My Favourite Failure: Making millions after failing seven businesses in four years - Peter Kell

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0:35It's all the tooling and automations you need to develop your people. You can even hook it up to payroll so that if someone hits an objective, it'll be reflected in their pay. If developing your people is a top priority, check out Personio at personio.com forward slash secret leaders. That's personio.com forward slash secret leaders. There's a link in the show notes. it's going to put you in the most jaw-dropping fucking mind-boggling mind-scattering state ever of unbelievable i can't believe i'm living like this i'm living in the caribbean there's fucking hot swedish babes all around and there's airplanes flying in front of me landing this is beautiful i'm making it rain i just made 50 grand last month like you are going to be fucking shocked that's peter kell a serial entrepreneur and successful marketer talking about what it feels like to get rich.

1:26Peter believes in going all the way. That's why last year he lost 95 % of the millions he'd made. But that's not the failure we're here to talk about. Peter's going to tell you about his lowest moment, how he turned his life around and how to pick yourself up, even after failing seven businesses in a row.

1:56Things all changed for Peter in his teenage years. Yeah, I mean, it all started for me when my dad went to jail when I was in high school. I was a senior in high school and my dad went to jail for this really stupid thing that he was, he was like the nicest guy ever, but he got caught making a website with some other people that turned out to be a fraud. He never took the website down. So they took him to jail for a year and a half. And I was like this skateboarder kid. And it is one of those things where I just like kind of ignored it, you know, but when he got out of jail, my parents wanted to move to the middle of nowhere.

2:26I was living in California in like a normal suburb, but they wanted to move to like buttfuck middle of nowhere in the woods. And I didn't want to go. I was 20 years old. I wanted to live my life and have a good time and be a young guy just graduated high school. So I really didn't want to go back to this kind of, you know, they had a basement up there. I didn't want to go back. So I got a job at a skateboard shop. I didn't go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I wanted to skateboard. But after about a year and a half of sleeping on my friend's floors, you know, my car started to explode.

2:54And I realized that I would be sleeping on floors for the rest of my life if I didn't, you know, get out of this kind of shitty job as a skateboard person. So eventually I gave up on my dream of just wanting to be a skateboarder and reluctantly moved back into the basement, you know, and no surprise here, I just fell into like the worst depression ever. Stuck in the basement, not getting out of bed, Peter was in a bad spot. Fortunately, his dad noticed and wanted to do something about it. He ran a small web design company, but also loved buying get rich online courses. He kept sending them to Peter.

3:30One of them was like really aggressive. It was trying to get us to buy their like sales. There's a sales page. It was trying to get us to buy their course. And it was like, hey, man, do you feel like a loser? Do you live in your parents' basement and wish you could make money on the internet with your feet in the sand, dating hot Swedish models out in the Caribbean, making$50 ,000 every two weeks, rep around in Lambos and McLarens. Fuck yeah, I do. Are you kidding me? Holy shit. Oh my God. Because I really felt there was a secret part of me that felt like I just sacrificed the most precious moments of my life, which is the early twenties, you know, the early twenties and they were gone.

4:10And I just wanted them to be worth something. I didn't want to sacrifice it for nothing. And then when I discovered this vision, if you will, of this fucking dope life of being a young, rich guy, I was like, oh my God, if I could make being young and rich happen by 27, 28, 29, I would sacrifice my early 20s for that. That would be worth it. Peter set about his goal with gusto. He started seven businesses in four years. He hustled. So it started out with like building websites and then it pivoted to like building mobile websites. And then I realized I was really bad at selling. And so we got into like lead generation.

4:50I started a lead generation company for rehab centers where I would like do radio ads and then inspire people to get into rehab if they have kind of drug problems. And that was, that was, that looked like it'd be a really solid business. But one of my first clients. I remember after three months of working hard to put this together, and we finally got my first client, and I'm finally feeling like I'm going to get the fuck out of this basement, right? It was just the mission to get out of the basement is all this ever was, right? It was my first client overdosed on heroin and died after like two years of getting people out of rehab centers.

5:21In hindsight, he said his big mistake was believing he could be a successful founder, that he could build businesses. He should have been focused on becoming an apprentice to a master, but he didn't realize this until well after he hit rock bottom after his seventh business he'd built a popular chrome extension but couldn't monetize it my landlord was fucking pissed because i already missed rent and i get into the house and she's like pete what are the fuck what are you doing with these stupid startups you need to get a job like you already missed rent you're about to miss a second rent you you can't do this you need to stop with your stupid fucking startups you need to get out of here i'm like fine so i go on i go on like Craigslist, like this job place.

6:01And I find that I get this job at like a cold calling center where now all of a sudden, after four years and seven failed companies, I'm sitting in this cold call center in a cubicle and a sea of other people feeling like my soul's getting sucked out every single day. And there is just, just smiling and dialing for dollars, you know, just smiling and dialing. And I remember a few days into it, I had this thought, it was like, you know, would I rather be in this dead end job, like making a living or be working on my dreams and homeless? like that was this kind of idea. Right. And I was like, after a few days, I was like, fuck it homeless.

6:34You know, I tell my job, I tell my boss, fuck you. I'm out of here. I quit. You know, I go back to my, my roommate, she evicts me immediately. The second the car repossession company comes to take my car. I have to store everything I have into a storage unit in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I remember driving my bank account got overdrafted by like$70. Right. And I only have$40 left. So I get on this like fucking scooter, right riding over to Chase Bank and this was like a hot Las Vegas 100 degree dusty day and I'm like sweating balls on a fucking scooter riding to the bank and I walk into the bank looking like a homeless person because I'm just sweaty and dusty and dirty right at the bank teller this motherfucker who's working like a night a$14 an hour dead-end job looks at me like I am the scum of the earth like I am just the biggest piece of wasted trash he's ever seen in his whole life because I can't fucking be responsible or whatever.

7:26He has no idea the four years of like pain and suffering and the a hundred plus books I read to try to make this all happen. And I'm like, look, bro, I'm down$70. You know, I only have$40 left. Can you just cut me? Can we just break even or something? And he just fucking looks at me with disgust and he like takes my money and he tells me to get out and he closes my bank account. And I just remember like getting back on my scooter and just being like, fuck you, you know, like you motherfucker, like I'm going to show this motherfucker. And I ended up going back. I have to ask my, one of my friends if I could sleep on their floor, which was actually the most painful thing out of all the biggest failed businesses.

8:02Now there's nothing more painful than having to reveal how fucked you just got and how bad you are, or even the situation that you're in after so many years of struggle, you know, you secretly just want to have at least a little bit of recognition and acknowledgement and something to show for all your hard work. But when nothing even worse is nothing, like you're at the lowest 1 % of results, right? After four years of trying to get better results, it's painful. I remember at the lowest moment, I found this book called Conversations with God by a guy named Neil Donald Walsh. And it's a story about an old man who just broke his neck and looked up at this guy and he's like, fuck you, God.

8:42You know, he's like, why does life have to be so hard? Why can't I get anything that I want? It all seems to slip away. When is my life going to take off? And he here's this voice. It's like, Hey, you want really want to hear an answer to that? And he's like, yeah, I do. And I remember they were talking about, cause I was trying to get rich and nothing I was doing was working. It felt like every time I tried to do this, it would get pushed away from me. And it felt like my life was never going to take off. So I was really feeling with this, with this guy in this book. And I remember there's this line, he's like, listen, you cannot have what you want because you're constantly creating reality.

9:15And if the things that you want are things that don't actually exist in your life, if you want something that means you don't actually have it. So you're constantly manifesting a life where you don't have it. When is your life going to take off? When you choose for it to take off and you decide right now it's taking off. I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Coincidentally, I walk past the fucking counter, the kitchen counter, and I see a toilet paper roll with a cockroach inside of it. And I'm like, I'm going to fucking kill this cockroach, right? Because fucking stupid little guy just staring at me.

9:43So I take a piece of toilet paper and I shove it down the top and I get this guy trapped inside of here. And my roommate looks at me. He's like, Peter, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, I'm killing this cockroach right now. That's what I'm doing. And I take it and I throw it in the drain and I turn on the drain and it dies. And I sit back down on the couch. I'm like, holy shit. What did I just say there? Right. I didn't say I wanted to kill the cockroach. I didn't say I needed to kill the cockroach. I said, I am killing the cockroach. And then I fucking did it. Right. I was like, I think that's what they're saying inside of this book is like, I don't want to get rich.

10:13I don't need to get rich. I am becoming rich right now. My actions are becoming rich. And I start to feel that fucking feeling of like, oh my God, like feel like there's a vibration in the air, like I just tuned into something or whatever. And I started visualizing this and started practicing this on my friend's floor with these fucking roaches around. And I begin to get really obsessed over that. In the course of the next couple of months, it all of a sudden the universe, which seemed to be slipping through my hands, the cards begin collapsing on their own. All of a sudden things started coming together on their own.

10:47It went from falling apart to falling together in the weirdest way. I ended up building this little product I could sell for$3 ,000 to my old boss, kickstarted my life, bought a scooter, got myself a job at this time as a media buyer and an affiliate network. So I was finally in the right seat on the right bus doing the skill set that I knew I needed to get in order to get rich, which was media buying. And then through that, I started this mastermind group where I started to meet different people and network with different people. And one of the guys who ended of joining were like two of the guys were some of the biggest affiliate marketers in the entire world.

11:20And I took this like the biggest opportunity in my life. And I just like, just had this relationship with them. And eventually they're like, yo, why don't you come work for us? And suddenly I went from sleeping on my floor to sleeping inside of their mansion. They let me come over to their mansion, sleep on their floor and teach me Facebook ads and how to do high volume Facebook ads in my fucking life just took off from there like a rocket. That was the tipping point. Peter's life took off with media buying. He found the right seat on the right bus, which he thinks is the key first step for becoming wealthy.

11:52He achieved his dream from the basement. He got rich quick. What did it feel like? You're going to start doing the things you've always wanted to do. I mean, if you ask somebody like, hey, if you were making 50 grand every two weeks, what percentage of your dreams would you make come true? Would you be able to make coming true? They're like 90 % of them. I can make 90 % of my dreams come true. You know, if I had that much money, I think that's a fair thing to say. So fuck. Yeah. I mean, you're going to go through a long list of everything you've ever wanted to do. Right. For sure. Now there's like mental models that will cause that caused me to feel sadness in the past.

12:26Like I remember the first time I became a millionaire, I will look down, there's a million dollars in my account and I'm walking and I just felt this weird, sad feeling of like, I thought this was going to be a whatever, you know, this, this, that, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but having money in your account isn't the thing that makes you happy. It's the experiences that you go get a do that makes you stoked. It's not the money in the account. It's the next fucking years of having a blast that it all adds up to be. Sadly for Peter, but fortunately for us as storytellers, he made a lot of money, lost it, and then did it all again.

13:00The second time around, he got rich, having scaled a skincare brand to$40 million in 10 months and selling his stake. In this story lies his wisdom for how you should pick yourself up if you experience a big failure. I recently just had a monster failure. You know, I sold my skincare brand, made a massive fortune, and I had a 95 % catastrophic disaster. I lost 95 % of my money that I had just made from selling this company due to a crypto fucking explosion. And I had no job, no business, no team, no product. And I was alone in Stockholm, Sweden. And even worse, I didn't even want to do it all over again.

13:41I had just did the business thing. So I had no drive either. Right. So I knew that first off, I was properly fucked for sure. I knew, and I knew the only way out of this was like manifesting. I'm a big person in like the law of attraction and believer in manifesting and stuff like that. So after a little bit of time, you know, the first thing, what do you have to manifest? Like, what would I have to manifest to get out of this situation? And I knew like a business partner who was also a mentor was the person that I would have to manifest. I would shortcut my ability to get back to, right? An abundant situation.

14:15All this time I'm devastated, right? I'm devastated. I'm broken. I'm fucking getting wrecked. I'm crying all the time in my room just because like, there's not a lot of hope. There's not a lot of sight. I don't know what to do. On top of that, I'm alone in Sweden. All my American friends went back to America and I'm fucking have no job or doing nothing. I'm just chilling. Right. And, uh, so I started studying manifesting every single day, particularly from a guy named Neville Goddard, who's one of the most OG manifestors ever. Cause I wanted to bring myself back up on manifesting skillset. And his whole thing is, listen, you know, the wake behind the boat does not drive the boat.

14:52It doesn't matter what's going on around you. It doesn't matter what's happening to you right now. Any moment you can turn the wheel and create a better life starting today. And in order to achieve that life, the first thing you have to do is you have to feel like it's already happening. And this is what I call like the battle of faith is for me, even though my whole world was burning down around me, I had to find a way to believe that something amazing was about to happen to me, that I was going to manifest this partner, that I had this situation. So it was like, I had to ignore the fire and focus on where I was going and keep my eye on the best case scenario prize that I could create.

15:28And not only that, but find a way to feel the emotion as if I already have it. You know, the focus on the fear and the failure and the horrific thing that's going on behind you, is it gonna help you? It's just gonna attract more of that. It's this weird thing that even though you're barreling towards a fucking tree at 100 miles an hour about to be destroyed, you have to look away from the tree and look towards the road. That's the only way. You have to look at the best case scenario, how your life could turn out and you have to pivot your attention and your energy to focus on this new road where life is working out and things are falling in line and things are falling together and you have to feel excited about that.

16:05right? One of my favorite quotes is faith is feeling, which means if you actually believe the universe was going to do something amazing with your life, you would feel incredible. Even though you're barreling towards a tree and you're fucking terrified, you pivot to, no, actually my life is taking off right now. Everything is coming together. The most amazing things are about to happen to me or happening to me right now and pivoting towards that. And it was through that state, I believe this state of abundance and state of thinking that I ran into my now business partner and mentor, Vishen Lakiani, who's the founder of Mindvalley.

16:37I ran into him on a boat in Croatia. I remember going back to his house and I was like, Vishen, what's your wifi password? He's like, oh, it's$10 billion. With$10 billion, my wifi password is$170 million. I was like, Jesus Christ, I'm here to help. I'm here to help this Mindvalley company. How much equity would I have to have in Mindvalley if they were worth$10 billion to make 170 million dollars like oh my god that's like 1.7 percent you do not need a lot of fucking points on the board to make some serious cash over here so i cut him a deal and bought it boom we were back in business that was it so the moral of the story is i mean focus on the life you're creating the wake behind the boat does not drive the boat it doesn't matter how many times you failed you can go a different direction any moment you want

17:28Peter Kell, a force of nature who's bounced from failure to success like few people we know. Thanks for listening to this episode. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter. If you like this episode, please hit follow or subscribe. See you next time.