Before getting going with the video, I do want to give a shout-out to my sponsor, Element. Element is a hydration mix containing potassium, magnesium, and sodium. When we get depleted, when we get dehydrated, it isn't just water that we're losing from our system, but also salts. And so, when you put a hydration mix like Element in your water bottle, not only does it make it taste better, even though it doesn't have added sugars, but it actually fuels your performance, fuels recovery, makes you feel fantastic throughout the day. You can use my link in the description box, drinkelement.com/captainsynbad, and you'll get a free product with any order. Now, back to the video. In this video, I want to talk about my greatest insights and what I've learned chasing my dreams very viciously for the past month. It feels kind of embarrassing to say that, but it's only been about a clear month where I resumed production and resumed my efforts on River Rats, the film. And what it essentially taught me is that chasing

your dreams is the best way to make money. Some time ago, I read this book, The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway, and in that book, he talks about how a lot of the careers that are perceived as very attractive or sexy, they don't make you any money. For instance, actors. Out of all the actors who are in the SAG-AFTRA union, which is very few, it's probably only like 1% of actors who are actually in the union. Only a small portion of them make more than $50,000 a year. 99% of actors who are actually registered with the union, which that itself is difficult to do, do not make a livable income from acting. And we know this to a degree, we know this to an extent, and that's why I've often chased practical things like getting a Salesforce certification or a degree or getting a job in Tech in my early days, because that was the most Surefire way that I could get progress. And I learned this sort of mentality all my life that it's

better to chase practical things rather than the things that I'm really interested in because that's how I make progress. It was easier for me to make progress in Tech than it ever was in the early days with acting or filmmaking. But I'm coming around to a different perspective. It is, in fact, the truth that chasing things that you love makes you more money than ever and brings about the most amount of progress. And so, in this video, I want to talk about how you can pursue dreams and, in fact, should pursue goals and dreams with immense fervor, with immense talent, and with immense dedication, and how it leads to the best results of your life. So, the first idea I want to talk about in this video is the fact that you can always execute some step of the process or the job with anything, in any profession, in any industry. You can always treat yourself like a professional with that endeavor. Let's take modeling for an example. A lot of people think modeling is kind of an impractical career.

especially if you grew up in Ohio or something, and you think, Okay, you want to be like one of the top models in New York City. But if you were to pare down and go back to what is possible, you look at your life in Ohio right now. I just chose that randomly, by the way. But you look at your life in Ohio. There are talent agencies or modeling agencies in Ohio, definitely. There's also a gym that's not just like your basic Anytime Fitness or, I don't know, Planet Fitness. It's like a dedicated gym for really serious people and people who are very, very passionate about fitness at a high level. Definitely, even in the middle of nowhere in Ohio, there would be people who are extremely passionate about fitness. And there's a modeling agency there. It could be a really rinky-dink modeling agency, but certainly, there's one there. And so, if you were to apply yourself without moving, just planting where you are or within a 20-minute drive radius of where you are, you would be able to work on contacts and networks.

that could get you modeling jobs, and those modeling jobs starting out, you know, like the stuff that I booked in my early days, was like a Sleep Number commercial or a Cadillac ad. It can be small stuff, but it is definitely work that is getting you on set, and it's work that's getting you experience. And so, with any endeavor you're taking on, I mean across the board, even if you want to be like a professional ice skater, you can find the sort of small-scale version of that right in your backyard. It's one of those things that I wish I understood far sooner because I spent many years just chasing my ambitions outside of myself, outside of my hometown. But you can often find progress right in your own backyard with anything you're pursuing. You can buy a camera, you can start taking photos and learning photography yourself at a high level, and then start building out your own portfolio online. You can become your own UX designer by taking classes and then building out like a modeling portfolio online. Suddenly, you have a digital

portfolio. Then you can use services like Rocket Reach or other outreach services, or even just LinkedIn, and directly reach out to bigger talent agencies outside of your current Ohio network and expand from there. But because so many people are told that the dream of signing with Ford models or Wilhelmina models in New York City or Chicago, that dream seems so far out they don't even pursue what's possible in their own backyard. For my own part, I thought that for me to make a movie or be a part of a movie, I would need to get reps in Hollywood. And I spent years chasing that to no success. And then eventually, I thought, Okay, I can't pursue this, but I suppose I can make personal development videos on YouTube because the production cost of that is very low. And I did that for a while. And then eventually, I worked up to some small-scale efforts where there might be a skit or back in 2020. What was really big for us was making these director series videos in which we would try to

impersonate the videography style of like you know my favorite director at the time, whether that's Christopher Nolan or Dena Lov or even the Cohen Brothers. But I never got around to making a proper feature-length project, even though it's something I've been talking about since probably 2020 on my Channel or 2021. So what happened? I forgot this rule that I had even told myself that I could do it in my own scale, in my own backyard. And yet somehow this year we got to work on that production. Let the main lesson of this principle be this: for whatever you're pursuing, ask yourself, How can I do this in my own backyard? How can I execute on some element of this process from where I'm at right now? And if you dare to ask yourself that question, you'll find yourself just moving towards it in a very exciting way. And the other beautiful thing about all this is that you don't need to do what you love on a super high level to be happy, of course.

you might find more satisfaction or just a greater sense of achievement, I suppose, from climbing up the ranks and like doing it at a higher level, which is to say perhaps being on set in New York City for some big New York City Fashion Week shoot. If your aspiration is to still be that model, perhaps that would be like a greater sense of achievement, but you would be surprised by how much of a sense of achievement and fulfillment and progress you would find by doing it at the scale that is available to you. And so keep that in mind, you can pursue whatever you want right in your own backyard, and I wish so many people would be more ambitious in like doing what they love at the scale that is available to them. The next thing I want to say in this video is that you can find the network who will do it with you if you simply care. The beautiful thing about pursuing things that you care is that it just brings life into you. The word inspire, the derivative of that, it means to bring life into something, and when we are in an inspired

State we are full of life. That's an insanely powerful position to be in. It makes you one with God, honestly. To be full of life, to be full of inspiration, and there's so many things that you know I've had to learn to do in my own Constitution to find that energetically, whether that's eating healthily, not drinking alcohol, sleeping enough. That was a whole skill set of its own for me. But even inspiration, it must constantly be maintained by having some Vision that you're working towards. And when you have that Vision, you begin to automatically find that Network who will do it with you. Dan Martell and his co-author wrote this really interesting book, who, which you don't need to read, but its premise is worth understanding. He says, Ask who, not what. So for any goal that you're pursuing, don't ask how to achieve it, ask who can do it, and who can achieve this goal for you. And I say this like having learned this lesson very slowly and very desperately. I thought I needed to

be at a different place in life, maybe in terms of YouTube subscribers or how much revenue I generated from the business, before I could take matters into my own hands and pursue my film project myself. And to a degree, my, you know, whatever small amount of influence that I have currently, it is definitely valuable, but there's so much I am able to do just because I am asking people to be involved in what I'm doing, doing, I'm just like putting it out there, and my inspiration is out there. With any objective that you're taking on, you need to let people know what you're working on, and that fire needs to be there to do the thing. The beautiful thing about chasing things that genuinely inspire you, that genuinely motivate you, is that people feel that energy, people feel that cultivation, and so you can find the network wherever you wish to go. So let me just give you a quick breakdown of where this network or where the people you want to connect with there can be found. One, I would say, is through social

media YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the big ones for me. If you regularly post content on YouTube or on Instagram and you just share the process, you share the vision of what you're working on. You literally work on the vision, and then you share the process. It naturally begins to attract people who can work with you. Some of the most loyal people and talented people I've worked with in the last 6 years, they've literally been just inbound leads through my YouTube channel and through Instagram. This even came before my channel was even big, back when I had 300 subscribers. This was in June of 2018. I had around 300 subscribers. I already had this actor, Levi Christ. It was his name, a really cool guy. He connected with me early on, and he'd been on a bunch of Broadway shows. He found me through a lot of like the semen retention, nofap videos that I would make in those days because a lot of artists resonate with that topic. I found that it's like you don't

need notoriety, or you don't need a huge audience to cultivate a network through social media, but it's that willingness to share what you're working on that people find so compelling, that people find so cool. I'm sure even for you, a lot of your favorite YouTubers or people that you follow on Instagram, they might not have a huge, huge audience, but they put out work that consistently speaks to you. It's there directly for you, and so you can respect that person, you can respect their craft. As a result, it becomes this great network, it becomes this great contact. I have a video that I can link in a card right now called How to Use Instagram as Both a Dating Portfolio and for Business, and I think the rules inside that video account for everything when it comes to just showing the process, showing your work. And it's something that I'm always doing my best at to cultivate and show my work on social media, and it's not in a way to boast, it's simply a way to bolster.

because when social media is used correctly, it actually fuels your dreams. It's almost like you're getting paid to pursue your dreams. You can also find your network in a coffee shop, coffee shops, libraries, run clubs. I haven't actually been to one, but I hear these events that are very low ticket can be really, really great mediums to meet people. And the more people that you connect with, the more people that you just randomly say hi to, the more lucky you get. There's an amazing book called the two books called the Serendipity Factor and the Luck Factor that talk about how your number one indicator of how lucky you are going to get is with how many people you connect with. And obviously connecting with people online is really powerful, like online outreach or online connection or I don't know, building a network through social media is super powerful, of course. But one that's really kind of more direct and has more of an immediate impact is just meeting people in real life because those people can actually feel your energy. They can feel the work you're

doing what you're putting out, and that can just have such an immediate impact on the goals you're trying to pursue. So, you can build a network just through going through a coffee shop. Literally, go to a coffee shop and say hi to the people around you, and you'll be shocked by how much progress you can make with that endeavor that you're pursuing. Even for River Rats, as we're ramping up to try, we're about a third of the way through shooting part one. Random people I've met in coffee shops and such have contributed to the success of the project as they were able to connect me with the actors at the Guth, or people who have gone through a BFA program. And then, of course, if you're trying to expand your network, especially at a more business scale or not, you can just pay for mentorship. Mentorship exists at all levels. This could be hiring a personal trainer; that could be a great mentorship. Or it could just be joining someone's coaching program. I'm a big advocate, of course, I

run my own coaching program as well, but I'm a big advocate of buying coaching programs and working with mentors directly because they just give you access to knowledge and insights that you wouldn't have otherwise. So, you can find the people who will do it with you, and when you have the right connections, damn, like it opens up a lot of doors. Principal three: act on your hunches. Dan Coad had written this beautiful Instagram post about how there are moments in our life in which we feel connected to Source, we feel connected to God, and we feel as if electricity is running through our fingertips. And in those periods of life, we're able to take on efforts, take on endeavors that actually move the needle. You just feel like the things you do matter more to me, God, the superconscious mind, and perhaps even a little bit the subconscious. They're all very connected, which is to say I can do things that put God in my corner, more like bring favor to me more readily. A lot of this comes down to your

intuition and your hunches. So, what are the intuitions and the hunches you have? You get instincts to do certain things or take on certain practices. When you take on those efforts, you genuinely progress towards what you want to do faster. I'm getting all the strange sorts of hunches or intuitions in this season of my life that feel very true. Of course, I'm proceeding with our marathon and Iron Man training, at least to a degree, whose journey you can log on my second channel, Sinbad Trains. But I also feel motivated and called to learn how to play the banjo. I know it sounds kind of silly, but there's a scene in my movie that calls for being able to play the banjo. So, sounds insane, right? But yeah, I'm starting banjo lessons, and then all these other hunches about where to shoot film locations, actors who can be in the movie, and all that. There's a number of intuitions and hunches that

you get and we all get them that we simply don't act upon. But when you get a hunch, sometimes it may seem scary, but you should act on it as readily as possible. Brian Tracy, he's like an old-school personal development author. He had written many, many books about productivity, and he said one of the better aspects of productivity is acting on your superconscious hunches. So, sometimes you'll randomly get an insight to make a right phone call, like, Oh, text this random person, or something like that. And whenever you get that hunch, whenever you get that insight, there's a good chance you should do it because it could be that it's a subconscious hunch to connect with someone. That person might be able to get you a job interview or, you know, help you progress towards some aspect of the ambition. But there's a number of things we can do to contribute to that. One is just to look at your goals regularly, and I often document my goals and the things I'm working on. I put my vision

board on Microsoft OneNote so you can just pay attention to the progress of that goal. I look at it every morning and every night, and I visualize it. This is not because the visualization directly has a result on the Law of Attraction and brings that thing to you, more so it's the fact that it gives you hunches or ideas on things you can act upon to bring about that result. I've come to realize that there's so many things in life whose result we can bring about if we just focus on the right things. So, with whatever goal you're pursuing, you should be having it like a visual of it and thinking about it all the time, just always be thinking about it. Another thing is just regular meditation, just increases your intuition. Across the board from that, I've talked about these in the videos in the past, like how to be potent, eating well, sleeping enough, all these efforts, they make your intuition work better, and the more you act on your hunches, the

more. You're in tune with the Divine, with God, which brings me to the next idea: put your faith in the process, put your faith in God. I'm not necessarily saying this from a devotional place when I say God; I mean a connection to a source, a connection to a substance, the source of creativity, the source of like, I don't know, the energy that has brought about life itself. There's definitely something out there that has cultivated all these things to exist in our lives, and you can access this force yourself. A mantra that I come back to often is that as you walk the path, it continues to reveal itself to you. So if you just continue to walk on the path of whatever you're working on, it will continue to reveal itself to you. And the way things work, oftentimes we cannot see more than two to three steps out, but we can always see a little bit out. It's really wild. You will always know what your next action is, or at least your action for that day. You will never be confused on what you

should do for that day. For the most part, you might be confused about how you're going to get to the Final Destination, like a month out or a year out. There could be a lot of fear and anxiety about that, but you can always definitively know what is to be done that day. And if you do that day's work, rest assured that the timeline will continue. So, put your faith in God. Often, ask yourself a journaling prompt that I do all the time at the start of every morning: What would God have me do today? And I try to come up with a list of those items, and I try to follow them. And it's scary sometimes. It means investing in myself and investing in my enterprises to the degree that I'm able to. And this doesn't stop failure from happening either, but I trust that intuition to the degree that I'm able to. And the more I have trusted it, the better things have gone for me. This brings me to the last idea of the video.

follow the money and follow excitement, ideally both of those things, but at least one of those things. Follow the money when you're on the right path. Generally speaking, it's not universally, but generally speaking, it actually leads to fortune, to good fortune, to financial progress. It's not always. Sometimes we have to invest in our dreams, and it sets us back a bit. But for the most part, when I have been set backwards in life financially, it is because I went off the path. I went off the path of even just being a good man or being courageous with my vision. And when I'm on the right path, I get intuitions that let me access more money. I'm like, This is how I can follow the money. So, it sounds crazy to say, but working on your goals will definitively make you more money. Even if your goal, let's say your goal is to qualify for the Iron Man World Championships, you know, to go to Kona, Hawaii, and do a sub-9-hour Iron Man or something like that.

that there's a ton of upfront expense when it comes to doing an Iron Man. You know, you have to get yourself an expensive bike, a wetsuit, travel, hotel, food, hydration. There's so much that goes into it. But if there is an internal calling telling you that you want to be an Iron Man Triathlon world champion, and that's the vision you want to pursue, and that means training 20 to 30 hours a week, I would bet that in the grand scheme of things, that vision is connected to your financial progress. Because that vision is basically God whispering in your ear, saying, This is what you got to do. This is what you're good at. And sometimes the hunches that we get, they're practical. So I get hunches, I don't know, maybe to learn Python or learn AI at a high level. Sometimes the hunches are practical, like you want to learn a particular programming language. Sometimes they're more out there. They're more out there, and in fact, it may

seem initially financially draining, but generally speaking, if you put your faith in the process and you follow the money, then you will do well. The other thing is to follow excitement. Excitement is also a wonderful thing. Sometimes excitement can lead us astray, but if what you're pursuing allows inspiration to come into your life, then prosperity is soon to come. I often find that the things we're meant to do in terms of our purpose and our work in the world, they're very much connected to the things that can make us money and the things that can bring us excitement. You can find money and excitement in a number of different fields, so it's just about staying curious and asking yourself what you should be working on that day. But above all else, what I want to say with this video is that always ask what I should do and what I can do. Always be curious about what path is available to you in this world because through your ambitions and through your strivings and through your curiosity and

through your connection to the Divine, a beautiful journey will continue to unfold. If you're new here, my name is NLL. This channel features uploads about once a week or once every other week. If you resonate with the message, love it if you could subscribe. You can follow me for more behind-the-scenes content on Instagram at Nraa Pond. And with that, I'll catch you in the next one. Greatness is coming. Onwards.

God Wants You to Follow Your Dreams.

God Wants You to Follow Your Dreams.