Ep. 008: Jon Neumann and the Story the Vice Principal Got Completely Wrong
Mar 03, 2026
Ep. 008: Jon Neumann and the Story the Vice Principal Got Completely Wrong
His vice principal looked him in the eye and told him he would not live to see his 18th birthday. At 16, Jon Neumann was addicted to crack cocaine. He had lost his best friend to murder and his grandfather in the same year. The math backed the VP up.
Jon got sober. Got a job at a steel mill at 18. And then sent his vice principal a registered letter every year on his birthday. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Five years. Five letters. Five proofs of life.
On the day he turned 24, he stopped. Not because he ran out of things to say. Because the story was no longer anyone else's to write.
In this episode of The Grit Factor Podcast, Karl Jacobi sits down with Jon Neumann, founder of JT23 Impact Labs and a 25-year steel industry veteran who climbed from crack addiction and a steel mill at 18 to executive leadership and a McGill MBA. Jon breaks down what it actually looked like to go from a vice principal who wrote him off to studying PhD-level metallurgy textbooks while working full time, finishing with near-perfect marks, and eventually walking away from the career that had given him everything except the one thing he still wanted.
He also talks about the last conversation he had with his best friend Jeremy, who was dying of pancreatic cancer at 34 and told Jon he was wasting his potential. Jon drove home screaming in his car, walked through the door, and told his wife he was going back to school. That was the turn. He never looked back.
What You'll Learn:
- The moment Jon decided to go back to school: what Jeremy said from a hospital bed at 34 and why Jon's first reaction was fury before it was gratitude
- Two words: outwork them. How Jon cracked PhD-level metallurgy textbooks with no background and came out the other side with near-perfect marks
- The 1% daily improvement formula that compounds to 37X over a year, and the baseball analogy that finally makes it click
- Five registered birthday letters to the vice principal who said he would not survive, and the exact moment Jon decided to stop sending them
- The 4 AM morning routine, three minutes of social media six times a day, and the grayscale phone filter protecting every hour that matters
About Jon Neumann:
Jon Neumann is the founder of JT23 Impact Labs, a sustainability and circular economy company built after 25 years in the steel industry that he walked away from on February 3, 2023. He went from crack addiction at 16 and a steel mill at 18 to executive leadership and an MBA from McGill University by outworking everyone in the room. The number 23 threads through every major chapter of his life and now sits at the center of everything he is building next.
The pillar this episode lives in is Ownership. That is the phase where you stop waiting for permission from the world to move forward and start writing your own story from scratch.
Jon had people lined up to write his story for him. A vice principal who called his death in advance. Decades inside a career that gave him security and nothing else. He could have stayed in any one of those chapters. Most people would have.
Jeremy dying on that hospital bed is not what changed Jon. Jeremy telling the truth is what changed Jon. What Jon did with that truth, the drive home screaming, the conversation with his wife, the enrollment form, the textbooks, the reps. That was Ownership in motion.
If you are sitting on a version of yourself that someone else has been deciding is too much, the 5-Day Reforge Challenge is five days of taking that back.
Join the next LIVE Reforge Challenge →
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