Alex Ikonn - Intelligent Change: How to Adopt The Mindset For Success

Full transcript: Alex Ikonn on London Real

3:40 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Alex Ikonn, the serial entrepreneur, influencer and angel investor. In 2010 you founded Luxy Hair with your now wife Mimi and experienced incredible growth with over 250,000 customers in more than 165 countries. The Luxy Hair YouTube channel gained over 3 million subscribers, making it the largest hair channel in the world and turning you and Mimi into well-known lifestyle influencers.

4:04 You’re also the co-founder of Intelligent Change, the company behind the best-selling Five Minute Journal and productivity planner, and you’re an angel investor in many startups, including the meditation app Calm. Alex, welcome back to London Real. Great having you. It’s been 5 years. Yes, you were here.

4:22 We’re both dads. Oh wow, I mean, quite a lot of changes, right? So do you, uh, is it weird thinking back 5 years earlier from how do you feel? Like a different person? Do you feel like a lot has changed, or do you feel like the same guy?

4:35 I always feel like the same guy, and I think even to you, the only thing that I realized in five years is how much you can do, okay? You know, so I think a lot of times we just forget you can make a lot of progress in five years. Like look, I had a daughter, I sold the business, I’m here. I think it’s great. Yeah, I think it was Tony Robbins, it says that most people are too hard on themselves in the short term and then they don’t give themselves enough credit in the long term, that you can do so much.

5:02 And I just had this guy on the show named James Clear, who has a book called Atomic Habits. Of course. Oh, you have on? Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s a couple weeks ago. You trying to recruit for your podcast?

5:10 Yeah. And so, uh, and so, you know, this 1% change every day really adds up over time, and I think people, you don’t forget that. Even sometimes I forget that. I’m always really self-critical, like how come it’s not getting there faster? But when you look back, it’s like you can really build something if you work at it every day, right?

5:27 Yeah, slowly, but you know, turtle wins the race, right? Well look, I want to hear about your adventures the last few years and fatherhood and what you’re doing next and all of that stuff, but most people know you and Mimi as these big influencers, right, you know, and that big. I know, but they know you from, you know, videos on YouTube and Instagram and this kind of, you know, nomadic lifestyle that you guys lead, and that’s great and I want to talk about that today, but I would also love to get back to, you know, where you started and kind of where you’re from and what all this came, because you know, every time I see you and Mimi and, you know, you guys, I’m always like, wow, you know, you guys have built something impressive, you’ve designed your life in this incredible way, but I don’t think people realize that you both started like really from the bottom, and it’s hard to actually believe that sometimes, but you guys really did start from kind of ground zero.

6:22 And I was wondering if you could maybe talk about even, you know, where you were born and that first, you know, 10 years of your journey and what that was like, because most people would be surprised. Yeah, I was actually just making a video today. I’m kind of back getting into YouTube, making videos again, and there was a tag Mimi, that it’s like 10 things I’ve never told anybody before, and I was just recalling some stories. I’m like, wow, it was a pretty badass kid and whatever.

6:50 I was like, I was like a street kid. And I grew up in Russia, that’s where I was born. Where in Russia? Orenburg, Russia. So it’s, uh, it’s a fairly small town, probably half a million population, near Kazakhstan, Europe-Asia border, and it was just, you know, I guess a regular Soviet, post-Soviet Union background and not really having a lot.

7:13 Of course, the biggest thing that I’ve had in my life was really having a very loving, unconditionally, but in regards to resources, like we weren’t, you know, we’re like lower middle class in Russia, which is really poor by Western standards. We, you know, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment with my other sister, me, my sister shared a bedroom, my parents slept on a living room pull-out couch. You know, that’s, I think a lot of people who grew up in the Soviet Union grew up in that way, so it was fairly normal there.

7:46 And we emigrated to Canada when I was about 10 years old, and, you know, that’s when I’ll say that chapter of my life started, and I really, that’s what I remember most vividly. And that move, was that move? What were you doing up until 10, like just getting in trouble? Oh wait, and what about your friends from back then, like what happened to them? Are they still there in that city?

8:12 I think some, some moved, a lot of them I think probably stayed, and I’m so grateful for my parents for making that move. So, you know, so much of that, if people really don’t realize how much opportunity they have when they live in Western society, and like here in Europe or in North America, it’s just, it gives you such a big opportunity when you’re in these markets. And for us, when I was growing up, yeah, I was like, you know, parents generally, I guess, have time for us, or we’re just like free-range children, you know.

8:46 It’s not like seven or eight-year-olds now that are always protected and helicopter parents. For us, I remember, you know, running around like scrap yards and junkyards, next grandma’s house, next to like railroad tracks, and, you know, even that I was recalling, like picking up like cigarette butts when I was like eight, nine years old, smoking and things like that, like buying beers like eight, nine years old, like this is like real, like some of these street rushing kids. You know, somehow I end up here, so I’m really grateful for that.

9:20 And then we emigrated and a whole new life started, but also that wasn’t easy, because any immigration, especially, I don’t know how mad, how parents make these moves when they’ve never been to a country and I can made it, and I just sell everything they have. And I always say the story is funny, being here like in, living in London as a Russian and Chelsea, there’s a lot of stereotype that you probably come from money or that as an oligarch, but that’s not my background at all. I’m not those kind of Russians, you know.

9:48 So it’s really the type of, you know, parents just selling everything they have, moving. Why’d they move? The true story is my mom’s brother, because, you know, my mom had a very troubled childhood with her parents, and it was, you know, probably violent and things like that, and she had through other siblings, and one of her brothers became a criminal, like she was in jail and alcoholic, probably drug user, all that stuff, and he was really upset at her that her life actually turned out really well.

10:27 Like you said, even though I said we’re lower middle class, but she had, you know, she had a good family, she had two kids, she had a family, we had birthday parties, you know, we were living still a great decent life, and her life was great. Well, for him it didn’t turn out that way, and because a lot of it is because his dad used to, you know, beat them and abuse them in other ways, and that’s why I think a lot of times when people, when they grew up and they started getting to criminal activity, it’s just because they’re just abused in some way, and they’re just showing in one form or another in an external world. And she just, at one time he came from jail, I think I remember probably like my early childhood traumas, he just came like banging on the door and she’s like, threat, anything like, I’m gonna kill everyone and stuff like that.

11:19 So it was like, it was just a, my mom was scared, so she was just like, I need to, if he’s, and he’s gonna, when he went to jail again, and like if he gets out, he’s like, you know, he’s, if I’m gonna get out, I’m gonna like, he threatened to like kill her basically and in the family. So she took it seriously and she’s like, I need to get out of here. And and at that point she got so lucky, one of her friends came to our city because he already moved to Canada to actually try to get his sister to emigrate, and he brought all that paperwork for her, and she’s like, I’m staying here.

11:55 I’m like patriotic, I’m not living, leaving my country. And my mom, she got lucky that she knew this guy. He’s like, hey, do you want these forms to immigrate to Canada? And she’s like, yeah. Just like, you know, she was thinking, how do I get out of this place?

12:08 And just came to the right place, and she convinced my dad, and there we go. And then we’re changing your whole life. That changes my whole life, and I’m so grateful. So, you know, in the, in a way these challenges turn out to be such huge, massive opportunities. As I’m so grateful in a way for my uncle who wanted to kill her family.

12:27 If you look at it back, it actually turned out to be for the best, because if everything was comfortable, and maybe she, if she didn’t get threatened, I wouldn’t be here. So I can gratitude to the next level. Oh, but that’s, that’s my, that’s how I think. I’m always in a way, I’m programmed this way now to just always look at the glass half-full and just looking how amazing life is. And then we just emigrated to Canada, and, all right, like I said, was difficult, and my parents divorced within a year, and there was my mom in a new country with no language, single mother, two kids, working night shifts, factory jobs, and they are go again.

13:04 I get to be independent on my own as a street kid in a way, but now in Canada. How did the divorce hit you? Hard, or did you process it? Oh, you know, the funny thing, once again I’m so grateful for the divorce. I know what you mean.

13:19 I mean, I’m grateful as well that is divorcing, because if they were together they would have been misery. Yeah, so why I’m saying this is that it really allowed me at that time I was, anyway, is really grateful to, to move my mom and being the pennant, my, it’s not my dad was a great guy, he was not violent, he’s never, either I don’t think he, I don’t recall even him raising his voice much or like hitting me, nothing, nothing like, he was just very chilled out dude. However, I’ll just in a way happy to be independent and because as a child, because my sister was good at school, I’d, he would always compare us.

14:02 He’s like, hey, and this is a work that you have two kids now, don’t ever compare your kids, okay? You know, it’s like the worst thing for them, and also employees, don’t compare. Here, what you think? So cherish what each one brings to the table. To play them off of each, I don’t play them off to each other.

14:17 So my, I was like, oh, your sister’s so good at school, why you’re so bad? And it’s like to this day I still remember that. Grateful for that too. I was sure. Yeah, I guess that’s what maybe I got into entrepreneurship, like this school thing is gonna be for me, so I shouldn’t really go hard at that.

14:33 Okay, so school didn’t work out for you. Are you dyslexic or something, or you’re not like that environment? I see, you know, the whole thing even now in our society with labels, dyslexic, ADHD, you know, if you diagnose, we probably are all in some way this. Like I’m not, hey, I’m not knocking, for sure there’s people with real, you know, disabilities. However, I think for the majority of us, we especially in today’s society, we can all struggle with attention spans.

15:02 It’s just the way society really now makes us, and it really tries to grab our attention. So for us at school, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t the brightest, you know, of the bunch. I was at the A student, and I was just really just focusing to get by, you know, just, I’ll skip a lot of class. My mom didn’t know English, so I’ll make her just think it’s funny, I’ll make hers like, oh right, like no, you know, you have to write notes if you, if you skipped school, you have to like a note from them, parent.

15:37 So make my mom, I’ll just write it in English, she didn’t know what I wrote, or maybe or even spell out what I dictate, the note from the parent, she didn’t know I was saying, and like just sign for it. It’s just so nice, you’re so naive, she just sign these notes. I don’t skip a lot of class, I just wouldn’t go to school. But you also started working on the streets, right? Yes, so same thing, like because we didn’t have a lot of money and I’ll see kids going to the movies or doing other things, and I just can see my mom couldn’t like give me 20 bucks to go to the movies and hang out with friends.

16:12 That was a lot of my cards, so it’s like, hey, if you wanna do that, you have to make your own money. So here I am like 11, 12 years old, and my sister and you, this guy who on weekends with pick up these miners, basically, so like really young kids, and kind of give them flowers at wholesale and say, okay, here’s 30 bunches of tulips or whatever, you that your cost is, we’ll say 3, 4 bucks, you can sell them for 8, 10. I’ll pick you up, you know, I drop you off at 9, I’ll pick you up at 8 p.m., and you’re there all day in this part in some suburban parking lot.

16:51 People will buy flowers from a little kid? Yeah, yeah, more likely. Exactly. Has strange guys, and he just dropped these kids off, and I was one of them. But in a way it was kind of like a hustle, right?

17:01 I still had to, I knew my cost, my wholesale cost, and I knew if I’m sell these many units I would make my money, and I would, my mom would recalls, I was like always, I always have money when I was young, so take my mom to like a restaurant, and I’ll buy, I’ll have like a basketball, have clothes and things like that, so it was really great. And so now you’re hanging with all these Canadian kids, obviously, you know, there’s resources in Canada, you know, but you’re Russian, you spent 10 years in Russia. Yeah.

17:30 What do you bring culturally from that country? You know, I’m married to a Bulgarian woman, and I always joke to people there’s no complaining allowed in Bulgaria. You know, it’s this kind of former Soviet bloc thing where it’s just, it’s kind of hard, there isn’t any complaining, and you get on with it, right? Am I stereotyping, or is there not a bit of that? I don’t, thanks for everybody.

17:48 I think a lot of people complained everywhere in the world. True, but, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I think to my wife says the same thing, I, I’m, I don’t complain, and it’s just like, why do I, I’d like, it is that a cultural thing? I’m sure you, I, as you’re bringing it up, I’m like, is it? However, I guess to answer your question, what did I bring?

18:09 What kind of mindset is when you come from not a lot and you have more opportunity here, it’s like, whoa, this is great, you know. You just, it’s, it’s truly a land of freedom to a certain degree, and you’re just able to use the resources more efficiently and, and take things more, be more responsible than just like a, whatever, I have a Canadian passport, I’ll have a US passport. So many people take that for granted that I have the ability to travel, or ability to just start a business, or ability of freedom, those sort of things are, you know, we don’t take for granted.

18:46 One even now if you live in Russia, right? That’s so neat, it was later, right? And so you’re there and you notice all these possibilities. Also you’re an immigrant, so this whole immigrant mind is that I’m here, I don’t have any of my old friends and family and I got to make it, right? Is that also a weird mentality of I got no choice, I can’t go home?

19:05 Yeah, I think as a child you really don’t think about that, okay? You just think about the present moment and whatever teenager struggles that you have of growing up, and maybe not having enough, or sometimes thinking like, how come other parents can provide for their kids and I have, you know, our parents are divorced, I have, I don’t have the resources, I don’t have parents, I have money, this sucks. However, all these things all contribute in me being here, but you only realize it with time, you know.

19:38 It, life makes sense looking backwards, as I said, right, as Steve Jobs says. Yeah, right. All right, so you’re a hustler, you go in through high school. Now, are you thinking, I’m gonna go to college and get a job and do the American-Canadian normal dream, is that what you’re kind of setting yourself up for? When did that change?

19:56 Growing up I was really planning for anything, I was just on to the next thing, and I wasn’t really good at school, at junior high school or they’re moving into high school. My sister was really good, and for me the pivotal moment that happened, like I was this kid who was, you know, smoking up a little, you know, playing dice in the school parking lot, like that’s, you see, if you everybody’s looking at this interviewer me or no, my image, that’s what I was talking about in my videos, like you see, like, we need to have a shadow Instagram account where it’s just you like smoking blunts, drinking 40s. She was a little, it, back.

20:37 Nope, I drinking 40s, like playing dice, that was you. It was amazing, smoking blunts. Yeah, smoking blunts, not like I can’t, like I, now we see you with pastel colors in Parisian pictures with your beautiful family. What’s going on? This is the beauty of life, okay?

20:56 That was a beauty of life, how, how you can honestly just totally turn around, cause even I look now, because so many people can judge, especially you, even me probably, if I see some kid who’s doing that now, be like, oh, like kids, you know, not gonna turn out so well, right? However, my own upbringing is a reminder of how you can really turn so much around, and a lot of times even these troubled kids or street kids can, they have actually the most potential ever, because they’re street smart, right? They just think differently and they don’t fit into the system.

21:34 That’s why you become a, that’s why I became an entrepreneur. Is I call myself, I’m simply unemployable, because it’s hard for me to be in a structure, and most people who are able to follow the rules and to play along, you know, it’s hard for them to be an entrepreneur, because the entrepreneurship was totally unknown, you don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, and being a street kid kind of prepares you for that. You’re being brought up in the family that doesn’t have a lot of certainty.

22:01 So how did you morph then from this kind of street vibe type of kid, you know, into like university and working at a bank? Because that’s kind of how you made that transition. That’s true. Oh, conscious, it was conscious, and yeah, I still remember this moment, it was probably one of the most important moments of my life, walking back home to where my mom was not gonna be. I was probably in junior high school, and my sister was not as present, she was always around with boys, you know, being a teenage girl and things like that, and knowing I’m going home, no one’s home, I have to make myself a meal.

22:41 Oh, I just, how much food? Oh, I’m probably might make myself a pasta with some maybe butter mixed in for some protein. That’s what we might dinner. And in that moment you feel you want to complain and you’re like, why is life so unfair? And it just hit me over the head that, like, no one cares.

23:07 You know, it was, it was like, it was hard, she was like, you’re alone, no one’s gonna make this life for you. And this is a moment when I’m like skipping school, doing office stuff, being expelled for playing dice, or suspended, Matt expelled, and that was the next step. And just realize that you can be on this path of what you’re doing and you’re, you’re the only one to blame, the only one that’s gonna change your life. It’s not your teacher, it’s not your mom, and not your parents, not your siblings, not the government, not religion, or anything.

23:47 It’s gonna be you, you’re the person that’s gonna change your life and put yourself in a trajectory of where you want to go. That was like, that was the epiphany I had, but that doesn’t mean I just changed in that moment, you know. I think we all have these realizations, then we, we were like, yeah, I’m gonna change, that was like, I want to do it, and then you, you still have to, sometimes you hit a rock bottom, sometimes you have to keep hitting rock bottom.

24:12 And for me it was, you know, I then after that I still kept being around wrong kids, but I was one of those kids too, so I can’t say, hey, I blame them, I was one of those, right, just being in that circle, kept smoking up, drinking, then I supply basketball, I broke my arm playing hoops. I was like trying to dunk and I fell off and fell on my elbow. What happened was I almost became disabled, because the way I fell I pinched one of my nerves and the doctors didn’t see that.

24:46 When, oh, he just brought broke your humerus. So I was like walking like this, like literally like this, my arm just hanging, no movement, so I couldn’t move it, and I said, oh it’s just nerves, but he’ll recover in like a month. Man, month passed by, so like no movement, and they’re, okay, you should see a specialist. Thank God there’s healthcare, free healthcare in Canada, the great thing about that country. And they saw specialists and he checked it out, he’s like, huh, I think you have some nerve damage there, there’s a high probability you’re not gonna recover.

25:21 So pick one of the, in, I was literally, I remember this, I was in this room, then I pick one of those like Freddy Krueger kind of hand devices where they’re like, it attaches to all of your fingers so kind of your hand will be open, because my hand was just like closed and I couldn’t open it, wouldn’t, if I try to close it, just it was just closed all automatically. Yeah, and he’s like, pick one of those devices, cause you might have to wear that like for a rest of your life. And I was like, no way, like I don’t want to like be like that.

25:52 And I had to get physio, or go to physio every day to try to recover, and that’s what that was a woman, one of my first experiences when I had to kind of work on my mindset. And want somebody, a person of, you know, a doctor tells you, you know, what most likely you have a high probability, you know, he didn’t say, hey, you have a probability of you can recover, he just focused on the negative. If he was like, you have a high probability that you might have nerve damage and it’s not moving yet, and I was like, no way, I’m gonna work on that.

26:23 And but during that time it was a hard time, because you, I had to overcome the psychology of belief that I will recover at the same time, your body, because you can’t work out, he can’t really do much. Well, at least that thought started, I saw playing basketball, and then I just started partying again, and one night after that other moment, I just was, you know, just drunk, high with my broken arm not moving and just being out of shape, and once again just having one of those out-of-body moments and just realizing like, you’re such a loser, like just, just being honest with yourself, like you, you thought you’re so responsible, you’re gonna take responsibility for your life, but here you are, like just like not being good at, not taking school seriously, not taking anything seriously, like, you know, you’re gonna end up like your uncle.

27:22 It’s just like those kind of things. It was, I think, was a very important moment, because so many of us in those moments when we’re overweight or underweight or whatever a situation, we choose not to be actually real with ourselves and honest that you are a loser, you know, like in that moment you have to face yourself and look yourself in the mirror and be like, you do not look healthy, you know, and if you continue this, like you’re gonna probably die early. So like if you want to change this, once again only you can change it if you take responsibility.

27:57 So for me, in that moment I was like, okay, I gotta take this stuff seriously, and it was the same time, like, wow, it was a difficult time, my father then passed away from cancer, you know, before that my stepfather passed away from cancer as well, from drinking, so both the cases like that, and so it was a really difficult time, and I made that difficult time in a way like, I gotta really take responsibility, and that’s how I was able to finish my last year of high school with good enough grades to get into university. I said, hey, like we’re talking about it with your interview as well, I was inspired to to be a banker because of Wall Street. Watch the movie Wall Street?

28:39 Watching it too. Yeah, watch that. Here we go. I don’t want to be, become a banker because of Wall Street, because, because when you don’t come from money you’re like, where’s, where can I make the quickest money? I can even, I was doing this peddling stuff, but I wasn’t, it wasn’t really that much money, who could make a lot of difference.

28:58 And that is really, I went to school and said before I went to university, I got a job at the bank just on a retail level. I thought I was being smart. I’m like, I’m like, I’m gonna be, you know, I’m gonna have four or five years experience by the time I’m at at university, I’m gonna get a great banking job, move on, and she want to be a lifer at the bank, like I just want to be a VP. I started wearing, you know, suits, dress shirts, and I was one of my first friends to stop wearing, you know, jeans outside down my ass and, and and baggy shirts.

29:31 There’s, there’s photos of me out there, I gotta get something. It’s so hard for me to think of you as that baggy pants guy or the lifer in red bandanas on your head. Okay, and were there any trouble with the law? Is all, yeah, we talked about, yeah, almost the same, so around the same time when I was still minor, before I was dull, around 16, 17, I got arrested for, you know, some kid stole a credit card and he’s like, hey, he’s like, you look, you just, you can go and use this credit card and buy something and we’ll split it, and I was like, yeah, cool, let’s do that.

30:11 And I remember being, you know, after the store even buying it, buying the stuff, and somebody come and grabs you and like, you’re under arrest. And then having to show up in court and with my mom, and it was like my first time, I’m also like wearing a dress shirt, and that was a pivotal moment, you know, being in court. In that same time, like that time was so like, it was, you can see how I could have went, you know, sometimes there’s periods in life where you can go one way or another, and I remember to so vividly now being court, about to face the judge, and looking at other youth like myself there who, I’m no different than them, I’m gonna, you know, I’m the same like they are, but seeing some of them who it’s not their first time there, and you can see in their eye they don’t care, they’re already accepted the fact that this is who I am, I’m a criminal.

31:08 Or a society turned their back on me, and now already like Barry don’t jive with society and cold in that kind of mainstream culture, and their rebellious to the point they’re like, I’m not gonna be part of the society. And that was scary for me, and I thought, I don’t want to be here, I want to be here again, and I just want to do things right. It’s interesting you say that. One of our most popular guests is a guy named Dorian Yates. He was six-time Mr. Olympia, and he had a similar problem, got thrown in like a youth jail when he was fairly young, and he tells the story of like one of the other inmates there, the guard was telling him to do something and he was gonna throw him in like solitary if he didn’t do it, and the guy said to the guard, I don’t give a, I just don’t give a.

31:52 And so basically he had checked out of society, rules, consequences, and Dorian thought to himself, well, I actually do give a. So that kind of scared him straight, and he was like, I don’t want to be this delinquent, what prison life or like these other guys. Exactly. So wow, sounds like that was a big moment for you. All right, so this is good stuff, man.

32:13 So and again, like you know, like you said, a lot of us when we feel a painful moment in our life, right, but the quickest thing to do is to mask it, right, and get away from it. Let’s go check out Netflix, check out Instagram, go eat something, go buy something, go smoke something. But if you actually take a moment and be with the pain, that’s what you did, right? You’re like, okay, I suck, I’m a loser, I’m like, let me really meditate on that for a bit, because that’s the only way you’re gonna, you’re gonna change, right?

32:39 Yeah, I think it’s very important. I had another one, of course, you know, another one of those moments in the future before we start our business. The turning point for me that really changes a lot, and this is the reason why you know we do what we do now in regards to being very open and sharing and, and helping share our experience, even as I’m here with you or through our own channels, is because when all that was going magically, my wife and, oh my, my mom’s manager, and she worked at this retail store, his name I believe was Joseph.

33:21 I love to, if Joseph ever hears this, or let’s meet him again and use of, you know, he was a great manager to her, and he gave her Personal Power tapes by Tony Robbins, like actual tapes, like a set of 30. I remember that in here. Give me, you had 30 tapes and he gave it to her, and my mom brought her home one day, and we’re going through this rough time, and I’m like, what are you, she’s like, oh my man, she gave them, says we should listen to it. And that’s when I started listening to Tony Robbins, and you know, whatever, you know, people think of him, and you know, he’s obviously, he’s big, there’s a lot of drama maybe surrounding him, however, I’m so grateful, you know, for him to share that knowledge of that, you can, and sharing his own story, how he overcame his own struggles, especially in those tapes, and ensuring kind of the guidelines of what you need to do to get out of your state, you know, and how do you create a life for yourself.

34:26 I think it’s so great, even what we do or you do now, sometimes we take it for granted, however, the reason I create content is I always think of that 17, 18 year old Alex, and hey, I can change his life because the way, you know, Tony Robbins changed my life to really start reframing my mindset to think of like what I’m grateful for, even though I had nothing, you know, you can say, oh I had, didn’t have, my life was crap and I have nothing to be grateful for, but in reality there were so many things, and once I shifted that mindset to be able to think of the things that I have instead of don’t have, and the opportunity that I have, because even think about it, being 18 years old, any billionaire will trade who’s like 90, well, with trade places with a 18-year-old who’s healthy and young but broke in a day, right?

35:20 Because it’s just that you got that whole life and youth and energy, it’s amazing. So and those are the things that especially young people take for granted, because we’re so insecure when we’re at teenagers or early twenties, but in reality we’re one of the wealthiest people in the world, want to that. So Tony Robbins really helped me in that time to really shift and create a new life for myself. Isn’t that crazy how an audiotape quite literally changed your life and put you on a new trajectory?

35:50 And say 20, 30 years earlier you would have never been able to get that piece of audio, and even a hundred years earlier even less so. And then nowadays we’ve got YouTube, would like you just listen on you surface right now, we’ve got videos, podcasts, and there’s thousands and thousands of people around the world that are putting out this information. The back then, Tony was one of the few games in town, yeah, that would give you your own personal power, right?

36:15 Yeah, it’s just wild of that. That’s why you have no reasons to complain right now, right? Incredible world. So you start listening to Personal Power, when did you meet Mimi, and when did you guys decide to go ahead and, well, get together and become entrepreneurs? Oh yeah, it was so, I got a job at the bank, and I used to work at this other branch, it was on a retail level, so not in like corporate, like that, and I quickly got promoted to be like an account manager, cause you start like as a teller, as you just let the counter, and then you, I got in my head because as a teller you had to stand all day and like I just sit down, so like that was really my reasoning for to get promoted.

37:00 So I got promoted fairly quickly to be an account manager, which was means like, you know, ideal, you open people’s accounts, give them credit cards, mortgages, all that stuff, and you also get to seen people’s like everyday people finances, which is really interesting, dangerous, I love that, and it’s racking of people. So I get moved to this branch in Richmond Hill, which is a suburb of Toronto, and before I moved to that branch my assistant manager is like, Alex, there’s this girl Mimi there, she’s a hottie. I don’t know why he said that, but he’s like, kind of watch out, like you’re so lucky you’re going there.

37:34 I’m like, sweet, I like, and my first day I remember signing my contract and she comes in, and yes, the rest is history. What was she like then? Oh, she’s the same, like, like that’s the great, I think Mimi just what she does now she just does it at a bigger scale, like it’s more magnified. What I mean by that is our customers loved her, like, and she, she truly loves serving people, and she misses that, like even to be able to, ability to interact with people on a daily basis, and because there she, you know, all day as a teller, that’s what it was.

38:14 What she didn’t want it, and when I, when I moved to the bank and then she was just a branch ambassador doing the same thing, meaning people would just come to her all day and they’ll line up and they’ll just wait to be served, kind of by Mimi, and she has to chew warm personality, she does now, and people would wait like, hey, I want to see me, anything I want to have that interaction with Mimi, because she was just, you know, she was very like, she’s as she is now, like loving and caring and always want to help other people, and you know, even if it’s like, you know, it’s someone’s have money, she’ll give him something for free and things like that, she always cares for people. And what she think of you? Oh, I don’t, I think as she says her first impression was like, oh, this Russian guy is here, because she’s also has that background, and I mean just she know what she’s Azerbaijani, right, but John, she knows Russians, sure, she knows, yeah, yeah.

39:07 So she never thought she would end up with a Russian guy. However, most people when they find out that I’m Russian, they don’t even think I’m Russian, because I just don’t think I’m Swedish, I don’t get the Russian thing a lot now, and I guess Russian guys have some sort of stereotype, and she kind of casted her on me at the beginning, but as we got to know each other we just, you know, became really good friends, and I was dating somebody else long distance, she had was in a long-distance relationship, so we’re just, just kind of coworkers, but she, I thought she was cute, she probably thought I was cute, you know, and, and a lot of people at the branch finger, which you get shook up, a lot of people hinted, okay, that you guys they don’t have a connection.

39:50 And then you did? Then we did, but you know, I think like so many young males who are inexperienced in many ways and all so very insecure, I did not think that I had a chance. She’s extremely good-looking, you know, she’s like, like a dream girl, and she was a year older than me, and that when your early 20s, my girls a year older, you think like probably dating like older guys who have money and stability and jobs, she’s not gonna like date a younger up-and-coming guy.

40:25 And one day she was actually gonna move back to our bhaijaan, and she said, hey, she would give me actually hints before, kind of asked me out, but I never listened to it, and like, hey, yeah, we should go camping sometimes, you go camping, you invite me next time, but I never did, but this time she said, hey, I’m gonna move away in a few months, I really want to go ice skating. If you can give me a pair of ice skates, we can go ice skating together. Obviously she can go to a skating rink and rent skates and just go, but I was like, I think she’s asking me.

40:58 I got it, I get this, make this happen. And you know, I call my buddy up and I said, hey, what’s your girlfriend’s size for skates? And I think he gave either his girl from her his sister skates, and I picked him up and we went on a date, and that’s it, the rest was history. I don’t even know how to skate. Wow.

41:18 I think, you know, we had, I’d spoke to Mimi, I think four years ago after you came in, it’s coming here soon again, but I think she said that Alex sold me on a vision of the future. Oh, when I asked her why she went out with you, and of course you are extremely good-looking, so that’s a, you know, good reasons now at least, but she said that Alex told me on this vision of the future, and I think maybe I was asking her about relationships, like how do people find other people attractive, and she said, you know, that he had this vision of the future of what you wanted to do or become, even at that age, and that’s what she was attracted to. Is that, is that right?

41:51 In her Tony Robbins, yeah, channeling. Oh, what happened was, when we started dating she didn’t take it seriously, and like I said, I didn’t think I had a chance, and then we just went on this date, then I took her out for, you know, dinner afterwards, and I’m like, oh, I’m like, we have a connection, I think that there’s a possibility here, and we kind of started dating as we’re coworkers, and everything was going really well. However, a lot of times maybe women do this on an evolutionary level, she don’t be like three, four times, so she’d be like, you know, we would be going out, everything’s fine, there’s, I didn’t do anything wrong, and she’d go, you know, I just, I don’t think it’s gonna work, you know, I’m, I’m leaving, and things like that.

42:41 I should just, and I would kind of keep back into it, and one of our last times, so it was like after three times she already turned me down, she said, no, I just want to see anymore, and I kind of come, it’s really just, hey, let’s just go out, talk, his friends, it’s cool that you don’t want to see me, and she’s like, okay, fine, and we went out together, I took her out just for a drink, like a bubble tea, nothing alcoholic. New Alex, yeah. And then I was just telling her like, I really see us, I really see a future together.

43:21 And actually, cause because she said at that moment, shake, why do you keep trying? Because she, I was so persistent, because a lot of times women do this on purpose, you know, they just reject the guy and the guys like, yeah, and it just drops off, but I was really persistent, and she’s like, why are you so persistent, like why do you keep doing this? And I was not doing it in a stalkerish way, it was a very like nice way. Yeah, I said, I really, I think I can see us together, I can see us being a great team and just having a life together, you know, that’s what I see.

43:57 And I just looked through her eye and I really believed it, and that’s what she told you, that I was able to kind of share my vision with her and I’m able to her kind of buy into that vision as well. I think this is what we do as well, and when we start companies and in leadership, we have to do that, we are firstly have to believe ourselves before we can help or make other people believe in anything as well, right? But ultimately it is about selling a vision if you want to be an entrepreneur or a leader, but most people don’t do it in relationships, but it’s just important, right?

44:30 You really have to articulate it and believe it and sell it, right? Oh, Massa, you have to be sharing your vision. Yeah. All right, so you guys get together, but it’s not all roses, because within a year or so you’re still living at your mom’s house with Mimi, you’ve got no business inside. I think you guys used to do these gratitude walks and like her dad would call and be like, what do you guys have to be grateful for?

44:54 You’re broke. Yeah, you know, is this about right, where you were, and then what happened to change it? Yeah, so I was very grateful that Mimi, she moved away and I said, hey, it’s fine, move, experience it, and then she came back, you know, a month after, because we would write to each other, and then I got fired from the bank. So shoot, she got a job back, but then after she got a job, I got fired, and I get fired and it, she’s like, I’m quitting, I don’t want to work here anyways, and because we mean it’s like that, she’s just very decisive and like, somebody has to work, like, no, I don’t want to work here.

45:33 So here we are, both of us unemployed, living off government benefits, because it, once again, I’m really grateful to Canada because they have the social net that if you get out of work you still get some sort of basics for like up to a year, but after that you’re on your own, and we’re kind of just living off the government benefits and my mom’s. I’m still University full-time and I’m saying, okay, I’m gonna finish University because I still want a degree for safety, because that’s what a lot of us want, and I’m gonna try out different entrepreneurial stuff, because the reason I got fired from the bank was because I had a side hustle, you know, of shipping cars from Russia to US. That’s a whole other story, but there’s always side hustles in my life, okay.

46:25 And with both of us in the situation, you know, Mimi figuring herself out, me figure myself out, what I’m gonna do, trying different ventures, we do Tony Robbins together, and there was, he had another program, it’s called Get the Edge, I’m not sure what it’s called now, but we do these and one of the first days he talks about the Hour of Power and doing a gratitude walk and going out and say out loud the things we were grateful for, and, and also being grateful for the things that you don’t even have yet. That’s what we would do, and as you recall, Mimi’s dad one day call and he’s like, what are you guys doing? And he’s like, hey, we’re doing a gratefulness walk.

47:07 He’s like, you guys need to get a job. I’ll do gratefulness, Paul, you need to work, gratefulness walks, but I’m gonna manifest anything for you guys. And we just kept doing, we kept believing, and that’s what really kind of put Mimi and I together was that vision of wanting to build this life of a lifestyle to be able to have this freedom in our lives, and that’s one of the strong core values that we both believe in, is that ability to be able to live life on our terms.

47:38 And not, you know, the biggest thing that being fired from a corporation has taught me, and that was my dream to be in a bank, was that at a corporation you’re still a number, they don’t care about you. Like it’s very, it was like, it was a very real, cause I was a good employee, my manager to love me, I was a great co-worker, I did everything right, but I just breached one of the policy things, which is like you don’t do another job during your day work job. I get it, however, if, if they didn’t look at me in a number and say, hey, this kid is like in his early 20s, he has, he’s working her full-time, he’s doing University full-time, he has a side hustle of business, and he’s meeting all of those targets here at the bank, hmm, we should do something here.

48:27 But they don’t have time for that, because it’s a big corporation, it’s policy, and it’s not worth their time to sometimes, you know, mentor and grow and put certain individuals, thinking like our school system. So at that moment, you know, I really realized for myself, I gotta make it on my own, got to create my own future and do that, and that’s when I started reading a lot of books, like The 4-Hour Workweek and all these other books. Seth Godin was a huge inspiration.

48:55 Gary Vaynerchuk was just coming out with Crush It, it was just, it was, it was a huge shift in society. This is an, oh wait, of course the financial crisis was happening at the same time, and it was just being an observer at that time. I still follow the stock market too, you just felt like there’s a shift happening, and I just felt the world is changing and this is the direction that’s gonna go too, it’s the direction of people actually being, having the power, and especially with these social media tools, and I want to be part of this movement.

49:32 That phrase, design your life, is something that always, that goes in my head, something Mimi says and something you said, and it’s a simple phrase, but like you guys live that too. I mean, you guys design your life, and people, a lot of people look at your life and they’re like, aha, they have it, they’re privileged or this, it’s like, no, they designed their life. You didn’t, you know, you are reacting to life, yeah, and these two had designed their life even when they were broke as a joke.

49:56 You were actually laying in those neural patterns to say, this is what we want, and then you kind of did manifest it with a lot of work, but I mean that’s what you were doing then, right? Oh, for sure, and you know, there’s a lot of stuff at that time too, there we watch like The Secret and all those other things, there’s a lot of truth to that, and what I mean by that is going through my journey in life and being here right now and be able to recall backwards, I can for sure see one of the most, and this is the reason why I’m unite together, the reason why we have the life that we have now, one of the most important things that you can do for yourself, it’s to create a vision for yourself too. Who are you gonna be in five years?

50:44 What does your life look like, you know, who’s your partner, who your friends, where do you live? Actually taking a time to think about the future, and that way it can really change your life, because most people are just, they end up just being their circumstances. Oh, I’m here in the ghetto, or I’m here in Russia, or I’m here in this Durrell a country, I will never get out. However, the you can actually make, you can, there’s so many stories, as you know, as we all know, where people are able to create miraculous changes in their life once they really set out the vision for themselves of what they want to achieve.

51:27 And I think the greatest leaders that we ever saw, you know, even Martin Luther King or Gandhi or any of these people, are you gonna Steve Jobs on a corporate level, what do these old people have? They had a strong vision and belief about the future that they are gonna create and manifest or are gonna be part of and create. And sometimes we talked about, you know, mean–you on our podcast as well, is that so many of us are playing small. So I’m not telling you to be even Gandhi or Steve Jobs, but just be a bigger version of yourself, you know, just think of what, how can you make your life better, and then a reverse engineer of the steps you need to take to get there, and that’s really how we did it for us.

52:10 But like there’s so few people to do that. I mean, what percentage of people do you meet in your life that actually actively designed their life through their mental patterns, through planning, as opposed to saying, I’ll never have that or I can’t afford that? I mean, is it 1 percent? I don’t know many people that really design their lives. Yeah, and it doesn’t mean successful people do that, right?

52:31 What I mean, really financially successful people, because I meant a lot of now financially successful people who are really unhappy, and the reason they’re unhappy is they’re actually not living the life that they want to live. So even just, even being successful financially, it doesn’t equate that they’ve designed or they had a vision for themselves. Sometimes people just do stuff because they’re like, hey, this is happening and I’m making money, like even in your own journey, as you said, you know, you were on this path where you’re also in finance and making lots of money but you weren’t happy, because you really didn’t have a vision for yourself of the life that you want to live, but only once you, you know, hits the rock bottoms and, and you realize, hey, what kind of life do I really want to live, you know, like, and sometimes you have to go downwards before you go upwards, but the biggest realizations we can have is when you set a trajectory for yourself in the future.

53:24 And this is why we share what we share with people, is when people, you know, a lot of my friends or people looking at us to say, oh you’re selling the people the dream and it’s not real and it’s fake and all that stuff, well sure, you can think it’s fake, it’s, I’m actually living it, you know, like you’ve been through our house. Yeah, you’ve been around, as you know how it actually is, and it doesn’t mean that there’s no challenges around it. However, what you see in regards to our Instagram stories or anything like that, that is our life, and it’s, it’s there for the taking for it.

54:02 We do that to not tell people you should live life like us, but you can live life, you can design your life to how you want it to be. Everyone has a different, can have a different vision for the life they want to live. Not everyone wants to live like us, and no one should live like us. You can, but you can when you think like, hey, what really makes me happy is being outdoors and being a small town, I don’t care to be in London, so yeah, cool, you should live in a small town, don’t come to London, you know, that’s not your thing.

54:34 Well, when we lived in Toronto, like we, we just don’t bother with the city, we want to go to a bigger city, and that’s why we’re here in London right now, for example. So we’re always thinking, always designing to where we’re going to be in the future. Yeah, yeah, and I’ve been to your place, I’m gonna with you guys, and that is you, that’s the funny thing, like it is you guys, and like I guess it is a reflection on people when they have a reaction to you, is it tells them a little bit about themselves, I think maybe, you know, and if you, if you look at it and say you’re showing off or that can’t be real or come on, or if you look at it and say wow, that’s kind of cool, you guys have been able to design that, maybe it’s a little feedback on where you’re at in your own journey, in your own.

55:12 Yeah, we all have that. Yeah, talk to me about Luxy Hair. I mean, it’s, it’s probably what, ten or eleven years of this business, and if you had to now look back on it, what are some of the, like, the key moments and the lessons learned and the things that you can pass on to other people about how you built this business with your partner, which is already not an easy thing to do, and that changed your life in many ways, right? Yeah, well how it all started was, I was, I would say, with the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

55:43 Yeah, that was a very important book, because he’s the, I guess, the godfather of lifestyle design, and that is what, the first time when I came across that phrase, and what really got me was the, the fat man in the red BMW, or if you remember that from, from the book. What he talks about was like, you don’t want to end up like the, you know, a fat guy in a red BMW, and we, what he recalls is that so many of us can fall into this trap of being in corporate or whatever and being this middle manager or attaining this level of success with whatever, 2.2 kids and living in the suburbs and living this country life, American Dream and having picket fence or whatever, you know, society tells us. Maybe that’s not for you, maybe you should be a nomad, maybe you don’t, you shouldn’t have kids, and thinking of that, you can design your life and you have to actually make that much money, you know, you can just make a little, however live in a different place in the world and live on your own terms, and that was very inspiring for us and aspiring to create.

56:58 And that’s how that was our, when we first started the business Luxy Hair, it was a muse business, that’s what Tim recalls it by, meaning a muse that will allow us to live the lifestyle that we want. Okay, and working four hours a week, that was the plan? Yeah, that was the plan. We didn’t have a plan of making millions of dollars or, and living in London, all that stuff, that was not the plan. Our goal is to make fifteen hundred dollars a month, and to this day I say to people like this whole idea of people like, hey, I want to be millionaires and become LMS and billionaire, it’s like, calm down, just make fifteen hundred bucks a month, you know, let’s start, let’s start low, just get into it.

57:38 You know, the greatest psychologist will say, you know, the way you change your habits, like I’ll say you want to start flossing your teeth, floss one tooth, you know, hey, I’m gonna start flossing my teeth, just want to, but as you start flossing one, two, you’re like, health loss, another one, I’ll floss another one, and you actually change your habits. So same thing with us getting into business, that was our gateway, it kind of in a way is, is hey, we just want to make 1,500, 1,500 dollars a month each, and if we make three thousand dollars together and we live my mom, we should be able to travel and do whatever, that was that was the vision. Wow, yeah, just modest dreams, lot of dreams, and we say, okay, we don’t have money, how can we market?

58:21 And we’re like, let’s do YouTube. And that’s how we started making videos, that was the whole strategy behind that business is, and really seeing Gary Vaynerchuk was the early pioneer in that regards, he was on a no eight, weight with wine line. Yeah, with Wine Library, and I took Wine Library, I said, hey, Wine Library is, will do the same thing with hair, okay, and hair tutorials. This was, you know, nine or oa2, it was ten, ten time. Yeah, so sometimes I had Gary in my show and I was like, I was on YouTube in 2011, and he looked at me and said, I was there in 2008, Brian.

58:55 Gary, these response to me. So alright, so he was there on o8, you came in 2010, okay, and that even at 2010, you probably recall, even when you won in 2011, you probably thought was late? Yeah, I was kind of, yeah, to a certain extent it was late, into the other people to the extent a lot of people hadn’t heard of, said well this is, this is why you’re here in London, you know, everything’s is in Europe, everything a little later to a next, you know, extent years later.

59:20 Yeah, be North America especially, being young, oh there are so many beauty YouTubers already, felt like they’re already, well I started. Yeah, because there was already like a Michelle Phan, who I was like over a million, and other people getting millions of views now, and it, whenever there’s things are established, it’s hard to enter, because you’re like, I’m starting with zero. That’s what we did anyways, because once again we had a very small goal.

59:43 It wasn’t much, and we started YouTube channel before we even had the product, but we knew already our strategy. We knew we were gonna use YouTube as our platform to drive business organically, and we calculator, okay, to make fifteen hundred dollars a month each, we need to make about three sales a day, our product costs about $130 back then, and we should be fine. So that’s how you can also break down things. Okay, what’s your goal? So my goal is to make fifteen hundred dollars.

1:00:16 Okay, what product are you gonna sell, how many of those products you have to sell on a daily basis to get yourself to that goal? Like it’s really simple, like you don’t have to be like a super venture- backed entrepreneur. Business is really simple if they make things too complicated, right? And we’re like, okay, if we make two to three sales a day, we should be fine, and we should be able to do that with our business and social media. First of all, it’s really refreshing to hear that not everybody in the world who’s successful started off with the billion dollar dream, but kind of taught that we’re kind of taught that, you know, I was gonna make a million dollars and then I went in and I did it, you know, it’s, it’s refreshing to know you had modest goals to start.

1:00:56 You know, Eva bogles. Oh, I still believe that, even the whole idea now have venture-backed companies and private equity, all that stuff, and it just gives people in the wrong place. I think business is not that complicated, most businesses are not at that level, so you can aspire to that, it’s fine, however, it starts small, and one of my favorite other books on the subject is actually called Small Giants by Bo Burlingham, and when he talks about in that book, he’s actually a reporter for like one of these newspapers that would cover a lot of these venture-backed businesses, and what he realized is like majority of businesses that provide most and create most of the GDP and jobs are actually small businesses, and, and these small to medium-size businesses, that doesn’t mean a bad thing, there’s so many Joes that you’ve never heard about that are making a hundred million dollars, they’re just not like, is it maybe not as sexy that he’s selling toilet paper in Wyoming to the US, but that Joe is making a million dollars, a hundred million dollars, and there’s so many of these small private businesses they, like, you’ve never heard of, and they’re having a great life, their employees are treated well and they’re having benefits, and those are the businesses that I am more inspired by, by the, you know, rather than the Facebooks and the unicorns, all that stuff.

1:02:16 And in a way that’s how we were able to slowly even build our businesses, getting back to, I guess, your question, how the whole business involved was starting as a news business, and we actually did the four-hour workweek for, say, the first three to four, five years, and we did that, and we’re very fortunate that the business really took off, because YouTube really took off, and the YouTube videos really fed that content and that traffic to our website, because that channel grew, as you said in the intro, to become a very large channel, and we, you know, we made over a million in revenue in our first year. Wow. And that was like, I remember having that meeting with Mimi and her sister, who was our co-founder, like, we just made a million, you know, but the next question that came from me, my sister is like, where’s the money?

1:03:05 And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize, just because you make a million or revenue doesn’t mean you’re like a millionaire, because you have to pay tax, you have to buy inventory, especially as you’re growing, you have to always be feeding the business, so you’re pulling out like minimal, still thirty thousand dollars maybe a year when you have a million dollar business. It’s another important thing for people to remember is in those early days, you still have to feed the business before you can feed itself. I remember somebody the other day, someone was saying that to be an entrepreneur with you, you’re saying, yes, a sign of in front of the checks, signed in front of the checks, down the back, that was not, you know, it sounds like a good line.

1:03:45 Yeah, somebody said as much vest as opposed to cash. Yeah, as an entrepreneur, where you have to get used to, if you want to be an entrepreneur, a lot of people want to sign the back of the check, you know, to cash the checks in. Yeah, in reality, in your entrepreneur, you have to be ready to sign the front of the checks, because you’re gonna be paying for inventory, for business, all that stuff is it throughout, especially at the beginning, you have to be ready to risk, invest, all that stuff, so that’s what we’re doing.

1:04:15 So that was another surprise, however we’re still able to, that’s how we got our, you know, now we’re not as nomadic as we used to be, we have this, you know, everybody thinks of us as these people who travel all the time, that’s not the reality as much now having a child, but back in the day, yeah, we would like go to Costa Rica for six weeks, I would just surf and live this lifestyle, so it was great. And you’re working four hours a week, literally? It was really, because if we just make one video a week and we just answer some customer service, and then we eventually got a customer service person, and we operated that business up to five million in revenue and very, and seven-figure profits, and with two staff for the first five years.

1:04:57 Wow. And what were some of your core principles? Because this is important, you guys have, what I think last time you were here, said people want to buy products but they wouldn’t want to be sold to, that was one of them, and the other one was always adding value, that’s something you guys are really big on, adding the value, and did I, I’m sure I forgot a couple others, but this shaped the business, you know, that became very successful and you sold now, but it wouldn’t have been that unless you guys have those values.

1:05:22 Hands down, and to this day the biggest realization that I have had that I can share with anybody who wants to make money is, this is a realization I had for myself, it’s not about you. So many people focus like, oh poor me, I need money, I need money, where’s my money? In reality it’s what can you do for others, what kind of values you can bring to other people’s lives to enrich their lives, that they will be lining up to give you money because you’re providing them value.

1:06:00 That’s why people make billions of dollars, they provide billions of dollars worth of value to other people. And that’s why a lot of people even now, you know this, we’re living through this time where, you know, entrepreneurs get a good rep, but at the same time there’s this whole movement about like, oh they’re, it’s not fair, how can we have these billionaires and things like that, but these people are creating massive value for people, how many jobs they created, all that stuff, and it really comes down to that, they wouldn’t be making money unless they’re bringing some sort of value, because people are transacting, people are buying their services or their goods because they need that stuff, they take value from that and they’re willing to hear you, here you go, here’s my money.

1:06:41 And that’s what we always have to remember as consumers as well, we’re always trading, you know, even I have this, you know, right now there’s this whole movement about environmentalism and all these youth coming on the streets of London and, and you know, saying, oh you’re stealing our future, no, people have to realize Bamm themselves are stealing their own future, you’re voting with your dollars every day. How many of those people, I bet you, who are protesting are wearing the same leather shoes from these factories, all that stuff, that is so unfair. You have to vote with your dollar, that’s the only way we all will change the world is with that.

1:07:19 So the same thing, reverse engineer, that is a business, you should have to see what our people want and need, and what can you provide and what problem can you solve for them in order for them to also give back to you. So with our business, that’s what we did, we just saw opportunities of, okay, where can we, were so low hanging fruit, which is a muse business, to be able to help people deliver value, and that’s what we did through our hair tutorials that we provided for free for people. And there’s a, you know, a law of reciprocity that is really strong, you know, in the book Influence by Robert Cialdini, he talks about reciprocity is like ingrained in us as human beings, and if you deliver value to people unconditionally, they’ll somehow want to provide, you know, support you, the and I, we’ve had customers literally buy our product, which was hair extensions, and say, you know, I really don’t even need hair extensions, I just bought it because I just wanted to support you guys in one way or another.

1:08:21 But it’s just a reminder that as long as you’re delivering value to people, people will want to transact with you somehow, or they’ll bring, they may not want your product but they’re gonna tell their friends about us who may needs to do business with you. So there’s always this relationship, but adding value and delivering value is the number one value for, I believe, for all businesses. It all successful businesses, what they’re really focused on is delivering value, not extracting value from others.

1:08:48 Yeah, relationships too. Yeah, which is business as well, right? Oh yeah. Talk to me about selling, because I come from America where, like I was telling someone here earlier, I used to make these a little, these videos as a kid, what we would, like I had like a camcorder and we do like these cowboy and Indian videos, we do like this kind of drama videos, and I would actually splice in ads into the video and we would make up these fictional products and sell them, because like that’s what I thought was normal about media.

1:09:15 Yeah. And so I’ve always grew up his environment of like sell, sell, sell, and I’d say America is more of the hard sell place, but you and Mimi never had that philosophy, it was always much more of a soft sell. Can you tell me about that mentality and then the plusses and minuses of it, if there are any? Yeah, so our whole formula, I think I talked about it last time here, is QVCA, and you know, it’s inspiration is from QVC, which is this hard selling Shopping Network in the US that makes billions of dollars.

1:09:48 So to this day I believe that’s the dying model to sell. I mean, personally I just don’t, I’m not attracted by buying in that fashion, and connecting to what I was saying before about delivering value, you know, even looking back I was just, I was not a good salesperson, even at the bank in that way. I couldn’t sell people by, you know, my boss was like, hey, like, like Glengarry Glen Ross, get caught, get dialing, you know, here’s the people you need to sell them mortgages or credit cards, and I just felt bad, I felt dirty.

1:10:26 Instead the way I was able to meet my targets and at the bank was actually by building relationships with people, and a lot of times that wouldn’t actually be encouraged in a corporation, like why are you spending an hour with this person? Well, cause I’m just giving them value, they may be asking me about their vacation plans and I’m like, hey, let me help you, oh I’ve been to this place, let me give you some tips on them, and I’ll be talking to them about their vacation, they’re like, it’s not related to your work. Well, it is, because once again, if you provide value to people, they will want to do business with you.

1:11:05 And this is with the QVCA, the way we realize, you know, after years of growing our business, where we realize is like, why are we, you know, why are we doing so well? Because I never think of ourselves as being special, and we kind of reverse engineer, so okay, what is it, and what are we doing, what are other people doing? We’re providing people quality, meaning quality content. What we always say is like, you don’t have to do super-high in production as you have right now, you know, but don’t do things too low end, just do it so people can hear it, see it, and there’s good lighting, that’s good enough.

1:11:42 Second, value, always be providing people value in what way, you can be entertaining people, right, you can be educating people, but you can, you always have to be adding something into people’s lives. In the last two points is be consistent, you know, I always show up, and what I mean by that is when you’re creating content, make sure it’s, it’s a consistent content, so you’re not putting out, you know, cat videos every other week, people know when they’re, you know, sign up or subscribe to your this channel or this podcast, they know what they’re gonna get, content with amazing people around the world where you bring guests that will add knowledge and value into other people’s lives, consistency in that way, and also consistency, people know, for example, that you put out shows every week, every two days, whatever your schedule is, that you tell people, and they come to expect that, and with consistency also being one of those human laws, when we’re consistent in what we do, especially in business, you become really reputable, people trust you more, that’s how you build trust by being and showing up and being there for people, consistency, and the last one, which is the most important bit that we talk about, is authenticity.

1:12:59 If you actually believe in what you’re selling, it is way easier, you know, being in the bank when I’m, I couldn’t sell people, you know, credit cards if they already have five and they’re in debt, I can’t sell you that. However, if I can look at you and say, because the way I would once again do well, even at the bank, I’m like, hey, you have these credit cards, I can actually, let’s, if I can get your line of credit it and to actually lower your credit and get your payments down a lot from 20% to 6%, that would help, would it? But that was still me thinking, how can I actually add value to your life and how can I make your life better, instead of how can I just sell you something without, you know, just by blindly selling.

1:13:46 And I think a lot of people approach business is selling just for the fact of selling. However, if you look at it and from this fashion of, you know, providing quality, people value, being consistent and being authentic with just your, your persona before you’re selling, you will have way easier time doing whatever you’re doing, and it just won’t feel as bad, because the, the best motivating factor in all of us is like, how do you feel? And you have to pay attention of that, you know, does it feel like wrong doing something?

1:14:19 Well, maybe you shouldn’t be doing that, you know, and I think we always have to intuitively listen to ourselves, because that inner voice can really guide us in the right direction. Mm-hmm. What, I had the Wolf of Wall Street in here recently, and did Jordan Belfort? No, we saw that, we saw the movie. And he and I said, you built this amazing company culture, because you couldn’t argue he had a thousand people out there that they just loved him and love doing business with him, and he said, Brian, the problem was is that we didn’t believe in the product.

1:14:46 He said at the end of the day, said some of the stocks I believed in, but he said at the end I was just selling garbage, and he said you cannot run an organization when you’re not authentic with the product, you don’t believe in the product. He’s like, actually today I believe in my product, he sells his sales system as Straight Line sales, he really believes in it, but he said that was the problem, and he said, I don’t care how much money you’re making, you can’t lead a team if they’re not really truly believing in what they’re selling, sooner or later it will fall apart, it’ll fall apart, and it did fall apart. Well, you know, the government helped him as well, but it’s interesting you say that because he noted that as well, you know, I had to be authentic.

1:15:19 Yeah, I love your QVCA, I quit it all the time, and it’s powerful stuff. Um, what’s it like building a business with your wife, and how did you guys navigate that over the years, and what advice would you give to people if they want to do that or not do that, and how did you divide responsibilities as well, cause Mimi’s kind of the front person? Yeah, certain extent. So how did that work? A lot of people asked, I would recommend working with your wife, like for everybody, it works really well for us, I think it’s the greatest thing ever.

1:15:47 I love working with Mimi, it’s, I’m like, even we know the last few years because she gave birth to our daughter and she’s been very present with her, we haven’t been working as much together and I really miss that, so now she’s coming into the office more and we’re working together more, and it’s amazing. Why do you like working with her? Ah, because we, you know, you’re gonna have Mimi on this, on the show and talk to her about the bingo theory. Okay, but we’re complementary and we’re opposite, and she’s, she’s a hustler, you know, I’m saying, she’s very decisive, she’s very driven, she’s very ambitious.

1:16:29 I’m actually very chilled out, so if you leave me like to myself in an office, I’m not that productive. Well, meaning she’s like, she has so many ideas, she, there’s so much that needs to be done, and you, you feel like, oh man, I should be doing something, you know, so you feel more motivated and driven when she’s around. So she’s actually, she really motivates me and she really makes me more driven in life, because otherwise I’ll just do the 4-hour workweek.

1:16:53 I don’t know about that. Yeah, you guys complement each other, really complement each other. Really well, and we enjoy each other’s company, simply put as that, and we always joke that, you know, we’re gonna be celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary next year, and we’re doing our renewal, and so in reality we have been together only, you’ll say, 12 years, however we’re like an old couple, because if you look at our relationship of how many actually hours we spent together versus any other couple, we’re for sure celebrating or like our 50, 60 year anniversary sort of actual hours, you know, there’s the mileage tracker on our spend together as a couple, we’re way up there, because we spend so much time together in our those early years, and that really helps to develop that relationship to not be afraid of confrontation and challenges.

1:17:56 However, most importantly it is, it really just comes down to enjoying each other’s company and presence, okay, it’s as simple as that. So you guys are the right fit, you didn’t necessarily have advice to people that want to build businesses with their wives. You have, because I always say if you, we have moments where I’m like, I can do this, and for example me being her, which I was for a long time, her videographer, photographer, like I, I said, sorry, I can’t do that anymore, because they just, you, I, it was hard, you know, be doing that role, so we, if I would have to do that I wouldn’t be able to do that because it has to be perfect and you gotta get the feedback and know, do this and do that, and you’re like, I can’t do it.

1:18:41 Yeah, and just for some reason that didn’t really vibe. Okay, but when he came to just, they’re doing different roles, and I’m still saying more of the operator and she’s a lot of like the visionary of our business, and we kind of complement each other in that regards. Okay, what can you tell us about YouTube, because you guys have been on that platform for a long time, nine years, right? And did all sorts of things, what they grew a business with it, what, what can you tell us about what YouTube is and the best way to use it and what it’s going to become in your mind?

1:19:14 Yeah, I think YouTube is the future. It’s even though it’s a pret, it’s the past in the present at the moment, and a lot of people think it’s too late. Out of all the social media networks right now, and where do you want to be putting out, I believe it has the most future proof ‘no stew it vs Instagram or anything else, because the content can be there evergreen and can be, it really has the ability to long tail and gain steam over time. When you create content on YouTube you really have to see it as planting seeds, that’s what we’ve done.

1:19:50 If you think about what are the reason, for example, you can why we got, you know, bought out and purchased and people saw a value in what we built is because we built this content platform where this, where we made hundreds of videos on different topics where we added value, you, that is searchable and stood gain and is still relevant and gains viewership over time that drives business to the actual business itself. So part of the reason Luxy Hair sold for the price it did because of the digital assets. Yeah, but are evergreen and still producing views and traffic and everything.

1:20:22 Exact, because it becomes intellectual property. And so for anybody right now for themselves or for their businesses, it’s one of the best platforms to build a brand, and what is a brand? A brand, how I define it, is your trust, is your trustworthiness, and the way you, whether you’re a real estate agent or you sell, you know, you’re a doctor, or I saw it, I was in Ukraine, I was telling, speaking for the 7,000 people in this, the presenter before me is a surgeon, surgeon who does all these surgeries on like YouTube and kind of what you do with like live-streaming and things like that with surgeries, and he’s, and what he was communicating is that because he actually does that, he’s able to charge a premium, people actually trust him more and seek him out from all over the world, and, and though he’s like, I have clients flying from everywhere to Ukraine to have a surgery, because there’s more trust because they see it.

1:21:25 They make interactive videos, as a medium is very immersive, it’s the closest thing you can get to real life currently, and this is why for anybody wanting to create a stronger brand for business or for an individual, it’s the best network to be. Hmm, yeah, I totally agree with you. I think it’s, it looks so simple, it’s a video on demand on any app, you know, any app platform in the world, but it’s, it’s got this like janus a qua, this magic to it, because there’s just something there, you know, it’s searchable and retrievable and it can just spread like ideas and feelings, like it lost the globe in such a fast way, and, and again it’s this evergreen, to go try to find an old video on Facebook or Instagram or even search iTunes for something is very, very hard, but you know YouTube, since it’s owned by the largest search engine in the world, that has that.

1:22:21 And so I always say like we don’t really know what YouTube is yet or how it’s affected culture, it’s already transformed in massively, massive, but, you know, you’re right, it’s probably just the beginning. It is, because I always think about also being growing up in post-Soviet Union society, what that time created was also mega wealth, you know, these oligarchs and billionaires, and a lot of people, you know, judge or they look at that time and said, yeah, only if I was at that time, I’ll be able to, also if I knew what was happening, I’ll be able to gain all this wealth. And, and this is actually happening right now, you know, many of us don’t realize that we’re in the storm until it passes, and you know, a lot of those moments when we look back in history, like, whoa, that was crazy, when, when it’s actually happening you don’t realize, most people don’t realize it’s actually happening, and right now we’re living through the most transformative time probably like ever in regards to, you know, work, careers, technology, tools, and accessibility of people to actually have change.

1:23:31 People to this day are, I just, they just probably don’t believe in themselves enough, that they have as much power as they actually do. You know, there’s that famous quote, it’s not our darkness but it’s our light, you know that? Yeah, yeah, because that’s not the darkness we fear, it’s the light. Yeah, there we go, and it’s in a way people are afraid of the amount of power that ours currently given to them as individuals to transform, change. It’s almost like you can go on YouTube, it’s your stage, you can show up and broadcast yourself right now, it’s up to you, no stopping you, if you have a phone even you can do it, it’s up to you, so it’s that accessible and it’s that powerful, you can change the world really literally with your phone.

1:24:16 So true, and like I push every single one of our students in our Academy, like video blogging is a standard thing, you know, and it’s a big hang-up for a lot of my students and I’m like, it’s the simplest thing, it’s literally in your pocket, within four seconds you could have a little video out there and it done, and at the same time it’s this massive barrier to entry because it terrifies so many people. I’ve had, you know, CEOs of multi-million dollar businesses that are terrified to hit Facebook Live and say a few words or to put something up on YouTube, and yet it’s the quickest way to build trust and build a brand. Like if I can see you talk about something you’re passionate about for a minute, I’ll spend my money with you as opposed to some brand with an app with a faceless corporate, you know, avatar, and yet people are still hesitant because of this social pressure.

1:25:00 So it’s this weird thing, again, battle in your own brain, like, all right, what do you want to do, do you want to design your life, are you willing to go into something that’s maybe weird and uncomfortable and embrace this opportunity, or do you want to, you know, go work in a bank? Well, I think the true question that everyone has to ask is, are you being authentic? Because if you can somehow dial in and get to that part of yourself, were you doing something that you’re actually authentically aligned with and you enjoy, that’s how you’ll be able to put yourself out there.

1:25:36 You still will be hard, but there’s more opportunity for you to do that, and I think the way to get to that point, like, okay, Alex, how do I get there, how do I get to that part of being authentic? Follow what feels good, you know, just slowly, like you, you’re doing, you know, what are you doing on the side, what do you do on your spare time, you know? For me, I don’t know about you, on my spare time I’m listening to podcasts, I’m consuming books, audiobooks on Audible about self-development, all that stuff, I’m watching informative YouTube videos, that’s just what I like to do.

1:26:13 This is why I’m in this industry now that I am, of helping people or, you know, education and things like that, this is because I really enjoy this thing, I’m not, it’s authentic to me, and I wanted to do more of that. That’s why even we sold the business, because, you know, selling hair extensions was, yeah, our first muse to make money, but I had to be honest with myself, and it was a hard decision to make, because that was a great business making lots of money, and they had stole the reason somebody bought it is because it has more opportunity to make more money, right? And to pay you a higher multiple, but you have to understand, you like be honest with yourself, is this what I want to continue doing, is this really authentic to me?

1:26:54 And both Mimi mean I had to be like, you know, why, like not for the long term, we’re grateful for the opportunity, we’re grateful for being here, but we have to step back, you know, and, and really go on an unknown. So many people were, especially close to us, we’re shocked when we sold the business, cause all right, well, this is your identity, this is kind of your success, and you’re like, yeah, that’s fine, cause well, money isn’t everything in this case, having that cash flow was not worth the trade-off of your time spending on something that maybe wasn’t a hundred percent authentic to where you wanted to go. Yeah, and every day is precious for you, and so that’s why you guys made that decision.

1:27:36 This is a hard decision, I can, and hey, we have a big reward for that decision. However, for anybody listening in their careers or jobs, even their regular paycheck, it doesn’t have to be high, you know, I always say you have to get off the crack, and then the crack is sometimes as having that paycheck, whatever that is, whether it is you’re a banker or you’re just a janitor, you know, it’s that consistency of a paycheck that we’re afraid of losing it, and it’s true, it there’s a lot of risk to getting often, and that’s why I don’t recommend everybody jump into entrepreneurship. However, I believe you can slowly wean yourself off it, that’s why it’s important to have some sort of side hustle, some things like that.

1:28:17 Yeah, I had Robert Kiyosaki in here a few weeks ago and he said as soon as you accept a salary, like something shuts off in your brain, you know, all of a sudden you don’t take the responsibility, you don’t take the ownership, and, yeah, part of you kind of changes, and it’s just weird, kind of a crack thing, and then it’s like, where’s my salary and someone should give me this thing, and in a weird way it shuts down like a lot of the creativity and stuff that’s born in an entrepreneur. And his Rich Dad, and he had in Rich Dad Poor Dad, his rich dad trained him as a little kid by not paying him to do work, and he forced him to like come up with ideas of how he could figure out how to make money. And yeah, it’s, it’s kind of a great book to read.

1:28:55 Ya know, but one thing, one warning I’ll just gifted people on that is that a lot of people believe when they start, I want to quit my job and you’re gonna be working for myself full-time, and they don’t really, I realize how hard it is to work for yourself. People are the worst their own bosses, they, and it’s simply because we don’t know how to manage our cells and our time, and usually I would actually argue that people are better working for somebody else. Even the reason people get investors is because the moment you get an investor you also have a boss and you have to be accountable to somebody, and then the way people are actually better when they’re more accountable to somebody.

1:29:41 So one anybody really listening or watching this has to realize is that if you are gonna make that leap into entrepreneurship, as, as exciting as we may sell it to be, the reality is you’re is gonna be very challenging if you don’t have that self control to how to actually manage your time more effectively. And that’s why I recommend some people, I was thrown into it, I was fired, I was very grateful to being fired, because I don’t think I would have been able to get off in that crack of employment, or crack, right? Yeah, however a lot of people I believe you can slowly wean yourself off it, doesn’t have to be hardcore, but know yourself, sometimes people you do have to jump, right.

1:30:25 And you’re the first one to kind of shadow the idea that a 4-hour workweek works for everybody or a lifestyle business is easy, because it’s not, it’s not. No, I’m not a writer, I think we talked about it before, I don’t recommend it, you don’t recommend people jump into it or even try to aspire to it, because it’s not for everyone. Ah, you know, this is the whole lifestyle thing, I’ve showed this before even on the show, is that, and it’s part of the journey, I guess, figuring out what do you really want, because many of us aspire to something and when we actually get there, this is the time to be honest and be like, this is not for me.

1:31:05 You know, I looked at these Alex and Mimi guys and I thought I should live in London and I should be a lifestyle entrepreneur and I live this fantasy life, and I’m doing it and just don’t feel good. Yeah, you shouldn’t do it, you know, the ultimate calling is yourself to be able to have that ongoing feedback to realize, am I happy, am I not, and maybe you just, maybe you are working and you do have a cellar and you’re happy, who says you should quit and be an entrepreneur? No, like continue, you can, I, I believe working and being part of the team can be as fulfilling, if not fulfilling, give me making them more money, being part of the team and being an entrepreneur on your own.

1:31:44 So it’s more about analyzing, be observing yourself and, and try things out. Sometimes it does take you jumping into entrepreneurship, trying it out, doing your best, may be failing and realizing it’s not for me, and like, I’m fine working part of a, you know, for a leader or a team that I can contribute my specialty to, you know, it doesn’t have to be you, everyone’s a leader and things like that, where we can work together as part of the tribe. He builds a great team at Luxy Hair.

1:32:17 How did you handle company culture, what’s, what do you think about when you’re trying to lead a team, and I remember, I remember you hiring people and building that team, what would it like, the few principles that you go back to? Um, I think going back, the most important principle that I see in people is not your experience, not your education, it’s more of your, we look for the sparkle in the eye, you know, your, your excitement to create and be part of something and wanting to contribute, and that’s what we really look for when we’re building our team, and I’m really grateful to everybody who is part of our team and to create that culture, and what we really did, and I say sometimes it’s not easy working for us, and that is because we give you a lot of freedom and we’re not actually good managers, and what I’m maybe where you can, you can have a different definition, what I’m saying is that we don’t micromanage you, we allow you to be on your own and take action and to, and to figure out what needs to be done.

1:33:31 We give everybody before they start working for us a book called Linchpin by Seth Godin, it’s a mandatory read, and we say pretty much this is our way of working, you have to, if you want to succeed here, you have to be a linchpin, you have to be indispensable, you have to see and how you can create value for this organization. It, you know, the challenge with a lot of small companies, including yours or us, when you don’t have a big organization, it’s like how do people see where do I go, like how do I grow in my role? And the way we would work with people is understand that the opportunity here is that you can create any role you want.

1:34:15 This is why you have to be entrepreneurial, especially those early employees, to create those opportunities for yourself, and then as you grow you create specialties and things like that. However, I found the fundamental team, Mimi, you need to mold them or see that entrepreneurial spirit where they are able to be okay, and you need those, you need those generalists where you can just throw in a battlefield and they’ll figure it out, you know, you can, I was, it was difficult sometimes to find people because you want experienced people, but sometimes those experienced people or their soul, they’re just too tightly specialized, you know, hey, I can’t operate unless I have like four people doing stuff for me. But you need to be able to be a SEAL team, a SEAL team unit of your own and figure things out.

1:35:03 Tell me more about Seth Godin, I know you’ve taken some of his classes in New York City with him, and yeah, I know you love his books. Why, why Seth? Ah, Seth, you know, he’s, there’s a few people in society who, when we look back in time, we’ll be like, wow, that was like one of the greats, and for, for Seth his teacher was a Zig Ziglar, and he was a big inspiration, of course, for Seth. For me growing up, you know, Seth Godin is probably my biggest and spray for how I approach life, how I approach business, where this whole idea of value comes from, this whole idea of bringing your emotional labor to life, you know.

1:35:51 By Linchpin, the book was a pivotal book in my life to realize that I’m, once again, I’m the only one who can make change. So many people get jobs or start businesses and they’re not looking at themselves, that you are the person who’s gonna make a difference. You know, it’s up to you to, as he says, to make a ruckus and to make things happen, and for me was a really stark, important reminder that once again I’m the only one responsible for my life and for what I do in this organization or team, and how do I become indispensable in life.

1:36:36 You know, as also as your guest Gary would say, you know, who’s gonna show up at my funeral? But the reason Gary’s growth is because simply he just puts out a lot of value, and these are one of the principles that of course Gary talks about, but for me Seth was kind of also the godfather of that. I’m really talking about thinking about the long tail, thinking long, long term, and really caring, you know, so many corporations and companies they put profits over value, and actually caring and especially in customer service, that’s how we were able to build the business that we have, you know, we’re the number we were, we built in the highest-rated company in our industry for Luxy Hair, number one rated, best ratings of any companies, and that was from that value of be human, be there for people.

1:37:29 Our customer service people, we didn’t give them scripts or anything like that, it was more we would always teach them about just be human, you know, when you’re at the, if you’re having a difficult decision to make, number one is you’re actually empowered to make that decision, even as you’re a customer service person, you have a certain budget that you’re allowed to, if you want to give people flowers or if you want to do something nice for them or you think they should get a refund even though something happen, it’s fine, use your own judgment. And I’ve gained a lot of that knowledge from Seth and his teachings, and that’ll, and I see when you actually utilize them in real life and you see them work, you’re like, it’s, it’s the truth. Yeah, and also maybe you just, you turn on that, you know, anybody listen to this now, we’re all have these judgments or prejudgments, and you can be open, like, this person’s really believes in what they’re saying, they’re being authentic with their values, and for me Seth Godin is one of those individuals who’s on a mission, really, to do things his own way, you know, he operates as a single person with his whatever small team, he’s not out there to be build big venture-backed companies, although he could if he wanted to, but he chooses to run his own show, be to his own drum beat.

1:38:47 Who else do you watch? Well, I watched you, of course, your videos always great. No, you guys put out with some really great content, especially you guys cut it up, because this is obviously a long format, but once you splice it up and put in some good stuff, so you can do great stuff. Other people, there’s not a lot, you know, sometimes if you need the hustle bit you get some Gary in there, give some caravanners like, but then I would say it was Sadhguru, who you recently had on as well, is it just a great reminder of why he likes that guru, he speaks a lot of truth that is not so conventional to with the image that he represents.

1:39:30 Them to self to be, yeah, it’s quite practical, and yeah, quite a nice face a little bit too, so that’s it. I don’t, I don’t have too many people actually that I confuse you much. And when you think about the next 20 or 30 years, first, I’ll talk about the world and then we’ll come back to what you’re going to be doing, but what do you see happening in the world, like what are the things that are gonna be driving human attention, the changes that we make, you know, what’s gonna be something that’s really important that’s happening, like what’s going on, because you, you have a good global sense of what’s going on in the world, you know, you know for a bunch of people that, you know, cell Paris, you know you do, because you talk to a lot of people, you know, with great ideas, you love ideas, you’ve always, you’re always, you’re always consuming and you’re practicing these things and stuff, but where do you see us going and what do you think, like the zeitgeist is gonna be?

1:40:22 Oh man, that’s such a big question. Massive shift in society, in the world, hopefully we make it. I, I mean, do you think we will? I’m an optimist, I believe we will. Right now is it’s a, you know, we’re going a little backwards in what way?

1:40:47 With a lot of, you know, right-wing kind of agendas and people really pulling back. The reason it’s happening, people are scared, it’s scared because things are moving so fast and people are not able to keep up, there’s so much information, there’s so much knowledge, there’s actually so much power that people are given that they can’t handle it. If you think about in reality, this is the, the stuff we’re living in the greatest era that we humans have ever lived, we have the most abundance ever in the world, poverty has never been lower, the opportunities that people have around the world have never been higher, this is the actual facts, I’m not like all the scary mongering that people get fed on media, these are actual statistics of that is happening, and in regards to, you know, how diseases are being thought and just the overall opportunity in this world, and because of the shift that is happening from in the workplace, and this is the biggest shift, how careers are not the same as they used to be, you know, a lot of the current generation that is fighting the current change, they’re nostalgic about this idea of where you have the safety and you work for a corporation and this corporation provides for you and the government room provides for you and you get this retirement and you live this comfortable life, that’s gone.

1:42:19 I’m gonna come back, like people clinging on to that and wanting to create some sort of socialist or communist systems, that’s not gonna work, that’s been tried out, you know, millions, even hundreds of millions people died for these ideas, and going backwards, it’s not gonna help. I think that’s very important to understand, so hopefully we don’t get go there. So the shift that is happening in the merging that I believe that I see, that from the things that I can swim and read, is that the whole idea, work is the biggest and scariest shift that is happening, and the freedom that people now have that we don’t, we don’t have to be on this path and that people can be flexible even how they work, you know, all my way here I was listening to a Naval Ravikant, you should have a lot, he’s a great thing in Joe Rogan’s podcast.

1:43:16 Right, yeah, he was on also, he’s from AngelList. Yeah, yeah, I was listening, he’s a brilliant guy. Yeah, super fast, and he was talking about the same ideas, meaning the future is were we actually go to our back to our human nature where we operate, meaning we would have just worked for like one tribe, we also be hunter-gatherers or our own individual cells, but sometimes we team up on a mission to hunt down that whatever move, animal who we needed to hunt down, and then when we split the profits and go off on our own ways or be in our own little tight unit, and as much as even for me as a business owner, I don’t like that as well, the whole like freelance work and stuff like that and an uncertainty and in your workplace, but this is where it’s really going to, and it will give a lot of people a lot of freedom and responsibility and that you, it will give you that option if you want to be a freelancer and to be wherever you want, or to operate within a team or work for in our organization, you know, the kind of on-demand economy even and the gig economy of Uber and all these things, these things are here to stay.

1:44:23 And same thing, people are fighting, oh like we don’t get paid enough or whatever, like this is the reality, this is what we’re really listening to, and, and opportunity’s actually greater than ever, and we do have to understand a society and what is lacking is the education, the current education system in a way itself is simply not preparing people for the way the current world is moving. So the other shift that will need to happen that hasn’t happened yet is the education, however this is where we’re, you know, what you do with this show, where the podcast for my video, former, you’re a candidate at Academy or anything like that, you’re a new form of education, a new way of people to, because things are changing so fast, to learn what is actually happening now, not learning about some theory that’s not relevant to you but actually learning about mindset and ideas that can actually help you be relevant in today’s time, and there’s more and more people like your yourself or me or other people who are really trying to educate people and prepare them for today’s time and how to operate more efficiently in the, in this era.

1:45:37 So that’s the future is really being more decentralized, not being as, you know, put together, and there it really creates a lot of opportunity, meaning yes, there will be these huge massive companies like Amazon and Facebook and Googles, they’ll get bigger and bigger, and then there’ll be people like Alex who can have a five, ten million dollar business, you know, because I’m just kind of taking off the scraps off of Amazon, things like that, and people don’t realize that making five to ten million dollars, it’s actually not much in the world, like in the grand scheme of commerce it is tiny, especially living in London and you realize I’m kind of like middle-class. No, I hopefully, when you look at South Kensington, did yeah, you are. Yeah, well, I’m trying to communicate by that is people are used to this idea of working for a corporation, just getting paid a certain salary, but once, yeah, but they don’t realize that you can should replace your salary fairly easily if you just add to the, the current way of how commerce is being done and through these different, you know, things like even like Airbnb, how you can have a little business there, or an Amazon or on Shopify or, you know, these different website like Upwork or different communities, you know, it’s not for everybody, but this is more, more where people where it’s shifting to, and you, we have to a society as people adapt to this change, you know, the greatest cause like it’s not the strongest sort of the fittest I survive, it’s the ones

1:47:18 That are most able to adapt to change, and this is relevant more than ever right now, it’s how do we adapt to this change. So in a future it’s gonna, it’s gonna be wild. So, and I think one of the things that I do stand for is we do need better governing in some way in the distribution of wealth, that is required, but at the same time it’s not like people think they just give money to the government and government fixes anything, that when this has that worked, you know, in some societies maybe, maybe we can learn from those, but currently I’ll say in the like US and things like that, they’re spending more than any other country for healthcare and yet their healthcare system is broken.

1:48:01 So ultimately it will come down to individuals like people listening right now, to mean you, to stand up to what they believe in, and then doesn’t have to be for certain things, but just whatever you believe in, you know, better healthcare or, or better education, and instead of conveyor meant, but instead of complaining how these big companies are ruining everything, you can understand that you as an individual can actually create a change, like I always applaud entrepreneurs who are creating these small companies who or maybe are doing better things for an environment or how they’re changing even those whole movement against plastic now, some was actually creating it, created this movement and made the consciousness awareness wake up, they, hey guys, like we’re polluting, like we got to stop this, and it’s slowly but someone did that, and I believe it’s important to realize.

1:48:57 I love that Steve Jobs quote it was really that, look around you, everything was created by people just like you, and you can do the same. And that’s what I kind of take with me at the end of the day and just keeps lugging along slowly and embracing the future. So I’m excited, I’m excited, just hopefully on it people don’t ruin it for the rest of us, you know, on the global level to like, hey, let’s be like protectionist and close off borders and things like that, and just like, that’s not the way of the future.

1:49:24 And what is the future for you and Mimi, and what, what do you want to be doing in the next few years and where do you want to be doing it, what’s, what’s gonna be your mission or like? Yeah, I think most importantly more than ever is living more authentically to ourselves, because going through this journey is realizing that even though we’re having a sold the business, having reached financial freedom at such a young age, yeah, I can just probably put some money in bonds and just live off that comfortably, what we do things now not for money, you know, it’s, I think they’ll ultimate for anybody, and you can do this without having to create financial abundance for yourself or independence, I really believe if we just skip that, you know, chasing of the Joneses or Alex and Mimi’s Instagram or anybody else’s social media thing that portray real or not, doesn’t matter, but actually be honest with yourself to what you want and what you want to create and understand, like, hey, fine, maybe we’ll be doing this work and I’m happy with it, I don’t have to be a Gary Vaynerchuk and hustle, you know, I don’t have to be an Alex, I don’t have to be Brian, right, I can be me and just do what I love, and whatever it is, figure it out slowly and be happy.

1:50:45 So for ourselves more and more now, the future is how do I align with being authentic to myself, and for me it is, it really stands to two things that I’ve got from Ray Dalio and his book Principles, we, I spoke this to you recently, and as really how do I create and have meaningful work that I do, and how do I have meaningful relationships. And from that book, you know, Ray Dalio would be one the wealthiest person in the world, one of the most powerful, these circles of Davos and flying around, just being with these powerful people, well, he’s communicated, coming also from nothing, is that the most important things in life is that is really just, do you have meaningful work and you have meaningful relationships in your life, and the happiest people that I’ve met are not the wealthiest, are the people who have that, who have meaningful working with meaningful relationships, and the meaning really comes from how do you see it, you know.

1:51:44 I love people who are, for example, janitors, and they’re happy and they find meaning in their work simply because they choose to focus on the meaning they create, they choose to see how they actually make this, they bring value to this workplace where they’re actually making this environment a better place, and that brings them joy and they actually see the meaning and purpose in their work. We had to do that as well as throughout times, I remember well we’re, you know, even doing our hair extensions, I’m like, we kind of get depressed as well, like, what, we’re not, we’re not doing anything meaningful, we’re not bringing any value by doing this business, and then I had to reframe our mindset, like, let’s, let’s see actually from this other side, what value do we bring to we world through the world?

1:52:27 Well, we actually do bring, we’re part of so many people’s amazing moments, would it be their wedding or their special day, how many people, you know, hooked up because she was wearing one of our products, or the way you made her feel or the emotions she felt, you know, there is some sort of value what we bring in, what we create, and of course it’s how we do business, how, you know, I love reading reviews of our customers and how they’ve had a great customer experience where they were treated, you know, it’s not a problem, they were, you know, mostly a lot of business alike, if you come to a problem like, oh we don’t want to talk to you, you know, we’ve already sold you stuff, but actually training our staff to actually welcome people and, and in and see the, the meaning behind their work to actually, you know, that you bring meaning, but you actually help people to have a better day, better experience through this, even a small interaction of them returning something or not being a soulless corporation.

1:53:25 Be, I’m sorry, it’s the, even though your product is perfectly packaged, it’s passed 30 days of no return, we can’t do that for you, and being just, you know, corporate, but I said, really, okay, you’re packaged perfectly fine, okay, it’s been whatever, three months, it’s fine, return it, we’ll give your money back. And this I think there’s even purpose, just being human and being kind, and that’s what I think we all have to in a way try to see, and anything that we do, before you try to, hey, maybe one day if I become an entrepreneur or have this career then I’ll have meaning and purpose, start seeing how you have meaning and purpose of what you’re doing right now. And it’s the same thing of that, you know, what really got us to be on this journey is really realizing even when we had nothing, that’s what, you know, Tony Robbins really taught me back then, and is that start being grateful for things that you have now, because of the, you know, they say a lot of art now unhappiness comes from really comparison, this is why social media really makes us so unhappy, and also from the desires that we have that are unfulfilled.

1:54:31 So, but you have to understand that and be real with yourself, what at this present moment do you currently have, what can you be grateful for? Oh, you’re healthy, you have like all four limbs, and you can breathe, amazing, you’re, you’re like, you’re really wealthy, you, you live in a country where you have cute like rights and, and you can actually have a mobility of freedom to move within your career or even around the world, you’re, you’re like so wealthy in this world, so it’s always focusing on those little things, and then what starts to happen, it’s just you could keep building up and you start seeing opportunities all around you. So that’s really are how we approach everything that we do.

1:55:16 I love it, man. I’m really excited to see what you guys are doing, and big shout out to the Five Minute Journal, one of your great products, it’s an app and all that stuff, but I use it every morning. Oh wow. Courage all my students to use it as well on our Life Accelerator, and just that moment of gratitude every single day is powerful, and yeah, and you guys build that thing, so, you know, it’s just the beginning, right? It’s just the beginning.

1:55:39 Fatherhood, what have you learn about fatherhood? What’s been the good part and what’s been the bad part, balantine part? Oh man, you probably see from my body language, it is follow them, is the hardest thing probably you can do, like having a business is easy, I think, compared to fatherhood, and what I’m saying that is, if you’re actually present and if you’re actually invested, it’s a lot of work dealing with humans on that level and, and being there in everyday, just, just present, and Alexa, our daughter, has, you know, taught me a lot, tell me a lot of patience, and overall it is one of the most challenging things maybe to us in a way, because our life was, you know, we’re so free before to do anything that we want, and all the sudden when you become a father you, you can’t be selfish, it’s not about you as any as much anymore, and you now have to think about somebody else, and that’s, I think the big, it was the biggest challenging shift for us, because when your life is so great and you’re so free and all the sudden you’re like, ah, okay, I have to, I have to this, is not, I’m not, I have to put myself not on that, you know, kind of place of being the most important, and really do cater, especially in those early days, to this human being.

1:57:13 So that’s what I would say, like I’m being very honest, a lot of people are going, oh man, think about fatherhood, oh, so joyous, it is, but the reason it’s, it feels so good is because it is so hard, and I think that’s why a lot of people, there’s so much purpose in being a parent, it’s simply because it’s so hard and it’s so challenging, and because you, it’s, there’s no easy escape from being a parent and going, you have to sticking through it, and that’s why it brings so much fulfillment to people in their life. Yeah, it’s being a parent, it’s like the original job, right, that you altima feel good job. Yeah, I think it was Daniel Craig, like the guy who plays James Bond, said it’s the hardest job you’ll have, and job you’ll ever have.

1:57:54 Yeah, yeah, and you don’t know, like it’s so it’s stolen Suren, like it’s the parents things like entrepreneurship, there’s so many analogies that I can put in regards to like socially, the first year, first three months, it’s like a startup, like you don’t know what you’re doing, you know what’s happening, you’re just figuring things out on the go. Yeah, oh yeah, I survived the first year, awesome. So you got many years, month to go, right? Yeah, yeah, time, school goes by fast.

1:58:24 Yeah, it does. What’s a daily habit for you that’s non-negotiable, what do you do every day that get you where you need to be, non-negotiable? It’s waking up. No, but for sure we practice Five Minute Journal every day, and with Mimi especially, for sure the non-negotiable part, even if we get, even if we forget to do it in the morning, because having a child in the morning can be very hectic, and you born, whatever, it’s like you just respond. However, in the evening, non-negotiable, we’re always with each other, say the, the evening portion of the Five Minute Journal, which is what are the three main, three amazing things that happen today and how can I made today better, and it really bonds us as a couple and makes us think and recall the good stuff throughout the day and really focus on the positive, so really is a great habit to have.

1:59:16 Wow, is it hard to overstate the importance of gratitude? I just, when I tell it to people they’re like, yeah, I know, I know it’s important, but I feel like it seems so simple and it’s so easy to overlook sometimes that it’s hard to impress upon how powerful it can be. I think most people don’t even know what it feels like to be grateful. And what I, what I say by that, you know, in this interview even if there’s a counter for how many times I said I’m grateful or gratitude, I’ve expressed my gratitude, it’s probably way up there, and it’s one of my most used words, and I use that is because I practice gratitude, and the way you practice gratitude, you have to make it a habit.

2:00:00 This is why we created a Five Minute Journal, it’s really to get you to make it a habit, and we all brush teeth every morning and night, why? Because it’s important, it needs to be a habit. What happens if you stop brushing your teeth? Things will start to decay, and the same thing is with our mind, we have to create habits for our mind to feed it the positives, the gratitude, looking forward to the things that will happen today, the daily affirmation of seeing your vision of who you were becoming, who you want to become in the world, recalling yourself of what, and looking back of what great things happen today.

2:00:38 That’s really the fundamentals of the Five Minute Journal and the idea of the gratitude, you only start to feel it when you do it. You may, yeah, I feel fake for at the beginning, when you do it, okay, I’m grateful for this, I’m grateful for that. If you do it consistently for, you know, at least six months to a year, what has I’ve been even to us, if you actually do it and you practice it, you’re like, hey, I’m just gonna stick to this, like brushing my teeth, I’m gonna keep it on my bedside table, fo pen, and when I wake up I’m gonna do this thing, and what happens with time, it’s the same thing like when you have your, you know, newborn, grow up, next thing you know they’re like, wow, they’re walking and talking, how did this happen?

2:01:25 It just happen so quickly, so fast. And same thing with the practice of gratitude, one day you would just wake up and actually feel, like actually feel, you know, I know what that feeling is like, of I’m so grateful for my life. And how many people who have way more than I have in regards to financial resources, there may be, you know, billionaires, how these companies have even bigger families and they aren’t happy, simply because they don’t have that habit and practice of actually seeing that things that they have, and they’re constantly just focusing on their desires and the things they haven’t achieved yet.

2:02:04 That’s why you have to reverse that and actually see, whoa, like, let’s actually look, look what I do have. And that’s why I believe this is the most, you know, if you can, if you ask me even here and now, like what’s the most, the a life-changing thing that I’ve done in my life, it’s simply practicing granted, and the way for it started me before I even started, we created the Five Minute Journal, it was, was training myself too, as soon as I wake up, to think of at least one thing that I’m grateful for. That’s it.

2:02:38 So I challenge anybody, you don’t need to buy the Five Minute Journal, right, just tomorrow when you wake up, commit yourself for the next year, right, to think of one thing that I’m grateful for when you wake up. And what will happen is you wake up tomorrow, you might forget, okay, I’m gonna do it again tomorrow, you wake up tomorrow, maybe you remember, you say, I’m grateful for, for waking up, great, little things, focus on what you have and just keep practicing, and to make a habit, they’ll maybe weeks where you’ll forget again to practice this habit of being grateful, where as soon as you wake up then you remember, you get on and again, and with time, this is what I did for myself, this was, this was the life-changing thing for me, with time you just wake up and you feel gratitude, you feel gratitude for just being alive, you feel gratitude for having a partner who’s sleeping next to you, like, wow, I have a partner, this is amazing, you know, instead of looking and focusing on what you don’t have, and it really transforms your life, and then it allows you to actually create more abundance in your life, because you’re not, you don’t have a scarcity mindset, you start thinking abundantly, you start thinking all the things that you do have, and the biggest hack is being grateful for things that you don’t have, and, and really putting in a present moment as you do have them.

2:03:57 We’ve created a manifest as so many things like that in my Five Minute Journal, write things for a long time before they came true, and but I’ll be grateful for it, because that emotion of gratitude, you’re already giving thanks, you’re already giving, you know, it’s, it’s, you’re not trying to take, you’re already saying thank you, and you, and then you feel it, and the feeling inside is, it’s something only you yourself will know of what it’s like to be grateful, and I recommend it for everybody. So gratitude challenge for everybody to start. I love it, that’s super powerful, you explain that.

2:04:31 If I was gonna ask, say five of your friends, what is Alex’s superpower, like what is it that you do better than anyone else to get these things done, what would they say yours is, what are you really great at? I’ll say helping others, even whenever I meet people, even random people or strangers, I’ll have lunch with them, I’m always trying to think of ways I can deliver value to their lives or help them out to be better. That’s like, I’m just always thinking like, how can I help you?

2:05:00 No, I just can’t stop myself. I mean, I really don’t think of even, you know, you came over for the podcast and a dinner in our place, like it was just like I, I couldn’t stop myself to try to help you in some way of like, how can I deliver value, how can I help you, how can I help you get to where you want to go faster, how can I help you realize your bigger vision, you know, and all that stuff, to me I just, I just get off on that, and however, many people, if they find it very challenging, right, because you’re really honest. Yeah, that could be your real superpower as well, explain to me about that.

2:05:35 It’s because I’m, I am now more and more honest with myself, I’m also honest with others, and I try to be with others as I want others to be onto me, and that’s where that honesty comes from, it’s really comes from my own self respect to me, and I’m like, I would want somebody to tell me what they think about me, because so many of us shy away even in our relationships, like with your, you know, loved one, and you just don’t do that because you don’t want to lose them, you don’t want to hurt them, and that honesty really comes from also from a, in a way it’s selfish reason, like I said, because I want that same kind of feedback, and there’s not unfortunately not too many people are willing to be that honest or to give that kind of feedback to each other, and it’s really born out of that desire to still help, that’s why I want to do for other people.

2:06:34 I just find that so fulfilling to be able to help other people and like shake them a bit and be like, can’t you see this? Because so many times people who are, you know, maybe have more experience, what can see ourselves that we don’t, you know, we can’t see ourselves outside of ourselves sometimes, and that can be the biggest superpower for somebody else to see where the path you’re on to and shake you up. I’d be like, hey, you know, like, can I give you some feedback?

2:07:02 You’re like, yes. I usually don’t ask, I should probably ask before. Yeah, well I believe if you try, at least try doing this, it can help you out, and I just think we should, yeah, be open more to others. There are like that, that are more open. Yeah, I always appreciate your honesty, I remember all the honest things you said to me even years back where I’m like, and it sticks with me and I’m just like, okay, I’m gonna dwell on that, because very few people are honest with me, and like I keep him around, and like champagne is one of them, he usually yells.

2:07:35 Ido Portal was really honest to me, is this Israeli guy, and he tells me what do you think’s in my film straight up, and he’s the first one I go to when I have a new film, I’m like, what do you think of this, cause you’re the only one that tells me the truth. Yeah, and I value that, because the only very few people do, you know, with us to feel good at the moment when I ask, what people give you their honest feedback? Oh, the honest feedback, no, but I mean, I know I need to get, the only way I’m gonna get better is if I get the real stuff, and you know, on social media and stuff you’re by danger gonna have a lot of people that love what you do no matter what, but that’s not necessarily how I get better, so I’m always looking for that.

2:08:10 That’s great. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. Best day of your life and worst day of your life comes to mind. Birthday of my life still to come. Oh, okay, good, good.

2:08:23 But it’s just right to give you a straight-up answer. Best day of my life, I see Mimi immediately. Me like, like it makes me like almost emotional, like, you know, to think about it. It’s just how one person can really, you know, change your whole life. You can meet one person and just make your life so much richer, more fulfilling, and, and like I love my daughter as well, and however I always tell Mimi, like, you know, she’s gonna grow up, she’s gonna go away.

2:08:57 Mimi, if we want to do this, we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna outlast even kind of her being just as our child, and that’s why we have to take care of each other and, and to love each other and, in to support each other and be honest with each other. So having that life partner can be very special, you know, we’re friends first. And yeah, so that’s the best day of my life. Worst day of my life? Oh, I do, I walk.

2:09:25 Oh yeah, that was that was that was worst. Huh, why? Yeah, so like I haven’t talked about it too much on that. You, you’re open about it once again, people probably wouldn’t think it. I have ever done, I lost a lie, cause, yeah, it’s true, currently my now we know about the blunts and the dice games, credit card fraud.

2:09:47 Yeah, it’s just I died, right? I think that’s what happens is when that experience for me at least, it’s, it was the dissolving of my ego, this is all in my identity, this is all being what it feels like to be me in this state of, you know, all of our life were in the state and facing out the world from our eyes and experiencing in this way, and in one moment and all shifts and you dissolve and you die in a certain way, and that’s why it was the best also, the best and one of the, the worst and the best day at the same time. Coming back from that experience for me, it was very hardcore, it was like Inception, just coming in, back out of after living infinity of lives and just being grateful to have a chance at this life and to experience it and to be, it, it’s a true gift to be alive, to be human, you know, we’re, we’re so fortunate to be in this state of human and have our consciousness, and this is one of the biggest gifts that you can have is to be human, and that your probability and luck, no matter where you are, I’ve already human instead of a sloth out somewhere in the deep ocean, you’ve made it, you know, so I’ve always kind of come back to that, so I’m really grateful as well for that experience.

2:11:14 We do it again? I don’t know, I, I always said I’m good for life with that once we want to experience for me the way it was, we don’t want to older, and if there’s some good shamans, that’s the only advice I can give to anybody, that your shaman make sure they’re the real deal, and don’t get just some random white guy in Venice Beach to be a shaman. That’s what you did? No, it’s not, okay, not, not in Venice Beach, but yeah, some random white dude and maybe some like live music and experience, and if they’ll ever, if I’m ever get to a point where I start being black and white, you know, I think that’s the only people that recommend it for, if you see the world and life in a very black-and-white way and you don’t see the amount of gradient and grayness and inside this life and that it’s not black and white, you need to do that kind of experience.

2:12:17 So if I ever get to that state where I start being cynical, complaining or any of that stuff, yeah, I’ll probably do it just to wake up. I think it’s important for some people just to wake up and to see the reality, I guess, from a different way. Yeah, it’s really good description of it. I know some people in Costa Rica, I’m like, I went in a year ago and had this three strong ceremonies, and I died, as I’d died a bunch of times, and it was painful, but I learned a lot, you know, I learned a lot, so super grateful for it, but I’m, I’m, I’m not, I’m not itching to go back anytime soon, but I know I need to go back at some point for that reminder, you know, just to remind me, you know, like you said, just to be grateful for what you have, and sometimes it’s good to just get dissolved for a while and just check in, because like you said, if you’re constantly watching this world from inside these eyes, you’re bringing your own filters and your own BS to it, and at some point you just need to kind of check up and just say, all right, and why am I right here, and let me just take a look from the outside, okay, now I can go back in.

2:13:19 Yeah, it just, it’s important to come back to reality in the, in a good way to be able to function, because it can throw you out. Yeah, so that’s why I wouldn’t recommend it for it for everybody, something out for everyone. I always tell people if it’s, if it’s calling you, you should go pursue it, if it’s not calling you then leave it alone, you know. There’s something inside you, though, the way I’ll tell how I frame it, only do it if you’re okay with dying.

2:13:46 No, I’m serious, like in that ceremony, but no one knows if they’re gonna be okay with die. I didn’t tell ya. Well, what I’m saying is you have to be like your life or may not never be the same, so you have to be okay with in a stern way of dying, and it’s just the reason why it’s so powerful, like you said, is because you can’t escape. Yeah, you know, I think there’s some shamanic ways probably to get you out of the trip, however the reason why it is so therapeutic is because many of us are not willing to experience pain to that level in this life, and that’s why we don’t, we can’t fix a lot of the problems, and when you’re in that experience in, you’re thrown in such a deep end of pain and misery and challenge, not for everybody, it can be very beautiful for some people, for me it wasn’t, and having to really face whatever demons and insecurities and fears that you have inside and be able to just be there and can escape and will live through it, and, and then be like, wow, I’m alive, I’ve lived, like it’s, it’s fine, I’m okay, I can survive, and that is the real power to that, whatever experience it is, and hopefully it becomes more legal and, and all these type of stuff to really help people.

2:15:13 Yeah, you do a lot of good work. It is, and then I hope someday they’ll be spas so you can just go away and, and you’re right, it forces you to be with a painful experience and you don’t have any choice, whereas most people in their life you can pull the, pull the ripcord and get out of situations. Yeah, and you can grow a lot when you force yourself there. So yeah, what scares you? Scares me, I think, thank to anybody, the first thing that comes to mind of course dying.

2:15:42 You still, I like what life is, a great, you don’t like you still like, let’s be honest, like I really enjoy being here, okay, my life is great, it sounds really grateful for it. So and, and the other thing I scared, like I said, is really reverse in society, into the direction that we’re currently going, and how will I think more and more as a world, we are the future as I see it is opening up more, meaning the world truly becoming one and not having borders and in living together as one human species and understanding that we’re all truly, we’re human, you know. How much that’s one of my favorite books of all time, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, we’re Sapiens, there was others types of Sapiens that we killed off, we’re the last standing, you know, us here, all of us in all of our different races and religions and all that stuff, for us to actually realize that, come together.

2:16:49 So that’s the, the optimistic future that I see, and it’s actually, if you see that is what’s happening, we’re now in England, and if you think about, you know, United Kingdom, what was that? It was a compilation of kingdoms and tribes that were separate throughout here in Europe that were living to get a separate, and the guy over the hill was the enemy, you know, that was that was a whole different being that we didn’t know, and then throughout time we gradually came together and then form, you know, from tribes and have kingdoms, and from kingdoms created countries, and then from those countries we created identities, like you know, your French or your English or your American or Indian, then now we have religions that have bigger ties on kind of that global level, but how do we, the next frontier is really having that Homo sapiens tie that we’re all one.

2:17:48 However, right now what scares me is the biggest threat is us really going back to that, really closing down borders, really seeing people as different and, and really not being human, you know, and becoming separate from each other, which we shouldn’t be, is how do we actually bring people together, how do we meet people come up even faster, you know, and coexist with each other and the planet. Yeah, it’s a powerful message. When I think we’re gonna be hearing more from you about what would we be surprised to learn about Alex Ikonn?

2:18:30 I think there’s a lot of surprising thing, 40 ounces and blonde, to know what we surprised to hear that you do on a regular basis, like I said, I think a lot of this things that we talked about, there’s already a lot of surprising things that I’ve done. in the past don’t do any more now, and I’m really grateful for that as well. And a surprising thing about me is probably I’m not as productive and as efficient as people probably think I am. You know, a lot of times from the outside you’d be like, oh, this guy who created the Five Minute Journal and the productivity planner, and to create these business, multiple, you know, different businesses and investment stuff, and has this great life, and he must be so efficient and productive.

2:19:17 Not the reality. Oh, I’m one of the most disorganized, unproductive people that I like ever, and that’s the surprising fact that probably with many entrepreneurs, and this is also a weakness and a strength, and you have to understand how to use it. The reason, let’s say, I created the tool like productivity planner is simply to help me to tame my I’m productiveness, and I know that for example when I put a tool like that to use and actually follow the instructions and I actually do the most important tasks first and actually just single tasks on, on my most important item, that’s actually how I’m able to create the, it’s life-changing products like the Five Minute Journal or the productivity planner or Creed these businesses that generate, you know, well for ourselves or for others, is that you really don’t need a lot of time.

2:20:06 As we’ve talked about, you didn’t mean you earlier today, is that you can do a lot in a year and five years, just chunk out it like a little bit, you know, dedicate even twenty-five minutes a day to reading a book or listening to an audio book or something informative, or even twenty-five minutes a day of just working on that dream product of yours. If you just do that for 25 minutes at bay for 360, it’s 365 days a year, you’ll be way ahead of the guy who’s planning to someday have this masterpiece of the plan he’s gonna execute and never does it. So it’s that’s my really like I said, what people don’t know is I’m not that productive, but how I, when I’m productive, I just do little things daily and that becomes a bigger thing, and that’s why I’m so excited, I’m only, you know, in my early thirties, there’s so much life to live, I’m so excited to be able to create more.

2:21:03 So work smarter, not harder. Yeah, leverage, she’s like, you’re really good at leverage and getting the right people in and making the right strategic moves. Yeah, still working on that too, right, as opposed to like banging your head against the wall, you know, some people do sometimes, I’ll be like that. So the tribe.

2:21:45 Second note, best advice you’ve ever received, could have been business or personal, could come from Seth, just something that comes to mind, best advice you ever seek, compete from your mom? I don’t know. Oh, oh, thanks for bringing up my mom. I’ll say, yeah, my mom is definitely giving me the best advice ever, and that is just try, you know, whenever I wasn’t good, as I wasn’t doing well, all she told me, she never said I’m a loser or I can’t have anything or I’m stupid, she just say it’s fine, just try your best, and that’s the best advice that I ever got, just keep trying, keep trying.

2:22:26 About you feeling it’s fine, just keep trying your best, you know, and ultimately, okay, I should try my best, and you do it, and he make it happen, how it’s just thinking to something that your wife Mimi said when she was here like four years ago, she said, no doesn’t mean no, it means not yet. She said maybe that means that kind of trying, it’s like, you know, you might get, might try some, when people say no, it’s like I could try again, try again, you know, it’s like a whole learning process. Yeah, my favorite quote is persistence is genius, and this guy’s, I’m not sure he said that, but it’s one of the greatest quotes and I truly believe that, that’s why I’m here.

2:23:06 Last question, to that 20-year-old that’s watching, listening to us, advice to give to them, you know, they’ve grown up in this kind of weird generation that we didn’t wear, you know, they’re connected, you know, they’re dealing with this fact that this whole industrial revolution type framework of these jobs forever and the government’s gonna do this is no longer, that they’re living in this gig economy, they’ve also got all this divisive this to deal with, and then social media, what advice do you give to them? Same thing, just try your best. I just don’t get overwhelmed by everything, just go at your own pace and do your best, whatever your best is, and just keep going, because so many of us get disappointed because we look up there, it’s now we’re exposed to so many, you know, world leaders, best of sports, everything, and it’s so easy to just, you know, really push it, punch yourself and be like, you’re a loser, like you’ll never be that, there’s no point of even trying.

2:24:10 And that’s why I say to anybody the same advice, don’t look at those people, look at yourself, and you’re just, just compete against yourself and just do your best of what you can, well your best is now, you know, don’t judge yourself against other people, just yourself on a daily basis, and if you’re better tomorrow than you were yesterday, you’re doing great, whatever that is, whatever the point that you’re in, honestly. It’s good stuff, man. Uh, you just started podcasting?

2:24:41 Yeah, the Ikonn Experience, I don’t agree you remain, but Ikonns Podcast, the Ikonns Podcast, I love it. Why do it, what’s the plan for it, and what it would have you learned from doing it? I was on there. Yeah, you’re the next. So for anybody who wants to see the roles reverse and it seemed Brian, Brian being interviewed by us, definitely tuned into the Ikonns Podcast, it’s I-K-O-N-N-S podcasts, our last name is, and the reality of the whole point of it is to be able to have great conversations as we’re having now with people that are interesting to us, and we’re very fortunate, you know, privileged to be able to invite people into our homes, have dinner with people, and we just want to extend that pleasure of inviting other people into our household in a way virtually and to share that conversation.

2:25:38 You know, you’ve been there, it’s very casual or just talking over a dinner table, and it’s really to be able to connect with others and to have these great conversations and to be able to share that, those ideas and knowledge to other people, because as what you’re doing is what we’re doing, I just see it brings so much value to just share with other people this type of mindset, because most of the success that people will gain, even I’ve gained, it’s not from actual, there’s so many people that are smarter than me that I’ve no know more than me, who are more organized than I am, the only reason I am where I am is because simply my mindset is different, and that mindset that you can change, it can make all the difference. This is why we have these conversations to invite people in to see how people operate, can operate differently and a different mindset that can get them to where they are, and also we have, it’s not only we don’t just do interviews, we also just have chats, we’ll just me, my wife, about different subjects about relationships or meaning or changes in your life and things like that, and just or just have some fun conversations.

2:26:56 It’s just ability to help people not feel alone. I think ultimately that’s why I love podcasts, it helped me when I listened to yours or anybody else’s, I’m able to be part of the conversation and able to understand that there’s other people just like me, they’re no different, and I can do this too, and that’s all our, all our, our mission is just really to help people feel normal, and then they also can achieve their own version of success. It’s a great way to connect people, isn’t it?

2:27:32 You know, reason I started listening to podcast ten years ago is because I wanted to feel connected, I wanted to be a part of a conversation I couldn’t be a part of, and it felt so cool, and then I started doing it. Yeah, yeah, and with the Ikonn Podcast you get dinner too, which is for those who want to have water. Yeah, okay, well it’s pretty amazing, so yeah, I mean Mimi’s amazing cook, and so you and you’d buttered up with dinner and then the show, so it’s a pretty good experience, and that’s a, yeah, because it’s, you know, us, so it’s easier to get you in for dinner, but when we invite, you know, imagine you you invite a guest that you don’t know or like, hey, you can’t have to come over to our house, have dinner, like pretty much here for dinner, and then we’ll do like a podcast after dinner, for a lot of people like, I don’t like, it feels weird, and I think it’ll happening in this country too, people are kind of weirded out by people inviting them to their homes maybe, right?

2:28:24 It’s kind of like, I find it people don’t do that at all, so it’s rare. Yeah, but you guys always have done that. Yeah, we love that, I, I love being, but I love when you invited us to your home for, you know, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving and things like that, you’re like, oh this is so cool, it’s a, it’s a cooler experience than just going to a restaurant. Yeah, it’s personal, it’s intimate, you know, you let people into your space and then you’re cooking food for them, and energy, and yeah, it’s powerful.

2:28:48 Exactly. I just want to thank you, Alex, just for being you. I consider you a good friend, you know, ever since I met you, you’ve just been on point, and I still remember you coming on the show last time, and Mimi, it was a really big deal, and people really enjoyed the episode in the content. I think it’s really good when we can sit down and have this long-form conversation, because the truth is most people know you from snippets and pictures on Instagram and short videos, and you can’t know anybody like that, and you know, now they know the real you, smoking and drinking and gambling, and even that’s it.

2:29:26 I think it makes you more interesting, because you know, I’m just always amazed, I just hung out with you guys for four hours or something, okay, and you and Mimi are just amazing, you guys have incredible energy, you’re super generous, you’re super real, you know, and, and you know, for me it always feels like you guys were born that way, but you guys created this, you know, you guys designed your life and you put the work in and, and made it, and that’s what I hope everyone can see about you guys, you know. And I think that’s the biggest mistake people make about you, is they think you were born that way or if you just, it just happened to happen, but you know, you guys manifested it, and it’s really empowering for other people if they can see your life that way, you know, and I know you’re trying to do that with Instagram, but sometimes people don’t understand, but if they can, they, they can get it, it’s actually super empowering, so thank you guys for doing that, put yourself out there.

2:30:13 Yeah, thank you for having me. I think for a lot of people who would just look at the Instagram and who have listened or watch this interview, they’re like, wow, like I would never think, I don’t think people have that image of me, like the way we present ourselves, that that will be my past, and it just shows how amazing your, your life can truly change and you can change your life in that way, you know, to see what I’ve been able to overcome and to be where I am now, you know, living in London is one of the best boroughs in the world, you know, being middle class of these super, super wealthy people coming from nothing, you know, my neighbors are like Sirs and Lords and things like that, and I complain about that, oh my God, like there’s no like normal, too.

2:30:57 Yeah, they don’t understand me, straight street kids, exactly. Yeah, so I’m just, I’m just grateful for all the opportunities and for the opportunity to be here and to share and to maybe one person, you know, being able to have this realization after listening to this, like, damn, like if you can do it, I can do it too, and I have no excuses, because maybe I have even more opportunity that he does, and that’s what I really believe, is that we can all make ourselves and our life to how we wanted to be. Yeah, all starts with your mind, man.

2:31:37 Beautiful stuff, man, thanks for coming on, thanks for being honest about everything, really appreciate it. Yeah, just looking forward to what you guys create in the future and wishing you all the best, man. Yeah, thanks. It’s like a casino, you don’t know how the time goes by here, right? Just government, dude, thanks so much.