898 Change Yourself in Order to Change the World with Dhar Mann

This is episode number 898 with Dar man. Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now, let the class begin. Jim Carrey said something interesting. I hope that everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of so they will know that it's not the answer. Man, it's so crazy how on social media we can get caught up in this need and desire to be liked. to be shared, to be viewed, to have people follow us. And we sometimes can attach our worth to the amount of attention we get on social media. Isn't it interesting how we can get caught up in this? I'm not saying everyone does this, but I'm saying that there are people that do this, and it definitely causes a lot of anxiety and stress and overwhelm for people. Well, Dhar Mann has had an interesting experience as an entrepreneur in businesses, on social media, specifically, and had lots of ups and downs. If you don't know who Darr is, he's starting to take over the world with his content. He's a serial entrepreneur who's experienced lots of highs and lows from success, from funding millions of dollars in real estate loans at 19 to his time in the medical marijuana industry to scaling an eight figure cosmetics business. He has a proven ability to build companies. Most recently, he's become the fastest growing viral video creator in less than a year with over 3 billion views across Facebook, IGTV and YouTube. He is growing so fast, it's crazy what he's been able to build. And in this interview, we talk about Dar's success and failure through multiple business ventures. He's had a lot of highs and a lot of lows. His struggles to keep up a lifestyle and appearance of success with friends, family and on social media. His lowest point financially and how he built himself up mentally and emotionally to change his habits. He talks about a story where he was really shunned and shamed with his friends, social media, the press, his family, and how some people could stay in this dark hole, but he built himself back up from the ashes in a big way. Why and how he's become the most successful viral video creator on Facebook in less than a year. That and so much more. I'm super excited about this. Make sure to share with your friends, lewishouse.com/898 and get this message out there. I think you're going to learn a lot from his lessons of failure and success. and so much about what he's been doing to build his businesses lately. Also, we have a big announcement to make. We have a documentary we are launching. That's right, a documentary called Chasing Greatness. If you go to Greatness.com right now, you can watch this documentary for free. There is a week-long period where it will be open for free. All you have to do is opt in and you'll be able to have access to this incredibly beautiful documentary. We had Hollywood film crew work on this. We spent about a year and a half, and it's finally ready for you to watch it. Some of the world's biggest experts are in there. I think of it as kind of like the secret on steroids in a new modern era. So if you're really looking to take your greatness to the next level, your life to the next level, then go to greatness.com and opt in to be notified of when we're launching this coming out very soon. We're also doing a one night only premiere in Los Angeles. So if you want to come and watch the documentary live with me and some other big celebrities and influencers who are featured in the documentary, then make sure to go to greatness.com, get your ticket because tickets will be limited. They'll go out very quickly. and sign up there to either come watch it live and we'll do a Q&A afterwards with me and also opt in to get access to the documentary for that week afterwards. So check it out right now at greatness.com Are you ready to level up your business?

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And without further ado, let's dive into this interview with the one and only Dhar Mann.

Welcome back to the School of Greatness, everyone. We've got my friend Dhar Mann in the house. Good pop right there. This is gonna be a great interview. We got connected, I actually found out about you, I don't know, five, six years ago probably, when you were this Jetset Life master on Instagram, right. Traveling the world. with your beautiful girlfriend slash fiance slash cars, mansions, champagne bottles. And I was always like, something about this guy, it seems a little bit off with this portrayal.

Yeah. Right?

I was like, I don't know how he's making his money. I don't know if it's true or if it's not true. And then you kind of went silent. You went cold for like four years.

Yeah.

You didn't post anything for four years on social media.

I deleted everything.

And I kind of forgot about you until I saw you come back again. And then I started seeing your content on Facebook and I was like, wow, this person's really thoughtful, really philosophical, even spiritual minded, and intentional about how he creates content. And it's really helpful for so many people. I was like, who is this guy? And what's his story? So we've started hanging out for the last, what, I don't know, three to four months?

Yeah.

And you started to tell me your story and blew me away about everything you've been through. So first off, let me start the context for people. You have the fastest growing page on Facebook right now, over 2.7 billion views in a year.

2.9. 2.9. Call it 3 billion by the end of this podcast.

That's crazy. 3 billion video views on your Facebook page, which is crazy in a year's.

Time between Facebook, YouTube, IGTV.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And I think you might have over 10 million fans or followers across all social media in a year's time, about a year, year and a half time.

Yeah, a year.

Right. And it just keeps growing, man. So you were dark for four years, you came back with this massive platform from nothing.

Right.

And you have an interesting story about how you got here. So I wanna learn about so many things, but I want you to first try to share the story of how you had this lifestyle before to where you're at now, the businesses you've been a part of. I know you have some type of, some criminal history. So I wanna hear and let people know your story.

Yeah.

Cause I don't think you've told it publicly at all.

I was waiting for you, man. I was like, I'm gonna go dark for four years and wait for the news to reach out to me and tell it all. Yeah.

So tell me what was life like before when you were this kind of Instagram influencer back in the heydays of Instagram?

For sure. So I just moved to LA and at the time, you know, this was four or five years ago, I had some money and was just sort of living this Hollywood bachelor lifestyle with all the crazy cars and the fancy house, you know, everything you can imagine as to what that lifestyle looks like. I was going to the club, you know, four nights a week with $5,000 bar tabs, like every single night, living this high life. But, you know, like a lot of people, I was spending a lot more than I was actually bringing in. And at the time, you know, my mentality was just like, okay, it's okay. I can fake it until I make it. And if I just keep this up, you know, maybe I could start monetizing or somehow the money will follow. But it didn't.

It didn't come.

It didn't come. So what was this just credit cards.

You were using or how were you.

Spending on these things?

Exactly.

So yeah, I mean, I've always been an entrepreneur and you know, I've had some successes but I've had way more failures. And so when I moved to LA, I did have some money. So I was able to, you know, I had more money than like a lot of people did. Yeah. But not nearly as to how lavish I was making this lifestyle scene.

And where did you come from before LA? And what was the business or the work you were doing before that brought you here?

Yeah, definitely. So I grew up in Northern California. I grew up in like this conservative Indian household. So Oakland, Oakland area. And then I went to UC Davis. And then I've been involved in a lot of different industries. I'm just a guy who was sort of always just looking for different ways of making money.

Like what can I do? What's the best way, the quickest way?

Exactly.

So what are some of the industries?

It's all across the country. You did real estate, you did real estate. I did medical marijuana, I did limousines, I did exotic car rentals, I did construction, I'm now in makeup, I've created content. I've been probably in about a dozen or so industries. And it was just always like pretty much my entire life just chasing the dollar. Wherever I could make a quick buck, that's the direction that I would go. So you'd see a guy who would be like, oh, I'm making a ton.

Of money in real estate. Exactly. And you'd go chase that, you see someone who's questioning construction, Right. Let me go chase that.

Exactly. I thought the way to success was to have like, I'm gonna start seven different businesses and the more businesses you had or the more opportunities you were chasing, the more successful you'd be. But it's sort of like that quote by Confucius that says like, the man who chases two rabbits catches neither one. And it took me a while to realize that, but I was always a guy who had a lot of speed. Like whatever I set my mind to, I could get there quickly, but my aim was always off. And so what I realized is if you're going the wrong way, wrong direction at 100 miles an hour. It's a lot worse than if you're going the right direction at one mile an hour. But it took me to have a lot of experience with failure in order to finally get the direction right.

Got it.

But yeah, so involved in a lot of different industries until I finally got to where I am today.

Okay, so you moved to LA, you had some money, and what was the business you were in when you were in LA?

Well, turns out it wasn't a business at all. I was investing in something that ended up not being a real investment. So, I mean, it's sort of a long story. I'm sure we'll get into it at some point. But I just sold my medical marijuana company. It wasn't, I know that sounds major because everyone's into medical marijuana right now and it's this big hot industry, but I wasn't one of those massive success stories that had some huge exit. I sold with basically just enough to kind of start a life here in LA. and then I had a bunch of time on my hands and I had some money. And so with a lot of people, a lot of young people with time and some money, I was like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna be a full-time Instagrammer. And so literally every day I would just wake up thinking, how am I gonna post like the most baller image possible? And so that's what my page became. It was all just about sort of the flash and the superficial lifestyle. And, you know, in the beginning, like, yeah, it was fun and it was exciting, but very quickly it started feeling real empty. And I definitely started feeling like a lack of purpose. And then also just felt inauthentic, like I wasn't being real. But when you're in that, it's so hard to actually see it and especially take yourself out of it because now you've got all these people that are sort of expecting that from you. So I try to maintain it as long as I could until I literally couldn't anymore.

Because you had like, I think you got a million followers. You were one of the few people who had a million followers five, six years ago when it was hard to get an audience.

Yeah, there wasn't a lot of people that had a lot of followers on Instagram at that time. So at my peak, I got to about 800k and then I just cold turkey went off Instagram and for like four or five years just watched that following decline. And it is so painful. I know that sounds like so silly to say, but if anybody has social media following that's listening to this podcast. They know that it's stressful when you're losing followers or you're not sort of at your peak that you used to be. So it was definitely like a painful process just being off the grid and sort of seeing my following slow, like just dropping off and then, you know, everybody speculating as to what happened to me. A lot of people thought I went to jail or they thought that they thought the craziest things but in reality, I was just trying to discover the new me.

So, you didn't post for four years on social media?

Exactly.

What was the final thing that made you say, okay, I gotta pull away from social media?

Yeah, so I've had three major failures in my life.

Three big ones.

Three big ones. I've had thousands of other ones. Small ones, yeah. But you know, a lot of people say that they've experienced success and failure and it's very common for a lot of, especially entrepreneurs. But my failures are the kind of failures that will, like, knock you off your feet and put you on your back, and a lot of people don't recover from. But I've always been this resilient guy as well. And I would say, like, if I've got one skill set, it's being able to bounce back. Right. But every time I failed, I always had an excuse. I always had a reason, you know, like the first time, oh, it was the industry. The whole industry collapsed. That was the real estate, you know? The mortgage business that started in 2008, 2009. I was like, oh, it was the industry's fault. It wasn't my fault.

But people were still making money in the industry that time.

Exactly. I wasn't taking accountability. And then so the second time, which I ended up getting my criminal charges, I got embroiled into a lot of different legal issues. My business wasn't doing well and I ended up sort of selling it at the bottom. So that was like my second experience with failure and it gets even worse. Each one was worse and worse and worse.

So what was the criminal charges for?

Yeah, so it's a crazy story. I'll get into that whole story in a second. And then the third one, which was even bigger, is I got one of my actually friends who was running this investment company. Turns out he was running a Ponzi scheme and I had no clue.

And you were investing in it.

And I was investing in it and all of my income was coming from that. So when you asked me, where was my income coming from? It wasn't even coming from a real business, but I didn't know that because I was getting all of my money from this investment fund. And so, of course, when that didn't work out, then I was blaming, you know, I was just blaming everyone else for why I wasn't succeeding in life. But after my third major failure, that's when I really stopped. and realize I'm the common denominator here. I am the one person that is consistent in all three of these massive failures. And unless I'm gonna take that really serious to change the person that I am, then my outcome is never gonna change. I'm gonna keep going through this same cycle of succeeding, making it really big, and then just falling flat on my face. And so I realized that in order to become the person that I needed to be, I had to just go dark off social media, start all over, and basically begin my life as new.

Wow.

And that's how old were you at that time?

So it was, I was about 30 years old. So I celebrated my 30th birthday with literally not even enough money to buy the drinks. I ordered at the bar.

Wow.

And everybody was think, 'cause I was just getting off social media at that time. Everybody was thinking of me as like this huge baller guy, but I couldn't even afford my own birthday cocktail. So I had hit like super rock bottom. I was on the verge of like moving in with my parents. I thought I wasn't gonna be able to even pay my rent. Yeah, I was about 30 years old when I turned my life around. And a lot of young people especially think like, oh man, I'm 22 and I haven't I haven't made it yet. I'm a failure or I'm 27 or whatever else. I was 30 years old and completely broke and starting over with my life.

And you weren't only broke, but you're also, I guess, socially shamed for things too.

Absolutely.

You went through a very public breakup.

Absolutely.

A semi-famous TV star.

Right.

And she was saying things and the news was saying things and friends were saying things. People were also publicly shaming you or whatever they were doing.

Exactly. And that kind of pressure, there's even more to the story that nobody knows. You don't even know, but happy to share it today.

What's that?

Yeah, but no, I was like, talk about the darkest time in your life. Like that's definitely where I was. Like I thought I was gonna get diabetes, put it that way.

You were so stressed.

I was having health issues. I was so stressed. like, I literally thought that it was the end of the road for me and that this is all I would ever become known for in my life. I was just this failure that would never get back on my feet. I certainly could never have imagined a few years later that I'd be on the school of greatness podcast, sitting across from Louis, that's for sure. But it's crazy. It just goes to show that whatever state that you're in is definitely not your permanent state, as long you believe in yourself.

Yeah, you can change it for sure. So what's the story that you haven't told me or anyone?

Yeah, so I mean, so I guess I gotta kind of spell it all out. Yeah, so I mean, you know, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, as I mentioned, lots of some success, a lot more failures, but I grew up and when my parents came into this country, they were completely broke. Like they came, I think, with seven or eight dollars in their pocket. I said seven dollars in their pocket, like in a YouTube video. And then my mom texted me and she said, you, got to tell the truth. We had $8. And she was like offended by that. But so my parents came, they were completely broke and trying to figure out, you know, how to make it in America. They immigrated from India. We were living in this small apartment that we shared with three, two or three other families. So really struggling. But my parents were really ambitious. and very hard working. And so even though I grew up in this like poor household, I saw how hard they were working and they started their own business that started becoming really successful. So I sort of had the entrepreneurship in my blood. So when I was like 10 years old, I started my first unofficial business. I was selling baseball cards with a little stand set up wherever there was heavy foot traffic. At 14, I was the first person in high school to buy a CD burner. I'm sure especially the young audience is probably like, what is a CD burner? But basically I was buying CDs and then making copies of them. Selling them to my friends. Five bucks a record. Exactly, 10 bucks. But if you add a cover, then.

You can, yeah, I get a couple more bucks.

Print off a piece of the COVID yeah. Exactly. And then so, so I always had this entrepreneurial mindset, but I always had this sort of make money fast. And even if you have to cut corners, it's okay. I had a broken moral compass. And so when I was 19 at UC Davis, I was studying economics and it was just hard for me to focus in school. So I knew that, you know, I wanted to get into business. I didn't want to wait to graduate. I also didn't want my parents paying my tuition. I wanted to be financially independent. So I started a real estate mortgage company. And if you ever watched in college, N-19. And so I rented an office. The property manager looked at me like I was crazy. He's like, are your parents co-sign. And I was like, no, they have no idea what I'm even doing. And for whatever reason, he believed in me. So I rented an office with whatever little money I had. It was a tiny space. As time went on, I got up to about like 25 employees or so. And have you ever seen the movie Boiler Room? So when you walk into a room, you just see people like dialing for dollars. That's what it was, where people were calling people, trying to get them to refinance their homes because interest rates were so low. Everyone was taking cash out at that time of their properties. So they call, get people to try to refinance their homes, fill out a college app, fill out a loan application, and then I was the guy that would take those applications and then go to people's houses and try to close those deals.

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And I was doing super well.

What gave you the courage to do this?

Yeah.

I'm gonna be a loan officer.

Yeah, you know what's crazy? I was dealing with a really bad breakup at the time. the time. And at that time, I was just like, I'm gonna show this person, I'm gonna go out and become super successful, and she's gonna regret, you know, breaking up or however that relationship ended. So I was sort of motivated by this breakup and then also sort of the family background. My brother was in real estate. So, you know, I had sort of like the, the entrepreneurial background before I was 21 years old, even legally able to drink. I had three houses.

What?

And I bought a Lamborghini. That's crazy. And so I'm in this small college town making more money. UC Davis. Yeah, there's like hardly anyone that not a lot of people live in Davis. So here I am, this college student driving this orange Lamborghini. You know, I was being funny. UC Davis. Yeah, there's like hardly anyone that not a lot of people live in Davis. So here I am, this college student driving this orange Lamborghini. You know, I was being super flashy and I was spending a lot of money. I was making great money. But I was spending it super fast as well. And what I didn't anticipate is that the 2008-2009 mortgage crisis hit and completely wiped me out. I was spending money faster than I could make it at that point. And as soon as my income dropped, I could no longer keep up with that expensive lifestyle. So I go in and now I'm like, how can I even make this? How can I even afford my car payment? That was my first massive failure. So I'm like, how can I even afford these car, this car payment? I can't afford this lifestyle. And so I've always been pretty good about fast thinking and then coming up with solutions. But often that might help me in the short run, but that thinking hurts me in the long run. I didn't realize it at the time. So I decided to start an exotic car rental company. I just created a website. It took a bunch of pictures of my car. Rent it out. Exactly. I started renting it out and that's how I was making my car payments. So I was able to barely buy like the hair on my chin, keep the expensive car. Exactly. So that was sort of my first experience with failure. I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do after that. And so I knew like I was passionate about real estate. I still thought I was gonna stay in real estate. So now I've got this exotic car rental company that I'm renting out my car and then I go into rehabbing commercial properties in real estate in Oakland. And so I found out about this government grant program where for every dollar you spend on rehabilitating your properties, they will give you $1 back if you do it in areas that need improvement. So I was super excited about this and I was like, hey, I can take on all these projects at once because I'm gonna get all this money coming back in for the government. And I, you know, again, trying to go 100 miles an hour, I think I was 22-23 years old, and I was like, I gotta make it. I gotta do something big with my life, and I wanna make a name for myself. So I gotta go super fast. So I got myself into all of these construction projects, and what I didn't anticipate is that the city took about a year to give a reimbursement for that grant.

Oh my gosh.

So I found myself once again, sort of in all this debt with contractors to pay, but I didn't have enough money to pay everybody because the grant money didn't come in.

Could you take out a loan at the bank or no?

Well, I ended up taking some shortcuts on my grant application paperwork. Oh man. But that wouldn't actually come to bite me. Are we allowed to cuss in this?

No.

Okay, that wouldn't come to bite me in the ass until I made headlines, I made international headlines in the medical marijuana industry.

What happened? What happened? It gets crazier.

I know. It just keeps getting crazier. So one of my commercial tenants walks in, you know, I was doing property management slash rehabilitating properties slash exotic car rents. I had a sword in my hand in a lot of things. One of my commercial tenants comes to me and says that they had a break-in inside of one of their, one of their units. And on the application, he said that they were running a catering company. so I was like, okay, no problem. Let's call the police, let's report this break-in. And so as I pick up the phone to call, the tenant's like, no, no, no, don't call the police. Before you call, I just want to let you know I'm not actually running a catering business, I'm running a medical marijuana grow operation. In the unit. In the unit. And he's like, but it's all legal and this and that. This is back in 2010, 2011. And not a lot of people knew about medical marijuana or anything like that. And I'm like, are you kidding? You're growing weed and you're telling me that it's legal? Like you're crazy, you're out of your mind. You know, I've got to evict you. So we go through the whole legal process. And then right before we go in front of a judge, my attorney comes to me and goes, Hey, Dar, just so you know, you're probably going to lose this case because I looked at his paperwork and he's running a legit operation. And I was like, you,'re telling me it's legal to grow weed in California? And he says yes. And then there's a big light bulb went out. Exactly. that's when the opportunity to me sort of kicks in and says, you know what? This is gonna be my path. Like there's a huge opportunity here. So I started what CNN dubbed the Walmart of weed, which was basically like the largest hydroponic store, which sells you all of the equipment that you need to grow. Yeah, to grow medical marijuana. So I didn't actually ever sell medical marijuana itself. It was just all the equipment that you needed to grow it. So I started scaling that up. I started franchising the concept and I built like this crazy name for myself. I was on all these documentaries, all these international news. You know, I definitely became like this high profile guy and people thought of me as sort of like the weed king, right? Or the ganja of guru. The guru of ganja. Yeah, that's what they would call me. And so as I'm becoming super high profile, I found out that the city Oakland was issuing these medical marijuana cultivation licenses to four people that would allow them to grow weed for the entire state. And I was one of the four people that was selected for that opportunity. New York Times runs a front page story on it and says, you know, D.A.R.M. gets selected for one of these four permits. I was living high. I was like, yeah, pun intended.

Controlling the market. you're like, I control the market.

Exactly. I was like, this is massive. I've made it. This is how old were you? I was probably like 24, 25 or so at this time. And then and so I'm drawing so much attention. And as you know, attention can be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm drawing so much attention that somebody in the district attorney's office is like, Hey, let me look into this guy, you know, let me see if everything checks out. They start going through my paperwork for when I was submitting all of those real estate grant applications and they started seeing that I was taking shortcuts on that paperwork. It wasn't that I didn't pay anyone or I didn't complete all my projects. I did all the work. I paid everyone. I just made it seem like it happened a little bit sooner than it actually did. But that was enough for them to file criminal charges against me. So I had been selected as sort of the winner as one of these four people that could grow medical marijuana for the entire state of California. I'm at the highest like state that you can imagine in my career. I'm well known. I'm super excited. And then boom, Dhar Mann, you know, the ganga, the guru of ganga gets hit with felony charges. Everything crashed and went downhill like instantly for me. Not only was I now dealing with this legal issue, but also the city of Oakland decided to revoke my permit that I had just simply off the charges. So now I've lost everything. People are distancing themselves from me. This is the first time that I'm going through like negative press. I never dealt with any sort of like, you know, negative reputation or anything like that. It is one of the most difficult things to deal with if, you know, you guys listening have never been with something like that. And now I'm going to spend the next few years fighting this criminal case. So I fight this criminal case and then ultimately, so that was a second massive failure. So I'm fighting this criminal case and it's about two years in or so I ended up winning. All my charges get dropped. But in Alameda County, they can refile against you a second time. And especially I was so high profile, everything they were doing was making headlines. They decide to file a second time. So now I'm like three years in fighting this case and you know, I'm running out of money. I don't have much because attorney fees are super expensive. I'm sort of, you know, down to my final dollars and I go in front of a judge and he says, look, if you're willing to accept probation, this isn't like a jail time type of thing. If you accept probation for five years, you know, do good for five years and then you can go ahead and clean your record after we can just, you know, get rid of this whole case kind of So I accepted it, I accepted the criminal charges and I got on probation for five years.

Wow.

Just a couple months ago, actually, I had all my charges removed. Wow, I know my record. I know, it was kind of crazy. And they actually talked about how I'm an example of how somebody can turn their life around and sort of go from felon to fortune, to good fortune. So that was the second massive victory. And then after that, I decided to sell my medical marijuana company and it wasn't for a lot of money or anything like that. And I met a guy who was doing these investments into affiliate marketing. And, you know, he was driving like a Ferrari and it was a young guy. He like spoke the language. He was also half Indian. So I was like, man, this guy seems super trustworthy. Ended up becoming like super good friends with him. I'm investing the money that I made from selling my company to him. and he's paying me monthly, you know, interest payments. Yeah, exactly. And these checks are, like, pretty large. Like, he's giving me, like, a crazy percentage. And so I'm all stoked. I'm telling my family about it. I'm telling my best friends. I moved to LA, and now I've just got all this income coming in from this guy, and I'm not working, so I've got all this time on my hands. So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna start going buying. expensive cars and I rented like a, you know, a four story house in the Hollywood Hills with like six or seven bedrooms. I was living this super fast Hollywood life and once again, I'm back on top, right? I'm like, I got this money now and everybody see, everybody thought that I had fallen, but see, I can do this. I'm back on top and was being super flamboyant and superficial once again, thinking that I didn't need to change I was, I finally figured out my lane. And then, you know, sure enough, one month happens like, and my friend tells me like, Hey, by the way, I'm gonna be a little late on my payments to you. And I'm like, okay, no problem, not a big deal. One month passes, two months pass, three months pass. And keep in mind, I had taken all this money from my friends and family. So I'm paying them all out from my pocket, even though I have no income coming in from him. And then about three months into it or so, I find out he completely disappears. He just goes off the face of the earth. And this was somebody who I thought was like my best friend. And so, that's when I realized like, holy crap, something's wrong. So, all of a sudden, my money stopped coming in. So, once again, I'm like, now in this financial pinch, I'm spending way more money than I've got coming in. But now I've got this this reputation on Instagram as this guy who's sort of just printing money and has so much money that he's, you know, flying high and I'm in this high profile relationship. This guy disappears on me. So I have zero income coming in overnight with all this overhead that I'm trying to maintain. Plus my friends and family relying on me for these monthly payments. Long story short, I'm sure, you know, everybody sort of, it seems so obvious in hindsight always, you know? Long story short, turns out he was running a Ponzi scheme. He's in jail now and everything, crazy story. But since I was the high profile one, a lot of people thought that it was my scheme that I was running. And so all of a sudden, my money stopped. And then as soon as my money stopped, I was in a very superficial relationship, which I was sort of leading on the whole money aspect. So when you're in that kind of a relationship, as soon as you're making.

Money, it's not a lover.

Exactly. Exactly. So very quickly, you know, my girl at the time left. And then not only that, basically broadcast to the world that I was like this broke person. You know, just she basically kicked me while I was already down. So I'm dealing with financial headaches and then I'm, you know, dealing with like, all this pressure from this relationship. Then I've got this high profile falling out. Then I've got all his friends and family looking at my money. Like, where's my money? Can you imagine how awkward that Thanksgiving was? Oh. Or I'm completely broke and literally everybody at the table I owe money to. So how did you get through that holiday? Oh my God. It was so, like, talk about rock bottom, you know? And that was right when I turned 30 years old. I am literally going through the most difficult time in my life.

Oh, man.

And then I came to the realization.

Well, before you say the realization, how did you explain yourself to people, your friends and family?

Yeah.

Like, what did you say?

Well, you know what? I.

Did you try to make an excuse again?

No, I was very upfront about it. But that's when I came to realize is that your reputation is worth more than money. Yeah. And because I had sort of always had these successes and failures and was always living this high profile lifestyle.

That was your reputation.

My reputation was in question. I couldn't say that, hey, take my word for it kind of a thing because people didn't know. Am I legit? Was I the one who was like, I always had a good heart, but I always had good intentions and was trying to do things well, but I just had that broken moral compass. and so I would tell them that here's what's happening, you know, so just hang in there. But certain people sort of believe me, certain people weren't sure. But eventually after sort of it all came out that this guy was running the Ponzi scheme and he got arrested and all those things, they believe me, but they were still out of pocket, right? They were still out of money and I take my debts very seriously. So, you know, I'm going through literally right, it was my 30th birthday. I'm at this this bar, I can't even afford the drinks. I was down to about $600 in my bank account. And, you know, just, I've got rent due, like in a couple weeks or so, not sure how I'm gonna even make that rent payment. I call my parents and especially in Indian households, like a 30-year-old man moving in with your parents, especially when you owe them money as it is.

Oh, man.

It is so embarrassing. And so, you know, I was going through massive depression, like on a different scale where literally every single day I would just wake up and I would just walk around my block all day because I couldn't sit still. I lost all my friends. Nobody wanted to associate with me. My reputation was downhill. Again, no money. And I'm just like, okay, how am I going to turn my life around? And then that was the first time in my life that I said, I am the problem. I am the reason that I am in this situation. It's not because of the real estate economy crashing or this district attorney's office targeting me.

Or my ex-girlfriend or.

Exactly. Or this best friend of mine that was running this scheme that took advantage. It is my fault. Because you know what? Even if these other people did screw me over, I attracted them into my life.

You made the decision to be with them or to do business with them.

Exactly. And people are attracted to flash, but the wrong kind of people come into your life as well. And so, you know, I was bringing all this negative attention to myself. So that's when I came to realize that the only way my life is gonna change is if I change. And so at that time, I started reading books, listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, meditating, like starting, I came to the realization that external success starts with internal success. And that the only way I was going to change my life around is if I change my thinking process. But that seems like such a slow solution and slow turnaround when you've got all these massive problems on you. So yeah, I could talk about my turnaround, but I'll stop there.

So your parents, what did they say? They said, okay, you can live with us. They give you additions or was it just yeah, come and live and you're fine and we love you no matter what?

Yeah. So, you know, it was hard. I definitely took it upon myself and especially like with Indian households, like it's tough love. You know, like they weren't like, no, you're on your own. They were like, hey, yeah, definitely we'll take you in, but you screwed up, you know, and like you've got to take responsibility for that. And so it It was sort of at my bottom, but I never ended up moving in with them because I got a lifeline in a very unexpected place that ended up turning my life around.

Tell me that lifeline.

So I was, you know, once again trying to figure out how I was even gonna pay rent. And at this point, you know, I was off social media because I realized that if I was gonna be able to really create change, that I could no longer be that guy anymore. And so you had to kill...

I had to kill that identity that everyone knew about.

I had to kill Jet Set Life, which was my Instagram. But it's sort of my alter ego as well. And I was like, I have to kill it. And can you imagine? Well, I mean, can you imagine having like almost a million followers and everyone thinks that you're this major baller and then all of a sudden going off the grid? So literally I would go to places and people were just like, oh, you're that guy. And they look at me like negatively, like I was this, you know, scammer guy or that I was broke or I fell from grace. And it was so hard. But when I was out to dinner one night, I'm with a group of people and one of those people at the table was a makeup artist and she was going around the world teaching these makeup seminars. And, you know, they were selling out all across the world and she was charging 300 and $400 a as a pot for this. She's telling me the story, I'm blown away. I know nothing about makeup at that time, obviously, you know, like most guys, I didn't know anything about it. And I'm just asking her, I just sort of blurted out like, Hey, have you ever thought about taking that concept online? And she goes, no, you know, that's actually a good idea. I would love to, but I don't know how. And you know, sort of like- I do. Exactly. I blurted out, I never built a website before, I knew nothing about makeup. I was like, I can do it. And I was literally on my last dollars with very little time to make rent. And she looks at me and for whatever reason she goes, okay, let's do it.

Did she know about your reputation and about everything that went down?

She didn't know the full extent about it, but for whatever reason she just sort of, I don't know.

You had charm. You charmed her.

Maybe it's God. However you wanna look at it, right?

She needed to take her business to another level.

Exactly.

She couldn't do it herself.

Exactly.

You were there at the right time. Right place, right time.

Right place, exactly. And you know, most of the time, a lot of people could just let that opportunity pass up. But that's the thing about opportunities is they're all around us, but if you're not in that right mindset where you're ready for that opportunity, you'll miss it.

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But I was in that mindset, like, I will take anything. I will take anything. I will take anything. Exactly. So I'm like, I can do it. So boom, I've only got a couple weeks left until rent is due. I've got 600 bucks to my name. I went out and I bought some softbox lights and a little, the cheapest webcam you could get. I spent 400 bucks on that. I've got 200 bucks left. I put an ad on Craigslist and I'm like, Hey, can somebody build a website For 200 bucks for an online makeup school, all these people tell me you're crazy, go to hell. And then one person says, Hey, I can't do it for 200, but you know what? I believe in you. If it works, pay me, he's like, Give me 200. And if it works, you know, pay me a few hundred extra bucks if it's successful. And I'm like, Perfect, golden. So I launched the whole website. She starts promoting it and thank God it hit right away. You know, she had about a million followers on Instagram as well at that time. time. So she starts promoting this website that hey, you can do online makeup classes. And so it ends up hitting right away, like our very first month, I think we made like a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue. And so now, once again, I'm in. Yes, I'm backing the money. Exactly. So now right away, I'm like cool, I'm backing the money, right? So all right, do I want to get a Lamborghini?

Do I want to get a Ferrari?

Yeah, exactly. and that's where my mindset's going. And then I realize and I'm like, no, wait. This time, I'm going to do things differently. And so I was living in this tiny studio apartment that probably about 300 square feet or so. There wasn't even enough room for a bed and a couch. So I had to turn, I had the couch that I use as the bed and I had a roommate. So we took turns sleeping on, I would sleep on the floor one night. He would sleep on the bed one night. We would take turns. No way. And I was running the business from there as well. So, I'm in this tiny space and so right away, I'm like, I'm going to go back to the hills and this and that. But I'm like, no, you know what? I'm going to make myself stay in this studio apartment until not only do I have like a nice savings but until I pay every single person back that I owed money to. So, I forced myself to stay there. I was carless. I had zero I went from nine exotic cars at my peak to zero cars, and I stayed at zero cars even though I had a great business that was bringing in a lot of money. So within a matter of a few months, thank God, I paid off all my friends, I paid off all my family. They had so much respect for me because they knew it came out of my own personal pocket.

It was hard.

Exactly. And then, you know, I'm starting now I'm starting to grow a business again. And then during one of those, one of these online makeup classes, I start scaling it up. I'm working with different makeup artists now. I'm starting to build different online makeup schools. I'm scaling up the business. And during one of these online makeup classes, one of the models happens to be my now fiance slash baby mama. Yeah, who I talk about quite often and you also know. She came into my life sort of at that perfect time because it's interesting when you meet people during your high, you never really know. It's much easier to meet somebody at your low and build up together, but if you meet somebody at your high and fall down, those relationships are very difficult to keep intact and don't last. Whereas my previous relationship, I started at my high and then went down and that quickly exploded. Laura, I met her at my low. And then she for and I decided to be honest with her from the beginning. And I was like, Hey, I just want to let you know, I don't have a car. I live in this tiny studio apartment. Like, you know, I'm not doing too well financially, but I've got these big dreams and you know, if you can believe in me and this and that. And right from the beginning, she just believed me. She would always buy dinners wherever we'd go and was carrying all, like, was fronting all the bills and everything, which in LA, like, I'm not sure how much you know, but in LA, that does not happen. But she was just a really good person. And then ultimately, you know, I was sort of becoming in the right mindset, but mindset changes take a long time. So even though I was trying to be this better person, I was definitely still having, like, some some relapses where I wanted to go back to that old lifestyle. But she sort of helped like me, she helped guide me and fix my broken compass. And so with her and I together, now I have the aim and the speed.

That's good.

And so basically I scaled up, I went from online makeup classes to partnering with, you know, Laura, we created our own makeup products. We started in online beauty box subscription, scaled that company up, started it with $600 within two years, took it to eight figures in revenue. We just hired our 100th employee.

Crazy.

So, you know, it's just crazy as to how much that scaled up. I continue to stay off Instagram. I continue to stay dark. And I was just like, I am not gonna go back in social media. I do not want to go back to my old ways. So for about four to five years, even though I was making great money, and was certainly able to go back to that previous lifestyle, I still just say very conservative in order to make sure that that mindset shift that I needed to make to be successful was a permanent one.

Wow. What do you think? And what's this? It's crazy. And what's the story you haven't told?

Yeah, so what's crazy is that while, all right, so as bad as it was about like when I lost all my money and celebrating on my 30th birthday as well, Well, while I was going through the relationship falling out, while I was going through owing all the friends and family money, while I was going through all that reputation damage, the FBI was also investigating. No way. And they thought that I was running that scheme because the person, my friend at that time, he was off social media and so he was sort of using me as a front runner. So I was the ambassador. Exactly. I didn't even know this, but I was sort of this front guy. So I was also being investigated and I was already on probation. And I was on probation, so I literally thought that.

I was on probation from the weed business.

From the weed business. And I've got the feds investigating me. And so if you could imagine how dark of a cloud was over my head, I was literally like, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in a prison.

Wow.

I thought that I was never gonna get out of that. And that was gonna be. That was my life.

That was a legacy.

And, you know, thankfully, the truth always comes out. And, you know, I. I firmly believe that, that if you do good and you're an honest person, that eventually comes out, and it didn't take them too long to realize what. Who the real culprit was. And then, so I was Vindicated from. the whole thing.

I'm curious, where do you think the broken moral compass came from?

Yeah, you know, I mean, it was definitely part of my upbringing. I think a lot of young people suffer from this where they see people doing well in life, and especially you see the success stories of, like, LeBron James, like, you know, just takes off the NBA at such a young age or Mark Zuckerberg, like founds Facebook, you know, in his early 20s and becomes a billionaire, Kylie Jenner, like, I was obsessed with success and money. And it really got to me that there were so many young people that were massively successful. So I was chasing money because I felt like I had to be one of those early success stories.

Why did you feel like you had to be?

Okay, so why can't you just, you know, at this point, point in my life, I'm definitely looking back and realizing that so much of our traits today stem from things that happened to us during our childhood, right? My parents were never around because they were always building a business. So since they weren't around, the only way to keep me busy is they would give me money, right? At a young age, I'm not talking about a ton of money, but like a hundred bucks when you're 10 years old, it's a lot of money. a lot of money.

I would get like five bucks, man.

Exactly. So, I always sort of associated money with love. And looking back, you know, I was the only Indian high school... I was the only Indian student in my high school or my entire city besides my brother. But he was older than me and went off to college by the time I went to high school. And in high school, it was sort of very cliquish where all the people, all the Asians sat all the black kids sat together, all the white kids sat together, and I'm this Indian kid trying to fit in. And the weirdest thing, man, is my darkest memories and what I come to realize now, my darkest memories was trying to find who I was gonna eat lunch with every single day. And I know that sounds so sad and pathetic, but every time that lunch bell would ring, I would just be like, which group of kids can I sit with today? And I always felt like the outcast. And so I used to go and have lunch with my teachers. And it was this constant battle of just feeling rejected, feeling like the loaner, feeling like the outcast. And I wanted people to accept me so bad. And so what I thought was that the only way people would accept me or love me was if I had a lot of money to offer. Because I thought money and love was the same thing. And so, I was like, I'm going to become so successful and have so much money where everyone's going to want to be my friend. And so, even every relationship I started, I'd always go into it with like, Hey, you know, I can help you make money and I can do this and that. I thought that was a great way to build relationships with people. And once again, that was what was attracting all these people into my life that essentially were not good influences on me.

Wow, that's crazy. I think a lot of us are shaped by those things. I remember a number of instances, but a couple ones that come to mind. One that I don't think I've ever talked about on my show, but just came to me when you told that story. When I was a young kid in my town, I didn't have any friends either. And I think I've told you this. And I remember there was a couple kids who were like playing outside and I went to go try to play with them and they wouldn't let me play with them. They said, We have like a special club. This is like a club and you have to... There's only two ways you can get in the club.

-Okay.

-And this is one of my earliest memories. There's only two ways you can get in the club. One is you have to be smart enough to answer a set of questions. And if you get the questions right, you join the club. And if not, you have to pay money to be in the club. I think it was like six or seven.

Okay.

And so school was not my thing. I didn't have any money. I didn't have any money. So I go, what's the questions? And one of the questions was like, name someone who's been on the moon.

Right?

And I didn't know the answer. And then I can't remember the other questions, but I didn't get any of the questions right.

Gotcha.

Not even close. I didn't even make up something that was close. And they said, sorry, you're not smart enough to be in our club. And they said, but if you have $5, you can give us the money and then you can be at the club. So I went home and I begged my mom for $5. She got out a shoebox. This is when we didn't have any money, right? She got a little shoebox, found all the change she could get to give me so I could have a couple of friends.

Wow.

And I remember going to their house, handing this box and hanging out with them for the next hour, feeling so miserable.

Oh, wow.

Feeling like I gave them this money, now I'm in the club.

Yeah.

But they didn't want to hang out with me. You know what I mean? I was there because I did the act but I was just like, I didn't feel good, I wasn't having fun. And I was just like, man, I need to be someone. I need to be interesting enough for people to want to hang out with me, 'cause I'm never gonna be smart enough. So I gotta do something. That was one of those early stories that shaped me into needing to prove people wrong or needing to do something differently to get attention. And the second one was when I was picked last in recess for a dodgeball game.

Gotcha.

Our class.

Big guy, too.

Big guy. I was in third or fourth grade. My teacher, he wasn't intentionally trying to do anything wrong. He picked two of the popular kids and said, okay, you guys be the captains. Pick your team. And you pick one at a time. And I think there's probably 30 or.

40 of us in the class.

And so the two popular kids are picking all the guys one at a time, like the cool guys. And it gets down to me and the last three guys. And I'm like, they've got to pick me. I'm an athlete. I'm pretty athletic at this point. and they don't pick me. I'm the last guy available and they skip me and they start picking girls. And then they start picking one girl at a time. Yeah. You know, and when you're eight, nine years old, that's a big deal.

Yeah.

To have a girl picked over you.

Exactly.

At that time, it was like they were just all laughing at me.

Oh my god.

Making fun of me. And so I wasn't even, I was the last one picked over all the girls as well. Wow. And I remember just saying to myself, F everyone. F the world. I'm gonna show these kids, I'm gonna destroy them. And I was just like a dodgeball machine, just like, boom, boom, catching me, ah, you know, just getting all the anger out. And those moments, I'm telling the story with so much passion still, just like you did. Because they shaped us. And I remember saying after that moment, I was like, I'm never going to be picked last again for a sport. or in life.

Yeah.

Right. What's it gonna have to take for me to be the best athlete I can be?

Yeah.

And sports and winning became the association for love for me.

Gotcha.

If I lost, then I wasn't gonna have friends. Wow. Because when I started to be so good, they couldn't ignore me. I became picked first. I was MVP on every team. I was captain.

All American.

Everything, right? It was like I was driven by winning.

Yeah.

So anything I. Anything I lost it. anything in life, I would take it personally and feel like no one's gonna love me. And it shaped until I had a breakdown at 30 years old.

At the same time.

Same time. When I started to go through my transition in life, that made me realize, wow, my whole life has been shaped around winning and needing to be right and needing to look good. And when I kind of had that death of that identity, that's when everything started to turn around for me. So we have a similar story in the sense of like timeline of killing an ego, an identity, and being driven by something to help us achieve that wasn't ultimately fulfilling us.

Exactly.

So it's crazy to have a similar story in that space. So you realize about your moral compass from this. I think that's the most powerful thing. Once we come to a place in our life where we realize this is why we are the way we are.

Yeah.

These are some of the situations, some of the stories, the memories we have that have shaped us.

Right.

And you start to do the work. Laura starts to re-correct you as you go off your path. She brings you back. You guys are staying connected. You build this up. You decide, I'm not gonna post anything. I'm not gonna buy the fancy car right now. I'm gonna wait. Exactly. And when did you realize, okay, now's the time I can come back?

Yeah, for sure. So it wasn't until last year. Yeah, it was about, was it my 35th birthday? No, I didn't even get back on Instagram until after that. That's when I got on Facebook. It was on my 35th birthday.

Just what day is that?

So May 29th last year, 2018. So now I've got this successful beauty box business that I'm building out with Laura. And I keep asking her, like every year that went by, I was like, you know, is this the year? Is this the year? Laura's like the most amazing support personality.

Is this the year for what?

For me to get back on social media. Really? Yeah. And you know, she would say whenever you feel that you're ready, it's totally up to you.

Because you're working with social media influencers.

You're working with social media influencers. You're seeing what they're doing. You're seeing all the opportunities. Yeah, exactly. And I know like, you know, I've got the ability to now, like I've got a great business that's doing super well. Stable relationship. Exactly. I've got more money in the bank account. and people still looked at me as sort of like, here's this mysterious guy, like is he real? Is he not real? Because he's been off of Instagram for years. And when you're sort of high profile, then go off the grid, everybody sort of assumes there's something shady about that. And there was, but not at that time. And so I really did want to clean up my name and my reputation and show people that, hey, I'm this new guy now. But I held myself back and I was like, no, I am not gonna come back until I'm a hundred percent ready. But when I come back, I'm gonna come back with a vengeance. So I continued to stay off. And then it wasn't until last year. So, you know, I've always here's the crazy part of it all, right? Is that now I create a lot of videos that inspire people and motivate people. But I had to go through every one of those massive failures in order to become the person that I needed to be, in order to learn the lessons that I needed to learn, and most importantly, in order to empathize with the pain and struggle that people go with every day. That other people were going through in order to create content that really connects with people. So because I went through that, because I was always a guy that for whatever reason, I wasn't emotional, I wasn't sensitive. And so if I ever hurt anyone's feelings or anything like that, it wouldn't really bother me, right? And it wasn't until that I went through so much pain and hardship that I became so much more empathetic towards others that I could speak to people and relate with them and connect with them in a way that I never would have been able to in the past. So I was sort of at this new mindset. It was like this DAR 2.0 guy when I finally decided to start creating content. There's this quote that I love by Dalai Lama who says, the depth of your suffering defines the height of your joy. And it was because I suffered so much, it was able to take me to this new place in life, this new level of happiness. happiness that I never experienced before. And that's not possible until you really start caring, until you open up your heart and you really start having love for people.

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To stay off the grid and then I came to realize, last year that look, you know, now through Live Glam, my beauty subscription box, I've got a team of people, I've got, you know, all these, I've got, I know how to create video, like I've got all the skills necessary to start creating content, I'm going to start putting out inspirational videos to help transform lives the same way that I was able to transform my own. So on May 29th on my birthday last year, 2019, I put out my my first video, and it took me 200 takes of me sitting in front of a camera saying the same scripted stuff over and over again. I literally thought that my videographer was just gonna leave because it was so redundant. But after 200 takes, I finally posted my first video. I was super excited, like, man, it's gonna go viral. Like, I don't know how virality works, and, you know, I kept refreshing, kept refreshing after I posted it, thinking like it's gonna get millions of views. And I think I got like a hundred views or 200 views or something like that. And so I definitely felt defeated, but I kept going during that whole content journey. So my first video was just me talking in front of a camera. And at this point, I'm at the place in my life where I'm disciplined enough where if I commit to something, I'm gonna see it through.

Figure it out.

Whereas the old me was like, if I'm not making money right away, I'm hopping onto the next thing. But now the new me just says, hey, if something's not working out right away, it's okay. Keep going, everybody starts somewhere. And I didn't have a money motive going into it. I just wanted to help people. All I wanted to do was help people. So I had no pressure and luckily I had a successful business as well. So I continued to put out videos for the next three or four months or so. And every time, same thing, I'd take a whole bunch of takes in front of a camera. I would talk about whatever my lesson was that I was trying to convey. I'd post a video, get super excited thinking it's gonna go viral, complete flop. I don't think any one of my videos even broke a thousand views for the first three months. Then I was like, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I shouldn't just be in front of a camera telling people how to think or feel. People's attention span is so short. hard to absorb information that way. So I was like, what if I instead told a story? So I started experimenting with stories, and then I would have cartoons, and I would tell stories, and then I realized that those would start to get between one to 5,000 views. Well, if I did it that way, and I was like, all right, storytelling, right? So it was me in front of a camera telling a story, and that started working a little bit better. but still, 5,000 views is not big numbers, right? And then I realized, okay, what if instead of me telling the story, I showed people the story? And so that's when I decided to hire actors to actually act out whatever the message that I was trying to convey was. And so these actors would go on and act scenes out and then I would come on at the end of that and say, here's the lesson that can come from this story that you just saw. So those videos now took me from 1 to 5,000 views from about five to 10,000 views. And I was like, all right, I'm on to something. So I'm about four months in, now it's September 2019. And as I'm going, you know, I'm continuing to have these videos that are getting between 1 to 10,000 thousand views, and I'm still like, you know what? Like, this is not really worth my time.

So much energy and time.

So much energy. Like, every night, I was pretty much up late nights, like, working, editing this content. I wasn't coming home. You know, I wasn't with Laura every night, which was pretty much our only time because I was always working and I was stressing myself out, and I was on the. I was just ready to give up. So this one night, I tell Laura and I said, you know what? I tried, at least I tried for four solid months and it's not working out, you know, the way that I had hoped. So the next video I'm going to post is in the morning. I had already recorded it. I uploaded it onto Facebook, scheduled it to post at 6 a.m. the following day. And I told Laura, I said, this is the last video that I'm going to post. And, you know, I'm sorry. Thanks for hanging in there with me, you know, supporting me. me through all this. I really appreciate it. And she saw how hard it was for me, you know, to not have this thing work. So she said, hey, you know what? If that's your decision, you know, I support you. I understand. So I went to bed that night thinking, I'll never make another video. The next morning, Laura's shaking me like, wake up, wake up. It's like 6 30 a.m. or something. And I wake up and she goes, dark. Dark. That video. That video. It's going viral. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? She goes, that video that you scheduled to post this morning, she goes, look at it. I opened my phone, my eyes are still like blurry. I'm like trying to focus and I look at it and it had gotten like over a hundred thousand views in like an hour or something like that. That video today now is over a hundred million views. And so what's crazy is I was on the verge of giving up the literally the night before I told myself I was done making videos and then the very next morning I had my first viral video. Wow. It's crazy. And it was on relationships.

Amazing.

And so that was like, I was like, oh my God, a bag, you know? Like I got this. A big light bulb went off and then I realized like, okay, I finally figured out a formula that works.

Yeah.

And then I continue to sort of optimize and like the next few videos, you know, were also flops, but then every like 10 videos, one would take off. And now my videos were getting like between 100,000 to like some a few million views. And you know, this is like October 2018. And then, you know, for every 10 videos, I'd have one that hit, you know, in the millions. And then I kept getting better. I'm a guy who likes to analyze as you know. And I would just be like, why did this video work and these nine didn't? And I would come up with different theories and I would test them, go back to the drawing board, and I kept trying to optimize my whole content strategy. And then as time went on, every five videos I would get one that goes viral. Then every three, then every two. And now, I mean, almost every video I put out ends up with, in the tens of millions of views now.

Crazy, man.

So yeah, all within probably about 13-14 months or so, it went from publishing that first video on my birthday, getting 100 views, to now being at just shy of 3 billion views all within about a year.

My man. What's the biggest lesson in the last year since that first one went viral on content in general of creating viral content?

Absolutely.

People that want to grow their their message out there.

Yeah, absolutely. So I would say the number one thing is you have to move people emotionally, right? And you have to make people feel something. Because what my success metric, the key to my success for my viral videos is one thing. It's a share button, right? On Facebook. Facebook has this share button where if you like something, you can click that share button and now it's going to your audience. And if they like it, they're gonna hit that share button and it just continues to snowball like that. And so what I come to realize is that the only way you're gonna get somebody to share something is you have to touch them emotionally. And there's different types of emotions, but the key ones for me like sadness, happiness, or you can make them laugh. I'm not very funny, so I'm good on the sadness and happiness because I've experienced that a lot in my life. So as long as you can really figure out what hits that emotion, that's gonna move people to hit that share button. And so the number one comment that I look for to know that my videos are really resonating is that video made me cry. That is what I look for. If you look at the comments on.

My video, it goes viral if it's.

That that video made me cry. That is like the number one thing that I go for. Number two, relatability. So many people look at my videos and say, that reminds me of when I grew up or that reminds me of my dad who I miss so much or that reminds me of my last relationship and thank God I'm not with that guy anymore or whatever else. So if you can just create relatable content, I trying to have all these like nice fancy productions and having all these fancy locations. But the videos that would do the best are the ones that were shot in my own kitchen or a bedroom or my own living room. If people can see something and just be able to connect with it, relate to your story, they're moved emotionally. That's what's gonna cause them to share that video.

Love it, man. We've only got a few minutes left. I'm going to respect your time and Laura downstairs. But we'll have to come back and do a whole another masterclass on content creation another time. I'm curious, almost 3 billion views. What's the vision moving forward for the next year or two? And we're starting a new year and a new decade. Where do you see this type of content going forward for yourself and for creators? Where do you see if people want to be successful and social media and on content creation, what do they need to do? Is it focusing on these emotional triggers? Is it scripted content? Is it, what is it?

Exactly, that's a great question. So, you know, one thing I decided early on that really helped, really helped establish my vision is that the only content that I'm gonna create is content that matters, that makes a positive impact in people's lives. So the saying that we've got at Dhar Mann Studios is we're not just telling stories, we're changing lives. So that really helped narrow my focus. And now that I know that we're only going to create content that impacts lives, the next step of this is to go towards children, to target really like the younger audience who doesn't have the same attention span. because all the content I create, you know, is between five to 10 minutes or so, and it's made for the shorter attention span generation. So lessons that are a little bit more aimed towards kids, that's the new division. And then going international, that's the other goal for next year. So doing videos in Hindi, in Spanish, you know, in Mandarin, in all the different types of languages, and also using set, like using sets and locations and visuals that are relatable for them. So we might even open up like locations in other countries so that when they see things, they can really resonate.

That's cool.

But the future of content creation, like, you know, a lot of people get hung up on the algorithms changed or, you know, there's all these other influencers now or whatever else. As long as you can be those two things, you can be be relatable, right? And be someone that others can really connect with and then also move people emotionally where your content makes them feel something, then you're really going to succeed in the long run, no matter how much the algorithm changes or no matter how many other influencers are out there.

That's great, man. How can we connect to you? Where can we find your stuff?

Pretty much anywhere now, if you just search Dhar Mann, it's D-H-A-R H-A-R, man with two N's, that's how you can find all my socials.

And Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the rest.

Back on Instagram! Back on Instagram as of a few months ago, I just got back this year.

Yeah, exactly. So you're on those three main platforms.

And you have a website too, or where?

Yeah, Dhar Mann dot com.

Dhar Mann dot com. Okay, cool. And the beauty subscription box is Live.

Glam dot com, L-I-V-E, G-L-A-M dot com. Exactly. To learn more about that business and what you guys are doing there. This question is called the Three Truths and I'm curious what yours are. I don't know if you know this question, but it's imagine you live another 100 plus years and you achieve everything that you want to achieve. All your dreams that come true. But for whatever reason, you got to take all your content and creations with you. So all your videos, the lessons you've got, you know, trillions of views at this point and a billion videos you've made and you've got, you created a Walt Disney studio of your own, but you gotta take it with you. No one else has access to any of the lessons or the principles that you've shared anymore through your content.

Yeah.

But you get to leave behind a piece of paper and you can write down the three things you know to be true about everything in your life. The three lessons that you've learned the most that have impacted you that you would share with the world. They don't have any of the other content, but they get these three lessons that you could share with them. What would be your three truths?

Yeah, it'd be very short. But it would basically be keep going because if my life is any example, then you know that you can bounce back from failure and you can turn your life around no matter how low of a point that you're at. Two, stay laser-focused. Focused. I try to only focus on one thing at a time, as you know. So really go a hundred percent all into whatever that goal is. And number three, think long term. Don't make short term decisions. I was doing that all my life. It feels good in the moment, but in the long run, it really hurts you. Taking the long run route is harder to get to, but once you get there, it's the most rewarding feeling ever.

Wow. I love it, man. Well, I appreciate you for the challenges you've overcome because I think it's easy to continue to make excuses for bad behavior, bad moral compass, bad actions, whatever it may be. And it's not easy to bounce back from that. It's challenging to come back after a third time and not continue to repeat that pattern. So I want to acknowledge you for showing up in a different way over the last few years and doing the hard work to show up in a different way when no one wanted to be your friend. No one wanted to hang out with you. No one maybe trusted you. No one wanted to do business with you.

Exactly.

And so I acknowledge you for making that conscious decision to say, you know what? I want to look at myself as a problem. What do I need to change? Because I think some people think they need to be perfect all the time, but we make mistakes.

Right.

But it's when you are consciously deciding to be different, that's when it's really inspiring.

Exactly.

It's really inspiring when you get to that point. Some of us takes longer than others.

Yeah. It took me a lot longer than most.

But I acknowledge you for showing up and for, you know, finding your lane of purpose, helping people, service. Now, you still like nice things and you still like your... You still, you know, like all this different stuff. But I think having a mission of purpose is powerful. So I acknowledge you for that, man. I'm really grateful for our friendship. Really grateful for you. Connecting and through you sharing the story openly. Yeah. So thank you.

My final question is, what's your definition of greatness? What's my definition of greatness? Doing what you love every single day. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that. I mean, if I could change anything right now about my life, it would be anything. I would literally just keep doing the same thing that I am today. So just being filled with who you are and happy where you are. It's good.

Yeah.

Dhar Mann, appreciate you, brother. This was amazing.

Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.

Appreciate it, man. There you have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Dhar Mann. Powerful story about how he overcame so many different challenges, from the poor decisions he made to how he didn't let those decisions define him. Make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com/episode-123 888@schoolofgreatness.com. If this is your first time here, welcome to the School of Greatness community. We've got over 150 million audio downloads in almost seven years. You're about to hit the seven year mark. So make sure to click the subscribe button on Apple Podcast, over on Spotify, anywhere you like to listen to podcasts, and share this with a friend. If you know one friend who's maybe gone through some challenging times lately, share this with them. as a reminder to inspire them on what's possible in their life. Be a hero in someone's life today by sharing this with them, lewishouse.com/897. Also, you can text me right now if you want to get inspirational and motivational text messages from me. I send out little micro audios and motivational messages every single week. Just text me at 614-350-3960. just text the word podcast so I know where you came from and I'll send you messages every week, little two three minute audio messages from me that I don't put out anywhere else. So shoot me a text right now, 614-350-3960. And also go to greatness.com right now. Opt in for our documentary. You can watch it for free. It's coming out in a few weeks. So make sure to go to greatness.com, opt in to be be notified of when we're launching. And also, we're doing a one night only Premiere here in Los Angeles where you can come watch it live. Tickets will be limited, so make sure to get on that notification list@greatness.com right now when we launch the announcement. Again, I love this quote from Jim Carrey. He said, I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of so they will know that it's not the answer. You've got to find the answer that means well for you. What is the truth for you of what you're seeking in your life? The reason we do these episodes and interviews is to help bring you that fulfillment, bring you those tools, bring you the strategy to create and cultivate that inner peace, that inner drive to make.

Greatness for your life.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Big thanks to Dhar Mann who crushing it and doing some amazing things. Make sure to follow him and check him out on social media, watch his videos, share them as well. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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