#215 Ebrahim Turner - Watch This Before Starting an Online Business

Ebrahim Turner is back for the second time on Kickoff Session and we have an interesting podcast for you. 

On today’s episode we’re diving deep into the journey of entrepreneurship and personal growth as Ebrahum reveals the realities of online business from the past seven years, financial success, the path for absolute freedom and how to break free from the trap of line gurus. 

Ebrahim shares his insights on the challenges of maintaining personal freedom while pushing for bigger targets in your business. We discuss the importance of internal freedom, the role of spirituality, religion, and the impact of mentorship. 

If you found value in our discussion, please let us know in the comments below

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Connect with Ebrahim
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ebrahimturner/

My Socials:
Instagram: Darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn: Darren Lee
Twitter: Darren_ks

(00:00) Preview and Intro 
(0:28) Freedom in Entrepreneurship
(01:45) The Entrepreneurial Matrix 
(04:36) Need for Continuous Drive in Business
(06:36) What Matters Most to Ebrahim Turner
(10:28) The Impact of Mentorship and Courses 
(14:33) Fundamentals of Service-Based Businesses
(18:08) Benefits of Breathwork and Personal Development
(24:07) Internal Work: Impact and Benefits
(30:28) Lifestyle Inflation with Entrepreneurial Growth 
(35:41) Handling Setbacks and Problems 
(41:44) Are More Entrepreneurs Turning to Religion? 
(47:14) The Impact of Ayahuasca on Personal Transformation 
(51:22) Realizations from Spiritual Growth
(59:19) Consequences of Spiritual Awakening on Personal Life
(01:09:52) Reflections on Past Relationships and Personal Growth
(01:10:28) The Role of Religion and Personal Development 
(01:13:01) The Importance of Letting Go in Personal Growth 
(01:19:42) Integrating Breathwork and Mindfulness into Daily Life 
(01:35:01) Approaching Alcohol Consumption Mindfully
(01:44:25) Ebrahim Turner’s Future Aspirations

Transcript

Ebrahim: 0:00

Making money online, living this external lifestyle that everyone told me was going to be it, and just feeling empty inside. That was one of the moments when I started to find faith, and so I found spirituality, just through pain. Alcohol was literally like the biggest part of my life, from 16 until probably like 25, 26. What are they called? They're called spirits, right? You're literally ingesting a spirit and it's a negative spirit that you're putting into you, right? It's why it creates this alter ego.

Darren: 0:28

Before we start this podcast, I have one little favor to ask you. Can you please hit the subscribe button down below, so we can help more people every single week. Thank you, all right, let's kick off. Where I want to start is do you think entrepreneurship is a matrix in itself?

Ebrahim: 0:45

Where I want to start is do you think entrepreneurship is a matrix in itself? Ooh, interesting. So if we look at the rat race the nine to five rat race that most entrepreneurs want to escape definitely the case of myself, I'm sure it was the case for you I think we get motivated by freedom, and I think it's usually external freedom, aka time, location and financial. And what I've seen happen this is what happened to me is that I didn't want to go to the matrix. I was in university and I did my economics degree and I got the choice to either go into the matrix or out of the matrix, right, go to Goldman Sachs or try and start an online business. And so I thought let's just try and start an online business. And so I thought let's just try and start an online business, because the risk of living that life, of knowing I'm going to work for 50 years, retire and then maybe live my life at 60, was too big of a risk for me to take. So I took what felt like the smaller risk, which was trying to start a business, started the business. That was a whole journey in itself, but I managed to create financial freedom.

Ebrahim: 1:45

For me, financial freedom meant like 10k a month. That was plenty of money for me back then to just live a good life. But what happened was I was chained to the desk. I was working 10 hours a day, so I didn't really have time freedom, right. I didn't even really have that much financial freedom because I was putting the money back into the business. Gross profit versus net profit exactly yeah, that was what's net profit.

Ebrahim: 2:13

I didn't even know what that was, that wasn't even a thing. And then and then I wasn't really traveling much because I was so busy making sure that I keep the business going. And if I did travel, like one time I traveled, took the girlfriend to portugal and I'm in portugal. I'm in this beautiful botanical garden, birds are singing. You've got, you know, just this perfect turquoise, reflective water. I'm looking down at get a call from my closer um, by the way, I'm leaving and I'm going to the company who you just paid five hundred dollars an hour for me to train with.

Ebrahim: 2:49

And so in that moment of external freedom outside of the matrix, I'm suffering, man, I'm not present, I'm not there. My ex at the time she's getting annoyed because we're on this beautiful holiday finally, and and I'm not even present there. So that in itself is a matrix, and I think the matrix that entrepreneurs do go into is exactly that they get motivated by the freedom, but then they inevitably get trapped within trying to create that. So I've actually broken it down into something called absolute freedom. So I've actually broken it down and into something called absolute freedom. Everyone in the make money online space talks about external freedom time, location and financial but no one talks about internal freedom, right? And your internal freedom is like what's going on inside, right, your thoughts, your feelings Because I was there in this beautiful botanical garden in Portugal, but I'm not really there, right? I'm not present, and so am I really out of the matrix or am I in a new self-created matrix?

Darren: 3:51

Why do you think, though, that people build themselves that prison? Because if you worked a nine to five like in Goldman Sachs I was in State Street and our investment bank, because it's quite linear and you can't control your salary, it's controlled for you you think you'd be more anxious. I look back on my days in tech and think I was getting paid 7k a month and my rent was 3k a month. How was I not freaking the fuck out? But obviously there's a predictability, for sure, but at the same time, then, as an entrepreneur, you're just constantly going and going and going. It's like why is that there? Like what's that element within people, that who had that freedom? Now they just feel completely caught in a loop.

Ebrahim: 4:31

I think so. The question is why do they just keep going and why do they get caught in that loop?

Darren: 4:36

yeah, and why are they continuously, you know, losing out on time and losing out on all those different aspects? Because, like they've all, we've all bought the courses, we've all bought the programs and whatnot, but basically, like it's up to us to take that threshold, and there is that opposite to it, that the counter trend which is like solopreneurship, which is like stay small, don't scale, and so on. Now, and that's starting, jordan or justin welsh has really paved the path for that. But I'm curious, from your perspective, because it's very similar to my perspective the constant drive to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I wonder where that comes from I definitely had.

Ebrahim: 5:11

It's interesting, so I've gone. I'd say I've gone through that. I had a, not that I was massive, I had a team of 10. You know we were doing like 50k a month with the agency and the goal was to get to get to 100k a month. That was what we were, we were on on track to do. But then one day I just asked is this really my goal or is this someone else's goal? And I really questioned that and I meditated on that for a while and I realized like my life wouldn't change between 50 and 100k a month.

Ebrahim: 5:41

And it seems like every time I try and get to a new revenue ago I just get more stress. And what happened was and I think what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs is that we start a business but the we end up becoming the servant to the business rather than the business being the servant for us, because the lifestyle, the freedom, why everyone gets into it in the first place, right to be able to be here in Bali like we are, is the dream for many millions of people. But then we lose that intention as to why we started out in the first place. So I think I think part of it's that, I think part of it is. For me it was insecurity. So when I was, you know, out of university, back in my parents shed working at the end of the garden five degrees, a small electric heater trying to hustle you go can I can?

Darren: 6:36

I just spoke to my parents recently, um, and in the middle of end of march it's currently snowing in ireland somewhere. Do you get? Yeah?

Ebrahim: 6:43

so I know exactly what you mean. That was. That was the life. Right, I'm in this shed and I'm all I'm thinking about is get me out of this shed. So that was my motivation. And then fast forward a year. All I wanted to do was move into a penthouse apartment. Not all I wanted to do, it was my. It was my vision of what I thought success looked like. And then I finally moved into that apartment. My parents dropped me off unbox, you know, drop the boxes off.

Ebrahim: 7:08

And here I am, sitting alone in this top floor, brand new penthouse apartment in london. I'm going to the balcony, I'm looking over at the smoky, you know, skyline of london and I just kind of whispered to myself I guess we've made it. And what washed over me was this sense of just like loneliness, this sense of lack, like something was missing. I didn't know what was missing at that time, because I did what entrepreneurship culture told me was winning right. This was the, this was a, this was a milestone to tick off. And then what happened was I tried. I was like, okay, well, if it's not the apartment that's going to give me the fulfillment that I'm looking for, it's probably just because I'm not going out and partying. It's probably because I'm not having girls around every other night, it's probably because I'm not doing drugs, so I did all of those things that will solve it. And then what happened is it's like oh, maybe it's because this city isn't for me. Everyone's traveling, everyone's going out and experiencing. So if I go to Portugal, if I go to Greece, if I travel across the world, take my girlfriend with me. That's what freedom looks like. Right, freedom is going to other countries. Here I am in these other countries.

Ebrahim: 8:30

I remember one time I was driving through italy with some friends and there's this photo of me and it's well, it's all in the car, we're in northern italy, it's beautiful scenic countryside and everyone's having a good time, and I'm just there in the back like this with my glasses on. I'm just asleep. And I was so burnt out and exhausted from work that the week that I had off to be in italy with my friends, I couldn't not only could I not be present, I couldn't even stay awake. That's, that's how exhausted I was, right, and, and so what happened after that was I realized that, no matter how much external things I do, unless I actually look at, okay, what's actually going on in here. This is just going to keep happening. Because this pattern replayed again and again and again. And it became obvious because I still was drinking.

Ebrahim: 9:26

I't like an alcoholic, but I would go out every weekend and that's similar to me, you know what I mean and it just knocked me off and I couldn't break the habit or I needed validation from women, right. And I just said one day, like if I wasn't here tomorrow, would anyone really care? And of course my family would care, of course my close friends would care, but would anyone really care? And, honestly, the answer I came up with was not really. People would probably forget in a week and it sounds a little bit sad and dark, but it was a wake-up call for me because it made me realize that I'm just leaving up leading a life that's self-serving and that sparked a change for me. That's when I started to look around and think okay, is this really the life I want to live? Is this whole you know, make 10k a month and your whole life is going to change is this really the answer that everyone's looking for? And for me it just, it just wasn't.

Darren: 10:28

You know, a life without fulfillment, a life without connection, a life without being just like clean internally, you know, is to me is just not a life worth living and you've done so much work, man, on that in the past couple years and it's amazing to see life worth living and you've done so much work, man, on that in the past couple of years and it's amazing to see the progress as a result. You know I also put time and effect cause and effect of time and the impact it has. So when you started doing that a couple of years ago when you were still in London, we see the effect of it now on your business and obviously you've made a lot of changes which we're going we get into that. Let's go back to the guru phase of like entrepreneurship. Do you think that actually has like a net negative on people overall? And it can, because we have people, you know, pushing harder build a community page, build the sma, build a coaching program is that actually net negative?

Ebrahim: 11:19

for me. When I started out, my first course I bought was from ty lopez. It was his 67 steps, which was 67 dollars, which was the scariest investment I ever made. 67 dollars to me at university was like that was my partying money that night to get me to drug money, to get me to let go of that. That was that was like talking about. You know, those who, uh, pay, pay attention. Oh, I paid attention to every. That meant everything to me. And then I invest, and then I invested in his SMMA course $997. Bro.

Darren: 11:52

I spent a month.

Ebrahim: 11:59

I spent a month thinking about it. I was like, okay, maybe I can figure out an exchange rate if I do it through an American bank and I can save like $50. And it took me a month. An American bank and I can save like $50. And it took me a month. I finally pulled the trigger and honestly I didn't get that much from the course. But I got one thing, and the one thing was mentors. And I think you sometimes only need one thing from these courses, right, or you get what you're ready to receive. And he said find a mentor, find a mentor, find a mentor. And then fast forward. About a month later I went to a workshop at my university and a guy came in to speak, um guy who ran a marketing agency seven figure agency. I was 20 years old, he was 30 years old crazy to think I'm turning 30 in six months and he did this.

Ebrahim: 12:37

He delivered this workshop. And as I'm listening to him, I'm not even listening to what the guy's saying in the back of my mind. Ty lopez is going, like knowledge, find the mentor. So I'm like, okay, I'm like this is my mentor. And I'm like, how do I do this? And I'm crapping myself, my hands are sweating. I'm sitting at the back of the room, everyone's going up to him thanking him, secure people. I just wait until the very, very, very, very end and he's closing up his you know presentation, about to leave, and I just pluck it up, walk up to him and I say, hey, marcus, love your talk. Um, can I work for you for free? And he just looked at me and he smiled and he said no, but we can go for coffee. And what happened was we went for coffee.

Ebrahim: 13:22

And here's what I realized with the power of these like courses and gurus and mentors is it's not about the information, it's about the subtle things you see behind the scenes. I got to see the way he thinks he gets a phone call with a fire in business, the way he reacts to that, the way he prepares for a meeting, the way he shows up to his team. He took me to his office and I got to see how people look at him and how he treats them. This is what I realize is the real gold in this whole educational space is actually seeing how people, how they act.

Ebrahim: 13:55

This is why a course compared to like a mastermind or a one-on-one coaching, there's such a big price discrepancy. It's because you're getting that proximity and, like tony robbins says, that proximity is power. That's what you pay for, right? So I think the course industry it's such a double-edged sword for me. It's given me everything right now. I've jumped onto some minefields, I've been scammed, I've you know we all have. But it's like it's the wild west right now and it's it's. It's we're still early, we're so early in this game, right. It's like we all think people ask me all the time like can I start an agency? Is it saturated?

Darren: 14:33

I'm like but if you go back to the foundations like I'm big, like fundamental guys I'm a big fundamental guy in terms of like what it is people want and why do they want them and how do they receive information the concept of like a service-based business, like an agency giving a service to someone, will be around till the end of time, because everybody's going to need something. You need to be fulfilled in some aspect. So, yes, your service-based business will be needed. It might need adjustments, so on. It might be changes required, but at the end of the day, people need the stuff right.

Darren: 15:02

So that's one way to kind of like unwind this, like internal wiring in your mind, you know, because that's a big fear that we have. It's not the fact that it's a fear, and we'll get into this too the fear of like it all falling down and it all collapsing. And I know your business was very different than like my business in terms of like we were only signing like long-term contracts. My business, in terms of like we were only signing like long-term contracts. So the so the idea of me being really like anxious and fearful and thinking was kind of a like a dumb idea. Fair enough, people might not pay you and it happens, and it's happened for sure. But fundamentally, like you can kind of like rest assured, based on two things one, like what you're building, why you're building it, and two, the skills that you have, because that's what's compounding, right, like that's what you got from those courses. Um, I just bought into a sales course in like january, february, a lot of money it was basically 10k and I did an entire learning program, which is not the reason why you do it, by the way, in like two days, and I was the last, I was the only person to finish, finish the last module, because it's a loom video and I was the only person that was there, and the reason why I paid into it was to get a bunch of like setters in the company and whatnot.

Darren: 16:08

But what I realized from this stuff is that you just pay for speed. You know, I mean just just speed, basically right, because when you don't have cash, you have to pay with your time. Um, and even if it's 67 dollars, right, that's like the first instance of it. So it's interesting observation. You know, talk to me about the changes that have happened in the past year. So we record a podcast, basically a year ago, nine months ago and a few observations I've made. So for anyone I haven't seen it, it was my first podcast when I first got here actually first or second first thing I noticed, man, is that you've gotten so much bigger since because you've put so much thought into I say yourself and your idea. You know you've been training with a coach.

Darren: 16:44

You hold yourself physically, physically like I've seen you got a lot bigger, more muscular. You're obviously much more like, intentional with your food and your training and what you're eating and you're resting, and it's been really cool to observe because you're not only, you know, many steps ahead of me, but you're many years ahead of me, which is important, you know, in your journey of entrepreneurship. So being able to kind of analyze that is really important for me because it's like, yes, we can send a thousand gold outreach a day, but that has nothing to do with what's happening inside you, right? Um, so it's obviously been that external. And then I've obviously seen what you've been doing personally and helping other people, which has been huge and even helping me, man, you know we had that spread work session on saturday.

Darren: 17:23

I said it's my one of my mentors. Actually, you'll love this. He's a Scottish guy based in Singapore. His name's Ned Great guy. I told him I was at the session. I was like, oh, my mate Ibrahim brought me along with Elise for a Brett work session and it was fantastic because I didn't have time to take a break for so, so long. And he sent me back a voice note and he was like if you ever thought that you would be doing brett work. Uh, in bali four years ago, when you were in like dc10 for four days straight, he would said you were like crazy. And I burst out laughing because that actually is the evolution, right, you know, you start off, you have a hypothesis, you're evolving over time, right, and then you have to stop yourself and realize that like, yeah, like we are progressing really quickly and that's awesome, it's really good, you know. So, um, yeah, man, how's it been for you the past couple months?

Ebrahim: 18:08

well, I want to ask you a question. But in terms of the breath work, right, the reason why I'm big on the breath work is because breath work is a gateway, right, you can try meditation and you can try sitting down. If you're just the kind of person who has loads of thoughts and stuff going on your head, you're try sitting down. If you're just the kind of person who has loads of thoughts and stuff going on in your head, you're just sitting down, thinking, right, it doesn't necessarily do anything for certain people, but with breath work you're going to have an experience you can't, particularly if I'm there standing over you. You're gonna something's gonna happen, right? So I'd love to hear from you, man, like, how was it for you that's?

Darren: 18:41

super interesting. So just for broader context, people listening. So we had a bratwork session. I went in completely unaware. I had never really done any sort of bratwork.

Darren: 18:49

I had tried meditation as the from the perspective of entrepreneurs, need to be able to meditate right, not from like I need it for other reasons, but I knew obviously it'd have an impact elsewhere. Why it was really helpful for me was the fact that, unlike you know, sitting still and leaving all these thoughts drown, in which the thoughts for me, usually man, are I need to open this message on Slack If I don't get back to my CEO, I need to do this and this and this and this was released. You know those thoughts are just, they're the tinkering lights. But why Brett work was really effective for me was because, unlike it being mind active, body still, it was like body active, mind active. I was breathing really heavily, we were coming in and out from it, so that allowed me to almost be occupied in one way, and even from when we were sitting upright we're sitting upright and then we lie back down when I was lying down actually felt much more at peace with it. So that's on that side and then on the actual like development of what was happening. So you were walking us through, you were bringing us through just a very natural path to start thinking about having, like, an intention and being much more intentional and focusing our thoughts on this.

Darren: 19:57

A lot of stuff started to come up for me which I didn't even would realize right, and you know, I don't know I said it to you before, but like I lost like a best friend recently, like, just like you know, grew like a parrot um had a very big impact on me, uh, very, very big impact. It's probably the reason why I'm probably a bit more harsh. You know, I'm quite like harsh as individual in terms of like I have a low threshold for mediocrity, put it that way. I think one of the reasons why it was something like that because I've kind of been, you know, stabbed in the back to some degree, used to some degree and so on. So that's obviously been playing very active in my mind, but it's led me to nearly achieve what I've achieved, because I've just been like relentlessly pushing and pushing, and pushing.

Darren: 20:44

So I was thinking a lot about that, which I generally would think is actually quite traumatic. Now that I speak to Elisa about this stuff, I'm like the way that it's impacted me has definitely like been traumatic. So just being able to sit down and think about that has just been like very, very helpful. And then you know, I've really wanted to come back to it as well and I think I need to be much more intentional. But like sitting down and documenting this stuff more so, um, but yeah, man, like a muscle, like going to the gym, it's something you need to work on continuously.

Ebrahim: 21:15

Um, and, if anything, it's the hardest thing to work on because it requires you to think right I really appreciate you sharing that, because I know it's vulnerable and I think it just takes a little bit of vulnerability to inspire other people and so it's like one of the core values that I live by is vulnerability equals strength. Because I think there's so much programming around men and masculinity around you know andrew tay like just drink 10 coffees a day, just push through it, just get jacked, like get the women, and that's success. And I think he's actually helped a lot of like guys come out of a rut. But then there's a whole other side to it that this kind of stuff that is just isn't, isn't inside of the program. It's not. It's not in the program, but the way I think about it is like if you're such a strong man, why are you afraid of your own emotions? And so many of us men are? But it's because we're programmed to think you shouldn't be emotional.

Ebrahim: 22:12

Now, yes, in most circumstances, as a man, you want to be cool, calm and collected, rational, have a degree of stoicism, but there's a time and a place to be able to go there to experience the emotion, the more feminine side, right? It's like think about if you're the kind of man who you know you have a long-term relationship. You might want to get married in the future. Do you want to be able to connect with your girlfriend and future wife in that way, right? Well, guess what? If you don't go there yourself, you're not going to be able to have that deep connection with her, or even with your team if you're if a team member's going through something. Well, being a leader is about. One of the characteristics is being able to be empathetic. We can only be empathetic to someone if you can feel that yourself, right. So, with that process, this is one of the core shifts I've made. Um, I call it state shifting, actually, because we all have this stuff going on inside of us, like you had, that those traumatic events happen, and for many of us it happens. You know, a breakup happens, a traumatic event happens, and then what do we do? We go, push that down, get on with business. Now here's the thing. You use that in a productive way, right, you use it as a fuel source and it helped you. And this is the thing that I think many of us entrepreneurs do, because we've just, you've just got the will to just get through it and you can just make it happen, right, and push through.

Ebrahim: 23:45

But what fuel source do you want to be relying on for the for the rest of your life? Using that is? It's like using coal. Right, you chuck coal into the fire. It's going to heat up the room, but eventually, if you're in that smoky room, you're going to be breathing in dust and smoke. It's going to do all kinds of things to your lungs. Maybe trying to find a renewable resource, maybe solar is going to be able to make you be more sustainable, right, and how does it show up? Well, it shows up in how reactive you are. It can show up in addictive character traits. I mean, you're someone who's worked on a lot of that stuff, so you've got a lot dialed in right, but things can still. Cracks can still appear.

Darren: 24:25

Yeah, I just wanted to say on that, that means they're up to you. But I I've just 100 felt all of this like and I've seen a lot of it, and the thing with me, and I think with a lot of entrepreneurs, is that I can spot variance in my performance. So I'll give an example if we're doing like we had a good week, we had a bad week, I can see that, like I reason I had a bad week was because I was thinking of these things, or had a bad day because a lot of these external stuff was coming in, you know, and like I was like checking messages or had an argument, let's say, or whatever, and then because I know that that will lead to a drop in performance, I can almost like eliminate it and get back to the work. So because that's because to me, to an entrepreneur, the work is positive, it's not on twitter being angry, do you get me, it's it's, it's positive. So I can throw myself into that, which, of course, in the long run, is not net positive. So I can basically kind of use that as nearly like um, an outlet. Okay, and that's actually resulted in me being way more logical in the business, because I view even the even arguments like that, like that instance that I mentioned as logical, and it's like okay, instead of getting caught up emotionally, I can act on logic and I would genuinely say that the way that I interact with clients, prospects, customers in general, is hyper, hyper logical, even if something goes wrong. And breaking down that framework.

Darren: 25:46

Now that's obviously had an impact on my relationship, not saying a negative, but it's like it's obviously fed into the relationship because, you know, I work from home, been working from home for like four years, right, I've also lived with my girlfriend for four years during all that process.

Darren: 26:01

And what's interesting is that switch between logic and emotion is like the hardest switch to make and I always say, like you know, businesses for logic, like leave your emotions at home and leave like that emotional side to you at home.

Darren: 26:15

Now there's obviously that's obviously like a fucking cookie cutter, like like definition, right, but that's how one thing that can go wrong in the system, which is all the way back up here, can trickle down into have an impact on the business. But that's how one thing that can go wrong in a system, which is all the way back up here, can trickle down into have an impact on the business and an impact on the relationship. And then that's when, like sometimes, you can almost feel like it's like a house of carrots and we go back to like the imprisonment and the trap of entrepreneurship is like when you it's weird, like it's like everything is manual. If you think about it in some way, it's like everything is manual. If you think about it in some way, it's like one manual impact and that's the next manual impact and all of them have a small impact on the outcome.

Ebrahim: 26:50

Something I've found with this is that we develop. So if we talk about, if we take it back to freedom, right, you have your external freedom time, location, financial which you have. Then there's the internal freedom right, what's going on inside the thoughts and the feelings right Now? As an entrepreneur, you realize over time that there's only so many strategies and tactics that you can apply. Right, you can put 10K into this sales course, you can get some setters, you can learn some more sales stuff and that will move the needle in your business forward. Fundamentally, it will help your business grow. No arguments there, right, but the biggest bottleneck in the business is always going to be you, always, always, doesn't matter how big you make it, how detached you are, even if you're a board member, yeah, you're still going to be the biggest bottleneck, right, 100. So then the question becomes how do we, how do we develop a system where it's just as important for you to focus on the internal stuff as as much as the external stuff? And it's for me the starting point is by being able to actually do what you just did right, go within, have a realization where, okay, these things came up, this traumatic event, and actually start to see here's how it's affecting your life, here's how it's affecting your business, and you might be able to sweep it under the rug for now, right, and you'll be fine. But eventually, after a decade, two decades of doing that, there's going to be so much swept under the rug that you're not going to be able to open the front door because it's just going to be full of all of this stuff and it gets trapped, it does, it does get pushed down right. These, these emotions, these events, and that's how we become reactive, to the point where you suddenly become irrational and you don't even necessarily see it coming, because the mind is the greatest tool, but it can also be our greatest enemy. And so, having a way to just be able to just tune in, check in and be like, okay, what am I, what's actually going on inside of me today, right, and this is where part of that process we did in the breath work is designed to do that, where you can just take a moment to just go within and just check what's going on internally. And for me, like I'll share some of my things For me, I realized I was still driven by insecurity.

Ebrahim: 29:07

And how did I know that? Well, if I look around, what am I doing? I'm going out, I'm casually hooking up with girls. I'm trying to look like the man. That's why I have this fancy apartment, right. It's obvious now in hindsight why I did that. Well, that was chaining me back to an old version of myself that was driven from this insecurity, which means I wouldn't make the best decisions for the business, which is why I had ups and why I had downs.

Ebrahim: 29:31

Another one I didn't actually feel like I was truly worthy of the clients. I was signing deep down. So how did that show up? Well, in a sales call, when it's time to go and dig and really handle some objections, I would just leave it. I wouldn't go there because I didn't really believe that I was worthy of this client. I didn't believe that I actually deserved them, right. That's another example. Or self-sabotage, right, I'll go and blow 20k on a trip where I could have invested that into my business. And here's the thing it like doesn't matter how much money you make. You can continue to make more and more and more money, but if you don't upgrade your internal system, then it's just gonna it's just gonna cut. This is the common denominator down here this internal system and you're just gonna get dragged all the way back down again and you can look back in life as to when these patterns have happened and it becomes really, really clear. Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense.

Darren: 30:28

That makes perfect sense. We spoke with paul daily recently and I asked him I'm asking everyone this question when your lifestyle is increasing and when you're making more money, do you think that the people that make 100k a month and then spend 90k on it straight away and blow it on random stuff, do you think they're like developing? Like are they? Do they have the skills to constantly be developing? Because, to some degree, like, are they just going to end up at zero? Because, apart from running this super tight lifestyle profit margin, it's almost like they're just running in a perpetual loop, continuously. Now you can, of course, invest in real estate, and if you wanted to buy a nice car and if you're interested in cars, and so on but it feels like that. That lifestyle inflation is like an inflection of a representation of the internal system, not upgrading and I don't know about you but like, obviously, our financials. My financial situation past couple years has dramatically changed. Right? I could arguably stop today and not work for a couple of years. I'd obviously want to, but I'm not saying I would have to, and not because I'd have to. It's probably probably because I don't have this crazy lifestyle, right, you know, but I've never wanted it. It's so fucking weird what drives you.

Darren: 31:38

So I played sport at a high level, and especially individual sports, as a sprinter, so super, hyper competitive and the whole thing about sprinting is like if you're not first, you're last, and I was just, yeah, I just drilled into me young, really wanted to compete at a high level. I didn't really enjoy it, which is funny. I was good at rugby, but I started better at sprinting or maybe better at rugby probably asking parents for that question but that like hyper competitiveness has always came into me. So then when I was like school, I was very average in school but I was like it always was a game, but what's interesting is that it's never a game with other people. I always say that like I was always for so many years I always helped so much people with their podcasts for completely free, and the reason why was because I never viewed it as a competition.

Darren: 32:26

But it was only after so many years that people viewed it as a competition with me that that had to stop right, because for me the competition was always where I was yesterday, and the big thing for me is that I always want to be like improving and upgrading, so whether it's like how I speak, how I present myself, how I run sales calls, whatever that like increase is important for me, um, and then that's represented in the outcomes that happens either like financially, the business, fitness and so on.

Darren: 32:51

Right, like I don't need to have like a perfect diet 24 7, I just do it because I want to be better than I was yesterday, because I feel like that if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards sometimes. Now obviously there's times to calibrate and, you know, reset and take another step up. But, um, I just don't want to be in the same position this time next year and I also don't want to be falling into those common traps that people do in their late 20s, early 30s, where they slow down and they get a bit fat and they lose their hair and you know the common things. I just when you're 20, you look at people that were 30 and you're that's never going to be me. It's like that's the stuff that I just don't want to happen.

Ebrahim: 33:36

What? What would happen if that did happen to you? Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever stopped or gone back, seemingly backwards?

Darren: 33:44

I've had to move sideways so I've had to change course. So like to give you some context. Um, when I was in finance, moved to tech, into tech space, I was working for revolute it's working on product for revolute and that was it like. I was like that was at the time. That company was growing really quickly and getting that company was so difficult that when I was in that company and I was moving really fast, it was like this was the peak you could be in, like the startup world, before you go raise 400 million to build a new startup and then when a few things started crumbling in that company as in like me and other people, or just a setup there, that's when I had to go change course. And the podcast thing was the next biggest opportunity for me. It was already coming to me. You know I had so many people coming to me looking for help and looking to run their shows and whatever that I had to like do a hard reset, right. You know I left a six thousand dollar apartment in Singapore that was worth millions of dollars on a penthouse and have to reset and go again. You know, but they're the important turning points and I feel like they were the strongest points that I've had to to propel forward.

Darren: 34:48

Now back to the fear thing. What got us so funny? Like you know, everyone talks about like how to hit like 10k a month. Honestly, man, honestly it was like six weeks, because we know we have expensive products, right, expensive products. But the reason I'm saying this is because when I went back to like zero, it was driven completely out of fear, you know, fear of my manager, fear like other people think of me, because fear of like that vc world, like that's the way they did it and I'm doing a different way, and that was good to get up and running, and then I actually forgot about it. I forgot, I just forgot about all that stuff and it's only been the last couple months, as we've talked about recently. That's kind of came back in. But I will say that, like, while it's came back in, that I'm hitting the kpis still, which is interesting, right, like fitness is good, like business is good, relationships are good, but obviously there's that undercurrent of events that that you can always be working on yeah.

Ebrahim: 35:41

So when you say it's come back in, do you mean the fears come back in a little bit kind of?

Darren: 35:45

like. What's just interesting is like with the businesses that we have you know, we're not kids anymore too like we can have wetter storms, right, but we set a bear. I know another, another milestone, another revenue target, another like kpi to hit, and so on. That, because we set those expectations, that elevates the pressure at times. Does that make sense? So to your point about earlier, like that 100K mark, which is a target for us, that sets a precedence of how we do everything as a result, right. So I'll give you an example If something goes wrong, that feeds into that, because that's the underlying goal that you want to get to.

Darren: 36:20

And because something's gone wrong, it's like, oh, it pulls us from the course. And because something's gone wrong, it's like, oh, it pulls us from the course, but it's like it's obviously the staircase doesn't go in one direction, right, it's up and down, up and down. Uh, I think my observation was that the more time you spend in the arena, the easier that this gets, which, which is true with some stuff, right, how you, how you handle, like, complaints, or how you handle this, but there's more layers to it, obviously, that I'm discovering.

Ebrahim: 36:46

So the next goal is 100k a month and when you have a setback like something goes wrong, client cancels or whatever, like what's your, what's like the first thing you like think or the first sense feeling that comes in it's remember william brown saying to me before that it's like you know, you don't know what you don't know with entrepreneurship in general there's no path, there's no plan.

Darren: 37:09

Even though someone would say that there's like a blueprint, there's not. You know. So if something goes wrong, how you diagnose issues or how you, how you show up, like how your brand is showing up and stuff, you don't. You don't know how that's presented right, so you don't know. What you don't know and that's the biggest thing for me is like where are the gaps in our frameworks and our tools and our processes and our systems, and even in there, even in our individuals, whereas the gaps that I'm not seeing? That maybe if you had a boardroom or if you had a bunch of vcs invested in you, they could have spotted it right.

Darren: 37:39

But when you're doing it yourself, that's often the biggest challenge, right's the fact that I don't have a co-founder. You know, I don't have any business partners. I have mentors, but they're kind of detracted, pulled out from the business. That because that pressure lies on you. It's like, yes, I know that there's a path, but and a plan, because business can be logical, but how do I know it's most optimized or it's the best version. What was it like for you?

Ebrahim: 38:05

you know, I had a, I had a client uh, try and sue us in the in the agency a few months back and initially it knocked me for six. They made the first of january. I woke up with a hate post about me on social media from this, from this person, and uh, happy 2024. That was my, that was my. That was the first thing I saw when I woke up.

Ebrahim: 38:28

First, that's fucking crazy so how do you react when a client is suing you for more money than they paid you, um, and you've got a hate post about you, with people thinking now you're a scam, because that's how the internet works, right, like, if someone says it, then it must be true. How I reacted in that situation? Honestly, for me it's about there's two parts, right. There's the logical part of like, what are the steps that you take, and then there's the internal, processing part of what's actually. What is that actually bringing up? And so the reason I asked you is because I see these moments as opportunities. We get these tests and these challenges in life and we can either decide to be a victim of it and I'm trying to avoid it or we can just decide to run towards it. Like, when we're in the breath work, we were running towards those fears, those tough situations, instead of running away. So in that situation, I just said, okay, what's coming up for me right now? What are the fears? Well, my fear is, like I'm like a fraud or something like going to be perceived as a fraud and my reputation goes down, um, that I'll have to pay a bunch of money and finance like a, like a fear of paying a bunch of money and then maybe other like a fear of paying a bunch of money and then maybe other clients will cancel because of it, and there's this whole butterfly of emotions right now. Me five years ago would have got encapsulated into that and then started making decisions based off of fear. But the only difference now is that I just sit with that, I let it come up, I let myself actually experience what's come up and then move through it and then, as soon as I get back to a state of neutrality and I can just be calm and collected again, I then act. And what I found this has done is it's been able to make my decision-making process just so much more, just better. I've just been able to make better decisions with this. So the best way I can describe it it's like it's it's this feeling of being bulletproof, like no, I know now, by being able to do this, no matter what happens, no matter what life throws at me, I've got a way to figure it out. I've got a way to move through it right. Whether it's a if the business collapses tomorrow, if a partner leaves me, if whatever it is, I know that I've got this thing to fall back on. Yeah, for me, that's that's how I do it.

Ebrahim: 40:47

What's your decision making process? It's usually really obvious. We all know that we act on emotion first and justify it with logic. Right in a sales situation, you like to think that that 10k you invested was purely rational. But it's not because we're emotional creatures. There's a there's emotion there, right?

Ebrahim: 41:04

So I like to do the emotional part first, understand what's going on first, to come to neutrality, and then it's just kind of obvious that the answer just presents itself.

Ebrahim: 41:14

It's like imagine, there's this is like blank mind and this is blank canvas, and then it's just written on the wall.

Ebrahim: 41:20

It's so clear, and then I just I go with that and what I found is, over time, I've started to just trust my gut more and as I've come more into faith and started to get closer to god, this has really helped me to just have a lot more trust in decisions and obviously I'm making logical decisions as well, but I'm allowing myself to be guided just by what my intuition is telling me.

Ebrahim: 41:44

And it was actually I think it was originally Steve Jobs I heard this from the first where a lot of decisions he made like I mean, he started Apple based on being on a frigging LSD trip, right, yeah, and a lot of founders actually have like some kind of background in like psychedelics or something like that, right, and they're going with their gut because at the end of the day, like you said, we don't know, there is no blueprint, right? But the one thing I've found is that anytime I've gone against my gut and my intuition and there's that inner sense of knowing, it's always come back to bite me in the ass. Knowing to always come back to bite me in the ass. Anytime I've gone with it, even when it's maybe not, I can't see exactly how it's going to play out logically in the moment. In the long run, it's always done me better I heard something very interesting before.

Darren: 42:33

I think it's based on jeff bezos's like decision making process. It's a two-way door system versus the one-way door system. So if you're looking to make a really big decision, what is a decision reversible and is the decision not reversible? If it's reversible, it's a two-way door we can run the ad today and if it doesn't work out, we can turn off the ads tomorrow. It's reversible or is it non-reversible? So you make a decision and you can't go back on it. So let's say, your team member fucks up and you fire him. Now you have to go and replace him.

Darren: 43:06

I think it's a really good way to like view things, which is probably more on the logical side, but it's a good way to break down like a framework. And man, it's the exact same in life, right, I was just speaking to all these, but this morning, like the stuff I'm doing with my diet I guess, obviously vastly different than what I've done for many years. But it's a two-way door. If it doesn't work out in a month, I can just go back to what I was doing, right, and that's what's very interesting is that sometimes people will make these crazy decisions at times, whether it's a gut or not, but then not have any way to like fall back on it. So it's just being being, it's a risk management, it's risk mitigation. I want to ask you about the spirituality side and religion side of it. Do you think that there's been like a rise in like entrepreneurs becoming more religious, becoming more spiritual recently, I think?

Ebrahim: 43:57

yes, I've seen more of it online. Um, I think there's a difference between being spiritual and being religious. I think there's a lot of dogma around religion, and me personally, even though I go to a church now, I don't identify myself as a Christian, and the reason for that is because I already had a connection with God through my spirituality like a decade before ever stepping foot in a church. So I grew up with a christian mom and a muslim dad, and they sat me down when I was eight years old and asked me which religion do you want to be? You can do, you can pick, and I'm like okay, well, me being, me being one way door versus two-way door, well, well here's here's the actual.

Ebrahim: 44:39

Here's what I said, me being an entrepreneur, I I said neither and I chose to be neither and they accepted that and so I grew up agnostic, I would say. I didn't think it wasn't real because I saw my parents, I'd been going to the mosque, I'd also go to the church at times, so I could see there was this religion thing going on, even though I didn't necessarily resonate with it back then. Then I remember when I got to university and I was doing economics very, very practical, mathematic-based degree, right and I remember a friend of mine, my best friend at university. His name was Alex. He started dating a girl from Cambridge Now Cambridge is like Harvard in the UK, oxford, cambridge, right, it's my most prestigious university Super smart girl becoming a lawyer, very, very intelligent. And then I found out she was a Christian and went to church and I suddenly lost respect for her because I thought how can you be so smart yet believing something that isn't scientifically proven? And I'll be honest, I'm ashamed to say that now with how I am now, but back then I now think why did I have that perspective? And it was because of the institution I was in, right, like science is a religion in itself, people, people follow science to the same degree as they do religion. Right, I didn't give me a religion, right, anything but us, yeah, and that was my religion back then.

Ebrahim: 46:07

But here's the thing I was a miserable atheist, like I didn't have joy, I didn't have faith, I didn't believe and I just thought everything revolved around me. You know, when I said that story earlier, when I I said would anyone really care if I wasn't here tomorrow? And the answer was no, that was one of the moments when I started to find faith. And so I found spirituality, just through pain, and through pain of making money online, living this external lifestyle that everyone told me was going to be it, and just feeling empty inside. And I just said, like, okay, if this is all that there is for me to feel and experience, um, I, I just refuse to accept that. And 2021 was a big year for me. It was the year I became a woman because I went on my, went on my spiritual journey. I spent I spent 15k on a coach, spiritual coach. I did ayahuasca, I went on an all vegan diet, I stopped lifting in the gym, I did yoga every single day. I was in.

Darren: 47:14

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Ebrahim: 47:46

How the fuck can you do ayahuasca in London? And okay, bear in mind, this was 2021. This was during COVID, so I knew I wanted it was in my awareness to do ayahuasca right, but I was fucking terrified of doing it. And a really good friend of mine, who I respect a lot, very, very, very successful guy said there are these shamans coming to London. I've done ayahuasca with them.

Ebrahim: 48:10

Big tech guy makes millions in crypto, a lot of projects you would know, but I just won't say his name for now. He said there are these shamans, you should go and work with them. So when he says a recommendation, I at least listen. So, anyway, I meet these, I meet these shamans and I decide to go to this, to this ayahuasca thing, right, and I'm there. I'm there with a group of 20 people and it's time to drink the medicine and I remember being terrified. The reason I was terrified was because I knew, as soon as I drink this small cup of liquid, I don't have control anymore and I have no idea what's going to come up. And I've heard stories and I've heard you vomit and all these. I've heard you can even like shit yourself.

Darren: 48:55

And were you in an?

Ebrahim: 48:55

apartment.

Darren: 48:56

Yeah, bro. Yeah, because if you're in, like Chile, right, it's like you're outside, so you can like vomit and shit anywhere.

Ebrahim: 49:03

Well, I nearly spoiler alert. I very nearly did shit myself and that was my biggest fear of happening. But what happened was through that experience. Right, it's eight hours. You're going through a lot of things. It was probably the most challenging experience of my life.

Ebrahim: 49:18

When I woke up, I was on a mat and I was in the fetal position like this, imagine just like an embryo inside a mother's belly right, and I was like this, wrapped up in a white blanket, and if anyone touched me at that moment I would have just shattered into a thousand pieces. It was like all of my layers of armor and ego were just stripped back. I was fragile is the right word to use to describe. And the shaman asked me like how you doing? And I said I feel like I could. Just, I feel broken, to be honest, right now. And and I said I feel like I don't deserve anything I've got in my life right now. And he said what you've just experienced is, uh, like essentially an ego death around self-worth. He was like you don't feel like you're worthy, do you? And I said what do you mean? Like, of course I'm worthy, I have all this success. I was there with my girlfriend at the time. You know, I have this life. Of course I'm worthy. How could I not be worthy?

Ebrahim: 50:19

And he explained to the group that the number one thing, particularly for men, what we struggle with is self-worth, believing that we're worthy enough. Right, and this was the first time I heard what that concept was. I didn't know what that meant before and I realized that most of the things we do is because we don't believe that we're good enough. So, entrepreneurs, right. Why do we build such big businesses? So that we can prove that we're good enough? So, entrepreneurs, right, why do we build such big businesses? So that we can prove that we're good enough, that we can do this, that we can do it to the rest of the world?

Ebrahim: 50:47

Right, and it can be a good driver. It's a fear-based driver, but then the question is you only get one life. Do you want to be living based on that fear as the primary motivator for everything you do for your whole life? Or do you want to maybe, like, internalize that and switch that motivation right, going from cold to solar? And that was, for me, when that switch happened, and that was when I started to. That was when I really knew okay, there's definitely something else that exists, that's greater than me.

Darren: 51:22

So interesting man. I've never tried ayahuasca, but there seems to be such a night and day contrast with how it's run, you know, as in like the fact that you have the shaman and he's walking through this and is like guided, versus like doing it yourself, or obviously doing it in like a parody context, like the outcome is just completely different, you know, and I think that dropping of the ego, like ego is the enemy, right, is that? Like letting go of that ego? Oh man, it's. That's just what entrepreneurship is, though, right, and I had, um, I had a call with a client recently and, uh, we just had like a couple of like communication, miscommunications, put it that way.

Darren: 51:59

And he, he said it to me like he was like it's just because we're both just entrepreneurs, and I was like he overlooked the point. He kept on going. I told myself I was like huh, that makes perfect sense, because his opinion was different than my opinion and he was like we're just both entrepreneurs. That's the reason why we're like this. I thought it was super, super interesting, right? So tell me more about the contrast it's been now since you. You found like fate or spirituality or like however you would describe it, to what you are now like. Why is it now that you feel more fulfilled?

Ebrahim: 52:29

so, after the ayahuasca, I just spirituality, just started to become more of a found. It was like one of my pillars, say before it was like my health, my business, my relationships, like these things I focus on connection with the higher power just became one of those pillars and it became. It started to move up the rankings. The spiritual journey showed me that there's like made me look at things from a universal perspective. We have a universe, right. We have planets, we have all this other stuff going on that is completely outside of our control. We have, I learned, I started to learn what energy is right. Like we're made up of atoms, which are 99.999 energy, which made me start to realize that, okay, we're not just physical matter, we're actually energy. And so I started to reverse engineer that. Okay, well, if we're energy and we're energetic beings, then what is like good energy? What is bad energy? Why do you want to be around people who are good vibe versus a bad vibe? What does a good vibe even mean? A good vibe is short for good vibration. Right, we're vibrating constantly, like that's how we hear, that's how we're, that's what we're made up of. So I started to delve. Well, I'll tell you a quick story. Um, during that same time I was meeting a friend at chipotle and I got there five minutes early, which was very rare for me, you know. I got here like what, one minute before this podcast today, right, and I got there early. I was like, wow, okay, I'm here early. So I just went and walked down.

Ebrahim: 54:01

I was in coventvent Garden in London, went and walked into an old dusty bookshop and I was just looking on the shelves straight to nonfiction section, classic. Never read a fiction book. Back then I was looking and I was running my hands along the case the book covers and this one book jumped off a shelf at me and this book was called Evolve your Brain by someone called Dr Joe Dispenza. He's like a quantum physicist guy who's sort of about like meditation, manifestation, that kind of stuff, but with a basis in science. Do not recommend starting with that book. If you're listening to this, it's very frigging dense and complex. I'll tell you another book that I recommend instead that he's written.

Ebrahim: 54:40

But I basically read that book and for the first time it bridged the gap between science and spirituality. It made me understand things like quantum physics, epigenetics, how what we think, how what we feel, is actually creating our reality. Right, because every, every skyscraper you've seen in dubai started with a thought in your mind. Right, that's where it came from. Right, it started with somebody visualizing it and having the idea. And one of the things I learned from that book is that 95 of our thoughts are exactly the same as yesterday. We just have the same thoughts again and again and again.

Ebrahim: 55:20

The average person. They get up on the same side of bed, take a shit, brush their teeth in the same way, have their coffee in the same way, get in their car, drive to work, sit in the same cubicle, have a break at the same time, have uh, you know, go back to work, have their lunch, come back from work, watch, have a beer, watch netflix. It's on autopilot. Right, life is an autopilot, and maybe for an entrepreneur it's a slightly better version of that because we've we choose the times and what we're doing. But a lot of life is actually lived on autopilot and I realized I was doing that, even though it was a self-created autopilot. Going back to your point right at the beginning, it's a self-created matrix and so if the thoughts that we're having influence our feelings, influence our actions, which creates our reality, then I want to become really intentional about my thoughts, because if I'm just thinking the same thoughts again and again, you know if it's what clients do I need to speak to every day. If it's I'm thinking about, uh, you know something that happened in the past or I'm fearful about the future well, those thoughts what you focus on is what you experience in your reality, right? So I became obsessed with this and I started to just go deep and meditate for hours and hours a day and eventually I could start to actually create like a picture in my mind of what it was I wanted. And I could actually not just create it, but I could actually feel it. I could feel what it felt like to be living this new life, and not just the things, not just like where I'm living, but the emotions associated with it. And this is when things start to change. So, for example, like I wanted to create, I wanted to make more money, so I was like, obviously I'm going to start there.

Ebrahim: 57:11

Right the day that I finally had a shift when I was going through this meditation and I could feel the difference, I literally just opened my email and an old video that I made on youtube was like an affiliate video for a funny enough a meditation product. Just hundreds of people started buying it through my video and I was getting these commissions. It was like I think it was like 24 per sale and it was just my. My inbox was flooded, my paypal was just popping. I think my paypal PayPal even got shut for a minute because it was so much money coming in.

Ebrahim: 57:44

Now a skeptic would just say, oh, it's just a coincidence that that happened. And maybe it was just a coincidence that it happened. Right, I'm not saying it's definite, but it was enough to give me a little bit of evidence to back up the science that I'd been learning, the practice that I'd been doing, that maybe there's something to this. And I looked at my state. Well, I'm feeling great, like it feels like there's a bit more of a flavor to life, more of like a bit of magic. Then I was like, okay, well, I'm here alone in this nice apartment. How about a girlfriend?

Ebrahim: 58:17

I start going through the process again, I start creating that and literally a couple of days later I get a message from a girl. I was on a dating app at the time and she just randomly voice noted me and was like hey, let's go out tomorrow and this was like beautiful girl. She ended up becoming my girlfriend and so now I'm like you can imagine, like I've just learned this whole new world and I'm like doing this thing, and then my actual life is genuinely changing. Now again, you can say it's all coincidence, it's intentional, but it's like, even if it is my life's changing, of course, so what? So what do I? What do I care? Right? So once I started to learn the science piece, that gave me like a foundation of logic for my mind to be satisfied and it just made me open and so fast forward to now, um, I started to find god, and god has been a completely different relationship as well. All I'll say is that it's it's given me a lot more humility finding god.

Ebrahim: 59:19

Because, for example, I'll tell you what happened at church this Sunday. I was at church and I had I had some. They did this beautiful sermon. So sermon is when they speak and just read the Bible, passages from the Bible, and interpret it right, and they were talking about how we get these. If it's in your heart, it's in your life. What does that mean? If you've got envy inside of you, if you've got jealousy, if you've got ill will towards someone and you're feeling that it doesn't mean you're acting on it, but you're experiencing it, then it's going to be showing up in your life somewhere, right, if it's in your heart, it's in your life. And so I started just praying to god and I was like, hey, like, please, please, like, take these out of my life, right, right.

Ebrahim: 1:00:00

And I was really emotional about it and I fully surrendered in that moment. And as I fully surrendered, I felt a hand on my back and a woman just came from I don't know where and started praying for me. I started weeping and I could feel this just like divine presence and it felt like I was starting to be like cleaned. And then she left and then, towards the end of the sermon, they said, okay, we've had some prayer team come from California who are just here for prayer for anyone who wants it. And I saw this woman go up to the front and it was the woman who put her hand on my shoulder and they said if you want to come forward for prayer, just come to the front and they'll pray for you. And they start playing some music. And nobody went to the front. And they'll pray for you, right? And they start playing some music and nobody went to the front and I could feel myself in this moment going. Do I want to be on basically a stage in front of everybody confessing my deepest fears? Not really. That's pretty vulnerable.

Ebrahim: 1:00:56

But this was a moment where I would say God intervened, where it didn't matter what I was. The fear I felt. It pulled me to going towards it and I went to her and she said is there anything you want to repent for? And I said I've never repented before. But these are the things I'm experiencing. I have this. I have this envy. I have this. I think I know best in these situations in my life and I just have this ego in my life and the reason I gave it up is because I was suffering because of it.

Ebrahim: 1:01:31

It was hurting me, which is the reason why I gave it up, and she said okay, and she prayed for me and she said what would you like to exchange it for with god? And I was like exchange it for? Like it doesn't seem like a good deal. I don't know if I'd take someone's shit and give them something back, but this is god, this is the beauty of having god in your life, and god can mean so many different things to many people.

Ebrahim: 1:01:52

Let's just take out the religious context for a minute, because god is to me, is all loving, is, is the creator right? And if you, if you think of it like a loving grandmother or granddad who just wants to care for you, that's almost one like physical manifestation how I see god, and I gave it up and the first thing that came back to me, for what I wanted in return was peace and, as I said, that she started praying for me and the only way I can describe it is, if you have this cup right and you can imagine this cup and it's got some water in it, but there's also this just like dirt in it. It's creating this murky water. As god started purifying me, it was like having this perfect spring water come into the cup and just overflowing the cup and as all this water is water's going everywhere, it's coming all outside of the cup and all of the dirt that was in there starts to rise and just comes out of the cup and I'm left with a clear glass and it's just a pure vessel, and that's what it feels like to be in touch with god. I just had this complete purity. And from that purity purity, that pure heart I was able to see clearly. I was able to see where were the things in my life that weren't in alignment.

Ebrahim: 1:03:11

And as I was driving back from church, I realized and I got a very clear message from God to end the relationship I was in. And you might say that's a bit of an intense thing to get from God, particularly if you don't believe in God. You're like, are you really going to listen to that? And I hear that, bro, because that would have been me. But what was super interesting is that my now ex was in Australia at the time, was also at church, and she got the exact same message, independently of me, and we had a conversation and we both came to the same conclusion that it's time to close this chapter. And here's what it, here's how, like, here's the advantage of having god in your life.

Ebrahim: 1:03:58

When we chose to close that chapter, it was done in pure love. There was no ill will, there was no anger, there was no hurt. In fact, we just told each other what we were grateful for, and she was one of the people who helped me find God. And so this was only a couple of days ago as well, and I genuinely feel so at peace, so just like excited for life, so free. I feel like I can go and do anything, and that's because I have complete trust in god, that god has the plan. I have my plan, but I was planning to marry this woman and have kids with her. That was my plan. Guess what? That's not what happened, right, that's not what happened.

Darren: 1:04:42

And I just met you on saturday, the day before. Yeah, that was the day before. Fuck man, that's crazy. Yeah, how do you think you say you've been okay with that, like in that relationship now and you're feeling a lot better now, but how do you think that's had an impact? It would have had impact if you didn't have, like god in your life or a higher power in your life well, the beautiful thing is, I have an exact comparison because I wrote a letter to her.

Ebrahim: 1:05:08

I was taking some of her stuff around to a friend's house, um, and I wrote a letter to her and it was basically just a letter of gratitude of all the things I was grateful for. And in that same journal I had some stuff from a previous ex. And the reason why I had this writing in the journal is because that, going back to the year 2021, when I became a woman, that was also when I broke up with my previous ex and I was in dubai at a men's masculinity retreat and I asked the woman who was teaching was this russian lady right, super, very like, connected, but very direct as well? And I said to her you know, I'm really struggling to get over my ex. And she just looked at me and she said I'm not going to try and do a russian accent, it's going to be so offensive. But she said to me it's because you believe you gave more to the relationship than you received and so you think that you've lost something.

Ebrahim: 1:06:02

And I was like, okay, let me. What does that mean? And she was actually right. The reason why I was struggling with that previous relationship is because I thought I'd done all this stuff for her. You know she's in a completely. You know I provided for her. She's now living her dream life and she's grown so much and look how much better her life is right. And I was, uh, I saw it as like a like a negative, like I'd wasted my time where I'd given her more than I'd received, and so I had this just negativity inside of me and that was why I couldn't let go of it, because I almost felt like I was owed something.

Darren: 1:06:40

You know, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder and then in that space, right, that is in that space, yeah, where people are like, oh, like I do think that if you have the means, you should provide and protect for everyone around you, but it shouldn't be a keeping score. Yeah, you should do it unintentionally. Forget, if you can't take the bill, take the bill if you can pay the rent, paid a rent and pay the electricity and everything you need, but don't keep score, yeah same with friends.

Ebrahim: 1:07:06

And so I never did until afterwards and I look back in hindsight and I I realized like I felt like I'd been like you, like all of this negativity used, manipulated, whatever it was, it was negativity was in my mind and in my heart. And so this is why she told me okay, get a piece of paper and if you're going through a breakup I this is exactly what I've done to move through mine multiple times. Now get a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle on one side, put what you put into the relationship, what you invested, and then, the other side, put what you received and what you're grateful for. Pay more attention to the second side of that paper. Because I can speak to the men here. I always ask guys, I'm like, do you feel like you give more in the relationship than you receive? And most men say yes, and the reason why is because, as men, we provide. We're providing more in the material sense right, external.

Darren: 1:07:59

It's external on one side, internal on the other side. Exactly right.

Ebrahim: 1:08:02

So it's clear to see like, well, I pay for the house, I get the food, whatever, I pay for the food. So it's physical, you can see it. But oftentimes, why? Okay, quick, quick side, tangent. Why is it that on a typical breakup, so the woman makes up with the man? He was not appreciating her, maybe he was cheating on her, whatever. And then, once they've broken up and there's some space in between them, now he wants her back. Now he's chasing after. Why does this happen? All the time?

Ebrahim: 1:08:27

Every song, love story, it's about trying to get the girl back right. Well, it's because he didn't realize what he had, because what women provide is a lot of it is internal, it can be emotional support, it can be love, it can be all of these things. And so that practice got me to focus on everything that I received, right. And then I actually called her from that retreat and I and I told her because I was trying to get her back and like manipulate the outcome and trying to just like plant these seeds. And when I called her and I told, hey, um, I just want to tell you these things that I'm grateful for, like we're crying the whole time. It was so healing, and I was able to let go of that relationship with love.

Ebrahim: 1:09:09

And so back to the story with this recent breakup. You know, in the same journal I could see that previous ex, and it was beautiful, though, because I could see all the things that I, things I received back then. It was things like she helped me to appreciate nature. I never gave two craps about nature back then.

Darren: 1:09:29

Same, actually right before I met elise yeah.

Ebrahim: 1:09:31

So what a gift, right. And then you know just she was. She was always dancing and it was just like she just got me up to dance and just have fun, be carefree. She always saw just like the best in people. She'd always brighten people's days and it was a whole long list of things. I was like, wow, yeah, I actually have most of those things now, like I've taken on those lessons.

Ebrahim: 1:09:52

And then with this relationship, I was able to see all of the new lessons I'd taken on. They were one, for example, finding finding god. Like what a bigger gift than that right now, knowing what I want in my future relationship to raise a family. I now know what I do want and need and what I wasn't getting. And now I know what I do want, right, what a gift. Whole list of things. And it was pretty poetic.

Ebrahim: 1:10:17

I wrote out this whole letter and then it got to the last page of that journal and I literally finished on the last page of that journal and closed it and it was just this, like very symbolic closing of a chapter and gave it.

Ebrahim: 1:10:28

And the big takeaway from this is that I'm just focusing on what's good and this is what it says in the bible like variations of just focus on what's good right, focus on what you're grateful for, and a lot of the here's the thing right. And my my ex reflected this to me when I started going to the church for the first time. She said you know most of the values that you have and the things you say are literally in the bible, like you actually already agree with it without even reading it. And as I started to look at it I was like, oh, actually, most of it is actually the same stuff. And so when people ask me why do you go to church, I just say for me it's just the best personal development seminar you could go to. So it's like why would you not want to go to church?

Darren: 1:11:09

well, that's, you know, from an observation perspective, like the bible quran whatever you want or whatever it is you want to read, it's a guiding principle to be a better person, right, it's not doing it to be the opposite. And for you to be a bad person, right. It's like if you take the principles and the lessons and you actually implement them, you're going to be a net benefit, you're going to be in a better position than you were in, right? So it's like that's where we get the line for someone like you, who's an implementer, and you, you're really cognizant of this and you're learning and you're you're implementing lessons. So, of course, a lot of the values are gonna be the same, probably the same as me. Probably a lot of the values are the exact same you would.

Ebrahim: 1:11:46

You would agree with most of the stuff in there. The problem, I think the challenge, is this is what it was like for me. I used to think god was like a man in the cloud, so I was like, well, and then, oh, here was, here was my argument. I was so sold on this argument. Well, if God's real, why do all the religions say different things? Right, because I was born into Christianity and Muslim, right? So there's those saying there's these different gods? Okay, and it's like I hung on to that one for so long. I was like, oh, that must be all wrong and I thought I was so smart and it's just like, let's just take out the religious institution for a moment. Let's just take that away.

Ebrahim: 1:12:25

To me, god is just the creator. God is inside of you, god is inside of me. We all can connect to that. You do not need to be in a specific building to connect with God. I just go there because I get so much. I receive so much from it. It makes me better. I can then go and share that with people and a lot of the wisdom that you learn from that is genuinely regurgitated shit that you read online anyway.

Darren: 1:12:46

A hundred percent. It's the same stuff.

Ebrahim: 1:12:47

So it's the way I see. It is like I've studied all this stuff. I've spent a hundred K in courses.

Darren: 1:12:57

Why not? Why not go to the source?

Ebrahim: 1:12:58

and I can get it for free as well. Half of the lessons are in the mindset part of the course yo, thanks, man, seriously bro.

Darren: 1:13:01

But yeah, man, as in, like you know, I was raised in like a christian catholic family, whatever you want to describe it as, and I same, like it's very similar to you, just like agnostic, just like, take it or leave it, like, yeah, it's there but I'm not, it's not cognizant, it's not focal, but at the same point, you know, I completely agree that, like, a lot of the less, like all of the lessons are just things you should be doing anyway, that you shouldn't be an asshole to other people, you should be kind to everyone, you shouldn't be unfaithful. All right, this small nuances that are guiding principles that we already have, but they're just not focal. But when you have the attachment or when you have the label, that's when it causes, like, that's when people create problems for themselves effectively, right, because they're in like camp a, camp b, camp c, where it's like let's just forget about that and let's just try to focus on being a better individual. You know, and yeah, man, like those deeply held beliefs are in everything you know and in many ways people try, as part of their marketing, to split the crowd and be divisive in those ways too, right, um, and not to go on a massive tangent.

Darren: 1:14:04

But, as I mentioned to you about the diet aspect, you know, I like I wrote that I wrote a post yesterday about how being like you don't know what you don't know and also just don't hold on to any of those like deeply held beliefs, as if you know everything right and like no, no one is correct, no one is like wrong.

Darren: 1:14:19

It's just like whatever makes you a better individual and whatever suits you and your circumstances and it's the best way to be right. And I can obviously see like you know, I haven't known you for many years but I feel like very connected to you, especially in the last year, even though we haven't had that many opportunities, even hang out. But I can even see the development that you've been on right and like how you've improved so much and your business has improved so much and you're doing so much other stuff. And it's just because it's a constant internal work that you're doing and I wouldn't even describe it as a battle for you because it seems like it's something you want to do and push through right. I think you spent those years doing the hard yards and now it's like improving and getting better right. Um, you spoke about letting go. When you mentioned letting go last week as well, how do you think about letting go of difficult situations and deeply held beliefs?

Ebrahim: 1:15:09

yeah, I think the why do people struggle with letting go? First of all so we were talking about this in the breath work, right, there's this element of surrender to letting go. You're releasing something. It's like you're holding on and then you're releasing. I think people struggle with it because it it's. It seems like you're waving a white flag and maybe you're it's resignation. You're saying I, I give up. Letting go is the complete opposite. So to me, like what letting go? Okay, this is what I've been doing this whole last days with this relationship. Right, here is a cold, hard truth my own vulnerable story. And you actually asked how has God helped? This will tie in how has God helped me move through this relationship? I'll finish the story, actually, because it'll answer the question.

Ebrahim: 1:16:04

In my last relationship, when it it ended, I was an absolute mess. I was trying to. I was constantly thinking about her 24, 7, looking at social media, trying to think how do I get her back? I was suffering. I was doing anything. I was. I would go to the same place as she would probably go to. I was like borderline freaking psycho. I would get so angry. I'd go to the same place as she would probably go to. I was like borderline freaking psycho. I would get so angry I'd be punching the walls in my apartment like I was an absolute mess without god.

Ebrahim: 1:16:25

Okay, in this relationship. When it happened the same night, I had the best night's sleep I had a week and I woke up the next day and things, sure things came up. But I went and I had a very productive day and a lot of movement forward. I took care of my health, I did my biohacking, I connected with friends, I connect with nature. I made big steps forward. The difference was in breakup one, I didn't have God. In breakup two, I did have god.

Ebrahim: 1:16:55

So how does this tie into letting go? Well, with letting go, it's a sense of you're just giving up your attachment to something greater. You're overcoming ego. Right, and this is god and letting go actually tie in very closely together, because whether you believe there is a higher power or isn't, let's say you don't believe it, it's fine, it still works the same, because you're essentially just saying, okay, I have this inside of me, right? I have this fear, I have this anger. Is this something I want to hold inside of me? If I'm being honest, if not, okay, then I'm gonna let it go. How do I let it go? It's so simple, man. This is the craziest thing.

Ebrahim: 1:17:39

All you have to do really is just relax, because most of the time we're sitting tense. If anyone listening right now just tune into your body. How's your stomach right now? Is it tense, is it sucked in or is it just fully relaxed and and let out where's your breathing? Is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? If it's your stomach, if it's in your, if it's in your chest, you're in a sympathetic state. You're in fight or flight, you're, you're clinging on. If it's in your belly, now you're relaxed. Now you can start to let go. At the end of our breath work, we actually moved into belly breathing, if you remember, and the reason we did that is because it allows you to relax.

Ebrahim: 1:18:16

And when you can relax, now you're able to process, because you're no longer in survival mode trying to figure everything out. You can just let things come through, and the best leaders I've observed, who are calm under pressure, are able to do this. They're actually and they might not consciously be saying I'm doing this process, but this is what's happening. A fire happens and in the moment they're able to just be calm, cool collective move through it and instantly they know what to do. That's what's happening.

Ebrahim: 1:18:51

So that's how I see letting go, and the best way I can describe it is like, if we're being honest, going through a business loss, going for a breakup, going for a friend passing away, these are things that we don't want to freaking think about or talk about. That's why we go and work hard. That's why we all turn to bad habits like partying and drugs, like I used to. But the problem is is that they don't go away until you address them, and the longer you don't address them, the more they build up. This is why we have midlife crises, right, why is it always at midlife? Why is it always at midlife? Well, it's because all this stuff built up and it's eventually got to the point where you get divorced. You then what do you do? You go and buy a ferrari to try to try and overcome it. Right, stereotypically, that's what happens, but it's it's literally because we're not letting go of what's happening in the moment and being present with it.

Ebrahim: 1:19:42

So my whole thing was like, okay, if I know this now and I have this ability, why not just like, let things go as and when they come up. It's just like doing the cleaning as we go right, instead of letting the room become an absolute mess. I'm just going to clean it every day, and so that's how I see it, and to me it's just like a normal practice, like I'll do it I've probably done it in this podcast, like without even realizing, because it's so natural to me and it's you're just essentially just relaxed that's the best way I can describe it. Instead of being tense and held up, you just relax and release.

Ebrahim: 1:20:15

Michael singer's a great guy who I've, uh, learned a lot from. He's wrote two great books the untethered soul and the surrender experiment. He's okay, but here's the thing he's the spiritual guy. Letting go might not resonate with an entrepreneur audience. Well, guess what? He also built a billion dollar tech company and he owes most of it to this process of being able to continuously let go right. So it's practical. It really is practical, and for me, I just want to show people that this isn't just for spiritual people this is this is.

Ebrahim: 1:20:48

It's just like how meditation has become. We agree as entrepreneurs that meditation is useful, at least because it can help us focus right. At least. And for me, like my whole life's work with conscious entrepreneur, what I'm doing is if I can get this practice just to become a normal thing that people just do, which is basically just a combination of meditation and breath, work with some intentionality, then I think that's a huge, a huge win for people because I've helped people.

Ebrahim: 1:21:16

I've worked with alcoholics who have been addicted to alcohol for 10 years, gone through everything you could imagine the a the therapy, 30 minutes. One session of this leaves no longer an alcoholic. People have been sexually assaulted most horrific things you can imagine, of course, living in that trauma. One session now live. Now they've let go of it right and so you don't have to necessarily always take think that it's hard, do 10 years of therapy. Nothing wrong with that if it's for you, but like there is an easier way and in my experience it will. Just comes down to your belief and willingness to to try it let's walk through that conscious entrepreneurial aspect.

Darren: 1:21:57

So I love the name and this is like such a valuable podcast man. This has been super actionable. It's been really laid back hopefully you join us all fair too, and it's super, super actionable for people. It's like people can take it and implement it straight away. What do you see like the future of it to be and like how does it work in your mind and what do you want to achieve with it?

Ebrahim: 1:22:21

so, to me, like what is being a conscious entrepreneur? Right, you've got two parts to it. You've got the consciousness side, then you've got the entrepreneurship side. Business, to me, is actually a spiritual game, because we're all, we all have a spirit, whether we believe in it or not, we all have a spirit. And so there's two elements, right, there's the entrepreneurship, which is the external freedom, and then there's the conscious side, which is the internal freedom. Together they create what I call absolute freedom. When you're free on both sides, so you don't have, so you're free financially, location and time you can do what you want, that's freedom, and that's just being able to do what you want when you want. To me, that's that's external freedom. The internal freedom is being free of the chains, of these traumas, these uh, this, you know animosity inside of us, this anger, this jealousy, all of these things that show up and then create our characters and create behaviors that we don't want in our life. So to me, so what conscious entrepreneur is is essentially saying okay, look, here's the vehicle to get to where you want to go, here's the tools, here's the tactics, here's the strategies. I've been 10 years of business. I just give, give that stuff to you Like here, it is right, you can go and do any business course and learn that stuff. My whole thing is here's the stuff, here's what to do, here's how to do it.

Ebrahim: 1:23:43

That's only 20%, though. That's the tactics and the strategies, and the other 80 is around the development of the entrepreneur. So this is why I'm really only working one-on-one right now. It's because to really develop an entrepreneur, it's these kind of conversations that take a little bit of time to unravel, to really go deep, to then have these big life shifts, right. So the other 80% is developing mentally, right so the mind, emotionally, the stuff that we've been talking about and spiritually as well, and of course health comes into that naturally. But if we can do that side of things whilst working on the business and we can create a harmony between the two, that's what conscious entrepreneurship is to me yeah, man, and I'm so behind your mission because it's just my oral white brain.

Darren: 1:24:33

I just see that it has such an impact, right, and it has an impact on the bottom line, top line, like your lifestyle and your relationships and everything right. It's all working, it's all feeding together. Because sometimes the kind of tripe I have with some of the masterminds and fucking group chats and all this kind of shit is like it's not relevant to me. You know, like, yes, it works, that sales program over there works, that SMA program over there works, that sma program over there works, but it's not relevant to me. But what I really like this is the fact that, like, every entrepreneur goes through these basically awakenings, right. So why I'm so like excited for you and your pad is because, yes, you can start off with businesses that you've worked with like sma, but then you can help people with coaching programs because it's the same shit anyway, and then you can help like agency dues and sas guys and startup guys and so on. You can build that ecosystem and I know you don't want to do like group.

Darren: 1:25:20

I think what would be really good is like a mastermind for you, and the reason why is because you know you're, you're handpicking like, let's say, like five or ten people similar to last weekend and they're all on a similar path, so it's more like the network effects of them coming together. Now maybe they could be like three or four months working with you, let's say, for instance, but at a certain point when they, when you feel like they're like almost like ready, they can be like integrated with other entrepreneurs. You know, yeah, man, I really really like that and like I like the concept of like you know, businessism is a meditation process, a meditative process. You know it's, it's a business's reflection of you and it's a meditation process. And being able to work on that one-to-one and also collectively with people in like a real setting, I mean, this is a really powerful business as well as an impact you can have.

Ebrahim: 1:26:07

It's so interesting. You said about the mastermind thing, so I know you've been, I know you've been saying that to me and I was thinking about the breath work and I was thinking I'd love to hear your honest, honest thoughts on this. Don't say it to make it sound good no, no give me your honest thoughts, right?

Ebrahim: 1:26:19

so you are friends, man, I'll tell you as it is because I want to hear the truth. So you were one of the maybe five people in that meditation, in that breath work session, who hadn't done breath work before, right, and there was a few other entrepreneurs and I purposely chose people who hadn't done it before and I purposely chose having some people who had had some experience before. Interesting, and the reason I did that is so that, well, first of all, everyone's an entrepreneur, so everyone feels kind of safe, part of the same tribe, right? You feel like, okay, I'm around like minor people. This isn't too. It's a bit weird, but it's not too weird. So it's like curated. But then what I noticed happened is you know, a couple of the guys who had very, very deep you might have heard them crying and shouting out like they had very deep, literally life-changing experiences, like jeremiah, if you remember him. He's literally gone on a new life tangent, after that session. Right, how was it for you seeing their reactions?

Darren: 1:27:15

I think, like I was very much in my own like mind and, like you know, thinking of my own priorities and thinking about this and taking my highest priorities and what I want to achieve and want to get out of this. And then when I heard like the guys like literally crying it, like I had that like rush of emotions and I said this to elise as well, like the phrase flood of emotions I quite literally felt a flood of emotions and, yeah, it was really nice because it was like basically, like we're all pretty similar in that aspect. We've similar challenges and, uh, traumas and difficulties that we're all working towards, but it just made so much more sense that we were on a similar path. That was like the most appealing element. You know, and I think there is a really good part. You said about some guys being ahead than other people. Now, you know, I initially I said everyone should be like further on, but I actually think it's actually a good idea that some people are beginners and some people are going through, because it's a benchmark and baseline. You know, when someone's so far ahead of you, it's like that's where I can get to, and then this is like the benchmark and so on. That's why, in a coaching program, you'll have people that crush it through presentations, because that's like the, that's the benchmark, right, um, at the same time, it's like more effective that way, I would say for sure, because, like you think, and it's interesting because we actually managed um a therapy podcast at the moment, would you believe and one challenge that we had was we felt that people didn't want to do group sessions um could be a limiting belief or whatever. People just wanted to do personal sessions, um, still working through that process at the moment.

Darren: 1:28:50

But I thought it was quite interesting because in this aspect it can be multifactorial, as business, mental, mindset, even physical, and then even start in the gym afterwards. Right, some people are further on in the gym than other people. But again, it goes back to I know I'm on a tangent, but it goes back to the kind of ego aspect, like if you're someone who's like comfortable with yourself, I'll give you like a stupid example like I can train with someone who's just new in the gym because I don't look at them, down at them. Does that make sense? And it's the same with this stuff where brett works. You can do brett work with someone who's five years into their journey and they don't look down at you. You know, you just need to have that internal perspective, say, yeah, we're both working on it. It's saturday morning, right, we're not hung over. We're sitting in like a fucking hut trying to work on this to get better, right, did you get me? Yeah, uh.

Ebrahim: 1:29:36

So there has to be that humility also employed, right yeah, I think, I think, uh, the reason why I wanted to do it that way was just fun, so everyone can be like in that like-minded community. But then too, my hope was that, by seeing what some of the other guys went through, it sometimes allows you to reflect on your own experience and think, oh man, maybe maybe there's like something to this, right, because I can sit here all day and harp on about breath work and harp on about your internal state. But when you experience it and when you see somebody else go through their own transformation, I think it just like changes your perspective and your belief systems in a way, because you're like, okay, this person is sharing their testimony, essentially right, and that's what they went through.

Darren: 1:30:23

So it's like, okay, well, maybe this is also possible for me yeah, what I realized as well is that I could probably push harder, push deeper. You know, um and I'm just giving an example with the gym, always, it's good analogy for life it's like you see someone in the gym coasting after one year they're going in circles to have made any progress. You see some people push really, really hard. They make some guys four year progress in two months, right, and I think that's kind of the way you can approach something like this as well. Um, is that, yes, you, you can do it, but you really want to develop it yourself and go a bit deeper. Um, but it starts with just like being consistent with it, and that's a big thing right.

Ebrahim: 1:31:04

Well, how are we going to get breath work into your daily routine?

Darren: 1:31:07

well, that's the thing, my dog work was cancelled. I made this today, but I wanted to do it today. Um, what's what I'm going to do? My plan is like, when the dogs are out of the house, like we've so much staff in our house at this stage, so when everything is cleared out, I want to start like integrating it. So if you have resources and something we can share, and then I could like basically have like resource bank for this stuff, and it's again, it's just factoring it into the day, right?

Darren: 1:31:31

Because the unfortunate truth is, like someone listening to this, they might be like fired up now and they're excited and they want to become more conscientious and more intentional. And then they check their slack and something pops up and they're like, fuck, this is important, right. So it's like, how can you reassign or realign your life in such a way that, like there's something you need to work on, you have to work on? So, yes, you need to do your outreach and do all this stuff, but you also need to add this into a key element. So let me give an example. What I've done in this instance is that I wake up in the morning and I walk first thing in the morning, so I walk for about 30 minutes in the morning. It's really good to like jog my brain, uh, calm down, decompress and like basically wake up and then, instead of getting into work, I read. So I read for around 30 to 40 minutes. Now I never read all my life, but in the past year or two I've read, you know, over like 100 books. And the reason why is because I just bake it into my plan right, I break it into how I learn, how I develop my writing, my reading, even my articulating, my speech, and I break that into the beginning. And it's a really nice way to elevate the day.

Darren: 1:32:34

And what I was actually planning to do, doing previously, was actually integrating brett work and meditation in before doing anything. And it's not this four hour morning routine, it's just go for a fucking walk so you regulate your body and do a bit of reading. Right. And I learned the brett work aspect from charlie morgan. He was like you want to slowly rise up in your day, so I think it's just about like what? So I want to get your thoughts and not like how can we take everything we've learned for the past? Like you want to slowly rise up in your day. So I think it's just about like what? So I want to get your thoughts on that, like how can we take everything we've learned for the past like you know, 90 minutes to two hours at this point and and bake it into that session, baking into your day?

Ebrahim: 1:33:06

I would say, if there was one thing you were going to do just to give the 80 20, it would just be start your day with 10 minutes of breath work.

Ebrahim: 1:33:15

I'll give you the one I give to my clients. It's just literally 10 minutes, but what it does is it integrates a lot of the things that we've talked about. It gets your head straight, gets your heart straight, it gets you focused for the day, gets you energized for the day, gets you clear. You don't even need to do meditation, in my experience, when you do this, because you, you are meditating as you're doing it right. So it's a very like 80-20 principle. And then just take that and make that one consistent habit. Like this is what I do. I literally wake up, I just sit up in bed and I just do the breath work first thing. That's just how I start my day and that's just the first thing I do.

Ebrahim: 1:33:57

And whatever here's the thing like whatever you're feeling at the start of the day, whatever thoughts are going around your head, this, the breath work, will just clean all of that out. It will raise your state, raise your energy, and then just go on and do whatever you want to do from there, whether you want to go into routine, if you just want to go straight into your day. Whatever works you, I go do some friggin trampolining with some music and I do some cold plunge and I do a few different things, because it's just all where I live. So it's just, it's easy. It takes like 30 minutes to do everything.

Ebrahim: 1:34:25

Um, but that's the one thing I would say, because if you can integrate that, like if you can do that, you can have an experience and you it's it's like a gateway into becoming more conscious, right, when, when you do that and it's guaranteed, like, you can sit down and meditate for 20 minutes and you could just be thinking for 20 minutes, you just wasted 20 minutes, right, let's be honest, that's what happens a lot of the time, right? If you're breathing and doing this specific breath work for 10 minutes, you will have an effect guaranteed as long as you're breathing right, right, because you have something to focus on. So that's the one thing I would give and I'll give it, I'll give, I'll send it to you.

Ebrahim: 1:35:01

You can put it in 100 I would just recommend to start with that 10 minutes a day. That'll that'll change things that's super interesting.

Darren: 1:35:09

I want to get a toss on alcohol. So you talk about like the gateway, like the path, and like I, and like I'm a big time guy, like I always talk about time Everyone listens to me because I'm super fucking sick when we talk about time but I just think, like time and effect is just life, right. You go back to the 44 year old that gets divorced and gets a Lamborghini. He got divorced because he didn't think about the right decisions. He made the decisions, he focused on external and then after 20 years, the divorce. But he had the money accumulated because he built a business and he can afford lamborghini after the divorce fees. Time and effect, right. We see all the. If we were to chart that out and it's, you have an x and y axis and the y axis go negative. He made a couple good decisions, the business went up and he made a couple bad decisions and it went negative and very, very negative and same with his bank balance and I just that's how I could literally view life.

Darren: 1:36:00

But for me, the entrance into like this self-development space even though I've been doing for years I hated the word self-development the personal development uh, I've been doing it for years. So I was recording pockets for years. The biggest thing for me was that I felt just miss in, not alignment with who I should be when I was recording all these podcasts, meeting all these like millionaires, basically startup founders, people doing like great stuff, but they were all crushing it. But I was living in misalignment by going out and partying and stuff like this. So when I was like looking at editing files at like you know, sunday morning stuff is super hung over and I'm all over the place, whereas for me it was quitting alcohol, walking away from alcohol. So when I moved to Singapore, initially alcohol was so expensive it seemed like the obvious choice. But then when I quit, I took one month and I was like whoa, I feel fantastic. And then, like two months and three months kicked in and all of the changes I made in month one and two started kicking in and four months, five months in, I was a different, different person. And then the question for me became not when will I drink again? Why would I drink again? And it's made me realize that was on a surface level, external level level. So podcast was growing. You know we're doing like millions and millions of views a month as a result, because I put all such time in the business is growing, my bank balance is growing, my relationships are improving, which is kind of internal, external.

Darren: 1:37:17

But then as time went on I kind of realized what was my relationship with alcohol to begin with and growing up in like, uh, in ireland, like alcohol is just ingrained in your culture, right, that most people presume they don't have a problem with it.

Darren: 1:37:31

It's just normal to go and drink and watch a champions league and the football and just drink and just get on with it.

Darren: 1:37:38

But then I realized that, like, actually at a deeper level, there was obviously a lot wrong with that system and that process and maybe even me putting myself in those social circles, which is like creating problems. So the reason why it took me till 28 to get to where I'm in the business, I could have actually honestly done it five years ago genuinely, for what I had to do to get to where I'm in the business, I could have actually honestly done it five years ago genuinely. What I had to do to get to this point was just a bunch of cold outreach and fulfillment, right, but it took me much longer because of the fact it wasn't a skill issue. A lot of it wasn't a skill issue. It was to do with misaligned priorities and focusing on alcohol. So my recommendation always is people to step away from that alcohol lifestyle, not forever and not to, you know, go against it completely, but just to reduce the consumption down because you don't know how much of an impact it's having on your body.

Ebrahim: 1:38:27

So let's just get your thoughts on that alcohol was literally like the biggest part of my life, from 16 until probably like 25, 26, so so for me it was dude. It's like having an awakening, quitting alcohol, right, because you're what is what? What are they called? They're called spirits, right, it's. You're literally ingesting a spirit and it's it's a negative spirit that you're putting into you, right? It's why it creates this alter ego and for me, I couldn't get out. I couldn't break the habit, man. I wanted to stop for a long time because I'd go. It would be same thing go out, hook up with a girl, same man. Come back, feel empty. I just wanted to get out of my friggin apartment, right my, that was.

Darren: 1:39:11

I was living in london as well, the same time as you. Oh, we might have saw each other man in fabric.

Ebrahim: 1:39:15

Yeah, yeah I was yeah, man oh, it was just.

Darren: 1:39:19

Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but it's just going in that perpetual loop, right.

Darren: 1:39:24

And then just saying the landlord's coming in the morning and then it's a massive fucking rush. And then you're doing it again and again, and again, right. And I've had many instances where I've literally like it's almost like joking, but I've been lying. It's like I've been sitting at the side of a car but a mate like super, like, like after night out, but you're kind of like coming down and you're like smoking a cigarette and you're joking me like why do we do this? But we're laughing about it. But there's truth to it, right, there's truth in that.

Ebrahim: 1:39:50

And then you just do it again it's for me, it was just escaping from a reality that I didn't like, and I didn't like who I was and I didn't like the reality I had. So that was why I couldn't get out of the habit. What did it for me was COVID. Same COVID did it for me. It became my options were taken away, because all of the things I attached alcohol to, socializing women, all these outside things, were gone. And bro covid was the best time of my life because of that, because I just got dialed in and I just and I stopped. And then suddenly, and me and my girlfriend used to drink a lot together, like we would go a lot we were like, should we just not go back to drinking now? And then we would go.

Ebrahim: 1:40:35

And you remember when, during covid, when you could meet like in a park, scam you could meet in a park fucking with a mask some days and other days without a mask, depending on what the weather was, and bear in mind, in ireland people used to drink in the park, that's exact. So that's exactly what was happening. So everyone was going there and drinking. And then I remember me and my girlfriend were there and we were like, should we just not drink?

Ebrahim: 1:40:56

And then I remember, like her friends this one day, looking at me like he's not drinking Like okay, and I could feel them like become distant from me, and it was because and if the same thing happened to you, it's because it's like holding up a mirror, right, and it's showing them their own shortcomings, essentially, Well, what was happening was, like you know, I had shortcomings essentially.

Darren: 1:41:18

Well, what was happening was, like you know, I had a. I had a crazy apartment in dublin when I was living in dublin. And this is after I came back from london and, uh, you know, I don't know, are you familiar with, like the house and techno scene? Like I'm really into music? I'm still heavily into music to this day. Um, I'll stay very up to date with it. I'm really into production, really into production and music, same as producing this.

Darren: 1:41:35

Right, and I was going to like all the big scenes in dublin, like friday, saturday, sunday, but we'd always host the drinks, always, right, always, because, like I was finished up in a company and we'd drink whatever and um, so when covid went, obviously like the entrepreneur in me says, fuck, all these rules and regulations, we're still gonna have the parties. So I was still having the parties in our house, right, but we were having the parties, but instead of 11 o'clock going to a nightclub till 5 am, we were just staying in the house. So, the kitchen, you're drinking the kitchen, then you're drinking the sitting room and drinking the kitchen, and it was my girlfriend said to me. She was like there's kind of no reason to drink at this stuff because like there's like nothing to do with like midnight anyway, right, and I'm like, ah, just keep drinking.

Darren: 1:42:14

It's fine, just keep drinking that's the keep drinking and then it was only until I came to asia, was then when I stopped because, like you, so much opportunity in bali to do whatever you want to, to do more enjoyable things at the weekend and so on. So we just stopped drinking so frequently. But the guys were still doing that and there's nothing wrong with them doing that. It's the fact that that's ideally what I didn't want to do and I never felt that breaking away pressure from the guys, because I've just always been an agent for the last couple years, so you know. And then when someone looks at me because a lot of the stuff that I'm doing on the outset has always been growing positively to the outset people are like, oh, like, you know, it's great, it's great whatever. And there's obviously the people that are, you know, that are, say, ship him and back and all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot of people I don't talk to anymore that I used to when I was a kid, which is just natural anyway, right, you know, you're just not going to keep up to date with people, so they probably have their own opinion, whatever. But I just mean, like the closest, closest friends never really really said anything, because they were just not in my proximity.

Darren: 1:43:14

And I just finished a podcast that I released last night with a guy from one year no beer. It's a great program in the uk. They focus on like high achievers, entrepreneurs, to reduce their alcohol consumption. So not remove is reduce and control it. And um, I said like out of everything that you do, like all the hacks and the tricks, he's had thousands of investment bankers in london. I was like what's the one thing that you would recommend? He said, because he said change. He said change environment, just change environment.

Darren: 1:43:39

And he moved from somewhere in the north of Scotland with like the worst alcoholism in all of Europe to Mallorca, and I just says Mallorca. And he does like long distance cycling, he does like Ironmans and stuff like this and he does like Spartan races, and I was. He does like iron mans and stuff like this and he does like spartan races and I was like why are you there? And he's like because people don't drink there as well as much you know. Uh, and he still drinks. So he runs that company but he still has like the odd glass of wine, like maybe like once a quarter or something like this. So, yeah, man, fucking hell, this was some podcast. I could honestly keep on going, like, like literally keep on going for another two or three hours, but it's 7 pm. Um, yeah, man, I want to say a big thank you. I wish you all the best. Man, I truly, I'm really behind everything you're doing and I think I can do to help you and support you.

Ebrahim: 1:44:25

Um, always let me know and hopefully you enjoyed the session and, dude, thank you to you, man, because like off camera in person you're not. You've helped me in this last few weeks, particularly just given, so freely helped me at every opportunities that you possibly could appreciate it really really means a lot to me, man, so thank you just from abundance, right?

Darren: 1:44:44

um, I just think that you would need to just think from that perspective, from even if you have nothing, right, and for many years I had nothing, um, and arguably you could say I was more free when I had money. You know, there's also that aspect, right? So abundance is in the mind. Uh, it's not in external shit, right? So the more we can give, we spend like this, this podcast could, I genuinely think, will actually really change people's lives like that.

Darren: 1:45:07

That's what I'm trying to do with everything that I'm putting out, um, and it's working. Like I'm getting more messages than ever without like clouding my own stuff. People are learning their lessons, are sending me screenshots. They're sending me screenshots of like random businesses that I have no idea how they'd run. It'd be like a random like e-commerce store, and they're like your podcast helped me. I'm like I'm not fucking clue about that, but it's, but it's again, it's the frameworks, the tools, it's the practices, right? So that's the only thing that, like this, is my impact play, right, and I'm gonna do this for as long as I have a voice box man. All right, bro, let's finish up there.