High financial achievement often masks deep existential anxiety and physical exhaustion. In this episode, host Richard Robinson sits down with guest Edward Zaydelman to discuss the raw reality of high-stakes hustle, financial collapse, and the journey toward genuine healing. Edward shares his path from throwing massive nightlife events and chasing luxury to confronting bankruptcy and rebuilding his life around somatic alignment and community. You’ll hear how fear subtly drives entrepreneurial decisions, and why true wealth requires redefining success far beyond the balance sheet. Together, they explore what happens when you dismantle the pressure to perform and step into authentic service. This conversation offers a grounded path forward for anyone ready to align material success with internal peace.
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Redefining True Wealth: Unmasking Fear, Hustle, And True Alignment With Edward Zaydelman
Welcome to another episode of the show. This interview is with Ed Zaydelman, and currently he is a consultant on developing land projects and buildings in Costa Rica. He tells an incredible story of waves of being disillusioned, being disheartened, successful regrouping, developing his inner self, and personal work. It’s a very powerful interview. He’s very honest, very personal, very vulnerable, and very real about an incredible journey that he’s still in for himself and his family. Thank you for joining. Please watch and enjoy this interview with Edward Zaydelman.
Welcome, Ed Zaydelman. I’m so happy that you’re here. As I said in the intro, you are my friend, and my wife and I have hired you somewhat for our own personal consultation for our move to Costa Rica. For the viewers, yes, I am in Costa Rica. We are in Costa Rica. Ed’s in Costa Rica. Ed is home outside San Jose. I’m at home. It’s a transitional space as we move our lives to Costa Rica. The backdrop behind me is not an artificial backdrop. It’s the real thing. Here we are in Costa Rica. Ed, thank you very much for joining us. Good morning.
Good morning.
I asked you to participate in this interview, this podcast, because you also have your own journey. You and your family have a journey, a multi-chaptered story regarding money and wealth and happiness and fulfillment and whatever all the heartbreak and ups and downs and very real challenges and very real circumstances. Thank you very much for saying yes to doing this interview with me and telling your story.
It’s something that does not happen every day that people say, tell us your truth. I appreciate your willingness, and when we were speaking, I was just so impressed and touched by your motivation for doing this. I asked you, is aligned with my motivation for creating this around helping ourselves and helping others. Thank you very much, Ed. Enough from me. Thank you for being here. Please introduce yourself and come around to what your journey, you and your family’s journey with money.
Immigrant Drives And The Pursuit Of Success
Edward Zaydelman. Ukrainian immigrant, Ukrainian Jew whose family moved to New York. I was the first in my family born in Brooklyn, New York. Because of that, the immigrant’s journey was often the same in the US, where we came with nothing. I saw my family build wealth and what people called the American dream.
Were you born in the UK or are you first generation?
I’m first generation. I was the great hope. My sister was born there. What’s funny is that because she came to the United States as a child, she learned English so well that she became a writer. She learned it beautifully because it was her second language. My Russian is really good. I was the firstborn in Brooklyn, New York, in my family. My family started making money in the shmatte business, selling clothing as many immigrants did, and got some wealth, and we went to good private schools. There was in me, I didn’t realize it until later, this pressure and drive to become “successful” from a young age, both from survival, also from having a good life and the American dream.
It was really instilled in me. I say that because seeing how getting good grades or going to a good school, how much of that was my own motivation or how much of it was me trying to fit a mold and later build a company and be a successful good boy and whatever it was that was running in my head. There was definitely some desire to “make it.” I always hustled, and I worked, and I was a nightclub promoter in high school throwing like 5,000-person parties once a month for underage kids. We would just cut the bar.
We would have 18-to 21-year-olds in nightclubs where we would pay to have no liquor. That was a riot. I was making money in high school at a very young age doing what I called community. I loved bringing people together. There was an authentic part of me that started to come out where I’m a connector, and I’m bringing people together. I still didn’t have a purpose. It was drugs and partying. Later, I would see that we can gather for better reasons. I was still young. What ended up happening, from what I saw at an early age, is that my family made a lot of money. My dad specifically.
The Physical Cost Of Unchecked Financial Hustle
That money really impacted his health. He was working with Russia when it just opened up with this. It was the Soviet Union when we had escaped as a family through Italy and landed in Brooklyn, New York. Eventually, after building some clothing stores and we got some stability in the United States, I was born, and my dad started a business with Russia, building a lot of what later became the non-Soviet Union. There were factories and gas stations. My father was in a hamster wheel of working in the former Soviet Union in the 70s. Every deal was closed with cigarettes and liquor. It was an unhealthy style of work to print money, to make exorbitant amounts of money.
I saw his health decline, and eventually two doctors in New York, I guess now we’d call them functional medicine doctors or something of that realm. He did a blood panel, and they told him that you can choose which disease you want to get in the next five years. This is how bad your markers are. They told him right then and there, because they knew his lifestyle intake, that it’s either your health and your family or your business. My dad walked away from millions, closed his business down, and decided to clean up his body.
I was already a nightlife nightclub promoter. I’m starting to get the sense, four years into my career, that I need the same. Even as a young guy, I’m about to go to college basically just for a timeframe. Both my dad and I are ready to quit our business and clean up our body, mind, and spirit. For him, it was a lot more body. He had to do heavy metal detox and a lot of things. I did those things too. I couldn’t believe how much crap I had in my body that I saw on tests. Heavy metals, things from my lifestyle, clubs, drinking. We also did some drugs at that point, what people would call medicine or drugs now. All that stuff built up in my body and stress.
When I cleaned it out with protocols of heavy metal detox and diet and all sorts of stuff to get my body good, I felt like a million bucks. I felt like a new human. I’m not going to go too far down the rabbit hole there. Basically, there was a decision point in our family to turn over our lives to a much healthier way of living. That’s when my dad and I quit our businesses, my nightlife, him with Russia. We started to look at what’s possible, what drives us, what do we want to do? It was definitely around this health and wellness direction, the functional medicine, longevity.
My grandpa had gotten cancer, and later I’ll share with you my mom’s story. We essentially got to see through my father’s journey, my grandfather’s journey, that there exists a wealth of preventive medicine and functional medicine. Unfortunately, it’s at these boring centers. I’m saying that with a lot of love. My mom sat at a place where, when I went, it didn’t inspire life the way that I get inspired in Costa Rica or at a Burning Man. That’s when my dad and I said, look, what if we could create this?
What if we could take the best of health and longevity that we’ve just been through and combine it with the things that you and I like and other people appreciate, which is art and adventure and culture. We started to think about what that would look like and where that could be a healthy life. That was the beginning of Costa Rica for our family, because we had a business idea. We saw a country that was a canvas for healthy living. No army, definitely no pesticides, which we’ll talk about. No army, high literacy rates, the Switzerland of the Americas.
Choosing Health And Community Over Material Luxury
It was close to home. We started looking at places based on values that we had and also logistics. We did not want to travel halfway around the world. We looked at where we could live a healthy and rich life and an abundant life and how that looked. Eventually it looked like we were getting land in Costa Rica to try to build that, build that as a community where people could live instead of with the gym as I had in my community, which is nice. What about a juice bar with clean organic food that takes God knows how long to clean and process? That’s what helped my mom later with her cancer.
What about a couple of key machines you need to clean your body other than the weightlifting machines, even a sauna? When we started looking at it, we saw that it’s not just a hotel or a retreat center or things we’ve been to where we go and heal. It has to be a way of living. I was going to things like Burning Man at the end of my run and when I got into college, and I had my lid blown open at how people could live in community, create art together. You’ve been there. My data points for what created a rich life were not Burning Man, because later I learned a lot of things I did not want from Burning Man in my day-to-day life, especially the amount of substance use.
What I did see is a way that people can be together, a way that money had a different role. There’s still a ton of money at Burning Man, $24 million a year. Most people do not understand that. Fourteen million in art grants some years. We’re also interacting in exchange and barter. Why I say this, I’m not going to go again into another rabbit hole. I say this because my family had a leap in a choice point of whether we wanted to pursue life in New York with fancy cars and nice things, or we wanted to pursue the real wealth.
We chose, for me it was about twenty years ago, to go on an adventure the way my dad did, from the Soviet Union to look for better ways of living. I was the first one born in the US and the first one to move out. This year, I’m 21 years old, living in Costa Rica, longer than I’ve lived in the United States. I’m 41. This is home, and I’ll share more in my life and money journey. That was our first big leap that I wanted to just pause on.
You’re painting a picture, telling a story, an incredible story of incredible opportunities and choices and very much looking at lifestyle, looking at choices, and then choosing based on values. Just the way the story begins when we came here, immigrant story. Mom, dad, daughter, and then baby Ed was born in Brooklyn. The beginnings. The enthusiasm. I remember, I’m a little older than you. I remember that when the former Soviet Union, the Soviet Union such as it was, collapsed. I remember as a teenager knowing that that was a rich opportunity for investment.
That was a huge opportunity because capitalism was going to just roll right into the former Soviet Union, and whoever was positioned was well positioned. I get it that your father came from there, speaking Russian fluently and all the rest, having contacts, understanding the bureaucracy in the system, even though it had collapsed. It was still very much there, and people’s culture and the headspace and being able to work with both. I get it.
He was well positioned and used it. Also, when I was in my teens, I had reason. There’s a family story that took me to Russia, and yes, the vodka and the cigarettes and the blinis and the caviar and everything. That was life. Even still, I travel to many countries, Europe, Asia. People smoke. Even still, we lived in. I live in California now, Costa Rica. People do not smoke. It’s just not around, which is great because I used to smoke. I can relate. Anyway, thank you for sharing your father’s journey. I’m saying it because I can see it.
I would later like to learn very much so that there’s stuff that’s, whether people call it ancestral or lineage or things, traumas. I was talking to a friend from Ireland. We realized, like, there’s a lot of similarities, and there was this survival culture that we could live on potatoes and vodka if we needed to or whatever it is, and we’re going to make it. When, in fact, there was a very abundant time in Russia where people were drinking and eating caviar, that survival mentality stayed ingrained. It was part of the immigrant story.
Even when I did not have to survive, when we were okay, I still had the program running. Later I’ll share with you someone who really put that program under review for me. I still had the program running that I needed to survive. As you said, these were the times of capitalism in the US. These were the times of Wall Street and Studio 54, and everything was money. Where was that coming from? For me, it was survival. It was a fear that I did not have enough. I’m not enough. I’m not good enough. What I did not understand is that, like most of that life where I was hustling, I was quite fine. There was no survival risk. I look at that now, and I see how much.
This is why I like having this conversation. It’s not like I’m healing my money journey or healing my relationships with my family. This is an ongoing conversation I’ve had for twenty-plus years with myself that I relate to very differently. I’m going to speak very transparently about all the good, the bad, and the ugly, because one, it’s very healthy, because I’m actually seeing and feeling the patterns that drove unhealthy behaviors around money and other things. Two, nobody told me. Didn’t tell me anywhere, not in high school, not in college, not in business school, not in anything. I’m like, “Oh my God.”
They never told you what, please?
One, they never told me that I’m okay, meaning that do what drives you, do what you’re passionate about, not just what you need to make money and survive. It’s a big thing nobody ever told me. The other thing nobody ever told me was to hold up a mirror and actually see what’s driving my decisions, which was fear. One way, or form, it boiled down to fear. It’s not just fear of money, by the way. Money in our society was equated with survival. Ultimately, it comes to a fear of death. Now I’ve been proven many times in my life. It’s called bankruptcy. I’ve gone broke. You do not die.
Some people, yes, there’s death. There’s heavy things happening in the world today where people’s lives are at risk. This big fear, this big elephant in the room that if I run out of money, I’m going to die or something. No. Later, if you do any entrepreneurship or business or life, you die many deaths in many ways. Why I say it is that unless I acknowledge the fear that was driving me, it rears its head today. It might not be that I’m flashy or I need some money. It rears its head in funny ways, which we could get into.
I want to name, say a soundbite, say a phrase, and I want to ask you if you feel it applies. Scarcity orientation versus abundance orientation. Does that apply? You’re talking about the immigrant story, and you even being born in the country and you lived comfortably, you lived fine, you were fine as a kid, as a teenager. Yet something drove you to be quite the entrepreneur as a teenager, putting together events for 5,000 people and doing it monthly. That’s cool. I’m sure that you had a lot of props among your peeps.
It was great. We were working with top celebrities. I’m not going to say the names here. It was incredible. We were hosting great events, and I felt part of me come alive. The connector.
It’s exciting. I put out a G scarcity versus abundance, or at least scarcity. What you’re talking about is that fear, and then we will not know. Not only will we not have enough, now you took it a step further. We’re going to die. It’s an existential angst. We have got to overachieve. We have got to achieve and overachieve. Is this a relevant summary? What is the way I’m saying it?
Except one part that made my body squirm was the abundance. Later, when I met a mentor, Ronit Hirschfeld from Leap Forward, she really had me look at what abundance is, what success is. A lot of it was a fantasy. What I had fantasized from movies and rap songs and Scarface and this and that was the abundance that is not the abundance I see today. It was wealth and flashy things and cars. I did that. It didn’t get me anywhere. I was in nightclubs with champagne.
I went to Burning Man, and it’s a little more cultural and respectful. The party was still continuing. I leap to Costa Rica and look at the eco village movement and what’s happening in other forms of community. One way or another, that thing started to get refined where money became a small part of the equation. You want to be sustainable. You want to make sure your gas and electric are on. It was not the main driver. The things that you asked me, the why. My why is people. I love people.
I love bringing them together. I love seeing them grow and evolve. I thought that looked like X, then Y, then Z, then retreats and gurus and healers. What I love about all this is that whole thing of we’re walking each other home. If we can have spaces for that, I do not care if it’s your house in Costa Rica or it’s a retreat center. It’s not about the bling. We’re building retreat centers. No, it’s that we want spaces where we can be in community and grow. That now becomes abundant for me.
That’s where I was going. The idea of abundance is not in financial excess, but rather an attitude of we’re okay. That there’s food, there’s shelter, there’s family, there’s community, there’s life, and there will be more. This will not stop. You say when people hit bankruptcy, they do not die. The world does not end. Anyways, let’s come back to. I do not want to distract us.
I’m afraid I might be with what is abundance, or to redefine abundance to something much more internal, much more personal, much more spiritual, much more whatever. Referring to what were the motivating factors, you were saying fear, and I was asking the word scarcity. Does that play in? You’re saying yes. Thank you very much. Those first chapters, and yes, I’m imagining young Ed creating major events for his 18- to 21-year-old friends, his teenage friends, and everything, and people giving you high fives up and down, and you are living the dream, you are walking on a cloud.
When you build success out of survival, you'll keep hustling even when you don't need to. Share on XMaking whatever money you were making, more so creating really cool events that you were loving. Other people were loving and facilitating all this stuff, people and kids and everybody coming together. The spin-offs that came out of that. This is great. Now please continue where we left off. There was a definitive moment where you left your narrative. Let’s come back to that.
I’m going to take a breath because we’re about to get into the dark night of the soul part of the journey. I took a leap with my family to pursue these ways of living that we’re talking about and pursue values we had of clean water, clean food, good neighbors, etc. We went on a big search. We eventually ended up taking a leap of faith, and my dad and I both had different signs that pointed to Costa Rica. My dad said, “Look, we have enough money to buy land there.
You would have to go and create these projects that we envision a healing center and a community.” I have done it in events. I’d worked with the founders of Burning Man, where we built a 70,000-person city. Not in a week. It takes a year to do that in a week for some people to put up their gear. I was really optimistic and blind and just like a giddy little kid, like, let’s go do this. Thank God I had that blind optimism. It fueled me to take a leap to move to Costa Rica and eventually find land. My father was here with me, and we searched all over the country.
We found two properties, one on a mountain over a lake and one on the coast to anchor a vision that we had. I spent some years starting to work with architects and engineers. I met my former wife at a Burning Man fundraiser in New York. She was a clothing designer. She’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I didn’t realize then it was basically what I was doing in nightlife, on land.” I’m like, “We have this space. We’re creating events.” She gave up on her job. Everything moved here with me to take one of our properties, which had maybe like an old hundred-person restaurant roof, like a ranch or what we call here.
We decided to throw a big event, a TED Talk meets a Burning Man with some friends we had met. Basically, we built a retreat center with one impact investor who wanted to support the event. He gave us $150,000. We bought 30 tents, built a swimming pool, a professional kitchen, and a lot of landscaping. On a four-two-burner stove, later we upgraded to a four-burner with a propane tank, like right next to it. We started hosting groups of 30 to 40 people. They would stay in our glamping tents. They didn’t care. They’re not going to the Ritz-Carlton. They’re here for something cool.
I was on a big healing journey where I said my dad was on the functional medicine and longevity path. I was working, I was going on retreats, meeting healers, teachers, vibrational healing, Reiki. Different things that I had found. Coaches, therapists. For me, it was all a big buffet. I knew things worked for me that didn’t for others. If I had this environment of people open to grow and learn, I got my first book, Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins book from my dad at like thirteen, and then a series of books in emotional intelligence, personal development, Dale Carnegie. All of it. When I got to Costa Rica, I’m like, “Wow.” All I really wanted to do was learn and grow. A philosophy major.
I have friends who want to learn and grow, and they’re tired of just partying. We started something in between where instead of just we’re at Burning Man, we had our fun stuff and we had our art and we had our cool things, we had programming all day at our place with really impactful teachers and facilitators, some for physical health and yoga, others who worked with different groups in entrepreneurship and leadership training and seeing places like Esalen and others that were inspirations in human potential movement flourishing.
Facing Financial Collapse And Market Crises
That was a big dream, Richard, and the money ran out as we were starting to build it because that’s what happens with money. It can run out. 2008 happened, the real estate crash right in the middle of our dream. Here I am with my recently married wife. We’re hosting groups. We’re not making a ton of money. We’re keeping the lights on, as you can imagine. We have these big dreams and these big projects. I had felt it came from spirit. We have to build community. We need to live better. This is a part of it, the people visiting and retreating. My dad, I remember when he called me one day, and he said, “The banks pulled all of our letters of credit, the real money you need to build the roads and things for the bigger project, not our little retreat center.”
He said, it was 2008. The real estate markets crashed, and we could still build our project. We have to raise the money.” There I was now going the next year to Burning Man, sharing the story of what I’m doing to raise a check. Part of me at that time felt like, “Great. I believe in this. I’m going to raise funding.” I have friends doing that at Burning Man for tech companies all the time. Man, we’re partying on substances with people. I’m sharing my dream. What I realized was once the money ran out and I needed to pay the bills, we had mortgages, things on properties. My Burning Man became a big pitch, and there emerged the fraudulent adult.
There emerged Ed, “Best friends, everyone, Richard, are you wealthy? Are you a founder? Let’s hang out. Let’s chill a little bit by the fire. What are you doing? I have this dream in Costa Rica.” Man, I look back at it now because I see it happening on a scale that I couldn’t believe in a different context today. There was a part of me that was hard pitching for money because I was going broke. There was a part of me lit up by an authentic vision, and that blurry line got very uncomfortable. We’re in year two and a half just getting our little retreat center running. My wife’s like, “What’s going on?”
I’m like, “If I do not pay this bank $20,000 this month, we lose this whole property.” My dad had already told me, “We got to sell some things at home.” I was living in Costa Rica. It was like, “What do you mean by things?” He’s like, “Mom selling the Maserati.” I’m like, “Like that?” He was like, “Like that.” We went all in on Costa Rica. We didn’t expect the crisis. People were doing these projects in a way that they were getting loans from banks, this and that. Later, God blessed us by pausing it. I’ll tell you why. The vision.
What I wanted to say is that essentially, once the money ran out, it was a very difficult time where I was constantly hosting groups, raising money, and I met my friend Ian Michael at the time, who you know well, who came, and he was working at Esalen. He knew this journey, and he saw that on one end, like you’re riding this lion and you have your project, the person riding the lion is like, “If this thing turns around and bites me, I’m dead.” The fear that lived in my body for two and a half years, finding 20K-a-month loans, friends, this just to keep the dream alive until I couldn’t anymore.
My marriage was run thin. My finances were run thin. Being an owner-operator was driving me crazy. The whole house of cards collapsed, and I walked away from everything. I said, “I cannot raise any more money. This is not happening. My marriage is dissolving because I’m running my own retreat center.” Later I learned you can hire people. They’re called operators. You pay them. They do that job so your health can be good. As an entrepreneur with a big dream, I thought I had to build the whole regenerative revolution myself. Later, a collection of these communities around the world. I couldn’t have had less hubris, whatever the word is, like more hubris. I did get a download, Richard.
Later I would learn that download. I’m just one small cog in that download. We’re all meant to create this heaven on earth. Where’s my role? I didn’t know. I had to pause everything and go like, really pause everything. I started the divorce process with my wife, with my father. Told him, “I cannot do this. It’s just, I do not have anyone else to raise money to ask from.” I prayed to God. I cried. My mom had gotten cancer in the process. It didn’t take rocket science to connect the dots. The quality of life, the joy, the stress. We all had loans. We had good intentions, like when was the fantasy too much?
On my walkabout, I met a hotel group who asked me, “We take over your place?” I said, “Please, here are the keys.” They’re like, “We’ll pay you, and we’ll give you equity.” I was like, “Sure. I can have a job.” They offered me a job with a salary. I was like, “Please, I haven’t had a job like where I have a consistent income.” When I tell you my value shifted right then and there, I was so tired of the risk and the cancer literally and the difficulty. I just wanted to pause. I thought I was going to go to an insane asylum, and there some magic started to happen. I’ll pause there because that was a big chunk.
I have a question. I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were talking. You mentioned that there was fraud. I guess I just want you to clarify it. You did explain it. I want to draw it out. On the one hand, I think it was a duality that, on the one hand, you had a product that you really did believe in. Really did have integrity about. On the other hand, I think it was the fact that you were working all these personal relationships to get a check out from somebody. Is that it? Is there more?
Unmasking Internal Fears And The Fraudulent Persona
There’s more. When I used fraud, by the way, later, and I’ll explain more, when I joined a nonprofit and started working on a lot of these things that were coming up in me, I noticed that psychologically two things were at play. In the language of Leap Forward and Ronit, one was that there’s always the child that has fear. We talked about that. I need to survive, or I need to make mommy and daddy happy. After a certain point, age seven, those things get locked in. To protect those things, this fraudulent adult comes. For me, it was the skater bad boy. I was a soft little Jewish kid.
I was smoking cigarettes and skating and listening to rap songs. I was the nightclub promoter, and now I’m the eco village promoter. There was always some hustle, excuse my language, some hustle that I was running. When I say fraud, I do not mean like con artists. I was later called that by my ex-wife publicly, and I had two of my investors step up. Literally get my back, who lost money, and said he was no con artist. We’ve been conned. This was a dream, and real estate can fail. You do not get your money back if Google goes down and you invested in the stock.
There was no con. What I felt after was that there was, and not in a legal sense, not in a financial or fiscal con. There was a con. I was telling myself I was living in a fantasy, and I saw that bubble bursting and still pitching out of fear. There was a fraudulent part of me who was like, “I’m going to pull all this together. I’m going to drink another cup of ayahuasca, get a clear download with who it has to be and how.” Now there was a part of me when I say fraudulent, that was not just like what I can see now, which was, “This whole thing would never have worked. You had no experience, no professionals working who have done this before.”
There were so many things that it’s not how this is done. I was in a fantasy. The fraud for me is, instead of going to Burning Man and just being there for the quality of the relationships, there came a point where it was about transactions for me. It didn’t always mean money. Later in life, I saw how transactional I could be, how much I see people as a means to my ends. Ronit helped me see that. There was a big egoic fantasy. Sure, I want to see heaven on earth. There was a big part of me, the hero, and saving my father and saving my family and this story that I told myself that didn’t need to be there.
Saving the Earth.
Saving, you know, or even saving my family. I just wanted to be able to breathe without stress for a week. What about that? What about my birthright? What about my birthright to just be as I am? When I was at the peak of my distress, I had gone to a conference called Hatch. It was impact and entrepreneurship. I had met this psychologist, and she really rubbed me the wrong way because I had to reschedule two meetings. She asked me in a text message, “Is this how you show up? Wishi washi.” I was like, “What? The golf? I’m sorry, like I’m busy. I had to reschedule.”
Something captured me. I knew she was some legendary psychologist who had worked with people like Ram Dass and Thich Nhat Hanh and all these people. She was being really rough with me. Later I met with her, and I was like, “I’m this and that, and I have this retreat center.” I was like, “I know.” I started telling her my story of that. It took me a while to heal from my divorce. This is already a couple of years into my walkabout. I said something to her, like when she said she had heard about me, I said like, “Only good things, I hope.” She said to me, “Richard, no.”
Said, “I heard you had a messy divorce, potentially scammed a bunch of investors.” I turned pale. Six years of plant medicine, rewiring tears, girlfriends after this, that I was just as broken and lost as I was. She helped me see that, really, there are a lot of things at play that, if I want to keep repeating these patterns, the cause of them is pretty clear psychologically, spiritually. You do not have to go more than an inch deep with me at least to see them.
There started the peeling of that fraudulent self because Ronit had a community of people, black, white, rich, poor, Asian, Jewish, all demographics put together just to do this work, to meet as humans and say, “I’m Ed, here I am with all my ugly shit. I have the value and desire to be a person of integrity. I do not want to repeat these patterns. I do not want to be a bad husband or scheme investors for a dream. I want to live a simple, integrated whole life.” Essentially, when I met Ronit in the group, I asked them what they do. When she showed me, it’s essentially a nonprofit dedicated to doing interpersonal work.
Where we do it through projects in social impact, mental health, whatever, on these projects we rub, and we argue, and all this shit that we’re talking about gets revealed. Essentially, when I joined the community, I was the cool kid, the nightclub promoter. Slowly, I started to peel the onion and the masks and realised that my biggest weakness was that I thought this icon artist was me. My wife called me and said I’m feeling like I’m a big failure. I had gotten this hotel group to take over my project. They hired me for a fancy job to build a hundred retreat centers in five years.
Here I am, still inside a con artist who feels like I failed. I started to see that, layer by layer, if I’m really authentic, that came from the fear of this. If I’m reflected every day by someone, something that I want to do, like speak the truth, not overinflate things with grandeur. If I want to change and rewire the way I show up, I’m going to need to work on this every day. The thing that I knew as a community who partied together. Now it’s a group of twelve people who support me in my journey of evolution. Every week, every month, I need support, and they need support.
Ronit’s thing that I think was the real genius for me. She’s like the anti-guru. She does not accept money for this work. Nothing is that when she studied with all these famous teachers, she realized a lot of the fruits were not from the tree. The students were not. Ram Dass or Thich Nhat Hanh or Dalai Lama, the world is not all of a sudden enlightened. There are a lot of things to take that work on the court, as you know, psychologically. These are ingrained.
You’re losing me, Ed, with not one of the fruits of the tree. What does that mean, please?
I had read every book you can imagine on personal development out there, and I was still an asshole. I say that like meaning I just kept learning and I wasn’t walking the walk. The same thing happened to me with plant medicine. I was getting these great lessons, and where were they on the court? The reason why I mentioned Leap Forward was that they’re just a group of people where I got to practice this on the court.
When I schemed, when I bullshitted, when I exaggerated, one of the members would point it out to me. “Ed, you didn’t need that pompous introduction to so-and-so.” Unless I’m getting that every day, I’m not going to rewire. It’s like a stroke victim unless you constrain them. They’re not going to be able to start using the other arm and the physical therapy. That constraint for me became community.
What did you mean by when you’re talking about Ronit and the lessons you’re learning, not all of the something is the fruits of the tree. I just didn’t catch that. You’re saying not everybody is Ram Dass and Thich Nhat Hanh. Where were you going with this?
True luxury isn't a fancy car. It's clean air, good food, and a calm nervous system. Share on XJust simply that a lot of these learnings are great and the teachers are great, but the learners are not being adapted into everyday life by most of their students.
Thank you.
Including myself, being one of them who read those things, and it didn’t get me any closer.
Whether it’s a workshop or an ayahuasca trip or hours of therapy or whatever it is, people can continue being who they’ve always been. Not looking at it, not incorporating it. I am familiar. Thank you for clarifying. You’re owning your part in that. That it took this group, the Leap Forward group, to be that mirror to confront you regularly, including that psychologist who, whoever she is, she has a big reputation, evidently maybe deserves it to be able to speak very candidly, very frankly with you instead of Pandora, whatever might have perpetuated her. Her frankness is helpful to you in that moment.
To this day. Absolutely, Richard. Just to track the conversation. The first leap that I shared with you was when my family leaped to Costa Rica. My second leap was after this dark night of the soul where the whole fantasy crumbled. Divorce relationship with father. I walked away from my business.
Relationship with my father, please expand if you’re comfortable doing so. How did your business interest with your dad? Previously, your dad had his projects, and you were a young guy. You had your projects. You decided to align, and he said, “If I’m going to invest my money or our family money in buying land in Costa Rica, you have to take the ball and run with it.” He didn’t say, “I’m moving to Costa Rica to do it.”
No, he did. The onus was on me to raise the money and the rest of it. Here, it was really a joint vision that we were going to co-create. We did. We met with architects together. We master planned. We did everything. We had years of adventure, and I wouldn’t change it. If I had a magic wand, I would not change a thing because if all those things hadn’t happened, my life would be different. Now for my work, I tell people all these things where we had blunders. I tell people when they’re like, “How come you’re asking about our relationship in your questionnaire?” In my questionnaire to work with people on land projects, I asked them about relationships and money. I think you know.
I’ve seen the Compass, and yes, that’s one of the items on the Compass. Relationships and other personal things too.
It’s because it all came up. It all came up very much. When my father, when I couldn’t raise more money, I said I’m done with the business. That’s really when our relationship took a pause because for two years it was an emergency fight-or-flight where I forgot about father and son. It’s just a machine, and I’m raising money, and we’re talking, and it’s like a company. When our business closed many years later, I regained my relationship with my father just as friends or father and son, not as coworkers or I work for him, and he’s my boss or whatever.
This is one of the potential wounds of wealth, family business. How it can change relationships. I just wanted to draw that out in this conversation and name it.
It’s funny because now most of my clients, a lot of them are family offices or family businesses, and they work so much on this stuff. The relationships between them, some do. It’s so critical. I say that because also with land projects, it might not be my father. It could be an investor tomorrow or the founder of the hotel group who hired me, who played the same role. I wanted to impress him now. When I get my new job after the whole dark night of the soul, it does not matter if it’s my father or not. I’m going to keep repeating that pattern.
Of trying to impress someone?
If I decide to perpetuate that, tomorrow it could be an investor. When you said a relationship could be a husband and wife, it could be two partners. It’s agnostic.
You’re talking about the toxicity that is agnostic.
It can also be a great pleasure. Certain things are done to work with people you love and care about. I have many cases of that too. I do not want to just talk about the negative. There really has to be a reverence for how much relationships play a role in every aspect of our life, including businesses.
Anyways, we’re at a point in the story where the relationship with Dad is, you say it’s on pause. That sounds like a very neutral way to reference that it was difficult.
No, we got into a fight. We didn’t speak for a year. It was not difficult. It was a complete collapse. I’m getting a divorce, my mom gets cancer, my dad and I are no longer speaking. My whole life collapsed. Forget meaning-making and this. I went to Taos, New Mexico, with my dear brother, Mike Hill, whom I met at one of our last events and who became a guide, like a dear friend to me. He nurtured me for three years through my dark night of the soul, figuring out what’s next. A girl that I dated, Julie Pham, was an angel.
She appeared too. She just nurtured me through that hard time. I’m trying to get my footing, survive, figure out what’s next. Identity, business. I glossed over it. It was not an easy part of my life. Really was the dark night of the soul where everything had a bank account at zero, a reputation at zero. I needed that. I needed full annihilation at that time of everything to shatter, to then rebuild something authentic, and figure out who I am. Parts of that, Richard. I am still Ed Zaydelman, the nightclub promoter. Maybe now I’m promoting a book or a specific teacher’s retreat. That’s my DNA as a connector, as someone who does connection of the heart between people. I had to go excavate that and figure out what the heck I want to do with my life for chapter three, I guess.
I decided not to do anything. I met a coach who had done many successful retreats at my place. He said, “Man, why do not you take a load off of it?” I was like, “What?” He was like, “You keep starting these companies and businesses in your next chapter. You have so much knowledge. You could just consult a couple hours a day and make all the money you need and figure out what you need.” He knew I had started working with Leap Forward. He knew I’m dedicated, and I had not said this. I eventually decided to dedicate close to half my time, half my day, to my healing, to being alone in a cabin and starting to peel all this shit.
Shifting Priority From Perpetual Profit To Personal Wholeness
When Ronit asked me how important it is to you, you become whole, you become free, all these stories that keep repeating each cycle. I decided it is important, and I do have to walk my walk. That means that I’m not going to spend all day working on some business. I’m going to see how much money I need to live. I made a calculation, added a little bit for padding. I do want to save, etc. I realized that yes, with a good coaching and consulting program, I could make that 4K a month, 5K a month, as it varied. The more I lowered that, the more freedom appeared.
My point was not that I found a way with my coach’s help to make a small consulting business, help people avoid the mistakes I made, and work 2, 3 hours a day so I could really work on myself the rest of the day. That was the biggest choice I ever made in my life. It lasts until today. My whole thing was about making money, working as much as I can. Now a lot of my life is working on myself and also doing things for other people. It’s called service, which I learned. Tzedakah for the Jewish people was also a very rewarding thing, way beyond money. The whole thing of Leap Forward is when we work together.
They’re acts of service, trauma healing for kids on the border of Israel and Gaza. Whatever the thing is. Kids with phones, black-and-white relations. Everything is a project to get us to experiment and feel these things. They’re not projects for money. Here I am busting my ass, 5, 6 hours a day on projects that are not income-generating for me whatsoever, but are providing me something way bigger than ROI. It took me some years to realize that it took a lot to get the entrepreneur hustler 24/7 out of me. Also, the people pleaser, charlatan, all of that is just constantly chiseled, and it’s really easy to, like, a rubber band bounces back.
I get lured into luxury drugs my whole life. Because of that community, I can stay tethered to my values and keep working on all this stuff. That was like the chapter of my story until now, when I started a small consulting business. My goal was stability, not millions of dollars. I did that for the last 3 or 4 years. It really calmed down my nervous system and gave me a very different view of financial success. For me, it was stability and creating something that I believed in sharing something as a service that I think will help others. I do not sell much or promote as most people somehow find me through a podcast or a referral.
Stop letting childhood fear run your adult business decisions. Share on XThank you for having me. Most of that now is from a very different place, and I enjoy it very differently because it’s part of a bigger equation of life where I want to be whole and stable and have an impact in the world and keep discovering who I am and why I’m here. It’s not like I figured it out, Richard. Now I’m at this. I’m still trying to figure out, “If I’m a connector, now I’m like connecting to people’s hearts, and I feel other aspects of connection. Why I say this is just that it’s not the conclusion to my story. It was the major evolution of my money journey, which was to stop the perpetuation that I need to take some enormous risk and create some enormous eco rat race and really start living a blessed, humble life where I can earn what I need and be of service. That’s it.
Could you repeat that?
I now seek to live a much more humble and simple life where I earn what I need to live well. I can be of service and really feel myself and feel my light.
How does it feel to you to say that? That tight sound bite that you just delivered, what goes on for you right now as you say it?
I get emotional because that comes from my soul and it comes from my truth. When I connect to that truth, and I connect to my light or my goodness, I really feel overwhelmed. That divine part. I also get emotional because I can see even today how there’s still in a good way, there’s always a gap between where I am. I feel just from this week, how a few things have actually built up that are out of alignment or integrity with that space. When I fell into it, it really brought me back home and beautifully re-energized me to my why. Why I’m here.
Are you asking? I’m just being present to everything that you’re saying because it’s so profound and fantastic and personal and even raw. I do not have more agenda than just supporting you in however much truth you want to identify for yourself, and you want to share for the viewers who are doing their job of healing and learning.
There is a why that I’m picking up now that I saw how I went a little off-piste in the last months, but when I was gathering people in nightclubs or when I worked with my clients and people like you and Nina to help build homes here in Costa Rica or projects. Yes, it’s from that love of bringing people together. Really, it’s that love of seeing them grow and evolve that I talked about because that’s what I want. My own evolution, my own freedom from all these blocks and things in perception. When I really look at that, and I look at my why, and I look at what we’re doing to the planet, we’re killing each other. We’re killing ourselves, and we’re killing Mother Nature.
It really hurts me when I see the Amazon, etc. It can stay at that level of like, the child, I cannot believe it’s happening. I can step into action, which I’ve been attempting to do and doing my best. When I really look at that why, my why of bringing people together to grow and evolve. It is the substrate. The cause of why we’re killing ourselves, each other, and the planet is the same fear that I have of survival, of money, of being accepted. I need to, same as we do as nations, grab land, drill for oil, this and that.
If I really want to live in alignment with my integrity, my why, it is the same why as all the shit that we’re dealing with as a human species right now. We’re at a turning point, Richard. I came here with open eyes, trying to make healthy eco-villages. Every facet of society is corrupt and decaying. Education, government, healthcare go around the wheel. If I get out of the fantasy like I was before again and I pop it, and life is not just a hedonistic Burning Man, let’s just build eco-villages and love each other and take drugs. Now the world is in a major crisis. Where am I in that? Am I a seeding leadership, or am I stepping in with my light? Why I say that is I’m not this year or this month or this week, just accepting any client who wants to build a project here.
I’m actively seeking relationships where I can grow and evolve with people. It might be funny that I was so excited to work with you and Nina, just on the purchase of your land and house. It’s much more in alignment than some of these hotel groups who want to do fancy beachfront hotels. Here’s Ed, I got the Costa Rica solution. No, it’s really, if I’m walking my walk, it’s the pleasure that I had to work with you and Nina and become friends and go through some human decision-making and rub with the lawyer a little bit. That’s all for me what evolution is about.
If I can stay anchored to that and have conversations like this, it’s not about money or wealth. That will come with integrity and alignment. Always. Richard, that whole thing that I shared where I felt like a fraud now, over the last five years, when I had clients who would ask me about a project or investment, I would start speaking truth to them like a spigot, as you’ve seen me do, where I’m the opposite. I’m like, “You’re going to get scammed there. That’s a fraud.” That’s like, “I do not believe your own words even. You do not have that much time as you said to me.”
I am constantly speaking the truth, and I guess where the wound is, the light pours in. Working on that thing that I did, I realized a lot of my work is just speaking truth to people. I cannot claim full credit for that. That really came from the reflections from Ronit. Who do you want to be? Who do you want to be every day? I’m late to a meeting. Sorry, I was walking the dog. Were you? Richard, I’m like, “No.” Anyway, I do not want to go off on a tangent, but I really do feel in my heart that that’s why, and that’s anchored to that why now.
I do not know if you’re aware, but you said one phrase that’s just so powerful. You said money and wealth, if I caught it correctly, money and wealth will come with integrity and truth. Integrity and truth include that you’re not specifically chasing money and wealth, or that the wealth that you’re pursuing is very different than the wealth that was painted to you, or that you stepped into other times of your life when you were much younger. Specifically buying into it is the American dream, it’s not just the American dream, the American dream. The Americans take things.
They blow it up. The industrial dream or the modern Western ideals, which cannot pay attention to the damage, still celebrate the fancy stuff and the bling. The Americans do that really, celebrating the bling. That’s something that’s, well, everybody knows. Other countries do too. It’s not strictly an American thing. It’s just part of the industrial revolution, part of what capitalism is creating, has been creating itself until it runs bankrupt morally and also bankrupts the planet and everything.
Spiral dynamics called it the red meme, by the way. The beautiful psychological study that showcases it’s the largest psychological study ever done in the world. I didn’t know that. The spiral dynamics study shows all these states of human evolution. Ren was a survival in greed that we saw in the early eighties, and the boom then became the green meme. Everyone’s driving a Civic in California, pointing fingers at anyone who’s polluting. Now, a lot of people are evolving. A group is evolving to what they call the yellow meme, where we see that we cannot just extract from the world everywhere. It’s going to collapse us.
The yellow meme is not the final meme of human evolution. The yellow meme, there’s a big gap. It’s one thing to see that you’re burning down the Amazon. It’s another thing to do something about it. Those are supposedly the times we’re in now. We either take a leap as a human species and evolve to purple or teal in spiral dynamics, where it’s basically integrated cooperation, where we work together, we’re not killing each other, we’re not in survival threat. That’s where we’re at now. If we do not take a leap, we are in a very interesting kit and caboodle, in my opinion. I find it interesting just to see that it’s not like some random thing. It is an evolution of a species.
I want to bring it. Thank you. I appreciate you giving a larger context to what’s a very personal journey. You’re saying that your personal journey, you can reference it and maybe not exactly, you can see an evolution based on some other models that exist that happen to people personally or personally, family, nationally, globally. These things are all playing out. You see your flow, your evolution, your changes, and you’re still in it. We’re still in it. For the people who care to pay attention to ourselves, it’s an ongoing thing. It does not one day stop, though. Now I’m there, and I can just be there. This is fantastic.
I want to ask you. You’ve covered an incredible journey with very pronounced changes in course, ups and downs, and going inward. It’s going inward that has helped you. Instead, you’d still be struggling to recreate the next big and impressive project and seeking out funding and whatever it is. Instead, you’re living very differently, very much happily. I couldn’t help but notice the parallel between the beginning of your story, wherein your dad was out there in the world. His health was collapsing, and he had to make a change.
He had to decide, and your moment of being out there in the world and you needing to make a decision and you chose to step away from the big projects as he chose to stay. He stepped away from millions, if I heard you correctly. If you were able to improve your game, potentially you stepped away from millions. It was very damaging to yourself. On many different levels, not just your physical health, but more your emotional, psychological, your soul was suffering. You had to repivot. I definitely saw that pattern play itself out in your day. The way you said it’s like, “That sounds like the beginning of this story.”
Thank you. I didn’t see it like that before. Thank you.
That occurred to me. Is there anything more that you want to share with the viewers, with me and the viewers and yourself?
When you stop chasing fame and start serving others, true abundance follows naturally. Share on XI wanted to close on just where I am today with this journey, and where it stands. Every relationship that I had, my father and mother with women, with business partners, everything painstakingly over five years, I repaired. When I look at my life today, my father and I are friends. We talk about the funniest stuff in the world. He’s an herbalist now, like his father, because he helped my mom through cancer by making herbs he couldn’t find online and with the potency he needed.
His father, did you just say?
Yes. My father’s father was an herbalist. My dad, after this whole journey of financial collapse and everything, my dad ended up making herbal remedies that he couldn’t simply find, like the tumor that is in a book that can kill cancer at this level. It was not on Amazon at that level. It was like a quarter of that. My dad’s like, “I cannot get strong enough medicine, natural medicine for mom.” He started to make it. Over the years, my father and I became friends. He’s an herbalist. My mom’s back to work, and now she’s really enjoying being back to work.
Rebuilding Clean Relationships And Living In Service
She’s seven years pancreatic cancer free. Even though her legs hurt from working, I know. She’s also out and working and staying healthy and meeting new people again and in her own rebirth of like a new life in a way. I know she wants to retire soon or something. In a weird way, it’s like when people do Sudoku puzzles and live another twenty years, she’s out, she’s alive, she’s cancer-free, she’s on her feet. My sister and I are really good friends. My business relationships are clean. I mostly help other people, and they thank me. There’s no like, “I need your money to do this thing.” I feel good.
That business that I stopped stressing about, not only did it become stable, it eventually became thriving because I have less time. People wanted more of my time, which I couldn’t do. My prices went up. I had a strong commitment. My time is my time. I work this many hours a day. Over time, based on truth and integrity, people recommended me because I’m the guy who will not bulls*** them when they’re going to go do a crazy project in Costa Rica or elsewhere. I enjoy a reputation of integrity now that I can stand behind and service. I make good money. I’m happy.
My cost of living to what I earn is at a great ratio. I lowered my cost of living a ton when I burst the fantasy bubble of being the fancy guy. Even in Costa Rica, I had a fancy apartment and all this stuff. Man, my rent is so low that even if I want to not work certain months, I’m like, “Stress.” In months where I make a lot of money, there’s no thought of getting a bigger house or a nicer car. I love my little two-door Jimny.
For me, it’s like the life I always wanted is the life that I have love and adventure and community and service. Now it’s just actually nurturing that fire more than those old fires that I had of desires and ego and fame. That’s where I wanted to close is that I feel a deep level of satisfaction and gratitude for where I’ve landed today and feel like I just want to be of service and share more when I’m asked to.
First of all, this is fantastic. You’ve answered the question. I didn’t plan it. What I came to doing these interviews was towards the end, I’d say, “Are you living a rich life?” You just answered that question. I want to observe what you’re saying. What’s coming up for me is the archetype of the wounded healer. That model is that if we work through our wounds, we can be available to be a healer to others who are experiencing wounds. If we do not work through our wounds, then we’re just suffering in our wounds, and we’re questionable healers.
The way you’re talking about your journey with money, your journey with businesses, your journey with ego, your journey with hubris, it taught you something, and you say you’ve spent time healing yourself, which goes on and healing these relationships and healing your lifestyle and healing your goals. Now you’re available to help others do their version of what they need. That ring has similar properties to that. They come to wherever they’re going, and Costa Rica happens to attract a lot of people with the highly idealistic nature, community, eco-friendly, and they do not necessarily have the skills or the wherewithal to pull it off.
They can go bankrupt, and they can go into angst, and they do, and you witness them. You’re available to help them. That’s profound. In ways that your average, I’m not criticizing the lawyers, the accountants, the consultants, whatever they’re doing their job. Many of them do it well and with integrity. You’re offering something that brings them all together. That’s what your website shows. That’s what my experience of you includes. That’s what you’re talking about. You only get that by wounds and personal growth and being involved, being in it. Anyway, shall we wrap up?
Absolutely. I was just smiling because it’s funny when you said my website, and yes, on my website, I help people build land projects, hotel retreat houses, whatever. Really, like when I start working, I do not have one client that is still not a deep friend because we go through the process of the project. Just like Leap Forward, I might be doing a project on book references, for example. In the process of the project, I learned all this stuff about them and them about me, and I had the same mother wound or father wound.
At the end, they’re like, “Man, this was like a coaching container.” I’m like, “It is.” I was like, “You wouldn’t have hired me for your personal coaching. You would hire me for your project, but it’s always an entry point into interpersonal work.” Which is not necessarily as a coach at that point. It’s human to human. We’re walking each other home. That’s why I do not put that on my website. I do not charge for that. People can. I’m not saying that’s wrong. I’m just saying in my work, that’s just a part of it where I’m just there for people.
You’re working out of a holistic model, whether you’re aware of it or say it that way. That’s what it appears is you work with the whole person personally, and you bring your whole person forward. You connect and blessings to you and your journey and your path, and the fact that you’re out of the wounds, you recreate yourself and offer something to the world. This is where you came into this story. You wanted to offer something to the world, and you just looked very different than how you came in.
It’s funny at this point of a show that would usually pitch something like one of my land projects. I was seeing what’s going through my heart, not my mind, like what’s left unsaid. I did want to share something brief, if that’s okay with you. All of the work that really helped me accelerate my healing and peeling these last five years in ways that nothing else I had tried before helped was the Leap Forward methodology and Ronit’s work.
For the first time, that’s going to be available as a book in October 2026 called Dear Future Human. I am really not supporting the launch of a book. I feel that if people had what I got over the last five years with her, if they even had a taste of that, their lives would be so much better. I’m going to buy a bunch of them to give to my friends. I really wanted to share that if any of that part of my journey you want to learn more about, check out and Richard could put the website. I’ll share with you the DearFutureHuman.us website and movie.
That’s exactly consistent with everything you’ve been saying. It’s not. You didn’t promote the next hotel that you’re helping lift off the ground. You didn’t even promote your own work as a consultant. You promoted how people can do their work to help themselves, and it ripples. It comes out into how it helps the world. That’s your truth, and that’s what you’re sharing, and I love it. Thank you very much, Ed, for being who you are and authentically owning it and sharing it. You said before we started, for your own benefit of telling the story and for the benefit of the audiences. Many people, I’m sure, will be touched by this and hopefully inspired.
Thank you, Richard. Reach out to me if you want. I’m not a hard person to reach.
Thank you. Your website and other information will be available. Thank you very much.
I appreciate it, Richard.
Important Links
- Edward Zaydelman on LinkedIn
- Edward Zaydelman on Instagram
- Leap Forward
- Dear Future Human
- Live The Possibility
- Live The Possibility News
About Edward Zaydelman
I’ve been producing events and retreats for the last 18 years, having grown up in New York City, I was organizing everything from 7000 person gatherings to boutique events for celebrities at top venues. But after some years in the fast paced event industry, I realized that a shift was needed and turned to more conscious gatherings… I started going on retreats, masterminds, joining communities and then finally I went to Burning Man.
So inspired by this next level of experience, I worked there for a year learning everything I could from the founders. I spent the next years visiting the top retreat centers around the world and meeting top teachers, healers, and practitioners of various wellness modalities. While their wisdom had such a profound impact on my life, I wanted nothing more than to share their knowledge and wisdom as they were the catalyst behind so much of the growth and transformation I saw.
That’s when VIDA our retreat center was born and we chose Costa Rica to paint this canvas! With VIDA, we wanted to create a space conducive to the level of transformation we saw possible. Out of a deep desire to prototype better, more abundant ways to live and feel – with a focus on true wellness and longevity and quality of life. To date VIDA has hosted some of the most incredible teachers and retreat leaders, and thousands of transformed lives after passing through our doors.
Over the years, having consulted international hotel brands, developing my own retreat center in Costa Rica, producing unique events around the globe, and working with top thought leaders in the personal growth and wellness space has left me quite invigorated. Impacting people’s lives in a positive way through experiential education and hospitality is a true passion.
And most recently, through www.LiveThePossibility.co, we are building the bridge for people to the live their best life, and take a leap into Alternative living abroad. Our company, VIDA Hospitality, advises on Real Estate & Hospitality Development whether it’s for a personal home or rental property, a retreat center, or a community. It’s our passion to help usher in a more sustainable and aligned future for humanity and for each other.