Lost in Your 20s: Mistakes and Lessons from Successful Entrepreneurs

I was recently interviewed for a book called “Lost in Your 20s: Mistakes and Lessons from Successful Entrepreneurs,” a book that features candid insights and hard-won knowledge of successful online entrepreneurs to see how they got there, and what they would have done differently when they started out.

I was interviewed along with 8 other internet famous content creators who are killing it right now, such as Andrew Ferebee (Knowlege for Men), Rob Cubbon (RobCubbon.com), Jesse Krieger (Lifestyle Entrepreneur), and others.

I probably don’t belong in the same book as these other people, but there are many who find my books, blog, and lifestyle inspiring, so I’m often approached for advice.

I’m often asked the question: “What advice would you give to your 20 year old self?” And I’ve thought about what indeed I would tell myself. The thing I’ve realized more than anything is that both successes and failures that you experience in life are arbitrary and impermanent, and the only constant is you.

Winston Churchill put it well:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

There was another quote, from Eric Hoffer’s “The Passionate State of Mind” that has stuck with me ever since I read it:

“There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day; we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life…”

What this quote means is that it’s far easier for most people to make up an excuse for why haven’t done anything, then do actually go out and do something great. There’s also a second part to this quote:

“Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.”

The second part of this quote means that we all too often place far too much emphasis on failure, or coming up short. So it’s easier to stay where we are and do nothing than to try and confirm that perhaps we aren’t as good as we had hoped.

Take this blog for instance. I’m typing this post without agonizing over whether the reader considers me some James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway reborn. Yeah, I know there are better writers than me. I’m not out to prove that I’m the best. I’m simply providing value the best way that I can. If people like what I write, awesome. If not, that’s fine too… But a few critics are not going to stop me.

Why do I say this? I feel that you should take the very valuable lesson. When you’re young and starting out, you’re unproven. You haven’t done anything really significant yet. So my advice is just go out and give your best effort, at whatever you decide to do, and keep learning and you’ll develop your capacity to do more than you ever imagined.

Below is my interview from the book, in its entirety. Have a read, it was a great conversation! And if you’re looking for more, do check out the book on Amazon, it’s a great value.

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Interviewer: You are the co-founder of OpenWorld Magazine and have been traveling as a digital nomad since 2009. And also, I read that you almost died a few times trying to live your dreams. Could you tell us a bit about what you did that almost got you killed?

Danny Flood, founder of OpenWorld Magazine.

Danny: I started traveling when I was 23. I went through high school and college, and I hadn’t really traveled too much. I had a pretty sheltered life, and I wanted more.

I was living in my comfort zone and I always believed that your life begins at the edge of your comfort zone, and it’s really when you’re feeling the rush of experiencing something new and foreign and exciting that you truly feel alive. I don’t know how to explain the sensation, but maybe when it’s almost at the edge of death that you truly come most alive, I think.

Somehow I’ve survived these last six years, in spite of a number of hardships.

As far as specific examples go, I have some, but I think it really just comes down to risk and how much risk you’re willing to tolerate. I’ve had physical accidents – I made a motorbike trip across Cambodia and Vietnam two years ago, and I almost got hit by a truck.

I fell from my bike one time. I fell from a bridge one time when I was hiking in Malaysia.
I’ve had some rough spots along the way, but again, it all comes down to taking on risk. And for me, I don’t wanna live every day the same.

I wanna try something new, and sometimes it doesn’t work out, sometimes it works out beautifully. So, you only have one life to live, it’s up to you to decide what you wanna do each day with it.

Interview with Danny Flood, OpenWorld Magazine.

Interviewer: How is that feeling, to have the freedom to travel the world and do all these fun things and work for yourself?

Danny: It feels great. I try to make sure that I write every single day about what I’m most happy about. I write three things that I’m thankful for every single day.

I have to continually remind myself that I don’t have to answer to a boss, I don’t have to get up at a certain hour, I don’t have to go to bed at a certain time.

I’m a free man. I can make my own decisions about what I wanna do with my time, where I wanna go, what I wanna eat. And you can’t really put a price tag on that. I wouldn’t trade $10 million for that kind of freedom.

Interviewer: What do you say to all those people who think you’ve got to have a bunch of money to go out and explore the world?

Danny: Well, I think they’re just being lazy.

Everyone has a secret excuse for why they’re not doing the things that they want to do, and there’s plenty of examples of people who are able to travel very cheaply and who don’t have a lot of money, but they’re still able to do it because they’re willing to do anything – whatever it takes to make that dream for themselves a reality.

If you really want something badly enough, you’re gonna do it. If what’s motivating you to go forward is stronger than the fear that’s keeping you back, that’s when you go forward. So, if the pain of staying where you are is strong enough to push you forward, then you’re gonna push forward, no matter what.

Interviewer: Before you began this crazy journey, how was this pain? How was the experience for you? Did you hate every day, like before you took action and really set out?

Danny: Did I hate every day? I wouldn’t say I hated every day. In my former life, I was working very hard. I always wanted to be self-employed, but I never seemed to get anywhere.

There was a huge gap between how good I thought I was and where I actually was in life. I thought I was gonna be some consultant and be successful right out of the gate.

I guess, I was a little bit naïve and maybe a little bit cocky when I was younger, and I was working really hard, but I was almost like a martyr because I was willing to do anything it took to be successful, but I wasn’t really getting very far.

I kept falling into traps, wasting my time doing things I shouldn’t be doing, working with people who I didn’t wanna work with. And I decided enough was enough. I felt like I was in a hamster wheel, so I ran an experiment.

I used to take trips down to Mexico because I was from San Diego, which was on the border in the United States, the southern border with Mexico – so I used to go down there to surf, and then I had a friend who was actually living down there.

And I thought, well, maybe I’ll go down to see her for two months. I know this lady down there, and I’ll make a trade with her because I know how to design websites now. I’ll help her design a hotel website, and then I’ll just ask her if I could stay there for free for a couple of months.

So what I did was I removed the risk. I took that step, but I also removed the risk because, first of all, it didn’t cost me anything to stay there. And second, if things went wrong, if suddenly I had to come back and I had to see my clients or be there for my clients, I could always drive back. It’s only two or three hours back to the border. So, I did that as an experiment, and I lowered the risk, lowered the barrier to entry, which is very important if you want to start.

And then, after that, I went back to the U.S. for a couple months, and I prepared and booked a one-way ticket to South America. I traveled all over the continent, and then I bought two more one-way tickets to other parts of the world as well.

Carnivale at Florianopolis, Brazil.

Interviewer: You just take away the risk and you do it. Like if you just pack your bags and leave without any security, it can become overwhelming. You’ll give up too easily. So I think that’s very good advice.

Danny: Yeah, but it’s not only that – it’s also that you’ve gotta lower the barrier to entry as well. Take the book “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell, he talks about how a lot of high school students who end up going to prestigious universities like Brown, Harvard, a lot of the science and math students, they’ll actually drop out of their major after one or two years. I think half of them do.

But if they were to go to a less prestigious school, more middle of the pack like University of Boston or University of Maryland, there’s a good chance that they’re gonna be at the top of their class in their science major. They’re much more likely to stick to that curriculum because it’s easier for them.

So, the harder you make it for yourself, the worse off you’re going to be. If you make your goals into a huge mental monster that makes it impossible for you to succeed, you’re gonna fail.

And the definition of success that I like is you’re successful at something if you do two things: if you give it your best effort and you learn something. And if you have those two rules set for success, it makes it impossible to fail. As long as you give your best and you learn something, you’re gonna keep moving forward.

Interviewer: Would you tell someone in a 9-5 they don’t like, an environment they don’t like, to start something on the side and still keep the job and then eventually move on to the other thing instead of just packing your bags and just leaving?

Danny: Well, it depends. It’s unique for every individual. I have people who contact me all the time, people who read my blog or subscribe to my newsletter, and they always have different situations.

It usually has something to do with, they wanna travel, they’re stuck somewhere, they wanna leave, but they’re worried about money. That’s usually the biggest objection that I hear.

And I think that part of it is that you need to zoom out and stop thinking about your day-to-day problems that you’re dealing with and look at the big picture. You have to be able to see the forest for the trees. And when people consult with me, I help them do that.

I really try to focus on what’s unique about that person, what are their strengths, and what options do they have right now? So everyone is different, as I said, but some people have experience in certain areas.

For example, I had one lady contact me, she’s written some books. She self-published on Amazon and is doing pretty well. She’s also taught English in Spain. And I told her, “Why don’t you write some books about teaching other people how to teach English and then target them to different countries?”

So I just tell her, “Take your strengths. Take what you already have and build on that.” And everybody has something they can build on. You just have to look at it and then find a way to monetise it.

Interviewer: You got to OpenWorld Magazine, you’re the co-founder. What was the reason you started this magazine in the first place?

Danny: It’s really a complement to my first book, it’s called, “Buy Your Own Island” (you can download the audio for free if you go to buyyourownisland.com/audio-book). And again, it’s hand-in-hand with what I write about in the book, and it’s the book that I wish I’d had five, six years ago when I was looking for mentors, trying to figure out the next 40 or 50 years of my life, and I didn’t have any good answers at the time.

Back then, we had a four-hour workweek, which was the one torch of hope in this conventional life-path that I was faced with. And so, when I started to travel, I met all kinds of interesting people, lifestyle designers – if that’s what you wanna call them – or digital nomads or just other backpackers who have done the most inspiring and incredible things.

And I wanted to be able to collect those stories into a single resource, and that’s where the blog and podcast came about.

Interviewer: When you’re interviewing people on the podcast, how do you keep it relaxed and in the zone? Do you have any tips for people who want to start their own podcast?

Danny: Yeah, sure. So it starts with an 9-word phrase, and it’s the magic phrase. And when I am connecting with someone for the first time, I obviously want them to open up. So, before I start the podcast, I’ll ask them, “What do you love to talk about the most?” And I think that’s nine words, but yeah. “What do you love to talk about the most?” And they’ll tell me, and that way I’m not forcing my questions onto them.

I wanna follow the flow and get them to talk about what they’re most comfortable with. And once I’ve got that insight from them, I can start to build rapport, and I can start to listen because I think, to create a great interview, you really have to listen, and the best conversationalists are great listeners.

And from there, a lot of interviews tend to go down a certain path – so I’ll ask them some personal questions, their back story, what it is they’re after, why they did something.

If they’ve changed their lives, what was driving them? And I’ll ask them, “What was the moment, what was going through your head when you were dealing with this?” Or, “Tell me about the story behind this.” Any time you can get them to open up and tell you the story, I think it’s really engaging because the listener wants to know what’s going to happen next.

Interviewer: Do you also have any preset questions you like to fall back on if something were to go wrong, or do you just wing it after the first nine words?

Danny: I don’t wing it. I don’t have preset questions either. I’ll start off the interview in the same way. I’ll say, “Welcome to OpenWorld Podcast,” and then I’ll introduce the person. And I’ll say, “So tell me a little bit about your back story and how did you get started with X, Y and Z company?” Or, “Why did you decide to run across the entire world? What was driving you?” Just stuff like that, and from there, I think the conversation can follow a natural flow.

I want to be able to pick apart things that I can learn. I want them to break the process down into steps. So those are the things I’ll focus on, and I’ll always do a little bit of research. I’ll read the person’s biography and stuff like that.

And I’ll obviously listen to previous podcasts that they did with other podcasters. And so, for example, I’ll go to the gym, and I’ll often use VLC player, which allows me to fast-forward through podcasts, so I can put it to 140% or 150% speed. That way, I can get through a previous podcast that’s 30, 40 minutes, in half the time. And that way I can at least get into the flow of the conversation beforehand.

Interviewer: Could you share some important things you have learned from your years traveling that you might not learn if you just work in a 9-5 and stay in the same place? Was there something groundbreaking or something that you really took up on?

Danny: I don’t know about groundbreaking, but I think you need to identify what your comfort zone is and then find ways to just gradually step outside of it.

Take baby steps because, if you try to take on too much risk, you’re gonna be foolish, and you’re probably gonna fail. And you’re not being honest with yourself. You really have to have an honest conversation with yourself and say, “Am I in my comfort zone? How can I expand outside of that comfort zone?”

And sure, you can go crazy. You can book a one-way ticket to the other side of the world, but you don’t need to be foolish. Just take little baby steps every single day. And the way that I look at it is, if you really want something, when you want something, you can either do something that’s easy, or you can do something that’s hard. And every day, you should try to find something you can do that’s hard because the best things in life are usually pretty hard to get.

Also, if you can take something that’s hard and identify the steps you need to take to do it, then just take action on those. Your success is inevitable as long as you’re persistent and you want it badly enough.

I don’t really know about groundbreaking, but I think that’s the way to go because it applies the same way to business. If you already have a talent, like I mentioned, you can write an e-book and publish that on Amazon. That’s easy. It’s an easy step to take, but it’s working towards a larger goal.

And if you’re gonna start your own business, do things that complement what you’re already doing or the skills you already have or the resources you already have. Don’t start a new business if you have no experience in whatever it is you’re doing. Take things that are gonna complement what you’re already doing.

So, for example, right now I have nine or 10 different income streams that I have active or that I’m working on, but they all relate to one another. If someone joins my mailing list, they probably know my book, they probably downloaded my audio book, they probably have other products that they wanna buy, or maybe they wanna buy coaching or consulting.

So, if I have a front-end service, I will create backend services that are related that benefit the other service that I already offer. You can start with where you are if you have a job, like if you have some experience with a trade. So yeah, find things that complement what you’re already doing, and the same applies to business. You can create complementary products for services that you already offer.

Interviewer: That’s gotta be powerful, the automation stuff like you have with 10 different income streams. If you get on the email list, you get on to those courses too. It’s gonna take a lot of work from your shoulders, then you can take that for new projects as well, this automation stream.

Danny: Yeah. I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s all automated though because it definitely takes work.

If I stop focusing on one thing, then it’s gonna dry up, that income stream’s gonna dry up.
Sales of my books will dry up if I don’t keep promoting them.

For example, if I don’t continue to go on podcasts and get my content out there, then the sales are gonna dry up. So, you do have to manage them.

I interviewed a lady this morning who gets a full-time income with Airbnb, and she makes six figures renting her condo in New York. Yeah, 80-90% of the work is setting it up, but once she’s gotten there, she’s working less than 10 hours a week and making six figures a year.

Interviewer: What would you say to someone who’s reading this and saying, “Yeah, this sounds great, but I don’t really know what skills or what trade I can give to people.” What’s the step for them if they don’t have any special skill they can just learn or teach to other people?

Danny: Well, if you don’t have any skills, then invest in other people who do have skills. Everyone has skills, everyone has experience, whether you’re rich or you’re poor. The poor know things about the world that the rich don’t. I think you really need to stop being lazy and you need to do benchmarking.

So, look at other people who are already successful and find ways to imitate them and to do what they’re doing. If you don’t have any role models, go find them.

You can find them from books, or find people who are doing what you wanna do and see what they’re doing. And if you can, ask them, “Hey, I like what you’re doing. I’m in this situation and I wanna do this.” And if you’re gonna ask someone for advice, if you’re gonna ask a mentor for advice, make sure it’s very specific, and make sure that you’re really familiar with what they do because successful people are gonna get approached all the time, and it’s no good if you just ask, “Hey, do you have any advice for me?” You’re putting too much work on your mentor.

If you read their book, for example, and say, “Hey, I love your book. I’m implementing this. I’m taking action.” Talk about what you’re actually doing because nobody wants to help someone who is not willing to do anything, who’s not already doing something.

Interviewer: “I took action on this right away, what you said here.” And they’re gonna be more likely to talk to you and help you. That’s a powerful strategy.

Danny: Yeah, nobody wants to be the person who says, “Hey, I’m not doing anything with my life currently, but I just wanted to come to you and see if you could help me.” That just reeks of desperation.

And there’s so much information out there already. There’s free blogs, there’s content. I’m always writing blog posts for my blog, giving away the best things that I’ve learned.

There’s always podcasts that you can listen to. You can listen to the most successful people in the world who are interviewed on these podcasts and listen to them for free, you get an hour of their time for free. So it’s impossible to say that, “I have no skills” or “I have no knowledge,” because it’s really everywhere. You don’t have to graduate from college anymore. You can find the information you need in 15 seconds online.

Interviewer: Do you think the anxiety about failure is transforming for a person saying: “I don’t have any skills”? So they use that as an excuse.

Danny: Well, take Airbnb, for example. You don’t need skills to make money like Airbnb. All you need is a space to rent. But people will not do it because they’ll say, “I don’t want to have a stranger in my home” or “I’m afraid of safety,” or whatever.

So, they’ll make up that excuse and that’s it. It’s basically an alibi. Everybody has excuses for why they’re not doing whatever it is they wanna do. And chances are, that excuse that you’re making up, it’s just something you create in your mind.

And the other thing is you’re probably not the only person who’s dealt with that. There’s other successful people who have felt those same fears, and sometimes we want to go and bury our head in the sand because we’re so tired of dealing with this emotion all day long.

And it happens to me sometimes! It happens to everyone! Every entrepreneur has terrible days. But you’re gonna wake up the next day, and you’re gonna be ready to go. And you’re either gonna act, or you’re not gonna act. And so much of it comes down to… Again, that’s why I write in my journal every day – three things I’m thankful for.

I focus on the positive: what I’m grateful for, what I’m happy about. And the more I focus on the positive energy, the more positivity I can create in my life.

Interviewer: That’s great!

Danny: Yeah, you can control the conversation that’s going on in your own head.

Interviewer: How do you develop a strong mindset that you’re not just gonna give up? Do you need to develop this big “why” for taking action?

Danny: Yeah, I think you always need to have compelling reasons, have a strong why for everything that you do. Otherwise, you’re not going to adhere to it.

For example, take New Year’s resolutions. A lot of people come into the gym on January 1st, and then they work out for a few weeks and then they stop. It’s because they don’t have a compelling enough reason why.

Again, a lot of times it comes down to other people telling them, “You should get into shape,” and blah, blah, blah. We’re bombarded by magazines and what have you. But you have to really be honest with yourself and say, “What do I really want?” not “What do other people tell me what I want? What do I really want?”

Mindset is so important. And obviously, your “Why?” is what starts it.

So, for example, you create more compelling reasons, like “Why do I want to work out? Because I want to have a lot of energy, because I want to have a six pack, because I want to have a sexy body, because I want my spouse to respect me.” If you have these compelling reasons, you’re much more motivated to go. And if the barrier to entry is very low, it makes it much easier to adhere to that.

Working out is one example. It could be learning Chinese. If you make Chinese really hard, you’re not gonna stick with it. If you make Chinese easy and start with the basics first and realize that it’s not as hard as you might think initially, then you start to see results, and you’re encouraged to continue. So, you need to have those early results to stick with it as well.

Interviewer: For someone who wants to build up some sort of business right now, do you think they should lock down and just focus on that for a few months/years to really get that up and going, or do you think it’s more important to balance it out and do other stuff as well?

Danny: Well, I think balance is really a myth. I think that’s an idea. I think you need to either be fully engaged in one thing or fully engaged in another thing. And I don’t think that you need to double down and spend months just focusing on work. You might spend 14 hours straight focusing on work because you’re driven and you’ve gotta get a lot done, which happens to me sometimes.

But then I’ll take the next morning off, and I’ll make sure to make time for my girlfriend, and we’ll go out to dinner together for an evening, or we’ll go to a movie together or something, or we’ll go take a weekend and go on a trip somewhere else in Thailand. So, sometimes, you’ve gotta be focused and in the zone, but then you’ve gotta realise when it’s time to stop and take a break. And you can do both.

I work really hard because I’ve got a lot of projects going on right now. My girlfriend works a 9-5, and we try to take the weekends off and we go outside of Bangkok because I know I’ll become burned out if I’m only working and I don’t take time off.

So, we’ll go to the islands. We’ll go to Krabi. We’ll go to Pattaya or someplace like that. And I’ll come back on Monday, and I’m refreshed, and I’m focused, and I’m motivated because so much of your productivity comes down to your emotions.

Danny Flood in Krabi, Thailand.

It doesn’t have to do with exercise or eating healthy so much as it has to do with your emotions and how engaged you are with what you’re doing.

So yeah. That’s exactly right. You have to observe your own emotions, and that’s called mindfulness. You have to be able to observe your own thoughts and your own emotions and your own patterns in a self analysing way, and that’s what it really comes down to. So, when it comes down to balance, you have to be able to observe yourself.

I observe myself every day when I wake up in the morning, when I say, “How much sleep did I get last night?” Okay. “What do I need to focus on? Am I in the zone right now?” Then I’m gonna focus on my highest priority activities.

If I’m low on energy and I’m not feeling it, I’m gonna take a break, and I’m gonna go swim or go do Muay Thai or something else for a while.

Interviewer: You are training in Muay Thai?

Danny: Yeah, I used to be an amateur Muay Thai boxer a couple years ago when I first came to Thailand. These days, I mostly just do it as a hobby.

I know a bunch of the guys down at the park, and there’s a gym there. So we get together, and we kind of spar a little bit and beat around the punching bag.

Interviewer: I know a lot of people who are doing some kind of martial art and who say that their practicing in martial art classes helps them overall in life, with discipline and being humble and stuff. Have you gotten any good, positive effects from training, that sort of thing?

Danny: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, life is always gonna throw challenges at you, and you have to have the strength to respond to those challenges.

So, if you’re not gonna do martial arts or lift weights, you’re gonna find a way to build that strength and that courage. I’ve done four different types of martial arts in my life, at different stages in my life. And it’s great. So that’s one aspect of it, it’s building an inner courage.

And two is that there’s also that meditation aspect because, if you’re in a fight, you have to be so focused and in the zone in that fight or you’re gonna get knocked out. You can’t be thinking about other things. And it’s like a meditation aspect. In ancient China, I mean, the monks, the reason they do come through is because they’re trying to discipline their minds.

They’re trying to hone their minds, and it’s about reaching a certain state. The quickest way to influence your mental state is through physical activity. It provides all kinds of positive benefits to your mental state and how you respond to challenges and how you look at the world.

Interviewer: It sounds so compelling to do a martial art, just because you get so much out of it.

Danny: Yeah, definitely. I remember I started out when I was 13. I was doing wrestling in high school and I remember the fear of having to face down an opponent, where you’re both grabbing at each other and taking each other down. It turns out I was pretty good. I was a pretty good wrestler, and after you win some matches against an aggressive opponent… I wasn’t always the most aggressive opponent, but I could outlast them. And after you win those matches, you know, damn, I didn’t know I was capable of this. And you realize that you’re capable of more than you ever thought.

Interviewer: If you could re-live your 20s again, your early 20s, would you do something different?

Danny: I don’t know. I think initially, going back, I would fix my mindset because it took me a long time to learn what I know now.

And the first book that I wrote after, “Buy Your Own Island”, it was actually a mindset book. It’s called, “How to Hack Your Mind to Become Bulletproof.”

When I was younger, I struggled with depression, isolation, loneliness. For some reason, I felt like an outsider because I didn’t wanna follow the path everyone else was taking. I just thought it was dumb. It didn’t make any sense to me. I felt disconnected.

And so I wish I could’ve gone back and said, “Look, you’re not alone. This is what you need to do. If you just focus on creating the reality that you wanna have instead of trying to suit this reality that’s obviously not working for you.”

Interviewer: Can we find this book? Is it on Amazon?

Danny: Yeah. I have all these books. So you can look up, “Buy Your Own Island.” That’s the main book. But you can also look at my author page. I have two other books at the moment. And I have two other ones I’m publishing soon.

Interviewer: Great.

Danny: And these books are all hacks. I write a lot about hacks because hacks are unconventional solutions to get to where you want to go. They’re a critical edge. And start building leverage to get from where you are now to where you wanna be. And every day, I try to implement hacks because I’m trying to get more done, and I’m trying to get further.

So, did you ever play Super Mario Brothers, Pontus?

Interviewer: Oh yeah, a lot.

Danny: In Super Mario Brothers 3, they have the magic whistle. And what the magic whistle does is it allows you to kind of skip some of the world so that you can go to the last world and face the boss, King Bowser.

So, I look at these hacks as being like the magic whistle. Basically, they’re gonna get you where you want to go now because you don’t wanna wait 30, 40 years to enjoy your life, at the end of life when you retire. I want to figure out how I can make this reality now. And time is money, man! Time is the only thing that’s a finite asset that we’re all running out of seconds.

Interviewer: Yeah, totally. That’s great. That’s really interesting, hacking your time, to get the most out of it.

Danny: Yeah, exactly. This is what I tell people, too, when they come consulting with me. Someone wants to freelance for example, and they wanna get clients so that they can be location independent, and they’re focused on redesigning their website and writing an e-book and setting up an autoresponder.

And I’m, “Dude, you’re wasting your time. What you need right now is a minimal, viable profile. Get that out there, and get it out in front of people. Stop wasting time doing all this other irrelevant stuff. You need to just get there now.” They’re putting it off because they’re almost afraid or they don’t actually believe that, whatever it is they want, that they can actually have it, because we’re conditioned to believe that the things that we want are somewhere far off in the future or impossible or too expensive, or whatever it is. Whatever the reason is – not good-looking enough or whatever it is, and it’s all bullshit.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Danny: Apply leverage to it. Go after what you want, and become obsessed with it. And apply these hacks to do it now.

2 Responses

  1. Nikoleta Míchalová

    I didnt get through all of the interview, but what I read…. caught my attention. I agree to a great extend with what you are saying – you can go out there and be yourself, you can do what you love and live a splendid life, you only have to give up your comfort zone and get out there. I agree totally – but its not always possible. Sometimes you might really want to and you would do it, but the situation does not allow you to. You feel trapped and you cannot escape -> at least for following few years. SO what do you do then? Are you drowning in misery? Making the best out of your life? What if you feel that your life cannot be any better only because you do not know how much better it can be? It’s strange, there are so many books out there, so many people sharing their inspirational stories and yet I feel like I dont know what to do.

    Also about setting yourself huge goals, I think its more important to challenge yourself to the limits than to go for something easy. You used example of school, so I’ll continue with that. I dont have any figures, but when I was in middle school I was going to an ordinary local school, it was too easy but I would still try my best…. though sometimes I was so bored of it that I would simply not work at all. Then I went to more difficult school after passing exams and I liked it. And then I went to one of the top schools and although the first year my score dropped hugely, I enjoyed the school and once I adjusted to the system, I was fine. I knew people from the first school that were on the top of the class with me – I thought that they would have a splendid future in front of them, but instead they became spoilt, bored of their life with no perspectives. From the second school, which was slightly more challenging, and only top students could enter, they would either have a really good future or ended up like the students from my first school. I think it all comes down to personality and to individual needs and wants. I still have three years till I am twenty and I am sharing my thougths from below that age, which makes me completely unaware of what is happening beyond. But although I mostly agree with your points, I have the feeling that they cannot apply to general public, but rather to individual people. Now, I’ll come back to the interview 😉
    Nikoleta Míchalová recently posted…The horrors of LidiceMy Profile

  2. Marie

    I like how honest are your every answer to the interview. And yes, I agree. When there’s a will, there’s a way. But this doesn’t happen to all of us 🙂 Lucky are those who tried and fulfilled their dreams. But there are those that up until now, they are still trying. Thanks!