Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - From Hustle to Empire A 30-Year Journey Embracing the Mental Illness of Entrepreneurship #68

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales#entrepreneurshiphorror #mentalstruggles #workaholichorror #startuptrauma #darksideofsuccess  "From Hustle to Empire: A 30-Year Journey Embracing the Mental Illness of Entrepreneurship" is a raw and unsettling look into the psychological horror behind building a business empire. This isn’t your usual success story—it’s the tale of a relentless entrepreneur consumed by ambition, obsession, and eventual madness. As years pass, the line between hustle and self-destruction blurs. Friends vanish, health deteriorates, and reality starts to crack under the weight of pressure. With a creeping sense of dread and emotional erosion, this story unveils the dark mental toll entrepreneurship can take when success becomes a curse instead of a dream.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, entrepreneurialmadness, darksuccessstory, psychologicalbreakdown, startupnightmare, obsessionwithsuccess, empirebuiltonpain, businesshorror, burnouttrauma, toxicgrindculture, descentintosuccess, mentalcollapse, workaholiclife, behindthehustle, mindovermoney

There's so much rugby on Sports Exter from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter Sports Extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've been every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place.

Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampact with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. Collini, did you know if your age between 25 and 65?

Well, you can get a free HPV cervical check. It's one of the best ways to protect yourself from cervical cancer. And you know what? I actually checked only recently when mine was due and no exaggeration. It took me less than five minutes. You go online to hse.com. But in your PPS number, check in the date of birth. And then they tell you when your next appointment is due.

Oh my God. I know. And you can check you're on the register on the website so you can phone [phone]. If your test is due today, you can book today or hcc. i.e. 4 slash cervical check. I'm 30 years old now. It feels weird even saying that out loud because honestly, I never imagined myself getting here. I mean, I'm the dude who dropped out of school in the eighth grade. No high school diploma, no GED, none of that. Just walked away from it one

day because I felt like it wasn't for me. Back then, people said I was throwing my life away, but I wasn't thinking about life at all. I was thinking about survival. About how to get money in my pocket today, not ten years from now with some degree. See, I've been hustling since forever. It feels like I came out of the womb already knowing how to flip something for a profit. Buy low, sell high, basic as that.

When I was a little kid, I started mowing lawns in my neighborhood. I didn't care if the sun was burning my neck or if I was cut. covered in sweat and grass clippings, I just knew that when I was done, I'd have cash in my hand. That feeling, the little wad of crumpled bills in my pocket, became addictive. After lawns, I moved on to cleaning windows for local businesses, then reselling random crap I'd find at garage sales or thrift stores. I'd polish up old sneakers, slap them on eBay, and make a decent margin. Later on, I got into selling weed for a while, not proud of it, but at the time, it was a steady source of income in my world.

I even went OTR driving for a bit, long-haul trucking, trying to find something legit that I could live with. From 16 to 21, I worked at Nike for four years. That was my first taste of corporate life, if you can even call it that. Folding shirts, organizing stockrooms, dealing with customers. I liked the discount on shoes, but I hated everything else. After Nike, I leveled up a little and got a job at Hugo Boss, selling overpriced suits to men who smelled like money. I learned how to talk to rich people there, how to present myself, how to fake

confidence. But here's the thing, I never felt like I belonged in that world. I couldn't see myself climbing the ladder for 30 years just to retire with a gold watch and a mediocre pension. So when one of my repeat customers approached me with a business idea, an online personal shopping service catering to people in India, I jumped. It sounded wild, but I didn't care. I wanted out of retail. I wanted to create something. We started small, just the two of us grinding day and night, working out of coffee shops

and our bedrooms. There were moments it felt like we were onto something huge. orders were coming in, people were talking about us, and for the first time in my life, I thought, maybe this is it. But here's where it gets real. For years, I thought I was just chasing money. That's what I told myself every time I skipped sleep to work or spent hours figuring out how to scale our little operation. I never called myself an entrepreneur. Other people did. They'd say, man, you're such a hustler, you're building your own thing, that's entrepreneurial as hell. But I'd just laugh and say, nah, I'm self-employed.

I thought being self-employed meant freedom, but it really meant I was my own boss and my own slave. It took me 30 years to realize the truth, I'm not self-employed. I'm not even doing this for money anymore. I've got a disease. It's like this mental illness nobody talks about. And no, it's not the glamorous, Instagram filtered, I'm an entrepreneur and I drive a limbo, kind of thing. My version isn't like the highlight reels you see online. It's messy.

It's brutal. It's lonely. It's waking up with panic attacks at 3 a.m. because you're about to miss payroll or because your account is $500 in the red. I've had months where I was pulling in $10,000, $20,000, sometimes even $30, $30,000, sometimes even $30,000. I thought I was on top of the world. And then just as easily, I'd have months where my inbox was full of insufficient funds and overdraft fee emails. One minute you're thinking about upgrading your car and the next year praying your debit card

doesn't get declined for gas. It's taken me all these years to finally get it, all that stuff people say about loving the process and taking it day by day is the truest shit ever spoken. Back when I was younger, every year I'd make some insane goal like, I'm going to make a million dollars this year. And every year I'd fail miserably. Why? Because I was so focused on the number that I ignored the foundation. Building a business is like building a house.

You can't just slap up walls and a roof and expect it to stand. You have to pour a solid foundation first. You have to construct each wall carefully, with patience and precision. using only the best materials. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes.

This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've been every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. That's the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampack with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months.

Search Sports Extra. extra customers only. Standupressing applies after 12 months further terms apply. Colleenie, did you know if your age between 25 and 65? Well, you can get a free HPV cervical check. It's one of the best ways to protect yourself from cervical cancer. And you know what? I actually checked only recently when mine was due

and no exaggeration. It took me less than five minutes. You go online to hse.e. forward slash cervical check. Put in your PPS number. Check in the data birth. And then they tell you when your next appointment is due. Oh my gosh. That's unreal. And you can check you on the register on the website so you can phone [phone]. If your test is due today, you can book it today or hc.ioc.i. 4 slash cervical check.

And then, and only then, do you add the roof to keep it all together? Most people don't want to hear that. They want shortcuts. They want, get rich, quick schemes. They want to believe they're going to become the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. But the truth is, most of us won't. And that's okay. It's not written in the stars for everyone to build a billion dollar company.

It's not even written for most of us to become millionaires. That doesn't mean we can't build something meaningful. We're going to run all kinds of businesses, trucking companies, e-commerce stores, retail shops, coffee shops, restaurants, software startups, media agencies, the list is endless. But here's the kicker, our drive for money alone isn't enough to get us through the storm. You know that famous Mark Cuban quote. He said, I'd rather work 80 hours a week and make $50,000 working for myself than make $100,000 working for someone else. If that doesn't resonate with you, if you can't imagine sacrificing sleep, social life, and stability just to keep your own thing alive, then you're probably not an entrepreneur. And that's not an insult.

That's just reality. There's no shame in getting a good job and working for someone else. In fact, for most people, that's the smarter move. But for those of us who are entrepreneurs, we're wired differently. We're born with this sickness. You can't catch it later in life. You can't read a book or watch a TED talk and suddenly develop it. It's either in you from the jump or it isn't. And trust me when I say, it's both a gift and a curse. I love it and I hate it. Some days, I feel I'm full of ideas, energy, passion. I believe in myself so fiercely that nothing and no one can touch me. Other days, I feel like a complete idiot for ever trying. I stare at my bank account, at the unpaid bills on my desk, and I wonder why I didn't just stick with a regular job and live a quiet life. But here's the truth, I wouldn't trade this life for anything. To all my fellow entrepreneurs out there, the ones who are bleeding, sweating, and crying while building their dreams from the ground up, I see you. I feel you.

I love you. You're the crazy ones. The misfits. The people who are just stubborn enough to believe they can create something out of nothing. You're the ones taking the path less traveled. You're my people. Keep going. The end.