- I was brought up into business intelligence
and computer science, and that sort of thing,
way back in the day.
I've been programing since I was five.
So, really a geek.
And, then, on day I was dragged kicking
and screaming into marketing.
And, I didn't want to go
because I always thought sales people, marketing
were always, you know, the guy wearing
the plaid suit trying to sell you a bad car.
And I did marketing just to prove
that they were wrong.
And it turns out I made more money in a month
than I did in a whole year.
And then I'm like, Okay, so maybe I should do marketing.
And that's kind of when I got into interested.
So, the background of my business has always
been marketing and sales
that sort of thing.
And lately, I've been focusing on internet marketing.
So, yeah.
That's where I also ran into Dan.
Before Dan's mentoring.
One of the things Dan keeps telling me
is I'm too smart for my own good,
which is a compliment, and an insult at the same time.
Which I like.
He got me to focus on one thing.
So, before Dan I'm trying to do 18 different things.
Yes, yes, they all tie in together wonderful,
but Dan said, "No, no, pick one. Go deep."
And then, the biggest thing he gave me
was to give myself time, right.
So, with giving myself time,
let me see the things I could see
that no one else could see.
And that's what made the business kind of flourish and grow.
When I switched to marketing the first time
I went into the financial services.
And yeah, I made a lot of money back in the day.
Used to pull in millions and millions a year.
And then everything happened around 2008-2009
Everything kind of crashed.
So, I ended up losing 40 Million.
That was a bad day.
So, I was down for awhile, right.
Kind of just dropped out, stopped talkin to everybody.
And out of the blue I just had this,
I just saw Dan doing the Vancouver Entrepreneur Group.
And so, he called me up
and said, "Hey, come see me do this thing."
And this is still at the Burnaby location
at the fire hall.
The funny thing is, so we, once upon a time, we were peers.
We shared a stage, all that kind of thing.
And I always liked the way he spoke on stage.
Even though he says he wasn't that good in the beginning.
You could tell he practiced, right.
And you could tell he
was putting his heart and soul into it.
And I like that about him.
He really goes deep into things
and figure stuff out.
So, as a mentor that was the one thing.
The second thing is we kind of ran into it by accident.
I emailed him saying,
"Hey, good to see you.
"You're doing a great job with V-E-G.
"When I cross over the million dollar threshold again,
"Let's work together."
Right, because I thought I had to earn the right
to be there again.
And the funny thing is he told me, "Earl,
"we've had been friends for years.
"You don't have to earn anything.
"You could be earning zero.
"It doesn't matter."
And the funny thing is that was the turning point.
When he said that to me it felt like I almost had permission
to be good and great again.
And that's the funny thing, the moment that happened
everything just switched, right.
It was like a light bulb turned on.
So, why did I choose him to be my mentor?
It was kind of by accident.
We were friends for years.
And I just said, "Hey, let's play together again.
"Once I hit a certain stage."
And he says, "Why wait?"
I didn't feel like I was worthy.
I didn't feel like I was okay.
I didn't feel like I was,
you know, that I shouldn't be working with Dan,
because I'm not at his level.
I'm no where near close.
And the funny thing is, it was him helping me back up again,
that got me to where I am today.
And that's a big leap.
Light bulb moments is really the biggest thing.
All those little "ah ha" moments.
And the funny thing is it was never the big reveal, right.
The thing about Dan is that he digs into
the heart and core of the business.
And he finds the little-small adjustments.
The little-small changes, right.
So, as long as you can stick to what he's asking for,
given that focus, and not just normal focus,
like deep, deep, deep focus.
And once you get that, he makes these slight adjustments.
And those slight adjustments make
the big explosions in the business.
And they just make everything go boom.
And I'm like...
And you feel like it such a small change.
But that small adjustment makes all the change in the world.
Once upon a time, this is a bit of a story,
I knew Dan was really interested in martial arts.
And so, I trained under some of Bruce Lee's
second generation students.
So, I introduced him to some of these guys
who were in Vancouver.
So, its almost like a coach, right.
So, it feels like he's coaching me.
So, the mentorship thing, I try to give him value back
to him as well.
But he's like a coach.
That's really it.
He points the way,
shows me the direction.
But he does it in a way that makes me think, right.
He doesn't just give me the answer.
He makes me think, makes me think, makes me think.
And if I'm going the wrong way he kicks my butt.
Right, like a coach should, right.
And yeah, whenever I stray off course ya know he gives me
the dirty coach look.
And oh, well, yeah, okay.
Go back.
(laughs)
Right, and that's neat.
I mean I'm starting to see where I veer off the path.
I can see it now, where as before I couldn't see it before.
What's changed in my business?
Lots of things have changed.
Number one, I'm calmer.
Right, I don't just make spur
of the moment decisions anymore.
I think things through, I evaluate versus judge, right.
So, that's been huge.
What else has been, I'm not as, I'm not in a hurry anymore.
And the funny thing is I'm not in a hurry,
but the business is growing faster then the last time.
So, it's weird.
Its like a maturity to my business
that Dan's really kind of brought to the table, right.
So, I don't jump at dumb things anymore.
I'm not trying to do 85 things anymore.
Focus, focus, focus, and then in that focus Dan gets
to really find neat things to tweak.
Again, small tweak, big explosion.
I'm still not sure what the correlation is,
but it just works.
He's been doing marketing and business,
and everything for so long,
his experiences have shown him all the things, right.
Like one of the things that he keeps telling me over
and over again in the calls.
Is that he's not the smartest person.
But he's the hardest worker, right.
So, he'll make all the mistakes.
But then he's made all the mistakes.
So, then when he coaches you and helps you out.
He'll say, "I remember that one."
And then he'll help you go around it.
"Oh, I remember that one."
Help you go around it.
And as long as you stay the path, right.
He can show you where the mistakes that he made were.
And that's great, right.
And he's not afraid to share.
And that's really key.
He's not afraid to share
and there's no ego.
It's just like there's no, no better, no, no.
It's just like, "Okay, I remember this one.
"Don't do that.
"This is how it hurt."
And the funny thing is he also let you step on
the landmine, if you need to step on the landmine.
Right, so sometimes I'm bull-headed.
"No, no Dan this is gonna work."
"No, Earl, it's not gonna work."
I jump on it, it explodes.
Okay, so it didn't work.
(laughs)
I come back, tail between my legs,
but at least Dan comes back.
And he goes, "Yeah, I understand."
Sometimes you just need to touch the stove, right.
I started working with Dan again in October, November
of last year.
We started getting serious and then started moving
the business around November.
Between November and January, I went from
this is a brand new business, started from scratch
to six figures, in 60 days, under his diligence.
And then, so far, so good.
This stuff I'm working on now bringing me to the
quarter million, half million mark.
And if everything keeps going on the same schedule,
I think we can do it.
I'll hit seven figures by
12 to 16 months
of the business.
So, the last time I did that, and reason I bring this up,
is, I feel like I'm going slower.
But the last time took me three years to get there.
Now its only going to take me one, maybe one and a half
if I screw up.
So, I feel like I'm going slower, yet its going faster.
So, that's a big thank you to Dan for that.
'Cause, holy cow.
I can't believe it.
I can't believe, I can't believe I can see
the light at the end of the tunnel again.
I can't believe I'm almost back to where I was before.
And the confidence level that he give is inspiring.
So...
Its the review of the lessons, right.
A lot of the lessons he teaches I've seen before, right.
I remember when I got "F.U. Money" as a word doc,
before the book was published.
I remember all this stuff.
The funny thing is reading then, versus reading it now.
That level of maturity, that level of patience
that's he's kind of instilled upon me.
You read the same passage again,
and its like oh, no, that's deeper
than it used to be, right.
And the funny thing is he actually teaches
at different levels.
So, whatever level you are able to accept
the information at, that's key.
So, you see it at one level, then okay you're
only ready of level one.
So he only teaches you at level one, right.
Three years later I read the same passage.
"Hey Dan, what do you mean by this part of the book?"
"Oh, you finally got it, oh okay."
Then, he shows me a whole another level
on the same diagram.
And my mind is completely blown.
So that was sitting in front of me the whole time,
for three years.
Yeah, right.
So, that's the neat part.
He'll only give you what you're ready to see.
So, that's neat.
Like he won't put too much stuff
or he won't, he won't push you farther
than you're capable of going.
But sometimes he knows how far you're capable of going.
Even if you don't.
The wealth of knowledge.
This guy is non-stop.
I think I go to a lot of seminars,
and learn a lot of stuff, no.
Not even close compared to Dan.
Maybe I spend one tenth, if I'm lucky
of what this guy spends on his own education.
So, this guy is just non-stop.
There's a saying called,
"constant and never ending improvement."
Dan is like the living embodiment of
that "constant and never ending improvement."
Every time I see him he gets better.
When he started this D-L-I-C back at Burnaby
at the fire station.
I could tell he was a little rusty,
he wasn't on stage for a long time.
He told me, "Hey, this is the first time in awhile."
Now you see him, head and shoulders above
where he used to be at his peak before, right.
So, he's getting higher and higher,
and he's pushing himself higher and higher.
So, that's inspiring to me.
I only get, maybe, three or four nuggets of information
that I don't know already from his meetings.
But, oh my gosh, that one little nugget
just, I can take one and be busy for
the nest three months, right.
So, and it grows the business.
Just on that one, right.
So, it doesn't matter how experienced you are.
It donest matter how much money you made,
or whatever else.
You're always gonna learn something.
Even veterans in the business who know their stuff.
Or at least we think we know our stuff.
And then, you see this guy go.
And Dan just shows you more and more and more, right.
That focus of deepness is really important, right.
So, he doesn't just know it, he knows it.
Because there's a difference.
The results speak for themselves, right.
I mean who starts a seven figure business in 12 months?
Right, and this is coming from a guy who was in depression.
I just lost 40 million dollars.
That was a bad place.
And he got me out of that bad place.
And he brought me back to success.
He brought me back to inspirity.
He brought me back to life, basically.
So, I don't care how far you've gone,
or you might even make more money then him.
It doesn't matter.
He still learns harder than anyone I ever known.
He still trains harder than anyone I ever known.
Right, so, regardless of where you are
this guy is just a wealth of information.
He's always going to show you something new, right.
Even if it's something old
that you just need to look at again, right.
That's even better, right.
When he takes something old and repositions it,
and just shifts it just a little bit,
and you learn something new from
that difference of perspective.
Ah, that speaks volumes.
So, that's what I mean.
So, its just his deepness of knowledge,
his deepness of...
He knows every industry, right.
I think I'm a freak because I know like lots
of weird things different industries.
I can hold a converstation with Dan
and he knows in inside, outwards, and backwards.
And I'm like, "How do you know this?"
Like, its such a weird nich, and he gets it.
Every single time.
So, that's what I mean about like
the "constant never ending improvement," right.
If he's not at the level where you want
to be learning at now.
Seriously, give him a month or two.
He'll be there already.
So, that's it.
I mean, if you're looking for someone
who's doing the research, putting the time in,
putting the effort in, and then dedicating it back
to his mentees.
This is the guy.