part I:

mindsets

1
introduction
I’m standing on the ledge.

Before me is the entire world and everything in it. And beside

me is my mentor. This man made millions, went broke, made

millions, went broke, made millions. His life has been full of ups

and downs. Smiles and frowns. Heartaches and joy. I don’t

know if I could stomach what he has gone through. Maybe

that’s why he’s the mentor and I’m the mentee.

We’re overlooking all of San Diego. It’s beautiful.

The sun is out. Lights are shining. City is electrified.

He looks out to the world and back at me. I feel his gaze sting

me before he opens his mouth and the words spill out…

“Tej, when you look out there, tell me what do you see?”

“I see buildings and rooftops and people and lights and

water.”

“Yes… but what else do you see that your eyes don’t see?”

I don’t know how to respond. He senses my hesitation.

“Let me tell you what I see,” he replies.

“I see a playground full of people moving along the trajectory

of their life. These people have hopes and dreams and visions

and ideas about their future. They have worries and concerns

and anxieties and insecurities to combat those hopes and

dreams. And they have the blood of fear pumping through

them. These people want to do more and be more, but

something is stopping them. This something is holding the rope

to their life and pulling the strings.

When I look out at the world, I don’t see objects. I see people. I

see the people in need of help. I see people in need of

2
products and services to make their lives easier and better. I

see opportunity here and I see 

opportunity there. I see opportunity all around. It’s not what

your eyes see. It’s what you feel and your mind believes.

Whatever your mind believes, your eyes will soon begin to see.

Use your mind to see opportunity where others see buildings

and trees and your eyes will grow to see money and everything

else you seek.”

Those lines were the beginning of the end.

Because they opened my eyes. And exposed me. I felt like a

fraud. All this time I was focused on the wrong things. I

focused on money and more money. And when the money

didn’t come, I grew discouraged and tired and lost hope. This

is the wrong mentality to have. It harmed me. And hurt me.

And took years off my life.

In fact, it wasn’t until I found this new outlook that my life went

from darkness to complete light…

…because prior to this moment…

I was the by-product of years of conditioning and socialization,

which made me believe I wasn’t worthy. I wasn’t good enough.

And I would never succeed.

I carried these feelings with me everywhere I went.

Every plane I boarded. Every pillow my head touched.

These insecurities stayed with me. And became my filter for the

world. Is it any surprise why I was drowning in despair?

Not really.

That’s because I had been looking at the world through the

lens of fear and anxiety and despair. And that’s why I couldn’t

see all the opportunity around me.

Change your filter. Change your finances.

3
That’s what I learned. And it’s true. It really does work.

Now, I don’t know what type of life you’ve lived up till this point.

And quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to teach you a

new set of powerful filters.

But you should keep in mind, these filters may not be for you.

They may just work for me. That’s okay.

The beauty isn’t in taking my filters and applying them over your

eyes. The beauty exists in finding your own filters. And carving

out a mindset and mentality that propels you towards success.

Once you have these new filters in place, making money will be

the least of your worries.

Here are my filters.

4
i believe everything is easy.

I thought life was difficult. It was all I saw around me. Despair

and heartache. Problem after problem. I thought we were just

here to survive. Make do with a little bit and then be done.

And so my life matched my beliefs. Life was difficult. A

challenge.

It was a chore just to get through.

Some days, I didn’t want to get through it. I wanted to curl up

in the fetal position until death knocked on my door. But death

never comes when you want it to.

I was forced to continue.

Then somewhere, somehow, things started changing. These

changes were triggered from a conversation I had with a very

successful and high profile businessman.

He told me, life is not difficult.

If you think life is difficult, it will be. If you think life is easy, it

will be.

It doesn’t matter if something is difficult or easy. What matters

is how your mind labels it. If your mind labels something as

hard, it will run away and avoid it and procrastinate and be

lazy.

But if your mind thinks something is easy, your mind will run to it

and conquer it and achieve it.

And most importantly:

Your mind won’t create perceptions of difficulty and lower

its chances of success before it even begins.

5
i believe my life is a first person

video game.

Life is a game and in the end the screen will read, “GAME

OVER.”

I know it. You know it.

I choose to live it.

I have gamified my life.

It’s a first person video game.

And I am the hero.

Everything I go through, every obstacle I encounter, every

challenge I experience, I see through the eyes of my first

person gamified character.

I view it as a challenge my character must overcome.

And this helps me weather the storm.

It keeps me calm. And poised.

But above all, it forces me to take more risks and embrace

uncertainty. This is where all the magic happens.

6
i believe opportunity lives in the

mud.
I don’t believe in the recession. Or poverty. Or unemployment.

Or turmoil. Or even failure.

Sure they exist. But not in my head.

My head only believes in opportunity.

I believe opportunity lives in the dirt. Not on a platter.

In other words, life does not serve you opportunity.

It exists under your feet. You have to look in places people

ignore, places people would never bother searching. This is

where you’ll find the most opportunity.

In the dirt.

So each morning, I put on my invisible overalls and I get to

work.

My one and only goal for the day is to get my overalls dirty.

That’s all.

At the end of our life, the only thing we can control is how dirty

we made our overalls. Effort, is the only metric under our

influence.

The more dirt on your overalls, the better your life will be.

Period.

If the world was left to me, I would place the invisible

overalls of life beside each tombstone.

It wouldn’t be a coincidence to realize the dirtiest of

overalls belonged to the fullest of lives.
7
i believe i am the cause, not

the effect.
All throughout elementary school, I let people push me around.

I thought they were my friends. They weren’t.

They were using me. And I let them.

I wanted to fit in. I wanted to belong. So I did what they told

me to do. Whatever they asked, I gave. Sometimes even my

lunch.

They weren’t bullies. Just acquaintances I mistook for friends.

Soon this mentality rubbed off onto the rest of my life. It

consumed me. And I started thinking of myself as the effect. As

someone life happens to.

I was easily swayed and controlled and life could push and pull

me in whichever direction it pleased. It doesn’t take a genius to

realize this isn’t a mentality conditioned for success.

Instead, you need the opposite mentality.

The mentality of an individual, the mentality of a producer.

When you adopt this mentality, you’ll learn to view yourself to

be a cause. A freak of nature. Wherever you go and whatever

you do, creates a ripple. And that ripple goes on to influence

and impact the lives of others and ultimately the world.

You are the cause. Life does not happen to you. You happen

to life.

Think about that for a second. Maybe just maybe you’ll find the

powers you have kept locked inside you all this time.

8
i believe in creating

empowering perceptions.
Two people looking at the same stimuli will see and believe

two different things. This holds for anything.

For example, if two people are looking at the same grass. One

person may think about the environment and global warming

and how humans are destroying the world.

The other may think about his childhood full of laughter and

joy, spent out on the grass with his siblings.

Same stimuli. Two different conditioned responses.

Life is full of stimuli.

And the older you grow, the more conditioned your responses

become.

Problem is:

Majority of your conditioned responses are negative.

Unfortunately, the response you attach to the stimuli around

you is what determines how much success and happiness you

experience in life. You must not let your mind be on autopilot

and form perceptions for you.

Take control and create empowering perceptions.

9
i believe i am a superhero

whose job is to solve problems

and be of value.
The clock goes off. It reads 5 AM.

I climb out of bed, walk to the washroom, brush my teeth and

look in the mirror.

Others see a regular man with the limits of a mere mortal. I see

a superhero.

My job is to save the world and everything in it.

I move through life with powers at my fingertips. I’m on the

lookout for people in need of help. And I save them.

Maybe I buy someone lunch.

Maybe I sell someone a product I believe can enrich their life

and solve a problem.

Maybe I create a company to make someone’s life easier.

I save people.

And sometimes…

I even save myself.

10
i believe in killing myself by

pushing past all limits.

I would never commit suicide. But I would kill myself.

I kill myself every day. Through my work.

I view my body as a vessel. Inside the vessel live talents and

ideas and ambitions. My job is to kill those dreams before life

kills them. I kill those dreams by releasing them from my body

and letting them dance in the world.

I empty my vessel. Or at least, I try.

Some days I return to bed with a heavier vessel. These are the

days I live wrong. For each day I must return to bed with a

lighter vessel, containing one less idea or one less dream.

Writing this guide is a way for me to kill myself.

The more pages I write; the more ideas I destroy inside

me. I release those ideas into the world and let them
crumble or fly without me.

11
i believe in discomfort and

breaking comfort zones.

My mom thought I was crazy. My sister thought I was nuts. My

brother just laughed. He didn’t know what to think.

Truth be told, I didn’t know what to think either. I had just got

caught sleeping on the floor, next to my king size bed. I slept

on the floor with no blanket and no mattress and no pillow. I

did this because I wanted to embrace discomfort.

Why?

Because I had become too comfortable. Too passive.

I had lost the aggression I was born with. The natural creativity

us human beings have pouring through our blood. I had lost. I

don’t know where it went. But it no longer lived in my blood.

Instead, I spent my life retreating and tucked inside my comfort

zone. It was safe and relaxing. But nothing ever happened for

me during this stage of my life. I tried doing a bunch of things.

None of them took off.

And that’s when I decided to break free.

And reclaim discomfort.

And that’s why my family caught me sleeping on the floor, next

to my bed with no pillow or blanket in the middle of winter

because I wanted to condition my mind to seek discomfort.

12
i believe the two enemies to a

great life are complainers and

negativity.

My heart was beating.

Anxiety was flowing through my blood and into my brain.

I knew if I went through with this, things would never be the

same.

I took a breath. And went through with it.

It sucks having to end friendships. You feel the pain in the

depths of your soul. It comes in the form of a voice that curses

out at you and questions your actions. It calls you name after

name and tries to change your mind.

I didn’t let it.

I knew I couldn’t keep surrounding myself with poison.

Soon the poison would impact my mind and kill me.

I escaped its wrath.

You must grip the poison and destroy it while you still can.

Take a 30-day break. Surround yourself with no poison. Delete

it. And replace it with love and laughter. I’ll be shocked if you

go back to the way things were. I’d be shocked.

13
i believe in returning to bed

feeling smarter, happier, wiser

and richer.

I believe in growth.

How do you grow?

You grow by attacking your fears.

Putting in work.

Facing discomfort.

Challenging yourself.

Extending the line inside your head which tells you what you’re

capable of achieving. You grow by pushing that line further

and further away from you until the entire world opens up to

you. That’s how you grow.

And I try to grow, daily.

14
i believe in not listening to a

single soul.

I found the courage. I swallowed my fears. I told them.

Dead silence.

Then laughter.

Then ridicule.

Then mockery.

They poked holes through my dreams until water poured

through them and drowned my ambition to succeed.

They said I’d never make it on my own.

They said it was a pipe dream.

I listened. I obliged.

I could have made a ton of money years earlier had I just

ignored them. I didn’t. I messed up.

Don’t listen to anybody. Not your mother or your best friend or

your sister or to the voices inside your head.

Smile and do it anyways. Always.

Best case scenario? You’ll succeed.

Worse case? You’ll have stories to share around the campfire.

15
i believe in the energy inside

me.

Increase belief in yourself not through thinking and wishing, but

by increasing your competence. Gain competence through

experience. Gain experience by taking action.

Earn small victories.

Each victory contributes to your belief account. Soon the small

victories add up and you become an individual with incredible

self belief. It takes time.

But it’s not hard.

You just have to begin.

A life without belief is like a bird without wings.

Useless and incapable of surviving in the big bad world.

16
recap
I wanted money. But I lacked the right mindsets.

I went through life without knowing the superpowers a badass

mindset gives you. And so I failed over and over and over

again.

I chased opportunity. I dabbled.

I didn’t succeed.

I grew sick and tired and full of despair.

And I almost gave up and went back to a life lived on the

sidelines. A life spent in cubicles and boardrooms.

I almost went back.

Not one one occasion. But over and over again.

The thought stayed in the depths of my brain like a house guest

who had overstayed his welcome. The thought came to life

every time I saw a peer or friend making it in the corporate

world.

It came to life a lot.

But I knew that wasn’t the life for me. I had to kill that thought.

And I’m not alone.

I see too many people in their 40’s and 50’s walking around in

a rut. I’ve come to realize they may still be breathing, but the

energy of life inside them is dead.

And that’s because life killed it.

Life is quite funny, you know.

17
When you’re young, you’re built to succeed. As a child, the

entire world is yours. You have big dreams. And ambitions.

But as you age, something strange happens.

Each passing year, something inside you dies.

The child inside you slips further and further away from you.
And then you become heavier with weight. The weight of
responsibility and bills and mortgages.

You keep dying and dying and dying. You keep breathing and
dying. And then you become cold and sick and full of hatred.
For life didn’t turn out as you expected.

The car you wanted, you never got. The dream house you
wanted, you never built. The life you wanted to give to your
family, you couldn’t afford.

And the thought makes you sick.

You blame everyone and everything.

Trying to rationalize to make yourself feel better. But

something inside you tells you you’re wrong.

But you never do look at it in the eye.

For you’re too scared to realize the real enemy wasn’t the man
or the boss or the world, the real enemy was you. The real
enemy you have been fighting your entire life was the thoughts
inside your brain.

And that is the moment you die and your soul bleeds out of
your eyes.

For you finally come to grips with the truth: You approached
life in the wrong manner. You attacked opportunity after
opportunity. And you failed and failed and failed. You blamed
the recession or the shady stockbroker or the sleazy business
partner.

You blamed them all.

And with each blame you cast, you grew heavier with pain and
heartache.

For you failed to realize the only common denominator was

your mindset.
18
And you never did try to build it up for success.

That’s why you die at 40, but don’t get buried till 70.

You let the world tell you how to think and feel.

You let the same world that built you, destroy you.

You conform to their ideals and expectations and beliefs.

And when they decide your time is up, out you go.

Or at least, that’s how it’s set up.

But for me?

I refuse to let the world kill the energy of life inside me. I
intend to use the energy of life to mold the world.

Join me. Please.

It’s the only fight worth fighting

19
part II:
habits

20
introduction
I thought I had it made. I thought I just had to turn on my

laptop, check my email, and watch the money pour in. It

doesn’t work like that. It never works like that.

Life moves slow.

Then it gets faster. And then you cannot control it.

Your job is to make life move in the right direction.

At first, you won’t notice the changes. You will second guess

your decisions. You will question if you’re on the right path.

And you will go through emotional turmoil.

It’s normal.

Then you’re going to catch a break. Something big will

happen. It always does. And you’re going to build momentum.

Then if you’re consistent, you will win.

Big.

That’s why you need habits. The right habits are the glue that

holds your life together. They are the foundation to success.

They make everything happen.

Unfortunately for me, I had horrible daily habits.

I drank. I partied. I hung out with horrible people.

That’s why my life sucked.

It took a lot of attempts before I successfully followed a new

set of habits. But when I did, life became a breeze. A complete

joy.

Here are those habits.

21
wake up at 5 am.
I would watch the inspirational YouTube videos. They all said

the same thing.

“You, Oprah, and Richard Branson all have 24 hours in a day.

How do you use your 24 hours?”

I would smile and nod. Then go back to partying and drinking

and waking up at 2pm.

I thought if I outsmarted my colleagues, I would succeed. It

didn’t work.

The competition destroyed me and left me lifeless, on the side

of the street, bruised and bloody.

I washed away the blood. And decided to change.

I went from waking up at noon to getting up at 5 AM. And it

gave me control over my life.

I used to be the dimwit walking around, feeding my brain lies,

telling myself “I don’t have the time.” I never had the time. And

then I woke up at 5 AM. And time was all I had.

Time to build and create and conquer.

This journey of success is easy, but it requires discipline.

The best form of discipline comes from rising at 5 AM.

Become a member of the 5 AM club and your world will be
turned upside down. Your perception of time will be
turned on its head. And you’ll go from being at the mercy
of life to being the driver of life. And never again will you
utter the bullshit phrase, “I don’t have the time.”

22
eat worms before breakfast.
I wake up in the morning. And grab a plate of worms. I stare
down the plate. It’s the first thing I do.

They’re squirming around, trying to avoid my touch. I want to go

back to sleep. I want to retreat back to bed and slip under the
covers. I don’t want to face the day. I don’t want to eat the
worms. It’s 5 AM and the sun is still down. Me and the birds are
the only ones awake.

“But this is what it takes, this is what it takes to get ahead.” I

tell myself. The birds outside my window chirp in agreement.

Some days it works and I hop out of bed. Some days the bitch
in me takes over and says, fuck it. And I go back to sleep. But
most days, I get up. And I eat the worms before breakfast. The
worms are code for my morning routine.

My morning routine is simple:

I drink water. I wake up feeling tired and aggravated. And

that’s because my brain is dehydrated. I sleep with a bottle of
water on my bed side. I wake up and chug it.

I meditate for 10 minutes. Meditation keeps me calm. My

mind runs a mile a minute. I need it to be present so I can
control the day. And meditation allows me to do just that. I sit
in silence, close my eyes, and follow my breath. The timer goes
off. I get up and proceed to the next stage of my morning
routine.

I visualize my future and how I want to live the day before

me. I close my eyes. And drift off to la la land. Everything I ever
achieved, I first visualized with my minds eye months and years
before. Don’t just visualize the end goal, don’t just visualize the
Lamborghini. Visualize the work and the process it’s going to
take to get there. Visualize yourself overcoming challenges
and solving problems.

I review my 6 month goals. I carry a piece of paper with me.

On the page contains 7-10 of my six month goals. I set goals in
six month intervals, I want to change my life every six months.
And achieving those goals allows me to do just that. I read the

23
contents on the page. And that gives my mind direction for the
day.
I do 100 push ups. I do 100 sit ups. I crank out 100 push ups.
And 100 sit ups. Some days it’s the last thing I want to do.

Correction: EVERY DAY it’s the last thing I want to do. But I

always feel better afterwards. One hundred times better. And

that’s why I do it.

I take a cold shower. I end my morning routine by embracing

discomfort. I view myself as a first person video game

character. And I know the day before me is going to be an

adventure. An adventure that is going to require guts, balls,

and boldness to conquer. I know I can only conquer the day

before me by embracing discomfort. And so I hop in the

shower and turn the knob to the blue and jump and scream

while the cold water hits my flesh and eradicates all weakness

from my body.

Now I can begin the day. I’m ready to kill.

24
come up with 10 new ideas.
I didn’t have connections.

I needed to find a new way. I needed to get their attention.

The attention of the movers and the shakers, the people who

pushed the world forward.

And the only way I could do it was through my ideas.

Ideas was all I had.

But they weren’t good. They weren’t good enough to execute

and they sure weren’t good enough to give to other people. I

was embarrassed because the ideas weren’t just ideas.

The ideas carried small particles of DNA. And the DNA

belonged to me.

They were my ideas.

And I couldn’t release horrible ideas into the world because

horrible ideas would reflect poorly on me.

So I had to strengthen my idea muscle. I had to build it over

again.

And the only way I knew how to build strong ideas was by

coming up with horrible ideas, every single day. And that’s

what I did and continue to do.

I wake up in the morning, perform my morning routine, eat

breakfast, and then at the breakfast table, I assign myself a

topic. The topic can be anything. From 10 books I could write to

10 businesses I could create to 10 people I could help.

Then I brainstorm 10 ideas. Then 10 more.

I do this. Every day.

25
And some days, I hit on something magical. A new idea that

ends up putting tons of money into my pockets. And joy in my

heart.
work 10-12 hour days in 45

minute increments.
It’s the fastest way to get ahead.

Say no to the office gatherings and the booze.

Focus on getting ahead.

Work the extra 4 hours a day on your side hustle.

And the world will open up.

The light from your new world will be more than enough to

offset the darkness you felt in the early days. The early days

spent working long nights without seeing any results. Believe

me.

I’ve experimented a lot with productivity hacks. And what works

for me is working in 45 minute increments.

I set a timer. And work for 45 minutes. Then I take a 5-15-

minute break.

I get up and stretch and throw on some music.

I refresh.

Maybe I’ll reply to some text messages.

Then the timer goes off again, the break is over and I go back

to the grind.

26
hit the gym for an hour.

“It’s not over until it’s over,” he said. The man was in his 80’s.

And I met him at the gym, the one and only day I decided to

go.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not about cultivating a body full of muscle. It’s about

improvement. It’s about soaking every last bit of water from the

day. Every drop you can get, you fucking take. And you work

and you build. It’s not about the end result. It’s about the work

you do on a daily basis. You’re either moving towards the right

direction or you’re losing and you’re dying. I may be the oldest

guy in this place, but as long as my heart is beating, it’s not

over until it’s over. And I’m going to work and build and grind

every single day of my life. And a part of that involves

strengthening my body and improving it. The only real joy we

gain comes from moving towards goals. It’s the only joy. And I

may be old, but I’ll be dammed if I let that joy pass me by.”

I didn’t know how to reply. I was standing in disbelief, looking

around the gym, waiting for Kanye West to jump out of

nowhere and say “I’m sorry Shakespeare, but this 80-year-old

man just delivered the greatest soliloquy of all time.”

Jokes aside. This man was the truth.

He changed my thoughts on health and wellness.

I decided to devote an hour each day to improving myself,

physically.

I didn’t care about achieving muscle and gains like the boys

running around my city. I only cared about using exercise as a

means to push past all preconceived limits.

27
spend one-hour learning or

strengthening a skill.

I carry a bag with me everywhere I go. It contains a notebook,

a few books, and a black box.

Inside the black box are all the skills I’ve accumulated to date.

Skills related to copywriting and marketing and sales. Skills

related to HTML and WordPress and SEO.

Skills I’ve built and honed throughout the years.

I return home. I set the bag down.

The lightness disturbs me. For I know the bag is too light. I

shouldn’t be able to carry the bag around. It should be too

heavy with skills. But it’s not. And that’s exactly why I struggled

to make big money.

It doesn’t matter how much money you want to make. What

matters is how many useful and marketable skills you possess.

How many skills do you carry in your bag? That’s the only thing

that matters. And it’s the only thing that determines how far

you go not only online, but in the offline world as well.

I learned this the hard way. I spent too much of my time

dreaming about riches, instead of building the necessary skills

to succeed.

I wasted too much time. Time I will never get back. But that’s

alright. It’s not about what you did, it’s about what you’re going

to do. At least that’s what I tell myself to make myself feel

better.

I don’t know if it works, but what I do know is devoting one hour

each day to building or strengthening a skill is one of the most

important habits you will ever pick up. I cannot recommend it

enough.

28