Success Lessons From A High School Dropout Turned PhD

I woke up today with a renewed sense of purpose. As the sunlight beamed through my blinds in San Diego, I reflected on what my life had become. 

*An inbox of potential clients requesting proposals from me, wanting to purchase business and life strategies

*My magazine, SHIFT Advanced Life Design now has a following and readers that LOVE my articles about high level performers in all industries

*My new book on speed learning, The Next Level Supercharged racing up the Amazon rankings and people sending me pics on Facebook of them holding it and giving testimonials about the efficacy of the techniques

*Finally identifying my tribe and making amazing business relationships with CEOs, vets, NYT best selling authors and coaches around the world

*Waking up to media requests for interviews, and speaking requests from schools and colleges

Still blown away by these opportunities. 

It wasn’t always like this.

In fact, ten years ago, you would have had a VERY hard time telling me that

this was possible.

I’ve always been a fighter.

Growing up in a low income household filled with drugs and crime was tough. But I endured. My grandmother and aunt took me in when they could and provided normalcy but my learning disability and lack of hope took root and I failed out of high school. Then 2 colleges.

By 19, I was sleeping on the floor, couldn’t afford meat, and had lost my job.

I joined the Air Force, finished college, and moved to San Diego.

By 30, I was living in a tiny, dark studio, STRUGGLING with my doctoral studies. I was eating moldy tuna fish sandwiches, my relationship had ended, and my self esteem was at an all time low. I was pretty much like Bradley Cooper at the beginning of Limitless. 

I wanted to write this today to detail EXACTLY what I did to go from one extreme to another.

Because I want YOU to have these opportunities.

You might be in a place in life wondering, “Where did it go wrong? I went to school, I raised a family, I lived with integrity, why am I SO UNFULLFILLED?”

The answer to this question is that you never discovered your purpose.

You probably never wrote down your talents, you never thought about the IMPACT you could make, and never created a strategic plan to CHASE AND CATCH YOUR DREAMS.

There are a ton of “experts” on your Facebook feed every day. Promising you everything under the sun using rented sports cars, dry erase boards with meaningless “lessons” and selling you overpriced, poorly written content that will leave you EVEN further behind after all is said and done.

This is the point where your inner Magnum PI voice says, “What are you selling, Rob?”

Nothing.

Anyone that knows me, knows that I give away 80% of my content. I give away apprenticeships, help mentor people, give gentle nudges in the right direction and don’t need to pitch except in limited offers.

My clients find me. 

My audience joins my Facebook group (LINK), takes advantage of my high impact freebies (LINK) and overall has a really fun time working with me. 

My message resonates with them and they want action TODAY. I don't need gimmicks, dry erase boards or to spam your email.

So here are my best practices that can help you FIND YOUR PURPOSE.

1. Isolate your strengths and outsource your weaknesses.

I sat down with paper and wrote down my greatest areas of achievement. I was a pretty good writer, good with people and awful at graphic design. By isolating what I was good at and what needed work, I focused on the area of highest aptitude.

For my graphic design work, I hired a pro designer. Trying to do it all WASTES TIME.

2. Develop your mindset and discipline.

Remember that you are better than your circumstances. Farrah Grey grew up in the poverty ridden projects of Chicago and sold his first company………at age 8.

Develop your habits and constantly feed your mind by listening to business podcasts, reading articles to help you grow and learning from experts. If you need help finding REALLY good content, my ENTIRE catalog of SHIFT magazines are FREE to read here: LINK

You can learn from Navy SEALs, best selling authors, and the best coaches IN INDUSTRY for free!

3. Upgrade everything.

Challenge yourself to work at your best level. Start distancing yourself from negative friends and people that complain all the time. Hire someone to make you branded graphics and SHOWCASE YOUR EXPERTISE in something.

Read Limitless and realize that your ONLY roadblocks in life are in your mind.
Your life, your relationships, your residence, your income and your job are ALL results from your choices. So make it a habit to think about DIRECT and CONCENTRATED actions to make better choices. Sorry to get all Matrix on you but its true.

If I didn’t imagine a better life for myself, I would STILL be in Eureka, probably working in a bowling alley, fat and lonely, wishing something would happen.


4. TAKE ACTION.

Your life doesn’t change until you commit to DOING SOMETHING. Not next week, not sometime, not as a stupid New Year’s Resolution. I don’t wait till Jan to make a commitment to lose weight, I train just as hard in June as I do in Jan. Its about TAKING ACTION.

*Hire a coach to help you “see” blind spots
*Ask for feedback about yourself and what you should be doing

*Look past my internal fears and realize that YOU CAN HELP SOMEONE END THEIR PAIN. That alone should inspire you to action

*Create a schedule and a plan for EVERY week and stick to it
*On paper, write out your best future self and start journaling (this is a GREAT guide for how to do it: LINK  )
*Create balance. Incorporate fitness, family, nutrition, fun, and REWARDS into your venture


In closing, remember three things:

1. You’re smarter than you have ever let yourself believe.

2. The only people that will judge you are the ones that NEVER achieve.

3. Your mind will either keep you paralyzed with fear, constantly being caught in the false web of safety OR you can develop it to create your HIGHEST levels of performance and optimism.

Your consciousness controls your mind, your mind controls your body but YOU control your consciousness. I know it sounds very Dr. Strange, but once I realized this concept, things started working out. REALLY WELL.

Need help finding your path? Find me at www.yournextlevelofsuccess.com. Lets talk. – Rob the Warrior Strategist. 

How I Conquered My Learning Disability

  I’ve always been unbelievably bad at academia. My ninth grade report card was Ds and Fs. I failed out of high school my senior year and had to go to continuation school. I just couldn’t focus nor find interest in most subjects that didn’t involve reading about fun things.

The first college I attended, I took 2 classes. I earned a D and an F. The next college I went to, I ended up failing out of as well.

I enlisted in the military after getting a VERY high score on the ASVAB, the test measuring aptitude for military jobs. In military technical school, I learned bomber avionic fundamentals and was reprimanded several times for failing tests. I came as close as you possibly can to failing out of school yet again, but barely passed.

I had a learning disability. A processing disorder that doesn’t let me connect things like a “normal” person. My brain and attention LITERALLY shut off within 40 seconds if I am not completely involved in what I am doing. You can imagine how delightful this is for relationships and jobs.

My instructors constantly made fun of me, a pool was set up so they could bet on when I would fail out, and my eventual supervisors told me I was the dumbest person they had ever met, and that I was wasting my time going back to college during active duty.

I refocused on my studies, and realized something. Once I had a goal (you have to have a degree to become an officer), I could focus and learn.

My goal to become an Air Force Officer outweighed my limited attention span.

I ended up moving to SD and was hired as an Engineering teacher.

Let’s stop for a minute and consider this. I never passed Pre-Algebra. Never took my SATs, never got an Engineering degree and now I’m going to teach it to high school kids??

I then figured out that by reading the curriculum heavily, creating the projects first, and then making diagrams, that this stuff was doable.

I ended up getting my Masters and then a Doctorate in Education. What changed?

The way that I learned.

I used my learning teams more. Drew diagrams for everything. Asked more questions. Balanced my own happiness into my studies by working out, listening to comedy and hanging out with my funniest friends.

This is a diagram I drew. 

Yes, there’s a minotaur surfing. Yes there’s a talking shark. Jet plane and pine trees. This diagram shows the doctoral path and kept me in the right mindset to finish. Childish? Yes. Idiotic? Possibly. Tell that to the 50% of people that let their stress levels get high enough so they quit the program. Maybe everyone should be drawing minotaurs.

I knew that establishing my “Why” early on would help keep me focused during the tough times that break most people.

What was my Why?

If I could finish a Doctorate, I could inspire thousands that ANYTHING is possible.

I was conferred on Oct 19^th, 2013 after 6.5 years of hell. Foreclosure notices, no money, no loans left, a relationship ending, and sometimes eating tuna fish on moldy bread. I took a picture of this day to remind me that things WOULD get better.

The final test of these techniques, my mental black belt, if you will, came when my boss in the Reserves said that they were sending me to military tactical data links school.

Imagine computer networking design………

For EVERY piece of military equipment in the US arsenal in EVERY branch of service.

I was more than terrified, but I signed up. These are two standard diagrams I found online.

I can actually read and understand these. Seriously. 

I went to the Joint Interoperability Center at Ft Bragg for the Basic Tactical Data Links Course.

Vets from all four branches of service were there, plus civilian defense contractors. I immediately realized on Day 1, that I would have to use every damn trick I knew and invented a few new ones. The basic course was a week long, one test at the end. It covered about 1200 pages of material. Eight hours a day. 122 slide Powerpoints from instructors that literally traveled the world teaching this stuff.

Here is how I did it:

1. Establish why. (This training pays a LOT on the outside/its necessary for my military requirements/if I fail, I go back to the unit with stigma)

2. Accurately assess the situation:
Cons:
*Most everyone was Active Duty and had experience working with these systems for YEARS. I was a Reservist in uniform 36 days a year, and have NEVER worked with any of this stuff. I’m learning this stuff from scratch.

*Learning disability that tunes out anyone that starts lecturing after 40 seconds.

*This stuff is LEGIT hard. Its an unbelievable firehose of systems, programming, military operational orders written in a condensed format and more.

*Oh great, I not only have to learn Air Force, but Army, Marines, Navy, Foreign Service setups and more.

Pros:

*I’m a speed learning expert. I have written a book on it, lectured in colleges, and teach PhD students how to use my techniques to crush their programs.

*I don’t have the limitations of soft ass people. I can give up basic comforts, devote HOURS a night and early morning to study, and have a work ethic that drops most people.

*I have the diligence of a complete psychopath. I take freezing cold showers daily, and once I have a committed desire for success, I cannot be denied.

*I have read Limitless obsessively and have also brought safe and natural brain drugs with me.

*I know how to supercharge my intelligence into a high learning state (jumping jacks plus cold shower plus brain drugs plus no breakfast plus about 100mg of caffeine)

I passed.

Then they upped the ante. The Advanced Course was legendary because it was something like 8 tests in two weeks covering everything from basic plus a TON of new content plus a group presentation. Fail two tests in a row and you’re gone. Fail any two tests in the series and you’re gone.

Bring it.

I was motivated walking around Bragg seeing Green Berets, Rangers and conventional Army doing PT at 5am in huge formations.

I buckled down. We formed study groups. I committed 3-5 hours a day studying EVERY DAY. Weekend off? I studied 8-10 hours a day. I drew diagrams, I made lists, I asked instructors about difficult concepts. I found Marines that were experts and pinged them for knowledge.

I created a ritual for tests, instead of fearing test day, I aggressively charged in. I didn’t engage in any of the negative comments many others did, didn’t complain, just took cold showers, studied and loudly played Paradise City by Guns and Roses when driving to school.

I passed all my tests first time. Then I got the call. “You’re signed up for the Planner’s Course. It’s harder than Advanced but you’ll be ok, you have a Doctorate.”

If Advanced was a nightmare, Planner’s Course was tactical damnation.

Not only would I have to take everything I had learned, I would have to pass a series of tests at high levels of comprehension at the PLANNING level. Our curriculum involved taking EVERY system from all four branches and creating a network architecture for a full scale multinational war.

In two weeks. So not only did we have to study like animals for all our tests, we had to plan a war, and create an OPTASKLINK for the whole thing. The OPTASKLINK is the document that lists every system in use and how they are connected. Its considered the hardest technical document in the entire project. Guess who had to write this 6-9 page monstrosity?

This is one page of an OPTASKLINK. It was created by the Devil. 

I asked for the damn thing. If I’m going down in flames, I’m going HARD.

I tapped my team more, drew HUGE diagrams on dry erase boards, even Googling topics that weren’t clear. I didn’t drink, barely had time to work out, just OBSESSIVELY got into it, FELT the process and grew.

We passed. Our presentation was strong, not perfect but strong. I got about 88% of the OPTASKLINK finished which is considered damn near Herculean for one guy. Our instructor caught me in the hallway and commended me for how much I got done.

I came back from Bragg with three certificates in tactical data links and something else I had never known:

Dignity.  

Got questions? Need help designing speed learning techniques for school or work? Contact me at www.yournextlevelofsuccess.com. - Rob 

How Entrepreneurs Can Bend Reality to Create Success

Strap in. This will be a journey. If you are reading this, you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, coach or healthy skeptic. All are welcome at the lavish feast at Dr. Rob’s table.

I’ll start with a very powerful framing sentence:

Your life is a result of your choices.

Read that again.

It’s ALL because of your decisions, choices, and alliances.

Your home. Your relationship. Your job. Your education. Your income. Your day to day. Your fitness. Your BFFs.

ALL are derived from your choices.

That being said, if you are dissatisfied with an aspect of your life, you can rethink your choices towards it to a better outcome. Think of it as re-rolling the dice.

Your universe is comprised of YOUR CHOICES

Now let’s apply this to the entrepreneurial platform. Entrepreneurs fundamentally don’t change. There are three things that are keeping them from their greatest levels of success in the early years.

Fear

Exposure

Productivity

Luckily for you guys, I teach strategies for all three. This will be one of the most valuable articles you will ever read. I don’t say that to brag, I say it because I’m going to hand you a $2k strategy to BEND YOUR BUSINESS REALITY.

Why? Because I am a trusted figure in advanced business coaching and I am grateful to my audience, clients and friends. We all deserve to find a gold nugget in the middle of the week. Without further ado, here are three solutions to these areas.

Problem: Fear is keeping you from attracting wealth/approaching influencers/being open about your business

Desired Result: To be able to FREELY do what I want without my subconscious injecting fear/hesitation/IMAGINED outcomes into my mind

Reality Changing Action: On a piece of paper, write down these sentences and then either a T or F for true/false.

I am scared to reach out to rich/famous influencers

I am afraid my family will make fun of my business

I am terrified that people will judge me

I am scared of making money

My ideas/business will never be successful

Once you have done this, for anything you marked T, write down the WORST thing that could happen.

Guess what? None of it is that life shattering. Someone makes fun of you, a product or program launch gets low sales or you have a few people make shitty comments.

Who cares? THAT SHOULD NOT AFFECT YOUR BOTTOM LINE. Now that you have isolated your fears. I want you to RECOGNIZE and imagine them locked in a cage. They can no longer affect you UNLESS YOU LET THEM OUT OF THE CAGE.

Next: Exposure

Entrepreneurs will have to realize that they need exposure in several aspects to grow their business. I have been on TV, radio and 15+ podcasts because of what I am about to teach you. 

Problem: No one knows about you

Desired Result: People are DYING to talk to you, to collaborate, to feature you, to buy from you

Reality Changing Action: You need RESULTS BASED ACTIONS to create your own celebrity. Here are a few of my best strategies

Start with Desired Result and work backwards

HUGE FB PRESENCE---grow FB friends list to 3k minimum—have FB friends post about you—post in FB groups—contact people using Messenger with personal greetings

POPULAR FB GROUP—freebies OFTEN—promote members—ask friends to recruit for group—offer contests—share link on Linkedin and Twitter

LOCAL EXPOSURE—post in FB groups in your area—attend Meetup groups—get on local podcasts

Next: Productivity

Problem: You are wasting time that could be devoted to business. Easily distracted and letting people suck away time. Not enough hours in day

Desired Result: A SUPERCHARGED day in which my goals are outlined, allies chosen, weekly tasks defined and distractions mitigated

Reality Changing Action: Declare ONE day of excellence just to test this out. The night before you go to bed, write down what you want to achieve in your DOE. Then write down your general weekly goals (1-3). Remember that weekly goals are general and daily tasks are specific. For your DOE, you will NOT:

Engage in political discussions

Watch Reality TV or Sports

Read celebrity gossip

Let ANYONE burst in on FB messenger unless its business related (whatever wonderfully cute thing their baby or cat did today can wait)

You WILL:

Recruit powerful allies for your tribe/inner circle

Recruit for your FB group

Think of media sources you can appear on

Research FB groups to post in that create max impact

Personally reach out to 3-5 new friends on FB and introduce yourself

Recruit an influencer with a 3:1 value proposition (you offer 3x services for any favors asked)

Do a self analysis and find out what areas your business rates “weak” in. Its either income/exposure/fear/or quality of goods/services. Be honest with yourself and seek out experts to help.

That wraps up the Dr. Strange Business Challenge. By committing to these actions, you will DIRECTLY influence your business and sway reality into your favor.

If you liked this content, I have a new challenge for you. I want to work with you. I’d love to teach you my BEST content/tactics and strategies to help you get noticed, attract new clients, build a power team and more!

My REVIVE! program has openings for entrepreneurs that are looking for a SUPERCHARGED boost to their business. It’s only $197 and you get a 14 INTENSE business course plus a free strat call with me valued at $1250!! Here is the link: REVIVE! Supercharged 14 Day Course

As always, wishing you the best,

Dr. Rob