Storytime: How To Vibe like a Ninja

Wow

Wild wild past couple days…

Ninja shit.

I’m not even sure where to start, but let’s dive in.

The Way of the Ninjapreneur

So a few weeks back I had this recurring thought about this concept “The Ninjapreneur”.

Here’s some of my original apple notes:

You get the basic idea.

Ninjapreneur: a fully self sufficient modern day artist, genius, multi-skilled entrepreneur - capable of finding synergies & building extremely unique businesses. Leveraging newest in tech. And working with amazing collaborators.

Today, I want to tell you my story from the past few days of working with some insanely skilled collaborators and how this all unfolds.

One of the keys to becoming a Ninjapreneur is having a strong personal brand. And the brand compounds the more skilled collaborators you create content for you with.

Other Ninjas see that you made content with X Y and Z creators, and they also want to work with you. It’s sort of like the music industry. Travis Scott is releasing track after track, has a collab album with Future, and then Lil Yachty hears it and has a vision for a project with Travis, and so on…

So creating content, creating art, and sharing it with the world is step one. I’ve of course been doing this for quite a long time, and I’ve worked with a number of skilled Ninja collaborators.

But the past few days has been a legit tsunami of collaboration activity…

The Mission of Becoming a Black Belt

About 1 year ago I started fight training at a gym in Agora hills in LA. My trainer, Ari Dinesh, was a 4 time champion Hap Ki Doe black belt master. Training with Ari was great and I developed some fundamentals in martial arts.

After stopping my training due to traveling around the world, I decided it was time to start up again, and by random circumstance my friend Jesse hit me up to hangout, talk internet biz and hike Runyon Canyon.

Along the hike, Jesse revealed to me that he was a 4th degree jiu jitsu black belt.

WTF I thought?

So… my first thought was… this guy can basically kill me at literally any moment in time. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

This was unsettling to me.

I mean, I played ice hockey growing up. Pretty tough and strong from training and lifting.

But this dude has been doing martial arts since he was 3 (he’s 33 now). The subtle art of inflicting pain, and even death upon anyone you needed to.

Fuck.

I’m legit a pussy standing next to this guy.

And so I asked Jesse if he would train me.

And he said yes.

Our first sessions were amazing and we trained in the corner on the mats in the Equinox off sunset boulevard in West Hollywood.

Even if the first few sessions, I felt I learned quite a lot.

So much in fact, that about a month later, when a homeless man legit attacked me and Chloe, I was prepared enough to properly defend myself. He blindsided me with a giant right hook, and I maneuvered and dodged it so he missed me.

I had Ninja senses and took Chloe across the street, into a stranger’s car that signaled to help us, and we drove away.

Adrenaline coursing through my veins, I called Jesse as soon as we got back to the hotel room to let him know how his training possibly saved my life.

And that’s when the Ninja concept entered my mind. Being a Ninja is a way of life, and at that moment I knew there was more to do with Jesse.

So, fast forward to last week, I hit up Jesse and asked him if he’d be down to shoot an artistic video about being a Ninjapreneur…

And then, I hit up my other Ninja artist friend, Val.

Now, obviously, Jesse is actually a real life literal Ninja with his 4th degree black belt, but I’m telling you, Val (@valdays on instagram) is a Ninja in his own way.

Enter the “Ninjartist”

Ok. Maybe doesn’t have the same ring to it. But you get the point.

Val is fucking OG as it comes when we’re talking about visual artist social media creators.

He was legit one of the FIRST creators on instagram and youtube to start putting out color edited GH4 videos and photos from places like Bali to hawaii. He’s best friends with Sam Kolder.

And we had been chatting about doing some kind of a collab video at some point.

So I hit up val to do the collab video with me and jesse and we got to work.

First off, jesse and i recorded this podcast which you can listen to here.

We talk about basic self defense from sketchy people in cities… and more.

Anyway… Val joins up with us and it was like this masterful meeting of them minds of 3 geniuses. Jesse, the black belt real life Ninja. Val the video artist savant. And me, whatever I am lol.

Val is rocking this backpack with like the dopest ninja gear i’ve seen.

New video and audio equipment that is so compact it’s able to get cinema quality shots you used to need $50k worth of gear to get. I know because i went to film school and i know film equipment.

We jam ideas for like 3 hours then start taking action.

The video is not done yet but the whole day and whole process of shooting was like massive flow state between the 3 of us. And it was such a vibe.

The highest level people. The highest level ninjapreneurs. They are vibe people. It’s more emotional than logical. You just feel it and are guided by intuition.

Enter Kinobody Greg

Greg Ogallagher is like a real life Bruce Wayne. I know that Jake Moscato recently called me like a real life bruce wayne, but no. That’s greg.

Greg’s og him. He’s jacked. Making M’s. Got so many dope product lines. And traveling the world in dope style. He’s just a g.

Anyway, greg hit me up for dinner. i brought the crew. We brought our ladies. Hit Catch STeak and it was one of the most high vibe dinners i’ve been to in a while.

We went from discussing philosophy and religion to jesse building out a potential online Ninja course to content ideas. All around just ninja shit. Was so good.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with this quote that Greg said that stuck with me:

-Arlin

PS - there’s more to the story, the next day I Hungout with my friend Milan who is legit a 4th degree Blackbelt in MEDITATION. Fuck. Gets even crazier. Hope you enjoyed this ramble. K pce off to hike and then live event with Marczell…