072: USA Memory Champion – Turning Your Passion into Your Business (w/Nelson Dellis)

Summary: Nelson Dellis is memory athlete, mnemonist (able to remember and recall unusually long lists of data such as unfamiliar names, list of numbers, and others), public speaker, and consultant. He is a four-time USA Memory Champion and the co-founder of Memory League, a new type of competitive memory platform that allows memory enthusiasts to challenge each other online.<br> <br> He is also the founder of Climb for Memory through which he preaches a lifestyle that combines both mental and physical fitness with proper diet and social involvement.<br> <br> HELP OUT in the endeavour to find a cure for Alzheimer’s by taking The Extreme Memory Challenge, a short, easy memory test online. It’s poised to be one of the largest long-term memory studies ever conducted. Just go to www.extremememorychallenge.com<br> <br> Becoming a memory enthusiast<br> <br> His grandmother died of Alzheimer’s in 2009 and that made Nelson develop an interest in memory. He saw how her mind slipped away and didn’t want the same thing to happen to him. From his research on memory, he discovered the US Memory Championship which to his surprise included average people who had just learnt some memory techniques and practised. That’s when he realised that memory was a skill like any other and from there he started off on his journey towards becoming a memory champion.<br> <br> Climb for Memory: Research on Alzheimer’s<br> <br> He says the current research is not clear on whether or not keeping the brain active deters Alzheimer’s. Some researchers say it doesn’t while others say it does. Nelson is a believer that keeping the brain active makes a big difference, judging from his own experience with his memory transformation.<br> <br> Core revenue streams<br> <br> He says it’s hard to define his business because his revenue sources have not always been clear. He is not much of a business guy. He started doing memory as a business when he found that he had won a few memory championships, had gotten a lot of media attention and was receiving a lot of requests for speaking engagements and different appearances. He used to work in coding and physics as a career but he decided to leave it behind.<br> <br> The majority of his revenues come from speaking engagements, doing different memory-related events, spokesperson deals, and other memory-related projects.<br> <br> Leaving the normal job<br> <br> He loved his formal job in the corporate world but when he started doing the memory-related projects, he had a hard time managing both. When he got an offer to do a memory event sponsored by a certain company, the head of marketing of that company approached him after the event, and asked him to work with them on a long-term basis. For Nelson to take their offer and focus entirely on memory-related work under their endorsement, they agreed to pay him the same amount he was getting as a salary at his job.<br> <br> Getting to the point of winning competitions<br> <br> He had to put in a lot of hard work to become a memory champion and it was easy because he was very passionate about it. He loved the whole process of memorization. He wanted to be the best, so he spent as much time as possible training his memory.<br> <br> He started getting serious about it in the summer of 2009 when his grandmother passed away. He entered into the first competition in March 2010 and came in 3rd place which was commendable considering it was his first time. That inspired him to train more seriously, and in 2011, he won the competition. He used to train every day after work for at least 2 hours. He says he also used to memorize numbers and cards while at work.<br> <br> Two ways to catapult memory retention skills<br> <br> He says one way is to pay attention which includes focusing on one thing at time and not multitasking. Since the brain is not good at memorizing abstract things like numbers,