At Growth Summit 2019, Dan will NOT be there with us attending my dinner, but I am going to have a plate setting for him and I will have his bobble-head next to my bobble-head at the main seat. 

Here is a picture of our bobble-heads along with books that I was invited to participate in, along with my book that he wrote a foreword to.

The picture below is a picture of him speaking was taken in July 2019, the last time he spoke in front of a small group of us in Cleveland. That was the last event he ever spoke at. I got yelled at by him for taking the picture.

In August 2019, I cancelled two scheduled trips to Cleveland in August for days of consults due to his illness. We have another engagement coming up in September 2019 that I am removing from my outlook. My hands are shaking as I remove the monthly scheduled calls from my Calendar.

I miss him so much. What am i going to do without Dan? Why now? Why so soon? I am just not ready for him to leave us so quickly.

I learned a lot from him. I attached myself to him like 'Velcro'. I studied him HARD. Over 350 mind maps, over 7500 bullet points. Three bookshelf full of binders and hundreds of hours of live, in person learning! I was the guy sitting in front row in between projector and stage with the perfect view of HIM and the SCREEN. I typed everything I heard and saw. I memorized during class, I analyzed and re-synthesized at nights. I crafted implementation plan for everything he taught me. For every hour I was with him, I invested ten more hours to research, analyze and build systems around what he taught me.

THANK YOU is not a big enough phrase to express my gratitude. Dan has done so much for me. He wrote foreword to my book. He invited me to contribute in his books, multiple books. He spoke about me from stage. He wrote about me in his publications. He picked on me from stage.

Dan is ALL I learned. Dan is ALL I know. I have nothing else. I know nothing else. Now that he is leaving us, I feel like a moon that lost its planet.

So many memories... I once told him: 'Dan, every time you touch me, I make money'. He put his hand on my shoulder and said 'Here's another touch Parthiv'.

Dan and I were like 'Tom and Jerry'. He lovingly called me his 'Annoying Little Indian'. One day he called me 'Annoying Little Indian' from stage in front of 400 people. Within seconds I bought the domain, pushed it to a landing page and ordered a huge sign to show up at my booth before he was done speaking. He could not believe I pulled that off.

Where do I start? He transformed me from being a freelance tech consultant in to a well known marketing agency. I read everything! Everything he published, I studied. He generously sent over 50,000 pages of reading material to study when I asked him to contribute to my Internal Marketing Machine. He recorded a 30 minute audio in a studio when I asked him for some kind words. He sent fax to people introducing me to them as a trusted service provider.

Any student of Dan would feel lucky to get one millionth of the amount of love I got from Dan.

On this day pm August 22, 2019 , I stand here in grief. Reflecting on what is going on today, I am still in shock and disbelief that this is happening right now. I feel so alone, so helpless, I think I now understand what it is like to be orphan and homeless.