Origin Story

My name is Kevin Jos, and this is my story.

After having early success with my first clothing brand, my beautiful dream was looking like it was on the right track, sales were flying in, a licensing offer from Warner Bros and many other mini victories that gave me hope. This journey was tough already but suddenly my dream started turning into a real nightmare. Dealing with unbelievable stress and crippling anxiety, I gave into bad habits, started chain smoking, became obese and completely lost my physical health. It didn’t stop there; due to my poor judgement, I ended up in an extremely toxic relationship, experienced horrible heartbreak, abuse, and a devastating betrayal resulting in the theft of my company, and pretty much my bankruptcy as a 24 year old. I had lost most of my friends, my home, my cat, my health and finally, my sanity.

I had completely lost my mind in this game.

I didn’t tell my story to anyone, just cut off everyone and moved back to my hometown. I found myself in an abyss, filled with rage, resentment, self pity and hopelessness. Everyone kept saying it’s over, that I should quit, how it’s been so many years and how I should stop being delusional, how I should just find a job and pursue something ordinary. I thought so too, I had no means of jumping back in the game, no money and I didn't really want to ask anyone for help. I remember caving in finally and telling my father, “Fine, I think you’re right, I’ll get a job and try that path, but it feels like i’m quitting at the end, you know? I went through hell and now I’m quitting? it feels like I’m selling my soul and running away from the battlefield”. He said “it’s fine, a job is what everyone does, it’s not so bad, you’ll make a good career if you work hard”. I knew he was really concerned about me and just wanted to help, but honestly, it wasn't helping.

I was internally screaming at the universe, begging it to help me and still nothing was happening. I had followed Patrick-bet-David for around 7 years now, he was almost like a father to me, but apart from watching his content, I had never read any of his books, realizing how arrogant I was, I decided to read his smallest 90 page book, and in it I found help. A quote which said;
 
This planted a new seed. I kept repeating it, probably a hundred times a day.

After many other issues, I realized I couldn’t even get a good job if I tried due to never having worked one so far, and so I decided to get back into entrepreneurship. I felt I had no other choice. I decided to start freelancing, just to stay afloat and keep moving forward. My self esteem was so crushed, and getting out of the victim mentality was a real struggle. I didn’t even have the confidence to build my own website, something I could do easily before. Yet I kept persisting, taking baby steps, and soon enough, I was back on my feet and life was okay again, I had my basic necessities, a new apartment, a new love, and a new life in a new city.

But there still was a hook in me.

A pull, to get back into ‘my game’, the E-commerce Fashion business. This was the industry I decided to commit to as an entrepreneur. Back when I started, I had a tremendous vision for my life and for the company I wanted to build and I believed I could still make it happen, I believed it in my bones. I also knew there were some fundamental mistakes in my thinking and that the first brand was genuinely not meant to be and so I realized that everything had actually been working in my favor.

I had a paradigm shift.

I knew I had to get back to good health and be happy again. It had been almost 5 years in my business journey, mostly filled with emotional turmoil. I was completely burned out. I wanted to work from a place of zen and do it bigger and better this time. So I started reading more books, working out and socializing again, but inside I was still unhappy, completely isolated, nobody from my old life, my life felt bleak and It felt like I was stuck in limbo.

I had started seeing this girl, and she I just clicked instantly, she seemed so familiar, like I had always known her and the randomness of it all just felt like serendipity. I told her about my story and she said “You should definitely get back into the clothing business, the way you talk about it, your eyes light up like a child”. I knew she was right, I wanted it deep in my heart, and no matter how much I buried it, I knew I couldn’t live this way.

As more time went by, the fear and indecision started to plague my mind. I had buried my dreams so f*cking deep within, I wouldn’t even spend a few minutes thinking about it. If I saw a cool T-shirt Ad on instagram, I would scroll past it immediately just unconsciously suppressing my inner desires. All the stories I read of my heroes started ringing in my head. I remembered the story of Alex Hormozi and how he had lost it all right before he hit it big, I had cried when I read his story, it was right after losing everything myself, I knew it was the same for me, I hoped it would be.

That was it.

I decided I would make a run at it again, I didn’t care how long it took, I was willing to suffer. 5, 10 or 20 years, It didn’t matter. I remembered my own words to my father “I will die before I quit”. I just needed to rest.

So I decided to take the first step and think of a new brand name. One evening, I was sitting at a local tea shop, smoking a cigarette like a bum, when It came to me like a hunch, an intuition, it came out of nowhere. The notion that at the core, I’m just a dreamer, a day dreamer, who had the courage to try and the persistence to keep trying. My vision seemed like an illusion to everyone else but not to me, to all of the them I was just being delusional, but to me it was all real, it was always real, and that was it, it hit me, ‘Dreams are just day time illusions until you make them a reality’.

And so, DAYLUSION™ was born.