Brian Johnson sold his business after reading Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, realizing he wasn't living his dharma. He spent two years reading philosophy and self-development books, wrote summaries of them, and built Philosopher's Notes into a business that integrated spirituality with a viable model.
Hi, this is Brian. How are you? Trust you're doing great. And I wanted to take a few minutes to share why I created Philosopher's Notes. I get asked the question pretty often, and I figured it'd be cool if I just created a video to share it. And so here we are. So we gotta rewind a few years. I was running about two and a half years. I was running a great business I loved, and. And I was taking a couple weeks off to let my team run the business. And I was just reading, and I found myself reading all kinds of great books like the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, the Way the Superior man by David Deida, Deepak Chopra's seven Spiritual Laws of success. And it was Deepak's book that really kind of catalyzed me in a powerful way. I was reading that book and I got to his seventh spiritual law of success, the Law of Dharma. And in that chapter, he talks about the importance of us figuring out who we are, what we're here to do in the world. And he asked a question, he said, if you had all the time and all of the money in the world, what would you do? And he used that as a leading question to help us figure out what our dharma is. And I remember I had asked myself that question a million times, and it was the first time in a few years since I started the business I was running, that my answer wasn't, put it all into zods, my company. I sat there, and I can vividly remember sitting there in stunned silence where I realized that I was no longer living my dharma. This wasn't quite what I was here to do. And long story a little bit shorter, I decided to sell the business within a couple weeks of that experience. And then within 30 days of that, the business was sold. The money was in the bank. We sold it to a publicly traded business. That was awesome. And I wound up deciding to travel for a little bit and figure out what my next steps are or were at the moment. And, and again, cutting it down so it's a little bit shorter. I basically decided to give myself a PhD in optimal living. I wanted to study the universal truths of optimal living. All the great philosophers and psychologists, the science of happiness, all the great self development teachers and modern gurus, mystics, wealth creation experts, business experts, all the stuff that I think goes into creating an extraordinary life. I wanted to study and give myself a PhD in how to live. And I couldn't find a program that was out there that integrated all the stuff I wanted to Do. I'm also a personal trainer from a past life. I studied that. I'm into fitness and health and nutrition and I wanted to get all this stuff into one program so couldn't find that anywhere. So decided to give myself my own PhD and I figured I'd get a Master's en route to my PhD when I had distilled 100 of my favorite books again on the classic old school philosophy books, on all the modern positive psychology books, the modern guys, 20th century guys and women, etc. And when I had distilled a hundred of these books into cool summaries that I can share with my friends and family and create a profitable business. Sharing. So I'm all about integrating spirituality and capitalism, integrating what I love to do with what I get paid to do. And, and I wanted to demonstrate that it's possible to get paid to read. I really wanted to read and improve my life and I wanted to show that it's possible for us to get paid doing what we absolutely love to do. So anyway, I was on a flight from Tokyo back to the States and I opened up an advertisement to a business that did summaries for business books for busy executives. And I remember it was a two page spread. I literally opened right up to it and I had one of those like alleluia epiphany moments where I just knew this is what I was here to do, that if someone was doing summaries for business books, someone should be doing summaries for self development books. And I decided that that someone should be me. And it worked out perfectly with my master's, my PhD that I just described and I realized this is it. And that was just about two years ago. And I spent the last two years reading and writing and thinking and creating these philosopher's notes and it's been incredibly fun. I spent a year in Bali and it's just been awesome to do this full time. And I'm super excited about what we've created, what I've created and now what we've created with the team members we have with the business. And I'm really excited to share what we're up to. So hopefully we'll have the opportunity to explore these great big ideas together. And thanks for taking the time to learn more about me and what brought me here. Hope you're doing great and talk to you soon. See you.
