Ask Me Anything (Live Q&A)

There we go. Okay, I think I'm live now. Welcome everyone. It's Stefan. Great to be with you guys today. Uh looking forward to answering your guys's questions. It's been quite a while since I've been live here on YouTube and uh done some consistent videos and just wanted to pop in and connect. What's going on? How's your life going? Uh what are you guys up to in your life? I'd love to hear from you guys. Um I'm sure many of you guys here have been subscribed to me for quite a while. As usual, I appreciate your support. And if there's any way I can contribute to you, if there's anything I can share with you, any way that I could help you with whatever it is that you're up to in your life, um please let me know. let me know here in the chat. Um, I'm going to spend a bit of time here today just to make sure

that I can be of some service and uh support you guys and whatever it is that you're up to. Uh, I want to make a quick update here with my life. Um, as you guys know, I'm here in Panama right now. Uh, many of you guys that follow me on social media know that I was expecting another child, another boy. Happy to announce that our second boy was uh, born about 11 days ago. Uh, his name is Matthew. uh very healthy, chill, happy baby. Uh couldn't be more grateful to have a second son. Um there's a two-year age gap uh between my first son, Lucas, and Matthew. Uh in fact, there's very crazy thing is that u Matthew's due date was supposed to be on the exact same day as Lucas's birthday, uh April 25th. Uh Matthew was born on April 27th. So very grateful, very happy. Um, right now we're still in the newborn stage, so there's um, you know, a lot of challenges that come with that, but I'm happy to say it's going a lot smoother and easier than it did the first time. Um, if you guys want to talk about parenting and the experience of being a father or a parent, happy to answer any questions that you guys have about that because that's really been the biggest change in my life over the last two years. Um, it's transformed my life in so many ways and it's the best thing that's happened to me in my life as well. It gives me so much meaning and joy. And uh because of that, that's where most of my focus, a lot of my growth, development has been put in the attention of parenting and being a great father and learning about kids and babies and toddlers. And you know, a lot of my time is spent with my family as well. So, uh that's always a topic now that I'm very passionate about and happy to share with you guys in any way that I can. But whatever you guys need support with, uh questions about, let me know. Post them in the chat. business, self-development, um, spiritual development, habits, health, relationships, whatever it is. Let's dive into it. So, I'm just going to turn my attention here to the

chat. We have Mithrin here from Bangalore. We have Hussein here. We've got Alex. Welcome. Great to be with you guys. Uh, okay. Um, Beard Long says, "Why did you stop YouTube, Stephan? How are you guys? " Yeah, I'm doing great. You know, I'm as I said, you know, really enjoying the experience of being a father. Um, I did a YouTube video a couple years ago titled Why I stopped publishing on YouTube. Um, you can find that on my channel. Uh, it shouldn't be too far back. But, um, pretty much I wanted to focus on other aspects of my life. You know, for over 10 years I've been a consistent YouTuber every single week, publishing videos. Uh, it was a big part of my life. I enjoyed a lot of it. Um, but I kind of got to the point where I think I was a little bit burnt out. I was kind of tired of talking about a lot of the same topics again and again. Um, a lot of my content was kind of catered to certain niches, whether it's building an online business, certain aspects of personal development, and I kind of felt that I kind of had outgrown a lot of those topics and wasn't that passionate talking about them again and again. And in the world of YouTube, when you're consumed, as I was, about getting subscribers and getting views, typically you have to cater and tailor your content towards topics that will get the most attraction and views and engagement and whatnot. And so kind of as I was consumed by that whole world, I felt that it was time for me to take a step away from that and I started focusing more on my spiritual development, different forms of personal development in my life. And I really wanted to focus on dissolving my ego. Um I think you know the years of building a business and as you grow as a YouTuber you definitely build an ego and uh I wanted to dissolve that and let go of a lot of these attachments that I had because I realized I had a lot of attachments as a content creator. I had fear that if I didn't keep publishing videos and putting out content or helping people that um you know somehow you know some irrational fears that I had would come up and so I kind of had these standards in place that would keep me being consistent but at the same time I had an attachment to doing that and being this YouTuber and maintaining this identity that I don't think it was healthy for my ultimate personal development and where I wanted to go. And so, um, you know, I kind of got to a point where I decided to let go of a lot of these attachments, focus on my personal well-being, happiness, joy. Uh, I wanted to experience retirement where I don't have the responsibilities or the obligations or the expectations to be a YouTuber and run a business and put out content and all of that. And it's been pretty amazing. So, I pretty much retired from the business world. And the approach that I more kind of took on was I'm still going to create content, but it's going to be on my terms. I'm not going to have this self-induced pressure where I have to put out videos every week. And that kind of, you know, forces me in some ways to, you know, maybe talk about things I don't really want to talk about or just kind of things to, you know, engage with my audience. And so, um, as I took on this more casual approach, I found myself just not that inspired to create much content. found myself when I genuinely looked inside myself about what do I generally want to do that's going to make me the most happiest fulfilled uh it wasn't really putting myself out there as much and so I think it's just been a really nice break for me and been enjoying it and you know I still doing some coaching every month and I enjoyed that um but yeah I kind of now look at myself as someone that um is financially free retired living my life on my terms and if I feel insp inspired as I did today to go live or create a video, I will. And if not, that's okay. So, I don't have that internal challenge as much within myself and I'm just really living my life in the way that's uh aligned with what makes me the happiest. Okay. Uh let's see what else

we got here. Alex says, "I'm 38 and haven't found my calling calling. How do I move forward in discovering that? " You know, Alex, uh you know, it's quite interesting. I'm 39. and I just, you know, had my birthday on May 3rd. And um, you know, a calling is something that I don't know if I really kind of look at it in that way. I think maybe what you're more looking for is purpose in your life. Something that inspires you, something that will wake you up early, keep you up late, something that will give you energy to pursue something in your life. And I think a lot of times people, they wait for that. They think it's just gonna magically fall out of the sky into their lap and then they're gonna get this sign or this calling that will inspire them to, you know, do something. You know, for me, I think it was more so just making a decision on what I wanted to do in my life and not waiting for everything to line up, be perfect to do it. And so, um, I wouldn't wait for your calling. Pursue things. Pursue opportunities in your life. pursue. You know, if you know what you want out of your life, which hopefully you do, you have a vision, you have goals, maybe it's to be financially free, a multi-millionaire, maybe it's to have a passion or a career or a hobby, uh maybe it's having a family, maybe it's traveling the world, whatever it is, just start pursuing that. And as you start going down the path, things kind of come together. Things kind of reveal themselves along the way. And you'll kind of, you know, find things that will maybe call you more than other things. and some things that you'll maybe move more in this direction or another. But I'll say when you find that purpose, understand that's not a permanent state. You know, even for me, for example, you know, I've had many different careers. I've been many different businesses. niches. And now I'm kind of in a place where my purpose has completely changed from what it was at 39 years old of, you know, being an influencer. Now my purpose is more with my family, more growing and developing myself in other ways. you know, my I find purpose through God, my relationship with my creator. And so, even if you do find your purpose, it's not like there's a permanence to that. You know, you're going to find things in your life that you'll be excited for and passionate about and give you purpose at different stages, but then at times you might lose touch with that purpose and look for other things. For me, you know, I'm not involved in, you know, the business world right now, but that's not a problem for me. There's no inner conflicts that I have with that. I'm at peace with where I'm at. And so, I'd say, Alex, don't wait for what your calling is or your purpose is. Just pursue opportunities that are in alignment with who you want to be, what you want out of your life. Start a business, read books, start new hobbies, new interests, and you can find purpose and meaning in all those things. And then as time goes on, you'll find things that will excite you even more that you'll get hooked on. and then you can go a lot deeper with those things and they'll give you even more

purpose. Uh, okay. Ahmed says, "If you had to start making money online today from scratch, what exact steps would you take in the first 30 days? " You know, Ahmed. So, uh, for me, I'm, you know, kind of as someone who's been retired from the business world, not in the trenches or aware of all the latest opportunities and all the details of that today. uh if I was kind of in a ground zero starting position, I would find some sort of mentor or online course or resource that I could follow in a certain direction that will guide me over 30 days or more to building an actual business. Um you know, look, you know, when I look back to when I started in my early 20s, that's essentially what I did. You know, I was scouring the internet and found different opportunities and when I found certain ones, I just went deep with it. You know, I remember this course that I bought called Bring the Fresh uh from Kelly Felix and um it's not around at all today, but um I found out about it. They're basically teaching affiliate marketing, how to create these little blogs, rank them in Google, be an affiliate, like I was an affiliate for the Vitamix Blender and whatnot, and then, you know, get traffic, make money through affiliate marketing. And whether or not that was the best opportunity or the easiest or the hardest, I don't know. But I just found something that I believed in. I was excited to do and I just took massive action with it. And so I applied it to the best of my ability. I learned a lot about marketing and business through that among many other courses that I did. And that one ended up producing some income for me, but really not anything that significant. It kind of produced a couple hundred bucks a month in income, which for me at the time was mind-blowing. But today, I would try to scour what's available today. you know, if it's e-commerce, if it's dropshipping, if it's affiliate marketing, if it's leveraging AI, if it's, you know, publishing books, if it's creating digital products, there's so many opportunities that work and are effective ways to make money. You just got to choose one that you resonate with and that you believe in and just take massive action with it. And if you do, and you go through something that's guiding you and has some form of mentorship and support along the way, um whether or not you really succeed in terms of making money, I don't know. But you'll learn so much and you'll grow so much and that will open the door for you to really be making money long term because it's not like you just press a few buttons and you get rich quick, right? It's a process of learning and discovering and improving yourself and all of that ultimately leads to the results and the best opportunity for you. So my advice as you know I always recommend and you know what I did is just find a good mentorship, find a good course, something step by step. There's so many of these internet marketing guys out there that are sharing many different methods, many different opportunities. Um, some of these guys are kind of more underground. They're not really out there as much, but there's, you know, you'll find countless webinars and trainings and things. You know, you don't really even need to look far. You know, go on your Facebook and there's, you know, Facebook ads and YouTube ads and people kind of targeting, you know, targeting you to, you know, sell their opportunity or their course or their method. Um, so for me, you know, that's what I have always kind of believed in is modeling success, learning from others. Um, you know, there's my friend Stephen Summers who's got a great program with Marketplace Superheroes called Accelerate. Uh, I've shared him on my channel many times. I think I did an interview with him a few months ago. You can watch that. Uh, but if you go to pro, there's probably a link in this description uh, of my video here. Go to projectlifemastery. comfreecourse and I share his program. He's got a wholesale wholesaling model. He's someone that I trust because he's always in the trenches. He's always, you know, on top of everything and he'd be someone that I would go to uh for mentorship and guidance if I was getting started. Uh I have a few other friends that have, you know, they're sharing, they always share with me their projects and their launches and their programs that they create. Uh sometimes I email those out to my list and share them if you're subscribed to my email list. Um, but I'm kind of blown away with what people are doing with AI. So, whatever I'd be doing today would be leveraging AI in some way, shape, or form. Uh, because it's just too powerful and it's providing a lot of opportunity right now for people because it's really disrupting the landscape. So, anything with a AI is great and maybe sometimes you get to try different things in order to find uh what works the best for you.

uh CVP income says, "Is it still worthwhile to create a course? " Uh if there's a demand there, you know, I've always kind of been the way that I've always taught people when it comes to being a course creator is first put out content for free online, such as on YouTube. Put out some amazing content and then whether or not if people are not going to watch or consume your content for free on YouTube, then they're probably not going to pay you money for it in a course. And so my approach has always been build an audience first, add massive value. You can really develop your communication skills, your teaching skills, your content creation skills by using something like YouTube. And what I essentially did with Project Life Mastery and what is I recommend for most people is once you kind of get a core audience, then you either ask them by interviewing uh interviewing with them or surveying them by saying, "Hey, listen. I'm thinking about creating a course. It's going to be on this topic. What do you think? Would you be interested in this? Uh if you were, what would you like me to cover? go deep into? Uh how much would you pay for it? You know, how long do you want it to be? How comprehensive? What are your biggest challenges? struggles? What are your goals? And I've always surveyed my audience to find out what they want and then created what it is offered that to them. Um, the other kind of approach that's worked well for me is that usually my courses came about organically, meaning um, I had an audience of people that would watch my videos and then I started doing coaching and then through coaching and just the content creation that I did on YouTube, people would then ask me, Stephan, would you create a course on this? Can you share more about this? You know, I've had people say to me over the years, hey, if you were to create a course on this, I would buy this from you. If you were to create a course on investing, I would buy that from you. So, generally, your audience kind of organically will tell you what they want from you and then um I've always found that the easiest way to create a course because you already have an audience that will line up to buy it from you and uh you can already you can even take pre-orders as well and you can have a successful launch of that program. I've never been the fan of just creating a product by guessing. you know, I always do my research, my due diligence to make sure that whatever it is that I'm gonna invest my time creating is going to be a success so that I have almost 100% certainty that it will succeed the moment that I launch it because I don't want to create something with, you know, no idea whether or not anyone's going to buy it. So yes, you can of course do incredibly well with online courses and whatnot, but it's really finding the market, the demand for it, and if there's enough demand for it, then obviously you can create it and sell

it. Uh Martin says, "I work full-time as a high school English teacher. I'm in graduate school working on a second master's degree, and I have been trying to write a book for a while. Is there a way to do it all? " To do what all? to be a teacher, go to school, and also write a book. Yes, of course. Uh I mean, writing a book can be a process if you're doing it more of a traditional way. Um I created a program called 24-hour book that was designed to teach people how to write a book rapidly fast in a way that's different than the traditional way of writing a book. Because most people, you know, they believe that writing a book is this process, this huge undertaking that's going to take a year. and you know it's just very overwhelming to even think about writing a book. And honestly, writing a book with in terms of the amount of time and energy that you invest in it is not the best ROI financially. Uh you know, it's a product that you're going to sell for $20, maybe $10 on Kindle. And so it's not going to, you know, get you a great ROI unless you have a publishing deal. you can scale it in a huge way or you're able to leverage that book to funnel into a you know a business that you might have and kind of use it as kind of like a business card in some ways to help promote your brand. Um, and so for me the way that I found is the most effective in terms of profitability if that's your goal of writing a book was um, you know, for me I kind of realized that a book doesn't have to be hundreds of pages and this huge undertaking. Um, there's a market of people that will buy books that are shorter. So I would start by writing books that are 30, 40, 50 pages and are on a specific topic that I did research on to ensure that there is a big enough demand in market for and then uh I would launch the book because it's a shorter book. I would launch it at a cheap price point. You know, if it's on Kindle, often I'd launch it just for 99. Uh if it's paperback, it would be, you know, $10 or so depending on how long it is. And so my idea, my goal initially when I'd launch a book was to get something to market that could add value that could help people. But I understood the beginning process is not really to make money from it. It was more to, you know, rank it on Amazon, get some reviews, get some downloads, and I would improve the book over time. And so I never really looked at the book as a finished product. I always kind of looked at it as something that I can improve, make better. And I wanted to kind of test the market as well. So instead of committing a whole year and all this time and money to creating a book and launching it and having no idea if it's going to sell, no idea if I'm going to make any money with it, I took a bit of a different approach. And that's kind of what I would teach with my mastering book publishing course and 24-hour book uh course. So it depends, I think, on what your goals are for writing a book, but there are different ways that you can do it. Now, there's AI that you can use to help you write your books. Um, you know, so there's technology that can help you do it much easier, much faster than ever before. But, um, you know, Martin, it kind of depends what your goals are. I mean, obviously, you have your full-time job, you're going to school. The book is probably more of a side gig, and you just have to dedicate whatever free time that you have to it and just uh set some clear goals and milestones with that to challenge yourself to get there. I know for me when I'd create content or I would write there'd kind of be moments where I'd be really inspired and I try to leverage that as much as I could to really go deep. And I also found that what worked best for me creatively was um when I was going to create something, I found that if I could be in an environment where there's no other distractions and I could fully immerse myself in it, I was always able to get the most done. And so, for example, one thing I would do is I would, you know, if I was you, I'd maybe take a oneweek vacation from your job, maybe, you know, time it with a break from school and just have one week where there's nothing else going on in your life. You lock yourself in your home, you know, you turn off your phone, you turn off all distractions, and you just go deep working, you know, 16-hour days on your book for seven days. And I can guarantee you're going to accomplish a lot more in that one week of no distractions, fully immersed than you will in months of just trying to do it an hour or two here every other day. So that's always how I've created my courses. Uh I create a lot of videos that way. I like to block off time, no distractions. I can immerse myself and you get this momentum. You get into this flow state where all the your best ideas and everything kind of flows out of you. And um I found that for me is something that worked really effectively in terms of a time management strategy to get a lot

done. Uh Mateo says, "When are you doing a meetup in Panama? " Yeah, no plans for that. Um you know, there have been people that reached out to me in Panama that live here um that follow me, which is pretty cool. And so um definitely it is an idea and something to do at some point. I live a couple hours away from this city and so I don't go to the city that often and that's where most people are and so um maybe at some point I might consider it um I'm actually looking potentially in the next year or two to buy an apartment in uh Panama City in Costa D. Uh we spent uh the last two and a half weeks or so in Costa DeSTE in an Airbnb uh you know right by town center and everything while we're close to the hospital waiting for Tatiana to give birth uh to go into labor and so um you know I love where I live. I live in the beach community but sometimes there's benefits of being in the city where there's just more activity, more fun things to do. And I definitely see as my kids get a little bit older, I'm going to want to do more things with them. And in Kosa Dee, um it's more of like a developed high higherend part of Panama, but just has better infrastructure. And they have this mall there, um which I'd want to, you know, I'm looking at a few buildings right next to it that's really optimized for kids. you know, it's got a, you know, go-karting, it's got a bowling alley, it's got mini golf, it's got an escape room, it's got a movie theater, it's got several play areas, an arcade, and so it just kind of has a lot of what you uh a lot of fun things that you could do that, you know, here, if I live in the beach, we can go to Panama City on the weekends with my kids, and we can have a lot of fun there and come back here during the week. So, that's kind of an upgrade of my lifestyle that I'd be looking to do um once my kids are a little bit older. Okay. Uh, let's see. Uh, Alex says, "Please help me find a way to sell the company that I worked for. It's a unique technology. " Uh, Alex, I'd recommend to find a broker. find a broker that you can meet with and you could um you know they can help you find buyers of your business. Um that's uh you know what I'd recommend. They take a cut of it, but they have a huge database of people that are looking to buy businesses. And so there's a lot of brokerages out there and websites that you can go to where you could list it with them and uh you can, you know, they'll email it out to their list of buyers and put it on their website and you can get a lot of leads and people that might be interested in buying your business through them. Uh Hussein says, "Should you create a course or a community? " Uh both, you know, uh both if you'd like. Uh definitely people that are learning and committed to learning on a certain subject generally want to be a part of a community as well to connect with others and network and mastermind together. So I think there's an opportunity to do both. Ahmed says, "I want to make money on Amazon online remote in the UAE. How do I approach this correctly? " Yeah, you know, you'd have to choose an Amazon marketplace that you want to sell on. So, is it in the US? Is it in Europe? Uh, you know, there's different Amazon marketplaces. Um, but I always recommend, man, just get a good course, something that will guide you through the process. Don't ask me here on YouTube or anything like that. There's online courses that are dedicated and communities dedicated to selling on Amazon and they'll guide you through the whole process and help you get up, you know, up and running and give you feedback and advice, all the latest stuff with it. I'm not involved in all the latest with Amazon by any means. And so find a great community and, you know, a great course of people that are much further ahead than you that can guide you through that process. But, you know, choose the marketplace you want to sell on, get it set up with your Amazon Seller Central account. But there's people that are a lot more uh knowledgeable and in the trenches than I am that can guide you through all the logistics of doing all

that. Uh Arash says, "Have you ever tried timerestricted feeding? And if so, what are your thoughts on it? " Yeah. So, I mean, do you mean like intermittent fasting? Um if that's what you mean, then the answer is yes. I generally do intermittent fasting on most days where I fast 14 hours uh to 16 hours I'd say at a time. Uh not all the time to be honest. Uh I mean even just recently I was in Panama City and we're uh eating out a lot more and had a bit of a different diet program then. But yeah, I definitely see benefits to intermittent fasting. um you know it's supposedly has benefits to your testosterone and helping your body detox and other kind of you know benefits and helping to extend your longevity and whatnot. And so from the research I've gathered the people that I generally follow a lot of them subscribe to intermittent fasting. Um I tend to also cycle it as I said. So I don't do it all the time. I might do it for a few months and then stop and then get back into it. So, I I see good benefits to it, and I personally enjoy it. Is Amazon FBA the best way to sell your chocolate brand? Uh, well, Amazon is probably one of the best ways. I mean, it's just a marketplace. It's an online retailer that has millions of customers. And so, if you're selling any physical product, why not also get it up there as well? Um, I believe in also having your own store, your own website, your own brand. And so maybe also setting up your own Shopify, but you can do both. You can have your own Shopify store and then you can have one sales channel be Amazon and list it there as well and and use that as a way to also generate sales and generate income as well for your

business. Um, okay. Lewis says, "Hi Stephan, cheers from Panama. How's everything doing with Amazon FBA now with the current changes on tariffs? So, again, I'm not really involved in, you know, I tend to have to kind of repeat this a lot uh because a lot of people maybe haven't watched my previous videos where I've shared that I've retired and kind of updates with my life and whatnot, but I've been out of the Amazon space for quite a while now. I'm not really involved in running operating businesses anymore. Um, I got to the point where I've been able to retire just off the income that my investments generate for me now. I've got more than enough than I need. And so I'm not really I haven't found it necessary to be involved in, you know, selling things online. I don't sell any courses online anymore either. So if you were to go to any of my websites like masteringbookpublishing. com or 24hourbook. com or affiliatemarketingmastery. com, pretty much discontinued selling all of my courses. So, I don't sell anything online anymore. I'm just enjoying and living my life uh being financially free. Um but, uh yes, in terms of tariffs, that definitely is something that's very concerning. Uh you definitely have to adapt. Uh I know a lot of people now that are teaching people how to source their products from the United States. And so, they're um you know, uh sourcing from the US. They're you know, getting into different markets, not just depending on the US as well. So definitely with what's been going on with Trump, he's definitely disrupted things. But anytime things are disrupted also provides an opportunity. Anytime things are disrupted, it often uh you basically the people that are the weak ones in my opinion kind of just fall to the wayside. They end up giving up. They end up failing. They can't really deal with the adversity of it. It's generally the strongest that survive, you know, survival of the fittest. And so, uh, in any business, you do have to adapt as the times change and diversify your business so that you're not dependent in one way of making money. And you build what I used to call was a parthonon. So, instead of having a one-legged stool where your whole business is dependent on one supplier, one market, one product, if it's a one-legged stool, you know, something can come along and it'll fall over. But if you build a parthonon, a parthonon has multiple pillars. And so, you know, if you're selling on Amazon, but you're also selling on Shopify, if you're, you know, selling in different marketplaces, you have different suppliers, you have a structure now that is not going to fall over at, you know, different signs of adversity or challenge. And so, that's always the goal that I learned very early on in my business career was build a parthonon, diversify, and don't be overly dependent on one stream of traffic, one stream of income, one product or anything like that. Uh what is the best way to determine if your online course idea is in demand? Put out free content on YouTube. Put out tons of free content on that topic on that niche and you know see whether or not you can get people to consume and watch that content on YouTube. If they're not going to watch it on YouTube or you can't maybe even look on YouTube and search those topics and see that there's a lot of content, people are consuming a lot on those topics on those niches, then that is kind of a way that you can gauge the demand of whether or not it makes sense to create an actual course on that topic.

Okay. Um, James says, "I've had anxiety in the past and I want to exit my comfort zone and practice socializing and meeting more people, but I'm having trouble figuring out places to meet more people and to socialize. " Uh, so James, I'm not sure if you really uh know my story, but I used to have very severe social anxiety as to be very shy when I was in high school. And um what changed things for me when I was 17 years old, I discovered the self-development community, the whole self-help world. And specifically, I got shared with by this guy that I knew online through this online game that I played. He shared with me an ebook called Double Your Dating by David D'Angelo. And this was a book for men on how to improve their social skills and their dating life, how to better meet and attract women into their life. And so for me at 17 years old, that was my biggest goal and focus. challenge in my life. I wanted to have a girlfriend. And so I got into this whole world of uh the whole kind of pickup artist world, I'll call it. Uh because I read the book The Game by Neil Strauss at 18 years old. Ended up meeting Neil Strauss. Ended up uh essentially finding this community of men in Vancouver, which is where I was from. And uh these were men that would go out every weekend and they would go out on, you know, Robson Street, they'd go to the malls, they'd go to, you know, the nightife, Granville Street, and they would walk around and they would cold approach women. And uh I got very involved in this at a young age and um eventually started coaching and helping other people and started my own business coaching people. But really what the biggest thing that whole world was about self-improvement. It wasn't really about picking up women, although that was kind of the focus of it. It was more about going out, improving our social skills, improving our confidence by challenging ourselves to go up and interact with everyone. And so um the way that things changed for me was uh I met a group of guys. I joined a community. Today there's so many of these communities out there all over that you can meet up with. And many of them have businesses, they offer coaching, they do boot camps. Uh we used to do a three-day boot camp where uh people would come out with us over a weekend and we would actually push their comfort zone and push them to go and approach this girl and approach that girl. And you know our whole mindset and approach was to approach by adding value. And so our mindset was you can approach a woman or anybody anywhere any time because you never know when you're going to come across that ideal man or woman that you know woman of your dreams. You want to be able to pull the trigger when that time comes. And so we would use these social venues like a mall, like coffee shops, you know, different festivals, nightife. Uh there would be opportunities to practice and develop your social skills. And so by adding value, the mindset was how can we leave this person better off for having met you? And so the simple approach was just to approach that person and give them a compliment. So, if you see somebody walking by or you're at a, you know, a coffee shop or you're at the mall, you can approach them and say, "Hey, listen. This might sound strange. I noticed you. I just want to come up and say that you look amazing. You look beautiful. I want to wish you a great day. " And then you walk away. And so the idea behind that was uh you are using what is called a softener by saying hey this might sound a little strange or hey I know this doesn't normally happen might seem totally random but I noticed you and I wanted to come up and say hi or that you look amazing or you have a great energy about yourself or I really like that hat or uh you know you have really amazing eyes and then by saying by generally doing that you're trying to be authentic and whatever it is, not kind of memorize a line or a script, but genuinely with every approach, every person you interact with, finding something about them that you can say and compliment them on to add value to their life. And generally the response is, oh, thank you so much, or I appreciate it. And initially, we would just say, "Have a great day. " and walk away. Because the goal at first is just to get comfortable approaching people, not in your head thinking, "Oh my god, I have to now pick this person up and get their phone number and get them attracted to me and make them laugh and what am I going to say? " It's just going up adding value, wishing them a great day, and walking away. If you can do that 10 times a day, you know, on the weekend, you go out by yourself or find some buddies or find a community that you can go out with and do that with, you'll get momentum, you'll get confident, you'll get comfortable just approaching people. And then as you got that down and you're confident with that, then you can start to push conversations a little bit more. You can push it and say, "Hey, so what are you up to today? You know, what are you looking, shopping for? " And you can transition into a conversation. So, um, that's what I'd recommend is if you want to develop your social skills and get push your comfort zone, you can do it anywhere. just go out to the mall, go out where any people are and you know just you want to be in an environment where there's a lot of people so that you can go from one person to the next and you can get a good you know amount of volume of approaches in and develop yourself in that way. And so um I'd recommend I mean if you can find a community to be a part of it makes it so much easier. If you can find coaches do a boot camp and invest in yourself in that way I think that would be the way to go uh if I were going about it again today. uh how to use chat GBT to be wealth to

be wealthy. Is it game changer in selling on Amazon platform? Yeah, chat GBT and just AI in general is a game changer with any online business. Uh something I use every day of my life, not for business but just for research. But in terms of any business, you can think of a million ways that you can apply to that business. With Amazon, you can use chatbt by giving it a prompt and saying, "Give me a list of 50 products that I could sell on Amazon that meet these requirements that are, you know, a small product that weigh less than this amount that get this many sales per day that uh is in this topic, in this niche, that has low competition, and it'll give you a list of 50 products that you could then further research and further explore. So you can use it for research. by asking ideas on how to make your product different or unique or better than other competitors. You can use it to um find suppliers. You can, you know, ask CHBT how to create a good, you know, give you several different titles for your for your product on Amazon for your Amazon listing. You can use it to help you with product images. You can use bullet points, with the description, with finding keywords, setting up ads on Amazon. I mean there's pretty much every part of the process you can use chatbt to help you but you have to learn the process first and that's where I think getting the proper training and guidance to help you with that uh is the way to go. So I would kind of find a course that can teach you and then use chatpt to help you with all those steps of the process. Uh I mean you can use it to create YouTube videos, social media content, you know it can write captions for you, it can write um you know viral video titles for YouTube videos. It can um you know do keyword research for YouTube videos. It can help you with thumbnails for YouTube videos. It can give you a script. copy for your email marketing for your sales pages or sales funnels. It can just really do so much for you. So definitely learn how to use chatbt uh if you want to be successful in a business today. Um, the walla the wala mala says, "You haven't streamed in for two years. Mind streaming more often? " Uh, yeah, maybe. I mean, that's I I wish I could give you more of an answer than that, but um you know, if I'm inspired to, I will. and uh and um you know, maybe you'll see me again soon. Let's see what else you have here. Phantom Blue says, "I'm doing a thing where I have purpose-driven five ebooks, one lead generator, merch, restockables, beverages, supplements, candles, skincare, etc. Is that enough for beginner or overkill? " Uh it's a bit of overkill. I mean, you're selling five books, you know, one for lead genen and then you have a lot of merch and all of that sort of stuff. I mean, it's quite a bit. What you'll generally find is that most of, you know, running a business and making money online is going to be getting traffic, right? So, you're creating the products and you're focused more on that end. But the traffic is really the most important thing because if you get traffic, if you can, for example, for me, my goal has always been generate traffic through the internet, whether through Amazon, YouTube, social media, whatever it is, running ads, generate traffic and build a list. If you can build an email list, then it's generally quite easy to find out what products you should then create to sell to those people. Uh so for me, you know, the one phrase I've always learned from my mentors early on in my internet marketing journey is that the money is in the list. If you can build your list, which is the one asset that you own, like the biggest asset that you own in your business is your list, then you can always email those subscribers and find out what they want, what their challenges are, what their goals are, what they would buy from you, and then you can then create and sell that product to them. So, um I think you might be doing a little bit a lot and kind of um diluting your focus a bit. Generally, I'd focus maybe on one or two products to get up and running and selling first and um and then kind of tinker with and modify things from there. And maybe if that means adding more products, you can or making other adjustments, uh you could definitely do that as you go.

Uh, okay. Ann an Ann says, "Hi, Stephan. Lovely to see you and congrats on the birth of your second son. I would like to ask if you would still start and build a YouTube channel today or would you use a different platform? " Ann, so Ann, you know, if it was me personally, the answer would be obvious, and that would be I'd definitely use YouTube as a way to get my message out there. Uh not everyone wants to be a YouTuber, but in my case, um I've always enjoyed coaching people, helping people, communicating with people. I had a lot of experience with public speaking. Um and so for me, this is still an avenue that I personally would have pursued. And it's really something that I probably will continue to pursue for the rest of my life. I always kind of see myself in some way, shape, or form still creating content and creating video content specifically and doing some coaching with it. YouTube is the biggest platform. It's the most obvious place to be. Uh but of course, you can repurpose your content as well and put it also on other platforms. And so for me with my business, um you know, when I was in the peak of creating content, I would first start by creating the YouTube video, but then repurpose it and take the audio, put it that as a podcast. And so I'd put that up on Spotify, you know, Apple, you know, Apple Music. Um, so I'd have it as a podcast. So that way people can find me on YouTube, but they can also find me on these other platforms as well. And then I'd also put it up on Facebook, you know, because, you know, my Facebook page, you can have videos for your Facebook as well. Um, you can put it up on X. Uh, we'd also edit, take clips of it, and you can create shorts, you can create reels, you can repurpose one video that you create for YouTube, you can repurpose it in like a dozen different ways to create a lot more content of that you can have it in many other places. And you could also use Rumble or other platforms like that, too. And so, um, I would take more of that approach, but I'd focus primarily on YouTube in terms of creating my content for that. Uh, because that's where you're going to get the most attention, the most eyeballs. that's where your, you know, videos can go the most viral and also, um, well, maybe that's not true. There's Tik Tok and other platforms like that, too. Um, but you can basically, you know, YouTube is a search engine as well. So, you can kind of optimize for YouTube search in different ways. Um, I will kind of add to that though, repurposing is a great way to be efficient with your time, but generally if you create content that's more native for the specific platform, it will do better than just kind of editing from a YouTube video. So, for example, create for YouTube, but if you want to really focus, let's say, on Tik Tok or Instagram reels, I would recommend try to create specifically for that as well. So maybe once you're done recording your YouTube video, then spend a couple minutes afterwards thinking, how can I create something uh that I just made for YouTube, but condense it and make it into a Tik Tok as well. Uh so um but yeah, you know, to answer your question, I definitely would be using YouTube. And uh I have no doubt that I'd also be successful today with YouTube. Um really my mindset always with content creation was adding as much value as I could. That's the X factor. That's how you want to differentiate yourself from others. Um, you can't be just like everybody else. And so for me, the way I often think about myself and the ways that I different differentiated myself as a YouTuber was I'd really try to go above and beyond in creating a lot of value. So I remember people would say, you know, Stephan, you should have videos, but they should be 10 minutes long or 20 minutes long. And I'd say, it. I'm going to create videos for as long as it takes to really add as much value as I possibly can on this topic. And so that's why you'll find a lot of my videos 40 minutes long, 50 minutes long, an hour long. And even though that wasn't, you know, what people said you should do because people don't have that attention span, I didn't care. I just wanted to, you know, I did I didn't want to focus on, you know, quantity, more the quality. You know, I know that if somebody watches a video for an hour or 30 minutes, that person's much more invested in me than someone that's just watching videos that are highly edited and processed that are five or 10 minutes long. So, I kind of stood out in that way, you know, just trying to add a lot of value. And I think it was very evident to people watching my videos that, wow, this guy's just adding a lot of value. And generally if you are then people leave great comments, they'll subscribe. They'll want to know more. They'll click on your links. Um they'll like it, they'll share it, and things kind of will take care of itself from there. So first and foremost, that was always my philosophy. Add as much value overd deliver to the point that I want people thinking that when they watch my videos, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is free. " You know, or wow, like if this is free, then what else does this guy have that you know he also created as well? So they're going to check out my other content or my other products as well. Uh so that was one way I stood out. Another way was being more transparent than others. So some of the things that I did was I'd share my income. I'd share my goals. I'd share my investment portfolio. Uh things that no one else would think to share. And there's a level of vulnerability in doing that. But uh by opening up in those ways or even sharing your personal struggles, your personal history, um the more you open up, the more people also connect with you and you stand out. you're different in that way as well. Another way that I'd stand out is I wasn't just someone teaching people how to build a business, but I'm also someone that's helping people improve their entire life, right? And I realized that the important that building a business is important, but your whole life and having life mastery is even more important. And so I kind of had a more balanced approach to life and um would help people on different topics. And then also I'd help people with their mindset as well. So a lot of people might give you the business advice but neglect the mindset. I really emphasized a lot on the mindset. And so those are just kind of different ways that you stand out from other people in the niches that you're in as a content creator. And so if you're just doing the same thing everyone else is doing and you're not going to stand out, then you're not really going to get that far. But if you can create your X factor and be different and unique and then you can build an audience of people that will connect with that. So um that'd be my advice if I was starting today. Princess Devon says, "Are you into XRP? " Uh XRP as in is as in Ripple. Um I do own some, but I'm not uh heavily invested in it. And as you know, I'm not into crypto as much as I used to be. I'm more of just, you know, I've always been buy and hold. I have a lot of Bitcoin. Um, I have some other altcoins, but um, you know, and I've done a lot of different things with crypto in the past, but I kind of realize I'm more of a passive investor and I enjoy kind of living my life where a big part of my focus and attention is not on money anymore. I spend so much of my life focused on money that now it's been nice just having that as an area of my life that is mostly taken care of. I don't have to worry about it too much. I can check in on it every month or so and uh just enjoy the benefits that it provides and then down the road I can sell off some of my crypto if I want to. But um yeah, I'm more of a passive investor and so I don't really actively buy too many individual cryptos or stocks anymore. I kind of stick more to index funds, ETFs, and you know, Bitcoin being the biggest

Uh, Amed says, "Given the chance, would you go back to relive your late 20s again? " Uh, no, I don't think so. Um, I'm, you know, I feel very satisfied and content with my life and where I'm at. Um, I feel just very blessed because I I genuinely feel like I have success and fulfillment. And uh I've always kind of believed the the quote from Tony Robbins that success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I'm more fulfilled now than I've ever been in my life, which has been amazing. Um I kind of look at my life, you know, at least my adult life is going through different stages. in my early 20s, let's say, let's say from, you know, 18 years old to 25 years old, I was very much in a stage where, as most people are, where you're trying to figure things out. You know, you don't really know who you are. You have insecurities, you lack confidence, you're trying to find your voice, niche, you're trying to find your opportunity, you're trying to find your purpose. And that stage of my life was just tremendous amount of personal development, tremendous amount of investing into myself. had a lot of failures. I made a lot of mistakes. Um, you know, uh, was broke, struggling a lot in those earlier days. But, you know, by the time I was, you know, 23 years old or so, I started figuring it out. I started making some money. I started gaining some confidence. But, it wasn't until, you know, let's say 25, let's say 25 to 30. That was a stage for me that I started to really experience success. That's where now after the seven, eight years that I spent before that, all those seeds that I planted, all those investments I made into myself, all the books that I read, all the failures, all the lessons that I learned now started to come together when I was 25. And that's where you start to get momentum. So for me, I started, you know, h gaining a lot of confidence. I started getting some success. I found things that worked for me. I started getting more success, you know, with meeting women and dating. And I felt more mature. I felt more secure within myself and so during that stage I became a millionaire at 27 became a multi-millionaire soon after that you know project life mastery I started in 20 when I was 25 years old so that really started to grow I met Tatiana uh when I was 28 years old you know so I had at that point found the woman of my dreams and things were great you know I was really starting to take off and things were you know really um it was a very exciting time to now get the results and have those seeds that you planted now start to grow and lead to uh something of fruition. And then 30 to 35 I'd say was really um the peak of my success where I started really you know getting you know becoming multi-millionaire very wealthy traveling the world just really enjoying my life now being able to buy everything that I wanted to buy you know all the material kind of world and everything like that and uh you know being in a great relationship and I did fitness competitions and so I just felt like wow I'm really on fire and just really getting a lot of great results. Um, but then what happened I think you know when you get a lot of success very quickly your ego can get out of control. And so even though I was achieving so much and I was on this big dopamine high, I wouldn't really say that I was the most fulfilled that I could be. I had times of being happy but I still kind of struggled with really feeling this happiness in my life. And um for me from 35 to now almost 40, I'd say it's been more of a an evolution where I decid I kind of came to the realization that in order for me to develop myself and be who I really want to be and how I want to live, I need to let go of a lot of these attachments, ego uh ego gratifications and things that I'm still chasing. uh the pursuit of you know money um the obsession with constantly pursuing more and more. You know Wayne Dyer used to say that more is the mantra of the ego and so I started to let go a lot of that and focus more on my spiritual development focus more on being in the present moment being in the here and now uh focus on really building uh you know kind of putting together now at this point roots. So before that I was, you know, traveling the world, digital nomad all over the place. And now I'm starting to build roots where I built a house. So I built my house here in Panama. I bought an apartment in Vancouver, you know, starting to build roots, started now to have kids, you know, so try to build that more stability and kind of more just transition into just learning how to truly enjoy life and enjoy the freedom and enjoy all the results and everything that I created. And so that's kind of what I look now at. You know, 35 to 40 and then probably 40 to 45 is really going to be a big focus on me being with young kids, still being very present with my kids, but there'll come a time probably, you know, my in my 40s where um my kids will kind of be more independent. you know, they're going to go off to school and that's kind of now a time where I'll be able to reflect and kind of maybe re start different opportunities that I want to focus on for myself, different business opportunities and whatnot. But, um, that's kind of how I look at it. So, if you were to ask me, you know, would I go back to my late 20s? Not really. No. Um, it was definitely a fun time and everything, but I'm way more content and satisfied with where I'm at this stage of my life now. Um, you know, and if you were to ask me during those stages too, I was never fully satisfied or content because there was always more that I wanted and was chasing, whether that was more money, you know, a certain lifestyle that I wanted to create, still wanted to have, you know, a family and kids. And if you're ask me today, you know, what more do you really want for your life? There's not much that I can tell you. I truly feel like I have everything that I could want in my life. I have, you know, and the only thing that was missing from me in my life was having kids and having a family. And, uh, now that I have that, I just feel, you know, sure, I can make more money. I could, you know, do other things, but it's not really going to add much more to my life at this stage. I'm just really content and satisfied with where I'm at. I would like to have more kids, God willing. And so, that is something. But for the most part, you know, I'm happy with the decisions that I made in my life that got me to this point that I'm at today.

Um, M. Williams says, "Hi, Stephan. What are your thoughts about influencing now? " Yeah, you know, it's quite interesting because, you know, I'm not on social media. Um, uh, I'm not that much on YouTube anymore. Uh I I use YouTube to you know there's certain educational stuff and certain things I do watch on YouTube. Um but I'm not really consuming much content as I used to. I'm not really that familiar with the influ uh influencer niche as much but definitely there's excuse me there's definitely a lot of influencers out there. One thing I don't like about it is um and kind of a turnoff and kind of one of the reasons I'm kind of happy not to be in the spotlight as much anymore is that there's a lot of negativity and there's kind of like this world of people attacking others. You know, like one popular thing it seems in the influencing space is people create reaction videos to what other people created. People are attacking other people. um you know like there's there people use other people's names to get attention and just kind of create a lot of drama and so I don't really like that. Um I'm content kind of now being a lot more out of the spotlight and just kind of living my life more privately. Um but yeah, there's just a lot, you know, there's a lot more that comes with being an influencer today. a lot more drama that if you become popular and you get your name out there, then you're going to have people that are going to be using your name to get attention, to create drama, to try to expose you or whatever else. Um, you know, they're people are going to use your name to run scams. to, you know, promote their crypto thing. Um, like one thing I've been dealing with for many years, uh, was on social media like Facebook and Instagram, there's tons of people that they create these fake accounts using your image and pretending that they're you and then they message your followers to promote this crypto scam and you report them and, you know, YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, they remove them, but then they just keep popping up. So, there's kind of things like that you have to deal with today as an influencer, which is unfortunate. But um yeah, it's definitely bigger than ever. Um also a lot more opportunity to collaborate with others as well. So I think there's a lot you could do today, but it's definitely changed a lot from when I started being an influencer many years ago. Um okay, Martin says, "Hi Stephan, it's great to see you. I've watched you over many years. I come from two educators and I've taught public school for over 30 years. How do I shift my mindset from worker to entrepreneur? It's definitely an adjustment. I think what you know being an entrepreneur and working for yourself has challenges. Uh working from home has challenges. Um, I think typically when you are involved in the school system and you work at jobs, one of the biggest things that provides is a structure where you have a place to show up every day and you're around other co-workers and kind of a community of people that are also there to work. You work from this time to this time and you have a form of accountability with a boss that you're working for and that you're accountable to. When you start working for yourself, you don't have that. you know, you have to be self-motivated. self-disciplined. Um, I've always recommended if you can to get a good coach or an accountability partner or a community where you can kind of use that as a way to be accountable. Like I used to have mastermind groups. We'd meet up every week. We'd share our goals for the week and it was useful to have that as a structure. Uh, and sometimes I'd go to co-working spaces or coffee shops just to kind of get out of the house and be in an environment that would help me be more productive and to work and focus. Sometimes if you're working from home, there's a lot of distractions, you know, you can just spend all this time on YouTube. Um, you know, so sometimes getting into a different environment and getting around other people that are also entrepreneurial can really help you a lot. But you have to learn time management. how to be productive. self-motivate. You have to have systems of accountability in place. Um, you know, you have to shift your mindset to realize that when you run a business, you're not getting paid by the hour, you're results. So, it doesn't matter. You know, if you have a job, you can spend eight hours doing whatever and you're going to get paid for it. But when you have a business, all it comes down to is results. You can spend eight hours doing whatever you want to do, but you're not doesn't mean you're going to get make money from doing that. So you have to learn how to be efficient and you have to know what out of all the actions that you can take in running a business is going to give you the greatest ROI. So you have to um you have to know what to prioritize and realize that there's some things you can spend time doing that are just not going to yield much of a return. I'd always try to identify what is that one thing, you know, what's the 8020 of what I could be doing that's giving me the biggest result. And I try to always focus on that the first thing in the morning when I work on my business. And so it's a different mindset shift that you have to make an adaptation into. But the longer that you're an entrepreneur, the more you get used to it. I just recommend getting community, go to maybe some entrepreneurial uh meetup groups and things like that so you can be around other people likeminded and spend time with them and kind of use them as a way for inspiration or accountability uh as you build a business. Oh, thank you guys for the nice comments. Appreciate it. Just reading through what you guys are writing here. Uh Eddie says, "I have a few books published on Amazon, but I'm having a hard time getting anyone but my friends to buy them. " Yeah. So, you got to focus on traffic, right? um you know, building a business, you know, maybe creating content, for example, that attracts people to you. Build an email list and funnel that into your books. Uh I used to sell a course called Mastering Book Marketing. That was, you know, I had mastering book publishing that was all about how to find your niche and publish your book. But mastering book marketing was really what people would struggle with, which is marketing your book, promoting it, and ultimately building a business where you're getting traffic, you're getting leads, and then you can funnel that traffic into your books or do affiliate marketing or whatever else that you want to sell. So, um, if you're just depending on Amazon, you're only going to sell your books and get traffic to them by Amazon search, meaning that you have to choose books and be in different niches that you can outrank other books out there based on keywords, which is very challenging to do. Or you have to get really good at running ads on Amazon, which is also challenging to do and cost you money. So, you have to really learn how to build a business outside of Amazon. You have your books on Amazon, but you get your traffic outside of Amazon while also leveraging what whatever you can on Amazon as well. Um, okay. Misha says, "What do you know as 39 years old man that you didn't know as a 29year-old man that is very important to you now? Um, I'd say one of the biggest things was, um, I think just really learn like I mean these are things that I knew when I was 29, but I think I didn't really allow myself to focus on it that much because I was still focused on a lot of my ego's desires of pursuing and achieving more in my life. But I've really learned um the power of letting go that um you know when I was younger I wanted to be you know have a big business and have a lot of followers and make a lot of money and it was all about more and more. And I think sometimes, which is kind of a natural part of the ego and development that many people go through, but I think a lot of people they have to kind of exhaust all of those ego desires and have the realization that that's not going to lead to happiness and fulfillment long term to then come to the realization that sometimes less is more and to let go of a lot of these things that you thought were going to make you happy, but the reality is they're not. And so for me, I've really kind of embraced more of a simplified life today. Um, I mean, my life is not simple, don't get me wrong. It's very complex. Having multiple homes is very complex, but I learned to uh like the last couple years since I retired has a big focus of it has been removing things that are complexities in my life. Like, you know, I had several businesses in Canada that I've, you know, dissolved. You know, I had a company in Panama that I've dissolved. like I had a lot of companies. moving pieces in my life. Um, you know, I have a real estate property in Vancouver that's an investment property that I'm going to be looking to sell in the next couple years. I had a lot of stocks, a lot of different investments that I'm been selling off and rebalancing my portfolio and simplifying more to certain index funds. So, I kind of learned from me, I really value peace of mind. And at the time when I was younger, I didn't realize that the more that you stack these things and pursue more um it's not sustainable. It's um very challenging to manage and juggle all of that. And so now that I've been in the process of kind of eliminating a lot of stuff and simplifying, it's been such a huge relief and given me so much more peace of mind and joy. And so I kind of learned a lot about my ego and um how to dissolve parts of that and find more of a balance in my life. Uh but at the same time I also felt like I had to go through what I went through to pursue more and to achieve in the ways that I did to come to these realizations. So um you know that's a big thing I think also just not being defined by what I'm doing. I used to be defined by my business. My identity was tied up in a lot of that. I used to be a human doing rather than a human being. Now I don't achieve as much as I used to. I'm not as productive as much. I spend a lot of time just doing very non-productive things with my kids. And um you know I it's kind of crazy because I'll spend hours with my kids. And previously when you know before I had kids that was time that I'd spend improving myself and reading books and going to the gym and all of that. Uh but now it's been replaced with this time where I'm not you know growing and improving in those ways. But I still am growing and improving because you know I'm developing myself ability just to live life and enjoy life and to be with my kids and get joy and meaning out of that which is the ultimate goal. I think the ultimate name of the game is to be happy and fulfilled with your life. And so, um, yeah, it's kind of a different mindset shift, but I'd say that kind of mindset shift is probably the biggest thing over the last 10 years, um, that's been changed uh, quite a bit within me. Uh Martin says, "Thank you for such beautiful advice, Stephan. Is your bookw writing master course still available for me to view? " Uh, unfortunately not. I discontinued my courses as I mentioned before. So, I stopped selling uh my products and um yeah, it's kind of another reason just really simplifying my business and uh even though you know there's still sources of income, I just feel you know, I wasn't really able to take on the responsibility of continuing to sell products because when you sell products, you also have to provide a level of support. You have to update things. You have to make sure the website everything is working properly. And so, even for me, that was something I just didn't want to deal with anymore. And so I just felt the most responsible thing to do was just to discontinue selling it if I'm not going to be up to the task and uh the responsibilities of it. You also said you mentioned doing some light coaching earlier. How can I arrange coaching opportunity with you? Yeah, nothing um you know nothing that I'm offering right now. Um but I might do some one-on-one coaching or maybe some group coaching at some point. If you're subscribed to my email list, which there's a link in the description to um if you're there, then when I do offer coaching, I'll send an email to my subscribers and you'll know about it. Matteo says, "What's the best email to get in contact with you regarding any business proposals? " Uh that would be supportrolelifemaster. com. Uh but um I'm not really interested right now in any business proposals. How to stay out of credit card debt and invest money to retire like you. You got to manage your finances. You have to every you know what I used to do when I got when I used to be in credit card debt. But part of what got me out of it was developing more awareness of how I'm spending my money. So I used to use a Google spreadsheet where every week I would log into my online banking. I would write down how much money I spent that week on every different category from food, eating out, entertainment, gym, membership, phone, rent, you know, everything. And I would learn to live below my means. I learned to cut out a lot of things, make a lot of sacrifices. I ended up at one point selling my car and uh learning to take the bus around the city. Um, I worked extra hours at different jobs just to make money to pay off my credit cards. But ultimately once I did get out of debt, then it was just what I learned from that is how to be a good money manager and to make sure that I'm living way below my means that I'm very hesitant to upgrade my lifestyle and ultimately just took whatever money that I had left over, made sure that I invested that. Um, actually to correct that, it's not that I waited till what money was left over. I really learned the mindset of paying yourself first. So regardless, no matter what, you take a certain percentage of what you're making and you invest that. And uh the number that I always followed was 10%. But as I started making a lot more money in my business, those numbers became a lot higher. And I'd got to the point where 95% of the money I was making was just going towards investments. And so you do need a large sum of money that can produce income for you uh like dividends or rental income in order for you to be able to retire. But it's all starting small and building up to that. And it's learning to be offensive as well as defensive. So offensive meaning that you're working towards making more money and then defensive where you're saving money. You're keeping your expenses to a minimum. You're setting a budget for yourself. You know, if you just do that and you don't focus on offense, then it's going to be very difficult to create a lot of wealth in your life. You know, if you just stay with a job and you can save or invest a couple hundred bucks a month, you know, it's going to take you a long time to be able to retire off that amount of money. But on the other hand, if you are saving and investing money every month and then simultaneously building a business or a side hustle and you're thinking of ways to grow your income, you kind of combine those together, you can create a lot of wealth um in a relatively short period of time, you know, 10 years or so, you can really transform your financial situation and be in a on the tra trajectory of being retired in a certain period of time. There's a big movement now called FIRE. F I re uh stands for financial independence retire early. Um so there's a big movement of people now that have realized that their mindset is you know we want to retire early so we're going to make certain tradeoffs and sacrifices and work really hard in our 20s and 30s so that we can retire in our 40s. And um you know I kind of subscribe more to that mindset now for myself but there's a good subreddit if you guys use Reddit uh type in fir and you can join that subreddit and there's tons of people there sharing what their number is how much money they want to get to so that they can retire. Um but yeah, it's a lot of younger people that have embraced this lifestyle of retiring early in their life and it's a very different than what our parents and traditionally, you know, waiting till you're in your 60s retire, but it's a different way of living life, which is pretty cool. Looks like the stream might be lagging a little bit. Apologize for that. Okay, we'll do a few more questions here, guys, before we wrap up. Let's see. Uh, okay. Craig says, "Your experience with your relationship while becoming parents, sex, and still having a great relationship. " Yeah, Craig. uh you know so um I think any parent knows that when you have kids it definitely changes your relationship with your partner um you know all of a sudden when you have a baby that baby is attached to the mama and uh you know requires their 24-hour attention. Um, and so that's kind of a big shift for a relationship where now you all of a sudden have this third party that its needs are more important than your needs or partner's needs. And you have to put a lot of attention, a lot of energy into that to ensure that, you know, they're surviving and thriving. And so initially, you know, obviously when you have a baby, you have to change your expectations because uh, you know, you're not going to have the same relationship. It's kind of like a shock to the system. uh even the first several months, you know, until your baby can release melatonin and have a proper sleep schedule, first at least six months, you're going to be sleepd deprived. And so, you're not really going to have the energy, you're not going to have the focus as much to focus on building an intimate, romantic, passionate relationship. So, the most important thing that I've learned um now having my second son is how important help is. If you can have help, it will make it so much easier, but also help ensure that you can still have time for you and your partner. So, that help could be in the form of a family member. It nanny. Um, I mean, obviously, you could do daycare at a certain point as well. Uh, we personally chose to use a nanny. Uh, we have a full-time nanny that has been working with us for the last year and a half or so who's been amazing. And that's a gamecher because now all of a sudden, you know, as especially as your child gets a little bit older and whatnot, you know, they can take care of your child and then you and your partner have time for each other. So, it's kind of a strange and challenging thing to go through at first, but you have to really manage your expectations. You can't expect your relationship when you have a newborn baby to be the same as what it was before. And you kind of realize more how there's stages to life and there's stages to relationships. And when you realize that you're in a certain stage, you let go of the resistance of, you know, feeling like it should be different or feeling like, you know, bad because you don't have the same passion and romance after, you know, you just had a baby a month ago. you know, you realize that's it's a stage and that these stages change and then you'll be in a stage later when you can reinccorporate and build your relationship again. Um, so for us, you know, we kind of went through a stage where we let go of, hey, you know what? Let's just focus on having this baby, working together in partnership, and this let let's try to prioritize time for each other once a week or, you know, twice a week or whatever you can. But initially it's trying to make sure that you still have a strong relationship and partnership and then as time goes on then you can you know like with you know babies you have to get if you want to go on a date with your partner in the evening time you have to get a babysitter like there's different logistics that you have to manage with that. Um, so Tatiana and I, we've kind of now experienced, you know, the newborn stage with her first son, kind of rebuilding our relationship and focusing more on passion and intimacy and whatnot. And then now with another baby, it's kind of, you know, now we know what to expect and we know that there'll be a stage again where we can really dial things in again with our relationship. Um, so what I'm describing is just it's not a problem. you know, you can't make it to be a problem that you and your partner are not super romantic and passionate when you have a newborn. You know, you realize that there's a stage for that and uh you make sure you prioritize that, you know, when necessary. Um so yeah, you know, for us um you know, we were able to um uh you know, still maintain an amazing relationship throughout this journey together. Um there has been more challenges in the relationship especially earlier on uh you know one of the challenges being like I have so much respect for women what they go through with giving birth and everything but the fourth trimester is real there's a lot of hormonal changes that women go through there's postpartum challenges that can occur and so that's also part of a stage that you also have to recognize as temporary and so that kind of brought about some different challenges that we had to you know when uh go through but you know You still have to make sure that when you do have kids that you prioritize the relationship and at times you'll be able to prioritize it more than others, but you still make sure that you have good habits. You make sure that you spend time together, you're growing together, you um have intimacy together, you know, sex, all that sort of stuff. And I think because Tatiana and I built such a great foundation and learned so many tools and had so many resources at our disposal that's helped us in our relationship to bounce back to make it great regardless of you know having kids. But I will say that you know oftent times um you know and this is actually a different shift that I've had within myself is the purpose of becoming financially free the purpose of creating wealth. Before having kids, you know, my purpose of having wealth was, wow, you can travel the world and you can buy what you want when you want and do whatever you want and, you know, you can have nice things and you can have beautiful homes and you can do all these great things. You can invest in yourself and all that. Those are great benefits of becoming financially wealthy and financially free, but in my opinion, they're not the greatest benefits. The greatest benefits are that if you are going to have kids and a family, money is such a huge advantage and gamecher that allows you to like in my situation be able to retire or have as much time as you want to be with your kids. to be able to not have to have financial stress having kids is huge because that's where a lot of families struggle is, you know, the husband's working or, you know, both par, you know, both parents have to work, the child's in daycare, you know, they're struggling financially. It's just the relationship is going to be way less important because you're just trying to survive and kind of deal with all the challenges of having kids. But if you have money and you have time, then you can be present with your kids. You can hire people to clean, to cook, to you can have child care. You know, child care is very expensive. You know, when we gave birth to um Lucas when we were in Vancouver, to have a nanny in Vancouver or in North America is, you know, three, four, $5,000 a month. You know, you're spending $40,000 a year on a nanny. And then maybe you decide not to. You do daycare. Daycare is also incredibly expensive as well. So, when you have money and financial freedom, it changes your experience of being a parent in so many different ways. Not that they're still not challenges, but you can mitigate and lessen so many of them in so many ways. And that's what I'm most grateful for now about the decisions that I made to become financially free is that my relationship with my wife, kids, my peace of mind, my mental health, all of that is so much better because of the financial position that I'm in. So, if you can before you have kids create financial wealth, financial freedom, it'll make your experience of being a parent and your relationship so much better. Um, it's pretty amazing. Uh, do you think YouTube will still be big in 5 to 10 years? I'm sure it will. I don't have doubts about that. There's not really strong competitors to that. Um, let's see. We'll do a few more questions before I wrap up here. Uh, Dee says, De or Dak says, "Hi Stephan, do you have regrets moving to Panama? Have you found high quality people, activities, and opportunities there? I have the chance to move this year either to South America or South Pacific. Uh, no, I do not regret it at all. I'm so grateful that I did. Uh, definitely grateful that I did in 2018 and left Canada in 2018. Uh, I would not have the life that I have today if I didn't. And I definitely wouldn't have been able to retire and have the lifestyle that I have now if I didn't move to Panama. Panama, moving to Panama accelerated my wealth um probably by several years. Um so the cost of living here that the home that I live in and the house that I built, you know, if I were to have a home like this on the beach or a home of this size in Vancouver or California, you know, it'd be $10 million plus. You know, I'm looking to buy a place in Panama City, so I could also have a place that I spend weekends with my family to go there. You can get in Costa D, which is the high-end part of Panama City. Uh, you can get a 3,000 to 4,000 square foot apartment, which is about four bedrooms with a maid's quarters for about a million dollars. Uh, you can get a 5,000 square foot apartment, which is pretty much the size of a house, a pretty big house, a whole floor with an amazing view and great amenities for just over a million dollars, maybe $1. 3 million, you know. So, you can, you know, on the other hand, you know, if you're going to try to get a home apartment that size in Vancouver, I mean, you're just not going to find many. You know, there's not many apartments that are 4,000 5,000 ft², and if they are, they're $10 million plus. And so, um, the cost of living, I mean, even getting help here. You can hire nannies and cleaners for a fraction of the cost of what it would cost you in North America. Um, there are some things that are more expensive, but yeah, I mean, I wouldn't I made the best decision like with it's just very evident that I did. I live in a great community. Um, I have friend great friends here and just a community of people that are so nice and awesome that even though they're not really necessarily into the same exact things that I'm into, they're just some of the best people that I've met live in this community because when you live in a gated community, people care about their neighbors. Like it's different than like living in a city. You can live in an apartment building and you see your neighbors in the elevator. They don't talk to each other. here. It's a different vibe and a different energy. And so I really love and appreciate the community of people that I've been able to surround myself with. Um it's easy to make friends and meet people when you have kids. You know, here we actually at our house we host uh gettogethers for, you know, um pool parties and things like that. So we have a lot of people come over here and um there's people I've been able to meet, you know, meet that also have kids. We go to all the different birthday parties that are here and stuff. So in that sense it's been really great to meet people but financially it was the best decision. Um you know the biggest challenge I'd say is boredom at times but the way I've always looked at that is that if my biggest problem is being bored sometimes and that's not a problem. That's like a great problem to have in life. There's many bigger problems that I could have than being bored once in a while. So if that's my problem I'll take that any day of the week. Um, but yeah, you know, it's definitely was a great decision without a doubt. Um, let's see. Do you already have a name for the second baby? Yep. His name is Matthew. So, we have Matthew and Lucas. Uh what does Panama offer the other South American countries does not? Um I mean I haven't explored all the other countries in South America but uh Pan one of the biggest advantages are that Panama is a territorial tax system. So you only pay taxes on income that you generate within Panama. Uh taxes that you make outside of the country you don't pay taxes on. Um uh there's no taxes on capital gains of certain investments like stocks or um cryptocurrency. There's no um uh you know when you do invest there's withholding taxes if you invest in Canada or the US, but that's only on dividends. It's not on capital gains. So your investments can grow a lot faster um by not being taxed on capital gains. So there's just a lot of great tax incentives and benefits. Uh Panama's the most developed in Central America. Um they have a great financial banking sector. stable economy. They're based on the US dollar. So a lot of people want to invest in Panama because they're not changing the currency from US dollar to another currency that might not be as stable. So that if you were to, you know, if you're buying in pesos and then you have to sell that investment and then you want to transfer back to US dollar, uh then, you know, you could take a loss or, you know, go through uh a foreign exchange, which you might not want to. So very stable for investment. Um very safe politically, generally quite stable. Um there's a lot of luxuries that you can have here. So you can have a higher quality of life in some ways. Um there's a there's definitely inequality in Panama. So there's um a big divide between the upper class and the lower class. Um but there's a lot of upper class, a lot of foreigners and expats that come to Panama as well. So there's great community of people like that you can also find. So those are just kind of some of them. I mean, definitely there's trade-offs uh that you make coming to a different country like this that you kind of miss out some things that you might have in your home country, but you kind of have to weigh what those trade-offs are and whether or not it's worth it. Uh let's see. Uh, I know there's a lot of good questions here, but I'm they're just a little bit deeper to dive into right now, and I want to try to pick one more question, but maybe something that's a little bit lighter. Um, okay. I'll kind of wrap it up maybe with this one. This is from what is real and um kind of adds to what someone else said. He said, "Hi Stephan, I'm still skeptical about YouTube because I've seen a lot of scams in there. Um what would you say to help uh me to convince me that this is real? " And this other person said, "These days there are about a million self-development gurus. It's very difficult to decipher teachers that actually want to see you grow versus I just want to make a quick buck off your vulnerability. Um, yeah. So, I'd say, you know, it's definitely true. There's definitely a lot of, you know, wolf in sheep's clothing out there. Um there's a lot of people out there that um are looking to you know sell different things or people that uh you know might teach different things and you know maybe um yeah maybe there could be a level of a scam that's there or maybe they're not integrous or honest or authentic or whatever it is and that could be very challenging to navigate that. Um, for me, you know, because I've, you know, for many, many years, I've invested a lot into myself and consumed a lot of content from a lot of different people. To be honest with you, there's a lot of people that I've learned from that are not the most integrous people. They're not the most spiritual developed people. They're not the most conscious people. They're not the most they're not the people that um I'd want to learn from today, you know, or learn from in order to be the most fulfilled or happiest in my life. But I think there are some teachers that I had that they were, you know, especially when you kind of get into the internet marketing community, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I got exposed to that community early on. Even you know I got exposed uh even before that when I was 17 years old to the pickup artist community and in uh there's a lot of gurus that also are not they're kind of shady guys you know they're guys that you know are not um don't treat women with respect and it's all about just taking from women and getting laid and you know it's just a lot of kind of that sort of stuff in it and I think for me what helped me was that I always had certain teachers that kind of steered me in the right direction and instilled in me certain values and I think one of them was uh someone like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Jim Ran, Wayne Dyer, Echart Tol, you know, Wayne Dyer, Echart Tol. kind of more spiritual uh types of teachers, but I had these kind of teachers like that I think instilled in me some of the right values that as I was kind of navigating these other spaces that I was in, I kind of was able to develop some morality and ethics to know what's right and what's wrong, you know, what's good and what's bad. And so even though um and sometimes I got lost in it, like I remember when I got into the pickup community, I would kind of learn from some guys that they would teach you these rehearsed canned openers and routines and to memorize scripts. And so I kind of got into that and they would, you know, if you ever read or heard of the book The Game, I remember when I was 18, I read that and they would kind of teach you how to what is called a neg a woman. like you kind of give her an off-handed compliment, backhanded compliment, but it's kind of like a little bit of something that kind of lower their self-esteem. So, there's kind of these things that I remember kind of getting indoctrinated with earlier on because I would was very naive and I kind of look up to these different gurus and whatnot, but I think I always kind of got out of that stuff because I had good mentors that kind of instilled in me the right values. Tony Robbins kind of teaching me about contribution and he you know he always emphasizes the secret to living is giving and to add value and to do what's right and you know you kind of learn some of that stuff and kind of helps you keep your ego in check and not kind of fall into some traps that otherwise I might have fallen into. Um, that's also where having a good spiritual practice comes into play. Whether that's, you know, Christianity or whatever you might believe, some of that can also helps you stay on course. And what's useful about that is it helps you if you can kind of have some of those things that help you grow consciously into higher consciousness. you can kind of identify other teachers that are a bit of a scam or maybe not a scam, but they're just not the most integrous, most conscious people. Um, you know, so you can find people out there that you can identify, wow, that person has a really big ego or that person's just really consumed by money or they're really pushy or they're really, you know, you can kind of maybe pick up on some of that those kind of those cues as you consume their stuff and that kind of is an indicator for you that maybe this is something that you don't really connect or resonate with. Um, so that I'd say is one thing to help you navigate that. I think there's other things like you can generally find people that you know with their content and get a maybe a sense of whether they are honest, integrous. You can get a sense with their content of just how much they share, how transparent they are. Um, you know, someone that's just, you know, you get a lot of benefit from what they're sharing. um you know if you do decide to invest in what they're selling that they offer a money back guarantee you know maybe you can you know uh there's always payment protections that you have today if you're going to buy something you can use PayPal and with PayPal if they're not delivering like if they just take your money they don't deliver to you then you can file a dispute with PayPal so there's things like that as precautions to avoid scams and obviously you make sure you don't just send someone money you know blindly or whatever without some asurances um and you know making sure that there's a good reputation of that person. So there's certain things that you can do to help navigate whether or not that is someone that is a legitimate person that you should learn from. But you know for me I definitely probably did learn from people that were not the most integrous that were not you know um I never been scammed per se. Uh but I definitely paid for things that were just not that valuable. Um, but I'd always find ways to still get value from it and learn from it in what whatever way that I can. And I think at different stages of my life, there are certain teachers that help me at different stages based on the consciousness that I was in at that time in my life as well. So, yeah, sometimes you have to navigate through different teachers. Um, you know, I've had, you know, I've had different teachers like I remember I used to look up to Robert Kiosaki, you know, and Robert Kiyosaki I benefited a lot from his books. mindset and his teachings. Uh I've met Robert Kiosaki. I've interviewed him. But to be honest, Robert Kiasaki is not someone I'm really inspired by. Like I don't feel, you know, after I have the chance to meet him and kind of know more about his story and all of that. There's certain aspects of him that I think he maybe was good to learn from in that stage of my life, but he's not the most, in my opinion, developed person to learn from um in some of these other areas of life as well. And you have to kind of gauge that too. You know, some people you might learn from they're good with maybe money or maybe at you can learn some marketing skills or sales skills, but maybe you don't model them in relationships or spiritually or their happiness or their health or other areas of their life as well. So, you kind of have to navigate through that. It's not easy. And yeah, sometimes you may maybe you might be disappointed like I've uh known teachers that ended up running a cult, you know, and kind of been kind of shocked by that or disappointed that you find out certain things from them. But, you know, you just I still can decipher what I learned from them. The value I still got from them at that time was still good. And um you know, if there are things like that, I can just kind of pull pieces from different people. And I'd also say don't idolize anyone. and don't put them on a such a pedestal because then you're setting yourself up to be disappointed. No one's perfect. Everybody has their challenges. Everyone's made their mistakes and whatnot. So, you know, you don't need to expect perfection from every teacher that's out there, but just try to pull whatever you can from each one. And um you know, and then just try to find over time the ones that are most consistently deliver for you and uh are honest that you feel and are ethical and do the best you can with it. So, it's not easy, but there's definitely a lot more out there that you have to sift through and um you know, always you can go back to the old school guys as I often do as well um that I always enjoy going through which are the Tony Robbins and people like that um that still have great content or the content from back then is still very relevant and can still benefit you uh tremendously as well. So, thank you guys. Uh pleasure connecting with you. I'll have to do this more often. Um, I know there's a lot of great questions here, but I wish you guys well. God bless you. Um, you know, and um, if you do want to learn, uh, more from me, there's tons of videos and content that you could still find here on this channel. And, uh, I'll be sure to update you guys in the coming months about my experience now with having a second child. And I just wish you guys the best in whatever it is that you're up to. So, God bless you guys. I'll see you again soon. Take care.