Episode 033: Anik Singal

Full Transcript

Rock Thomas: Hey everybody, welcome back to another session of the #IAMMovement podcast. Today’s guest is a

Rock Thomas: brilliant guy that knows so much of the things that I would love to know. But it’s not my wheelhouse. And that’s why I brought on Anik Singal.

Rock Thomas: To today’s podcast. Now, if you haven’t heard of him, which you probably have. He is the CEO of Lurn Inc.

Rock Thomas: And vs s Mike. He is widely considered one of today’s most successful digital publishers and marketers his specialties include profit generating product launches.

Rock Thomas: Building back ends and funnels article marketing, search engine optimization affiliate marketing and business management consulting. Doesn’t that sound sexy all the stuff that

Rock Thomas: Is really important if you’re going to be online in today’s world, and He is the guy. He also has a podcast called the fighting entrepreneur, he’s a really, really smart guy. 

Rock Thomas: He is also really, really generous when it comes to philanthropy and some really big missions that you’re going to hear about on today’s show. He’s a super, super relatable guy and very successful and it’s my honor to welcome Anik to today’s podcast.

Rock Thomas: How are you?

Anik Singal: I’m doing well, man. Thank you for having me. So it’s an honor and a pleasure.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, we’re super excited to have you here as well. And you know you’ve created so much in this space. I want people to be able to learn from you. And a lot of people probably know you that are listening, but some are going to be new to your experience. So tell us a little bit how you became

Rock Thomas: Not once, but twice super successful in this niche.

Anik Singal: Yeah, it’s crazy, right. Sometimes I think about I’ll meet people and they’ll say you’re like a grandfather in this space and I’m 36 years old, so I was like wow you know that’s

Anik Singal: But yeah, I started in the whole internet marketing space almost 17 years ago when really it wasn’t an industry. It was just, just a thing. It was just a dream and so

Anik Singal: I was in college. Look, I’m Indian, by descent from the, you know, from India. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a hospital. But we, there’s a lot of us who are doctors. So that’s kind of what we do.

Anik Singal: That’s what our community goes towards. That’s what we consider successful growing up, I had a very simple formula for success. I knew I wanted to be very successful and you wanted to be wealthy.

Anik Singal: I looked around me and it looked around the community and I saw that those with the most respect and the best cars biggest houses were doctors so the process of elimination for me was easy. I thought

Anik Singal: I’ll be a doctor, but that was the only reason I wanted to be a doctor just because of the money.

Anik Singal: And you know, I worked hard in school and got good grades. All that fun stuff even got a full scholarship for an amazing program that was gonna be a one way ticket to Harvard, uh, you know, med school. I was ready to go.

Anik Singal: And about. I’m not even joking. Like a few weeks into pre med I go to college, a few weeks. And I’m like, oh, I had a feeling, what the heck did I just do this is not going to be wasting my life when I hate this.

Anik Singal: And I couldn’t help but keep thinking about the little lemonade stand. I had when I was in third grade or the little thing I did in high school that got me in trouble when I was trying to start a business.

Anik Singal: Those entrepreneurial vibes were always there, but they weren’t nurtured because no one in my family.

Anik Singal: If an entrepreneur knew how to catch that, you know, like today, I look at one of my nephews and I see it. Right. I can completely. See, it’s there and

Anik Singal: I really know how to nurture it. I know how to kind of help him along. But, and have that. So it took me about a year and a half. I finally

Anik Singal: Really was a tough moment but I pulled the plug and I just decided I’m going to switch universities and get a full scholarship. My parents were amazing. I love them to death. I thought they wouldn’t support it, it totally did.

Rock Thomas: Wow.

Anik Singal: I get to college because I’m going to study business. So here we go. Right VICTORY, YES, I DID IT. I’M GONNA BE living my dream now.

Anik Singal: I go through like two weeks of classes in business school. And I’m like, I hate this to

Anik Singal: This sucks. And this is when the fear of God is in me because I’m like oh my god I’m gonna be a college dropout living in my parents basement. Like I’m doomed. Right. I don’t like anything.

Anik Singal: And that was when I really started to think through it and I realized I just wanted to do something. I was, it wasn’t what I was studying it was just the fact alone that I was all I was doing was studying

Anik Singal: The idea of graduating and just getting a job and just this monotonous life wasn’t for me so much of a problem. It was having $100 to my name that I wanted a super bowl game.

Anik Singal: Because I predicted the rights for like I wasn’t really flowing in a lot of venture capital, right. So I’m gonna go buy a McDonald’s or anything. So turn to the internet, man. I went to the internet. I went to Google and I typed in how to make money.

Anik Singal: Right, like how many of us have done that, that’s the beginning of my career, but Google doesn’t auto suggest and their first auto suggestion was online.

Anik Singal: So I remember thinking, sure, why not. Not everyone you know doesn’t care where I make money right now. Like, I have no intention of going online. I’m not technical

Anik Singal: I don’t understand. If you put a gun to my head today, right now, and said, build a website, I would say, pull the trigger, because I have no idea how to get a website up

Anik Singal: So anyways, I found this forum, I found a lot of other stuff right stuffing envelopes survey answering all this BS all that went through all of that and I didn’t buy any of it. But I went through it and then

Anik Singal: I found this forum that talks about selling information and now being a college kid who spent thousands of dollars a year on textbooks that made sense to me like innately just resonated was excelling content online.

Anik Singal: And in PDF format and there’s so many people talking about in this forum so many people I make 20 grand a month to make 30 grand a month. I’m like, wow.

Anik Singal: Gosh, if I could make three grand a month. That’d be like you know stoked.

Anik Singal: But would you believe 18 months of just failing, failing, failing, failing, failing, failing. I mean, I worked hard, you know, people say hustle, hustle, hustle.

Anik Singal: Just so everyone knows I was a full time student taking extra college credit classes because I was behind right because I switched business.

Anik Singal: From med to business. I want to be. I don’t want to be the van Wilder my generation, I wanted to graduate on time. And so I think of extra classes.

Anik Singal: I had a part time which was practically a full time job. I was an independent contractor financial planner, because it was paying the bills, keeping some money coming and I wanted to put all the burden on my parents.

Anik Singal: I wouldn’t even get home from all of that to like 9pm then I’d studied till 12

Anik Singal: Then I’d work on my business until three or four in the morning and get up again at 8am to go to class. So I was. I wasn’t going to college parties. It wasn’t hanging out with friends. I was just hustling and working hard.

Anik Singal: 18 months of that, it beats on you. I almost quit. But I had an angelic moment when someone came in at the last minute right before I quit and helped me out. That was my first really you know birthing

Anik Singal: Because I just learned the value of enjoying the journey.

Anik Singal: Because 18 months was painful. But I learned a lot. And when it all kind of, you know, it’s crazy when you’re learning skills to be an entrepreneur, you’re learning these independent things and they don’t seem to carry as much value independently.

Anik Singal: And all you see is the independent results which are failure, failure, failure, failure, but there is a beautiful symphonic moment that can happen if you stick it out long enough.

Anik Singal: Where the individual things you were learning come together.

Anik Singal: And all of a sudden, they’re like Lego pieces they plug together and they build the eventual thing you’re looking for. And that was what this individual helped me do that night when they finally helped me

Anik Singal: All of my skills came together and all of a sudden I made $300 one night while sleeping. That was more money that I had made 18 months of actively trying combined. So that was my first time, you know, and that would, that was

Anik Singal: Wearing started

Rock Thomas: What was the product. What did you create, what did you have an interest or you just threw something. Tell us a little bit about what that

Anik Singal: I know that

Anik Singal: That’s the best part man no product nothing because back then when I was really learning about SEO and I was learning about affiliate marketing, because I was going to sell as a broke college kid sitting in his you know boxers in the dorm room.

Anik Singal: And so it was a software on Clickbank that you know I’m kind of like shy to admit, now it’s kind of black hat black hat SEO software like it would never work today, but back then it was getting tons of results so

Anik Singal: I just wrote up a review about it. I was an owner of the software. I was using it like I was making like 1020 bucks a day with AdSense and stuff. So, you know, is working for me and I just published my results and

Anik Singal: This person helped. Show me the proper way of building an email list and then taking that list and shell and selling them this affiliate software or I was making like $75 a sale for doing nothing.

Anik Singal: So my first product where I kind of had my big media success was the software I did very quickly thereafter go on to have my own products and services, which is which is where I really made a ton of money, but my first real success was as an affiliate for a different product.

Rock Thomas: So now you

Rock Thomas: Tell us a little bit about the journey where you know you brought yourself up to, I think it was 10 million in sales, and then you kind of face planted. Tell us what happened there.

Anik Singal: Yeah, so basically I’m I always say this today. If you were to ask me, what’s my superpower as an entrepreneur. I say I am

Anik Singal: When I find something that works. I know very few people that can scale it the way that I scale things

Anik Singal: I am a systems person. I’m not quite the innovator. I’m not interested in inventing. I’d like to know what’s working and I like to scale it. So when I found this thing working right.

Anik Singal: You know, build an email list promoting affiliate products. And I was like, build an email list and sell my own product. Ooh, that works even better build an email list and sell my own service and then

Anik Singal: Hey, how about if I build an email list and have multiple products. So I just started scaling that up to 10 million I had offices all around the world 96 employees was living on top of the

Anik Singal: World. I was getting, you know, winning awards from magazines. I was 2324 years old flying first class traveling and events and speaking in Singapore and I was living the life right

Anik Singal: All of a sudden, guess what happens when I’m young, so I feel completely invincible. So start getting the golden touch complex. It’s like anything I touch turns to gold.

Anik Singal: I’m making millions my company’s doing over 10 million a year. This is peanuts. This is a joke. This industry is silly. I need to play with the big boys.

Anik Singal: You know, I need to be in where Facebook is. I need to be in where Google is so I came up with an idea when I was on an elliptical machine and I swear it was a superb idea.

Anik Singal: And that’s where the name of my company comes from Lurn play on the word L URL, but

Anik Singal: I was going to build this educational platform where people could submit courses and I was going to do commodities education so that true experts from all over the world could submit their coursework to the platform. Okay, so

Anik Singal: Here’s the deal.

Anik Singal: I told you earlier. I can’t even put up a website. If you put a gun to my head right now. I am the least technical person you’ll ever meet. And here I am trying to build and thinking about building you the most technical company, you can possibly imagine.

Anik Singal: So what do I do? Well, I’m Indian. I know Hindi.

Anik Singal: I’m going to go to India. Like, I’m going to use my greatest asset. Everyone seems to be outsourcing to India. So I’m going to go get myself a bunch of coders in India, we’re going to build this platform. How hard can it be

Anik Singal: So I started to build my poor lots of money to millions of dollars into operation and into my US operation India operation.

Anik Singal: I’m totally distracted. And so what I stopped doing is focusing on the simple system that was working that was generating me all my money.

Anik Singal: And I start burning on that money and trying to build this big company when I don’t know anything about what I’m doing and have no historical data performance anything. Well,

Anik Singal: Sure enough, things are still going. Okay. All right. Business is still good. I’ve got my team running it got other people mentioning it but it’s doing what it’s doing 2008 happens

Anik Singal: And I think this is really relevant advice for everyone who’s listening today. Like, why is it that today, even that the economy is crashing and everything we’ve got going on in the world.

Anik Singal: And I’m still really thriving and actually probably going to have my best one or two months that I’ve ever had in the business in the next couple of months.

Anik Singal: And that is because back then. I learned a big lesson. So in 2008 when the market crashed it didn’t really impact our industry till about mid 2009

Anik Singal: That was the crazy part our industry did not take a hit until like later immediately we were okay

Anik Singal: And when that hit came man did my revenue plummet. We’re talking about 60 70% plummet.

Anik Singal: That was a new first time CEO, so I didn’t understand that when you get that kind of plummet. You better change your expenses, real quick. I didn’t actually keep hiring.

Anik Singal: It was, again, lack of knowledge or arrogance. I don’t know what it was. So now here’s a man flying high and mighty

Anik Singal: And I started going massively in debt and here’s the crazy thing 26 years old I fell 1.7 million in debt.

Anik Singal: I was in such a bad place my health deteriorated and was in the hospital for a few months. I was in internal bleeding. I already had pre existing conditions.

Anik Singal: My poor parents were watching this and I remember the night I’ll never forget it seared into my mind and I don’t let myself forget it.

Anik Singal: And I speak about it every time I possibly can. No matter how painful it is this I let it remind me that I never want to do this again or be in this place.

Anik Singal: My father had to write me a check where he remortgaged his home to help me cover my expenses, a home he had spent 20 years paying off.

Anik Singal: And was one of the most painful moments of my life. But I had no option that time and I promised myself and I remember crying.

Anik Singal: When I was doing this and I told him that my promise to him was, I would never ever put him in that position. I’ll never let that happen again. My best friend lent me his life savings Visa, MasterCard, AMEX my bank, I would everybody money $1.7 million and

Anik Singal: I just had a moment where you know where I got so sick. I was on a flight to India.

Anik Singal: got halfway through the flight. It was an Amsterdam thing. I couldn’t make the flight and I started having major internal bleeding.

Anik Singal: I immediately try to book a flight back to the US THE PLANES about to take off I block out. All right, I’m in such a bad place.

Anik Singal: Luckily, the passenger next to me. I’ll never know who they were, never know their name, never be able to thank them, get caught on to it, you know. Next thing I know, I’m being slapped awake.

Anik Singal: I’m on a stretcher being walked down the steps because the plane was pulled over on the tarmac. The plane was literally about two minutes from taking off.

Anik Singal: The plane taking off.

Anik Singal: They told me I had lost so much blood. I’d lost 60% of blood volume. I’ve lost so much blood, I would have gone into shock within about an hour over the Atlantic Ocean. There’s nothing that could have done so.

Rock Thomas: What was going on, what are you doing to yourself.

Anik Singal: Yeah, so I have a condition called Crohn’s disease and Crohn’s disease and for me I am very serious like I’ve had multiple surgeries and have multiple areas you know parts removed my intestines, like it was pretty bad.

Anik Singal: To begin with, stress is not fun. So during this whole time I’m just really stressing myself out, not taking good care of myself, not sleeping well and taking my meds distracted. My Crohn’s was just out of control.

Anik Singal: And so that was a wake up call for me, I found myself in a hospital alone and Amsterdam not understand the language on my deathbed half

Anik Singal: Size. Like, do we have to fix this? I went into being an entrepreneur to be financially free and here I am literally tied down to the bed with all these wires and doodads on, you have to ask for help, just to go pee.

Anik Singal: Like this is not cool. We’re not going to live this life so come home.

Anik Singal: Went from 96 employees to six shut everything down. And you know what, I remember when my office was closing that last night. I said, I’m not leaving this office tonight and not turning the keys and until I FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENED. WHAT DID I DO.

Anik Singal: And that was the lesson I learned. I said, Man, I, when I sat down. I thought the very steps I was taking the whole time to make

Anik Singal: Money those first six years. I wasn’t doing any of it the last year and a half to two years. So as I kind of go back to the basics. And then what’s crazy when I went back to the basics 16 months 16 months I paid back $1.7 million in debt. Got myself back up to 10 million a year.

Anik Singal: At like 11 or 12 employees never look back and I’ve never left the systems. I’m a systems person and today as the market, whatever it’s doing

Anik Singal: My email list I nurture my students, I know what to do. I know the systems. I’m smart in managing my business, you know, this is not the time for us to go off and do crazy new gutsy things. So, but, yeah, that was a

Anik Singal: Man, I gotta tell you, I have some people in the world. I don’t like and I don’t like them a lot and I still wouldn’t wish them even close to what I experienced in that 2009-2010 period . It was rough.

Rock Thomas: You packed a lot of learnings into that period of time. You did a good to rebound compared to what most people are capable of doing.

Rock Thomas: And of course, I have to ask the questions. You know, what did you Lurn from that? But I also want to maybe see if you can weave in there. Some things that because as I hear you saying this, I hear

Rock Thomas: I run a mastermind group with 300 people and our goal is to help them become financially free and e commerce, what you’re a master at is a really great vehicle for a lot of people, but

Rock Thomas: I think a lot of people, when they hear you talk, are going to go. Yeah, well, I’m not

Rock Thomas: As industrious, as smart, as clever a system oriented as Nick is. So how can I do what he’s done and you’re teaching a lot of people to do this. So could you talk a little bit about the limiting thoughts, people have and how you help them overcome that.

Anik Singal: Yeah, absolutely. So. So to answer your first question, some of the lessons that I learned. One is, um, we’re all different, and we all have our own skill sets.

Anik Singal: I have a lot of my friends who are amazing at certain types of marketing. I’m a smart person. I can figure things out, but I can’t seem to dial in what they’re doing.

Anik Singal: They’re getting results to the 10s of millions and I just can’t seem to do that. But the very same friend will look at me and say,

Anik Singal: I don’t understand how you’re doing email marketing and like how your funnel is so strong. My funnels just aren’t that strong. There’s a scene in the movie. Good Will Hunting.

Anik Singal: That has resonated with me and stuck with me forever in which Matt Damon’s character. He can play the piano really well. And so his girlfriend says

Anik Singal: You know, how do you do it, how do you play the piano so well and he looks at her and he’s like, you know,

Anik Singal: I forgot exactly what he says. But he says, you know, Dino Beethoven and he’s, he’s like, what do you see when you look at a piano and she’s like no chopsticks are just like I just see you know keys and he’s like,

Anik Singal: When I look at the piano. I see music. And so I just remember that resonated like for me, there’s certain things that I do in marketing that are symphonic for me when I look at them they sing, they just make sense and

Anik Singal: And my other friends, it doesn’t. But my other friends. They’ve done things in their business that when they look at their specific core skill.

Anik Singal: They see Symphony and music and I don’t. And so one of the biggest lessons I learned in that time that applies to both your second question. Also, which is

Anik Singal: What is your particular thing. Listen, you can Lurn about other stuff. You can take

Anik Singal: Facebook ads courses YouTube ads courses copywriting courses email marketing courses econ courses, that’s fine. Having general skills you need those. It’s all good.

Anik Singal: But there has to be the one thing where you’re going to say, you know what, that’s it. I’m going to be the master of that. I love it. I can beat anybody in this and I will tell you if you think, oh, I don’t have any of that.

Anik Singal: That’s just you getting in your own way. I mean, that’s the truth. You have it there is something that you are really exceptionally made to be good at. You just haven’t discovered it yet. And typically, I find

Anik Singal: It’s in the thing you enjoy. I always ask my students, what is it you find yourself researching reading or studying at 1130 at night before bed.

Anik Singal: What is it that you find yourself just fine? It just kind of that’s what’s going to help you go to sleep.

Anik Singal: And it’s amazing the answers I get I always say your passion that you can be a master at that skill that are making millions

Anik Singal: Is probably found in between that 11pm and 12am period or you’re lying in bed on your phone Googling something because it’s it’s relaxing the stressing detoxing for you to

Anik Singal: Figure out what that is and stop caring about what you know Tom and Nancy are doing. It’s what are you doing for me that was a big lesson 2008

Anik Singal: Second big lesson really was that, you know, entrepreneurs innately we have shiny object syndrome. We grass is always greener on the other side for us. And what I discovered was that, and I saw a

Anik Singal: YouTube video once I swear I wish I saved it under the name of the person being interviewed, but this is after my catastrophe had happened, and made so much sense. Someone says, Hey, you know, entrepreneurs.

Anik Singal: They’re such risk takers. How do you sleep at night? But how do you deal with it? And the person being interviewed says billionaire self made millionaire entrepreneur serial entrepreneur, he starts laughing

Anik Singal: laughing at him and says, you know, that is the biggest Miss believe biggest misconception in the world. If you think I’m a risk taker.

Anik Singal: You’ve completely missed the boat. I am the least risk taker person you’ll ever meet in your life. And I remember thinking, that’s when most people think entrepreneurship is

Anik Singal: They think it’s gun slinging they think it’s, you know, wild, you know, Hail Mary passes down the field and it actually isn’t.

Anik Singal: Since 2008 happened. I am so strategic I tell you right now, most projects I take on now.

Anik Singal: I have about a zero percent chance of losing money on. And typically, a big chance of making a lot of money even if I’m going to lose money. It’s very tiny.

Anik Singal: I look at it. Like seriously, I would rather bet on my business than on a casino every day because of my probabilities. Now, the way I work my ideas and thoughts and strategy.

Anik Singal: Or so wait in my favor. So way. The house is completely stacked in my favor.

Anik Singal: And but that takes the strategic side, right, that takes like systems and understanding what you’re doing and repeating the process again and again, which sometimes. Let’s face it, so boring.

Anik Singal: Right, so how do I fill that boredom while I look for players? I bring in really strong players and I noticed I said I didn’t say build a team or find employees. That’s that I look for a players really star people

Anik Singal: That can run those systems and allow me to go off and be creative, but creative within the boundaries of my business as a mission and goal.

Anik Singal: I don’t go off and create like I’m not allowed to just keep launching businesses now and that’s the biggest curse that entrepreneurs deal with

Anik Singal: So my question to you, really comes down to is, you know, what is that mission that goal. What is it, but specifically speaking, can you fine tune a system that’s working and just

Anik Singal: Really triple down on it, quadruple down on it and pull it and scale it and focus on it. Right. I want to answer your limiting belief question a little bit

Anik Singal: A lot of people’s limiting beliefs are built off of what they’re seeing other people do.

Anik Singal: And so I remember being in an interview with one of a group of my students. These are top students who’ve paid us the most there in our workshops masterminds

Anik Singal: One of the initiatives we had put forth in our company inside of this Facebook group where we cater to this small group of students was every week we wanted to publish success stories.

Anik Singal: We said we want to take the students in the group. We want to outline their success stories and posted in the group publicly

Anik Singal: And we thought, this is going to be really inspiring for all of those who are maybe struggling or not doing everything because they’ll see their, their peers and colleagues succeeding and it’ll be awesome, right.

Anik Singal: So we start to do this. And about a month later as part of my regular process in business. I did a focus group.

Anik Singal: About five or six of these students in that group on a call I said last going through a bunch of questions. You’ll never believe this was crazy.

Anik Singal: What I discovered was that us doing that weekly post was one of the most demoralizing things for our students, they actually came back and said that it was making them depressed.

Anik Singal: I WAS JUST BAFFLED I thought what and they’re like, Yeah. I said, How in the world?” Why is this, why is this depressing? They said, because

Anik Singal: We feel even worse now seeing that others can do it. And we can’t

Anik Singal: And I just thought, way, way, way, way, way, this is supposed to show you that you can do it. And then they said, Yeah, but so on started three months after me.

Anik Singal: And they’ve already had so much success. I’ve been trying this for longer than them. And I can’t seem to have any success.

Anik Singal: So that changed how we did the interviews or their success stories to

Anik Singal: Wow, instead of just posting their results. We started asking them, what are you doing, what level of work are you putting in, what failures did you have, how did you address them. What would you tell to the students who are struggling

Anik Singal: And all of a sudden the impact that we got from those reviews and those studies was so much better for the community so

Anik Singal: You might be surprised if you look deep inside of yourself. If you have limiting beliefs. What you don’t realize is, it’s because you are comparing yourself to other people around you.

Anik Singal: And you don’t know what they’ve been through this is one of the things they said, oh, social media, right, if you’ve actually ever watched an Instagram model get their one picture. It can take them hours.

Anik Singal: Hours and hours of photography lighting moving you see one picture of the most beautiful complexion and body and

Anik Singal: It took them three plus hours to get that one picture. What you don’t know is that three hours. So you sit here and say, oh my god, my pictures thing.

Anik Singal: But you didn’t put in three hours to take the picture. So if we knew the whole story. We would be better prepared. So one of the things about your limiting beliefs is you’re trying to copy Tom and Nancy

Anik Singal: You’re trying to do what other people are doing. And you know what, that’s just not, that’s not your skill set.

Anik Singal: And sorry, like you’re not great at everything you’re going to be great at a few things you need to figure out what those few things are. And you’re going to see how much

Anik Singal: Your self confidence just goes through the roof. Number two is

Anik Singal: You know, you’re looking at the success of others and you feel that there’s an elevator somewhere that you’re supposed to click a button on

Anik Singal: And you haven’t found the elevator yet or you think there’s an escalator. But what you’re not seeing is that it’s a stairwell. It’s windy.

Anik Singal: With missing steps and it’s like it’s like the game of snakes or sometimes you fall down the slide and you’re back to square one and everyone you’re seeing has all been through the exact same process.

Anik Singal: And as you’re going through the process. You think you’re behind, but you’re actually in the perfect place.

Anik Singal: And that’s giving you these limiting beliefs. And third, last but not least by any means, is just remember how we’re brought up.

Anik Singal: We’re constantly told what to do when to do what we can do and what we cannot do from the time that we are children all the way through school through work through everything.

Anik Singal: Other people’s validation of the US dictates our success. The only time you’re truly an entrepreneur is when you’re a child. You ever see how you tell a kid not to do something and it’s the very thing they want to do.

Anik Singal: Because they want to experience it for themselves. They want to see what it is right now. If a kid sticks his finger in out in the, you know,

Anik Singal: light socket gets shocked. Trust me, they kind of do it again. They won’t do that again. But they’ll do other things that you’re telling them not to do.

Anik Singal: Think about that. You go to school, then all sudden in school, your teachers don’t do that. Yes, do this, don’t do that, do this, do that your parents don’t do that do this your coach do that do this.

Anik Singal: Then you get to school. You know, you have to go to college, they get a good grade on SAP is better have a good GPA you constantly validating

Anik Singal: Yourself by other people’s perception and the score results, then you go to college and you have to work really hard and build the best rap sheet to get a job, but you get a job and to impress the heck out of your boss to get a promotion.

Anik Singal: So you haven’t yet had a chance to Learn how to develop your own skills and validate yourself, your, your confidence is low. Your paradigms are there because it’s just how you were brought up. You were trained to be an employee.

Anik Singal: And it’s just the way society is, you can untrain yourself now. First step, right, what is the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous awareness and acceptance. So just accept what you’ve been going through. Be aware of it and intently change it.

Rock Thomas: Wow, that’s a lot of great stuff there. And I love the way you string it together, you’ve obviously been able to work with a lot of people you’ve had your own level of awareness for yourself.

Rock Thomas: All of that. So really, really beautiful. So where did you get your wisdom from. Who are some of your mentors or books or things that you tapped into now you know you’ve become the teacher, but where do you draw from yourself?

Anik Singal: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve had a lot of mentors in my life. And I always say that mentors are seasonal

Anik Singal: I think the misconception about mentorship out there is that you pick one mentor and the mentor you for your whole life.

Anik Singal: That could happen. And maybe it will not be that I have one mentor who mentors me my whole life. And that’s my father, my first and foremost best amazing most

Anik Singal: Incredible mentor, I can do as much as I want in my life and I’m never going to come even 5% close to success. He’s had my dad. Growing up I

Anik Singal: Grew up in a poor village in India, and they had no electricity to study at night. He’d have to walk a mile down the street and study under a lamp post

Anik Singal: Or candles at home, but they didn’t have a lot of money so didn’t want to burn a lot of candles.

Anik Singal: So this is the level of work. This man put in and today he brought our family to the US. He’s a nuclear mechanical engineer has a master’s in nuclear engineering

Anik Singal: He’s the head through the government. He represents the government at nuclear power plants, you know, and he’s given me the life of my dreams. He’s

Anik Singal: There was never anything I as a kid didn’t have. I mean, I had the luxury results. So I had the toys. I had the

Anik Singal: You know I you know I did everything you know at a car when I turned 16 i mean

Anik Singal: So I always say whatever that man knows whatever he’s done. He knows something I listened to my dad has taught me one thing and that is number two is never good enough and

Anik Singal: It can be rough. Sometimes you know you weren’t always the easiest dad. I mean, he was rough on me. Listen, I was studying for the CTS and I was in the sixth grade.

Anik Singal: I took my first sap in the seventh grade and outscored my sister. At that time, who was in the 11th grade. So the man was like a drill sergeant. He had me going, but today. He’s a rock, upon which I lean

Anik Singal: So that’s one mentor that’s been with me my whole life, and that will remain with me.

Anik Singal: But you know when I wanted to learn copywriting I had a copywriting mentor. When I wanted to learn how to do media buying I got a media buying mentor. When I wanted to learn how to build my first business.

Anik Singal: Like the infrastructure like how do I be a CEO, who do I hire. I had a mentor. During that time, I can also very, very proudly say I’ve outgrown all of them.

Anik Singal: And when I outgrow them I move on, right, and I’m still friends with them and keep in touch, but they’re not actively my mentors anymore so

Anik Singal: From a book perspective thinking grow rich had a massive impact on me in a very young age, when I was reading it kind of late high school early college

Anik Singal: Rich Dad, Poor Dad changed my life. It’s so it’s the first book I ever read and the funny story of why I read the book, I was in high school, I actually skipped class to go to a bookstore. Don’t ask.

Anik Singal: Went to a bookstore. I had had a big fight with my dad, the night before. And so the title. Rich Dad, Poor Dad caught my attention because I was angry at my father. And so I read it.

Anik Singal: It’s so crazy to think that today. I’m actually business partners with Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the first book that I ever read that changed my life.

Anik Singal: And I talked to him. He’s on my cell phone. I can call him right now. And he’d pick up, it’s, it’s just like perplexing to me. Rich Dad, Poor Dad think and grow rich a book called scaling up, which has been really relevant to me in recent times, because it’s all about how to scale up a business.

Anik Singal: Those are probably three books that come to mind. But there’s a lot of books out there. I mean,

Anik Singal: When it comes to my health. There’s a book called Wheat Belly that really changed my perception about, you know, and that’s helped me a lot and heal a lot. So I’m an avid reader, probably about at least 30 books a year.

Anik Singal: So, you know, I’ve been a little bit off that goal. The last year plus because I’ve been really busy with the business. But yes, so I picked. I tend, I tend to take away a little bit of something from every book I read

Rock Thomas: There’s a bunch of skill of books which one who wrote that one scale up

Anik Singal: Scaling up is written by how to show it to you one second.

Okay.

It’s

Anik Singal: Verne Hornish

Anik Singal: Okay, so, Vern harness. It’s book called scaling up and

Anik Singal: This is really this book. I mean, this is

Anik Singal: To run your company like a military. I mean, it’s a lot of habits that you have to set up. It’s not easy to follow but it makes a true impact on your company.

Anik Singal: Like when you read it, you’ll be like, ah, you know, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do that. That sounds boring. That sounds stupid. That sounds ridiculous. It all works. You can complain and

Anik Singal: You can complain and ignore it as much as you want it works. He’s got quite the cult following, like in a good way. Like it’s you know people that are trying to really build their business. I’d say if you have a company doing two or 3 million a year.

Anik Singal: This book starts to become highly applicable to

Rock Thomas: Make sense. That’s awesome. So tell me a little bit about if people want to get in touch with you follow your you’ve got you’ve got your podcast. You’ve got books, you’ve got products, what’s the best way that people can tap into your wisdom.

Anik Singal: Yeah, thank you. Well, first and foremost, I’d love to invite everyone to my podcast. I do a podcast every week, called the fighting entrepreneur. It’s a lot of fun.

Anik Singal: I bring on some amazing guests. My podcast is very, very different in the sense of, it’s very tactical so we go over a lot of marketing strategies and business strategies.

Anik Singal: And it’s designed and built specifically. So you can actually watch it and go take action. Like there’s, you can actually do the stuff we talked about

Anik Singal: It. So that’s just more because that’s what I like. It’s because I use my podcast to learn and be very selfish about my podcast. So you get to be a

Rock Thomas: Fly on the Wall.

Anik Singal: As I’m learning how to do things and learning new skills. It’s a lot of fun.

Anik Singal: Different kind of podcast. You can also check out my website just more about me and what I do on a single and i k s i n g h l.com but

Anik Singal: I’ll tell you the number one place to go if you want to really connect with what we’re doing. Go to Lurn com L. You are calm. You can sign up for an absolutely free membership.

Anik Singal: And we’ve got over 100 courses in there. We’ve published some of the best authors there. Many of our courses are free.

Anik Singal: Summer $7 and, you know, then there are some academies that are much more, but you have pretty much every major marketing and internet business skill you need being covered in that platform.

Anik Singal: Lots of new features and things coming out soon community features coming out. So there’s, you know, three amazing resources right there for people if you want to connect with me, but definitely invite you to my podcast for sure you’ll love it. It’s a lot of amazing knowledge there.

Rock Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. So what is, tell us a little bit about your, your vision going forward. You’ve obviously created a lot of momentum in your life, you got a lot of people that you’re working with.

Rock Thomas: What is the mission behind all of it.

Anik Singal: And I love that. Thank you for the question. So one of the things that we didn’t even talk about on this podcast is that my wife and I have our foundation. So we have a single foundation on that people can see it s i n g h l.org that’s my

Rock Thomas: Cool, right.

Anik Singal: Yeah, we do a lot of work, actually. So right now, during this entire time with coronavirus and we’ve actually released a relief fund.

Anik Singal: We’ve given away $53,000 already to families that need just money for groceries and gas and just something emergency bills.

Anik Singal: Will probably be at about $100,000 within the next three to four weeks given out from that fund.

Anik Singal: We also help build schools for children in India. We have 900 children who live in the slums, like literally living in mud.

Anik Singal: But they go to first class facilities and schools. We’re building a hospital right now in a village where people are dying every day because the closest hospitals, an hour and a half away or building a five story hospital first class facility there.

Anik Singal: We work with an orphanage in Nepal. So we do a lot of work.

Anik Singal: You can check out my TED talk. My, my beliefs about how I do giving because I don’t believe in giving we only do empowering. So it’s a little bit of a different perception.

Anik Singal: So I have two goals in my life, and they’re both represented by two organizations I have already set up. So I’m very blessed. At the age of 36 to have that

Anik Singal: Number one is what I call my for profit goal, which is represented by learning. So if you go to Lurn com L, you are in common and can be a part of that mission.

Anik Singal: I’m going to help raise up a million entrepreneurs and power a million entrepreneurs worldwide, because here’s the thing.

Anik Singal: The day I die I want to know that I fundamentally changed the world. I actually wanted them to be selfish like that. I want to know that my work helps change the access upon which the world rotates.

Anik Singal: However, I don’t care if the world knows it.

Anik Singal: I want to know it, but I don’t care if the world knows it. So it’s a big task to do that alone. Let’s face it, maybe I’m not that smart, not a Steve Jobs and I’m not gonna invent the next iPhone.

Anik Singal: So I thought, let’s do it through use of volume, let me build an army I’ll build an army of entrepreneurs and I’ll tell you one thing, you get a million entrepreneurs out there doing something

Anik Singal: The world is going to change. There’s just no way the world wouldn’t change, it would be different.

Anik Singal: So that was my mission. So that’s why I built the platform with Lurn. We have two more years of amazing development to do on it. We already have 370,000 members there.

Anik Singal: We will be at 10 million members. Probably within the next two, two and a half years 510 million members. Certainly I’m gonna be able to take a million of them and really help them and support them.

Anik Singal: My Nonprofit mission and goal is with the single foundation so single.org you can see our investing and are giving strategy.

Anik Singal: We want to empower a million children who are currently living in the slums, or currently very impoverished.

Anik Singal: Who society has turned their backs to so these million children are currently in a cycle that will repeat

Anik Singal: I don’t want to give them money. I want to empower them to break the cycle. So I want these million children to go to school become entrepreneurs, whatever it is, but when they grow up and they have kids.

Anik Singal: They will have moved out of the extreme poverty definition of the World Bank by themselves. They’ll be making enough money to be in the next class.

Anik Singal: And so that’s our vision there whatever we have to do it through, whether we do it through medical supplies, whether we do it through schools which we fund.

Anik Singal: Or we also work in Africa we adopt villages and microphone businesses and build micro economies for villages in Africa.

Anik Singal: So we have all these different programs going out and it’s amazing because right now our numbers that we think we’re about 3500 people impacted so tons more to go. We got to hit a million, but we’re still getting our systems down right now.

Rock Thomas: So you have a great father you’ve obviously been instilled with some great values at the tender young age in your mid 30s, you’re living in many ways that would appear from the outside, a very balanced fulfilling life.

Rock Thomas: How what contributed to that because a lot of people struggle, and you did you kind of chase the dollar. Initially, etc.

Rock Thomas: But now you seem to have kind of figured some stuff out would you credit, you know, both your parents, your dad mentors. What was, what was enabled you to have that insight to create this

Anik Singal: Yeah, that, that’s interesting. It’s a question I’ve never been asked before, so it’s a good question. Um. Hundred percent my parents would be a huge part of it. You know, I know I speak a lot about my dad and my mom is awesome. My mom is always my mom’s protector. Right.

Anik Singal: So, you know, she’s the one we’d hide behind if something’s going on.

Anik Singal: And so she’s, she’s just heart. My mom is all heart. I mean, she’s you learn to be a good person, you learn to be a gentle person when you’re around my mom with my dad you learn, you know, you learn habits you learn discipline and you learn, you know, consistency and

Anik Singal: I think for me it’s a combination of a lot of things. It’s definitely the people in my life that have carved who I am. So 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago, I met my now wife.

Anik Singal: You know, because I had an office in India, and she started working for us. And let me just say this woman has challenged me at every level of my being.

Anik Singal: And in a good way. She’s very different from me. She’s very spiritual she’s incredibly centered

Anik Singal: Bible following and she just has a heart that I’ve never found in another person.

Anik Singal: And so she’s really centered me. I mean, brought me to help me come to a place where I realized the truth, things that matter in life. So, and what’s crazy. This is the craziest thing is

Anik Singal: You can actually look at my success and track it. And here’s like the day on the chart where I got married.

Anik Singal: And my wealth just goes like through the roof. I mean, and that’s not that’s not coincidental. Right. Like I realigned the types of things I’m doing and her influence

Anik Singal: My mentors have been a big part of it. I can tell you every mentor I’ve ever had has been the kind that’s had a big heart that gives back a lot

Anik Singal: I don’t think it’ll resonate with someone who doesn’t. So I would say my parents, my wife, my mentors and just generally speaking

Anik Singal: I’ve reached a point man, where I asked myself so I’m a logical person. So for me, two plus two is four, like you got to talk and data and numbers. Here’s the thing.

Anik Singal: So what do I want to make more money? Sure I do. I feel like money is like a tool that measures the. It’s like an outcome tool right so like the more you have it you feel like you’ve gone in the right direction.

Anik Singal: But if tomorrow morning I woke up and you infused another 50 million hundred million 200 million into my bank account.

Anik Singal: There is, and I’ve done this exercise with myself multiple times. There is nothing different than I would be doing nothing. I live in my dream home, drive my dream cars, live my dream life, love my company, love my employees, love my team, love my family.

Anik Singal: I fly first class. I don’t know what else I would do so why make my life about the money.

Anik Singal: When it would bring zero value to my life. But what I do love waking up to is I woke up this morning and I had a bunch of stories from students in India.

Anik Singal: That is sending videos to their teachers because they miss going to school. They want to go to school. They’re really upset that they’re stuck at home.

Anik Singal: And I just have these video sent to me and like that was the first thing I woke up to

Anik Singal: You know, like that. That’s awesome. I won’t wake up to that but waking up to the fact that he gives us another million dollars in his bank account. It’s like

Anik Singal: Alright. Cool. Thanks. You know, so I think that’s helped that just being logical about it is really help center me and just, you know, realigned the things I focus on

Rock Thomas: Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. So there’s two things I want to do. As we wrap this up one I want to get to your identity. This is the I Am movement podcast and you’ve written out here.

Rock Thomas: Who you are and I want to talk to that and just before that, I want to ask, do you use the platform of YouTube to connect with your students and to build out your business.

Anik Singal: I have started using it more and more. I’m still trying to fine tune exactly how to use it, but I’m definitely active on YouTube minimum one video per week, sometimes two and it’s growing. I mean, I think, last I checked with 60,000 plus subscribers so yeah definitely use it.

Rock Thomas: Okay.

Rock Thomas: You make things seem so simple. I love it.

Rock Thomas: All right, you’ve got, I am a dreamer. I am a fighter. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a speaker. I’m a teacher.

Rock Thomas: You know in life. Sometimes we get these labels that are given to us that are disempowering like you’re stupid. You’ll never amount to much, you’re shy, etc.

Rock Thomas: These are all empowering and you talk about your charities being you want to empower people you want to just give you want to empower so I see the consistency with your, with your identity.

Rock Thomas: Where these conscious choices are this something that you grew into I’d like you to speak to that a little bit.

Anik Singal: So, you know, it’s really impressive you caught that. Um, I didn’t even know that this was who I am or what I am until my most recent mentor.

Anik Singal: John peer who retired. So we talk a lot less now.

Anik Singal: But we still talk sometimes and he’s a big believer. He was the one that introduced me to scaling up and to Rockefeller habits and all of that. And he’s a big believer in doing an exercise called your success map.

Anik Singal: And it really helps you mean it’s a deep exercise right in one page you kind of put who you are.

Anik Singal: And it makes you figure out your goals. It makes you figure out your core values, your mission and all of the best things I’ve ever done like three years ago when we did this.

Anik Singal: And as we’re doing this exercise. I think the the breaking point for me was, or when when he figured it out is when I got a chance to do a TEDx talk

Anik Singal: And you know I’m bait. I’m debating again. Again, what am I going to do about my talk, what I’m gonna do with my talk, and

Anik Singal: Finally, one day, he’s like, Hey, did you decide, I said, Yeah, that’s it. You know, I know what I’m talking about. So we’re gonna talk, but I said

Anik Singal: My, my, my TEDx talk is called dreams of the bottom billion. And I’m going to talk about how giving sucks and how everyone should stop giving money to the poor. Donating money is useless.

Anik Singal: And of course, my mentor is like a care to go a little deeper into that. And I’m like, yeah, absolutely. I said, you know,

Anik Singal: And so I gave him my whole spiel. And if anyone wants to listen to my TEDx talk. I think you’ll see just type Anik and all TEDx on YouTube.

Anik Singal: And when I talk about in this I outline my talk tonight and share it with him and he just starts laughing because this is what I built in my talk, I my whole point is, look,

Anik Singal: As a private world as private investors not a nonprofit , we demand or return on our investment. We track our investments like a hawk, right, how many times, especially right now in today’s day and age, are we checking our stock market.

Anik Singal: You know, checking out what’s my money doing all my money is down. Well, we never do this with nonprofit money we just give and say, All right, bye.

Anik Singal: Know like I demand a return on my money like not back to me. But I want to know that if I gave $40,000 what’s going on.

Anik Singal: What was returned. What happened and I hate the idea of funding something and then only next year the nonprofit shows up again and says hey you know that school we built for you.

Anik Singal: We’re gonna have to shut it down unless you give us another 40 grand. It’s like, that sucks. That is not as you’re building an economy, you’re not building. You’re just building liability at that point.

Anik Singal: Like no business would run that way no business would allow that to be something that runs. So I talked about it. So, so I built what I call the triangle of empowerment

Rock Thomas: Like

Anik Singal: Part of my presentation. Right.

Anik Singal: And so when I’m sharing this with my mentor and quite frankly I don’t even remember what’s in the triangle of empowerment. It was like it’s in my presentation, but it’s it’s

Rock Thomas: You know,

Anik Singal: It’s something that came up, but when he started laughing when I said triangle of empowerment, and he really laughed out loud. And I’m like, what are you laughing about he goes

Anik Singal: Oh my god, I’ve been right about you. He had just started working with me. About four or five months. And he’s like,

Anik Singal: Man, you are just all about empowerment, aren’t you, and I said, What do you mean he’s like

Anik Singal: You literally don’t want to do things for people. You just want to facilitate and empower people

Anik Singal: You are all about. Take ownership, do it yourself. I’m here to support you. You’re the dude who routes for you’re the guy who roots for the underdog.

Anik Singal: You know, you’re the guy that’s but they have to earn it. You’re hardcore about they gotta earn it yourself. Like, I’m not going to do it for you.

Anik Singal: So I was like, yeah, I really am that way. That’s how I coach people. It’s how I teach people

Anik Singal: It’s what I believe. I mean, you should listen to me, like, you know, sitting with my nephew, he’s seven years old and I’m teaching them about Texas.

Anik Singal: I’m teaching about investing and I’m teaching them about ownership and you I want to buy a video game good go earn it.

Anik Singal: You know, I, I didn’t realize where that comes from. I truly don’t at some point in my life. I figured it out that if I rely on myself and empower myself. I can do everything and anything

Anik Singal: But I think the other thing that helps me do that is that I fail a lot to

Anik Singal: See, the problem with empowering empowerment is that you accept that your results are an outcome of your actions and your responsibility.

Anik Singal: That’s great, when things are going well. It sucks when things are going bad.

Anik Singal: So I’ve learned to accept that I’m okay with it when things are going bad, like if I failed all the power to me, I will own it, love it, learn from it.

Anik Singal: But a lot of people can’t. A lot of people take it really badly, and so they fall back on leaning on others, me not, I wanna I’m going to focus on myself and do it myself. And, you know, no one better than me to do something that really, in the end, I feel

Rock Thomas: Like you

Rock Thomas: Got that that matters to you but you’re a good good human and you’ve got a really good perspective on life. I

Rock Thomas: I’ve met a lot of really brilliant people in the world, including Robert Kiyosaki that I shared the stage with and there’s a lot of really, really smart good people.

Rock Thomas: But you’ve figured a lot out and you’ve got it well rounded and I want to congratulate your parents and your wife for having contributed to know

Rock Thomas: Who you are who you become and what you’re saying. Honestly, if we had more people on the planet like you then.

Rock Thomas: We would ride through pandemics like this without you know the the trauma that’s being created to the same degree so

Rock Thomas: I really appreciate you. Thank you for coming and joining the I am moving podcast and for those people that got a chance to listen to this, you might want to go back and re-listen to it and follow this brilliant young man, thank you so much for joining us today.

Anik Singal: Thank you, man. Thank you for having me. And as I always say to everyone. As I end the presentations, listen when life pushes you, stand straight, smile and push it. The heck back. Thanks for having me. Everyone go out there, stay safe and you know go fight for your dreams.