How I Met a Digital Mentor

Here is the 3-year journey that led to this selfie

Everyone always talks about the downsides to social media, but in reality there are upsides as well. One of which is direct immediate access into the mindset of the greats.

In 2022 as I was looking to become a better version of my newfound post wall-street self, I started following some big names on (then) twitter. And when you follow one person, those people suddenly unlock a new network of people for you to follow.

Sahil (x.com/sahilbloom) must have come up as a follow at one point of time and the algorithm pumped his content to me — as his daily advice matched what I was looking for.

His X account reminds me of getting the perfect fortune cookie at a Chinese Restaurant every time.

One example is the 2-minute evening journal. I’ve been journaling for a while now but I always had trouble structuring the writing. In one of his threads he alluded to a 1-1-1 method for end-of-day journaling:

I still carry this 1-1-1 habit to this day. I must have ~500 entries at this point (though 50 of them were left in an AirBNB this summer lol).

Like many of my other digital mentors like Tim Ferris (x.com/timferris), Naval Ravikant (x.com/naval), and Jimmy Donaldson (x.com/mrbeast), I never really have the opportunity to ever speak with these people.

Actually speaking of Tim Ferris here’s a funny story. Last year in August I booked a 1 way ticket to Amsterdam 3 hours before my flight for my annual personal retreat (Air Canada 60k pts biz class)

At my hostel on Day 1 I saw a man that looked eerily familiar. I used to shy away from interactions with “famous people” but I’ve come to realize what’s the downside to saying hello? So without hesitation, I go up to him and ask if he is Tim Ferris. I was super amped up to finally meet a Digital Mentor!

Unfortunately, it was not and just a Dutch bald dude, but we spoke about Tim's writings and he alluded to reading Tools of Titans, which I’ve ended up consuming for the past 8 months and want to throw it out as a book rec. Highly recommend. And if you don’t want to read it and just want my notes, I have a continuous thread on X that I use for posting my notes here: https://x.com/extravirginguy/status/1905386854909898885

Back to the story of the selfie, in 2023 one of my cold reach outs to Dickie Bush converted into a short conversation. Never went anywhere but it was a glimmer of hope!

To be honest over the past few years I haven’t actively looked to meet these digital mentors, but I will always tag people I reference with the hope that maybe 1 day, someone will see it and perhaps leave a comment. I’ve had some good replies and reposts, but they’ve always fizzled out thereafter.

Now I will introduce Pieter Levels (x.com/levelsio). He’s very well-known in the entrepreneurial / indie hacker world, best way to describe him is a guy that builds a lot of online businesses with a great hit rate. He writes about his work on X and has amassed an impressive following.

Funny enough when I landed in Amsterdam in August (trip referenced above), I was at the metro station with legit no plans for the next 3 weeks and my way to cope with that reality was reading his EBook “Make” which offered more great perspective on making useful things.

Recently he has been diving deeper into the world of health, and Bryan Johnson commented on one of his posts, which brought it to my feed. It was one of those [I have to respond] moments and I Quote Tweeted it

Enter Sahil: he recently released a book named The 5 Types of Wealth that redefines “wealthy” to cover a broader spectrum than just Financial Wealth. Highly, highly recommend.

Note: I’ve read tons of self-improvement books. This one doesn’t require pre-reqs. Great engaging first chapter and all the sudden you’re in for a journey that will help you unlock some of the missing / subdued pieces in your life. I speak more on this in my review that stemmed from a reply to the post I linked above.

In the Quote Tweet, I tagged Sahil as an ode to the fact that my bias may have come from reading his book.

And out of left field, instantaneous reply.

At first I thought it was a bot impersonator of Sahil as one is conditioned to do on today’s internet, but I clicked the profile and low and behold 1M followers shows up and I say wow, this is cool.

We ended up chatting a bit in the replies, then DMs, then Email. Even with the great communication flow I still had doubt I’d ever get to meet him.

But he was being truthful in his messaging and low and behold this morning we got the opportunity to meet. 100% worth the 6am Wake Up.

What an incredible guy. He was so cool and normal and consider this post an appreciation post for that moment he suggested we take a selfie. Sahil if you’re reading this. Thank you.

I’ll leave you today with a useful diagram from his book:

-Jack