Dhar Mann: Not Where You Want to Be Yet? (Follow THIS 5-Step Framework to Stop Overthinking and Finally Take Action)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Failure is not the opposite of success. That is actually
a part of success.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
You didn't go to business school, you didn't have a business,
you're inheriting, and you didn't have someone say Da, here's
a million dollars, go and start a business. Where did
you learn business gift?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
There's a five step process that if you follow, I
promise you you will be successful.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
come to become happier, healthier and most healed. Today's guest
is one of my dearest friends, someone's I've known for
quite a few years now, and I can't believe this
is his first time on the podcast. Dar Man is
one of the most watched digital storytellers in the world,
reaching billions with videos that turn simple stories into powerful

(00:51):
life lessons. Da has achieved so much success in his
career has been named as one of the biggest creators
by Forbes. Please wellcome to the show, my dear friend
and Insane creator, dah Man.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
It is great to have you here. It's such an honor. Jay,
I really appreciate It's been a long time coming, and
I'm so glad that it's happening now because we've gotten
what seven eight years of building this amazing friendship together.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
One of the things I knew when I started my
career was that I never wanted to be lonely on
the journey. And I feel like there are certain people
and we have a lot of mutual friends that we've
all connected with that we're all in the industry. We
all want to see each other when, we want to
support each other. We want to give each other advice
and guidance and give each other insights where and when

(01:37):
we can. And really grateful to you for as a
friend as well. Is that watching your success which we
will dive into today, watching your story unfold, and the
incredible businesses you've built we'll get into today. Dar. I
want to start off with the question because I know
a little bit about you. You've told me your story
and I want to dive into it for the audience.
Tell me about a childhood memory that you have that

(01:59):
defines you today.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
You know what's interesting is that as I think back
upon my childhood, I actually can't remember a lot of it.
As I look back now as an adult, I realize
that's because I created this emotional detachment because of all
the struggles and pain that I went through as a kid.
It was a tough childhood. I grew up around, you know,

(02:23):
constant yelling and arguing and violence that I try to
block a lot of it out. And it's hard because
as a child, so much of your perspective in life
is shaped by your parents. Right as a child, you
think that whatever your parents tell you is the truth,
is you know, how you're supposed to see the world.

(02:45):
And then it's not until you get older that can
you actually start to realize that my parents are also
flawed human beings, that they don't always know what's right
and what's wrong. You know, my parents had just come
from India to America and they came with six dollars
in their pocket. My dad, you know, didn't even get

(03:07):
finished like an equivalent of a high school education, so
he was just trying to figure everything out in life
in America, in this world where they didn't even speak English,
and they made a lot of mistakes in the process.
And that's the toughest thing as a child, when, especially
when you grow up thinking that your parents are your
hero to have to now all of a sudden start
to see, you know, all of the mistakes that they

(03:29):
made and took a long time for me to have
to try to unlearn some of the things that I
was taught and also to try to heal from them.
But at the same time, I'm so grateful for the
tough childhood that I had because now I have the
opportunity as a father to show up for my daughters

(03:53):
in a way, to be the parent that I never
had as a child. And that means so much me
because my goal as a parent is not to try
to be perfect. There's no such thing as a perfect parent.
But my goal is to give them so much love
and support that my daughters don't have to spend their

(04:14):
adult life trying to overcome the traumas that they received
as children. But you know, I'm just at a place
in my life where I believe that everything that happens
is for a reason, and I try to see the
positive from it.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
It's super powerful to hear that, to think about how
you're parenting differently because of how you were parented, And
I know that when you say that, we actually share
a lot, and we've had dinners where we've talked about this.
We share a lot of history and how we were
raised and what we came up through and of course
both of us are Indian, although you grew up in
the States and I grew up in London. I've always

(04:46):
joked that I had three options growing up, which was
to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. What
did you think you were going to be or what
did you expect from yourself when you were growing up
as a young man.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I was growing up, I just wanted to be accepted.
I just wanted to fit in. I just wanted to
find a community. So when I was eight years old,
I actually had a turbin and as you can imagine
as being like the only Indian at my elementary school
wearing a turbine, I was often made fun of. I
was bullied. It wasn't in like today's environment where there's

(05:22):
a lot more awareness. I'm not saying that doesn't happen today,
but it was a really hard time, and so I
grew up just feeling like I never fit into the
American community. But at the same time, if you're Indian
and you follow the Sikh faith, or you know any
sort of religion, you know that there's different aspects or

(05:42):
there's different levels of people that follow the faith. And
so the time that I would be in an American school,
I had never felt like I quite fit in. But
also the opposite happened when I would go to our
temple on Sundays because I may not be as religious,
or I didn't wear a certain amount of gard because
I didn't pray as many times in a day. I

(06:04):
also felt like I wasn't good enough for that community.
So for a long time my life, I just felt
like I was too Indian for the Americans, and I
was too American for the Indians. So I fell in
some place in the middle. I remember spending a lot
of high school just trying to find people that I
could have lunch with every day. That was my biggest

(06:24):
anxiety is I didn't want to have lunch alone, and
my school was very racially segregated, so you know, everyone
from each culture kind of ate at their own table,
and I just found myself as this outcast, and so
there were a lot of days that I would eat
lunch inside of the bathroom because I didn't want anyone
to know that I had no one to sit with.

(06:46):
And as I got to my junior and senior years,
I actually would start having lunch with my teachers because
I connected with them more. I for a long time
chased that feeling of belonging and feeling of community that
I never quite got. And again just kind of looking
back as to how I look back in my life
and realize that everything happens for a reason now today,

(07:09):
because I was seeking to build that community and didn't
have one, I was able to build one of the
largest communities in the world of other people that also
felt like they didn't really belong at some time in
their life.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, it's incredible how the stories you tell now are
so wired by the messaging of what you experienced. Even
if it may not be just the South Asian American story,
you're appealing to so many young people around the world
who are feeling othered, who are feeling like they don't belong,
who are feeling like they're bullied, who are feeling like

(07:44):
they don't connect, they don't know where they fit in.
And it really is this incredible pain to purpose story
which sounds cliche, but when you actually hear your story back,
you're like, oh, wow, no, that's true. Like you're literally
telling stories that are helping people who are going through
what you were going through all those years ago. When
was the first time you actually felt in your whole

(08:05):
life that you did belong. I wonder if you even
feel that now.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Very recently, I have started to feel like I belong.
You know, there's different aspects of belonging. Right first is
sort of on the professional side of things, as a creator,
as an entrepreneur and being successful. And am very grateful
to have received a certain level of validation that has
come from my consistency in doing things that have made

(08:30):
me feel like, Okay, I belong. As much as I
could try to convince myself of that before, I would
never have been able to until I reached a certain
level of success objectively, And I think that's important for
anyone that's like struggling with self confidence. What I would
say is the repetition and the consistency, and eventually the

(08:51):
success follows. That's when you start to build that self
confidence and that continues to propel as you go further
into what you do. Right, like, today, you have interviewed
the biggest guest, So whoever, I don't even know which
is the biggest celebrity that you've not interviewed. Maybe Beyonce
the Rock. I don't know if you've interviewed these guests,
yet I'm sure they're coming. You would not be nervous

(09:13):
about that because you've already put in all these repetitions
right and have interviewed all these other guests and built
that self confidence in yourself. And so I would say professionally,
I have felt more recently like I've belonged because of
the practice and the effort, and that all comes from

(09:33):
all the failures of like trying to figure it out.
But I would say the other part of belonging, and
the more important one that I realize now as I
gain into my forties and my perspective has changed, especially
as a father, is just realizing that you actually don't
have to belong. You know, we're actually born to stand out,

(09:55):
and the people that really support you and love you,
they're going to be there no matter what. And so
what I always remember is if I have nobody else
in this world, I have my daughters, and as long
as I have a tight relationship with them, and I'm
showing up to be the father that I want to be,
or always feel like I belong.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, such a great answer. What was the first business
you ever started?

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Oh? My god?

Speaker 2 (10:20):
And not even like a not even it may not
even be an official business. I mean, like, what was
your first hustle? Because I think about it, like I
used to buy jackets of the streetwear brands from outside
of England and then sell them to people in England,
and so I'd order like aver X jackets and shot jackets.
These were brands that I remember people in my area

(10:41):
loved having, and I'd always find them early and then
sell them. When I was doing this when I was
like fifteen years old at school. Yeah, and that was
like my first kind of entrepreneurial venture. I was obviously
I was delivering papers before that. What was your first job?

Speaker 1 (10:55):
What was your first Well, you had a lot more
foresight than I did. Mine wasn't as calculated. I probably
started my first business venture quote unquote when I was
in fifth grade ten years old, and I would just
set up little stands where I would sell baseball cards,
so you know, i'd make like a couple bucks. I've
done everything from like selling lemonade to selling I don't

(11:16):
know if you remember when the CD burners came out
and it was really popular to be able to now
have custom soundtracks on CDs. So I was the guy
because a lot of people couldn't afford CD burners. So
I was a guy that for ten bucks, you could say,
like what your favorite songs were, I'd put him on
a CD. And I'd even learn how to like print

(11:37):
custom artwork and I'd put it like on the sleeve
so you could have this like really cool jewel case.
And then as I got older, you know, in college,
I would say, like my first real business was I
was trying to find a place to live. And at
that time, this is pre Craigslist, this is pre you know,
all the tools that exist today online, and so the
only way to find places to live was like you'd

(11:59):
have to go to the local bulletin boards. And it
was really hard because bulletin boards were messy. Your flyers
would get taken down, like a lot of times, they
just weren't maintained properly. So at a certain point, I
found a two bedroom apartment and I needed a roommate.
I didn't know anyone that I was looking for an apartment,
so I decided that I was going to put flyers

(12:21):
all around these bulletin boards. I woke up super early.
There was probably like thirty forty bulletin boards all around campus.
I posted these flyers and then I went home showered,
came back like later in the day as a student,
and I realized half my flyers were like torn down,
half of them were just like they fell off the
bulletin board. I was like, man, this is a real

(12:41):
struggle trying to be able to reach people. So I
started this business called Davis Marketing Services, where basically I
would help businesses that were trying to reach students post
flyers on bulletin boards, and that continued to evolve. I
set up like a sales team that was commissioned only.
I worked with a local sorority that would do my

(13:02):
distribution that would go and like post all the flyers.
I hired a graphic designer that would create really cool art,
and I started getting clients like apartment buildings that would say, hey,
help us fill our housing. And I started making money
that way. You know, I probably had like a five
person team by the time I was like nineteen years
old or so, which was cool. And then after that

(13:23):
I got into real estate and I started what now
is sort of known is like a boiler room or
like a call center, and I probably at the peak
of it had like forty students working for me, where
they would just call people and ask if they were
interested in refinancing their home or selling their home. I
became a real estate broker pretty early on, and so

(13:45):
that was like at the peak, right before the two
thousand and eight real estate crash. I got the front
page of like our student newspaper highlighting like the business
that I built. We got to three offices, and yeah,
it was pretty cool. I even bought like a Lamborghini.
When I was twenty one years old, I bought two
houses as investment properties. The hard part about that is

(14:07):
life is going to give you certain levels of validation
even if you're on the wrong path. Right, even if
I'm doing things for the wrong intentions, success could still
blind you because you're receiving a certain level of validation.
Maybe you're receiving a certain amount of money, or people
that are around you, whether they're good influencers or not,
or saying, hey, great job, and they're all sort of

(14:28):
benefiting from what is happening anyway. But ultimately, if you
do things for the wrong reasons, it's never going to
work out. And I had to learn that the hard
way multiple times in my life. So I spent a
lot of my life in my late teens early twenties
just misdirected, trying to chase money over meeting, and that
led me to a lot of bad short term decisions

(14:51):
that ultimately I had to come later in life to
realize weren't the right way of doing things. And that's
why I'm such a believer in second chances, in self growth.
That's why I started my whole studio to say that
you can make mistakes, you can get everything wrong in life,

(15:12):
hit rock bottom, and completely change your life and become
someone entirely new. That's what I did with my life,
and that's what I try to inspire others and knowing
that they can also do the same.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
You didn't go to business school, you didn't have a business.
You're inheriting from your family, and you didn't have someone say, doh,
here's a million dollars, go and start a business. Where
did you learn business skills?

Speaker 1 (15:36):
I was always just really motivated with a lot of
big dreams, and I was never scared to try and
fail because what I realized is I was working retail,
like in my late teen years, Like my very first
job was at Gap and then I worked at Macy's
for a little bit, and when I was thinking about
starting my own business, I just realized, like, hey, okay,

(15:57):
what if it doesn't work out? What if you fail? Okay,
then that means you just go on and get a job,
just like everybody else, trial by failure. Right, how did
you become a great public speaker? It kind of goes
back to our conversation that you had to probably mess
up a lot of times on stage to be able
to have the confidence that you have. Right, how does

(16:18):
anyone become a great athlete? You miss a lot of
shots before you actually score. The hard part about business
is let's say in baseball, you hit one out of
three balls and get on base, you're an all star player.
But in business, right, it feels like so much pressure
if you lose, or your business fails, or your idea

(16:40):
doesn't work out, because we're worried about everybody's judgment on us,
we're worrying about failing in public. But the thing is is,
even if you fail nine times in a row and
you succeed that tenth time, the thing that people are
going to remember you for is that tenth time that
you actually succeed.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
It what would you say to someone who says, I'm
scared I'm going to put out a video that's cringe.

(17:23):
I'm scared that I'm not going to have any customers
for my business. I'm scared that no one's going to
buy my product. I'm scared I'm going to fail.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
You know, when I think back about putting out my
first video, I had those same thoughts of self doubt.
And keep in mind, I started putting out content in
my thirties. A lot of times, you know, people that
are a little bit older might think, oh, I missed
my window, because I see a lot of creators that
are teens or in their early twenties.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
I didn't start my journey until my mid thirties, and
when I was recording my very first video, I was stuck,
you know, feeling that level of paralysis where, hey, what
are people going to think? What if people laugh at me?
What if no one watches the videos? And what got
me over that hurdle was remembering that even if one

(18:15):
person watched my videos and it made a difference, a
positive impact in their life, then that's a reason for
me to keep going. And I put out that video
for that one person and It was also a good
thing I had that realization because there was probably only
that one person that was watching my videos in the beginning,

(18:36):
and it was my mother in law. Like Laura's mom
was so good at like liking and sharing my videos
to all of her network, and for a long time,
you know, I wasn't getting any views. Then I kept
at it, right, I kept switching formats. My whole content
was about not giving up after failure, because I was
somebody who just found myself having failed so many times

(19:00):
in my life that I wanted to inspire people that
even if you have failed, you can keep going. So
as my content wasn't taken off the way that I
wanted to, as it was failing, I wanted to give
up myself, but because my messaging was to not give up,
I had to keep going. That inadvertently became my own motivation,
and so I kept trying new formats, news types of stories.

(19:22):
Eventually I landed on asking friends and family members to
be actors and videos. Everything was shot in my small
little studio apartment on iPhones, and one of the very
first videos that ended up going viral was a video
that honored housewives. Because I realized that Housewives, especially at

(19:43):
that time, there was not a lot of content that
made it obvious as to how hard it is to
be a stay at home mom, And so I created
the storyline about a mom who has this to do list,
and she wakes up in the morning, she has to
get her kid ready, she has to get herself ready,
She makes lunch, she takes her kid to school, she

(20:04):
comes back, she cleans the entire place. She's doing all
this work, and then she's making her husband's favorite lunch
for when he comes back. And right before he comes home,
the child makes a complete mess out of the house
once again. So the husband comes home and he looks
around and he's clearly upset. And the wife goes like,
what's wrong, honey? Do you not like it? I made

(20:25):
your favorite dish? And he goes, I like it, but
what did you do all day? Were you just sitting
around doing nothing? And you could tell she was completely
heartbroken by that response, and she walks off in tears.
And so the husband is upset and you know, feels
like his wife doesn't appreciate him because of his hard

(20:47):
work and he's the only one doing hard work. He
goes and he finds the notebook of her to do
list and sees all the different things that she had
to do that day, and at the very end, it
was make dinner for the person that I love. And
he instantly felt this guilt realizing how much she actually did,

(21:09):
but he didn't see it. And what was so special
about that video?

Speaker 2 (21:14):
For me?

Speaker 1 (21:14):
It was the very first one to ever go viral.
But what was so special was not just the amount
of us. Yes, that video went on to get two
hundred and fifty million views, but what was more important
to me were the comments. There were so many women
that said this video helped me feel seen. This video

(21:36):
helped me feel like being a housewife or a stay
at home mom is appreciated. And on the flip of it,
there were so many husbands in the comment saying, Wow,
I decided to bring my wife flowers today to let
her know how much she's appreciated. I'm going to start
to tell her how much I love her, and I

(21:56):
see the hard work that she's doing. So I started
seeing the actual change that happened in the world. So
what I would say is, if you are looking to
create content, if you are looking to start a business,
if you're looking to do anything that is worthwhile. Start
with your why, start with your purpose, and if your

(22:18):
purpose is to try to help people, which I hope
it is, as you and I can both relate to.
No one wants to start something to make the world
a worse place, right, We all want to make the
world a better place because of what we have contributed
to it. Then just remember, even if one person is
able to be better off because of what you have done,

(22:40):
then it's worthwhile pursuing. My very first comment on a
video do you know what it was? It was one
of my quote unquote friends that said, who do you
think you are? Tony Robbins? And that hurts so bad
because I was like, oh my gosh, who do I
think I am? But then I also realized that that
video is not for him.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
That's such a great story, man. I love the reframe
of putting yourself out there, being cringey, being awkward, being
uncomfortable because it may help one person. I love that
reframe because one of my friends recently started making food
content and she was telling me she was like, oh gosh,
anytime I put out a video, I just feel so

(23:20):
awkward and cringe. But the thing that keeps her going
is someone who messages her and says, I made your
recipe for my daughter tonight and she loved it, or
like I made this for my husband tonight or my
wife tonight and they loved it. That is what keeps
us going. And I think when you get lost in
the views and the numbers and the digits, you lose
that love. And I think that happens even in the
astronomical numbers. We've both experienced insane numbers. And if you

(23:45):
don't look at the comments with those insane numbers, you
stop being fulfilled because the numbers don't last for that long.
Like they can eventually get you can get used to
them as well. But it's that comment, it's that dm
that makes all the difference. If people start making something
like that. Now, talk to me about what makes the shift.
Where like, okay, you were putting it out. It was

(24:06):
making one person happy, your mother in law. And that
video you just told me about was your personal story
with Laura where you were ungrateful to her. Right, That's
what it was.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
I'll get that later. Her to do list all these things.
This was at a time where she was not a
mom yet.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Okay, okay, yeah, but talk to me about the difference
between I'm making videos it's making one person happy, I'm
doing it for the right reason. I'm doing it for
a mission. But hey, I need to get better at this,
Like I need to understand how to connect with more people,
because if I'm going to make this my livelihood and
actually have a team, I know you have a huge team.
You have incredible studios. Now, Like, what it's grown to

(24:47):
is a real machine, and I think this is something
I want to make people aware of that you can
do what you love, but if you want it to
last and you want it to sustain and you want
it to grow, it is going to have to become
more effective, organized, and machine like to some degree. Talk
to me about how you tested and what you did
as a business person in order to go from I

(25:08):
want to make a difference in the world. One person
is happy, but actually we need to reach more people
if I'm going to make this real.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
There's a five step process that anyone who's looking to
be a successful creator or even to own a business
or being an entrepreneur that if you follow this five
step process, I promise you you will be successful. To
make it on brand, right I came up with an
acronym as to what this five step process is. So

(25:36):
the five step process is called heart h e a RT.
Step one is h honor your story. You can easily
follow trends, but instead tell your truth. We were talking
about this earlier that there are so many people that

(26:00):
want to be creators out there. There are so many
businesses out there. It could feel overwhelming. If you have
a goal right now, that's probably in the back of
your mind. There's already so many people. How am I
going to stand out? But there is only one you.
There is only one person that has lived the life
that you have lived and is able to tell your story.

(26:23):
So start by honoring your story. And I'll tell you
a quick example. There is this friend that I have.
She's from Columbia and she has this thick accent. She's
always wanted to be in media, and so when she
came to America, she was working as a news broadcaster,
but she would be given a hard time by the

(26:45):
producer because the producer would say, you're not pronouncing certain
words right, That's not how it's said, and would constantly
make her feel insecure and criticize her because of her accent. Eventually,
she got fired from that job because of her accent.
So she decided, instead of giving up on her dream

(27:07):
of becoming a content creator, that she wasn't going to
let any producer control her destiny. So she decides to
start a YouTube channel, and naturally, she just got fired
from her job. She's insecure about her accent, she's trying
to sound more American right because of that, But she's
putting out videos and she's speaking in her authentic voice,

(27:31):
creating whatever the type of content that she was creating.
And ironically, the reason that her content succeeded is because
of her accent. There were so many people that also
had an accent that looked at that and said, I
can relate to this person because they sound like me.

(27:52):
So take the thing that makes you unique and make
that your superpower.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Let's talk about that one for a second, because I
really do like that one. And I think that's why
I've noticed, especially in short form content, the incredible rise
in people just sitting in their car. It's so intimate
and personal and you're so in someone's life, and I've
heard people just ramble like sometimes someone just rambling, Like
I think there's a lot to be said for people
are like, I'm not a good public speaker, I'm not

(28:20):
well spoken. Some of my favorite videos are just wanting
someone vent in the car because it just feels so
real and I feel like I'm in the car with
you and I'm feel like i'm your friend. And then
there are some people who are more polished, who are
more clean about what they want to say, are more
clear about what they want to say, And I think
I love the part of honoring your story and who
you are and where you come from, because that's all

(28:42):
you have anyway, Like you can't like she couldn't change
her accent, this person can't change where they live or
what they're doing. You are going to have to put
yourself out there. And I love the idea of just
being really clear about not thinking you have to be
more or less polished, more or less professional. Some people
I love because they're not professional and how they put
out videos at all. Yeah, And there are some people

(29:04):
I love because they're so professional. And then there's some
people who I love because they're really fashionable. And there
are some people I love because they don't care. And
it's like that is what's so fascinating about The point
you're making is that we don't all follow one type
of person. You might follow someone who's just always put together,
and then you love following someone who's always a mess.
It's not like this. It's not like there's one person

(29:26):
in the world that everyone thinks we should all follow
and that we don't want to follow other people who
do it differently.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
It's the hardest thing in the world to actually believe
this and take a chance on this. But the things
that you are most insecure about are actually what makes
you the most relatable and makes you the easiest to
connect with others. Your greatest struggle is actually your greatest superpower.

(29:54):
And I'll give another example because we both have a
mutual friend, Jamie Kernlima, the founder of it Cosmetics. She
started her career also in media, and she was always
ashamed or made to feel bad about herself because of
different skin issues that she had yea, she had rosesha

(30:15):
and she can never find a product in the marketplace
that actually worked for her, so eventually she decided to
create her own product. She turned her biggest struggle into
her biggest superpower and eventually sold her brand to Loreal
for one billion dollars. So think about those areas in

(30:36):
your life that you feel you're actually trying to hide from,
and those actually might be the things that take you
to success and grow you into having the biggest audience
of people that are experiencing something very similar to what
you're going through.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
I love that or what's e.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
The second step is e earn your audience's trust. It's
easy to get somebody to watch a video one time,
but if you're going to build a sustainable career as
a creator, you have to get them to keep coming back.
And how are they going to keep coming back is
if they trust you. And the only way to get
your audience to trust you is if you know who

(31:18):
your audience is. What are they like, what do they feel,
what drives them emotionally? What do they connect with? What
are things that they're struggling. If you help your audience
become seen, they'll want to come back and watch your
videos over and over again. So the number one comment
that I get with our stories because we tell stories

(31:39):
that have very diverse characters. This was in a time
where Hollywood traditionally has been mainly white, and when I
started creating content, I created content with people in the
videos that look just like me. I mean, I'm Indian,
my wife is Hispanic. Our team is very diverse. So
those are the types of people that we put in
our videos, and it represented all types of people, and

(32:01):
all the storylines from the beginning came from my own
life experience of failure. And because other people could relate
to what I had been through or experience similar types
of hardships, they said, I see myself in your content,
and that's what was able to connect with them. And
so similarly, we were just talking about this actually before

(32:23):
we started the podcast. You have so many people that
want to come on your podcast, and sure, maybe you
know it's going to get a lot of use because
they might be a controversial person. And as we know
in today's environment, if you say things that are controversial,
you'll probably get a lot of use. But you made
the decision that your platform, your brand, your mission stands

(32:47):
for something. It's who you are. So you have made
certain decisions to not platform someone that might have gotten
you a lot of short term success, but because you
believe in your long term success and more importantly, because
you wouldn't ever want to disappoint your audience. So everything
you do, you need to think about earning your audience's

(33:09):
trust if you want to build a sustainable career as
a creator.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
What do people do when they feel like everyone's watching
and then now no one's watching, and everyone's watching and
no one's watching Like you almost feel like you're trying
to earn your audience's trust. You thought they'd be interested
in this, but now they're not, and you're feeling disheartened
by the fact that, God, the last video got like
a million views. This video got like ten thousand views.
The next video or let's not even talk about that astronomical.

(33:36):
My first video got a thousand likes. I felt really good.
My second video got a hundred likes. What do you
do when you feel like it's flip flopping? What are
you doing wrong? What are you not understanding?

Speaker 1 (33:45):
I think when it comes to pivoting right in business,
in life, there's going to be a lot of times
where something is working and it no longer is. So
how do you know when is the right time to
actually switch your strategy? Because what is the common advice?
Don't give up, keep going. Guess what, I peddle this
advice too, But there is a point in time, Hey,

(34:09):
you might want to go do something else. And there's
three reasons I would say that you ever want to pivot.
Number one is when your inner goals no longer align
with the outer outcome. And what I mean by that
is your purpose is no longer aligned with what you're

(34:31):
doing on a daily basis, And a lot of times
we might feel that when you're trying to become successful
and it's not working, that's when you probably need to pivot.
I know just as many people that are actually very
successful at something, but they're successful at doing something that

(34:52):
no longer serves their mission or fulfills their why. And
that's the hardest thing in the world to take something
that is already successful and decide that I'm no longer
going to do this because it no longer aligns with
who I am. But if you don't make that decision,
it's always going to end badly. So if you're ever

(35:15):
feeling like you no longer are aligned with your purpose,
that's the first reason to shift. The second reason is
when the market has changed or the audience has changed.
We keep wanting to put out the same thing because
it's worked one time, or it's worked for many years,
but at certain points in time, trends change, the algorithm changes, desires,

(35:41):
public interest, whatever it is changes, and so we have
to be able to face the hard truths of reality,
and those will often get you to try new things.
There's this great book called Who Moved My Cheese?

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Eh? Greatly?

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, And it's basically about mice trying to go to
the same place that they've always found cheese, and then
as an experiment, that cheese gets moved to a new location.
There's a certain group of mice that keep going back
to that same place that that cheese was not found,
and they keep going again and again and they never
give up. And then there's another group that, after a
couple of times where they realized the cheese wasn't there,

(36:17):
they actually go a different path and start looking at
different areas. The ones that were able to move on
the quickest were actually the mice that survived the longest.
So if the cheese in your industry has been moved,
you have to be able to see that. The third
thing I would say is if you are not pivoting,

(36:39):
is it because you are worried and not facing the
truth about reality? Because it is scary. It is so
scary when something has worked for so long and the
idea to now all of a sudden have to do
something new that you've never done before. But the longer
you stay stuck in that place, the longer it's going

(37:01):
to take for you to find that new way of success.
So just ask yourself, are you not pivoting because you
think the data is wrong? Or is it because you're
in denial? And if you're in denial, then you have
to face that hard truth that it's time to make
a change. And I will say there's always greatness on

(37:25):
the other side of that mountain. I know it sounds
scary anyone listening to this right now, You are at
a place in your life right now that if you
look back five years ago, you're probably at a better place.
And that's because you embrace certain hard changes that might
have felt scary at first, but you made those decisions

(37:46):
to get to where you are today. So don't doubt
your ability to overcome whatever new environments and changes that
are going to be there for whatever this new chapter
in your life is going to bring.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
By the way, thank you for being so systematic. This
is why I love DA, because DA has a system
and a methodology for everything, and those three points help
so much. And one of the ways I practically applied
that in my company from day one was what I
call the seventy thirty rule, which was that seventy percent
of our content would always be what we know works
and thirty percent would always be trial and error. And

(38:20):
so we were okay if thirty percent of our posts
absolutely tanked and didn't work, because the one that did
work would become the next phase of this seventy percent.
And we've seen that time and time and time again.
You will see us trialing new formats and trialing new
types of content all the time, but that's thirty percent
of our output, because that thirty percent will become the

(38:40):
future seventy percent. The mistake we make is you do
one hundred percent of what works, and when it ends,
you don't know what's going to work, and now you
have to go one hundred percent in trial, and then
you'll have ninety percent failure and that gets really, really scary.
And so these points that you just shared are huge,
and that's been one of the ways that we've implemented it.
I even saw in the early days, like I saw
a lot of my peers in the space when I started,

(39:04):
which was actually just ten years ago twenty sixteen Jan
this year, I saw a lot of my peers become
one platform people, and I saw a lot of people
become like a YouTuber. At that time, I was a
facebooker through and through, like that's where I made content.
And I saw people like I saw peers of mine,
or even actually even people before me hindsight, the ogs

(39:25):
who literally paid off their parents' mortgage because of how
much money they made on YouTube, and then the next
year couldn't pay their own rent.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
That house I bought you I got to move into now, really.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
And I was so heart broken. I was watching that
and I was like, God, that's scary. And I noticed
that you couldn't be bound to a platform. So even
though one platform was killing it for me, we were
always building multiple platforms in multiple businesses off the back
of that because you couldn't rely on So everything you're
saying are practical things that even in my life, even
though I didn't have that methodology you just laid out

(40:01):
those are the practical ways we were doing it.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Let's go to a The third step is a architect
a system. What you're describing right now is a framework
for success. The goal shouldn't be to create a piece
of content. The goal should be to create a company
or a content machine. It doesn't matter even if you
want to be a one person practitioner or if you
want to have a five thousand person team and become

(40:23):
the next Disney. The goal should always be to think
about content as creating a company. And what I mean
by that is you have certain systems in place, you
have certain methodologies, you have ways of testing new content
and also super serving the content that is working. And
so for us, we have processes when it comes to
how do we greenlight content, how does something flow from

(40:46):
script all the way to screen, and all the different
processes that are involved in between. We have a great
team that's always leveling up and learning new skills that
we've empowered in order to make sure that the content
has continuity, because I know so many people that have
gone viral once and that should never be the goal.

(41:06):
Because if you have the company infrastructure underneath and all
of these systems and processes that make sure that you
can keep putting out new content every single week, or
new products or whatever your goal is, that's what's going
to ultimately leads you to long term success.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
There's one more thing you reminded me of that I loved.
We did this years ago. We used to do something
that I learned called the board test, And so what
we would do is we'd watch a video or we'd
watch a podcast as a group, as a team, and
people would start putting up their hands as soon as
they got bored. And it was almost like when you
watch America's Got Talent and someone presses the buzzer and

(42:01):
the person has to keep performing until everyone puts their
buzzer out. And it was amazing because we got to
see every moment in which it was like, God, this
podcast got boring at thirty seconds, what are we gonna
do at thirty seconds to help people feel connected? Or
this video got boring at three minutes seventeen seconds, what
are we going to add there to keep attention? And
it was these systems that allowed us to create engaging content.

(42:24):
And I think people don't realize how much engineering and
how much thought and how much intentionality goes into serving
a great piece of content. When you look at the
best TV shows you love, when you look at the
best movies that you're fixated on it's because someone has
obsessed over every single line in that script and every
single visual and angle that you see. You're not just

(42:46):
watching it because it happened to capture attention. And I
think we almost have this false belief that like, oh,
when you make art, it just works, and I'm like,
I'm not sure about that. It's as much of art
as it is a science. Half of our era revenue
from content comes from just repurposing the same videos into
other platforms or into different types of content.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
Here's what I mean. In traditional media, if you create
a hit franchise, right, let's say Friends or Seinfeld, how
many times are you able to sell that show to
so many different places. You're watching it on Netflix, you're
watching it on Hulu, you're watching it on Disney, all
these different places. So the people that created that content,
they can keep monetizing it over and over. But on

(43:32):
social media it doesn't work that way. For creators, you
put out one piece of content, whatever it's going to
generate in the first thirty days is typically about ninety
five percent of the money that you're ever going to make.
But it doesn't have to be that way. And so
what I started doing was I started figuring out ways
to give that content new life. I started doing this

(43:54):
several years ago. Now it's a little bit more known
of a system. But let's say I created YouTube video
and that video is twenty one minutes. I am being
served an audience that is watching that video who wants
to consume twenty one minute videos. These are people that
are probably eating dinner and have about twenty minutes to

(44:16):
watch watching in their living room. But there's a whole
nother group out there of people that want two hour videos,
and that's what the algorithm is serving them. And then
so what I did was I took my existing videos
and I would combine. If they're about twenty minutes each,
I would combine combine six of them, and I would
come up with the theme. Let's say there's a whole

(44:38):
theme around kindness. You know, the kindness you put out
into the world always comes back to you. That is
what I consider packaging. I'll put six videos together that
have that sort of a lesson, and then I will
put that on a standalone channel as a separate video.
And now YouTube is going to go and serve a
whole different audience that content. So now out of those

(44:59):
six videos. I'm getting another life out of that content.
You do this with content. A lot of people do
this with content. That's a known thing. The other thing
that we do is cutting down the content. A lot
of people know clipping. Of course. Now you take that
same piece of content, you find one minute versions, you
put it on TikTok, you put it on Instagram reels,

(45:19):
you put it on YouTube shorts.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Great. That might not be generating much revenue, but it's
helping you gain a certain level of exposure that ideally
is going to lead to long form views back to
your main YouTube channel, your podcast, whatever it is. But
we also do something called reversioning, which is taking a
twenty minute piece of content and we'll cut it down
into let's say, a seven minute video. We'll look at

(45:42):
the retention graphs of the video, we'll take the most
interesting parts, and before we post it, we have a
whole system of testing that piece of content. We'll take
a twenty minute piece of content, create twenty different versions
of it in a seven minute video, run Facebook ads.
And by the way, when I say this, I know

(46:03):
it sounds expensive. I'm talking about we'll spend like five
dollars testing each video, see what the best performing one was,
and then post that one on our Facebook. So it
just goes back to having a system in place of
testing of optimizing. These are the things that are going
to ultimately help lead you to long term success. That's

(46:24):
the difference between what big creators are doing and smaller
creators that they may not understand. It's not that big
creators have more time in their day. They're not necessarily
working harder than you are. I know lots of small
creators are probably working just as hard or not harder
as I am. They just have a method of doing things,
and so if you can learn what those methods are,
that's going to give you the advantage for success. I'll

(46:46):
give you one last analogy. If someone asked you go
out and cut as many trees as you possibly can,
and they're going to give you thirty days to accomplish
that job and hand you a pay as what are
you gonna do. Most people will grab that ax and
start chopping, and sure in the beginning they're making progress.

(47:09):
Let's say that they can cut one tree a day.
I don't know how this all works. How many trees
are going to cut a day? I'm not encouraging anyone
to cut trees.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Let me get that.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Let me also get that out there. All right, we
love trees, but that one person can, let's just say,
cut one tree a day for simplicity. The other person
goes and thinks, Hey, I'm not going to start cutting trees.
I'm going to create a system for cutting trees. I'm
going to create a tree cutting company. I'm going to
go out and recruit people now or build a whole

(47:38):
tree manufacturing facility, and I'm going to spend twenty nine
days doing this. So on the surface, it looks like
that one person that's cutting trees, they're way ahead. They've
cut twenty nine trees in twenty nine days, while the
other person hasn't cut a single one. But on the
thirtieth day, when that person and shows up with an

(48:02):
army of dream cutters and all the sophisticated tools and
supplies and a whole factory, they're gonna cut three hundred
trees on the day that someone was gonna cut one.
So focus on building the company, not the content.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, well said.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
So Step four is our reach people emotionally. And the
whole idea is that we're so obsessed about having the
perfect edit, or the perfect lighting or the perfect angle.
All those things. At the end of the day, yeah
they help a little bit, but that's not going to
be the reason why people watch. No one is listening
to this podcast right now or watching it on a

(48:37):
video think, oh my gosh, the podcast isn't great, but
the lighting the lighting is amazing, or the sound effects
or whatever else. So it goes back to what we
were talking about earlier. Don't try to worry about being
so polished. The real success is in trying to keep
that emotional resonance with your audience. We call it retention,

(49:01):
but really what is retention of any video. It's your
ability to connect emotionally with an audience. The only reason
that people are still listening right now is they're feeling something.
That is the ultimate retention graph. So don't get overly
concerned about all these metrics and the data and all
those things. Yeah they matter in architecting the system, but

(49:23):
you also have to reach people emotionally and with my content.
I think that's why it has worked. I have so
many families, for instance, that watch our videos. So many
moms come to me and they say, darr I have
a hard time trying to get my teenager to listen
to anything I say, But for some reason, when they

(49:44):
watch your videos, they suddenly get the lesson. And because
now I've been able to embrace watching your videos with
them as part of our nightly routine, that's actually improved
the relationship that I have with my child. That is
an emotional connect right that exists and has been the
secret for our success. Because people feel something, they'll want

(50:07):
to share it with others, They'll want to comment. My
favorite comment is this video made me cry. This video
improve my relationship with my spouse. This video helped me
realize that even if I failed, I can get back
up and try again. And I'm sure your comments and
your dms are flooded with those sorts of things. So

(50:29):
I would say that's step four, try to reach the heart.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
I couldn't agree more. I remember years ago, this is
before I mean, this is an old, old article. There
was research done on I think it was like seven
thousand pieces of viral content, and I believe it was
in the New York Times, and they found that there
were only five reasons content went viral, and it was

(50:54):
because you made people feel one of these five things.
It was so when you see someone like skydiving, or
you see someone like water skiing, whatever it is, someone's
doing something that makes you feel a sense of adventure.
They're traveling and like you feel this thrill and this
burst of like wow, they're on a journey. The second

(51:17):
was humor. So our good friend Adam W who knows
how to do this best, like when people laugh in
those same way as your comments are. This made me cry.
People say this made me crack up. I send this
to my friend. We're rolling on the floor laughing, like
making people feel humor or comedy video.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Laugh so hard I cried, Yeah, how did you get both?
Then you get both?

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Or cried so hard? I laughed. I guess okay too,
but like, yeah, I was watching a clip of Trevoroe
the other day from his new special and it was
so funny. That again is one of them. So humor,
so adventure humor. The third was negativity. So the news
makes you feel a certain way. That's why we don't
skip a news story. It's why we share it. It's

(51:58):
why we talk about it, is because it makes us
feel something. In that case, negativity. Fourth was inspiration, which
is yours and what I try and focus on as
well is that our content makes people feel inspired or
that's at least our intention. And the fifth was surprise,
and I think you do this really as well as well,
because your stories have so many like turning points and
twists and things like that, and so a sense of surprise.

(52:19):
So the point is I always say this to creators.
If your content doesn't make you feel adventure, humor, negativity,
hopefully not inspiration or surprise, it won't be shared and
therefore it won't be seen. And I feel like a
lot of people are like, what is this going to
teach someone? Or what is this going to like? What

(52:41):
are people going to remember? And it's like, no, no, no,
What do people feel when they watch your content, when
they hear you speak, when they hear your voice, when
they look into your eyes? What do they feel? And
so I love that reaching your audience is the fourth aspects.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, reaching their hearts, reaching them Yeah. And number five
is turn views into impact.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
You can get a lot of views and still be unsuccessful.
You can get hardly any views and still be very
successful because at the end of the day, I think
we're all here on this earth to make some sort
of a positive impact. Right, Nobody wants to spend their
life doing something that they're not proud of or didn't

(53:24):
feel like someone was better off because of their existence.
So more important than just trying to chase numbers, chase
meaning chase adding value and giving back. And that's what
the whole brand has been built around is letting people
know that even on your worst day, that brighter days
are ahead. That you can fail, everything can go wrong,

(53:47):
but you still will get a second chance. Everyone deserves
a second chance. If they never ask for your side
of the story, then the side that they heard is
already everything that they already feel about. You. Don't waste
your time explaining yourself to people who are dedicated to
misunderstanding you.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
That five step system is absolutely brilliant. The three reasons
to pivot were fantastic. I really feel like if anyone
follows that, they actually have the exact blueprint you need
to build a successful business, whether it's a YouTube channel,
whether it's a product, a podcast, or whatever it may be.
And I know how dedicated you've been to your mission,

(54:26):
Like it's so clear to me because I know all
the ups and downs that come with everything you go
through and the fact that you've held onto that and
how important that was to you. So much of that
is based on your own story, and I want to
kind of go back there for a second. I'm sure
it almost brings tears to you as to think about
how when a kid messages you or sees you, or

(54:49):
runs up to you at like Disney, which I've seen
videos of this happening, when you're at Disney with your
kids and other people's kids run up to you and
they want pictures with you, and they recognize you and
they are moved by your videos. I mean, I'm sure
that makes you just go God. I never thought when
I was going through all that stuff that this would
be happening.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
I'm so grateful for where I am in my journey,
because when I turned thirty years old, I reached the
lowest point in my life and I truly felt that
my life was over. I was broke, I was depressed,
I just got out of a bad breakup. I had anxiety,

(55:29):
I had depression, I had family issues. I was days
away from getting evicted from my apartment. And honestly, I'm
sure like those listening have probably felt this type of
feeling before. It just felt like everything I have ever
dreamed of was falling apart and my life was not

(55:50):
going to amount to anything. And I stayed in that
low place for a long time. The one thing that
really helped me was reading stories of inspirational people. And
it turned out that every person that we look up
to that is successful, they've encountered a lot of failures

(56:11):
leading up to that success. So I read stories about
how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team,
or how Oprah was fired from her job as a
radio host, or how jk Rowling had so many publishers
turn her down before Harry Potter came out, or how
Walt Disney went bankrupt multiple times before even coming up

(56:32):
with Mickey Mouse. And reading those stories made me realize
that failure is not the opposite of success, that is
actually a part of success. Those people didn't become successful
because they didn't fail. They became successful because they kept
pushing through those failures until they finally got to success.

(56:54):
So that motivated me to keep going. And what I
decided to do was that's when I started thinking, how
many other people are out there that are struggling like
I am. What is the one thing that makes me unique?
What is my superpower? I just failed a lot more
than everybody else. I made a lot more mistakes than
most people out there. So instead of hiding from that,

(57:18):
I'm going to embrace that. I'm going to talk about
that openly, because that's not something that you hear quite often.
People say I messed up, I'm wrong, I failed. I'm
sure a lot of women hearing this probably wish that
their husbands would say this more often, or vice versa.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
You know.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
So I started saying that right that, here's what all
the things that I did wrong in my life. And
in the beginning, I would just talk to camera, thinking that,
you know, my videos would go viral because I was
given this profound advice. And I remember posting my very
first video on my birthday because I thought, oh, I'm
gonna get extra love. You know, I'm gonna get prioritizing

(57:55):
the algorithm, because everyone's gonna be coming to my page.
So I post this video and I refresh, and I
refresh and I refresh. And that video got no views.
It didn't even break one hundred views at that time.
And I kept thinking, like, if I could just get
a comma in that number right, And for a long

(58:16):
time I thought that the algorithm was broken, that something
was wrong because this video was so good. No one
was watching my videos early on. But you know what,
because this was mission driven and because I was trying
to help people get through hard times, I kept going.
I kept putting out video after video, and ultimately I
started switching my formats. That's when I started storytelling. My

(58:40):
views went from one hundred to maybe five hundred. So
then when I started storytelling, you know, the ceiling that
I got up to was about a thousand views, and
I couldn't seem to break past that. And so as
much as I tried, I kept putting out video after video,
nothing seemed to break that ceiling, and I got a
little discouraged. And so one day I told my wife,

(59:01):
I said, you know, I'm thinking about giving up. Maybe
I want to still inspire people. I want to, but maybe,
like creating videos is not my way of doing that.
Maybe it's writing a book, or maybe it's talking on stage.
And God bless Laura, She's like, no, you can't give up,
Like I see how passionate you are about this. You
have to keep going. So I keep putting out videos

(59:24):
I keep, you know, every single week, no matter what,
I kept being consistent, kept showing up, kept putting out
video after video, and still none of them were breaking
a thousand views. So one day I tell Laura, all right,
you know what, I have tried my best. It's just
not working out for me. I'm just not meant to

(59:46):
create videos. So this next video that I create is
going to be my last one. She didn't want to
accept that, but you know, she supported me in my decision.
So I used to write my scripts on napkins at
that time, and everything was a story that taught some
sort of a positive lesson. And at that time, my
brother in law was visiting me and my wife's friend

(01:00:07):
was over. This was in our small studio apartment. So
I'm writing this story on a napkin, and I decide
to talk about infidelity and about how infidelity can start
with seemingly small innocent acts such as liking an ex's
Facebook post. So I came up with this idea about
this husband who's liking this ex's Facebook post while his

(01:00:31):
wife is cooking him dinner in the kitchen. As I'm
staring at this nakin, I look up and I see
my brother in law scrolling Facebook on his phone with
my wife's friend cooking something in the kitchen with her
back to him, and I suddenly got this inspiration. I
don't call it serendipity, call it fate, call it God,

(01:00:53):
whatever it is, because at that time, keep in mind,
I wasn't doing any visual storytelling. I wasn't creating scripted coment.
So I walk over to my brother in law, my
wife's friend, and I said, hey, will you guys be
in this video? They're like, what do we have to do?
And I was like, nothing, just literally stand there and
do what you're doing. I mean, to hindsight, I probably

(01:01:14):
should have told my brother in law that are portraying
him as a cheater, but I just was like, no
one's gonna watch his anyway. So I had one team
member at that time. I asked him to record on
an iPhone, right, and instead of me telling a story
just talking a camera, I narrate a story while my
brother in law and my wife's friend are just doing

(01:01:36):
what they're doing. And I'm saying, hey, you know, cheating
can start a relatively innocent acts such as lacking. I'm
narrating this whole story. I shoot the video. I go
to bed that night, don't think anything of it. I
scheduled that video to go live at six o'clock in
the morning. The next morning, Laura's waking me up. She's

(01:01:56):
shaking me. She's like, Dar, wake up. I'm like, oh,
what's going on. She's like that video that you posted,
it's going viral. And I'm like, yeah, right, I'm still
half asleep. I'm like rubbing my eyes, like trying to
see it. And sure enough, the last video that I
ever planned on posting was the one that went viral.

(01:02:20):
And I say this story because I want people to
know that you could always be one opportunity, one phone call,
one door, one piece of content away from massive success,
from achieving all of your dreams that you've ever wanted,
and you'll never know unless you keep going. Because imagine

(01:02:45):
if I had given up one video before, none of
this would have ever happened. So, going back to your
story about how it feels now when people come to
me and they say, Dar, I watch your content, the
reason that it feels so special to me is because
I know that I started putting out content for people

(01:03:09):
to be able to overcome their toughest times. In life
to be able to know that if you failed, failure
is an event. It is not a person that you
can pick yourself back up and keep going. So it's
more so the way that people describe how my videos
have affected them, or how they've my videos have brought

(01:03:30):
them closer to their mom or their spouse or their children,
or help them believe in themselves or feel seen in
a way that they've never felt before. That's the greatest
gift of all.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, it's so
interesting to me how you always want win away.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Never underestimate God's ability to change your life in an instant.
You're much closer than you ever think, and it could
happen tomorrow, but you would not know unless you keep going.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
If you put yourself back there and someone told you
this is going to be the Jenny you're on, I
guess you wouldn't even believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
It didn't even seem possible, you know. I was just
so broken. I had failed so much in my life
that I honestly felt like my life was over, that
I was never going to amount to anything, that none
of my dreams were ever going to work out. I
had worries that on my tombstone people were going to say,

(01:04:32):
here is Darmann the biggest failure that has ever existed.
Like literally, that is what went through my mind. And
so if you could tell me back then that I
would be where I am today, like I would just
say you're you're crazy, Like there's absolutely no way. And
I think that's what gives me so gratitude, so much gratitude,
like for this journey. And that's why every step, every win,

(01:04:54):
I am so appreciative of that because I remember what
it's like to be on the other side of this
and feeling like completely hopeless.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Talk to me about the importance of having a good
partner when you're an aspiring entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
For me, having the right partner is the biggest decision
that you will ever make in your life. And when
you're choosing the right partner, don't choose someone that you
can have fun with. You should choose someone that you
can struggle with, because anyone's going to be there during

(01:05:47):
your good times, when you're high on life, when money
is flowing, when it seems like everything you touch turns
of gold. Guess what, there's going to be a whole
army of people around that want to be your friend.
But when you're at your her lowest moment, when you're
there sitting in the emergency room at three o'clock in
the morning, how many people are going to show up

(01:06:08):
to hold your hand? Very few people. And when you
find that person, that is the person that is meant
to be in your life. And Laura has been that
person for me. I'm so thankful that she came into
my life because she came from a different set of

(01:06:29):
values and upbringing than I did, and she helped straighten
my life in a way that I never would have
been able to. I grew up where operating in a
gray area was okay, right, like if as long as
you made money, it was okay. The means didn't have
to justify the end as kind of a thing. But
Laura came in and she was so black and white

(01:06:50):
about everything, her morals about you know, the way that
one should live, and that really helped to get me
on a better path in my life. She believed in
me when I had nothing, Like in the beginning, I
couldn't even afford the ticket for the parking garage when
she came to visit me, like that's how broke I was,

(01:07:13):
but she still saw something in me that I couldn't
even see in myself, and she kept believing me, and
she kept making me feel like all these big dreams
I had, all these ideas, that they weren't silly, that
they weren't over, that I could still achieve them if
I just focused and worked hard enough. You know. I
remember early on there was this influencer brand trip that

(01:07:38):
we got invited to, and the brand that was paying
for it would only buy economy tickets. They wouldn't buy
business class. I was just grateful to get a plane ticket.
But what I didn't realize is that every other influencer
paid to upgrade their ticket. And at this time, Laura
was the influencer. I wasn't creating content were all her friends.

(01:08:02):
So all of her friends were sitting in first class,
and Laura and I came on on the plane, and
you probably know this feeling. Anyone listening to this probably
knows the feeling. We walked by first class and all
of her friends are watching, and we went all the
way to economy, and like the friends in the seats,
they were kind of like looking at us, somewhat judging.

(01:08:25):
I felt so embarrassed, and I said, Babe, like, I'm
so sorry that I couldn't afford to upgrade us to
first class. And she's like, as long as you're next
to me, that's all that matters. I don't care if
we're sitting in economy. I don't care if we're riding
the bus. And like, at that point where I felt

(01:08:46):
like I was nothing and I was just humiliated and
was you know, sort of laughed at because of that.
To have someone that believed in me and stood by
me despite that, that meant so much to me. And
you know what's interesting is like fast forward to today,
a lot of those people you know writing in first

(01:09:07):
class are now the ones writing an economy because they
didn't manage their money well or they were spending, you know, incorrectly.
And I'm grateful to have built success in a way
where you know, we've managed our finance as well and
made good long term decisions, where we've built something sustainable
so we can fire the way that we choose to now.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
I mean, I love hearing about your relationship because I
know Laura, she's incredible, Like she's unbelievable. She's such a
special force of a human and I know how much
she loves you and cares about you, and so hearing
about you speak about her in that way is super
super heartwarming. What has love taught you that success? Never could?

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
I think in success, you think about the big wins,
but love is actually in the details. And I'll give
you a great example of this. One time Laura and
I were flying to go see her favorite artist perform.
Laura was so excited. She gets unbelievably excited when it

(01:10:11):
comes to like seeing her favorite artists, and she spent
all his time on her makeup, on her outfit, She
had all the pictures planned that she was going to take.
We get to the concert and her phone dies. She
forgot to charge her phone. Now I can look at
that and say, why didn't you think to charge your

(01:10:31):
phone and blame her for that, But instead I took
it as something I missed because I know my wife.
She's not the best at charging her phone. And it's
also very important to her to take great content for
moments that she enjoys. So going forward after that day

(01:10:53):
now today, whenever we go anywhere, whenever we travel, as
soon as we get to the hotel, I put her
phone on the charger. I always look for any opportunity
that she could run into a problem and think, how
could I prevent that before she experiences that pain. And
by the way, because of things that have gone wrong

(01:11:14):
in the past, that's why now I always have snacks
on me. I always have advil, I always have safety pins.
I always have boob tape or tampons or whatever it is.
Because sometime in the past, Laura has really needed something
that she didn't have, and I saw it as an
opportunity for the way that I could serve her better.

(01:11:37):
So literally and figuratively, Laura's gas tank is always full
and she doesn't have to worry about it. So love
taught me that it's in noticing the small details, and
you win when you serve others. Taking that same application
can also apply to business, and when I did that,

(01:11:59):
that's when I started already winning big. When it came
to my team members, for instance, or it came to
certain brand partners. If I'm in a room and I
happen to overhear someone say that their favorite artist is
coming to town, I'm just going to surprise them with
artist tickets. They wouldn't even know that I was listening

(01:12:20):
Or if I happen to overhear a conversation with someone
saying they always wanted to learn how to play guitar,
I'm going to surprise them with the guitar and try
to sign them up for guitar lessons. If there's someone
that tells me that they have a child, I'm not
going to say how old is your kid? Again? The
third time I met them, I'm going to say, your
kid is six? Right, her name is Ava, she's in kindergarten.

(01:12:43):
How's kindergarten going for her? That makes somebody feel seen
in noticing the small details, and that's what transcends people
feeling like the reason that they exist in your life
is for some sort of business purpose and that you
truly care about them. So I'd say love has actually
taught me quite a bit in how it can actually

(01:13:04):
apply those same lessons to business. That has made me
more successful.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
There's so many connections in how we treat one person
into how you treat your company, into how you treat
your partner, and it's almost so much of it is
so much more interconnected than we give it credit for.
And I think a long time ago everyone would be like, well,
this hour treat this group of youele and this hover
treat this group of people, and you start to realize
that our mind's not that good at segmentation. It's almost

(01:13:29):
just bleeding the energy that you have for one person
into the other. Dar I've learned so much today. You
have as always, even though we've had many Bernie dinners,
Indian dinners usually where we're having these conversations, I feel
like I've learned so much more today, not just about
your journey, about strategy, about growth, about your approach to business.
I think people are going to get a lot of

(01:13:50):
value from this. We end every episode of On Purpose
with the final five. These questions have to be answered
in one sentence maximum. Oh shoot, so dar Man, these
are your final five. I've brought to you by state PHM.
First question, what is the best advice you've ever had
or received.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
The reason that you have certain big ideas and dreams
in your head is because God put them there for
a reason. God wouldn't put these big ideas, these big dreams,
these big notions in your head that keep you up
at night because you're so excited about this vision of
what your life can look like. If you weren't meant

(01:14:27):
to achieve them. So always remember that God's vision for
your life is bigger than your own. Don't doubt him,
and sometimes all you have to do is get out
of your own way.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever had
to receive.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
The worst advice that I ever received was someone said, Dar,
you should change your name. And that's because at that
point in my life, I had failed so many times
that the only thing associated with my name was failure.

(01:15:04):
And for a long time, honestly, I did think about
changing my name, but then I realized there's so many
people out there just like me that feel like a failure.
I wanted to create a brand that lets people know
that you can have second chances in life, you can

(01:15:25):
get knocked down and get back up again. And so
instead I decided to create a whole studio that is
now one of the biggest storytelling studios in the world,
that lets people know that regardless of how bad life
has been, better days are ahead. And my name is
associated with positivity and overcoming hardship. So I'm glad that

(01:15:47):
I didn't listen to I was sure to change my
name to Jay, you know, like good things would have happened.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
A question number three, what makes a good.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Friend someone that focuses on giving more than getting. A
good friend is not somebody who shows up just when
times are good, when money is flowing, what it feels
like you can't miss because there's always so many people
wanting to be in your life. Then a good friend
is someone who shows up during your hardest times, someone
who shows up at the emergency room at three o'clock

(01:16:20):
in the morning and is holding your hand, letting you
know that you're going to get through this. So whoever's
with you during your struggle, they're the ones that deserve
to be with you during your success.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Question I'm a full What do you say to yourself
when you're at rockbotam in your most difficult moments?

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Don't underestimate God's ability to change your life in an instant.
God's vision for your life is so much bigger than
your own, and a lot of times the reason that
stops us from getting that life is us. We're holding
on to the things that he's trying to remove. How
many of us have stayed in that bad relationship, or

(01:17:02):
stayed in that bad friendship group, or hung on to
those bad habits or those bad ideas or the bad
job or situations. We have to get out of our
own way. When God is trying to remove certain things
from your life, let him because you can't hold on
to today's burdens and also receive tomorrow's blessings.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Fifth and final question we asked just every guest who's
ever been on the show, if you could create one
law that everyone in the world had to follow, what
would it be?

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Just be kind to one another. You never know what
someone is going through. People don't walk around with signs
saying I'm trying to hold it all together right now.
We tend to think of the people that have like
the big public breakdowns as the ones that are really struggling.
But there's so many people out there that are struggling

(01:17:53):
in silence and you never know. So just be compassionate
because you never know what someone is going through.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
I'm so excited about this because you just launched your
own podcast, which I've always been in the work for many,
many years.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Yeah, tell us about the podcast. It's called What Happens Next.
And the reason I came up with that name is
every successful person in life, they've all encountered so many
failures so many hardships, but what matters the most what
happens next. So this podcast is just a platform where

(01:18:27):
I sit down with some of the most inspirational people
in the world that have overcome some of the biggest
challenges and have still gotten to unbelievable success. And so
for anyone that's looking to get inspiration or ad vice,
I think it'd be a great podcast I'll listen to.
I'm really excited and I hope that one day that
you'll come on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
Congrats, I comment to tune in and so excited for
people to check out what happens next.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Awesome doh. I'm so excited to see what you continue
to build with your company, your mission, your drive, I
your friend all the way. I'm excited for you. I'm
pumped for you. I can't wait to see you keep winning.
I'm excited to see the content you're going to create,
whether it's film, TV, movies. I know you've got so
many incredible plans in the studio you're building, and it's

(01:19:13):
amazing to see what you've created. I can't wait to
be able to I can't wait till you start building
theme parks like I'm like, I'm just ready for it, man,
So I'll be right there lining up to attend all
of it. And I want to thank you for being
such an incredible sort of inspiration in the world to
millions of people across the world, and for being a
dear friend. I appreciate you deeply. Thank you Maneah, it's
a huge honor. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Thank you, loving brother.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Thank you. If this is the year you're finally ready
to start that business, level up your goals, or build
real momentum in your life, you need to hear my
conversation with Alex Hormosi.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
I have a very simple framework that I encourage people
who are starting out to follow, which I call closer.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
So see, you stand for clarifying.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
But you'd begin the conversation like, Hey, why'd you respond
to my thing

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