How I Managed to Fool Native Speakers Into Believing I Was One Of Them...
This is kind of the story of my life.
My English started from nothing.
I was born to a Slovenian family in, you guessed it, Slovenia.
No one in my family speaks English above average. And I didn't even have English until 4th grade of primary school. I must have been around 9-10 years old.
My parents enrolled me in this extra English curriculum and I ended up learning a bit about the big red doubledecker bus and probably my first few words and basic grammar rules.
What changed the trajectory of my English came a few years later when I was 12 years old
Whilst riding our bikes around the neighbourhood, I crashed into the side of a car. Unconcious, I was brought to the hospital. They didn't know whether or not I would walk again.
Turned out luck was on my side, and I had only suffered a concussion and a broken collarbone. Nothing a few weeks in bed won't heal.
But I didn't spend that time in bed. I spent it laying on the couch with my newly bought laptop playing RuneScape.

I spent the entire time of my healing process glued to the screen trying to make my way out of Lumbridge and into the vast open world of Gielinor.
And it changed everything...
RuneScape is a video game filled with quests. Hundreds of different adventures, enveloped in intricate storylines and thousands upon thousands of items to examine and use on your journey through the endless amount of lore.
But there's something else that is seemingly endless in this game. Skills.
Just like in real life, there are skills you can train. Woodcutting, Fishing, Firemaking, Attack, Strength...
And I will never forget the faces of my classmates when I said I would try and get level 99 in Cooking.
To give you context. In RuneScape you start with level 1 and work your way to level 99, the highest level available. With each new level unlocked, the grind gets harder.
RuneScape actually coined a hilarious, yet brutal phrase:
92 is half of 99.
The reason for this is that in order to get a new level, you have to perform actions that give a certain amount of XP (experience) to progress. And it takes the same amount of XP to get from level 1 to level 92, as it does to get from level 92 to level 99.
Why am I telling you this? Because something similar happens in English. The first few levels are very quick, learning the basic English tenses, mastering the most primitive of grammar structures and attaining the base vocabulary.
But if you want to become extraordinary (like getting level 99), then you have to put in double the work.

Reaching level 99 unlocked a special cape. When worn, this would indicate to every other player in the game that you had gotten the highest level in that particular skill.
Bragging rights, essentially.
And since I made a promise, I decided to hold up my end of the bargain. I spent months in a little town in RuneScape called Draynor Village, doing nothing else but cooking Lobsters.
Each lobster cooked would give you 120 experience points. You would cook a full inventory of lobsters (28), each taking 2.4s to cook. To get to level 99, you require 13,034,431 XP.
That's 72.4 hours, implying non-stop cooking. But it doesn't account for the % chance of burning the lobster you are cooking, which yields 0 XP. It doesn't account for time running from the bank to the fire. It doesn't account for lighting a new fire to cook on. Doesn't account for...
Well, you get my point. A grueling, repetitive and seemingly boring skill to train. Not tell me again Tim,
What has this got to do with English?
Surely you're not implying that you learned English by cooking lobsters for 100 hours in some videogame??
You're right, I didn't. I spent those 100 hours reading hundreds of Wikipedia pages on all the quests I would have to do once my parents bought me my first membership package.
Because of this I ended up overtaking all of my classmates, despite them having had a massive advantage of both having started earlier than me, and having had membership package purchased for them months before I ever got my first taste of the full version of RuneScape.
At that time, I also engulfed myself with hundreds of hours of YouTube content, guides, tutorials, how to videos and anything and everything that would help me become the best player in my classroom.
I won't bore you with the rest of the technicalities, but after I reached level 99 in cooking, proving to everyone that this can actually be done, two things happened:
Half of my classmates quit playing
Half of my classmates got their own 99 shortly after
We don't believe things can be done, until someone proves us wrong by doing it.
I quit RuneScape myself in 2012 after enrolling in high-school before discovering a new gem, a game that would start something I could never have foreseen.
Yet ultimately for the remainder of this story, the choice of game does not matter. It's what I did with it that changed everything.
I preach a lot about humanity being a cohort of consumers. There are far more people consuming content than there are people creating content.
And after watching hundreds of hours of other people recording guides and tutorials on RuneScape. It was a no-brainer decision for me to try my luck as a content creator.
It wasn't until 2014 that I mustered the courage to upload my very first youtube video with commentary. Back then I used a Shure SM78. A Stage mic I nicked off of my dad because he had a few lying around from various music performances.
A great microphone for live music performance, but a horrendous microphone for doing youtube videos. Just not something it was ever designed to do. But there was something worse than the microphone. My voice...
In order to fix this problem of sounding like a drunk russian from the balkan, I started immitating the british pronunciation from all the years of youtube videos I had already consumed whilst cooking lobsters all those years back.
At first it was bad, but with every video uploaded, the confidence grew and my voice became clearer and stronger. What made the biggest difference was the many hours spent inside video editing programs listening back to my own voice and paying close attention to the words that I was mispronouncing.
I can't tell you exactly how long it took, but judging from my still available videos on YouTube, you can see that just about 1 year after uploading my first video, I had already started to sound very much british and significantly more confident in my voice.
This was me reaching level 92 in my voice. And I would wager I am still to this very day working on my way up to level 99.
You clicked on this email because I promised to tell you how I managed to fool native speakers into thinking I was one of them. In case you read this far into the email, I congratulate you. On the merrit of this alone, you will go far. I know it.
But alas, I have to dissapoint you. To fool someone into believing you are a native, one must speak as a native. There is no other way. There is no shortcut. There is no magic formula. There is no mumbo jumbo lie I can tell you. This is the truth.
I uploaded dozens of videos on YouTube, streamed hundreds of hours of content on Twitch, and played thousands of hours of video games in my lifetime.
There is no easy way to fooling someone you are a native.
Almost everything I do is to try to help you scale your English Confidence. I belive this is fast becoming the main theme that connects all the people that my content or advertisements attract. You are all here because you lack confidence. In yourself. In your speaking. In your words. In your vocabulary. In your grammar. And many more.
You are no different from me. That's why anything I will ever try to sell to you will include a method I used to fix the problem for myself.
If I preach the A-R-M system, that's because I use it everyday myself. If I share a template with you, it's because I use it every week. If I sell you a book or video course, it contains over a decade of knowledge and experience. Real knowledge and experience. My knowledge and experience.
12-Day English Masterclass (eBook + Audiobook + Video Course)
This is 12 years of experience, condensed into 12 days. Various tasks, videos, stories, techniques and methods available to speedrun your way to a better voice. This eBook/Audiobook/Course contains everything one might need to become more confident in his speech, improve his pronunciation and use English with ease. A true Masterclass.
It's also a product I update regularly and add new pages, pictures, graphs, videos, templates... As such the price increases. Once you purchase this Masterclass, you will receive a lifetime of updates.
English Confidence Community (FREE)
For a long time I wanted to do something for free. To give back to the community, to provide value and to help. But why? Why not milk you for all your money? I'm running a business and business has to eat something. So what's the catch?
Information of course. I only started Flip English a few years ago, and I am still learning. Every singe day of the week. English is a vast subject, and my clients come from all over the world. I learn from you. You teach me what you need to be taught. You tell me your pain, and I go out into the world seeking your medicine. I am doing this because I want to have an impact on the world. I want to help you.
In the Flip English Community you can see a Map, showing people from all over the world, all united by a common goal: To speak better English.

Private 1-on-1 English Confidence Coaching
I still remember my first coaching client. He reached out to me on Instagram and borderline demanded to work with me. When we had our first call, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I started learning and listening attentively to understand his painpoints. With every new coaching client I learned that each human is so unique, that a template can't be used for coaching. There is not one solution.
But as I said before, I am fantastic at recognising patterns. And a pattern that I noticed in each and every client I have coached, was their desire for more confidence.
That is why I call my English coaching confidence coaching. And it's why I don't directly teach English, but try to assist some other venue or your life, in order to make the confidence attaining process primary, and the English proficiency a side effect. Collateral damage. A side result. Passive gain.
theOrangeDoom, Podcast and Self-Improvement
The Alter Ego of theOrangeDoom was a key-factor in my English journey. This character I created as a result of War Thunder was a test of big proportions. Not just did I decide that I wanted this alternate persona to have a strong british accent, but I crafted it out of all those little details that were missing from my personal character. I made him arrogant, confident and extroverted. Everything that I wasn't, but wanted to be.
Through the story created by this Alter Ego, I entered a stage of life that demanded a high amount of self-improvement. Old mindsets had to be overrulled and new horizons installed into my brain's firmware. I decided to do this by journalling my mood, talking about mental health and getting in touch with all the people I met throughout the years.
I started a Podcast as a result. Travelling the world with friends I met online. People that helped create the man I am today. In hope that others would follow along, and find better life, happiness and meaning. I called it Doom Time.
This is me. Unfiltered. Unaltered. Raw.
It's a fresh project, a brand new start and a personal project. I aim to combine all that I learned, into exciting and educational content.
To motivate, to help, to drive. From my travels abroad, to my love for food. From my highs, to my lows. From English to business. From self-improvement to investing, there will be something for everyone.
As an entrepreneur, I spend every waking minute of every day creating.
New products, new funnels, new content, new emails, new value.
You are on this email list because you want to improve. And I aim to show you that English isn't your biggest problem. In fact it's probably not even your second, third or fourth.
I am exited to have you here. And I know you will go far. Thank you for being on this journey with me.
Until next time..