Meditation made me a better businessman.

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Reader, when I was 19, I read this quote that said:

And it stuck with me ever since - I took it to mean that business is a fantastic vessel for self-improvement. Why?

Because it ties the intangible inner work to tangible outer progress.

Think about all you have to do to grow a successful business - from ideation, to actually starting, to growth, to declines, to putting out fires, to hiring, to selling. It comprises all of the identity work and shifting that you see in the world of spirituality.

There are so many components inside the vehicle of business that will force you to grow into the person you want to become.

See, my biggest problem with the self-improvement space is that it’s all a little bit vague.

Sure, you can say you’re doing the inner work to heal previous traumas, but what does that look like practically? How does that show up? How do you measure your healing process? When do you know that you are healed?

Now I am not saying that you must own a business to do this work, but I am saying that entrepreneurship and inner mastery are spiritually linked.

Business is a spiritual game.

In the past, I built a multi-7-figure business from these principles, and today I still use them to create an edge in my content and new ventures.

So with that being said, I want to share with you the tactical case for inner work: how self-discipline, clean thinking and focus will compound into your competitive advantage.

These tactics not only made me a better person but a better businessman by default.

A good friend of mine often jokes around with me and calls me the Entrepreneur Yogi, but the more we say it, the more we think there’s something in there…

I. Inner always precedes Outer

Nothing external will ever precede (come before) what is internal.

No action ever came before a thought.

When you understand this simple universal law, you will make the necessary shift in your thinking to actually change your life. See, I used to think that all the answers were “out there”.

I used to think that in order to change my life and my results, I just had to change strategies enough times.

And whilst strategy is important, there is one rule I now live by that I keep top of mind:

State > Strategy

Your internal state is the foundation for what your outer strategy will be built on, and until you fix it, it’ll be like building a house on sand. The foundation can collapse at any moment.

In business, this usually comes in the form of putting out fires or something going wrong - good strategy can get you to a desired goal, but problems will test whether you can stay there, and if your inner state isn’t regulated, the way you respond to chaos can be career-ending.

I learnt early on that two people with the same plan will get drastically different results because of one thing - their inner state.

Of course, both are needed, but an optimised internal state is a multiplier that determines whether your strategies compound or collapse; energy beats tactics every single time.

So the rule here is, in order to gain a competitive advantage in life or in business, prioritise the regulation of your inner world - I will share with you some proven techniques on exactly how to do this shortly.

II. Clean Mind = Divine Downloads

Your mind is like a garden - but 99% of people's gardens are like chaotic dumping grounds.

They let anyone and anything enter, wander around and leave it messier than they found it.

The thing with gardens is, if they are not tended to, they will overgrow, they will become messy, they will invite unwanted guests, and the soil will be ruined.

Ancient cultures treated sacred spaces (like gardens) with reverence - only certain people could enter, specific rituals maintained purity, and guards protected the threshold.

Your mental garden is sacred, but you're running it like a London underground bathroom. No standards for entry, no maintenance schedule, no protection of what's sacred.

Your garden has been desecrated by negligence, not invasion.

Every garden needs a gardener. YOU are the gardener of your mind and the guardian of your mental gates; you should be intentionally choosing what is allowed in.

A garden that is tended means creating a space for something beautiful to grow. I am always asked, “Milan, how do you come up with good ideas?”

The answer is simple: they come to me because I create a space that invites them to arrive. In business, how can you expect to have good ideas if...

1. They have nowhere to land.

2. Even if they find a spot to land, they will be left covered by the weeds of your mind.

A well-kept garden acts like a container for divine downloads; it means pulling the weeds before they can choke the roses.

Most people wonder why clarity never visits them or why inspiration feels distant. The answer is so simple it hurts: you haven't prepared the ground.

If I’ve learnt anything about ideas, it’s that they never arrive fully formed; they will land subtly, delicately, almost silently. It's a seedling, not a tree. It needs space, sunlight, and attention to grow.

But if your mental garden is overgrown with anxiety, cluttered with everyone else's opinions, and polluted with algorithmic noise - that seed doesn't stand a chance.

When your inner environment is clean, ordered, and intentional, ideas won’t fight to survive; they have room to grow.

This is why the same opportunity can walk past two people, and only one of them sees it.

One person's garden is so overgrown that they couldn't spot a diamond in the dirt. The other person's garden is so clear that even the smallest seed of possibility is immediately visible.

Divinity doesn't scream; it reminds you of its presence subtly and pulls at you to co-create with it, but you will miss the call if you haven’t prepared the grounds.

But even a pristine garden is useless without the gardener's focused attention. Which brings us to...

III. The Art of Focus
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The gap between where you are and where you want to be is not a talent gap, but a focus gap.

To me, focus is just the centralisation of all your energy into a singular task.

When you really break down what the spectrum of focus means, you begin to understand the quote that Dan shared with me…

Focus is the difference between just looking and actually noticing. Everyone has eyes, but not everyone can see.

Most think that focus is just about concentration - the ability to stare at something for hours without distraction.

But focus isn't just about duration, it's about direction. You can spend 12 hours "focused" on the wrong things and make zero progress. You can spend 12 hours in a reactive state, pulled by notifications, swept up in other people's agendas, mistaking busyness for productivity.

To me, that is not true focus, but just another state of hypnosis.

Real focus is intentional aperture.

Like a camera lens, your focus determines what comes into clarity and what should blur into the background. And the quality of your focus literally shapes your reality.

Most people's focus is fragmented across three toxic categories:

- Things they cannot control - other people's opinions, past failures, external circumstances

- Things that don't matter - algorithmic entertainment, manufactured drama, endless comparison

- Things that aren't theirs to carry - other people's problems, inherited expectations, cultural programming they never chose

There is neuroscience that proves the existence of what is called “mental residue,” which is the leftover effect of your focus constantly being pulled in a thousand different directions.

But the masters of reality and the best entrepreneurs I know understand this:

Your focus is your most valuable resource, more valuable than time.

More valuable than money. More valuable than talent. Because focus is what transforms all those other resources into results, you can have all the time in the world, but if your focus is scattered, you'll accomplish nothing.

You can have capital, but if your focus is misaligned, you'll waste it. You can have talent, but if your focus is weak, you'll watch less gifted people pass you by.


The good news is, it’s not something you find or are born with; it’s something you build and train, every day.


It's a practice. A discipline. An Art. 


And like the garden, it requires constant maintenance; you have to know what deserves your attention and what doesn't.

On instagram they tell you to protect your energy. I’ll tell you to instead protect your focus - because they're the same thing.


Every notification you respond to, every conversation you entertain, every thought you follow eats away at your mental bandwidth.

The clearer you become about what doesn't belong in your awareness, the more power you have to direct your attention toward what matters.

And that is what the art of focus is really about, knowing where to point the lens, and having the discipline to keep it there long enough for the picture to develop.

Okay okay, so you understand why all of this can give you an edge in the game of business - but what are these proven techniques that can get you there and that you can implement today?

IV. The Proven Techniques

So how do you actually build this competitive advantage? How do you regulate your inner state, clean your mental garden, and sharpen your focus?

Here are the exact practices that changed everything for me - not just as a person, but as an operator.

Meditation: The Foundation of Everything.

Let me be clear about something: meditation is not what you think it is. It's not about sitting cross-legged chanting (although I do do this on occasion)

Meditation is the most practical business tool I've ever encountered. Because it trains you to observe your thoughts without being controlled by them.

It creates separation between you and the noise. Between stimulus and response, in business, this gap is everything.

When a deal falls through, when a team member quits, when revenue drops - the untrained mind reacts. It spirals… It makes decisions from panic and scarcity (that you trained so hard to get rid of).

But the trained mind observes, then responds. It sees the situation as it is, without the distortion of emotion and therefore asks better questions.

Which gets you to solutions faster.

My practice is simple: 10-20 minutes every morning before I touch my phone. I sit, I focus on my breath, and when thoughts arise, I notice them and return to the breath. That's it, no apps or complicated techniques, just me, my breathing, and the practice of returning to centre. What this builds over time is mental resilience and the ability to stay present under pressure. The capacity to hold clarity when everyone else is losing their minds.

When I REALLY need to clear a thick mental block, I'll extend my daily meditations. 40-60 Minutes at a time.

The Evening Audit: Tending the Garden Daily


Every evening, I do what I call "The Evening Audit." It takes 5-10 minutes, and it's non-negotiable. I ask myself three questions:


What entered my mental garden today that shouldn't have?

Toxic conversations

Scrolling

Fear propaganda

Other people's anxiety

What grew today that I want to keep?

Useful insights

Productive thoughts

Creative ideas

Valuable connections

What weeds need to be pulled before tomorrow?

Unresolved tension

Unclear commitments

Mental clutter

You don’t have to write these down; even going through this practice mentally brings it to the forefront of your awareness, which is enough to force clarity.

The more you do this, the more you prevent mental residue from compounding, and it ensures that yesterday's chaos doesn't bleed into tomorrow’s clarity.

The 90-Minute Focus Block: Deep Work and intentional rest as ritual.

Focus isn’t something you can sustain all day; it ebbs and flows, so you have to go with it.

But you can train yourself to enter deep, undistracted focus for smaller, concentrated periods. And that's where the magic happens.

I structure my days around 90-minute focus blocks. During these blocks:

Phone on DND + App Blocker on (I use an app called Opal)

No email, no instagram, no messages

Single task only - no multitasking

Door closed, headphones on if needed

The rule is simple: one task, 90 minutes, zero interruptions.


I typically do 2-3 of these blocks per day. That's 3-4.5 hours of real, deep work, more than most people accomplish in a full week of "busy."

Darwin wrote over 20 books, including the theory of evolution, and conducted extensive research using this approach.

3 hours of work a day. The rest of his day involved walks, rest, light reading, and correspondence - but the real breakthrough thinking happened in those short, protected windows of deep work.

It’s more about depth than duration when it comes to training your focus.

And then in the gaps in-between, it’s about intentionally recharging with the right inputs that reset your mind and regulate your system. Like reading the right books, dinner with friends, movement and training, and playing sports.

The key is treating these blocks as sacred. They're rituals.

They're the container where my best thinking happens, where complex problems get solved, where strategy finds refinement.

Everything else - the meetings, the emails, the administrative tasks - gets scheduled around these blocks, not the other way around.

The Compounding Effect


None of these practices is complicated.

None of them requires expensive tools or complicated systems; the real edge begins to sharpen when you implement them over long periods of time…

In a week, you feel slightly more centred, a bit clearer.

In a month, you notice you're making better decisions, responding instead of reacting.

In a year, you've developed a sustainable system that compounds. You're outperforming people with more talent, more resources, more time - because you have something they don't: inner leverage.

This is what I mean by meditation making me a better businessman.

It's not about the practice itself. It's about what the practice creates: mental clarity, emotional regulation, focused attention, and strategic thinking.

What results will you see?

Fair question, I said it made me a better businessman, let me prove it, at the end of the day, businesses speak the language of return on investment.


So what's the actual ROI on meditation? On mental clarity? On focus?


Here's what changed for me when I implemented these practices:

My idea to execution gap closed in


Before I did this kind of work, I would delay a decision or action for weeks, and sometimes months at a time.

I'd spiral into analysis paralysis, collecting more data, seeking more opinions, trying to eliminate all uncertainty before moving.


But after building mental clarity through these practices, my decision-making timeline collapsed because I could see through the noise faster. I could feel the right answer instead of thinking my way into confusion.

The internal clarity gave me conviction, and conviction creates speed. Speed creates momentum —> momentum creates results.


I was taught that in business, the cost of slow decisions is invisible but devastating. You will miss opportunities, lose talent and get outpaced by competitors who move while you spiral.

My Creativity Increased tenfold

As I mentioned, your best ideas don't come from grinding harder; they come from creating internal space.

I used to struggle to be creative, producing content that was fine but forgettable.

After establishing a clean mental garden and deep focus blocks? It was like I was getting divine downloads for video ideas, guest collaborations, and business ventures.

I started seeing connections others missed, and I started producing content that actually moved people instead of just informing them.

This newsletter you're reading? I couldn't have written this three years ago.

Not because I didn't have the information, but because I didn't have the clarity to distil it into something useful.

My Stress-induced mistakes dropped to zero 


When I was 21, I made a six-figure mistake in my business. And when I look back, it was simply because I was operating from a dysregulated nervous system.

I was reactive and emotional, making decisions from scarcity and panic, which cost me more than I knew at the time.


I said yes when I should have said no - all because my internal state was chaos and I was being dragged along rather than centred in my own intuitive knowing. 


That was the last time I made a mistake from that place. Do I still make mistakes now? Of course, but I can't remember the last time I made a major decision I regretted.

Not because I'm smarter, but because I'm calmer. I respond instead of react. That gap - that tiny pause meditation creates - has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoided mistakes.

Look, I could give you stories all day, but what you should take away from this letter is this:

Most people ask: "Can I afford to spend time on meditation and inner work when I have so much to do?"


That's the wrong question.


The right question is: "Can I afford NOT to?"


Because every decision you make from a dysregulated state costs you. Every opportunity you miss because your mind is too cluttered to see it costs you, and every mistake born from reactive thinking costs you.

The most expensive thing you can do in business is operate without clarity, and the shift in culture I am seeing (and glad to be a part of) is that Inner work isn't a luxury or just a nice to have, it’s necessary infrastructure.

And the entrepreneurs who understand this are building sustainable empires, so the ball is in your court…

- Milan

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​Announcement 📣

So you understand that inner work creates outer results. You see how a clean mental garden attracts divine downloads.

You recognise that focus is your most valuable competitive advantage.

You know the practices that compound into extraordinary performance.

But knowing and doing are two different games.

I just opened 2 spots for Performance Alchemy to work with me 1:1.

For founders who understand that their internal state is their competitive advantage - they just need someone who's walked the path to help them build it.

This is the inner engineering for entrepreneurs who are done operating from chaos and ready to build from clarity.

Inside Performance Alchemy, we work together to:

✦ Identify and break the unconscious patterns - keeping you stuck between vision and execution

✦ Build a personalised meditation and focus practice - that actually fits your life (not some monk's retreat schedule)

✦ Engineer your mental environment - so good ideas land naturally instead of you forcing them.

✦ Develop emotional regulation under pressure - so you make million-dollar decisions from clarity, not panic

✦ Create sustainable high performance - that compounds instead of burns you out

This program is for you if:

- You're building something meaningful but feel scattered, reactive, or mentally cluttered

- You know you're capable of more but can't access it consistently

- You're tired of "hustle culture" but don't want to sacrifice results

- You sense there's a deeper game to play but don't have the guidance to play it

- You're ready to close the gap between vision and execution
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This is high-ticket, premium 1:1 work. Not because I want to exclude people, but because transformation at this level requires deep attention, customization, and commitment from both sides.

The entrepreneurs building the next wave of conscious businesses will rule the world.

​[Book your call here] 2 spots only
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– Milan

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