Your Transformation Station - 26. "Am I an Adult" Learning Entrepreneurship Nickolas DeGrange w/ 'Favazza'

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

"How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself?" Join (Greg Favazza) "podcast" host and creator as he speaks with "Entrepreneur" and author (Nickolas DeGrange). They discuss his (key moments in achievement) when beginning his company and through his life.   Support the showPODCAST INFO:Podcast website: https://ytspod.comApple Podcasts: https://ytspod.com/appleSpotify: https://ytspod.com/spotifyRSS: https://ytspod.com/rssYouTube: https://ytspod.com/youtubeSUPPORT & CONNECT:- Check out the sponsors below, it's the best way to support this podcast- Outgrow: https://www.ytspod.com/outgrow- Quillbot Flow: https://ytspod.com/quilbot - LearnWorlds: https://ytspod.com/learnworlds- Facebook: https://ytspod.com/facebook- Instagram: https://ytspod.com/instagram- TikTok: https://ytspod.com/tiktok- Twitter: https://ytspod.com/x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to your transformation station. This is your transformation station. We're tapping in to surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in a new foresight, methodologies, and clairvoyance you never knew. This is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favaza. Definition of success. If I could go back, there's not many things that I would be. go back for them, but...

What do you do when you lose your purpose? It's okay to struggle. It's okay that you're not okay. I am your host, Greg Favaza. Together, we will go on a journey. This show is all about surpassing our internal dialogue, rediscovering your true identity, honing new foresight.

We have a chance to make the world a better place for our children. Start living in the example today and become your future self tomorrow. If you can leave our viewers with some good advice to follow, what would you let them know? These things that you're afraid to do? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to your transformation station. You have your one and only, Greg Favaza here. So, it's been a long week. It's been quite an adventure.

We are doing it. Ladies and gentlemen, we are doing it. Yes. Hit the subscribe. If you're new to the show, hit the subscribe button. For those that are frequent listeners, I appreciate you guys. I hope you are having an excellent week. Leave us a review.

Scroll down, hit the iTunes comment link, and let me know how your day is going. I would love to collect up some emails where Larry and I can go in and see what we can interpret what you guys are going through where we can help assist you in your transformation process having an outside perspective could be very beneficial I know I can get stuck in my head I don't know what the hell is right or what the hell's wrong

so if you guys have experiencing something like this send us an email at Your Transformation Podcast at gmail.com. And if we get enough emails, we can make this a reoccurring episode where, well, hold on. I didn't tell you. No, I definitely did. I think I did. I'm almost positive. Larry.

Larry Oliver, he is our new co-host. He will be assisting. your transformation station, bringing self-awareness into our lives so we can start working on ourselves not just because we want to but because we need to

our kids need us our family whoever you take care of they look up to you we all hold a place in a role model position, whether we realize that or not. And that requires us to be the best versions of ourselves. And I want us to be able to grow together as a community

while we still have some good laughs. Laughing is extremely important. And if I can make one person laugh by my humor, which is completely insane. It's definitely out there. But I'm okay with that. As long as I'm impacting you in your transformation process, then I'm doing a good job. This is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favaza.

Nick, how are you doing, man? I'm super excited. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. As far as what I understand, you're an engineer, an innovator, an entrepreneur. I mean, you studied at Drexel University for mechanical engineering and finances, clear communications, one of your core missions in life. So you have a great story and I can't wait to get this out here as far as what I can do to help you out and achieve what your message is.

Yeah, so DeGrange Technologies is built off of, so when I started, in university, I began working on alternative energy. And originally it was for the purpose of having my own car company. Like I just thought that was the coolest thing growing up. Like I wanted to design cars, stuff like that. But as I began moving and experiencing more of life and the real needs of communities, it became more of like, oh, you know, this would be cool, but to design cars and have a car company, but there are more pressing matters in human life.

So I moved to Asia. I lived in Singapore for a little bit. And while I was there, I traveled to Indonesia and Thailand, some for work, some personal. And I began to see the need for alternative renewable energy that was accessible in second and third world countries. So I began to shift my focus. Didn't really know how to build a business, especially for something that scale, you

know, like growing up, my parents are small independent business owners, but I was looking at something like globally scalable, and I just never felt qualified to do that. So it was a lot of like battling internally with myself as well as externally, like reaching out to investors and venture capitalists with new technology. And I was kind of just getting laughed out the door before, like as soon as I walked in, because people without an expertise in the field and just a generalist understanding, we're like, oh, well, you know, that's not possible. So what AIDS were you at this time? I started building the technology when I was 19.

Wow. And then I got it patented when I was 21. And that's kind of when everything just like crashed and burn. Like I had taken all the money that I had saved up from my corporate experiences while I was in university. I had these paid internships, so one was in Singapore, and then the other was in New York. So I'd taken all that money, like, lived out of my car for a while because I was so committed to the cause. And when it crashed and burned, I had like a severe identity crisis. Like everything I had believed in was completely wrong.

So I really had to look at what life was becoming, what, like, who I was because of, of what I believed and it was particularly intense because I had just moved all over the place in such a short amount of time and kind of like drained myself of culture and picked up these new cultures and I was struggling with like you know who am I what am I doing like what's my purpose what's my contribution to this world so that's kind of that in a nutshell it's interesting is the fact that you had like from what you're describing it's like a midlife crisis at age 21. Yeah. It sucked. Wow, you've been through a lot. One thing that I'm really adamant about is like having other people share their stories. A lot of people don't think their

own stories are that significant. You know, mine just happens to be a bit all over the place, a bit ridiculous, but the background on everyone is what allows us to create relationships and community. And that's what we really need right now. You know, people are feeling more isolated than ever, especially with everything being shut down, people are starting to realize how few friends they can actually rely on. What is the main objective with Grange Industries? Really just to spread hope through creativity. I think it's more clear now than ever to me. Before, it was like, you know, how am I approaching this? You know, I'm in like a hardware technology industry. It's tough.

right now because a lot of investors are looking into software and things like that. How am I bringing the mission of loving people and serving other people and meeting their needs through hardware and technology? And with everything that's happened with the coronavirus and then moving out here to LA and seeing the it's a completely different energy and community out here than it is on the East Coast or I'm sure it isn't in St. Louis. And it's my first time being out here. But seeing that so many people are speaking and talking and pushing their agenda,

but nobody's listening. And right now, more than ever, we need people to create. Because when we create, it transcends the boundaries of intellectual capacity. And it hits people within their soul. And they're able to adopt that message without listening to somebody talking. So that's really my my mission with DeGrange Technologies is to be able to spread that hope for a brighter future and more authentic, genuine, loving communities through providing tangible materials, technologies to allow people to create and to dream more and to serve more people. It's inspirational right there. I like that message.

as far as getting people to listen is the biggest struggle that we're facing. Not because with what the government is telling us whether we should believe it or not, but it's just everybody is stuck in this old school mindset and we're adapting. Yeah. Some people are not. And getting people on the same page is the biggest problem right now. But as far as if we were to look at creating, accessible, renewable energy for the communities without traditional power?

How does that relate with third world countries? I think, so this might be a bit tangential the way I answer this, but one thing that I've really noticed in technological adoption is that there might be great ideas that serve people's problems, but a lot of engineers and innovators and marketers aren't thinking about the societal repercussions of what those technologies might bring. So like, for example, the internet or the iPhone, incredible technologies, and they've really opened up a great deal of new opportunities for us to advance as a society and as individuals. but there were no parameters around how far we could go with those technologies.

So it's created both good and bad and one of the core, it's been quite damaging to people's mental health and social communities because we're stuck within something where it's our own little world. Whereas when we're face to face with someone, we get to feel out like the energy that they're bringing. We get to see their body language, the tone of their voice and things like that. And through the internet and social media, we're just getting a fraction of that. And we're not actually building relationships where we feel like we can trust people, because we're only seeing each other at our best moments. And we're not seeing a whole lot of everything that falls in between and people are longing to share life with other people. That is the essence of

community. So like that's one example that I would like to use, but in bringing this new technology to third world countries, making sure that a team is there to help properly implement how much can be developed off of this technology. So say for example, like I send a team out to help integrate this accessible renewable energy in a part of Indonesia where they don't have traditional infrastructure, electricity, electrical infrastructure. So providing them with, I guess, clean water and or electricity to their homes. They can build schools out of that. And then they have their necessary, their basic needs met.

and they can kind of tuck that away. And then they begin thinking about how to create and build more solutions for what their community needs. But making sure that that implementation period doesn't take off too quick. This is kind of like an engineering ethics problem. And it's not so much an ethical issue as it is like a relationship issue. because if you're in a relationship with someone that you care about, you're willing to withhold the things that might hurt them. It's like, you know, the example of freedom,

people think that if you put parameters around their freedom, then it's not really freedom. But you would never let your own child walk out into a busy street because they can just do whatever they want. Like that would be dangerous for them. So in the initial stages, building out a set of parameters, where they can grow and fill, I guess, that cup and then pouring that substance out into a bigger cup and allowing them to grow rather than just like letting it run out and see where they go. So would you say the parameters lay between the government issuing out a fixed amount to the country that's in need of this energy source?

I would say that that's definitely a step, but there also needs to be parameters. within these second and third world governments. Because I might have great intentions bringing this new technology to people who really need it. But if the government is the only one who's profiting off of it and they're not helping their people with it, it's not really helping anyone. It's just getting people rich. And that is a very fine line. It's a very tricky situation.

Which is why my core mission needs to be more. people focused than capital or technology focused. So with this talk about Venezuela, didn't go bankrupt because of the cost of oil instead. It was socialism. Do you think that's relatable to that? Yeah, I do. I think one thing that we kind of lose, and this is also tangential, but I think one thing that we kind of lose with respect to the media is, is that having an opinion on something doesn't mean you have the same opinion about somebody.

So you can classify an organization. And sometimes it's easy as a member of the audience to be like, okay, well, that person thinks that way about all of those people. And that's really just a, like, that's an immature mistake. It's a rationalization to make because an organization doesn't represent each individual member. You have to see people for who they really are and not for what the organization is. So in the case of Venezuelan government, that's not my opinion about the individuals in the Venezuelan government because I don't know them. But I do think that it applies in this situation.

And that's a part of, you know, that's a responsibility that they take when they step into office, that they are going to represent what's going on as a collective organization. But it doesn't mean that we as individuals, I guess, have the right to view them or judge them in such a way without even getting to know them individually. That's one thing that is rampant in America is just opinions on things that nobody actually knows. It's like what's relevant at this time. It all becomes a, when people want to argue, it comes down to self-reflecting their own inner beliefs on to other people when they don't agree with the situation. Yeah. And these aren't, you know, political opinions that we're talking about here. These are like, this is the human condition.

Yes. And if we look at what's going on within our own lives personally, like what turmoil we're going through in our inner world, we're able to more accurately discern why we're thinking the way that we're thinking. And I know that that can seem introspective, but if we don't check on our own emotions, like our emotions shouldn't be driving us, though it's very easy to get sucked into taking action based on an emotion.

They're more of like an indicator of what's going on in your internal world. There's like a check engine light like okay. I had this emotion. I need to I need to check on what's going on. Why am I feeling this way? And if we were just a little bit more receptive to that, there wouldn't be so much division being created because it's so like fear cells on the media. And that's why we see so much depressing news. You know, like I can't, I like to. I like to. keep up to date with things, but I can't watch the news and some people are just sucked into it because it's addicting. Something's always going wrong. How are we going to fix this problem? And the problems don't lie in a massive change of organization. Like people are talking about changing the world, but nobody wants to take a step and build a relationship with somebody that

they're close with. So if we can't even, if we can't start on step one, how are we supposed to change the entire world? How are we supposed to? to change the entire community. What kind of a kid were you in high school? So I'm going to have to talk about not only who I was objectively, but how I saw myself from my perspective, because that definitely factors in a lot. Yes.

So growing up, I'm the oldest of, so I just have a younger brother. So I'm the oldest. We were really close growing up. My mom, psychotherapist, my dad, dad's mechanic. Funny enough, my dad is incredible with people, just like really genuinely interested in them, spending time with them, can talk about anything to anyone, actually pretty amazing. And my mom is great with people, but she spends so much time with people professionally that when she's like out and about, she likes to like spend more time either just with us

as a family or alone. So growing up, seeing that dynamic, I was learning a lot, psychological, psychologically, subconsciously. Like there were things that I began to discern body language and tone of voice and all of those things that psychologists are studying, but I was learning it subconsciously. So I didn't know the terms, but I was integrating that into the way I functioned as a human being. Like, for example, when my mom would like catch me in the middle of a lie, growing up I was like how could she possibly know like I did such a good job to cover it up but she would know and then as I began to get a little bit older six seven eight I began understanding that she might have not actually known I was lying she just didn't believe me if I was telling the truth so there were sometimes when I would tell the truth and she thought I was lying and it was really like a stalemate type whoever had more um Whoever committed more to that belief is the one who won the argument.

So I got really good at convincing myself of things that might not have necessarily been true. And that kind of later in a little bit later in life, 18, 19, 2021, that put me in a lot of positions and places where I should not have been. Because I was so committed to a lie that people completely believed I was telling the truth. And that was not good for me or them. So growing up, back to growing up, I was raised by, well, I should say, like, when I was younger and when I was in daycare, I spent a lot of time with, like, very matriarchal women. So I spent more time with females growing up than I did males, like socially. And I think it, like developed my thought pattern differently in a way. So I never like I love sports and like I was into so many different sports and like always super into learning like self-education.

But I was always that one kid who was like a nomad. Like I had a bunch of different groups of friends, but I wasn't super close with anyone in particular. And my original group of friends growing up in elementary school transitioning into middle school didn't like that. So I started to recognize the difference between being accepted by a group of people and being celebrated. And I was like, you know, my friends, quote unquote friends aren't really celebrating me. They're like they accept me and they tolerate me, but they're not celebrating me. So I don't really know if I want to hang out with them. And that was like a really pivotal conscious decision I made when I was young that a lot of people don't have to make.

And I'm not really sure why I made that decision, I guess, recognizing it, like being socialized with kids who were maybe like six, seven years older than me growing up when I was really young. I guess I recognized that earlier on. And that made it really tough for me because I was like socially ostracized by that group of people for like probably four years. and it really did a number on my self-esteem. And I knew who I was, but every time I was in a social situation, I seemed overcome with this anxiety. But because I was so good at lying to myself,

I could play it off like I wasn't anxious, even though I was feeling all of those things inside. So it was kind of just like I was pretending not to feel what I was feeling. And people would receive it as if I was confident and not anxious, but inside I was actually struggling with all of this stuff. So throughout high school, I was good at sports. I played sports year-round. Still had like a bunch of different groups of friends, but never really crossed,

like I never really brought friends from one group into another group about anything, just because I learned a lot about social dynamic and social chemistry in those formative years and how bringing in one person who really doesn't blend with another group of people socially can really affect the authenticity of conversation and the energy between people. You became adaptable. Yeah, extremely. And I became even more adaptable when I started moving from city to city because I realized that the culture that I was bringing into that community,

wasn't that relevant. And, you know, I might be able to bring in those, I guess, individualized quirks of personality into that community. But I couldn't bring, I couldn't force another culture into a community that I was joining because that's not how it works. People don't sign up for that. And I realized it's not necessary to force culture on other people. It's necessary just to be there with them and to get to know them.

and to accept their culture and who they are as a person, because that leads to genuine relationships and ultimately genuine change. So I started learning how to adopt and empty myself of culture and community and different social cues really fast over a short period of time, and it was extremely uncomfortable. It was also amazing. I just want to say that is awesome right there what you described there is the ultimate key to success is when we go through a situation that we we have this self-doubt this anxiety and the way it plays out it just starts out with a thought on looking at the outcome it's not going to that way you want and what you described is you reversed it where it's the outcome that you desired, thus you're able to achieve what you always wanted

to achieve without even knowing how you did it. Yeah. Kind of inception like, isn't it? Exactly. What was your toughest feedback? I think a lot of the toughest feedback came from my parents, came from particularly my mom because she had such great influence in my life. And, you know, the people that you care about, you hold their opinions in high regard. And I can remember growing, maturing, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. And my mom as a psychologist would point out the obvious and say, you're not further than where you are. And that was really tough for me because I was like, I know I'm not further.

than where I am right now or what I am right now. But that doesn't mean that I'm not becoming who I was designed to be, who I want to be. And that was tough a lot of times to hear, especially from someone that I cared so much about, because I still had to, like, you know, it hurt me, like it hurt my soul to an extent. But that didn't give me any right to stop loving or caring for her or seeing her perspective the way she did. And understanding the dynamics of that relationship has actually developed my relationships further in my own life, even if they're just very entry-level stage. Because it has taught me to value whoever that person is, no matter. what happens. That's I like that. And and that's you know that's sacrificial but

that's where you see the most growth in relationships those relationships are the most rich and rewarding because you don't say anything with your words you say things with your action as you remain whatever your responsibility is in that relationship you know between me and my mom being being her son and being open with her and talking to her and still loving her. As you persevere through those difficult times, richer experiences of life unfold on the other side. So do you believe in the sub-cost fallacy? I'm not familiar with it. Can you explain it to me?

With the sunk-foss fallacy, as far as in life, when you're struggling, there's a point where somebody decides just to call it quits and to move on to something else. But instead, you keep going through and pushing because you invest it all this time into it. Having that self-awareness to understand that you are where you're at, but you still want to keep going because there's a bigger picture that you're trying to achieve. Now that you explained it, it resonated. I'm not sure if I heard you properly at first, but the sunk cost fallacy. Yeah. And, you know, there have definitely been times in my life where I backed out of something that I had been so committed to. And the pain that comes with backing out of something last minute after you put so much skin in the game

is worse than whatever else you're going to endure before you get to whatever that reward is. A lot of the times it's so easy to talk ourselves out of what we're just doing almost subconsciously, naturally. We question ourselves. We're like, why am I continuing with this? Especially when we're not seeing results. And we're very, as people, we're very result-oriented. We don't value the in-between stages quite as much. but one thing that has been really heavy on my mind,

especially moving out here to L.A. is like character is hard to find. Accolades and accomplishments are not. People have a plethora of accomplishments. And you honor people for those, you know? Like that's something that you do in valuing people. But what's more rare to find are people who have refined character and who actually care.

about people and their characteristics and how things have, how their story has changed them as an individual to further change other individuals rather than accolades. Self-talk? It's really easy to look at people who have incredible stories and say, wow, you know, they must just be cut from a different cloth or they must just have a personality for that. And to an extent, yes, we all do have capacity. And that's extremely important to recognize as you're pursuing what you want to pursue in life because sometimes We're caught off guard by you know like we see something that somebody else has on Instagram or the news or social media

Whatever it may be and we're like whatever they had to do to get that or to get where they are I'm willing to do that But as soon as you begin pursuing that and you start sticking it out and persevering through that you realize whether or not you have a capacity to handle as much as they did over their life. And that is not like someone with more capacity is not any more honorable than somebody who doesn't have any, who has less capacity. It's honorable as to, it's important to honor someone if they're fulfilling the fullness of their capacity, if that makes sense. I know I use that word a lot.

It makes perfect sense to me. Go ahead. Yeah, to say that somebody who, you know, and I'll just use a reference, but like a 20 ounce cup, and that's just the way they were designed to handle more, we can't, you know, we're not honoring that person anymore than the person who can, who can manage 10 ounces. And I don't want to like get into like a talk on religious. or anything like that. But in the Bible, there's a parable of the talents. And three servants were given

different amounts of money. A talent was like a year's wages in that time by the landlord. And he was going away and he said, when I come back, I expect a return. And there was one servant who got 10 talents. So just imagine 10 years wages. So I don't know, $600,000. $600,000. over the course of one year. And when he came back, he had turned it in, he had doubled that. So he was given 10 talents, or he was given, sorry, he was given five talents, he turned it into 10. The other servant who had two talents turned it into four. And then there was one servant who got one talent. And in his mind, and this is actually word for word in the parable, he said, I knew you to be a hard and difficult man. So I buried your talent and here it.

it is and the master said you're wicked and lazy which seems aggressive but he said why wouldn't you at least take it to the bank and give interest and that's a statement on what we're given in our life it's not about the money or the financial capital that we're given but more so the gifts if you have a gift to speak you have to use it and it doesn't mean you have to be on a platform speaking to hundreds millions of people just and one individual a day exactly and for some people that's all the greater their capacity will get. But to impact 10 out of 10 people that you were assigned, that is just as honorable as somebody who is impacting 100 out of 100 people that they were assigned because they're fulfilling

their purpose. That resonates with me tremendously. So how do you spend your spare time? So it looks a little bit different. every season for sure. I go into what those seasons look like in my book, and I only say that just because I'm able to further articulate like what was going on at that stage of life,

the people that I met where I was living, and how all of that affected my internal world. So the last, I would say the last three years has really been like, like I've really been stripped back of a lot of, things that most people had. My final year of university was 2019 because I went to a five-year school. And it was really, like I didn't have a job. I was, and it wasn't for lack of trying either, but that's when I had fully switched

over to finance. So I was taking 20 credits every 10 weeks with a week break in between and then doing it again. And I did that for five terms in a row. So I was like, I didn't, I was really not interested in finishing school. Just because I felt like I had lost my purpose. I felt like I had lost direction. I really wasn't sure where things were going. And that's actually when I began writing my book,

but it wasn't intended to be a book. Like I sucked at language and English and grammar and writing all that stuff growing up. So to write a book for me is just kind of still hilarious because it's my, blowing like it's nothing short of a miracle for sure but I started writing that just to document my memories because I was like you know some of the stuff that's happened to me this is crazy might as well you know I share it with people when I talk to them so I might as well write it down it can be my cop out whenever I meet someone that I don't have time to talk to just like hey read my book you know but

during that time it was a lot of silence and a lot of isolation it was a lot of spending time alone with my thoughts. And even for me, I became really developed and matured a lot spiritually. And that was never important to me before. I kind of just, I would say I kind of acknowledged that God was there and that there was a God and that was about it. And, you know, like the colloquial sayings like, oh, you know, like everything happens for a reason, you know, it's all in God's hands or it's all in God's timing. But during those season,

like that extended period of time, like two and a half, three years, it seemed like everything I tried to do and that I got excited about just failed. It was like picking up something that was tangible and like it had material and it was structured and then it just dissolved into like ash or sand and it fell out of my hands and it was really disheartening and frustrating because I was constantly I lived my life growing up thinking like what's the hope of the future that's where I'm placing all of my energy that's how I get through difficult times and I was faced with a situation over the last three years where I couldn't do that because um everything that I kept putting my hope in, kept dissolving in front of my eyes.

And I was like, what is going on? Like it was the most, it was almost tormenting. Like, extremely, extremely frustrating. Definitely dark times. But it was also the times that I felt the most peace. Because I was spending more time instead of trying to figure out, like, things about the world. I was trying to understand who God was. And that is a personal journey for everyone, for sure.

So I'm not going to go into that too much deeper, but as a result of spending a lot of that time, just alone with myself, alone, figuring out who God was, my world began to change dramatically. And my thought process began to change dramatically. And I was able to understand and articulate things better and just be with people. And one thing I was never good at doing growing up, even though I was around people all the time. was actually being there in the present of the moment and enjoying those small little things, whether it was somebody's jokes that weren't actually that funny, but just, you know, honoring them for who they were as a person, feeling comfortable enough around me to joke with me, or the little things that they talk about that I actually didn't care about whatsoever, but it really mattered to them, to sit down and just be there with people.

and it changed my entire world. So now I'll hear in L.A. My free time is more like, you know, I'm still spending some of that quiet time, usually in the morning before anything gets started. But if it's during the day or if it's in the evening, it's going to the beach, going for a drive, spending time with friends, things like that.

That's interesting. With you, like somehow, I can picture you as an individual that would be a little shithead. There's no other way I can put it at this moment. And now it's like, I feel like there must have been a situation or an event that led to a behavior change. Can we go into that situation that led into your enlightenment? I'm trying to articulate this in a better way. Yeah.

Yeah. So, and I go into my mind. much deeper detail in the book about this. When I moved to Singapore, I was 20 years old. I always wanted growing up, I always wanted to, like it was always a dream of mine to just move to a foreign country, start from scratch with like nothing and just see if I could make it. I just thought that would be the coolest thing. So I kind of simulated this for myself. I got a co-op over there. I had a company that I was connected with and I had, I believe, $500 in my bank account. And I moved over there a week before everything started.

And I was like, you know, I do this. I'm good at this, you know. I was very like narcissistic at the time. I was very into myself. I was very prideful for a lot of things. But that pride was just covering up those insecurities that I was talking about growing up that I hadn't quite dealt with yet. When I got to Singapore, I stayed at Airbnb for a month.

And the first week, I was so jet-lagged. I would fall asleep at five o'clock at night after walking around Singapore and exploring Singapore all day. And I would wake up at like 1 a.m. And I would have a plan to like go to the club or the bars at night and meet people because I wasn't meeting people during the day. After the fifth or sixth day, I was so frustrated and disheartened by not meeting people. And having these incredible experiences but not being able to share them with anyone that I was like, you know, I think I made a mistake and I need to go back. And it was like an intuitive voice that night

as I was really considering, like highly considering going back on my word, which was something I never did. And it was just like, you know, the intuition said if you don't take this opportunity, you may not get another opportunity like this in life. And I was just like, oh, you know what? But like I did, you know, I did consider that.

It's just like all the pressure of this moment is just too much for me. And I remember that night really thinking a lot. I stayed up until like 3 or 4 a.m. just like awake with my thoughts. And I was like, you know what? This next six, seven months is going to suck. But I'm just going to commit because I said I was going to do this. And this is what I've always wanted to do. and if the next six, seven months sucks, so be it.

You know, I'm here now. Like, I'm not going to go back on my word and make effort to change a situation that I'm in. And as soon as I made that commitment, within the week, I started meeting some really incredible influential people on the island. One of the first people I met was this girl who was an independent journalist for almost every club or bar in Singapore. And I was like dating her friend at the time. So she was like, hey, if you ever want to, if you ever want to go out, just let me know.

I can just call up the manager and like get you a table or a bottle, no issue. So I barely paid for alcohol in Singapore the whole time I was there, which was like incredible. I was a 20 year old, you know, it's like the most expensive city in the world. And here I am just like getting handouts. So that kind of just like catalyzed my recklessness. But in a direction that I needed to go. Because one thing I noticed after everything, and I'll come back to like that pivotal moment in just a second.

But one thing I started to notice after my life began to change after that pivotal moment is that if things wouldn't have gotten as bad and dramatic as they had in such a short, time, I would probably still be living my life that way, thinking I was living it the best I could. And that's such a huge mistake that we make when we're young is thinking, and it's funny coming out on my mouth saying that like 24 when we're young. But such a huge mistake that we make when we're young and we're perceiving the world in our own perspective and the memories that have shaped us is that we have it all figured out and that we're living life to the best of our abilities, we're not taking on ideas or beliefs that we don't agree with.

And those things that we don't agree with or might offend us internally might be just the thing we need in order to live the life that we've always been looking to live. And I was so grateful for that opportunity, and I still am grateful that everything was so catalyzed because I am the type of person, I was the type of person growing up, like, you couldn't tell me anything. Like, well, you could, but, and I might agree with you, but I had to figure it, I had to learn for myself. I had to figure out.

I had to see, is it really like that or is it just that person's opinion? So instead of saying, you know, somebody who was wiser than me and more experienced to me saying, don't play with the fire or the bonfire, don't touch it, it's going to burn you, I was like, yeah, well, maybe I'm Superman. maybe that's not the case and that was such a humbling experience and I'm so grateful for it

people talk about like check your pride but when we're actually acting out our lives and we're not just pretending we're someone then we figure out real quick

who we actually are and I figured out real quick that I wasn't some type of Superman or I wasn't some type of genius. I wasn't that special, even though I thought I was. And I got burned by life. And it was the most traumatic, but also most amazing experience I've ever had. Because I can look back at that and say, like, okay, I'm healed now.

I'm, you know, I'm still becoming better. But it's not about me. It's about understanding that what I have is really for other people. and that was that was extremely pivotal to me so the going back to the the moment that caused a lot of the behavioral change um I was like a self-proclaimed casanova um like I remember in high school thinking like because of my self-esteem was so low like that I wasn't good with girls even though I had so many friends who were girls and when I went to college I was just like I'm just going to take advantage of this so

I was like, when I talk about it, I was like sleeping with a lot of different girls and it was, it was a very narcissistic, like, ill-intentioned pursuit because I didn't actually care about a lot of those girls. It was just more so for me. And when I actually started, there was a girl that I dated in Singapore who was five years older than me and she started to like shake my world. of culture, big time. And she was like making me better in a way when we were dating. And then things got like things moved way too fast, got way too toxic. And I was like, I realized I was like, we can't keep dating.

So I told her one day I was like, we got to break up. Like I can't continue to do this. And I go into why I made that decision and what caused that in the book. After that, I started to realize it wasn't other. people who had the problem that it was actually me and that was really tough to recognize. And that's when I started to realize like I needed help and I wasn't as awesome as I thought I was. And I started to spend a lot more time alone and just I got more introspective and it got kind of dangerous because I would get into these intense battles in my mind, you know, like we can't always control the thoughts that come to us.

sometimes we have thoughts like don't think of a pink elephant and I know that's like a that's something that another person initiates but sometimes when we're thinking about something and then a thought just comes it's really easy to like dwell or meditate on that thought and if it's not a good thought then that's destructive to us and that's what began happening but I also began building better relationships healthier relationships and one night I went out with some friends and I ended up bringing this girl back home and I woke up in the morning and from spending so many so much time with people you know how like you can kind of when you meet someone or you talk to someone for a bit like you can understand who they are like you have an idea of their character the personality almost like possessing like an empath sort of mentality you just kind of can like intuitively understand who they are and what they've been through in a present moment you meet them yeah so that didn't happen this time and it was she was the first person i ever met that like the best way to describe it is like she had no soul like she was a black hole she was a void of a person and it was the strangest and oddest uh Like, I don't want to say terrifying, but it was definitely scary being in that proximity with someone who, like, I don't want to say she was a sociopath, but like she, it felt like there was no, there was no character, substance, or personality within her whatsoever. And like, we had talked the night before. We had talked in the morning. I looked out my window and I heard this voice that was not my own intuition. And I don't want to say it was like the voice of God because it wasn't an audible voice,

but it had power and authority behind it. And I knew it wasn't mine. And I don't want to give that away because that's like a turning point in my book. But when I heard what that voice had to say, it shook me to my core. And I tried to just shake it off. I was like, that didn't actually just happen. and the more I tried to forget about it, the more disturbed I became with the statement. And that led to just me needing to find peace and answers and something.

And it began a search for me, really. And you said earlier, like, you could picture a behavioral change for sure. sure, you're right. But it wasn't, this wasn't self-help. This was a lot different than that. And I go through the differences between self-help and like the encounter that I had that really changed my life from that point on in my book. And I think I don't, it's not that I don't want to talk about it here, but I think I can articulate it a lot better because when I was writing, I didn't have like voice intonations and body language to be able to. to explain this. So I really had to use my words and find the right diction for what actually

happened. Because before that point, I was really into self-help. And I was kind of like seduced by this, if you just do it and you persevere and you make it happen for yourself, then that's how you get things in life. And I was very performance, like, I had a great deal of performance identity. And when I had that encounter and things began, my life dramatically began to change, I realized that wasn't so much the case anymore. And that scared me. That is what threw me into an identity crisis. Okay, if we can zoom out, what led to your transformation. Would you say the essence was timing? Yeah, I would. And I would say the relentless pursuit of what I wanted in life. Whether the outcome was good or

bad, it still led me on the path that I needed to be. And I know that sounds a bit esoteric, but in a generation where people love to talk and not do anything, you can never actually know if your theory is true on life. People have a lot of beliefs that they die for, but they won't actually enact them. So for me, it was actually pursuing those beliefs with all of my energy. And it led me to a place. that was not pretty, but here I am out of that situation, and I can live to tell the tale, so I might as well share that. Because when you act on something, it actually tests the theory. It's like in science. You can have theories of like, you know, this works mathematically,

theoretically. The concept is there. But when it's out, it's tangible, it's manifest. are the conditions the same. To our listeners, some good advice to follow and some bad advice to avoid, what would you let them know? This is a hard one because this was hard for me, but some good advice that I would give, and this is something that the audience is going to have to sit with and chew on. But being more interested in others than you are with yourself, and that's not saying don't recognize your own value. because those are two very different statements. When you don't recognize your own value

and you're interested in others all the time, it's like almost a coping mechanism of like, I'm not important, therefore I need to focus on other people. What I'm saying is recognize your importance. Spend time discovering who you are designed to be. Spend time discovering what you're good at and how valuable you are in your community, in this society. but don't be more interested in yourself, in your accolades, in your accomplishments than you are in other people's character.

So that's my, I guess, my good advice. And that advice will lead every individual down a different path. It looks different for everyone. There's not like a one-size-fits-all for how to do life. And we love, especially in American culture, We love to have all the steps and the keys to success and they need to look exactly the same for everyone. And that's just not the case. We have to be understanding that it's going to look different for different people.

And that's valuable in knowing because you're in knowing that and accepting that, you're saying, okay, I actually value you as an individual. You have different skill sets. You have different strengths and weaknesses than me. and therefore your path, the keys to your success in life are going to look different. My advice for things to avoid, never, and then this is super important. Never think you're wiser than you are. Because the moment that you think you have everything figured out, you're going to get humbled immediately.

But if you're, the opposite side to this is this. It's not intentional naivity. It's living life in mystery and curiosity. And that is what creates us a fulfilled life because we're able to keep in touch with our inner child. The reason childhood is so exciting is because we're constantly in awe

of the mystery of life. And we're constantly curious. And we can pursue answers all we want to we still have to be okay with never having answers to some questions. And that's life. That's what keeps it interesting. That's what gives it flavor. So my advice, especially because I thought I was wiser than I was when I was young,

is never think that you have it all figured out because there's never going to be that point. Like the journey of life is discovery at all times. And the more comfortable you are in life, the less you're disdive. discover that that is spot on that I'm excited to see where you're going to end up Nicholas what is the name of your book and how can our listeners find it yes so it's on Amazon it's called the one who follows and the author title is actually N.C. de launch. I just abbreviated my first and middle initial because I guess that's what authors do. But I can actually send you the link if you want to share it with the audience.

Yes, that'll be great. I'll be in sure to incorporate everything we said in the show notes. How can our listeners get in touch with you? So I am kind of a social ghost, but I do have a LinkedIn and an Instagram. So my LinkedIn is Nicholas de Grange and my Instagram, I guess it's handle, is at Nicholas de Grange. I'll be sure that link that into the show notes as well. Nicholas, is there anything else that we did not touch on or you would like to say before we wrap this up? No, I really feel like this was an incredible chat that we've had.

and I'm just so grateful that you had me on your platform. You are very welcome. Everybody deserves a chance. There's plenty of room for everybody to get out there and experience life in their own way. And I appreciate you coming on. This has been a great talk. Thank you. You've been listening to your transformation station.

Rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet. We hope you enjoyed the show. and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Join us weekly on Monday for the YTS Challenge and bi-weekly on Wednesday for the exclusive interviews at 8 p.m. Central Time. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at YTS, the podcast. We'll be back soon. Until then, this is your transformation station. Signing off.

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