A movement born from love, loss, and the belief that showing up changes everything
This is the story of how COE began. Not with a business plan or a grant proposal — but with a wound, a vision, and a brother whose love outlasted his life.
There's a café in Cambridge — little place on Brattle Street, terrible coffee, magnificent silence. I was sitting there the morning my father called. September 6th, 2014. He said two words.
He's gone.
My brother Tolik was thirty years old. He'd carried a brain injury for a decade — headaches that would have broken most men. A fog that settled in and never left. He never mentioned it. Not once. Not to me.
What he did do was show up at my dorm room during the semester I was failing out of everything. No lecture. No disappointment. He just reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed me five hundred dollars. "For tutoring," he said. "Books. Whatever you need."
I found out months later that was all he had. He walked to work after that. Ate once a day. Sometimes not at all.
When I had nothing, he gave me everything he had left. And then he was gone.
But the wound goes back further than that phone call. It goes back to the kid I was — growing up in New Jersey with fire in his chest and nothing in his hands. No connections. No roadmap. Just a desperate, unformed sense that there had to be more.
And there were people who showed up. A tutor who came three times a week — not because anyone paid him enough, but because he saw something in me I couldn't see in myself. An extra-curricular learning project (Masmid Govoha) that didn't tell me what to become but created conditions where I couldn't help but become more of who I already was.
Neither told me what to become. They created conditions where I couldn't help but become more of who I already was.
That is the wound. Not just my brother's death. The decade before it — when nobody showed up for him the way they showed up for me. And the question that has followed me ever since: What if someone had?
Here's the part no one tells you about grief. They talk about sadness. They don't talk about rage.
For ten years, I hated him. How dare he leave. After carrying me through every dark corridor of my life, how could he abandon me the moment I finally walked into the light? Harvard. Silicon Valley. Everything we whispered about as kids in New Jersey — and his chair was empty.
Then one evening, at a ceremony in Ashland, Oregon — beautiful place, the kind of town that smells like pine and forgiveness — I watched a fly. Just a common housefly, throwing itself against a windowpane. Over. And over. And over. Killing itself against a wall it couldn't see. The door was six inches to the left.
And I understood something I'd been too close to see for a decade.
We were both that fly. Tolik and I. Trapped behind walls we couldn't name. The exit was always there — we just couldn't step back far enough to find it.
He wasn't my brother who left me. He was my soldier who fell. He didn't abandon the mission. He completed it. He held the line until I was strong enough to stand on my own. And then he laid down his arms.
As I entered a meditative state deeper than I had ever known, I saw him. He came to me — not as memory, not as metaphor — in a vision. And he came to relieve me of the tremendous burden I had been carrying for so many years since his passing.
Throughout this vision, I felt it completely. Through my whole body. The intense love he had for me throughout his lifetime. And how it was this very love — not ambition, not discipline, not grit — that had carried me through the most difficult challenges of my life. Long after he was gone.
His love was still doing the carrying.
In that moment, I realized how I had been blessed with this incredible angle of love and understanding. It was through the people in my life who showed up for me. Without anyone asking them to. They just appeared — to help me, that kid reaching up with empty hands — completely of their own free will, and showed me empathy.
In that moment of clarity and forgiveness — for all the pain and suffering I had endured — I understood my mission. My calling.
It was to start a movement of showing up for others in a way that makes their efforts visible and their potential undeniable. Because they remember — they remember — how powerful they really are. In exactly the same way my brother showed up for me.
And for me to continue spreading his love in the world. Through mentorship. Through accountability. Through genuinely showing up for others with such enthusiasm, such ferocity of presence, that my brother might still be alive today — if he had been on the receiving end of it.
But the seed had been planted years earlier. In 2018, four years after my brother took his own life, I found myself in a deep meditative brainstorm with my friend and business partner Steve. We were sitting in a poorly furnished office we could barely afford in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The kind of office where the radiator clanks like a man trying to escape a trunk, and you learn to talk over it.
In that session, I asked a question:
What if people from all walks of life had access to an institution — a real one, with weight and permanence — that gave them real-world knowledge and skills? One that rewarded them with ranking, promotions, and a measurably better quality of life.
But this institution would be fundamentally different. It wouldn't measure progress by how much it could take from you. It would measure your progress by how much it could give you.
And give it shall.
Accountability. Lessons. Tools. A network leading to measurable abundance, prosperity, financial well-being, and — most importantly — a greater knowledge of oneself and one's major purpose in life. A place where families could convene on weekends. Study together. Grow as a family unit.
I called it COE. A covenant we all signed. Of education. Of being there for others.
But really — and I suspect you already know this — it's just another way of expressing love. The kind of love my brother showed me, long before the darkness took him.
You know what Tolik actually gave me? It wasn't five hundred dollars or advice. It was perspective. The rarest thing in the world. The ability to see yourself — your pain, your potential, your invisible walls — from an angle of love rather than fear.
That single gift saved my life. And now I hand it to teenagers who are losing themselves the way I was losing myself.
Seven teachings. Seven weeks. Tools they'll carry for the rest of their lives — long after they've forgotten my name.
Every single one of them carrying a fragment of what a man with five hundred dollars and a brain injury gave to his kid brother in a dormitory that smelled like stale pizza and desperation.
This is the Covenant of Education. It's not a program. It's a debt I intend to repay for the rest of my life.
Our most granular success metric — the atom from which all future success and impact follows — is this:
The moment someone sees in themselves a newfound power or ability they had not seen before. Or believed they could possess. The moment they recall a glimpse of the Godly power within themselves.That single atom of realization. That is our proof of concept. That is our currency.
And this proof of success forces us to answer to our mission — the question we ask ourselves at every milestone, at every turn:
How do we show up for as many people as possible, as early as possible, in a way that makes their efforts visible and their potential undeniable — because they reawaken the Godly power within themselves?A system that, when followed, brings ongoing success and happiness to the practitioner. Not as a promise. As a pattern.
The foundation of all transformation. The belief — held in the bones, not just the mind — that a better life is possible and already underway.
Clear thinking leads to clear action. Guard the mind against noise and distortion so your true signal can emerge.
See your future before it exists. Build the life you want in your mind first — then walk toward it with conviction.
The bridge between knowing and doing. Take action despite fear. Move toward the door even when all you see is glass.
The ability to inspire, connect, and lead. Not performance — presence. The kind that makes others feel seen.
Create sacred space for growth. A protected environment where deep work, reflection, and transformation can happen.
The sustainable pace of lifelong growth. Consistency over intensity. Show up again. And again. And again.
Our plan to scale is to disseminate the 7 Teachings through cards, cohorts, and one-on-one guidance — reaching as many people as possible, ecologically.
Explore the 7 TeachingsDiscovering their purpose by 2040. Through the 7 Teachings. Through mentorship. Through showing up.
And after that, we intend to announce a Purpose Prize of one million dollars — awarded to the school, youth organization, or community program that succeeds in producing the most measurable improvement in teen purpose clarity within eighteen months of using the 7 Teachings program and methodology.
One million dollars. Because when you're serious about a thing, you put weight behind it.
Someone taught you to walk. And now there's a kid out there, reaching up with empty hands, waiting for you to return the favor.
Your cohort carries your name — or the name of someone you loved and lost. At the beginning of every lesson, we tell their story. Your legacy becomes a teenager's turning point.