The #1 Mindset Shift That Builds Millionaires | The Why Project

The more you put yourself out there, and I want to tell you, for your success, the more you take on bigger challenges, the deeper you fail, the quicker you're going to get the success. I love that. People think as you get more successful, you don't have as many problems. They get bigger. Yeah, right. And what I always say is, if I'm in a room with successful people, I know the most successful person in the room solves bigger problems than everybody else. So here's something that'll blow your mind. What if you didn't wish less problems? What if you wished to have the ability to handle big problems?

You talk a lot about the difference between having an employee mindset and an owner mindset. And I always, while reading that, it caused me an immense curiosity to know how you got to that, but also what that difference looks like. Like, what does an employee, uh, mindset look like different to how an owner mindset looks like?

Thank God for people who decide to go all in on a career, or you and I couldn't build what we built. And especially if you provide a place where they can grow and impact, have impact, and escalate with, with raises and responsibilities. The difference to me is time, because I believe that most of us start, and again, this is just my perception.

Yeah.

I think most of us start with a similar mindset, meaning you go into a career and say, I'm gonna go in this, I'm gonna kick butt in this job. They're gonna notice me. Mm-hmm. They're gonna see me. They're gonna promote me. I'm gonna be a manager. I'm gonna run this someday. Maybe I even run this company. Yeah. And unfortunately, so many bigger companies are set up with such bureaucracy. 100%. That you get lost. And your great idea becomes invisible. You gotta live into your full potential. So I, so I feel the difference is career feels a little safer.

Yeah.

It's got some guardrails. You can't fall off the cliff. It's like that meme. It's like the little kid roller coaster. You hope it goes well, but it continues to go up. On the other side, the, the, the creator, the innovator, the entrepreneur mindset, the owner mindset, you train yourself to be okay without guardrails. You know that it's not the little kid roller coaster. It's the scary one that goes, I got this. There's no problem. Ah, it's all gonna crash. How can I do this? You know, COVID came. We're done. Oh, no, no. We switched. We're virtual. We got this. We could do good. No, no, no. Nobody wants to watch virtual. Like, it's like, how many times in your career, let me ask you, were you like, we finally got this. We are dialed. And 3 months, 6 months later, you're like, what am I doing? Why did I take this debt? Why am I doing this thing? Nobody's gonna come. How many times have you experienced it?

It's more than I can tell you.

I know I've gone through it. Could you go through it again?

1,000%.

Would you stress the same?

No.

Okay.

Especially knowing what I know now.

So the part I wanna share is an owner mindset, an entrepreneur mindset. You start having the nerve to go after your dreams and whether they win or lose, you win. And if you love it, don't, don't feel bad for that. Yeah. I'm talking about those that are in a job that wake up every day and go, ugh, all right. I'll get through it. And you wake up, you're 55, and you're like, the hell happened? Kids are out of the house. I'd rather get to the— like I said, I'd rather get to the end of your life and be like, maybe I didn't get as successful as I want, but I lived it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I squeezed the juice out of all of it, right?

Love that.

So the more you put yourself out there, the more you take on bigger challenges, the deeper you fail, the quicker you're going to get to success. People think as you get more successful, you don't have as many problems. They get bigger. And what I always say is if I'm in a room with successful people, I know the most successful person in the room solves bigger problems than everybody else. So here's something that'll blow your mind. Maybe, uh, take one thing from this podcast, take this. What if you didn't wish for less problems? What if you wished to have the ability to handle big ones? Something goes wrong in a boardroom and it's like, what do we do? Walk in, I got this one, give it to me.

I love that.

The building's on fire, everybody's running out, I'm running to make sure we got everything done. I'm the— I solve problems. I literally— I don't say that out loud, but that's one of my inner self-beings. It's one of my people. I am the problem solver.

Tell me about your childhood. How was that? How'd you go from, um, from your childhood to where you're at now?

You know, um, everybody has their story. For me, my parents were married 9 times between the two of them. I moved 20 times by the time I was 19. I, I'd go to school some days without lunch money when I was living with my dad, and I would just tell my friends, hey, I'm just not hungry. Nah, I'm, I'm trying to get ripped or something. I'd make something up, but my dad didn't have the dollar for lunch money that day, right? And I think as you look at this, and this, this is something I think is really important, each one of those moments can be the thing that held you back, or each one of those moments could be the thing that drives you forward. And I'm not trying to oversimplify it, but I'm going to tell a simple little story that I heard ages ago. Twin boys.

Okay.

One of them is in jail, in and out of doing drugs, in and out of trouble, is in jail. And they say, and the other brother came really successful, married, happy family, doing really well with his own business. They interviewed both of them. Their father was a severe alcoholic that used to beat him. They interviewed the kid in jail, the man in jail, and said, what happened? Why are you in jail? And he said, With a father like mine, where else could my life go? And when they interviewed the successful brother, he said, with a father like mine, what else could I do? I, uh, I'm here with my daughter. I've, I have 4 children. I'm married, feel blessed, married to the love of my life. And I watched so much dysfunction that I just decided God gave me an example of what not to do. Yeah. And I could use that as fuel or I could use that as an anchor. But what if all the stuff you went through was actually designed for you? For a bigger reason. And I've used this word that somebody told me about 20 years ago. What if you were actually paying your success tax? But it was a journey. It was. There was times you thought about quitting, right?

1,000%.

Many times. Times you maybe compared yourself to your dad. True. I just need to do something completely different because I don't want to be in his shadow. I'm just making stuff up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right? And I believe, what if God, the universe, whatever you believe, has a checklist and there's 20 things that you have to check off? Paying your success tax before you get the huge breakthrough where you impact lives, change the world. And you don't know how many. Maybe you have to go through 20. Maybe I have to go through 30. Maybe one of the guys here has to go through 3. But what if he's been thinking a lot about, because his dad's in the— I'm making this up. Yeah. And thinking about quitting, but he still got up and did it. Didn't have the money for the studio, but found the money. Even though somebody let him down and the builder took their down payment, he still got up and he's doing it himself. Check. And what if you look at it and go, the situation I'm going through sucks. What if you just thought, this doesn't feel good? What if I'm checking another box of how many success tax I gotta pay? And what I always say is, what if there's an absolute number? I gotta get through 17 self-doubt and failures. Number 18. I got chills talking. Yeah. Yes. Number 18 is my turn. When you look at it differently, you go, this one sucks, but that's number 7. That's cool. I'm closer. Yeah. Right. And I realized as a kid that I started— I found a way to do that. And I wasn't a study of anybody. I just got lucky in that way where I was like, this stinks, but what if it's building my character? What if it's making me stronger? And aren't we really just who we believe we are?

I was very curious to ask you if you thought that maybe that's how finding your purpose also looks like. If you think that maybe we need to take action and then figure out what that why is or what your purpose is, how, how do you think that looks like that?

You want the cheat code? I do. Please. The absolute cheat code. This is when we're not taught in school. This is why my 19-year-old daughter's with me here today and I love she's working with me because she gets to see real life stuff. You know what the cheat code is? Find something you think you like. And then find somebody who's amazing at it and model what they do. Mm-hmm. The biggest thing that stops all of us is the word how. I want to go into the new business. How, how do you start? Do I start with an LLC? Do I start with hiring people? Do I start with marketing? Do I start with a bank account? Is it an S corp or an LLC? Do, do, do I need to raise money? How, how, how, how, how? Ah, I'll stay where I'm at. What if you just find somebody who has already done it? Just see what they've done. Think of, I always talk about the rainforest in Brazil as a joke because I watched a documentary on it, right? Yeah. And it's crazy how thick it is and dense it is and how many things can kill you in it. Yep. Right? So here's what I'll say. Here's the cheat code. It's really simple. And you should write this down or think through it. Model proven practices. What does that look like? I use this simple analogy. Imagine going to Brazil and there's a 20-mile trek, old indigenous, beautiful place. It's got rivers and mountains and everybody wants to go there. It's spiritual. You feel amazing when you get there. You know how most people approach it? They get to the, they get to the thing and it's 20 miles that way. Great. And they run in the woods. Yeah. They get bit by a spider, they fall into a pit. Mm-hmm. They go, they don't know where to sleep. They run back out and go, that is crazy. I am never doing that. I'm never gonna see this beautiful place. But what if you looked down a little bit and there was a guy and a girl there and they'd been walking those woods for 20 years and they had the exact map. This is where it's— halfway point is where you sleep. It's really safe. The cave is where you can get some fresh water. Avoid this because there's snakes in this area. Avoid these spiders. What if you just walked over and paid $5 for the map? The cheat code. Yep. So you still need the hunger to get through the woods. You still need the drive. You still need not to quit. Those are just— you still need courage. Courage is a big muscle. You got to move forward. But who's going to win? The person that's modeling proven practices with the map or the person that just runs into the wilderness? So the part is investigate the areas where you think you want to go. Find somebody who's living success in that area and start modeling them. And just by through their lens, you could say, I would love to be where they are. I know it took them 20 years to get there, but could it take me 5? That's great. We're not the smartest people in the world. We just find the best in the world at what they do and model them.

How you are personally using AI and, and what you feel, why you think it's important for people to learn about AI.

Okay, so I'm gonna start here. Not that everybody wants to hear about AI, but I'm gonna tell you, you have to, especially if you're an artist. If you feel like it's gonna take away your humanity, if it's gonna replace you, there are weird emotions that go on. Yeah, they just are. But the fact of the matter is, and please hear me, it's here, it's coming, we can't avoid it. And avoiding it will just widen the gap. And what if I told you the next 5 minutes you'll realize that AI can make you more human? Mm-hmm. Right? Okay. You're already in a screen. Everybody's already in a screen. So think about, I've used this analogy before, but I'm going to use it again. In the 1800s, if a farmer planted an acre of corn, in other parts of the country they use different things of acre, just a plot. Yeah, yeah. It took about 40 to 50 hours to It took 3 days to plant an acre of corn by hand. When a tractor came along, the newest technology, you could plant an acre of corn in 30 minutes. If you didn't have a tractor, could you stay in business?

Compared to the rest of the people?

No. No, because I don't care how much you work. Yeah. 40 hours, the other person could do what, 100 acres? Yeah, right. Just, you can't, it's compounded. You buy time back, but it's not just time, it's leverage. Think about when the internet came back. There was a lot of people that said, no, the internet's crazy. It's gonna go bad. It's gonna end the world. Would you do business with somebody today if you said, hey, why don't you, uh, email that over? And like, oh, I'm not online.

Yeah, it'd be silly.

How do I get the contract? Yeah, I don't even like FedEx. I'm just going to put a stamp on this thing, I'll mail it to you, have it in about 12 days. You'd be like, team, don't do business with them.

No, it'd be impossible.

Impossible. We are the first generation to go no AI to AI. So it feels— it's personal. Some people might be watching right now and go, I'd finally launch that business. I'd unlock my creativity. What if I told you that literally AI is the greatest time saver that's ever been invented and it doesn't cost as much as the tractor? So if you think about— you should never replace the human part of you. You should never replace the passion of writing a song. You should never replace the passion of how you play, how you sing, and all that. It can never replace you. But done wisely, if you audit all the things you do on a regular basis, I would bet my life in less than 4 weeks, automating, accelerating, augmenting, letting AI do the boring, the mundane, the repetitive. I would bet my life in 4 weeks, I could show you to get 15 hours a week back because it not only saves time, it allows you to think better. One of the things we teach is how to get AI to know you. Right now, most people use AI. It's like having an employee. That you hire, that's a great employee, but you have no context. They don't know the music you like. They don't know your life story. Don't know your purpose. Don't know your constraints. Don't know what your 6-month goals are, 1-year goals. Don't know where you failed in the past, where you've succeeded in the past. You just hire a great employee and go, hey, let's make, uh, let's make our business go a little better this month. Thanks. Goodbye. And walk in the other room like, now if they're great, they might give you a great generic answer. Hey, we can, uh, do better marketing and, um, We'll do 3 songs a month, not 1 a year, whatever. You're like, that was kind of a crappy answer. Help me a little. Yeah. But imagine if you spent hours teaching that great employee, that super smart employee that has access to everything that's ever written in the history of the world and said, hey, I want you to be my— I want you to help me write a business plan for the next year of my life. But let me tell you, this is where I've been. This is my father. This is what I've done. These are my values. This is what we stand for. This is the studio we have. This is the podcast we have. These are our best episodes. These are the best songs I've ever written. And you just loaded all that context. And then when you ask, it says, hey, let me just tell you what I think your best plan is. In an hour, you go from a generic AI that gives you a little bit better answers to like the smartest business partner you could ever have in the history of the world.

And you use it like that as well.

It's exactly what we teach. It's what we're gonna teach at our event. I don't need that roller coaster. So, you know, we opened up a restaurant and, uh, you know, life was good. We raised our son. And could you imagine if your maker played you a video of the man you could have been? Oh, that was with your studio in the other room jamming with people you love. And the, and the celeb, and the singer that you admire the most shows up out of the blue one day and you jam and make this hit. And you watch all this, you're like, oh my God. And you knew all the complexity in between. Which one would you choose? Did you choose a safety net?

No, I would go for the one that I hadn't.

Even though it was a roller coaster, the adult roller coaster. If that was the case, you got to the end of your life and your maker gave you one wish, what would it be?

To do it.

Do it again, right? Yeah. You know what I tell everybody? Wish granted.

Do it.

You're here today. Yeah, you can make the decision today. What do you need to say no to today? What do you need to say yes to today? The thing you've been saying no— you know you need to say no to for 5 years. What if today you just go, life's too short, no, I'm not doing this anymore? Or yes, I'm starting my music career. Yes, I'm jumping in. Yes, I'm going to start the business. Yes, the creativity. In a moment, we can make that decision.