← What Are You Made Of?
What Are You Made Of?
From Fear to Fortune: Ronan Levy’s Journey in Psychedelics & Entrepreneurship
00:35:12
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Foreign.
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Hey, it's your boy, C Rock here in that one studio on the Woody made up show. We're back with another great episode for you today to remind you that you're unstoppable to live in the life of your dreams. We do that through the stories of our guests and with things that they've overcome. Every guest has gotten through everything they've ever been through. Isn't that funny? And so we ask them what they're made of so that they can vulnerably share these transparent stories of the reason why they're doing what they're doing or how they became who they are. Today we have Ronan Levy with us. Ronan, welcome to the show, man.
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Thanks, dude. Good to see you.
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Yeah, you as well, man. You're a pioneer in the cannabis and psychedelics industry. You inspired millions of people to find healing and inspiration through elevated states of consciousness. And you've been featured on all kinds of places like the Times, New York Times, cnbc, Nature, Bloomberg, Forge, Fast Company. I can keep going. I mean, there's a whole list here. And now the what do you made of show. We'll add that on your bio. Now.
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The most important right here, right now.
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I love it, man. Well, look, man, I. I got to get you to. To the question first, because I sometimes if I go on, if I start going on beyond that, I forget to ask.
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That's all good.
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What are you made of, man?
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It's a good question. I was thinking about that in the 30 seconds right before you asked that question, and I'm going to go with the answer of blood, guts, and a little intestinal fortitude. Okay.
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I like it. I like it. I thought you'd talk about consciousness in this answer. I just had a feeling, but maybe not.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know. The. The problem with talking about consciousness is, like, I don't have any answers, right? Like, it's. It's so esoteric and, you know, I have my beliefs around what I think might be happening, but I don't know. And so when I think about, like, who I am and what I've done to get here, it's like I grew up as a super shy kid. Super, super shy kid. My first job was working slinging burgers at McDonald's. And I was so shy that, you know, I couldn't even say, like, good night to someone. I could just say thank you. I was too shy really, to actually, like, even, like, do a step out of saying just thank you. And so to get where I got you know, it was just, it was just a conscious choice at some point. Not trying to use conscious in the sort of consciousness vibe. But in. At one point I just woke up and I'm like, I don't want to deal. I don't want to live like this. I don't want to be shy. I don't want to be hiding. I just need to get out there and do shit. And, and that's kind of what, what, what drove, I think probably a fairly significant change in me.
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Yeah, I can relate to this. I remember when I first got into, I guess, you know, thinking about college when I got to college. And I try to be like, I played football, so I'd like the coaches be there. I'd try to be real respectful to the coaches and, and talk to them as much as I could and this and that. But I do remember that they. I had a drink to get social and I, I never drank until I got out of high school, so I wasn't used to that. But like, I remember that feeling. Like I would love to be able to just go up to cool people and talk to them and girls, of course, you know, and have a game. I didn't have any game and it sucked, but I wanted it. And then it goes and transfers into business. And when I got into sales and all that, it was like so hard at first to build rapport. It was like, weird, man. It was like awkward. And nowadays it's like, easy. I don't. But when you said that right there, I just gave myself like a little bit of a retrospect situation where I was able to go back and say, look how far I've come. So, yeah, I can relate to that.
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Yeah. And where I am now, it's like I was exactly the same. I was super shy. And in high school, all the girls thought I was good looking, which helped a lot. So, like, my shyness was overcome by like, I guess a, a little bit of a blessing from, from the gods in terms of my physical appearance. But I was super shy. And then I kind of made the change and I started like getting myself out there and I realized, you know, there's a couple of super key insights, which is the easiest way to get people to like you is just ask questions about them because the more they talk about themselves to you, the more they like you. And that was a super insight. And then honestly, drinking was a huge piece. Like as soon as I started drinking and got over that shyness, chemically induced to some degree, you can get past it more and more and more and more. And then I got to a point and also worked in business, not necessarily drinking, but like, just getting yourself out there, talking to people, finding success, having interesting conversations. And then you kind of get to the point being like, oh, I always wanted to have game. And then you worked on it and you got game. It's like, oh, I always want to, you know, be successful at school. You work hard, you have school, you get good grades, you go to university. I always want to be successful at business. You get good at business. And then like, there's always the. But what next? It's like, what next? What next? What next? And it's kind of. I found all entrepreneurs I've met hit this point where they work hard, they get success, they come out the other side of success. Success, at least financial. And they look at themselves and like, oh, shit, now I have a big bank account, but every other problem I've ever had is still with me. And now I don't have that thing to distract myself with the, oh, if I just get successful here, then all these other things will go away. I don't have that anymore. So I still got all these things, and now I have no solutions for them. And then they have this crisis of meaning, right? And I've kind of gone through that a little bit because with my last business field trip, you know, we. At the beginning, we. We were just a rocket ship, right? That's how I got on the Times and on CNBC and all this kind of stuff, and everyone wanted to pay attention to me. And I was invited to all the parties. And then field trip failed. It scratched and burned. And then it was just like the big pickup of like, oh, like all those things that I valued, that I thought I, you know, had oriented my life around are gone. And so how do you, especially as a man in this day and age, it's like, how do you find a sense of value, of purpose? If you don't have your job, you don't have your business. Who are you? It's been a good stuff. It's been a working. It is a work in progress. But I think I'm coming through at least one. One stage of that. That development.
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That's a good point. I talk about this all the time, man. Like, this is huge. Every guest I've ever had, the darkest time of their life, the toughest time, was when they identified with what they did. They attached their identity to their. To their profession, which is really the vehicle. I. I like to, like, create some imagery here. Like when you get a mission and you find out who you are and you, you work on that part, then you can hop in vehicles. And if that vehicle crashes, slows down, stops, whatever, or if it even does good, it's not your identity, it's just your vehicle. And so I've been through this myself, and so I want to know. We'll dive deep into that, but I want to know about Field Trip. What was Field Trip? So that the listeners can.
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Yeah, so Field Trip was a nasdaq, one of the first NASDAQ listed psychedelic therapy companies. Back in 2019, I came out of the cannabis industry, which is funny because going back to high school, I was a guy who never touched drugs. I didn't touch alcohol. None of this, like, not even close. So he could have voted me the least likely to ever be involved in a drug industry, and everyone would have pointed to me, almost certainly. So to go into these industries. But in 2019, kind of looked and saw the global zeitgeist shifting like no one was aware of it. But I got the sense and just there were some signs out there about the zeitgeist around. Psychedelics were changing. And I'm like, oh, this is going to be huge. And coming from a person who's done my fair share of work with therapy and spirituality and self exploration and consciousness and all that kind of stuff, I saw psychedelics not as a platform for mental health. I always thought that was an inadequate explanation for it, but it was the one that, you know, people can resonate with. I saw this as like a platform for consciousness change. Right. Really helping people go into these deep, fundamental questions, the questions that I think humans are here to, to tackle. You know, we're the only species equipped to tackle these questions, as far as I can tell. And so in 2019, we started Field Trip and, you know, our mission really was to normalize the therapeutic use of psychedelics across the board. And, and we just hit it right on the time. And, and, and the Field Trip brand really just spoke to people. What I realized is that there is millions and millions of people wanting to do this work, explore their consciousness, explore psychedelics, but they were afraid, you know, not, not to get political. But it's kind of like 2016 Trump voters. It's like there was a whole cadre of Trump voters who would never actually admit to it. But when it came to election day, they, they put up their hands and voted for Trump. And with psychedelics, it was the same thing. There's millions of people who just want, like, just want Some permission to say, like, hey, I think this stuff is cool. Hey, like, this has really worked for me. And so it's field Trip. We started building clinics, doing psychedelic assisted therapy with ket assisted therapy in North America, psilocybin assisted therapy in the Netherlands, and also doing drug development work to try and get novel psychedelics approved for different therapeutic uses. Again, I didn't love the fact that this was just medicine per se, but I saw that this was the vehicle to try and get broader acceptance around this conversation.
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Gotcha. And so did you have. Why. Why did you call it Field Trip? Was it just a good name, or did you guys take people on field trips to their retreats and things too?
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It was just a good name, honestly. It was a moment where we were chatting, trying to come up with a name and. Or we're chatting about the business, and one of my business partners, mujeep, was like, all right, so we're gonna go do a field trip and take some psychedelics. And I'm like, field trip. That's the name right there. And it stuck. And it just, you know, when it comes to the conversations around psychedelics and I don't know if you've had conversations around psychedelics on this podcast. My guest, if you've spoken to entrepreneurs, you probably have, but it's always been such a serious conversation. There's so much we around, oh, you got to take psychedelics so seriously. It's. It's. They're super powerful medicine, and they are, but if you always trap them in the seriousness conversation, then you're limiting the potential of what they can do. So I wanted to bring a bit of levity to it, a little bit of excitement. So all those people who wanted to out themselves as. As psychonauts are interested in psychedelics could, like, point at a brand and be like, yeah, that. That's a brand I can get behind. Because they get it. They get that, you know, it's not always that serious.
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It's not just about psychedelics, though. Like, you make serious limits its potential.
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Totally.
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You know, I mean, everything's a game in life. Like, everything. Challenges, setbacks, all. It's all a game. Matter of fact, if things go too good for you, we talked about this the other day. Like, if it goes too good for you, we subconsciously will create a challenge for ourselves. Chaos. We'll throw it. And it's a game because human beings are here to play games. Keeps us interested, you know, And I. I think when you're done playing the games, then you leave.
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Yeah. As Tom Robbins, my favorite author, says, life is too serious to take that seriously. And you're right. I had this thought a few months ago that of all the species that have ever emerged in this world, the one thing that separates human is we are more equipped for chaos than any other species. I mean, look at us. We're hairless, defenseless slabs of meat walking around this world that just happens to have a good brain that can make us almost infinitely adaptable. So it's almost like, bring the chaos. Like, if you can get to that place of give me life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb, and just enjoy the fluctuations, the ups and downs, and just be like, oh, this is all part of the experience. Because at some point on this ride, I'm probably gonna die unless Brian Johnson gets his way, you know, being like, all right, well, give me all of it then. Like, I don't know. I'm only here for a certain amount of time. Why would I want to limit what I'm exposed to? Let's have all of whatever this can give at least, you know, end on that Hunter S. Thompson quote of like, you know, come in and with, like, what a ride that was, right?
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Yeah, 100%, man. So what, what happened with field trip, though? It took off great.
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What did you.
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What happened and what did you learn?
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What I learned, I learned a ton. So what happened? The. The. The kind of business explanation of what happened is we just got out over our skis, you know, and. And raised too much money and had to try and justify the valuation. It was a little bit of. Of our control because we launched in our first clinic, opened in March of 2020. And so three weeks later, pandemic, the whole world shut down. And we're like, oh, shit. Like, we had planned to do a financing in September of that year. We didn't know if there's going to be a world in September of that year. And it just so happened that there were a couple of publicly traded psychedelic stocks or, you know, closely related stocks in Canada that were just bucking the trend. Everything else was down 40%, but these few stocks were up, you know, 50, 100%. So we had all of these bankers calling us, being, hey, you guys want to raise money? And we're like, yes, you know, and the current circumstances, we'll take cash whenever we can get it. So we did. And that came with strings attached of we had to go public sooner than we wanted to and just tried to, you know, had to justify the valuation. So we built really quickly, believing we could, you know, build the plane as we were flying it and it just never worked out. And you know, looking back about it was one of those funny things where everybody wanted psych. Not everybody. A lot of people wanted psychedelics to come to fruition, but the people who actually wanted to pay for medically supervised therapeutic use was actually a very narrow window, which is all the people already using psychedelics would never pay to go to a doctor for it. The other half of the population who will never touch psychedelics would never touch psychedelics. So there's this very narrow band of people who actually fit the narrative of I have a medical need that justifies therapeutic intervention and I'm willing to pay for it. And I want it to be a doctor as opposed to going to an underground guide who can give me MDMA or whatever other drug I want. And so it's just, just too challeng. And the world was just not quite ready. Yeah.
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So, well, you had a niche, which is good when you're starting a business, you have a startup like you want a niche. But the fact of the matter is, I'll never forget this, this line that I learned in Wharton School when I took a class there said if you over capitalize something that's not ready, it's like putting a rocket on a grocery cart.
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And that's kind of what happened pretty much. And you know, I think we could have figured it out. But what happened is in 2021, you know, the, the bottom of the biotech market broadly. You know, at one point I was talking to a CFO of a publicly traded pharma company and he was saying there's something like. I'm going to misquote the number. Something like 1100 publicly traded biotech stocks and 800 of them were trading below cash value. So the market just destroyed biotech and pharma and psychedelic companies like ours got hit extra bad because it was still so speculative because we're still three or four or five years out from the first approvals. And so it was just the market fell out and, and so we ran out of Runway of time to try and. Yeah. Make the business model work. Yeah.
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Do you think big pharma put some controls in there to. To prevent by like the psychedelic market to going up? I mean, that's crazy. But it just seems like it could because it could affect their bottom line.
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So I would say this about big pharma. Two things. One is if it was only psychedelic companies that were hit so bad, then I would say maybe there's Some merit to this, but. But the vast majority of publicly traded biotech stocks, psychedelic or otherwise, were getting hammered as well. So it wasn't just. It wasn't just us. And, you know, I've worked in Big Pharma, and the people I've met at Big Pharma, maybe they're lying. But generally speaking, the people I meet are genuinely interested in seeing human thriving and flourishing.
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Oh, it's not those people, man. It's not those people. It's not. They. They do have great hearts. It's not those people.
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Yeah, yeah.
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You know, when it comes down to it, it's the people at the very top and the people that have the investments, that control the investments. That's. That's where the conflict of interest always comes in with this stuff. It's the money. You know, the people that are working have, you know, true intentions of, like, betterment, and they have missions, and then they. They're. You're. They're used for the. The grand mission, which is always in capitalism. It's money, but it's just too obvious. But here's the thing. So what would you have done differently? Looking back.
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Yeah, so. So here's an interesting opportunity is I may be buying Field Trip out of. So we filed Field. Field Trip, went into restructuring, got acquired by another company. That company never used the brand. Even though the brand, you know, has worldwide attention, you know, for. For something like psychedelics to have worldwide awareness, they never use the brand and they never use the app that we built. So I'm in the process of hopefully buying those back, and then I'm gonna do Field Trip the way I always wanted to.
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Oh, nice.
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And the way I always wanted to was that, like, I. The psychedelic movement is a movement. It's a social movement, it's a cultural movement. It's kind of like the 60s, but it's just got too much momentum. And with the Internet making pretty much everything permissible these days, there's no way it's going back in the box like once in the 60s. And so what I would have done differently is I would have focused on slower growth, invested more in building community awareness, even supporting underground use. You know, just become, if you're familiar with the brand, Lululemon. You know what Lululemon did for yoga? Right. It became synonymous with yoga. And I thought. And I. I think. And I thought then, I think now that Field Trip can become the Lululemon for psychedelics, as Lululemon is to. To yoga kind of thing. And just build community, give people tools to Explore their consciousness. You know, the, the mission, if I do acquire it back, is going to be to see the world in a new way. Because when you really think about what psychedelics do, what meditation, high intensity exercise does, it gives you a moment to see the world from a different lens, to get you out of your normal state of mind. And that's what people are longing for. And that's what creates possibility and openness. And so, you know, that's my goal. My goal is not to, you know, solve depression or anxiety. Maybe that would be a byproduct of it. But I think if you can give people the capacity to see the world in a new way, even for a brief moment in time, you're going to solve a lot of human suffering.
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Yeah, I agree. And it really always comes back to the same thing I talk about all the time, which is whatever your intention is, is what you're going to focus on, what you focus on. Because we only have so many attention units available to us. All of us are limited on attention units. There's trillion, trillions of things right now that's sitting us right around here that we could be paying attention to. How do we direct what we pay attention to? Well, it's because of our intention. How can we set a better intention? Clearing out some of the garbage that's blocking us in our subconscious, which could be done through the field trip method.
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Totally 100 and I remember.
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And that's it.
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Yeah, I remember one time I would, I. I took a gram of mushrooms and went for a walk with my buddies and walking through the woods. And it was the fall, it was a beautiful fall day. And I remember looking up and seeing one leaf fall from a tree, right? And you know, just in the way that psychedelics do, I had the capacity to pay attention to it a lot more than I normally would. And then I expanded my awareness slightly and I just noticed I just. All the leaves falling kind of in my world view. And I was like, oh my God, like, how, how much is happening just in watching these leaves? And they expanded the world, my worldview, just to like the ground in front of us. I'm like, there is so much happening. Like I am missing 99.9999% of what's happening just in this 300 square feet view that I'm looking at right now. And then you start to expand it out being like, how do we even believe in history, right? Like you start to be like, how could anyone, what happened at the battle of Gettysburg or whatever, when you realize that Watching just leaves fall in front of you. You can't even possibly perceive everything that's going on. Not even close.
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Nowadays, like, our attention units are grabbed by the technology that's out there. So there's a. There's a quote.
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I don't know who said it.
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I should. Should wrote that down. But he said that we miss God because we're too busy looking up.
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Yeah.
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You know, and now. Or we're looking down. But that was the same quote. Now, now I could change that quote. Yeah, we down too much because, like. Yeah. Going for a walk, especially when it's nice out, when it's cold, I can. I just want to be warm. But when it's nice out here, man, I love going for a walk out here. And I look at the trees and I look at the birds and listen. Hear the sounds. I was. I was to the point where I wasn't even hearing what was going on.
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Yeah.
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And. And I took a walk one day when I started opening up my perceptions and I heard bugs during the daytime. And I'm like, dude, wait a minute. I thought I only heard crickets and. But bugs at nighttime. And I was like, wait a minute, it sounds just like nighttime. I didn't only recognize it at night because I wasn't paying attention. We're little weird things like that, though.
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Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I was just. I was just listening to the Lex Fridman podcast and they had Adam. I almost forgot his last name, but he was talking about. He wrote a book called the Blind Spot and how, you know, we have. We live in a world of scientific exceptionalism that, like, if it can't be measured, if it's not mathematical, if it doesn't comply with physics or chemistry or anything along those lines, it's not real. And that's why science kind of like dismisses consciousness as to being a byproduct of, you know, our biology. And his point, which I thought was super on point, is, you know, just like our vision has a blind spot that we're not aware of, where our optic nerve attaches to our eye. Science has this blind spot, which is science can only be done by humans. Right. There's always going to be the human lens of experience built into all science. And so Lex Fridman was like, asking him about good free will, which has been a recent conversation and some scientific approaches, and he's like, it's just a given. Right. Because science can't ever measure the nature of experience. Right. And it's becoming a very interesting conversation. With AI and consciousness right now too, being like, can AI being ever be conscious? It's like, I don't know, can AI ever actually experience things? And my kind of viewpoint is probably not. I don't know what it is that makes biology experiential versus as code, computers and silicon. But I don't know. It's such an interesting conversation.
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Well, I mean, when you're talking about what science can measure, like you start talking about quantum and, and quantum entanglement and they can't figure. Like this has never been figured out before. When two electrons get entangled.
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Yeah.
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And they start spinning the same direction and then you separate them light years away and one, you change direction of the spin again, the other one instantaneously starts spinning because are entangled quantumly, like in. You can't measure that now. Now I guess they're trying to. They have theories. But there's things that can happen that are beyond, like you said, our perception that don't fit our science. So you can't. It's like, here's the thing, here's the other thing. Like, I relate this to religion. I'm a Christian, I read the Bible. And when I'm reading the Bible, I have an open. I'm just open to learning. Like, I'll look at other religions, I'll read. I've studied, studied all of them. Scientology, all of them. Like I look into them to see what things are related, what things contradict each other if they are actually similar. And in doing that, it's. It's similar to scientists staying in a religion. And they're like, nope, I'm not going to look at anything else out, out there because I have to stay here. And, and it limits your potential and your understanding, ability to know.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And the Bible actually, you know, for all any Christians out there, like it actually tells you to seek and you will find. Like why, why do you think that you're, you're not supposed to go out and look. Look at other things. So that just leads in Ronan, to when you're working with psychedelics. Some people think that it opens up the realm for evil to come in, not just being more conscious, but like it opens up some kind of portal or something and it can. And it can cause problems. So what are your thoughts on that part?
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Just before you go there, I just wanted to mention one thing about the quantum and I love this point. So what Our medical director, clinic in California, Dr. Randy Sherlock. Love the guy. You know, we're talking about quantum entanglement and he's like, so what's the explanation for quantum entanglement? It violates one of the principles of physics that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. He's like, you can come up with all sorts of explanations, but here's one that seems really simple, which is the limit on the speed of light only works in the four dimensions that we understand. What makes more sense is that there's probably a fifth dimension that's operating outside of the four dimensions that we can measure. Right? And I'm like, like, oh, yeah, that's fucking. That's like Occam's razor. It's like, that's the simple explanation right there. And it makes so much sense. Going back to your question about psychedelics.
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One comment on that, though. Like, who the heck are we to think that we. We know there's only four dimensions?
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Yeah, exactly.
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Who the heck are we to think that? Like, that just. That just shows you the. The ego of the human being.
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Yeah, yeah.
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My.
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My. One of my teachers, Erwin, talks about, in order to perceive each dimension, you have to be looking from the next higher dimension. Right? Like, width doesn'. Exist unless you have height from which to look at the width. Right. And like, depth doesn't exist unless you have another dimension to look from. So there's always got to be a higher dimension. So if we can perceive four dimensions, that means there has to be a fifth dimension operating. It's just pure logic. I found that an interesting point going to your question about evil and psychedelics. I. Especially as a Jewish person, it's like, it's hard to say this sometimes, but I don't know that evil exists. Evil is just something that we define. Right. I've always been persuaded by the line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, when Hamlet said, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so and so, you know, Can a psychedelic trip send. People often do crazy things that we think are bad. Yes, of course. But everything can, right? Cars can, alcohol can work. Like, there's nothing that doesn't fit that parameters. I think people are just scared when it comes to psychedelics because it. It takes. Gives people a level of freedom of perception that most people are scared of.
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Or power that you're not ready to handle.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I mean, that's an ability, right? Come becoming more conscious, becoming more aware. That's an actual superhuman, actually. To get to certain levels. Ability. And not everybody's responsible enough and ready to handle it.
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Yeah, no, that's true. But I think that applies to just about everything. True to be quite honest.
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Race car, same thing. A gun.
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Same thing, yeah. Fast food, right. Like, you know how we can, like, deal with fast food and eat too much and make ourselves like. So I think, I think the concerns around that are, Are substantially overblown. And yeah, I don't, I don't guess I. Because I don't believe as evil as being a force, but there could be acts of evil. It's like that, that, that's just part of being human. And so I just, I don't, I don't lose sleep over it. I encourage people to be responsible and thoughtful when, when they're exploring psychedelics, have a guide, have a support person, do prep, you know, be, be ready for what you're about to embark on. But I think by far, by far the net positive impacts of, you know, robust access to psychedelics, thoughtful, informed, educated psychedelic therapies and beyond far exceed any potential negative risks. But with everything we do, literally everything, even in the most traditional medical sense, there's always risk, you know.
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Yeah.
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The benefits outweigh the negative.
- [27:30]
B
It goes back to your intention. What's your intention? Intention creates everything. Everything going into this, like, yeah, just hit me again. I, I always preach attention, tension, tension, but not like some kind of just performance coach or something, like on a spiritual level, on a, On a, On a metaphysical level. Like, the intention is everything. So when you're going into this, what is your intention? What with it?
- [27:54]
A
Are you asking me or.
- [27:55]
B
No, no, no, being rhetorical.
- [27:57]
A
Rhetorical, yeah.
- [27:58]
B
Like, what is your intention with it? Like, go into it. Like, if your intention is to see things that you shouldn't see or you get. You have fear going into it, you're going to get that.
- [28:08]
A
Y.
- [28:08]
B
You know.
- [28:09]
A
Yep.
- [28:09]
B
You know, so. Yeah.
- [28:11]
A
All right.
- [28:11]
B
I want to talk about ego for a second in entrepreneurship because, sure, when you have success in business, you can start to get. Your ego gets puffed up and you start to get sitting on your high horse and you start to think, I made it, we made it. We finally did it like this and that. And if we have money coming in that we're not used to, we could all kinds of things happen. Right? And then when we get like that, we get humbled because we have a lesson that we need to learn. And so I want to hear, like, how was your. You personally, how did you handle all this? Kind of like, take us through that journey of when you started, you had success, and then. And when it came down, like, how did you handle that? And then where are you now?
- [28:49]
A
Yeah, so I'VE always been like, growing up, I, I was. What's the word I'm looking for? I had a lot of self confidence issues. You know, I had imposter syndrome all the way through. Being like, I just got through school because I figured out the game. Oh, I just figured out university, I just figured out the game. It's not because I'm actually smart. And so, you know, when Field Trip took off, I've always, I've often come from a level of humbleness, starting to step more into a level of confidence. And I always knew it was going to be a rocky ride. Right. We had an upshot. It started off super well. We achieved about a $700 million valuation at one point in the NASDAQ. But I had gotten a little bit overconfident financially a couple of times before where a couple of the projects I had been involved with had achieved massive valuations and then disappeared. And so I was always keeping myself in check, notwithstanding when Field Trip Trip filed for restructuring. Like, it. The first two weeks or so were kind of wonderful and like, the weight I had been carrying because I knew the trajectory of where things had been going for quite some time, kind of got released. But then, then I had what I called the dead cat bounce, where it just hit me. All the stress that I had been carrying came back and I had about six months of brain fog. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know I was good, if I was good at anything. Right. Like, I didn't know how I was going to pick up the pieces and, you know, provide for my family. And. And so my first instinct, like, just get right back in the saddle and start running again in any direction that you could chase. And that didn't, didn't work out. And then I remember I was going through the brain fog with pretty deep intensity. Like I was losing thoughts all the time. It was scary. I'm like, is this, is this brain cancer? Is this early onset Alzheimer's, which makes it worse? Yeah, for sure. And. And then I had, I was meditating and I just had this very clear answer of like, you're trying to do too much. That was it, right? And so I was like, okay, I took the lesson and I just took the gas off and I started spending time with my kids. You know, I started walking them to school and we went on our first road trip together down to Cleveland to watch some baseball. And slowly but surely it started to lift and it really gave me some pause. You know, I've been Fortunate that notwithstanding that field trip failed, I've been somewhat successful and had some financial means that didn't really have to worry, although the anxiety was there and I started being like, you know what? My kids grow up really fast and this doesn't come back. There's always another business opportunity that I can, can make happen. And so I reoriented to like, spending a lot of time on myself, spending time with my kids and enjoying them at the age they're 8 and 5 right now, and they're super fun and, and slowly but surely, you know, other opportunities start to fall in place and, you know, picked up the pieces and started, started a couple of new businesses already at various, various stage of progress. But the biggest lesson I will take away is I will never let a business consume me as much as field trip. You know, it just, it was all encompassing. It was all the time. I couldn't ever let it go or let it down. And I want to do that again. Like, business is not that important. Even, even Brian Johnson, I was just listening to him on a podcast yesterday. I was talking about like, that model of entrepreneurship. It's so destructive, you know, sleeping under your desk, working 48 hours, it's so destructive. We've got to stop that.
- [32:09]
B
Elon and Alex Mosi, that's how they roll.
- [32:12]
A
I know. And it's like, yeah, what are you gonna do with all the money? You can't take it with you. Like, yeah. You know, I love that Elon puts it into massive, ambitious projects. Like, I have so much respect for that.
- [32:21]
B
Yeah. But I don't. I wouldn't want to be him.
- [32:23]
A
No.
- [32:23]
B
You know what I mean?
- [32:24]
A
Like in a hundred years.
- [32:25]
B
Yeah. You know, I went through this thing with the mortgage business and I put everything into it. My kids are 18 and 12 now. My son's graduated. And I look back on that too, and I'm like, man, like, that just pisses. So now I, I, same thing. I, I redirected my focus to the kids, homeschooling my daughter, spending tons of time with my family and working out of the house most of the time besides when I travel. And, and it's. Yeah, it's, it's amazing that what that does for you.
- [32:50]
A
Like, yeah.
- [32:51]
B
And, and here's something. I'll, I'll end on this because we're up against the clock. I started to realize when I was going through the same, same kind of thing, anxiety about, like, how am I going to provide my family? And this is like, this is going to be permanent. We're not gonna be able to go to the restaurants or. Or live where we live, or go on the trips that we used to like. Everything came down like, oh, it's permanent. But when you're in the midst of adversity, the less light you see at the end of the tunnel, if any little hope, it's dark and heavy. But you just gotta keep going, moving in a direction. It doesn't have to be fast, like you said, and hop back on the horse, but you just gotta keep moving. But here's the thing. I remember when I came into this. This world, I was butt naked. I didn't know how to talk. I had no experience. My network was my mom. And I made it, right? Like, I made it. So how the heck can I not make it now when I have the experience, the network, you know what I mean? I can talk, communicate. There's no chance that I won't make it. I made it as far as I did doing this. So if I have to go back to being butt naked again, I still have all those other things. And that helped me. It's crazy sounding.
- [33:52]
A
Of course, you asked me at the beginning, what are you made of? And when I said blood, guts and intestines, that was exactly what I was thinking of. It's like you just gotta stand up, put one foot in front of the other and keep going. As long as you can find the will to do that, you can make it through just about anything.
- [34:08]
B
Great way to wrap it up. We came full circle, Ronan. All right, man. Where can people go deeper with you?
- [34:13]
A
You can come to my website. Ronanlevy.com is my current website. A couple of businesses that you want to check out. I'm on. I'm on Instagram and all the socials. Ronan D. Levy. Ronan David Levy is my socials. If you want to check out some of the current businesses I'm working on, check out Sizzle Brands. That's C I Z Z L E B R A N D S. Sizzle Brands. We just went public with that company, working on a longevity company called Coastline Longevity. All getting super exciting and fun stages of development, but ones that won't consume me, like field trip.
- [34:47]
B
Love it. I love it. All right, man. Thank you so much for your time today, man. I look forward to doing something with you in the future. I don't know what yet, but we're gonna figure something out. I love your vibe and there's anything I can ever do, man, just reach out, out.
- [34:58]
A
Appreciate it.
- [34:59]
B
All right, hang tight while I wrap this up, folks. Thank you so much for being here on the Woody Made up show with your boy C. Rock and Ronan Levy, sharing what he's made of. Until next time, make sure you subscribe, tell your friends, family, co workers about us and our guest, Ronin. Until next time, be that one.