Hi friend -- I’m Anton.
I was born on an island tiny enough to disappear from most maps — a green dot.
St. Lucia is famous for two things: its pitons that slice the sky and the impossible statistic of having more Nobel laureates per capita than libraries.
Derek Walcott and Sir Arthur Lewis both born on the same date — twenty years apart.
As if fate stamped the place “literary portal.”
Nobody could explain how a nation with patch-work roads and a literacy rate that plays hopscotch around fifty percent kept producing world-class genius every 20 years.
But every pulse on the island felt the quiet pressure of that myth.
People came down to do studies.
People were testing the soil and the water.
What was the island’s secret?
I felt it most in my throat. Trauma made the cords tighten whenever I tried to speak truth; dyslexia tangled every paragraph I tried to read.
The universe chuckled: Let’s forge a communicator by paralyzing his voice and scrambling his letters.
Wounds are excellent teachers. If I wanted to be heard I had to study sound; if I wanted to be clear I had to master meaning.
Pain is a tuition bill you pay with attention.
My parents were the first in the country brave enough—or reckless enough, depending on which church elder you asked—to ship their children 3,000 miles north.
Fundamentalist whispers called it blasphemy. A fourteen-year-old should stay planted in familiar soil, they said.
My parents looked at that soil, saw the weeds of cultish certainty, and chose exile over easy faith.
They packed desperation, devotion, and a single non-negotiable: we would not inherit the silence that fed the island’s shadows.
That is how I landed at Northfield Mount Hermon, the New England boarding school where The Holdovers would later be filmed.
Watch the movie if you want a documentary of my adolescence: snow slapping chapel windows while prodigies in tweed jackets tried to run from the ghosts stuffed in their suitcases.
I arrived with a Caribbean accent, a stutter of self-doubt, and an inferno of determination. Reading assignments swallowed me whole, but essays became rescue ropes.
By senior year I stopped pretending to love Dickens and started bleeding essays that felt like lungfuls of mountain air. We spent a semester dissecting The New Yorker.
I didn’t understand the prestige; I understood the cadence. Long sentences curled like smoke; short ones cracked like whips. I mimicked them until the rhythm soaked into marrow.
Graduation meant freedom and famine. I hustled copy gigs for ten dollars an hour, climbed rung by scarred rung until I stood on Tony Robbins’s doorstep with a folder full of words sharp enough to make audiences cry on cue.
Times Square screens flashed sentences I’d soldered at 3 a.m., but inside the agency halls I felt like rented muscle.
When the paychecks stopped matching the blood I poured, they called me ungrateful and kicked me into the street. Good. My voice didn’t belong in their mouth.
All of that would have been footnotes if I hadn’t married a romance novelist who built an empire from kitchen-table drafts and PayPal receipts. She showed me the mundane holiness of shipping work: outline, draft, publish, repeat.
Watching her crank novels while our coffee cooled yanked the last excuse from my throat. If she could architect whole universes before breakfast, what was I doing ghost-writing motivational thunder for other men?
Permission to Be Powerful was the answer. Not a blog—an exorcism in serial form. Part Walcott lyric, part Naipaul scalpel, part Agora shock-copy, delivered with the pacing of a stand-up set and the honesty of Radical Honesty itself.
It is The New Yorker after a weekend in the desert with Goggins and Jung. It is scripture for survivors who refuse both victimhood and veneer. Every post is a boundary line drawn in fresh ink; every VIP guide is a weaponized diary entry.
Look at the breadcrumb trail: island of laureates, parents of heretics, boarding-school crucible, copywriting trenches, novelist muse. Add dyslexia, voice trauma, and the unkillable itch to tell the naked truth.
There is no coincidence left—only convergence. I publish more in a week than most MFAs will in a lifetime because silence once tried to kill me and I decided to make it pay rent.
So here we are. You’re reading the magazine I was engineered to write. I don’t promise comfort.
Comfort is how systems sedate genius. I promise clarity sharp enough to shave delusion, stories honest enough to disinfect shame, and frameworks brutal enough to build sovereignty. I promise that every sentence comes debt-free of lies.
Welcome to Permission to Be Powerful, the personal New Yorker of a Caribbean exile who stole fire, bottled it in Substack, and mails a new flame every time you open your inbox.
Read at your own risk. Truth has side effects.
For The Ones Who Refuse to Play Small
This is for the ones who know they’re meant for more.
The ones who feel the pull—who know they’re capable of greatness but keep getting stuck in the same patterns.
The ones tired of playing by the rules, waiting for permission, and watching others take the spotlight.
This is for the thinkers, the builders, the creators—the ones who refuse to shrink, who refuse to live a life that doesn’t set them on fire.
You’re not here to be average. You’re here to be unapologetically you.
To build something real. To tell your story. To own your power.
And if the world doesn’t get it? Who cares.
This is where you step up. This is where you stop holding back.
Welcome to Permission to Be Powerful.
“The Day I Gave Myself Permission to Be Dangerous”
Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,
I want to tell you a story.
It’s a story about the day I stopped asking for permission—and started printing it.
See, there comes a time in every man’s life when he has to choose:
Be a pet… or become a predator.
And the scariest part?
Most of us are trained to wag our tails.
We spend our lives fetching scraps, smiling politely, and pretending we don’t feel the ache.
That dull ache of knowing:
“There’s something bigger in me. Something wild. Something brilliant. Something terrifying.”
But we shove it down.
We go to school. We follow the rules. We sit in traffic. We take the job. We ask for the raise. We don’t get it. We thank them anyway.
Until one day—you snap.
You sit in your car after getting fired, like I did, and realize:
“I was never going to be allowed to win.”
I remember the exact moment it hit me.
I was pacing the kitchen, broke, exhausted, holding a plastic fork and whispering a prayer to the ceiling like a madman:
“God… if I don’t find a way out of this, I’m gonna die in here.”
Not physically. That would’ve been a relief.
I mean something worse.
The slow rot of a soul that was meant for more.
And right then—I made a dangerous decision.
I stopped waiting for someone to hand me the keys.
I reached down…
And I forged my own permission slip.
Let Me Be Blunt
This letter isn’t for everybody.
It’s not for the people who still think the world is fair.
Not for those who believe hard work alone gets rewarded.
It’s not for the nice guys, the sweet girls, or the team players who think if they just “keep showing up,” someone will finally notice.
This letter is for the one who’s DONE.
Done with waiting.
Done with begging.
Done with the constant contortions just to be liked, followed, or funded.
You want in?
Good.
I’ll tell you exactly how I did it.
Not the Instagram version.
The Gary Halbert version.
The dirty, dangerous, dollar-printing, nerve-ripping truth.
Ready?
Step 1: I Chose Power Over Permission
Let me ask you a question:
“Whose rules are you living by?”
If the answer isn’t yours, we’ve got a problem.
See, Halbert knew something most marketers forget:
“You don’t win by playing the game. You win by rewriting the rules.”
I stopped following client briefs.
I started writing letters like THIS.
Letters that bled.
Letters that roared.
Letters that said, “This is who I am. Take it or get the hell out.”
And suddenly…
People listened.
Why?
Because the world is starving for authenticity. For heat. For guts.
Most of the crap online is so neutered, you’d think it was written by beige robots with MBA degrees.
Not here.
You’re getting the dangerous kind of copy—the kind they used to burn at the stake.
Step 2: I Built A Printing Press Inside My Skull
Want to know my real business model?
I built a machine that could spit out:
Bold headlines
Killer hooks
Offers that make grown men weep
I trained AI on the Gary Halbert motherlode, on every Agora promo, every Roy Furr line, every blood-stained Gary Bencivenga secret I could find.
I gave it my voice.
And now? I’ve got a personal Halbert in my pocket.
But the real secret isn’t AI.
It’s balls.
Because even with all the tools in the world, you still have to say what no one else will say.
You still have to be the guy who walks into the bank, flips a table, and says:
“Your money’s coming with me.”
If you can’t do that, you’re toast.
Step 3: I Sold My Truth. Not My Time.
Let me make you a promise.
The world doesn’t need another freelancer.
The world needs a leader with something to say.
So I stopped selling hours. Stopped begging for gigs. Stopped answering emails from micromanaging middlemen who wouldn’t recognize a winning headline if it bit ’em in the ass.
Instead, I turned my truth into a product.
My heartbreak? A story that converts.
My meltdown? A bullet point that grabs the gut.
My shame? A weapon.
And people paid.
They didn’t pay because I was polished.
They paid because I was real.
And Then the Magic Happened
Here’s what they don’t tell you:
When you stop chasing approval, power follows.
When you speak the truth—loudly—people gather.
They listen. They lean in. They buy.
That’s why this isn’t just a newsletter.
This is a movement.
A revolt against the beige.
A battle cry for the bold.
A safehouse for the dangerous, the gifted, the forgotten.
You belong here.
But only if you’re ready to stop being “good” and start being great.
So What Do You Do Next?
Good question.
You’ve got three options:
Close this tab, scroll Instagram, and go back to watching lesser men live the life you were meant for.
Bookmark it, promise to return, and forget.
Say “screw it” and take what’s yours.
I recommend #3.
I recommend you print your permission slip today.
Write the thing you’re afraid to say.
Launch the thing they told you you weren’t ready for.
Use this newsletter as your forge.
Because I don’t care if you’re broke, broken, or bruised.
You are powerful.
You are dangerous.
And the world has no idea what’s coming.
But we do.
And we’re waiting for you.
Welcome to Permission to Be Powerful.
—Anton
Here Are Some of My Favorite Posts To Get You Started:
1. I Spent 7 Days in Deep Meditation, and Here’s What Broke
Total sensory lockdown, strange bodily glitches—then the insight that rewired my default reality.
2. The Government Knows: The Terminator Is Coming…In the Next 1,000 Days
And They Are Quietly Preparing for a World That May Never Be the Same
3. Gaslighting Isn’t Just Denial—It’s Rewriting Your Reality
How Manipulation Makes You Question Everything (Including Yourself)
4. 2025: The Year the Middle Class Died
Here's The Uncomfortable Truth About The Insane Cost of Eggs.
5. Raise Your Price
The Art of Being Unapologetically Expensive
6. The Tragic Genius of the Gifted Child
Breaking Free from the Chains of Generational Trauma
7. The Worst Cases of Child Abuse Ever
When Protectors Become Monsters -- and When Childhood Becomes a Nightmare
8. Why I Created Permission to be Powerful.
Tony Robbins Fired Me. I Hit Rock Bottom. And Now... I'm Building My Own Empire.
9. CockyGate: How One Author’s Trademark Lawsuit Backfired Spectacularly
How One Karen F*cked Around and Found Out—Getting Mocked by the Entire Planet
10. Why I Let Zen Masters Beat Me With Sticks
Modern Monk: Lessons in Stillness, Strength, and Simplicity
11. Blackballed: How I Lost Everything Overnight
15 Years to the Top—Gone in an Instant
12. Bachata Isn’t Music. It’s Confession.
Worst Case Scenario, You Learn A Fuck-ton of Hot Spanish In 5 Minutes Or Less.
13. The Science of Seeing Through Bullshit
How to Spot Liars in Seconds. Decode Their Words. Read the Signs. See Them Coming a Mile Away.
14. The NY Times Reveals: This Simple Psychological Experiment Can Make Anyone Fall in Love
36 Questions That Create Instant Intimacy, Tear Down Walls, and Forge Unbreakable Bonds
15. I Like To Party With a 77 Year Old Lady. She's My Wingman and She's Always The Baddest Bitch in The Room.
We Party All The Time. This Lady Is A FREAK. I'll Just Shut Up and Let This Video Speak For Itself
16. The Universe Is More Profound Than You Think
31 Scientific Truths That Will Break Your Brain and Rewrite Reality
17. The Truth About Lies (And Other Lies About Truth)
The More You Read, The Less You’ll Understand—And That’s the Point
18. THE UFO FILES: THE CASES THEY CAN’T EXPLAIN
Government Cover-Ups, Pilot Encounters, and the Stories Too Wild to Ignore
