Anthony Filipovich

Full transcript: Anthony Filipovich on London Real

0:00 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Anthony Filipovich, recent graduate of our Speak to Inspire course. Welcome to the studio. Thanks Brian, it is so awesome to be here. I’ve seen so many interviews you’ve done in this space, and to actually be sitting here, this is the reason I came to London, this is the reason I thought I came to London. I got so much out of it, out of meeting with the people and doing the speeches last night. This is the reason I came, but I got so much more out of it.

0:32 And so I’m so glad I came to London. I’m so glad you did too. Tell us about you. Where are you from, what do you do? I’m from Toronto, Canada. I’m in the IT fields; right now I’m a project manager, consultant. I moved to New York in 2000 as part of the dot com. A friend of mine phoned me up and said, “You know, there’s this new thing called internet. People makin’ a lot of money. They’re throwin’ a lot of money around, why don’t you come down?”

0:53 So I did, I went down there, and I interviewed at Priceline, Priceline gas and grocery site. It’s a version of Priceline that went out of business in 2000, right? So I moved down there, sold everything in Toronto, moved down there, and three months later that Priceline was out of business. But I loved the area, I loved the energy of New York. I ended up staying because I met people there, like friends who thought big.

1:25 I would say Canadians and Americans are almost similar, you can’t tell them apart, right? But one thing was a big difference, and I saw it right away: they think bigger. ‘Cause I went out to dinner with some friends and I was thinkin’, should I go back to Canada? Should I stay here? And one of my friends goes, “Why don’t we raise a billion dollars, go to India and buy all these third tier companies and create one large consultant company?” And I thought, who’s gonna give us a billion dollars?

1:54 But he put together the proposal, and we went out and four people actually met with us, which blew my mind! And then we did get some money and we started another venture, not the original one, but we started another venture. And that’s when I started thinking, I love the way people think around here. And I ended up staying like 12 years.

2:11 Wow, wow. What was goin’ on with you before you took this course? Before you decided to join us, what was goin’ on inside and around you to cause you to wanna Speak to Inspire? That’s a great question. I think in the last 20 years, I’ve been on this voyage to grow spiritually, and grow in every way I could. And what started that is I always felt that I could get more out of life. So I started meditating, all these other ventures.

2:42 When I moved to New York, my trajectory started going like up, then it would be like this, like this, like this, but it was goin’ up and life felt great. In about 2014, we moved back to Toronto and I got a consulting job there. But it felt like when I moved back to Toronto, I was hittin’ a ceiling, right? And we started a company in Toronto, a private labelling thing selling them on Amazon, and it didn’t really take off.

3:11 And it felt like I was in a rut and I needed something again to energise me, just like New York did in 2000. I signed up for London Real, and then you kept on with the emails. I remember I deleted five emails and the sixth one, I go, well, let’s try it. ‘Cause it felt good, it felt good, right? I didn’t do that much research on the class itself, but it just felt like the right thing to do.

3:34 And it turned out to be incredible, because up until that point, because I was hittin’ the ceiling, it felt like I was losing all my energy and losing the passion for work and a lot of things. I needed something to boost me up, and the class did it. After getting into the class for two weeks, I was just passionate about the assignments. Terrified, but passionate about the assignments.

4:01 And that passion, the interesting thing is, that passion went into every aspect of my life. The contract work, everything became a lot more passionate. So I would talk to people at work using some of the techniques we found in just like conversations like this, and it made the conversations so much more fun. So in the last six weeks, I’ve been riding this really nice high, which is the reason I joined, right? So thank you!

4:29 Yeah, no, my pleasure. And why London Real? I started watchin’ the Joe Rogan podcasts and I really liked them, especially the ones with Graham Hancock. His whole background, I found incredibly fascinating. And it was one episode where the legitimate scientists were on there and they were battling back and forth. And then I watched some other ones that weren’t that interesting to me, so I figured let’s look around, see what other podcasts are out there.

4:58 So I spent a couple of days looking for some other podcasts. Checked a couple out, but London Real seemed to be more of what I was looking for. So then I stopped my search and just started watching a lot of your videos, signed up for the site. You had great people being interviewed. There was a lot of really good information. So I stopped my search. I’d look at a couple of other podcasts, but mainly I look at London Real right now, mostly, for information.

5:27 So you pull the trigger, you jump in the course. First two weeks, I connect you with these 75 people around the world, I’m asking you to upload videos on Facebook, I’m hittin’ you with the video modules, you’ve got two live calls a week with me on there. What is that first two weeks like? That first two weeks is kind of like you’re walkin’ through a jungle. You know there’s this five star hotel on the other side, but you’re not sure how you’re gonna get there. You’re just trying to survive, basically.

5:56 But it was exciting at the same time. When we had to post our first video on our Facebook page, that was terrifying, because I’ve never really posted anything on Facebook, and I had this fear that if I posted something, anything, no one would leave comments. And for whatever reason, that terrified me. But when I did post it, I got so many comments, like positive comments, and I thought, whoa, this Facebook thing might actually be useful in some way.

6:28 And then the other fear, the big fear, was when we started doin’ the Live, Facebook Live. I remember when I did the first one, and I saw the clock start tickin’, like you’re live, I can’t describe the terror I felt. But I think someone said along the way that, go to where the fear is. I really utilised that for the course and it did me well.

6:56 What did you struggle with the most? What was the hardest part? The first two examples were really hard. And the hardest part was, you kept givin’ this lesson in regards to just do it, right? Don’t get it perfect. I remember in the second module, I spent like four hours one night trying to get a video right, and each take was gettin’ worse and worse instead of better.

7:24 Worse and worse, and finally it was around midnight and I was so pissed at myself, I just went to bed. I woke up the next morning mad at myself, like really mad, a heightened state of emotion, and I took a video and it worked. Like, I was in the flow for some reason. So the hardest part, like really the hardest part was before we did the Live. I thought the Live would be horrifying, but the Live really liberate us in a lot of ways, ’cause you would just get on there, you do it, done, right?

7:56 Before then, I would spend like five, six hours gettin’ the video, and that was hard, that was hard. Because I couldn’t find a ritual that would put me into that heightened state like on the prior example. I’m still lookin’ for a ritual, maybe you can explain to me how you do it, that puts you into a heightened emotional state, ’cause I find that’s the key. ‘Cause if you do the practising, you rehearse it, you got the structure, as long as I can get in a heightened emotional state, that thing flows. But I can’t do that all the time.

8:26 I try to visualise all the people’s lives that I’m changing and all the good that I’m doing in the world by delivering that message. And I can just think, I can visualise people watching me on this video and, wow, I get it Brian, and then them changing their lives and doing all these great things. So it takes it off me. It’s no longer about me being cool or liked or performance or anything, and it puts it now as I’m doing this for a bigger purpose. And I find that always gets me in the zone and it makes me do my best as well, so there’s a little tip. Awesome! That’s for you.

8:58 Talk to me about the class. What are these people like? And you met 20 or 30 of ’em here this weekend, and what is it like, all these people you don’t know, but now you do know? I feel like when we came here last night, it felt like I’d met my best friends that I’d never met. Everyone, we went out last night as you know, and I had a chance to talk to almost everybody, and everybody had an interesting story. The energy was incredible, everyone was laughing, engaged and had an interesting story to tell.

9:31 It was so much fun. But not only fun, you felt like… there was a saying that came up during the course that you’re the sum of the five people you know the most. I would pick any five people out of that group and want to hang out with them and have them be the five that shaped me. Everyone, there’s so many people doing awesome things, moving forward in a positive manner.

10:01 The course content was excellent. It was simple, straightforward. The classes with you were awesome ’cause of your energy. But just as big is the people that we met. The people that I met, the friendships. And I know I’ll have friendships for a lifetime now. And that’s the awesome part of it, of taking the class. And I never thought that was gonna happen, taking an internet online course.

10:22 I know, I always tell people this and they don’t realise it until it happens. What was your biggest win in this course? The biggest success that you had when it comes to your speaking. The biggest success is, at that time I was telling you it took me four hours to get a video out, I woke up the next day, literally rolled out of bed and did a video, and I was in the flow. And I know what that feels like. It’s just a matter of me being able to get back into that state.

10:50 So after I did that video, and literally, I got out of bed so my hair wasn’t combed, I looked like crap, I always had the intent of going back and redoing that. But when I looked at it, I thought, s***, I can’t do better than this. Not now, anyway, right? So I uploaded it. So, the way I felt doing that speech, I know I can get into that flow again. And I think I’m really close to be able to do that at will. That was a huge win. Powerful. And it felt liberating, it felt…

11:27 In my job as an IT consultant, I don’t really get a lot of opportunities to be creative. And I always felt like that was a big part missing in my life. And that one episode filled that desire. That was cool. What was it like last night gettin’ up in front of the whole class and giving your speech, and then listening to everybody else’s?

11:52 It was very different than I thought it was gonna be. I thought I’d be scared, I thought I’d be nervous. More nervous than scared. But there was so much support in that room that when I got out there, there wasn’t any nervousness at all. I just went up there, and to tell you the truth, I don’t even remember, really, what I said. I remember when I sat down, I thought, s***, I thought I missed big portions of the speech, ’cause I couldn’t really remember what I had said when I was up there.

12:19 But I remember thinking, since I saw your hand in the back, I must’ve went four minutes, so I must have got everything in. But I could not recall anything that I said. Like major sections of the speech, I could not recall. And the interesting thing is, when I got in there, there’s around 30 people in the room, 30 speeches, and I started thinking, wow, this is gonna be long, man. How am I gonna last through 30 speeches? It went like that! Was it two, three hours we were there? Yeah, it was over three, I think three.

12:49 But it went like that, every speech was enjoyable. And the cool thing was your comments at the end. That was worth the trip to London alone, because to me, everyone had improved greatly. But the comments that you were giving that last night were the comments that I needed to hear. I’m sure a lot of people needed to hear to take it to that expert level. You got that on video, right? ‘Cause I gotta go back and take some notes.

13:14 Yeah, we got it on video, we’ll hook you up. But yeah, no, I mean look, the energy was incredible. People were speaking from their passions and their core values. So I agree, every story was great, and I was just tryin’ to give you all feedback ’cause I think that could be greater. That feedback was awesome. And everybody out there has five minutes that’s 10 worthy, and I just wanna make sure everybody gets there. So it’s encouraging to see.

13:39 What are your plans for the next 12 months when it comes to your speaking and, of course, working with a class? My speaking, my goal is to do a TED Talk. First thing I need to understand is what I’m gonna talk about specifically. Like meditation, spirituality has been a huge part of my life, but I gotta figure out how I’m gonna frame that. So that’s the first thing I’m gonna do. And I think I can do that relatively quickly.

14:06 And then I heard some people, when they were giving their ideas for 2018, there was some good ideas out of there that I’m gonna pull, like doin’ a video a week, setting up a YouTube station, doin’ a video a week on that topic, seein’ how I can get speaking engagements on that topic. And then get enough material out there that I can apply for a TED Talk, ’cause I looked into the submission process for TED, and it’s pretty straightforward. I just need to get some body of work out there.

14:35 I’m not sure how much, but I’m gonna try for this year to get something done. Good, do it. ‘Cause after last night, I can do the TED Talk. Exactly, exactly. It’s no problem. I love it. How have you changed as a person? If we walked down on the street and I bumped into the Anthony that didn’t take this course, how is that guy different from you?

14:55 The Anthony that didn’t take that course, like I was telling you, was hittin’ that wall. He was a little maybe depressed. Not feelin’ good about himself. Not feelin’ good about his future. Now, I feel I can do anything. I mean, it sounds a little cliche, but there is so much positive energy in me now, from the class, the people, so much positive energy from the classmates. Even when we were downstairs today, it’s still like you feel like you’re sittin’ on a raging volcano of positivity, so I’m a lot happier than I would have been otherwise.

15:27 You can do anything. Yeah! Last question: to someone who’s thinkin’ about taking Speak to Inspire but just not sure, what would you say? I would say, if you wanna grow as a person, you wanna learn how to confront your fears and move forward in a powerful way, and if you wanna learn how to speak, but the first three are the more important things, take the course. ‘Cause it’s one of the best things I done in a long time. Maybe since I went to India, that story. It’s awesome, I would highly recommend it.

16:00 Anthony, thank you so much for your energy in this course. I made you one of the team leaders for next year because you just had incredible leadership. You were helping everyone in the class get across the goal line. I’m watchin’ that chat and you were like, “Come on, let me help, let me help!” Your energy was amazing, and Team Rose is incredible in the whole class. I’m seeing great things for all of you. So welcome to the family. Thank you. And let’s make the next 12 months epic in everything you do. Let’s do it. All right man. Thank you so much. Thank you.