The Rags-to-Riches Round Trip:
When Success Keeps Vanishing
Richer Soul Podcast • Episode 477 • Featuring Smoke Wallin
What happens when you make $50 – $100 million on paper—and then lose it all? Not once, but multiple times? Most people would call it failure. Smoke Wallin calls it his teacher.
In this raw and transformative episode of Richer Soul, we sit down with Smoke Wallin, entrepreneur, M&A advisor, and spiritual guide who has lived the full cycle of building fortunes and watching them disappear. But this isn’t a story about making money—it’s about discovering why all the money in the world couldn’t turn off the “loud fan” of anxiety constantly running in the back of his head.
Until one day in Nepal, at Buddha’s birthplace, everything changed.
“I was in a constant state of anxiety, but I was really good at compartmentalizing and covering it up. When I healed my trauma, the fan turned off by itself and I quit drinking.”
The Betrayal Pattern: When Your Subconscious Sabotages Your Success
Smoke grew up in poverty—food stamps, unpaid bills, and a childhood marked by scarcity. But beneath the financial struggle was something darker: sexual abuse by his grandfather that was covered up by family members. His response? Bury it completely and become unstoppable in business.
By age 29, he was CFO of a billion-dollar company, raising $110 million in the bond market. He built multiple businesses worth tens of millions. On paper, he had escaped the poverty of his childhood and conquered the business world.
But there was a pattern he couldn’t see: he kept attracting business partners who would betray him. Build. Betray. Lose everything. Start again. Build. Betray. Lose everything. The “rags-to-riches round trip” his coach had warned him about.
Why? Because betrayal was his unhealed wound. His subconscious was stuck in the loop of childhood betrayal, unconsciously recreating the pattern in his adult business relationships. Until he faced the trauma he’d buried, the cycle would never break.
As Rocky points out in the episode: “Childhood adversity can fuel success, but unhealed trauma will sabotage it.”
The Fan in Your Head: Living with Invisible Anxiety
Here’s what shocks most people about Smoke’s story: despite all his success, he was suffering in ways he couldn’t consciously identify.
He describes living with “a loud fan going off in the back of my head” that would only quiet down when he drank alcohol. He was in the liquor industry, so drinking was part of the culture, but he never understood why that first cocktail felt so necessary. It wasn’t about getting drunk—it was about turning down the volume on an anxiety he didn’t even know was there.
He functioned. He succeeded. He closed deals and led companies. But beneath the surface, unresolved trauma was running the show.
The remarkable part? When he finally healed the trauma, the fan turned off by itself. And he quit drinking without trying.
No willpower. No 12-step program. The anxiety simply dissolved when its root cause was addressed.
This is the hidden cost of success: you can check every box of external achievement while fundamentally suffering internally. And because high achievers are so good at compartmentalizing, they often don’t even realize they’re in pain.
The Electric Shock at Buddha’s Birthplace
Smoke was in Nepal closing a deal—selling a brewery to Carlsberg. During the trip, he visited Lumbini, Buddha’s birthplace. In the Japanese temple, his friend knelt to pray. Smoke joined him.
“I asked the Buddha for peace and love.”
He had love—great kids, a wonderful spouse, good friends. But something told him: it’s a different kind of love, a higher level. And peace? He didn’t even realize how much he needed it.
Then it happened: an electric shock went through his back and up through his head. What he now recognizes as a Kundalini awakening.
A few months later, his business partner in Canada invited him to work with plant medicine. Smoke and his wife decided to try it.
His wife had a beautiful experience—angels, bliss, peace.
Smoke’s experience was different: “I was having hard labor for nine hours.”
During that session, a negative entity was removed from him—what traditional religion might call an exorcism. Wind literally went through the room. Everyone felt it.
That was the opening. Over the following year, memories he’d completely buried began surfacing. The sexual abuse. The betrayal. The trauma he’d spent decades running from through achievement, alcohol, and constant forward motion.
“Plant medicine is like 35 years of therapy. But 99% of the work is integration.”
The Deal with His Higher Self: Forgiveness as Freedom
As the memories began returning, Smoke made a deal with his higher self:
“If I can remember—if I can get the specific details, I need to know what happened—I’ll forgive.”
And he innately understood the truth: “Forgiveness is for the forgiver, not the forgiven. You get your freedom by forgiving.”
This wasn’t intellectual understanding. This was soul-level truth that unlocked everything. Spirit won’t reveal what we’re not ready to receive. By committing to forgiveness before the memories fully returned, Smoke showed he was ready.
The memories came. And he forgave. And he became free.
But freedom required more than one breakthrough moment. It required reprogramming his entire operating system through daily practices: meditation, reading over 400 books on spirituality and consciousness, eliminating negative inputs, and consciously clearing repetitive thought patterns.
“We are the cumulative energetic buildup of all of our thoughts and actions up to now.”
Just like athletic training builds muscle through repetition, spiritual integration builds new patterns through consistent daily practice.
Money Is Neutral: The New Relationship with Wealth
Today, Smoke still operates in the M&A world, helping entrepreneurs with exits worth $100-500 million. But his relationship with money has fundamentally transformed.
He doesn’t need more money. There’s nothing he wants. Nothing he needs.
“Money is neutral. Sex is neutral. Power is neutral. It’s our attachments to those that are the problem.”
Once you’re non-attached—once you don’t need money or validation—you can experience wealth while keeping it in proper perspective. You can fully enjoy the human experience without being controlled by it.
He now channels his resources toward higher purposes:
- Dignity Moves: Co-founded this homeless initiative in California, building 22 villages to help thousands get off the streets
- SACRED: Serves on the board supporting families dealing with child sexual abuse
And increasingly, his M&A work has evolved into something deeper: coaching entrepreneurs through the question most avoid until it’s too late—what comes after the exit?
“Half my job is selling the company. The other half is coaching and holding the hand of the CEO through the ups and downs of the deal process.”
He’s seen it too many times: entrepreneur has a massive exit, suddenly has all the money and time in the world—and their life falls apart. They lose their sense of meaning. Their relationships crumble. They have everything and nothing simultaneously.
Why? Because they never thought about how to turn success into significance.
The Question Nobody Can Answer: How Much Is Enough?
During our conversation, Rocky poses the question that most successful people struggle to answer:
“How much is enough?”
Even people who’ve had exits, who’ve accumulated substantial wealth, don’t know anything but “more.” They haven’t taken the time to think about what their life really means, to actually stop and ask: What is the purpose of all of this?
Smoke is witnessing an awakening in entrepreneurial circles. “In the last five years, more and more people are waking up to: I’ve had all this financial success. I’ve checked all the boxes. I can go do 10 more deals and make a lot more money. But is there something more?”
The shift is happening. Business leaders are realizing the next deal won’t make them happy either. That money and consciousness can—and should—intersect.
Practical Wisdom: Integration Over Inspiration
So how do you bridge the gap between material success and spiritual peace? Here are actionable insights from Smoke’s journey:
- Ask for Help: “Help is available to everyone, but you have to ask for it.” Smoke’s awakening began with a simple prayer: “Buddha, help me.” But here’s the catch: if you want peace and love, everything between you and peace and love will come up. Are you willing to face it?
- Commit to Daily Practices: The breakthrough is 1%. Integration is 99%. Meditation, contemplation, conscious thought monitoring, reading high-calibration material, eliminating negative inputs—these aren’t optional. They’re the work.
- Recognize Your Patterns: What patterns keep repeating in your business relationships, your personal life? Those patterns are pointing to unhealed wounds. Awareness is the first step.
- Face Your Shadows: Most people want peace but aren’t willing to face their pain. Smoke chose differently. He dove deep, read 400+ books, worked with coaches, and did the hard labor of remembering and integrating his trauma.
- Practice Non-Attachment: Don’t confuse detachment (separation from life) with non-attachment (fully experiencing life without being controlled by it). You can enjoy wealth, success, and pleasure while keeping them in perspective.
- Define “Enough”: Before your next exit or milestone, answer the question: How much is enough? What comes after? How do you turn success into significance? If you don’t know, start exploring now.
The Ultimate Success Metric
Financial freedom is worthy. Building businesses is valuable. Creating wealth matters. But these are incomplete goals.
Smoke’s journey reveals a deeper truth: you can make $100 million multiple times and still be fundamentally unfree if you haven’t healed what’s driving you beneath the surface.
The richest life isn’t measured in dollars. It’s measured in peace, joy, meaning, and contribution.
As Smoke says today: “I live in peace and joy at all times now. The normal challenges that we all have don’t bother me in any way.”
That’s what success looks like when it’s complete—when the external achievement is matched by internal freedom.
Don’t just build wealth—build a richer soul.
About the Guest: Smoke Wallin
Smoke Wallin is an entrepreneur, M&A advisor, and spiritual guide based in Sedona, Arizona. He has built, scaled, and exited multiple companies across various industries, including becoming CFO of a billion-dollar business at age 29. After a profound spiritual awakening, he now helps entrepreneurs navigate both the business and existential dimensions of major exits. He co-founded Dignity Moves (homeless initiative in California) and serves on the board of SACRED (supporting families affected by child sexual abuse). He’s been a member of YPO for 23 years and has an MBA in finance. His forthcoming book offers an entrepreneur’s guide to spiritual awakening.
Links:
Podcast Home & All Platforms https://thesmoketrail.transistor.fm
YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/@SmokeWallinOfficial
Substack Full episodes + Pre-Show Q&As + Community & Poetry & Essays https://smokewallin.substack.com/
LinkedIn – Primary promotion & newsletter- https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7055158311603601408
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smokewallin
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/smoketrailpodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smokewallin
X (Twitter) https://x.com/TheSmokeTrail1
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@smokewallin
Facebook Podcast Home https://www.facebook.com/DrinkTechnology
Website: https://smokewallin.com/the-smoke-trail-podcast
Listen to the Full Conversation
This blog post only scratches the surface of Smoke’s remarkable journey. To hear the full story of his plant medicine experiences, his reading recommendations (including Dr. David Hawkins’ transformative work), and his insights on bridging business and consciousness, listen to Episode 477 of Richer Soul: https://richersoul.com/ep-477-from-trauma-to-triumph-how-spiritual-awakening-transformed-smoke-wallins-business-and-life/
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@richersoul
Richer Soul Life Beyond Money. You got rich, now what? Let’s talk about your journey to more a purposeful, intentional, amazing life. Where are you going to go and how are you going to get there? Let’s figure that out together. At the core is the financial well-being to be able to do what you want, when you want, how you want. It’s about personal freedom!
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