Leo, how have you done it?

[The Mystical Man]

Hi @Leo Gura,

I've been watching your videos for years now and I have been reading everything that you are posting on this forum yet I have never participated.

Today, I made the decision to change that. I'd like to ask for guidance if that is okay.

I have asked you for advice two years ago. That was in the comment section under this video:

Back then I was not into nonduality at all and I did not understand the importance of raising my consciousness.

I thought my life purpose is to make video games so the concepts that you shared in that video did not resonate with me and confused me. So I asked you for advice on how to deal with that because I knew that you used to be a professional game designer.

You said:

Quote

"The bottom line is this: games are terrible for the human psyche, but they are fun. Sorta like a greasy cheeseburger with extra mayo and double bacon with BBQ sauce. Keep in mind the reason you most likely gravitate towards games is because they are fun and easy and you're just going with what you know. So perhaps consider broadening your horizons."

You also told me to take the life purpose course…which was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Obviously, I was not very happy with your reply. So I kept working on my game projects.

But I never stopped watching your videos, although I was close to stopping due to the new vision for Actualized.org which did not resonate with me back then. The habit of watching your videos every Sunday was too strong and that's the only thing that made me keep watching them, even though I did not understand what the hell you were talking about.

Eventually, I started doing my own research, started becoming more open-minded, bought your booklist and started reading the books listed in the consciousness section, started learning from many other teachers, started having my first psychedelic experiences, started doing the techniques, and one day I finally realized:

"Oh my god, this is the most important thing that one could do."

I had some profound experiences and glimpses with and without psychedelics.

It took me two years to understand the importance of your advice. I finally broadened my horizons and took your life purpose course. (I sold my PS4 to afford it.)

Today, I know that I want to become a modern mystic. What could be more important than that? What could be more important than reaching the ultimate levels of consciousness?

For me, there is nothing else. But the thing is this:

The dream must go on.

It was really a painful thing to realize. To realize that I can't keep focusing on this. To realize that I have to go back. Go back where? To the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in order to fill some holes…

I realized that I had worked my way up way too fast thanks to your work and the comfort that comes with living at home with my parents (I'm 19-years-old and a "college student". There is no such thing as college in Germany but I guess it's the equivalent to it).

I know that I need to go back down and build a proper foundation. I know that because otherwise, it would not be very strategic. The freedom I have now will not stay for I will not be a student forever and I have no intention of staying with my parents forever either. I learned the importance of having an ultimate outcome from this video:

My ultimate outcome is to have a simple but independent lifestyle that gives me the ability to focus on what really matters. And what really matters is raising your consciousness. But no one pays you for sitting in darkness, meditating for months or years to wake up from the dream. So I realized that I need to get to a good place within the dream first before I can continue to try to wake up from it.

In other words, I learned the importance of financial freedom. I firmly believe that financial freedom is an important fundament to implement in your life.

I have always admired your lifestyle Leo and my goal is to design a similar lifestyle for myself.

I really loved the first videos in your LP course. It's more personal than your usual videos. I liked your stories and I could see a lot of similarities between you and me.

In one normal Actualized.org video - I do not remember which one it was - you mentioned that you were able to quit your 9 - 5 after five months of starting your internet marketing business.

Internet marketing is what I'm getting into lately. I'd like to create a passive income as it is described in this video:

One of your replies on this forum was this:

Quote

After years of strategically laying my groundwork I now have the freedom to not work for 10 years without any financial problems. That's what good strategy will yield. I could retire and go meditate for 1 year straight without any worries, come back, and still be richer than when I left. This situation did not happen by accident! I deliberately designed it this way because I realized a long time ago that freedom was the #1 variable to living the kind of life I envision. It's very hard to self-actualize when you are a wage slave.

I have actually saved that paragraph in my OneNote so it can serve as an inspiration and as a reminder.

My teenage years were not completely wasted. I started writing when I was 7. I thought I'm gonna become a novelist. I started making video games when I was 12. I thought I'm gonna become a game designer and eventually become a game director/writer. Then an internship revealed to me that this 9 - 5 thing is not for me and that I need to do my own thing. So at 14, I started getting into digital art. Particularly 3D-Art. I decided I'd have my own game company in order to keep my creative freedom and control.

Doing all these things allowed me to learn about work ethic, creating websites, content, project management, team management, being a producer and creator instead of being a consumer, and a lot of other things.

So I kept going in that direction until this whole nonduality thing happened. I outgrew a lot of my old interests or skipped many things that I need to go back to and properly implement it in my life.

That's when I realized that the video game company is the wrong battle to fight. This is a really powerful question from the strategic motherfucker video which helped me a lot:

Quote

"Will winning the battle get me closer to winning the war?"

My teenage years were about exploration. 

I want to make my early twenties about financial freedom.

And my thirties about hardcore nonduality.

It's similar to how Om Swami did it. Or how you did it.

I am willing to work 18 hours a day, every day even if it's not what I love doing.

I'd rather do that for a few years and get my financial freedom instead of a 9 - 5 for 50 years and never get to focus on reaching the highest levels of consciousness that a human being can reach.

I want to master the human experience holistically. Not in a "I just want enlightenment and nothing else matters" way.

Yes, it's the most important thing to master but there is still health, relationships, and money. 

Lately, I have been working on my mindset when it comes to money. I have never really cared about money. I care about Truth, art, beauty, consciousness, mastery & excellence.

So I had to learn to look at money from a different perspective and the books on your booklist regarding money and the book "The Millionaire Fastlane" helped a lot with that. It taught me that things that I care about are not profitable. 

You too said that a life purpose is usually not profitable and that passive income can enable one to follow one's life purpose.

As I have already mentioned I've been learning about internet marketing and all the different possibilities that exist out there.

I'm learning about copywriting, marketing, sales and I'm reading books like "Dotcom Secrets".

It's not easy to study this unconscious stuff once you have gone beyond that and found something deeper. I know that what I'm getting into is completely against everything you taught us in this Video:

But anything else would not be very strategic.

My question to you Leo is this: What have you been doing? You mentioned your internet marketing business often but never went into detail about it.

Did you promote other people's products through affiliate marketing? That's how it sounds like in the very first Actualized.org video where you talked about creating all the backlinks. Did you use ClickBank? ClickFunnels?

On Gamasutra, you also talked about having employees and customer services. Did you sell physical products?

E-Commerce? Dropshipping? Did you work for other businesses?

I know it sounds like I'm just trying to find the most lucrative, fastest, and easiest way to make as much money as possible. But that's not it.

I'm willing to work hard.

But I'm a little bit lost and scared of committing 100% before I have a proper understanding of what I'm getting myself into. And I do not want to commit only 99%.

I know what worked for you almost a decade ago would probably not work today. The internet has changed. Besides that, you are not interested in this kind of stuff anymore. That's totally understandable. I don't expect you to go into much detail about your "internet marketing days".

I'm not asking you to become my mentor, hold my hand, and lead me to my financial freedom.

I will have to walk this path alone.

But you as someone who has already been through this, and has already achieved financial freedom, and has designed an awesome lifestyle, do you think you can give advice and point out pitfalls to look out for and avoid?

The reason why I went into so much detail and told you about my background is because I really wanted you to understand my situation and where I'm coming from so that you can look at this from my perspective and hopefully give advice accordingly. And maybe because of fear as well…

It's the fear of spending money unwisely. I have not much and I don't want to lose everything on Facebook ads or invest in the wrong projects or courses.

If you choose to give me advice again, I will not repeat the same mistake. This time I will listen more carefully.

If you read all of this: Thank you!

If you choose to ignore this: Thank you, anyway. Your work has already impacted me in amazing ways and I'm grateful for that.

I hope to contribute to this forum from now on and add value.

PS: One last thing...don't you think it's funny that you quit working on BioShock Infinite and at Irrational Games only to become irrational and discover Infinity later on? I think that's awesome. Great events are often foreshadowed.

[Leo Gura]

I understand where you're at. I was in a similar place about 10 years ago when I started doing business.

It's not really important what my business was. Business is basically all the same: you look for new opportunities in the marketplace which are emerging, and you seize on them. It's not a good idea to copy others in business, since your success in biz depends very much on you innovating and finding new opportunities. You cannot do the things I did 10 years ago today. You need to find new opportunities. There are always tons of new biz opportunities emerging every year. But people get so preoccupied doing what everyone else is doing that they miss it. They overlook that simple point that business success is about leadership, not following the herd. Those who follow the herd in business ultimately fail.

The whole key to business is to do lots of research and be creative and original. You must connect new dots.

You can take various seminars, workshops, and video courses to learn the fundamentals of biz, sales, and marketing. That is very important. But then you must have the courage to go find your own unique niche. Business-in-a-box solutions do not work. If they did, every fool would be a millionaire. The whole point is that you cannot do that. You must bring something truly new to the table, which takes cleverness, which is rare.

Be very careful doing business purely for money. Find a way to align yourself with your life purpose as soon as humanly possible.

You'd be surprised! People actually can pay you to sit in darkness. Ever heard of Dark Room retreats? Someone's making money off that. You can literally earn money locking people in a dark room as long as you know how to convince them its good for them

The best advice I can give to entrepreneurs is: learn the theory of biz & marketing and then do tons of research. If you do enough research, you will eventually stumble upon your niche.

P.S. The highest income I ever earned came AFTER I fully aligned myself with my life purpose, not when I was chasing money.

P.P.S. I have a video about Small Business advice: https://www.actualized.org/articles/the-psychology-of-small-business-success

Starting a business will be the one of the hardest things you'll do in your life. But the rewards more than compensate for it. Business is not for everyone. To succeed in business you must be a bit of a wolf and you must have ambition.

[The Mystical Man]

Thank you very much, Leo. 

I'll make sure that I implement your advice properly and I'll watch that video. I can't believe I haven't watched that one yet. 

I have never seen myself as a businessman. I've never liked selling. I just wanted to create but I didn't care too much about the marketing side of it. I know that needs to change.

And no, it's not going to be easy at all. I know that a very scary and painful time is in front of me. 

But I have strong reasons for why I'm doing this and I'm sure they'll get me through this. 

Edited August 23, 2018 by The Mystical Man

[Leo Gura]

31 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

I have never seen myself as a businessman. I've never liked selling. I just wanted to create but I didn't care too much about the marketing side of it.

Yeah... I thought that way too. I still basically feel that way. But life also forced me to learn what is necessary for survival.

Business is a survival activity. It's the modern-day equivalent of hunting in the forest for squirrels. Squirrels are smart and you have to learn how to outsmart them or you will go hungry.

Just don't go using your skills towards devilish ends. Do it in service of your art, in service of raising consciousness.

[Vladimir]

17 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah... I thought that way too. I still basically feel that way. But life also forced me to learn what is necessary for survival.

Business is a survival activity. It's the modern-day equivalent of hunting in the forest for squirrels. Squirrels are smart and you have to learn how to outsmart them or you will go hungry.

Just don't go using your skills towards devilish ends. Do it in service of your art, in service of raising consciousness.

Leo, are my videos evil? - https://www.youtube.com/c/CleverTechieTube

[The Mystical Man]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Just don't go using your skills towards devilish ends. Do it in service of your art, in service of raising consciousness.

 

Yes, that's important. And I think that's why it's good that I stumbled upon Enlightenment before starting a business. That one glimpse that I had - even though it was not a full-blown awakening - has changed me forever.

But unfortunately, my consciousness has started contracting itself again since I have started learning more about Business & Marketing and doing less spiritual purification. 

[d0ornokey]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You can take various seminars, workshops, and video courses to learn the fundamentals of biz, sales, and marketing. That is very important. But then you must have the courage to go find your own unique niche. Business-in-a-box solutions do not work. If they did, every fool would be a millionaire. The whole point is that you cannot do that. You must bring something truly new to the table, which takes cleverness, which is rare.

 

Hmm what do you mean by this?

Like you can't make copy-cat businesses? I can assure you that there are tons of copy-cat models that work. Do you mean by level of potential/ success rate? 

[Leo Gura]

29 minutes ago, d0ornokey said:

Hmm what do you mean by this?

Like you can't make copy-cat businesses? I can assure you that there are tons of copy-cat models that work. Do you mean by level of potential/ success rate? 

You can make a copy-cat business but it's a bad strategy. It will be hard to market and eventually you will go out of business unless you bring something new to the table.

A Seth Godin says, you must create a Purple Cow.

The bigger picture of business that people fail to see is that marketplaces are constantly evolving and self-optimizing. If you offer something of genuine value, then you will be optimized out of the marketplace by evolutionary forces.

You cannot go copy Bill Gates or Elon Musk. You must bring something new to the table.

Practically what this means is, you cannot create a good business using a cookie-cutter business-in-a-box plan. This is why get-rich-quick-schemes and multi-level-marketing schemes fail. What you cannot do is follow a 1-2-3 step formula for creating wealth, because if you could, everyone could do it, but that cannot happen by definition because wealth depends on a disparity between you and other people in society. So you must offer more genuine value than other people offer. You must differentiate yourself from the poor and maintain that differentiation.

I say this specifically because there are a lot of tempting business-in-a-box plans out there. But the ones who get rich off those are the ones selling the plans, not the ones buying the plans.

No one can sell you a plan for how to create something like Actualized.org, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Uber, Ebay, Tesla, Amazon, SpaceX, etc. Because the plan itself is the whole value of the company. And the plan is always time-sensitive. You cannot create another Amazon today. That ship has sailed.

The more original your plan, the more money you stand to make, the greater your competitive advantage.

Of course you can still study all these great companies and learn lessons and gain inspiration for building your own.

[Lynnel]

@Leo Gura

About this.

After listening to the Orange spiral dynamics video for the 10th time I understood that sucess as a writer for itself would be extremely shallow. 

But there is still a bussiness side to it and the issue with novels is well... if you view it as a product the only room for differentiation is the content itself. I mean the reader experience is very vague because every reader is very different. So Blue ocean approaches and Ux approaches fall short because you can't even understand what is happening in the market. They also fail because if you write for the market which evolves and changes every second you will most likely produce inauthentic garbage which will sell a bit and that's it.

I'm thus thinking about something along the line staying true to my heart and writing about what truly matters to me (which is a issue in itself because I tend to use that to bitch and moan and complain and spread unhealthy orange values) AND at the same time providing the best reader experience I can with my skills based on this content which I feel is the truest to me.

But isn't everyone trying to do that ?

Also it's still very abstract compared to some other strategies in classic bussiness which if applied to books would look  along the lines of  : those 3 tropes are a trend, so we're gonna design a book with vampires and those three trends which has never been done then add some vampire witches, lesbian sex and long dialogue about prisoner health issues.

And also how do I know for instance  what is the most true "thing" for myself ? What if it's actually  low consciousness and 5 years from now I would cringe while reading my own books ? (Rhetoric questions for myself I believe)

 

[Staples]

@Lynnel If you can't look back and cringe, you're not evolving  Cringe is a blessing. 

Edited August 23, 2018 by Staples

[Strikr]

the shift is only in the mind, I worked like "hell" 14 hours a day on multiple stimulant/ ( weed, ritalin, thea )

after taking 4 step back with some psyche, I understand now why I couldn't start my business, even if my skill is "high" now.

this makes me realise that I dig so much that I wasn't seeing the light anymore ( kind of the idea ) ( too much work ) ( I m  on computer ) )

I wasn't focus that much on monney, but in my case, this is a bit of a problem aswell.

There is tons of "work" to do, on many aspect, not only the thing you want to buss

Some musician around me, are so much into monney, that their music has no soul, they just push and push on people or create value in their social relationship to them, they are little guru.

 

reality is : there is almost no shortcut in "making it" in fact the road is all there is ( you'll see.. )

 it's knowledge, self reflection, and work on taking the good road for yourself. But dreaming is one thing, you should act the music inside you.

 

that's exactly like leo told, there is no "recipe" to success ( what is success anyway ) do you reflect that you really want to be rich ? what's for ? fuck hookers and then end your life because you never had this fulfilling meaning inside you, you should create a powerful meaning for your entire life, it's better than monney ( I m not sayin monney is bad or good, it depend a lot, like many things ) Monney can bliss you, or she can makes you miserable. Do not start like me to feel ( like I was 2 years ago ) that you're in a bad position because you're not where you want to be. ( this is a mindtrap to "anxiety" )

the mind take action, so take care of it.

Why do you think "rich people" can still commit the worst for their life even if from our perspective they are rich, successful and then, should be happy. doesn't work like this.. it's a kid dream.

 

I m not sayin becoming rich isn't a good goal. For instance, me as a creator, I want to be billionnaire. Not for fuck hookers all days or doing coke, but only to create something greater than myself for the whole community.

But for being a part of this, I need to take the egocentrical road of my own business. To get the "trust" of people.

the hard thing will be to sustain on the road, you'll see the hardest isn't the physical work at all, it's really more about the mind ( and of course you should work/effort ) learn, practice, self reflect, integrate knwoledge that align with your "life purpose".

You should create something of value for you, and then share it with the world ( this is only my view, do as you want )

yes there is a recipe, the one you'll write for yourself. it's more easy to read it, than "get it" I m still in the process of getting it. As we will for ever.

 

Even starting with a book as simple as Napoleon Hill could be a good thing when you don't know anything about "mindset business" this was just a part of my road, but I m not sayin this a great book, it depend where you are, and what you can "believe" right now.

 

Edited August 23, 2018 by Strikr

[ExodiaGearCEO]

@The Mystical Man hey, I like the drive and the willing to learn. If you ever want to learn how to sell on amazon fba and make passive income. I’ll be happy to share my tips and advice

[Moreira]

There are genuinely people who live in minimalism like Tom Oar in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and dont need TV and fancy stuff.

[Nahm]

@The Mystical Man You’re amazing dude. 19? Gtfo.

@Leo Gura ??

[Giancarlo]

@The Mystical Man I'm in the same boat as you. Love this philosophical stuff, but 18 years old in college with no income and very confused as to how to start a business. 

I do find that all the deep inner work from Actualized.org has definitely helped keep my emotions under control. I just wish there were more reliable resources on how exactly to start a business (like the 4HWW, which is somewhat outdated sadly).

PS Where in Germany are you? I'm from Strasbourg, which is why I ask

 

[Strikr]

On 23/08/2018 at 3:35 AM, Leo Gura said:

Yeah... I thought that way too. I still basically feel that way. But life also forced me to learn what is necessary for survival.

Business is a survival activity. It's the modern-day equivalent of hunting in the forest for squirrels. Squirrels are smart and you have to learn how to outsmart them or you will go hungry.

Just don't go using your skills towards devilish ends. Do it in service of your art, in service of raising consciousness.

✓ I got that too. 

But it has always been with me since I m . Doesn't understand why I was an outcast mind. I wanted truth in people and in all. Didn't understand why people was thinking the way they are.

By doing and watch my self I learn and push the effort. I lean toward lot of roads

I still manipulate maya. But maya Always manipulated me. 

For me the funny thing is : this work created an 'ego' who wasn't true me.. the true me come back. What I ve Always be. Nothing change and everything change.

What I m gonna do ?

Art

We share the same eyes different roads.

You only get one pure truth out of many