Let Me Tell You Why It’s Better to Be an Underdog

Sometimes the underdog actually has the unfair advantage. Welcome to the Dean Graziosi show. All success starts right here. You know, I always felt like the underdog. I was always small in school. I was literally, hands down, not just kind of the smallest kid in school. I was the smallest kid in school. Plus, we didn't have any money. I mean, I say that it's not like the story just for my marketing. We truly didn't have money. My mom worked two jobs to make 90 bucks a week. My dad worked in his collision shop to probably make 25, 30 grand a year. Worked his butt off. They were hard workers. There was no correlation between hard work and making money, though. It's smart, hard work, right? But I want to tell you a story. When I was in my 20s, I became the New England championship grass dragger with a snowmobile. That sounds weird. I don't know if I call it. It's grass drags. You race on grass 5-700ft drag racing with a snowmobile. You put these big long paddles, these spikes with paddles in the. In the track. You bolt them in, you change, you lighten the machine up. And it's really just this major, like, I mean, I'd go a hundred miles an hour in 500ft. Is that crazy or what? But here's the thing. I was absolutely the underdog because I didn't have any money back then. I mean, I had some. I was working hard. This is by the time in my 20s, I'm doing real estate. This is early 20s, doing real estate, working on cars every day with my dad at the collision shop, that type of thing. But I didn't have the money that some of these people had because when I started getting good and I started winning, winning more and more, I was ramping up. So I would. I would go to these meets where it would be like the New England championship. So there would be. I parked the car. Okay, no hands, because I parked the car. There'd be people from all over the eastern part of the United States. And all of a sudden, I'd go. And there'd be team Arty Cat and team Polaris and Team Skidoo. Big tractor trailers. They'd take their machines off with a forklift. They'd have a crew of 10 people, all awesome shirts on. They're fine to them. And these snowmobiles were so loud. I don't know if you ever raced motorcycles or snowmobiles. Just loud, deep throttle. And I would go there with my pickup truck with my snowmobile on the back, I had all my tools in an old milk crate. You know, like the. The plastic square milk crate, all my tools stacked up. And you have to have ways to lube the track. I had, like, a handmade way to lube the track. And I had a leaf blower that would cool down the engine because you'd race in the fall, in the spring. So sometimes the snowmobiles got hot because they like to run in the cold weather. Right? They're designed for sn. So I'm telling. Why am I telling you this story? Because I was thinking about it like, you might feel like an underdog. And what's the definition of an underdog? Maybe you don't have money to get started. Maybe no one in your family supports you because they think you're nuts, that you want to do your own thing. Maybe you live in a country or world, a town, a city where people are discouraging, where it doesn't seem like things are good. Or maybe you feel like you're an underdog because you were born during a bad time. Or. Or maybe you had some really tough things in your past. Maybe you're married to someone or dating someone who is negative and tells you what you can't do. I don't know. But we all have that little bit of underdog feeling inside. And most of the time, it can squash us, it can keep us small. But I want to tell you, I teach my kids for softball and for baseball. I teach them that you win races, you win games when no one is watching. And I've been implementing in that to them because I want them to practice like, you don't win. When you're on the pitcher's mound and you get the glory, you don't win. I've said this before, but you don't win as a rock star. Just when you're up there jamming to 50,000 people, you're winning when you're throwing a hundred balls in the dark, when no one's watching. Up against the fence or you're jamming on the guitar, you know, till late at night when no one's watching, that you win when no one's watching. Well, I won New England State snowmobile championship when no one was watching. You see, I was the underdog. These people I ended up racing when I got to the highest level and I used to race, I had a Polaris 650. Not that that means anything to you. It was a 1989 Polaris 650 snowmobile. But I. That I raced in the 650 class, the 700 class and the 800 class. And I'd win all three of them. Now I didn't have the money these other guys did. I didn't have them full time set of mechanics. I didn't have a tractor trailer with separate engines and new clutches and all this stuff. I just had me. And a buddy would come with me. A buddy or two would come me in a milk crate and my tools in it. But you know what I did when no one was watching? Being the underdog. I knew I didn't have the money. I couldn't beat him, I couldn't outspend them, I couldn't hire a full time mechanic. That wasn't my life. I had worked all day with cars and real estate and on weekends I'd go do that. But what I used to do is I'd go out in the apple orchard behind my house when no one was watching. And I perfected this. I don't want to get too technical, but I perfected the clutching because I couldn't afford to get my motors redundant to get a lot more horsepower. Cars go faster with more horsepower, but I worked on the clutching, meaning how fast the snowmobile shift, how high the RPMs were when it came out. Not that means anything to you, but what I did when no one was watching, I'd bring my milk crate because I was the underdog. It gave me an unfair advantage because I wanted, I didn't want those people with more money, more, you know, you could think about in every area of your life, right? Think about this, whatever area you're thinking about. I didn't want them because they had more money to be like, ah, what's that guy trying? I loved going in there with my, you know, my, my. I pull my snowball off the back of my truck and my tools were messed up and they had all these people. And I'd make it to the finals and I could see them looking at me like, how'd this guy get in the finals? And then I'd kick their ass. I mean, I smoked him, I won. There was a time where I went 39 races, 39 first place in a row, week after week. Because when no one was watching, I'd go out in this apple orchard, I'd mark out 500ft and I'd bring my buddy out there and I'd go run. I go 90 miles an hour at 500ft and I go back and I'd time it and I'd write it down. Like the clutching. I think I could let the RPMs go up. And I. I literally used to have a file that. This doesn't mean anything, but think of the intricacies of this. I would have a file, and I'd file the clutching. Because in snowmobiles and. God, I haven't raced a snowmobile in 25 years. But it's. A centrifugal clutch is what makes it shift on its own. It's not like a manual shifter. It's not automatic like your car. It's a clutch system. So inside this clutch are weights. And as it starts going around in circle, the revolutions per minute, it throws the clutches, it throws the weights out, and it makes it shift. So I figured a way to, like, change the angle so they'd flip up quicker or I'd lighten them down. I'd grind a little bit off the side, make them go quicker. And I changed the weights and the clutching. I did all this stuff that I couldn't have because I couldn't afford the horsepower. I couldn't afford to send my engine out and spend ten grand to make it just this prestige engine. So I messed with the clutching. Then I took gearing. So again, I'm telling you all this for a reason. I took gear, I changed the gears. We were racing 500ft, I'd have gears. So my snowmobile, we go be going as fast as it possibly could at 500ft. If we were racing 900ft, they'd blow by me 100 miles an hour. But I got all the juice out of the 500ft. So what's the moral of the story? I didn't have the money. I was the underdog. I didn't have what they had. But what I had was a burning desire deeper than they ever could. And that created in ingenuity, right? Like, I found a way to get the slowmobile to go faster without the money. I played with the clutches. I played with the gears. What in your life can you play with to adjust the knobs? How can you adjust the gears? How can you use your passion, your desire, your. That underdog feeling instead of the anchor, the wind behind your sail? Listen, it's such an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to have you guys here. The podcast is on fire because of you. We haven't been promoting it because of word of mouth. It's all because of you. I appreciate this. I appreciate the. The wisdom, the messages. Make sure you follow me on Instagram and let me know, because you can hit me up with DMS and let me know any topics that you want me to talk about again. If you love this, share it with friends, like it, post on it, comment, anything you can do to keep the momentum forward so we can affect more people's lives. But today I just want you to think about yes, we all are an underdog in some way, shape or form. But instead of that being the anchor, what if that was the wind behind your sail? Make it happen. If you liked this podcast, make sure you rate it and also make sure to click subscribe so you never miss out. Remember, all success starts here.