TEST: Stop Mental Mastabation To Become Successful – RockStar Entrepreneur Experience EP. 1

 

In this episode, Dan Ardebili and Tony Finbarr-Smith talk about overcoming the many challenges of becoming a successful entrepreneur and how to overcome them. Including why you must stop “Mental Mastabation”, waiting for the “right or perfect time”, (Dan calls it cleaning the desk). Stop getting ready to get ready and making excuses on why you haven’t already started on those things you know you must do in order to start being successful in your entrepreneurial journey! How and why you must listen to the Universe, keeping your eyes and ears (and mind) open to new opportunities, and “Taking The Leap”.

We also dive into some other RockStar Lessons and topics that have helped Dan become successful in his own life and empire. We discuss creating a bulletproof business/empire that will thrive even in a bad economy, how food choices can impact your ability to be a successful entrepreneur, and talk about a new Netflix movie (Rated #1 on iTunes) that will open your eyes to the power of eating to success.

 

Sneak Peek:

>> [00:15] Not waiting until the time is right before you “do the thing” that makes you successful
>> [01:25] “Stop Cleaning your desk” and just do the stuff that will make you successful NOW!
>> [03:18] Tony Robbins introduced Dan to his Success Guru
>> [03:55] Words Can Hurt! How the words you use have hidden meanings
>> [07:25] Stop Mental Mastabating
>> [08:32] Be Lazy and work smarter
>> [09:34] “Fear” and self-sabotage
>> [17:00] Leap First! Overcome fear by “leaping first” how Dan Overcome his fears of making videos and speaking on stage
>> [22:50] Dan’s view on self-sabotage
>> [25:35] Reward yourself for what you do achieve
>> [26:02] Finding what works for you
>> [28:39] Motivation vs commitment
>> [29:51] If someone has already done it, you can too
>> [31:59] Listen to the Universe! Be open to adjusting your path – keep your eyes and ears open
>> [36:30] The outdated models & rules we’re taught by society
>> [37:55] The problem with doing the same as everyone else
>> [40:25] What the 2007 economic crash taught Dan about creating a bulletproof business/empire
>> [42:10] The most expensive advice
>> [47:50] Tony goes Vegetarian!
>> [53:47] How Dan’s food and eating choices gave him his superpowers to be an effective entrepreneur and led to his success.

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Guru Singh

Hidden Messages In Water Book

Get Both of Dan’s Books Free Here

Watch The New Netflix Movie ” The Game Changers”

 

Please be sure to Subscribe to the YouTube Channel HERE

Also, comment below your Aha-Moments and any requests on what you want us to discuss on the next episode of The RockStar Entrepreneur Experience.

Be a RockStar In Your Life,
And Make The World Your Stage!

Dan “RockStar In Life” Ardebili
& Tony “Don’t Stop Believing” Finbarr-Smith

 

Transcript: (Read Time: 39 Minutes)

Tony: For this first video for us to talk about not waiting until the time is right. Not waiting until everything’s perfect till all the planets are aligned before you do the thing.

Dan: Yeah. I like that.

Tony: I had great ideas of what I wanted to do. I would always make lots of excuses like, well, as soon as this has happened, so as soon as the baby’s born. Your world turns upside down when you have your first baby especially. As soon as the baby’s sleeping, then I’ll focus on my biz. Yeah. And then Whoa. Wow. The baby sleeping.

Dan: I know that too well.

Tony: Yeah it doesn’t work out so well. Then it’s when, okay. When the baby’s doing this, when the baby is at nursery, when the baby is going to play group I’ll have a couple of hours and then you just catch some sleep. And then, okay. When the baby’s at school and the next thing you got another baby. And then next thing in my case you get into a divorce and then next, all these years later and it’s a lot of stuff I should have just made it happen there. And then instead of waiting for the perfect time. [crosstalk 00:01:10].

Dan: Yeah, I call it cleaning the desk. I mean, because a lot of people can relate. Not everybody could relate to the baby story, but everybody can relate to the cleaning the desk because when you’re in business for yourself, nobody’s going to tell you what you need to do because you’re in business for yourself. No matter what you’re doing and if you don’t go out and do something, then the only people that are going to come after you, you’re going to be the bill collectors and people like PGNE or depending on where you live, your electric company is saying, “Hey, you need to pay your money or we’re shutting off your refrigerator for your… Or your entire electricity and everything.”

Dan: And you got… But you’ll sit there and clean your desk like, “Oh but I can’t do this. I can’t make that phone call because I’ve got to clean the desk. I got to organize it. If I put the picture in the right place for me…” I was like I need to clean my desk, I need to put up this whiteboard and then I’m going to put it in like these grids and how many people I need to contact a day in order to get this many sales. And I need to have that perfect. And I just… Yeah. So it’s clean. Get ready to get ready. Yeah, exactly. You’re showing it right there. Yeah.

Dan: I used to use one of those where I do the grids and I need to talk to this many people and do these many things and put this system together. Cray these presentation materials. Because in my old business, we had to create our own presentation materials and I would print out new laminates. I create all these strategies and ideas, anything that would allow me to make an excuse to not actually have to do the things I didn’t want to do. The things that were I was afraid to do was actually even more accurate. I was afraid to do those things.

Tony: Yeah, absolutely. So kind of busy activity that you could say is work, but it’s not income producing work.

Dan: Well, it’s funny because my good friend, guru Singh, who’s one of my main teachers now that I learned from who I met through Tony Robbins, as you know, I’ve told you that story, Tony. So Tony and Tony Robbins, not you Tony, had introduced me to guru Singh at one of his small events that we did a private mastermind that we did. And I was just really drawn to guru Singh and he just lives his life at a higher level. He’s one of Tony’s mentors. He’s known him for over, I want to say 30 years, might be somewhere around there.

Dan: So one thing that that guru Singh had taught me there’s these words, right? So the words that we use, I think there’s like 15,000 words actually come from Sanscript. So it’s like these words that actually had meanings that just it blew me away. Because it was things like relationship, like a word like relationship. You just think, okay, it’s a word, right? The word relationship. Did you ever think what that word actually means to relate in a ship. Relationship. Marriage.

Dan: It’s the carriage to infinity. So it’s like there’s all these meanings and these words and so it actually forces me just like, I’m sure you’ve heard this Tony, we’ve never talked about it, but your words actually have meaning. Meaning that they have a cause and effect or an energy to them. Like writing words, like hate on a water bottle and then freezing it and you look at under a microscope and you can see that the molecules or the parts of the water freeze really weird looking like angry and ugly. Words like love, I mean there’s this whole book on that, The Water Meaning or something like that and-

Tony: And Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto.

Dan: Yeah, I’ve got that book. And I just never, I don’t put that in my mental rolodex of… Or a mental hard drive of the name of all that. But yeah. So it’s like words have meaning and so I try and prevent my… Not prevent, but I choose my… Like I just did right now not prevent. Right. I choose my words very carefully because they have a certain meaning and power to them. For instance, when we talk about, I don’t talk about weight loss and people say like, “Whoa, you lost weight.” I’m like, “Oh, thanks. Yeah, I eliminated a lot of weight.” I eliminated [crosstalk 00:05:37].

Tony: If you lose anything to try and find it, don’t you?

Dan: Yeah. Because if you lose something, it belongs to you. If you lose your car keys, do you want to never get your car keys back? No. You want your car keys back. Right. So you’re hoping it’ll come back to you so you don’t want that weight to come back to you. So it’s kind of the same thing. So that whole example is to kind of lead you back to the word I was talking about these words had meaning is business. The word business comes from busy-ness and it’s like really do I… So I don’t like to use the word business as much because it’s like you’re busy-ness and I don’t want to always be in busy-ness. Right?

Tony: Yeah.

Dan: I like to say empire. My empire, working on my empire. Because that to me that’s your castle, right? That’s your retirement. Even though I don’t even like to use word retirement, but that’s your nest egg, I guess you could call it or your empire. Something that is yours, that you’re building for you, your family for generations to come, that’s going to outlast you and your kids and their kids and their kids and their kids. Right?

Tony: Yeah, absolutely. Busy-ness does suggest that you have to continuously kind of continually be doing things to get the result when that’s not necessarily strictly the case.

Dan: Well, how many people do you know? I know for the last couple of years, I mean, it’s been better the last I’d say a year or two. For me, I never wanted to operate in this busy-ness. We would get on calls with my partner, with Ben and we’d get on calls with other team members that we had on and we’d do these long discussions and other partners that we had. And we had a technology partner that just wanted to get on the phone or on a Skype call and then talk for hours about, well, what if this, what if that and all these other things. And I’m like, dude, I called it mental masturbation.

Dan: I’m like, dude, this isn’t like exhausting me. And we’re just talking about these things that will, might never happen like 90 to, I’d say like 98% of the stuff we talked about never happened. And I knew that most of that would never happen. So why the hell are we going to sit on a four to six hour call, several times a week talking about all this other stuff that might never happen and that we might never do. It’s like, no, dude, we can talk about higher level things, but let’s save that to like once a week or once a month and structure that in a way of like, okay, here’s our first step. Now when we get closer to that, then we can talk about that.

Dan: And for me, I’ve never wanted to operate on this let’s just be in this busy-ness because I always joked and said I’m lazy, right? I’m lazy. I want to do the least amount possible to get the best results, which is just working smarter. A lot of people like to say it’s working smarter, which I agree it’s working smarter. What’s the least I can do, that’s the most powerful that I can do that’s going to get me the best results, like the tortoise and the hare, right? Like that the hare just goes out there and the bunny goes out there and just runs as fast as it can to get there. And the tortoise put this turtle put together this plan on how to get there and was smarter and got there first. Right?

Tony: Yeah.

Dan: Depending on which cartoon you go by, there was the Bugs Bunny. There was all these traps and things.

Tony: Elma fun.

Dan: All these fun examples. But that’s how real life is. Don’t get caught in this busy-ness. Right?

Tony: Absolutely. One interesting thing to pick up on something you said is avoiding doing the things that people are afraid of. And until recently, until like what day is today? Today’s Friday, until just this Monday. So five days ago, that’s all I ever heard. And I never heard an alternative that made sense. And I always thought, I’m not scared to call anyone. So I’m not scared of making sales calls and I’m not scared of the rejection.

Dan: I am. So you really aren’t you? I’m [crosstalk 00:09:54] completely?

Tony: I’d just doesn’t bother me. Tell me to call anyone if I’m in that frame of mind where I’m in my work character, my work persona, I’ll do it. It’s not a problem. But I was talking to this guy and he said, “Well, there’s no such thing as self sabotage. No such thing.” Because I like, “Well, why don’t people do the work? Why do they screw themselves up? Why do they self-sabotage?” He said, “There’s no such thing as self-sabotage. Everything you do is a choice or everything you don’t do is a choice because you get something from it. So identify what it is that you get from not doing the thing, not doing the work, not making those phone calls,” because I wasn’t scared of them at all. Is it’s-

Dan: Were you ever scared of them?

Tony: Oh yeah. I used to be. Yeah. Of course.

Dan: Let’s definitely circle, because there’s something there. I want to circle back to that. You’ll have to remember because my ADD will kick in and I won’t remember, but I definitely want to jump back on that one too.

Tony: Yeah. So what being scared of calls?

Dan: Yeah. Being scared of calls or anything like that. I mean, if you want we can… Did you want to finish your point or [crosstalk 00:11:08].

Tony: Yeah. I’ll quickly finish the point and we can loop straight back to that then.

Dan: Perfect.

Tony: So the point that he was making is there’s no such thing as self-sabotage. You just get something from this behavior that you’re choosing. So whether it’s doing busy work, cleaning your desk, watching YouTube videos, watching instructional videos, I’ll just watch that training again and I’ll not do it until I’m sure that I’ve got it right. Getting all your ducks in a row and all that business or whether it’s to do with weight loss and it might be or other weight elimination. It might be like, “Okay, I’ve been clean eating all week, but when it comes to my friends going out for something to eat, well I can’t say no because they’re my friends,” and he’s like, “Don’t be all, ‘Oh, why do I self-sabotage boohoo victim’.”

Tony: He said, “No. Instead just say, ‘Okay, you’re obviously doing that because you get something from it. And usually it’s a feeling of safety. So it’s not necessarily scared of one thing, but it’s feeling safe, preferring that feeling of safety.’” So then he said, “All you need to do is identify that good feeling or that thing that you get out of it and then question it, ask all the right questions, like, well, what does this cost me in the past? What does it costing me now? Who else does it affect this kind of uncontrolled kind of behavior and then look at it well in the future, what else could I do? What kind of pattern interrupts could I put into place?”

Tony: All the right questions to ask. And that made a big difference I think looking at things because that’s one thing where people say, “Oh, you’re scared of doing it.” Well instead of looking at, okay, maybe being scared of something and people think going on, “I’m not scared of that. I don’t have any fear.” Maybe say, “Okay, we’ll just identify the behavior that you don’t like and you’re not sure about that you feel is self-sabotage,” and then say, “What do you get from that?” Because there’s no such thing as self sabotage. There’s just choosing the preferred path and then identify why you’re doing that and then ask the right questions. And I found that really helpful.

Dan: I agree with most of what you said. There is a couple of different things to that. There’s going to be different levels, right? There’s going to be different levels of awareness in anything you do, right? It’s like, “Oh, I want to have a child and I’m going to love that child,” right? But until you have that child, you don’t really know what that means. Right? You understand, but you don’t really own that. You don’t really… You can’t feel 100% what that’s going to be like until you experienced it. It’s like-

Tony: You don’t know till you know.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, it’s just like anything else. It’s like say like, “Oh, well I want to learn how to snowboard or ski or surf or whatever or ski in the… Behind a boat,” right? Go skiing behind a boat. Until you do it, you might think like oh, it’s going to be easy, or it’s going to be enjoyable until you do it, you don’t really know. You can’t really understand it. And there are different levels and I think that is just like anything else you learn, whether it’s a sport or even like in school, like at first math seems very difficult, but then once you learn like one plus one is two, two plus two is four, four plus four is 22.

Dan: Oh, whoops. No, I’m just kidding. Before you really… When you start to understand those, like how the numbers work, it started to makes more sense and it’s kind of the same thing. Like this whole thing with exactly what you said. That’s how I learned. That was the level I needed to get to, to get to the next level. And the way I learned it was actually through Tony Robbins. He had a planning method called rapid planning method, RPM. Have you ever heard of that?

Tony: Yeah, it rings a bell, but I can’t remember the specifics.

Dan: Yeah, I don’t recommend if you’re watching this, I don’t recommend you go look for it or anything like that because it took me to where I needed to be. But if I could go back, I would’ve shortcutted that, but I’m just using it as a reference of how I also learned myself from exactly what you said. The whole purpose of that was every single day I had a journal, every single day I had to write in there. It was something like the five things that I wanted to accomplish, what it would feel like if I did those five things, what it would feel like if I didn’t do those five things, what would it cost me? So it was all about this bring pain and bring pleasure. Right?

Dan: So let’s start with the pain and now here’s the pleasure. If I do accomplish those five things that I want to accomplish. And then you’d have your higher level goals that weren’t just for the day, but for the future. And I did this for at least a year, if not two years. I don’t remember exactly, but I did it so often that I didn’t have to write it down anymore because it was just part of me now. Now I understand. I could have shortcutted that though. Learning from guru Singh as I explained, and now I have a deeper understanding of how that works. And instead of saying to myself, and this actually circles back to the whole fear, I still have fear of calling people. I still have fear of speaking to strangers.

Dan: I still have fear. But the difference is now is that I’ve conditioned myself to just take that leap. So I just take that action and I don’t listen to that fear anymore. And that fear has numbed itself because I’ve experienced it. It’s like a martial art or boxing or any other thing that you can think of is doing something might be scary at first. But once you learn to block, you get better at blocking and eventually you’ll be able to block almost every one of the punches. And if a punch comes through, you already know what it feels like to get hit and it hurts and you’d prefer not to get hit. But now you know what it feels like. So the more you do it, which I call take the leap. Leap first and let the net appear.

Dan: It’s actually one of my books, right? A RockStar lesson. Leap first and let the net appear and it’s like off a high dive. I use that example all the time. If you’ve ever done that, when you’re standing on the top of the high dive and you’re looking down and you just got this pit in your stomach and it hurts and you’re like freaked out. Well if you just leap, it’s going to suck, but you’re going to do it now. If you were to keep it, it’s going to be easy as the second time and easier the third time and easy the four time.

Dan: And if you did it like a hundred times in a row or a hundred times in the next week or two, eventually just be the point where you won’t even think about it. You’ll just be able to just jump off. And I don’t know if that fear would ever leave you. For me, making those phone calls, it never fully left me, but it’s so numb now that it’s not even really there. You don’t really feel it. But I still have that leap first. So most of the time I’ll just dial the number and then just call without even thinking. So that’s my leap first and it’s ringing and I’m like, well, I have no choice. It’s ringing. Right?

Tony: Yeah.

Dan: Does that makes sense?

Tony: Yeah. Maybe that’s when I say I don’t have any fear. Maybe that’s what it is, is I’ve just done it that many times. I used to work for a company where you knock on doors for charities and ask them to sign a thing, like sign up for a monthly donation from their bank. You get pretty numb to rejection and fear and stuff doing that. So, yeah. And you just a game of it.

Dan: Yeah. I was freaked out to make videos. I mean, we’re making a video right now, but 10 what? 15 what? 2000, I think 2000, 2006, 2007, somewhere around there. I think 2007, I started making a couple of videos here and there. And I was freaked out. My video was like 15 minutes long. There’s lots of ands and ums. There was lots of little just like, ah, and I had to edit it down and back then you couldn’t record anything. You couldn’t upload anything longer than 10 minutes to YouTube. And I remember it was so hard to get it down to 10 minutes and I did.

Dan: But man, those videos really suck, especially compared to how we’re doing them now. But the more you do it, the better you start to get at it. And you just leap first. I still don’t want to hit record. I still don’t want to make a really want to make a video, but the message is so important that it has to be out there. If I don’t do it, who else is going to do it? Same with speaking on stage. I’m still freaked out to get on stage. I’m freaked out. I can’t sleep the night before when I have to take a plane or something, then I’m there and I’m like freaked out. But I just do that whole leap first and I just go, dude, I’m just going to get out there and do it and I’ll mess up on there. But people won’t even realize I mess up because I’ve learned to ask a question because I’ll forget like we were doing this recording.

Dan: That’s why I asked you to keep part of it in there where I lost my train of thought. Right. You saw it firsthand. I forgot what the hell I was saying. And that happens on stage and it sucks and it still feels like a pit in your stomach. But I learned on stage, I could ask a question. I’d be like, “Hey, how many of you guys here went here before?” Or, “How many of you here are from this place?” Or, “Who’s ever experienced this?” And then people raise their hand and then usually I’ll remember what I was going to say and I go back to it, or I’ll even have more fun.

Dan: And I’ll say, here’s the fun thing I’ll do is I’ll say, “Hey, I’ve got major ADD, ADHD and I saw a squirrel and I lost my train of thought. So can somebody to remind me what I was just saying? Because this is going to happen probably more than once.” And somebody in the audience would say, “You were talking about this.” And then it becomes fun for people there as well. I mean, I even did that at… What is it called? What was that thing you go to when somebody passes away? The word for that?

Tony: Awake or eulogies, funeral.

Dan: I guess awake. Yeah. Like that. Yeah, it was a funeral eulogy. Actually-

Tony: Like a memorial service?

Dan: Yeah, I did the squirrel thing. I said, “Sorry, I’ve got ADHD and forgot my train of thought. I saw a bunch of seagulls fly by.” And luckily for me there were seagulls that flew by. So it worked out. So my whole point of everything that just kind of explain it that higher level to that experience, different ways of experiencing it is this whole… And this is the part that I didn’t agree with. I agree with it, but at a different level is this whole, there’s no such thing as self-sabotage.

Dan: I wouldn’t call it sabotage because I wanted to be careful with my words, but it can be called that, especially when you’re first starting out, it feels like sabotage. It feels so intense, but it gets numbed down and then you do this leap first to the point where you won’t even have to do that anymore. So won’t be self-sabotage. It’ll just be, I’m feeling like I don’t want to do this. Instead of this video we’re making right now. I mean, I’d rather be sitting in my electric recliner over here, chilling in my little man cave in my office here, my home office and watching… What was I watching her realize watching here last? It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Dan: I’d rather be watching that right now, man. And I do that a lot. I’ll binge watch shows are kind of kicked back and I’ll go like a couple of days of binge watching things and just do like a little bit of this and that here and there. I might only work like 10 minutes to half an hour in the whole day. And then other days I’ll just go boom and I’ll just go because I’ll go full force and I’ll make a bunch of videos or I’ll create a bunch of content or I’ll do a bunch of things that I’ll map out the next product or the next software or the next plan of ideas or videos I want to make or things I want to do because everybody has their own way of doing things.

Dan: And for me, I’m what’s called an artist and I know there’s a large part of yourself as well. Tony, you’re an artist as well, but we all have these different levels where there’s this artist and this and there’s this entrepreneurness, this is manager-ness. Some people aren’t the artists. Some people are the manager where they don’t really want to do that. They don’t enjoy doing the creation process. They like managing and they like creating the systems and it doesn’t mean they have to be a manager at some company. It just means that they don’t want to be part of that creative process, that they just want to manage all the steps in there and they need to find their way.

Dan: And this could be a whole different discussion where we go into this because this is really important as well, but it’s important to find out what it is that, that you’re best at and do that. But there’s this point where you hit this higher level where you don’t even need to worry about this whole like, “Oh, I need to force myself,” instead of just… And, “Oh, why am I self sabotaging myself? Why am I doing this? Why?” Then you get like the stuck in this why? And you’re like, “Oh, I need to do all these affirmations. I need to do all these things.”

Dan: It’s like, no, just do it. Just leap. Just jump. Just take a little bit of action and then reward yourself for that action. Pat yourself on the back don’t go, “Oh, well that was only… I only did like 10 minutes of this,” or, “I only wrote three things. I want to write a whole book and I only did like a quarter of a page.” Reward yourself in that quarter of the page. Get yourself in that mindset and do a little bit more, do a little bit more, do a little bit more and eventually it’ll be done.

Tony: Absolutely. Now, I’m absolutely inclined to agree with that. Absolutely. I think a lot of the time with all of these things there’s very blurred lines between all the concepts and I think often you just need to hear it said in a way that resonates with you for it to-

Dan: And if it doesn’t resonate with you, create your own.

Tony: Yeah. Just to get that result. However the result happens. As long as that thing, that change that needs to happen happens. And even if that change is no change but just go, well I’m going to do it anyway while I wait for the change to happen.

Dan: I hear it all the time. I’ve like posted in other Facebook groups of other people owning stuff and try to help people in there because I saw a message pop up about like, “Hey, I’m scared of this, or, “I’m confused on this,” or, “Hey, I’m not getting any sales on the course that I created,” and I’ll reply like, “Hey, you just need to do this,” or, “You need to think like this.” And then you’ll get responses from we call them trolls because they’re just unhappy and they want to pick things apart and just ruin somebody else’s day. And they’ll say something like, “Oh well I’m not sleazy like that. I don’t like to do my sales like that.”

Dan: And I’m like, “Dude, I thought the whole point was to get your course in other people’s hands because they need your course because it’s going to help them. So how has that sleazy helping them make a decision to purchase your product or get your product if it’s going to help them, if it’s not going to help them,” then yeah, then that sucks. Don’t do that. But how’s that? It just makes no sense. Well, I mean, I understand why, but it’s just stupid. It’s just stupid that they prevent themselves from taking that action. And my point on that is for people that might watch this and go, “Oh Dan, he’s too energized. He’s too energetic. He’s too… I don’t really like his vocabulary. I don’t like his bald head. I don’t like that he likes Deadpool. Deadpool curses in movies. So I’m not going to listen to him. Oh, Dan said the F word, or the S words.

Dan: So I’m not going… It’s like, dude, get what you need to get from what we’re talking about related any way you need to in order to get something from it. Make stuff up in your own way to hear the message that we’re giving. It doesn’t matter the words we’re using. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like our personality or would come off a certain way. Use what we said to motivate you in any way necessary. Be your own motivation and make that commitment. And that’s a whole different subject is it’s not motivation, it’s commitment. Make that commitment to make that change because motivation’s only going to get you so far.

Dan: And I tried it for years to motivate myself. Motivate affirmations, music, writing down if I don’t do it as I’m going to have this and my family is going to be broken. I’m going to live on the streets and I had to do that thing where we were digging in couch cushions, to find gas money so I can get to my next meeting, and barely having enough to make it over there and using Starbucks as our office. And I had to come up with the four bucks or whatever it was to buy a caramel frappuccino. Right. And it sucked. But you know what? I am where I am today. I don’t have to worry about money. We live in a beautiful house. We’re in Orange County, California. Beautiful view, beautiful pool, got a nice size house, got nice cars. We got all this stuff we want.

Tony: Nice. That’s the thing. The time is going to pass anyway, isn’t it? So as well just do the things and yeah, it’s uncomfortable. But if somebody has already walked that path like you have, it’s not like we’re asking somebody to design a ship that’s going to take us to colonize Mars. Just saying, look, other people have done this. You can do this too. And they go, “Oh, but I gained my own way,” or, “I don’t do this,” or, “I…” Okay, well we’ve just discussed everything you need to do to kind of overcome that.

Dan: Yeah. Just take a step. Take a step find somebody to model after. And if there isn’t anybody to model after to kind of model what they did, then be the first, right. Be the first, just do it, take a step. And when you’re taking that path, I use this example I’ve used a lot where, if there’s two paths and you’re not sure and you need to get water, right, because you’re in the desert. There’s these two paths or we won’t say desert, we’ll say the woods. There’s these two paths you need to get water. One of the paths you’ll get there in a mile and you’ll get the water you need the other path, you go a hundred miles, there’s no water.

Dan: Obviously you don’t know this because you haven’t taken those two paths, but you’ve got a choice. Okay. What makes better sense to sit there and just sit there in front of these two paths and just sit there and just crying and saying, I don’t know what to do. And then just die of thirst. Or to actually take one of the damn paths to walk. And then if you don’t hit water at some point, you could always turn around and go the other direction if needed. Or you can re-adjust. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about right here. And you might never reach the water, but you know what, you won’t know until you know and you won’t get it. But least you’re taking that leap in order to get that, right? And the difference here is you’re not going to die of thirst.

Dan: So what I mean is when you take that step, it’s going to lead you to where you need to go. It’s going to lead… And that’s the same thing that I did in my businesses before we created two RockStars and RockStar entrepreneur and all these other businesses that we have. And before I met my partner, Ben, I was on a different path. I had created a course, I think it was one or two courses, wrote two books and I was on a different path. I was coaching people and I was on that path, but it just wasn’t taking off.

Dan: And it wasn’t that I was… It wasn’t doing as good as I wanted it to do, but it led me into that other path. It wasn’t like I just said, “Oh, I’m going to scrap this and go here.” It was just that I was like, “Oh, I have this opportunity to also do this.” So I started doing that other path, that other business. Well, and that turned into even bigger and it was like, “Whoa, I got there.” But if I wouldn’t have taken that first, those first steps and made a lot of little mistakes and not reached what I expected myself to reach, what I wanted to reach those goals, then it wouldn’t have led me to where I am today.

Tony: Absolutely. I think a lot of it is about keeping your eyes open and looking out for those opportunities. Yeah, keep your head down and they say the word focus stands for faithfully on course until successful. But I think keeping your eyes and ears open at the same time…

Dan: Because you have to adjust.

Tony: You’ve got to adjust. For example, I’ll give an example. A RockStar entrepreneur family might recognize. I’ve been building sites for electricians who rewire houses, put in new fuse boxes, things like that. Then he doing every 30, 40 years. And I’ve been building these sites, I’ve been ranking them contacting electricians abouts, do you want this website? It’s all over Google, on page one, multiple first result kind of rankings and stuff. Do you want it? And this guy came back to me and he went, well, I liked what you doing, but I don’t really like house rewires because there’s this wrong, there’s that wrong. And that was just his opinion.

Tony: And he said, what would be really good is if the website was ranking for electric car charging point installation in people’s homes. And I was like, “Oh, okay, is that a popular thing? Is it profitable?” He went, “My God, it is so profitable because for a start, the UK government is giving…” It costs about a thousand pounds. And in England a thousand pounds is a lot of money. But first off, if people are buying electric cars, they tend to have the money. But he’s saying, it costs about a thousand pounds, but 500 of that comes from the government. So there’s these government grants to install at home electric car charging points.

Tony: And he’s like, “I’d love to rank for that.” So I’ve mentioned it to another electrician who has one of my sites. And he’s like, “Oh my God, if you could rank for that, my God, it’ll rain money.” And I was like, “Well, why didn’t you tell me that before? Because this guy, I know him, I’ve known him 15 years, and he had the first site,” and I was like, “I’ve been asking you, we’ve been focused on these house rewires,” and he went, “Oh, it’s just been so focused on the house rewires.

Tony: I didn’t even think of that. But yeah, I’ve done a couple of those in the last week. They’re so good then the money.” So yeah, you got to keep your eyes open. Boys and girls, keep your eyes open. The opportunities are there. This guy, the first guy is saying, “Oh yeah, go for it and this is what I want to do. I like what you’re doing. Let’s do this instead.” And Neil, the guy who’s got the website already, his head was down just looking at house rewires and he forgot to even tell me about the electric car charging points.

Dan: I love that. [crosstalk 00:35:56]. Yeah. I’ve got plenty of examples myself as well. I mean that’s, yeah, just keep your eyes open, keep your ears open and you got to kind of look at things and be like, okay, well where’s this going to take me? Well, let me see. Let me see what’s going to happen? Obviously there’s this weird-like, this old-like traditional like lessons that we’ve been taught by our parents. Not everybody’s parents, but most majority society like get a good job, good secure job, which does not exist. Right.

Dan: Save your money. Right. And then buy a house and retire. Well, there is no more retirement guys. So these old rules in this whole like focus, do one thing. It’s like, no, that’s not how it works anymore. You don’t just like for instance, for you, as soon as that first person came to you, that first electrician and said, “Hey, if you could rank for this, I would love it.” You didn’t go, okay, well I’m going to close everything else I’m doing and only do this now. Right. You said, “Okay, well I’m going to ask one of my other clients,” and, “Oh, now you validated it.”

Dan: You didn’t shut everything down, but you’re like, okay, now I’m going to also do this. And then that might take off to the point to where you’re like, okay, this is all I’m going to do if it takes off, but you have… But if you wouldn’t have taken that, you would have stuck to that old just focus. Just focus this one thing, stupid, these old lessons and rules that we’ve been taught over our lifetime. You got to break it. You got to break those rules that don’t serve us anymore.

Tony: Oh. As they say, if you do the same, if you do what everyone else does, you’re going to get whatever and else gets, and the last time I looked, everyone else was pretty broke.

Dan: Yeah. Well, that’s the challenge too though, is that all these people like I live in what’s called Coto de Caza. It’s a city. It’s within gates. So the whole city is inside the gates. I think there’s like I want to say there’s 4000 houses. About 14,000 people live here, I believe. And everybody there is like, it’s all million-dollar multimillion-dollar homes. Right. Got some celebrities. The Real Housewives of Orange County is filmed here and yeah, that’s our claim to fame. And-

Tony: Hey, wait till I tell Gemma’s mama, because when I said I’m going to derail a conversation, when I told Gemma’s mom about working with you guys, and she’s like, “Oh wait, where whereabouts do they live?” And I said, “Oh, well Ben lives in up in Vancouver, British Columbia and Canadia, one of his neighbors, kind of the back of him is Michael Bublé,” and she’s like, “Oh my God.” And I said, “Yeah, Dan lives down in Orange County.” She’s like, “Oh, like the Real Housewives of Orange County.” I was like, “Yeah, I’m sure that is nearby. So you wait.”But the thing is-

Dan: It’s in our city.

Tony: She was saying the best thing was she was saying, “So are you going to go and visit them?” And I was like, “There’s no need for me to go visit them.” “Yeah. But you could go visit them and take Gemma and the baby.” And I was like, “Well I’d get even less done.” She said, “Yeah, but then I can come and I can be the British nanny looking after the baby.” I saw, “For God sake. You just want to go see the Housewives of Orange County.” So yeah, sorry. Anyway, we were saying?

Dan: That’s fine. So yeah, no, but my point was… I love that. My point was, is that you don’t really know, right. This whole thing of like, okay, well this advice I’m getting from somebody, right? They might look like they have money, they might look like they have it all together, but they could have a second mortgage. They can be upside down. I mean most people are when they’re driving these beautiful cars and we see Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s driving through, porsches constantly, right.

Dan: And it’s like you don’t really know what they got going on for years because we actually got caught up in the whole 2006, 2007, 2008 whole financial meltdown that we had here that we actually… I had three cars repoed and I basically for, since 2007, about 2007 to maybe like a year and a half ago, I would just drive an older car and we would just have one car because we didn’t want to get caught up in that again. So I was like, look, I’m not going to go buy expensive cars. I’m not going to have all this extra debt. Right? I’m not going to go spend, I’m not going to go buy a Mercedes for 50, 60, 70, 80, $100,000 in cash and then not have that money on hand in case something else happens. So you never know.

Dan: So I’m sitting here driving around in 2009 Mazda CX-9 while everybody else I know is driving a Tesla or a Mercedes or BMW or Fryer, Lamborghini and all the people around here and we’re driving probably the worst car in the whole in most of the city right here that we live in. And people might think like, “Oh, they’re broke or they ain’t got money.” It’s just, no. I want to be smart with my money. So you could model after one of my neighbors that has the Ferrari but be completely upside down or they have a horrible marriage. Their kids are always getting in trouble and stuff. I mean, you have no idea what’s going on in life.

Dan: So don’t look at other people going, “Oh, I wish I had what they have,” because you have no idea. Well take their advice. Right. I heard people say the, the most expensive advice could be free advice because you don’t know who it’s coming from. And that’s again, the reason why you want a model. Model after somebody that you want to be like. But also look at how they live their life. Do you want to model that person exactly or just maybe a piece of it. They have a billion dollar company. Maybe you want to model how to build a billion dollar company, but you don’t want to model how to have work life and balance because they might be divorced twice or three times. Their kids might hate them. They might be 80 pounds overweight, right, and unhealthy. So find those bits and pieces that you want to model after them.

Tony: So that’s probably, I think that’s a good topic for another video. So I’m going to write it down. Just modeling people.

Dan: By the way, I’ve got nicer cars now, so I don’t want you to think like, “Oh well, well Dan says that I need to have a crummy car or a 2009 or whatever, an older car and that’s what I should have forever. No, at some point, you will feel confident and comfortable or you won’t need to have as much money in reserves or you have enough money at that point in that in reserves that you go, okay, when I have this much coming into my business, let’s say when I reached this, fifteen thousand dollars might be your number, maybe ten thousand.

Dan: Maybe something is small, five grand is your number. When I have this number consistently coming in every month, no matter if I work or don’t work, then I will go and splurge. I will buy myself an exotic or a European, but a smart purchase, right? I’m not going to go out there and buy the a hundred and fifty thousand dollar car. I’ll buy an eighty thousand dollar car. I’ll buy a fifty thousand dollar car. I don’t know what your number is, but you can predetermine what your first steps going to be. Because when I first started out, I was making money in the real estate business back in like 2001, 2002, 2003, I don’t know.

Dan: Somewhere around there. I forgot the exact year. I went out and bought expensive Mercedes and this custom Mercedes, with this custom interior and I bought a special edition Harley motorcycle, the same one, like Wolverine was driving and it was like always one of my dreams. And I saw him as exotic like magazines, the Robb Report, and I bought all these things, but when the market turned and I couldn’t afford to keep them anymore because the market turned and my income pretty much completely disappeared because of the mortgage meltdown. I had to figure something else out, so I decided not to catch myself in that ever again and to secure myself.

Tony: Yeah. It’s due another one. They say, don’t they? The market-

Dan: Always going to be another one.

Tony: So, it makes sense to kind of prepare yourself and to not overextend yourself. I think that’s kind of the initial problem, wasn’t it? When people are paying monthly, not higher but paying notes each month on their vehicles that when instead they could be paying out a lot less or just by the car outright which what we’ve done. We’re a two car family. One of them is on lease. Gemma’s dad works for Audi, so we’ve got an Audi A1 that’s on lease, but then we’ve had the baby and it doesn’t have back doors.

Tony: So well the baby doesn’t have back doors, but the Audi A1 doesn’t have back doors either. So we couldn’t put the baby in and out. So we just went out and we looked at a couple of lease options. Where you after three years you decide what you want to do or whatever. Do you want to buy it or do you want to trade it in or whatever. And we said, “No, let’s just get a Nissan Qashqai family wagon sorted. We paid six and a half grand upfront bosch done and now we don’t have to worry about that.

Dan: Yeah, it’s going to be different for everybody. I mean, again, it’s whatever you got going on in your business. I mean for some people it makes more sense to lease. I’m leasing one of my cars and then we bought other cars a big Chrysler Pacifica, stealth edition, which is the coolest minivan they make. There’s some cool YouTube commercials I see on there with that actress, I think it’s Katie something. She’s in a bunch of comedies and stuff. It’s a great a commercial. But yeah, so I mean we purchased that one outright.

Dan: And but we actually financed it, but I mean we purchased it but we financed it still. Because it just makes better sense. Instead of me tying up $60,000, I’m like, okay, well I’ll just make payments and if something happens I still have that money in my pocket. And then for our… I have an Audi SQ5. And that one I leased because it makes sense because I don’t drive much. I mean I think I’ve had it for maybe four months or five months or something like that. And I only have 2000 miles on it because I barely drive. And it just makes sense. It doesn’t tie up my money. But for other people it might not make sense. It might make better sense to pay cash.

Tony: Yeah. Absolutely. Cool beans. All right, well I think we’ve got lots of tasty nuggets of advice. Little…

Dan: Super tasty.

Tony: Super tasty. I’ll tell you what, before we go, I’ve got to tell you, so now I’m officially vegetarian with Gemma and we’ve been getting this thing. So do you know Paul McCartney, the singer for the Beatles?

Dan: Yeah.

Tony: He had a wife called Linda McCartney, advocate for vegetarianism in the 80s, and then she died. But there’s still the Linda McCartney food range, and they do this… When you go to the Chinese and you get these little pancakes and you get a shredded, we call them spring onions. You call them scallions and shredded cucumber and crispy duck, and you wrap it up and all that. Well, they do a vegetarian one is like mushroom, but it’s exactly like crispy duck and it tastes the same. It’s absolutely amazing. So tasty crispy duck, fake crispy duck nuggets of information there.

Dan: I love it. Have you checked out the movie Game Changers yet?

Tony: No, not heard of it.

Dan: Have you heard of it?

Tony: Who’s in it?

Dan: Oh, man. Well, it’s a documentary. And it was actually the producer is a James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the guy that just won one of the… Race car drivers that just won… I don’t know what it’s called, but he won that. He’s in it. The guy that won the Wimbleton, he’s in it. One of the guys I met, it came to my house as Nimai Delgado who is a professional bodybuilder. He’s a vegan bodybuilder. So it’s all about veganism, but it’s not a moral kind of thing where all the other videos are about this moral and health healthier and all this other stuff.

Tony: Yeah. Like conspiracy and stuff.

Dan: Yeah. This is actually all about the performance of the top athletes in the world that they took actual non-vegans and tested their blood, and had them eat the best meat than vegetarian than vegan and tested their blood. And it’s amazing. And all these other vegan powerlifters, strongmen, all these other professional athletes. There’s football players that are professional football players. Half of the team went vegan for the Titans and it’s just, it’s amazing. It’s just came out. We watched it on at the movie theaters last month.

Tony: Okay, cool. Well, I’m going to check that out.

Dan: It’s a great documentary. It’s about to be… Well, depending on when you watch this video, it’s about to be released on Netflix, I think October what? The 15th I think so by the time you watch this video it’d probably be on Netflix as well, but you can watch it on iTunes. You can rent it on iTunes, Vudu, FandangoNOW. But you can watch it on Netflix pretty soon. It’s amazing documentary. I highly recommend you check it out and it’s great.

Tony: Game Changers.

Dan: Yeah. Game Changers.

Tony: Game Changers, right. Cool.

Dan: Jackie Chan I believe is one of the… He’s one of the directors as well, or producers.

Tony: Oh, nice. Okay, cool. I will let you know what I think I’ll find it and Gem is well up for that because obviously she’s been vegetarian since she was a little kid, saw an animal being slaughtered on the TV and was like, “Wait, that’s where our food comes from. No, thank you.” So yeah.

Dan: I was the exact opposite. I was a bodybuilder and I’d eat five pounds of meat a day and 48 egg whites, protein powders and all that kind of stuff. Lots of milk. I did that for years and I never thought about… I was never like, “Oh, I feel guilty,” or anything like that. I was like almost everyone else that eats meat. It was like, “Oh, whatever,” [crosstalk 00:51:27] therefore. And it wasn’t until I was like, okay, well, Tony Robbins that actually talked about going vegan and I was healthier and all that stuff.

Dan: So we decided to give it a try because I was… Oh, I stopped working out and I started a new business. My daughter was in a really bad car wreck and this is a whole another story. But long story short, I decided to give it a try and say, “You know what, I’ll give it two weeks and just see how I feel.” And I felt amazing and I started getting in shape without even exercising. And it just stuck with us. And then at some point you kind of feel that compassion. I’ve actually heard about this recently where they talked about once you are not consuming animal blood anymore, there’s this trigger inside of you, this is chemical or something like that in your brain that that triggers this compassion.

Dan: I forgot the science behind it, but there is some science behind it where it triggers us compassion where you become compassionate. So all of a sudden it turned into this, yes, we are compassionate about the animals now and you’ll be disgusted even think about eating meat ever again. And yeah. People always say like, “Well what do you eat? Twigs and berries and tofu or just salads and tofu.” And it’s like, no, it opens up a whole new world. I mean I used to not look forward to eating when I was eating meat and I would just be bored of food because I would eat six meals a day and I was like chicken or rice, beef and rice, beef and potatoes, chicken and potatoes, vegetables-

Tony: Don’t forget the broccoli.

Dan: It was boring as shit. Well, all of a sudden you have all these new things you make these nut burgers out of almonds and all these other things that you’d mixed together and you’d have all these vegetables you never even tried and you’re like, “Whoa, this is amazing.” And you’re like this… I mean now I know sibos are popular, but when they weren’t it was like, “What is a sibo? This is amazing. Oh my God, it’s like a desert.” There’s all these other kinds of meals that you experience in these fruits, these vegetables that you’re just like, “Dude, this is like explosion in my mouth. It’s amazing.” It’s crazy.

Tony: So do you find that it helps your concentration as well? Are you a more effective entrepreneur?

Dan: Yes, big time. I was always really scattered. I felt like there was a point that I felt like… This is no joke. There was this point where I was thinking the only way I’m going to come up with an idea, because I was working in jobs. I was actually a personal trainer at the time. And I remember thinking back, I was at a nightclub and we had taken… Some people call Molly, which was ecstasy. And I was thinking like the only way I’d be able to come up with an idea and do something was if I took a drug like that.

Dan: And I thought I was going to have to take a drug in the day and I was going to have to sit down and write down all my ideas and that’s how I was going to have to come up with it. And I was never going to be successful unless I took a drug or something like that. And I just couldn’t focus. My ADD was so bad that I would have so many different things coming through me. I’d never be able to focus on one thing. So it was like I never had a good idea. I had okay ideas, but I was never able to get them to good.

Dan: And then beyond to better to actually even take, implement something be all my ideas were scattered and once I started doing Kundalini yoga and also being vegan, it was like this snapped inside of me and all of a sudden, and I was doing cold showers. So it was like a combination. All of these that I was doing, that’s when I wrote my first book and then my second book and publish them both. Right. And it was like… And then I had all these other ideas and then it led me and I took those steps like we talked about and I took these steps and it started directing me to where I needed to go. Now I needed to learn online marketing, right?

Dan: And to learn all my marketing. Now I need to online market myself because there was nobody to hire back then. There was no courses on here’s how you do online marketing back then. So I had to figure it out myself. I had to study, I had a test, I had to spend 80 hours trying to figure this stuff out. And once I started getting some success, just a little bit, not enough to actually even pay me like real money to where I can live off of, I started having… Because again this is around the meltdown time here and where the mortgage crisis and people were losing their jobs and everything. I started to have business owners coming to me saying, “Hey, I saw… I know you’re doing that for your books and your own stuff. Can you do that for me? Or who can you recommend?” Actually the first question was who do you recommend that can do that for me? And I was like, “Honestly, there is nobody.”

Dan: And they’re like, “Oh well can I just pay you $2,000 to do it for me?” And I’m like, “Okay.” And that led me the next thing. So it was like if I didn’t do those things, that wouldn’t have led me to that thing. And then it turned into I’m getting paid a couple of grand from all these people and then a monthly, every from all these people. And then it turned into, okay, I’m making six figures doing that. And then it turned into, “Hey, can you online, can you teach me how to get clients and do what you were doing?” And I was like, “Sure.” And they’re like, “Why don’t you create a course?” And I actually started with doing like I coach like one or two people.

Dan: They paid me to do it. And then it was like, “Okay, well why don’t you create a course on how to do that?” I’m like, “Okay, fine, I’ll do that and then think I was going to make any money at it.” And I just took off and I was like, “Okay, now that’s what I’m doing.” Right. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. And then it was like, “Well, I don’t want to use WordPress. Is there any software I could use?” And we didn’t want to use WordPress anymore either for that, for building client sites. And we’re like, “Well, there’s no software we recommend, so let’s go build our own.” And we built our own and it’s like just led us to the next thing to the next thing, the next thing.

Tony: Nice. And that’s looping us back nicely to earlier where we’re saying about keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t freak out about sticking to just the one core, the one direction. You’ve got to keep your eyes… Sometimes the universe is… Or whatever label you want to give it is giving you something. You just got to look up and take it. Absolutely.

Dan: Yeah. You just got to start walking the path, adjust along, adjust as you’re going along.

Tony: Got to walk that path. This has been a brilliant, brilliant conversation. Really enlightening.

Dan: I loved it. I had fun.

Tony: Let’s look back. I mean I’ve got so many great notes as well for us to talk about other topics. If you’re watching this and you want to ask us any questions, use that little comment box down below. Leave a little comment and if there’s anything you want us to cover a course absolutely. Down below is where you do that. And before we go any kind of anything you want to say Dan?

Dan: Be a RockStar in your life, make the world your stage!

Tony: As always is I like to say, don’t stop believing.

Dan: I love it.

Tony: Catch you later.

Dan: See you next time.

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Be a RockStar In Your Life,
And Make The World Your Stage!

Dan “RockStar In Life” Ardebili
& Tony “Don’t Stop Believing” Finbarr-Smith