"No One Is Prepared for What's Coming with AI" - Dean Graziosi x Lewis Howes

The speed in which change is happening, it's uncertain for everybody. Uh-huh. We've never had something move so exponential. Like, we've come into— it was the printing press and then electricity and all the, you know, the internet came and FedEx and fax machines and the evolution. But all of them kind of had this sweep. And the way it's moving now, just, we're not used to it.

How do we stay calm under all this uncertainty and chaos that's here? And it seems like even more is going to be coming.

I've never seen a time where nobody really has the answer. I think that's— the space we're in.

No one has the answer.

No, no one has the answer. In my life, whenever I'm like, how do I go to another level? How do I shift the changing economy? The real estate market's down, there's new technology. There's always somebody that's like, oh, I've been there, let me just tell you. Where we're going is uncharted territory. We've never had anything that's smarter than us, faster than us, quicker than us. So I don't think anyone has that answer. So if you can't find the answer for your certainty, then you got to get the inside strong. I don't think there's been a better time in history to have to work on the inside so you can handle this. When people want to learn AI, they might go on YouTube, might find somebody, you start watching videos, and it's like, oh my God, do I need to get a Mac Mini and a ClawBot? What's a ClawBot? And I think people are starting off on like step 5, and it's the same for anything. So AI, any change in your life, I think any change has to start with a compelling reason, like a purpose. Why do I want this in the first place? And then once you have a reason, like, oh, what if I could use AI to just save me 5 hours a week? Just get rid of the stuff I don't want to do. Could it automate that? That's my purpose. Because I want that time to coach Little League for my son. He's 6 years old. I want to coach Little League. So now you got a purpose, right? That calms the nervous system. The next thing is you got to overcome the fear. Because if your brain's thinking this is going to end the world, robots someday, craziness, start World War III, if you do that, you don't move forward. So then you got to find a way to say, hey, humanity is going to find a way through this. And I'm just going to say AI is going to help cure cancer, solve jobs that nobody wants, and we're going to find a way to all flourish. The first is you got to have a reason why you're doing it. The second thing is you got to overcome the fear. Then the third thing, you got to embrace change and got to say, hey, if I stay here, probably not going to work out for me. I'm on the side of the mountain. If I just stay here, I can't hang on the side of the mountain forever. So I got to probably go up. I mean, would you do business with anybody who didn't have the internet right now? No. In a year from now, will you do anybody— will you hire anybody that doesn't know AI?

Probably not.

You won't. So then you got to say, I got to embrace this change. And then after change, you got to cut through the clutter, meaning there's a million apps, a million things. Pick one.

Yeah.

And go deep. I'm just going to learn ChatGPT. I'm going to learn how to get 5 hours a week back with this one thing. Then you start the education, right? If you miss those first steps, then you're jumping right into the overwhelm. You have a little fear, you're afraid to change, the clutter, you're stuck.

So what's the greatest skill someone can learn today then that's different than 10, 20 years ago?

Communication. All the things that AI is doing, programmers and coders been doing for a long time, but they would sit in a room and code forever. We didn't know that language. If you wanted a cool app to keep everybody on your team organized 5 years ago, 4 years ago, you'd pay 10 programmers. It'd be hundreds of dollars every hour per programmer, take you months. You'd adjust it and tweak it. Today, if you know how to communicate and give good context, you could go talk to a quad agent, communicate with the English language of what you want the outcome to be.

And it can make it.

And because of good communication, it'll build the same thing in 20 minutes, maybe a half hour, maybe it'll take you half a day because you know how to communicate. So I think communication skills, people-to-people is still one of the most important things in the world. Communication, influence, persuasion. And now context and communication with AI that's going to help us go faster.

So learning communication skills, but it seems like it's hard for kids to learn that when they're glued to their phone constantly.

Yeah, that's, that's an absolute fact. The one thing I've helped my kids always do is create a compelling future that they're fighting for. And if they spend 5 hours a day on their phone, they're never going to reach that compelling future. You know, I don't expect my kids to have the drive I have. You know, I went to school without lunch money. I have that still inside. That broke kid still lives inside of me. I still work like I'm broke. You can't inherit that, but you have to find other ways to motivate a next generation. Your kids won't be motivated because they didn't have lunch money, but they could be motivated not to live into their full potential. They could see people who've coasted their whole lives and they don't find happiness and joy. And I don't care if my daughter, my son wants to be the best teacher in entire school. I will support them. They don't have to be crazy entrepreneurs, but they need a compelling compelling future. If not, you just drift.

But how does someone develop a compelling future if they're always stuck in uncertainty? Wars are happening. AI is just confusing to learn, even the basics.

Isn't it easy to stack all the things that could go wrong? Yeah, but there's also moments that you're like, I don't care about any of that. I'm just not quitting. I don't care if they don't hear me now. They'll hear me someday. Like, we have both of those people live inside of us. The first thing is you have to realize you could stack all the things that go wrong to where your psyche's like, why should I do anything? And right alongside of it, you could also stack all that could go right. Wow, what if I could use this innovation? What if I could use AI to not have to raise money, to not have to hire employees? What if I could finally unlock the creativity that's been living inside of me? What if humans actually put guardrails up and it doesn't go wrong? What if the wars stop? What if there is peace? Because whatever you focus on is what you're gonna feel. I would just say at 57, now that I look at things, the negative side still comes up every day. It's not like it just goes away and dies. You can just acknowledge it and say, I'm not gonna stack the bad today. I'm gonna stack that I'm blessed to be here. I can live another day. I can fight another fight. That's the start of a compelling future. There's more things to it, but I think that's— with the news and the speed of which it's coming to us, If you're stacking the bad, you can't handle it all. Let's talk about that compelling future for a second. What drives you? It is purpose. Let's picture you have a toolbox and you start getting momentum. I'll reach in that toolbox for whatever I need to keep me moving forward. So it's not just a compelling future. It's not just if things go wrong, whatever it takes to move you. Sometimes I'm motivated motivated by what could be. Other times I'm motivated not to go backwards. So for example, in this toolbox, sometimes I might look at— get to the end of my life and have my creator play me a video of the man I could have been. And I feel it though. I don't just say it. It's not just something I'm doing for— like, I literally feel of saying, yeah, you were inspiration to your kids. They moved forward. They saw their dad struggled, failed, got back up, and kept going. And maybe I'm like, no, and I played small. Like, I'll visualize that. And I visualize things like, if I see who I could have been, the lives I could have impacted, the things I could have done, the relationships I could have built, and I missed it, I always think to myself, the only wish I would have is to go back. And then I say, Dean, wish granted. You're here. Let's freaking go.

That's cool.

Right? But there's other times that that might not even be enough. Now, I gotta tell you, my dad was married 5 times. And And it's okay for me to share this. He was physically abused and sexually abused as a child. He just had built-in anger, right? So 10 brothers and sisters, when he didn't talk to any of them, he didn't talk to his mother or father when they passed away. My sister hasn't talked to him in 22 years, his only other sibling. I watched my dad work hard, struggle, try to be a good dad, try to figure it out. This is going to sound horrible, but you know what's in my toolbox when I really want my if you don't do this, you're gonna end up like your father.

Oh, man.

But it's not easy. You need this toolbox full of things that drive you. So you— I don't want to be complacent. I don't want to get to my life, end of life, and feel like I coasted. I personally, and I think all of it, what keeps us alive is we feel alive when we grow. It doesn't mean millions and billions of dollars, just a better version today than I was yesterday. And when you do that, you feel alive. Nobody like— I don't care what anybody says. No one wants to coast.

And why do you think it's so hard for even some of the most successful people to separate their self-worth from their net worth or their bank account?

It all's merged together. We live in a time where significance, it's just prominent, you know, especially with everything that's online and you get to see and everybody seems like they have the perfect life and they're making more money and it was easier for them. But I find myself falling into that trap still to this day. Really?

What's the trap you fall into the most?

When I surround myself with people who are doing better than me, I think I'm doing good. Then I get in a room and I'm like, I'm broke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, and it's still in there. And that insecure broke kid from 7th grade without lunch money goes, see, because you're not that smart, you can't get where they are. When you feel that way, the immediate thing you should do is look in your rearview mirror because we forget where we came from.

Yes.

We're looking to the horizon. We're trying to trace the horizon. You can't get there. So you got to turn around and go, look where I was a year ago, 6 years ago, 16 years ago. Number 2, I said count your blessings. I said that for a reason is when I feel that way, I'll immediately say, maybe I could have been a little more successful, but I have an amazing relationship with all 4 of my kids. I love my wife more than anything. I have an amazing relationship with her. My 19-year-old daughter's with me traveling right now, right? And as soon as I put my brain in that mode of looking in the rearview mirror, look how far I've come, look what's in front of me, my nervous system calms down and all of a sudden I'm back and it's gone. But I'm telling you, the reason I'm sharing that, because you say it and I'd love to be the person that says, "No, that doesn't affect me anymore." But it does. I'd be lying to you.

What are the 3 most powerful ways you're using AI to either save time, accelerate growth or help you build financial wealth?

One of the biggest patterns, it's one of the things that Tony and I teach, is get your AI to know you deeply. Most people are using it as one-offs. You want it to help you write a marketing email. You want it to do something that an attorney would typically do. And people are kind of using it as a one-off like Google, and it'll give you a good answer. But the more context it has, the deeper it knows you, knows you. So what does that mean? You could literally go on your phone, say you have a ChatGPT account, and just talk to it for 20 minutes and tell it your ideas, your goals, your constraints, your worries, where you hope the company's going to go, how much you love your wife, how many kids you have. And people say, yeah, you're telling it a lot, aren't you? I'm like, well, if you have social media, they already know. The world already knows, right? And then you start telling what your daily tasks are, your weekly tasks, your weekly goals, the things that usually hold hold you back. Most people aren't doing that yet with AI. Teach it. Tell it what you need. Tell it what you want. Let it get to know you. It will be a completely different answer. A second one, you know, in business they call it an SOP, the standing operating procedure. It just means the process.

Yeah.

Some people call it a playbook. In AI terms, they call it a workflow. It's all the same thing. So I would take— once, once you get AI to know you a little The next question you can ask after it gets to know you is tell it everything you have going on that week and then say, how can you help me with what's on my plate to save 5 hours this week? Because this is why I say it can make you more human. If you get 5 hours back, you can actually do the stuff that makes you more human. Yeah. Right? The next thing is pick one thing that you do and document all the steps. Like, this is how I book an appointment. It's how I get someone on the phone. Then once I call them, I This is what I say. This is how I follow up. This is what I send them as an email. And just document one standing operating procedure, one playbook, one workflow, and then load that into the same AI and say, where in this workflow can you help me go faster? And it'll blow your mind. It'll say, hey, I could do this thing. I could send out the daily reminder email on my own. I could do this thing. I could do that thing. And it just gives you a different— it's like having a really smart personal assistant that's there to work for you 24 hours, 7 days a week.

And what do you feel like is missing most in humanity right now?

I hate to fall back on something that might sound so simple, but we've had such a good life for so long, even though we think things are tough. Would you rather— would you want to be alive at any other time in history? No. We don't realize that we take it for granted. So what is the thing missing? Gratitude. You can see a land of opportunity or a land of the lost. It's your decision.