Suddenly, I was publicly speaking about my whole experience in childhood, all the mistakes I made, getting arrested. I was not an angel. And I was sharing that over the last ten years, I've been building very successful startups, leaning into the gifts that I was given that I just didn't know how to use when I was younger. And so I got to share fully with people who I was. And I think those were the moments where it really clicked.
Hello, and welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute. My name is Sadie Hanna. And in this podcast, you'll hear real conversations and stories with graduates about their courageous journey inward, and how their love and light are living in the world around them. Love's Everyday Radius. Thank you for being here and welcome. Hey everyone and welcome. I'm Sadie. I'm here today with Jake Breisch. Thank you so much for being here with
me. It's amazing to share this with you. Wonderful. A really interesting place to dive in is as we were preparing for this, we talked about bios, and you're like, actually, my bio has changed in some way. So maybe that's a good place to begin. Who are you? What do you do in the world? How has your bio changed over the past couple of years?
Yeah. Well, it's, it's funny that the first thing that comes to mind, I think, for most when you hear about a biography is, I think, especially for Americans, is professional because it's much of how we define our lives. But I think more recently, over the last year and change, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to truly live into who I am more fully, and I think Hoffman was part of that.
I guess I'll start with a little bit of the context on, like, what created this human, which is, you know, I grew up in small town Upstate New York, and I was raised by two parents that were super altruistic and very much box checkers. Always got great grades, went to the top schools, first in their family to go to college, and I was the middle child. And when I came along, I was a little different. I got to high school, and I was the only Jewish kid in the school of 800 people.
I didn't know that other Jews existed at that time. We're just different. We're just we're just different humans here. I was also ADHD. Today, ADHD, I feel like, means something slightly different because we're all so distracted by our devices. But but back then, I was just distinctly and unusually energetic and distracted and hard for teachers to manage, and that that started all the way in elementary.
I was diagnosed at nine, and that commenced, like, a eight year period where I was in and out of the doctor's office with my mother. They would always ask me this question of, so how are the meds working? How's Jake doing? And I remember distinctly that I would never answer that question. My mother would answer that question, and I just kind of accepted that that was part of my life that it was
different. The most embarrassing thing that would happen in school would be that I would forget to take my meds in the morning, and I would get I would see a call come in to the classroom in my first class. And as soon as the ring happened, I knew immediately, I thought, oh, I forgot to take my meds, and my father would be down there, and it would just be mortifying to me. But that's, like, just a little bit of the context of me as a child.
My parents were phenomenally loving and caring in the ways that they knew, and I consider myself to be super lucky. But all of that context of being super creative, engaging, very loving, I got a lot of that from my father. It just didn't fit well in public school, so I had a lot of challenges, especially in high school. I got in actually quite a few fist fights because being the only Jewish kid in rural New York was, stimulated some interesting insults. It was really painful then.
And as I look back now, '35, especially after Hoffman and kinda seeing and uncovering a lot of the patterns that I'll carry forever, seeing where they came from and accepting that versus, you know, trying to change myself or beating myself up for who
I am. I think that's a big part of the change that I went through, I mean, Hoffman particularly, but I had some struggles post high school figuring out what I wanted to do, but I ended up following my parents footsteps and going off to, stereotypically, from the office, Cornell University.
And getting there was actually another moment for me, especially because I screwed off so much in high school and got into so much trouble, suddenly be at an Ivy League school with more rule followers, more box checkers. The first thing I remember at Cornell was how much I felt like I needed to fake who I was
once again. So now I was transitioning from being, like, you know, the cool kid in high school trying to, you know, trying to fit in, standing up for myself, getting into a lot of trouble, smoking a
lot of weed. And then I was at Cornell, and then I felt like I had to do it all over again because I, you know, by this point, I discovered that I definitely didn't wanna just follow the path of a lot of my peers from high school and just, like, end up staying in Geneva, New York, which is where I was born. And so I remember sitting in this info session around orientation that was about, you know, consulting or investment banking or something.
And the program I went to is, like, just kinda siphoned kids off to these top investment banking firms. I remember sitting there and just feeling like, oh, respect, but these aren't my people. Like, I don't feel like I fit in here again either. And by this point, I was just like I knew what it could feel like to
be myself. I'd kinda experienced it in brief moments where, like, people would appreciate my energy and creativity, and I knew that I didn't wanna end up back in a place where the career path I chose slammed me right back into that box that I was experiencing all through high school. And so, I went into the office at entrepreneurship at Cornell, and I had, you know, been thinking about starting
businesses. My parents encouraged us to make our own money, and so I was always snow shoveling, lawn mowing, hustling around the neighborhood, you know, finding ways to buy whatever toy I wanted or whatever. I was kind of excited at the idea of of building a start up, and so I got into that entrepreneurship at Cornell program. What's funny if I think back two years prior, I did the Hoffman process about a year
ago. If I think back when I was kinda in the thick of my career two, three years ago, all that I just shared, I wouldn't have even shared with the team members that I was working most closely. I was hiding that part of myself because I was embarrassed that when I was younger, I was screwing up, that I was medicated at an early age. I was told I have a disability.
I was put in classes where I had extra time for my test, and the people in those classes generally had a disability that for me felt different. I'm only now able to actually share all that with comfort. Yeah. I mean, I felt different is one thing, but it was also and that's a problem that needs to be fixed. I can really relate to, and I think a lot of people can also the experience of trying to fit in whether it's the high school
peers or in college. It's like, okay. Now I'm gonna somehow try to be what everyone else is or but knowing it doesn't quite fit. I think that's a really, not always human experience. Thank you for having the courage to share it and to lead with it. What you start to realize is that when you share the things that you're at times the most afraid of, you give people permission to share with you
the things that they're most afraid of. And then suddenly, you know that person more fully, and then suddenly, you have more connection with that person, and then suddenly, you can build a relationship that has just a different level of depth. I have to say, I think having traveled the world, been fortunate enough to just be in so many amazing places, and learned that in The US, it's even more acute, the desire to present in a certain way because that way is the quote unquote right way to be,
and we all carry that. We carry that for a long time. I carried it for thirty three, thirty four years, and it feels better to let that go. So taking us back into that day you walked into the office of entrepreneurship, take us there. Oh, I immediately could tell that these were my people. There was a venture capitalist there, a couple other students that were hacking on startup ideas, and I could just tell that I was kind of around some neurodivergent people.
There was less khakis and suits and a lot more casual, creative people in general. So I ended up just in that moment feeling appreciated for my energy level and feeling like I don't have to, like, act. And this woman, Deb Moshe, who I still keep in touch with and know very well, Zach Shulman, were incredibly helpful to to me in, like, kinda gaining confidence. Like, they believed in me. And I didn't usually get that from authority figures in education. I usually got that like stay in your
seat. Don't forget to do your homework. Make sure you're ready for that test tomorrow. Why are you fidgeting so much? Why are you cracking these jokes? I was used to that. So that was new. If I take it from there, there was a lot going on, but it was a lot of the same while I was finishing up at Cornell, which was I was just trying to complete my classes and trying to build a startup that I felt like had a meaningful impact on the world in a positive way that could stand the test of time
for my energy level. Because, like, by this point, you know, as I'm getting ready to exit Cornell, I'd done an internship with the founder of a company called AeroFarms who passed away just a few years back. He was one of the early leaders in aeroponic farming systems. So it was like a social impact startup, and I got to work side by side with the CTO of that company. It's become massive. Has nothing to do with anything I did.
That's for damn sure. But I got to see how quirky he was, how special he was, how obsessed he was. That was me. I just gained energy from solving these problems, and that really gave me a lot of confidence that this was the career path for me. As I was exiting Cornell, I had just started a company called Eversound. The idea was you know, we've got all these senior living communities all across the country. There's like 50,000 of these congregate living centers for older adults, dorms for
older adults. They've got different level of care. Some of them are health care related. Some of them are just independent living. But I had experience with a loved one that a lot of these places are really difficult to get socialization for a number of reasons. One reason being there just aren't the best activities. There isn't a lot going on in general. The other reason is hearing loss, people not being able to communicate with one another.
The approach that we took was unusual, which was we provided both assistive listening technology and live on demand programs that were streamed to a community for therapeutic recreational programs. So virtual travel and bingo and all sorts of fun games, and that kinda commenced a eight year journey where all I did was work. All I had going on was work. I was able to actually put all of my processing of why I am the way I am,
like, who am I truly. I put all of that on hold because all I was doing was building a company. Your patterns definitely come up. But after a while, I I realized it was holding me back, and I started doing some work on it. But I wasn't truly able to get into meaningful steps forward being the the person I wanted to be until I had the space to disconnect. But even the fact that I chose building a company and wanting to be validated as, quote, unquote, successful for my parents. I want to prove to
them that, like, hey. I know I screwed up a lot in high school, but look at me now. I've made it. I've built a company. You know? And it it was a source of motivation for me. It certainly was, but not always the best source of motivation because if your whole identity is tied up in something like that, during the down moments, those moments were so, so deep, so far down because if the business failed, then guess what I was again? I was a bad kid again. I failed.
And what I think the business allowed me to do was escape from what I needed to process and avoid it altogether. Because anytime something would come up, I could just be like, oh, yes. Sorry. I'm busy. I gotta I gotta do this. If I had social anxiety or something, I will always use that excuse. If I was spending time with family and it was really bring up a lot of stuff for me, easy. I go and I send emails for the next three hours. And everyone would respect that. It
was my escape. I just defined my whole life by it. What I really love is the through line of I felt different and isolated, and I've created this amazing product that helps people feel connected. That really was like, oh, how cool. It's an interesting reframing. I had a partner in this, Matt Reiners, who one of my best friends growing up, he and I were, like, perfectly complimentary. He was always the one out there externally
at the trade shows, working with communities. I did a lot of that too toward the beginning, but, like, I was for sure most comfortable kinda staying siloed, working behind the scenes and and making sure that we were hiring the best people and kinda setting the culture and the tone. Still, at that point, I I had a lot
of social anxiety. One way to look at it is I think a lot of members of my team at Eversound, if they stumble upon this or if we catch up anytime soon where I share more about myself, they would probably be able to perceive, they look back at my leadership that sometimes it probably felt a little forced, Sometimes it probably didn't feel fully me because part of this is also just being a young entrepreneur where you have to fake so
much. There are many times where I felt like I think this is what they say when this kind of thing happens, and it's almost a caricature. Suddenly being a startup CEO and struggling with what I struggled with, it's almost a caricature of what I was going through before to try and present as a good kid. Now I just have a whole lot of eyes.
We ended up raising, you know, tens of millions of dollars for this startup and hiring a hundred plus team members, and and there was a lot of responsibility, and there was a lot of people to fake it for. There's a lot there for me. So here you are. Stakes are high. Lots of people depending on you. Your sense of worthiness of I'm good. I'm not the bad kid, riding on it as well in the more vulnerable moments, and eight years of work, work, work, work that allowed you to not quite look at it.
So, ultimately, we know that somewhere in the middle of this story, you do the process. How did you get there? Well, there was a moment actually when toward the middle of building Eversound, so maybe four years in, we are starting to scale out. We moved too quickly, and I hired too many people, and I had to let handful of people go. And I didn't handle it well. I didn't really know what I was doing. Then suddenly, I had, of course, them upset with me.
The decision to do was very very obvious, but hard to understand for a team that felt like family. And suddenly, I had a lot of people that I truly cared about that did not like me anymore, that despise me is what it felt like. And I had this full blown breakdown. I called my mother and I was I remember exactly where I was. I was crying because it was one of the lowest moments I'd ever had. And I didn't know why it was so
triggering. Like, you're a startup CEO. You gotta make tough decisions, like, not everybody's gonna like you. I've been being told that all along, but this was the moment where it came true. And I was like, man, why why can't I handle that? Why is that so difficult for me? And in that moment, I kinda realized there was there's a lot that I need to process post Eversound. And so when we were acquired in 2023, that was the hardest six months of my life leading up to the acquisition,
Never worked so hard in my life. And then suddenly, it's over. You go from, like, hundred hour weeks to, you know, transactions closed. There's a lot of integration. But that was when I immediately turned my eyes toward, okay. It's time to take care of myself. It's time to to find the best way to learn who I am underneath, and I joined this group. It was called the post exit founders group. A friend of mine posted in that group, said that she had done the Hoffman process.
And I hadn't even heard of it at that point, but I was looking for a retreat. I did a couple weekend meditation retreats in Sedona. They didn't click for me. I was doing a lot of personal coaching, but then I heard about the Hoffman process. And the biggest thing that stood out for me was that I wouldn't have my phone for seven days guaranteed. Actually, I had two requirements. One was that phones would be taken away, and two, that
I could hide all of my work. I didn't wanna talk about work at all, period, full stop. I didn't wanna have that continue to cloud. And I think that was because one of the retreats I did in Sedona asked what people did, and I shared that I was very high level.
But there was a financial advisor in the group, and so I felt immediately the relationship changed with that person where, like, I could tell that they were perceiving certain things about me and wanting to to get close, not because they wanted to know who I was. So that's how that requirement ended up being part of it. And then I did my Hoffman process in March of twenty twenty four. By that time, I'd finished all responsibilities with the acquirer, and I was just ready to full force dive in.
I'm sure we all experience this need to present ourselves in a certain way and feeling underneath. Like, imposter syndrome is widely talked about professionally and just in general. But I think there's something really impactful for both the people you encounter in the future and for yourself to let as much of that shell.
I think of it kind of as a shell that you have around you that you just want with each passing year to just, like, shed a little bit more of that shell because it feels so good, and the world responds in really positive ways. And I think that's part of what I experienced while at the Hoffman process was that I felt this level of depth with other people that was in some ways really new to me.
And I kinda gave myself permission to be all the components of what kinda make up Jake and not hide from it by having a professional identity that's easy to hide with. I go back to that moment you described about walking into the office of entrepreneurship and this sense of maybe it's okay to show different parts of me, or maybe it's okay to engage with this that's different than how I've always tried to, like, force myself to be.
Is there a moment that you remember that stands out where you gave yourself that permission? Within the Hoffman process, I think what I noticed as I shared things with people that I hadn't shared before and noticed a much different reaction. Like, I had like a physical fear of kinda letting people fully in because of how that could impact me, whether I would be safe or not. As I let people in, noticing that the response was actually inarguably positive.
There was no difficulty in reading the emotions in the room and the depth of the relationship. It was just very obviously a new level of depth. If I think about the moments where I I found myself feeling most, most resurrected, most, like, fully authentic, if I think about those moments, the majority of them actually came slowly in the months after because as you're coming out of the program,
you you feel amazing. You're riding this wave of new insights, and you've learned about why you have these tendencies, these patterns to do certain things that cause you pain or cause others pain, but you just can't help it, and then you beat yourself up for having done it again, and the cycle just repeats over and over. You start to just kinda watch that in in the third person looking at the events taking place with a little less judgment.
Last year, after the process, I had a really special experience that more or less united both of my identities in a really public way, which was part of my story coming out of high school that I actually didn't share in the beginning. I wasn't sure whether I would share, but I'm gonna share it. My parents sent me off to boarding school for my last year of high school. Before boarding school,
I went to a wilderness program. So I lived in the woods for seven weeks straight because my parents found me with a big bag of weed in my room. They were, you know, very straight edge. It was unacceptable. There wasn't a single person in my entire company that knew that I had trouble when I was in high school that I was like I'm sure they knew I was kinda crazy. I'm sure plenty of them could have guessed I was ADHD, but I just didn't share any of this part
of me. And then in last year, I got connected with a company. I was brought in as an interim CEO of one of the largest behavioral health companies. The space had gotten clobbered because there was a lot of mistreatment of youth. There was a lot of issues they called the troubled teen industry. I saw it from a different vantage point because I know that that program was what also helped me snap out of it and wanna like get my life together when I
was younger. So suddenly, I was publicly speaking about my whole experience in childhood, all the mistakes I made, getting arrested. I was not an angel, and I was sharing that by the way, over the last ten years, I've been building very successful startups, leaning into the gifts that I was given that I just didn't know how to use when I was younger. And so I get to share fully with people who I was, and I think those were the moments where it really clicked.
It clicked some at Hoffman, but more so in the months that come, it gave me permission to step more fully into who I am and see how people respond in a professional setting. Sadly, we didn't see a path for the behavioral health company, and so that interim CEO role didn't last, but I get a lot out of my experience doing that, bringing myself together.
Prior to Jake feeling a bit like an imposter to a keynote sharing publicly some of your challenges and bringing that into your professional life, how did people respond? After the decision was made to not proceed forward, the company wouldn't wouldn't continue on. I actually had a an actual keynote presentation for a large therapeutic conference, and there were several hundred people there. Yeah. I used to be so nervous for those presentations. My gosh. I feel like I'd have to force so
much. I do all this prep. I rehearse like crazy. For this presentation, I threw together a slide deck on a plane and then just went up and just like told my story, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. I am still getting emails and outreach of people who are looking for support, and I think I was able to make a lot of impact in a short amount of time.
And and it's also kinda what spun me into what I'm focused on right now, which is I'm I'm incubating a few mental health startups and trying to find better ways of supporting neurodivergent people in many cases with the resources that they need to feel just more themselves in general. If you were to summarize, what was responsible for your ability to be yourself and share your story in a more vulnerable way?
I think the time at Hoffman gave me, like, a full lens into the complexity of myself and both the reality that I can't have the strengths that I have that I'm grateful for without also having the weaknesses and the patterns that I have. They're part of the same person, and they're always gonna be part of
that same person. And so you kinda wanna just be a little bit more forgiving, and I think that gave me permission to accept the negative parts of my upbringing and what I took from that and be a little bit more myself and see how people responded, and they responded positively. We haven't even spoken yet about where you are in your life now, but you've made another big change that feels a little unpredictable, wild, maybe exciting about where you're living now. I'd love to hear a little bit
about that. And, yes, where is this permission to be yourself moving out into the world from this point on? What's funny, if I think about the experience I had in between high school and college in wilderness, like, at the time, I didn't appreciate it for what it was. Like, I was upset to be away from my friends
just like every kid would be. But, like, after I kinda slowly saw the benefits of it and just the insights that I would have, if I think about the impact that Hoffman had and in the year after how I've adjusted to being a more full version of myself as a leader, as a family member, as a friend, as a husband. A lot of the story that has played itself out in my head has been this need to prove yourself from a success side in startups.
And along the way, I just met this magnificent woman who loved me unconditionally. It just rocked my world, and she so perfectly fit into my life. I almost can't picture being able to build a startup while not processing all the stuff that I had from my childhood without somebody like that along my side giving me a different type of love that was just completely unconditional. I didn't need to fit into any boxes to be a good kid. It's just really worked and continues to.
Okay. Let's rewrite the bio right now. Off the top of your head, two sentences, three sentences. If it's not all about the professional success, if there's unconditional love that has changed you, if there's a permission for self, if there's a connection to the little boy inside of you that's part of your story, what would it be? I wonder if I'll ever have an answer for that question because it changes with such frequency, especially now as I'm going through this period
of reinvention. It changes with such frequency that I almost struggle to put a line in the sand of kinda where I'm at because it's more or less these themes that have emerged. For example, I can be incredibly results oriented and dive deep into what's the true source of this problem, and it can intimidate people. And at my core, at my center, like, who I truly am, I deeply desire connection and to do good for other people, and I think about that often.
And I do little things, especially for people who I just appreciate the difficulty of their life, and I know that just a small little thing that no one ever does for them will really make them feel, but I I do those things all the time because I just get so much from the connection I immediately feel with that person. It's funny doing this interview right now because I am in this process of full blown reinvention.
I just moved after ten years in the Northeast to Panama with my wife to learn Spanish fully. I don't want any of that gringo Spanish. Like, I wanna be full. I wanna talk to someone. I want them to think that I was raised in Panama. And here we are indefinitely living in Panama. While I'm still working on the professional projects, I still got some cool startups I'm working with. While I'm working on my marriage, what it looks like to be a not so busy husband.
You know, what's funny about this interview is, like, realizing how little I've actually thought through a lot of this stuff. You said just a few minutes ago, I find myself wanting to play a game. When you said that, I wanted to interrupt you and say, like, I find myself wanting to do this whole interview over because I've learned so much just kind of replaying things under a different set of circumstances. Like, I never would have done an interview like this.
Like, I I mean, I've been increasingly uncomfortable throughout this interview because the further I go, the more I have to go away from the kind of shield that keeps me safe, that I developed to keep me safe when I was younger. Thank you for being willing to do this episode, to be willing to be uncomfortable, and for being present to yourself through the whole thing. Thanks for having me and for allowing me the space to learn more about myself in ways I didn't exactly expect. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Razi Ingrassi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other and in the world. To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.