Original subtitles

Welcome to the story, Brian.

Great to have you, I'm glad you could come out tonight, and in spite of the rain, everyone else made

it out.

I was hoping everyone would make it in spite of the rain.

But look at pretty good turnout, whoever works here.

Yeah.

And yes or no.

Yeah.

So we we usually like to start off with a little bit of background information to understand a little

bit more about where you came from.

Were you born, where were you born, where do you come from?

Antwerp, Belgium.

We're very proud.

So, so big city life.

Well, I left, so not that really.

But I love I love Belgium.

Startup scene is less than the Netherlands, partially.

Why we moved head offices to the Netherlands.

Born and raised in Antwerp.

I was in the city center.

My parents just came with a suitcase and one hundred dollars they were from the Soviet Union that collapsed.

Ninety one they left came to Belgium.

I was born in ninety three then.

And so I'm completely Belgian.

Don't know anything else.

I know the language so that's good.

And and since they're, they kind of.

Well when you're, when you don't have anything, the kind of only option is to be an entrepreneur.

So I guess I only saw that lifestyle.

But it wasn't from your parents.

Yeah, it was.

It wasn't called entrepreneurship.

Of course, my parents told me to always become a lawyer.

So I studied law.

And yeah, I just followed that pattern.

I was very curious, asking a lot of questions.

So I wanted to study law because I wanted to know everything.

My kind of my reasoning to study law was to say that if I would ever have a car accident, that was

the movie playing in my head, if I ever had a car accident, you always had a guy come out and say,

I'm going to sue you.

And then I wanted to say, no, you're not.

It's yeah, that that was my reasoning behind it.

But then my parents like group became big at 17 years old.

It kind of separated.

They had to divorce.

It got a little bit messy.

But to say it really nicely, I didn't fit it into the plans of both parents.

So I kind of went on my own.

Luckily, I had skipped my last year.

I jumped in the sense I finished graduated early.

So I was already in university when that happened and I was suddenly left 17 years old, which is not

very nice in Belgium because you don't have rights.

You kind of learn, you learn.

It's knowing a minor doesn't have rights.

But I actually experienced it.

It means going to police station them, not wanting to accept your written review because you're a minor,

going to an institution, them not wanting to take your statement for support, for instance.

So I was stuck with that position and I.

Yeah.

What do you do?

So from seventeen years old, I can do what they now say in a very creative and nice way.

Hustle's which sounds nicer than what it is and I guess I ended up in entrepreneurship found in companies

mostly was I wanted to fund my law school.

I couldn't believe that because of the misfortune that I had, suddenly my law school dream would have

stopped.

So that's kind of how I ended up.

I ended up doing like seven or eight jobs.

And then my mentor told me, like, I was overstressed, crazily overstressed.

And my mentor told me, you have to find a way where you do those seven or eight jobs and and make more

money, but do less.

That's all he said.

And it was like, what?

And funnily enough, three months later, I started writing video letters, which is the main company

in the video marketing that we do for multinationals, and that funded me through law school.

But there was a lot of ups and downs, a lot of jobs.

Like I said, student jobs don't pay well, so.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's the background story, I guess.

So backtracking just a little bit when you were younger, when you're, say, seven or eight in school,

were you already thinking about a business, about work?

I guess like you said, you saw your parents activity and what they were doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For sure.

Were you already engaged?

And somehow a lot of the typical is, you know, selling candy or some sort of other speakers we had.

Yeah, they were buying stuff from from China and selling it to their friends and things like that.

They always found something.

I wasn't doing it for the simple reason that every time I had an idea, my parents said, no, just.

Doesn't happen is like my dad used to say, a dictatorship, folks and studies, which is actually very

common immigrant households.

So every time I had an idea, hey, I want to go in the streets and go door to door because my friends

are doing it and like in the Scouts, collecting money.

And they got me really excited and I couldn't do it, so I didn't do it.

And then I think around I think 11 years old, I discovered online secondhand shops like secondhand

cards.

And now I don't know what it is here.

But and I realized that people were selling iPhones for, like, wait cheaper.

And I was like, what if I just buy an iPhone so that an iPhone?

And then I'm not breaking my parents rules.

And so I start flipping a lot of stuff.

I got I got two luxury watches after a while, which is good.

And then at 15 years old, at 13 years old, I got my first job working in a bar, which is really cool

because it's 13.

So I sampled all the I probably shouldn't tell this, but I sampled all the drinks.

And then at 15 years old, that's like the time when we all go clubbing and stuff in my school.

Well, it's not 16 years old because that's the minimum drinking age.

But we got in at 15.

So I started spending quite some money and my parents did want to give me money.

So I needed to find a creative way to go out without spending money.

So I started throwing club parties because now I got money from sponsors and everything and I could

go out and I got VIP corners without doing anything.

So that was my first real venture.

If I was small, I wasn't like flipping candy in school, my parents would punish me.

So, um, your current company, Lightning Video Editors, you said you started that shortly after after

you finish high school.

Yeah.

What how how did you come across or what was the idea behind that?

What was that?

Yes.

Well, the idea was I needed to find the thing that makes me more money than the seven or eight jobs.

But realistically, what the thing was, I got into a community of people where I found my mentor.

The mentor told me I needed to find a thing.

And then I was brainstorming with him because at the time I was doing door to door sales, one of the

jobs that I was doing and I had I've been promoted there kind of an unofficial team leader where I was

like coaching people in sales.

And I thought, hey, all these people are like selling stuff online.

Maybe I do like a course.

And they sell that online.

To which he replied, No, everybody's doing that.

Don't do that.

It's horrible.

So I was like, OK, if it's that bad, then I'll stay away from it.

And I did.

So the next thing on the list was I was traveling and taking pictures and videos of that.

I was like, hey, I have a camera, maybe I should do something with video.

And then he says, well, it's a good market.

At the time it was a good market.

Now it's overcrowded, it's a good market, it's competitive if you make sure that you're better than

the rest and we have ways to be better than the rest, you could actually make something there.

So when I was building it, it had to be something with video.

I didn't know what it was going to be, but I knew that the number one problem in that industry is that

everybody loves to film.

Everybody hates to edit.

So that's how we got to video editors, which is actually still in the name.

And we barely do that.

And it needed to sound cool.

So I was like, hey, how about just do lightning or something?

It was like there are a lot of names like zoos, video editors or Greek mythology stuff.

But we ended up with lightning video editors and and we started doing video conferences, editing a

lot because I knew people in that industry.

And it ended up to what we do now, which is video marketing for multinationals, because we take all

those videos and create a funnel behind it, make sure that it converts.

And so it's all the the more detailed stuff, the technical stuff that's so it's actually sort of pivoted

from the original concept to something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And but quite a name.

It's still reflected where we were originally.

I was walking around with other camera guys because I was hiring camera guys.

I was enjoying myself and we were walking around filming conferences to now sometimes we still do it.

We filmed South by Southwest Update in Amsterdam.

So that was a cool thing.

But we usually do more of the technical stuff because the less so less competition.

But if you gather a lot of data from a lot of videos, you have a step up that others don't have.

Unless you're a big media agency, there is no competition and even there there's not really a competition

because you have different data than I have and I'm more focused on this target market.

And I know these clients a little bit better than you.

And so I have something that they want and becomes easier.

And so I kind of started listening to my clients and I realized that they didn't really want the video

part.

They wanted what the video brought them, which is more sales.

And how do I get the more sales?

Not by making a video, but by creating the funnel behind it.

That actually leads to a video that actually leads to converting that traffic and that's listening.

I just listened.

OK, so, I mean, I was going to ask a question, sort of I guess it's related to the first part of

your of the company, because a lot of founders here, a lot of startups, obviously, they're looking

to sell.

They're starting a new company and they're looking for for their customers.

So how did it work for you?

How did you find your first customers?

How did you reach out in the first place?

Find out that it was a pain, points that you could monetize, capitalize on top of, and then how did

you start to reach out to to two customers?

And in the early days, it's more of a different mindset.

It was more of a mindset of instead of finding something new that I wasn't going to do with a law background,

I was not an engineer.

Suddenly something or code something.

It was more like finding a viable market that already has money in it.

And then just beating the competition sounds really harsh, but like being better than the competition,

especially in this industry.

A lot of and this is actually a big thing that if somebody is listening and as a filmmaker, a lot of

people in this industry, in the branding video, the PR there are very creative.

They're the kind of types that you find in short film festivals, which that's where I was looking for

editors.

And and that nails them because I'm very commercial, because I want my clients are paying me money,

so I want them to be happy with me.

So I would always sacrifice the creative part as long as my client was happy up to a point, because

there's some things that I know conferred better.

So we tell them, don't do that.

And if you do, it's on your own risk.

But I would always listen to my client.

I would do just that.

It's making the creative industry, I guess, nicer for the clients, which is where it should be.

Instead of putting my foot down and saying, no, this is how it should be the video.

And so I chose a market that had money in it and I just started being better than the rest to the point

where now I was working with the best again, I could hire the best.

OK, and what advice would you have for your client?

Well, for successful sales, as a startup, as a startup, often you're not well known.

Even if your product is better, maybe you're not very well known.

So but a lot of people don't do sales.

So that's exactly the question is what's the point?

What's the key?

I don't know.

I have a feeling that most people get into startup life because it's nicer on that side and they don't

do sales.

They create the product, they create the brand.

And I'm part of that as well.

Sometimes sometimes you catch me doing the branding where I totally shouldn't.

But like, initially when I got into my company, I needed food on the table.

So everything I was doing was with in mind, like branding.

It had to be premium so I could attract premium clients so that I could have food on the table because

no sales, no no food.

And and so when you're a startup, I have a feeling from the friends that I see, from the mentors that

I see actually we started investing a couple of months ago from the investments that I see.

The people are hungry because they need the sale and they realize that that's their priority.

Like, they'll get it.

They'll start looking into their network.

You everybody has ten to one hundred people in their network.

And if you don't like when I started, I didn't have that.

I started getting a lot of jobs.

And in all those jobs, these are meeting people and they also have problems.

And so you can have the job and externally also a system with a video or with marketing.

And where do you get that knowledge on the Internet?

You go in Udemy, you go on YouTube and like basic Facebook ads, knowledge, every company nowadays

wants a Facebook ad expert, but they don't want to invest the time to go on YouTube.

Or you do need to actually learn how to create a Facebook ad campaign, whereas you can just go on YouTube.

You don't even have to go on Udemy go on YouTube.

You see how to create a Facebook ad campaign.

You go get a job in like two or three companies as like part time, and you're like and as you're talking

with your boss, you start noticing probably that he has problems attracting clients.

And then you'll say, hey, I can do Instagram ads for you, I can do Facebook ads for you, and there's

your first client.

If you don't have any connections, if you have connections already makes it easier because then you

just ring up your blacklists book.

And that's the stories of founders that they always say, which is like they have an idea.

They call up some people and then the first sale comes in to then go through your black book and then

just go every no cold calling.

And this is also thing the startups I know don't realize the conversion rates are two to four percent.

That's industry standard on a landing page.

If you can get 10 to 20 percent, you have a really good landing page.

So knowing that those are the percentages for every hundred people you contact, two or four will become

clients, then you know what you need to do?

You need to contact the thousand people and every hundred you have to optimize because if you're not

converting to or four at one hundred mark, that means you're doing something wrong.

You get the two hundred mark, you have an optimized still like you have to optimize when you get to

a thousand.

Now you can say cool, I got this many clients, did I get to my four percent conversion rate then four

percent.

That's awesome.

And every time I hear people talk they say, hey, I can get a job, so start a startup.

And then my question is, but when you look for a job, you may be like send out 20 like CVS, right.

When you're a startup, you have to do a hundred a day at least.

And like my mentors are doing a couple of thousand today and like they're they're hitched to like big

servers like Amazon and stuff like that, because the quantity of energy is so big that you just you

can't send it through a normal Gmail.

And that which is in this world, obviously, most know that this is lead generation.

This is how the game is played.

And it's it's the quantity and quality because as you grow and you get your thousand, you'll be optimizing

because you want that conversion rate to go up.

Right.

You want to go from two percent to four percent to eight percent, 12 percent.

And the way you do that is by hiring a copywriter that does your copywriting better than you do, creating

buying apps that make reminders easy for you.

So that which is what I used to do when I started, I had to I had in my agenda had reminder days so

would send out an email on a Monday and then probably on a Thursday.

By the time I got through all the emails, I would start again this whole cycle of now sending reminder

emails and then like the next week again and again, and it takes like four or five or six times before

you even get a response.

And then they if you do it well, people will be happy.

And if they're not interested, they'll just say no.

If you do it bad, they'll start insulting you, which is something to learn.

You can optimize as well.

So along along those lines, how do you, uh, not appear pushy yet?

Still push hard enough to close it.

But here's a question.

If I take away all your money and there's no food on the table, will you be worried about pushy?

Probably not.

No.

You'll be optimizing on the go and make sure that people don't insult you and all my mentors that I've

heard ever.

They were always very arrogant in the beginning.

I wasn't I had to learn that arrogance from them, but like to measure like you try not to become arrogant,

but you try to get the right balance, right.

It's all about balance.

But they all started really arrogant.

Like I have stories from my mentors.

Were they they would insult the company in public and the company would call them and they say, what

did you do, like so much traffic or bad name?

And then the guy would just answer, OK, cool, so when are you hiring me?

And then I feel I'm a bit nicer when I do it.

So pushy.

If you're going with that mindset, then my answer to that is you're going it's people like me that

don't care.

So how are you going to beat me if you're in the same industry when I'm I just don't care.

I just go for it and I apologize if I insulted them in any manner and try to deal with the best intentions

and and try to give them value.

Because if you're not giving them value and they're insulting you, then you're wasting their time.

You should optimize that, make make better copywriting, give better value.

Like don't give them don't give them an ebook.

Everybody has an ebook.

Nobody cares about that book.

Give them a video like a nice video.

That's like we looked at your company.

That's what we saw wrong with it.

We have the data to make this better.

Hire us.

Who's going to insult you for that?

Right.

So how many employees you have now and.

And a lightning video editors, we have a teen to have two companies and somehow they're still mixed.

We're now eight people, of which six are active because two are taking a break.

And in enlightening video editor specifically, which is kind of a good thing, that's why I chose this

industry as well.

The industry got reformed a couple of years ago to the point where everybody was freelance or all my

camera guys or my editors was in a very luxurious position because I could have a huge team and not

have the big salaries unless it was like a lot of projects to do.

But yes, we don't have fixed we have like six to eight people because it would take a break.

But six people that are just active, they're helping me.

They're assisting me.

But when we have big projects, I have a database between 50 to 80 people, depending on the project,

I would call them up and be like, these are guys that I've worked with for like two or three years

now.

So I know them.

I know their gear and how the footage looks like.

I know how they edit, they know how I edit.

So in that sense, I'm in a well together and but from the six or eight people there, that's more of

your core team that you work with.

Your team is.

And how do you when you obviously you had to go from just yourself to the first person, second, third,

fourth, how do you keep your your I guess the culture, the mindset, the.

Yeah, so I tried, I really did try that.

So that's always something I want.

And it's always a challenge when when you have an idea you're passionate, you have maybe your co-founder

like, OK, now we need to hire our first person.

Now what is the second company is why not three.

It's a work life balance training program.

And no matter how much changes I do this company, the Work Life Balance Company, has a bigger vision

than lightning video editors.

It's a video marketing.

I tried my best to to only work with companies that have an experience where sharing that's our headline.

And we try to do the best we work with Ted worked with those kind of companies, but still it's corporates.

And so even though I try my best, there are some limitations.

Even though I tried to lift them by angling it towards something good, you can't fake something good.

It has to be something good to the companies I work with, have to be good.

And if I don't, my team starts giving me a lot of work.

We have discussions and it's not fixable because you're not authentic and you're suffering.

And the other company, I learned what I was doing wrong here, which is the vision, the creation.

And once that vision is really well done, you start attracting people.

But attracting is not enough because now you have to build a hiring funnel to get the right people in.

And once they're in, they're usually really high quality people because they're attracted to vision

where you improve people's lives.

And then then the real problem starts, because a lot of people think getting them is no.

So now you get really high quality people and they get bored after three to five months.

So now culture starts where initially they were super motivated.

The culture was no problem.

Now it starts suffering.

And I'm a very analytical person in the sense that I try to look and optimize systems and build systems.

And then I get to the point where how do you optimize culture if you're that kind of person?

And so I was watching a video from Gary Vaynerchuk had just released a video of his chief heart officer.

And I was like, wait, that's the missing link.

I need a chief heart officer, a person that is the complete opposite of me because I tried my best

and I got to a point where people were just bored.

They were going through the motions like they were bored.

They saw the impact.

People's lives were changing.

But it's just like I couldn't do anything.

I wasn't capable enough to do anything.

So I got somebody, a chief heart officer, to do it.

And she just like she messages now every day.

Like what made you smile today?

I've never really thought I would do it, but it's like.

Yeah, so so it's it's it's not something that you can do with with an Excel sheet.

I tried it will work for the first three months and then it won't end.

So it's kind of the game of knowing your weaknesses and knowing your strengths.

And then I like improving my weaknesses.

But the way I like to do that is by having people that are way better than me lift me up instead of,

like, fighting to get to to make my weaknesses strengths.

I'd rather just hire somebody who makes that better or ask somebody, a friend for free to tell me,

like, what do I do, a friend.

That is the complete opposite of me, like in this case, a girl that understands empathy a bit better

than me, even though I try it.

Yeah.

So you're second company.

Why not three?

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

What's where does the name come from.

What's the name.

So why, why not three.

We're not for exactly.

Initially I thought the number seven even but well the name is has any name just really simple is in

the kitchen of a friend and his mom was like making tea.

They're British.

And we were just chatting and I was like, hey, I just came back.

It was a German conference that I delivered the first workshop for one or three.

I was speaking there for other reasons.

And this was this one external workshop that I came and there was nobody.

It was an allocated, so we just got it.

The only message the agenda manager told us was talk about work life balance.

And I was like, what kind of work?

Life balance?

What do you want?

And if you didn't, he said, just do your thing.

And I was like, what thing?

But eventually we I just looked at the workshop and thought, hey, let's just talk about the last three

main principles.

And my mentors have taught me and how I manage the last seven years going through law school funding,

the companies working with the seven, eight jobs and maintaining all of that and having relationships.

And it was three simple principles that I thought, hey, cool, I just talk about that came back from

that workshop and the people there were I realize how big the problems were and that in moments people

were burning out.

People were almost crying in the workshop.

And I stood there and I literally thought, whoa, I thought I was just going to talk about three simple

principles that everybody knows.

And we would do a refresh thing.

And apparently nobody knew that.

And so I came back and I was talking with this friend's mom and say all these people were so like like

this is the I had workshops to inspire people, but like, this was a whole other level.

And I was very lucky to discover that so young to discover something where you can actually create an

impact.

That's crazy.

And she was like, so I was I said, I want to write a pamphlet around it.

And I started writing the pamphlet and the pamphlets.

Pamphlets started becoming like an beginning.

I thought it was ten pages, like an output of the workshop.

Ten pages became 20 pages, then 30, 40, 50, soon became a hundred.

And I started becoming a book to to which extent I was like, how are we going to call this?

And then she said to me initially.

You're doing this thing, but you already have a business running.

Why don't you just treat it the same way?

That's what she said, treated the same way.

And it was like that's when the light bulb came on.

And I was like, wait a second.

This work life balancing, if I created as a business, it would grow faster and spread the message

faster.

So now we need to name it.

And I was like, cool.

Yeah, OK, so what do I call the book?

And then I heard somewhere I read I think I read the blog post from Tim Ferriss on how he chose the

title The Four Hour Workweek and the way he chose it is pretty much at the time it was Google ads,

I think it was doing.

And he had a couple of headlines with the title of the book, pretty much, and you would split and

he got the four hour work week.

So I went into the nearest bookstore, looked at self-help kind of industry, which is where my industry

would be ending up as any startup sort of startup.

You need to do computer analysis to know what's happening in that industry.

So I went into the self-help section, saw the book start with why the compound effect, the four hour

work week and the one commonality that they all had was it was white and red, white and red.

So I knew my colors now and most of them had a question or they had a number that I started seeing,

like the books that popped up when you when you see them, those were the books with a number or with

a question in them.

And they were white and red.

So I knew it had to be a question, had to have a number and it had to be white or red.

So his brain and I said that to her and she's like, OK, so what kind of questions like, why don't

we, like, do something?

Like, why?

Like, why something?

And then lucky number seven.

So I was thinking maybe why seven.

She's like, why not three.

And I was like, yeah, that's good.

So that's how we got the title.

And then the funny thing is the moment she said that, I was like, Yeah, that sounds good and catchy.

I took my the the pamphlet, the output that we had.

And funnily enough, if you look at how I built the workshop because because I'm a certified trainer.

So I built my workshops the way I was taught and it was a 90 minute workshop.

Every principal, three principals over 30 minutes each.

And the book had three parts and every part had three things.

And one of the things, for instance, I'll share, which is what I talked about today, is how I define

life.

And the way I define life is based on a really on the ground pamphlet that almost nobody can find that

I found when I was going through learning how to be more empathetic, more social with people.

It's by a guy called Kenson Klepper on how to cold read people, how to look at a person and in 80 percent

of the cases say something that sounds relevant to this person so that you create some comfort with

this person so that you can start having real conversations.

And he said that any and every problem that you ever have, you can divide into health, wealth and

relationships.

And each has an internal and external component.

So any problem falls under those three categories.

And so to define life, I have three categories.

Then the second principle also had three things in that, and the last thing also had three things,

and it just fits.

And then the Beta Minoff effect starts kicking in, which is the effect that, for instance, if you

see a red Ferrari, you buy a red Ferrari, you see red Ferrari is everywhere.

So I start seeing the number three everyone and just click the name clicked.

And I like I like that I didn't go with why three?

But then why not collect this one.

No, it's it's a catchy name.

So can you do you have the elevator pitch and why not three.

What are the three to the three you've been talking about.

Three.

That's three.

That's three.

This is I was like what is three.

Yeah.

So the, the elevator pitch version.

The No what we do is one of the three, the three topics is work life balance.

No we do work life balance for overachievers.

So pretty much we get the most extreme cases of people that have burned out, doctors have given up

on them or like non extreme cases that just don't know because there's a lot of crap out there.

So they just don't know.

And what I do in there, it was initially a platform where I say this, how I learned it.

And this guy, my mentor in this area, has taught me that or this guy said that was kind of the idea

of why not three.

And the three is the three topics that you refer to.

So in the workshop in the master class, where they talk then about is in the first principles, how

you define life.

Why?

Because when I first discovered it from Kenson and he was using it in a completely different industry

and I started using it in personal development because I just figured out the relationships part I.

Comfortable, the foundations were late for that, and I was wondering, I learned a skill, what can

I do next?

And I was looking at the time I had a door and like with chalk, I would write on it and in the top

left corner because the door was filled, I just had H.W. Ah, because I couldn't write the whole word

and I was like, what's next?

And I'm looking at my door.

I'm like, wait a second.

I just figured out relationships.

Maybe I can do like health or wealth.

And at the time I chose health.

So I got into the whole biohacking community and like all my friends.

So the primary principles is this health, wealth and health, wealth and relationships.

So and the reason why it's important because once you know how to define life, you know where to put

your focus to improve the basics and the foundation of that.

The next part is yours.

I call this the meta level, the level where you rise above and you reflect on how it looks.

So now you know where the problem is.

Now you have to define how many goals you can handle and start experimenting with that.

And you can research.

It is called the Warren Buffett method.

How Warren Buffett divides his day, like a lot of people stuck their name on it when I researched it

was the Warren Buffett method.

And pretty much what the guy said is like three goals.

That's the maximum you can handle.

And I was like, well, Warren Buffett is all I can do better.

So I started experimenting with more.

And after, like six months, I concluded that three was the maximum and with three goals, for instance,

focusing on relationships, my girlfriend, for instance, or focusing on improving my business or focusing

at the time law school.

If I do those three, I will improve in all areas the moment I start taking four or five.

So I put Jim in there or something like that.

Suddenly I start maintaining stuff like it grows, but not as much.

And it's more like a it's harder.

So I did five and it kind of works.

I found the fact that I could combine stuff, which is my shortcut to it.

But at the end of the day, to become truly successful, what I found was like three.

It was the three things focusing on three things.

I was like and so is how work life is work life balance possible?

Yeah.

So the other myth around it is that I have a lot of discussions about mid-level managers and actually

not the top because the top realizes this is.

You can have it, but just like starting a startup when you can find a job.

It's going to be harder if you decide to have a work life balance, it's going to happen.

Just like if you decide to be successful thinking rich, you'll get there somehow.

You don't know how to look like, but you're not going to be ending up under a bridge or something like

that.

So the same thing with work life balance, you have to decide first and then the Beta Minoff effect

kicks and you start seeing stuff.

And now that you start seeing stuff, you need the definition.

What am I focusing on first?

Because there's so much help, both the relationships.

So, for instance, I went into health.

Right.

And what you start realizing then is that you have to balance that and to balance that.

That's the last principle that I teach, is you have to go into the details of it.

How do you plan your day?

How does your day look like?

How is your week look like in detail to the point where that's where the Excel sheet comes in?

A friend of mine invented this Excel sheet that he coded to have a sheet, which for my extreme clients

I use.

I use that because you need to know in detail what is happening there, like in detail what their food

is like, what their day is like, who they're talking to, everything.

Because if you're at the top of your stress levels and you're almost ending up at the hospital, like

at the time, that was my issues.

The reason I got so extreme with it, I, I was diagnosed with chronic hyperventilation because of stress.

The reason I'm breathing normally today is because I found a way to hit the optimal productivity point,

but not go over it.

And the reason I know I'm not over it is because the moment I go over it and my friends around me can

attest to that, I started breathing really bad.

I started taking short breaths.

I can talk, I can talk.

I just don't notice.

So I know right now that I'm balanced on the health side.

It's really extreme imbalance on the health side because I'm not breathing bad.

And the moment I feel that it's going there, so I catch my symptoms and know my body, I try to make

sure that the systems that have built so far are in check or if I'm lacking.

And one of those systems is a thing that I invented called The Silent Day.

Every Sunday I take a break.

And if you have the discipline to build those systems and follow them no matter what, no matter what

people say, because in the startup scene, if you tell them, you take a break, they'll shoot you.

So but I had to.

So I took this silent day.

And what I found is that I was more productive after as long as they took that time.

And every Sunday, it was like no matter what biohacking gear I got or what supplements I got at the

end, that was the thing that fixed me.

And usually and there's a really good book on it that I discovered later by Dr. John Gray, who describes

the oldest tradition that we ever have written down in the Bible.

It's the seventh day you take a break and then suddenly now in the 21st century, with online kicking

in the seven day vanished.

It's really recent.

And we started getting papers out from really renominated doctors about a disease called acquired attention

deficit disorder, which is a real thing.

And it's fixable if you read the book from Dr. John.

Great, because if you just do a Silent Day seven, like his silent days based on the Bible, mine is

way more strict to the point where I detox.

I don't eat, I do intermittent fasting.

I don't have any electronics.

I just pretty much sleep in my bed.

I made a video about it and everything, but because people didn't believe me that I actually don't

do anything.

So I made a video about it because they didn't believe me.

And that's what usually fixes that.

So is it possible?

Yes, but it's a lot of discipline because it's like a detox.

Imagine going without your phone for a day if you're a top level executive that has like ten thousand

fires to put out.

But it's possible.

And the top level executives that make it and are happy, they do it and they do meditation, they do

all that fun stuff.

But it's not easy.

It's definitely not easy.

So what advice would you give a young you if you could go back and say a little over?

No, the thing is, I don't have any regrets, I'm happy with the way it went and I'm happy with every

step that I took because every hardship that I had gave me material for why not three where I can inspire

people or to really inspire.

I have trackers and systems based on those bad experiences that I give to my clients now to fix them.

So if I didn't have any of those bad experiences, I wouldn't know how to get out of them.

And bad experiences could include things like when I was lonely and I didn't have family and have friends

and I had to build everything from zero because I wanted to be in law school and and I wasn't going

to go work somewhere because I believe that I could have done more if I had an education.

And how I got out of those slums, out of those negative thoughts, what did I do?

And I dragged myself at the time, was it?

For instance, I discovered that the main thing to get me out of that almost depression, what it was,

is talking, talking, being social with people, but not social for the sake of knowing somebody,

but actually getting to know someone getting.

Yeah.

So one of those things when you're at the top.

Right.

And have a video testimonial on my website from one of my clients where he says it perfectly, when

you're at that level like CEO or your founder or startup, when you're even small, but you're alone,

it gets depressing, like really bad, and especially if you're in charge of everything when when it

goes bad, it's your fault and you are there in your mind.

And everybody has those voices where it's like it's your fault, it's your fault.

Why did you do this decision?

Not that decision, especially when it goes bad and it will go bad.

So the negative voices come in.

How do you get out of that slump?

And the simplest things are the ones that get you out of it.

And so I tracked it and there are a ton of it.

Like there are a ton of buycks that you can do.

You can take supplements like psychiatrist give you antidepressants.

Right.

Which is crap.

You shouldn't do that.

But the most effective was the simplest thing.

It's talking to somebody that listens to you.

So really simple.

What do I do?

And I have a top level executive client.

I just listen, it's like one of those things I listen, they know that they're heard and and it does

so much.

It's crazy.

There's so much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I just and if anyone has a question at any point in time, just raise your hand.

We have a microphone here.

We'll pass that around.

Happy to take your questions as well.

Um, yeah, so I guess back a little bit to the business side of things, um, see where we have the

microphone?

Here we go.

Hi, my name is Victoria.

And you mentioned that you had mentors for your business.

I was curious to see how those mentors came into your life, how you started asking them for that commitment

and any advice you could give us for people we know that we think would be good mentors and how can

we encourage them to give us their time if they're busy?

I think the most important question, which I love, I love that because it's important to know.

So thank you for asking because I think it can bring value.

I literally got an email this morning from one of the members that follows my 30 day challenge, and

he asked that and I answered it for the 30 day challenge I explained in there.

But no, my actual answer to that is there are two ways because I tracked it right.

So there are two ways in my mind, my subjective mind, how I got it.

There is the nonpaid way and there's a paid way.

I prefer to paid way because of the fact that dynamics change.

And if they're a good mentor, they will go above and beyond to to make you successful.

So I like the way the Pittaway could be in different ways.

It could be paying to go.

GISTARO Great, right?

Being around these people, finding somebody more successful than you, just chatting with them, getting

around their circles, you'd be surprised how many of my friends, my mentors, my clients pay sometimes

up to twenty, thirty thousand euros just to go on some retreats to be around some millionaires just

just to be around them.

It's not guaranteed that they're that those people are even clients.

It's just being around them.

And how many times I like I have a story in my book how when I was a student I had maybe I think I had

almost nothing on my bank account, but I was working based on commission door to door.

I just got that job and I, I put a deposit down to to find my mentor to go to a workshop that my mentor

had in New York.

And I was a student, barely had any money, no support, had some job for a charity, whereas doing

door to door put the money down in that light because there was so much stress there.

Within two months I broke the national record, which gave me the money to fund the rest of the trip

to New York and be around this person.

And so now I'm around in the circles.

He's my Facebook friend and I just chat sometimes.

I'm like sending him messages.

Hey, this super cool thing happened with me.

Thank you.

But I just I keep him and that's so that's the paid way how I got in there.

And when people tell me I don't have enough money to do that, like I was broke, I didn't have anything

and I did that.

And I have people telling me stories how they save up like one point five K to go to some Australia

trip or something.

Like it's like you can also go to a mentor.

So that's the way I prefer that way, because it creates a better dynamic.

I feel sometimes it's a subjective way.

Right.

So being around events, being around specific people the cheap way is when I was completely broke.

How I did it is YouTube, Google blogs, books, audio books.

There's a ton on YouTube, audio books you can find and you digest all of their content.

And that's actually a good way to start because by so I digested all of the content that my mentor had

before I even went to New York so that by the time I went to New York, the questions that I had were

very specific and targeted to the point where he taught me he was at the time, no one in the world

for social dynamics.

He taught me how to predict behaviour, which is something I wouldn't even have guessed was possible

because he never talked about it.

Because if because of the fact where I got things, his free content, I even I, I was ready to receive

that advanced level content from him at the time if I didn't follow the cheap way, the freeway, which

is absorbing everything from you to from from books, audio books, everything then and this wouldn't

have worked as well, but this would get me around him, which is important, so that I could then read

the books and then still ask the question.

But the cheap ways, literally, everything's online and like very simple in why not three.

I made the rule that if it's super, unless it's super expensive, it's free.

So people ask me, how can I get around you as a mentor, blah, blah.

Everything is there.

And then really big guys like there is like I've heard about Dan Penya, which is really cool guy.

Right.

But all of this content, he literally says it is online for free in written form and in videos he shares

like a little bit.

So like all of them give away content for free and they have to it's a marketing tactic because if your

content isn't good and it doesn't give you results, then why would they buy a course from you so you

can learn so much by taking the free content, applying it free content, applying it to the point like

and this is the analogy to giving the video in the third day challenge is once you hit that point,

like in the gym, you're exercising and you hit that point where it's like too much like you're trying

everything, but you're not gaining muscle mass and would start like business.

You're trying everything, but you're stuck at the five K a month level.

At that point, you've hit a limit of yourself.

And what you do then is what the second option is.

You get around people that have gone through that hurdle.

And there's several ways, like I said, to get around this.

People you pay for events or you pay for specific mentors.

And it's like it's so real that it's so weird to me that startups don't even understand that.

Because if if you have a problem in the film industry, none of the billionaires are going to help me

because they don't know film industry.

But some guy next to me down the street that also does film in the same office, I pay him like 500

euros or a thousand euros for an hour.

And like I know the guy now.

And every time I have a problem, I ask him or I pay him a thousand dollars for an hour and they say,

this is my problem.

Like, what do I do?

And you get through the hurdle.

And as you do that, you build networks of people that know people that are interesting, that can help

you, that are relevant to you.

And then and then it's about maintaining said now you maintain the relationship.

So you don't just it's kind of like dating a girl.

You don't just, like, sleep with a girl and then leave.

I mean, you can do that, but it's not beneficial, right.

Unless you're that person.

But in a business relationship, it's not you.

You you treat this person with respect by by staying in touch with this person and giving them kind

of they taught you something.

You send them a message back, hey, I applied it and got like ten K now, not five K and and that's

how you in their mind.

And then when something big pops up, you're not paying one K anymore.

They'll help you for free.

So I just a little quick thing.

So do you have a list of these mentors as official mentors of your company, or are they just sort of

people you can reach out to?

Like as in official men?

There are no official mentors like me on a YouTube channel saying, this guy, help me with this, this

guy.

So I have like specific people that I know.

One hundred percent like these guys.

Just their content is good.

I've applied it.

It worked for me.

So why would I refer to somebody else for business?

I do that for health.

It's a bit harder because health is very like it's hard and it's hard because it's individual.

So there are guys like Tim Ferriss, Dave Astbury and Mark Cesan.

They're the main guys.

The issue with health that we that we recognize is and we got certified by a bio laboratory called Alleycat.

So we got the option now to do blood tests on our clients to see how their immune system reacts to certain

types of foods.

So it becomes harder for me to refer to Dave as pure Marxism or whatever.

And they're amazing people and they have amazing content.

But it doesn't work for everybody and doesn't work because it has to be in certain doses, certain fats

have to be in certain doses for other people.

And and for instance, some people are better on dairy.

Europeans are way better on dairy than than on the other side of the ocean.

So in that point, it became hard to refer to other people just because we became kind of more individualistic

and more.

Thanks to al Qaeda, we became more centered on that, so I do refer and I do still say these guys are

really good because they teach you the mentality and how you should treat how you can learn it from

me.

But if you don't believe me, you can still go to these people and see that they do the exact same thing

as I do and in some extent even way more than I do, because they're also older.

They have more years, more experience, but sometimes it becomes harder.

But I still mention.

I am so I find it very interesting, everything you do, and I applaud you and I think, as you say,

balance is the key.

So I want to ask you out of curiosity, because we just talked.

So with 17, I thought I knew it all and I was like, I know it all.

Now I'm 32 and I know I even less.

So do you think with twenty three you have enough experience to say that you know what it takes to balance

life, work and health?

And also the second question is, how do you make CEOs, for example, or 60 or 65, trust a 23 year

old telling them how to balance their life?

Well, the simple answer is the results.

Yeah.

Again, some guys that are huge don't have the certifications that we have.

So they are very individualistic.

But realistically, do I know?

Of course not.

And that's why I build a platform where I referred to my mentors.

But the book you wrote.

Right, not your mentors like who wrote the book?

Who wrote the book?

You indicate in the book.

I also refer to people just like I studied law, just like in a law paper.

You refer to sources that are way smarter than you have done their research and have applied it in the

works.

Just in this book, I do the same thing, the mentality of law.

And so in the book I refer to people that are way smarter than me, have done way more time or research

than I ever in my lifetime could do.

So I don't know anything.

And that's why I would rather build the platform where I refer to the people that have taught me and

I say have taught me not know everything because I've applied their knowledge and it seems to work for

me.

So I think it can work for them too.

And that's why I referred to them.

And what I share in my platform is how I did it so that you can go to those sources, see what they

preach, and then see how I applied it, because there's a big chance that you apply differently.

But it's nice to know how somebody did it because it's very vague most of the time.

How do I get of guys that are way older than me to trust me?

Well, first of all, on that level, there aren't many people that understand the psychology of that

high performance.

I got lucky because of my experience.

Lucky with chronic hyperventilation.

It's not that lucky, but it's I went through a really bad experience and most of the time it's worse

than any of the CEOs that I get, no matter how chronic their diseases are.

Unfortunately, somehow I got it worse.

Luckily, in some ways it's not as bad because it's not like I got a guy that's really overweight.

So fortunately I didn't have that.

So in some ways it's worse.

In some ways it's better.

But what it does give you, just like it's kind of like I say, psychology a little bit, it's kind

of like a war survivor or somebody that got shot.

It doesn't it doesn't matter if you got shot by Glock or by an M 16, you got shot.

It's the same thing.

The experiences are different, but you understand each other.

And once you're on that wavelength, where you understand each other is a matter the age matters experience.

And if you found a solution and the reason I help them is not because I want to help them and I see

the money in it, I know it distracts me because one of the things that you learn in startups is you

focus on one thing and you do that to the rest of your life.

Right.

And this kind of distracts me from that.

But as one of my mentor once said, when I was going for my certification for a trainer is he said,

when your audience displays a need, you have to do it because you're there in a leadership capacity.

And a leadership to leadership capacity to me means that you have to sacrifice your needs for their

needs in any shape or form because that's how you help them.

So everywhere I look at all these top performers, you know, what they were saying is do more, work

more, do 18 hours, do 20 hours.

And, you know, when you really look deeper into them and like, I would challenge any huge CEO to

that, when you really look deeper into what they actually do, it's not 18, 20 hour days.

They do them some, like most of the times even they do 18 to 20 hours.

You know what they also do?

They take two week breaks.

They they sometimes between those 18, 20 hours, they take two hours where they go to their families.

Then when he mentions that parts nobody mentions that they sometimes even meditate.

He mentions that outside of all of that, they go running with their friends in the mornings or to the

gym.

It kind of gets mentioned but doesn't get emphasized.

So when I built the platform, it wasn't going to be called productivity was going to be called work

life balance, because what we actually do is optimal productivity in each area.

But if I would call it a.

The more productivity it would have the wrong connotation to what actually is getting done and nobody

was talking about work life balance, and it had to be spread because the actual successful happy people,

they all balance.

But that message doesn't get spread.

And in some way, I had the luxury position to work with multinationals.

So I get a first view, enlightening video that there's how those guys actually do it.

But in startups, there isn't that much chance that you're going to see that.

So like I said, what I preach is what I discovered.

There are some things that I invented and some things that I applied for my mentors.

I referred to everybody because I have to from a lot of background, my professors wouldn't be happy,

but I refer to everybody.

I show how I apply it and it's not my knowledge.

So it doesn't matter what my ages is.

Somebody's knowledge has dedicated his life to it and go out there and read that book or see how I applied.

And yeah, at the end of the day, there is a need and the need is those people are burning out.

They're ending up at the hospitals.

Nobody's speaking up about it.

Nobody at that level is speaking up about it.

What do you mean at that level, for example, like where they're found in companies that are successful,

the people that are found in companies are successful.

I know because they're my friends.

They don't want to talk about it.

They want to be anonymous.

They don't have an online presence.

Sometimes they do have an online presence.

But at the end of the day, they just want to do business.

There are people like me, analytical Excel sheets.

They want to optimize systems.

But when you have best friends ending up in the hospital and yourself almost getting chronic hyperventilation

is almost ending up in hospitals at one point had prolonged paralysis of my lips just because of stress.

And when all of that is happening and you fix yourself and then your friends, the doctors are giving

up on them, nobody wants to take care of them and you take care of them, you start realizing.

And then when that workshop popped up and these people are almost crying in my workshop, it's like

nobody is doing this crazy.

Well, what do you mean nobody's doing it?

Because there's so many, like Anthony Robbins, etc..

But again, Anthony Robbins, what does he actually say?

He's a success coach.

Productivity is his main thing.

But what he actually does, if you zoom in, is work life balance.

So why didn't he call it work life balance?

But, you know, just like that experiment, when you're in in small grade, you you talking to somebody

a year, and by the time it reaches the other room, somebody gets watered down.

You look at Anthony Robbins and if you don't see is day to day, you think productive, you have to

work more.

Anthony Robbins is running around for twenty hours on a five day conference.

I have to do more.

You don't actually see what Anthony Robbins does, how much time he spends with his kids, with his

family.

He actually takes breaks.

He talks about meditation and how we optimize that.

But you know what I realized from me and from from normal people like me, you do that for six months

and then you're like, oh, screw it, I'll just eat chocolate.

This is like that's not maintainable.

That's not a system that will keep you healthy if if in some way, in the best way.

I hope.

Anthony Robbins at one point rebranded himself and says work life balance, that's what you should do.

And he says all the time he emphasizes, like I emphasize, relationships and health and business all

the time instead of you emphasize business a bit more because that's what he gets.

And that attracts the money, of course.

But if he does that, there will be a spread and it's happening.

It's happening.

Arianna Huffington started doing that, which is good.

But again, this is like what one person, whereas you have other people, they get more traction that

are saying 20 hour days.

Hey, let's let's all do that.

But those 20 hour days, they have good families that they didn't go through what I went through, which

is actually really common among founders, loneliness, not having a family to back them up now, having

friends, sickness.

And if you say 20 hour days, then you're going to end up in the hospital.

Not within two years, two years.

You can maintain five years at five at the five year mark.

I tracked it at five year mark.

That's when the symptoms start showing up and you can go back anymore.

It's done.

It's a trauma.

So that's the reason I did it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So I think we could probably go on a lot, lot longer, but we need to ramp up.

You're still around for a bit afterwards.

So if you have any questions for Lova, he's still around.

So we have another forty five minutes for networking and I'm sure he'd be happy to connect with you

personally as well.

But before we wrap up, we like to ask a few questions.

We asked to to to all of the.

The guest that we have here, we call it rapid fire question, so there's just simple fun questions

and the first thing that comes to mind is what we want to hear.

OK, so what is an item that you own that you would never sell?

That I would never sell my HARTMUT device, which is an infrared tracker that monitors your heart rate

variability.

I don't use it.

I would never sell it.

And what is your most unusual skill?

My most unusual skill.

Uh.

I'm not creative.

I'm in the film industry, I'm not creative.

It's interesting.

Yeah, what's more important, strength, speed or stamina?

Definitely not strength, because strength over time develops speed is everything, but over time,

stamina will make you successful.

So it's like.

If you are slow, but you have stamina, that's not a good combination of speed and stamina, then yes,

if you have speed and no stamina, you'll burn out.

What historical figure do you most admire?

I like Isaac Newton because of how smart he was, sort of person I like right now.

He's really popular as Neil deGrasse Tyson, the scientist, a really cool guy, great continent.

And what is your favorite season of the year?

Spring because it's warm, but not too warm and yeah, and you don't sweat.

And when was the last time you tried something new?

Something new.

I think it was the other week.

Uh, what did they do?

Oh, yeah, it was a new system to learn faster.

I'm not the one with the headphone, and so if you can have the attribute of any animal, what would

you choose?

Attribute to any animal.

Like the the long age of a turtle.

There you go.

Thank you so much, lover.