How old were you when you died?

That guy in the picture? That was me several years (and belt sizes) ago. We had some good times together. Which, incidentally, led to the belt size situation. But I digress.

Friends, I was your classic middle-aged archetype. Career-obsessed, not giving a damn about the bigger picture and content so long as my business was rocking and I appeared successful. 

And, truly, it was fun for a while. 

After working a series of jobs, some I loved, some I...well...yeah...I used my 20+ years of experience as a comedian to build a speechwriting company called Winning Wit. Our motto was, "Bringing humor to life", and we helped everyone from professional wrestlers to NFL stars to flight attendants to corporate moguls deliver killer speeches and roasts for big events. 

Times were good. The work was fun. The clients were gems.

But then 2022 happened. A mysterious illness turned me into a walking skeleton for a year, with no ability to keep down food, travel, deliver keynotes, host events, facilitate group trainings or even smile. I became a recluse; and was taken to within an inch of my life.

It was all gone, just like that. The party was over.

But what followed was something even better than I could have dreamed. A mystical calling (think Field of Dreams but without the farm debt or awesome acting of James Earl Jones) caused a deep dive into why I chose to show up as this Geoff character on Earth to begin with. And it had nothing to do with business or money or fame or the acquisition of good scotch (tragically).

It was about remembering that my mission here was to use humor not as a mechanism for jaded sarcasm, vicious roasting or empire-building, but as a bridge. A way to loosen up the knots that keep us stuck in our adult stories, and allow us to play again. Like we did when we were kids. Before life told us we had to grow up.

Friends, I realized at that moment that we already had all the answers to our deepest questions about who we are and why we're here. We just needed a little nudge to help unlock them.

So the mission then was simple: Create the nudges.

For you. 

And everyone else who walks the same road of questioning everything.

That's when all the madness began. 

When I was compelled to build something that would be the home of all these different nudges.

The Soul's Speakeasy.