Rewire Your Brain for Unstoppable Success

We're going physical to freaking AI like nuclear. And so the biggest challenge is we have an ancient brain trying to adapt in a hyper-modern changing world because our brain takes 10,000 years of evolution to change, at least 10,000 years. And now we're being forced like it's adapt or become extinct. Yeah. You don't adapt to AI with your business now, just say goodbye. Like save yourself the headache. You don't want to adapt, you know, to using AI in certain things. You know, it won't be a big deal, but AI will make you smarter, You'll be able to do things cheaper and better than anything you can do. Why?

Welcome to the Speakeasy Podcast, where the real conversations happen behind closed doors with the boldest entrepreneurs, creators, and growth minds in the game. No fluff, no filters, just the raw strategies, personal stories, and mental models that move the needle. I'm Eric Berman. Now let's get into it. I'm so pumped for today's episode with my good friend and business guru, brain genius, John Assaraf. And he's going to share some insights and stories which made him successful and what's more importantly made millions of his students and followers successful. And so much of it has to do, actually everything has to do with what's inside of us, our brain. And he's going to share a couple of very simple techniques, things that are so profound yet simple that we're all ignoring and not taking advantage of. So we can all immediately level up after listening to this podcast. So welcome today, John Assaraf.

Mr. Berman, nice to be with you and everybody else. Hi everyone. Hello. Hello.

And on that note, for those that don't know the backstory, and then I'm going to get into a lot more fun things we'll get into, you know, we actually started this whole community back in a conversation. It's so crazy how vivid I remember that. I was Brian Tracy and I still am Brian Tracy's right arm in business. And you were doing some amazing things with NeuroGym. And your businesses, and you approached me and said, you know, we were doing some JVs, some joint ventures, and you approached me and said, Eric, let's get together and do some masterminding. And do you remember how that conversation went?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I shared with you that in 1987, when I bought RE/MAX of Indiana, I was trying to figure everything out on my own, even though RE/MAX had very successful regions all over the country in the United States and all over Canada. And I was like, why am I trying to figure this out on my own when other people already know what I should be doing and how to do it? You know, I was selling a franchise, but the regional information for owners wasn't franchised, you know, as far as the steps to take. And then I said, listen, Brian and I are in the same industry. You're a wizard at operations and you're a wizard at helping Brian with the systems and processes. I do really well with sales and marketing and growth. Like, help me with the systems and processes. I'll help you with the growth. And let's get a few other really sharp entrepreneurs that are willing to lift each other up as we are growing. And he said, yeah, that's a great idea. And that was the, I guess, the seed discussion to just getting together and helping each other through our trials and tribulations. And we just gave each other stuff and it wasn't, you know, I'll give you this if you give me that. No, we just showed up to give each other whatever we could give each other. And everybody flourished because the more we gave, the more everybody wanted to give. And, you know, Robert Cialdini said like, that's the law of reciprocity.

That's right. Yeah. No. And it never do we know where it would come into today and how that added more and more people. And I always remember what you said, you know, the answer is always yes. And it was so inspiring to be in a room with people that, I always would say, oh, these are all people that would be charging, you know, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $50,000 a day for their time or a few hours. And it's like, they're all here to give. And it was just so magical to have that. And I think, you know, you know, I think today, I mean, you ever look back, the value of community and getting together in a time where we're lonely as entrepreneurs, and it is getting worse in the world of AI, you know, it's just so important to have that tribe.

It wasn't even a matter of being lonely as an entrepreneur. I wasn't lonely as an entrepreneur. I was, I think, a highly successful entrepreneur. And for me, I wanted people here in my local town that wasn't a 4-hour drive or an 8-hour flight where I could say, okay, once a month I can get together and I've got a way for me to be inspired and for me to get access to knowledge, skills, processes, system, tools, and resources that other entrepreneurs were doing, some of which was what I needed. And then the stuff that my team and I were creating or spending money figuring out or implementing, I would just say, sure, here you go. You help me, I help you. Everybody grows, everybody's happy. So, for me, it wasn't— entrepreneurship has never been lonely for me, but having a local market, you know, place to have people you trust and really start to love, that's why I wanted to be in that environment. Then that's why I wanted to help, you you know, you grow this, you know, as your business.

Yeah. And thank you so much. And it's been so, so fun going on this ride with you. And, you know, for those of you, I mean, I haven't even properly introduced you yet, John, but I mean, for those that don't actually know you, he's one of the, you know, one of the most powerful entrepreneurs in the world. You might've seen him on The Secret, heard about him with some of the top neuroscientists that he's always talking to, learning from and interviewing, possibly read one of his bestselling books like Innercise or Having It All. But what you guys may not know about John is just how practical and battle-tested his strategies are for entrepreneurs. And today we're going to dive deep and talk a lot about some of that stuff. Some of the stuff you do with brain work, success, overcoming mental blocks, scaling with clarity. So we're going to get into all that. But, you know, before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about the background, some of the stuff you've been through. You mentioned earlier RE/MAX, but let's talk about, you know, I know you were born in the streets of Montreal, right? Montreal, Canada, building a million dollar business, but maybe take us back to when things weren't working and how you shifted, the early mistakes you made as that entrepreneur.

So I was born in Israel, moved to Montreal when I was 5. By the time I was 9, I got involved in a little group of kids between 9 and 15 that we all weren't doing well in school. We were the derelicts, the kids in the principal's office. Some of us ended up in detention centers like me, in trouble with the law. Like me. Some of us were on the path to the jail or the morgue, like me. And I was just a bad kid. I was doing things that I thought I had to do to make some money to help my mother and my father. My father was an alcoholic gambler. My mother worked her ass off at the department store as a seamstress. So I was selling drugs and doing drugs and doing breaking and entries and selling the stuff to, you know, to people who want to buy to make money for myself. To feel good and to give my mom some money. And by the time I was 19, I knew that things were getting very, very, very serious, shall we say, bringing in kilos of cocaine from Florida. And we were doing deals that could have landed us in jail, not just the detention center. So that fortunately was, let me see, 45 years ago. And I ended up with a mentor. My brother introduced me to this one man who cared about other people and he was a philanthropist, a real real estate successful mogul. And he took me under his wing and he started to teach me that there's more to me than I knew. He started to teach me that there's a process for success. There's a process for learning. There's a process for earning. There's a process for marketing. There's a process for sales. There's a process for managing. And he just started to teach me. And I was a voracious student because At the time, this was like April 1980. So I'm 63 now, just to put into perspective, right? April 1980, a lot of years ago, I was making $1.65 an hour. And by getting under his wing and upgrading my mindset and my skills, within 6 months I was making $10,000 a month. Wow.

At that age, at that time, it was a lot.

19. My parents actually thought I moved from Montreal to Toronto to do more of the illegal stuff. And that's why I was making money. I invited them to our office. I invited them to talk to Mr. Brown. They're like, they were like, what, what, what happened to you? How did you, you were a little hoodlum on the streets. And he just taught me different things about me and what was possible. And so I worked with him for a little bit and then I went, traveled around the world and then I came back. In 1987, 7 years later, and I bought the franchising rights for RE/MAX for the state of Indiana. And then I bought it from a guy by the name of Walter Schneider, and I'm actually looking at his picture right over there. My first mentor was Alan Brown. My second mentor was Walter, and he was in real estate franchising of RE/MAX in Canada. And so he taught me the art of franchising and the art of scaling. And over a 10-year period of time, I built RE/MAX of Indiana from 0 to 85 offices, 1,200 sales associates, 700 employees in those offices, and $4.5 billion a year in sales.

How old are you at this point?

26 to 36.

Jesus. Okay. So that was around— I'm going to go back a second because you said something just so— I mean, I know a lot of us listening share a similar story, and thank you for sharing and being vulnerable on that. Some people wouldn't probably divulge some of that stuff. So that's, you know, and they're like, wow, John did this. I mean, it's just, there's so much you didn't realize or know how much potential was in you. You know, it was all there. You're probably damn good. You would have been damn good at whatever you did, selling drugs, doing illegal things. You had that natural thing. You just, it's almost like you just, that mentor was choose your own adventure. You go down this path or this path. That person sort of like the train track hit and it just diverted you this direction. Thank God.

And desire, Eric, I had desire. Like I knew what I was doing was going to get me in trouble. I knew it, right? Because I'd already been in trouble.

Yeah.

I had desire and I had like, I'm sick and tired of doing what I was doing and feeling lousy about myself doing it.

Yeah.

My parents taught me right from wrong, but they didn't teach me how to do right and at scale. My father made $25 a day driving a taxi, and then he would go and drink, play cards, and go to the horse races in Montreal and have zero money back when he came home, fight with my mother. She'd get angry. He'd go back to work at 5:30 in the morning, and some days he would give her enough money. And so there was always lack and limitation and scarcity. And this gentleman, Mr. Brown, he's like, there's more than enough money in the world for everybody, but most people haven't learned the skill of how to earn money. So I said, okay, teach me the skill.

Right. And thank God, thank God you met him. And then that's great. I mean, a lot of it's, you know, you're such a mindset expert too. So a lot of it you just talked about was really the mindset. You had the skills, the tools, the The things you needed to learn, you know, getting into, to that and then RE/MAX and the growth over 10 years, you know, what do you think the role that the mindset played for you to be able to get that level compared to like, let's just say pure business tactics?

Mindset is what separates the best from the rest. But when I say mindsets, like exercise is what gets people in shape versus, you know, people who are not in shape. That's partially true, but. Within mindset, there's categories. And, you know, as somebody who has studied the human brain, you know, in behavioral neuroscience and neuropsychology, you know, let's look at identity, right? Nothing, nothing will help you achieve more success than your identity. Not your skills, not your attitude, your identity, who I I am will determine what I believe I can do and what I believe I deserve. And when I believe I can do X, Y, or Z and deserve whatever I choose, then I develop the beliefs and the knowledge and the skills and the habits to match the identity. And the question I always ask my students— I've been fortunate to have had over 100,000 paying students in the last 8 years and millions, you know, in my career. How much time do you invest, not spend, invest on upgrading and updating your identity to keep matching the vision, goals, and results that you want? And most people are like, what?

Yeah.

I said, well, you will never outperform your hidden identity. You will never outperform your beliefs. And if you do, and let's say you win the lottery, 92% of people will blow it within 3 years because the results do not match the identity. And the identity will cause self-sabotage, alcohol, drugs, overspending, making stupid decisions. So it's the inner game that determines the perspective that you have of the world, the lens by which you see yourself in the world, then the beliefs line up to match the identity, and then behavior follows. Now, let me prove this to you. Are there Oxford PhDs, Harvard PhDs, Princeton PhDs that do well but not great?

Yeah, of course.

Oh, so how come don't they make millions? Because they don't have the identity. They might have intelligence in school or intelligence in a topic, but that doesn't translate to them being healthy. It doesn't translate to them having a great relationship. It only translates to they're really good at this thing that they know.

Right.

So as business owners, in less than 5 minutes, I can hop onto ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude right now and I could say, hey, I'm a 63-year-old male, and here's my situation, and here's my business, and here's my programs, and here's my products, and here are the services I have, and here's how much I charge, and here's how long I've been in business, and here's the clients that I serve that could really help. Can you help me create a plan to do 10x in the next 12 months? And Eric, how long will it take for ChatGPT or one of those to give me a, well, here's what you could do.

Yep.

Like 3 minutes? And then I can say, well, number 1 I don't like, number 3 I do like, unpack number 4 and number 5, create a 2 or 3 week plan for me and create it in 90 minute chunks and put it on my calendar. So I can use generative AI to do that, agentic AI to stick it on my calendar. And do you know how many people that don't have the identity but have the plan will actually implement it?

Very few.

3 out of 100.

Yeah.

Because we don't do what we should do or could do. We do what we are conditioned to do and what our identity demands of us.

I want to dig deeper in the identity. Help me understand a little bit more examples of somebody's identity and working, like, what would be like, you've helped so many people with this.

Yeah. So your identity is made up of your self-image, self-worth, self-esteem, like one chunk. It's made up of what you believe to be true about yourself and what's possible. It's made up of your self-talk. It's made up of your emotional control or regulation, right? So if you have this identity of, you know, always stressed out, that's part of your identity, right? Then you think, feel, behave, and attract and see things that always stressed you out. And then it sets up a series of biases, right? So your identity always comes with biases. Well, I'm biased towards this because that's what I believe. And so confirmation bias confirms what we believe. Listen, if you want to understand a little bit about what this means, think about the political system, let's say, in the United States right now. To the United parties. Yeah, this party believes this, this party believes that, and facts do not change minds. I just actually wrote an article, it's on my blog, on why facts do not change minds. We don't have time to get into it right now, but information doesn't change minds or behavior. So I have to remain consistent with what I believe. I've got to remain consistent with my habits because I have automatic systems to automate my thinking, emotions, and behaviors. And then I have ways to reinforce what I already believe to make those neural patterns more efficient because that's part of how the brain works. So, when you take a multimillionaire and she loses her money through whatever means, chances are because she had the identity of a multimillionaire, And let's say she made it, not won it or it was handed down. She has identity of somebody who has earned it. Right. She makes it back, who is homeless and maybe never made more than $10,000 a year. Take that person and give them $10 million. 92% within 3 years lose it. And this is research. Over 80% said it was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Winning it because it has cognitive dissonance, right? Beyond belief so that they have to get rid of it to get back to their baselines.

So this is fascinating and just started to cut you off there. So it's like, obviously, and you talk again, you work with so many people. I imagine first step is number one is the realization of the identity and what the limiting beliefs might be like, oh, I have limiting beliefs. This might be what's in the way. So I imagine that's a big part of what you're teaching, right? They got to understand that we're our own worst enemy, as they say, and our own beliefs and identities is causing us—

or best ally, worst enemy or best ally.

Sure.

Identity, that the pillars, right, is self-image, self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence are pillars, our beliefs. Here's something that's actually fun for you and I to do. Were you or anybody that might be listening or watching us born with an identity?

Or were we born with one?

Wow.

And that's a I would say no. It's all learned.

Were you born with any beliefs?

I would say not necessarily. Whatever we witnessed and observed.

Were you born with any fear? No. Fear of failing, fear of being abandoned, fear of being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, rejected, fear of losing your money, fear of making it and losing it, you know, fear of being ridiculed. We weren't. Zero. No. So we weren't born with an identity. We weren't born with beliefs. We weren't born with fears. And we certainly weren't born with knowledge and skills. Correct. Right? So we developed our identity, beliefs, fears, etc., based on what we saw our parents, what they told us, television, our siblings, our friends, our teachers, comic books, books we read. And we start to develop these patterns in the brain. From birth to about 12 or 13, we develop these patterns that are full-on our brain was creating these patterns from 0 to 13. And that's based on something called the neuroplasticity switch, the brain creating connections, neuroplasticity, brain's ability to make connections. And then that switch turns off around 13. And then we reinforce the patterns. So it's kind of like we build the highway, right? And then we ride along the highway, right? But if all of a sudden, we want to go somewhere where the highway isn't, or we want to take a detour, we have to create a new road, a new path. So the first thing that I ask people to do is what would you say your character traits are? Right? So let's have a little bit of fun. Eric, what are 3 of your top character traits?

I would say very reliable.

Reliable.

I'd say follow through.

Follow through.

Empathy.

Empathy. Okay. And we can list out a whole bunch and I recommend everybody to write down what your character traits currently are. Okay. Part 1. Part number 2 would be, I want you to think of your business. Okay. And I want you to think of 10x-ing your business in 12 months. Okay. Now I want you to ask yourself this question. In order to be able to achieve 10x results in 12 months, What character traits would you need to add?

Right. And for me, I think probably my case, probably just, you know, fear of probably a little bit of a confident trade.

Would you need to add, you need to add, you know, unstoppable certainty and confidence.

Yeah. Yep.

You need to add being fearless. Correct. Being willing to take the risk. And be comfortable with it, right? That's right. Now, if you had those now, and let's say you had those a year or two or three ago, would you be more successful? And talk about successful in the results you're achieving in business.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. So, you didn't have any character traits, okay, or beliefs when you were younger. You had propensities, and then you developed character traits. And those character traits cause you to believe what you believe, cause you to behave the way you behave. That's natural and easy. But now for 10x, you have to add some new character traits. What one thing would you need to believe if you were looking backwards now? Let's say you already achieved that 10x. What belief do you have, having achieved 10x, about yourself?

I mean, I'd have more confidence in having risk. Let's just say take a risk.

What would you believe about you having done it?

I would have believed that I had the success and that I had that trait. I would have believed that I had that trait the whole time if I had done it.

I believe that I'm worthy, smart, able to achieve 10x and I did it, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

I, you know, I believe that I'm unstoppable and I can achieve any goal I choose.

Right.

Okay. Right. Why not imprint that belief into your brain right now? Why not imprint those character traits right now? Why not deliberately and consciously use the science of neuroplasticity and get those in your head now so that you act in line with what you believe? Would you have to believe it's totally unequivocally unashamedly possible to do 10x in 12 months, right?

No, I get you, right?

So what is a belief in the brain? What is a character trait in the brain? What is an identity in the brain? And the answer is nothing more than neurons that have fired and wired together and then have been reinforced.

Just building up, just, yeah, I get it. You're just building on, I mean, what you're saying is it's all there. We all have everything. This goes back to the human brain and the potential.

You got it. Every brain function works the same. So Eric, right over here on my— you see John's Exceptional Life Blueprint 25, 26?

Yep.

I have a series of, you know, you may remember this, you know, my house from the movie The Secret.

Yep. Right?

But before this was my house in The Secret, this was on my vision board, if you recall. But I have a vision, Rainer. Let me show you. So first I start, you see this body, Eric?

Yep.

Does this body remind you of anything?

It reminds me of just a body that you're trying to achieve.

Yeah. And I already got a six-pack at 60. I start off with the vision, right? Eric, have you been to my place over here in Telluride? Oh yeah. And all— Eric, this was the trip Marie and I took to the Maldives. Wow.

Yeah.

Everything starts off with a picture. Eric, have you seen this car? Oh yeah. Where? Yep.

It's your baby. It's your car.

Yes, it's in my garage. Now, why am I showing you and everybody else? So I start off with the vision, but then I cement it with creating the story and the character and the beliefs. Not one page, not two pages for everything, but three full pages so that I use, you know, inner size.

And I want to talk about that next.

Yeah. So I create the vision and the goals first. Then I say, in order to achieve that vision and those goals, what's the identity I must have to create a resonant match? What do I need to believe about myself? What do I believe? What do I need to believe about what's possible? Right? How do I need to talk to myself? How do I need to manage my emotions? Part 1, mindset, right? What skills do I need? Part of mindset, right? And then what are the strategies, tactics, timelines, tools, and resources to achieve that I want to have? But that, right?

It's at the end of the day, and I love the analogy of the light switches are off. They're there. You basically have to know which light switches to go. You're in a computer. I got to go hit these 6 switches. I got to turn them on. There's an awareness there.

That's right.

The ability to do it because we could do anything. And now, what do you, how do you now do that once you learned it? And then it's brilliant.

So I reverse engineer every piece, not just, you know, the shell, the outside, right? I create resonant matches since everything, almost everything in the universe is energy, vibration, frequency. I'm looking to create a resonant match spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, all the time.

Love it. Love it. You mentioned earlier, and I want to dig into this because this work has been so incredible what you've done over the last, I mean, I don't know, it's been probably 10, 12 years now. Intersize, trademarked term, your big, your company, your app.

Yeah.

How do you, you mentioned that a little bit. So is it, and I love the analogy of the muscles and all that. Let's talk a little bit about intersizing. Cause I know that's one of the tools to get what you just talked about.

So I work out and I go to the gym, work my muscles every day. They're spiking. I love it.

I'm jealous. I need to get there.

The six-pack is that.

Yep.

Look, this is a 63-year-old's bicep, right? I share this with everybody not to impress you, but I was 233 pounds, 30% body fat, borderline diabetic, hypertensive, alcoholic, sugar addict. And I said, I'm doing great in business, but how do I like apply this to my own personal life?

Right.

I was like, fuck, like, just fucking do the same process. Lost all the weight. Took me 2 years, right? Got into the best shape of my life by 50, and I just keep doing the same thing. So what did I do? Well, first I created the goal of what I want to create. Same I do for Bid, the vision first, then the goal, right? Then the identity and the beliefs. And all that stuff. I just reverse engineer all of it for health, wealth, relationships, career, business, finances. And then I, just like I go to the gym to exercise my body and organs or cardiovascular system, I say, how do I exercise my brain, my mind? We know that when we use the right language patterns with ourselves, you know, the right language pattern, every word that I use, watch this. I'm going to give you a couple sentences, everybody. I want you to imagine that in the room that you're at or car that you're at, but be careful if you're driving a car on this one, there's a 7-foot, 200-pound snake slithering towards you or in your car. How many of you, just the word of snake slithering towards you, turn around and you go, whoa, whoa. Well, there's no snake where you are, but I just used words to activate brain cells in your brain, electrical activity, release neurochemicals that cause you to feel a certain way. I want you to imagine you have your favorite drink and you're sitting with somebody you love on your favorite beach somewhere in the world. The sun is warmly shining on your face and the ocean or lake, whatever it is, is gently coming in and you are like the most peaceful in the world. How many of you like could feel just that relaxation 2 seconds? So the first part is affirming, okay, the language patterns around your identity, your character traits, your beliefs. That may not be true now. So we are actually going to fire and wire a new set of neural patterns through language patterns, or let's say affirmations, affirming in my mind. 2, if you were achieving the vision and goals that you want to achieve, how would you feel? Would you feel proud? Limbic system activates, specifically the amygdala part of the brain. Bam, that would feel amazing, right? Would you look in the mirror and go, "Fuck yeah." All right, would you walk a little bit differently? Would you appreciate when people go, "God, you look great. God, your company's doing so well. Wow, you too look so." You'd feel a certain way, right? Where that's energy in motion. Well, what if I affirmed something that may not be real right now? And what if I went ahead and I added energy to that word or sentence or language about emotion. And then I would cement that neural pattern a little bit more because at the synaptic gap, we release protein to bind the neural patterns together. So if I affirm repetitively, if I feel repetitively, and then if I say, okay, how would I act today if I believed this and felt this? Can I act today for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes this way? Can I practice it until I become it?

Amazing.

How would a Hollywood actor learn a new script that she just got from Steven Spielberg with a $100,000 check saying, "We're filming in 6 months"? She's never seen it before.

Yep.

She'd read it like 100 or 200 times, right? She would practice it with somebody else. She would record it to listen to it. She might get her mobile phone on a stand, and with her script in hand, she would practice it. And then she wouldn't need the script anymore, and then she'd work on her technique. And then she and the script would become one, where the identity for the script, the incantations, the accent, the tonality, and the energy around the new script that's not her yet, it would slowly merge with practice. Now, from a neuroscience perspective, isn't that just neurons firing and wiring together? And the neurons that we fire and wire and repeat reinforce, and the neurons that we reinforce become dominant, and the dominant neurons that we reinforce deliberately today remove the old ones from yesterday. It's kind of like a software update. That's what Interscience does using the most powerful evidence-based methods and techniques in the world.

Love it. I mean, I love that analogy. I love the gym analogy. And to me, it goes back to the things— the gym is tangible. The script with a $100,000 check is tangible. The inner size and what you're doing and teaching is you got to believe that it's tangible because it's that vision board you have and the tools are there to get there.

And variety of tools. It's not one tool. Like, if you want to get in great shape, it's, you know, diet, exercise, right? Sleep, right? There's like 3 or 4 things. If you do those 3 things— those, by the way, are the top 3 to get in shape. Diet first, exercise, and sleep are the 3 things. The sleep regulates hormones, specifically leptin. So when you do diet, exercise, sleep— and I don't mean diet like starve yourself, I mean get a proper eating plan, exercise the right way for you, sleep the right amount of time at the right time to activate your circadian rhythm and connect you to the Earth's circadian rhythm, then now you're in flow, right? So most people don't know this, or they know it and they're not doing it, and they're not doing it because they don't have the identity that demands them doing it. So I say, let's create the vision and the goals. Let's build the identity and the beliefs. Let's upgrade the skills and let's put them all together. And start practicing every single day.

Love it. Let's get into, and I'm going to go just a couple more things here. You are so cutting edge when it comes to what is going on in the world of brain and health and just the mental side. And I've seen you interview and talk to a lot of guests out there. And now we have this incredible AI revolution where people are just dumping stuff in there. What are you excited about? What are you seeing? Like, maybe what are you scared of? Like what's going on in the future with this, with AI and the world that you play in?

I interviewed a guy 5, 6 years ago. His name is Kai-Fu Lee, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. He was the head of Google and the head of Microsoft China in his history. Brilliant individual. And now he's one of the partners and heads of DeepSeek, one of the AI platforms in China that competes with OpenAI. And he opened up my eyes to AI. So I was here for the internet era. 2000 to 2008, '09. In 2006, I raised $28 million with my business partners. We built this company called bamboo.com. Then we merged with IPIX, the virtual tour leader in the world is what we were. If you ever saw a house, the inside of a house, inside, outside, mouse up, mouse down, you can actually walk through a house and look everywhere. That was our technology. So I was there for the internet era. That was like unbelievable. We had raised $28 million. Had 1,200 employees in a year. We're doing millions a month in real revenue and our market cap was $2.5 billion. So I saw that in one year. So I saw the, we called it eye time. At a time and we had a company called bamboo.com. Bambi is what our ticker was on NASDAQ and we just saw Bambi hopping. So now here comes, you know, AI and AI started in 1956 with machine learning. So It's not like yesterday, but it started off with machine learning. So it's been around for quite some time, but it's really been since 2020, all right, that this AI buzzword has been on the minds of some people. And so it is the biggest shift in the history of humanity since the beginning of time. It's almost like if you understand the difference between a between a physical thing and a chemical thing, there's about a million degrees of separation between physical and chemical power. Chemical to nuclear is another million. And then nuclear is working at the atomic scale, right? Releasing the energy at the atomic scale. So millions of magnitudes of power more. AI is the atomic scale. Like quantum computing, AI is the atomic scale shift. And we're going, we're bypassing, you know, the middle layer. We're going physical to freaking AI like nuclear. Yeah. And so the biggest challenge is we have an ancient brain trying to adapt in a hypermodern changing world because our brain, you know, is like it takes 10,000 years of evolution to change, at least 10,000 years. And now we're being forced in a period of literally last year, like it's adapt or become extinct.

Yeah.

You don't adapt to AI with your business now, just say goodbye. Like save yourself the headache. You don't want to adapt, you know, to using AI in certain things. It won't be a big deal, but AI will make you smarter, faster. You'll be able to do things cheaper and better than anything you can do. Why? Right now, the best AI's got IQs of about 250. By the end of this year, the IQ will be 400. Einstein was 160, 170. By next year, AI will be at 1,600 IQ in every single category.

Jesus.

1,600. You know, my IQ is maybe 1, I don't know, 110, 120. I don't know. So it'll be like Einstein trying to explain to a cat. E equals mc squared. Jeez. So, A, first, like, open the eyes, right? And be aware of what's happening. B, how do you upgrade your ability to adapt now? And how do you upgrade the skill you have so that you can use the tool to 5, 10, 20, 50x what you're doing right now? Everybody knows there's, you know, generative AI. We use ChatGPT. Hey, write me a blog. Write me a story. Midjourney, create an image for me. VE03, create a spectacular video for me. Now we're entering the age of agentic AI. And I have an agent on my computer, a series of them. I've got my Google and MCP that connects my Google Drive to my calendar to my emails. And in seconds, it'll analyze and tell me what's going on in those three things. But right now, for example, in my company, I could put in one word or three words or a sentence. I could do pet euthanasia, right? Not something people hear about often. And in literally in less than three minutes, and I don't mean three minutes figuratively, I mean three minutes literally, I can have an article in my voice on pet euthanasia to put as a content on social media. I can have a carousel of 6 or 7 pieces to create. I can have an image done, a blog post done, a video done, and it can all do that automatically because we've got these digital employees, I call them. Forget these AI robots, digital employees. I got a digital research employee who then connects with my digital writing employee who connects to my digital graphic artist employee who connects to my Google document, who connects to, you know, my social media. And so I can have all of this done. I can have one person on my team look at it, edit it, and then it will post the stuff automatically, analyze how many people have watched it and commented, have a digital employee AI comment Then at the end of the week, get all the download of the data and analyze it and make recommendations for next week's content.

Right.

This is not coming. I already have it.

Yep.

I have digital employees that are scraping any YouTube video that's gone viral in my niche and suggesting what viral videos and copy we should create. So imagine right now, I just took a picture of this. I'm going to show you something, Eric. You're going to love this. Give me once. I literally, before you and I got on a call, let me look at my photos. I just took a picture of this. Okay. Look at this. Can you read what it says? Amazon deploys its 1 millionth robot.

Yep. And launches new AI.

But it launches new AI to boost efficiency. Marc Benioff, the CEO of salesforce.com, said by the end of this year, they will have 1 billion digital robots or employees. 1 billion, 1,000 million. So for all of my colleagues and friends in business, right? You can watch what happens. You can get in the game and make it happen, or you'll be wondering what the hell happened.

It's happening.

We've all heard this before. So, I happen to spot trends early. I got onto RE/MAX early, got on the internet early, got onto AI early. And I'm going to ride this 10,000-foot wave for the next 2.5, 3 years. I'm going to sell this company also and enjoy my 4th exit. My 5th exit was an exit the wrong way. I had to bankrupt that company because of a partnership breakup. So, I've had a bunch of exits. One of them wasn't the one that I wanted. But I always like to know, you know, where's it going? Like Wayne Gretzky said, go to where the puck is. And then I will just retrain my brain to feel comfortable with the change I need to make the new more comfortable than my old.

Love it. And to wrap, John, that's because I know I've taken up so much of your time. If somebody who doesn't know you or even does know you has yet to work with you, because they can hopefully get a sense from our conversation on so many goodies, especially what we're all missing. What do you suggest? What's the best way to get to enter your world and maybe just, you know, start or some of your trainings? Because you just said something profound. I mean, we all need, we all know this AI train's coming, but maybe we're not wired correctly to handle it. So how do we get help?

Listen, I do a lot of live trainings for free that then invite people to my coaching programs. So I have an AI growth coaching program. That's 6 or 12 months. But I suggest you hop onto one of my free events. I usually do 2 a month where I train, I show, I teach the mindset and the skill sets. If you don't want to do that, then just go to my Instagram account, go watch my YouTube videos, you know, that I've had. Pick up one of my books. One of my bestselling books on the mindset was number 1 Amazon bestseller called Innercise: The New Science to Unlock Your Brain's Hidden Power. New York Times bestselling book. Having It All is a great book to get. The book, The Answer for Business Growth is there, but just get into my orbit at, you know, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. I'm all over there. Go to johnassaraf.com and take a look at the wall of fame. And that you're going to see a bunch of our students that we've helped, you know, make $50,000, $100,000, $1 million, $10 million, $100 million in revenue. And just get into the orbit of what I teach and how I teach it. And I just learned some more about how you can just expand, you know, your thinking, but expanding your understanding of how powerful you already are. Most people don't know this, Eric, but every brain functionally works the same. But most people don't know how to use their brain to 5x, 10x, 20x, 50x. So they are limited by their governors and their beliefs are governors. Their self-image is a governor, their identity is a governor. And even if you have a car that goes 250 miles an hour, but the governor is set at 80, it will never go 250 miles an hour, no matter how many times you smack that pedal.

I love it. And I can vouch certainly for everything you're saying and your stuff is amazing and just get in there and I love it. Just follow you. You're going to find something's going to resonate with anybody who hasn't seen it. And John, thank you so much for your time today and really appreciate you and taught me a lot of cool things once again, and I love you, brother.

Thanks everyone.

And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the Real Mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.