#263 Dakota Robertson - Writing Online Made Me $1M+ by 26

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Dakota Robertson didn’t build a $1M business by going viral—he did it by mastering the fundamentals.

He built a system that works—and stuck to it.

In our conversation, he shared the exact steps he took to go from barely making ends meet to running a million-dollar writing business by 27.

Most writers focus on the wrong things:
- Trying to appeal to everyone instead of a specific audience
- Writing without a simple goal or system
- Being afraid to sell their work

But Dakota kept it simple and focused on what matters:
- Clarity
- Solving specific problems
- Consistency in execution

Here’s what we covered in the episode:
- How Dakota turned tweets into long-term revenue
- The unsexy habits: discipline and iteration
- How to find niches that pay—even with a small audience
- Why selling is a skill—and how writing builds trust
- Why solving problems beats entertaining every time

This isn’t just a conversation about writing—it’s a roadmap for freedom.

Freedom to work anywhere.

Freedom to grow without limits.

Freedom to turn your ideas into income.

If you want to learn how to write online and build a business that lasts, this is the episode for you.

Connect with Dakota: https://www.instagram.com/yodakota/?hl=en

(00:00) Introduction to Dakota Robertson
(01:10) Overcoming Addictions
(08:10) Life in Colombia 
(11:42) Why Dakota Shut Down his Agency
(14:30) Running an Agency vs. Coaching Business
(17:36) Understanding Your Client
(19:42) Helping Others Achieve Freedom
(24:17) Breaking Free from Scarcity Mindset
(27:29) Lessons Learned from Mentors
(32:08) Sahil Bloom’s Five pillars of Wealth
(37:10) Dakota's Early Life
(42:41) Processing Loss and Moving forward
(50:17) Trying Ayahuasca
(52:24) The Importance of Fatherhood and Raising Kids
(58:27) Social Trends and Political Correctness
(59:58) Eastern Medicine, Ayahuasca, and Alternative Healing
(01:03:04) Personal Experiences with Energy Healing
(01:06:25) The Challenge of Growing an Audience
(01:07:52) The Curse of Knowledge in Teaching
(01:10:25) Would Dakota Ghostwrite a Book?
(01:16:03) Understanding Your Audience
(01:18:27) Building Credibility in Your Niche
(01:24:11) The Reality of Building a Sustainable Brand
(01:30:37) Dakota’s Personal and Business Goals
(01:36:04) Learning from Alex Hormozi
(01:41:32) Lessons from Software Development and Startups
(01:45:22) Overcoming Delusions in Business Growth

Chapters

• 0:00 Achieving Freedom Through Online Writing
• 3:54 Navigating Personal Habits and Entrepreneurship
• 10:29 Building a Lead Generation System
• 21:30 Finding Freedom Through Self-Improvement
• 30:34 Investing in Skills for Long-Term Success
• 35:23 Navigating Family Struggles and Addiction
• 42:41 Navigating Family Tragedy and Self-Healing
• 55:04 Social Dynamics and Alternative Medicine
• 1:07:33 Creating a Unique Brand Framework
• 1:21:09 Navigating Niche Expertise and Business Growth
• 1:28:54 Scaling Business Growth Through Strategic Planning
• 1:41:04 Challenges in Software Development and Funding
• 1:46:22 The Genius Behind 600k a Month

Transcript

Dakota: 0:00

It's really cool because I'm helping pass versions of myself where I used to really get frustrated with the lack of freedom, time, money, location, with my jobs and then I found online business, built my own freedom from that. Now I get to help people do that quit their jobs, drop out of college. So many people want to skip the step. You know, or they just want to be the guy or the woman right away and they don't want to put in the work. It's like you're going to pay your dues. You know they just want to be the guy or the woman right away and they don't want to put in the work and it's like you're going to pay your dues. You know you can't pursue the highest version of yourself if you're struggling financially. You can't help your loved ones. If you're struggling financially, hell, if your health's screwed up or if any of these areas are screwed up, you can't be the highest version of yourself. And if you can't be the highest version of yourself, you can't help those that you care about around you.

Darren: 0:41

Dakota Robertson is a writer who has built a multi million dollar business through the power of online writing. As the founder of Growth Ghost, he trains the top 1% of ghostwriters and shares his expertise in writing, branding and business. With over 150 clients served and $3 million in results, dakota has helped hundreds turn their passion for writing into a profitable business. In this episode, we'll dive deep into how he's achieved absolute freedom through writing and how you can do the same to transform your life and business. Dude, all we need is some nicotine. Do you have nicotine?

Dakota: 1:10

No, I actually got off it. I got off it recently. I was like when I left Canada I was like I'm not bringing any nicotine, I'm not bringing any dextrogen. It's like Adderall, just different version of Adderall. My brother gets it prescribed, so he was giving me some and I was definitely abusing it for the launch.

Darren: 1:27

So I was looking at my HRV on my whoop and I knew it wasn't good and I had to stop. It's kind of counterintuitive to have a HRV whoop band and then take a shit on a drug.

Dakota: 1:38

Yeah, it's like, oh great, I'm paying to see how shitty my sleep and health is. That's awesome, I love it. But it's interesting to see the effect on it and you're like, okay, that's what happens when you abuse stimulants right.

Darren: 1:50

So much people have messaged me because I always hope, like nicotine and stuff, and I'm always like, oh, like, I think it's better for you. So you said there's something about it that's good for you yeah, in like okay, this is the thing.

Dakota: 2:03

It can be like a blanket state. That's why I put the the precautions in the thing. But still people took it and ran with it and said I was satan. But I was saying, if you take it in the right dose and you don't abuse it, nicotine can actually be neuroprotective if your brain and prevent alzheimer's, yes, it can help. I'm not gonna say it's a cure. I'm saying it could be preventative and help with alzheimer's, um and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dakota: 2:30

Yes, I'm very, I'm very fancy neurodegenerate I'm very literate, I say big words, but um what was that like, though, when you were taking a shit ton of it though?

Darren: 2:39

so so you had you had grow ghosts coming out. No, you had the I had full stack.

Dakota: 2:44

I had full stack creator. I launched that. That was crazy and a lot. And then I had to prep right after for the growth ghost launch and just doing all that and it was a lot and I just kept myself going with nicotine and, oh yeah, modafinil too, because you can get over the counter in Colombia. So I got that. It's basically like a lesser side effect version of adderall yeah, I was gonna take in college, yeah yeah, it's like a nice little stem, um.

Dakota: 3:13

But me it's like with nicotine I was. Always I had a rule like okay, don't go past three milligrams. So I did that for multiple years like I was like, okay, I'll take one milligram, two milligram, and then eventually my tolerance built and I did three Past six months. It's been abused past that. And then I was just looking and I'm like, okay, I need to take a break. Like I'm a violated.

Darren: 3:35

That's pretty low.

Dakota: 3:36

Yeah, exactly that's what I'm saying. I think that's why a lot of people they get confused with nicotine is they abuse it. There's like doing like 50 milligrams in one hit. I'm like what, 50. Yeah, like my buddy Aaron shout out to Aaron Will I don't know if you're watching this, you sicko. Yeah, I got him into nicotine and then he was telling me about how he's taking like 50 in one go. I'm like, dude, what? And so it's just like it depends on the person. Like, okay, you should not get into it, but if you're like me, I do have an addictive personality, but I can, I know when to stop, or if I can set guardrails where it's like, okay, if I go past this, it means I have a problem and I need to stop and I, I can get off nicotine. I have no side effects whatsoever. No, like, I'll drink socially. Like I probably drink five, six times a year if I drink like would you get smashed or just?

Dakota: 4:26

yeah.

Dakota: 4:26

So like my problem in the past was I never craved alcohol, but when I would drink, on the rare occasion, I would just go all out and I would, my brain would think, the more the better, and I would get to a point where I'd black out and I would end up in like embarrassing situations where, like, I'm a very happy guy and and very uplifting, but there's, there was times where apparently I was just a fucking asshole and I just blackout and I was just a dick and I'd never remembered anything and I just felt horrible and, um, I just realized I don't have a drinking problem in the sense that I would normally think about it where I crave alcohol or I'm always drinking.

Dakota: 5:10

But I have a problem, I have a tendency. I have a problem where when I do drink, I will drink too much and it will cause me to act like a complete idiot. I don't really get become a dick anymore, I guess, but I do black out and I just act like an idiot and just want to take one quick break to ask you one question have you been enjoying these episodes?

Darren: 5:32

because, if you have, I'd really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel so that more people can see these episodes and be influenced to build an online business this year. Thank you, why do you think that?

Dakota: 5:43

is because I think Irish people are the exact same, or just guys in general I think it's probably because I don't drink often and I think, oh, you're like, you know, you don't get to do it much, you might as well go all out. And uh, my brain's just like, oh, the more you do, the better, and all that because, like I think, for me, when I do something I put my all into it and I go hard, and so my brain just kind of associates that with other things as well. Yeah, man.

Darren: 6:09

Well, that was a big problem with me and alcohol, which is I don't think I didn't think I realized I had a problem with it until I gave it up, but it also wasn't. But it also wasn't a problem in the context of what people think. People think like you only have a problem if you're like beating your wife with alcohol Genuinely. They actually think that's like the problem, mark, but for me it wasn't. Which was it took me away from everything else. So when we had our first podcast, I had just given up drink and that's when I finally like was getting my shit together. But it wasn't like I didn't have my shit together. It's just that I wasn't working on things that I want to work on.

Darren: 6:43

Yeah, and it's not like Huberman maxing some of your balls, it's just the fact that, like to build an online business, to build a podcast, to build anything, it just takes a shit ton of time and if you spend most of your like the way I decided, it was like if you, if you're drinking, you're drinking at the weekend, you spend Wednesday getting ready for it. Same with Thursday. If thursday, friday and saturday you're drinking or you're recovering, and then the next three days you're recovering and then getting ready to go again. Yeah, so your life is around the session. And bear in mind, like in ireland, that's not just drink, it's drugs, it's girls, it's, it's everything. It's everything of the vices Did. I used to have 20 cigarettes on that out 20. I'm asthmatic, bro. You got asthma 20. 20. So like that's why I'm like, yeah, that becomes problematic. I didn't drink, I never smoked sober, but when I'm out it's just fucking menthols and gin and tonic.

Dakota: 7:46

It's also like the shit that comes out of it too like you just do stupid stuff. And yeah, I mean there's some times where it's like, okay, it's pretty funny, like the stories that come out of it. But yeah what was? Uh columbia, like columbia was cool. I mean, all I did was pretty much work there, um, worked, went to restaurants and that was it.

Darren: 8:04

What's the vibe like?

Dakota: 8:05

It was great. I love it.

Darren: 8:10

I mean people go for different reasons to Medellin and Colombia.

Dakota: 8:13

I was not like that wasn't me, I swear, I swear. No, but I really like the restaurants there. They're amazing. The coffee shops are a vibe. There's a great community of entrepreneurs. Everything's not out of this world, like crazy priced, like Canada and Latinas, so we're like a good mixer. No, I didn't know how I behaved, but yeah, I met. I met some cool people. It was it's wild man, like man. I was at two different coffee shops. I got recognized by two people in the business space. One of them is now a good friend. He actually lives here in Dubai. He's not here right now, but Pedro, shout out to him. He was a really cool dude.

Darren: 8:58

I had a call with him. You set me up with him, did I? Oh yeah that's right, I did. He literally messaged me like three days ago being like congrats on getting married.

Dakota: 9:08

Yeah, I need to get back to him. Fucking dude, I love pedro. He's dope, he's such a, he's such a killer, he's a great guy but, yeah, it seems like a good approach.

Darren: 9:15

it seems like to me that, like for people that are based, like in america who want to be, it's weird, like I think american people and canadian people think you need to be on that time zone which I don't think so I can tell you a reason why but for people who want to be there, but they want to get rid of, like the bullshit in the West Central America seems, or South America, seems a good call and Central America too, dude, like in Columbia, it's EST time zone.

Dakota: 9:38

It's perfect, it's great, I love it, but I think, to be honest, if you can work online, being ahead is better. Oh, yeah, yeah, I don't know about dubai time, but if you keep going pretty good but if you keep going, trust me, you keep going. What do you?

Darren: 9:51

mean. So basically, if you're living in asia and you have american clients, it's like living in the future I'm gonna get ahead of my competition when you're, when you're sleeping, I'm grinding no, it's better than that, which is like they can't pester you during the day.

Darren: 10:07

Oh yeah, yeah, your focus work so like you just wake up and then you will have like just some questions and feedback from them and then you or your team will do the work. But then during the day, then you can go to the gym, do whatever you want, and then in the evening you might just have a few calls I do like that.

Dakota: 10:21

I prefer that isn't. It isn't Dubai kind of hard, I don't know. Dubai is good because you can do it. Your calls are like eight, no, yeah.

Darren: 10:29

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Dakota: 11:16

I like doing my deep focus work at the start of the day and then calls and stuff at the end. It's nice because you chill. It's like whatever I find my creativity is is stunted. If I do a call at the start of the day and then I try to work after, it's like no, not happening. That's me personally.

Darren: 11:32

I want to chat about the big changes you've had since our first podcast. What do you think has been like the biggest, biggest things you've gone. So you had the agency and then why did you stop the agency?

Dakota: 11:42

Because I was trying to juggle it with the coaching program and also grow on my own social media on five different platforms, and so it was a lot, believe it or not. So it was just like, okay, what do I enjoy and what makes me money? And for me, I mean, before I got into online business, I was going to be a high school teacher because I enjoy teaching, I have a passion for it and I like English and psychology, so I was going to be a high school English and psychology teacher. I never knew that, yeah, yeah. So when I had the coaching program, when I had the opportunity to do that, I was doing it alongside the agency and I was enjoying the coaching program.

Dakota: 12:24

A, I had the opportunity to do that. I was doing it alongside the agency and I was enjoying the coaching program a lot more and making a shit ton more money too. I'm not even lying, um, but I enjoyed it a lot more and it was way more fulfilling for me. And so I was just looking at the two. I'm like, okay, I got all this stress like trying to do the agency, multiple clients, trying to grow my personal brand, and then the coaching program, and I was like you know, let's just focus on one thing do it really well.

Dakota: 12:48

And yeah, I doubled down on that um. I let go of my clients and just kept doing my own personal brand um. And now that I've systemized a lot of the coaching program and I built it all out, now I'm starting my agency again and I'll be very selective with the clients I take on and only work with people like I 100 want to work with um, but right now I'm training one of my writers, nicholas, and I'll get other writers as well for different platforms. But if I can transfer my whole brain to those people and I can be a strategist where I'm not sitting down and I'm writing all the content, but I can be a strategist like, okay, we do this, this and this and train them on all my sops and stuff 100, I'm gonna do that.

Darren: 13:36

I'm gonna run that up. I really want to get into like the real fucking nerdy parts of this, which is like why do you think the agency wasn't making as much money as a coaching?

Dakota: 13:44

Because my audience, like I, was in a unique position. So when I have, when you have a big audience, it's like okay, with the agency, it's like I'm doing the work for them, and so it's very time intensive, it's very labor intensive. All of that With a coaching program I can hop, I can I could make the course. I can hop on group calls every week and then so I can take on 50 high ticket clients at like 5k a pop and then easily fulfill with that, opposed to okay, one client. I have to write all the content, I have to schedule it all out, I have to make sure I have to do any edits, I have to like make sure everything's optimized. All that stuff is a lot more intensive.

Darren: 14:30

I think maybe my question is like what's the average amount of time a client would stay with you?

Dakota: 14:35

So that would vary depending on the price. So some clients I would charge like 7k a month. It's just fucking absurd. Like to be because I didn't care. I had so many clients um, other clients were like 3 500. So the people like the lower you go, the like, the more they're going to stay on.

Dakota: 14:51

So I had a client like really oh yeah, I would say the opposite, no, no, no, okay, well, like, it depends on. It depends on who you're going after, uh, how their systems are set up, all that stuff. Like so if you have a client that's paying you like 7k a month and they're just interested in followers and they don't have systems set up and they're not making money from their social media, they're just doing for clout or ego or whatever it's like, it's hard to rationalize paying just over 70 000 a year just on social media. Look, it is. It's crazy. That's a lot. And so what I noticed was you know people at like the three to four 5k range, they would stay on a lot longer. Like I had a client that stayed with me like a year and a half, and there's some clients that were paying like the 7k a month where it's like it lasted four or five months.

Darren: 15:49

You know, I think it's an interesting observation someone said it to me before which is like do you have more business owners solo, solo business owners or companies? Because if you're with a company and you're charging them six, seven, ten k a month, they just see it as an outsourced vendor and they're like, oh okay, we're just paying down this vendor to take care of this service or this role or whatnot. Because I think that's why I'm kind of like a little bit confused as to like why you'd shut down the agency. Because for me specifically, we have so many like year contracts that you know work. They're committed, let's say 80k a year, and if you commit 15 people and the workload's pretty low, like that's like a million and a half a year, right, well, you're working with companies, right. Yes, now we still have obviously individual people too, but it's like that's why I think it's interesting, because price sensitivity, so it's, this is such a this is interesting conversation.

Darren: 16:39

Because I think there's two different parts of this. We're coaching people realize that they need to put faith in themselves, so they take ownership, so they're less like volatile with their emotions With an agency. They have to put their trust into you. So they're more like more pressure on you, but then if it's a company that's buying your services and agency, they approach it more maturely, but if it's an individual, they're like where the fuck's my oral wipe, you know? So there's just a lot of like emotional, psychological swings, uh, and I remember Sean Haniff, who's based here, he told me about this before which was you need to put your clients into different, uh, emotional states ego, uh ignorant, naive, insecure, like where are they in that pyramid pyramid, where are they in that, in that grid? And then, as a result, you approach them differently, from pricing to how you speak to them.

Darren: 17:36

Okay, so ignorant is like not really understanding, like, maybe, like the value, okay, overall they don't. They're kind of skeptical, right, and like maybe they they have a bit of an ego as well, which is like they think, like okay, I know best, you know, we've all seen those clients where it's like you, you would say I want to write it in this framework and you're like no, no, write it the way I wrote it before. It's like, well, dude, you should just do it yourself. You know, there that is a big cohort as well of people.

Dakota: 18:01

So would you say that's an emotional state?

Darren: 18:05

It is because they react emotionally right, because, like the blow up is in Slack, right, the bombs go off in Slack and when they go off, you approach them differently, which is why I've hired people who are very different than me, so that they can approach problems completely differently than how I approach them.

Dakota: 18:23

See, I think companies are probably easier to sell because they have investors or they have money to blow, because they got funding and all that. But yeah, I think the probably what I was experiencing was I was going after founders that either, you know, they just wanted the clout whatever for themselves or they're like solopreneur types, and so, yeah, they're more like ROI focused, or maybe they don't have all the unlimited funding just to make it rain. But yeah, because I wanted to focus on people that wanted to build their personal brand, because I think people interact more with people that have personal brands rather than a company, unless you're like Wendy's or something, something you got funny ass marketing.

Darren: 19:07

It's interesting, right? Because when it's, I think there's another kind of weird tangent on this, which is when people haven't gone through the pain, like you've built your brand I know you've done different stuff beforehand, like you were into crypto and doing her shit, so you realize how difficult it is to do something. But when someone buys your services, they're paying for you to bypass that pain. So then they don't realize the severity of the pain and they're like, well, why am I not at 100k a month? It's like because, dude, most people never get to that point, but we're assisting you to get there. How do you find that? Especially like what you're coaching and what?

Dakota: 19:42

your clients. Yeah, yeah, it's really cool for me. I'm not helping people scale to 100K a month right now, but for me it's really cool because I'm helping past versions of myself. So where I used to really get frustrated with the lack of freedom, time, money. Location with my jobs, just absolutely hating it. Location with my jobs, just absolutely hating it. And then I found online business and got into that and then built my own freedom from that. Now I get to help people do that quit their jobs, quit, drop out of college. Now they can like support their their family and it's really cool.

Dakota: 20:20

It's very purposeful for me to help people do that. Like I've had people like tell me like, dude, you like legit changed my life and it's I don't take it lightly, I was. I'm very like like I try to I don't know, I try not to be like oh yeah, the person like, oh, it's all because of me. It's like I try to like put it back on them, but like, yeah, I did play a role in helping them and whether you know me just giving them the tools, and they took that and ran with it and like built it on their own. But like it's just really satisfying for me Cause I think for me, freedom is my highest value in life and to help other people that share that same value achieve that in their life and see the effect that has on the world is a really cool.

Dakota: 21:05

It's like ml, ethical mlm right, like if I can, if I can show somebody the tools to grow on social media, to write, market, sell, it's like think about that. What effect will they have as they grow their audience and they help other people, whether it's with ghostwriting or whatever the hell they want to do? It's like who are all the people they help and then who are all the people they have?

Darren: 21:29

ethical mlm. It's what happened with me and your content. Like, literally, I saw your shit write a podcast, I had a shit, a shit, ton of insights and I just put it into my category, you know, and I said, like you're a huge influence on what I've done, I want to ask you about the freedom part. So what? Why is that? Why is freedom the highest window of value for you?

Dakota: 21:50

I think for me, a lot of my life was just pain, like just dealing with a lot of bullshit or not liking myself and not being in a good financial situation, growing up and just feeling a lack of control in my life. And then, as I improved in different areas like the gym and with finances and with confidence, whatever I felt like all these little like winds of freedom and I gained momentum and it helped me just get these wins in other life, in in other parts of my life. But at the end of the day it's like I think if you feel free, then you're you're free to pursue your highest version of yourself.

Dakota: 22:42

You know you can't pursue the highest version of yourself If you're struggling financially. You can't help your loved ones. If you're struggling financially, hell, if your health screwed up or if any of these areas are screwed up, you can't be the highest version of yourself. And if you can't be the highest version of yourself, you can't help those that you care about around you. And also you're probably more miserable too, and miserable people just like to spread that misery around. So overall, I just think you know it makes people happier and those around them happier, and I think it's a good way to improve the world.

Darren: 23:17

When did you kind of come to terms that you're free, Like you've kind of passed that element of freedom Because like, for instance, uh, we both have different backgrounds, but I also like fuck all money growing up like super fucked up family, all the usual shit. So I have a lot of scarcity around. I'd never want to go back there. So myself and my wife and her dad her dad was homeless we often just sit around the table and we're like I'm never going back to it. So that's why I'll do the 16 hour days, because I'm kind of always running from that and I don't mind admitting it and I'm also not moving towards that. I'm going the other way. So sometimes I have a hard limiter. So I don't have like a scarcity mindset, but I also don't want to slip up in my own discipline rough word standards to fall back in there, right, because so much people make money and end up back in wendy's. It's just very common, right. So when did you have that switch in mindset that you're comfortable with?

Dakota: 24:17

where you're at. I don't know if there's like a hard switch. I think it was more like a gradual thing, but it was over time. I would stack, I would stack the wins and I would build up the proof. And this was in different areas. So I used to be the fat, chubby, chunker kid and so I would use that emotion, that negative emotion I felt, and I would go to the gym and I'd work my ass off till I sometimes I'd throw up, I'd be drenched in sweat and I would just keep doing it over and Cause I wanted to move away from that pain.

Dakota: 24:50

And then eventually I noticed I would look in the mirror and I noticed the change in my body, the physical change, and I would look. I remember the first time I saw the physical change. I was looking in the mirror. I was probably like grade nine and I was just like I saw this little V taper a little bit. I was like holy shit, dude. And I looked in the mirror for like 20 minutes and I was like so amazed and I was like, wow, this is crazy. And I remember at that moment I felt control over my life. I was like, oh, if you just do something consistently, month over month over month, and you do it in the right way, you will see results. And it was such an empowering feeling for me because I had this situation where I didn't like myself physically and I took that emotion and I used it as motivation, as fuel, and I built something cool. I changed the direction of my life and I was like, oh, I wonder what else I can apply that to.

Dakota: 25:45

And so I also used to be socially anxious and so, just like lifting weights, I would start off small. I would go up to the cashier and I'd ask about them their day, or I would go with the YMCA counter. I would be the first one to say, hello, just like little stack little wins, and over time, those like grew. And I grew, I grew my baseline and then I started building my confidence and I would go up to strangers and say, hey, how's it going all that?

Dakota: 26:12

It was the same thing with business. It's like, okay, at the start you don't know what the hell you're doing, you're just trying to figure things out. And so I would just just model the people ahead of me, apply what they were, and then I would just stack those little wins and then, over time, you're just building this new identity and you can look back on all those, all those wins you did in the past, all that experience, and you're like, oh yeah, like I guess it's like it's like starting to add up and you, you kind of build that identity. And so, for me, I I always invested heavily in my education. I've invested over 220,000, $230,000 in in, just like mentors and coaching.

Darren: 26:53

Fuck, what was the most, what was the biggest investment? Was it kind of this one?

Dakota: 26:57

thing that was super big, or you know. Funny enough, um, I invested 25 K into this guy. This is a really ironic I don't know what the word is, but today I ran into him at the the creators summit, whatever the 1 billion summit. Um, funny enough, he was the most I ever spent on a mentor, like one of the most, and he just like ripped me off like he was totally incompetent and whatever. So I saw him in the lineup today and he like came up to me. He's like, oh, hey, like I I just called him.

Dakota: 27:29

I was like I was, I was like in line, like just like I was calm, but I was like, dude, you're a fucking scammer. Like well, yeah, I was like I was just talking, I was talking to like uh, yeah, I was just calling him out because I like he did like pretty much scam me, because he just was wildly incompetent. Um, and he has a reputation for scamming people. But uh, yeah, it was weird, but yeah, I don't know like I would. Just I spent like 5 10k on some mentors, others 30k, others 15, like it ranges from different stuff, but uh, it's just like different levels. You'll you'll reach different bosses to fight and you know you pay to get knowledge and fight the boss or whatever, and then, okay, you unlock new levels and there's new bosses, and then you gotta I think that makes you better at coaching people, though, because, like the, the only way that I've built our platform was all the stuff that I didn't like of the stuff that I bought.

Darren: 28:26

So I remember joining programs for eight or 10 K and like not even getting like an onboarding message, like I just I'd arrive in school and I'd be like, okay, it's literally like arriving first day of school and I'm like I remember at the time, dude, I didn't know how school worked and it was a classroom and I was like, okay, where do I go? I literally was like, where do I go from here? And then there was like no activity in the chat, and I remember when we and I was thinking about that, then the biggest fear that I had was like no one would use the platform, like no one used this, and that's when, for me, it was like, okay, I need to start building a community engagement post every day. I remember there was one stage there in, like september. I me and tom both posted every day for 30 days, and then it started a snowball effect, because they saw everyone posting, that everyone was putting in consistent posts and it was just you.

Darren: 29:11

Just I think it's just really good to look at everything that you fucking hate and do and then fix it for yourself. So that's why. That's why I really rate you investing so much. And then because I'm the exact same. That's the reason I asked you is because I just continuously look at the things I don't like, and that's funny, because that's not the reason why I bought the thing in the first place 100%.

Dakota: 29:31

It's like you can take lessons from anything right. It's. It's like turning that negative into a positive, and it can be so subtle.

Darren: 29:38

Yeah, like I've had like things like the group coaching call gets moved every week and I'm like I fucking hate that, I know, I just I hate that, you know. So how have you been able to have the ability to shut down things even when they're successful?

Dakota: 29:53

can you specify shut down?

Darren: 29:55

so you close the agency to do the coaching and then you run the coaching, then you kind of stop the coaching. Then I saw your newsletter last year, this this week, where you said you did like half the revenue of the year before because you're planning next thing. How have you come to terms with being able to, you know, slow something down to build something new?

Dakota: 30:12

I think it just comes from, for me at least, just knowing that I can do pretty much anything, now obviously I can't do a backflip, I mean well, I can.

Darren: 30:25

Well, I don't know. There's a gym downstairs. I don't want to break my neck today. I can do it on trampoline, but not anything else I don't think I can do it on trampoline.

Dakota: 30:34

But like that's why, like, I invested so much into the education is because I know this could all just break tomorrow, I could lose everything, and so I could get my account banned. I can I don't know get fucking become a paraplegic, I don't know what, like crazy shit. But I know the skills will never leave me. I think the number one thing you should invest in is that your skills and your knowledge, because you can place me from anywhere in the world to starting at zero. But you could never take that away from me, and so I can build it all back. And I know I have this knowledge and so that just gave me the confidence.

Dakota: 31:11

Like, yeah, I made like half of what I did last year this year, but I was okay with that because I'm like okay, I'm building something, like I'm taking a step back to build the foundations and I know that taking these two steps back will allow me to go five steps forward. And it was just like you know what I could take that as an ego hit and just think, oh, I'm trash and all that. It's like no, I know the money I make doesn't define who I am as a person. It's a nice way to keep score, but I'm playing this as a long game. I'm not playing this year to year, I'm playing this in like decades, right, because I'm not going anywhere then. So just realizing it's like if you build your skills and you change your identity, um, I think you become a lot more confident in the long term and your ability to do stuff like that. So, yeah, I have no problem with it have you read a sahil bloom's new book?

Darren: 32:08

it's out in february but I think you probably get a copy now if you wanted to. But it's all the five pillars of wealth and that's the whole idea that wealth isn't the only scoreboard, it was. And now there's health relationships, mental health, freedom is one of the pillars. Um, and whenever I talk to him it just always those are so refreshing because he's gone through the nine to five grind. He's gone through like the business grind in the many regards to, and now he's like at like 35. He's pretty settled in that way. But, dude, he's running like a subtree or a marathon, you know, because he has all the other pillars in place, which just makes him really comfortable in his own skin that he can fucking do anything, literally do anything, right. That's why he kind of has like a bunch of different companies. So it's just really cool, right, because I think that goes that much. That comes with maturity, but maturity comes with experience and experience comes with results. It's a very important part right?

Darren: 33:04

yeah, everyone wants to skip the part where you go, get the experience and the results well, that's why I think it's funny when people buy client services, because they they bypass that. They bypass it's fine, right, but they bypass the skill and the experiences you know, and that's why I think it's great to be able to learn all different components of your business whether it's coaching or agency or whatever in the beginning, so that you can, therefore, you just always have it. I don't know, it's just a weird thing, right, and that made me, that made me get slower to grow, but it's in a better position yeah, you build out that foundation.

Dakota: 33:39

I agree too with uh, doing all the the jobs of your business too, like the sales, the marketing, the ops, especially at the start, because then as you bring more people on, you can you know if they're doing a good job or not. I think a lot of people screw that up. It's like they just hire someone, they expect them to do it.

Darren: 33:58

You're like they're just doing a shit job you know, when, like ken from bangladesh is offline for four days and he's like my internet's not working, it's like dude, we all know you're not working. That happens so much. Guys are like it takes six days to create a short form clip. I'm like bro I know.

Dakota: 34:15

that's why elon's such a great ceo too is because he's done it all. He knows it and he knows how to push people to their their, because he's like I've done this, I know how to do it yeah.

Darren: 34:27

Never ask someone to do something that you haven't done yourself.

Dakota: 34:29

Exactly.

Darren: 34:30

You mentioned like when you were younger and like those kind of things you were like struggling with, and we touched on that slightly on our first podcast, but not really in depth. Have you reflected more on that time in recent, because it seems like you're a bit more introspective now, even like when you did like psychedelics and you've documented that. Do you find yourself like a bit more reflective now?

Dakota: 34:51

yeah, I mean, I think, uh, especially during the ayahuasca, that was a good moment for me because up until that point, I was going to therapy for, I think, a good seven months before that, not because I was in like any distress or anything. It was like. You know, it's probably good to talk about this stuff and so I think that set me up well for the ayahuasca. Um, and that ayahuasca was like 10 years of therapy in a week. It was crazy, um.

Dakota: 35:23

But yeah, I've always been very introspective of my past, like why did I turn out the way I did? And you know, some people in that situation go a different route. I was always like just very curious on stuff um, but yeah, like I think a lot of it's learning to forgive others and forgive myself and let go of a lot of resentment and um, so for me, I always felt very helpless as a kid and so, uh, seeing my you know father you know he's always like into drugs and whatever and like he, I, I couldn't do anything to help him I didn't really care that much because I didn't have a strong relationship with him. But like, um, my mother, like I was very, very close with my mother, very close. I was a typical mama's boy and I I was like her, her everything, her everything. And so for me, when she started to get into the drugs and I was like that only person there for her, like the like she was, like that rock for her, and seeing her get into those, the, the, the crack and the cocaine and all that shit, and just me being a kid and not being able to save her and like help her, like I felt like no one else could reach her, like I did I could. And just seeing the, the hold that the drugs had on her and how she transformed from this beautiful, my beautiful mother like a most amazing person ever and transformed to something that was fucking unrecognizable.

Dakota: 37:10

And me, just I would. I remember I would drive her to rehab, like I drove her hours out of town just to get her to rehab Um, that didn't work. I would pick her up at random fucking crack places, um, after her getting beat by a dealer, um, call me, calls me at the, the middle of the night, just drunk or high, asking for a ride, and just just the feeling like I don't know what to do and I know there's no one else that can help her and just feeling like just a, I just didn't have control and I didn't know what to do and I just I just felt like so helpless. And I remember there was like a point where I was like I just I don't, I just cut it off. I just tried to disassociate from it because I just had no idea what to do, because I just had no idea what to do. And, yeah, there was a few moments of like really deep regret that I had.

Darren: 38:10

But how did it start?

Dakota: 38:15

Her getting into the drugs.

Darren: 38:16

Yeah, yeah so is that really common in Canada?

Dakota: 38:19

No, no, definitely not. I guess depends on your upbringing. My mom had had a crazy upbringing, like her parents were alcoholics, um, her father would like beat her fucking mom in front of her like he was a very abusive and nasty drunk, um, but uh, so she was like always like kind of I don't know crazy, not like in a bad way, but like I don, I don't know, she's just like very open and and, uh, she smoked a lot of dope as a kid and all that. So she was in like the drug scene and always like hanging around the skids, um, but uh, she had me, she had my brother, my brother lived with my grandparents and uh, me growing up I was like I don't know, know, just always with her and she was always working, whatever.

Dakota: 39:06

She eventually met another guy. They had two kids together, my little sisters, but they eventually, after like 13 years, they broke up and that was very, very hard on her because she, her whole identity was her kids. You know, I think it's like our work is part of our identity, our families, our identity too. But women, I think, if they don't have that family or the kids or the husband or whatever, it's really hard on them, like, who are you right? And so my little sisters, they went to live with him because she was working she ran her own hot dog cart business and she was working all the time and all that.

Dakota: 39:51

So, uh, she took that really hard and especially like how they broke up and like the whole situation there, I was very, very hard on her because she's a very loving person. She pours her heart out and uh, yeah, so that like destroyed her. So she's a very loving person, she pours her heart out and yeah, so that like destroyed her. So she got into alcohol. She was drinking and just the environment she's around, like she's always trying to uplift people like addicts or people that are struggling, homeless people. She gives them jobs and just being around that environment and she was in a vulnerable place. She eventually started drinking and she started coming home late just drunk as hell. Drinking led to cocaine. So she got in the cocaine scene for a bit and then cocaine. Obviously that's where you start really getting into the hard shit. So that led to crack and, yeah, once you smoke crack you don't go back.

Darren: 40:46

At least it's hard, but you probably don't even know what's in it, though and I'm in canada and america, right that's the.

Dakota: 40:50

That's the, that's the hardship man. Yeah, like, especially nowadays.

Darren: 40:53

Um, that's how she died like it was a fentanyl, fentanyl overdose because, like in ireland, cocaine is really common, but the next step isn't, you know, it's just that isn't in, it's not really in the culture. Cocaine is in the culture for sure, but not the step forward, and that's why I think, like you know, it may not even be something intentional initially. Does that make sense? And then it's like a slippery fucking slope as a result, cause you know, my, my wife is American. I'm familiar with all like how bad fentanyl is and everything. Walking through LA, like everyone's a fucking zombie yeah, it's, it's crazy, dude. Like it's just. It's to the point that it's actually safe because no one is capable to they can't get up. Like Miami, downtown Miami is actually pretty fine to walk around because everyone is literally on the verge of death.

Dakota: 41:45

You're not even the same person after a while. It was. That was. Yeah, it was. It was rough seeing that, especially when you know the person I think you know him so well and then just someone else it was. It was crazy. I felt relief when she died, as fucked up as that sounds like, I was like she's not in hell anymore. She was literally like homeless for a while. Yeah, she was. She was homeless for a while. It was, it was.

Darren: 42:09

It was very rough to see but I think, like the challenge there is the fact that, like you know I know you said yourself you're helpless but you also couldn't do anything right. Like there's, there's nothing you can do and like I've I've seen this a lot with alcohols like, like you know, a lot of alcohol problems with my family and like you just can't get true to them. Like you just nothing. You say it's like, it's like you're a fucking alien, like so how did you kind of move on from it? Or like what was the? Not even move on, but like what was the process then afterwards? Like after she died?

Darren: 42:41

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Dakota: 43:38

Um well, I remember like I was at the gym. Okay, I'll rewind it back back a bit too. Uh, so I went to a music festival. It was downtown in my local city and we were leaving the music festival app festival after with my friends and we're walking downtown and there's this street called leon street. That's where, like all the homeless people stay, and so we're like, fucked up, we're like walking down the on street, we're gonna go like pizza and I'm with probably five, six of my friends and we're walking on the sidewalk and we see all like the homeless people on the whatever streets and whatever. But we're walking on the sidewalk and I see a figure just like standing up, uh, in the distance I guess 20 meters in the distance. I see him.

Dakota: 44:27

We get closer and closer and like the person comes into frame and can see him a bit clearer, and the person's just like staring out into the night sky, just like fucking spaced out, like what the hell's going on. I get closer and closer and I'm in the back of my friend group and I'm just looking at the person and I'm like, holy fuck, it's my mom, as like she's literally like 10 feet in front of me and I'm just like what the fuck? And she's just spaced out Like she doesn't even know what the hell's going on. But my friends are walking and I'm just like, do I even do here, like I don't even know? And so I get closer and closer and I just like feel this, like feeling like fuck, like I don't, I don't even know, like I I don't know what to do here, like I I don't want to make a scene like whatever, like I just didn't say anything to anyone and I just like walked past her. She didn't even like her own son was like right there and she like literally fucking right there. She doesn't even recognize me because she was just so spaced out on drugs and, um, yeah, I was just like god, like it really like hurt me a lot to see that. It's like that's like the woman that fucking raised me and like like had the best values and took care of me and like just seeing her fucking homeless and like no one's there. And uh, yeah, I just walked past her.

Dakota: 45:58

And uh, yeah, a week later I was at the, at the gym, with my buddy and we're just working out and I get a call and it's from my grandpa. My grandpa's like this fucking macho man like hardcore, like like I don't know, just macho dude, and he calls me and he's like Dakota, you, like you should do, come out, come home. Like you should come home. I was like what the hell? Like what's going on? And he's just like it was. It was weird because I could hear like his voice sounded off and I was like I knew something wasn't good. But he was like just, dakota, just come home.

Dakota: 46:37

And I was like okay, and so my buddy, he, he gave me a ride home and I just remember like the 10 minute drive home, just I kind of knew, but I didn't want to accept it and my brain was just racing. But get back to my grandparents' house where I was staying, and I see a cop car out front and I'm like I fucking know, like what this is, but my brain's like it's just doesn't want to accept it, like I'm just like blocking it off, blocking it off, and it just felt like slow motion getting out of that car. I walked toward the the door and I turned the handle and I opened the door and right away I just see my grandparents and my brother. Um, they're crying and there's a fucking police officer talking the door. And right away, I just see my grandparents and my brother, um, they're crying and there's a fucking police officer talking to them and right away, I just like I just knew and I just I just started fucking bawling and I just I just remember saying, fuck, like I, I just kept repeating it, I didn't say anything else, I just kept repeating it and uh, my brothers came in and hugged me and yeah, like she was just gone, like that A week after, like me was walking past her and I never said anything to her, like I never hugged her, I never said anything, like that was the last time I saw her and I just felt so much, I don't know, I hated myself, just like seeing your mother there and then, like, not even acknowledging her.

Dakota: 48:10

Um, yeah, like a week after she died from that fentanyl laced overdose and uh, yeah, she, uh she died. Um, the people she was smoking crack with whatever in the. It was in the back of a shed. Um, they just left her. They had, uh, uh, whatever those knocks or whatever those fucking revive kits, whatever when you overdose. They never used it on her, they just left her. Um, she was left in a shed for fucking two days. I was in the summer. Her body was decomposing, um, I remember we visited the shed after. Um, she was left on a mat. On the mat there's maggots. It was fucking disgusting and the smell was horrible.

Dakota: 48:56

Um, that was fucked up and, like I, it was such like a for me is like god died that day for me and it was just like I just felt like this numbness with everything, like I couldn't feel it was weird.

Dakota: 49:13

I think it was like my way of protecting myself. I just shut down like all emotions and I just felt numb and I, and whenever they would bring up my mom like my family would bring up my mom I would feel this intense anger. Like I'm not an angry person, but for whatever reason, I just felt like intense anger, like shut up, don't talk about it, like I just didn't want to acknowledge it and so, yeah, like for a long time I just felt numb and decompartmentalized from a lot of stuff. And so with ayahuasca, it was very for me, it was very helpful because I got to confront my inner kid and got to take him by the hand and just tell him like hey, it's okay, and just acknowledge all those feelings I felt as a kid and then also as a teenager and like dealing with the stuff with my mom but just just saying hey, it's okay.

Darren: 50:17

How did you feel then?

Dakota: 50:18

Because it was like a rush of emotion during the ayahuasca yeah Cause, like it's fucking happening on I was crying a lot but it wasn't like sadness, it was, it was like a release, it's like acknowledgement, and I was embracing that inner kid and I got to. I remember just telling him like hey, it's okay, like I got you and so like I didn't have growing up my, my mom was great and and all, but she was like working a lot and I never really had that strong like figure in my life to lead me or like especially like a father. I think that's important as a man, to have that father figure. I just didn't have that and I didn't have that guidance and I didn't have the person to confide in.

Darren: 51:01

Like someone you respect, you know.

Dakota: 51:03

Exactly.

Darren: 51:10

That's what. Like, that's what you need, you know. Yeah, like I look at, uh, like my wife and her father, who had like a very tough life, and he leads the family really well, you know, because like he guides them. Does that make sense? So, even like she might be like, oh, he was mean to me as a kid or whatever, like he did things with the best intention to raise her with strong values, um, but like, if a guy doesn't have that, that's when they go off the fucking rails. They go one or one of two ways and I think going off the rails is is a byproduct to getting your shit together. You know, I think you actually you have to go through those days where you want those three day benders to then realize, okay, I'm gonna keep going down that path or I'm gonna get my shit together. People don't talk about that for guys specifically.

Dakota: 51:49

That's why, jordan peterson, they had that big explosion right at the start, because like so it's like exactly right and it's it's like a lot of men crave that stuff because like, yeah, we don't get that, like it's the fatherhood stuff that people are dropping the ball, so we gotta look for it in other areas, right? So yeah, I think like that. For me, personally, I think the number one thing you can do in life is raise good kids, because you think about the, the effect that has right, and then if they raise good kids and they raise good kids, it's like it affects everyone.

Darren: 52:24

So do you want to have?

Dakota: 52:25

children. Yeah, 100, yeah, I uh. Yeah, I ended a relationship recently because they don't want to have kids um in the future and it just wasn't aligned. But, uh, yeah, yeah, I do and yeah, I think it's one of the at least for me, it's one of my top goals in life.

Darren: 52:45

Definitely not anytime soon, probably like eight years or so but yeah, I, I think, like you know, when you go into a good intentions like you do like you've got your so much pain, so much like awful shit, that like you're like okay, now I'm like ready to do it not now, obviously, but in due course that's like the perfect case. You know, I know that seems kind of ridiculous, but it is the perfect case because you're going to be attentive, you're going to be there, you're going to be that missing spot that you didn't have so it's just like when you went in, like when you go in coaching programs and you realize, oh, I didn't have this or that, it's like the exact same thing yeah, exactly, you're filling in the gaps

Darren: 53:20

yeah whereas, like you know, the npcs who just follow the traditional path by the white picket fence decide to have a kid at 30 because it's a good thing to do and they're a fucking asshole and they're working in kpmg. I genuinely think that those people shouldn't have children. I think they should be reassessing. Should they actually do it? Because, like you know, we don't need more. We don't need more kids that are not raised well. Right, that's not like a fucking gap in the market. Right, it's not like we need more kids. It's like we need more kids that are raised well. Does that make sense? Whereas, like, the default pad is I'm just going to do this because everyone else is doing it, because the reason I asked you is because I actually don't want our children, and so is my wife, so that's the reason why we're well, that's the one reason we're compatible. But we don't want to and because of, like, my upbringing and stuff, that I'm just like I'm good, you know, and I've, and if other people want to do it, I'm like, yeah, fucking, do it, but do it for the right reason, you know. Like do it because you want to do it, like I've made the conscious decision and like I don't know, like whatever things might change, but as of now and like as our plans have been discussed very thoroughly. I don't want to and it's true, because not everyone has to, you know so it's but I just think what's important is your level of awareness of what you're doing in your fucking life, cause most people are not awake. And that's why I asked you about freedom, because you know to identify freedom as your highest value. You must understand the other flip of the coin, right, which is the hell analogy, which is just like when it all burns down, or how it all burns down, what's the other side of it.

Darren: 54:52

Because I think, without getting too fucking conspiracy theory vibes, I think my theory on this is I think a lot of people in the in uk and ireland, they don't have that. They have a floor how far they can fall in society because there's so much government aid, there's so much support from like welfare, all this shit, and, like you know, I have family members that are, that are rolled that system. That's the reason I'm saying this. So, as a result, they have like a cushion, whereas America you have no floor. You just fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, which is why I think it's it's given a rise to people who think very independently and who've built their own systems and philosophies and worldview. And that's why americans and canadians are well, maybe not. Canadians are outspoken, you know, because they're like, well fucking, no one helps jerry and jerry's on the fucking street, so I'm gonna grab my ass off, so, but that's not in european culture, like that is 100 not in european culture, because they do have a floor.

Dakota: 55:50

Man, yep, same with canada, like we're more social.

Darren: 55:53

Super, super woke dude yeah it's crazy how far they went. Dude. Canada used to be a great country man I remember.

Darren: 56:00

I remember when uh was it Trump did his first term when he stopped the J1 visas for Irish people going to America. There was a J1 visa when any young person could go there for 90 to six months 90 days to six months and then everyone went to Canada and Canada were open and they used to bring in a bunch of Irish people, uk people, and it was great. Then, all of a sudden, then during covid, and because they just chopped everyone's head off, just like, it went super, super like. Just the other side of the coin, right same in australia australia too, man, that's surprising. And france, they're bringing in a fucking global tax thing in france and uk are following that pursuit.

Darren: 56:44

Uh well, they're bringing in a fucking global tax thing in France and UK are following that pursuit. Uh well, they're trying to do it. Uh, because basically, what they're realizing in these countries is that you know their moat, which was the employment they could offer, you know, working in Goldman Sachs and whatever. That's not a moat anymore, because all these online business bros are making more money than these doctors and they don't need education. So the moat of going to harvard and stuff is gone and like, and they, they are identifying this and this isn't a conspiracy theory. It's obvious because the amount of people that are fleeing from 20 to 30 is growing. I think like on average, there's 40 000 people a year in ireland from 20 to 30 leave. 40 000 a year, bro, it's fucking fucking. Half population. Yeah right, six million people in the country, dude I think uk is.

Dakota: 57:27

Uh, I think the only only place in the world is is that has net negative millionaires. Like everywhere else is like they they're. They're growing in millionaires every year. Uk is the only one that's decreasing millionaires.

Darren: 57:38

Interesting man and basically you know, when they're just getting started they're going to Thailand and when they are established they're going to Dubai. So there's like a stepping stone for younger people these days, and especially because in Australia they have like the Commonwealth, so UK people can go to Australia for the most part visa friendly. So I think really like this, the COVID gap accelerated all of this independent thinking by a hundred years, like a hundred years was compressed into two years, you know, and if you didn't catch the wind then you're never going to catch it.

Darren: 58:14

If you, if you think, if you never open your eyes, then you were never going to open your eyes, which is which, as Tate says, you need someone to flip the burgers, right, yeah.

Dakota: 58:27

But then they're going to automate that too, so you're screwed, you do you do it all right.

Darren: 58:32

It's how, it's how the bell curve works.

Dakota: 58:34

It's actually, it's insane. This past four, five years has been a big, giant IQ test, like for me, the the biggest, one of the biggest ones, is that people think there's more than two genders. I'm not even like trying to be disrespectful, but like that was actually like I realized like oh, there's a lot of people that are fucking stupid. It's like you can be trans, you can be gay, that's totally fine, whatever, like, like that's chill. But to think that you might need to cut this, I don't know Like how political you're. Yeah, okay, I'm fine, okay.

Dakota: 59:10

But you know, what's really interesting was Orwell, where it's like if they can make you think that two plus two equals five, they can make you believe anything. It's the exact same thing with the genders. If they can make you believe anything, it's the exact same thing with the genders. If they can make you think that men can get pregnant, that like all this like crazy shit, it's like what else can they make you believe? And so it's just really interesting. It's like a big social experiment of psyop. Um, just like the, the crowds. If you can get enough people saying, oh no, the sky is red or no, men can have babies or get pregnant, whatever. It's like what. You could sign up all these people and they comply. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's. It's just so funny just seeing, like, how scared people get like the woke mob and all this and it's it's coming backwards.

Darren: 59:58

Now it's swinging back. One thing that was really big to me was um, especially you, recently, people used to look down on Eastern medicine, so not necessarily Chinese medicine, but like traditional medicine, whether it's like from a fucking plant or like from like meditation or spirituality or a healer or some shit. And then Western society deliberately banned, banned that. So ayurveda you know ayurveda medicine, it's like an indian type of medicine. I'm not too familiar with it, but when good mates ned sent me yesterday, that's that's banned in western culture. So the idea that that is a remedy for your illness is is wrong, okay. However, we're seeing increasingly like those, non those traditional types of like medicines even even like ayahuasca, which is traditional, are helping people massively, massively. So instead of going on all these like medication, taking natural remedies and natural remedies as well it could be food, bro, sun, exercise, sleep that can also be a natural remedy, right. And then you've some elements of like meditation, spirituality, rare work and stuff. That rise has been really interesting and that's been really big for me.

Darren: 1:01:11

I went to a local healer, energy healer bro in Lombok recently and like I was super skeptical of this shit, super skeptical, but like I have lots of like resistance in life, a lot of like stress and pressure and I don't know, just stuff I wanted like alleviate. And I went to this guy and, uh, he's basically like a massage. So the guy's not spiritual, okay, he's not like. He's not like, oh, I sensed you have something wrong with your mother and you're like, oh, no, fucking shit. It was more like he tries to like identify like blockages in your body and it could be kind of woo, woo, whatever. But he like felt my arms and felt my here, felt here, felt underneath my armpit, and he pushed it and it was so fucking tight, like extremely tight, to the point, that I like screamed and jumped up and I was like, what the fuck is this? And he was like, yeah, dude, like all the pressure you're carrying is carried through your neck, it's in your shoulder, it's in your arms, like you need to alleviate that pressure. It's stuck inside you. And to this point I was still like, okay, I kind of half believe it, do believe it, I don't know.

Darren: 1:02:16

And then he worked on it. It felt like he was breaking bones in my body. But three or four minutes later, that point in my arm that he was running over that felt like breaking bones was gone, and same my forearms, same my arms and same my armpits in my neck, same my head. And then he checked my legs and I've really fucked up my knee when I was a kid, like really badly with sport, and he identified that it was a huge blockage here and started to alleviate that. And I did for my feet and there's loads of like signals that like shit in your feet like goes up energy wise, all those bollocks, and I was like okay, like it's fucking clear, like I felt it, it's clear to me and the logic is like if you, if you see it and if you believe it, then it's true, right, like, whether you think you can or you can't, it's true.

Darren: 1:03:04

And my wife did something similar and she's had like a really fucked up um, she's really fucked up issues in her stomach. So she's been like misdiagnosed with really bad like uh, illnesses in her stomach, chronic illnesses. And this guy had no context and like felt her stomach and was like there's a shit ton of stuff like out of alignment here, blockages in here, and he did a load of work on her and she was screaming on the bed and then she got up and she felt like 100 okay afterwards holy shit, this was from one session one session and this guy, it's like passed down through generations and this guy is like you know, he's not like spiritual, he was out smoking a cigarette before he did it right.

Darren: 1:03:35

And um, he's like, yeah, like I learned it from my dad, I'm doing it to. Like lots of people that come in, that's like westerners. People come back and when they come back, they don't have the blockages again. So a woman, a woman, frequently she flies back from russia every year and she did it the first time. She did it four times because she was all blocked up with like stress and pressure and then she went back to russia and every year for six years she comes back and when she comes back, he doesn't work on her because he touches. He touches where he needs and he's like, yeah, you're perfectly fine, but she like she got such a big uh unlock from it. She comes back every year still and he barely speaks english and he's like, yeah, this russian chick come and she thinks something wrong, but nothing wrong still. Like that's how he talks, right is he is he indonesian yeah, it's from like.

Darren: 1:04:20

It's like a remote area called lambok. It's a beautiful area, um, but you should do it, bro, like genuinely like, as in. It's like fucking 25 dollars, you know. But what I'm trying to say here is like the things that we were told when we were younger are actually all not true. Go to job, take all the debt, get a mortgage, which I think is a fucking scam we can talk about if you want to, um, go, go, uh, golden handcuff yourself to this job, just a few pyramid. And also like, put money into retirement that you know. We've seen all those like retirement funds go to zero and stuff.

Darren: 1:04:57

So the the answer to this and like for you it's the word is freedom. For me it's like self-sovereignty, which is like you just create your own universe james kemp's calls that your own universe which is like you build your own reality. And how much money I need, who's in my circle, who's not in my circle? Uh, the health I want, spirituality or whatever. And then you, just, you just live in your own world, bro, and like choose your own adventure.

Dakota: 1:05:21

Yeah, if you don't want the client just say no.

Darren: 1:05:23

If you don't like the the work, you just refund them, you just move on. You know, um, I remember I was at james kemp's mastermind and he was like he was like I need nothing. He was like I'm engaged right now and he was like my fiance doesn't need me, I don't need her. She survived 35 years on her own. I survived 42 years on my own. I don't't need anything. We're all going to survive. We are here to help each other and it was like a nice little frame change of positioning and like he lives a very happy and like life of freedom.

Dakota: 1:05:57

So yeah, it's interesting, but then within there, then you can grow as much as you want, you can build that business that you want or invest the time or invest the money, but you're doing it in a way that you want, not because you are conditioned to do it. Yeah, it's it's I like the, yeah like we. I resonate a lot with what you said. It's like you're not there because you need the other person, but it's like you're there because you want to. You don't need anything. It's just like, yeah, let's just build some cool shit together. That's the best way to do it.

Darren: 1:06:25

I guess we're at the top of some business stuff. Do you think it's a lot different to grow an audience now?

Dakota: 1:06:30

I think first principles are the same. I just think the chessboard moves faster and so there's going to be different trends that pop up as you to be different formats of content, but I think at the first principles level, it's the same. It's like how do you make content relevant to people? At the end of the day, people want to move away from pain and move toward pleasure, desired outcomes, and so understanding your audience, what makes them tick, and then presenting content in a way that captures attention Brilliant. At the end of the day, it's that simple. It's like content that's relevant, get traffic to that content and that's how you grow.

Darren: 1:07:19

And so the way you get traffic might be different or the way you format the content might be different, but the underlying principles are the same I think this has become so like second nature to you that you probably don't even realize that most people don't even know that, right, yeah, no, yeah, that's the thing.

Dakota: 1:07:33

Right, it's the curse of knowledge yeah, it's nice though, because, like I work with a lot of beginners, so I have to explain it in like very simple ways and like condense down different shit. So it's like I get the constant reminder like people don't know what the hell it is. So it's it's it's. It's nice for me. I have to learn from first principles so I can teach it.

Darren: 1:07:52

The way I think about this is like everyone is a beginner at 99.9% of things that exist in the world, and they're like a master at their small piece. Nine percent of things that exist in the world, and they're like a master at their small piece. So if someone is, let's say, an entrepreneur and and they're super successful building a huge tech company, and if you're speaking to them to become their writer, well then they don't have no clue about writing, so their like mind is blown by this 21 year old who knows copywriting genuinely. That's what happens, right. So I think that's the that's the flip side to that. So it's a good opportunity again at that point, right. So that's why I think, when you're thinking about building an audience, like the way you explain, it is obvious to you, but it's not to other people yeah, it's cool too, because the reason I love ghostwriting so much was because, yeah, I had this puzzle piece that they had no idea how to do.

Dakota: 1:08:39

Well, they didn't have the time or the know-how to grow on social media and so I got to interview all these best time selling authors Like one of my favorite books that I remember listening years ago, scouted a podcast, and then was a year and a half ago, I I was in this, like, introduce Dan, and true Dan, go introduce me to him. Um, but I ended up ghostwriting for this guy and it's like this is crazy, like I never would have got this opportunity. He never probably would have gave me the time of day if I didn't have this skill, and so it's like it's. It's crazy like these different opportunities you get presented when you have this missing puzzle piece that these other people they want but they don't know how.

Darren: 1:09:20

Would you ghostwrite for, like an actor for their book?

Dakota: 1:09:23

For an actor.

Darren: 1:09:24

Would you write a book?

Dakota: 1:09:25

Oh, would I write a book.

Darren: 1:09:27

As in would you ghostwrite someone's book Like isn't that what Mark Hudson did for Will Smith?

Dakota: 1:09:31

I don't think I would do it personally, because I think a book that's a lot, like that's a big, big commitment and if I'm gonna go straight a book, I want credit like I'm gonna be selfish, like if I'm gonna put my all into like a book, I probably want credit like it's like um eric yorgoson that wrote uh, naval ravagan's book I've had.

Darren: 1:09:51

I've interviewed eric but no one knows it was him. Yeah, his name is anna, but everyone just recognizes naval's book right, okay, but you saw him he curated it, didn't he?

Darren: 1:10:03

he did. But like, what I'm trying to say is that the book sells so much on its own. Now, do you get me that? Like if you saw Eric walking down the street, you wouldn't be like that's the guy that wrote Naval's book, right? Whereas like Naval is this like fucking translucent. Like yeah, exactly, he's like up here into the sky, right? So would you write your own book?

Dakota: 1:10:25

yeah, 100.

Dakota: 1:10:26

What's the plan for me? I think, just starting out, just being like very educational I think I would make one on brand to start out or content maybe, like I don't know, just first principles, because I I don't think. I think I think a lot of the stuff people teach when it comes to brand or social media is like tactics or tips that work now but not everlasting. And so, with me working with different niches, with ghostwriter, with ghostwriting, and then also working with many beginners in different niches, I found different patterns that work and first principles, and so I think I would condense that into a book about brand or social media or something like that around that and I would just distill it in the most easy to simple, to understand frameworks and make it super actionable that people could use right away and do a book on that, like I enjoy. I enjoy teaching it and so, like I, I basically condense my program into a book and then sell that and then obviously like, use that to get more leads and all that stuff, but it's a book funnel.

Darren: 1:11:30

Yeah, what are some of those evergreen principles on?

Dakota: 1:11:34

brand, so brand like. The way I think about brand is. I call it the brand framework.

Darren: 1:11:42

Let's see if I remember so fucking nerdy like yeah, so nerdy what you're like you got so well you think about it like every okay.

Dakota: 1:11:51

Well, the way I have my program structured, like every lesson has a framework, and the reason why I do that is because I want them to associate that framework with me, because every time they use that, it's like I'm in their head and that's part of branding too. It's like you're literally like branding your ideas into their brain. So that's why I talk about the gap framework or the what, why, how framework or whatever. And so I always think, like when I'm teaching this, how can I make this my own? And Russell Brunson, I think he talks this it's like always come out with your own frameworks and just for that same reason. And so the brand framework it's a newer one. So let's see if I remember it, but B is for bold, so you have to stand out.

Darren: 1:12:30

You love using the letters.

Dakota: 1:12:31

I do, I do, I fully admit it. I love it. I'm such a nerd. How hard is it for you to put that square peg in a circle, bro? I I will sometimes sit there for hours thinking about how do I come up with the best name? I shit you not. I'll sit there for hours sometimes just to find I'm so autistic. But it works. It works well.

Dakota: 1:12:51

So like brand, so like b. So you have bold. So, um, think about it if, if you have a bunch of purple circles on a board, they're all purple, they're all the same shapes. But what if you see a red triangle? Where is your eye drawn to? So visually? It's obviously the red triangles. Why is that? It stands out from everything else. It's the same thing with brand Our attention is going to be directed to what stands out.

Dakota: 1:13:19

And so you look at someone like Andrew Tate, look at someone like Elon Musk, whoever else you want to think of. They stand out because they're bold and they're not afraid to beat up their own drum and go against the mainstream. I think Dan Coe does this very well, is he'll look at what the mainstream is doing. He'll do the exact opposite. So, for example, common advice is to niche down. He flips on its head. He says no, you are the niche. And so he's instantly going against the grain. He's standing out because it's like, oh, this common way of thinking. Although I don't think it's right, I think you become the niche later on. I think you should niche out the start I was gonna ask you I love dan but like I I think it's like objectively wrong or people misinterpret

Dakota: 1:14:06

it statistically, um, no, but like, if you can look at what, what are the sacred cows, what are the the common beliefs, what are the the ways of thinking in my industry and what are the things I don't agree with and I could flip it on its head and go against, lean into that. And so Tate, for example, he's such a great example. He smashed it, bro. He smashed it because, look, it was all like politically correct, like men were being demonized, all that he just fucking leaned into the masculinity.

Darren: 1:14:40

I feel like he was part of the election in terms of you know, like, when that movement towards trump came on like he, he started that.

Dakota: 1:14:49

Yeah. Well, you look at trump too. It's like everyone's used to the politicians. They're used to the same thing. Trump comes in complete opposite, just saying the most crazy shit. That's so funny. We're gonna build a wall. It's gonna be a big wall. This is like crazy stuff. And he's bold. He stood out and he fucking won the election because of that, because he was so, he stood for something and he was different. So bold is a big part.

Dakota: 1:15:12

And then, uh, the second one is relevancy, if I remember correctly. So you have to be relevant. So if you're not relevant to your audience, they don don't care. So I could talk about basket weaving or Icelandic tap dancing. It's like I'm not going to be relevant to people because most people don't care about it. So you have to understand who you're trying to target. And the way I think about relevancy is like what are the pain points and what are the desired outcomes that that audience wants? And how do you become useful to people? Basically, because, at the end of the day, humans are selfish and if you're not useful to them, they don't care. That's why I don't agree with you are the niche, at least at the start, because no one cares about who you are Like. If I'm the niche I can talk about whatever it's like. No one cares unless you're being useful to them.

Darren: 1:16:03

Yeah, so we have a ton of people in our program that personal development podcasts, um, and I'm always like, look, you just need to get more specific yeah, that's what I tell people, because even like jay shetty like he's like the, everyone's like oh, but jay shetty is super white, but it's like he was the monk, bro, though you know he was known for being like from like meditation beginning he was also super early too, exactly.

Darren: 1:16:25

But but even at that those guys still had specificity to some like. If you looked at it close enough, it's specific, even like diary ceo. He was like an entrepreneur who had sold a company and then he was building flight, whatever the fuck it's called, so it was still like business, and now he's fucking talking about god knows what these days, but it still had that specificity. If you really strip it back, does that make sense? Whereas, like when you're 21 and you're talking about like how you should do self-mastery and then fitness and then also god knows what it's like, you have to be the guy in initially. You know you have to be the guy. It's so funny whenever I write about that I always get people being like but what about if you're?

Dakota: 1:17:05

a girl. I'm like bro, come on, are you hot? That's definitely a good way to stand out. Don't even lie, like let's be honest here. So, true, um, but yeah, that's like relevant's, like how can you be useful to people?

Dakota: 1:17:21

And then the A in the brand framework is authentic. So it's like I could talk about the best business tips, the best marketing tips, whatever my niche is about, and that's fine and dandy. But then you're comparing yourself with everyone else that's in that same niche. So if someone else has better marketing tips or if they have more credibility, they're going to beat you every time. So you don't want to play on that playing field, and that's where authenticity comes into play. So if you can get people connected to who you are and relate to you on a level, or aspire to be like you on a level, that's how you win, because then there's that emotional connection. So someone else might have a better offer, but if they connect with you as a person, they're going to go with you, because humans are more emotional. So how can you tell stories, how can you share your polarizing takes, how can you talk about your experiences and build that connection with people? And so that's one of the best ways to stand out and how to build that, that moat and the diehard fans is the story tell and all that stuff. So that's authenticity.

Dakota: 1:18:27

And then the end in the brand framework is notability. So it's like what's the difference between someone saying you know 10 tips to hit 10K a month and someone else saying it hit 10k a month? And someone else saying it it's like why can alex ramozy say here's how to make 100k a month versus joe blow 69 saying it? It's like the notability and notability is your, pretty much your credibility. Like what can you back up with your experience and show like hey, I know what I'm talking about. Like I earned this and so any social proof. Um, like jay shetty, like he had something notable because he lived with monks or whatever the hell he was, even though that's been debated if that's real or not, I don't know what you're saying um, but um, notability, it adds.

Dakota: 1:19:16

it adds that oomph to what you actually say and backs it up. So we weigh a doctor's opinion on health more than someone else's. It's starting to change now, but having that credibility.

Dakota: 1:19:31

The white coat yeah, exactly, Exactly yeah exactly, and so if you have more notability or credibility, it's like you're going to have an easier time. And the final part is dedication, like how dedicated are you to hitting those first principles, like all the ones I mentioned before? So I like to think about like the three, I think about as a pyramid actually. So like the base three is the bra, so the and authentic, and then the top two are the notability and then the dedication, and so the more dedicated you are to consistently repeating your message, being bold, being relevant, being authentic and sharing your notability, the more your brand's going to compound over time. Because why does McDonald's, why does Nike, why do any of these big brands? Why do they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year repeating the same message? It's because they know, consistently and being dedicated to the like, repeating that message is what's going to build it into the human's brain, because we learn through repetition and the more associations we make with something, then the more we're going to associate with it.

Darren: 1:20:41

And you think about the success loop too. Right, I'm thinking about Hermosi, because Hermosi will start a YouTube video which will say here's how to get 10K a month from someone who's sold a business for 42 million, who manages a private equity firm of 250 billion a year. But he says that with the next video coming out of the private equity firm now managing 260 million a year. It's continuously improving, but it's the feedback loop is within the same, like stratosphere right versus. I have a fucking nail salon agency over here and I'm also a ghost writer for fucking tech founders.

Darren: 1:21:15

It's like these are these don't help each other. Does that make sense? Which is the reason why like people's like brand is so broad. And then they're like well, I'm in personal development, this niche. It's like that's not the niche, though. There has to be lots of subsections within there. And then you pick one specific vertical. It was like let's think of it from your position. We're in social media, content marketing, writing, podcast. They're fucking wildly different. One speaks and one writes, but that's not obvious people. They're like oh, it's just marketing.

Dakota: 1:21:50

No, yeah, it's like same industry, but there's like different mechanisms. And then, within those mechanisms, there's like all those other new ones. But like for me for, for example, I think I did it well, where at the start I was trying to be that broad self-improvement account, like it was called philosophy of fits, and on account on twitter just like talking about philosophy, investing, fitness, all this stuff.

Dakota: 1:22:14

Oh god, yeah, so cringe um, and then the last, you know right yeah, and then I niched down to writing and I just started talking about writing and when I I would teach what I was learning and so I'd learn from people ahead of me, I would apply it and then I would teach people a few steps behind me. And then I started growing my social media account because I was giving writing tips and then so as I grew my social media, that gave me kind of a new pillar to talk about because I had that experience with growing my own social media and so I started mixing in writing tips with social media tips and then I started growing my other people and I was getting them results because I grew my own social media and so that gave me the credibility to talk about ghostwriting. But it also gave me the credibility to talk about landing clients and marketing and sales and all of this different stuff, because I was getting the experience with ghostwriting. And then I had the experience with ghostwriting and building my business through that. So I had a coaching program and then that gave me the credibility to talk about that.

Dakota: 1:23:28

So it's like you can start like niche down and then you just see how it expands over time as you gain more experience, but it's within those relevant areas, exactly yeah, and then you can go broad later on. So that's why I disagree. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but like you are the niche, I don't think that should be your thinking at the start. I think you should niche down, then become the niche later on, once you have all this different experience. Like hormosi has become the niche because he has all this experience. But he started with gyms and then he did like the gym launch shit and then whatever all the other stuff, but he was always like within he would always go like one degree to the right or the left, but it wasn't like a complete 180.

Darren: 1:24:11

And the biggest thing there is that you have to have the success in that new thing to UX that you tried. So I'll give you examples. I have a podcast for fuck knows how long, and then that was a core message. But then we'd build out offers that worked for us and then, with the clients we had, we had to find a way to monetize them. So we ran those offers and then I was like, oh, I'm pretty fucking decent at running these offers, so then we were showing people then how they could do that. And then it went into sponsorships and we started doing outreach or sponsorship. And then we kind of got that process down.

Darren: 1:24:42

But you have to spend like six months to a year at least at a successful level of doing it yourself before you even think about opening that up into your content, right, but then that has an exponent which is basically that drives huge more engagement, because it's like, okay, this guy isn't just a podcast guy anymore or isn't just a, a writer in silence. He can actually build a business and he can build a writing business, a traditional business that most people never make money from, you know. So that's a unique mechanism.

Dakota: 1:25:08

as a result, yeah, and it's like so many people want to skip the step. You know they just like I just want to be the guy or the woman right away and they don't want to put in the work and it's like you're gonna pay your dues and it's lame, but you gotta do it well, that's why most people leave the market and just say it's a scam, right, like that's what that's just what happens at the end of the day is.

Darren: 1:25:29

But I also I said this to james camp too, and we've had a lot of podcasts together and I said it the other day I was like I don't understand why someone would not do the work, though like it doesn't, it doesn't come into my brain. As to you start this business, this ghostwriting agency, and then you're like oh, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to send every just like what's the alternative, bro? Like genuinely like you finish it down. You go back to your mom's house. Your mom screams at you for being a dumbass. Like what's, what's the alternative? You don't have an alternative, so you have to do it until you find a better mechanism or you get you, you process it, and james is like no, like a lot of guys, just they do it for a while and then they just stop doing it. I'm like I don't think I'll ever understand why that would be.

Dakota: 1:26:12

I think it's because if you are comfortable with you know you're nine to five, like I think there's this, this sweet spot where it screws over a lot of people, where they're they're not happy but they're comfortable, but they're not in enough pain to move away from it. I think there's a certain type of person, like you and me, where we absolutely like hate being in that sweet spot and we can't stand it. So that's why we just go hard with business is because we know what the alternative is. But some people are just like really happy. They're like, yeah, like I'll just like sit at the desk nine hours a day.

Darren: 1:26:49

And even, but even entrepreneurs, like I've heard people who do launches um, they do courts. They'll do a launch for the cohort. It might get get like 80k for the cohort for 12 weeks and then we'll just stop and then just do the cohort stuff and then the four months time freak the fuck out, because I don't have any more money.

Darren: 1:27:06

I'm like what? I'm like, what the fuck you talking about? Like, why would that happen? It's very, it's very common people do that. What are you doing for the next four months? Because, like the, the pursuit is the thing, right, like, that's why I like, like launches and planning something and building something. Like the pursuit is the vessel, it's not the fucking one, it's the outcome obviously is there, but I just mean, like there shouldn't be a cyclical process of your. It was actually I learned this from jk, which was he said that this was years ago. He had spent a lot of time in this 10 out of 10 emotion state sign a client, one out of 10, oh my God, my business is going to go on fire. And he got to a point whereby he was always gravitating between a six sorry, like a five and a seven, so highs and lows, and that allowed him to just do this thing kind of forever, you know, whereas most people go through this cyclical cycle of just emotional turmoil I did it for a while.

Darren: 1:28:03

Yeah, I'd like, yeah, do those launches, or they take it out of you but the boom and bust, though I don't understand, like why would you go and do nothing for a bit?

Dakota: 1:28:12

well, I just made a fuck ton of money from those launches. So like I was like that helped, like I made like a mil from just doing that it.

Darren: 1:28:19

It's like well one launcher like four, four, four launches total.

Dakota: 1:28:24

So, um, yeah, so like it was like, oh okay, so I'm pretty much almost at a hundred K a month, like that's cool, but I, I, I agree, I think it's better just to consistently just build it up, like I'm glad I got that experience with it. Um, for me it was nice though, because, like the cohorts, everyone's starting on the same date and it allowed me to organize things and like focus on just fulfilling, which was really useful for me. But, um, now that I have things dialed in, I yeah, I think evergreen is the way to go.

Darren: 1:28:54

I'd like to ask you about, like what, what's the kind of bigger goal you want to do? Because I remember speaking with someone recently and same age as me, same setup as me, writing business, and they're doing a million a month, and we were doing 100K a month at a time and the only thing they were doing different was ads Same concept, same agency, plus coaching, hybrid coaching, whatever you want to call it and the only thing they were doing was ads different. And as a result, they they got into a million because I had an exponent, because I had the 10x ability to drive it into everything else, and I was like I literally was like what the fuck? How is this? How is this possible? Like obviously they have a bigger sales team, bigger whatever. And then I took it away and I was like this doesn't make sense to me as to like why I'm not doing this, and then, within four months, we'd got to 200K a month. And then, at that point, now we're at 200K a month, and now I'm like it's so clear to me how to get to 400 to 600 to 800.

Darren: 1:29:55

Now it's bigger infrastructure, bigger team, but it's not. It's not a question of what anymore, it's just simply not. It's like you fucking create a shit ton of content, you run a shit ton of ads, you have a shit ton of like sales teams because you have to, you have traffic and then you have a conversion mechanism on the backend and that was the biggest thing for me and I was like and then a part in category of one. Um, the first chapter is like you make the decision to go or not. And if you make the decision to go, it's like you leave behind all the false limiting beliefs you had before and it's like you are going to go for this and it's like, yeah, it's high risk and there's obviously a high upside, but you have to make that decision, which we kind of did about a year ago. So I'd like to get your thoughts on, like what your goal is.

Dakota: 1:30:37

Yeah, I think for me. I think in one to two year sprints. I don't think in 10 years, for that maybe I should.

Darren: 1:30:46

I've been talking to multiple people, but we're all going to be like AI agents in 10 years.

Dakota: 1:30:50

I know Right For me. Yeah, like I want to, not so much for the money, just to like just as a scoreboard. I want to hit like a mil a month, just like, just to fucking do it Because you can.

Darren: 1:31:05

Yeah, exactly Because I don't think it's different. Like I think there's nothing different. If you look at something like Charlie and Morgan, they're doing I think like 1.5 million a month. They just have a coaching program. They run a fuck ton of ads, they have a huge sales team on the back end and that's it, and I don't think they do much fulfillment in terms of him in there. They just have a customer success manager and that's it. That's what the biggest guys in the space are doing, and he has one offer.

Dakota: 1:31:34

They got really good at what they do.

Darren: 1:31:36

Yeah, exceptional what he did.

Dakota: 1:31:38

Exactly so. It's like you have the fulfillment and then you just run traffic to it, right? It's like kind of like the same recipe for growing on social media. It's like you have quality content and then you run traffic to it. It's like, how much traffic do you run to it? And then if it's good content, it's just going to multiply. Dude, have you ever seen.

Darren: 1:31:55

Uh, if you ever like put down like a goal, like let's say you want to do 3 million a year or whatever, if you put down how much leads, that is, how much appointments, that is, how much presentations, that is, how much sales, that is, it's frightening. It's truly frightening, bro, because the scale that you need to do it at is so much higher than you think is even possible. So I'll give you an idea. Uh, this isn't even for 3 million.

Darren: 1:32:20

Basically, what it was was like for us for one of the offers for like 1.5 million a year. It was like a thousand leads a month, 10% booked, a hundred calls, uh, 75% show rate, so presentations, and then of that, 40% close. So I was like you need to speak to a thousand people a month just to get a hundred on a call, and how you acquire them is whatever way you want to do. You put your head out the window and scream, but you need to hit a thousand conversations a month, which is like 30 a day. And that was only for like 1.5 mil. That wasn't for three or four, I think, because we have a few different offers that have this really weird upside their sponsorships, so they're lower margin, but they have like a fucking crazy upside but they're not high. So they're high revenue, low margin, um. But yeah, I just think most people don't know the numbers and most people don't know what they truly want and most people don't know how to get there yeah well, yeah, well, yeah, it's interesting.

Dakota: 1:33:19

When you start, we reverse engineer it and like that's what I do with my program too Before they even get into the main stuff I get, I'm like okay, what are your goals? Like specific goals. And then let's break it down into quarters. Now break your quarters down into months. Now break your months into weeks. Now break your weeks into days. Now you know exactly what you need to do day by day and it just becomes not so much oh, I want to make 10k a month. It's like, oh, you have to do these actions every day to hit 10k a month. So it's more like on the process rather than the actual goal, although you do have the goal, like steering, like it's like a gps. The goal is like a gps.

Darren: 1:33:57

It's like if you're off, it's like, oh, okay, that's the biggest thing there, right, isn't it? It's like you want to actually have you read.

Dakota: 1:34:04

10x is easier than 2x no, but I keep hearing it all the time.

Darren: 1:34:06

You should listen to it, man, you should definitely get it, um, because it was for me. It was like, yeah, it's obvious, whatever, but it's just more the mindset in terms of like, yes, it is the coaching for you, versus, like, the agency. But how do you do it? What was the best parts of what you did last time? Like, how do you repeat that behavior? It's like a, it's like a calmer way to approach this, um, because then you realize like, oh, like, I can write a really good post, get leads or so on, so definitely read it.

Dakota: 1:34:32

Okay, it's really good yeah, I'm overdue, I gotta. I keep hearing it from everybody, so I'm gonna do it now. I read uh, what was another one becoming your future self? But I think it was the co-author of of.

Darren: 1:34:44

10x is better than 2x the phd dude or dan sullivan no, not dan sullivan, the other guy I haven't gotten down dan sullivan's work that much, but I know he's like a an og in the space too. Who do you like? Who'd you look up to slash?

Dakota: 1:34:59

learn from the most dan co is a big one. Like he's, the one kind of indoctrinated me into the whole money twitter space.

Darren: 1:35:05

So are you still like?

Dakota: 1:35:06

very close. Oh yeah, we're. Yeah, we're friends. We don't talk like too too much, but we're like, yeah, we're good friends yeah, would he like mentor, you, or just just bros.

Dakota: 1:35:16

Oh yeah, we're like bros now. Yeah, yeah, at the start it was like mentor and then we just became good friends. I lived with him for five months. Um, yeah, he's, I love that guy. Um, he was a big influence on me. Um, I think, honestly, the cliche is, like alex ramosi, like that guy, he gets a lot of flack from people. Um, I don't get why, dude, I don't get it either. Like I think he's just doing his own thing and like who cares? Like if he wants to not have kids, like whatever, like he wants to fucking work all the time, let him. Um, I've learned so much from him, like honestly, and I've heard like shady shit and like the background like no one knows about, but I don't know if that's true or not, whatever, but I've learned a lot from him. Yeah, like he, uh, like his book. I remember when I was just starting out, I was his 19th follower on twitter I knew him before.

Darren: 1:36:04

Oh, before he was cool.

Dakota: 1:36:05

No, because my buddy david mendez talked about him. He was like this guy's gonna blow up, like whatever. I'm like who is this guy? And I checked out his youtube like this this guy knows his shit.

Darren: 1:36:15

You were his 19th, yeah on twitter.

Dakota: 1:36:18

I don't know what he had on youtube, but I was like I was learning so much from him. I was like this guy's amazing and uh, he. I just followed his offers book step by step, and that's what helped me, like scale my ghost training business. You guys learn how to create offers like holy shit that's exactly.

Darren: 1:36:34

Yeah, it was the only thing that I listened to. It just works and I was like he's worked out of the box and it's bro, like obviously still works. But I mean, if you ever go back to you know, reviewing your offer, it's like you just look at it through the dream outcome lens. So just look at it, just look at the equation.

Dakota: 1:36:49

All right, okay and the way the yeah, the way he teaches is so simple and I I take a lot of inspiration when I, when I create my own teaching stuff. It's like you know how? How can I simplify this like he did? Because he's so good at articulating himself, um, and I think he he's the best content creator in terms of business, like hands down dude, he changed the game.

Darren: 1:37:11

Yeah, because I wasn't around for, like the tai lopez yeah, no, you know I wasn't around for that, but, regardless, information wasn't as high quality as this, like his hormosis. Youtube is fucking crazy, have you? I was actually going to go to the workshops. Oh yeah, yeah, I was. Well, I was trying to interview alex several times, but I was going to vegas anyway and uh, just, it's on. It's on every weekend and I was there on like a monday and I choose this, so I just missed it. But I qualified for it. I qualified for the workshop, but I would have been sick, though, like, like you know, I know it's not with him, but you don't even want to be with him, man. You want to be with a team that scales the companies you know, um, but that's cool, that's a cool offer that they have. It's a nice bridge between the just get started with school and your three millennia year business that they want to acquire yeah he's built out his ego system.

Dakota: 1:38:04

It's funny because, like you knew something was going going on when, uh he said, uh, I do have something, like he stopped doing that I don't have anything to sell. You remember that when he's like, oh yeah, I'm taking that back, I was like, oh shit, this guy's gonna go full guru and there's a school that he was saying, or no, well, he did before his leads book, uh, launch, where he uh he said, I'm not saying I don't have anything to sell you anymore.

Dakota: 1:38:34

He did right before the leads book. I still think he was expecting, or everyone was expecting him, to like sell a course during that, but he didn't. But over the coming months or a year, that's when he got involved with school and that's when he started doing the workshops and all that other stuff. Smart play, like, if you're going to get to a billion or whatever plus that he wants, like, yeah, like, you have this huge audience, you service them.

Darren: 1:38:58

How do you think school and wop will all turn out watching the future?

Dakota: 1:39:03

that is like I don't get school. Like I don't. I don't understand why people fucking like that platform. Like it is ass, in my opinion. Like it's very simple. Like okay, I'll give them that, but like it's meant to be simple. There's no chat, there's just post and you can comment on the post. It's like it reminds me of Facebook. It's like I don't want Facebook. Like I want chats where you can like, talk shit and the things I don't know. Circle is king for that. I don't like Circle either.

Darren: 1:39:29

What I think Circle's ass.

Dakota: 1:39:30

What Everyone gives me flack for this. No one knows what it is.

Darren: 1:39:34

Dude, I love Circle.

Dakota: 1:39:36

Heartbeat community community. They need to sponsor me because no one's talking your guys's marketing's ass. I'm the only one that talks about it. But heartbeat community is fucking amazing, is the best platform for a community shitty name, but it's the best platform I will. I will die by that hill. Have you tried a wop? I did try. Well, I couldn't get into it.

Darren: 1:39:56

I don't know, I like the team behind it.

Dakota: 1:39:58

I'm just like I don't know.

Darren: 1:40:00

I love brett man I met, have you? You haven't been on brett's podcast.

Dakota: 1:40:03

I've not dude, you have to go on that podcast yeah, well, maybe I don't want to, maybe I'm just too big for reps we've watched some of his episodes, all right oh, yeah, yeah, that's great like I.

Darren: 1:40:14

I met him in manhattan. I went for like coffee beforehand and the way his brain works. He's like. I just interview these guys and I just try to find out every single thing that they do and if they don't tell me, I'll just keep pressing them until they tell me, that's good that's how you know you have a good host.

Darren: 1:40:28

oh, exactly, and he fucking his just level of awareness of, like, the online space and everything is he's just crazy. You know, he's an amazing. He's such a nice guy as well, man, so I think you should definitely just like speak to him about it, cause he's always looking for good guys, um, but, um, he's in WAP now, you know. So that's why that's why I mentioned it. Um, but it's cool Cause he's been in the I'm happy building this company. Um, he said he's working a hundred hours a week, but that's the reality of building software.

Darren: 1:41:04

Everyone thinks that like software is like you just put the website in. It's like no, bro as in, it's fucking complicated. Yeah, it's so complicated, man.

Dakota: 1:41:14

Yeah, you said you were in software before.

Darren: 1:41:21

Is that correct before? Is that dude? My story with that stuff is was I did software engineering but I did like half business, half software engineering. So you come out and you go into like startups and stuff. I when I did an internship in investment banking fucking hated it fucking hated it.

Darren: 1:41:32

Right, I wasn't in like actual investment banking, I was in like middle office, even worse, but I can't. My only, the only reason why I went back to university was because the deal was I wouldn't go to university and instead I would work in a startup and just do the exams. So I worked in like a proper grungy startup, like a people, and it was the best thing I ever done. I was like an analyst there. But look at, the analyst does everything Right. So I did that like nine at 18 and uh, all day, every day, for a year and then the, the next step, then all this step with software. When you learn it is like, okay, you have to go do it yourself. It's always the situation is like you gotta go do yourself, but I didn't have the balls to do it was just so complicated. So then I went to a few companies and I went to revolute you know revolute, uh, and I was in trading in revolute. So I built a trading product. So I built a trading product in europe us us market was crazy with regulation there, australia and singapore and I was like this close from going to an investor to try get funding to build my own variation, because everyone's like, oh, you work for revolut, you'll get the funding. And I just had a gut feeling. I was like, because it's so difficult and I can't see it because I wasn't an engineer, uh, I just feel so out of control, I don't, I can't control it because, dude, it is that. So when difference from like you know, like fucking, no code, bot bollocks and software is like in Revolut I had 100, I had 60 engineers and that's air table boards, 60 of them, and they're like this configuration doesn't hit this server, like, bro, it's, it's awful, it's awful, like it's, it's awful. And I was like this close from doing it, and my mentor ned was like, are you sure you want to do this?

Darren: 1:43:13

And then about three weeks later, all the markets crashed, all the vc money left. So basically, you raise capital from the vc money with the interest and the interest changes. So all those companies, just they just vanished. Every one of them just fell like a house of carrots. All those mini startups who just were getting started, you know, they all just vanished off the VC portfolio.

Darren: 1:43:32

And I was about three weeks out from it and I didn't even know what I was building. That's the irony. The irony with VC money is most people don't know what they're actually going to build. So you just get the money and they're like a good operator. And then they get the money and then they figure out the rest, um, and that's probably three weeks out from now and, like that dude, that 500 000 you take, like they'll fucking kill you for it, like they will kill you to get back the money, man, and your life is like over. Dude, if you, if, when you don't fulfill the criteria, your life is over, because it's not like Andrew Newman from WeWork, where you just go get more money and you go again like you're like your reputation's tarnished. You know you try to build this thing.

Darren: 1:44:13

You went to zero and stuff like that, but before I did that, I went to build my own app myself. So this is the reason why I'm saying I went down that path is because during covid you'll find it's funny before covid hit, I tried to build a passport app, so a digital passport, and I sat in the airport, in dublin airport, and I was like, would you like to buy a passport app? What is the biggest pain points you have with your passport traveling? And, bro, everyone loved it. Everybody loved it and I built the wireframes myself, I did like some of the no code in the back myself and I went to get investors and I couldn't get investment for it, so I was fucking 20, um, so that's how I ended up in revelers, basically, yeah, yeah.

Darren: 1:44:55

So like on that whole mentality, especially from university, which is like just it's just like just get the money from the angels or the vcs, because then everything else is possible, but no one knows how to do it, though you know. So there I was, like I swear to god in in dublin airport every weekend asking people so which button would you like? Would you like the button to be red or green? I did that, for did I for a long time, bro?

Dakota: 1:45:21

I wish I could have seen that.

Darren: 1:45:22

That's funny and it's just that's why I'm like content so fucking easy, because when you compare it to the other stuff, yeah, dude, I think a lot of people don't have context you know, serge, serge guteri.

Darren: 1:45:34

You know, uh, he does the build and release offers. He's actually from canada. He's from rwanda originally but he moved to canada, so he's a canadian uh residency or whatever he put. He went up that video the other day which was just like you know, all these guys who were talking about buying businesses and getting the software. It's like, bro, you can't get someone onto your coaching program, you can't even sell a fucking piff and you're talking about building the next uber. It's like you don't understand. And he's like in his like porsche at 911 or gt3, and he's like you just don't get it. I'll show you the video it's so funny.

Darren: 1:46:08

He's like you're so delusional that you think you can build a software company, but you can't get someone to buy your coaching offer. It's such a rude awakening yeah did you have to check out serge gattari?

Dakota: 1:46:22

he's really cool dude oh, he's the guy, yeah, no, he's the the black guy, right yeah yeah, you know, I've seen his stuff.

Darren: 1:46:27

Actually he's like he's so sick dude, he's like a sick guy. We've recorded like a long podcast together and he's just like he thinks extremely differently than everyone else. Like he's, you know, he was 23 years old, making 600k a month, you know, and he's he's just playing a different game, like he's trying to. He's like a hundred. Did he have a? No, his payroll was like 200k a year, a month or something. So basically he was building much more of a bigger thing and uh, yeah, he just he'd just be chilling in his Porsche, man, but he's a very smart guy.

Dakota: 1:47:01

You know, super, super smart guy I'm grateful because I know I'm a dumbass, like with a lot of stuff, like I'm a potato but like. I'll just, I'll just fucking brute force, I'll just do it over and over, and then I'll learn it and it's like oh, I understand it now, and then I could portray it to other potatoes and like teach it. I think that's why I can like condense stuff down the potato pyramid yeah, the potato pyramid.

Darren: 1:47:25

You know, it just works you want to go get dinner? Sure, yeah, I don't know how long we've been recording, for I don't know, this is sick though there's probably like 600 more things you can talk about oh yeah, but yeah man appreciate the honesty and openness and everything man, of course.

Dakota: 1:47:45

Thank you it was a lot of fun. It was.