Ep 72I Was a Teenage Drug Lord Getting Rich and Making Enemies: The Yankel Meislin Story
Where does a 19-year-old with $200,000 keep $200,000?
Yankel Meislin
I Was a Teenage Drug Lord Getting Rich and Making Enemies: The Yankel Meislin Story
with Yankel Meislin
Failure is not the end. I failed many times in my life, many.
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Quotes
“It's a pit. You know, you're it's you're throwing it away, kind of like gambling.”
“I kind of made an attempt to trade my riches for my life.”
“Your son is in grave danger. He doesn't belong in this world. You need to get him out.”
“How many people that are alive get to say that their life was saved by a hitman and have the audacity to claim that there's no God.”
“If you speak in a place, it's nice kind of motivation, but it's not long-lasting inspiration.”
“The less I know about your business the the freer I am to ask questions that nobody would ask.”
“You just spent hours doing that. Isn't your time worth money?”
“This failure that happened was the best thing that could have possibly happened.”
Takeaways
- 1 Yankel Meislin grew up non-religious in Oceanside, Long Island. Small and bullied, he turned to weed as an escape and started dealing at 14 or 15 to pay for it.
- 2 He spent two years of high school in a daytime rehab program, repeatedly beating its drug tests. Contacts from Narcotics Anonymous later helped him deal cocaine and heroin.
- 3 At his peak, around age 19, he made about $200,000 a year with about 10 people working for him. He kept the cash buried in friends' yards and later walked away from it.
- 4 He had been jumped, robbed and stabbed. His own bodyguard, a heroin user, was stealing from him in the open.
- 5 A mafia hitman who learned the bodyguard used heroin called Yankel's mother and told her to get him out. His father, a drug therapist, arranged rehab in Florida.
- 6 At rock bottom, a 12-step speaker told the story of the binding of Isaac. He saw his own life in it, cried for the first time in years, and began to pray.
- 7 A Chabad shliach who works with Jews in rehab took him in. Yankel was moved that the rabbi trusted him around his children. He later learned in Kfar Chabad, became a sofer, married, and now coaches and speaks.
- 8 He sees coaching as uncovering the beliefs that hold a person back - different from consulting, which requires expertise in your field.
- 9 Money habits show up in coaching: clients who chronically pay late, and people afraid to invest in themselves in case they don't follow through.
- 10 Keeping up with the neighbors is empty, but so is extreme bargain hunting. He challenged a wealthy client who bid on used $75 jerseys to take his grandfather to Manhattan's most expensive steakhouse.
- 11 He has rebuilt from zero many times: as a young scribe in Israel, living in his parents' basement with three kids, climbing to the top of a job, and then starting over as a coach and author.
- 12 A business lesson from his past (host's recap): taking goods on credit is risky - if you can't pay people back, your integrity and reputation suffer.