Millionaire Success Habits with Dean Graziosi and Lewis Howes

all right welcome everyone to the school of greatness podcast we have a living legend dean graziosi in the house thanks for being thank you for having me here man this is good to see you i'm excited i uh first found out about you probably i don't know 10 or 15 years ago from tv yeah late night when i was probably broke and depressed trying to figure out about what i was doing with my life you were on there interviewing talking about a book and real estate stuff i remember you in front of a house talking about how you generated like or this house like someone made 30 grand from or something like that or 130 000 or something like that vaguely and i met you the first time i don't know if you remember this i think it was probably five or six years ago at um josh bazoni had a mastermind oh yeah yeah yeah in uh austin yes that's right and i i was wondering where i met you the first time i could briefly just shut your hands and then i met you again i think for like a hot second through than merrell okay i believe at one of his events or something yeah i think we met briefly but this is oh now we're here so now we're here and um thanks to joe polish for connecting us yeah and uh he's the man he's the total connector right yeah exactly um i've got a lot of questions for you today but you wrote a book called millionaire success habits make sure you guys go check this out we'll tell you where to go at the end here it's the the gateway to wealth and prosperity and you are a new york times bestseller you've written a number of books five books right yep and why why this book most of it in real estate minded books why a book about millionaire success habits you know i it's a great question the first book i ever wrote my first new york times bestseller was called totally fulfilled i was in the business and i read it now and you know what it's like you look back if you're a person someone who grows i look back at that now and i'm like oh cringe can i take it off the shelf but i wrote that book because i had already been in the education business for 10 years and when you know when you find out when you obsess on getting people results right and which everybody watching whatever you do in life like there's nothing better than being passionate about what you do and when i'd look where people would fall short on doing a real estate deal or taking their life to the next level or or taking action it had nothing to do with my tactical skills and what i taught in real estate because what i was teaching was exactly what i did i literally you know i had to go to the store but i was lived in a trailer park i was homeless with my dad for a year we lived in a bathroom i went through that i didn't go to past high school i had dyslexia all this stuff that a lot of us have gone through i know that the strategies worked in real estate when i got so frustrated i'm like i don't need to write a real estate book i need to write a book to get out of their own way to get over the obstacles to just use the crap that i'm giving you so you can take action because they would have the strategies but they wouldn't get the results right they couldn't you know the first obstacle they turn around go backwards right first time it doesn't work you know limiting beliefs people from the outside the stories they tell themselves all the things that we all know and if if your audience is watching this they get a lot of that stuff so i i wrote that book and then went on to write four or five five more real estate books i've been blessed to sell lots of millions of books sold and then in the last couple years it's just been on my heart to to share the the process in which i went through and then being blessed to be friends with really successful people and billionaires and the more success you have the more you realize it's less shifts in your life than you would think i think when you're struggling and you want more if you think back to when you're on the couch at your sister's house you probably thought there was a hundred or two hundred things you had to change about you you had to discover the latest and greatest and technology and all the things the complexity of today's world right we're overloaded with information we're overloaded with delivery systems if everybody anybody's in marketing it's like do i do facebook and if it's facebook is it facebook live is it we get all so much complexity with the delivery systems and we forget that it really boils down to about a handful things handful of things that make someone successful or not so through my years and touching the lives of millions of people and reading tens of thousands of posts and doing live events you realize that people are just lacking these habits that they could shift and that's what i got on this obsession about 18 months ago and that's why that's why millionaire success habits who was your biggest mentor growing up you know i would say i didn't have a lot of mentors growing up um i was i was probably more running away from the life i had you know i hated watching my parents struggle i mean all they were worried about was money right right there was no time for coaching little league and i was telling you i'll take more my daughter's here with me today too her first business trip when she turned 10 she's here in the business trip but you know i get to coach little league i get to go to every dance recital i play at the park in the middle of the day i watch my parents not have any of those options they were great parents they just didn't have those options so i think i was running away from the pain of money and broke and all that but that i would have to say 18 years ago tony robbins made a massive impact on my life just i mean he's one of my dearest friends in the world now but 18 years ago it was his course and my journal where i said someday i hope to meet him you know right so i would say that he made a big impact on me for sure crazy wow okay was there how did you get out of the uh i guess the scarcity mindset or the scarce life you were living in where you're in the trailer park or you were living in a bathroom and your parents had these conversations how did you shift it was there information you learned from tony or from someone else that helped you get started you know it's funny i i've been asked that question before and i don't have a specific epiphany like oh this one moment i can remember thinking um throughout high school and even in my early twenties uh maybe not my early twenties i i flipped pretty quick uh right around 20 years old i didn't go to college right now i didn't go to college and i barely got out of high school but i can remember thinking in high school whatever years that was is that you know i hope someday i can get a job and make a thousand bucks a week and just get by i'm not that smart because i had trouble reading i still can't read great but i've just had dyslexia is what i think it's been diagnosed now but i still can't comprehend good when i read but i didn't realize i was an audible and visual learner i could listen to a book and i'll memorize the whole book i can watch somebody on stage and emulate that if it fits my life but sometimes we're judged by a scorecard that doesn't it's an outdated scorecard right so not only did we not have money i also felt well i'm not smart enough to go to school and something changed around 17 18 years old just something flipped and i just i noticed and this is gonna sound like it's a pitch for the book and it's not but i noticed the people in my town this little tiny town i grew up in upstate new york the people that had money the people that seemed happier i don't know behind the scenes but they seemed happier more fulfilled they were more relaxed like life just happened like they were walking up a ladder instead of like my family seemed like they were running on a treadmill you know it's like we're going fast but we're not going anywhere so why is this guy and this woman in this town doing so well and i remember just obsessing on it and and what i noticed it was i didn't i didn't call it habits i'd love to say i figured this out but what i realized is they just did different things than my family and my friends were doing and i just started obsessing on that and i was young enough and naive enough to just think i could do it wow you know i mean sometimes you wish you could give that gift to somebody in the 20s 30s 50s 70s right i had the gift of being naive and a little dumb and not listening to anybody i mean i was i in 1998 i did my first infomercial wow and almost 20 years ago yeah in 1998 i filmed my first one and my sister my daughter's aunt my daughter's sitting here with this my sister drove from virginia because by then so in 1990 i had um i had an apartments i had a collision shop i had an auto sales and i was building houses wow doing from from that broke kid i was you when you started that was probably in 1998 was what 20 years ago i was uh 28 29 years old so in your early 20s you started to do this yeah so by the way yeah but yeah so i i hit it big in real estate by the time i was 26 27 years old just by taking action knocking on a million doors and finally got someone to do a no money down deal with me when i was 20 and then another one and i rolled that into the next deal the next deal and action consistent action and and consistent you know failing and getting back up right the the space between failures is really a huge determining factor of your success right it's like if you can fail fast you can win quicker right um so i remember the first i decided to do an infomercial i'm gonna write a book on how to make money and go on tv and my family lost their mind like my sister drove from virginia to sit down with me and say it's time to get real you you did good you got lucky not lucky you work hard you got here but you're gonna blow it you're and i remember that defending it that that conversation like it was yesterday was your sister my sister and she did it out of pure love she thought she was protecting me how many people listening right now absolutely want to listen to you or do something oh you're listening to that wasting your time just get real you know do some so i remember that conversation and i i literally almost gave up on it i remember gonna cancel the whole thing and say what am i thinking i i can't read that good i'm gonna write a book and all this stuff and luckily i just remember thinking if i keep these patterns i'm gonna continue the same process my family has and i want more and we filmed it and the show went on tv and you know it aired in 1999 and i went 17 years straight without missing a day on tv 17 years without missing a dance does it stop now or it's not because we're going from my real estate book to this so we're just pausing until this this the show i did with larry king's going to roll out on a millionaire success habits sometimes 17 years yeah i didn't miss a day on tv was it all throughout the us over the world just us yeah wow and how did you know was that guy named big who was a part of this big yeah big he bought my media got you i met him he bought some of my media when we were yeah he's a great guy he's an interesting character i love that guy yeah so he worked for mercury media and i had three media at one time when we were really cranking i had three media companies at the same time yeah we were running out of media it was converting so well so amazing now is this the same uh infomercial for cemeteries no no no you shouldn't know about every year really wow yeah somewhere it was an interview some i drove in my car that was one of my biggest ones i just put a camera on the dash of the the window the windshield and i drove in the car for a half hour and and pitched i'd stop it literally i'd stop at street lights and pitch my book i'd stop and then i hold the book up like everybody i'm driving to my house right now from my office but if you want my book call the number wait light screen i gotta go gosh what did you um what do you how did you think that um these infomercials were to do well for you you know you had a good system already you were making good money why you risked something because of tony i if i lost all my if i lost all my money i'd have to blame him because he was on tv he was on tv and he inspired me i'm like i want to inspire people with my story so i didn't i didn't even know i didn't know about direct mail or the internet really wasn't there yet it was aol dial up that would you know so it wasn't the internet and i was naive enough i mean i i shot the infomercial and then i didn't know how to get it on tv i was calling like stations and like who books the media how do you get like so nice how did you know what formula was gonna work i didn't i didn't i just watched tony and i let me try this let me try this and i just i remember i was a nervous wreck and scared but my you know there's a and and i'm i'm happy to talk about me but i really want to serve today i want to i want to give back anything that i can do to help somebody watching right now that wants to get over that obstacle or they feel like they're at a plateau or just there they know there's more and they can't i mean that's the biggest frustration in life is knowing you have more gas in the tank and you don't know where to go how to go or get that momentum but i i i i digress that i got off track but i guess how did you know what how it was going to work and how did you tweak it or were there big failures early on in the infomercial yeah yeah that's what you lost sorry sorry yes i i did the infomercial being so naive um had no idea how to get it on and i just and that the part i was going to tell everybody is persistence like i didn't i literally flew to arizona to meet a media buyer and i said i have no idea what i'm doing and i just kept pushing in and one of those things that i think during the evolution of growing from wherever you are to where you want to go is do whatever you do best i mean do whatever you're doing the best you can knowing there's the bigger horizon so i literally was working during the day on cars i was like i'd paint cars i was doing a collision repair at night i'd go work on my apartments and i was a plumber and and and hung sheetrock and i'd worked till midnight on houses and i was tired but i had a dream i knew i wanted to help people do better so it made what i was doing okay because i knew there was more so the big problem i see is people want more and they hate what they're doing so that they're they're in a they're in a state of mind where god i just when i'm done with this crap then someday i'll reach my dreams and if you can flop that to go no this is the gateway to my dreams i don't care that i'm serving coffee or i'm painting cars or i'm a teacher right now or i'm on my sister's couch like this is what i have to do and i have to do it the best become a master just become a master at that because and that's the income and the security and the mindset that fuels the next level it's not this is miserable i hate it i feel the next level and now i'm amazing it's like you need to master that yeah the process yeah you got to fall in love with that process you do yeah and the evolution yeah failure you're not going to have like overnight success you know it took you probably 10 years and see until you got into that it's like the first time you see an actor in a movie and you're like i never saw that person overnight success it's like they don't show the summer stock and all the stuff you know the millions of theater and no money and all the extra work that he did yeah sitting there drinking coffee in the background yeah yeah yeah exactly wow okay um can you share i wasn't even going to ask about this but i'm fascinated about infomercials now since you've done it for so long is there a a formula to like the most successful infomercial like five or six things that you must have yeah you know what's so funny when i went dead before when my brain there was a thought i had i nev never happens because we just got off a plane it might be the drama mean but i went flat for a second because what i was thinking what i was going to tell you is you said how do you know it was going to work and what i'd share with anybody watching in any kind of marketing or any kind of persuasion or any kind of getting some attracting somebody persuading someone to get them to take action when i look back at those original infomercials i had two things going for me i i wasn't the smartest guy in the world struggled reading insecure about that um wasn't college educated i don't have a really incredible vocabulary it's hard for me to articulate certain words because i just they're not in there yeah right but what i had was is enthusiasm and authenticity when i look back at those infomercials and they hit like monsters i mean one infomercial i did one of the first sit down interfer in infomercials i did did 150 million in sales wow just one infomercial and how long a period was that over about 18 months wow it's amazing and i look back at that and i don't say that to brag and that all that's not profit you know of course you spend a lot of media on your course and so i don't want anybody i'm not and i i barely say anything about money i'm saying that to make an impact because i wasn't the smartest guy i didn't go to college i didn't come from anything most people watching are way further ahead than i was when i started you weren't trained on the camera yeah but what i did have is i look back even at those old shows where i'm embarrassed to see myself and my new york accent was like super heavy that's where i grew up is i had authenticity and enthusiasm and i think people could see this guy really wants to help i wasn't scripted it wasn't perfect i stuttered i i said words wrong i mean i look at some of those i use the wrong words in the wrong context but it's still converted and as i evolve so i say what's the foundation like as i evolved and i did the first time i did a sit down larry king style infomercial he's the one that gave me the idea for that then i did the one where i was driving in my car the reason i did that driving in my car is i wanted people to know that i wasn't using a teleprompter there wasn't somebody scripting me there wasn't a million cuts it was me just driving it wasn't produced it was me driving from my office i started it with a backpack i said i'm going home you want to take a ride with me and i talked till i got home you brianna and my son were probably uh three in one when i got to the door they came running out that was the infomercial that's cool right and that wasn't even planned they just ran out because dad was home right but i did that because i could tell the authenticity and the enthusiasm i had to change people's lives was there so what i'd say for an infomercial for any kind of marketing for selling yourself you still need the co i mean what i wrote in this book but what you need is the core foundations yeah of of what success are now i i would say a couple of things when it comes to persuasion out of all my years of doing this and and being lucky to sell i i wasn't a scientist of selling i was just an innate i had an innate ability to sell through that passion and then you get your ten thousand hours in and all of a sudden it becomes good right so on the job training of course right but when i look back um and if i if i go off in an area that you want to reel me back in and build back in but people buy from you will love you will learn from you will give you a promotion when they feel understood not when they understand you and that was one of the biggest lessons ever when you watch someone who is so full of knowledge so full of wisdom and wants to sell their product sell themselves get the raise close the deal at the board room they're always want to just exude who they are their credentials what they have and how they can solve the problem and that will get you so far like being great at sharing who you are will get you out of egypt understand how people feel and let them feel understood i'll get you to the promised land right so when you go to an audience or you're talking to to close a deal most people want to share most of time you just need to be quiet and and find what's going on in that person's life be be an expert at the temporary state of mind like understand what they're going through at that minute and let them feel understood when you let people feel understood when someone's watching you and you do an amazing job dude i've been watching you forever and i love what you do but when someone watches you and go man that guy gets me he understands where i'm going at he understands my struggles he understands where i want to go that's someone i can hitch my cart to rather than someone who's got great cadence credentials and tells uh you can go i understand that person but i don't think he understands where i'm at right right and so the the two things when it comes to an infomercial comes to anything with persuasion the two things i always tell myself is how do i make sure that person feels understood and secondly how do i enter a conversation going on in their mind not mine you know when you were on your sister's couch you had different struggles right now i come to dohany drive in la you're in a completely different world a completely different space flying to the white house and all the stuff that you got going on the conversations in your head have changed dramatically from when you're on your sister's couch till now yeah so what happens and i've watched this with marketers and people in business as they evolve they hit a certain you remember that pain that passion the desire for more i mean you could probably close your eyes right now and remember that desire and thing can am i ever going to make it and and even a little bit of envy for maybe some of your buddies who made it or a little jealousy doesn't mean you wished ill thoughts on them but it's like damn it they made it i don't have it what if i never get it when if you remember that pain if you remember that process you remember that thoughts you will always serve anybody watching who needs that but what happens to some people is as they evolve and you're going to join the country club maybe you're going to get married you're going to move to the suburbs now you've got an accountant and you've got two assistants and now should i hire a salesman you've got a private jet and then is the pilot going to be late and then and then you know and then you're like i got a facebook team should i outsource the facebook marketing and all of a sudden your conversations change you get to do an interview or you pitch on camera or you do an infomercial and all of a sudden you're having conversations in your head and your audience feels disconnected yeah and you don't even know why like what did i miss because now you're asking questions of a completely different group because you've evolved so the two things again i always go back to even before i turn the camera on before i go on stage before i do an infomercial i said people buy from you love you adore you will learn from you if they feel understood and i want to enter conversations going on in their heads not mine wow powerful so too too simple like such simple little things but it's a foundation for persuasion amazing man um so what are some of the habits then that you learned over the years that the millionaires have that the rest of people don't have um so this is going to sound this one's going to sound crazy but this is one that i've i've i shouldn't say it sounds crazy it sounds too simple but this one has been a passion of mine for the last probably two years more than ever last six months especially i told you before with with being a dad you know you always want to be able to look in the mirror no matter how much money you're making and what you're doing for a living and look at that person and say are you good with you like are you compromising who you are are you going against your values to be successful you know you just you have to have that conversation with the man in the mirror right yeah absolutely but when you have kids it compounds times a thousand anybody watching who knows knows exactly what i'm saying kids don't do what you say they do what you do so you have somebody watching if i want to be the best dad possible i want to i need to keep evolving and faster than ever so i would say a morning routine this is just one of them that's been huge in my life is setting my day up for success and and you know in an interview like this there's so many different directions we can go but i want to give some really strong takeaways here is everybody watching we suffer on all different levels of suffering we some people suffer on a high level some people suffer because is the job going to get done is the is the deal going to come through like we have these moments of suffering no matter if it's five minutes of suffering or an hour of suffering or months of suffering some people lose a relationship and they suffer for years some people have a partner take their money they suffer for years and they're stuck in that and if you can limit the time you suffer the more you can work on the solutions that better your life people stuck in suffering are stuck forever and we know right now i'm saying it and you're thinking of friends that you have that are stuck something they they went when it went found some suffering and they just crippled moments where i was suffering and i didn't let go of it you can't let go over right or i held on to it for too long to hurt me right and if you hold on to it there's not enough energy or focus to keep moving forward you could that's when you still right yeah so what i've been on this obsession and literally tony robbins flew out him and i got really close he flew out and him and i had lunch about nine months ago and he's on the same thing like eliminating like complete suffering gone like instead of it hours or weeks it's moments that you catch it so morning routines help me more than ever and i'll tell you mine anybody wants to steal this this works for me because i want to set my days up for the least amount of suffering feeling grateful and ready to you know just rock at the day like nothing can get me off now everybody knows gratitude is a key to success happiness joy you can't be grateful and depressed grateful and sad you just can't do the two together but it's hard sometimes i feel like the road runners before your time but when i was a kid remember beep beep the road there was the tasmanian devil yeah so most of our lives with facebook and social media and cell phones and we're like the tasmanian there's so much dust around us it's hard to like see through it right like it's like i just gotta get through this storm and then i'll be okay how do i you want me to set a goal and be grateful like how do i get out of this dust storm right sure so i just obsessed on how do i start my day to make sure it doesn't happen so one thing i do is at night put your i put my phone on airplane mode and for the last year especially when i wake up in the morning i do not check email or text because i can't if i check email or text especially in bed right right and who and i've done it for years i'm not telling something i haven't done but the great texts put me in a good mood bad text i become the anxious yeah like you feel like you know i should get this done let's just get this out of the way right and you become the thermometer of life life just grabbed the hold of you and they're going to tell you how your day is going to be i don't know if i'm going to adjust you on the heat up the ice cold they're stressed or anxious or so i leave my phone on airplane mode and the first thing i do is i feed my soul right and and that's not this i'm just being honest i don't chant i don't do hours of meditation what i've done is i've lowered the bar of gratitude now these are habits that you think oh this is revolutionary these are the habits that i look have made me successful make me keep going forward push through the negative times keep reaching for the next thing so i i find gratitude but i've lowered the bar and i just said this but i'll wake up some mornings and be like damn these sheets are amazing you know i mean a hundred and fifty thousand you can google it 150 000 people die every day there's some days i just wake up and go damn i'm not one of them i'm here and when you can find gratitude on the lowest level not i conquered i did look i see your wall you've interviewed such amazing people you got to be so proud of yourself i look at it i admire that's amazing goals but sometimes we just set ourselves up until you get the next one of those pictures up there the rest of stuff is just mundane it's not we're in this beautiful world we're blessed every day we're learning every moment even an interview like this take take all the stuff i say throw most of it away if you get one thing i say today it was worth your time with us being together just just one thing right yeah so i find a way to be grateful in like the first few moments i wake up by lowering the bar no big special thing or sometimes i'll open a book like i just read the untethered soul for the second time love that book i'll read two sentences out loud and then i feed my body so i immediately get up and i do i mean just my personal thing but i do a glass full big glass of water with a lemon a green juice some essential oils and i down next i feel like i'm feeding my body and then i go move whether it's workout run exercise and someone isn't working out i just move and those three things set me up for a successful day and then when i get back this is something i've been doing for a year and and i'd say rob this because there's things that listen you're in business there's things that you love to do it's your core competency you are put on this earth to do it's interviewing it's meeting people it's networking whatever you have is meant to be but there's some things that you do it's like i don't want to do that conference call i don't want to sit with my accountant and go over numbers whatever it is right and i used to think man i have to do that today and i just switch that in the mornings i write a quick little list every day of what i get to do i just put the word what i get to do when i think about that i i used to i used to literally live in a bathroom with my dad and i in my teens i worked on cars every day and smoke you know smelled fumes because i was like the rooms were always smoky i was the only one painter in our collision shop and i'd have headaches and like i could be doing that so i have to do conference calls on tuesdays and i don't like conference calls now when i say i get to do conference calls it changes everything so that little room not a victim anymore i'm not a victim anymore right and and again on every level it's it makes a difference i love it any other half or any other thing in the morning that you you do no that's it that's that's my morning routine are there any non-negotiables every day for you besides the routine no not really yeah i'm pretty flexible yeah okay cool uh there's a part actually that i wanted to go over in your book called seven levels deep is how it is yeah and this is an exercise that you do right and what is this exercise for okay and how does it go okay so seven levels deep was probably the biggest impact uh the biggest thing in the impact of my life ever really yeah one one day so i i hired a guy named joe stump do you know joe stump no great guy he's in the marketing world but i hired him because i want more engagement with my students so it's it's all about if you can get somebody to digest some of your book if somebody will read 30 pages of your book they'll read the whole book but how do you get them to the first 30 pages so i'm always obsessing and trying to create ethical bribes whatever i can do to get you to take action right um we know books work it's the books and the actions so i was oh so anyway so joe comes in and he's i said i want to do whatever i can and he said have you ever done the seven levels deep i don't know where he got it from this is probably about eight years ago she was two so about eight years ago um and i said if it's good just give it to me right right i'll take it and he's like i want to go through it with you i'm like listen and and i paid joe 10 grand for a half a day of consulting at the time and he's like i said i want to go through i just want it because i won't give it to you unless you do it so we sit there and what the seven levels deep is is finding everybody wants to know your purpose and what's what's this meaning of life and what's my why and all that i get and it's kind of played out but i don't know if anything really gets to the heart of the of it as simple as this so what it basically was he's like why would you give me 10 grand for a half a day and i said because i want to create a company that stands out from everybody else i want to engage more students change more lives and he basically said to me that's a really great answer so i asked you why i'm here and you said you want to engage more students and and get more people change your life so why is it important for you to engage more students and change people's lives and i remember saying you know there's a lot of people in this industry that shouldn't be here and there's some great people i want to help rise all boats of the good and push the rest down i want to leave a legacy for my kids so he said okay i asked you why you paid me 10 grand i'm not gonna go through this whole thing and he's like you did this you know you said you wanted to stand out and you want to leave a legacy so why is it important to leave a legacy and the whole point is asking the previous question seven times i took that that day by the time i got to the third question what happens is the third when there was three questions left i should say he asked me four times it switched from my head to my heart and i felt my physiology change i felt my emotions change i felt like tears welling up and when he asked me i don't even remember what the fourth thing i said but the third thing i said was i never want to go backwards and he got me thinking about things i haven't thought about in years i didn't like being the kid with hand-me-downs and i'd make my parents drop me off down the street with their junky car and i'd go to lunch and this is not a poor me i my life was designed to be exactly the way it was i wouldn't be the man or the father i am today but there was days i'd go to school without lunch money and i just tell my buddies i'm not hungry because we didn't have a buck right so i never want to go back there and i felt that emotion and it it it hit me so hard i'm like that's what it is and he's like well there's two more left so he said dean why is it important that you never go backwards and i'm like i i i don't know and it hit me and i thought my kids i i i just want to give them options i don't want to raise entitled kids or brats but i want to give them options that i didn't have and i'm like that's it so he's like well that's not really it's seven it's not nine it's not five it's seven levels deep and by now i'm crying cause i'm thinking about my kids literally and i got half my staff there and i'm like just weeping and it came to me he said why is that important and he just hit me and i never knew why i worked so hard since i was cutting firewood in high school and did all stuff i said i need to be in control of my life and these emotions flooded and my everybody's got their thing right but for me and i'm saying this because i want you at home to be or when you're watching this listen is i realize that my parents were married nine times when i was a kid so i moved 20 times by the time i was 19. different step brothers steps both parents were married five for my dad five for my mom four from my my gosh yeah it's crazy always moving like military kids know what that feels like right so i'd be in a cul-de-sac with a new step-dad step brother step-sisters have the bike come home one day and my mom's like we're moving again and then i'm moving my dad moving to my grandmother so i had this crazy hopscotch my whole certainty there was no certainty so what i realized at that moment literally i'm bawling loose i mean like literally crying it's like i don't want anybody to ever tell me when to move how to dress how to live how to work how i'm going to raise my kids definitely not going to kiss somebody's ass for money right and i realized at that moment my why was i i don't want to be a control freak i just want to be in control when i was 27 i retired both my parents i stopped worrying about them i took care of my grandmother i take care of something like so i got those problems out of the way and when i anchored that in and you watching at home it's like if you think you're watching this because you want to be an entrepreneur you want or you already are if you're watching this you've already had great success in your life you want that next level or maybe it's income or or better health or better diet or better physiology whatever it is you want so many times we think it's because i want to get out of that job i want this freedom i just want more money i want to take the better vacations and it's seven times deeper than that and when you find that and the reason i know this not only because it wasn't just transformative to me transformational to me is i did live events in las vegas for six years straight every single month there was 400 people in the room that paid 20 grand to go to real estate events right real estate so about five and a half years i did them um every month in las vegas so once a month i'd fly in and that was like the highest level and i'd every single month i'd raise i'd get i'd pick somebody out of the audience and i'd say come on up let's do this seven levels deep like i got it man i know what it is and i'm like okay so like i'm gonna give you a quick example i i won't beat this up but this is so important because when you feel fatigued when you want to say no when you don't want to go to the gym when you don't want to make that sales call when you don't want to get your funnel working when you don't want to start new when you don't want to say no to someone you should say no to or say yes to someone else you should say yes to literally for me still i fall back on my why when i think of my kids and going backwards and being in control i could push through anything nothing will stop me a bad day i don't know what it's like to be sick because my mind i can program my brain to just power through because i focus foundationally on this why right so i get i remember this guy he was awesome big dude he had dreadlocks he was like six foot seven i mean six foot five he was huge just awesome dude he comes up he's like man i like pick me up he gives us big hugs so i said why are you here he's like i already know dude you're not gonna get seven levels on me you're not gonna i've already done the exercise because i'm here because in my neighborhood there's no dads there's not enough dads in my neighborhood i grew up without a dad these kids need dads so i'm making money in real estate and i'm starting this youth group i already had debt we get dads together and we go spend these days he has he had this amazing story and i mean i melted on the first one i said why is that important he goes dude what do you mean why is that important of course it's important and he's laughing he's joking he gives me another reason i want more money because i want to build a building for it but i could tell you still in his head he gets the number two or one and his everything changed on him he gets small and he starts crying i mean like uncontrollable crying and he gets to his number one he's like my mom raised a good boy but when she died nine years ago i was a drug addict and she never saw the man she created and she said i'm showing her in heaven what a man she i'm saying right now wow physical good he said that and i said he said i'll never stop now i'll never stop and again we all have our own reasons for doing stuff but when you get to the heart of why you're watching why you do what you do it's so much deeper than what you think and i forget sometimes i i hope i don't sit here and feel like seem like i got my life all figured out i've been blessed to have more i've had more blessings in my life than i ever could imagine if somebody would have told me at 25 this is where i'd be i'd say impossible it's a so i appreciate my blessings but i'm not i'm not perfect at all this stuff but when i practice these habits when i think through this when i recognize my why the days that i'm off track the days i think i bit off more than i can chew or the days where i feel like i plateaued when i go back to that y it's like game over you're not getting in my way nothing is [Music] wow got me emotional what is the uh i mean you've achieved so much over the years you know you said in the first 18 months 150 million in sales you know and that was 20 years ago and the things you've created now 10 years ago the things you've created now you've created so much you've impacted so many lives it sounds like you don't need to work or need to keep pushing um but why do you what's the dream and why do you keep going afterwards so i think it's three things so real quick i think there's three types of entrepreneurs there's an entrepreneur who wants to work under the blanket of someone else right they're the company they're the person that's in a company like man that guy that woman she just they want to rise up through the ranks and be an entrepreneur but kind of with the safety net and it doesn't make them better or worse than anybody i mean without the implementers in your life without the team who would i be without the amazing people on my team secondly there's lifestyle entrepreneurs like my buddy dean jackson he's got this i know i'm being successful when let's go for anybody's got a lifestyle entrepreneur there's just a certain amount of money he says i know i'm being successful when i don't i don't have an alarm clock in my house and it never goes off i wear black t-shirts every day and no one gives a um i golf you know i golf at least five times a week i live on a 50 000 a month net income i live like what do you say i live like an artist with a trust fund except i don't know how to paint so he's got this he's so he like he has this list he knows he's being successful when and that's that's lifestyle entrepreneur and then there's entrepreneurs that just want to keep that just want to they're accomplishment based it has nothing to do with the money they thought it was i think this would mean they thought it was when i get the money and success out of the way that i could stop worrying and it's not it's the next accomplishment what can you do it's yeah it's the game and i think it converts that's why you see something like richard branson that that his whole life now is uh virgin unite you know his charity i spent a couple weeks with him out in his island because me and joe polish raised a million bucks for him so we got to spend time with him and he started that same process made all the money and then now he's still driven but now it's how many more schools he could build in africa so it never changes it just but always have your focus on something like you see people who go to you know warren buffett his age he's still crushing because he has a bigger purpose we always have to have that so i would say yeah i you know a couple years ago especially when the kids are young i was thinking of should i just cash out and spend 10 years being dad but i would i wouldn't be the best me i love accomplishing i love creating i love something new you know so um what do you want to accomplish in your life what's the big thing the big thing is uh you know i i'm first and foremost i'd love to say it's you know i i'd say top two is showing people easier path i think most people are are they're driving 100 miles an hour and they don't know where to go it's like even if they got a ferrari engine they don't have any gps and it's like everybody's going fast and most of the time they think it's going to be this dramatic spectacular thing and a lot of teams it's the same thing that they could have learned from dale carnegie or earl nightingale or napoleon hill or or somebody you know it's just these simple core things that can make them slow down and achieve and i think that i can i think i have the ability to deliver a message in a way that it sticks and that's what i've been blessed to do in real estate is it's not that i had found the only way to make money in real estate but i'm the i was the biggest real estate educator in the entire world there was nobody even close to me it was like second second through 20th place didn't make up body i did right right and there was other guys that were great at education i just think i found a way to deliver it it's probably because of my dyslexia and my learning disabilities and stuff i found a way to give people recipes so i would say the a big fuel is is getting people these strategies in their hands so they could see there's a better way but the number one is is to just be a totally present and impactful father like it's it's just where i'm at and it's magical age anybody who's watching it remembers their kids eight ten years old it's like they're just it's all i'm still superman they still love it for two three years i'm gonna absorb it while i can you know that's cool couple years i might have a you know a new um you know thing for trying to get teenagers to like you or something i don't know sure what's the um the thing people miss um understand about you the most um i would say cause i did infomercials for a year i mean years tony and i had this conversation a lot of times when somebody sees you on an infomercial it's like ah that guy's you know that guy's got to be a huckster he's just schlepping books on a on an infomercial so i think the biggest misconception is that i'm an introvert when i'm on stage or on camera or an interview i love it but if i go to my kids school function there's a whole bunch of people around i'm the one hiding in the corner or playing with the kids i'm not a networker i've never had a business card in my entire life and i think some people when they see that if they're looking from afar if they don't come up and shake my hand people will say oh that guy he's he's too good for everybody he doesn't talk to him i really don't know i'm i'm hiding sure right so i would say that and and i think the infomercial thing you know i'll give i gotta just one more thing about tony robbins the first time i met him about five years ago i go up to his hotel room he's doing a date with destiny invites me up for lunch and i get there and we're talking for like 15 minutes and he stands up and he picks up and he gives me a hug and he says i gotta apologize to you he's like i almost canceled this meeting today because you're an infomercial guy and he goes i made a judgment and he goes what an ass because i was the infomercial yeah because i've been trying to run away from it because people look at you and wonder and he said and i judged you wrong and we've been really close since then so i think that those two things are probably the biggest wow i'm so i'm surprised you still do infomercials then if you think so many people you know yeah you know what so i i don't mind because it's all about the message yeah i want to get my message out there i've been off tv for two and a half years on purpose by choice um but with millionaire success habits i just i ran across larry king who's a big impact in my life we met i said do you want to do a show you're the one who inspired me to do sit down so he interviewed you he interviewed me and the funny thing is so i'm going to digress here for a minute i'm going to digress on two things that are really funny so eight nine years ago i'm watching larry king interview joel osteen he says the joel i'm guessing nine 9 10 years ago he says to joel i'm a jew i don't believe in jesus that mean i'm going to hell i'm like oh my god could you imagine getting asked that on larry king where there's millions of people watching joel like turned different colors he didn't know how to answer and and if you don't know joel osteen is like the biggest pastor in the world right um so i see that i remember thinking oh my god could you imagine if larry just looked at the camera and said hey like joel or not if you'd like to get his book call our show and that's what inspired me to do a larry king show i just thought so i raced that i built a set like larry king i spent four grandfathers harry kane's microphone right i did all this stuff i do an interview and that was my big breakout show that's when my company went from 10 15 million a year we broke 100 million dollars in a year within 18 months because of that sit down live with the other guy it's like the bald guy or the ball we had different guys yeah we had different guys through the years but we did all these different things right so i say that and so larry king inspired me to do that it was just the chat now everybody does sit down interviews but i was the first one out there and the first one who sold the book on the infomercials direct consumer so we sell the book larry makes an impact in my life he doesn't know it fast forward years now larry comes i haven't used that set in ages we wheel it back out because larry's coming right to do this interview and i'm i'm nervous like i'm a little kid larry kevin's coming i mean i know you know larry right here when i look at him yeah yeah so larry comes and he gets there and we go to dinner that night and the next day he comes in the studio and i'm telling him this story and as he's kind of not paying attention to me he looks over and he goes you know the mic is supposed to be here no way i moved it i was just like oh this is so crazy and we just riffed he goes you have questions for me i said here's my goal larry i i do i have all your questions and are loaded on the teleprompter but why don't you just start the show like you always start your shows when you say something why this book why now he used to say that all the time and he goes dean you don't need this why the hell are you doing a book now and we just rift for a half hour and so that's everybody watching you guys will see that show so there's no pre and there's no questions he really used off the prompter he just kind of went off one or two and yeah and we rocked it and the show tested it solid it'll be out in february wow so can i tell you a really funny story if you he is a he's an amazing joke teller amazing joke and storyteller oh my god there's nobody better than jokes for days yeah and i don't know if you know who harvey mckay is yeah swimming sharks so last friday larry came to my office and harvey's there wow they're there for two hours i'm between these two 83 and 84 years old they got more history and stories and they're just out doing each other with stories it's non-stop and i just and they look at me and i'm like i got nothing just you guys so larry larry for like all the years he's doing live with larry king they have this they have he has a producer who's like a practical a prankster and he said but big time really good at what he does and he said anytime that someone was in the office a little off or or grumpy they'd get him so he said they had this guy i don't know what department but he was kind of a pain in the ass for lack of a better word sure so they wanted to get him so the guy came in every day structured he came in with his briefcase his hat his overcoat he hang his hat hang his overcoat up and go to work so they went and found the hat the exact hat and bought one two sizes too small oh my god so every day he'd come in they let him go for a week where he'd go to put the hat on no way he couldn't get over his head like me i'd have to tell the guy like in a day so the guy's freaked out he's coming in off like just off he thinks his head swells right so they didn't they didn't just leave it down like then you told him he goes no he goes then we bought a hat two sizes too big and we left that there for a week and he said he was rolling up paper and stuffing it no way and i'm like oh my god i mean but larry tells that story so amazing and then they finally told him after two weeks that's hilarious anyway i mean digress is just a funny story no it's amazing um is there any question that you wish more people would ask you um but they don't ask god that's a really good that's a really good question um yeah probably how to get you know i i think and i watch this when we when we did the fundraiser with richard branson we went there i watched everybody trying to ask him like how did you get to be a billionaire and i don't i think that's the wrong question when you see somebody successful i think it's i think it's more of like asking them either what their why was or how they overcame obstacles or how they persevered so i think and and i don't think it's about ours it's about the story it's just i think so many people give up on the five yard line i think i think so many of you are just there and you think it's so much heavier it when you start playing at a higher level there's not a lot of competition no and it's not doing i'm not doing much different i'm just being honest with you i'm not doing much different now than i did to start my collision shop and start my auto sales i'm doing the same thing just on a bigger scale i still have to overcome negativity i still have to get out of bed i still am stressed some days and there's some days i question myself there's some days i make bad decisions and it's just how you get over them how you handle it and how you go forward is is everything and and you say that now i'm talking and thinking at the same time and i don't know how much time we have left but i would say the last thing or one of the last things i'd love people to to really think about is their thoughts you have you ever read the untethered soul no and so you got to put it on your list it's an yeah i'm how about eckhart totally the power now sure so you read that yes okay so an untethered soul is for me it's it's that and and so much more it's a great book um so i know if you had another question so i think so i i'll reframe that it's that one but if it was one specific question i'd love for people to say how do you be the observer of your thoughts and that's something yeah and that's something i would i would i and the only reason i say this is because i've been obsessed with it for the last three years because i want to be the observer of thoughts immediately and i'm not there yet i want it to trigger because when you're having a bad day an angst day a stressful day you feel off or overwhelmed most the time it's just the thoughts we're having in that particular day and when you can look back and view those thoughts you can make a decision to throw them out or not let that spin you up or feel it for 10 minutes and then throw it out but when you leave them there they just linger and the more i've become aware of my thoughts the more i've evolved as a person so again i'm sitting here because my daughter you're probably bored to death on love you uh she's doing great over there uh i'm gonna tell a story about her i am trying to observe my thoughts as they happen so i don't know if she'll remember this but we were we were and i'm sharing this is my story but i want you to put yourself in these shoes this could be your husband your wife your kids your co-worker your partner people you do business with employer employees but we're at breakfast and breakfast is really important to our family we have breakfast every single day and and i cook for them most of the time and so we sit at breakfast and try to have conversations about gratitude and all this kind of stuff and my son brody was obsessed with these crayons and they were like these crazy colors they weren't red they were like aqua blue marine something so i'm sitting there using them and and i pull it out oh god this is a cool color and he names it i'm telling for a reason so i pull out another he names all i was at 25 or 50 in that pack so he names all of them these big long names i'm like dude what an incredible gift i couldn't memorize these if i spent a month trying that's not my how my brain thinks but that's him he's this structured organized kid so brie she says to me i could do that so i don't know if you remember this one but she studied it and like five minutes later on the second one she didn't remember i'm like we're all blessed with different gifts i couldn't remember he does that but my daughter is the inventor she comes up with ideas that are real not not kid invention she's going to be a mate she's going to be the visionary my son's going to be the implementer if you ever read rocket fuel that's the two kids i have implementer and a visionary right so when she tried all of a sudden she got upset and started almost crying and she said because there's so much attention going to my son of course and she says dad it's because you spend more time with brody than me in the mornings and i remember just having the immediate thought that may have came from my dad or the way i was brought up and i said to her breed don't lie to me and don't lie to yourself that's not true i i work my butt off to be completely equal and you're telling yourself a lie it's not a good story and i went on this rant and she tucked it up she stopped tears she tucked up it was the first time ever that she left the house without kissing me goodbye ever and i'm like well she just got to learn that lesson yeah and she left for about a half hour and i like it hit me like a ton of bricks like i observed that thought i had and what i basically told my daughter is that i didn't give a about her feelings that it didn't matter how she felt right that dad was right tuck it down i said if she was married to a man and i watched her try to tell her husband about her feelings how she was feeling and he basically told her to shut up and tuck it down i'd have a talk with that dude right if he's married to my daughter and i treated my daughter that way i got in my car because i only because i'm sharing this because i i practice trying to observe what's going on why am i feeling this way what is this thought i'm having step back look at it when i stepped back and looked at i knew i screwed up i drove the school 100 miles an hour even if you were right even if i was right no i might have been right that i keep equal time yes but i didn't acknowledge her feelings exactly i didn't acknowledge her feelings i mean that's the gift of selling it's not what people need it's what they want how they feel right so i told her her feelings off i drove to her school 100 miles an hour you were at chapel remember i came and got you out of chapel i got her out of chapel and i walked her outside i said dad screwed up i said i may have been right in context but i wasn't right and telling you your emotions mean something your feelings mean something and we had a great talk we hugged we kissed her and i had the best relationship in the world and and i left and i felt amazing and she felt amazing and i never would have caught that if i wasn't observing my thoughts so i say that story about my family my daughter who's sitting here right now but who who are you not you know what thoughts are clouding your judgment in a marriage or in a relationship or in your partnership or trying to get a raise or taking your life to another level whatever it is in your life most of the time it's those thoughts that are messing with us and if you can you can observe them you can adjust them amazing man i've got a few final questions for you this has been great uh this one's called the three truths okay so it's many many years down the line you've achieved everything you want but it's your last day it's your last day here okay all right and you know it's the last day your whole your whole family is there friends everything um for whatever reason all your books have been erased from time and they've sold hundreds of millions of them at this point they're all gone okay and uh someone in your family comes up and says i have a piece of paper and a pen and all you get to do is write down three things you know to be true about everything you've experienced in your life the three simple truths or the three lessons that is all we would remember you by physically because all the stuff on the books is gone what would be the three truths for you um wow what a great question i'm glad i didn't know that one in advance because i would have thought about it too much that's really good um i think the three truths are that um it's not the objects it's the things that we get to experience so you can't buy your way i i had a lot of pain as a kid which we often i i know i thought for a time in my life that money would fix that and there's nothing more than the experience my daughter's on her first trip with me as a business trip this will last this is worth millions to me i'd give up all my books to have that so it's the it's the moments and the experience not the things um is one i would say um wow um that i lived true okay this is a really good question sorry it's all good but um i would say success is easier than people think like i i think i like there's a lot of days i'm like man when's ever gonna figure out i'm not that smart i'm just being honest i literally for years outside people are gonna say i'm not that smart i'm just enthusiastic and and you know and i have the momentum and and so i would say that that truth is don't be over prepared be overly enthusiastic and committed um and i would say last is um that i found a way to not to let thoughts be things not who i am if thoughts can be automatically a thing but not who i am of my soul then i lived a good life those are great truths thank you um before i ask the final question i want to acknowledge you for a moment dean for your incredible generosity and your enthusiasm for wanting to impact so many people thank you from a guy that has gone through so much pain and suffering to a person who's led a life of service and constantly pushing the envelope and showing what's possible for people like me who are dyslexic as well and who barely uh you know got through high school in college myself seven years of college um you're such an inspiration every time i see your message or see you in person you're always smiling and happy and and want to give to people well thank you so i want to acknowledge you for all those kids thank you and i give that back that's why i'm here because i love what you're doing and then don't don't stop keep pushing yeah no matter what it takes get it out there i appreciate it thank you man appreciate you we have one final question but make sure you guys go get millionaire success habits go get the book where's the link for it again uh you can of course it's on itunes but we set up a special link at mshbook.com msh millionaire success habits mshbook.com awesome we'll have that linked up in the show notes um and where do you like to hang out the most online do you spend time on social media at all yourself don't not much a little bit on facebook a little bit on instagram but okay we'll link it up there in the show notes as well and uh the final question is what's your definition of greatness um just going at it full full tilt boogie a buddy of mine used to say when i was in high school i used to say when he was playing football if he had a great day he was and i was full tilt boogie i don't even know what that means but i think definition of greatness is just knowing that you gave it your all and i think so many people on that last when you're 90 years old and you look back if you say if you don't if you didn't give it your all i think that's going to be one of those things like i had one shot at this why didn't i just go for it why didn't i say yes why didn't i finally say no so i think greatness is just freaking putting the pedal to the metal dean thanks so much appreciate being sure you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 222,525

Keywords: Dean Graziosi, Millionaire Success Habits, Millionaire Secrets, How to Make Millions, Lewis Howes, the school of greatness

Id: Wyfmo7xR75Q

Length: 54min 27sec (3267 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2017