Anik Singal Interview

Anik Singhal is a successful entrepreneur who turned his passion into a thriving business empire. He realized his true calling for entrepreneurship while in college, despite having a secure future in medicine. His initial challenge was the lack of knowledge and support in building a business. Singhal had mentors, including his father, who inspired him with his own success story. He started his first business with just $100 and faced failures along the way. Singhal grew a massive business called Learn, but also experienced challenges. He is open about discussing his journey and believes in learning from mistakes. Today we have the privilege of chatting with Anik Singhal, a visionary entrepreneur and the driving force behind LEARN. Anik's journey is not just to tell a business acumen of success, it's a testament to the power of resilience, learning from failures, and the relentless pursuit of dreams. He's been challenging the norms of a traditional career path to overcoming staggering obstacles. His story inspires and educates, and today we're going to dive deep into the mind of the man who's turned his passion into a thriving business empire, and is now a beacon of hope and guidance for entrepreneurs worldwide. Anik, welcome. It's a pleasure to chat with you. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here, and yeah, I appreciate the time. Well, maybe I can start by asking you about the moment you realized that entrepreneurship was your true calling. Oh man, you know, so it's funny because I think there were lots of hints along the way since I was a little kid. I think I realized it thoroughly though when I was already in pre-med, I'm in college, I'm on a full scholarship, I mean, I'm on a one-way ticket to Ivy League med schools. I have my life made, and yet there I lay in bed, miserable. I couldn't get out of bed every morning, and when I say I'm made, I mean, I'm literally, I am going to undergrad at one of the best programs in the country that I competed to get into. I have a full scholarship. I'm actually getting paid to go to college. I'm being recruited to go to top Ivy League med schools my freshman year of pre-med. So I'm like, I have it made, and yet I was miserable. And so there was a moment, I remember sitting back, and I'm a very self-reflective person. I can reflect really well, and I think that's a skill that everyone should develop. And so I asked myself one morning when I just did not want to go to class, I said, when was I the happiest? When have I been the happiest? And I realized going all the way back to when I was a little kid, I was like, I missed God and I misjudged myself this whole time. I was the happiest when I was doing my own thing. I was the happiest when I was building a business or being creative and out there creating. And so while still in pre-med, I started doing a little tinkering, a little entrepreneurial projects, and I just loved it. And although none of it was working, I eventually took the massive step of just leaving this made-for-me life all behind, and I went to switch universities. I went to study business, and I think it was somewhere freshman year early when I started college that I realized it, but then, I mean, you go back to when I was in third grade, and now that I realize it, there's clear signs that I was an entrepreneur as far back as I could think. Yeah, hindsight can be a good thing, can't it, when you look back on those early achievements. What was the initial challenge that you faced, though, when you started out, when you decided that this was your future? Yeah, I think the initial challenge we all face is just lack of knowledge, lack of association, lack of everything, right? You just don't know where to go, who to go to. I don't have entrepreneurs in my family at the time. I didn't know what I didn't know, and so here I am trying to build a business. What does that mean? There's a gazillion options out there. I have no money. I'm not going to ask my parents. I don't even want to tell anybody that I'm doing this, because they're all going to call me crazy. It's not like anyone believes what you believe, and so it's that lonely lack of knowing, yet you're still inspired and you want to figure it out, and then all of that piles on with the fact that you make mistake after mistake after mistake. You make error after error, so you're failing. You don't know who to ask for help. You don't want to tell anybody, yet you still believe. It's this really strange mixture of feelings, and those who survive through that and thrive through that are usually the ones, not usually, are the ones that succeed. Many I believe that have tried to become an entrepreneur get stuck somewhere in those mixture of feelings and can't get past it, and that's where they fall apart. So that was my first biggest challenge, was just figuring out how do I carve through this massive, right? Here's the thing. If you want to be a doctor, it's a pretty set straight path. Lawyer, path. Engineer, path. Plumber, path. I mean, every profession out there has a clear-cut path. You can Google it, and it tells you boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Entrepreneurship does not. There is no path, and so that I think is the biggest challenge an entrepreneur goes through. And they say that success leaves clues. Did you look up to anybody at this time, and who were your mentors, if you like? Yeah, absolutely. I've had many mentors throughout my entire career, and I feel that mentors, you have some mentors that will be with you forever, but you have some mentors that you will be with you for a period of time, and you actually surpass them. I think the person I looked up to the most was my father. Now, he's not an entrepreneur. He's a nuclear mechanical engineer. He's a brilliant man, and he's way smarter than I am, but he's in a completely different line. However, here's what's really inspiring. He grew up in a village at one point that had no electricity. He used to study for his school under lampposts, street lampposts. His house had no electricity, candles. And here's the irony. And yet, he went on to, at the end of his career, he's retired now, he was the head of two nuclear power plants in the United States, literally the government head. So he could, at any moment's notice, shut them down, turn them on, boss them around. And I thought that was the most ironic thing. Think about it. Someone who grew up studying with no electricity, now overseeing and commanding the electricity that millions of people receive. And I saw where he took our family, single-handedly. My mom was mostly stay-at-home. She had a daycare at the house, but it was kind of on and off. And so my dad, and I watched what he did, and I saw the opportunities he gave me. And so I always tell people that even when I do become a billionaire in my life at some point, my success and feats that I achieve will be nowhere near what my father did. I mean, he crossed far, far bigger chasms of success. So I used to look at that and just say, it's upon me to take our family name to the next level, and I need to do that. And then, of course, in business, I had great mentors at different parts. An individual who really made a deep impact in my life in the world of direct marketing and information marketing was Justin Ford, who, I don't know why, saw talent in me and didn't just take me on. He insisted and fought and convinced me to let him mentor me. And he's actually the brother of Mark Ford, which many people may not know is Michael Masterson, who is arguably one of the best copywriters to have ever lived. So I got the good fortune of being directly mentored and coached by the brother of the best marketer who's ever lived. So, you know, those are two people that I think just I always consistently try to remember and give credit to for where I am today. Am I right in thinking that you started out small with like just a $300 investment in your business? Is that is that correct? It was even less. I won $100 at a Super Bowl game. Our families would always come together at Super Bowl and we would do these guess the score contest. Right. So everyone put five, five, five, five, five dollars in the pot. I remember I think I put five or 10 in and I guess I scored turned into $100. That was the money I had to start my first business. I blew through it in a matter of just days. And then obviously being in college, I had my father's credit card. So I was so optimistic and so positive that I kept things going, except now I was putting money on his credit card that I did not have. And so I blew up another $300 on top of the hundred. And at that point, I stopped it and I paid him back through savings that I had. But it took me a while after that until I had my first breakthrough. But my first quote unquote business venture online was started with $100 for a Super Bowl game. Plus, let's just say a $300 loan from my father, which completely collapsed, failed, didn't work. But in the process of all that, I learned a lot of skills that till this day serve me. And from those humble beginnings, if you like, you've grown a massive business. People may recognize you from Learn, which became hugely successful. And I know that more recently, you've had a few challenges based on that. How comfortable are you, Anik, about talking about that side of things? Oh, I'm an open book, my friend. I talk about absolutely anything that's happened in my life, never hide anything. Great stuff. Okay, well, in that case, let's maybe just touch a little bit on Learn, this company that you've grown. Tell us about that and going through that process of growing such a large company and then what happened next? Yeah, so Learn, you know, was a culmination of many companies and many ideas. And I'll give you the shorter version, but I believe I could go back, I'm being honest with you. I have regrets. I love every part of my life. I love what I've done. But if I could go back, and actually, it's funny, I wanted to write a book. And I think I'm going to write one, which is an interview with myself at the age of 40, is really what I want to call it, which is I turned 40, I want to interview myself. What have I learned? Right? And it's meant to be ideally a book read by 20, 30 year olds. And one of the things I would talk to myself about is pick a business idea or pick a type of business that's simple, that can scale, and that 20 years of invested time can turn it into something huge. But pick something that's got a model out there, unless you've got something truly innovative, like you've invented the next iPhone, or you've invented some technology like AI, or whatever. If it's not that, pick a model that's simple, because the business model I chose was not simple. It was very hard. It was very complicated. Of course, at the time, I didn't know. But it started simple. So it started with me selling information. I took knowledge out of my head, I put it down into some form of written and video format, and I sold it to people. And I started to do very well with that. And in doing that, I started to build quite an audience. I had an email list that was hyper responsive, I could generate thousands of clicks and make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of sales of products. I would promote someone else's product as an affiliate, and it would work really well, and I'd make a lot of money. So one day, I had this idea years ago, 15 plus years ago, I said, what if I were to publish somebody else? So instead of selling them as an affiliate, what if I brought them into my institution, into my company, did all the work, put the course together, published it, sold it to my community, plus also went out and did what I do with other affiliates to get them to sell it. I can make a larger share. And so basically, I was becoming a distributor of a publishing house. My now skill set became the fact that I had reach, distribution, market, and I did very well with that. I was able to publish a couple people, make really good money, and make them a lot of good money, and made them into prominent names in the industry, and I did that for some time. In the middle, I had this idea once to commoditize education. I'm all about education. And I started to build this platform that was supposed to basically be this place where people can upload their education and sell it. And I wanted to take what is Harvard-level education and commoditize it. I wanted to connect, I believe, in peer-to-peer education. I think remove the middle, remove the institutions. If someone's a great investor, if someone's a great rose gardener, if someone's a great whatever, connect the student direct to that person, not the teachers who just take theory. So I started to build this platform. I don't know technology. I don't know coding. I built an office in India. I got completely blown away, millions of dollars wasted. I was shutting the whole operation down, and that very day, my now-wife, at that time girlfriend, comes running up to me and says, have you seen this? And she shows me Udemy. So here it was, somebody else in the world, in Turkey, and three guys in a garage building the very company that I was trying to build. I mean, it was almost like they had a camera in my head. So it's a huge failure, but that didn't stop me from wanting to build that. I came back and turned Learn. That's why the name Learn exists, by the way. It's a generic name, because it was supposed to be a generic educational platform. However, I lost a lot of money, went near bankruptcy during that time, came back, and decided to build a company that would be an educational platform, but for entrepreneurs. So now I was really tripling down on becoming a publishing house. Now, I'll tell you the challenge of being a publishing house. You in the direct marketing world, funnels, copy, paid ads, these require a very special skill set. This skill set is not readily available on the internet. Most people that are really good at this skill set are out there doing it for themselves. So hiring the right team was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. It was the biggest challenge I ever conquered. And I was struggling, and I was slogging and working 20-hour days, and I was making great money, but I was miserable. I wasn't happy. At this point, I'm married, and I'm not... It was just a misery. It was miserable. 2020, the business blows up post-COVID, and I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life, and I'm miserable. So I finally decide to really pour money into hiring. I go, and I hire the best of the best of the best of the best, okay? And I work with them, and we got it. It took forever. And by early 2022, we were good. I had someone ready to step in as a CEO for me. I had my team running. We had a system down. We were scaling. In 2022, we were going to do $40 million in revenue. We were climbing and climbing, and my wife and I were expecting our first baby in April. So on April 21st, I'm also in the middle of getting acquired. I have an acquisition offer on the table. We've gone through due diligence. I'm going to have the entrepreneurial dream. April, I'll have my baby, and I was hoping to be acquired by July or August. May comes. I come back to work. I decide I'm stepping down as CEO. I'm going to name my right hand as CEO. My baby's going to get to shepherd the company through this acquisition, and once the company gets acquired, I'm taking a year off. I'm going to be dad, and I'm going to go back, regroup, figure out what the next project is that I want to launch, and I'll get to come back a year or so. So I get the entrepreneurial dream. My dream was to sell, build, and sell a company by the time I'm 40. I was just turning 40. I was a year before 40. I was like, this is amazing. I did it, right? Did the company get as big as I wanted? No. Was it still going to be an amazing story? Heck yes. All right. So it took forever to figure that out, to build a system. To be able to step down. And I'm proud of what we built to this day, love what we did. May 3rd, week of May, I'm back in the office for only three days from paternity leave, and I get the dreaded FedEx package in the mail from the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, which for anyone who's not in the United States, who doesn't know what that is, it's a regulatory body from the government, the federal government regulatory body that oversees consumer-related matters, commerce, basically. And I was told in that letter, which was 31 pages, that the FTC would like to be closer to me for the next coming months. And that was another way of saying they wanted to investigate me. Even as I talk about it today, my stomach falls to the bottom of my, like my heart falls to the bottom of my stomach because everything shattered that moment. I wasn't going to get to step down as CEO anymore. I wasn't going to get acquired anymore. And here's the irony, May of 2022 was going to be a record-breaking month for us. It was. Fifteen years of me trying to figure out how to build that type of business, the publishing company, I had just nailed it. It ended up not being a record-breaking month. Within two days of receiving that notice, I shut down 80% of my business, not because they made me, but because I'm a publishing company, so obviously the people who I publish, I'm not going to hide this from them, even though I wasn't required to tell them, I was going to tell them. And then I told them, what do you think they would ask me? They asked me to shut down their promotions, of course, so I shut it down beforehand. 80% of my $40 million a year, what was projected to be $40 million a year company, poof, gone in a matter of seconds. And I had to lay off about 80% of my team. Within three days, my life turned upside down. And in the end, it came down to just a few things being said in the marketing that they did not like that were against the rules. And it turned my entire life, I mean, it was a crazy time. And I'm telling you what proceeded after that, the 18-month investigation, it took 18 months to close it, to settle, am I alive, am I good, am I more blessed than 99% of the people in the world? Yes. I'm grateful for it. But the 18 months was, as I put it, for those 18 months, and even since then, I would say I have been where hell goes when hell has been bad. Right. I was going to say, most people look forward to receiving a FedEx package, you know what I mean? Normally, it's a nice thing that arrives. So that must have been quite a shock just in itself, but then for everything to unravel off the back. And as you say, I guess a lot of your colleagues, your co-publishers, if you like, they're worried about the contagion that they may also then become part of the investigation. Yeah. And two of them did. Two of them did. And how do you manage that? I mean, you're a human being, right? It's such a horrible thing to happen to you. And a lot of people think, oh, you know, you're a businessman, so it's fine, you can take it on the chin and whatever. But how did that affect you personally, Anik? Oh, it's, oh man, it's hard to explain. So till this day, by the way, first of all, as a funny side note, I have PTSD in the sense of don't hand me a FedEx package or a certified letter. I immediately have an impulse, I just have a reaction to it, I have a repulsive reaction because that wasn't the only thing that happened to me. It really is crazy that when it rains, it pours because right around this time is when the interest rates hike started happening. So my wife and I, we have all this real estate that was tenanted by this really large company this secure hundred-year-old big company conglomerate that's safe to have a debt with, they go bankrupt. So now I have this massive debt to the banks on my head, don't know how to pay that. We have a property issue with one of our properties in Florida. We have other issues that come up left, right. We have an issue with an investment made back in 2016 years ago that now is being looked at, it had nothing to do with us. We were just one of the investors and so it's not a thing against us, but it's something that we need to think about and worry about. I mean, these are all being delivered to me in what, FedEx packages or certified letters. So till this day, I put my hands up, I'm like, I don't want it. Someone else open it, tell me what it is before, who's getting sued, what's going on? Personally, what it does, man, is it messes you up. There's no other way to put it. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat stuff. You go through the biggest emotional rollercoaster on a daily basis. One morning you wake up and you are like, I'm going to take over the world. This is going to be the best comeback story and everyone, da, da, da, da. The next day you are like, what's the point? You're depressed. You don't want to do anything. Why did this happen to me? I mean, if you think about it, I had a multi-deck a million acquisition going through, approved and done, gone. I had a $40 million a year company. I wasn't in the weeds anymore. I was about to step down as CEO and I was going to live my life going around racing my cars and going to shooting ranges and hanging out with my kids and gone, poof, in a second. You have to take a minute to really process the speed with which that goes and the whiplash that you feel from it. Everyone handles it differently. Listen, there have been people that have been investigated by the FTC that had a heart attack and died. There have been people that have been investigated by the FTC who committed suicide and I knew about this. I researched it. I obviously wasn't going to be one of them, but you can imagine the torture that it plays on one's mind. Now, people think this is because the FTC or the government comes in and they smack you around and they do this and do that. I can't speak to what the FTC and the government have done in other cases, but I can speak to mine. It was nothing like that. It was nothing like that. I got the document. They were cordial the entire time, professional. They gave extensions and there were no threats. We weren't told we have to shut down our business, but that doesn't matter. In the end, you still have a 3,000-pound gorilla with an unlimited budget and unlimited power and you don't know what they're going to do. Every morning you wake up, here's a crazy story. One time I walked into the office and there was an unmarked car standing outside the office. It even had that little squiggly light thing that police cars have outside the driver's side. I was thoroughly convinced it was someone from the FBI watching me. Your mind starts to play tricks on you. I walked in and I tell my front desk person, I said, watch for that. I'm calling my lawyer. I'm calling my wife saying I might get taken in. Pay attention. My lawyer's telling me on the phone, he's like, what are you doing? No, there's no one there. That's not how they work. I'm like, I'm telling you, there's someone here. Only to go and find out half an hour later, it was a car bought on an impound from one of the people that services our buildings. Your brain plays tricks on you and this goes on for months. It's the torture and you've got that. You're trying to save the company because you want to save the team. You're trying to make sure you spend the countless hours in discovery required to submit the documents that the government's looking for. You're trying to pay all the bills. I had just become a father and as the 18 month process went on, we had a second child. Now I've got kids at home. I've got a wife at home. I've got these investments that are going south. I've got banks calling me. I've got the FTC to handle. I've got a business to save. I've got a business to build. You're in the middle of a perfect storm for you at that point. I mean, emotionally, it must take its toll, as you say, and, you know, the fact that we're here having this conversation and also what you've decided to do next off the back of this, you mentioned earlier how it was just a few things that you had said. Could we just explore that for a moment for anybody listening who perhaps is thinking, hang on a second, you know, if it can happen to Anik, it can happen to me, maybe. So what if maybe a few of the red flags that were pointed out to you that caused you to becoming the crosshairs of the FTC like that? This could happen to anybody, whether it is the FTC or it is some other regulatory body. If you live outside the US, it could be a state government, state AG, it could be a class action lawsuit by your customers. It can be multitude of things that can completely come in and disrupt everything about your life. Now, of course, every different body has different authority. For me, the future as I'm now living it was carved one night. And one night, it was around 8 or 9 o'clock, and I was in the lowest of lows. I was really feeling it because one of the things and the trap that you don't want to fall into, everyone I'm telling right now, at any point in life, when you get, if you get to a place where you're low, the trap that's very difficult to come out of is the why me trap. If you start going through the why did this happen to me, look at so and so, look at so and so, look at so and so, why me, why me, you just can't dig yourself out of that. That's a very difficult place to be. So I refuse to ever allow myself to get into it. The very first thing I did when this whole thing happened is I took ownership. I took accountability. I don't agree with the investigation. I don't agree with the outcome. I settled due to other reasons and the need for peace. I respect the FTC and the organization. You disagree. That's OK. We can do that. But I took ownership over it. I am where I am today because of decisions and things, decisions I've made, things I've done. A friend of mine told me once and it's stuck with me forever. Life doesn't happen to you. It happens for you. Anything in your life you're going through, that doesn't happen to you. It's happening for you. And so I took this moment and I said, all right, so one night, eight, nine o'clock, whatever, I'm sitting there, I'm at the lows of lows. I catch myself self-reflective. I know what's happening. I said, we're not going to go down this hole. I'm not going to fall into that little pity party. So what can we do right now? And I said, you know what, if I don't feel good right now, the only way I think I can make myself feel better is if I make someone else feel better. So the worse I feel, the more value I will pour into the to the world. The worse I feel, the worst place I feel like I'm at, the more value I'm going to pour into the world. And that's actually why I created this Facebook group called the Expert Scale Facebook Community, where I thought, if I can't scale my business right now because of where I am, I'm going to teach other people how to scale their businesses. I'm going to serve them for free, nothing. I'm going to put good into the world. The universe has to recognize that there is no way it doesn't have a byproduct, doesn't have an end result. So I'm going to do more. The worse I feel, the more I do. And that became my fighting mantra. And that led me to where I am today, where I said, you know, I remember hearing something on a podcast. I was at a gym from Ed Milet that changed a lot of my approach during this investigation and what I wanted to do afterward. And he said, your best customer is the person you used to be. And I thought, man, there are some brilliance in that. Right. So so back to your question of what were some of the things. So the the FTC doesn't like when you make claims and it doesn't like when you imply the specific results that somebody else will get. Now, if you get on a four hour webinar about a product that you love and believe in. And you start to go at it and you are selling it. I'm sorry, but I would feel most people in this world will end up saying something that could be considered as noncompliant. Listen, you could be the best driver in the world. If I follow you around long enough, you're going to roll through a stop sign, cross a red light, do something that I could say. Ha ha ha. Driving infraction. So initially, the document I got had sentences and things in there from some of the webinars and things I had done. They had thoroughly looked at me. You could tell they had watched things that were old. I wasn't even using them anymore, but they still existed on the Internet. So based on that, I was enough to say, hey, we'd like to investigate you to see what else you are doing now, some rules of change and laws of change. It's a long explanation, but basically it's a little bit harder for them to come and collect money and fines based off of things you've said on a web based sales, what we call one to many sales, sales pages, videos, webinars. But it's enough to open an investigation. And when they opened the investigation with me, they quickly discovered that I had a telesales operation, meaning I was having people sold on the phone one to one, an area where they still have a lot of governance and the ability to collect fines and money. So my investigation quickly became more centered around the one to one phone sales activity. Now, the irony of this is I have spent over a million dollars in the past trying to make sure that we were fully compliant with legal fees and the checks. I had a full time paralegal in my company before we even got investigated. And her job entirely was to listen to every sales call that led to a sale because I wanted nothing unethical and nothing unfair said to my customers. We actually had the lowest conversions on our phone than any other operation because I was so heavy on them. However, there was one thing I did not know about. I was not told about by my attorneys and it made it into our scripts. And that was enough. And that was what my entire case came down to. Four words. What is your goal? That question on a one to one phone call is an implied earnings claim, because here's how it's going to go. The person, on the other hand, says, I'd like to make ten thousand dollars a month so I can quit my job. And of course, the salesperson on the other side says, great, we can help you get there. Implied earnings claim. It's called goal setting. There's no regulations or rules written about it. Nothing anywhere says you can't do it, but they collapse it under the terms of implied earnings claims. And my entire case came down to those four words pretty much. Now, I'm not saying if those four words had not existed, that my case would have disappeared. But I am saying based off of what my attorney has told me is that those four words didn't exist on my sales calls. Everything else about my sales calls were fine. They were clean because I had a very good process in place. Everything else about my sales calls was great. If those four words did not exist, the case would have been drastically different is what I'm told from my attorneys. So can you imagine having to process that, that your life, the sale, the year off, the freedom, the dream coming true by the time you turn 40? Everything came down to four words. And I and I had my scripts and things reviewed by attorneys. They never got triggered. So you could be doing the right things. You could be taking the right steps. You could have all the right intentions. But you could still make a mistake in the eyes of others who can then come after you. So, yeah, life can throw you lemons real fast and you just you can't ever prepare for everything. What were the FTC after? I mean, what was their preferred outcome to this investigation? You know, they don't really ever say. So one of the things that's interesting is if I answered that question, I would be inferring. I'm happy to give you a guess. You know, from my experience, but I have to say, guys, they never said any of this. And this is just me guessing. So first of all, it's not like I get to talk to them much throughout the process. The lawyers talk to them. I got a chance to meet them once. A really funny story from that meeting. It's a story worth exploring. It's just irony. But it's very important to me. It was a very pivotal moment in my in the case for my psyche. But I got to meet them once I got to go into the FTC and do a presentation, saw them for about an hour. Beyond that. The FTC, there's there's no gray there, it's black and white. You're good, you're evil, it's no middle. So as far as I was concerned, from at least the way they approached us, that was evil. However, look, there was someone else I know who got an investigative document a week before I got mine. Now, that person had done some. I don't want to be judgmental, but they had done some things that I felt made them deserving of it. I'm sure all the people would say. I've done things that made me deserving of it and it's fine, but I their case was a lot more clear cut. There's a lot more fraud involved. And you know what? The FTC bulldozed through that case in six or seven months. I happen to know more about the case intimately just because I know the people behind it. And some of it is hearsay, but I trust the hearsay. The same time, my case took 18 months. And so I do believe that with mine, they had to dig deeper. And with mine, they had to make a case. When they have an easy case and it's just there, they'll go finish and move on. They want you to stop. It's what they want you to do, I think, in an ideal world. They want you gone. They want your business to stop. Do they say that? No. Am I banned or injuncted from being in the industry? No. Are some people that yes, some people do get banned. The individual I'm speaking about who whose business got shut down and I mean, whose investigation got shut down in six, seven months and over, they're banned. They're banned from being in the industry for some time. I'm not. So there's definitely grades. I say black or white and there's no gray, but there is gray. It comes in the way they approach you and the time and the judgment eventually they give you. But what do they want? They want reparations for the consumers. They want to collect as much money as they can back so they can give it back to the consumers. And they want you to stop doing whatever it is that they don't want you to do. And so there's a big myth out there that people think the FTC is a money grab and that they're going out and grabbing all this money and keeping it and using it to fund the wars of the government. There's a lot of conspiracy crap out there about this. And I'm actually here and I believe that. I actually thought the money that they take, they just keep in the court and go ahead and then they use it to be more evil and go after more people. This is what I thought prior. It's not that actually at all. They get every penny of it back to your consumers. They don't keep a penny. So they probably spent a million dollars out of their time investigating me because they had to do 18 months plus the time they spent before they sent me that document. So and those are expensive lawyers, investigators. They put multiple people on you. So I'm sure they invested a million plus dollars of their money. And in my process, they don't recover any of that. The money that I turned over goes straight back to the consumers. So really all they want money back to consumers. And I want you to stop doing the things that they don't like you doing. And prior to this, I think you had no prior knowledge that they may be investigating. This just came totally out of the blue. So, yeah, I look, I have been in business for 20 years. I have never been sued by a single customer. I've never had a state complaint. I've never had a merchant account problem. I've never had a chargeback problem. My BBB rating is an A. My trust pilot was great. My customers love me. I have a four million dollar facility that I'm in every single day. I show up. I've never had people come and Google me. I sit on webinars. I said, Google me. There's very few Internet marketers have been around for 20 years. They say, Google me. It's not bad stuff about me. I'm a good person. I do good things by people. I treat people well. And the only thing is that in October of 2021, apparently, there was a warning letter released. And I use quotes because I disagree with the fact that it was a warning letter with like 700 or plus, like a thousand plus company's names on it. And it had names like Amazon and Uber and Lyft and all these big companies, too. And at the top of the letter, I got to see it later. I never got it. We actually have physical evidence of me never receiving the letter in the mail. But eventually, when I saw it, the Learn's name was on that. And so according to the FTC, that was like, hey, we warned you. But at the same time, it's a letter. It's kind of funny because at the very top, it says, just by having, I'm paraphrasing, but it says something like, just by having your name on this letter, it doesn't mean that you're actually doing anything wrong. So, you know, so even had I received it, I don't know how I would have received it, how I would have looked at it. My assumption at that point was they took a thousand of the largest advertisers and just sent it to them. I was spending about almost a million dollars a month on paid ads. So, all right. You know, I got under the radar. I didn't think that that was a proper warning, but they say it was. And it was a letter I never received. And they say we spent it. That's your problem. So but beyond that, no, I didn't have any. I had no issue. We had sixty three thousand transactions in a three year window. And we still managed to keep a BBB rating of an A and make our customers happy. Thirty six minute response time, twenty four, seven holidays included. I had three support teams worldwide, eight, eight, eight hour shifts running. We treated our customers like they were the they were not like they were the most important thing in the company. I built a company. I tracked the KPIs. I measured everything and I made sure we were strong, solid, amazing business. And I burned millions of dollars doing that. And I did it on purpose because I knew we're a heavily regulated industry. And I wanted to make sure that we never got into the web of all of this. Ironically, we still did, though. And at this point you have your 40 million dollar company. You've had to shut down, I just say, 80 percent of the company. You've got expensive lawyers, I'm sure, that are on with you all the time to try and navigate through this. What was the outcome, Anik? What what actually happened towards the end? And did the end come quickly? I know you said it's an 18 month process, but when the end came, did it come really quickly or was that a drawn out process, too? No, no, it was drawn out. I think we were finally done. So we started turning over things and started working on the case by June of twenty twenty two. And I think it was finally in January of twenty twenty three that we said here is all of the documents we have. So we took about six, seven months and digging a little bit more because then they came back in Feb and March. We were still giving some documents over. I think I went to see them in March. I think they delivered their official complaint letter to us sometime in March or April. We negotiated over that for a month or two. Then we got into the negotiations of the extra dollar amount that took a couple of months. Then once we agreed on the dollar amount and we had something to sign, it took a couple of months, actually took three months to get the commissioners at the FTC to sign it off on it. So, I mean, it dragged on until the end of twenty twenty three, which is why I say it took 18 months. It was not fast, it was slow, it was thorough and in some ways I appreciate that and in some ways it sucks. Right. Like if I had someone come to me today and said, hey, I got this notice from the FTC, my advice to them would be move fast. Don't drag it. Just just look. Once you get a CID, it's called a CID, Civil Investigative Demand, you're guilty. Like the chances of them getting they've already researched you. They have what they want that. I just want these are for my lawyer, by the way. I'm not making stuff up. I would just say, look, you're going to pay a fine. You're going to do something. Just get to it. You know, save yourself a legal fees. I spent my fine eventually was two and a half million dollars, which is heavily determined by your ability to pay. It's just so unfair because there are people that have done far, far worse things and gotten away with paying a two hundred thousand dollar fine because they were idiots and they were broke and the guy was rewarded for it. So I have some thoughts there. But again, my opinions, I'm allowed to have opinions and they do what they need to do and they do it their way and I respect it. But my we there's a lot of things that go into determining how the fine was determined. A lot of people online, I saw some people, not a lot. I've been very blessed by how this was received by the industry and very, very supported. And but some people are like, oh, my God, I can't believe it only had two and a half million dollars to his name. Because they don't they don't take every penny to your name. It's not how it works. There's no point in settling. Why would I settle if every dollar I have to my name disappeared? Obviously, then you're incentivized to go to court. It's a settlement. Both parties come to the table and agree. I mean, it's a two way thing. But I spent about one to one point two million dollars in legal fees. I spent about one to one and a half million dollars in staff cost of discovery. And I lost at least 10 to 15 million dollars of opportunity costs, which is profit that I would have been making in the business that we have finally streamlined. And I lost a multi deck a million dollar acquisition. Yeah. So for the people that look and say, oh, my God, I like two and a half million dollars. I'm not so bad, man. You paid millions. You got off easy. Let's talk about the fact that my hair was fully black before this whole thing started. And last time I got a haircut, half my hair was white. Let's talk about the fact that if you try to hand me a certified letter, I'll freak out. Let's talk about the fact that it's at least 150 nights of sleepless nights. Let's talk about the fact that sometimes even till this day, you'll see me staring at a wall blankly. Let's talk about the fact that there was I have a chronic health condition that's been flaring that flare nonstop for over a year. Gained 20 plus pounds. Let's talk about the fact that, you know, there's just so many things that aren't talked about that I'm going to talk about in my book that I specifically say, you know, one of the things I find the most offensive is when someone looks at me. It's such a naive and stupid comment to say, oh, my God, two and a half million dollars. You just don't know. You just don't know. It's like telling someone who goes to jail for five years. I actually had I knew someone that went to jail and I was the dumb idiot who said this to them. He was a young guy. He went to jail when he was 20. He had to go to jail for five years. And I was interviewing him and I said, hey, at least it's only five years. You were out by the time you're 25. You know, you have your whole life. And the guy just looks at me. I guess he said it to me in the interview. Is it the dumbest thing I've ever heard? And he said, do you even know what that means? Do you even know what those five years were like? Do you even know what that's done to me for the rest of my life? Do you know the five years I missed? He's like, I miss my girlfriend who I had been with for 10 years, 10 years old. You know, I couldn't marry her. I left. I watched her marry someone else. It was just like it was crazy to watch and to listen and then to go through this. And I'm like, people tell me, oh, it's just two and a half million dollars. I'm like, that's not it was 20 years of my life is what I feel like. Right. So, yeah, it's been interesting. I think the stress that goes with that, as you say, I mean, how important was the support of your family at that point? I think. Great question. So my wife, oh, man, all the men out there find a woman like the one I have, man, just strong as can be and was like probably more riled up than me. I mean, there were times where she was like, bring it on. Let's go. And I'm like, oh, calm down, Tiger. Like, you know, she's we were about to ready to settle. She's like, screw this gentleman. Let's go all in. Take her to court. This is bullshit. I'm like, you know, it's all a bunch of reasons. Not to do that. Man, I wouldn't have been able to do it without her. She was just, you know, I have people that I got a chance to meet once I got my FTC notice. And you go out talking to and meeting others who have been through it. And I met like two or three at least that got divorced during the time. And now my wife was a huge part of it. Having my child, which was it's like it sucked so much that this happened a month less than a month after my three weeks after my daughter was born. Actually, yeah, three to four weeks after my daughter was born. As much as that sucked, I think my daughter got me through it because I always had something to go back to that would just make me smile. Even until this day, I go home at night. Right. No matter how much I've been beat up throughout the day, when she comes running to give me a hug, it's all gone. Right. Instantly melts away that two baby girls now that that really have helped me through my friend circle. I'll talk, you know, I can't talk enough about my team. Why are they still here? It's crazy. Leave. Go. This is nuts. Why are you voluntarily dealing with this bullshit? Right. When the ship is sinking, it's like, I got to stay. You all should go. And they're like, no. I'm like, please go. No, I can't afford to pay right now. Fine. Leave. No. All right. You know, it's just it's a burden. But it's also so humbling to just know, like, wow, because sometimes when you're going through this, sometimes you start to question yourself. You start to hear the things that they're saying about you, the questions they're asking, and you start to say, dang, am I a wolf in sheep's clothes? Am I bad? Have I been a bad human? Have I hurt people like you start to ask yourself this stuff? And I was really getting into it. I'm a very spiritual person. And so I really believe in God and the impact of God throughout this whole time. There was something that happened at the FTC's headquarters that I thought was God just letting me know, no, you are not a bad person. But my team really helped me through it, man. They're still here. Not one person left me. Not one person who I didn't unfortunately have to ask to leave me left me. And that was such a such a humbling thing. My friends, my customers, the industry. I was open about it. I talked about it. Everyone's like, hey, what can we do to support? What can we do to get you back up? Like, we love you. This is crap. We don't want you to go through this. The only people I never told was my parents until the settlement was written. And I knew we were good and we were settling. I did not tell them because they just would not be able to handle it. I did not want to put them through that. What I went through for 18 months? I don't know. I don't want to put them through that. So the day we had an official agreement and I was signing the settlement, I called my dad. I said, I want to talk to you. I told him. And I stand by that decision. I felt it was a good decision. Didn't tell my sister, didn't tell family. But yeah, man, I came out of this. Unfortunately, I feel bad because a lot of people come out of things like this realizing they have no support. And I came out of this realizing, damn, I'm blessed because I had so much support. And you say you had like a sign from from God when you got to the FTC offices. This is a this is a great story. Can you share with us what happened? It was until this day, every time I tell the story, I just. Yeah, I just get goosebumps. So if the person is watching, if I've reached this person, please reach out to me, because when we met, I could not get your name and take a picture with you. I didn't think it was appropriate. But meeting you that moment was a was a huge thing for me. And I want to be able to meet you again. I want to be able to say hi and thank you. But so when you walk into the FTC building, the government buildings, you go through kind of like the airport security, OK, to get into the main corridor. Now, when you get into the main corridor, you are told the FTC building. So I guess it's multiple buildings that get to one lobby. I don't know how it works. I was too I was too distracted at the time and thinking about my presentation to look around. It was a beautiful building. So you kind of walk this way and then you walk up and like that will be the entrance to the FTC building. And the FTC building has its own security. So the doors are locked and you have to knock on the door and then get buzzed open. So anyways, I was behind. I had like six, seven people with me. I've got my two lawyers. I had a team of four or five people. So I was like hanging back for a second. I'm going to use the restroom. I'll meet you guys when I get there. They're already inside. I knock, the door opens. I walk in and the security table is kind of surrounded by them. And also my team kind of like made a little space and there's a head security guard sitting at the table right under the FTC sign. And he looks at me and he just goes, Onik, holy crap. I love you, man. I'll follow all your stuff. I've been following you for years. And he's like, what the hell are you doing here? And I remember being in shock looking at him and I just kind of pointed to the commission sign. I was like, well, like that. And he just goes, man, it was the best, most crazy feeling. So I walk up to him. So of course my lawyer comes running. He's like, oh, tell me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. So we shake hands. He's like, man, I've been following you for years. Love your stuff. He's like, but I've only taken your free courses. I've never bought any one of your courses, but I really feel like you've had such an impact on my life. So I got a little emotional when I talked about this, sir, because I needed to hear that. Look, I needed to hear that at that moment. That I had made a positive impact on someone's life because I was starting to get convinced that I was a horrible human. And that was probably the hardest thing to deal with of the entire thing. Right. And to hear him say that, that's all I remember. I blanked out after that. And so I remember the, uh, the attorney from the FTC who was, uh, who was responsible for the case. He came down, it was really awkward, right? We shake hands and my attorney is like, oh, you got to talk to your guy here. You know, he's, um, you know, and one of my slides in our presentation was that, hey, we don't just only sell courses. I have, I have, uh, I have free courses. I try to help. I try to help all the people all over the world, even those who can't afford it. So we're like told him like, Hey. And so the guy, I security guard said something to the attorney as like a small thing. And we got in the elevator. It's only a few floors. Weirdest, awkwardest, longest elevator ride ever. It's quiet. And the attorney from the FTC side, he just goes, well, that's a first. That's how you broke the silence. He said, that's a first. And we're all like, what we had kind of forgotten. We're like, what am I looking? My turn is like, what are you talking about? He's like that what happened in the lobby? Our security guard recognizing one of our, you know, like you, and that's all he said about it. That's all he ever said. He's like, oh, maybe I should go. No, he said one more thing. He's like, maybe I should go talk to him. We're like, yeah, you should. And for me, it felt like God said in the building of my accusers lives a man whose life I've influenced positively. So how can you say you're a bad person or you've done bad? I never asked myself that question after that day. I let that go. I was convinced thoroughly at that point that no, I'm not a bad person. Maybe some bad luck or made some poor decisions that led me into this place. But no, I'm not, not a wolf, not been hurting people. I have made a positive impact. There's really, really important part. I'm really grateful that God put that person there because I need that. You just have to have a look on your social media feed as well, Anik, to see there's a lot of love for you and for what you do. And also what you are doing now off the back of this, which is, again, helping people. You mentioned before the book, and I also believe you have a podcast as well. Can you tell us a little bit about those two things? Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And you know what? Honestly, I think that was another selfish reason I started pouring so much value into the world. The byproduct of that was to hear from people the influence and impact I was having and had had. I needed that. That was the currency that kept me going. I didn't make any money during this whole time. I was losing money, burning money left and right, literally burned millions of dollars. And but the best currency I have was someone telling me, you've helped me. That's it. Three words. You've helped me was the best bank deposit I could make. Somewhere along the process, as I'm dealing with all the attorneys, one of my attorneys who I'm not business partners with on the book and on the podcast, I just never knew the extent of what I didn't know. Most people think that, look, getting in trouble with the FCC is all complaint driven process. You have to get a volume of complaints against you. And I didn't have a volume of complaints against you. I'm like, I'm good. I'm not hurting people. So I won't get looked at. But that turns out not to be the case. If you're breaking the rules, you're breaking the rules, period. Right. So the rules you have to understand thoroughly. I got them kind of. And, you know, in hindsight, I look back and I'm like, I probably should have said that. Oh, my gosh. Why did you do that? So I'm not saying like, oh, my God, I'm completely innocent. I see some of the things and I see the perspective of the FCC and some parts. I'm like, OK, I get it. Some parts I disagree with. But I started to learn from this attorney, Greg. And I'm like, dang, man, if I don't know this in 20 years of being in the industry, there are just so many people that don't know this. And I want those who are small right now, small people that they call themselves small. If you're making multi six figures, less than multi six figures, a couple of million. I want you to know now, learn now because you want to grow big. You want to get there. Please set the right habits from day one, because it's very difficult to change when you're like five times bigger than you are today. And when you're five or six times bigger, you're definitely going to come into the radar and you might come into the radar today. Listen, we know about settlements and cases where the FCC has settled with someone for their watch or the settlement has been as low as fifteen thousand dollars. So there's a lot of people out there misinforming, saying you're too small. You're not. The rules are the rules. The FCC does not care because they don't make any money from you. You're not paying the FCC. You're they're doing consumer redress. So get that thought out of your head. People think, well, the FCC wants to make millions of dollars. They're going to come after the small guys because they keep the money. They don't keep the money. So whether they go after a small person, big person, they don't care. Right. So I halfway through, I'm like, no. I got to turn my mess into a message. I got to turn my mess into my message. I got to get this word out. I got to teach people what I'm learning, because if I don't know it, they definitely don't know it. And I see it all around me. My closest friends making mistakes left, right, front and back. And I'm like, please stop. Stop. You don't want to deal with what I dealt with. It is hell upon hell. And so if I can help either one person stop. So that was where we decided we're going to do a podcast. We can't. And I've tried to make compliance fun. Right. So we call it don't say that instead of like FCC compliance rules. No one wants to watch that. So, hey, now what I'm doing is I'm architecting as I'm doing. I'm architecting a compliance marketing model. So how do you because a lot of people are like, well, if I can't say this, I can't say that. What the hell am I supposed to say? I'm not going to make any money. No, I'm building a business now. Compliantly, there is a way to do it. And you can do it. You get better customers. It's a better business. It lasts you a lot longer. You have just it's better. Believe it or not, I'm actually really enjoying what I'm doing now. So we have this book called Don't Say That. I have my next book already being worked on, which will be all about my compliant marketing model. We have our podcast that we do every week where we talk about different things you can and cannot do and the different things happening in the regulatory world, which I think everyone should be tuning into. We're going to be using it as an instructional place to teach you how to do things like things you might be doing right now that aren't compliant. Like, OK, value stacking, this package is worth $38,000. All right, let's talk about that because that's not allowed to be done. Right. Your testimonial usage, your own stories, case studies, all of this we teach. So Don't Say That.com has our podcast and it has our book that you can grab. And we have virtual events we're going to be doing. We have live events we're going to be doing. We have an audit service that we've launched where we do a quick assessment of your marketing to give you an idea. And then we can do a full blown audit. We have a software coming out that's fully AI powered that can monitor live your entire business 24-7, social media posts, your ads, your copy, your sales calls to make sure you're staying compliant. I mean, we are diving full head first into this to really help businesses all over the world, because even if you're in Australia, Canada, whatever, you can still come into the wraps of FTC violations, state AGs, class action lawsuits. We want to help protect you against all of that. Anik, tell us once again, the web address we need to head to to find out more about the book and the podcast and the virtual and in-person events that you're planning. So Don't Say That.com has our podcast, has the book, ComplianceSummit.com, so ComplianceSummit.com. Well, if it's virtual or if it's in person, whatever the next one coming up, you can register your spot for the event there. And then also, if you want to learn more from the marketing side from you, or if you're like, man, I know about this FTC stuff, Anik, teach me how to scale a business, teach me a copywriting, teach me funnels, teach me ad buying, teach me community building. Go to Expertscale.com and join our Facebook group and join our email newsletter where I'm constantly, every day, teaching how to build businesses online. So we've got both sides. I'll teach you how to build a business. I'll teach you how to do it compliantly. Expertscale.com, DontSayThat.com. Wonderful. I mean, it's been an absolute pleasure. I wish the subject matter would have been maybe slightly different, but still, thank you for sharing your knowledge, your insight and your story, which is, I'm sure you're glad it's behind you. Yes, I am. Hey, thank you for having me. And for those who are listening, seriously, thank you for listening. Thank you for taking this seriously enough to listen. And I always say one thing at the end of everything I ever say, which is when life pushes you, which it inevitably will, stand straight, smile and push it back. Thanks.