"If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." -Jim Rohn

In 2014 I started following the works of multiple people in the personal development industry. Just some off the top of my head are Les Brown, Eric Thomas, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, and some others.

What I realized pretty quickly is that most of these guys give out really good advice, and that would be the end of that. There wasn't any applicable business tactics and strategies that makes money. In some instance, money felt like something dirty, or as conventional wisdom says: "money is the root of all evil."

I remember reading Atlas Shrugged during university, and within the book, Ayn Rand argues that money is actually the root of all good. For some reason that resonated with me. It made sense for me that it's a unit of measurement, and the saying that "money is not the most important thing, but it's the only thing that anyone is keeping track of." Also "if you think money doesn't buy happiness, you are shopping at the wrong place."

Warren Buffet is my hero. You get the idea.

Obviously, there's more to life than just getting rich, but if getting paid is my goal, how would it ever happen by listening to people who only got rich by telling other people how to get rich?

Eventually I stumbled upon 3 people, Grant Cardone, Gary Vineychuck and Mr. Dan Pena. Grant is always selling something, and the marketing/sell stuff is really good. He came from nothing, which is what I need, because looking at someone that comes from money gives me excuses about why I can't do the same. Before work and on transit for about a year, I would just listen to his 10x audio book. If you follow him on social media and all of his newsletters, you will notice that he pushes out a lot of stuff and he does what he tells others to do, which is 10x the amount of work that you think is necessary to become successful.

Then there's Gary, who came from some money. He has got next level work ethic, we can see that on all of his Youtube videos. 13, 14, 15 hour days seems to be the norm. His message is consistent.

I follow Brian Rose, and his interviews that he does through London Real. Through there, I saw this interview of Mr. Dan Pena. It was really different, there wasn't anything that made me feel good. Actually the opposite happened, most of the stuff he said made me feel kind of uncomfortable. He didn't seem to be there to hold your hand and walk you down the path. He drags you to the water, pushes your head down a few times and if you still didn't get it, he would just move on.

All of his content is free, here. He doesn't sell anything. He took a company public, then took up the mission to become the best high performance coach that the world has seen. One of things he says is that, early on, in his process of becoming one of the best, one of his mentor told him that the personal development business is a billion dollar business, a dollar going around to a billion people. This resonated with me. It made sense that if what I'm after is money, I should probably listen to someone that has made lots of it.

The only thing that is not free is his 1 week castle seminar. Then you are on his free mentorship program for a year. The reason that it's free is because if there is no performance, you are out of the program.

I've been investing successfully in the cryptocurrency space since 2013, and with the price increase since January 2017, I had just enough to pay for the whole thing. I become a full time cryptocurrency investor and writer in May. I thought that something like this for a year would set me straight on the fast track of entrepreneurial success.

The whole process was basically me sending out an e-mail to Thelma, Mr. P's assistant, expressing my interest in the seminar. Then sending the money over through a bank wire, buying the flight to Scotland, and waited for the day of getting there.

Then August 22nd came, and I was off from Toronto to Edinburgh. My return ticket was for the day when the seminar was over, because I knew that after I start this process, there won't be any easy break time. The traveling was fairly straight forward. Landed in Edinburgh, took a train up to Abraoth, which is a small town 15 minute cab ride away from the Gutherie Castle built in the 14th century. Check in was 3pm, I got there around 10am. I stayed in a coffee shop and waited.

Around 2:30, I went into the bathroom in the coffee shop changed into my suit, and called a cab. The cab drove for about 15 minutes, I asked him what was the thing that I should bring home as a souvenir, and he mentioned smoked fish. Noted.

Once you get to the castle, it's gated, password and have to call. Then drive up to the main entrance. There, everyone had to sign a waiver, basically signing your life away during the seminar. Everyone gets a welcome package. We were then free to roam around the castle grounds before the reception. You can see the intro video here.

There were 3 houses besides the castle within the estate. 23 participants, each had a room, I had a roommate. First day I met a Doctor from Switzerland, he was a bit older. Most people were between 25 and 35. Youngest was 19 and oldest was 52. I went on a 1st of the daily run with the Doctor. Then it was reception, which you can see here. You could also see most of beginning, mid, and end portion of the daily "lectures".

Day starts at 7 with breakfast buffet, then Mr. P talks about his life stories and business stories from 8 to 1, then 12 to 5. Then homework and free time from 5 to 8. At 8, drinks and diner is served. The whole time, if you needed anything, you could just tell anyone working there, and they would take care of it.

First day was about fear, second day was about role models, 3rd day was about goal setting, from 4th and on, it was about leadership, building a team, and business. You can watch clips of the whole thing here.

From a content perspective, you would probably get more specific business knowledge about accounting and management and all of that kind of good stuff from a MBA degree. From a how it goes down in the trenches and the crazy shit that happens during a boardroom meeting, there is no better person that could teach the material.

Just a few freebies, there are a few steps to this process. All of them besides the last few can be done simultaneously. The first most important step is to find a mentor/chairman that have done what you want to do. After that, you would get a board together, 2 industry specialists, lawyer and accountant. These are none executive board members. You give everyone equity. Then you talk to the law firms and accounting firms into being part of your deal team. Then you go out and do roll-ups. Two industries: health care and telecommunications/internet. Easiest health care roll-ups is basically buying retirement homes. Because of the board, you would be able to obtain financing based on their track record. After buying the first one, look for the second deal. Refinance/over-finance, pay bonuses. With the help of the board, running the business and adding value becomes a lot easier. Then once the whole things is large enough, exit. It's the no money down house model but with businesses.

It's other people (OP), and other people's money (OPM). You give them enough equity in your dream, way higher than industry standard so they are motivated to grow the pie bigger. 100% of nothing is nothing, 1% of couple billion is a lot of millions.

I knew the big picture going into the seminar. Hearing it directly was completely different.

When asked about my experience and what I got out of it, I would say there are two things. One, I got my money's worth on the first day. I came to terms with the fact that I picked Actuarial Science because it gave me an excuse to be mediocre. This is not to say that Actuaries are mediocre, or the exam process isn't one of most demanding process of any credentials. To me, all I really had to do was stay in the program, graduate, pass some exams and find a job. Along the way, it was okay to fail at these exams, because everyone fails. It was okay to just find a job, because actuaries were really good and solid jobs. This gave me the cover up that I needed to just fuck around. Doing it in the wrong thing wastes time. Now it's time that I don't have to spend on what I picked for all the wrong reasons.

The second thing that made it worth it to me was seeing it. I remember during high school, I wanted to become a magician, and one day my mentor took me to a restaurant that had a close-up magician performing. He wasn't particularly awesome at the craft, but the restaurant had a poster of him, he was doing magic in public and making money.After seem this guy doing it, I thought to myself, if this half-ass magician can do it why can't I? That was all it took for me start cold calling and getting gigs.

Fast forward to the seminar, the Doctor came to the castle with the specific idea of making a drink that would help with malaria. He told me about his experience in Africa and how he contacted malaria 13 times. Everyone gets an hour with Mr. P. If you have no questions for him, he would just tell you to get out. The Doc's 1 on 1 was the day before mine. After his 1 on 1 we went for a run like usual, I asked him how he felt about the whole thing, what his experience was and if he had any tips for me. He just kept running for a while, kind of absent minded, then turned to me and told me to just be myself during my 1 on 1.

Next morning during breakfast, he turned to me and told me: "You know, I'm going to make 100 million dollars."

Then came my turn. Before the seminar, there's this long list of stuff that everyone participants had to fill out. Mr. P would then put the slides together and add and remove stuff that would be relevant for the attendees.

Keeping it short and confidential, he basically told me to focus on one and forget about the rest. Later on that day, during diner, I was sitting right across the Doc. We looked at each other, then burst out of laughing because we both knew.

To write more about my experience would undersell what it actually felt like. As there's no comparison having a guy who have done it give you all of the tools, stories and prepare you for super success telling you that you are capable of doing the same. The bonus was to have you live in his castle, feed you 3 course meals and have butlers cater to whatever you needed.

It was definitely one of the few life altering experiences that I have had in my life. This picture sums it up pretty nicely for my new life.

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