How I discovered my WHY

Well, hello, I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and this is beyond you'd why podcast, where we get beyond just talking about your why or thinking about your why to actually living your why so that you can have a bigger impact. Now, this is our very first podcast, and I'm so excited to share with you everything that we've learned over the last eight years in helping over 30,000 people discover their why and live their why so that they can have a bigger impact. That's what we're going to share in this podcast. Now, the format that we're going to use is kind of a variety. We're going to have some interviews where we bring in people that you do know that have lived their why, but we're also going to bring to you some people that you don't know, everyday people that have taken their why and created better relationships, created better businesses, learned to understand themselves better so that they can move in the right direction. You're going to meet lots of people like that as well. We're also going to have some informational podcasts where it'll be just you and I and I get to share with you things that I've learned about the why in helping 30,000 people discover their why. We're going to talk about the nine whys. We're going to talk about how to discover your personal why formula. We're going to talk about how to live your why and how it can apply to every different area of your life. And then we're also going to have some question and answer podcasts where they're going to be more of a live podcast where you can call in and ask questions or you can send in questions, and I'll answer them on the podcast. So it's going to be a great series. And where I thought we ought to start today was telling you a little bit about my story so that you can understand where this all came from. You see, in 1980, I graduated from the Albuquerque Academy. I'm a dentist here in Albuquerque, by the way. So I know you're probably thinking, what the heck is a dentist doing talking to me about the why? You know, maybe we should be talking about fillings or bad breath or something like that, which we could do, as a matter of fact, if you want, on one of the podcasts. But what we're going to do today is I want to share with you how this all happened. And way back in 1980, I graduated from high school here from the Albuquerque Academy, and I went off to college, and I had the major of Undeclared, right? I don't know how many of you out there had that same major, but I kept that major as long as I could because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't really have any way to determine what I wanted to do. I didn't have much guidance. I didn't know how to make that decision. So instead of making a decision, I pretty much live life by default. I just kind of let things happen and let's see where it takes me. So I stayed undeclared as long as I could until the last possible day, where they said, okay, today you've got to declare your major. And so in declaring my major, I just picked the only class that I got a good grade in, which was biology. So I became a biology major. Didn't really know why, but I'm a biology major now. And I kept. I had that until they finally made you decide, what are you going to do with it? Okay, now you're a biology major. What are you going to do with your career? And so since I didn't know, again, I just went with by default. My father was a dentist. I knew the lifestyle of a dentist. I'd never really worked in his practice, so I didn't know much about being a dentist. But I just said, okay, I'll try dental school. So off I went. Applied, I got in, I went off to USC dental school. I had a great time. Dental school was so much fun. Learning about the mouth, learning about teeth, learning how to help people get healthy. And when I graduated in 1988, I was so excited to be coming back to Albuquerque and starting my practice with my dad. Do you remember the first day, your first day of work? If you're working now, do you remember when. How excited you were for the phone to ring or for you to be able to help someone or for you be able to sell something? You were just so excited. Well, that's how I was. I couldn't wait to get back to Albuquerque, and I was going to fix everybody's tooth in Albuquerque. Nobody was going to have a cavity while I was a dentist, right? I was so fired up. So I get back here, and the advice that I was given at the time was, if you build a great product, people will come. Have you ever heard that? Build a great product, do the best job that you can. People will naturally see that. They'll naturally come to appreciate that, and they'll send their friends to you, and you'll have an amazing business because you did a great job. Well, that's the advice that I was given. So that's what I did. I spent 20 years developing a great product. I spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars going to continuing education. While most dentists were doing 20 hours a year, I was doing 200 hours a year. I went to the best institutes, I hired the best mentors. If there was something I wanted to learn, I would fly that person in and have them work with me so that I could perfect my craft to become an elite dentist. Then my practice, the business of my practice, we went to the Schuster center for Professional Development, which was a business school for dentists, so that we could get our policies and systems and processes down so that we could deliver what we said we were going to do. I have the latest technology. I have a great staff, very well trained staff. I built a great product. And I can tell you, having a great product is not enough. It's not enough. I found people come to expect what you deliver. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to go to a party and say, hey, look at these nice crowns Dr. Sanchez made for my front teeth. They want you to say, hey, you got a great smile. And then say, thank you. And they leave it at that. So I went from being so fired up and so excited to feeling lost and feeling helpless and feeling, in essence, really pissed off because I had worked so hard at something and it wasn't turning out the way I wanted. We were only getting four to six new patients a month, which, in a dental practice for myself and my brother, was not enough. I was so frustrated. I remember sitting in my office, which is where I am right now, listening in the other room in my operatories and hearing silence because I didn't have any patience. And I remember just tasting that anxiety and feeling that my heart was just ready to jump out of my chest. I knew there had to be a better way. And in that moment, what I realized was that I had been looking outside of myself for answers. If I just buy another piece of technology, if I just hire another person, I take another course, that's going to solve my problem. And it never did. I needed to take that mirror that I was pointing at everything else and point it at myself and say, who am I? Why do I do what I do? What do I believe? What am I about? What is my gift? You know? That same week, my daughter Bella, who was 15 at the time, asked me to take her and her teenage girlfriends to the midnight book opening of Twilight. Remember when Twilight came out? Great book, great movie. So here I am in the bookstore at midnight, and of course, I'm by myself now because my teenage daughters don't daughter doesn't want me around. So I'm wandering through this bookstore by myself, and I look down this one aisle and I see a book called the Answer. I'm thinking, wow, I got all these questions, all these issues, all this stuff going on in my head. And there's a book called the Answer. So I pick it up, and it was exactly what I was looking for. It was a book written by a guy named John Assaraf. If you've seen the movie the Secret, you know who he is. He was the guy with the vision boards. As a young man, he took over a ReMax real estate company that was failing, took it from nothing to 1.4 billion, sold it in his early 40s, and then went back and figured out why he was so successful. Why did the vision boards work? How does it work in your brain? How do you train your brain for success? And that was what I was looking for. So I hired him as my coach. Now, through John, I learned a lot of things, but one of the things I did learn was how to use the Internet. I learned how to do websites. I learned how to do drip campaigns. I learned how to do mess. I learned how to do SEO. I learned how to create videos. I learned how to get my message out to the world. Now I can tell everybody about me. But the only problem was, what am I going to say? What am I going to say that separates me from everybody else? Back then, anyone who could put something white in your mouth called themselves a cosmetic dentist. Where I had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours perfecting my craft, somebody right out of school said they were the same as me. What was I going to say that didn't make me sound bad? What was I going to say that didn't make me sound desperate or like I actually needed new patients? So since I didn't know what to say, I just stayed quiet. You ever felt that way? You ever felt like you got something really, really good, you've built a great product, or you yourself, somebody that this company really needs, but you don't know how to say who you are or what you believe or what you're about or what your company's about? So instead, you just let it ride and you hope things turn out? That's what I was doing. I can tell you. It didn't work. Then I heard John Asraf interview Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek wrote the book Start with why. If you haven't seen his TED Talk or you haven't read his book, I highly recommend it. I heard John Assaraf interview Simon Sinek. Simon developed this golden circle concept. So picture this. Imagine a bullseye with a center bullseye, three concentric circles. Okay, A bullseye. The center one says why, the next one out says how and the next one out says what. So you got why, how, what? What Simon talks about is, he says inspiring people, people like Steve Jobs or Martin Luther King, inspiring organizations like Apple or Southwest Airlines or Harley Davidson, they all communicate the same way and it's the opposite to the way the rest of us communicate, where we tell people what we do, right? I'm a dentist, I'm a chiropractor, I'm an attorney, I'm a student, I'm a CEO.

They tell you why they do what they do. So he says, everybody knows what they do. Some know how they do what they do. By how, we mean what are your proprietary processes or the things that you think make you different? But very few know why they do what they do. And by why, we mean what's your purpose, what's your cause, what's your belief? He says it's the inspiring companies that start with their why, then tell you how they do what they do. And. And lastly, what they do that connects to your brain in a completely different way that allows you to move in their direction, buy their product, buy their service, join their cause because it connects to the decision making part of the brain. And when I heard that, I was like, gah. That is what I'm missing. That's the missing piece. I already got a great product. I already got the stuff that's hard to do. Now I just need to know how to talk about it. And that was the piece that I didn't have. So I became, I totally bought in. I'm going to start my life with my why. I'm going to start my business with my why. I'm going to start the messaging and the marketing and the culture of my business around my why. I'm in. But the only problem was I didn't know my why. I didn't know my why. So this wonderful concept became useless for me because I couldn't do it. It became another one of those books that just pisses you off, right? I want it, I see it, I can't have it. So I became obsessed with discovering my why. I called Simon and I said, simon, I need you to help me discover my why. So he took me through this process, over the course of about eight months, going backwards in my life through every significant event from today, all the way back to when I was a little kid, looking for a pattern of what made me feel successful. And we kept working with it and kept working with it, and finally we got to the vicinity of what my why was. And then I kept working on it on my own, and I kept working. Finally, I discovered my why. My why is to find a better way and then share it. And as soon as I realized my why, God, my life's made so much sense to me. I started playing back almost like movies in my mind all the areas where I have found better ways. I've got lots of patents and products and inventions, all better ways of doing things. I developed a chair for everybody, for everyday people. I mean, for people that sit all the time. Instead of you having to form yourself to the chair, the chair forms itself to you. It's called the health chair. I developed fitness challenges for everyday people, a better way to get in shape. Everything I do is all about finding a better way and then sharing it. God, my life made so much sense to me. So I took what I learned from John Assaraf, and I took what I learned from Simon Sinek, and I created this yification process back in 2010. It's why we do what we do, how we do it, what is it we do, what's our vision for what we do, who is it we need to attract to create that vision, and what is it they want so we know where to find them and how to talk to them. When I created that wifi cation process, I applied it to my dental practice and my practice took off. 2010, we had our best year ever. Most new patients, most fun, most satisfaction. We went from four to six new patients a month, which is just barely surviving, if that, to 35 to 45 new patients a month. And in our practice, a new patient is worth about $6,000. So it was significant for us. And so 2010, our best year ever. 2011, better again. 2012, better. 13, 14, 15, 16. And we just finished 17. And that year, this year was better than last year. So every year has been better and better and better. It has been so much fun. I can tell you that abundance is a heck of a lot more fun than just getting by. So what happened was I started getting calls from other dentists asking me to help them do what I did. So I had to develop processes and systems for helping other people to discover their why and use it in their business. And so I worked with a couple of hundred dentists, and then I started getting calls from lawyers, and I've worked with a few hundred lawyers, and then I started getting calls from chiropractors and financial groups and financial businesses. And these businesses started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And now I've worked with over 500 companies, from small yoga studios to multi, multi billion dollar companies. And I've seen them all go through this transformation of, instead of talking about what they do, they talk about why they do what they do. You see, because transformation isn't about you trying to be someone else. Transformation is about you being you. You being you. You are already good enough. You already have something very, very special. You already have something that you bring that people need and people want. You just have to know what it is. You have to know who you are. And that happens when you discover your why and your how and your what. And that is the personal why formula that we're going to talk about in depth in the podcast so that once you're clear on you, that's when your life and your path and your relationships and your business all become clear. A clear business starts with a clear you, and that's what we're going to focus on. So as I was helping these companies to discover their why and live their why, I became obsessed with helping people to discover their why. And if you remember, I said my why is to find a better way and then share it with. Well, I went back to what Simon was trying to do in helping people discover their why, and I came up with a much better way. Instead of taking six or eight or 10 months, I was able to help someone discover their why. In about an hour, I could sit down with them and take them through a series of questions, help them discover their why. And so I started working with anybody who would let me help them discover their why. If you were sitting next to me on a plane, you were getting your why discovered. It was that simple. You meet me out at a restaurant and we get to have a conversation. You were going to get your why discovered. So I worked with anyone who would let me helping them discover their why. And after working with thousands and thousands of people on stages, on Skype, one on one, in groups, I found that there was only nine different whys. Nine different whys. That was the most important thing that I discovered. Discovering the nine whys then allowed me to help discover your why in about 15 minutes. Because we finally had an endpoint, you know, when I had my why discovered. Originally, when Simon helped me to discover my why. There was no endpoint. There was no way of saying, hey, this is now your why. I didn't know I had to keep going and keep going and keep going. I never felt like there was an end point. So how valuable is something if you're not sure? But once I discovered the nine whys, it all came to light. The nine whys? I've not found a tenth. Is it possible there's a tenth? I guess it's possible, but I have not seen one. The nine whys has made it possible to now create a software program which many of you have already taken. Or if you haven't, go to my website whyinstitute.com and discover your why. The why app is on the site for free. To discover your why. You've got to discover your why in order to live your why. You've got to discover your why in order to have clarity. You've got to discover your why in order to have better relationships, make better decisions, have better businesses. Because everything you do comes from why you do what you do. Discovering your why will answer so many of those questions that you've had throughout your life and haven't been able to answer. That's what we're going to focus on for the rest of these podcasts with guests. Like I said, we're also going to do it in just informational podcasts just like this. So I think that's probably enough for today. I hope you got a little bit of a sense of who I am and why I'm so passionate about helping others live their why and get beyond just talking about your why. You see, my why is to find a better way. And there's nothing that brings me more excitement that I'm more passionate about than showing other people a better way. Right? Finding a better way and sharing it. I'm sharing a better way for you to understand yourself so that you can then go out and have a bigger impact. That's what I have passion about. So in the upcoming podcast, I'm going to go deeper into those nine whys. I want you to know the nine whys in detail. Not only because one of them is yours, but because one of them is people that are close to you, around you. Do you think it would be valuable to know the why of your spouse or significant other or of your child? Would it be valuable to know the why of your teenage daughter for her to know that she has a gift and what her gift is before she starts to date? How about the teachers where you take your kids. Would it be nice to know how they think before you entrust your child with them? Or maybe even our politicians? You know, we've got our governor governorial race going here in New Mexico. Wouldn't it be nice to know how the candidates think, what their why is, before you vote for them? So I want you to become experts at knowing the nine whys so that you can see them and use them to build to know yourself better for one, to know the significant people in your lives better for two, and to help you in so many other areas of your life that we're going to talk about as we move forward in our podcast series. So I'm excited that we're doing this. I'm excited that you're here. I can't wait for our next podcast. It's going to be great. We're going to go dive deeper into the nine whys so that you know them, you can use them, and you can get beyond just talking about your why and actually live your why. Have a great day. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez. This is beyond you'd why podcast, Sam.