Dean Graziosi - Millionaire Success Habits: How To Lead A Business In An Unstable Economic Climate

Full transcript: Dean Graziosi on London Real

0:49 This is London Real. I’m Brian Rose. My guest today is Dean Graziosi, the American entrepreneur, author, investor and educator. You are a pioneer of online learning, and for the past 20 years have been at the forefront of self-education, empowering those who seek to improve themselves outside of the traditional institutions. You recently partnered with Tony Robbins to create the Knowledge Business Blueprint, launching with the largest online training in history, topping over 200,000 people attending live.

1:29 You’ve written five books, selling over a million copies combined, including Millionaire Success Habits, which outlines easy to implement routines to create wealth and success. Dean, welcome to London Real. Brian, great to be here, man. Great to be here. I met it’s great to have you.

1:43 I’ve been following your work for a long time. Tons of talk about today, you know. I want to talk about the knowledge business blueprint and Tony Robbins and in your book, but I wanted to start with mindset. You know, I’ve been running the London Real Academy here for about five and a half years. We graduated just over 5,000 students, and one thing we spent a lot of time on in the first couple weeks of our eight-week courses is mindset.

2:05 And I watched an interview where you said something that really stuck with me, and it was this. I’m gonna quote you if that’s okay. You see, you said, quote, you could literally give someone a business on selling $20 bills for five bucks and they would screw it up because of their beliefs. And I know you’re being a little blunt there, and maybe you can qualify it, but maybe you could explain, you know, how a lot of us bring baggage to the table sometimes, and without knowing it we kind of self-sabotage ourselves, because I see a lot of my students that do this, and it’s frustrating to me as a teacher, ’cause I’m like, I know you can do it, but you seem to block yourself.

2:40 And maybe you could tell me what are your views on this and how you see it with your students? Yeah, I’d love to share that. And I’m sure no matter what age you are, first, I’ll, Brian, congratulations on all your doing all the support and all the impact you’ve made on the world, and I know it’s part of your heart and soul. So those of you listening right now, I, you know, you’re in the right place, and today I’m here to serve, so wherever whatever we can do to deliver value so you can take something from this interview and implement it in your life.

3:05 Basically, take what serves you and throw the rest away, but what serves you, make it real. So I want to share some same thing you’re obviously doing with your eight-week training, which I’m sure is amazing. This is probably almost two decades ago, Brian. I was literally teaching people how to make money with cars, because that’s where one of my foundational pieces, my first self- education product, is how to make money in the car business. We were selling a decent amount, we were figuring this out, and thousands of people a month, and it always drove me crazy that like 15 to 18 percent of the people would refund the product, and I said, can I, I got to make the product better.

3:43 I want it, like it needs to be better. So this is no joke, this is probably two decades ago, Brian. I go to the customer service department, that sounds like a department. It was three people, and I put a headset on for two days straight, and I just listened to the calls. I’m like, put me on a call.

3:59 Anybody who’s wanting to refund, and it had nothing to do. They didn’t say, of his products, thinks cars don’t work, money’s not coming in. It was like, my husband thinks I’m crazy for doing this, or I don’t live in an area where people want to buy. You know, there was every excuse possible except for the course stunk or it didn’t work. It was, it was the beliefs they had.

4:21 It was the mindset they had, and this is, you know, probably 15 years ago, I decided to write a book called Totally Fulfilled. I was teaching people how to do real estate investing, real estate, and invest in cars, and I did a personal development book, because I just knew their obstacles had nothing to do with what was in front of them. It had to do with them having the ability to just keep moving forward, right? It, it boils down to, you know, it’s hard to simplify, and you know this, Brian.

4:49 But there’s a certain phase you’re like, probably in your 20s, if you’re in your 20s and you’re listening right now, you’re like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I don’t need mindset, just give me that thing that makes me the money or fixes my relationship or puts me in shape. Just give me a… I’m a hustler, I’ll do it. But we’re wrong, you know.

5:02 I would think mindset in my 20s was 10%, and 90% was the thing. And now I realize it’s 90% mindset and 10% the thing, and it boils down to one thing. Things, but this, I want you to think about, is most of us think we need more resources. If I had support from my family, somebody lent me the money, someone would just show me how to do it, if this economy wasn’t so messed up, if we didn’t have this, you know, president, or this is the Liberals or the Conservatives or the Christians or the Jews.

5:31 Like, we get all these things because we think if we had the resources we could make it work. And what I realized at 51, looking back and having more success than I could have ever imagined possible, I feel blessed every single day in my life. It has nothing to do with resources. It has to do with resourcefulness and relentlessly being resourceful. And where does resourcefulness come from?

5:54 It all gets foundation to end mindset. If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t. That sounds simple. You’ve heard Tony Robbins and a million other people say it, but maybe it’s the first time you’re actually hearing it.

6:05 When you look back through time, you look at the founders of America, George Washington, or people who made shifts like Abraham Lincoln. You look at the best athletes that you may admire, or people who changed racism, or you look at Mother Teresa. They never had resources. They found a way to be resourceful, and when you go upstream, it’s all anchored in the beliefs that you have. It’s like a really deep point that you make there.

6:29 And so I guess the next question people are thinking, Dean, is, okay, how do I get myself out of that mindset that maybe is failing me and make myself more resourceful? Yeah, the obvious and great question, and I don’t want, listen, everybody listening right now, you might think, Oh, Dean, you’re doing well now. that’s easy for you to through. But please know, wherever you are, whether you’re doing amazing and you’re ready to scale, whether Covid and all this craziness has shifted and transitioned your life, or you’re having a really tough time and your back’s against the wall, I want you to know I can speak from a place that I’ve been at all.

7:04 I live in a bathroom with my dad as a kid because we didn’t have heat, and the rest of the house, just a little plug-in heater. I live in a trailer park with my mom until we got evicted, because she couldn’t afford it, so I’ve been at that place, and I’ve also been at the place of envy, where I saw them, my friends, going to college, and I couldn’t afford it, didn’t think I was smart enough, like, wow, they’re gonna have a great life, and I’m not. I’m gonna be stuck here working on cars, smell paint fumes every day.

7:26 Then I also found a way to shift my beliefs, and I’ll tell you how I did it in a moment. Here, too, where I knew there was more from, or I knew I had more potential, that I was judging myself, and other ones, other people were judging me with an outdated scorecard. I had dyslexia, I wasn’t that book smart, but man, I could watch somebody do something and do it. I could fail fast, get back up, shake it off and keep going. I could find a way to be confident when other people are scared, and that’s all I needed.

7:52 Like, those little things with a shift in a mindset allowed me to get those first sales and get to a hundred grand a year, a hundred grand a quarter, a hundred grand a week, a hundred grand a day, a hundred grand before lunch. Like, I’ve been through all those phases. So, no, as I say this, I’m not sitting up on the golden hill going, oh, you guys with that bad mindset, you should come up here. It’s wonderful and beautiful. I’ve been in the trenches and know that, I could go all over the place, but know that I used to think the little things were important.

8:18 The little things are everything. And if you want to consider mindset a little thing, then, and no, it’s, it’s deeper than you think. So here’s what I want to share. If even my dad, my dad, he’s 84 years old. When I first started teaching my dad about my mindset shift, he’s like, yeah, you’re gonna go jump up and down and listen to that foo-foo stuff, get to work, work harder.

8:39 My dad worked his tail off his entire life. He never made more than 30 grand a year until I retired him when I was 30, and I’ve been sending him a check every week since then. Right, hard work didn’t change his life. Not adapting a new mindset didn’t change his life. So here’s the thing.

8:55 If you are happy where you are, then congratulations, it’s so good to have you here. But if you’re someone who wants to move away from something, it’s not perfect, or you want to move towards something that’s better, know that your beliefs, your best beliefs, your best thinking got you to this point, and the only thing that takes you to the next point, the next level of your business, starting the business, scaling the business, intimate relationship, passion, in shape, is new beliefs. It’s like the beliefs that got you out of Egypt are not the beliefs that’ll take you to the promised land.

9:26 So what do you have to do? You just have to check them. You have to say, I could go to three million a year, I could go to thirty million a year, I could go to 50 million a year, but, and usually what follows that but is your current belief system, and you just got to find a way to shift it. And, and now that’s, that’s kind of tactical, not really, it’s more strategic. But question all beliefs.

9:45 Every time you see something, you go to have a thought, a word. I’ve literally been practicing this for two decades, Brian. I, I feel a certain way. I’m like, oh, it’s just a way I think. I’m like, what belief is making me feel stressed right now?

9:57 What belief is making me happy? What belief makes me think I can do this? What belief thinks I’m an impostor, right now, this is too big for me, I can’t handle it? And I’m always checking those beliefs. But here’s one thing I do know.

10:08 If you always question your beliefs, you’ll realize that there’s ones that empower you and ones that take away your power. And not to be simple and show my depth of wisdom, but have less of the beliefs that f*** you, and more of the beliefs that empower you. And I also look at this, the last thing, I know I’m going on a little rant here, but I always look, as especially being 50, I’m past the halfway point at 51, so that’s a little weird thought process when you’re past halfway, right?

10:34 But I always think at the end of my life, at a hundred years old, imagine looking back and saying, I could have done more. Imagine meeting your maker, whatever your beliefs are, sitting with your maker, and your maker says, how was your hundred years? You know, imagine if you said, you know, life was good, our relationship was good, you know, the thing I did for a living, I really didn’t impact people, didn’t really light my heart up, but it was good. Like, if Brian, look, what if you stayed in your old position, you would have made great money, but would you have been in the place you are now, or you’re serving people, loving what you do?

11:04 We talked about that a little before, right? Just think at the end of your life, if you’re saying, life was pretty good, you know, I was gonna, I was gonna go for that, my own business, or I was gonna scale my business, but, you know, I didn’t think it was the right time. My wife or my husband really didn’t support me. My friends thought I was crazy. I lived in this place in London, I lived in this place in the States.

11:24 Or, yeah, imagine all those excuses. Could you imagine your maker just like holding his head, oh my god, I give you, I make you human. I put you on earth. I give you endless capabilities. The only thing that stopped you is that you believed a situation was reality when it was nothing more than your perception of a circumstance.

11:42 The only reality we all have, not to get all foo-foo, the only reality we have is the perception of situations. If we’re both together, I might see opportunity, I might see a newbie, and you might see a new end. Right? It’s like the book Who Moved My Cheese, when someone moves the cheese, someone sits there and goes, I want my life to go back to the way it was before. Covid.

12:03 I’m waiting right here till somebody fixes it. Someone else says, screw that, excuse my language, I’m going to find a new life. I’m gonna fight for, same circumstance, just a different belief and different actions. Yeah, first of all, I love that book, Who Moved My Cheese, right? And so it’s a great book.

12:20 You know, I think they’ve said that, like the definition of hell is at the end of your life, meaning the person that you could have become. You know, heard that, that just gave me the chills. Yeah. And you know, the thing about that is that it’s the same person as you, but that person just made different decisions, which means they have different beliefs, like you said, and they just found empowering thoughts, but it’s, it’s, it’s everything you have now.

12:46 So it’s the same biology, the same situation you’re in now. And I think it was Jeff Bezos that called what he was doing his regret minimization hypothesis, and that’s why he went, and you know, he was working at a company called D.E. Shaw in New York City, actually. I think I interviewed there, or sent him a resume when I was trying to get to Wall Street. He was doing well there.

13:06 They were like an algorithmic trading firm, and he packed it all up and drove his, you know, car out to Seattle to set up Amazon, because he knew he couldn’t live with himself unless he really went for it. And of course, now in retrospect, it looks like a great decision. But still, I, I think I see what you’re saying there. You know, you know, I’ve got a mentor who constantly pushes me. Dean, I got, I think I have the meanest mentor on the planet.

13:33 It’s a long story. He called himself the trillion-dollar man. He has a castle in Scotland. He yells a lot, but he gets so angry when I’m not going to my potential, because I think he sees me wasting my life and my chance on this earth to go big. And I think you’re right.

13:48 I think we’re all given this beautiful gift and we have to try to make the most of it. Right. Yeah. And I mean, here’s the thing, I love what you just said, and I know we’re all afraid. I’m still afraid as I go to different levels.

14:01 You know, tart Tony Robbins and I partnered up 25 years ago. Tony is one of the guys that inspired me to get into my mindset when I bought a car, of course off an infomercial, right? And now he’s my partner. We’re already partnered on two companies. We’re right now merging another company together.

14:13 There’s still times where I feel like I’m an impostor, and can I really handle this? I think those feelings are just, they’re just innate. Like, I tell people sometimes I feel like I was born a pessimist. I’ve been fighting my whole life to be an optimist. Like my brain wants to default on what could go wrong, but I’ve been through it enough, and, and, and you know we’re similar in age, I’ve been through it enough to know that my next level always lives on the other side of the thing I’m afraid of, the thing I fear.

14:43 So I have to step up. And listen here, the thing you guys got to realize, there’s no one path to move forward. We must move forward. We know that we need next-level thinking. We have to take next-level actions, and that’s the only way to next-level results.

14:57 So I love that. I don’t know in depth what you do, but having an eight-week training, I think that’s what you said, that’s giving people next-level thinking, encouraging them to take next-level actions so they can get those next-level results. Here’s what I know. I don’t like to fail. I don’t like to be scared.

15:13 I don’t like to have anxiety. I don’t like to have stress. I mean, not to get too personal, I hated that for my kids that I went through a divorce, you know, five years ago, started the process. I hated it. I was scared to death because I was a product of divorce, and my parents hated each other and fought non-stop, and I just, I was projecting all that on my kids.

15:31 I just thought it was gonna be chaos. I was afraid of it, and I kept looking away until I finally said, our next level, my ex, me, my children, there’s another level on the other side of this. I need to face this. I need to not avoid it, not look away. I need to look into it, focus on solutions and focus on using compassion and empathy, but power to get it done.

15:50 Now, fast forward, and my ex is the happiest she’s ever been. My kids are blooming, they’re on fire. I’m a better man, Brian. I’ll just be completely honest, I learned how to become a better version of me. I made just as many mistakes as she did.

16:03 Wasn’t her, it was a combo, but that made me a better man on the other side of what I fear the most. I’m a better father. I’m a better leader to my team, and I’m an incredible husband to my wife. We’ve been together, heading on four years, that we fall in love more every single day. We just had a baby.

16:19 She wants three more and I’m ready to go for it. Never would have happened unless I got that belief of, I’m gonna screw up everybody, and I found a new belief that I can make this right. I don’t care how other people handle divorce. I don’t care how other people co-parent. I don’t care how other people just go from relationship to relationship.

16:37 I’m doing it different. I know I went and found it here. One last thing. I don’t want to beat up on beliefs, guys. We have lots to talk about, but here’s one thing that has always helped me.

16:46 I go find someone that has done what I want to do, whether that’s online, whether that’s a video or in person, and I rob their belief. I found a friend of mine who went through a divorce, who, his ex comes over for Christmas, he got remarried, he had new kids, the kids all hang out together, the families hang out together. They just traveled to Italy six months ago together as a family, her with her new family and husband, him with his new family, and they got together, they had dinner every night.

17:13 They stayed in the same hotel room, you know, different rooms, but stayed in the same hotel. I just focused on him. I didn’t focus on my twenty other friends that hate their exes, woman robbed my money, or that man’s no good. I didn’t listen to any of them. I didn’t believe any of them when my friend said, oh my god, you’re being too generous, screw you, excuse my language, but you don’t have what I want.

17:32 And I just found people who did, and it’s like, that’s all I stared at. That’s, I don’t want to oversimplify it, but that’s one of the hacks I use. What was one of the things that stood out when you spoke to that guy about how he behaved through this, or how he acted? Like, what was something different than the kind of bitter divorce guys would say to you? He said, replace all your feelings, envy, anger, frustration, with compassion.

17:57 Bite your tongue, figure it out, and just focus on, in ten years from now, do you want your, you know, your ex to drop off the kids and out in the road, not even come in the driveway, look the other way, and your kids are fractured? And they got it, they have to have one relationship with their mom and one relationship with their dad. Like I did. I had to lie to my parents ’cause they hated each other so much, right? I became two people, one for my mom, one for my dad.

18:21 And when I realized that kids get fractured, and then they go back to therapy at 40 to try to get put back together, my whole end result was, my kids can go back and forth to houses and feel zero pressure, and what that all boiled down to is, I had to replace all other emotions with compassion and create a friendship with my ex. I’ll just put it this way. Mother’s Day, on Mother’s Day, my wife was sitting at the kitchen table helping my kids create Mother’s Day crafts for my ex, and I walked in on, like, I got goose bumps talking about.

18:54 My kids don’t even know that there’s anything, like, they transition from home to home. They can come here and talk about their mom, and they can go to their moms and talk about being here, and not even know that there’s not even the tiniest bit of tension. And that was my goal, and I just wouldn’t accept anything else. And then I found people who’d already done it, and that fueled my belief. If I would have stared at people who screwed it up or went down a bad path, that would have been my belief as well.

19:20 That’s so, you know, and I was a child of divorce, and I know how, you know, when you have these little black holes in your past, like you said, you magnify them. They become these massive fears, and then you stay away from them. And if you have to confront them, then you project all the badness on it, and if you’re not careful, you relive it that way. Or right, was literally, I was going down a path of anxiety and worry and fear until I shifted it. What do you tell someone like, you’re constantly recognizing your, your, it seems like you’re watching yourself a lot of times in your life.

19:52 So you’re saying, okay, why am I angry here? Why am I reacting this way? Why am I feeling stressed? You know, that’s a great place to be, but a lot of people can’t even get there. Do you, ’cause when I started getting that, that’s why I left the city in a banking career.

20:05 I actually took a meditation course, and I, after like four weeks, I woke up one day and I said, Brian, super unhappy. He’s been doing the same thing every day for the last five years. It’s not making him any happier. Why doesn’t Brian try something new? But it took me a little a shift to be able to observe myself.

20:21 Do you have any suggestions to people on how they might be able to get in that mode? Yeah, really, really, really good question, because sometimes you think, right, you, I was in that spot of not knowing how to shift, and where do you go, right? And then you think, yeah, you think, I’m mindset’s gonna fix my bank account or my marriage, come on, like, give me a tool to fix it, right? That’s our brain defaults, like, give me a path. But listen, let’s just talk about it.

20:42 How do you guys, how do you get in better shape? I’m not gonna oversimplify this, but what if you worked out more and ate better? Like, you don’t need magic, right? How do you fix a relationship? Be connected, listen more, have empathy, compassion.

21:00 How do you, how do you start or scale the business? Focus on the things that move the needle, obsess on marketing, focus on solutions. Like, a lot of times the answers are in books, the answers are in courses, the answers are in next-level training and workshops and masterminds, but we don’t take the action. So I would just say to yourself, are the actions you’re taking getting you the results you want? Like, that’s a really powerful question.

21:29 Are the actions you’re taking getting you the results that you want? That’s the first thing, be honest with yourself. If, listen, so I feel like I’m blessed, I’m grateful. Yeah, you could be blessed and grateful and still not happy. Brian, you should have been blessed and grateful that you’re making great money, living in New York City, living in London, like, living in, but there was another level for you.

21:47 So be honest with yourself. So, honesty, and are the actions you’re taking getting you the results you want? And then here’s the part that I think could really shift you. That’s three parts on my share. Pretend it’s five years from now.

21:58 Right now, literally it’s five years from now. You’re looking back and your life has not changed a bit. Not a bit. You’re still doing the same thing, taking the same actions. Relationship’s still, same, the income’s still the same, the career’s still the same.

22:12 Just after you listen to this, go take a minute by yourself, not even meditation, and just really visualize you’re five years older, a couple more crow’s feet maybe, a couple greys, five more pounds around the belly, and you’re still doing exactly the same thing. Let that sink in. Between those two things, then you have this urge of, like, well, what the hell do I do now? Dean, now I feel terrible. It’s just start spending some time, say, what if I shifted this one belief?

22:36 What if I believed I could? What if I believe that what’s going on with Covid is the beginning, not the end? What if I investigated what industries are actually growing in a time like this? What if I could do something at home and virtually? If I could do something like, Brian, something like Dean.

22:53 I could start, like, a different mindset can be shifted in just in a moment. It’s the last thing I’ll say. I want to share this story really quick, because I know, again, this little shift is not an easy task. Like, Brian started meditation, I got Tony Robbins’ course. Like, sometimes you just need an interview like this or more videos.

23:12 But one last thing, Covid hits. I have a friend of mine, he lives in Utah, and he knows two restaurant owners. This sounds like a fable, but this is a real thing that happened just 90 days ago, 60 days ago. So Covid hits, shuts down the restaurants, right? These restaurants are a mile away from each other, on opposite sides of the road.

23:32 On one street in Utah, they close down, one of the owners is just furious. He said he’s mad at China for inventing it, he had a conspiracy, and then he’s mad at the local government for making him shut down. Kind of like the way I envisioned it. Doesn’t mean he did, he crossed his arms and said, this is BS, someone needs to fix this, and he didn’t get his PPP, the stimulus money here in America. He didn’t get it in on time and missed it, and just furious.

23:57 A mile down the street, on the opposite side of the road, there’s a barbecue restaurant that same weekend. Or he had all that fear and anger and shut down. These guys, him and his brothers, this is the story I was told. Went to Lowe’s, got all the lumber, and built this cool outside structure for drive-through. They went inside and moved the kitchen around so people could be six-foot apart, and they switched their entire business over a weekend into takeout.

24:21 They literally are doing three times the business, crushing it. The other guy’s business is still closed. Now, same time in history, same industry, same street, same city. One of them is gonna look back in five years and say, that damn Covid, that damn president, China, they ruined my life. The other one’s gonna look back and say, that damn Covid, China, that president.

24:44 Oh my god, we have ten places. What’s different? Except the perception of the situation that was in front of them. I needed to tell that story. Chisholm, just, I know it’s not easy, but start that ship, start analyzing those thoughts and beliefs, and I’ll tell you it’ll take you further than you could ever imagine.

25:01 Yeah, it’s such a powerful story, and you know, I’m really glad you told that fable, because I was looking for a great, a great one out there that has the kind of, the two brothers like you said. You know, this is something I decided consciously in March. It was like, I’m gonna expand and not contract here. I’m gonna try to find opportunities and try to deliver value to all of our people here, to try to get him information. And that’s what we’re gonna do for the next three or four months, and it was a real mindset shift.

25:27 And I have a bunch of, like, personal trainers and mentors and stuff, and it was funny, half of them when I would text him saying what are we doing, half of them would say the gyms are closed and everything shut down and nothing, and then the other other half said, guess what, let’s get on zoom. Guess what, I don’t want you to go do this. Guess what, it was just options, alternatives, solutions. Some people come up with problems, some people come up with solutions.

25:49 So I know it, it is mindset, but if you don’t have the mindset, it does, it sounds too easy, doesn’t it? Dean, tell me about the book itself, because it’s called Millionaire Success Habits, but there’s some real, like, deep stuff in there about mindsets and habits, and I was wondering if we could maybe just go through quickly some of those that just got you to where you are and got some of your students to the next level. Yeah, you know, that book I loved, right?

26:18 In that book, and I’m glad the world loved that. I think we’re at about a million copies of that book right now, and it’s, if there’s just, so everybody knows it’s called Millionaire Success Habits, but I’ll just be honest with you, there’s no reference in there on how to, shall we make money? It’s just what it says. It’s not make a million dollars, it’s Millionaire Success Habits, and that’s the part that you know, I took a risk. I had friends telling me, like, oh, dude, don’t write a book with the word habits in it, nobody wants to change their habits.

26:44 And I can’t, but that’s what people need. So what I want you to think about before I share, is I tell you I’m gonna say one more story. I’m sorry, I got two. This is one. Tony always talks about when he does a health day at one of his events, he said, you pull up, somebody pulls up, a doctor pulls up to a stream, and all these people are coming down the stream, floating and drowning, and this doctor, he’s meant to serve, that’s his life, and he’s going out in the stream and he’s pulling people out, fooling people up, and he makes a phone call, 10 more doctors come, and they’re all going out in the stream.

27:14 Look at all these people in this water drowning. We got to save him, we got to save him, and there’s stress and stress and stress, and then like the 11th doctor comes, and he sees what’s going on, and he walks back to his car. I goes, how dare you, how could you go back to your car? We need help. And he said, I’m gonna drive upstream and see who’s throwing these people in.

27:33 And stuff. As I like, okay, like I get it, and that’s, that’s really the whole premise of Millionaire Success Habits. Is I want to go upstream. I don’t give you a magical money machine. There’s no way to get rich overnight in that book, but I’m gonna help you build a foundation where you could just apply it to any area of your life, and create these, remember I said, the little things are the big things, the little things are everything, right?

27:55 I know this sounds simple. I’m just picking one. There’s so many great things. I love that book. But I have trained my brain to be solution-oriented, solution-focused.

28:06 We all, if you’re successful, Brian, anybody listening, you’re all, if you’re successful, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, I have no doubts that you already do this, right? There’s some people to focus on why it went wrong, whose fault it is, how could this happen to me, and they get stuck. If you’re here, I bet you you’re not. But how do you shorten that distance, right? How do you not blame other people?

28:29 Listen, blame is easy, and there’s lots of people to blame. But what if you just took complete ownership of your life? You could took complete ownership of every situation. What if everything that went sideways, the carpet getting pulled out, Covid things going on? What if it was complete?

28:42 What if you just had the mindset, not, say, you’re gonna be here today, but what if you had the mindset that all of that was absolutely designed for you at this time in history? And when those happen, instead of their brain going back on who, why, how, how’s this gonna hurt me, what’s gonna happen in the future, your brain was just programmed as a habit to focus on the fix. That’s what I teach my kids. I’m like, how do you focus on the fix? It happened, you spilt the milk.

29:05 You can complain about it, or you go get a little new glass of milk, right? I don’t want to oversimplify it, as simple as that. Does I know that that allows me to go in a boardroom with ten people that I feel are smarter, been in business longer, and they’re all talking about the crap, the thing that went wrong, and I can walk in and 1000%, 100% of my focus is how to fix it. I care whose fault it is, but care who messed up, don’t care if it’s like, what does that matter if it doesn’t fix it?

29:32 So again, I’m not trying to oversimplify, but they’re the type of habits that have allowed me to get here, and that’s what I teach in Millionaire Success Habits. All right, and there’s a whole list of them in there. You have 13 habits, and it’s all about mindset and behaviors, and those little things you do every day really add up. Is that right? They do.

29:51 They do. And listen, if they really add up, so as simple as a morning routine. I’m not gonna go deep in a morning routine, but I have a quick one. I don’t have a long, I wish I could say that I got up and I meditated and did everything perfect. I don’t, but here’s what I know.

30:07 There’s two different morning routines. I have one, it screws up my day, and I play defense all day, and one empowers me to play offense, and that’s how I label it. It’s defense and offense. How I would play defense all day, I’d roll, oh, roll up, wake up, roll over, and grab my phone, check my text messages, check my emails. First one of them might not be perfect.

30:27 Deal didn’t go through, thing didn’t happen, oh my god, I got an action to take, and it immediately puts my mind, oh, I gotta fix this, and I’m on defense and it happens all day. On the other side, the little things that add up to the big things. If I wake up in the morning and ignore my phone, and the first thought in my head is something with gratitude, that give it if you just wake up, right? 150,000 people die a day. You wake up and go, wow, I’m here to live another day, to fight another, to fight the good fight, right?

30:53 Or you pray, if you’re, if you, if you have faith, or you read two sentences out of a book that’s empowering. Right now, just be grateful you woke up next to somebody, or you woke up in the sheets, feel good, or it’s a beautiful day out, or it’s a rainy day. I like to hack my brain into gratitude with just a couple sentences, not, not a half hour meditation. And then there’s two things I do. I, when I had the day before, because as all of us, all of us who are fighting for another level, we tend to think about the things we miss, not the things we have achieved.

31:22 So I’m gonna train my brain to go, no, yesterday you’re pretty badass, Dean. You closed that deal. You got it done. You spent quality time with your son, your daughter. Looked at anyway, you still have a great connection.

31:31 Your wife knows you love her, right? I think about an accomplishment, a win from the day before, and I think of a win I want to accomplish that day. Now that’s all it takes, moments. But I have to tell you, if I do that, and then I get up, and then I have a routine. I like to, I, I go feed, I feel like I feed my mind and I feed my body.

31:48 I do lemon and a green, jank green powder, a little apple cider vinegar. I drink that, and then I go move. I go exercise. I go to the gym or I take a walk. I take a run.

31:58 If I do that, Brian, my day is set up for strength. I feel like, bring it, I got it. And then I’m proactive. If I wake up and I look at my phone and I walk out in the living room, I’m like, oh man, I gotta get this done, let me make that call, crap, all there’s gonna be a heavy day. I have two completely different days.

32:13 One is a state of mind of accomplishment, get it done, see you over anything in my way. One is like, I hope it doesn’t get worse. So again, these are little tiny things. You like, oh, that’s gonna make me wealthy? Kinda, that’s gonna make me happier.

32:28 Yes, right? Yeah, and you know, success, I think even Tony Robbins once said that, you know, in the, in the short term, we’re hard on ourselves, and in the long term we don’t see how much we’ve done. And so if you have these daily habits, and you really stack them up over months and years, it’s incredible what you can accomplish. It really is, and I think we forget that sometimes. Yeah, true story, and they do build up.

32:53 They, they are cumulative, right? They stack up. And I love the saying, I learned this from a guy named David Keck. Yeah, he was in a wheelchair. He got hit by a car running and paralyzed from the neck down, and just such a positive guy.

33:06 He had these little kekaa ch credos. I met him and he literally handed me, it was like the size of a business card, Brian, but it unfolded, like it unfolded like a Christmas card, like three feet long, right? And it had all these little credos, and one of them was, living the hard way is easy, and living the easy way is hard, and it really just hit me. I always think about that. Like, it’s easy to order takeout food, eat pizza, watch TV, binge out on Netflix and do nothing.

33:30 That’s easy. Right now it’s hard when you’re 50 or 60 and you have diabetes or you’re overweight or you feel sick and you have illness, right? It’s, it’s hard to sit and have a real, in-depth relationship with your significant other and listen more, even when you’re busy, and put your phone down and pay attention. That’s hard to do now, but it’s great when you can spend decades married and have a partner that’s on your side, right? It’s hard to be a good parent and listen and be there and read parenting books.

34:00 It’s hard, but man, it’s great when you have a long relationship with children, even when they’re gone, right? It’s hard to start the business. It’s hard. Like, you have to overcome obstacles. You have to overcome limiting beliefs.

34:11 You have to overcome that the people who tell you no. You have to work some more hours. You have to gain more capability. You have to go to coaching and training, like what you provide, Brian, and what we provide, right? That’s a little hard right now, but it’s way easier when you’re older and you feel like you tapped into your full potential, you’re living life on purpose, you have money and time freedom.

34:29 That’s easier. It’s easier now to just say, I just work for somebody, they give me the paycheck, life is great. How’s that gonna feel at the end of your life when you’re like, wow, this sucks, I could have done more? Right. So that whole, just remember that if you remember anything from this, I hope you remember a lot, but living the hard way now makes for an easier life down the road, no matter, that’s your health, you love, your being a parent, the income, the career, the other passions that you have.

34:54 Yeah, I love that concept. You have a phrase that you use called protect your confidence, and I thought it was really interesting hearing you talk about that. What does that mean, and how important is confidence for you and for everybody? Yeah, so my morning routine that I shared is to help protect my confidence. Think about this, you’re listening right now.

35:16 Have you ever done anything good in your life when your confidence is down? Do you start the business? Do you get the sale? If you’re in sales, have you ever done a sale in your life when your confidence is down? Right?

35:28 Have you ever persuaded your children to make a better decision when your confidence is down? Nothing. You don’t do anything good in your life when you have lack of confidence, and confidence is, it doesn’t have to be a 100% to zero. Like, if your confidence is at 90%, you play small. You hesitate.

35:43 You don’t go after the business. You don’t go after the relationship. You don’t go after the raise. Like, you just don’t, you play small and going, you know, what I should be happy, how would that, you shouldn’t be happy, you should actually be happy. So confidence to me is king, it’s key.

35:59 And so protecting your confidence, I’m gonna make this really simple. Again, this is gonna show my depth of wisdom. Now, there are things in your life that take away your confidence, and there’s things in your life that build your confidence. So here’s this magic. Ready?

36:14 The things that take away your confidence, do less of those. The things that empower your confidence, do more of those. Silly analogy, I know, I wrote this in my booklet. When’s the last time anybody listening watched the news and you got done and go, I feel amazing, I feel more confident? You watch the news, it’s like the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, right?

36:34 So I don’t watch the news. I have not had it in over a decade, right? That robs my confidence, so I’m not doing it. There’s people in your life who may be you know, well mannered and love you and care about you, but when you talk to them you doubt yourself, you doubt your dreams, because they tell you what’s wrong, what’s not gonna work, and stop, time to get real. I avoid those people.

36:54 In my life they’re gone. And if it’s a family member, I found a way to put Teflon on, because there’s never a time that I’ve talked to someone like that where I gained comfort. I lose it. For me, when I work on my weaknesses, Brian, I lose confidence. I don’t want to work on things that I suck at.

37:08 I want to empower the things I’m good at, so I don’t work on anything about it. So if those three things, and there’s more in your life, if they take your confidence away, then don’t do them. Find a way to avoid them. When I have a conversation like this with you, Brian, when I’m, when I’m watching inspiration or listening to inspirational or motivational personal growth, when I’m working with my team, when I’m around my family and I feel this love, when I, when I work on serving other people and helping solve big problems, man, my confidence grows and I feel like it can attack anything.

37:39 When I do my morning routine, when I focus on solutions, when I question my beliefs, all of those things build confidence in me. So do more of those, and do less of these, because with confidence, it is the law, gene pad, to doing more. And one last piece I’ll say about this is, a lot of times people think that if you do the right things, confidence will just happen. And there’s one more thing before confidence that really can empower you to move you forward, and that’s courage.

38:11 Courage isn’t taking action in the absence of fear. Courage is taking the action even though the fear is there. And if you can find courage and be courageous, on the other side of taking that action is the confidence that builds momentum. That’s powerful stuff. You know, we have a graveyard right next to our studio here.

38:32 You know, it’s kind of a London thing. There’s graveyards everywhere. And um, if you come see us, I’ll, I’ll take your walk through it, but it’s on the way to the gym for me, and it’s great, because I always walk through this graveyard, and there’s people buried there from the 1600s and 1700s, the 1800s, and I always, I always look at the graves and think, you know, does that person wish they would have, you know, gone for it more? You know, do they wish they would have taken that extra risk or had the courage to, I don’t know, ask the woman out, start the business, whatever.

38:59 And I always think, of course they do, man. They wish they could have come back and done more and done those big things. And so whenever I’m faced with a decision, I’m always like, you know, what would they do? They would be like, go for it. You know, this is the time to get that courage.

39:14 So for me, that helps. Sometimes you talk about education, because you know, if you look at your CV, you’re the last guy you would think would be talking about education. You didn’t go to college. You briefly talked about your upbringing. Maybe you can talk about it now, but you know, you grew up in a family with not many resources, with very severe limiting mindsets.

39:34 You were kind of locked into a career in auto repair that you thought you would be at, or you could easily be out. Right now, how did that shift happen, and how did you get passionate about education, because that’s what you do now on a mass scale? Yes, and I think the, the, the word is alternative, right? Alternative education, self-education, right? This isn’t just knocking the traditional education system.

39:58 I think it’s got a lot of flaws. I think the world’s been growing exponentially, and the educate, advanced education, next, traditional education systems been growing linearly. Like, they just haven’t caught up. I mean, if you took somebody just in our, just in our lifetime, Brian, if you took somebody just 50 years ago, not five hundred, you took somebody 50 years ago and brought him and showed him what was going on in the world, they saw an iPhone that’s got more power in an iPhone than President Clinton had in the entire White House, and the entire CIA wore in this phone.

40:28 They’d be like, oh my god, it’s got Google, it’s got Maps, take pictures, video, answer every question, oh my god. And then you took him over to a classroom, they’d look around and go, I was the same as mine. Wait, no, no, it’s different. It used to be a blackboard, now it’s a whiteboard, right? Like, schools have not evolved, and the world’s realizing that, because people are, there’s a mass exodus of college.

40:52 But what I didn’t know, and why I’m so passionate about it, Brian, is because when I was in high school and I did have dyslexia, really bad. I hated school. Not kinda, like, I hate it, cuz I felt embarrassed. I felt dumb. Couldn’t wait to get out.

41:03 But when I sat with my guidance counselor in 11th grade talking about what I was gonna do the next year, I told her, definitely not going to college, not even taking my SATs. I’m going to work with my dad in a collision shop. She was like, oh okay, no college. You know, listen, you’re probably good with your hands, you could work on cars, or maybe you could go there. There’s a factory, there’s only one factory in my town, triple our industries, they made plastic bags, and they paid minimum wage.

41:30 She literally told me I could go there and apply, and, and so many people are programmed like either college, and, uh, or, ooh, blue collar, broke, you might as well go buy a six-pack and kick your dog. Like that’s how I felt. She was, and, and I knew there was more, but I really wasn’t aware of self-education, on that level of my life, until just a few years later. I did get momentum, and I did start buying properties with no money down, and I had a car business, and then I bought a tow truck, tow truck, and built a tow truck company.

42:01 Then I started building houses and subdividing land. So by 25, Brian, I was doing pretty darn good, but then something fundamentally shifted in my life. I saw Tony Robbins on an infomercial. I paid money and he sent me knowledge. And I’m not kidding you, my dad was like, are you crazy?

42:17 You gave a money, you got a guy 300 bucks to talk to you. Oh, you’re, you know, get your money back. And what I realized is, like, it just blew my mind that there was just nothing. There was this, the other lane, right? It wasn’t just no college and broke or college and perfect.

42:32 There was this third lane of self-education. Honestly, Tony blew me away. All the things that I felt he affirmed, and then he introduced me to Wayne Dyer and Dale Carnegie and Earl Nightingale and Napoleon Hill and Jim Rohn, and all of a sudden I was like, oh my god, and my momentum, it went straight up. My life fundamentally shifted, and within two years, because there was no internet back then, I did an infomercial on my first product, on teaching people how to make money with cars, and then I did a product on how to make money in real estate, because by then I’d become a real, a millionaire with real estate.

43:05 I want to teach people, and it was just like, it was two things. Self-education, sell it, saved my life, and then I got in an industry that was just like, I get to do this for a living, and I got completely hooked. And that’s been my, you know, it’s been 24 years I’ve been in this space, and now I’m gonna point where I want to teach others. I’m pushing other people, like, you have knowledge in your head, you have experiences, life experiences that could save somebody from struggle.

43:33 So I push everybody to extract what you know and share it. Look, if this is what we do, we’re in the self-education industry. People can start off where you left off. People can get the unfair advantage. You know, the last thing I always say, I’ll say here on this point, and I’ll answer any questions you have, is, you know, what would it be worth to you right now to go back and spend a day with your 10-year-old younger self, 20-year-old younger self?

43:56 Priceless. Like, you could say, oh, this is what you do, don’t do this, go in the store, this is your mindset, this is the belief, this is how you sell, this is how you start. I mean, oh my god. And that’s really what self- education is. People who ever had the experiences, not knocking teachers, but it’s not the teacher in the classroom teaching about business who’s never had a business in their life.

44:14 It’s all theory. It’s the businessman extracting his knowledge and helping somebody in business. It’s the, it’s the person that knows how to sell, or knows how to cut hair better, or fly fish better, or speak a language, somebody who’s gone through a divorce, came out on the other side positive. It’s turning your mess into a message, your experience into a gift, extracting what you know and sharing it with those that need it, who are starting on day one.

44:36 That’s, that’s really self-education. It’s that, I believe it’s the greatest industry in the world. I feel blessed to be a part of it, and you guys are doing it big, and I want to talk about that. You said something in there, Dean, you said, I paid Tony money and he sent me the information, and maybe briefly talked about that component. It’s something that one of my mentors calls pay, price, to action, and it’s something that, you know, I used to teach my courses for free, and I realized nobody was finishing them, but when I charged a significant amount of money, I realized that almost everybody finished them, and, and, and it seems like you said that to me because it made you take it more seriously.

45:13 I don’t know, how does that component play out in this whole dynamic of self-education, because it’s an important one, isn’t it? It is, it is. And you know, I don’t want to, this might, seem, seem like rude, but if you don’t pay, you don’t pay attention. It’s just simple. That when things are free, you dismiss them, right?

45:29 I see my kids when they want to buy a bike. If I buy the bike, it’s one way. If I make them split the bike with me and they pay half, I have, it’s clean, it’s upright, it’s put away every time. It’s unbelievable, the difference between free and paid. And it’s the same with knowledge.

45:44 Let’s just be really kin. Knowledge is the new currency, like, right, back down. Remember, knowledge is the new currency, right? If somebody gave you ten thousand bucks, you’d go buy one Rolex, put it on your hand and pretend to be a big-shot and feel cool about it. I’m not being rude, I’m just being honest.

46:02 Imagine if you paid Brian, if he’s in your expertise, or someone else took the skills, that the knowledge that could leapfrog you 10 years, could allow you to cut the learning curve, start off where they left off, start off going a hundred miles an hour. Knowledge is the new currency, because if you don’t pay for it, you’re paying for it anyway. You’re gonna go back to college. How’s that working out for people? You know, you ever see the statistics, Google, if people go back to get their masters and spend a hundred grand more to make seventy-two hundred dollars more a year, if they can get a promotion.

46:34 How’s that working out for you? How’s your own trial and error working out for you? You want to try something new, and you want to spend the next five years figuring out your, in the time and money anyway? What I hope to help people do is see that they can pay for speed, right? They could pay for the capabilities to go faster, to avoid mistakes, to avoid the potholes, and allow themselves to go faster.

46:54 Like, here’s the crazy part, people been paying for college that hasn’t been doing crap for years. Like, let’s just get to the stats. Twenty seven percent of people who graduate college actually use their degree. Twenty-seven percent. Seventy-three percent don’t use it, and guess what, out of those twenty-seven percent, fifty-two percent of them hate the job they got.

47:15 Okay, so you’re down to like thirteen percent of people who actually go to college, a career in that, and like it. It’s not working. It’s flawed, but people are okay having debt for ten years for a college degree that didn’t serve them. And some people get a little weird about paying for self-education, but here’s the cool part, that whole dynamic is shifting. That’s over.

47:36 People know they need coaches, they need workshops, they need masterminds, they need mentors, and it’s happened exponentially. It’s one of the fastest growing industries in the world because people are getting results. Listen, let me ask you something. If you were going through a divorce, would you love to go to a therapist for 200 bucks an hour who’s never been divorced, maybe never been married, never experienced it, but they learned about it? What would you like?

47:59 To sit in a room with me? I don’t teach a course on divorce. I’m just telling you, would you like to sit in the room with me, where I had an elegant divorce, my kids are thriving, my ex is thriving, my new wife and my ex, all is good. We are on the other side, and we’re all better humans. Would you rather learn from me on how I did it, or do you want to learn from your therapist who never experienced any of it, and he’s given me opinions and things he read out of a book?

48:22 That’s where the world’s going. Would you rather learn how to write? Listen, I feel blessed, and the multiple New York Times bestselling author, write, and I have dyslexia and can barely read, but I know how to write books, and I know how to do it easy, and then I know the best part. I know how to sell. So let me ask you, you want to go to college and learn how to be an author to get your book out there?

48:40 What would you like? To spend a weekend with me showing you how to get a book done, how to get a publishing deal, and how to sell a million copies. Who do you want to go to? Not being an ass, I’m just telling you this, is where the world’s going, and if it’s a part of you, if you feel it, then be a part of this transformation, deliver value to the rest of the world, and the cool part, in a lot of cases, get paid for it. Yeah, you just sold me on your divorce course.

49:02 Hopefully I won’t need it, but you’re, you’re so right, and this is such an exciting time right now, and there’s so many people around the world with so much intellectual property they don’t even know they’re sitting on, that they could share and just make people’s lives better, and it’s, it’s, it’s exciting stuff. And look, now let’s jump into it. I want to hear about the Knowledge Business Blueprint. I kind of want to hear how you hatched the idea and came up with the whole thing.

49:26 But before we do it, I got to give you my Tony Robbins story. So I met Tony when I was 12 years old, I think. I know, and I doubt he remembers me, but my mom sent me to something called SuperCamp when I was a kid, and it was somewhere in California, somewhere, and it was like 10 days, and it was like this intensive learning camp, and they taught us how to speed read, and all this stuff, and Tony Robbins rolled up. Keith, my mom had taken the firewalk experience like years before, or something, so she already knew what was up.

49:56 But in 60 minutes he taught all of us munchkins how to break a board with our hands, all right? And I was the skinny little science geek introvert, and I was in physical at all, but sure enough, 60 minutes later, I broke a board with my hands. And you know, that was my experience with Tony, and so he was always up there as, like, this incredible super mythical guy, and in California he was, and everywhere, so you know, obviously you had a relationship with him, based from buying the tapes.

50:24 But how did this all begin, and then how did you come up with this idea? I know you wrote, like, all the copy yourself, and tell me how this all came together. Yeah, great question. Um, so yeah, Tony impacted me in a similar way. It’s funny you say that about the board break.

50:40 Right now we’re doing the first-ever, I’m Tony and I working together. I was doing his first-ever UPW virtually, and we’re sending everybody. There’s 22,000 people signed up. Literally my team just helped his team find 22,000 boards. We’re sending out 22,000, the people around the world, to have an experience of a board break virtually.

51:01 So isn’t that crazy? Out of this world, fun, all the way around. They still doing it. I didn’t know is he can’t do firewalk. Well, you would love to do firewalk, but has, want people have burned down their houses, right?

51:10 Itself. Yeah, so a decade ago, I’m about eight, nine years ago, someone introduced us, and I admired Tony. He changed my life with his course, and we just hit it off and became friends, and we decided to stay friends. I watched so many people wanting to be partners. I mean, I feel blessed.

51:27 A lot of people want to do stuff with me, but Tony’s was like on steroids, and I’m like, you know, I don’t want to ruin this friendship. So we went seven years just being friends. We meet four or five times a year. I don’t golf much, he doesn’t golf much, but we golf when we get together, eight, nine holes, have fun, eat lunch. So we always talked about doing something, when I got next time, next time.

51:46 But this thing had been burning inside of me, the Knowledge Business Blueprint. It changed my life. The knowledge industry, and I wanted to show people, like, you do have intellectual capital, right? You said those words, perfect, right? You have knowledge as a new currency.

52:01 Everybody listening has currency inside of them. They just don’t know how to unlock it, how to share it, how to teach it, who did teach it, to what platform to use, how to get paid. And I’m like, what if we could teach people how to unlock their gifts? So I kept thinking about that. I put this on a whiteboard, like a 20-foot-long whiteboard, and I laid the whole thing out, and I said, you know what, maybe this is the thing I do.

52:22 Would tell you. So we are golfing in Idaho, Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and we’re about three holes in, I’m like, I gotta tell you something I’ve been thinking about for about two years. I’m not kidding, cuz self-education changed his life. He was living in a car when he gave his money to go see Jim Rohn, and Jim Rohn overnight his life, and was never the same. Similar.

52:40 Tony did for me, Jim Rohn did for him. So I tell him, I’m 20 minutes in, he’s like, brother, there’s no way I’m in. I must do this with you. Let’s do it. And then we just decided.

52:51 It birthed on that golf course, and then I just laid out the whole thing. I took his 40 years in this space, my 25 years in this space, and I just extracted it, but then simplified it for the person going and I really impact lives, and so what I know, and we just built this course, and I knew it was coming out great. When we were doing, you know, how, Brian, there’s certain things that you do, and you just feel and flow the entire time. Like, there’s other times we have frustrations.

53:16 This was just flow, like when he recorded all his stuff for the course, when I recorded, then we, we found a way to pull people through the course, and then we built the software around it so he can make it real. Then we built this community, and I was like, this thing is gonna be unbelievable, and it just kept going and kept going. We sometimes to make better, you actually simplify. And then we launched it to the world, and I knew the world was ready, but we didn’t even know how ready.

53:40 It turned out to be the biggest launch in internet history. Like, it was crazy. The enrollment, I mean, on our last training we had 380,000 people live at the same time, and it’s been amazing. It’s turned into a movement. We have people in 150 countries sharing what they know in 43 hundred different niches.

53:59 Like, every niche you could possibly imagine. People are going, oh my god, I do hair extensions, I teach people how to do art, I save relationships, I help people with divorce, I help your kids feel empowered, I help people eat vegan, I help people like ketose. Like everything you could possibly imagine. We have people all over the world extracting that intellectual capital, sharing it, impacting others, and, you know, brings success themselves. So it’s amazing.

54:25 It’s been a fun ride. Well, first of all, congratulations for all that. I had heard about it in the background, and I knew a couple people that were doing affiliates with you, and they were like, yeah, they’re doing this thing, and obviously it was a dream team, but then when I heard your results, it was like, wow, these guys really crushed it. So congrats, and I know you got the next version. You know, you doing them every year, you’re launching here?

54:44 Yep, we’re working really hard on the next version. Next version is gonna be through the roof. Okay, now you, you brought the marketing to this, right? And that really is one of your specialties, is that right? I mean, that’s, that’s what you know, you’re really well known for.

54:58 And I’m wondering, how did you look at this from your 10, 20, 25 years plus of marketing? You know, I was in New York City about four months ago, pre-Covid, luckily we barely got there, and I sat down with Seth Godin, and I asked him, I have a tendency to ask really simple questions sometimes to these people, and I said, I said, Seth, what is marketing? Like, you know, what is marketing? And he just looked at me and he said, he said, Brian, great marketing is a great product.

55:22 That’s one of the things he said to me, and I was just like, man, made me think about that for another year. But how did you approach this from the marketing standpoint? So I knew, we created the greatest product in the world. But here’s the thing though, I know Seth, but I’d have to disagree with him, because there’s a lot of great products out there. Listen, the best way to disagree with him on that, politely, is 95% of all books in Barnes & Noble don’t sell over a thousand copies.

55:50 And I’d guarantee there are some amazing books on those shelves that would change people’s lives, would inspire them, make them laugh, make them cry, give them capabilities, but somebody didn’t market them, so they sit there and die. Do you know how many great products and services are out there that people don’t market? People think, if I build it, they will come. They won’t. I don’t care who you are, don’t care, KBB.

56:14 Do we call it KBB? Knowledge Business Blueprint is literally the greatest course ever. People who get it are losing their minds, but if we didn’t market it, no one would know it was there. So I, I obsess on that. So when we created the marketing campaign, first week, and how companies explode, is great marketing aligned with a great product.

56:34 Great marketing with a bad product, flash-in-the-pan. Great product without marketing could get passed by. So when I knew we had the best product in the world, we created a campaign that was based around impact. Listen, Brian, I know we had a quick talk before, you’re doing something that serves your soul while simultaneously you’re making a living. Before you are making a great living that didn’t serve, and I just felt it was time for people to really know that they could do something meaningful that could also bring them success.

57:01 And if you watch the marketing, there’s not one bit of marketing out there, Brian, that says come work with Tony and Dean and get rich. Come work with Tony and Dean and make lots of money. Come with Dean and Tony and do this business that can make, there’s none of that. Marketing. Our marketing is, how would you finally like to do something meaningful, to serve others, to fulfill your potential, while simultaneously creating success for you and your family?

57:24 So we have tax just marketing, not based on, listen, you go on Facebook or Instagram and find 200 ads this very minute telling you how to get rich. I didn’t want to compete with that. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re giving people a real opportunity to do something that could kind of light them up, and that was my approach, and luckily it really knocked it out of the park. Well, you say luckily, because a lot of people would say that’s a gamble, because a lot of people say that people go to the lowest common denominator, and when they’re scrolling through Facebook, which is where you might have to compete, you know, if people don’t see, well, what’s in it for me, then they’ll just gloss it by.

57:57 So I’m sure that must have, in the back of your mind, my team was like, it’s too soft, it’s not gonna work. I’ve watched everything you’ve done, Dean, but this one is too soft. And I’m like, I got to go for it this way. That’s Tony’s heart, that’s my heart. This is where, and this was kind of like a, this was a passion project, right?

58:12 We didn’t need this. Both of us are doing just fine. We didn’t need this to survive. So you can take gambles sometimes that are bigger when you don’t need it, when you just want it, and it just proved we were just really authentic. We were to the point.

58:25 In fact, in a lot of our marketing is like, if you’re looking for the magical way to get rich overnight, this isn’t us. There’s a lot of those claims out there. This is about doing something that’s real in an industry that’s exponentially growing, and it’s growing right now during Covid. It’s one of those rare industries that’s exponentially growing because everybody’s home and they’re looking for self-education. Yeah, we had our biggest class ever in April and May.

58:48 It was crazy. It was crazy, like everything went up like four or five X in those months. So, uh, so yeah, it’s the perfect time for this. Do you think that, that, that can sometimes create success when you don’t have to make it, you know, when you’re not desperate to do that for your business? Success, and you can, I’m at it for the right reasons, or is that only one component of success?

59:11 I think that’s one. I, you know, I still approach things like I’m an underdog. I approach everything like it’s not gonna work. So it’s kind of a combo. Like, that was a passion project, and I’d be okay if it didn’t work, but I still go after it as if I needed it, especially.

59:26 It was after almost a decade, Tony and I decide to be partners. I wasn’t gonna mess around. I didn’t want it to be like, oh, we did kind of good. I needed it to be epic, so I went all-in. We had, we had 3,500 affiliates, because I, and I didn’t sell the affiliates on money either.

59:40 I never said, hey, if you get this you can make all this money. I’m like, go look at this course and look how we’re gonna change lives. If you go through that course and you don’t want to share it with your audience, I totally get it, and people just lost their mind, because what it did is they used it for their own business. Like, I never looked at it that way. Oh my god, Tony, let me up.

59:57 Oh my god, Dean, that marketing you taught, how can I not get, how can I not empower my audience with this? So we kind of had, like, a mission-based movement rather than an affiliate launch. Right, affiliate launch sounds like a mission-based movement. It’s like, yeah, I want to get people in this. So luckily all the, you know, the lines ended up, the dots, they ended up in it.

1:00:17 It went unbelievable. And what was it like working with Tony, because this isn’t exactly what he does? You know, he’s the live event guy, he’s the book guy. This is kind of new. Yeah, I’ll tell you, at first, he trusts me, because we have a great relationship, and there was some things outside of his comfort zone until we launched, and then our community has started having more success than anything he and I had ever created.

1:00:41 Like, there’s a hundred and forty-seven thousand posts a month in the Facebook group. There’s success happening every minute. There’s a new post of somebody doing something in 150 countries. Like, I know both of us kind of stalk that group, watching all the success come in, and it lights us up. So he loves it now.

1:00:57 He’s absolutely in love with the product, that impact it’s making. So it’s good stuff. You wrote all the copy for it, right? Right, I did. I wrote all the copy, all the emails, cuz I, listen, I have a great team, but this one was too important, so I dug in and did it all.

1:01:16 And how do you write? I record it first. I’m better with my words than I am with my fingertip, so I’ll be inspired, like, why people need this, how we can help them, and I’ll record it on my phone, then I’ll get it transcribed and I’ll turn it into copy. Is that secret to your success? Do you think that gives you an edge?

1:01:35 Yeah, for sure. Any other copywriting tips? Live in the mind of your prospect, not in yours. I know that sounds like duh, but most people, we get in our own heads and we think we know what people need. You don’t know what people need.

1:01:48 You got to listen to what they want. Read comments, go in other forums with similar people that would want your product, and learn their fears, learn their desires, and let them know you understand them. Most people want to be understood. The secret to copy is understanding people that are needing what you have or wanting what you have. So live in the mind of your prospect, enter conversations in their heads, not yours, and let them feel understood, and be authentic, be real, be transparent.

1:02:18 You’ll be mountains above anybody else in the space. Powerful, super powerful. What if, what have you learned from Tony over the years, and what’s it like to be friends with him, that he walks the walk? You know, you see, you see sometimes you see a guy that writes a book on time management, and he shows up late for your meeting because he’s stressed. Right?

1:02:40 I, what Tony preaches is how Tony lives, and he’s been a really great example for me. He’s in a, he’s the one that helped me realize that true love was a thing. Him and Sage have been together over 20 years. They have the most magical relationship you’ve ever seen. He helped me a lot going through a separation and finding love of my life, and being that, that role model again.

1:03:00 Remember I said, you want to prove something’s real, find a role model, watching a couple that’s been together 20 years, kiss and hold hands, and, and when they’re not around each other, talk about each other, and Tony doesn’t have a slightest bit of a wandering eye. His whole love, his life is passionate. Those into his wife. Man, your around that, I’m like, this is real, I got to do this, it’s, it’s possible. So I learned a lot of stuff.

1:03:22 He helped me 25 years ago, he helped me 10 years ago, but we help each other every day now. I mean, I think we talked nine times yesterday. So it’s pretty cool. And he gave you some advice when you were in your 40s, and he asked you some questions that made you think about what you wanted to be in your 50s. Can you, can you tell us what that was?

1:03:39 Yeah, he, uh, he said to me, not what I was gonna do, but who, who were you gonna become? He’s like, who are you gonna be in your 50s? And you know, we talked about that earlier. It’s like, that, that really fundamentally shifted the how I wanted to roll into my 50s, and I started outlining who I wanted to be as a father, a role model, a leader, what I want to do for a living, what partners that I liked but they weren’t aligned with where I wanted to go anymore, and had, there was some businesses I ended, and there was some new ones I started.

1:04:09 So it really was like a line in the sand. My 50s were different because of that simple little question. Yes, and that is, who do you want to be, as, as opposed to what? Right, as opposed to what do you want to do or get done or be known for? You know, yeah, yeah.

1:04:25 It’s funny, like I’m almost 250, and it’s, the world has never made more sense than it makes now. I’ve never, I’ve never felt more in control of my life and felt empowered and felt connected. But for much of my life, you know, I was kind of like what you were describing earlier. I was always in my own way. You know, it was always my own fears and my own constraints and my own beliefs that just ruined things for me, whether that took me to alcoholism or drug addiction or paranoia from having a family.

1:04:54 I just, I just had my first kids three or four years ago, and for a long time I was scared of family, because I thought they would hurt me emotionally, you know, and I had to get over that. But now I feel like I’m pushing more into it. I’m sure I got more to learn, but like, there’s something about the 50s that are just kind of amazing, where it almost, I feel like I’m just in, like, a superior mindset now, much to where I was in the 30s and 40s. And I don’t know how you feel about that?

1:05:22 I feel exactly the same way. Exactly the same way, you know. And listen, it’s glad that you get to appreciate each decade that you’re in, but I think all the crazy knowledge and information and the places we’ve navigated in the world, all those things kind of, I don’t want to act like I’m full of wisdom, but I think all that stuff kind of accumulates into wisdom at this time. Like, it’s an intuition, it’s a gut feeling, right? You know, right from, and I think it’s not, it doesn’t mean that’s way for everybody.

1:05:50 Some people might know right from wrong, we decide to just keep doing it the same way. But is there something freeing about going, I’ve done that before and that result wasn’t so good, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna open my heart up here. I’m not gonna stay closed anymore. I’m gonna trust people more or I’m gonna limit my circle of friends more? Like you kinda know, it’s like, it’s like you’ve been, it’s like you’re driving from New York to Florida, and you can almost let go of the wheel.

1:06:14 You just know how to get there. If you decide you want to go down in the wrong roads, you actually know the repercussions of getting lost, right? So I don’t know, I feel the same way. It’s, it’s definitely easier to navigate, and that’s why I’m so in love with what I do right now, because I wish somebody, I wish more people would have shared this with me when I was younger, or at any age, just because they’re the little gifts. You know, there’s that saying, little hinges swing a big door.

1:06:37 And I think what we talked about today, and this has been a blast hanging with you, man, but I think what we shared today are like little hinges, but they’ll swing a big door if you implement them into your life. You once said love is the answer to everything. Sounds like a Beatles song. Dean, what did you mean? Uh, you know, it’s that, probably came at a point when I was going through my divorce, because everything else didn’t work.

1:06:59 Right? I tried to be cunning. I tried to think around it and maneuver an angle. Man, when I just stopped all the BS and went to compassion and love, it all worked out. So I guarantee that interview was probably in my B’s, around 48 years old.

1:07:13 I would say I still feel that way, but I know I shared that a lot around that time. What’s next for you? What are the next five years look like? Is it, are you like 80% of your time on KBB, or do you have all sorts of other projects that you work on? KBB is about 60 percent of my time.

1:07:30 It got bigger than I ever would have thought or imagined. There’s 100 employees just on KBB. In that company, Tony and I are partnering on his other company right now, so I’m working a lot and putting more time in right now than ever before, but I love, you know, help them with unique abilities that I have. I still own hundreds of houses. In art, you know, I’m still in the real estate business.

1:07:50 I still write books. I released a new book every couple of years, so it’s a busy, and I have a three-month-old baby, and my wife wants four more. So I’m, I have her down to think in three, or hoping for two more. But yeah, so family is everything. I’ve really narrowed down what I love to do, Brian.

1:08:09 I love being with my family. I love being a husband and a father. I love being a dear friend. I love being a leader to my team, and I love to grow as a human. Pretty much everything outside of that, I say no to.

1:08:20 Like, everything outside of that, I say no to in the next five years. I think just to continue to grow and continue to make impact and be a good dad and husband. What’s it like having a child you know in your 50s, as opposed to in your 30s? Does it feel, there’s everything you said about being 50, it just seems so much easier. I just get it.

1:08:38 Like, nothing frustrates me. If he stays up, I just know I’m gonna miss all of it, so none of it bugs me. Like, honestly, it’s, it’s easy as pie, and it’s not because we have a million nannies. My wife doesn’t even want a nanny. I’m like, my wife’s handling it, and we, like, it’s because it’s just life, and it’s beautiful, and I just don’t let it spin me up.

1:08:59 Dean, what scares you? You know, I would love to say that I’ve outgrown this, but the fear of going backwards, like the fear of losing it, or I’m still that broke kid on the inside. I’d love to say I’ve grown past that, but I have a fear, like, one day waking up and it’s all gone. And I don’t mean like the money. Like, it’s just like the knowledge, the impact we get to make.

1:09:22 We provided six million meals last year through Feeding America. We, we have saved hundreds of kids from slavery. We donated a half a million bucks this year to help people. Like those types of things, retiring my parents, given my kids choices, and working on growing as a human and impact in more lives. I still deep down fear could go away.

1:09:45 I don’t think it can, but it keeps me fighting it, keeps me driving and being sharpened, and not be the guy that used to be good at marketing, or the guy that you used to be good at impact. I’ve got it. Used to write good books. It keeps me on the edge. I want to have that youthful feel so people can relate to me.

1:10:02 So it’s a good thing as long as you can control it. Yeah, would we be surprised to learn about Dean Graziosi? He’s something you do that’s maybe non-marketing, non-self-educating. I don’t know, something strange, man. I used to love, I used to, I used to drive a tow truck, in bulldozers and backhoes, and I actually miss it all the time.

1:10:24 Like, I’ll drive by somebody using an excavator and I’m like, I just want to jump in it like a kid and play with the big Tonka toy. So yeah, I used to. Here’s something, you know, I was, you said you worked on cars. My whole 20s I was a blue-collar guy with grease under my nails, working on engines, cars, painting cars, driving tow trucks. So, like, most people don’t know that.

1:10:42 I could do all of that. Someone, you know, a lot of times I’ll see a car breakdown, like, I know I can fix that. I’m not gonna, but I know exactly how to. So yeah, that most people don’t know that. What keeps you awake at night, wanting to accomplish more, going faster, quicker?

1:11:00 Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of things that kept me up at night throughout history, right? But right now, I, things that kept me up at night when I was going through divorce, worried about my kids. There was always different phases. I sleep pretty good right now, but what keeps me up would be just wanting to go faster and quicker while simultaneously being a good dad and husband. For sure.

1:11:20 Dean, I always hear to finish with a few questions. I’m gonna ask you this one. If you could pick up the phone and ring up the 20-year-old Dean Graziosi and give that young man some advice? I’m guessing right about then your dad just renamed his repair shop with your name on it, and you’re doing pretty good. What would you tell him?

1:11:39 Wow, you did your research. That’s a true story. I was right about that time. Paul and Dean Autobody. It’s hard to walk away from that, because that’s a lot of kids that would be the rest of their life.

1:11:52 Yeah, really good question. You know, what if I didn’t start off with beliefs? At one point in my life I would probably say, watch your beliefs, don’t let them f*** you. But obviously I did. I think I would tell that 20-year-old self, like, you got this.

1:12:06 The things you fear are not going to come true. The things you dream about are possible. Okay, on that same advice you ever received, could have come from Tony Robbins or your dad or Jim Rohn or somebody throughout your life? But is there something that sticks out? Yeah, I go back to Tony.

1:12:26 I was at an event with him, and I had this crazy relationship with my dad. He was the youngest of 12, physically, and he shares this, sexually abused and really bad, physically abused. And he never hit me and my sister, but he did some other crazy things, and my sister and him haven’t talked in 20 years. And we, we formed a really good relationship, but there’s some things I really resented him for, maybe 5% left, and Tony said something that changed everything to someone else.

1:12:54 He was in it. He was doing an intervention with somebody. He said, if you’re gonna blame your dad for all the crap, you better blame him for all the good you are, because all the things he did made you the woman you are today. He was doing an intervention, and that moment I forgave my dad. I blame him for some of the crazy stuff, but I blame him for the man I am, because dealing with that made me open my heart, have more empathy.

1:13:17 I decided to not be like him, and then I was able to shift my dad, and he’s in an amazing space at 84 years old. So if you’re gonna blame people for what they did wrong, you better blame them for what the outcomes you got because of what they did. I think I’ve seen that video of Tony doing that to someone, and it gets you really, really thinking. You know, it really does. Last part of that, to that 20-year-old that’s watching us or listened to us, advice to them, or maybe even an 18-year-old that’s thinking about going to college, or, you know, wondering what they should do with their lives, or wondering how they should learn.

1:13:50 What do you tell them? That they never build statues of critics. Just follow your heart. You’d much rather be in the arena, playing the game and fail, learn from it and move on, than standing on the sidelines judging, because someone told you not to be a dreamer, or this is the path you should follow. The world has changed.

1:14:09 You don’t have to do what everybody tells you to do. You can do what you have to do, but here’s the deal, you have to work harder. If they work twenty-five or fifty percent harder than you think, but it’s worth it. And then to that, how can people find out more about you? You’ve got a podcast, books, and also KBB.

1:14:25 How can they get involved? Yeah, yeah. So if you want to watch the training Tony and I did, you can go to Dean’s training.com. It’s a two-hour training, will blow your mind. You got to check it out.

1:14:33 So Dean’s training.com. Of course, you can go to Amazon, check out my books. You can go to Dean’s free book.com. You can get Millionaire Success Habits. They’re my podcast.

1:14:42 Feel so blessed that it just cracked the top 50 podcasts and entrepreneurs. It’s uh, it’s moving really fast right now. So Dean Graziosi show, and I try to do it. I do a story every single day on Instagram. It’s just easy for me, and I think people are liking it, cuz we went from like 50,000 followers a couple years ago, we just blew past a million.

1:15:01 So you can check me out on Instagram as well. Brian, I want to tell you before we end this, man, it was really, really a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you for such quality questions. Your mannerisms, your tone, and your, your, your desire to help others. It just shines through.

1:15:16 Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. I appreciate everything you do. You know, seriously, it shows it shows that you care in everything you do, your products, and the touches, and everything. And it’s even more so talking to you.

1:15:30 I gotta say, so yeah, it all makes sense now. You know, it’s, it’s funny, people see people that are successful, and, and I think the natural default mindset is how they got lucky, or they were born with it, or something, and it’s like, it’s usually the fact that they’re actually amazing at providing value to people in a big way. And that’s that’s what you do a lot. So look, you know, congrats on all your success, and looking forward to the next project as well.

1:15:54 And yeah, hopefully we can do this next time in person, either here in London or in Arizona, or who knows, but London. So as soon as the world opens up, I’ll take you up on that. Okay, thank you, Dean. All the best. Everybody’d follow him.

1:16:09 Definitely follow him on Instagram for those stories, and really appreciate you, and appreciate the time today. All right, man. See ya. All right, awesome stuff. Thank you, thank you for watching.

1:16:18 We appreciate you. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care. At London Real, we believe that individuals’ transformation, in change the world, join us and start your journey today.