163. Dean Graziosi: The ‘7 Levels Deep’ Exercise That Transformed His Life And It Can Transform Yours!

When you face rejection, conflict, when you face problems, instead of retreating, you might not love it, but you run into the fire to fix it.

And people say, find your purpose, find your passion job.

Sometimes you got to get dirty, fail, and be in it enough to go, damn, this is worth fighting for.

My dad used to say, life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else.

Get in there, roll your sleeves up, fail a little bit, because I think we all crave that safety.

We don't want to leave the nest unless we have a fully baked plan.

So if you don't have a strong enough purpose and why, the outside world will control you.

You'll play small.

You'll sit on your hands rather than saying, now is the time.

Not tomorrow, not next week.

This purpose is so strong, nothing in my way.

I got to go.

When you find something that you would otherwise do for free, that you love to do, you really don't feel like you work a day in your life.

If you look from the outside in, it seems like I'm working my ass off, but that's what I love to do.

Like when I'm on vacation, I want to do this.

If you think about it, most of us get hit with stuff.

It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility to do something about it.

If someone's listening listening to this right now and they just feel sort of stuck and maybe overwhelmed, what's a shift that they could make that could change in that direction?

I would love for you to take nothing else in this podcast is every time you think you have the answer.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brecca, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between.

And today's guest is a very special guest.

I've actually stalked him from afar on social media.

I've been to a number of events that he's spoken at.

He's an impactful speaker, an entrepreneur.

multiple New York Times best-selling author, and he has recently become a very good friend of mine.

Welcome to the podcast, Dean Graziosi.

So good to be here, Gary.

Dude, I'm so, I'm so excited that you're here.

And, and you know what happens to me so many times when I have guests over?

And I should have a rule that you have to go from the elevator to the podcast room because we ended up doing a podcast room.

We did a podcast just now.

Yeah.

For two hours off camera.

And finally, we both stood up and we're like, we should probably go in the podcast room.

Exactly.

The whole reason why we came.

And we were talking about everything, regenerative farming, stem cells, blood.

We covered it all in an hour and 45 minutes.

I think we solved the Russian-Ukraine crisis.

I mean, we covered it all.

But I'm so excited to have you sitting in this chair.

I'll be here.

And I think my audience is going to get so much value out of this because there's a common theme

that seems to run through the majority of my podcast guests.

And that's that they are where they are and they're making such an impact and they're so passionate and so purposeful because they solve the problem in their life.

And when I, you know, I obviously knew who you were and your work with Tony Robbins and, you know,

what an icon you are for so many entrepreneurs.

But when I started to peel back the layers of like, who is Dean Graziosi?

You didn't really have like a privileged upbringing by any means, right?

Probably as privileged as yours.

And, you know,

it's always exciting for me to talk about,

you know, what was the problem that you solved?

I've had so many people sit in that chair that

they were a soccer mom and they were plagued by Lyme disease and they became a citizen scientist and they solved their Lyme disease.

And now they're one of the most impactful speakers or or they were a drug addict or an alcoholic and they overcame the addiction and now they're one of the biggest voices in that in that industry.

So what was your journey like that set you on the path to where you are now?

Really great question.

And first off, before I get started, I just want to say I have the same for you.

I've been watching you.

My wife fell in love with how you speak and how clear you are and how you give transferable information so freely.

Like meaning when I say transferable, there's a lot of great people, doctors, physicians, and people out there that are helping.

And sometimes it feels so out of reach.

Right.

And what you're so good at is taking complicated things and making it simple for all of us to go, hey, I could get healthier doing that.

Yeah.

I just want to say watching you grow has been a privilege and a pleasure.

And we had passed each other a million times.

So I was glad we finally got to meet you.

Yeah, I mean, we actually some of the same events on the stage, a lot of the same events.

Amazing stuff.

And it's a privilege to be here.

You know, if I think about it, not to go too deep deep on my story.

I'm here for you guys that are listening and watching right now.

But if you think about this, there's a philosophy that I didn't say this for the last 40 years of my life, but it's something that hit me a couple years ago.

And if you're watching right now, listening right now, you know, you're someone that's meant for more.

You want to do more.

You want to be healthy.

You want to live into your full potential, live longer, impact more, just do more, right?

Right.

But if you think about it, most of us get hit with stuff.

Yeah.

Right?

Whatever that stuff is.

And there's a philosophy that I've been living by.

I probably have lived by it for a long time, but now I say it is it's not your fault.

It might not be your fault that your parents didn't tell you they loved you.

It might not be your fault that you got Lyme's disease.

It might not be your fault that no one believed in your dreams.

It's not your fault that the economy could go a certain way or tariffs or inflation,

but it is your responsibility to do something about it.

Yeah.

And I think those that have the opportunity to live into their healthiest self, their most successful self, to live into where they're meant to be, not settling to to be, realize it's on them, right?

It's not your fault those things happen.

Yeah.

But how do you take that and make that into fuel in your life rather than the anchor?

Now, I know this is a made-up story.

Then I'll get to my story really quick.

But did you ever hear that?

It's probably a made-up story about twins.

No.

And so one twin is a drug addict in and out of jail.

And they say, How did this happen to you?

And he said, My father was physically abusive and drank too much.

And he was so mean to me.

How else could I turn turn out?

They went to the other brother who was massively successful, happily married with kids.

And they said, hey, how did you become so successful?

He said, my father was a drug addict in and out of prison.

What else could I be?

Wow.

Right?

So one found a way to use it as fuel, as the wind behind their sail, and the other as an anchor.

And I think that's our job in life.

How do we, how do we take what happened to us and make it the inspiration, not the anchor?

Do you think it's a difference between a victim mentality and I've heard victor and victim, but you know, very often we start to repeat patterns in our life because we feel like things are happening to us, like they're out of our control.

Yeah.

And you know what I think?

I probably would have said victim or the opposite side mentality years ago, but what I realized now is some people just aren't taught how to think differently.

How that they can actually change their childhood.

They could change their past.

They could change the meaning of things.

So you asked me a little bit about me.

What was that thing?

If I go back to my earliest memory, I mean, for you, there has to be, there has to be a new compelling future that you create for yourself every year.

You've already passed.

I guarantee you far surpassed anything you thought was possible.

Oh, no question.

Right.

So if you don't have a new compelling future, then you're just the good old days and you're not a good old days guy.

Yeah.

Right.

It's like, you know for a fact, next year is going to be better than this year.

True.

That's so true.

But not everybody has that.

And it's one of the things my partner, Tony Robbins, does so well.

And I try to do, he does it in the personal development world.

I do it in business and crafting a business and making it successful you do it in health is it's a bigger future so if I think about when you asked me that question I don't think it was one moment at at seven years old I realized my dad and mom split when I was three and I realized probably seven eight that my mom was working three jobs you don't know the difference she was cleaning houses she was cutting hair she was painting houses come home nine 10 o'clock every night to make nothing i mean darling we lived in the only trailer in a trailer park yeah i lived in the trailer park in our the only trailer park in our town We lived in that until my mom couldn't afford it.

We moved in with grandma, right?

Wow.

So I remember, I don't know if I was seven, 10, 15.

I just remember thinking, I need to get insanely successful for a couple of reasons.

One,

money controlled my mom.

She didn't control it.

She wanted to be there for our baseball games and try to take us to school and all that, but she couldn't.

My grandmother ended up doing all of it because my mom was working her tail off.

Right.

So I realized money controlled my mom.

She didn't control her own life.

Right.

And secondly, I just wanted to retire her.

I mean, mean, I remember, I remember being 10 years old.

I want to retire.

Like, I wanted my mom.

Like, I remember my uncle Larry, who was very college-oriented, asked me at like 12 years old, what are you going to do?

I said, I'm going to be rich.

And the first thing I'm going to do is make it so my mom never has to work again.

And I remember him saying to me, I remember him saying to me, well, that's a great dream, but what, what's what college do you want to do?

What's your profession, right?

And, and I think the, the why.

behind you want something is way more profound and important than the how.

I totally agree with you.

I mean, I really, really agree with you.

So, if someone's listening to this right now and they just feel sort of stuck

and maybe overwhelmed, or like they don't know how to make that switch, like they know that they're capable of more and they know that what they're doing is not working.

What's a shift that they could make?

Yeah, great.

It could sort of change that direction.

Right.

And whether this is leading into the healthiest version of you, the most profitable, you know, the most wealthy version of you, right?

It's all the same.

right?

So

if you think about it, sometimes we don't realize it's the questions we ask ourselves.

It's like, how come I could never get healthy, right?

I've heard Tony do this so well.

Or saying the question is, who do I need to model to become the healthiest version of myself?

So sometimes you just got to watch the questions we ask ourselves because we can give ourselves bad questions, therefore we get a bad answer, right?

In my 20s, I would say, as long as you do what the best in the world do and you model proven practices, how could you not be successful?

But the problem is you could give a business on how to sell $20 bills for 10 bucks to a lot of people and they'll still mess it up.

Yeah.

And nobody wants $20 bills anymore.

You know, they're kind of old.

These are kind of crinkled.

I didn't get a good batch.

They showed up late.

My wife thinks it's a dream.

I don't think.

You know, I saw you and Ed Milet talking one day.

I think it was out on a

bluff in California because I think I recognized the background.

And

you were just just, it was a very simple story that you told.

And you're like, if I'm in a restaurant and I order, you know, well-done steak and some guy, somebody brings me chicken, I'll just eat the chicken.

It's like, I got bigger problems to solve.

Yeah, I got bigger problems.

And it reminded me, you're like, I don't get all wound up, you know, and fire up the waiter and then bring the conversation down at the table.

Look at this, they screw it up.

Like, I want to get fired up over, in your terms, would be, I want to get fired up and upset about if I can't live to 110.

Yes.

I want to get fired up about a hundred million dollar business or a billion dollar.

And I'm not, I'm just saying you just realize all problems can feel the same weight,

but they aren't.

Solve bigger problems, get bigger results.

Yeah.

Right.

It's, it's what you do so well.

So at this phase of my life, I realize that if the mindset isn't right,

that it doesn't matter about the opportunity.

Right.

So, so I'm going to share a little something with you.

I, I,

about 15 years ago, I had something so profound shift my life.

Um, I hired a consultant.

His name was Joe Stump.

And I hired him and said, I want my students, people who follow me, like yours, you would want more of your people to actually do the stuff you teach so they can actually get healthy.

Join your VIP, buy your supplements.

Not because, I mean, I know the passion you have for people.

I see it when the cameras are off and you talk about how to, like, you're on this earth to change lives.

Like, that's someone you follow.

That's someone you model, right?

So I hired him to come in and said, how do I get more of my students' results?

Because like, I know this thing works because I spent 15 years figuring it out

and people say yes but then they actually don't do it and they still are upset that they're not getting results so i hired him and said how do i get more results

and he said to me i want to do this seven levels deep exercise on you i'm like no you don't have to do it on me just give it to me if it's i paid you 10 grand for half a day just give it to me he's like no i can't give it to you i got to do it with you And it's shifted my life, Gary.

Like, I would ask, why?

Okay, you still work like you're broke.

I said that to you.

That's so true.

You like you work.

So do I.

I literally just landed after a 15-hour flight.

I know.

I said, do you want me to come back?

You're like, no, I feel amazing.

Well, I did a sauna in a cold punch, but now I'm back to life.

But

let me just say, you work so hard.

So if I said to you, why do you work so hard?

What would your answer be?

Two reasons.

One, because I believe that my

purpose is way bigger than the problems that I have in my life.

And secondly, I know that I'm on God's plan for me because I feel that.

And it sounds so cliche.

I used to think that this saying was just something you put on a sign, you sort of hung it on your office because it was sort of supposed to be there, like an Ansel Adams picture or something.

And,

you know, when

you find something that you would otherwise do for free that you love to do, you really don't feel like you work a day in your life.

So if you look from the outside in, it seems like I'm working my ass off because I travel so much.

keep an insane schedule and I speak so frequently and I read incessantly.

But that's what I love to do.

Like when I'm on vacation, I want to do this.

Yeah.

I get it.

I get it.

I don't like to sleep.

I don't like to go on vacation.

I can't wait to wake up every morning.

And then I stretch it.

So I'm like, how can I get up a half hour earlier?

So there's more of the day.

I only say that because for you to work the way you work, have the success that you have, the depth of caring, congratulations on this podcast being one of the top podcasts in the world.

Thank you.

Well deserved.

Yeah, well despite the people that are listening right now.

Yeah, well deserved.

And you're listening to the right guy.

But there is something in your soul bigger

than the fear,

bigger than what's going on in politics, bigger than inflation, bigger than tariffs, bigger than politics, bigger than the news being negative or what it is.

So they have clickbait.

There has to be something bigger in your, your, your reason for doing it has to be greater than the reason not to.

I don't want to oversimplify it.

And what Joe Stump gave me that day was such a profound shift.

I had already, I was already successful, already had a great company and but it shifted everything for me because I understood with clarity why the heck I did what I did.

So I want to tell you, you just gave me a great reason why your purpose, God, healing.

I know you want to impact people.

I know you want to make this world a healthy place.

I know you're doing it bigger than most people realize behind the scenes.

I know what you're doing behind the scenes to make this country a healthier place.

It's amazing what you're doing.

I see it.

But that comes along with something that when you face rejection, when you face conflict, when you face problems, instead of retreating, you might not love it, but you run into the fire.

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Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast.

So I want to, I'd love to give everybody listening,

if you take nothing else from this podcast, take this.

Joe Stump, this guy, Joe, I'm sitting in front of my team.

I got about six of my team members and I'm waiting for him to give us gold.

to get more of our people to do the things that we know will change their life.

Step one, two, three.

What's one thing everybody should do right now to be healthier if they're not doing it?

Like sleep.

Sleep, right?

So it's it's like you, you give them this process to sleep.

You know, if they sleep, you know, all the benefits of it, but they still don't sleep.

It's like,

what can I do to get your butt in bed and do the thing, right?

Yeah, so true.

So I'm just waiting for the, oh, this will help me.

And he said, Dean, why'd you spend 10 grand for me to come here today?

And I got to tell you, when you start, he calls it seven levels deep because.

you ask yourself the reason why seven times.

And I have to tell you, it's crazy.

Five's not enough.

Eight's too many.

He's He's right on point because the first five or so questions come from your head.

So he asked me, he's like, well, I said, well, I want more of my students, my clients, to have the results I got to have.

I was great.

That's such a noble reason.

Why do you want them to have success?

I said, something like, I want to leave a legacy.

I want this industry to step up.

You know,

it's like, it's either do better, right?

I'm sure you hate when somebody's just hocking a vitamin that they don't even know what it is.

It's built with horrible products.

It's got worse ingredients in it.

It's got to drive you crazy.

Yes.

Well, now, I mean, Tony's my partner now, but I look at Tony as grade A and there were so many people.

It was just like, step up or step out, right?

So I said some things like that that came out of my head.

I don't even know what I said for the first four or five times.

But man, when he got to the fifth time, he goes, why is that important?

Something shifted.

And this is the part everybody should hear.

Something shifted from my head to my heart.

It was like,

like I physically changed.

I felt.

like, you know, you get the goosebumps.

And I said something I had never said.

I said, I don't ever want to go backwards.

I'm sitting in front of my team.

They're probably like, and I'm like, I remember being broke as a kid.

I remember not being able to go to restaurants.

I remember my mom struggling for money.

And in this moment, talking about why I hired a consultant with my team around, I'm like, I don't want to go backwards.

And he's like, thanks, Dina.

You're in your heart.

I feel that.

He goes, That's really, I really appreciate you.

And he answered it just this is what he did really in this soothing voice.

Like he was, he was like Matthew McConaughey.

You know what I mean?

He's like, but why would it be important for you not to go backwards?

And I said,

I want my kids to to have choices.

Now as a dad, you know exactly what times.

Now I'm emotional.

I got a tear running down my eye.

And all I remember is I didn't feel like I had choices as a kid, right?

I wanted my kids not to be entitled.

The world doesn't need more entitled children, but I wanted them to have more choices in the world.

Now I'm in my heart.

I got tears running down my eyes.

He goes, Dean, that's only number six.

And you were a hustler before you had kids.

So I got to ask you the final time.

Why is it important that your kids have choices?

And I said the thing that shifted my life.

I said, I need to be in control.

And for me, not a control freak, what I realized at that moment, I'm an adult with children sitting around a team.

I realized the reason I worked so hard is because my parents were married nine times between the two of them, five and four.

Wow.

I moved 20 times by the time I was 19 years old, right?

I never felt in control.

Gary, I had a step-grandfather, Leo Rizzo.

He was the greatest guy in the world.

Taught me how to hunt, took me fishing, come home from school one day.

Our stuff's on the front yard in the moving truck.

Never seen Leo again.

Right.

Stepsister, stepbrother.

Gus Valentino was a stepbrother stepbrother of mine.

We were like buddies.

We shared bunks.

Dad got divorced.

Never saw Gus again.

And all these things come racing in my soul.

And I realize I work so hard because I want to be in control of my decisions.

I want to raise my kids in a different way.

I want to be the husband to my wife in a different way.

I dress in a black t-shirt every day of my life.

I want those choices.

Yeah.

And that day, so again, I just shared about me.

I'm not trying to make it about me.

But I would love for you, if take nothing else in this podcast, is find someone to do it with or do it on your own.

And every time you think you have the answer, you've got to go deeper into your heart.

And it's usually seven times.

And when it clicks, you feel this, you feel it through your body.

So to this day, I mean, we all face adversity.

People think as you get more successful, it gets less.

It just, you just deal with bigger problems.

When I hit adversity, hundreds and hundreds of employees, the things we get to do around the world, partner, like all this great stuff.

I literally go back to, hey, if I just wanted to make more money, I'd quit.

If I just wanted to make my students, even though I want them to be more successful, I'd quit.

But I am never going to go backwards.

I am never going to let my kids down.

And no one is ever going to tell me what I'm going to do with my time.

Like, I still take my kids to school.

I still get to ballet.

I still get to jiu-jitsu.

I still go to tennis practice.

Imagine if someone said, no, sorry, Gary, you got to finish that project.

You can't go watch that

ballet session.

That would, like, to me, I'd choose death before that.

So get out of my way.

Right.

So just all I know is in times, and I'm going to keep going, but I'll share this.

In times of uncertainty that we have right now, we don't know the world's going.

There's lots of stuff.

Could go amazing.

Who knows?

Anything that's negative in your body is compounded.

So if you don't have a strong enough purpose and why, the outside world will control you.

You'll play small.

You'll sit on your hands.

You'll do what most people do.

You'll wait to see what happens rather than saying, now is the time, not tomorrow, not next week.

This purpose is so strong.

Nothing in my way.

I got to go.

Yeah.

And how do people find that purpose?

Like, you know, because for me, it took until I was in my like mid-40s.

You know, I was, I was making decent money.

I had a nice, the decent house.

My kids were, you know, all in school, a great family life.

You know, we didn't want for a lot of things.

But I think very similar to the transitions that you made,

I felt like I wasn't on the path to anything great and I wasn't fulfilling anything.

You know, you were living a life that wasn't yours.

Yeah, it wasn't mine.

And now I'm twice as busy and I am a hundred more times more things on my plate.

And I am as content and satisfied as I've ever been.

And I think from the outside end, it might look like chaos, but to me, it's, it's the only, I would just give it up for, you know, a moment because it's purpose-driven.

But I think a lot of people identify with that, but don't know how to find that.

Yeah, so I think if you separate, one is the reason why you want to live into who you're meant to be, whatever that is.

And the second is the vehicle to get there.

Right.

So I think they're not the same.

Like one is

like you found your purpose and then your why kind of creeped in.

Yeah.

Right.

But imagine if you did the exercise first and you're like, I'm supposed to have more time.

I'm supposed to impact people.

I want to change lives for a living or whatever it is that you want to do.

And I want more freedom.

Then it's time to go research and find the vehicle.

And it doesn't mean they're going to hit it out of the park on the first one.

Right.

Right.

But it's supposed to stop at the beginning.

And the other thing i'd love to say to people is when people say find your purpose find your passion job you're like right i think we're waiting for like clouds to open sunshine pop out of the box heavens part yeah and like be written like this is this is ah yeah like sometimes you got to get dirty fail and and be in it enough to go damn this is worth fighting for yeah so so you really just line your ship up in the direction you think you want to go do the research on it model people who've already been there like don't try to figure it out on your own somebody's already done what you want to do right so just find somebody somebody who's already done what you want to do, model what they do, and roll up your sleeves, get dirty a little bit, get in it, fail a little, right?

Yeah, confidence comes after courage, yeah, right.

My dad used to say, Life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else, which I thought was such a that's he's a very simple,

yeah, he's a very simple, like uh, Captain John Brecka.

Big shout out, dad.

Um, he's you know, my mom and dad are still with us by the grace of God.

Oh, that's amazing, and um, he was you know, like a simple guy,

uh, very disciplined, military guy.

But he would say, life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else.

And I was like, I didn't realize how profound that was until I was.

Beyond profound.

Yeah.

But

that's true.

Because don't you hate it when you're like in high school and your parents are like, well, what do you want to make your life?

What do you want to go to college for?

I don't even know what I want for lunch.

I don't know.

I don't know what I want to have for dinner.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So sometimes those.

Those sayings just, they just

until you get to a certain age.

It's like, do you ever hear the saying when you have kids, you wait about six months and you call your parents and say, thank you.

And I'm sorry.

I had no idea.

I had no idea what you went through to keep us alive.

Right.

It's funny.

Your dad's saying, there's a, there's a saying, Agmendino, there was a section in his book.

It's kind of old school

therapy.

Old school therapy is don't let your emotions dictate your actions.

Let your actions dictate your emotions.

So true.

Right.

How can you be depressed and sad when you're on the move?

So sometimes we got to get on the move and then we find the thing we should be doing along the journey.

Just what your father said, beautifully said by your dad.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it was beautifully said.

And it was very simple.

And like in simplicity, there was, it was really profound.

And it's so true because, well, I actually went to undergrad and grad school for human biology, you know, biology and human biology.

I never really realized how much of an impact that that was going to have because it was, you know, years later that it came around and I found it to be, you know, really, very useful.

But I think it's like you were saying, you know, get in there, roll roll your sleeves up, fail a little bit, because I think we all

crave that safety, right?

We don't want to leave the nest unless we have a fully baked plan.

Yeah, did you ever, did you ever see that meme where it shows, be careful what you wish for, and it shows three meals a day, safe, protected, and all this stuff.

And then it shows a lion in a cage.

Right.

He's safe.

He's protected.

He gets three meals a day.

Can't be hunted.

Can't be killed.

Yeah.

And he's in a cage.

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

It's so true.

You got to get out of that comfort zone.

And so what are the exercises that somebody could go through?

I mean,

how do you start putting yourself and putting one foot in front of the other and taking that path towards success?

You talk about courage, not the definition of courage that we find in Webster's dictionary, but I've heard you talk about your own version of courage before.

And what does that mean to you?

What does courage really mean to you?

How does somebody find the courage to do that?

Yeah, really great question.

You know,

courage is not moving forward in the absence of fear.

Courage is moving forward even though you're scared to death, right?

And how they all stack up.

If you got a good enough purpose,

then that pushes you to be courageous.

Right.

And people say, I need confidence.

Confidence to me doesn't really come until you're actually in the game.

Right.

You have the courage to start the game.

You learn how to play the game when you're on the field.

Like the Theodore Roosevelt quote, the man in the arena, right?

And you're on the field, bloody and marred.

You don't.

You don't want to be in the stands with someone else's name on your jersey, cheering for them.

You're horrible.

You suck, but you're sitting in your chair doing nothing.

I want to be on the field.

Even if I fail, you're learning, right?

So courage is that thing that you need to move forward so you can see if you like it.

And so there's a couple of reasons you need courage.

So I'll try to answer both the questions.

Like, how do you, what are some steps

you should take?

One thing you got to realize, now, and I know we're on a podcast, you have the absolute best podcast in the world on health and longevity, and we're talking about success.

I get that.

It's a little bit, but it all goes, yeah, at the end of our lives, we want to be successful and healthy.

Yeah, right.

The first course course module that I built for my VIP community was mindset, because I think a lot of people struggle with mindset, meaning they struggle with just the simple ability to put themselves first, especially women, you know, without putting the needs of other people before theirs.

And eventually what happens is this act of being so selfless

comes back to haunt them.

They believe that self-care is being selfish when really self-care is being very selfless.

Right.

You know, it's the only version of yourself with everybody.

Oxygen mask on before you assist your own child.

You know, if the plane depressurizes, which isn't, you know, a mother's first instinct, it's to try, right?

Not to help themselves.

But I think there's a lot of truth in that, you know, you're a much better person and can show up better for your spouse, for your career, for your kids, you know, for your coworkers, for your peers.

So what I, what I would start, if I, again, if I could answer both those questions, like, how would you start?

One thing, we, we don't realize it, but we fall in a hypnotic rhythm.

We fall in a routine, right?

What's probably the biggest thing to get somebody healthier is to get out of the current routine that they have, even if it's not a good routine.

I wake up, I have my first cup of coffee, I eat this certain thing, I do this certain thing.

And you got to shift that morning routine is hard enough.

Not even your whole life, just shift the first thing you do in the first 45 minutes of waking up is hard, right?

But if you can get them to shift that little bit, then you go, oh, you got that.

How about you doing this once a week?

Oh, how about three times a week, right?

So it's these, so first off, it's like Kaizen.

All shifts start with micro shifts that lead the the bigger shifts that lead the bigger shifts.

Everybody who starts in New Year's resolutions, I'm going to do all this stuff.

Never going to eat bread.

No more sodas, no more thing.

By January 1st, it's all January 15th.

It's all gone, right?

It's too big.

Yeah.

So one thing to realize, say you're in a career and it's unfulfilling and you know you're meant for more.

I love using that term.

Like you're enough, you know enough.

You could do more.

You could impact more.

You're just not quite sure where to go.

But without realizing it, in a career, sometimes we start that career thinking, hey,

I'm going to get this career.

I'm going to get promotions.

I'm I'm going to get raises.

I'm going to knock it out of the park.

And

in a

hierarchy of a business, sometimes you don't get recognized.

Your lessons aren't heard.

Your ideas are passed over.

And over time, you start shrinking on the inside.

Like, hey, nobody listens anyway.

Heck with it.

It's a safe spot.

That's how I do it.

I get my check.

I get my check.

Everybody in my family tells me I should be lucky to have this job.

It's okay.

But then there's one day, right?

We all wake up and say, I'm like, I watched the Steve Harvey interview just this morning.

I was on the treadmill this morning.

I thought it was so good.

There's a day you wake up and go, enough.

I need to be healthy today.

He heard about you on a Friday.

He was here on a Monday.

I love that.

Threw down to see me with you.

Because we all get to a moment where you go, I'm not doing that.

I'm living someone else's life.

And whether it's because you're let go or AI replaces you,

or you decide, there's got to be that definitive line and say, today, enough is enough.

I'm getting healthy.

I'm starting my own thing.

I'm going to shift my financial future, right?

When that happens, what you don't realize is the years of maybe a career mindset made you turn down your innovation, turn down your drive a little bit.

And you got to find a way to wake it up.

And you got to be courageous to do that.

Yeah.

Right.

And you got to realize that maybe the guardrails go away, but you were meant to drive with no guardrails.

You were meant not to be in that cage.

Right.

Yeah.

But what are some of the ways that people can shift that, that inner monologue, right?

That's that, that dialogue.

Because I think that, you know, I talk about, for example,

keeping little promises to yourself.

Like that.

Okay.

So you, you know, and when I say the promises that you break are the promises that nobody else knows about because, you know, you don't tell your spouse, hey, I'm, I told myself I'm going to go to bed at 10 o'clock tonight.

And then you go to bed at midnight.

You just make a promise to yourself.

You know, you got home from work tonight.

Tonight I'm going to bed at 10 o'clock.

And you only shared that with yourself.

And you go to bed at 11.30.

You know, tomorrow morning, I'm getting out for a 30-minute walk, first thing in the morning.

You don't really go for the the walk nobody else notices but you and what what i believe happens is that um

you keep breaking these little promises to yourself and you actually lose trust in yourself it's so true and you you actually

truly don't believe yourself because your actions don't you know fall in line and and i and i you lose faith in your own yeah so i'm myself we're not this collection of goals and this collection of of priorities we're really a collection of habits and you know if you want to lose weight and you don't develop the habits of somebody who's going to lose weight,

the goal of losing weight or the priority of losing weight isn't you're never going to get there.

So if you, if you don't get into the habits, so if you don't have the habits of someone who's successful or the habits of someone who wants to lose weight or the habits of a champion or the habits of somebody who wants to be financially successful, I don't know any other way that you get there without developing those habits.

But it has to start and,

you know, like in my course, I always start with the mindset shift.

You have to.

So, how, how do people begin that shift?

How do they start to change that monologue?

Because the older we are, the harder it gets, the stronger that monologue is.

Like the calcium, it gets harder.

Yeah.

Right.

And then I think it's sort of a double-edged sword for younger people.

And I noticed this in the, in my son and my daughter's generation, not with my son and my daughter particularly, but in their generation, is that they truly want instantaneous gratification.

Like they're willing to try jiu-jitsu for three classes.

And if they're not a black belt by the fourth class,

they're kind of out.

And I think that's society has set that framework up.

Or, you know, they're looking at Instagram and they're like, well, this kid is making millions of dollars a year doing stupid videos and gambling.

So maybe I just want to do stupid videos and gambling.

You don't realize that's the one in the million

that broke through.

I love this question.

First off, I tell my kids that all the time.

I'm like, don't say you're going to make your bed every day and then you don't because you're lying to yourself and you'll get in that habit.

Right.

And even though that's a little bit.

I'm just accepting it.

And that was very true.

I like to think about it is, here's three things.

And I'll give you a tool that I use like a tool in the toolbox, right?

The more tools you have, the more further you can go, right?

Is

we can talk about this later, but first, if you're going to, you want to do your own thing, then you need to spend the time understanding the industries that are going to be here and grow in the future.

Right.

You might say, I would never invest in a taxi cab business.

It's over.

Right.

But would you even invest in an Uber business right now when they say within two years 90 of the cars are going to be autonomous right so you have to you got to make sure you could be the best in the world best uber driver in the world if it's replaced by a machine and there's driverless teslas and and waymos all over the country it doesn't matter how good you get so you got to spend the time to find an industry that's growing and that we could talk about that a little bit Number two is you got to model proven practices.

We don't have time in today's world.

Everything's moving exponentially.

Nothing's linear anymore.

AI has changed everything.

There's no like, oh, in three years, like, no, we can figure out what took three years in three seconds, right?

It's so strong.

So you have to find somebody who's already done what you've done and do what they've done so you could start off where they left off.

And the third thing is you got to have that purpose strong enough that you take uncomfortable action because it is uncomfortable to do something new.

If you do something you've never done before, it's going to be uncomfortable.

Most people retreat.

If you don't want to be the person that retreats, you got to take uncomfortable action.

So I don't want to oversimplify success, but if you're an emerging company, you model someone who's already done it and you keep persisting, I don't think there's any way you don't succeed, whether that's with your health or the business you want to start.

So if I add a tool in our toolbox, like courage is a big thing to me.

It's a word I use often with my kids.

I use it in my own vocabulary to myself is I want to have the courage to move forward.

And one thing I think about, and I shared this once, I'll always ask,

we're doing an event.

I'm so glad you're coming.

Oh, no.

I'm so excited for it.

We'll talk about it.

I'm so excited for the end of the year this year, you know, working with you and Tony.

I'm so excited for it.

Oh, me too.

And we'll talk about that in a minute.

But you'll see there's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people live.

And I love, because we got this big chat wall where the chats come in.

Oh, on these events.

Yeah, and these virtual events.

You're going to freak out when you see it because you get instant feedback, right?

So I'll say, hey,

what is the thing?

holding you back from living into your full potential.

In your world, you might say being your optimal health.

In me, it's like most people there will have 800,000 people that are all saying, I want to do my own thing.

And I say, what's holding you back?

It'll be things like, my family doesn't believe in me.

It's kind of embarrassing.

It's hard to start small.

My husband thinks I'm crazy.

I want to wait till we have a different president.

Like it'll come in, but you'll see it like our data.

And then we take that and run it through AI.

And I know the top things.

You know, one of the top things is the fear of looking small, the fear of starting over, the fear of failing, like all these things.

So I've taken them through an exercise and I'll, not an exercise, I'll do it in two minutes here.

But I say, okay, so think about that fear.

And what is that fear on a scale of one to 10 that your husband doesn't believe in you?

Your friends will think you're crazy for starting your own thing.

You're already paid for college.

So why should I do, right?

All these things.

I'm like, what is that story?

Because that's the story holding you back.

Like there's, there's nothing else.

There's, yeah, that's the story.

I'm not good enough.

I'm too old.

I'm too young.

My husband, but that's the story.

So on a scale of one to 10, how strong is that holding you back?

And everybody will do a seven to 10, seven to 10.

I'm like, okay, great.

Now stop for a minute.

Now it's the end of your life.

You lived a 90 years, 95 years, and you're sitting next to your maker, sitting next to God.

God pulls out his iPhone and plays you a video of the woman or the man you could have been.

And you see this life of living into what it scared you, but you did it.

And you had a breakthrough.

Then you failed three times.

Then you had a bigger breakthrough.

And you watched this version of you that you didn't even, you knew it existed, but you let that story of your mom, your sister, the age stop you.

Yeah.

I said,

now I want to tell you, tell me what that feels like on a scale of one to 10.

And it's like 100, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000.

I'm like, and what is the only thing you would say to your maker?

And everybody writes, go back, go back, go back, start over, start over, go back, go back, go back.

And I look at the camera and I say, wish granted.

You're here today.

Today is the day you could start over.

Today is the day you don't let that story stop you anymore because your family doesn't believe in you.

If you're going to show them what you're made of, because you're older, you have wisdom, not just information.

because because you could shift that story and that motivation because then i sometimes go back and i say okay now rate the first story and it's like one one one right right stupid thing yeah right stupid little thing my family doesn't believe in me

that might sound like hey yeah but dean how do you actually make the money this is the foundation to have the leverage right it's the leverage to go i'm freaking doing this no matter what i fail i'm getting up my people my parents criticize me i'm getting up my family thinks i'm not i'm getting up i'm going because when you have that you can give a person with that much like reason to do it a B opportunity, a C opportunity, and they'll make it work.

Give somebody without that passion an A plus opportunity, they fail every time.

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It's got all of the trace minerals that the body needs.

You know, most of us are not just protein deficient, meaning amino acid deficient or fatty acid deficient.

We are mineral deficient.

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In fact, I made a steak today.

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Try it.

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I don't know, a $15 or $20 bag of this will probably last you five years.

It's literally the world's best biohacking syncretic.

Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast.

That's so true.

Gosh, it's so true.

And, you know, for someone like you, that's, that's, you've impacted millions and you've made millions.

Now that you've achieved that level of socioeconomic success, for you,

what's on the other side of that?

Like, what's what's what's next for you?

Like, what, what's still getting you out of bed?

Um, impact at this phase.

Really?

Yeah.

And, and somebody.

I hear Tony talk about that a lot.

Yeah.

Well, and I think about it a lot.

He's my.

He's my dearest friend, right?

I just, I was with him till midnight last night.

I just, I'm in Florida because I spent the last three days with him and I get to hang out with you too.

So what a great, what a great couple of days, right?

And I'm going to biohack like a madman.

um

but at this phase is

you always need that compelling future right so tony and i co-founded we own multiple companies together but we co-founded a company called mastermind and we started mastermind we were on a golf course we just talked about yesterday we're on a golf course seven years ago we were already friends for five years and i watched so many people before you had any business before you had any business you know why because i we started to become friends and every time i'm with him we have a meeting everybody's pitching them and you you see this look especially with your podcast but you're gonna have a hundred times more in the next thing.

Oh, yeah.

So I'm like, you know what?

I don't want to do business with this guy.

He's becoming my dearest friend.

Let's just be friends because I was doing well.

He was doing extremely well.

But then about seven, eight years ago, we're on a golf course and we said, if we were going to start a business, what would we start?

That's how the conversation literally like that.

If we were going to start a business, what would we start?

He said,

you know, he went to a Jim Rohn event, old school personal development.

Jim Rohn event when he was 17 with his last 40 bucks.

fundamentally shifted his life.

He started teaching Jim Rohn stuff and then he became Tony Robbins.

Really?

Yeah.

I didn't know.

For me, I was already, I had a car business, a collision shop, and auto sales.

I buy Tony Robbins stuff 27 years ago.

I jumped into this industry.

So we just decided, why not show people how to do what we do?

How to take your life experience, what you do right now with your VIP program, with all the things you're doing all over the world,

this podcast, you're delivering value to people so they can condense time.

If you model proven practices, it could take you 10 years to figure it out on your own.

I do what Gary did.

I could do it in a year.

Yes.

Right.

I could do it.

Yeah.

Tony took 40 years to do it.

I do it in two.

I was still able to do it.

Right.

So, so we decided, why not create a company that pulls back the curtain and shows people that their life experience might be the most valuable asset you own.

So then, so then we said, this will be our passion project.

We'll show people what we learned.

I have 28 years.

He has 48 years.

We had 76 years of combined in this industry.

We're like, we'll show people, you don't realize it, but the skill you have at work, it's valuable.

The mess you went through and you're on the other side, it's valuable.

The passion you have that you learned so much about somebody starting day one on the passion, yeah, it's valuable because they want to condense time.

Yeah, so we started a company called Mastermind.

Now, it started, we launched it and became a movement, right?

Um, we've this is going to be our seventh event that averages almost a million people event.

That is incredible, right?

We're going to get people all over the world, speaking of your, yeah, and I can't wait for you to be there.

It's going to be amazing, but the cool part about it is it's so mission-driven because now Tony's got a really good way about him.

He's like, Brother,

you know, he got to invent this industry in so many ways and create it.

And it's been a legacy for all of us to model, right?

I get to, I've been doing it probably second longest to him, almost 30 years.

But he's like, hey, when we're gone, we can't help people anymore.

So if we show people how to do what we do, we can make millions of people

armed with the tools to live a fulfilled life, to live into their full potential, an industry that's always going to keep growing.

And we're going, like he found a way to make it about a legacy, about impact.

And the byproduct is the company is growing exponentially.

Right.

But we get up every day.

We're again, we, I said that to you.

You work like you're broke.

Tony and I were joking.

We both work like we're broke.

Same here.

Because now he's like, we got more things to do.

And the byproduct, you know, he's, he fed a billion people in eight years.

One billion people.

Provided one billion meals through Feeding America.

He wanted to do it in 10.

He did it in eight.

You were telling me that.

I mean, a billion.

A billion meals.

I mean, that's, you want to talk about making an impact.

I don't know what another thing is.

Somebody fed him when he was a kid at Thanksgiving when he had nothing and it just left this lasting impression on him.

But the things that he gets to do, right?

You asked what drives those are chicken soup for the soul things.

Oh, I know.

Those are

those on a regular basis, a regular, like regularly, he's doing things like that without telling anybody.

Yeah.

I'll give you an example.

When, when the fires happened in California, he calls me like disturbed by it.

Like, brother, there's a lot of people with money.

They go wherever they want.

There's a lot of people without money.

They lost their houses.

They lost everything.

They can't even afford an Airbnb.

Yeah.

He's like, what are we going to do?

Like, he takes it.

He's like, what are we going to do?

I don't know.

What can I do?

What can I do?

He can't live with that.

And, you know, he donated millions of bucks.

Then he calls me back and he says, hey, let's put another million and buy Airbnbs and just give open tickets to people who can't afford it.

I'm like, tell me where to wire the money.

And having that ability to send money like that in a moment or build schools in Africa or help kids out of slavery, all these things you get to do in the invisible.

goes right back to why I get up every morning.

I'm right because our business mastermind gets to show people how to start, scale, live into their full potential.

And the byproduct, we do this cool stuff for people.

I get to meet awesome people like you.

We're building a friendship.

We're not just doing a podcast, which is totally awesome.

Yeah.

Right.

It's like, man, I want everybody to experience that.

And I'm 56.

Like, I don't have a lot.

I got to go fast.

I want,

you know what I mean?

I got to get more people, you know, the 30 years.

Yeah, thank you.

I'll take an extra 30.

So, and I'm so excited you're speaking at this event.

People are going to absolutely love you.

You know, I think it's, it's so powerful for people to hear ways to quiet that voice of fear and doubt.

Because I think, you know, there's a famous story about

Oprah Winfrey when she tried all of these diets and tried all of these different ways to lose weight.

And I guess she tried Weight Watchers and she might be a shareholder in hell, but she tried Weight Watchers.

She tried all of these different exercise regimens and she just couldn't lose weight.

And she met this philosopher named Gary Zukov and

who wrote the book Seed of the Soul.

And I think he wrote another book called Soul Stories.

Seed of the Soul was great.

Yeah.

And

so he was credited with getting her to

for the first time to getting

Winfrey to lose weight.

And I remember reading this story and someone asked Gary, like, what,

what was it that you did to get her to lose weight?

And he said, it was very simple.

I had her stop seeing herself as a fat person.

And

I was like, wow, that's, that's, that's really profound.

You know, I mean, you're a smoker.

You see yourself as a smoker.

You never stop smoking.

And I think sometimes

the subconscious way that we see ourselves is

what manifests itself in the real world.

And when you do these things like break little promises to yourself, it just, it sort of reiterates and gives a voice to those kinds of things.

And I think a lot of people,

yourself included, doesn't sound like you were surrounded by a lot of mentors.

No.

Right.

You didn't have like a rich uncle that had figured it all out that was your mom's brother that was driving a nice card and built a business and was like, hey, Dean, I'm going to teach you, I'm going to teach you how to do it.

So I think,

you know, very often people fall back on that crutch too, is, is like, well, I don't have anybody to show me.

But what you're saying is it really is within you.

It is.

And once you find it within you, then the mentors appear.

You didn't even know they were the time.

And the mentor could be the book.

Could be the podcast.

Yeah.

Could be the interview that you listen to, right?

Because it's like when you buy a car, you think nobody has it, right?

I bought a white Ford pickup truck.

I love it.

Oh, you got to see white Ford pickup trucks.

Everywhere.

There's 200 of them in my neighborhood.

And it's the same way.

Sometimes when you shift, when you go, I don't want to get to the end of my life and realize I missed it.

Oof, I got to take action today.

Right.

I do have a purpose.

I want to be in control of my time or whatever that is.

All of a sudden, you get hungry.

Like if you look at the common thread for the people who get healthier,

that finally do their own thing, it's a depth of hunger.

Where does that hunger come from?

It comes from a purpose.

It comes from running away from something.

Whatever it is, you use it to get that momentum.

And all of a sudden, I believe the white Ford pickup trucks start showing up all over the place, right?

There's a mentor.

There's an event I should go to.

There's a speech I should listen to.

This is a book I should download, right?

Yeah.

But along this journey of yours, because it seems to me like you've really developed a very conscious mindset, like you're very present.

You're very in touch with how you feel, who you are, where you want to go.

but along your journey somewhere there had to be some setbacks

even even even even success

had to bring a whole new set of without a doubt yeah of setbacks yeah

is there are there any that particularly stand out to you um tipping points that you recall yeah what did you do in those and they never in those moments everybody's like they just get bigger thanks gary dean you make me feel so good about success

they just want to remind you you're not only

bringing right back down to earth here.

Yeah.

Not only do they continue to come, they get bigger.

Yeah, they

get more complex.

The one that I thought I couldn't get through is so

you got to figure.

I did own a collision shop.

I owned Dean Collision Center at 19 years old.

Really?

That's awesome.

And it wasn't a monster, but in my little town, I had Dean Collision Center.

I had about 15 apartments.

I would buy rundown apartment houses.

So I'd work on cars during the day and I'd go home and eat and I'd work on my houses.

I learned how to be a plumber, a carpenter.

so i had 19 apartments and a little collision shop and i bought a tow truck and i so long story short and i watched tony robbins on an infomercial and i was already doing well but when i listened to tony i bought his whole course and i remember listen that life happens for me not to me like i could use my past as the win not the anchor all the stuff we've been talking about today

Foundationally, I got a lot of that from him 27, 28 years ago, right?

Right.

Long story short, not only it profoundly shifts some things in me.

I was already having success, but I knew I was meant for more, just like what you said.

There was something, I was living someone else's life.

I wasn't supposed to be painting fenders.

I'm not knocking that, but that wasn't where I was, where I felt I belonged.

But the second thing that happened by buying this course is I said, wow, I gave Tony Robbins money for information.

Like, think about it.

It's, it's inflation proof.

You don't have to store it.

You don't have to warehouse it.

He just shared with me stuff to be better and it worked.

Tariff.

Yeah, exactly.

So I went in that, so I decided to go in that business.

So the two things that shifted, I decided to go in that business and create a course.

I did an infomercial.

People are like, why did you do an infomercial?

It's because there was no internet when I started.

Sorry, you're just older, right?

But long story short, picture this blue-collar guy in a little town.

I have two desks in my collision shop.

One is my new business, creating an infomercial and a product.

I had no clue what I was doing.

Look back now.

But that was your favorite desk.

Cause I know what you mean.

Yeah.

So I have a desk with all my.

Yeah.

So like somebody would come in for an estimate on their car and then the other phone would be like, oh my God, I got it.

Like, this is my future.

Right.

so long story short i start getting momentum i produce a product i produce an infomercial i put way

back then to do an infomercial and buy media it was a couple hundred grand which i didn't have i put a lot of it on credit cards so i'm launching this and then i find a company now in arizona who knows more than me about this space so now picture i go about two years

working in new york and upstate my collision shop i sold cars apartment houses flipping houses i'd go back to new york three weeks being that guy i'd make money i'd take it with me to Arizona and I'd dump it what seemed like this bottomless pit of this infomercial product company.

Like I'd put 25 grand and I'm like, ooh, we're good.

And like two days later, it's gone.

Yeah.

And it's like two days later, they're like, it's gone.

I'm like, ah, you know, and so I'm hustling back and forth and I'm finally getting momentum, Gary.

I'm like, I finally, you know, you remember, you know, the breakthrough, you've been there a million times when you're like, it's the moment before you quit.

Yeah.

You just say one more go.

And that's the thing I wish everybody could have is like,

sometimes we quit inches from the

touchdown, the field goal or whatever it is you want to say, right?

I'm about like, can I really do this?

In my mind, the story my sister told me, I'm not Tony Robbins.

You're 5'7.

He's 6'7.

He's got friends.

He's got money.

Like, I remember all these things, right?

Of them trying to protect me.

And right before it's quitting, Gary, I'm starting to get momentum.

And I see it.

I see people are starting to say thank you for the product.

And we're getting momentum.

And me going back and forth, I hire someone who's at this time is probably the age I am now, older, wiser.

I hire him as like CFO, help me much as I could afford.

Help me run this when I'm not here.

Cause I got to go back to New York and actually make money to fund this whole, right?

Yeah.

I start getting momentum.

There's a little money in the bank.

We're getting success.

The infomercial is starting to rank.

Like I'm the fourth infomercial in the country.

Tony's number one.

Yeah.

My mentor that he didn't even know it back then.

I'm like number four or five.

And this guy at 56 years old never gambled a day in his life.

He gambled his wife's

retirement money away.

And when he lost that, he drained all my bank accounts, went to the casino, put it all on the color.

It was a CFO.

It wasn't a CFO.

Back then it was an accountant.

Accountant.

So I wasn't.

For you.

For me.

Oh my God.

He took all the money out of all my accounts, went and gambled to try to get his wife's money back, and he lost mine.

So I'm just barely afloat, right?

You got to think.

And I got people saying, you're a dreamer out there in Arizona, infomercial guy.

And back then it wasn't.

It was like you were called the infomercial guy.

Like, you want to be the infomercial guy and i go out there one day thinking we're doing good and he calls me and he just he says can i talk to you he says it's all gone i'm like what do you what do you mean it's all gone said to me we don't have one dollar we can't make payroll on friday like we finally put a cushion away go get the cushion money and he told me the story crying he told you the story yeah crying like a baby he just threw himself at the mercy of the car oh my gosh and and i just remember leaving there guy i remember it was back when cell phones were those big not cell phone a home cordless phone with the big oh yeah yeah antenna that you pull out yeah it was so hard against the wall it stuck in it went straight in and stuck i went to the floor and cried and this is the part i want everybody to hear the human part is all of it came back i said my sister was right i didn't go to college i don't have a business degree i don't know how to run businesses this is for people way smarter than me this is for people who have money backing this is for people who weren't blue collar i'm a damn car guy Like I remember just saying, you should have never left Marlboro.

You should, like, all these things, no matter how much I didn't work on myself as much back then, but I remember all of those things.

And I thank God that something shifted.

I don't know if it was a day, three days, or five days, something shifted.

And I just said, if I can get through this, I bet you I can get through anything.

That was the, that was honestly the shift.

I'd love to say it was miraculous.

It was praying.

And I probably did all of that.

But I just got this thing in my head.

I'm like, well, what if I could get through this?

Like, I bet you if I got through this, nothing will ever stop me again.

And just the switch of the thought, Gary, went from crying in my soup.

I woke up the next morning.

I'm like, how do I fix this?

How do I fix this?

I mean, I did things like applied for 10 credit cards at once so they wouldn't all see my credit card check, the credit check.

And then you used to be able to do that.

Right, they can't do it anymore.

Right.

AI, they can find it.

So I applied for all these credit cards.

Soon as I got them, I went to the bank and got cash advance on all of them.

Made payroll.

My dad had a house with no mortgage on it from years prior that I helped him get.

I'm like, dad, can I do a home equity line of credit on on your house?

But I need to do it right now.

I'll pay the whole thing.

Please, he's like, Do it, do it.

He got me 100 grand off his house.

Oh, wow.

And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I got 80 grand here.

I got 100 grand here.

What about this?

I sold the house I was living in.

You did?

I sold the house I was living.

I moved into a $1,200 a month house rented down the street.

I got 400, 300 grand in equity or 200 grand in equity in the house.

I put all that in, and all I kept saying is, imagine if I get through this.

Yeah.

And

that's the gift I hope we inspired other people to see.

You know what I think, too?

I think that a lot of the best things in life come from perspective.

And I think that when you have that perspective and then you succeed, even if you marginally succeed.

Yeah, even if you just don't die.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You just

stay alive.

So, you know, I look at a lot of the negative things that have, you know, looking back, you would consider to be negative things, litigation, divorce, bankruptcy, you know, all of these things.

I walked out of Louis Vuitton store one time with a pair of sunglasses on my head and

I ended up actually calling the store to report it, but I got arrested the next day for walking out of Louis Vuitton as a zero tolerance policy and they actually arrested me.

And

my mug shot was in the paper.

And

the case got thrown out and it was, you know, it was, it was, it was a no-lo process.

And I got a lawful denial letter from the court and everything else as soon as the state attorney general got it.

She was like, you didn't actually steal these.

You reported them before they found out.

But I'm just saying, I look back at a lot of these things, you know, divorce or bankruptcy

and God help you, if you've ever been arrested, it's the worst feeling in the world.

But

and the shift, the momentous shift that

happened in me because of that event, because if you just don't stop and you get beyond that, you get more tolerance.

You get, you, you build this resilience.

Yeah.

And then if you start thinking, what if, God, I know your beliefs.

I'm a huge believer.

What if

you had to experience that to be the Gary you are today?

Yeah.

I see the relationship you have with your wife.

And I feel blessed to say that I have that with mine.

Yeah.

And I'm amazing.

I'm not saying

not critical, but I know a lot of people that it looks like that, but behind the curtain, it's not.

What if you had to go through all that to be the man you are to your wife?

What if you had to go through all that to have the resilience to impact so many lives?

What if you had to do that to do this podcast?

Yeah, it's all worth it.

Right.

Then you look you have an ability i know this sounds crazy especially if you're younger you might think i'm nuts but you have ability to change your past everybody says you you can change your future can't change your past not really true you could give a different perspective to the things that happened yeah like why the hell i forgot the damn sunglasses on my head i walked out it wasn't my phone but I guarantee if you had a way to look at the dots, when you get to your maker at the end of your life and say, why did that happen?

He's like, oh, wait, let me pull out page 47.

And you're like, oh my God.

I need to have a banger right.

yeah yeah i was trying to tell you to make the left carry yeah you weren't so i made a hard right for you right and you're like oh my gosh yeah right yes whether it's true or not if you believe it's true it feels just the same like many of you the hardest thing for me is to shut off my mind at night when i want to sleep and it's funny because sometimes i'll wake up tired already thinking of when i'll get back to bed again but exactly the moment that i lay my head on the pillow it feels like the machine of crazy what-if thoughts is turned back on does this this happen to you?

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Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast.

Yeah.

You know, but I think there's so much power in, and this is so off my normal topic that I usually talk about, but I don't want to get back to health here in a minute, but,

you know, I think there's so much power in just the ability to reframe things.

You know, to like you're talking about, you know, going back into the past and just reframing that.

Absolutely.

I have a um a friend they call him dr rewire and i actually watched him uh one night we we went to one of his uh uh events at the saint regis in uh salt lake city

and

he

he brought all these people out around a fire and people were disclosing their

some very dark things that had happened in their life you know um and it had to do with either very tough breakups or tough relationships tough emotional journeys that they've been on different forms of abuse.

And I watched him actually

go into that moment with them and reframe the way that they talked about it and actually walk them from that moment to where they were now.

I would love to watch somebody as a skilled person.

Oh, he's, yeah, he's, he's a, his, his name is Dr.

Aluk Travotti.

And

call him Dr.

Rewire.

But it was, Sage and I were sitting around this fire.

I'll never forget.

And I was watching these people go through what seemed like a torture session, right?

Because they were deep in this traumatic period of their life.

I remember one girl in particular, her, her boyfriend had actually

put a pistol in her mouth and he had cocked the handle of the pistol back and he was threatening

to kill her.

And, you know, this massively traumatic event, but what it caused her to do was take her kid

and leave and finally leave him and stop with the trial of abuse.

And that's a really intense

story.

But my whole point is that I watched him rewire these people from some of the darkest moments in their life into these very positive launching pads where they were almost like, thank God that happened.

Right.

Exactly.

Thank God that

actually happened to me.

And,

you know, not consciously doing it, but sometimes now that I look back on some of these other little tipping points in my life, like, you know, you losing everything with your partner stealing from you.

I mean, a lot of people would have gotten really pissed off and they would have gotten really angry.

and they would have diverted all of their energy towards holding that person accountable.

You know, it's like, it's like focusing on the spilt milk.

It's already spilt.

Doesn't matter whose fault it is.

It doesn't matter if it's going to stay in the carpet.

It's already spilled.

You might as well get a towel and a new glass of milk and try to fix exactly a new glass of milk.

I love it.

Dean, this is amazing.

I want to shift gears a little bit because I know that you're in good shape.

You're in really good condition.

Obviously, you're taking care of yourself.

What kind of role for you?

Does fitness, wellness,

you know, we talked about your diet a little bit beforehand because

I think the fuel that obviously goes into our bodies matters.

Absolutely.

And I think that your mindset has a lot to do with how you feel physically.

And, you know, sick, fat, tired people don't build empires.

True story.

And

what does your routine look like?

What are some things that you do?

And this is not a biohacking question.

It has to be super insightful.

Well, I mean, the thing is, to be the father I want to be, I have an 18-year-old, 16-year-old, five-year-old, and a two-year-old, right?

So I got a big, big spread there.

And my two-year-old,

I got to be, I want to be here for a while, but

how can I impact the world at the level I want?

Or just impact the world might sound like a big, how do I live into the best version of me?

The only thing I can do is be, I want to be better today than I was last week, last year, last month, right?

So it's a culture of progress, not perfection.

or comparison, right?

If you just compare yourself to who you were last year and you're better, you're moving.

So for me,

I don't feel I could be the man, the husband.

I want my wife to look at me a certain way.

I want my kids, but my kids, my older kids just work out.

I never asked them to.

I just see dad working out.

They started working out.

They're both in great shape.

Right.

So I don't get to be the, have the energy, be the man I want to be, the husband, the leader I want to be.

And I need the energy at this age to go at the pace I go.

I run hard.

So therefore,

I need to have my body as optimized as possible.

Like my next year, I want to work with you to, I want to go from being in good shape to the best of my life, right?

You know, the ultimate human being.

You're my next superhuman project.

Yeah.

So I say that.

So therefore, it pushes me to take care of myself.

And one thing I want to share, I know this is, I guarantee you got this psychology on a way different level than me.

Then I'll tell you my routine.

But everybody says, you know, I do work out seven days a week.

I don't miss it.

There's nothing.

I can be up all night.

I can fly.

Like, I don't miss it, right?

Same.

And that's just a routine for 30 years, right?

And when people say, God, you must love the workout.

The fact is, I don't love working out.

And

people will say, it must be nice to have your own business and have your own world.

Here's what I know.

Nothing

great comes easy.

But if we focus on the task, if I focus on, hey, I got to get up at five again so I can make everything work.

Then I got to, you know, I got to get ready.

I got to go out in the gym.

Oh, I got to, oh, today's leg day.

I don't love legs the best, but I should do that.

Like, if you think about the doing it, it's hard.

When I have days that I don't want to do it, all I can think about is I want my kids to see by example.

I want my wife to still look at me with the eyes that she looks at me that way.

I want to live a long time.

My two-year-old, I had her when I was 54.

Like, I want to be here when she gets married.

Yeah.

So all I do, and I think about how much better I feel.

My clarity is there.

I feel more alive.

When I'm done working out, I'm like ready to rip something open, right?

Limitless.

So all I do is think about how I feel at the end, how my kids are going to be, how my wife will look at me better.

And if I think about the outcome, then therefore I'll do the work.

Wow.

So it's like starting your own business.

It's like, oh man, I got to figure out the first step and the next step.

And do I do an LLC?

That's kind of a lot.

But are you going to leave yourself in a job that's slowly killing you?

Think about the two years from now when your business is thriving, when you're in control of your decisions, you're in control, like all the things that you wanted to happen.

I need to focus on where I'm going to be so the moment doesn't seem so hard.

So if you ask me why I, how I work out consistently is I'll focus on how I'll feel and the things that'll come after and therefore gets me to do it.

My routine is I do the same thing.

I get up about 4.30 every day.

I get up.

I do a green drink and some fish oil and some other stuff that you're going to make better for me.

Yep, I am.

And then, and then.

I do about a half hour of catching up on creative stuff that I like.

I don't look at stuff that brings me down a rabbit hole.

So my 4.30 to 5.15-ish is my creative stuff, thinking about the day, having fun, like looking through those lenses.

And then I go work out about 5.15 every day.

So three days a week is three or four days a week.

So you have like an hour

moving into the morning.

I do.

Yeah.

And then is this like an hour?

Do you, do you, do you reflect?

Do you practice gratitude?

Do you do meditation?

Not meditation.

I would love to say I meditate.

I can't meditate either.

I don't, but I, but I'll think about, I'll think about three things.

So in the morning, I try to think about one thing I'm grateful for.

I know everybody's like, practice gratitude.

Sometimes you run out of things to be grateful for.

Like, if you ever tried to do a

gratitude journal, you're like, I think I wrote everything down.

Nice.

Right?

So I try to like lower the bar of gratitude.

Lower the bar.

Like, I woke up.

Some mornings, I'm like, 170,000 people a day die if you Google it.

Yeah.

Like, some days I'm like, hey, I woke up today golden.

Like, that's all I need.

If I'm in the right mood, that's enough.

Or, or I slept good, or my pillow felt good.

Right?

Like, you got to just lower it, right?

Way down the gratitude.

My kids didn't get up last night.

Damn, this is good.

Hey, if you got a two-year-old, yeah, exactly.

And then, and then I think of one win from the day before, because a lot of times as someone listening, if you're still listening right now, you're a hustler.

You never give yourself credit for the things you accomplish.

You'll beat yourself up for what you miss.

So I just say, what's one thing I accomplished yesterday that's cool?

And sometimes it's business and sometimes it's monster deals.

And sometimes it's...

I made it to jiu-jitsu.

And when my son did good, he looked up and saw him.

I was there and he smiled.

That's enough of a win from the day before.

And then I'll think of one win I want that day.

Right.

So that's the little routine as soon as my eyes open up is a little gratitude, lower the bar of it, a win from yesterday, a win I want today.

Sometimes I'll also like send love to maybe my mom or send somebody like appreciation in the air, right?

Of like, thank you for that.

And it just, it sets the clock a little different for me.

It puts me in more of an offensive way to approach the day rather than defensive.

Like I think a defensivist, if I woke up and looked at all my emails and I found the one bad one, I'm like, oh, I got to do it.

Puts me in a different state.

So I want to avoid that in the morning.

Right.

And then I do, you know, I drink this concoction in the morning that I can't wait for you to make better.

And then, and then I move.

Yeah.

Right.

Then I move.

Then I go exercise.

And if I do that, which I do most days,

I start the day ready.

Like,

breaking good habits.

The brain alone is a great habit.

You're in the 1% of 1%.

And I just make smart, I never diet.

I just make smart choices with my food for years.

I do the same thing.

I went probably two decades with barely eating anything bad.

I didn't eat a dessert for two decades.

And then I met my wife.

And she always has issues.

Like, we don't dessert a lot, but when it's the right, like, I'm like, babe, it's always the right time for you.

So last year, I probably cheated a little bit on desserts.

But other than that, yeah, that's the routine.

That's amazing, man.

Dean,

we're going to do a series of these first of all, because I'm definitely going to have you back.

For my audience that is not familiar with you, how do they find you?

Where can they find you online?

And which of your books do you think they should start with?

So

Millionaire Success Habits is a great book.

It's over a million copies.

It was from years ago.

It just consistently sells on a regular basis.

It's a great book.

I'd love to invite everybody to come to the event you're going to speak at.

That'd be great.

It's on May 15th through the 17th.

If you liked anything we shared today, if you like my partner Tony Robbins, Gary Brecker is going to be speaking.

Jay Shetty, Matthew McConaughey, some other amazing guests.

Some amazing guests are coming.

And everybody's there is going to be talking about how they took a life experience and turned it into a product.

Wow.

Turned it into impact.

So Tony and I believe with the company we founded Mastermind that every single person listening has an experience, a skill, or a mess they can turn into the message that is valuable in the marketplace.

And once you realize that that could be a side business or the full-time business, and you realize the leverage of a business, an industry that's at a billion dollars a day right now.

Wow.

Heading towards a trillion a year, they predict.

So this is one of those industries that's growing.

If you're intrigued or ever thought about doing that or being a creator, May 15th through the 17th, we're calling it Thrive in 2025.

It's our seventh one.

We'll probably have about 800,000 to a million people joining from over 100 countries.

And they can log in.

They can do it remotely.

So thrive900.com.

Thrive900.com.

I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes as well.

But go register, reserve a spot.

If anything I said today was intriguing, you'll really enjoy it.

It's the only time of year we do three days for free.

Really?

No charge.

So

that, and at Dean Graziosi on Instagram.

At Dean Graziosi on Instagram.

Amazing.

Well, I wind down every podcast by asking my guests the exact same question.

So if you've watched my podcast and made it to the end, you know this question is coming.

And there's no right or wrong answer to this question.

But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

It's so funny.

Of course, I've seen you ask that question, but when it's asked to you, I know.

I'm not prepared for this stuff.

And you know, honestly, some of the best answers weren't like the most wildly philosophical.

Well, I'll tell you what, the first thing came to me

is at the end of my life, I could close my eyes.

And if my wife's still with me, which I'm sure she will be, and my kids, I can feel like I did everything in my power to be an example to show them how to be contributing humans and live a fulfilled life.

Like, Lily, when you said it, all I could, the first thing that came to my mind is if my kids were like, man, my dad set us up, not money, but set us up to be

good humans and live a resourceful kind of life.

That's amazing.

Well, I also have a VIP community, so we're going to head over to my VIP community now.

I let them know before the podcast who's coming on.

Oh, that's awesome.

I've got some questions waiting for you.

If you're interested in becoming an ultimate human VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP.

You could sign up to be a VIP for $97 a month.

I pour myself into this community.

In fact, today I have a two-hour live QA with them right after this podcast, answering any question that you have on health, on

diet, life.

That's a great opportunity.

Spiritual well-being, biohacking, the exact thing that we teach.

You should be doing it.

You took all these years to you, you've failed on so many things that made you win.

There's no reason other people should fail.

Yeah, so go

jump on it.

I'll shortcut it for you guys.

So go over to theultimathuman.com forward slash VIP.

And until next time, that's just science.