12 weeks ago, someone shared with me a statement that has since profoundly impacted the trajectory of my life.
I want to tell you the story because, for many of you, this will impact you too.
I was sitting at Soho House in Stockholm. I came to Stockholm to attend a longevity conference. I assembled people around me: founders, a few Mindvalley authors, close friends.
I asked them an important question.
I’d gathered them because I was confused.
And I wanted the truth from people who wouldn’t flatter me.
Here’s what I asked:
“I love teaching. But this past year I’ve been teaching so many different things, and I keep wondering what would happen if I focused on one. Among the areas of manifesting, entrepreneurship, AI, personal growth, and influence, what would you most want to hear me speak about?”
Across from me sat a brilliant doctor and speaker named Babak Amen.
And what he said stopped me cold.
“Vishen, the manifesting work is cool. But plenty of people do that. The one thing you’re truly the best in the world at, the thing that has my full attention, is turning someone who is an expert into an authority. You’ve done it for hundreds of authors. For WildFit. For Lifebook. For Marisa Peer. For Jim Kwik. For Regan Hillyer. You’ve built world-class names. Some of them are globally recognized. After two decades, you must have a system because I don’t know anyone else who’s done this a hundred times, for a hundred different people. What’s the method? Teach that. And I’ll take notes.”
I sat with it for a long time.
He was right.
It’s the one thing I’m possibly truly one of the best in the world at.
I know how to take an expert nobody has heard of and make them a name people flock to.
I know how to take a founder with a brilliant product that can’t get seen, and help them tell their story so clearly that people start chasing them instead.
I know how to take a webinar and turn it into an engine that floods a company with leads.
I did that for Lifebook — a 12-year-old company — and grew their revenue 300% in a few months.
I know how to make a world-class teacher into a globally recognized name. I did that with Marisa Peer in 2015.
And I know how to build a video ad that makes a teacher famous. The campaign we built for Jim Kwik took him from 50,000 Instagram followers to two million. At its peak, it drove $20 million A YEAR for his program Superbrain.
I’ve done this more than a hundred times.
Here’s what Babak Amen actually gave me that afternoon. It wasn’t a compliment. It was clarity. Because I realized I don’t just know how to do this thing — I know how to teach it.
That’s the realization moving me into a new chapter of my life.
Why this becomes my legacy
At Mindvalley, we’ve always dreamed of touching a billion lives.
After 20 years, we’ve reached about 20 million people directly. Count the lives our teachers have touched, and it’s closer to 100 million people. Beautiful.
But it still leaves 900 million to go.
I’ve finally made peace with something. We can’t get there on our own.
The only way to touch a billion lives is to amplify other teachers. To take the gifted and the unknown, the ones with something real to give, and help the world actually receive them. I know the system that does this. So I’m going to give it away.
I’m starting with a summit. I’ll be doing most of the teaching.
It’s called Expert to Authority Summit, and I’m teaching my best systems over 3 days for 4 hours each day. Free.
It begins September 18.
That date is not random. Dates carry meaning for me.
September 18, 2007, was the most important day of my life. It’s the day my son Hayden was born.
Hayden just left for university. He’s in Florida now, and I’m enormously proud of him. We spent his last year before university traveling the world together, learning together because any parent will tell you the hard math: you spend about 90% of the time you’ll ever have with your child before they turn eighteen.
So this September 18, for the first time, Hayden’s at university. And a lot of time has opened up in my life.
I could let that become sadness. The quiet grief that hits so many parents when the house goes still. Instead, I’m pouring it into something that matters, building a new chapter around helping experts become authorities.
That’s why the summit begins on the 18th. The day my son starts his next chapter and turns 19 is the day I start mine.
Expert to Authority Summit. Three days, live on Zoom, September 18–20. Free.
I’ll be honest about what this is and isn’t.
It’s not a motivational weekend.
For 22 years, this method has stayed behind the curtain; it’s how we build every new Mindvalley author in their first thirty days.
This is the first time I’m teaching all of it in the open.
If you’re an expert, a coach, a founder, or a teacher who is genuinely good at what you do and the world still doesn’t know it, come.
With love,
P.S. If this story stirred something in you, leave me a comment; I read every single one. Tell me: what’s the one thing you might be the best in the world at?
82 Responses
Vishen, your story really resonated with me. I’ve been part of the Mindvalley world for several years, and I’m deeply grateful for the authors and teachers you’ve brought into my life. Their (and your) work has genuinely influenced and transformed me.
Your question made me stop and ask myself: what have I spent my life exploring deeply enough to have something truly unique to teach?
My answer would be: movement — and the profound connection between the body, the mind, and what we believe is possible.
I’ve been immersed in movement since childhood, teaching for 23 years and exploring the potential of the human body for more than two decades through performance, aerial acrobatics, and movement education.
At the heart of my work is something very simple, yet surprisingly powerful: learning to listen to your body, understand its signals, and work with it rather than against it.
I explore this on both the micro and macro scales.
Through what I call Micromovement, I teach people to release unnecessary tension, develop deep body awareness, and create an “economy of movement” — using only what is needed, with precision and intention.
And on the other end of the spectrum, I’ve spent 26 years practicing aerial silks and now teach aerial acrobatics internationally — exploring how the body can learn things that initially seem impossible.
What fascinates me is that the principles are the same: awareness, visualization, precision, persistence, and learning from every “failure” until the body and mind discover a new possibility.
I don’t just want to teach people how to perform a movement. I want to help them listen to their bodies so deeply that they begin to discover abilities they didn’t know they had.
Perhaps that is the work I could spend the rest of my life exploring — the art of listening to the body, and unlocking its potential through the mind.
And perhaps one day, I would love to bring this work to the Mindvalley community. ❤️
Hello Vishen,
Thank you so much for sharing this experience. It speaks to me, as well as the relationship you have with your son. Funny enough, on September 18-20 my son and I are doing a “father-son workshop”, so I will unfortunately not be able to assist to your summit. Hopefully you can reach out and tell me how I could possibly get the info.
Best regards,
Hello Vishen. I have watched your path for years and even bought your first set of CDs. Every topic you touched has been a critical part of my self education, including Silva. You inspired me to write my own books, including Your Will and Your Win: Rescuing Your Human Will from Popular Culture and Finding Your Win. I am not ready to be an expert. My intuition is guiding me more than anything now. While writing my book, I had an opportunity to get the book translated into Dutch for very little investment. That has been sitting with me for 3 years now and making me notice a new path opening. Your new path is opening and I think it is extraordinary. The experts you enhance also open up new paths for others. You create an exponential effect. Yes, of course, it is a good path. As is your love for your child. You may this this love is ordinary, but it is not. More people should love their children and this would create more secure adults. It’s possible to reach this level of security without it, but like climbing Mount Everest. My best to you, Carla
I am an experienced cook. I have a passion for cooking and believe in the healing and comfort properties it brings to souls that seek care, love and compassion. I cooked in a hospital for patients, always infusing my food with love and creativity, to bring smiles to sick and injured patients who needed extra support. Good food feeds the soul! I now cook for and supervise inmates in the local jail kitchen. The company recipes we are required to use leave little room for adding love and creativity to food through the restrictions of budget. This budget is designed to use poor quality food that just meets the daily required caloric intake of inmates. It is not designed to taste good. With my knack for improvising, I make the jail food enjoyable! I go above and beyond to be creative, to add flavor and magic to what I have to work with, almost never following the recipe. For 99% of the inmates, mealtimes are all they have to look forward to. I receive many compliments and notes from inmates just saying “Thank You”. I know these are “Thank you for caring, Thank you for being compassionate, Thank you for not treating me like cattle, Thank you for not judging me, Thank you for caring enough to not serve me food that I wouldn’t feed my dog”. Institution food for the inmate system is designed by companies that don’t value palpable, or decency. To me, I feel like I’m contributing to the healing of souls who are struggling with their purpose. Many who have not experienced compassion from others. I’m not trying to drive the vehicle of judgement and persecution into their mouths and stomachs. My co workers have no compassion, they show up to work, cook slop that they wouldn’t feed their families and shrug it off, “they’re inmates, this is what they deserve”. It sickens me that they don’t care about the well being of other humans. It doesn’t help the collective, it just loops the cycle of disfunction, disregard and discontent. How do I petition the criminal system to see that compassion is key to the future of rehabilition? I feel that rehabilitation threatens the system, because they also need money, they need jobs, they cannot survive without this system of holding peoples heads under the water. I feel under scrutiny an judgment by my peers for trying to make a difference and fear losing my job someday because I don’t agree with protocol. I know that I am a valuable contributor to society but also an upsetter to the status quo who want to keep the system operating as it always has. It feels like an impossible battle. How does one person advocate and stand up to such an antiquated system without getting burned at the stake?
You are incredible. I love what you wrote about Why you are doing this. Mindvalley is Incredible App and I can’t wait for this Expert to authority summit.
I am an experienced cook. I have a passion for cooking and believe in the healing and comfort properties it brings to souls that seek care, love and compassion. I cooked in a hospital for patients, always infusing my food with love and creativity, to bring smiles to sick and injured patients who needed extra support. Good food feeds the soul! I now cook for and supervise inmates in the local jail kitchen. The company recipes we are required to use leave little room for adding love and creativity to food through the restrictions of budget. This budget is designed to use poor quality food that just meets the daily required caloric intake of inmates. It is not designed to taste good. With my knack for improvising, I make the jail food enjoyable! I go above and beyond to be creative, to add flavor and magic to what I have to work with, almost never following the recipe. For 99% of the inmates, mealtimes are all they have to look forward to. I receive many compliments and notes from inmates just saying “Thank You”. I know these are “Thank you for caring, Thank you for being compassionate, Thank you for not treating me like cattle, Thank you for not judging me, Thank you for caring enough to not serve me food that I wouldn’t feed my dog”. Institution food for the inmate system is designed by companies that don’t value palpable, or decency. To me, I feel like I’m contributing to the healing of souls who are struggling with their purpose. Many who have not experienced compassion from others. I’m not trying to drive the vehicle of judgement and persecution into their mouths and stomachs. My co workers have no compassion, they show up to work, cook slop that they wouldn’t feed their families and shrug it off, “they’re inmates, this is what they deserve”. It sickens me that they don’t care about the well being of other humans. It doesn’t help the collective, it just loops the cycle of disfunction, disregard and discontent. How do I petition the criminal system to see that compassion is key to the future of rehabilition? I feel that rehabilitation threatens the system, because they also need money, they need jobs, they cannot survive without this system of holding peoples heads under the water. I feel under scrutiny an judgment by my peers for trying to make a difference and fear losing my job someday because I don’t agree with protocol. I know that I am a valuable contributor to society but also an upsetter to the status quo who want to keep the system operating as it always has. It feels like an impossible battle. How does one person advocate and stand up to such an antiquated system without getting burned at the stake?
Hi Vishen,
Love this article you wrote.
Feels calm and authentic.
As asked, I am very good at
designing my own line of fantasy
jewelry. Working with all colours, my
current collection is The Fairy Garden
Collection utilizing glass and crystal components.
Garden is eternal and my inspiration
comes from observing nature.
Self taught I keep my business manageable on my own including production.
Thank you for observing this writing.
Appreciate your teachings and all that you are doing to awaken humanity at this time.
Looking forward to attending your seminar starting September 18th –
my dearly departed Grandmother Mary’s birthday.
Sincerely,
Valerie
Hi Vishen,
My name is Estíbaliz Lancha. I’m a pharmacist, formulator, entrepreneur — and also a Mindvalley member.
I’m writing to you because I would genuinely love to tell you about something I’ve been building.
After more than 20 years working in skincare and formulation, I became increasingly interested in a different question: could we create a very simple tool to help people shift from stress towards a calmer state, using something as immediate and accessible as the skin and the sense of smell?**
That question became ATELIEST.
We combine neurocosmetics and neuroperfumery to create simple sensory tools that can be used in seconds, in real everyday moments — before a difficult meeting, after an argument, when you feel overwhelmed, or simply when you need to slow down.
We are a tiny, self-funded company in Spain, but the ambition behind it is much bigger than creating another beauty brand. What really drives me is the possibility of helping as many people as we can live with a little less stress.
We have already carried out two small pilot studies using EEG and salivary cortisol, and the initial results have encouraged us to keep exploring.
As someone who has personally learned from the Mindvalley ecosystem, I would love the opportunity to tell you more about what we are building and, if you are curious, send you ATELIEST so you can experience it yourself.
Thank you for everything you have built and for the ideas that have reached people like me.
Warmly,
Estíbaliz Lancha
Pharmacist, Formulator & Founder
ATELIEST
Hi Vishen
I have witnessed your journey over the years. After reading code of the extraordinary mind, I began integrating, an implementing the principles and practices into my personal and professional life. I have learned a great deal from you and all of the powerful leaders you have helped bring into the world. I wrote to your team about a book I committed to writing for the world. It’s called the uncaged man: resurrecting the masculine, honoring the feminine, and healing humanity.
Prior to writing this book and leaving academia, I said the word unfuckwithable in a talk, I gave in a university setting. And it was well received by those who were ready to hear it and not so well received by others. I believe I can help you get to 1 billion. I have been through many initiations to higher states of consciousness and. beingness. I am one of the people touched by your work. I would like my expertise, my book, and my leadership to make its way into the world. The publication industry has been a challenge for me. It appears I don’t have the following they require. I would love your help and expertise to step more out into the world as a leader, healer, Coach, and mentor to those that would benefit. As a leader, I help men, women, families, direct their attention and truthful presence towards what matters most. It requires and un caging process, waking up, healing up, cleaning up, maturing up, and showing up in the world. I’m here to help humanity transition to a new state of beingness. Thank you for listening.
I’m beginning to see a pattern. I’m still in bed with a terrible cough and sore throat. I’m idling and i start fiddling with my cell ph device. At the top of the email list is Vishen again. Curiosity kills the cat, but not me! I start scrolling again and alas, this uninvited fly that keeps crashlanding in my best coffee cup drops again. I’m not throwing my coffee away, but registering for the expert to authority summit – on one condition, that Vishen is not playing “cheap Malaysian psychology on me”. Boom!
Hi Vishen, my name is Earl and I am an expert Authority figure on how all of this life on this realm called earth works. I been studying and meditating (vipassana for over 27 years). I reached a place of awareness to where I understand h ow this life works in its entirety. I never really shared with the public but I want to share with a community by my side in this physical reality. Thank you for taking the time, wholeness brother.
Thank you Vishen. I find your newsletter always very authentic, practical and insightful at the same time. To answer your question: what I am best at is teaching and coaching my clients while making them feel always at ease, seen, understood and empowered to show up as the person they really are.
Vishen, your question stopped me.
I have followed you for many years, and much of what I have learnt from you has found its way, sometimes unexpectedly, into my own work.
I am a 68-year-old Australian woman who has lived with Parkinson’s disease and Multiple System Atrophy–Parkinsonian type for more than two decades. For around sixteen of those years I have been an active advocate within the Parkinson’s community, coaching and mentoring others living with the disease, while continuing to research, learn and eventually complete a PhD grounded in Parkinson’s research.
I have received recognition along the way, including being named Queensland Community Hero in 2019–2020. My neurologist even gives me what I laughingly call his “gold accolade”. I am proud of those things. But reading your story made me realise that none of them actually answers your question:
What is the one thing I might be unusually good at?
I think it is this:
I know how to help a person stop being merely the recipient of a progressive neurological disease and become an active steward of the life that remains theirs to influence.
Over many years I have developed what I call Parkinson’s Lifestyle Protocols — highly individual practices built around mindset, movement, careful observation, experimentation and small, deliberate daily actions. I don’t claim these practices cure Parkinson’s or MSA. They don’t. But I believe they have contributed significantly to the way I have continued to live, work and function, and I have seen these same principles help others discover possibilities they had stopped looking for.
My central question has never been only:
“What is Parkinson’s doing to me?”
It is also:
“What can I do in response?”
That distinction has become my life’s work.
Millions of people around the world live with Parkinson’s disease, with still more living with atypical forms of parkinsonism. Behind those numbers are people learning how to live inside a diagnosis that progressively changes the rules.
Most are necessarily taught a great deal about their disease and its treatment and necessary daily drug therapies. I am interested in something that sits alongside good medical care: teaching people how to become knowledgeable observers and active participants in their own lives — noticing, responding, adapting, moving, experimenting, building personal systems and continuing to exercise agency wherever agency remains possible.
Perhaps what I am unusually good at is helping people discover that they still have moves available to them.
And perhaps, after reading your post tonight, I have finally understood that this is the thing I should be teaching much more widely.
Thank you for the question.
Dr Nikki A. Creber
http://www.nikkiacreber.com (under redevelopment currently) Australia
Dear Vishen, your question touched something very deep in me.
For 20 years, through my work with Happy Mama Yoga in Hermany I have accompanied thousands of women through pregnancy and into motherhood.
I believe my greatest gift is helping pregnant women reconnect with the wisdom of their bodies, trust their own strength, and prepare for birth with confidence rather than fear.
At a time when Caesarean section rates are rising around the world, and many women approach birth feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or disconnected from their own power, I believe this work matters more than ever.
My vision is to make this knowledge and support accessible to many more women — so that natural and self-determined birth remains a real possibility, and women enter motherhood feeling strengthened rather than diminished.
Perhaps this is the work I am meant to bring to a much wider audience.
Woops! Got it sorted. Thanks, Vishen.
Hi Vishen,
This is Shernaz, the Founder of Purple Lotus. Mindvalley and you hsve been my inspiration for years. Purple Lotus is a start-up (it’s been almost five years since I was inspired in a deep meditative state of a vision of Lord Buddha gifting me a lotus flower). If you visit purplelotus.me you will get the essence of Purple Lotus. I infact reached out to you several times on Linked In to explore opportunities of working together. I am based in Dubai, UAE and would love to speak to you directly.
Stay well and happy
Shernaz
Dear Wonderful Vishen,
Your letter this morning about your Stockholm experience is so moving. Thank you. You are a great gift to this world.
I’m attempting to upgrade for your VIP Authority Pass to your Expert to Authority Summit. Where ever I hover and click, there is so far no changed result.
Any advice?
Thanks so much.
Hi Vishen. I enjoy your courses very much and I thank you for all the good work. I am a writer and actress from Iceland. My plays, books and my TV series have always received brilliant, outstanding reviews and many awards both nationally and internationally- but somehow I am always struggling financially and am not “in demand” so to speak. It seems like I have to prove myself every time I start a new project – and basically I am not offered any projects at all. They all happen because I start them. After each success, there has always been a long period of “void – where I am left thinking: why doesn’t anyone offer me a great project? A fantastic collaboration? A properly paid interesting professional gig? I reach out – offer my skills and there are no takers. I neither know why this happens nor what to do. I am a brilliant storyteller and a fountain of ideas as well as a good writer and an excellent actress. My dream is to eventually run a financially sound storyfactory – with different projects going on, thus giving myself and many other people platform to get their voices heard with my guidance and support. Is this something you could help with?
Vishen, this made me wonder if some of our greatest gifts are the ones we’ve been quietly practicing our whole lives.
I’ve been writing little stories since I was a kid of the experiences and adventures I wanted to have then living them —then helping clients find and tell the story that was already alive inside them focusing on the joy and flow in every word as if it was already lived. Now that same thread has become “Heart Song”, my musical at the Philly Fringe happening now until September 27th.
Maybe our “next chapter” isn’t about discovering something new. Maybe it’s finally recognizing the gift that has been singing through us all along. ❤️
Hi Vishen,
Creating visibility in a noisy world is truly a gift.
I help organisations improve their human capital by increasing their human capacity using somatic methods and Lifestyle Medicine and measuring evidence based outcomes to measure the improvements.