Hi, I’m Shane.

I Felt Like I Was Destined to Fail

I didn’t start out as one of those “promising” kids.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Growing up, I felt like everyone else had the manual for life and somehow I’d misplaced mine.

It's not that I was lazy. I tried. I tried really hard.

But nothing I tried worked. Every effort to “get my life together” just produced more failure. I struggled through school, I dropped out of university, I drifted through some of the worst temp jobs imaginable (make minimum wage to spend all day carrying heavy boxes through a messy warehouse that would make OSHA implode, anyone?)... 

It felt like I was just defective, somehow, like life was a process of slow but steady humiliation for me. You can only fail at so many normal things before you start suspecting you’re missing a fundamental piece everyone else has.

A First Glimmer of Hope

The one thing that did work for me was martial arts. Since early childhood, I'd been obsessed with stories of knights and warriors. I devoured Jackie Chan movies, idolized Bruce Lee, read The Book of Five Rings...

So it's not entirely a surprise that the first time I walked into a martial arts gym, I felt right at home.

And what's more: I could actually see progress! Training was the one thing where I could clearly see my efforts pay off.

I went from awkward beginner to assistant instructor, and eventually ran my own kids’ class. This class became the most popular one at the entire school.

That changed something deep. I realized I could figure things out, given enough obsession and persistence.

The Way of the Entrepreneur

My obsession with the way of the empty hand and the way of the sword (and all the confidence it had engendered in me) became the basis for my next big step: entrepreneurship.

Since I had no qualifications and it was dawning on me that I'm unemployable, I was left with few other options.

But this time, I had a plan: what if I apply the same level of obsession and attention to this as I had to martial arts? Could I get good at this?

So I dove in. Read every book I could find. Scoured the web for blog posts, forum discussions, courses... anything that would teach me how to build a business.

And more importantly: I experimented. I did a lot of learning-by-doing.

At first, nothing worked and I had no clue. I didn't know how to start a business, how to create a website, or a product for that matter. I didn't know how to hire - and I couldn't afford to, anyway. I didn't know how to sell, how to do marketing, how to write copy...

But I kept going. I kept learning and practicing as much as I could. My life became a blur of work, eat, sleep, repeat. I just brute-forced my way forward until the puzzle started making sense.

Eventually, things started coming together. I had built several websites and they were starting to bring in some passive income. I wrote about my entrepreneurial journey on my blog and readership slowly started growing.

I launched my first product and it worked! Through several years of persistent effort, I ended up with over 2,000 customers. Financial freedom was in sight!

Soon after, I co-founded SwissMadeMarketing, which was the first company I grew to over 7 figures in annual revenue. Then followed Thrive Themes, which grew to a team of over 100 people, 50,000+ customers and my first exit as a founder.

Entrepreneurship was an absolute trial by fire for me. I had to figure out how to work more effectively, how to be productive and manage my time well. Then, how to hire, how to manage teams, how to create a shared vision. I was forced to develop real leadership skills and the stakes were growing as more and more people's livelihood depended on me.

A question I started getting a lot was "how do you do all this?!" - which led me to teach productivity skills in focus & action as well as leadership skills.

Before long, I was a recognized expert in my industry, I'd get asked for selfies by people at conferences and I spoke on stage in front of an audience of hundreds...

It seemed that I'd figured out the formula for success: learn the skills, work obsessively, don’t quit.

The Cracks Start Showing...

But over time, the limits of that formula became obvious.

The same approach that got me success professionally left other parts of life untouched - or worse.

My love life was a mess. A lack of social confidence and deeply seated sexual shame made every relationship a source of struggle and pain in my life.

Try as I might, I couldn’t logic or hustle my way out of this problem.

The same was true for burnout. I had accomplished a lot, but often at the cost of my well being. And more of "the grind" was clearly no solution here.

And then, it got worse.

MUCH worse.

When COVID hit and crushed one of my projects, I did what I always do: I stubbornly kept grinding. I kept slamming my head against the wall. For four years straight, I was determined to not give up, to keep going and somehow pull through.

Only this time the wall didn’t break. I did.

That was a turning point for me: I finally had to admit defeat. The system I'd built my life around was no longer working.

It was scary to admit but relying on stubborn, hard work, cold logic and strategic planning - it simply didn't work for some problems. And no amount of “doubling down” would change that.

Discovering the Secret of Living in Alignment

That realization forced me to look elsewhere. I started exploring what you could broadly call the spiritual dimension, not as an escape, but as a survival strategy.

From the depths of my mind, lessons from over a decade before, from my chapter as a martial artist, bubbled back to the surface.

Had I not read the Tao Te Ching? Learned about ideas such as going with the flow of life?

Had I not heard this message over and over again, from hardened warrior cultures and certified badasses I idolized?

Musashi: accept everything just as it is.

Bruce Lee: be like water, my friend.

What if life isn’t something to be wrestled into submission? What if there’s a way to cooperate with it instead?

I began experimenting with intuition, embodiment, and what I can only describe as inner alignment - a sense that there’s a compass inside that actually points the right way if I’d just stop overriding it.

Following that compass changed everything.

Problems I’d spent years trying to brute-force started resolving almost effortlessly.

From Control to Connection

Along the way, I began working more directly with people: coaching, running men’s groups, leading workshops and retreats. I also started the QuitByHealing project to help men overcome porn addiction (an issue I had struggled with for most of my life).

What struck me is that the biggest breakthroughs didn’t come from clever strategies or perfect logic. They came from presence - the ability to drop in with someone, tune into what’s actually happening beneath the words, and speak from that depth.

It’s not something you can fake. It feels like touching the real current underneath all the noise.

That’s what I teach and explore now: how to live, work, and relate from that place of alignment.

How to stay ambitious and rooted in the real world, build companies, create, lead, without burning yourself alive in the process.

The Ripple Effect - Create A Better World Through Inner Work

I’m still an entrepreneur at heart. I still love building things that work and make a difference. But my focus has shifted.

What I’m obsessed with now is the quality of being behind the doing. It's about cultivating a state from which right action naturally flows. Because once you’re aligned, you no longer have to force everything.

That’s the essence of my work: helping people return to that alignment so they can create, love, and lead from a place of clarity and strength.

I believe that when one person shows up in that way, it ripples outward. It changes conversations, relationships, communities. That’s the kind of contagion I want to spread.