My Simple Hack For Solving Problems

Guess what solves lots of problems? Money. Sales solve problems. Sales buys you the new CRM. Sales buys you the new website. Sales buys you new building. Right? So as simple as that might sound, I've really run my businesses in my life on those core principles. Welcome to the Dean Graziosi show. All success starts right here. End of my life. The best could be is that I went after it, not worrying about what other people thought, and I achieved everything that I went after. But even if I didn't achieve it, I could still end my life knowing I tried, rather than just being judgmental in the stands. Way better. Quote from Theodore Roosevelt. He said it in France when he was president. You should Google it and see it. But the way I look at that is what happens is people judge from the outside. And, like, I feel we all. I think we all start. So look at this stupid analogy. I love this. Thank you for bringing this up. Is I think we all start out with jerseys on, with our own name on our back, right? And we're all like, okay, I'm getting after this. I'm not settled. I'm not gonna live like my parents did. I'm gonna go after it. And then all of a sudden, there's a day where you take off your shirt and you put someone else's name on your back, and that's it. Life's over. You don't live your life anymore, right? So I don't want to be a guy, and I don't mean this disrespectfully if you're a sports fan, this is just an analogy, but I don't want to be in the stands wearing someone else's shirt, judging them. Oh, he could have ran the ball down the sidelines. That was a long play. No, screw that. I want to be in the game. If I fumble, I'll fumble a shit ton of times. But eventually I'll get in the end zone because I'm in the game, and that's how you got to feel. Remember, I think I said this before. They don't make statues of critics. Like, being a critic doesn't get you anywhere. So just know that being an entrepreneur also. I know. I'm all over the place, man. Sorry. Being an entrepreneur also is a lonely world because it takes years to find a small group of people that think like you do. You see the way you and Brian get along? You'll acquire friends like this forever, and you'll end up being older, and you'll have five or six really close friends that think like you because the rest of the world doesn't think like you. If you're watching Clark, if you're watching me, if you're still here, you think different than most people. You feel lonely in your thoughts. You feel weird. Sometimes you feel like a dreamer. Sometimes you feel like you should get more real. Right? That's all nonsense. That's programming of the majority. You want to be the loud minority who breaks free from all that. And you keep your name on the back of your jersey.

Part of being in the arena is definitely failure, right? And I'm curious about your story when we're talking about the journey. What was, like, your biggest failure and the lessons you learned from it? Was there a low point where you're like, I don't even. I want to take my jersey off. I want to put someone else's off, because that'd be a lot easier.

Yeah. Really great question. All the time. All the time. I failed. You know, I can't even. I can't say there's, like, this big failure. There was lots of failures. It's like. It seems like every two years of my life, I make a bad choice or go down the wrong road and be too aggressive, go too fast in a new company or stick with a company I shouldn't have too long or maybe partner with somebody that didn't have exactly the right values. I did, and I thought I could change their values, right? So there's been lots of failures. There was one time, and just so you know, there was multiple times where I wanted to rip the jersey off my back. And I thought to myself, everybody was right. Everybody was right. I wasn't smart enough. I didn't go to college. I didn't have the money to start. There was plenty of times where I'm like, I'm running this business. It's too big. I don't know what I'm doing. Like, all those things happen. But as my dear friend Tony Robbins says, Life happens 4 us, not to us. I promise you, someday you'll look back and be thankful for all the crap that you dealt with. It's your path. It's designed for you so you can be the great version of yourself that you are now. But about one of my biggest, like, sick to my stomach failures, sleepless nights, stressed out is. I was in the collision business. Fixing cars, selling cars, real estate, apartments, building houses. And I decided to go because of Tony Robbins. I bought his course off an infomercial, gave me personal development, shifted my life. I was like, oh, my go. This guy, this. This knowledge Is priceless. I just believed every word he said. I started living that life and that's what my life.

What, of course was it.

It was his first one. It was a cassette. Ultimate power.

Oh, personal power.

Personal power. Yeah, it was personal power. And then later on it was the ultimate edge.

Get the edge.

Yeah, right. So music. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sticks in your head, right? So I get that and I just shift the way I think and I'm just going after it and I'm evolving. And now because Tony changed my life through an infomercial, I create a course. You said before Motor Millions. I taught people how to make money with cars like I did. And I'm going to go do an infomercial just like Tony did. This guy changed my life. I want to help other people. So I take every dollar I have. I go against every single human being alive. I film an infomercial. I have no idea how to get it on camera. I have no idea, I mean, no idea how to get it on tv. I start calling TV stations, like completely clueless. Like I look back, I was so naive. I want to laugh at myself. I. But persistence. I finally got on tv, started to work a little and then that's why I live out in Arizona. I hired some people that were really good at that out here. So I was flying from New York to Arizona. So picture this. Picture this life for two years is in New York. I fixed cars during the day. I worked on my apartments and houses at night, drove a tow truck at night. Buy and flip houses. Then I'd stay there for two weeks and then I'd fly to Arizona for a week and I'd come and start my knowledge industry, my knowledge business. I was working my infomercial and deciding how to do customer service and shipping and product and books and coaching and like. And I did that for two years going back and forth. And the truth is the real estate and the cars supported the information business because I was losing a shit ton of money. And this is on YouTube and I probably swear too much. So you'll have to bleep all those ads, okay?

We don't care about ad revenue.

Okay? So I'm going back and forth and I finally build up Motor Millions to not a massively successful company. I bet you we were a 10,8 million dollar a year company, small profit. But I'm learning and growing. I've made miserable mistakes and I'm trying to figure out customer service and shipping. I learned every part of the business. Then I got a book. It's not like YouTube and Facebook. I have to go to a media agency and buy time on a commercial. That can be five grand. And if I buy the 6am rather than the 5am, I lose all my money. So I'm learning ROI on TV stations and direct response and upsells and cross sells. And that's why I know all this stuff now, because of those days, right? So happens for me, not to me. I had to learn how to do TV where if you messed up, you lost 200 grand like that, you mess up on an online ad or a Facebook ad, what do you go, oh, I spent 50 bucks. Shut that ad off. I'd be like, oh, my God, we're booked for two months. Ah, right. So I'm obsessing on all this stuff. I finally get the company up to 10, 12 million, and I want to move on. And I want to teach people how to do real estate now, because real estate really made me a millionaire. Cars built my core income. Real estate had made me a millionaire. So I build a course called Think a little different, and I'm going to launch an infomercial on how to invest in real estate the way I do. And I kind of want Adam order millions. And this is one of the things. This is one of the biggest mistakes I learned in my life. Do you ever have something new in your life and you're so sick of the old one and you, like, resent the old one, you resent the old job, you. You resent the old podcast. Like, I want to do this new thing, but this thing is anchoring me. You got to shift that out of your mind. Because that's the biggest mistakes in my life happen there. So what I did was I wanted to go on to think a little different rather than giving the attention this needed and loving it for bringing me here, I started resenting it, right? So now I sell. I make a fast, hasty move, and I sell motor millions to another company. And I go on to work on think a little different. Done there. I move on. All of a sudden, this company, I held the note for the sale, whatever it was, 5 million bucks or something like that. I hold the note, and the merchant was still in my name for six months. Long story short, this company, because I avoided it, and it was like, I'm done with it. This company ran up, like, $2 million in debt. They didn't pay refunds, they didn't serve the clients like I did. So now I'm onto my new thing, and I get sucked back into this company. And when I Find out that they didn't pay refunds. I find out that people are online pissed off at me, even though I don't own the company anymore. And. And it was like the biggest. Like, I remember those times you said the biggest failure. Think about feeling a kid that didn't go to high school. Friends said, you wouldn't make it. Family said, what? And I felt like I made it. And now I felt like it was all gone. Like, I got to go to court to fight to take the company back. I go to court, I win. What did I win? It was like I sold a racehorse and they broke its legs, and I had to pay for it to get back. I get the company back. It's $2 million in debt. The infomercial is not working anymore. I don't have the income. 2 million bucks. To me, this is 15 years ago was like a million bucks because I invested all the money I did have into the think a little different real estate course. So now this one didn't get off the ground yet, and this one's $2 million in debt. And I remember just, like, crying legit. Like, as a man crying go, I screwed up. Maybe everybody was right. I'm not smart enough. I should have. I shouldn't have had better counsel. I don't know how to run business. I'm good at marketing, but maybe I don't know structure and SOPs and KPIs and I'm dumb. And I went all back to the limiting beliefs that we all have. And when I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I pulled myself back up and leaned in on personal growth. Went back and listened to old Tony Robbins tapes. I got my personal. I got my incantation. I remember saying, if I can get through this, I can get through anything. I spent, like, three months working out every morning, and I'd walk or jog to the gym, and I'd say, if I can get through this, I can get through anything. And I just got. I didn't change anything in the outside world. I changed me on the inside through personal growth, through foundational pieces I teach in my books. And all those pieces, and I got myself nothing. Think about this. Nothing else changed. I still sold the business dumb to somebody else. I still was in $2 million in debt. I still had clients mad at me even though I didn't do it. I still didn't have any cash to cover it. I still couldn't launch. Think a little different because I didn't have the money to fix it. I was still in the same thing but all of a sudden, one day, because of personal development, I'm like, I got this. I can do this. I hired two people to call every client that was owed money, every client that was owed money. And we told him the truth. We told him exactly what happened and said, but Dean wants to pay you. My attorney told me to file bankruptcy on the company. I wouldn't. And we just said, hey, I know you're owed a thousand bucks. Any chance Dean can pay you 100 bucks a month? 90% of the people said, yeah, let him tell Dean I'm sorry that happened. Let him pay me by the month. And 10% of the people were like, screw Dean. Tell them to pay me now. What I did is I let two or three people obsess on those clients. Sorry the story gets long, but I want you to know I let two or three people obsess on those clients. And I put all my effort, energy into think a little different. I launched that infomercial. It started generating me money. I remember I was netting about 15 or 20 grand a week, like, within three months. And I remember every week I'd look at that 20 grand, like, oh, my God, that's awesome. I take two grand out for me, and I put it over into motor millions. And I did that for, like, so long. It was so painful. But there was a time when I paid 100% of that off, and every customer was satisfied. I shut that company down and then took off on the real estate training and education that went on to do extremely well. I think we became the number one trainer on the planet in that space, impacting lives all over. And as much as that hurt, even I tell it. I can remember the emotions. I can remember the sleepless nights. I can remember I smashed. I had a cordless phone. It wasn't cell phones. I had a big old cordless phone with a thing on it. I remember smashing it against the wall in a million pieces. Like, I'm just. I. I was so mad and so upset, but personal growth got me through. Thinking strategically got me through. And it was meant for me, like. So the one thing I want to tell you, if you're going through a really hard time right now, I'm sorry. And it sucks. And it doesn't mean you should feel good about it. Doesn't mean you can go, oh, it's meant for me. No, that doesn't help. But I promise you, it's you just paying your success tax. It's God or the universe putting you through something that if you can come out through the other side, your next level of life lives on the other side of it. I promise you, whatever you're fearful of, whatever you're afraid of, whatever makes you hesitate, if you turn and face it, your next level lives on the other side of that. When I got through with that, I was freaking, like, seasoned. Like, I was battle tested, right? Like, I just pulled a company that should have went bankrupt. I paid everybody off. Now I got a thriving company. I'm ready for the next one. I learned what not to do the next time. I could have never gotten that experience unless the universe put me through it, right? So again, if you're going through a tough time, just know. I promise you, it's there for a reason. Again, you don't have to like it, but take the lessons from it and apply it moving forward.

How important is it then when you have something tougher, that's the loss of a business, a breakup, a divorce, whatever, to allow that little grieving period there before, just like going hard on the motivation and being like, you know what? It didn't happen. And kind of almost ignoring it.

Yes. Great, great, great question. It's so funny because it's just a different evolution. So I would have said, if you ask me that question, my 20s and 30s, I'm like, suck it up. Just freaking go into the motivation, get it done next day. And next day, like, screw that shit. Just let it go. And that's wrong, because what you're really doing, you never move on. You just take it and you hide it someplace inside of you, and eventually it bubbles up. And for me, that bubbled up. I did a lot of that in my 20s and 30s and my 40s. It bubbled up big time. Especially. I went through a divorce in my 40s, and a lot of those things I hid for all those years just came exploding out. I ended up having anxiety and I was freaking out. Like, where is this coming from? It's because I tucked it down forever. And now I've learned since then. Especially Michael Singer. The Untethered Soul is an amazing book to let you realize we are supposed to feel it. We're not supposed to keep it, we're supposed to feel it. So when you lose the relationship, when it's over, the business goes bad, the partner screws you over, you don't go, screw that. They got me. Because you're just tucking in. You need to feel it, you need to do it. It's like, think about if you could make it a shape, right? Your relationship's over. I'm Using that, let's just say it's your business, like, it's over. Picture. It's a shape. What we do is we go, oh, that's painful. Boom. I'm going out, getting drunk with the boys, gonna hook up with another person, and that's it. Like, you didn't get over it. You just tucked it someplace. I promise you, when you're alone or you're hungover, in four months from now, you're gonna start crying all day on a Sunday going, where's this coming from? Because you just tucked it in. So if you think of object instead of tucking it in. Michael Singer had a great analogy in the Untethered Souls. Like, you bring it in, and you look at it and go, man, this sucks. This is painful. Stare at it, feel, cry. Know it's a loss, but know that this is part of your journey and there's some gift in this. And you might not even see the gift now. So if you could get to a point. I'm not this emotionally evolved yet either. I work on it every day. But. But there's a point where you'll go, this sucks. I feel it. I might not see the gift in it right now, but I hope I will soon and thank you for this. And then you let it go. Like the Minority Report with Tom Cruise. Remember, he had the glove on and swipe stuff. It's like, see it, stare at it, feel it, and then wipe it out of your life rather than going, this didn't happen. Because when you do that, you're just really tucking it into place and it'll come out.

Do you have any more tactical things for people out there that are going through a really low point? Like when you had that motor millions thing where you had to pay back all this money, that anxiety, or what you just mentioned with the divorce? Speak to that person who's at that low point right now.

Yeah. So what I'd say is, what happens when you're in the midst of crap is you start thinking of all the things we all do. You start thinking all the things that could go wrong, and then you think about all the things you could do to potentially fix them, and it feels like a mountain. Like, oh, my God, if the money doesn't come in, I can't pay my rent. People make fun of me, but I'll probably lose my girlfriend. I can't do this. I can't go on that vacation or whatever it is if I break up. What if I'm alone forever? What if I'm missing, like, all These things. When I was going through my divorce, I was thinking about my kids, all the things that could go wrong with them. And I was freaked out because I kept looking at all the things that potentially could happen. I was making up all these stories in my head because nothing actually did right. But then there was a moment when I realized that I had to obsess on a compelling future, right? Not just the hype or the motivation saying, hey, I'm going through a really tough time, but what would be ideal if it was a year from now? So if you're going through a tough time, a couple things I'd say is you really have to force yourself to write down what would be your ideal life in one year from today. And then, you know how often you got to look at it? Every day. You got to get up when you're feeling sad and go, no, but this is where I'm going to be in a year. You got to get up when things don't feel right. But this is where I'm going to be going in. You need that compelling future that drives you. It's the beacon of light. You got to stick the beacon of light a year out in front of you and go, I'm going through hell. I'm on a ship and I'm in the middle of a storm. But if I sail for a little while, eventually I'll get the calm seas heading towards that beacon of light. You might be in a storm, but know that storm was designed for, you know, yes, it sucks, but you have to have the compelling future. And one other thing that I think it came to mind, and I want to share this. Oh, try to think of one thing that can get you exponential results. What's the one problem you could solve that solves many. I'll give you a quick example if you're in the middle of shit right now. When I was going through a divorce, I was so stressed about my kids. I was stressed about seeing them, and I travel a lot. There was a million things, believe me. My parents were married nine times. So I have all these fears about what divorce does to kids. And I start. And I had a million things I thought could go wrong. And yes, I was focusing on them. And then I was trying to do a million things to fix them. I was doing yoga and meditation. I was working out more. I was going to see my buddy Tony Robbins. I was going therapy once a week. I was doing all these things to try to fix it. And then one day I'm like, what's one thing that could solve all this. And for me, I was like, wow, if I truly become dear friends with my ex wife, all those problems go away. If we hate each other, we resent each other. It'll be hard when I date someone new. It'd be hard for the kids. She might talk about when I'm not there. We might disagree on parenting styles. All the things I was worried about. The one thing that fixed all of it was being friends with my ex. So then all my attention, all the energy went into how do I know she's heard? How do I become a real friend? How do I grow as a man and fix the things I did in the past? I put all my energy for three months on letting my ex know that I was here as a friend. And today she is a dear friend of mine and we are co parenting and we have the most amazing kids in the world. And all the anxiety went away because I solved one problem. So being friends with my ex solved a million of them. Your company right now hiring someone to help you with marketing might solve all of them. Obsessing on selling might solve all the problems. So many people I see in companies, they're trying to solve 15 different departments. I said you're struggling because you have no cash flow. Stop all the bullshit. Stop worried about your CRM and your this department and that department and what building and what color your logos. Get your ass to selling. Get your ass to marketing. Learn Facebook marketing. Learn YouTube marketing. Because guess what solves lots of problems. Money sales solve problems. Sales buys you the new CRM. Sales buys you the new website. Sales buys you the new building. Right? So as simple as that might sound, I've really run my businesses and my life on those core principles. Do the things that move the needle in your life. Is there one problem you could solve that exponentially solves other problems? And those things also can get you out of the rut you're in. Simultaneously solving one problem that can have results in multiplying your results while you're looking at a beacon of light on where you want to go is probably two of the biggest game changers I could share with you. If you remember anything from this. Those two things solve one problem that solves many and have your beacon of light. As always, our podcast is free. We don't even sell advertising space. So how you could pay us back is by helping other people get this information in their hands. So if you enjoyed today's podcast, go ahead and take a second and rate and review the show and tell a friend, Heck take a snapshot and put it on your Instagram. It's the best way for you to help other action takers get the knowledge they need to live into their full potential. And if you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe now to get access to new episodes three times a week. And as always, you can go to the description for this podcast and check out the special links I shared with you to take your success, freedom and abundance to a whole nother level.