In loving memory of Bob Proctor 1938 -2022

Now, I want to show you this picture. I want to show you this picture because this is me in 2003. You can see I've just quit my job. I can barely afford pants. And the furniture I'm sitting on, this was furniture we salvaged from the street in New York. New York, very friendly city. If you need furniture, just walk out to the street. People put out their. Every year, IKEA comes up with a new line, and then the previous line is left out on the street. So this is the IKEA 2002 collection. I'm serious. You can look that up. This is called the Lack L A C K table. Even the naming of it lac signifies the lack of abundance. You need to sit on it. And I'm serious. It's actually called the Lack L a c k. Go Sweden. So that was me, 2003, and then I started teaching meditation. I started teaching meditation, and this was the apartment that the first mindvalley website went off. If you live in New York, you might recognize this. This is the Playwrights tavern. It's on 8 Avenue and 46th Street. And I had this apartment above the Playwrights Tavern. This is in Times Square, not Disney Times Square. Like today. I'm talking about strippers and crack. Times Square of 2003, before Disney took over. Two years before I moved into that apartment, that was my window. It was behind that window that the first mindvalley website was being built. Two years before I moved into it. It was a thigh massage parlor. Now, if you live in New York, you know what thigh massage parlor is code word for? So, yes, yes, the School for Humanity did start in a former whorehouse. I love the fact that you guys are excited about that. That's incredible. Okay, so what happens is, for the next five years, I'm teaching meditation. Now I've had to move back to Malaysia, right? Because in America, it's kind of hard to be an immigrant. It's very hard to get a visa. So had to move back to Malaysia. So now we were building up mindvalley in Malaysia, but we still stayed an American company, even though I couldn't get a visa. And I moved to Malaysia because I registered the company in America. America's been making me pay taxes for the last 15 years. So now we're in Malaysia, and every three months, I'm flying to New York and flying to London to teach meditation classes for small groups of people. Sometimes there'll only be 15 people in a room, but I would fly 24 hours to teach that group of 15 people. And I Was proud of that. I loved it. I loved seeing my students lives changed. There wasn't much money. Imagine flying all the way from Malaysia to New York, teaching a class for a weekend, flying back and at the end of it you've made a grand total of $3,000, right? It's not much but you know, it gave me a chance to travel and 3,000 bucks could go far in Malaysia. Now one day, this was after the Secret had become really big and Bob Proctor, who was on the Secret had become a superstar. Someone introduced me to Bob Proctor and told him that I was really good at building websites. So Bob Proctor contracted me to build his website. So I got to know Bob Proctor, he became an inspiration. And what happened was in 2008, now remember, I'd now been teaching meditation for five years, not much money. I was further in debt than I would be if I'd never started Mindvalley and just stuck to a regular job. How many of you guys know that struggle, right? As a teacher, as a healer, as a coach. So 2008, I'm in London and Bob is finishing a big seminar and it's lunchtime and he's having lunch and he knows I'm. Then he's like, hey Vishen, come over let's say. And just say hi during my lunch break. So I show up and Bob Proctor asks me, by the way, you guys all know who Bob Proctor is, right? Famous author. So he says, so what brings you here? So I'm really proud of myself. I'm like, well Bob, I teach this class in meditation. I'm going to have 40 students in a room. Today I flew all the way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, going to be teaching, going to be facilitating the Silver Method class. And Bob Proctor asks me, that's fantastic. How much are you earning from this class? And I go, well I can tell you Bob, I'm going to go home with $5,000 profit. $5,000. Now to me that was a big deal. $5,000 goes really far in Malaysia, that's like three months salary. And Bob said, are you kidding me? And Bob Proctor's got this really stern face and this really, really like intense voice. It was more like, are you kidding me? Then he does the Bob Proctor scowl and I'm like, no, seriously Bob, that's what I'm doing. I teach meditation now. I don't just build websites, I can teach. And Bob says, wait, you're telling me that you left your wife, you left your one year old baby boy to hop on a flight for 22 hours from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to London, just so you could touch the lives of 40 people on a weekend and then travel all the way back. I hope you're going business class. Then he looks at me and he goes, you're a traveling coach, aren't you? And he does that face again. And then I'm like, yeah, I'm traveling coach. If I travel business class, I would make no money at all. And Bob goes, vision, vision. Vision. And now he touches his face. So I knew something is coming. He says, you really think small. I would never do what you're doing. You gotta dream bigger, son. And he looked at me with complete disappointment. And I was pissed off. I'm like, screw you, Mr. I'm the big deal guy in the Secret, with your fancy suits and your awesome voice and your great smell. Whatever cologne you're using, I like what I do. I like what I do. But then I went and I did that class. And the next day, I woke up depressed. And I realized Bob was right. For five years, I'd been doing the same thing, touching 20 people, 40 people at a time. And I was doing one class every two months, right? And I realized I had to think bigger. Now I went to my Facebook and I changed the quote on my Facebook. Facebook has a category where you put your favorite quote. And that's what I put down. It's a quote from Bob Proctor. The question is not, are you worthy enough to reach your goals? The question is, are your goals worthy enough of you? It's now been 10 years, right? I haven't touched it. That is still the quote you will see on Vishen Lakhiani's Facebook. But I put it up and I did something else. I quit. That was the last time I taught a meditation class. I just quit. I gave it up completely, 100%. I never did it again. Because Bob Proctor was right. I started dreaming bigger, bigger and bigger. And every time I would hit one of those big dreams, I would do the next thing. And that's how mindvalley became a company obsessed with touching a billion lives, shifting the course of history. It's why we set a goal to create the best learning technology in the world. It's why we started deciding that we were going to be so much bigger than just me teaching 20 people in a room meditation. We wanted to assemble all the greatest teachers on Earth. It's why we decided to invest in technology and build really cool learning applications like Quest. It's why we launched a fest. After I quit teaching that meditation class, it took me two years to do my next seminar. But two years later, that next seminar was a fest, which is now one of the hottest tickets in personal growth. We had 250 people, and this time it was in Costa Rica. And we had incredible speakers come and share the stage with me. That was how Bob Proctor's Kick in the Butt shifted my life. We went from working from a rundown house to building what won an Award in Inc. Magazine for one of the top 10 coolest workplaces in the world. And we assembled a team of now some 250people from 46 countries who moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to build everything that Mindvalley develops. It's actually now 47 because we just hired someone from Iraq. All of that because as a teacher, somebody kicked my butt and made me dream bigger. So I went from building this up in a former whorehouse in Times square to an Inc magazine, one of the world's top 10 coolest workplaces in the world. And all of that was in. It was between 2003 and 2012. Right. My mat is failing me right now. Seven years. And I believe that that's something that all of us should aspire to, because the world needs teachers. The world needs people to spread these enlightened ideas, which I hope there's a lesson there. For anyone here who's gone through that same struggle I've experienced, if you know what I'm talking about, raise your hand and make some sounds.