Divorce, Bankruptcy and Devastation to Success in E-Commerce with Neil Twa

Dr. Brad Miller 0:00

Today with Neil, he is all about

Dr. Brad Miller 0:04

launching and operating and acquiring e-commerce brands focusing

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on Amazon FBA and other aspects of marketing. But he also

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comes from a background of having some challenges and some

Dr. Brad Miller 0:17

financial struggles in his life. And he has some things to teach us

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and lead us in this area. Neil Welcome to Beyond adversity.

Neil 0:25

Wonderful. I'm honored. And thank you for having me on. Dr. Miller.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:27

It is good to have you on here and to teach us a little bit

Dr. Brad Miller 0:32

about what you're about. And obviously, you're successful in

Dr. Brad Miller 0:34

the business world and Amazon FBA and e-commerce and

Dr. Brad Miller 0:38

you've had some exciting opportunities in that area, we're

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gonna get to that in just a little bit. But it hasn't always been

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the case. I know that to be from talking a little prior to our

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conversation here today hasn't always been the case, and

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you had some struggles and some challenges in your life.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:54

Just tell us your story about some of the adversities that you

Dr. Brad Miller 0:56

face that led you eventually to do what you're doing now.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:59

But what are some things that you had to face in your life?

Neil 1:01

Yeah, thank you for that. And I appreciate you asking that question.

Neil 1:04

I'll try to keep it as small as possible been on target.

Neil 1:09

I've kind of lived a couple of lives. I'm only 46. But I've reinvented

Neil 1:12

or restarted multiple times from scratch, and had to go up and

Neil 1:17

down and learn some very hard life lessons in the process. And

Neil 1:21

in simple terms, I learned how to kind of make my own way a little bit.

Neil 1:23

My dad worked as a mechanical engineer, I guess is the best way

Neil 1:28

to put it, although he was more of a shop guy worked for

Neil 1:31

a company and had come out of the Navy has been eight

Neil 1:33

years in that and was a hard working determined guy he

Neil 1:36

dropped out of high school and life was for him was a bit tough,

Neil 1:39

but he did the best he could. And it meant we didn't really

Neil 1:41

need anything, but anything we wanted, wasn't really available.

Neil 1:44

So I quickly learned that I needed to go make some additional money.

Neil 1:47

So I set out to start mowing lawns in the neighborhood. And they

Neil 1:51

gave me some additional cash in my teens, to kind of do a little

Neil 1:54

extra of what I wanted to do. And I didn't really have a business

Neil 1:58

background. And again, my father was more on the technical working

Neil 2:00

side and a very strong blue-collar guy who spent 30-plus years of his

Neil 2:04

life working very hard and doing very well. But I didn't have that

Neil 2:08

business and knowledge. And that's something that I wanted to glean.

Neil 2:10

I very much wanted to go into the military and follow

Neil 2:13

sort of in my dad's footsteps. So I decided to go to the Air Force.

Neil 2:16

And as I got through high school, which for me kind of felt sort

Neil 2:19

of easy. I kind of cruised through high school, not really learning

Neil 2:22

how to learn, as it turns out, as part of my story will tell you. But here

Neil 2:26

In the end result, I didn't really want to go to college,

Neil 2:29

I actually wanted to go in the Air Force and become a

Neil 2:30

fighter pilot. And so I was set to do that I went to the recruiter's office.

Neil 2:34

Turns out in six foot-five will not fit in an F-16 pilot and that dream

Neil 2:38

was squelched. Because I had a music background.

Neil 2:41

And I've been playing since the fourth grade, jazz and

Neil 2:43

classical trumpet and had gone off-state a couple of times,

Neil 2:45

I had scholarships to go to college, almost full, right?

Neil 2:48

So I decided to go ahead and go to college, I had choices

Neil 2:51

across the country to go to and I ended up at a little liberal

Neil 2:54

arts college in Iowa in the middle of the cornfields where

Neil 2:56

I found three years of nothing but trouble, fell

Neil 2:59

out of college twice had to be reinstated. I did not want

Neil 3:02

to be there, as you probably heard me say a minute ago.

Neil 3:05

And I was trying to find my way through it. But in that process

Neil 3:07

as technology and internet started to come on board,

Neil 3:10

and suddenly machines were showing up. And I was like

Neil 3:13

fascinated about how that worked. And nobody else knew.

Neil 3:15

So as soon as I could, I went down and got my $4.25 seven

Neil 3:18

hour job at the computers, whatever you want to call it down

Neil 3:23

at the computer lab, I guess, learning how to build these

Neil 3:26

machines, put them together and network

Dr. Brad Miller 3:27

Oh is this in the college campus?

Neil 3:28

On college campus, we didn't have a computer room

Neil 3:31

yet. And that's part of what was getting set up.

Neil 3:34

We started with the DX 280s. And eventually, when the

Neil 3:36

Pentium showed up, that was a whopping big deal.

Neil 3:38

And when those three one came on, everybody's

Neil 3:40

freaking out. So I learned how to do that through the

Neil 3:43

time that I was studying, I discovered I had sort of an interest

Neil 3:45

in the computer technology side of it and what was really

Neil 3:48

possible like nobody truly knew just yet, but there was a lot

Neil 3:51

of opportunity. But I also realized, at some point, I didn't want

Neil 3:54

to stay in the academia world per se, I had that opportunity.

Neil 3:57

And I had a great life, doing the, you know, the aspects of

Neil 4:00

learning it, which were cool. But I also knew there was a lot

Neil 4:03

more and again, I didn't really want to be there. So I was

Neil 4:05

always looking for a way to kind of get out of that. So my

Neil 4:07

third year of college I dropped out, I realized that, you know,

Neil 4:10

to stay in that would be go to computer science beyond a

Neil 4:12

green screen and live my life behind a programming desk.

Neil 4:15

And that was not my aptitude. I was too inclined to do other

Neil 4:18

things. And the creativity of the music and stuff in me was

Neil 4:21

just like that's too linear, too structured, I need something that

Neil 4:23

flows and more creative, more intuitive and you know, can be

Neil 4:27

changed. So I knew that business and internet and the

Neil 4:30

E commerce world was something I wanted to get involved in,

Neil 4:32

in business around I just didn't know how. But I went out and got

Neil 4:35

a little consulting gig, because I knew enough to network. And so

Neil 4:38

I was helping to network computers inside of banks up in

Neil 4:40

Lee's Summit, Missouri. And the guy took a chance on me and

Neil 4:43

it was an opportunity to learn. I taught myself some programming

Neil 4:45

at that time. It was just HTML. And then I started to learn database

Neil 4:48

programming, ASP pages. I taught myself how to do that and

Neil 4:52

eventually got better contracting jobs where I was being

Neil 4:55

paid 10$ to $25 an hour. And that led me to an opportunity

Neil 5:00

To make a Hail Mary pass from a contract job in sprint to

Neil 5:03

what was becoming sprint PCs as division for the launch of the

Neil 5:07

first mobile phone, and they were hiring people across.

Neil 5:09

And so I threw my Hail Mary in there to see what what happened.

Neil 5:12

I got picked up to be one of the people who was managing

Neil 5:15

the customer support rep knowledge base. For the first phone

Neil 5:18

launches, sprint PCs, the big brick phone. We take it for granted

Neil 5:21

today. But that was a one hour charge phone. And we thought

Neil 5:23

this was the most amazing thing that ever happened. And it

Neil 5:26

Neil 5:30

literally, to be hired full time into sprint. And to oversee the

Neil 5:34

knowledge meant we had about 50,000 web pages that this

Neil 5:36

little team was saying. And eventually I became manager over

Neil 5:39

that team, there was about four or five of us, of all walks in ages.

Neil 5:42

By that point, I was about 21, I was making more in a year than

Neil 5:45

my dad made at that stage. And taking off got to watch.

Neil 5:50

You know, within that five, six years of sprint, we went from

Neil 5:52

Neil 5:56

that were within our knowledge management to full artificial

Neil 6:00

intelligence knowledge systems and 25,000 reps to support

Neil 6:04

and I was flying around the world helping to support them.

Neil 6:07

So by the time I turned 25, I had a lot of success in that venture,

Neil 6:10

because I was one of the first in the door and got to see a lot.

Neil 6:12

And I learned something very quickly. It's who you know,

Neil 6:14

that gets you there. And it's what you know, that keeps you there.

Neil 6:16

So a lot of these things I had to learn on the fly. Sometimes

Neil 6:19

I was staying up till 11 o'clock and midnight at night, learning

Neil 6:21

the things that I was trying to apply on my job the next day.

Neil 6:24

And so as I did that, and got some success out of it

Neil 6:27

and just learned along the way. One of the partners

Neil 6:30

that came in from an IBM consulting group that came to help sprint,

Neil 6:35

do kind of what we were doing but at a larger level and

Neil 6:37

trying to take the lessons that had been learned from what

Neil 6:39

was the first knowledge management implementation at a

Neil 6:41

corporate level, and move it out to other places in the corporate world.

Neil 6:44

And IBM wanted to lead that up and sprint said, Sure, come on and help.

Neil 6:47

So for a year, I got to work very closely with a group of guys

Neil 6:50

from IBM made friends with one of the partners got to fly

Neil 6:53

out to Armonk, and got into IBM on a handshake.

Neil 6:56

So here I am, college dropout, no degree, working for IBM.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:00

You sure fast track all the way at a very young age.

Neil 7:03

I was moving very hard, I was willing to take risks, I was

Neil 7:06

okay with failing big and seeing opportunities to win large

Neil 7:10

and taking some chances within that I didn't quite play.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:13

Were you a single guy at this time?

Neil 7:15

I was married to a woman that I met in college when I was 19.

Neil 7:20

And that leads to some other adversity commerce and part

Neil 7:22

of your five ds that you mentioned.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:25

We talk about it, I just know that for some people hard

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charging young people just get in, there's not a lot

Dr. Brad Miller 7:29

of other obligations and hit it hard.

Neil 7:33

Why? And and responsibilities during that time as well.

Neil 7:37

But I understood the level of risk I was willing to play there

Neil 7:40

was maybe feeling a little different than others. And I was

Neil 7:43

willing to risk some of those things to see the potential of the

Neil 7:46

reward because I knew what was possible. And I was willing

Neil 7:48

to push myself to see what I was capable of doing. And so

Neil 7:51

because of that I operated a little bit out of fear, I guess less

Neil 7:54

of fear, to be clearer, and more of just pure ambition, quite frankly.

Dr. Brad Miller 8:01

Ambition drove you and eventually, some things went south it sounds well.

Neil 8:08

yes, my ego and pride overtook my common sense.

Neil 8:14

And in the process of that, well, I fell in love with this girl

Neil 8:18

somewhere in the first year or two of our marriage,

Neil 8:21

she fell out of love with me and didn't mention it. And in the process

Neil 8:25

of that while traveling and doing the business, she decided to start

Neil 8:28

a second life without me. And as I would learn that later on,

Neil 8:32

she really started an entire life without me she was traveling

Neil 8:36

around the country when I wasn't there. When I was traveling,

Neil 8:39

she took on a new name, a new identity, different set of

Neil 8:42

credit cards and really became a whole different person.

Dr. Brad Miller 8:45

So we're not talking about someone who's just kind

Dr. Brad Miller 8:47

of fantasizing or whatever about this.

Neil 8:49

she went in the real world I discovered it returning from

Neil 8:53

a trip one time when I was walking through the parking

Neil 8:55

lot going to pick up my car and notice there was another

Neil 8:58

car there that looked exactly like mine. And as I was walking

Neil 9:01

past that car, I thought okay, the license plate is even looking

Neil 9:03

like mine. But in that euphoria moment in that displacement that

Neil 9:07

occurs in that shock, you're questioning the reality of what you're

Neil 9:12

looking at your questioning the reality of the situation, because

Neil 9:14

at that moment you're trying to process the shocking reality that

Neil 9:17

something is very wrong about why it's completely disjointed.

Neil 9:21

It's completely just joining your reality fractures for a moment

Neil 9:23

in my reality fractured into two splits the one that I had known

Neil 9:26

in that moment and the one that it is just split into and the

Neil 9:28

moment I realized that car was there and it should not have

Neil 9:30

been there. It did for a moment. Yeah, it shocked me, kicked me back.

Neil 9:35

And to the point where I didn't know what to do. So I went

Neil 9:37

on home and kind of you know, did life for a little while, trying

Neil 9:41

to wonder how that actually worked out. Only to learn you

Neil 9:45

know, later as my suspicions would no longer be squelched in

Neil 9:49

my reality was fractured and my cognitive dissonance was broken.

Neil 9:52

And all of a sudden I was faced with learning the reality of my

Neil 9:55

life as I had not understood it to what I was now understanding.

You know, I had to realize that she had an entire relationship

with multiple men a different language and cell phone pictures

and all kinds of stuff, I discovered that that really solidified the fracture.

So we've spent the better part of a year, getting divorced.

After two years of separation and dealing with those issues as

they came out over time, I was willing to reconcile

Were their children involved as well?

Thank God, there were no children involved.

So that made the break a little bit easier, although this was

a girl that I had fallen in love with. And I was very much

dedicated to making it work, to the point that I was willing to

jeopardize my job, my financial status and other things to get

counseling to help her out, only to eventually come through the

mourning process of waking up and realizing and anger

process and getting through the reconciliation and coming

to the last stages, that she never wanted to be a part of it.

And the lie started from the very beginning, I just didn't

realize that I was born to it. And yeah, so that was quite a wake up call.

Your world kind of came crashing down. Did you maintain your career or shift?

I maintain my career only because I threw myself into it.

And only because it gave me the opportunity to be moving

because I was traveling three times a week to different locations,

week by week, almost 200 travel days in the year, I simply

let the apartment go, I put all this stuff in a container and I

lived as a road warrior for almost a year. So I lived out of hotels, I was moving, I was shifting.

So your marriage was ending, your hard charging, traveling a lot living,

strode myself into the work.

Just threw yourself into that.

While having to deal with divorce papers and legal stuff in the process.

Did any other crashes come along, you know, knew the parts of your life?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that wasn't the first.

I just know from my experience that many times one crash

of a divorce or something like this is exacerbated by other

aspects. Sometimes its physical health, sometimes its.

Mental flaws and your personality, stubbornness, and arrogance

and pride, those things can kick other parts of your life

upside down. The issue there was I had kind of reconcile

that and decided to be a part of that. And that was when

I threw myself into my career for a while. I did met a person

who became a friend because I was not looking for anybody else.

And I eventually woke up to that person about a year after

meeting them, that there was more there because I was

blinded by life and the divorce and I met this very wonderful

girl from from Oklahoma, and we hit it off isn't that we're

great friends. And then one day it snapped and was like, Hey,

she's more than a friend. That's it took about a year later

for that to kind of kick in. But that sent us on a different path I

had pulled unfortunately, due to the divorce, a lot of debt

and other things along with me, in order to get out of it.

I had a business on a side hustle that was doing great that

ended up crashing, she ended up going on the warpath

and pretty much destroying everything from my 41k to my life

to my credit score. I didn't know my car I owned

what was in it, I was pretty much starting over from zero along with.

So your former wife devastate you financially or

was it a part of your financial devastation as well?

After the six months of trying to get divorced under one

name with the name that she originally was married under,

we had to redo the entire divorce again, when it was discovered

in the court during the day with a judge that she had a

completely different identity. And we had to redo the whole

thing all over again. So we went after six more months of that.

And in that process, something changed in her and she decided

to not play the victim and instead went after everything I had.

So when I walked out of it in order to get divorced to leave the

whole thing behind and start over I came up with nearly zero

and my bank account, I own all the debt. I own the Bank

of Ripsi itself failed credit and nothing. But the suitcase

and the stuff in the car that I didn't know.

If you had dead you're a little less than zero then weren't you?

Well, I get Yeah. So I met this girl and got back into life.

And I continued to start paying down the debt. And I still had

my job. And so I was working forward through that point and

the relationship extended. But later on, a lot of that financial

burden unfortunately got dragged into that new relationship.

And then we eventually got married and to a very different

person than the one I had originally met someone who is

willing to fight by my side, someone who knew what I went

through and was willing to take the debt on with me and

make a plan to fix it. She had just finished her Bs in nursing.

And she was working and doing great. And between that

in our jobs we were quickly come overcoming the debt

unfortunately, I got very successful, I'm gonna say this then

run the wrong way in some online media and mobile

advertising that did very well. And then I processed

suddenly, we were very flush with cash. And the change

led me into an investment strategy, a bit of naivety

sucked in by a friend that caused me to invest way too

much into that and the output of that was I got too

leveraged into the business before I realized that they were

messing with investor funds. The SEC could get involved

there was a whole lot of things going on that

got discovered with that

Sound it got ugly got legal and some things like that.

I got indemnifiedand bailed out and my indemnification

of component was to file bankruptcy. Bankruptcy in the

business and my personal life in order to be indemnified.

From what was coming from the investors.

Just to tick off a few things here. You've had a divorce,

you've had all the middle anguish with that.

You've got remarried, you've got trying to build a life you've

had super success, which can be an adversity of itself.

And and then you also had a crash of your business and financial.

Correct. So I'm with a wife now and three children

with a fourth on the way and we're filing bankruptcy

And her medical conditions and got bad enough,

she could no longer work. So we had no income.

So you have some medical issues as well on top everything.

Yep, she has some terrible medical issues discovered during.

You've a period of time when things were a bit of a mess sounds like.

For about 10 to 12 years, life was a big mess for me.

Yeah. Partially created by myself partially circumstantial,

I take my responsibility, of course, and then just a series of

bad luck events, I guess, is how you wouldn't say, it was stupid

on my part, I'll take responsibility. But the end result

You've found some ways to start to maneuver out of that you.

A lot of people stay stuck in that state, you know, they just

keep cycling through. Pardon me, and cycling through bad things.

I call it the malaise of mediocrity or the malaise of failure

is keep doing the same thing. expecting different results.

Sounds like you were a bit of a risk taker, an entrepreneur,

and sometimes you got burned with that.

I still hadn't fully let go of my pride and ego,

The poeple I know, myself included, that's part of their DNA

is kind of the keep trying thing. So what do you do?

What kind of things do you try? What kind of actions

did you take to start to maneuver out of this mess you found yourself?

Well, for my for the fact that the medical issues occurred,

start with my wife when she got pregnant. In the first year,

we were married, she ended up having her first transient

ischemic attack, which is known as a mini stroke, which

legally left her incapable of driving. And so she went on to

bed rest, which forced her to stop working. During that process,

we were trying to discover why these things were occurring for

her the taxation of the baby on her body, and we couldn't quite

figure it all out. And we spent a better part of a year in the

medical community trying to discover that issue, which was making

it very difficult for her as she got through that first pregnancy.

And we started to discover some of the issues medically, we started

overcoming some of those challenges in the process of dealing

with that, and then into our second and third children. We had to

really kind of fight all these problems and demons, and even for a

short time had to go on, you know, subsidies and Medicare subsidies

and stuff, which was very, you know, humbling. And I think what I was

what's happening here to where you are at one time, you were flown

Very much so terribly humbling terribly, like in me as a fighter,

knowing who I am, I'm not a fighter fight, personnel fight,

even if I'm not sure I'm right, I'm still gonna fight. So at the

end of that it was not going to give up. And I knew this was

going to be something I'm on temporarily. And someday, it might

be my story, but I'm not staying there. Like, I'm going to do

whatever it takes to get off. So what ended up happening,

though, the documentary was I could not get a job because of the

medical conditions that my wife had. She couldn't be left alone,

we had small children. And so I was there.

What ended up happening

was, in my opinion, God sat me in a place

and in the storm and just said,

Be quiet. I got this and just sat here and

like, pushed my arrogance and pride

out of the way, because that is what

led to those other decisions that

made financial ruin and caused problems.

So for a period of almost a year

And so that painful, that's probably what you need

Extremely painful, I had to be Dad and Mom, we had to work

through those issues. It got even worse after the third pregnancy.

But God miraculously showed money, things and opportunities,

I couldn't get a job to save my life. I wish I had all the credentials

in the world and couldn't get a job got rejected by everyone.

Business and entrepreneurial stuff just would not go and literally,

money still showed up, even down to the penny, which I know was

completely God. She needed one month $1,859 And like 33 cents,

and it showed up to pay our bills and keep things going. But I can't

remember exactly how it showed up. It just did.

So for a while I had to be Dad and Mom, things got worse.

With the caretaker I'm sure as well part of that process

All day long. Because we had five kids

with four kids and four and a half years,

It's like you also had to do some caretaking of your wife a lot

And my wife as well. And so as we got to that last child she had

A lot ofpeople who are kind of type A people aren't

necessarily inclined to be caretaker types, there are more

Not typically, it was very strange

Saying you know, there wasn't kind of

where you would have seen yourself?

No, not per se no. The guy that was in was very much

driven in the corporate ambitious world and thought

my kids would go to college and do this thing and

become these people. And I've since you know very

much changed that guy to a very different one.

I was humbled greatly

So you were humbled and then a part of this process for you.

Neil was somehow connecting with your spiritual side

or your your faith story. So let's go there for just a minute

about how that's it. You've mentioned a couple of times how

this was a part of the deal for you. It sounds like it was

not so much a part of the process for you when you were

hard driving guy, but now you bet humbled. So what was

kind of a pivotal aspect of spiritual ascpect to this, which

was helped you to get through this time and move

on to what you're doing now?

Well I mean, in simple terms, I had a relationship with

God and I always had I grew up in a what do we call a

Christian home, however, the belief and understanding of

God and then Jesus Christ is the one true light. And the

one way, was not something I had learned until much later in life.

So I had a relationship with God, but not Jesus.

And so what he constantly wanted me to do was wake up

to that and have a realization of a life saving grace.

And he gave me stumbling blocks that would put, he was

put in my path, to cause me to fall in order to reach a

point where I would where I would surrender.

And so that happened, and the moment where we had,

you know, for children, no money, a looming bankruptcy,

and no way to make money, I was at the very bottom. And

as they say, when you get the bottom, there's nowhere to go,

but up, you look up. And in that moment, I looked up

and I surrender all of it to him, I said, I don't know how

I'm gonna do this be dad and mom make money,

do this work, I can't get a job. You know, all that. So I'm

giving it all to you. And I'm just going to go and see

what happens next. And so as I surrendered that and

humbled that a faith, believing and understanding of

Jesus Christ, He came to my heart, and in a matter

of conversion, I accepted Jesus, not through some prayer,

or some mechanism or other person through just a conversion

moment, a true conversion moment, and unlike anything

I would have experienced in the past, and from that

things changed dramatically.

You went through what I call my teaching your kind of,

you know, your wilderness moment, you know, your

wilderness. And most time, Neil, for most of us, that's

not exactly a moment, like a week or two, it is a season,

you know, it's more of a, the biblical metaphor is 40

days or 40 years. I mean, you know, you got no one

the Ark and Moses on the mountain. And Moses on the

promised land. So is what I'm trying to get at. And you

kind of had to hit the bottom and stay there and

work through that. And you had to be humbled in order

to get eradicate here, and then do but you didn't took

some actions then and, and what I'm trying to get with

you here is there's a lot of people who are listening to us

right now and through things that you teach through what

you're about, who've been humbled by life, and they've had

bad things happen to them. Divorce, you know, I went through

a devastating divorce myself when I was young, and it messed

me up for years emotionally, spiritually, and

financially everything. And it took a long time to recover.

And a lot of folks if it wasn't, you know, COVID crisis knocked

a lot of people's business out and physical health. So when,

but the people took action, and you're an action, your action

by his person, and let's talk about it. And of course, finances is

always a thing for everybody, no matter what they say, you

know, It's always there. Yes. And so let's talk about some

of the actions that you took. Not just financially business wise,

the kind of your spiritual health, your emotional health,

your relationships, but also to kind of, you know,

what are some of the actions you took, you've had

this pivotal moment, you've had your faith moment,

season, and now you're getting out of it. What are you doing?