The policeman asked again, this time much more aggressively… “Get out your driver’s licence, mate.” My heart sank into my stomach. A torrential downpour of tears flowed from my eyes. I didn’t have my licence. I already had my licence suspended after getting pulled over with drugs in my system a few months prior. “How did I get here?” “What the hell is wrong with me?” “I am such a failure.” …I thought to myself as shame and guilt suffocated me. My career is going nowhere, my dad had tried to take his life and I’d developed a crippling dependence on drugs and alcohol to cope… …and now I had a date with the Magistrate’s Court. Sometimes it takes a wake-up call like this one to turn your life around. And it sure did for me. It sparked my appreciation for the importance of mental health & mindset and catalysed my journey into entrepreneurship… Because I desperately wanted a way to express myself and ensure others wouldn’t have to experience the same suffering I did. The next 3 years were spent building a social enterprise in emotional wellbeing, which won multiple awards and provided support to thousands of community members across Australia and India. And in the midst of investor pitches and trips abroad to explore global expansion, I had a fallout with my co-founder… and we had to shut our company down. The awesome growth, widespread impact and deep fulfilment we had created came to a grinding halt. It was heart-breaking. Devastating. Gut-wrenching. Building a company is hard. But it’s one of the best tools out there to advance your own personal, professional, emotional and spiritual growth. Economic challenges, countless rejections and co-founder conflicts taught me that the most important thing an entrepreneur can invest in is their own mindset. Mindset is the root cause of every result an entrepreneur is or is not producing in their business. For this reason, I am wholeheartedly devoted to helping impact-driven entrepreneurs unlock their next level of growth & impact not by hustle and grind… but by mastering their mindset. For my impact, I have been awarded the Early Ethical Entrepreneur of the Year by Moral Fairground & The University of Melbourne, a 7News Young Achiever Finalist in Leadership & Wellbeing, Top Voice in Mental Health by LinkedIn and the B-Good Pause Award, recognising a company that has done well to change our economic system to positively impact all stakeholders through their commercial practice. If you want to go deeper, check out this free mindset training I recently recorded: https://youtu.be/f5kjfBo5sY8