Mustafa Tut-Brown has been many things: a barefoot kid in a Caribbean village, an angry teen in Canadian high schools, a university radio host, a shipping broker, a moving-company owner on a bicycle, a restaurateur, a financial consultant, a father of six, and a man who once thought hustle could outrun grief.
He calls his true alma mater the “University of Hard Knocks” — with courses in pain, suffering, success, failure, and reinvention. Later in life, he returned to formal study, spending three years in philosophy and earning a diploma in mental health and addictions.
Serial Entrepreneur, Reluctant Addict to Success
He has been:
For years, he believed more hustle would fix everything. Instead, it nearly broke him.
A New Kind of Calling
Philosophy, Mental Health, and the Work of Repair
After his body forced him to stop, Mustafa began a different kind of study. He spent three years in university studying philosophy, then trained in mental health and addictions. Those disciplines gave him language for what he had lived: the pull of addiction, the weight of depression, the cost of unresolved grief.
Today, he brings all of it together — the village, the immigration story, the businesses, the breakdowns, the classroom — in his work as a writer, speaker, mentor, and mental health practitioner.
He lives by a simple confession:
“I don’t throw stones because I’ve been living in a glass house, and I’ve got skeletons in all my closets.” –Mustafa Tut