He couldn’t pay his mortgage. He asked me the wrong question.

Last Thursday a guy on my call told the room he couldn’t pay his mortgage. He’s thirty. Five years into a business he started so he’d have freedom. What he got was a job that owns him, and now the market turned and it’s taking the house too.

He didn’t ask for pity. He asked me what industry he should move into. Wrong question. So I told him that, and then I told him the truth about where he actually was.

Nobody else on that call said a word for ten minutes. Because every one of them has been that guy. Some of them twice.

That’s what I’ve been doing for twenty years. Not the capital stuff, that’s downstream. I sit in a room with people who build things and I tell them what I actually see. Which is usually not what they came in asking about.

I’ve opened a place for that. It’s called The Come Up. $99 a month. One call a week, Thursdays, same time I’ve always been there. You bring the real thing, not the cleaned up version, and we take it apart in front of everyone. The people watching get as much as the person talking. That’s not a bonus. That’s the whole design.

There’s a framework in there too. Eight bottlenecks, and an assessment that tells you which one is actually yours instead of the one you think it is. Use it or don’t. The call is the thing.

I’m not going to sell you on this. If you’ve read me this long you already know if it’s for you.

-Nick