I lost all my money at a poker game.

That's how Purpose got started.

It was late 2024. I was near the end of a year-long sabbatical. I'd sold my last company, spent time in 24 countries, done every kind of coaching and meditation and breathwork I could find. I came back to LA with a wide-open mind and a half-built prototype of an AI tool that my friends kept calling instead of their therapists.

At the poker game I mentioned it to Mark Manson.

Mark is a three-time The New York Times bestselling author. 20 million books sold. 10 million readers. He's spent two decades building trust with an audience that is genuinely devoted to him. We had a mutual friend and I knew who he was, but we weren't close.

I told him I thought there was something real in what I was building. That AI was about to do to personal growth what it had already done to every other industry. That the price of transformation didn't need to be $300 an hour.

Mark put down his cards.

"No shit," he said. "I've been looking at the exact same thing."

He'd been trying to acquire a company in the space. The deal fell through. He'd been sitting on the same idea with nowhere to put it.

We went from a poker table to a one-hour lunch that turned into three hours. Two people who had traveled completely opposite roads arriving at exactly the same place at exactly the same time.

A 12-year AI builder who had never written a book.

A world-famous author who had never built a startup.

Neither of us could have built what we built alone.

A million dollars in revenue in the first two weeks. Thousands of users telling us this changed their life. A team that cries reading the testimonials.

I lost everything at that poker game.

Best hand I ever played.

What's the most unexpected place a great partnership has started for you?