Happy father’s day Dad.

Confession – I blamed 95% of my problems on you, Dad.

Growing up, I rarely felt loved, validated, or seen. I’d watch the white families on TV, wishing I had a dad I could talk to.

Ngl – I always related to stories of those without a dad. Even though you were physically there, you’d isolate yourself in your room and numb yourself with TV, cigarettes, and food at night. Even though you denied it, we all knew something was wrong.

Whenever I asked for your help, I’d get yelled at or called stupid or lazy. So, I learned to stop asking and figure everything myself, knowing I couldn’t count on you. This is why I “know” a lot of random things but struggle asking for help.

Ever since I can remember, I’d get into these vicious cycles where I isolate myself and work myself to death. I still do this lol.

What no one knows is that I go to sleep feeling alone and disappointed. No matter what I accomplish, I feel like I’m falling behind.

If I’m honest, the reason why I work hard sometimes isn’t for the viewers, clients, or to help people. It’s to get the “I’m proud of you” or “good job” I never got as a kid.

I felt this in pharmacy. I felt this leaving pharmacy. I felt it as a kid. And I still feel it now.

Now that I’m older, I know this is in my head. No matter what happens on the outside, it will never fill the void on the inside… which is feeling loved, which is probably something we both struggled with.

Your dad wasn’t there because he died after WWII. And I’m sure you went through a lot of loneliness and isolation after the Vietnam War. (For those pro-war, consider this – the impact of PTSD on families is real.)

Despite all this, I realize now you were doing the best you could.

Whether it was driving me to Chinese school every Saturday, going to lunch together on my early release days, or reading Hop on Pop, thanks for doing your best.

I was wrong. You weren’t the worst or the best dad. You’re my only dad.

Six years ago, I promised you, “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll make sure to take care of mom, Chris, and our family. It okay to go.”

Dad, I want to make another promise to you – I want to be the father that both you and I never had growing up.

Happy Father’s Day.

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I feel stuck and bored.

Question: “I feel stagnant.”

Not going to lie – I sometimes feel like I’m in a slump.

My routines feel the same every week and even though when I hang out with friends it feels really nice, I feel lonely the morning after.

My routine is pretty boring. I wake up, start work, journal, jiu jitsu, and go for a walk. But sometimes I wonder how much longer can I do this?

Compared to my 20s, this doesn’t feel fun or enjoyable anymore. The good news is my training in terms of strength has gone up, I’m eating a lot healthier, and I’m making quite a bit. In addition, I don’t spend that much money, but I do find myself binging content.

I feel this longing in my heart for not only a romantic partner, but just more friends in general. To be honest, I think it’s more spending more time with friends.

But this has really prompted this thought of – “what makes a fulfilling life for me?”. Do you have any suggestions on how to make life fulfilling again?

Answer:

First of all, thank you so much for sharing your experience and what you’re going through.

Something that I admire is your level of awareness and reflection over the years so I would really encourage that you celebrate that.

When you started the “monk mode” path, you knew that it would not be that easy and that’s what you’re going through now.

While fulfilling, it’s not always fun working on your YouTube business, training jiu jitsu, eating boring foods, and going through the everyday routines.

This is part of building discipline and masculinity. For so much of your life, no one ever enforced these habits or practice.

With that being said, from a strategic point of view a question to ask might be – “hypothetically if I “had” to suck it up, how can I make this experience more enjoyable?”

It might be:

• Changing the experience: How can we turn all the training, work, or dieting into a ritual or game (blasting SZA or r&b)?
• Changing the environment: Instead of working out of the same Whole Foods, home office, or boba / coffee shops, how can we switch up the spots to include some novelty to make things exciting again?
• Changing the people: Instead of working by yourself, who can you ask to co-work or maybe grab happy hour after?
• Changing the rewards: Instead of beating yourself into the ground, how can you change the reward? Are you building feedback? Maybe host a mini happy hour event?

Just remember it’s all temporary too. You always have the choice to change or quit.

Something I would also consider is planning something that you’ll forward to. For example, you’ve always wanted to go to Asia. So why not plan it?

Why not plan a trip back to ATL or Seattle or Portland for the weekend?

How can you use things like ChatGPT to add spontaneous fun into your life?

“Who do you need to be?”

Question: “Who do you need to be?”

Something I’m thinking a lot about is who do I need to be if I want to hit my goals? My top 3 goals is:

• 10th Planet BJJ Black Belt
• Have a loving family of 4
• Creator business $100k / month
• 10% body fat
• Bench 315 lbs, Deadlift 515 lbs, Squat 405 lbs

Who do you need to be? What would you prioritize first? What beliefs would you have? How would you carry yourself?

Answer: “Optimize your health.”

Something I’d consider is – what is the goal that would ultimately make everything easier if not effortless?

In my mind, it’s the health.

While money is definitely up there, health is the most essential because right now my energy isn’t that great.

• Work: If I can lower my body fat and optimize my sleep, it would make the work easier. I can focus for longer periods of time and have more innovative ideas. I’d need less sleep as well. Plus – I’d look better in my YouTube videos and there’s a bias for good looking people on YouTube. I’d have more energy and bandwidth to organize events.
• Family: Since I’m single right now, I want to attract a life long partner. I think about my kids genetics and want to optimize it and what better way to do it than be in better health. Due to the secondary benefits of work, we would never have to worry about money.

Who would I have to be though?

I would need to be a man of discipline and aware of my weaknesses. I’d rely not on how I feel, but on my habits and systems. For instance, I’d:

• Have 80% of my meals planned out and ready to go the week before
• Eating majority of my meals that are animal based
• Training 5x a week with jiu jitsu and 3x with weight lifting
• Sleeping on time with 8 hours of buffer and waking up without an alarm
• Getting health labs regularly (blood panel, testosterone, A1C, etc)

I can imagine myself working out in the AM with all my workouts by 9 AM and ready to work. I’ll walk midday and in the evening I’d either walk. I can imagine myself looking amazing naked with my bicep veins and looking amazing in my clothes that are form fitting.

Turning down “bad foods” that don’t align to my goals don’t feel like a chore but feel like a sign of self respect and love to my body. I would easily turn things down like seed oils, refined carbs, and heavy carbs.

I can imagine my kids and my wife looking at me in admiration. I’m an athlete and move like one.

Now that you have the who you need to be, how do you want to life your daily life?

why you’re stuck with decisions.

Question: why do I hesitate when it comes to making decisions?

When I was 25 years old, I used to have shiny object syndrome. Everything from business models to ABG’s in k-town, my eyes always used to wander.

Even though I’m much older now and I’ve committed to a business model, I still notice myself overwhelmed with choices with women.

It’s not like they’re flocking to me, but when I’m faced with multiple choices I almost feel paralyzed. I think it’s pretty clear – I don’t know what I want.

Or I think the deeper question is… why do I hesitate when it comes to making decisions?

Answer: focus on what you can control rather than the outcomes.

Let’s look at this from multiple fronts.

If we were to bottomline the question, is the real concern that you don’t know what you want?

Or are you more concerned about the consequences of your decisions or how others perceive the decisions you’ve made?

If you’re worried about the consequences, try asking yourself this… “what if the concept of wrong decisions didn’t exist?”

If we look at it, what makes a decision right or wrong? It’s all subjective. There is no perfect decision. You make decisions and adjust along the way. This was true with your previous relationships and business, especially when learning sales and YouTube.

Maybe the deeper question is – are you tying your self worth to the outcomes?

For example, is the reason why you’re hesitating with relationships and going on dates is because you’re fearful of it not working out (again like all those other times) and getting hurt? Is the reason why you’re hesitant on planning events because your scared of no one actually showing up?

What if those things happen? What would that mean?

The truth is majority of people would say… “It’s because I’m not good enough. Or it’s because no one likes me”. But the truth is those things could be mutually exclusive and even if they are true you can’t control them.

But by focusing on doing the action, what would it mean to us?

It could mean that we’re committed to finding a loving partner. It could mean that we’re testing our resilience, despite the outcome. It could mean that we’re willing to just try things out at fail.

Focus on what you can control rather than the outcomes.

PS… there’s this great video by Dr K.

How do I realize my full potential?

Question: How do I realize my full potential?

Sometimes I feel like I have so much potential, but I’m not realizing it.

I have the knowledge, but some how my external life doesn’t match up to what’s in my head. Like for example, when I chop it up with my millionaire friends, they’re often mind blown with what I know and the experience I have.

What would you recommend to close that gap and self actualize your full potential?

Answer: It comes down to three things.

First of all, let’s take sometime to appreciate everything you’ve learned and experienced. And there’s a moment of celebration because 7-8 figure owners find you as a gold mine!

That’s a win in my book.

Anyways, if we were to list the three major things that could be the issue:

1. Strategy
2. Habits
3. Being

Let’s cover the first one – strategy.

In terms of strategy, look at the strategy of these huge creators. They aren’t successful because of a special hack or some secret. They just focus on the fundamentals.

Do they have a lead generation strategy? Yes. Do they have a nurturing strategy? Yes. Do they have backend offers to deepen the relationship? Yes. Do they have a team to lower the friction? Yes.

Now, let’s take a hard look at you.

Do you have a lead generation strategy? Yes. Do you have a nurturing strategy? Yes – but it’s inconsistent. Do you have backend offers to deepen the relationship? Yes – but only high ticket. Do you have a team to lower the friction? Yes.

Outside looking in you need to be more consistent with your communication with your friends and have low ticket experiences so people can get more value from you.

Some great things that you have that you didn’t have before is now you have a content team to help you out.

Let’s cover the second one – habits.

If you look at the habits, most business owners have the same boring things.

When you look at people like Hamza, Dan Koe, Ali Abdaal, or even Vanessa Lau, they all have relatively predictable habits.

It comes down to three things:

1. They block out time the night before
2. They plan the top 3 priorities and schedule for the next day
3. They reflect on what worked and didn’t work

That’s it. So let’s be really honest – is your daily schedule really conducive to your goals and future self?

Let’s cover the third one – being.

Out of everything, this is the most important. This goes more than just your beliefs – it’s the more holistic view.

You need to ask yourself… Am I being my future self?

I know it gets woo woo, but let’s dial it down.

For example, you want to be a black belt in jiu jitsu. Is how you’re training how a black belt would perform, train, and act?

So if you want to be a $1M / year creator, are you acting like one?

Are you making the right hire for your team? Are you focusing on the inputs and outputs? Are you focusing on all the ways you can serve your audience?

Just food for thought.

the key to persisting is deluding yourself.

Question: how do I stay positive and optimistic, especially when i’m in the dip?

So recently I’ve invested into my YouTube channel. My money, time, energy into making the best content that I can make and building a world class team.

However something that has been on my mind is – when will I see the fruits of my labor self actualize?

Sometimes it’s tough staying optimistic and positive in the dip. Even though, we’ve had some wins sometimes I feel frustrated about our momentum.

I feel like we should be moving faster because we have the talent. I have the knowledge.

I fully realize this is a content packaging / audience problem. My old pharmacy audience isn’t interested in business content. The high ticket closer people aren’t interested in my YouTube content creation content. 

But I’ve grown a lot in these last few years where I personally believe it would be foolish to completely start over again. I’ve figured out a way to not share to my subscribers so I have that figured out.

The real question is how do I stay positive and optimistic, especially when you’re in the dip?

Answer: the key is to delude yourself into becoming your future self.

It seems like you’ve done quite a bit and you’re in this for the long run. 

Something I appreciate about you is your dedication to play the long term game of content creation – just how you play the long term game with crypto and investing.

You’re headed in the right direction.

Remember Naval Ravikant and his advice to play long term games with long term people. You are doing exactly that.

Obviously we need more context on success and failure, but here’s a thought exercise:

If it took 10 years for you to be “successful”, would an extra 2 years of “failure” really matter? Probably not.

And I know what you’re thinking “how do I guarantee my success?”

Personally I wouldn’t ask this question and I’d ask instead “how can I increase the odds in my favor?”

A more detailed question would be “how do I incorporate feedback loops from experts to make sure I’m on the right track?”

Right now, you have quite a bit. 

You’re in film booths community getting feedback there. You have a creator mastermind. You have amazing talent. You’re paying for power hours from strategists and making friends with them. You are now sourcing your ideas from data backed videos.

Why wouldn’t you succeed? You are paying your ignorance tax.

Plus you are one of the most real creators out there that’s been on the platform for 8+ years. Don’t discount your experience. You were 25 when you started and now you’re 36. Think about how much growth you’ve experienced during that time.

You’re more strategic, experienced, and your judgement is way better. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be – so don’t stress.

I think the real concern here is “what if you fail? What if you waste all these years chasing something that won’t be worth it?”

And that my friend is the definition of visionary. Everyone who started something new went through periods of doubt and uncertain times.

You literally have to delude yourself to believe in something that isn’t there. But this isn’t only true for entrepreneurship – it was true for things like pharmacy school. You had to believe that you were capable of being a pharmacist before you’re actually one.

So just remember – you’re a lot closer than where you think you are. Whenever you’re in doubt just look back and ask yourself – is the way that I’m operating not closer to being that 7-8 figure creator?

Absolutely. Keep going.

why you feel stuck and how to break free.

Question: I feel stagnant and regressing with my progress and goals.

Recently, I’ve been feeling quite behind in my life. Especially the part of starting a family, dating, my health, and business.

There’s a part of me that feels like “I should” be further ahead. Deep down inside, I ask myself… “what are the expectations that I’m setting with myself?“

A few things come to mind about the things at – my mind is telling me I should:

• Be closer to black belt with jiu jitsu, but I’m still a blue belt after many years
• Have a million dollar creator business and more MRR in the bank
• Have a girlfriend (more so fiancé) and closer to starting a family
• Be in Asia enjoying my life
• Be at 10-12% body fat and look amazing naked in the mirror

Especially recently, I’ve been looking at old pictures and I’m not happy with my level of fitness and weight. I feel tired all the time – yet I’m dieting all the time. I wonder if it’s hormonal Sometimes I feel like a victim in my circumstances because I’m really trying my best with what I have.

Can you please help me?

Answer: Start asking “what is true?”

What you’re going through is definitely understandable and keep in mind a lot of other people (including your friends and family) have felt the same way. However this doesn’t take away from what you’re experiencing.

If you were to really sit with everything, what is the core reason why you’re experiencing what your going through? It’s that the extrinsic results aren’t aligning with your expectations.

Let’s take a look at some hard truths for some possibilities of what might be happening. You might be:

1. Strategy – Lacking focus on the “right” things that lead to your desired outcomes
2. Effort – Not putting in “enough” work or working as hard as you think you are
3. Resources – At capacity – doing too much given the resources you have
4. Expectation alignment – there are limitations or factors you need to take in consideration (age, time, etc)

As much as you want to compare yourself to others, it’s really not a fair comparison. Everyone starts off in different places, no matter how “equal” things might seem to be.

What people don’t take in consideration are:

• Support from family (emotional / financial)
• Foundation (knowledge, emotional, habits)
• Emotional baggage (traumatic moments, parental attachment styles)
• Technology exposure (kids these days have more exposure to tech compared to back in my day)
• Unfair advantages (Strengths, weaknesses, skills, some people are more visionary vs operator / macro vs micro focused)

So back to the question at hand. Let’s get greater clarity on the goals. From what it seems like you want to:

1. Start a family within the next five years
2. Scale your creator business to $1M / year
3. Live in Asia for a quarter
4. Earn your 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Black Belt
5. Lean down to 10-12% body fat at 195 lbs

Maybe these aren’t all inclusive – but it’s a good starting point. A good resource to do is Dan Koe’s Anti-Vision exercise as well.

How would you prioritize these goals?

1. Lean down to 10-12% body fat at 195 lbs
2. Scale your creator business to $1M / year
3. Live in Asia for a quarter
4. Start a family within the next five years
5. Earn your 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Black Belt

Notice that there are tangential benefits.

By focusing on health first, it’ll help improve your vitality and you’ll have more energy for your business. It makes jiu jitsu significantly easier. It’ll help improve attractiveness for dating.

By focusing on business second, you’ll have the finances and foundation to setup your family. You can hire specialists to accelerator your journey to black belt. When you travel to Asia, you’ll really live like a king. And when you have cool stories, that will help with dating.

So now that we have the goals locked in, what are the actionable steps that you have control over?

So lets focus on the first two goals (health + money)

Goal: Lean down to 10-12% body fat at 195 lbs

• Get Dexascan
• Get a blood lab done to check testosterone, thyroid, A1C, and lipid panel
• Diet: Commit to one week of animal based diet
• Fitness: Move twice per day
• Challenge: 75 Hard
• Jiu Jitsu – spend 10 minutes watching Firas Zahabi everyday

Goal: Creator business $1M / year

• Backend Offers: Finish creating products for the business (YouTube accelerator + High Ticket Sales accelerator into masterminds)
• Affiliates / Sponsors: Create 10 $1K / month reviews on SaaS tools for creators, digital marketing, and high ticket sales
• AdSense: Release 2 videos per week on YouTube

As cliche as it sounds, by focusing on what you can control it helps reduce your anxiety. Don’t be afraid to lean into the truth.

why feeling behind is okay.

Question: I feel like I’m behind in life.

Something I think about a lot recently is that I’ve been feeling quite alone. I feel like my friends and people around me are moving on with out me.

The reason why I’ve been feeling this way is because my YouTube channel hasn’t been growing as fast as I’d like and friends are starting their family.

I know I “shouldn’t” be comparing, but what do I do?

Answer: its okay to feel behind.

What you’re going through is very normal and I can see why you’d feel that way.

So often we ask ourselves questions like – Are we on track for retirement at our age? How healthy are we compared to others?

Unlike conventional advice, comparison isn’t always the worst thing in the world and is an opportunity for a reflection point. But the real question is – is this the right measuring tool? And by comparing ourselves to others, what are we really hoping to accomplish?

In most cases, it’s validation that I’m on the right track. That I’m not a complete fucking failure. That I’m not behind.

Something to keep in mind is that you’re journey isn’t the same as other people Kevin. Context is key.

You did a previous career of pharmacy and transitioned out. You moved to a new state and started your relationship over again. Your dad treated you like absolute dog shit – but you forgave him and had to resolve a lot of the internalized BS from your childhood. You literally get paid six figures to talk about making videos for godsake lol.

Inner work takes time. Some people grew up wealthy. Others had supportive parents. Keep in mind – you didn’t have any of that.

Whether you are behind or not, it doesn’t matter. What you are doing right is doing things like this – journaling to gain clarity about what you really want and see what’s aligned to you.

Imagine if you continued this for the next week? Next year? Next 10 years? How much clarity will you have?

The worst trap you can fall into is following and believing that you’re striving for someone else’s dream instead of our own.

Hope this helps,

Kevin

finding my focus again.

I’m realizing I haven’t spent a lot of time checking in with myself. This is something I used to do a lot I used to feel a lot more at ease.

So this will be my brain dump this week. Planning to do this a lot more 🙂

What happened this week?

This week I’ve been feeling quite exhausted. My sleep has feeling off. I’ve noticed myself kind of doom scrolling at night, watching a lot of “trash” YouTube (e-dates / politics), and noticing that I feel quite lonely.

I’ve also been quite exhausted and late to things to jiu jitsu, but I haven’t really done that much work. My speculation is that it’s the accumulation of all the work I’ve done over the last few months.

Bought a producer course + mental health course.

What went well?

• I got invited to a Sean Osborn’s mastermind to talk about YouTube along with Rad’s mastermind this week.
• I made quite a bit of affiliate income and Ali Abdaal commissions (~average $500-1000 / day)
• Scripted out quite a bit of my scripts for YouTube (3-4 scripts this week)
• I now have branding guidelines for my new channel along with scripting guidelines, which is cool
• I reviewed all my videos this week (thumbnail / Yash’s video / Joey’s video was sick – first try too)
• I decided to eat clean going forward (grass fed sirloin, fish oils, fruits, protein) because I’ve been having major brain fog
• I squatted 315 easy, benched 215 easy
• I booked in a session with the acupuncturist

What didn’t go so well?

• Lack of energy + focus – I’m noticing that it’s really hard for me to sit down and focus
• My “deep focus sessions” have been kinda lame. I only spend about 2 hours per session, but know I can get more done
• I saw most of my friends and lower belts promoted (def feeling the FOMO)
• Feeling stressed about planning my birthday
• Something that I’m also noticing is that what’s holding me back from my purple belt

What are the lessons I learned?

• I need to listen to my Oura ring + make self care a priority. I’m noticing that I haven’t stuck to my quadrants as much as before
• Sleep is the most important factor (when I don’t sleep right my focus and energy feel off)
• I’m learning from Dr. K that my stress, anxiety, and energy drain are coming from emotional regulation and “self control” – meaning my self is fighting itself due to old beliefs
• I’m getting consumed with work and I don’t have clear boundaries for reviewing things

What are the changes I want to make going forward?

• I’m prioritizing my mental health, sleep, and physical health (diet / exercise / rest) going forward
• I’m finishing the 2 hour cocktail part to relax and chill and most of all not feel lonely and also be a master connector

Other things this week I need to finish:

1. Assigning Ali Abdaal a template for a testimonial of things to say and what to focus on
2. Personal taxes this week
3. Outcast from the 853
4. Slides for Sean Osborn’s Mastermind (Wednesday)
5. 1 of 10 Finder Review
6. Ali Abdaal script
7. Set time with my script writer
8. Set up a Discord for my internal team
9. Read 2-hour cocktail party
10. 75 Hard + personal daily check list
11. Check up personally on all the mastermind students this week
12. Setup GHL for the actual course + MM by Wednesday
13. Determine next 12 week goals
14. Buy a BJJ fanatics DVD

How to deal with the guilt of not working 24/7

Present Kevin

What’s going on today?

I am getting a bunch of meetings. I had a sales call canceled today, and I was looking forward to canceling or actually moving over to the next day. Something for me is that my energy feels very drained after these last two days of intense sprinting, and I know I need a rest.

The problem for me is that I feel the need to keep on working, keep on hiring, but it’s a never-ending circle.

Future Kevin, how do I go about dealing with the guilt of having to work all the time?

Thank you!

Future Kevin

Hey, Kevin, what is going on?

I can understand how you feel about the guilt of the work.

A lot of it is coming from the meaning you’re putting behind your work. For example, so what if you did not do a video or a sales page? What does that mean about yourself? And more importantly, what’s the meaning you’re putting behind that experience?

The truth is, Kevin, over the last few months, you’ve been a lot more strategic. You’ve noticed a lot of things. You’ve grown immensely, and you should be so proud of yourself.

Being a projector from your human design, you’re not meant to go 24/7, and you are not trying to create your old pharmacy life. You’re doing exactly what you need to be doing, focusing on the important things, your top three things.

And also, I just want to say, I am so proud of you for everything that you’ve gotten done. You’ve gotten done more in the last week than you have in a few months at times.

Just remember, don’t discount the amount of work you’ve done on yourself, and don’t discount the number of successes that you have. Also, Kevin, just be very aware of your relationship with work.

Oftentimes in the past, you used it to numb yourself emotionally, to run away from pain like heartbreak, and it’s coming to a point where it’s manifesting into your dreams, like getting back with Nelyn and missing that relationship.

You work so hard, Kevin, and at times, if I was there, I would tell you to really enjoy life.

At times, we only get this life, and then at the end of the day, work is all meaningless anyways. It disappears with us. Maybe some of our work survives, but 99% of the work that we do is meaningless.

I don’t say this to discourage you, but I just say this to give you a broader perspective of life.

Love,

Future Kevin