Discover your Why with Gary Sanchez and Joe Apfelbaum

Today I have a special guest with me. His name is Gary Sanchez. He's the founder of the Why Institute, and I've written some things about him, but I want to welcome him. Gary, welcome to this LinkedIn Live with me today.

Thanks, Joe, man. I'm looking forward to this.

So I'm so excited that you had me on your podcast, and I'm going to be sharing the link to the podcast. And as you may know, or you may not know, my goal is to go on LinkedIn Live 244 times this year. It sounds like a big number for some people because some people never even went LinkedIn Live once. But I always say, if you want to get really good at something, you've got to set a real big goal to get there. And as you know, my why is to find a better way and to share it. So I'm always looking for a better way to do everything. Do you want to briefly just introduce yourself and Let everybody know what this concept of the why is and why it's important to know your own why.

For sure, Joe. You know, forever man's been asking this question, why? Why do I do what I do? And why am I here? And what makes me special? And many people have written about it. You've heard Simon Sinek talk about it. He's kind of the most well-known one lately, but he's just the first— the, the last of many that have talked about this. Back to You know, the Bible to Mark Twain says, the 2 most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. And many people go through their whole life never knowing what their why is. And so, that's kind of what happened with me. I was a dentist for the last 32 years. When I graduated from dental school in 1988, the advice that I was given was build a great product and people will come. And so, I spent 20 years reaching the highest levels you could in dentistry. And still found myself blending in with everybody else who said, yeah, I'm a dentist too. Drove me crazy, Joe. And that's when I saw Simon Sinek's TED Talk. Probably 61 million people have seen that. I've read his book many, many times. And I said, that's what I'm missing. I have a great what, but I don't know my why. And I became obsessed with discovering my why. That's when I called Simon. I said, Simon, I need you to help me discover my why. And he and I spent about 8 months together going back through my life looking for clues. And When I finally found out that my why, like yours, Joe, is to find a better way and share it, that's when my life made so much sense to me. I've got a lot of patents and products and inventions that are better ways of doing things. So, in my dental practice, we stopped talking about what we do— crowns, bridges, fillings, all that fun stuff— and we started talking about why we do what we do and what we believe. And that's when my practice took off. And so, I started getting calls from other dentists wanting me to help them. And since my why, like yours, is to find a better way, I went back and figured out a better way to help someone discover their why than what Simon was doing. And I did it for thousands of people for free until I started to notice patterns and trends and similarities. And I figured out there's only 9 different whys. And we all have all 9, but one of them is more dominant than the rest. And that's the one that becomes your why. And that's how you operate from that perspective of always looking for a better way, right, Joe? Are you always looking for a better way?

I'm looking for a better way right now in this conversation. I'm always looking for a better way to do things. And in every LinkedIn Live that I do, I look for a better way to do the LinkedIn Live. And so I'm excited that you're sharing this. And of course, people are purpose-driven, as you say. People are purpose-driven. They're looking for meaning. There's a book called Man's Search for Meaning. He talks about how he survived the Holocaust. I think his name is Viktor Frankl, how he survived the Holocaust by attaching to that meaning. Why is finding your why so important from your perspective?

Well, because it gives you the words to clearly articulate what makes you special. It gives you the peace of mind that you are okay. You know, a lot of us go through life wondering, do we even have anything special? And maybe some of us think that we do, but we don't know what it is. But when you can say it, That's when you know it and that's when you can use it. And I took what I learned and created software where you can now go online and discover your why in about 5 minutes. And it goes even deeper. So, Joe, something we haven't yet talked about is YOS. What I developed was what's called your Why Operating System. It's 3 times more powerful than just knowing your why. It's your why, your how, and your what. And my new software actually finds that for you and builds your message for you in about 8 minutes. So we told you already that, or I told you already that Joe's why is to find a better way and share it, just like mine. But how he does that, how Joe goes about doing that is by challenging the status quo and thinking differently. Pushing limits, thinking outside the box. Ultimately, what he brings is a way to contribute, add value, have an impact in your lives, in your life. So, his why is to find a better way. His how is to challenge the status quo. And his what is to contribute to other people's success. And now, we know an awful lot about Joe. Before, all we knew is he's this LinkedIn guy that creates some cool stuff. He's got his EVAI and many of the other things that you see that he does. But now we know why he does it, because he's always in search of something— for something better. And how he does it is by thinking outside the box so that he can help other people have a bigger impact.

No, it did definitely help me. It did definitely help me a lot to discover my own why. I remember when I was going through coaching and trying to figure out, okay, what's my niche? What am I doing? How am I doing it? Why am I the way that I am? And sometimes when you don't have that purpose, you end up attaching yourself to some other purpose or you end up looking for your brand. I remember about 10 years ago, I became a certified Google trainer and I started meeting with people to try to find out what is my personal brand? How do I come up with my own personal brand? Like, who am I? Who's Joe Apfelbaum? And I was talking to consultants and coaches. I remember speaking to this guy named— I think his name was Josh Levy or Mark Levy. I think it was Mark Levy. I had a conversation with him. And he's like, why don't you meet with me for a weekend? And it was tens of thousands of dollars. And we would try to discover who you really are and find out, you know, what were those moments that you had in your life that made you become who you are? And now looking back, I'm like, this is what the why is.

Mm-hmm.

I can literally, you can just go grab the Why OS from your website, go to why.os, just go in there and then just start, Figuring out your why, do your assessment and figuring it out. And that's like how you figure out your personal brands. If you're watching this and you don't have your personal brand in order, definitely look up Dr. Gary Sanchez DDS because he's a dentist. By the way, how are your teeth?

They're still good. They're still there.

Are they connected to your why? Are they connected to your gums?

I think they're connected to my bone, but yes, exactly. They, um, But I don't practice anymore. I stopped practicing about 3 and a half years ago.

Wow!

And now fully focus on YOS. But what you said was so critical because, Joe, there's such a difference between knowing and not knowing or kind of knowing or kind of thinking I know my why or kind of or sort of or maybe or I think I do versus I know. I know exactly why I'm here. I know what I bring. I know what makes me special. Most people will say that their why is their kids, or their why is their business, or their why is their new book. And what they're talking about is a short-term motivation for doing things the way they're doing them. And when the kids grow up, or the business moves on, or you launch your book, you lose your why. What you're talking about is something even more profound, which is why Joe does what he does everywhere he goes. He can't turn it off. He didn't pick it. He didn't choose it. It's just the way it is. And when you know it, it's just like gravity, right? Whether you believe in gravity or not, it still affects everything you do. Whether you know your why or you don't know your why, it still affects everything you do. If you know your why, and even more powerful, your YOS, then you can use it in your life. Then it becomes this wonderful thing that you can base your life Because it'll help you find your passion, your purpose, your direction. All of that comes from knowing your YOS. So, if you're listening to this and you're not sure you're on the right path, or maybe you haven't yet found your passion, maybe you're looking for that passion, discover your YOS first and the rest becomes a lot easier.

Wow! Wow! It's so interesting the way the framework that you have. And if somebody's listening to this and they want to become a YOS coach, Because I know you're limited to how many people you can actually help. How does the coaching process work specifically for ICF coaches or for business coaches or for personal coaches or resume coaches? How does, how does it process up? I know you have a goal to sign up quite a few coaches in the next year. What is the process for somebody to become a YOS coach and what is the benefit?

So this is who I'm looking for, Joe. If you're a coach, business, any kind of personal growth business coach, consultant and you believe that knowing your why is the first step in self-awareness and self-awareness is the first step in performing at the highest level for yourself and your clients, then you will love the YOS certification. Because what it does is it gives you a tool to get people to their why and their YOS, their why, how, and what. In under 10 minutes so that then you can do the coaching that you already do really well, even better, even faster, and get them to their goals that much quicker. So, helping people— if you believe that it's the first step, you're going to love this because if you've tried to help someone discover their why, you know how hard that is. And you know that sometimes you don't even get there. Sometimes you're not even sure that that's their why. But if everything your client is basing their life on, their passion, their purpose, their direction, all that is based on their why, don't you think it ought to be you make sure that it's accurate, that it's correct? So, this will get you there every single time quickly, easily, accurately. And it becomes a tool for you to not only use with your clients but also with your prospects. Because once you sit down with somebody And you know their YOS, they're going to know that you know them unlike anybody else has ever known them. And you'll be able to help them move in the right direction with speed and with passion and with purpose. So, it gives you a tool to build your practice and it gives you a tool to work within your current practice to have even better relationships and even better results and more long-term with those clients.

It's so interesting what you're saying about your prospects. I think it was Alex Hormozi that said in his book, $100 Million Offers, that when a prospect knows that you know their problem better than they do, they start trusting you more than anybody else because they want to know that you really know what their issue is. They really want to know that you really are intimately connected with who they are, and that's how you build trust with them. The why process can also help you with prospecting, it seems. And it could help you with networking and with building relationships and with your personal brand and with so many other things. How is the why different than StrengthsFinder? Because I know some people talk about finding your strengths. How would you compare it to StrengthsFinder?

Great question. Okay, so Joe, there are a lot of wonderful assessments out there. There's Myers-Briggs, Kolbe, DiSC, StrengthsFinder. You could go on and on and on. They're really good. And we love them and we use them. Those are how you take action and not why you take action. We have the world's first and only why discovery tool. So, if you start with why first, then the how, then the StrengthsFinder, then the Kolbe, then the DiSC, then the others will make even more sense, be even more valuable. So is YOS better than Strengths? No. Is YOS better than DiSC? No. It's a matter of sequence. YOS comes first, then Strengths. So most of our coaches are certified in multiple different types of modalities. Lots of Kolbe coaches, lots of StrengthsFinder coaches, lots of DiSC coaches, and they use the YOS first. And then they follow it with DiSC or Strengths or Kolbe. But what it does, let's go back to Joe. So, if Joe was a prospect and we were sitting down to have a conversation, and I already, see, I don't meet with anybody unless I know their YOS. Because what are we going to talk about? Right? Once you know somebody's YOS, it becomes very predictable what's going on in their life. We know that Joe's Why was better way. His How was challenge and his What was contribute. So, we know that he's always looking for a better way. He cannot stop himself and he can't turn it off. So, he's always looking for what's coming next. Shiny penny can be a problem for him. Well, this was new. I like the new things. I like what's new and great. So, it's harder for him to stay focused, just like it is for me. How he does that is by challenging. So, he likes to look at things differently, not do it the same way all the time. And he ultimately, though, he wants to have a bigger impact. So, if I was his coach and I was developing a program for Joe, I would not make it super structured where there's only one way to get results. There's only one way to do it. I would give him some free rein, create something where he's always able to find better ways. He's able to think outside the box. He's able to help others have a bigger impact. But you create a program that's structured around the way that Joe thinks. So, we all know the Golden Rule. Golden Rule is treat others the way you want to be treated. Well, what if they don't want to be treated the way you want to be treated? Well, then you use the Platinum Rule. The Platinum Rule is treat others the way they want to be treated. Work with others the way they want to be treated. Speak to them in the way that they want to hear things. And that's what you're able to do when you know the YOS. So, with Joe, if we had an idea that we were wanting to bring to him and get his buy-in, I better show him how it's better. I better show him how it's different. And I better show him how it's going to help people have a— help him have a bigger impact or he's not going to want it. If I show him that, I know he's going to want it because that's his decision-making process. That's how he thinks. Does that make sense, Joe?

Makes total sense. It makes total sense. And, you know, I love that you mentioned all the different assessments that exist and how WI stands out from all of them. I want to take a break for a moment and just tell you guys about this incredible tool that a lot of people have been asking me about called Evy AI. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I know that you mentioned it earlier in this episode, so I want to make sure that people know how to be able to use it. So if you just click on the login button for from the website, you'll be able to log in. And on the bottom left corner, you see where it says Add Evvy AI to Chrome, the purple button? You click on that purple button, it'll take you to the Google Chrome Store. And then you can click on Add to Google Chrome on the top right. It'll ask you if you want to be able to add it. You just press Add to Google Chrome. And then when you go to LinkedIn, once you pin it, you click in here and then you just pin it. Once you go to LinkedIn, you can look up Gary. So I'm gonna look up Gary right now. You see, this is our event page over here. So I'm going to go to Gary's profile, Gary Sanchez DDS, pull him up over here. So as you can see, Gary has 7,000 followers here on LinkedIn. You can easily get in touch with him by connecting with him, building a relationship with him right here. But if you want to check out some of his posts, you'll see that he has posted over here. So I'm going to click on View All Posts. You see he posted over here not too long ago. I'm going to click on his— I'm just going to refresh over here. If I want to leave a comment on his post, I'm going to show you how to quickly leave a comment on his post using Evie AI so that you understand one of the 11 benefits that you can get from this amazing tool. And I do recommend you leave comments on people's posts on LinkedIn if you want to get to know them and build a relationship with them. So I'm just gonna click on comment, and then I'm going to click on this little purple icon And you can see I already left a comment for him on this post. So maybe I'll just go to the next one over here. I see he posted here about Joel. And I know this is your coach. You mentioned the word even to me. I actually left a comment called boom. But I'm going to leave another comment over here. I'm going to select my persona, in this case, Joe Apfelbaum. Let's find the Joe Apfelbaum persona here. I'm going to press GPT-4. And instead of addressing concerns, I'm going to build rapport and I'm going to give a conversational tone. And I'm going to press Generate. So what it's going to do is it's actually going to read the post and then it's going to go ahead and generate a comment in just a few seconds for this particular post. Absolutely agree, Gary. A well-crafted introduction can indeed set the tone for a powerful presentation. I've seen it work wonders in workshops. I'm going to tag you, Gary, so that you also get a notification, and I press Post. So for those of you that are wondering, this tool that I mentioned This tool, I built this tool because I found my why, because of— because I use the YOS myself, not just to find my, my why, but also my how and my what. Like really understanding how I always want to find a better way to do things, and using AI is a better way to do things. And then helping other people and helping many other people with this particular tool. We're currently helping Thousands and thousands and thousands of people all over the world use LinkedIn more effectively with artificial intelligence, specifically because of the product that you put out, Gary. So I just want to take a moment to thank you for putting out such an incredible product like, like the, the why. Now, how many different types of whys exist? Do you want to quickly share with the audience? Because people will be like, oh, my why could be anything. I could have millions of different whys. But really, there's a limited amount of whys that even exist. Can you share about that?

Yeah, that's the most important thing that I actually discovered. And that was, in fact, Joe, I was working with this big group of lawyers in Florida. And I was supposed to be speaking at this event for about 45 minutes. And 14 hours later, I'm still on stage bringing people out of the audience one at a time on stage with me and discovering their why in front of the audience and then helping them build their messaging, marketing, and branding based on their why. But about halfway through the day, this one gal, this lawyer raised her hand and she said, hey, Gary, how many whys are there? And I said, gosh, I don't know. I never thought of that. So, I started keeping track of all the whys. This is probably 10 years ago, maybe even a little bit more. And I figured out after thousands and thousands of why discoveries that there's only 10, only 9 different whys. There's only 9 different whys. And that was the most important thing I discovered because once I figured that out, Then, I could teach other people how to do what I was doing. Then, I could get more and more data. And with that data, then I was able to develop the algorithm where in 2016, we launched the Why Discovery that just found your why in about 5 minutes. And I gave it away to hundreds of thousands of people for free to test it. And then, in 2021, we launched the Why OS Discovery that finds your why, your how, and your what. And build your message for you. And so, if you go to my website, whyinstitute.com, you'll see a place where you can take that. So, it's $97 to discover your YOS. I just had my team create a code, Joe A. Joe A. If you use Joe A, you can discover it right now for half price, 50% off. Right now, just go discover. There you are right there. Yeah, you can discover it for Discover Your Wire, Discover Your YOS. So go to YOS right there, and if you put in the code Joe A, you'll get it at half price. So that's let's make sure it works because it should be. Put in the code. Joey has expired, so we'll have to double-check that. But it, it's going to, um, give you 50% off, so it'll be $48. And, um, yeah, there you go. Perfect. I love how you're doing that. Go to YOS Discovery and then just discover your YOS, and it'll look like those 3 circles there. It'll have your why, your how, and your what, and your message for you. And it does that in about 8 minutes. So it'll take you about 8 minutes to discover your why, your how, and your what. So here's another way that it's different, Joe. A lot of what you see— Myers-Briggs, Kolbe StrengthsFinder, all those— those are, say, 100 questions. You answer 100 questions, and then it gives you a score. Well, to discover your YOS, there's over 4,000 question options, and you only have to answer about 30. And so I Used logic-based programming, which means that when you answer one question, the next question will be based on what you just answered. So you and I would take totally different sets of questions based upon how we answered the previous question, and it wipes away the ones that you don't need to answer. So it's very accurate. It double-checks itself as it goes. I actually wrote the algorithm, and I actually programmed the software, so I know exactly how it works. And I know you're thinking, what does a dentist know about that? Not much until I really had to do it, right? So, Joe, think my next book's going to be called The Power of Pissed Off. The Power of Pissed Off. Because think of what you can accomplish in your life when you're pissed off. And that's what happened to me. I got so upset with my tech team that I was like, if you can figure this out, I can figure it out. So in one weekend, I learned how to program the software, and I learned how to— and I programmed my own software. And created it in one weekend. I was so upset.

But wow, the power of pissed off. Look at that. Having a pissed off dentist will really get the algorithm built.

Yeah, you don't want me pissed off as your dentist.

Very, very cool. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show here on LinkedIn Live. We're also live on Facebook, we're live on YouTube, and we're actually going to restream this out into the future into LinkedIn as well for those of you that maybe missed it and you want to watch it again. So, if you're watching the live, just let me know where in the world you're dialing in from. Let me know if you're going to get the Why. Let me know in the comments that you're interested in learning more. Maybe I'll send you the link if you drop a comment letting me know that you want to learn more. And Gary, thank you so much for joining here. Is there any other insight that you want to share with the audience before we wrap up?

I would just say that knowing your why is the essential first step. In you knowing you. One of the things that we talk about is, you know, are you ready to become who you already are? And so that's a really important thing to think about. A lot of people talk about change this, change that, change your life, change your brain, change these things. And how often does somebody really ever change anything for any length of time? And I don't even believe that you need to change. I believe you just need to know who you are. Because once you know who you are, being the best version of you is so much better than trying to change you into somebody that you're not. And so, you're already good enough. You already have something special inside you. You already have something amazing there. It's already there. You don't have to do anything to have it other than you just need to know what it is. So, once you discover your WHY OS, you'll be clear on who you are and you'll be ready to become who you already are and just be the best version of yourself. Joe is such a perfect example of that. In fact, I told Joe that he didn't know this, but I told him when he was on our podcast, he's actually in the first chapter. You're in the pre— I think you're in the first chapter of my book and you didn't even know it because way back when we talked, I remember when you told me What happened to you after you discovered your why and all the changes, physical, mental, all the stuff that happened to you when you became clear on you and what an impact it made in your life and now for so many other people that you've impacted.

Yeah. You know what happens when you motivate an idiot? You have a motivated idiot. I love it. No, but I recently heard Gary Vaynerchuk talk. He did a video that I commented on. I think it was yesterday or the day before. and a woman walked over to her and said, I'm a big fan of you, Gary Vaynerchuk, and one day I'm gonna be somebody. One day I'm gonna be somebody. And he stopped her. He's like, stop. And she's like, what? He's like, you already are somebody. You just have to discover who you are. And that— so your message resonates with me so much because a lot of the times we don't believe that we're good enough, or we don't believe we deserve success yet, or we don't believe that we're special. But every person has a fingerprint. Look at your fingers. Do you have a fingerprint on your fingers? If you do, then you can be tracked. If you have a fingerprint, that means that you're unique, and we're all unique. We all have our own unique stories, our unique experiences, and even our unique YOS. So if you haven't taken the YOS, I highly recommend you go to theyinstitute.com, click on YOS, use the code JOEA so you get 50% off, Highly, highly recommend it. I'm a big fan of Gary's. That's why I'm his affiliate. That's why I want you guys to buy it with the coupon code. Because once you know your why, your how, and your what, that's when you truly can become unleashed. If somebody wants to sign up as a coach, they can reach out to Gary Sanchez directly on LinkedIn, or they can go to the website and there's a special part of the website specifically for signing up as a coach. There's a Find a Coach box. So if you want to join that Find a Coach box, you just go there. And on the bottom, there's a YOS certification that you can take, and you can learn more about him at yinstitute.com. Gary, it was such a pleasure having you here. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your story about how you went from being a dentist to finding this concept of the why. And maybe we'll bring you back in the future. I do have more questions to ask you, and I would love to potentially bring you back to do another rendition of LinkedIn Live. And hopefully this time we'll go a little bit longer. Maybe we'll review each one of the 9 whys in a future episode. So if you guys want all the 9 whys, write 9 whys in the chat here when you watch this, the live or the replay, and maybe we'll share with you all 9 whys so you can kind of compare them and see them. But if you want to get all your messaging in order, and you want to really take this assessment to really have the best year ever, then go ahead and check out the YOS. And I would love to see your YOS, and I would love for you to share it on LinkedIn also, and then let the world know what your why is, especially if you have a why like mine, which is to find a better way and share it. Which is— that's why I love sharing so much. So I'm curious to know if anybody else has a why like me and Gary, um, and that's why we're such We're such great friends. So thank you so much for being my friend. Thank you for being my LinkedIn connection. Thank you for being a client of Evvy AI. Thank you for being in my life, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again online.

Awesome. Thanks, Joe.