- I remember the time I went to Microsoft, the first time,
Seattle, I'm there in the room, and that whole, whole
room of people, and I thought to myself man,
I couldn't even apply to work in the cafeteria.
I'm not even qualified to work in the cafeteria.
Does that make sense?
- [Class Student] Yes.
- All these Harvard, Stanford, Yale University.
People in the front row that report directly to Bill Gates,
Steve Ballmer, they're the front row and they're gone
for two days.
Like how did I end up here?
And I look back and I retrace my steps towards the mindset
and mental toughness and focus of over a period of time
of reading 10 pages a day.
Taking one hour a day and committing to it no matter what.
To learn, to absorb, feed my mind.
Realize that when I'm driving that the average gain
over 19 years of age you'll spend approximately
500 hours per year driving their automobile or on public
transportation, if they just listen to educational audio
programs, or audio books like owl.com, over the course
of a calender, it's 500 hours of training development.
Which is equivalent to a college year's
semester of education.
So that, if I just start doing this, and over a period
of time, my life will change.
Does that make sense?
So this is how you learn things.
It's doing things, and it's going to be uncomfortable
when you first start doing it.
People are going to notice things about you.
There is times in my life where I would think to myself,
man I would love to meet that person some day.
I'd see 'em in a magazine, like a fortune magazine
or success magazine or see them on television,
and I would put myself in the pit and put them
on the pedestal.
Anybody ever done this?
Where you minimize yourself, put yourself in a pit,
and you put them on a pedestal.
I did that for a good majority of my life.
I would minimize myself and put myself in a pit,
and put them on a pedestal.
And that was my belief system.
And then I realized that I could provide massive value,
and it was, then all of a sudden, people starting calling me
and emailing me, and I'm thinking to myself,
these are people that I originally put on a pedestal,
and now they're calling me to ask me for advice.
Why?
And what it was, was all the things behind the scenes
that I did by myself during the waking hours of my day.
Gentleman taught me many years ago and he passed away now,
a lot of my mentors, a lot of my coaches, are people
you've never heard of.
They're not the 20 rounds everybody traces the world.
These people are great.
A lot of my mentors are people that come into my life
that have, I met originally from Rotary Club,
Chamber of Commerce, wide PO groups, different networking
groups that have come into my life that are very low profile
under the radar kind of people.
And they pull me aside, and they say let's have
a conversation.
Like Dan did tonight with what he did with the hot seat.
And, the gentleman, when he pulled me to the side,
he said to me, he said "Darren," he says, "Can I give you
"some feedback?"
I said, "Sure."
He goes, "Success is," he goes, excuse me for a minute,
he goes, "In your life,"
I didn't want to be emotional tonight.
(laughter) I'm a very logical
kind of guy, it's kind of funny.
But, the thing is, he said Darren, "Right now, you're out
"there trying to climb the ladder.
"You mean you climb ladder the you know what, you go up
"there, you get good grades, get good school,
"and then you go out and become somebody, right?"
And he said something to me that changed my life.
He goes, "Darren, success is not something you go out
"in the world to pursue."
He said, "Success is something you attract by the person
"you become."
Think about that.
Success is not something that you go out in the world
to pursue, you'll wake up tomorrow and say, I gotta hustle,
I gotta grind, I gotta make phone calls, I gotta
go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
Networking meeting, this and this and that.
You're out there pursuing something.
Success something you're going out in the world to pursue.
Does that make sense?
And what it is, success is not something you go in the world
to pursue, success is something you attract into your life
by the person you become.
So you think when you get up tomorrow,
what can you do differently to become the person
you want to become?
What book will you read?
What video will you watch?
What website will you go to?
Who you follow on social media.
I've learned in the last couple years of all these websites,
all these people, all these gurus, all these mentors,
all these experts,
that I've boiled down to three people now.
And I filtered out everybody else, and I focus on three
key people that influence me and advise me,
kind of like an advisory board.
And that's what I do.
I don't have time to get all this information all the time
from people now and things like that, so what I do
is every couple weeks I'll go meet with a bunch of people
at a table, and they'll sit around and they bring--
I learned this from Opera--
And they'll bring from what's going on.
So in a one hour, hour and a half,
I get a lot of information that would take me hours to get
and decipher of the course of a couple weeks.
I get it in 90 minutes or less.
From a bunch of specialists or experts in that field.
Does that make sense?
So you're leveraging your time on what you're doing.
Big, big difference in what you're doing.
So the thing is you want to realize tonight is that one
of the things to understand in terms of income,
is we go to networking events and people want to walk
around and give you business cards and brochures and fliers,
is one of the things I was taught a number of years ago,
was to play the contribution game.
And what the contribution game is, is when you wake up
the moral, you think to yourself how can I provide value
to somebody else's life and contribute to the life
through a contribution gain.
Now I used to be so scared when I was younger,
I was scared to talk to girls, I was scared to prospect
and network to people, I used put pennies in my left pocket,
and every time I talk to somebody I'd transfer a penny
to the other pocket.
And I wouldn't go home at the end of the night until
the pennies were out of the left pocket and into
the right pocket.
That's how I started.
I didn't have the self-esteem, the self-confidence.
I started where the phone used to weigh 500 pounds,
and I would do everything I could to avoid
making telephone calls.
Today I can call anybody on anything now.
'Cause I've done it so many times, it doesn't bother me.
Now how you learn is by taking action.
The fast way to do something is by taking action.
It's gonna be scary, it's gonna be fearful,
but it's taking action. The key thing is, you gotta act
in spite of fear.
Act in spite of discomfort.
Act in spite of worry.
Act in spite of uncertainty.
And you just keep taking action.
And there will be days when you don't know
what's gonna happen.
They'll be times when you don't know what's gonna happen,
what's gonna go on.
They'll be days when you have a certain organized plan,
and it doesn't go according to plan.
Does that make sense?
I learned that from being in Africa.
I'm in West Africa, 44 degrees Celsius, I get in this car.
11 people including myself, they don't speak English.
It's all translated.
We're going down this dirt road, going to look for animals,
wild animals, and inside the car, there's no floorboards.
You can see the ground.
The fan belt was dental floss and pantyhose.
We had to push start the car.
As we're going down the road, if any of you been to Africa,
you know the potholes are the size of small children,
'cause they get flash floods and rains and storms there.
As we're going down the road, we hit a pothole.
As we hit the pothole, we blow the front driver's side tire.
In a couple hours, it's starting to get dusk and dark.
And in Africa, within 10-15 minutes, it's pushing daylight
to pitch black.
And we blow the tire in the car, how many of you have read
the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Dr. Stephen Covey?
You remember one of the habits called, he talks about
the paradigm shift?
How many are familiar with paradigm shift, transformation?
So I understood it intellectually.
But if you asked me to go into a group of kids and explain
it to them, I couldn't explain what a paradigm shift
or a transformation.
I don't know how to articulate those words.
So I'm in this car, we blew the driver's side tire.
And, I think oh my gosh, we're almost out of water,
no body speaks English except for myself, we can't go
to a farm, there's no roadside assistance, there's no 911,
we can't go to anybody nearby, and I realize at that moment,
that no body's coming to rescue me, nobody.
So I go through a SWOT Analysis, strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats, (student chuckles)
I listed benefits and drawbacks, and I started to look at
profiling people.
Who's a leader?
Who's the follower?
We have to eliminate something.
All these different things I'm going through
in my assessment, my analysis,
then I realize, what I'm going to do.
No one's coming to rescue us.
The driver gets out of the car, very calm guy,
and he walks around the back of the car, and he goes
into the ditch, and he starts pulling dead grass
out of the ditch.
This goes on for 10, 15, 20 minutes.
Everybody's very calm.
I'm freaking out, inside. (light giggles)
There are wild animals, we're almost out of water,
I, no body speaks English, there's no road side assistance,
there's no 911, I don't know what to do.
The driver then goes ahead, he pops open the trunk
of the car, he pulls out a machete knife, he then
goes around to the driver's side tire, he starts taking
the knife, he starts cutting open cab, the cab of the tire,
and starts stuffing grass into the tire.
He filled the entire cabinet of the tire full of grass,
we got back in the car, we drove down the road.
It took a little longer, and at that moment,
I had a paradigm shift.
I had a transformation.
And I realized that there's always a way
if you're committed.
That if you got into the problem,
there's a way to get out of the problem.
Because in my mindset, my perspective on life growing up
in North America, was that what are we gonna do?
All of our options have been used up!
There's no 911, there's no roadside assistance,
there's no gas station, there's no farm.
No, we can't call, there's no mobile phone service,
there's no satellite phone service, no body's coming.
There's no money for a spare tire.
They don't have that.
No body's coming to get us.
Does that make sense.
And so when you realize that if you're in a problem
challenge right now, realize that you're on track
for something big in your life.
Which is something great.
So as you leave tonight,
realize that you can make a difference.
You can make a difference.
Realize that you're gonna have fear, you're gonna have
doubt, and you're gonna have worry.
And there will be times when you have to pull away
from everybody and spend time on yourself,
whether it's in prayer, it's in meditation, to focus
on yourself and say I need to get through this.
And you'll be amazed
at what you can accomplish in your life.
I am living proof of a guy who barely passed high school,
to multiple suicide attempts in my life, to doing things
in my life I never, ever dreamed possible.
But I believe it now because I've done it.
And I started realizing there's more and more things
I can do in my life, and you can do the same thing.
I'm an example of someone who was not suppose to go far
in life, not suppose to amount to much, not suppose
to do much in my life.
But I've done it because of perseverance and massive action,
keep some values, but committing to not giving up
and doing whatever it takes and making things non-negotiable
at times.
So have a great night everyone.
It's been a pleasure to be here.
Thank you. (clapping)
(cheering)