I made it sound like a funny story.
Fourteen hours on a bathroom floor in Morocco with food poisoning. I had my phone in my hand the whole time and it never occurred to me to call anyone.
That's not true. It occurred to me. I just didn't do it.
I have a brother who would've found a doctor from 8,000 miles away. I have a buddy two towns over who would've brought water and sat on the couch until I stopped being pathetic. I didn't text either of them until the next afternoon, and when I did, I made it sound like a funny story. "You'll never guess what I ate." Like it was content, not a crisis.
That's the trap. You build a life around not needing anyone. You train yourself out of asking. You get so good at handling everything alone that when something actually breaks, not your business, you, the muscle for reaching out has completely atrophied.
I earned this. Fifteen years of practice. When I was running my logistics company I was the guy who handled everything himself. Truck breaks down at 3am, I drove out. Payroll short, I moved money around. Employee quits the day before a major delivery, I ran the route myself. Not because I had to. Because asking for help felt like admitting the thing I built was too big for me. And admitting that would've meant my decision to drop out of college at 19 was exactly as stupid as everyone said it was.
So I became the guy who never asks. I wore it like a badge. I watched other business owners bring in partners, delegate, lean on people, and I told myself they were weaker for it. I told myself my way was harder, which meant it was better.
After I sold the company I kept the habit. Built three new income streams. No partners. No real team. A couple contractors I message when something technical breaks. The whole system is designed so I never depend on a single person for anything.
And it works. Runs clean. Revenue hits the account every month whether I'm in Portugal or Morocco or sitting on a beach doing nothing.
It works right up until the moment you're on a floor at 2am and the thing that's broken is you.
You know this one. Maybe you sat with a tax problem for three weeks before mentioning it to the friend who offered to help. Because hiring an accountant is a transaction but asking a friend feels like a debt. Maybe your business stalled and you spent a month pretending everything was fine because the whole story you tell about yourself is that you don't need saving. Maybe you got really sick, or really sad, or really lost, and you opened your phone and scrolled through names and couldn't figure out who to call. Not because you didn't have people. Because you'd spent years quietly teaching them not to expect you to call.
My mom raised nine kids and never asked anyone for anything. Not her sisters. Not the neighbors. Not her own mother. She carried everything herself and I thought that was the strongest thing I'd ever seen. I still think it's strong. But I also remember watching her sit at the kitchen table after everyone was in bed, exhausted in a way that went deeper than tired. She never put anything down. Not once. And we all picked that up without choosing to.
The idea that needing someone is a failure. That if you can do it alone, you should. That self-sufficiency is the highest form of competence.
I believed that for thirty-five years.
The week after Morocco I called my brother. Not about being sick. Just called. He talked for twenty minutes about his kids, his shifts, some argument with a neighbor about a property line. I didn't say anything important. I just stayed on the phone and let his life fill up the quiet.
It was nothing. But I'd forgotten what it felt like. Someone on the other end who isn't a contractor or a customer or a stranger at a coffee shop. Just a person who picks up because your name showed up on their screen.
I'm trying to relearn this. It's harder than building a business. Harder than selling one. Harder than any product launch or system I've ever built. Because it requires the one thing I spent fifteen years getting rid of.
The willingness to need someone.
— Best, Jose
