Retrain Your Brain and Create Long-term Success | John Assaraf

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Scale Up Method, where we teach you how to reach the next level in business. Build your dream team and scale beyond eight figures. Now, too many business owners are stuck trying to do everything themselves, and their businesses are suffering as a result. And I don't want you to be one of those people. I am Alison Maslin, and my company, Pinnacle Global Network, has helped thousands of business owners scale their companies using our framework, the Scale it method. All business owners face similar challenges when it comes to growth. So on this podcast, we're delivering the tactics you need to finally reach your next level in business. Build your dream team and scale beyond eight figures. And today, I am super excited to welcome back my dear friend John Assaraf, one of the world's leading behavioral and mindset experts. And John has spoken at many of my events. He's been a favorite on this show where he always shares some incredible insights on how to reprogram your brain to reach your goals, become happier, healthier, and more successful. John is the founder and CEO of NeuroGym, a research development company that helps people retrain their minds for optimal performance. He's written two New York Times bestselling books, he's founded five multimillion dollar companies, and he was featured in the 2006 smash hit film the Secret for his knowledge of the power of visualization. John, thank you. And I'm so excited to have you on the show again.

As always, it's so great to be with you.

Yeah. So, gosh, there's so many things that we could talk about. And for those that haven't listened to the past episodes, I'd like to start at the beginning. You started your career at age 19 and you were selling real estate. I'm sure there was a lot of stuff leading up to that. You made 30,000 after your first year and then 150,000 after your second. At such a young age, how did you come about that kind of motivation to, you know, start a career growth at that time?

Sure. So you know the word motivation is motive for action. Right. So 17, 16, 17, 18. I was getting myself into a lot of trouble, trouble with the law. I left high school, grade 11. I failed English, failed math. Didn't think I was smart enough to achieve success in my life. And my results, the evidence proved that to be the case at the time. And my brother, who was concerned for my well being, invited me to have lunch with a man that he was teaching tennis to. My brother's a tennis coach. And this man was a very successful entrepreneur. Real estate developer, had real estate offices. And I said, sure, I'll come and visit you. And I was living in Montreal at the time. My brother was in Toronto, about 350 miles away. So I took the train, met my brother for the weekend. And it started off with lunch with this Mr. Allen Brown. And this guy was just a very calm gentleman, in shape, peaceful, seemed smart, dressed well. Asked me a whole bunch of questions on what is it that I wanted to achieve at the time. I said, well, I'd like to leave my parents house. I can live on my own or, you know, with a buddy of mine. I'd like to buy my own car because don't have a car. So I'm taking the bus and the subway system everywhere. And I'd like to get a job that I earn more than $1.65 an hour in. That is what I was making working in the shipping department of the big conglomerate, Philips Electronics. And I was bored out of my mind doing menial things all day long. And so he asked me if I had, you know, bigger vision or some goals for my life. And I said no. And he gave me this document. I remember this like it was yesterday, Allison. And this was the. I'll put it, I'll give you the date. It was, it was. The date was March in 1980, and the document was the 1980 Goal Setting Guide. And so he said, will you do me a favor and just sit at the table next to your brother and I and fill out the stuff? That's the questions. I said, sure, Mr. Brown. So I opened up this little manual and the first question says, remember, I'm 19 years old, looking at this document for the first time. It says, at what age do you want to retire? And so I looked at the document, I looked up, looked at the document, and so I looked at Mr. Brown, Excuse me, sir, I'm 19. Like, nobody in my family retires. My aunts and uncles, my father, everybody still works. Like, what am I supposed to put here? And he said, just write a number, okay? I wrote 45. The next question was, how much net worth do you want to have when you retire? I looked at Mr. Brother, I said, excuse me, sir, what does net worth mean? You must have thought that I was like, dumb as shit. And the third question was, what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What kind of car do you want? What kind of home do you want? Who do you want to help? How much money do you want to make, et cetera. What am I supposed to write? He says, Just make up something, use your imagination. So I wrote down, I want a four bedroom home, I want a Mercedes Benz, I want to travel the world first class. I want to retire my parents, etc. I want an Italian wardrobe, I remember nice Italian clothes. And he looked at this, he said, these are all like great ideas of what you would like your fantasy life to be. And there's a path between your current reality where you're getting in trouble, not making enough money, living at your parents house, no car, no nothing really. And there's a bridge between your current reality and that fantasy. He says, but in order to make the fantasy the reality, I'm going to ask you one question. And the answer to this one question will determine whether you have everything you wrote down. And you're gonna imagine I was cocky at 19. And so I'm thinking to myself, yeah, bullshit, one question. So he leans in and he says to me, are you interested in achieving all of these things or are you committed to. And I'm like, what? Am I interested or am I committed? And I was racking my brain trying to figure out what's the difference? And so I asked him, I said, Mr. Brown, what's the difference? He says, if you're interested, you'll allow your past or your present circumstances to control your thinking. You'll allow your beliefs and your habits and your story of leaving high school, grade 11. Your father's a cab driver, mother works at the department store. You don't have the money, you don't have the knowledge. You'll allow all that to control your thinking and what you do. He said, but if you're committed, you'll upgrade your identity to match this new destiny. And along with the identity will come the character to achieve these goals. Along with the character will come the beliefs. Along with the beliefs will come the behaviors. Along with the behaviors will come the habits. And if you're committed, you'll be able to achieve them. But if you're interested, nobody can help you. And so he leans and he says, so are you interested or are you committed? And so I don't know why Allison, but I, you know, 19, you know, Vim and vigor. I said, well, I'm committed then, Mr. Brown. And so he reached out his hand, he said, in that case, I will be your mentor. I said thank you sir. What's a mentor? Right? Well the mentor is somebody who will show you the path. They'll show you what not to do. They'll show you what to do, they'll help you with the tools the resources, and they'll help you understand what you need to do and what you're not supposed to do. So I said, great, when do I start? He says, well, good question, because there's a real estate class that starts on May 5, 1980, that I'd like you to enroll in. And as fast as he said that, this was March. I was living in Montreal, in a different city. The only two people I knew in Toronto was him and my brother. My brother and him. And. And he says, well, there's a real estate class starting on May 5, 1980. It's five weeks, nine to five. I need you to enroll in that. I said, ho, ho, ho, hold on a second. You want me to go to a real estate school? He goes, yeah. I said, I don't know anything about real estate. The law, I don't know. He says, stop telling me what you don't know. First you make a commitment, and then you figure out the how. I said, Mr. Brown, I failed English, I failed math. I don't do well in school. I bomb every test. He goes, there you are again, telling me about your past circumstances. He says, if you're committed, you will figure out how to do this. Anyway, this went on and on for five, six, seven minutes, what seemed like a lifetime. I said, fine, I'll move to Toronto. I'll go to the real estate school. He Goes, great, it's $500 to join the school. What? 500? I don't have $500. I have $40 to my name. I just used $17 to come from Montreal to Toronto. I don't have $500. He goes, Stop. Here you go again. I said, but it's true. I make a dollar 65 an hour. I don't have any money. He goes, well, winners make decisions and then they find out and figure out how to achieve it. So I said, fine, you know, I'll do this real estate course and, you know, I'll find the money. And I ended up moving to Toronto literally several weeks later. Moved in with my brother, borrowed money from my, you know, my mother, my father, my sister lent me some money. So I had the $500 for the class. And on May 5, I got into the class. On June 20, 1980, I got my real estate license. And I remember these dates so well, Alison, because in school I had cheated on almost every test that I could just so I could not feel dumb and pass the tests. And this was the first time in many, many, many years where I actually applied myself, learned what I needed to learn. Mr. Brown and some of the other people in his office helped me study for the test. And I passed with my own, you know, my own effort. And it was one of the first times as a young man at 19 that I actually felt proud. And it was the first glimpse that I had that maybe I'm not that dumb. And. And so I got my real estate license and I started, you know, working for him on commission only. But he taught me how to cold call. And he taught me the script to call a person like they live on a street somewhere behind our office. And I learned to practice a script. I learned to practice the objections that they said people would give me. I learned to practice what the next, you know, thing to say is. So he had me practicing and rehearsing before I actually made the calls with other people that were learning the scripts. And so I would pick up the phone, I'd have a document in front of me, you know, like a little document, and it said, okay, if they pick up the phone. And back then, cold calling was big. There weren't any laws against cold calling. I would say, hi, this John Asraf with Allen Brown Real Estate Company. We have somebody who's looking to buy a home in the neighborhood. Have you thought about making a move? If they said yes, I went to the other script. I said, great, can we come over at 3 o' clock, or would 5 o' clock be better to see the house so we can explain it well to our buyers? If they said no, I would say thank you. Oh, by the way, have any of the neighbors mentioned that they may want to make a move? If they said yes, I'd ask for the name. If they said no, say thank you. Oh, one last question. Since we are the local real estate company of choice in the area, do you know when you might be thinking of making a move in the future? So I had this, this little map of what to say. I had to practice it, I had to record it. I had to listen to it on the way to the office, on the way home, on the cassette tapes that were in my car in the office. And I learned the language pattern that they knew worked with cold calling. And that's how I made $60,000 my first year, of which I kept 30. He kept 30. So in essence, I paid him $30,000 when I was 19 to teach me how to make $30,000. That wasn't bad, right? The second year he taught me some new scripts. And the new scripts was not going after general people who may or may not want to sell their house. The second script was for sale by owners. So now there's people who are trying to sell their home privately, either because their listing expired or they didn't want to hire a real estate agent and pay them the 6%. So I learned a brand new script for that. So now from general, you know, selling, I went to targeted selling, and I would call people who were trying to sell their home privately. And I had a script for that also. Now I 5x my business from 30,000 to 151,000, which means I actually made about 250,000 because I was on a 5050 split, then 60 40, then 7030 as I made more money. And so Mr. Brown really, you know, gave me the shortcut to success because he said, do this, don't do that, say this, don't say that. When they say this. You say that when they have this objection. Here is the answer. And I had to rehearse it. And he taught me the benefits of practice. He taught me the benefits of not using the field, the playing field when you're. When it's game time to rehearse.

Yeah. Wow. So many lessons there, right? And also letting go of your past story and I mean, having the courage to have faith in yourself and oh, man, what a. What an angel. Isn't that wild, how the universe works, to put him in your.

Yeah, well, you know what? I didn't have faith in myself. My facts were that I wasn't smart enough, wasn't good enough, didn't deserve to achieve the success because of all the stuff that I did. But I had faith in him. I had to actually transfer my faith that he knows more about this than I do. He has the life that I want, and he has evidence that's very, very different than my evidence. So I did not have faith or trust in me. I had fear in me. I had uncertainty in me. I had doubt in me. I had evidence that the reason I didn't do well in school was because I was not smart. That was my evidence. And. And then he had other evidence, and so I had to suspend my disbelief.

Yeah, and really, I love that you transferred it onto his knowingness and, you know, allowed him to mentor you and change the course of your life forever, moving forward and just learning those skills as sales at a young age, especially as a businessman or a businesswoman. I mean, I did cold calling, too. And I used to go door to door as well. I am so as hard as that was for me, because I used to stand outside of the door and have major conversations with myself. I was terrified. And then I would just do it. Just going through that process has made me such a better businesswoman years later. How do you feel like that has impacted you just going through that process, learning sales, the scripts and so forth as a business owner now?

Yeah, well. Well, it actually started even before then because When I was 9, 10, 11, 12, I used to read comic books. And in the classified ads of comic books, they had little ads a to deliver flyers door to door and make X amount of pennies per flyer. So I then from that there were ads in the classified of the comic books that said, hey, if you'd like to make, you know, like $7 a week, right. I was getting $0.25 allowance a week from my father. Okay, so this was make $7 a week having a newspaper route. So they would give me a route with, let's say, 20 subscribers in the neighborhood. And then part of what I had to do is when I was delivering the papers, to knock on the door and said, hi, my name is John. I deliver the newspapers. Some of your neighbors, would you like to receive the newspapers daily or on Saturdays? So most of us said, no, thank you, young man, and left. But every once in a while, people go, yeah, sure, I've been wanting to get the newspaper instead of going up the street to the store. So I went from, you know, 20 to 25 to 30. So I learned that I need to ask people, and if I had the words to ask. And I didn't take rejection personally because they told me a lot of people just going to say no. Some people won't answer the door. Some people might even get mad at you. Don't worry about that. I said, okay. So I would knock on the door and I'd have my little, you know, card to sign them up. And so I was taught not to fear rejection. I was taught that if I have the right opening question and I had the proper answers to their concerns or objections, then I could help many more people and then help myself. So I learned how not to fear rejection personally. I learned not to worry about what other people said on the phone because they would yell at me, scream at me, swear at me, hang up on me. Some of them would even call the office back and say, don't have you call us again. And then three weeks later, they say, we're getting divorced. Can you guys come over?

So, you know, oh, my gosh, I love that.

Yeah. So. So I learned that it's the first and foremost, it's a numbers game. And I also had. Alan Brown was brilliant at this. I had a. A sheet, you know, a sheet of paper, you know, kind of like this with, with a hundred boxes on the sheet. $15, $30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120. I said, here's the game. You're gonna pick up the phone, you're gonna call one person. If they say yes or no, it doesn't matter. You just made $15. So your job is to get to 100 of these boxes checked off a day, call 100 people. And he said, here's the law of averages. If you speak to enough people with what it is that you have to offer them a certain percentage, I say, yes, I want it. So I learned how to just get through the numbers. And then I learned how to use leverage through marketing to get through millions of people instead of one at a time. So I was taught these things. I had no idea that, that there's, you know, there are skills that you can learn. And if there's a skill you can learn, if you want the result, then learn the skill or have somebody else who has the skill do it.

Yeah. Wow. And that's where it all began. And then you evolved, obviously, with several multimillion dollar companies with ReMax, with bamboo.com. what were some of your biggest wins or lessons in building these companies?

Sure. So as a real estate agent, I learned selling and marketing and really taking care of people, serving others. So selling was serving and doing something for somebody, not to somebody. So those are some frames of how do I serve more people? And then marketing, you know, was a way to get people to know you, build your brand and call you and give you the opportunity to serve them. So that was part one. When I started ReMax of Indiana when I was 26. My partner at that time was the most successful sub franchisor in the world of any franchise. And he said, listen, kid, this world of franchising is all about leverage. People pay 25, 50, 105, or a million dollars for a process or a system that's been proven, and that's the leverage. Right? They don't have to figure it out on their own. Now we figured out how to sell franchises. We figured out how to help successful agents who are working with other companies come work at ReMax for themselves. So I said, great, will you teach me how to sell franchises? Will you teach me how to recruit agents? He says, of course I will. It's $75,000 to learn that. Okay, here's $75,000. So $75,000 to get this opportunity to buy ReMax of Indiana to be his partner. And at the time, 1986, this guy was making like 10 million there. He just sold one of his companies literally three months ago for 234 million. Just a portion of it. Smart guy. He's worth probably about $750 million right now. So he was a good guy to follow in his footsteps. He's still one of my dearest friends.

But the fact, John, that you invested 75,000 at 26 years old, I mean, that alone is.

And I borrowed half of that because I only had 37,500. I borrowed half, took what I had and bet on me, but also bet that he could teach me how to, like, leverage and to get to that next level. So, 26, I bought ReMax of Indiana when he said to me, by the way, this is a funny story, when he said to me, hey, do you want to. You want to, you know, buy a region with me? I said, absolutely. He says, great, let's do this. He said, great, we're going to buy Indiana. I said, where's Indiana? I was in Toronto, Canada. I didn't even know where Indiana was because I was Canadian. So I had to move to Indiana, not even knowing where it was, but I doing it first, then found out where Indiana was. So it didn't make a difference to me because I wanted the opportunity, and I wanted the opportunity to learn from him. He was again achieving the results on a huge scale because he brought ReMax to Canada. And so I said, yeah, I'll be partners with you. And. And then Walter started teaching me the world of franchising, the world of leveraging, the world of systems and processes and scale. And from 26 to 30, I opened up about 45 offices. We were doing 1.2 billion a year in sales. And then the next several years, from 1992 to 1995, I got the company to four and a half billion a year in sales. 85 offices, 1200 salespeople. Now, it may be because, you know, I worked hard, which I did, but I was working hard, doing the right things. And I often, you know, I have. I think you may know, I'm a Rubik's Cube junkie. I often show people you could work really hard. You can work tirelessly, you know, to solve this, or you can just learn from somebody who's done it and just solve it. Because there's an algorithm or a formula, hard work doesn't necessarily equal the results that you want. Doing the right Things does. And this is what I Learned about franchising. ReMax was, you know, a growing company back in the 80s and 90s. And, and so there were people that already did what I want us going to do in Indiana, even though ReMax in Indiana failed two times before I got there. And when I was going to try and sell franchises to reputable real estate owner companies, real estate owners of companies, I would always hear, but ReMax has been here before and it failed twice. It won't work in Indiana. So do you remember what I said earlier that I learned there's always going to be objections and it's my responsibility to know the answers to those objections. That's my responsibility. Yeah, you're right. ReMax did fail twice. But let me ask you a question. If I gave you a Mercedes Benz 500SL and you drove it into a ditch, is the problem with the car?

No, no.

Oh, so there are people who have a great opportunity that drive it into a ditch, Right? Well, the last two owners were very, very nice people, but they weren't me. I won't drive it into a ditch. I will do what I know it's capable of doing because I've just come from a marketplace that had competitors that have been there for a hundred years and ReMax is now number one. So I'm going to make ReMax number one here as well. Do you want to join? So my certainty over lapped their uncertainty or their evidence. So as an entrepreneur, right, it's our responsibility, of course, to have a great program, product, service. Of course it is. But it's also to know, you know, how to create the leverage points for our scalability which you're brilliant at. Right. It's also responsible for us to know what are the objections that are going to come up and how to handle those. That's our responsibility. But it's also our responsibility to understand our own inner game of objections to achieving the next level of our own success. And I'm going to go back to the Rubik's Cube, you know, I'll show you. I always have these on my desk just to remind me, let's say Rubik's Cubes represent a business. Let's say this is a million dollar business. 5 million, 25 million, 100 million. A billion. Okay, let's say these represent businesses. Do we know the formula? Does somebody know the formula to build a billion dollar business right now?

Yes.

Oh. 100 million dollar business. 25, 50 million dollars. So the how to grow a 10, 20, 50, 100 million dollar billion dollar business is already available right now. So the biggest challenge that most business owners have is not that the how to doesn't exist. You just haven't committed to.

Yeah, yeah. The answers are there. And you know, it's interesting too. I was thinking about this just recently. I think a lot of people struggle with asking for help. John. You know, if you ask people, do you have a harder time saying I'm sorry, do you have a harder time saying I love you? Or do you have a harder time asking for help? Most people will say it is asking for help. Like that there's a reflection on them that something's wrong with them that they have to ask for help when it's going to make their life so much easier.

Yeah. So, you know, if we get into the, the psychology of it was if I ask for help, then what does it really say about who I am now? For some people, what it says for them, people like me, it means that I'm smart enough to know I need help. For other people, it means I'm dumb. Therefore I don't want to expose that to others. And now we're dealing with a self image challenge, not an intelligence challenge. So now what is it about my self image that's worried that somebody might think that I'm not smart enough? Like I had evidence of school. I never want to feel that way again. But I also learned from my mentors that when you ask others for help, you actually show how smart you are.

Yeah, that's.

So I ask all the time now. I like to be the dumbest guy in the room.

I ask all the time too. And I love that we share different ideas together. And so switching gears with your focus with Neurogym last several years and helping people intentionally evolve their mental, emotional and behavioral habits. Can you talk about why? You know, what was this working with the brain? What's the fascination for you? What drew you to make that shift? And can you talk about why it's so important?

Sure. So I've always been fascinated with performance, my own behavior. Why am I doing this? Why am I not doing that? Why can I read a book and get so excited but not apply it? Why can I go to a course for two days, three days, five days and get all fired up and take freaking great notes and asterisks and highlight and put it into the order of what I'm going to do and then not do it when I get home? And it stemmed from when I was building ReMax of Indiana. I was buying books for our Agents. I was hiring some of the top speakers in the world, whether it was Jim Rohn, Dennis Waitley, Zig Ziglar, Mark Victorhan, all these people were coming into our regions and training our agents. So we'd teach them selling skills and closing skills and management skills and this skill and that skill, and they'd all get excited. But their incomes rarely increased dramatically. A few broke free. I was like, what? Why are they stuck when they're. When we. The training is so good? And I was reminded, you know, with Alan Brown, one of the things that I didn't know it at the time, but he had me training my brain almost every single day. I had, you know, my vision and my goals. Every day I had to review my vision and my goals. Every day I had to review the beliefs that I would need to have in order to achieve these visions and goals. Every day I would have to review and I recorded my vision and my goals and the questions and the objections and the beliefs that I need to. And I would listen to it over and over and over and over again every single day. Every day. I'd have to close my eyes after I read, you know, my. My vision for my life. And I'd have to visualize it. I'd have to emotionalize it. And I used to think that was stupid. I used to think that I was like, what the f. Am I doing this for? But my results got better. And I was. I just kept doing. And I remembered, you know, him. Him telling me and other trainers that I was in the environment of back then, talking about the subconscious mind. And, you know, your brain works like a thermostat. And if you're conditioned to earn $50,000 a year, even though there's $100,000 opportunities here, or $500,000 opportun stuck like a thermostat that has a setting for a certain temperature. And if you don't reset the thermostat, it always goes back to the initial temperature. And so I learned to have positive self talk around what I wanted to achieve. I learned how to manage my emotions, to focus on what I wanted versus not what I didn't want to move towards, versus moving away. I learned how to focus on my vision and my goals every single day and the behaviors and habits required to achieve the goal and then how to mod to the next level and the next. So if you recall earlier I mentioned to you that we had gotten about a billion dollars in sales with. With ReMax in Indiana. And then we were stuck. I was like, why are we stuck. Why is it that the agents are getting so much training but they're not translating it to behavior? I was like, oh my gosh, like I should have had a V8. We haven't been working on retraining their brain and their financial setting and their self image. And so over the next couple of years, between 1992 and 1995, we started to train agents brains. That started off as a test with 75 agents over six months. And those 75 agents increased sales by 100 million more than the year before. Those group of eight, I said, okay, I just hit the jackpot. And so we started to offer our brain training in addition to our skills training to our agents. And revenue. Sales went from 1.2 billion to four and a half billion a year. And so after I retired from ReMax, I had somebody run it for me for 10 years. I did the same thing@bamboo.com and we raised $28 million, took the company public on NASDAQ a year later and we were doing 10 million a month in revenue on the 9th month. Retired, wrote some books. And then I realized that the inner game is so critical to the outer game and success. So I got fascinated with the latest neuroscience research probably 20 years ago and got deep into what's going on in the human brain. Like what happens when I speak to somebody in their brain. What caused them to pay attention or not? What caused them to move towards what I'm saying versus moving away. Is there any, you know, and this is a, a new science that I love teaching on is around neuro marketing and neuro sales and what do we know about the human brain, you know, to clear through the clutter of noise and to create offers that people really want to, you know, move towards. And so I just got fascinated with the world of neuroscience and, and change. And so I started, you know, I wrote my newest best selling book. Inner size is how do I strengthen my core neuro muscles. Whether it's my self image neuromuscle, my belief neuromuscle, my self talk regulation neuromuscle, my emotional regulation neuromuscles. And I've had, you know, hundreds of thousands of students that have, you know, worked on training their brain to achieve their goals faster. So I just got fascinated with the little hinge that swings the big door.

Yeah, it is, it's just so fascinating.

And it will, it's $75,000 to learn that.

Okay, so interesting too John, because so many business owners that we talk to, you know, they're so. I just, I Just want the strategy. You know, I'm not interested in the mindset. My mindset is fine. In meantime, they've been stuck at the same level for years, even if they're, you know, 5 million, 10 million in revenue. And then they hit a wall. You know, they. They struggle, really scaling the company further, building the team. What would you say, as one of the world's leading experts on human behavior and mindset, what advice do you give business owners that are struggling in this area? They've hit that wall.

Sure.

And they can't seem to break through. And they're really struggling with that and their own leadership.

Yeah. So first it's understanding, you know, a little bit about the neuromechanics. So think about this. You know, when your car doesn't run optimally, what do you do? You take it to a mechanic. I mean, everybody who's listening right now probably has heard about what a governor or a restrictor plate is on a car. And if you haven't back in the 50s and 60s, and they still put them on some cars today, let's say you have an engine that has the ability to go 150 miles an hour, but out of the factory, there's a restrictor plate or a governor on it that only allows to go 75. So even though the car can go 150, no matter how hard you hit the pedal, it won't go past 75 because there's a restrictor plate that's on the engine. Well, the average person has no idea where the restrictor plays or how to take it off safely. Well, the average owner that has, let's say, the capacity go from 1 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 25. They don't realize that their own mindset is the governor and the restrictor plate. And no matter how much more information you get and strategies and tactics you get, you don't apply them at the level you can. Why? It's not because you can't. I always have a brain on my desk also. But we gather information, obviously through our eyes and through our ears, and it goes into short term memory for processing. But there's another part of the brain that's responsible for my habitual thoughts, emotions and behaviors that controls up to 98% of my behavior every day. So just because I discover or learn new strategies doesn't mean that translates to new behaviors. One of it happens in this part of the brain. Behavior is dictated by another part of the brain. So if you don't change the. It's called the striatum by the way, if you don't change the neural patterns in the striatum that are part of a larger part of your brain called the hippocampus that regulates behavior, you gather information and knowledge and you get excited, but you don't translate it to long term behavior. So can you learn a strategy and apply it? Today, sure. Tomorrow, sure. Next week? Sure. But if you don't know how to sustain it past the initial excitement, you revert back to all of the old thoughts, emotions, behaviors. Why? The third most important part of what the brain does, number one, or number number one, safety and security. Number two is avoidance of any real or pain, real or imagined pain or discomfort. Change is a threat in the brain. When our brain perceives change, even though it's what we want to do, it actually deactivates the motivational center, the behavioral center. And number three in the brain is conservation of energy above all else. So now we have this new behavior, this new strategy that has risk associated with it. Move away. It has a new behavior associated with takes energy. Move away. It's easier for me to master my comfort zone than master change. That's why people get stuck. It's not that they can't, they just don't understand the method by which they need to change the behavior. So that the behaviors required at 10 million or 25 million or 100 million are also aligned with how the brain is programmed to automatically operate. That's a little bit more complex than the average person's willing to understand and change.

And so what are so, so interesting? We really are in our own way. And so what are some of the practices to overcome these, these blockages? You're at 5 million, you want to get to 20, you're at 20, you want to get to 100 and beyond. Like what are some of those practices that we can do?

So let's put some frames around this opportunity. First and foremost, there's something called the 100 day rule. What's the 100 day rule? The 100 day rule stems from some of the latest research in neuroscience that says shows that it takes approximately 66 to 365 days to change or create a pattern in the brain and have it become the new dominant pattern versus the 10, 20, 30, 40 year old patterns that are locked and loaded and operate automatically. First framework is anything that I want to do, I must agree to 100 days to create and reinforce the new pattern. So if I want to think a different way, if I want to have better emotional regulation, and if I want behavioral change 100 day rule to build my foundation. Don't want to do that. Forget the goal, because chances are I'll bet against you every day of the week and 99 times out of 100, I will win. One out of 100 I won't. So number one is 100 day rule. So what do I need to believe for the next hundred days? How do I need to feel for the next hundred days and what do I need to do for the next hundred days to cement this new thought, belief and behavioral pattern? Write it down. So then I want to go to my day for the next hundred days and when am I going to, let's say, review the new goal? When am I going to review the strategies that I've agreed to implement? When am I going to review the beliefs that I need? And how am I going to make sure that for 100 days me, and let's say my team is going to implement this stuff and how am I going to create accountability for that? Because I don't want to just do it, you know, for a weekend. I want to make this part of, you know, my business, my culture and my behavior. So now I can accelerate my, let's say, revenue or marketing or leads or whatever it is, and now I can sustain it. So one of the things that's a really, really easy thing to do is after you've got your vision and your goals and your big wine, your strategies in your calendar, every day before you start your day, sit at your desk or on your sofa or even on the toilet, it makes no difference. I want you to take a look at your vision and your goals and your why. And I have mine always here in my exceptional life blueprint. I could take you to my. My results, the story of my life, the business results. And I could walk you through that in a nanosecond because that's what I look at every day. I have one upstairs, one downstairs, etc. So now I'm going to activate a big part of my brain called the visual cortex or the occipital lobe in my brain. Why? Well, we know, number one, that that practice makes permanent patterns. I'm creating neural patterns and then a visualization is a simulation. So if I can practice seeing my goal, seeing my why, practicing the strategies and the behaviors that I want to achieve, and then I can see myself achieving it. I am firing neurons in my brain and the neurons that fire together, wire together. Well, that's what conditioning is, that's what programming is. We are all programmed to achieve the Results you're currently achieving. That's what you're programmed and conditioned to achieve. So if you want a different result, you need to reprogram your brain like software. You upgrade your phone, you upgrade your computer. Well, what do you think your brain is? It's a bio computer. And then when you fire these neurons, day one, it's firing and it might make a light connection. Day seven, okay, the connections are getting stronger. Day 30, oh my God. It's easier for those neurons to fire automatically. Now your brain says, hey, you've been doing this for 30 days. I guess we should weaken the other programming because you're not using it as much. You're deliberately using energy for this. So all of a sudden they're firing together and this one fires less and this one fires more automatically. This one actually atrophies, and this one is the firing neurons that is aligned with the vision goals you have. So the more I practice, the more I use every sense that I have, whether it's visualization, whether it's emotionalization, whether it's the behavior required. I am activating a group of cells in my brain that I want to create something known as automaticity. I want this to be the norm and the easy pattern for my brain to conserve energy with versus the old one. Now why do most people fail at doing that? Because they have a mismatched expectation. I said earlier, 66 days to 365 is what the science is showing. So don't do this for 35 days going, it doesn't work for me. That's like planting seeds in the soil and then digging it up to see, well, is the root taking place. And so, yeah, patience. So all of my students say, give me 100 days or don't even start. Yeah, give me 100 days, don't even start. Because I can't. I can give you awareness in a day, an hour. I can give you some knowledge, but I can't, I can't create long term sustained behavioral change and result change.

That'S so powerful. Yeah, I've got my big vision. I don't have it in a book, but I've got it right here. Read it every single day. So I, I'm, I'm right there with you. And you know, it's interesting that with, with our mastermind, people are in a minimum of a year, although we have many that are in now over 10 years. And it's interesting too that you say that. I was thinking about that too, because over time, as the brain evolves to that next Level. That's why they just keep evolving too, because of that continued commitment. I want to talk about as we're kind of getting to the end of the interview, but this is really something that I'm so passionate about. I utilize the power of intention in everything I do. In fact, that's going to be one of my books here, coming up here soon. And I understand the importance of aligning our energy mentally, physically, emotionally to what I desire, plus taking mass rest and spiritually. And spiritually. Thank you. I left that out and we could do a whole show on this. But what are your thoughts as it pertains to attracting what we want? Of course, you talked all about this in the secret, in our business, in our lives. What do you feel is necessary to make this happen in regards to the intention and then also the energy? Knowing that we are energy at the root core.

Yeah. We are vibrating packets of energy called quanta. So there is the. Obviously we know there's the physical world and then there's the non physical world. And if you think about, you know, I like to use visuals, as you can tell, you know, ice is H2O, water is liquid, ice is solid. If we took the water and we added heat to it, we would increase the amplitude of the vibration of the molecules, right. H2 hydrogen, one oxygen molecule. And if we heated it up enough, right. We could take water, we could take ice, turn into water. If we heated up water enough. 211 degrees. Water makes very, very hot tea. But at 212 degrees exactly. 212, not 213. 212. Water turns from steam or from, from, sorry, from liquid into steam. Steam. We can move a locum move. It's the exact same energy, but because it's vibrating at a higher frequency, it's releasing more energy. So it goes from solid to. Or liquid to solid or solid, back to liquid to air, ether, gas. And so there are a variety of different layers to energy is what I want to say. So part one, so part two is if our brain is this electromagnetic switching station that can tap into the unseen forces. We use telescopes to look out into the deepest beginnings of time space. We use microscopes to look deep into the nucleus of an atom. What happens is we know that our thoughts create a vibrational field in our body. Right? We are 100 trillion cells that vibrate at the level of our thoughts. We know that we have emotions, which is the energy in motion. Some of the energy in motion is causing us to move towards that which we want. And some of the energy and motion is causing us to retreat and be in a protective mode. And that's what this physical body does. It moves right towards or away from what is that we want or neutral. So when we're talking about energy, the question then becomes this. If my goal is to create harmony, okay, I'm going to go to musical music for just a moment. If my goal is to create harmony between my physical body, my emotions, and my thoughts and what is already here in this field of enticing the strategies and the behaviors that I want to achieve, and then I can see myself achieve intelligence that we're all in. It's not like there's an out there and there's an in here. It's all in this energy field. We happen to be in a solid, you know, vibrational state, you know, as a body. But I can also use my. Other than hear, see, smell, taste and touch senses to tap into. Like, what's intuition? Like, have you ever walked into a room, Nothing's been said, but you know something's wrong and you go, what's wrong? Say nothing. Come on. Of course there's something wrong. Well, we, we can feel that. So the question is, are you in resonance? Okay, if you have three musicians or five musicians that are out of resonance, the music sounds like. But when they're in resonance, it's like, magical. That's what an orchestra is. So can I orchestrate? Okay, as the conductor and the orchestra, can I coordinate my thoughts and my emotions and align them with the behaviors so that I am in resonance with all of the answers, the tools, the people that are already here. And the answer is, of course you can. It's no different than if you have, you know, the numbers to a safe and inside the safe is a hundred million dollars, but you don't have the numbers in the right order.

Yeah.

So what we want to do is align physically, emotionally, and mentally with that which is already here spiritually. And we are spiritual beings anyway. And that's why we have this desire to have more, be more, achieve more, give more, love more and all that stuff, because that's our birthright. But then we have all of these blockages that can affect the signal. So our fear can affect the signal. Our limiting beliefs affects the signal. So our fear can affect the signal. Our limiting beliefs affects the signal. Am I worthy? Self image can affect the signal. Even though the nucleus, right, wants fuller expression, and it knows, it knows that it can achieve, it sometimes just doesn't know how.

So it's about aligning that signal right, with the energy of the signal or the. Or whatever you're trying to connect that signal to by dialing into a radio station. Right. Where it was, like, fuzzy. Remember the days when we used to do that?

If you're. If you're not exactly on the station, it's fuzzy, even though the signal is right here in. Wherever anybody is right now. Right now. There's rock and roll, classical, punk, rock. Every type of music that you want to hear is in the room you're in right now or in the car, if you're listening in a car. Now, the question is, are you tuned into that signal?

Yeah, that. If you, you know, if you got a business owner and they're like, you know, John, I'm doing everything. I'm doing all the strategies, doing all the things, and I, you know, I want to get there so badly. So internally, that signal that you're projecting, maybe I don't believe that it's possible, really. Maybe I'm afraid of success or a number of things is blocking that signal.

That's right. So the signal you may have, you know, part of the signal is locked and loaded, and the other signal is running an interference pattern.

Yeah. Yeah. So fast.

One foot on the brakes.

Yeah.

The proverbial gas and brakes is all happening in your own mind.

Yeah.

Is how do I get tuned in?

Yeah.

I tune out what I don't want.

Well, this is. This is so fascinating. And again, we could talk about this for hours and hours. How can people learn more about this? Because I know this is what you teach all day long, and I know a lot of business owners listening would love to increase the rate of their signal to that higher level.

Listen, on my website, johnassaraf.com, there's a whole bunch of articles on the inner game. There's videos as well. Pick up one of my New York Times bestselling books. Whether it's the answer up there, having it all over there, inner size over there, and just get into really understanding that everyone own. Let me back up a moment. Every brain functionally works the same. That's first and foremost. Every brain functioning works the same. So Einstein's brain, just like yours, Hitler's brain, just like yours. Genghis Khan's brain, just like yours, Oprah's brain, Richard Branson's brain. Every brain functionally works the same. So that's part one, part two. Maybe you just need to be a better operator. And so if you want to be a better operator of how do you manage your thoughts better or what you focus on, which thoughts. You have 6200 a day. How do you focus on the ones that will empower you, inspire you and move you forward versus disempower you and are negative and are destructive? How do you manage your emotions? Since you're not your emotions but you have emotions, how do you manage them better? And then how do you get this physical body to take the action required to achieve the goal that's readily available for you to achieve? So if you make some of your focus on how do I do that better, you will become a better neuromechanic. And, you know, I like to consider all of us as, you know, psychonauts, and we're psychonauts. A lot of us just haven't gotten a lot of training on how to manage the most powerful biocomputer in the whole world. So just get into being curious and hopefully we've created some curiosity today.

Oh, always fascinating, John. Always. Every time you come on this show, it has been so great. Thank you so much. You know, I found an old interview that we did together back in 2012, so I think it's 10 years we've been doing this, and every time it's so fascinating. So thank you for coming on here and sharing and enlightening us today.

Thank you so much. And thank you for, you know, being such a great participant in my life and teaching the business owners that follow my work. Your wizardry, which I appreciate too.

Thank you. Episode of the Scale It Method and a quick reminder about our free masterclass. If you want to build a scalable company that can thrive without you and you're ready to get the support you need to do it, sign up for the masterclass today and during our time on that class, I will teach you the first the five critical phases you must know in order to scale to eight figures and beyond. Just go to scalemasterclass.com forward slash podcast to secure your seat and I will see you there. Until the next episode of the Scale It Method, we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody.

Bye, everyone. Times best selling books Whether it's the answer up there having it all over there Inner side.