Maybe everybody thinks they think outside the box. Maybe it’s not just me.
I get called gullible every day of my life. But that’s ok. I wouldn’t trade my mind for anything on earth. I would rather be dead than not be curious.
It started with “The 7 Habbits of highly effective people”. It was a tape set that my mum bought me when I was 17.
A kid doesn’t know what’s Hot is until hey experience it. I didn’t know that some people could be highly effective until I read that phrase for the first time. As I read those words, a whole spectrum opened up in my mind. In that moment, I had a whole new concept, I was forced to consider that some people could be more effective than others. That in itself raised more questions. “More effective at what?? Richer? Stronger? Funnier? Happier? What exactly?
I was lucky to meet Malcolm Drinnan. He was a talent scout at a talent show where I was playing guitar age 15. He approached me afterwards and asked if I would like to play guitar on some tracks he was recording. He managed a few female singers, he wrote songs, and he was trying to find some success in the music business. I was lucky that my dad had some large porta cabins in the garden that we could use a studio. We even created a Limited company. “Dream World Records”.
Nothing much happened with the music we produced, but one day we had a Hypno therapist who wanted to record some hyno-therapy CDs in our studio. It was quite fascinating. For some reason I thought it had something to do with gohsts. I can remember naivly questioning her about if she ever has dead people contacting her during hypnosis! It seemed perfectly logical at the time.
Me and Malcolm lost contact for about 12 months, and then I had call from him out of the blue. He had become a Hypno-therapist, he trained and qualified in London at a recognized hypnotherapy college and he was now successfully earning a living seeing clients. This utterly fascinated me. Not so much because I wanted to help people, but because I wanted to be able to do Jedi mind tricks and be influential. He offered to teach me. I jumped at the chance!
I would drive to his house every week for 6 months and pay him to teach me one on one. Luckily I was earning good money for a 19 year old kid. I was teaching guitar and was doing pretty well for my age. Paying him was no problem. He tought me very thoroughly all the aspects of hypnotherapy. I would practise on him and I was a keen student (there is something different about learning a subject you have chosen, out of school, and paying for it!).
After 6 months, I was becoming confident, I started to perform Hypnosis party tricks at parties. My friend found it very entertaining. The truth is I enjoyed the attention. (Hey, if you’re not on the rugby team you have to find ways to stand out and be cool!)
My mum had subscribed to a Nightingale Conant mailing list. They are an American company that sell all sorts of personal development CDs and book and training programs such as sales training, the power of positive thinking, etc, etc (you get the idea). I can remember sitting a looking though their catalogue of audio training programs they had on offer. There were fascining subjects. All psychology and personal develpment related. I can remmeber thinking “this would be a good inventment to buy every single one of these! the amount of knowledge would surely be priceless. After a while I decided to buy “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. It was about how to grow a business. I bought it for Dad for his birthday but naturally I copied it and listened to it myself. It was really good. I mean really really good. It was inspiring. The guy was funny, obviously very smart, and obviously pretty successful. That when I realized business men could be funny, rich and cool.
Another psychology training program I bought was how to chat up girls. It was called Speed Seduction by Ross Jefferies. That was the first thing I ever put on my new credit card. I can remember listening to it in my bedroom while the guys in my band were practicing their parts in the studio. Every so ofter I would get a phone call saying “Ben can you come down here, we are ready to rehearse that song”. It was an utter inconvenience, I would much rather listen to sleezy hypnotic chat up lines that I could use on girls I fancy. Who knows I might eventually actually get laid!
I quit the music technology degree I was doing because a) there was no girls on the course, and b) the guys were all stoners and they had no get-up-and-go (entrepreneurial spirit). Electronic synthesizers and digital recording studios just didn’t turn me on any more. Besides, I was busy. I mean really busy. I was teaching guitar 6 days per week, playing in 4 bands that giged and rehearsed several times per week (Including Beth Rowley band who you may have heard of) and I was renting out P.A. and lighting equipment to bands and discos. I even use to drive to London to play Jazz guitar at posh hotels. I loved those gigs. They were easy because it was just me on my own is a car, I would wear a pin stripe suit, and get payed £250 to play for 1 or 2 hours. No noise, no hassell, pleasant people great. But. it was boring. The most fun band was in was The Red Hot Silli Feckers (a tribut to the Chili Peppers) . We did huge student gigs. We were like rockstars. We got paid well, we got given booze, we had Aidi as our roadie driving us around and setting up our (my) equipment and helping us (me) tune our guitar and help us (me) pack down our (my) equipment. Aidi was our bitch but he enjoyed it. Me and Will even convinced him to chauffeur us to some girl’s student hall’s of residence at 1am after a gig. Joe and Dave were pissed off because we left them waiting in the rain after the venue had closed but I didn’t give a fuck I was trying to get laid.
Joe played bass in the silli feckers, and he would later design my websites. Dave was the drummer. We all went to school together. Dave is one of those people I can’t help but torment. I don’t see anything wrong with bullying so long as it’s really funny.
I was waiting in the hallway at college waiting to go into a music exam when I saw a stand full of leaflets about holistic therapy courses that the college ran. There was massage, aromatherapy, reflexology, and other components including crystal healing and reiki. (you get the idea). I didn’t hesitate. I was already interested in the mind, the body, health and healing. (who the hell am I kidding I knew there was going to be some chicks on this course). I even took my mum along to the interview because I knew they would like her and it would help my application. It worked a treat. (I asked her to park the S-Class Mercedes round the corner out of sight because I didn’t really think it would help my interview for this type of course). I loved that course. It was only 1 year long. At the end of it we got about 10 various diplomas including nutrition. Suprisingly there were around 14 on the course and 6 of us were male. That helped, at least I didn’t feel so weird doing a massage course. I was really popular in that course, every body in the class got on very well, we had alot of fun, naturally there was a lot of practical classes learning about the body and learning massage techniques. It was fun. They appreciated my hypnosis skills too. I even went to work for 8 months in Tina’s (one of the lecturures) holistic therapy centre in midsomer norton. That was cool because it gave me an oportunity to give tratment profesionally and get paid for it. I mostly gave reflexology and Hypnotherapy treatments.
Some people say hypno- therpay is powerful, dangerous, risky. That’s what the chief psychologist told me when I auditioned for big brother (season 4). I got right down to the last 50 applicants. I was very close to being on that show. But looking back on it I’m glad I didn’t. During the auditioning process, he told me i was “playing with fire” by medaling with hypnosis and I should “be very carful”. At the time that shook my confidense. I stopped doing it. I stopped hypnotisoing my friends and parties and I stopped giving treatments. Something terrible had happened, I believed him. Looking back on it now, he may have been right, but in my case, he was wrong. I am a natural, hypnosis is not difficult, nor is it dangerous, (no more so than anything else in life, think about it, you could go and grab a knife from the kitchen and stab somebody with it). Guns don’t kill people, People kill people. Hypnosis is no more dangerous than a car is. Nowadays, there is nobody in the world that could convince me otherwise.
Summer 2003. I finished holistic therapy college and went to Newquay with my friends. We had a great time on sunny side camp site. Me and Matt Baker had a racket going on where we could snoop round the camp site looking for groups of girls then Matt would do his “can I borrow a lighter” act, then about 3 minutes later I would come along with my guitar pretending I had been looking for him. During those 3 minutes he had already told them he was a singer. By the that point they were begging for us to sing a song. You don’t need me to explain the rest. It’s just a case of waiting for them to get drunk, then meeting up with them that night in town. Simple. It’s a formula. 1 + 1 = 2. Me + Matt + Campsite + Girls = I pull. Matt is one of those people that all you have to do is stand next to him and say nothing and you come off looking good. He’s fun. He’s a joker. (Me and him won £5000 in a talent contest in Manchester once. Don Allen took his commision). He showed up on the first day, the rest of the guys in the caravan were all friends of mine, he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him. He pulled up out side, barged into the caravan, dropped a pile a porn magazines on the table in from of everybody, said “Right, the party’s started, IM HERE”, then sat down, lit a bread stick, and started smoking it like a Cigar.
Me and Matt played our first big gig at Pensford music festival. 4000 people. That really gave us the confidence we needed. It was nice of Paul Hunt to ask us to play. That really set us up. It gave us a reputation. It was a spring board. Things might have been different if it weren’t for those pensford festival gigs. Me and Matt would play in bands together for years and do many more big gigs. I joined a band called Elguapo at one point, we played at festivals in front of 10,000 people quite often.
I started playing guitar at age 9. Dad bought the guitar for himself, and his friend Alison booked some guitar lessons for her husband and dad as a present. Dad was crap. Some people just aren’t musically talented. I started attending his guitar lessons instead of him. I took to it like a duck to water. John Van Gowler was the guitar teacher. I had lessons from age 9 to 16 with John. He shaped my guitar playing. Guitar was my identity. It was how everybody in school new me. I was Ben Lowrey who played guitar.
The next year we went to Newquay again with all the lads. but I was excited for a different reason. I just ordered some Anthony Robbins CDs and when I got home they would be ready waiting for me. This was exciting. I had seen Anthony Robbins adverts several times late at night on Sky. He is a famous motivational speaker. Larger than life. He claims to be able to help you achieve an amazing life of your dreams. I was not a skeptical person, I was already converted, I didn’t need any persuading, I already had learned NLP (from Ross Jeffries Speed Seduction CDs) and Hypnosis (from Malcolm) so I already understood the power of psychology. Those CDs were AMAZING. I convinced my mum to go halves on the cost because she was also interested in NLP. The box set was about £115. That was the best £115 I ever spent in my life without exception. If they cost £10,000 it would still be worth it (try explaining that the 99% percent of skeptical smart ass dicks that walk the earth broke, ill, and tired).
It frustrated me that I didn’t know any other people that were larger than life like tony robbins, interested in psychology, interested in having a better life, interested in getting rich. I was surfing the tony Robbins forum one night and I found group in Bristol called Yes Group. It said it was a monthly meeting for people interested in personal development and positive thinking, they get different speakers along every month to talk about a variety of different subject from business, health, relationship, psychology, NLP, property investing (you get the idea). It bothered me that I had to cancel one of my guitar student to be able to get to the Yes Group for 7:00 oclock. I would have to loose the £20. I bit the bullet and decided to go. That was the second best decision of my life (after buying the Tony Robbins CDs).
I found a group of fantastic people there who would become my new peer group. They were happy, interesting, open minded, outgoing, accepting, etc etc. It was brilliant. James Richardson and Jonathan Drew welcomed me. I had found MY type of people. James told me about the a Yes Group in Cardiff. I emailed Ken Abram and soon I was attending each Yes group every month in Cardiff, London, and Bristol. The amount I learned and the people I have met is priceless. I mean priceless. I MEAN PRICELESS. This totally changed my life. I was now making friends with people who were successful, interesting and intelligent. I went to London to the Mind Body Spirit event (because carol anne had an intuition that I should ) and I met Tinna Pederson and Glenn Burges. Tinna was my first spiritual friend that I met coincidently. She also had a few buddies with her. We hung out for the rest of the day and would pump into each other from time to time at various seminars. Glenn was working the stand promoting the film What the Bleep to We Know.
Neil Philips had a huge impact on me. I met him at Cardiff yes group. He’s an entrepreneur in his 30′s with a property portfolio that would make your jaw drop, he is a fountain of knowledge, spends most of his time reading, partying, playing online poker, and making money out of the internet by selling ebooks. Neil told me what books to read. He thought me marketing. (incase you don’t know, Marketing = Money). I’m not talking about graphic design and pretty posters type of marketing, I’m talking about how to make money type of marketing. This knowledge would later allow me to build vGuitarLessons.com.
Neil also told me to read a book called The Game. The Game is a true story about a bunch of guys in Hollywood that are so desperate and lonely that they become obsessed with learning how to pull girls. They become so good at it that it evolved into social pandemic. The main ring leader called Mystery claims to be the world’s greatest pickup artist, he has developed an Art and Science which he calls “The Mystery Method”. It is a proven, tried, tested method for chatting up girls that will almost certainly work so long as you apply it correctly. Anyway, this was a chapter of my life that lasted 2 solid years, was complete obsession, ewsulted in me creating an internet business teaching chat up line, and resulted in me having lots of fun, meeting loads of cool interesting people, learning lots about social psychology and social dynamics and getting lots of pussy.
The biggest chapter of my life was yet to come. It was just round the corner. I was still an avid Tony Robbins fan. This stuff was too good to miss out on. It was so empowering and so inspiring. I had already pissed off and alienated all of my band members and most of my friends by telling them their pathetic lives could be improved if they would only listen to Tony Robbins. (I later learned that is part of the process of learning this stuff, there is always the point where you loose all your friends by preaching personal development anekdotes at them). When I was at Yes Group one night, James Richardson told me there was a Tony Robbins seminar coming up soon in London. I nearly fell off my seat. I had to see this guy. I emailed Ken Abram and asked him to reserve some tickets. My parents came too. Dad was reluctant at first. But once he had listened to Tony Robbins CDs he realized it was probably worth going. The tickets were £350 each. It’s a 4 day event. There is 2 types of people in this world, the ones that think it is a scam to charge 10,000 people £350 each just to talk about positive thinking, and then there is the people with a fucking brain that realize it’s worth it. Anybody who is 6 foot 7 and has made at one point in his life $400million in one day , I want to hear what they’ve got to say!! That was the best 4 days in my life. It was amazing. It was like a massive yes group on steroids. Everybody in that room is alive, everybody is excited, everybody wants to be successful, everybody has open minded, everybody wants to learn, everybody wants be the best they can be. Tony Robbins is larger than life. On the first night everybody in the audience (10 thousand) does a barefoot firewalk as a metaphor for breaking though fears. You either get it, or you don’t.
That weekend I quit all my guitar students. I didn’t want to work for money. I wanted to get rich. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I felt guilty because a lot of my guitar students enjoy learning from me. But sometimes you just got to do what you’ve got to do.
One night in the hotel, I showed Ken Abram and James Richardson some of my pickup artist tricks. The only victim (i mean woman) in the hotel lounge at that moment was an older women. I thought to myself ‘what the fuck’ and used a few chat up lines just to demonstrate. James and Ken had both been on Tony Robbins advanced courses called Date With Destiny, Wealth Mastery and Life Mastery. I wanted to go too. Why on earth wouldn’t I? Jame’s Richardson recommended it. I’m glad he did. It’s small things like that that make a difference. Only trouble was I didn’t have the $9,999 to pay for it. Then I remembered that my great auntie had died and left me and my sister almost exactly that amount each. Dad had invested the money in property for us, so I decided to call in the loan at 5 minutes notice! I walked round the corner to the hotel restaurant where him and mum were eating and explained that I wan’t to do Tony’s Mastery University. He wasn’t convinced. It was a lot of money just to stick on his card in one go. But he liked tony, he knew it would be worth it, and most of all, he knew I would use what I learned from Tony to make more money. He was right.
Me and Dad did a few property developing projects. One was successful, one wasn’t, we broke even. It didn’t quite suit our personalities.
I went to Date with Destiny (the advanced tony seminar) in Palm Springs California in December 2005. I made tonnes of cool friends. Martine George was one of the friends I made. Like I true hustler, I had already decided to email all the girls on the tony robbins forum to ask if they want to share the cost of a large hotel room between 4 people. In the end, Me, Zoe, Chris and Tianna shared a room. The whole week was cool as fuck. 6 solid days and night with Tony Robbins and 2,500 other Tony fans.
I also met Elise Crozier who was going out with Mark Anastasi at the time. Me an Mark would later become good friends and spend many fun times talking about how to make more and more money from the internet, and also arguing about when the US government was going to stage a fake alien invasion as a way of putting us into fear so we would accept RFID chips under our skin so we can be controlled. (I’m not kidding folks)
Then there was Life Mastery (the next Tony Robbins seminar) in Scotland. (He runs that seminar is Fiji aswell, but I couldn’t afford plane ticket. I even volunteerd as a crew member at the London Tony Robbins seminars. I crewed 2 times. That is also a lot of fun. Because there is 250 other tony fans and working behind the scenes to facilitate that huge event. Phil Noble became a good friend because he was incharge of microphones and mic runners. There is 14 crew member that sit in the audience holding microphones ready for if Tony wants to talk to somebody in the audience. It’s then our job to run to that person as fast as we can. We each have a different coloured cap so the sound engineer can identify which microphone to switch on from the sound desk.
Then there was wealth mastery in London (the third of the 3 Mastery University advanced seminars.
From going to Tony Robbins, yes groups, and various other personal development seminars including Mark Anastasi, Eric Edmeades, and Topher Morrison, and what I learned from Neil, I eventually came up with the idea of vGuitarLessons.com. It’s been running for 3 years now and has 135,000 members who subscribe to it. Joe Hayhow designed it, Tom James programed the first version of the site, Adam Johnson edits the videos, Matt Cantillon programms the new upsell systems, Gareth Owen and Ciaran take care of SEO and google Adwords, Yours truely records the video lessons, and Zippy rings me up and talks shit down the phone.
I became friends with Mark Anastasi because we had a lot in common. We had both built succefful internet businesses. We both are ambitious and we are both trying to prove a point to the world. We were both single, we were both interested in all the same personal development seminars, and as it turned out, we both loved conspiracy theories! Zeitgeist the movie really got the ball rolling. Check out zeitgeistmovie.com. In the summer 2007 I went to Cyprus to spend a week in the sun with Mark, he also invited 2 girls, Sam and Zoe. That week was a lot of fun. I got completely infatuated with Zoe. I followed Zoe around for 6 months after that!
Mark does very well. He is a very good marketer. He puts on huge seminars teaching people how to make money from the internet. He is hungry for money, just like me. He will never ever stop. If you havn’t heard of him already, you will. He asks me to speak at his seminars from time to time in London. I met Gareth Owen at one of Mark’s seminars. Garth halved my google adwords costs and doubled the amount of traffic to my website. Never underestimate the power of going to a seminar. Mark’s seminars are fun. It’s good to hang out with like minded people. At mark’s seminar, Carlo Feher, John Cato, Magnus, Kavit, Michael Blue Pants, Holly and Ciaran were all there. We all had fun.
It wasn’t until we all went to Akash which was a seminar hosted by Triumphant events that I saw John Demartini speak for the first time. He teaches about why it’s better not to get infatuated! (Look him up I’m not going to explain it now). It was ever since I listened to John Demartini that I’ve been fulfilled. Tony made me into an Achiever, John Demartini made me fulfilled and Happy.
Me and Joe Hayhow moved into a nice apartment in Bristol for a bit. That was the first time I moved out. It was fun in Bristol.
I stopped trying so hard to chat up women eventually. I relaxed. I was happy with myself. I didn’t need to prove a point, I wasn’t so desperate any more. Who the hell am I kidding, that didn’t stop me hustling around facebook looking for chicks! It’s a simple strategy, type in “Yoga” into the search box and then send a message to all the fit looking ones saying “Hi I noticed you are into Yoga, I like Yoga too”. Then do the same for other words such as “Spitual”, “Healthy”, “Nutrition”, etc etc. (Think what type of person you want to meet!) That how I met Stacey. We’ve known each other nearly 2 years now, been going out for 1 of those. She’s my first proper girlfriend. We spend lots of time in the town of Glasonbury (where the festival is held in the summer). There’s lots of hippy spiritual stuff there. I even moved into a flat in Wells which is the next town along. Stacey has lots of nice friends like Helen Clair Ian Jezz and Caludie. Ian is as bent as a nine bob note. Glastonbury has a nice garden called the chalice well. It’s worth visiting. We all went to Totness to a weekend conference about conspiracy theories, 2012 , and general hippy stuff. That was fun. We hired an apartment for the weekend.
I met Carlo at Yes Group Bristol. Carlo is one of those type of people who everybody likes. Carlo likes introducing people. He took me round to meet Patrick one day. Patrick is the next best thing to Tony Robbins you are ever going to meet. He’s an Actor, a TV presnter, a stand up comedian, stock trader, and NLP master, (Paul McKenna passes clients to him just to give you an idea), dispite being 6 foot 5, black, and 20 stone of body building muscle, he also has the energy of a 6 year old kid. And he’s one of those type of people who only shouts! He doesn’t have a volume control. He’s the kind of person who dominates a whole room, everybody will turn to look when he walks in. He has presence. In summer 2008, 10 of us went to Ibiza for his Stagg doo. Sid Lawrence (England Cricket, no smaller or less black than Patrick) also came. In the airport, there was the crowds of typical skinny, white, drunk Ibiza kids, who normally would be shouting a wailing, but on this occasion were silent compared to these 2 black giants whose booming voices dominated the entire departure lounge!
Patrick is teaching me how to trade the stock market. That is my new job. I love trading. I love money. Anything that gives me an opportunity to make money easily I love. That’s what I do. I would rather be dead than not be a business man, or at least be able to make deals and hussle. My heros are succefful men. I read books about Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, (you get the idea). I read a lot. Everytime I need a new book I usually email Neil and ask him what he recommends (He’s read every fucking book ever printed so I might as well ask).
I give interviews from time to time. People like to interview me about internet business. I always insist on doing it over the phone so I don’t have to go anywhere , and it communicates my personality better if you can hear me speaking. Plus the interview like to send out audio to their customers because it’s more interesting than just an email.
I bought a mercedez. That was an important day for me. My dad has always driven mercedez, (heck, the fucking president of Russia gets driven around in a mercedez.)
I also bought a house in turkey. But I decided to sell it soon after (for a few different reasons), largely because I learned to trade since then so I would rather use that money in the stock market.
My sister works for me. She does my paperwork and admin (washing and ironing) and anything that helps me concentrate on what I do best which is create stuff to go on the internet and trade the stock market.
My parents love personal development. My dad has tonnes of DVDs about quantum phsycis and psychology and neutrition. He watches Down the Rabbit Hole every week. Mum has just done an NLP training in Florida with Topher Morrisson. Dad studied NLP with Paul McKenna and Richard Bandler in London. He says it has deffinitly increased his business at least 3 fold. He loves learning about health because his friend had a stroke.
At the moment I am learning about law. I recently learned that law is not the law. It is only law when you give your consent for it to be imposed upon you. It’s sort of a trick. I love conspiracy theories. I went to court 2 times this week as a spectator. I wanted to learn the procedures and protocol of court so I can understand law better. I was very impressed with the judges. Very smart guys. Currently I am looking forward to trading tomorrow. Then at the end of this month me and Stacey and rosy and some of the guys are going surfing in Devon. Anyway I better go, I need to call Zippy.
