Hey Reader,

It’s been a while since I’ve last written to you.

You might have noticed that this email is coming from a new domain (if it landed in your promotions, please move it to Primary, and add me as a Contact).

I’m leaving the Promptmaster brand behind, there were so many problems with the business model, and so much baggage from previous founders that I couldn’t keep the company profitable, and I’ve realized I wanted to do something else, and do it differently.

I’ve had crazy successes with AI, some of them I still haven’t fully internalized, and I feel like I didn’t deserve it. I’m still actively working with a therapist to build my self-esteem, my self-confidence, to lower my anxiety and be happier.

In 2025, I’ve done a lot of very interesting AI projects. In the spring, I’ve travelled to Hawaii to speak in front of hundreds of entrepreneurs at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s annual GLC conference, and we got 2 rooms full (so full, that people were sitting on the floor, and security didn’t let more people in).

Then in July, I’ve travelled to the U.S. again, this time to Portland, Oregon, and hosted a workshop for the EO Portland chapter about how they can use AI in their businesses.

Also in July, I’ve hosted two series in Jumpstart July for EO, which were two 3-week series on AI prompting and AI integration. In total, I’ve done 12 presentations in these 3 weeks to thousands of entrepreneurs in EO, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

I say overwhelmingly, because it is still really hard for me to internalize these successes. If I put the facts together, and now as I write them down, I know how big these achievements are, but after the Jumpstart July was over, I still felt like I wasn’t good enough and I wasn’t worthy.

I spent the last 2-3 years hustling like crazy to be successful in the AI space, and I haven’t really taken time to rest and reflect. So I’ve decided to take the entire August off, went on a holiday to Italy where I’ve enjoyed my new car (that I could afford thanks to my business successes in AI), and did amazing hikes with my dog, and journaled quite a lot.

And in September, I set out to start working again.

But I couldn’t. When I even thought of work, I felt a slight difficulty breathing, big brain fog and sweaty palms. It’s an old friend, anxiety. I didn’t have writer’s block. I couldn’t even get to the writer’s block part, because I was procrastinating on even sitting down.

This September was the first time in many many years, that I didn’t HAVE to work to make ends meet. The last time I was in this situation was in 2020 October, when I took 3 months off on purpose, I did 6 days out of a 10-day Vipassana retreat, and got into a depression that took 3 years to cure.

So when the same feeling came, I got scared and wanted to lock everything out. Put my head in the sand. I’ve escaped again into video games, binge watching series and not doing anything productive, but not being bored either. Distractions.

I wasn’t ready to face my inner world. This big hole inside that I didn’t feel good enough. After all of these accomplishments, I thought I’d be happy and content. But that only lasted a little while, maybe a week, and then I felt totally aimless, unmotivated, dull and empty.

Truth be told, I always had a lot of anxiety while working. Lots of fear. Fear of being judged, ridiculed, or not being good enough.

But I didn’t have no choice. I couldn’t afford to hide, because if I did, nobody would pay me anything and I would have no food on my plate. So I became a perfectionist instead, and put really high-quality stuff out there that had no mistakes. I was terrified of making mistakes, but I did it anyways, because my survival depended on it.

This time it was different. I could afford not to work. The first time in years, I didn’t have the fire under my ass to work. No external pressure. I could lay back and do nothing for a year and still have savings left. And it finally showed me what has always been inside me this entire time.

One major thing I’ve realized about myself thanks to Hungarian author and priest Ferenc Pál (also known as Pálferi) is that I have low internal & high external sources of self-esteem.

What this means is that I don’t have strong internal foundational feelings that I’m good enough, and my self-esteem depends on external validation. My self-esteem therefore is very fragile.

I grew up like this. A good thing about people like me is that we can and do contribute to make the world better, because that’s how we compensate our lack of internal self-esteem. Most people like me are also successful, they do well in school, they grow social media profiles, they appear in media, etc. because this validation is the only thing that makes us feel good. What made me feel good.

And the satisfaction doesn’t last, so I have to keep chasing new and new achievements to keep the chemicals coming. It’s like a drug you get hooked on, and whenever you are not productive, you feel useless and worthless.

A person with strong internal & external sources of self-esteem however would feel good about themselves even when they are not working. They are more open to criticism and less dependent on good or bad feedback, and they are not afraid to make mistakes and put themselves out there.

So one key thing I’ve learned about myself is how performance pressured I feel all the time. This was also visible in areas outside of work. In sports, I couldn’t “just go to the gym regularly”, I would get bored. I always had to do something competitive. Swimming, handball, CrossFit, whatever it was, I was not a recreational athlete, that’s for sure. In my free time, I only played competitive video games, because non-competitive games bored me. I used to play Counter Strike, Chess, Hearthstone, Sim Racing, MMOs, etc. I could easily feed my competitive nature, but I would also get super titled when I lost. I would beat myself up, yell at my teammates or wreck others with my car (just on the sim lol) to prove a point.

This September, I finally saw this for what this truly is, and realized I don’t want to live like this anymore. I wanted to find intrinsic sources of motivation for work (instead of external like money, follower counts, cars, etc.). I’m not sure I have found this fully, but maybe a tiny seed of it I hope. I feel different now as I write these lines.

I feel a calm presence, and to be honest, I don’t focus on what you think about my story, about how I write, or how this will impact my business.

I just write to express myself, to learn about what I think, to learn about who I am, and connect with others in the process.

I am a highly sensitive person and feel my emotions very deeply. This is not a flaw but a personality trait I’ve learned to embrace. Especially when my former business partner would constantly hurt and abuse me verbally, destroying my self-esteem, and then hide behind statements like “you’re being too sensitive” or “I’m just saying what I think, if that hurts you it sounds like a you problem” and “I’m not going to walk on eggshells”. Actually me thinking he was right, and searching for phrases like “how not to be too sensitive” led me down a rabbit hole of understanding this part of myself, and finally standing up for myself after 2 years of abuse. When I did that, he sensed I’ve changed, he lost his methods to manipulate me and when he realized I was not useful to him anymore, he left the company within a week.

So being an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), I experience the world in a deeply emotional way.

I am a Phoenix. I burn out every once in a while, retreat to my ashes, hide from the world, work through my inner shit, and get reborn as a new person.

This time, I feel like I’m finally going back to my authentic creativity that I have embraced in 2019-2020, with 5 extra years of maturity, growth and experience.

My early years, where I just listened to what felt right to share, to make and to leave behind. The early years when I didn’t listen to advice from the wrong people about writing, sales and business. When I was just playing a meme deck I’ve put together, and it was fun to play, even though it wasn’t the meta (ask ChatGPT about this if you don’t get the reference). If you’re curious about these years, go to my Instagram page, and scroll down all the way, and read. The posts start from 2019 September, when I was still going to medical school, but I started building my personal brand on the side.

My first Phoenix burnout was in 2019 October, when I got disillusioned about medical school, and decided to quit. I’ll tell that story to you maybe another time. The Phoenix rose after a week, when he decided to pause medical school for a year, and see what he can do in business. If it hadn’t worked, I would’ve gone back to finish medical school.

My second Phoenix burnout was in 2020 October, when I got successful in my business and took 3 months off to rest and recharge (3 months on purpose). I carried that one through 2021–22 combined with a depression. The Phoenix rose a second time in 2023 when ChatGPT came around and I moved to Budapest to build what would become Promptmaster.

The third Phoenix burnout was now in 2025 August–September. When there was no external pressure on me to perform and I could face my challenges about self-worth. It feels like the Phoenix is now rising for a third time. I might collapse and retreat to my couch again, or I might not.

But however it goes, I trust myself that I’ll be able to solve that too.

Thanks for reading so far, thanks for being here and thanks for all of your support throughout the years. I’ll share more about what I plan to do next, but being a fucking phoenix, I’m scared to promise when.

I’ll share when it feels right.

Best,

Dave

Dave Talas