit the bottom and stay there and

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:47

work through that. And you had to be humbled in order

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:50

to get eradicate here, and then do but you didn't took

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:53

some actions then and, and what I'm trying to get with

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:56

you here is there's a lot of people who are listening to us

Dr. Brad Miller: 21:59

right now and through things that you teach through what

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:02

you're about, who've been humbled by life, and they've had

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:05

bad things happen to them. Divorce, you know, I went through

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:08

a devastating divorce myself when I was young, and it messed

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:13

me up for years emotionally, spiritually, and

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:17

financially everything. And it took a long time to recover.

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:22

And a lot of folks if it wasn't, you know, COVID crisis knocked

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:25

a lot of people's business out and physical health. So when,

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:28

but the people took action, and you're an action, your action

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:30

by his person, and let's talk about it. And of course, finances is

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:35

always a thing for everybody, no matter what they say, you

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:38

know, It's always there. Yes. And so let's talk about some

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:42

of the actions that you took. Not just financially business wise,

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:46

the kind of your spiritual health, your emotional health,

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:48

your relationships, but also to kind of, you know,

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:51

what are some of the actions you took, you've had

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:54

this pivotal moment, you've had your faith moment,

Dr. Brad Miller: 22:56

season, and now you're getting out of it. What are you doing?