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The WHY Of Make Sense: Unlocking Your Best Self By Finding Your Genius With Mike Zeller

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius

If you want to find your genius, you need to figure out who you are and what you’re amazing at. Once you find that you can put yourself in a position where you can succeed the most. Life gives you so many clues on how to find your genius, like a murder mystery, you just need to find and organize them. This is your zone of genius. Dr. Gary Sanchez’s guest, Mike Zeller exemplifies the WHY of make sense. Mike is a business architect and entrepreneur mentor who helps professionals find their zone of genius. He is the founder of Symposia Mastermind and is the author of “The Genius Within“. Learn how to find greater clarity in yourself so that you can be in your zone of genius. Learn what the WHY of make sense means for Mike today!

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The WHY Of Make Sense: Unlocking Your Best Self By Finding Your Genius With Mike Zeller

Welcome to the show where we go beyond just talking about your WHY, and helping you discover and live your WHY. If you’re a regular, you know that every week, we talk about one of the nine WHYs. We bring on somebody with that WHY so we can see how their WHY has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the WHY of Make Sense or to make sense of the complex and challenging.

If this is your WHY then you are driven to solve problems and resolve challenging or complex situations. You have an uncanny ability to take in lots of data and information. You tend to observe situations and circumstances around you and sort through them quickly to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. Often, you are viewed as an expert because of your unique ability to find solutions quickly. You also have a gift for articulating solutions and summarizing them clearly in understandable language. You believe that many people are stuck and that if they could make sense out of their situation, they could develop simple solutions and move forward. In essence, you help people get unstuck and move forward by helping them solve their problems.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Mike Zeller. He is a business architect and entrepreneur mentor. He helps professionals find their zone of genius and rewrite their subconscious to fuel momentum towards life’s purpose. He has mentored over 200 high-level entrepreneurs from all over the world, helping add tens of millions in revenue to his clients. An entrepreneur himself, he has founded or partnered in over twenty ventures across multiple industries including technology, real estate, digital marketing and more.

Collectively, his businesses have achieved more than $100 million in sales in the last several years. He partners his business strategy with a heavy emphasis on social entrepreneurism, including one venture that gave away $300,000 in cars to single mothers in need. Mike has trained under masters of the industry such as Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson and Jay Abraham. As a master NLP practitioner, he uses his core methodology to help entrepreneurs and creatives get unstuck from emotional roadblocks to become more fully integrated and build unstoppable momentum. He has been featured in Business Insider, Forbes Coaches Council, Thrive Global, Huffington Post, and on Fox Radio. Mike, welcome to the show.

Gary, I’m excited to be here. After that intro, I sound a lot more impressive than I feel.

It sounds like you have done a lot of things. Where I think we should start is take us back through your life, maybe back to even when you were in high school. Where did you grow up? How did you get on this path of entrepreneurism and end up where you are now? Let’s start back there.

I was in love with baseball in high school. I was devoted to becoming a professional baseball player at one point. That’s where self-discipline, desire, hunger and that fuel to challenge myself grew. My dad was an immigrant from Germany with an eighth-grade education. He moved to America, not speaking a word of English during post World War II. He was born in 1940. His parents were anti-Hitler but they still had to have a picture of Hitler hanging in their house. Otherwise, they could be arrested by the Gestapo and a lot worse could happen to them. They had a picture of Hitler hanging in the back door in a closet. If someone came in, they could say, “We have our picture of Hitler in the back.” I learned this story from my dad.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: People need to find their genius. There are clues scattered throughout their lives. The challenge is most people haven’t organized and synthesized those clues yet.

If I go back to some of the roots and things that are imprinted upon us that you don’t even realize where they come from, my dad was eligible for nutrition deficient camps. Even though he was a German boy and his parents had a general store, which is a precursor to grocery stores. He came over to America with this hardiness and this resilience where they had one serving of meat a week. They would have potatoes, vegetables and things like that.

I’m not terribly old or anything like that but when I was growing up, he taught us a lot of that. He taught us to be resilient, disciplined, frugal, hardworking and industrious. I got a lot of that, but he was also self-employed at the time I was growing up. He owned and raised harness horses and was one of the best in the country, so I wanted to eventually be self-employed. Eventually, I knew I was meant to be an entrepreneur. I thought I was going to be in the restaurants. I got into real estate and started building a mini real estate empire.

At age 32, I listened to Tony Robbins’ Personal Power II. He talks about doing incantations and affirmations. My seventh affirmation was that I mentor and lead some of the brightest and best people in the world. I was like, “I don’t know how I’m going to do that. All I’m doing now is real estate.” I was like, “I’m supposed to write this down.”

Three years later, I had started at that point six more businesses. After a mini-sabbatical in Buenos Aires, Argentina that was inspired by The 4-Hour Workweek, I started getting tons of people reaching out for mentorship and coaching. My first paid client at the time was doing $25 million a year in eComm. He’s the cofounder of iHeartDogs. I loved it and felt like I need to figure out a way to make this viable and make sense in helping entrepreneurs grow. That’s a long story.

You were early on into sports. That was your thing. Did you go off to college or no college?

I went to college. I went to a private liberal arts school and played baseball in college for a bit. I am still very attuned to sports. I’m hosting a Clubhouse room called The Sons and Daughters of Hall of Famers. Jim Brown’s daughter is coming on, Gill Russell’s daughter, Sugar Ray Leonard’s son, Joe Montana’s son might come and share. I love the game of sports.

That will be interesting because the pressure that’s got to be on the son or daughter of a legend has got to be intense. I’m fortunate that I had two daughters and I didn’t get to put pressure on them to be these amazing athletes because that wasn’t in their makeup. I realized that quickly when I was coaching soccer to five-year-old girls. I turned to put my daughter in the game and she’s down at the end of the field chasing a butterfly. I realized all this pressure that I could apply to be a great athlete is not going to apply to them. What was the first business that you got into?

You can't find your genius without knowing your values and weaknesses. Click To Tweet

Besides a couple of network marketing businesses, I would say real estate investing. I’ve built on a little real estate portfolio.

Who got you into that? Why did you pick that of all the things that you could have picked why real estate investing?

One of my mentors at the time shared with me Carleton Sheets’ No Down Payment Program. It says, “97% of America’s millionaires made their millions in real estate.” It was one of his core premises. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know but I got in the game. I loved the power of leverage, the tax write-offs, and all the other things that come with real estate. I’m a big believer in real estate.

It was interesting when I listened to your story, the quick version of it. It’s very similar to my path. I did Tony Robbins’ Personal Power when I was in my twenties. I took the No Down Payment course. I took a lot of those same things. It’d be interesting to see if most entrepreneurs were on that same path. I saw some different multilevel marketing things way back in the day. I quickly learned that maybe that wasn’t the best way. You probably figured out it didn’t make much sense.

I didn’t want everyone that I talked to be a prospect of my downline.

You didn’t want them to scatter when you walked in?

Yeah, exactly.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: Your genius is where you can be one of the best in your marketplace. This has to be deeply aligned with your values, life experiences, relationships, and strengths.

What kind of real estate were you involved with?

It is mostly residential. We did a few flips but frankly, the flips were hard. Even though Nashville is a great market, it is still a very hard market to make good margins on. I eventually owned an office building. I had an office building that was sold in 2020. I loved investing and I still do. Besides cryptocurrency, that’s the thing I want to heavily invest in over the next twenty years, as well as other companies.

You jump in there, figure out the best way to do it, do that for a little while, and then onto the next.

One of the things that I started noticing, especially as I reflect back, is I have 4 or 5 friends that have $100 million-plus real estate portfolios. I didn’t love the game as they did, but I loved other things that they maybe don’t understand or get to. When we go into finding your genius, I think there are clues scattered throughout our lives. The challenge is most of us haven’t organized and synthesized the clues that, “You’re a genius over here and you’re not so much a genius over here. In fact, you suck over here.” We have some basic understanding of those things but you have to get even more precise. One of the fundamentals, as I look back at my entrepreneurial journey, is that I see over and over that those people who accomplish extraordinary things put themselves in extraordinarily right positions. I think there are clues in your life, my life, and everyone’s life as well.

I bet you see scenarios where they put themselves in situations where they weren’t living their genius. How long can somebody take that? You did real estate for a while and then jumped into it by accident. It sounds like personal growth, mentoring and helping other people achieve their success. In that area, is that where you learned about the zone of genius?

One of the businesses that I started when I came back from Buenos Aires was a socially-minded car dealership. We had a goal that was twofold. It’s to create the most ethical, honest, straightforward, and the best value car buying experience in the Southeast, which we did. Every car we sold helped us give away another car to a single mother in need. We gave away over $300,000 worth of cars. We started a digital marketing agency that was designed to help my businesses and other businesses grow and stretch. Another venture was the men’s fashion line, then a sustainable fashion line, and then an office/coworking space.

I started asking myself, “What parts of the business am I good at?” I also started getting clues about what parts of the business I’m not so good at, which are some operations, legal, administrative tax sides. I hate those things. It’s not in my wheelhouse. I can do them and I can discipline myself, but only for so long. I get bored and I want to go over here and create something else. I lost over $1 million as well.

To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom. If you can master yourself, you can master the game of life. Click To Tweet

After I had all this growth, doing $30 million a year in revenue, I personally lost over $1 million in a pretty short time period in 2018. It sideswiped me because I was playing out of my position so much. I realized that my genius had gotten me to a certain level but I didn’t have the right partners, collaborators, etc. Now I had more people asking as well as I was getting more advice-seekers approaching me. I’m like, “I can’t tell you where and what you should do without knowing your values, strengths and weaknesses.” I thought, “All the personality tests gave us different clues.” I loosely created a process to organize and synthesize the clues.

You figured it out. You made sense of this complex thing called, “What’s my genius?”

I’ve got the most complete process ever created for someone who is hungry to figure out their genius more precisely. I’ve yet to find someone that doesn’t have a massive breakthrough when they do the whole thing.

How do you define your genius?

My genius is where I can be one of the best in the world or best in the marketplace that’s deeply aligned with my values, life experiences, relationships and my strengths. It’s those four pillars. We all have webs of relationships. Our network is our net worth, some might say. The third thing is our defining life experiences. Why does someone who goes through the same university or goes through the same experience in terms of the same education or whatever do something radically different?

If we look back at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, why are they both in a race for space? They were fascinated with space in their teenage years and wanted to do something. They dreamed of going to outer space. One of my favorite stories is about Theodore Roosevelt. At the age of 22 or 23, unfortunately, his first wife dies giving birth and his mom dies 24 hours later. He’s like, “I can’t take it.” He was a politician at the time, a Congressman or something. He let his aunt raise his daughter for the next six months because he’s like, “What am I going to do with an infant? I’m a rough rider type personality.”

He goes out West to North Dakota and South Dakota. He camps, hunts and lives in the wilderness for months. Fast forward many years later, he becomes the President of the US. He preserves the national parks. He preserves more natural acreage and is a bigger advocate for wildlife than any other president we’ve ever had because of those types of experiences.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: The universe is made up of waves. The challenge is to create a new pattern or wave. You can do this by creating new perspectives and new perspectives create aha moments.

The first thing was unique talents, the second thing was your important relationships, and then the third was your life experiences. What was the fourth again?

It’s values and passions. What do I stand for and what do I stand against? What lights me up? What am I insatiably curious about? They all give clues. The goal is you synthesize and organize all the clues. They are scattered throughout. If you get them all on one table or one worksheet in my case, now you have all these clues organized and you can see patterns emerge. You’ve probably read Jim Collins’ Good to Great book, Built to Last and all that. What is it? Jim gathered a bunch of data and he didn’t go in assuming certain things. He had some guesses but he looked in and said, “What patterns are going to emerge from the data, about the companies when they went from good to great.” There were some patterns that he didn’t even expect.

What happens is you have greater certainty and greater clarity. One of my clients that I took through a whole day session on it is a former executive of the federal government. She’s retiring and she’s had as many as 80,000 employees underneath her. She said, “Mike, this is one of the biggest a-ha moments in my 34-year career. She went through the process even though she is pretty self-aware. She spent tens of thousands of dollars with coaching programs. She read countless books. She gets up at 4:30 AM. She does her disciplines and things like that. Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.” If you can master yourself, you can master the game of life.

What was the turning point for you? Why did you decide to go on this path?

I remember when I first became a man of faith in college. I became a Christian in my junior year. I remember speaking and organizing an event. I was like, “I think my purpose in life is to unleash people’s God-given potential.” I did ministry for a while but I felt like, “I’m not supposed to be in ministry.”

What made you believe that?

It was almost like a divine download. I had a whisper. Sometimes in life, we get whispers and nudges. It doesn’t have to be audible. It’s just, “There was something meaningful here. I’m supposed to connect with this person.” When I was 21 years old, I was mentoring college students. One of the guys I was mentoring was two years younger than me. He says to me one day, “Mike, you’re the best mentor I’ve ever had.” I was like, “Wow.” His dad was a bestselling leadership author. His dad was pretty legit and way far ahead of me. I was like, “That’s pretty awesome.”

The phrase, 'I am' is very powerful because it's a declaration that moves your body to where you want to go. Click To Tweet

When you get connected to your heart and spirit, you get clarity if you’re willing to still yourself, still the outside noise and listen. Tune yourself and ask yourself. Your body doesn’t lie. If I take this pen right here and I put my hand down and I try to stab it, my body will not stab itself unless I’ve somehow bypassed it. A Navy SEAL might be able to bypass it but I can’t bypass that very easily because our body is designed not to harm itself. Our body is also very honest, but most of us are attuned to our mind more than our body. Our minds can lie and it lies all the time. We get all these word tracks, wounds, stories and false beliefs.

I have a Claim Your Power Meditation on YouTube that you go through and you get more connected to yourself, your weak-ass self and your most powerful self. You release the weak-ass version of you from controlling and guiding your life. It’s all about asking your heart and your body. What is the name of your badass self? I’ve got Magic Mike, and I’ve got Weak-ass Willie. Magic Mike is more powerful, I promise you that.

You create your own name for the badass version of yourself and then you put that one on your shoulder or what? How do you use your badass self?

We’re both sports fans. We know Kobe Bryant had Black Mamba. Bo Jackson had a guy named Jason from Friday the 13th. He’s a nice guy off the field but when he’s on the field, he’s going to run over and destroy people. It’s how he thinks. You flip into a different mentality. One of the early clients that I worked with on this was a big Instagram influencer. She had 600,000 followers on Instagram. We sat down for twenty minutes in our session. We were out in LA and she breaks down in tears. She said, “Mike, I’m completely stuck on my message.” I’m like, “What am I going to do? I got a crying girl in my hands.” I realized, “I can take her through this process.”

I took her through the process and I got her connected to Oprah Winfrey. I asked her, “Who do you admire who knows their message?” “Oprah Winfrey.” I had her visualize experiencing, being and delivering a message as Oprah. By the end of that, we go back to her. She’s created a whole new brainwave. We’ve got wavelengths. The universe is made up of waves, sound waves and light waves. As entrepreneurs, what are we? We’re up and down. It’s a roller coaster to some extent. Our women have a cycle and it’s a 30-day cycle. They’re up and down. There’s a time of the month they’re crazy and want chocolate. The universe is made up of waves.

The challenge is to create a new pattern or a new wave. In that Law of Physics, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside source. We can create new patterns and new waves with new perspectives. New perspectives create a-has. Why did the founder of Red Bull discover Red Bull when he’s in Thailand? He’s tired and he has a big meeting. He asked the taxi driver to pull over so he could run in and get an energy drink. The taxi driver says, “Get this Red Bull. It’s good.” He goes down and gets a Red Bull can or whatever with a little Red Bull on it. It is something similar to what it is now. He was like, “This works.” He comes back and creates that brand. He was in a different brainwave, pattern and perspective. I help people create new patterns around finding their genius and anchoring to their most powerful identity.

When they have their most powerful identity, they can use that as a sounding board. How do they use it once they have their badass self?

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: Don’t let a thought or pattern that doesn’t serve who you actually are, stay in your mind. You can let them come in, but do not let them build a nest.

I’ll give you an example. One of my clients is Renee Batten. She’s a former Army veteran or a Navy veteran. She’s a powerhouse woman who has written a bunch of books. Her alter ego is Barbuda. We were talking and in many parts of her business, she’s doubled and tripled her income since working together but she hadn’t made some leaps up in our marketing. I was like, “Renee, who’s leading your marketing department? Is it Barbuda or is it Renee?” She’s like, “It’s not Barbuda. It’s Renee.” Barbuda leads with power, magnificence, strength and courage. She doesn’t play small. You have different energy. It’s the beauty of the human mind that is different from the animal kingdom.

I remember when my dad made us watch animal shows. You see a wildebeest getting caught by some lions and then all of a sudden, it somehow escapes the jaws of the lion and runs off. The lion is too tired to chase it down. Two minutes later, it’s eating grass. You’re like, “Mr. Wildebeest, what the heck’s wrong with you? You were just in the jaws of a lion and now you’re eating grass.” We wouldn’t do that. If we almost die, we’re not eating a sandwich two minutes later because our minds are different.

In the animal kingdom, their minds are designed to release energy faster. I’m studying trauma a lot. Healing from Trauma is a great book that talks a little bit about this. As humans, we hold on to it. We also have the superpower of we can transport our minds into a different space with imagination and creativity. If we can do that, then we will lead and create from a radically different space.

Our marriages and relationships can be different. We unlock our divine human potential in a different way. That’s why I think this higher version of ourselves that’s within us is the real version. Sometimes we’re like, “If I step up here and I imagine myself there, that’s the imposter.” No, your current reality is most likely your imposter. What if we flip the perspective? What if my current reality or the one that wants to play small, the one that wants to hide, the one that wants to not go for it is the false version?

Once you have defined what the real version of you is and named, then you can step into that?

What I do is I have people write out, “How does this version of you walk and talk? What is this version of you wearing? Are they wearing hand-me-downs pre-owned clothes? Are they wearing Gucci or whatever they are wearing? What type of music does that version of you listen to?” Do you do affirmations?

Yeah.

Figure out who you are and where you're amazing at. Then you can put yourself in a position where you can succeed the most. Click To Tweet

I start my day off with, “I am Magic Mike. I am a wealth magnet. I am attracting, earning and saving millions of dollars. I am worthy of extraordinary.” I’ve got 2 minutes and 22 seconds of affirmations of declaring “I am,” even though some of those things have not happened fully yet, but I’m speaking where I want to go. Our words are our commands so I speak those into existence based on my zone of genius partly as well, then they are in alignment.

I’m designed to be a creator and not an accumulator like Warren Buffett. The Wealth Dynamics test is one of my favorite personality tests. It shows you your natural pathway to wealth. If I’m creating and building in alignment, the powerful phrase “I am” subtly commands your body to move in that direction with energy and music. I like energy and music. It changes our brain waves as well.

Tell us about Magic Mike versus Weak-ass Willie. When did that transition happen from Weak-ass Willie to Magic Mike? What was that like for you?

Both of them still show up. Weak-ass Willie is when I lost a lot of money and then I had all these people I had to pay and all these things. I had some significant shame around that. I had my tail between my legs. I’m not going to take care of what I need to take care of if Weak-ass Willie is leading my life. I started creating that alter ego of Magic Mike. I had a client call me Magic Mike because of the magic I was creating in her life. I said, “What does Magic Mike do? How does it lead? How can you show up more before I go into meetings or podcasts interviews, and before I do this or this?”

I’m like, “Do I want Magic Mike to lead or do I want Weak-ass Willie?” When Weak-ass Willie shows up, I’ll literally say, “Thank you for sharing your good desire.” It’s always for protection and wanting to keep me from harm. I’m like, “I see you and I hear you but I’ve got to advance. I’ve got to be on the offensive and lead. I can’t retreat. “Thank you. Magic Mike, you take the reins, drive the car, drive the bus in my life. Let’s roll.”

It is very much like sports.

It goes down into visualization, commanding, reinforcing and not letting a thought or pattern that doesn’t serve who you are and how you want to show up stay in your mind long. We all have them come in, but do we let them build a nest in a home?

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: Greater clarity leads to greater confidence. Greater confidence leads to a greater conviction. Greater conviction leads to greater courage. Then you will have higher-level commitments to yourself and others.

It’s I can’t versus I can. I was a world champion in racquetball and at every level that I went through at every stage, I faced the “Am I really good enough?” You have to overcome that by believing it. What worked when you were at a lower level does not work when you get to the next level, which does not work when you get to the next level, so you’ve got to reinvent.

You’ve had to do that a few times in your career. I imagine you’ve gotten closer as well to your genius and to your purpose. There is always more to unpack using the lessons of our wins and failures.

What I like about what you’ve done is that you’ve figured it out. You’ve codified what people were doing that found success versus what people were doing that didn’t find success. You said, “This is what these people are doing. Let me show you what the heck they’re doing so it makes sense to you and then you can go do it.”

It’s do-it in your own unique way and your own unique path. The other thing that’s cool about this process is when you do it, now you’re going to have even more deep alignment. If you’re resolved and convicted in your spirit, you show up more courageously. You show up with greater confidence and greater commitment. It all starts with clarity. It’s the first of the five Cs. Greater clarity leads to greater confidence. Greater confidence leads to a greater conviction. With a greater conviction, we show up with more courage, then we make higher-level commitments to ourselves and others.

I’m sure there are a lot of people reading right now that are in that stage themselves where they are making that shift or the transition from what they were doing to what they wanted to do, and it’s scary. It’s sometimes easier to write it out and play small. If you’re talking to them right now, they’re reading and they’re teetering on, “Should I go for it? Should I not go for it?” What is the first step they should take?

Socrates is one of the wisest men who ever lived. He mentored Plato and Aristotle who gave us in essence, Western Civilization, the philosophy of democracy, and the capitalistic system as well, and human growth and human potential. He said, “To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.” King David said in Proverbs 16:32, “It’s better to have self-control than to conquer a city.” Another wise man, Dee Hock, the Founder of Visa. When he started writing for Harvard Business Review, he found the very best leaders in the world and did something that ordinary leaders did not. That was that they focused more than 50% of their leadership energy on leading themselves.

Back to what I said before, “Extraordinary results are predicated not necessarily by the most extraordinary people but people being in extraordinarily right positions.” You think of a great sports team. They are extraordinarily aligned. Why will the Brooklyn Nets probably never win an NBA championship with Kevin Durant and James Harden consistently? They don’t have a complementary team. They got two great stars but it’s not aligned with the rest of the team.

Spend 30 minutes a day reading. That way, you start your day off with some fuel in the tank. Click To Tweet

Extraordinary success comes down to people being in extraordinarily right positions. If you get yourself more in the right position, which I think that’s where I had another client go through the test and the course before I had the book out. She was like, “Mike, I would have doubled my salary if I had gone through this first because I would have had so much greater clarity around where I kicked butt and I would have asked for more.” She renegotiated her salary after being at the job for a month.

Figure out who you are and where you are amazing because you can put yourself in a position where you can succeed the most. I would say pick up the book because it guides you through the whole process but go through the personality tests. The reason I’d take people through five personality tests is they all give you different clues. They measure different behaviors and strengths. Doing the other inventories around relationships and defining life moments also give you other layers of clues. The more layers of clues, the more patterns you will see.

Once you know yourself, then making decisions is easier, and then you have clarity, confidence, conviction, courage and commitment. That’s exactly what we believe. The first step is self-awareness and the first step in self-awareness is knowing your WHY because once you know your WHY, all the rest makes sense and fits together. In your case, we know you are somebody who believes in making sense of complex and challenging things. You’ve done that in every area of your life all the way along, from being the guy that helped people through their problems when you were young, to the person that’s continually doing it now. You did it in real estate and you did it all the way along in your journey.

Knowing that, we could predict that you’re eventually going to figure something special out, and you did. You took something that is complex, challenging and overwhelming. I have no idea what to do and I don’t know where to turn,” and you said, “Let me hold your hand for a second. Here’s where you go. Here’s your step. Figure yourself out and then we’ll figure the rest out.” I got one last question for you before we go there. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever been given or that you ever gave someone?

Something that changed my world was when I was nineteen years old. I went to Peter Lowe’s Success Seminar. I heard guys like Zig Ziglar, Colin Powell and all those legends of afar. One of them said, “Spend 30 minutes a day reading. Do it in the first part of your day. Do it in the morning. That way, you start your day off with some fuel in the tank. You put some deposits in your bank account.” I’ve done that in every season of life since then. I’ve read 1,500 books now. I love learning and growing. As a result, I can honestly say that I mastered a lot of different subjects.

There is another guy, Brian Tracy, when I was twenty years old in the middle of a finals week. He said at his seminar, “If you read a book a month in your chosen field, you’ll be an expert in three years. That’s 36 books.” I was like, “I don’t want to wait three years.” I’m a little more impatient. I was like, “I’m going to master a subject in one year.” The first one I mastered and worked on was leadership, sales and marketing, spirituality, relationships, human psychology and all those others.

Choosing a field and becoming a bonafide expert goes far. You want to learn, lean into that and become a master. Don’t be a dabbler. You can dabble in some things and that’s okay. That’s experimentation, but choose a handful of things to become a master at. Once you master something else and you want to explore and master something else, master that. The top one-percenters earn disproportionately more than everyone else. We all can be one-percenters. If that’s 36 books, you can read 36 books in a subject and not take yourself up but apply it. That’s was the best advice I’ve ever received.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
The Genius Within: Your Natural Pathway To Impact, Fulfillment, & Wealth

One of my mentors says it this way. He says, “Learn less and study more.” It’s pretty much what you said. You don’t need 500 books on 500 subjects, take one subject and go 500 books deep, and then you become the master. If there are people that are reading and they’re like, “I love what Mike had to say. How do I get ahold and work with him?” What’s the best way to connect with you? What would work best for you?

If you want a free Six-Step Guide To Finding Your Genius, I’ve got a free six-step guide. You can text Genius U to 474747. You’ll get a link to opt-in and get that PDF. Also, GeniusWithinBook.com or it’s on Amazon. I’m @TheMikeZeller on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and MikeZeller.com as well. It’s a pleasure being on your show, Gary. I love your approach and am excited for this next chapter of your life as well.

I’m so glad you were here. Thank you for taking the time and I look forward to staying in touch. As you come through Albuquerque, look me up and we’ll go get some Mexican food here.

That would be great. I love it.

Thanks.

In our last segment of Guess the WHY, I want us to think about Patrick Mahomes. He is the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. They won the Super Bowl and had a great year in 2020, and not such a great year in 2021, but I’m sure it’s going to end better for him. What do you think Patrick Mahomes’ WHY is? He’s the guy that can throw the sidearms and can run and passes well. He seems to think faster than everybody else. He always seems one step ahead.

For me, his WHY is the same as our guest’s, Mike Zeller, which is to make sense of the complex and challenging. So much comes his way but he quickly synthesizes it. He quickly gets on the right path, makes a decision and makes it happen. That’s what people with the WHY of Makes Sense do. Thank you, all. If you’ve not yet discovered your WHY, you can do so at WHYInstitute.com. Use the code PODCAST50 and you can get it for half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review and a rating on whatever platform you’re using. Thank you and I will see you next episode.

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About Mike Zeller

Mike Zeller is a business architect and entrepreneur mentor who helps professionals find their zone of genius and rewire their subconscious to fuel momentum toward their life’s purpose. He has mentored over two hundred high-level entrepreneurs from all over the world, helping add tens of millions in revenue to his clients.
An entrepreneur himself, Mike has founded or partnered in over 20 ventures across multiple industries, including technology, real estate, digital marketing, and more. Collectively, his businesses have achieved more than $100 million in sales in the last 10 years. He partners  his business strategy with a heavy emphasis on social entrepreneurism,  including one venture that gave away $300,000+ in cars to single  mothers in need.
Mike has trained under masters of the industry such as Tony Robbins,  Russell Brunson, and Jay Abraham. A master NLP practitioner, he uses  this core methodology to help entrepreneurs and creatives get unstuck  from emotional roadblocks to become more fully integrated and build  unstoppable momentum. Mike has been featured in Business Insider,  Forbes Coaches Council, Thrive Global, Huffington Post, and on Fox  Radio.
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Podcast

Herbal Ecstasy: The Search For A Better Way To Party With Shaahin Cheyene.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy

 

Shaahin Cheyene always searched for a better way. He is the brilliant mind behind the legendary smart drug known as herbal ecstasy. He’s earned over a billion dollars in revenue because of it. But what if you were to discover that Shaahin’s family had to escape to survive and ended up finally migrating to Los Angeles, California? At 15 years old, Shaahin left home with nothing but the clothes on his back! Join the conversation as host Dr. Gary Sanchez uncovers Shaahin’s powerful “why” of wanting to contribute better processes and systems to the world. It pushed him from a place of desperation to a place of prosperity. Tune in and find a better way!

 

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Herbal Ecstasy: The Search For A Better Way To Party With Shaahin Cheyene

Welcome to the show, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and live your why. If you’re a regular reader, you know that every week, we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so we can see how their why has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of better way. If your why is better way, then you are the ultimate innovator. You are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better.

You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, “What if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better?” You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, “I’m often pleased, but never satisfied.” You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Shaahin Cheyene. During the Iranian revolution of 1978, Shaahin’s family had to escape to survive and ended up finally migrating to Los Angeles, California. At fifteen years old, Shaahin left home with nothing, but the clothes on his back and created over $1 billion in revenue by inventing the legendary smart drug known as Herbal Ecstacy. These childhood experiences had a major impact on his perspective of freedom, hard work, and entrepreneurship.

Shaahin went on to invent Digital Vaporization, the forerunner to this day’s vapes and a start a number of successful businesses with a couple of notable failures. He is the Founder and CEO of Accelerated Intelligence, Inc., a major Amazon FBA seller with millions in sales and the Lead Coach at Amazon Mastery, where he teaches the entrepreneurs how to crush it on the Amazon platform. He is an active YouTube creator.

Shaahin is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in eCommerce, Amazon and the internet. He is described as the Willy Wonka of Generation X by The London Observer and Newsweek and is one of the most forward thinkers in business. With his Amazon Mastery course, he acutely recognizes trends and patterns early on the Amazon platform to help others understand how these shifts impact markets and consumer behavior. Shaahin, welcome to the show.

Gary, it’s my honor to be on. Thank you for having me.

Take us back through your life. Let’s go back and give us your story, how you got started and how you got to where you are because it sounds like it was a struggle at the beginning for sure.

We came to the United States in the late 1970s, early 1980s as immigrants. We immigrated here through Germany to the United States. Iran was on top of the heap, we came here and all of a sudden, we learned that we were third-class citizens in a country that didn’t appreciate Iranians during the whole Iran-Contra thing. We had Ronald Reagan trickle-down economics and Oliver North. Iran-Contra was not a friendly environment.

Make a path for your success. Click To Tweet

I grew up with a big chip on my shoulder because I was constantly getting my ass handed to me in school. I would go to school and get beat up every day. We grew up in a neighborhood that was up and coming, the little enclave of Los Angeles called Pacific Palisades. In the early ‘80s, it was much more hippie than it was well-to-do and gentrified. My folks managed to get a house there. It was fairly inexpensive. It was a totally beat-down house. They bought the house and we started fixing it up. As we started fixing up this old house, the neighborhoods started booming.

More and more people started moving to LA. LA was in a building boom. All this wealth started cropping up, literally all around us. We’re in this old house. My dad worked at a pizza shop and then at dry cleaners. We were solidly poor and there was all this wealth around us. I remember grown up there. We didn’t eat out at restaurants. We didn’t buy new clothes and all that stuff. When my brother and I got clothes, we would wait for somebody to walk into my dad’s dry cleaner and pray that person was like cool that they would not pay their bill, so we could get the clothes when they defaulted on their bill or just left the clothes there. We’d always be 2 or 3 seasons behind on whatever the fashion was.

I remember a friend of mine whose dad was a wealthy doctor, invited me over to eat. I was like, “Cool. What’s your mom cooking?” He’s like, “No, she’s not cooking. We’re going to a restaurant.” I was like, “Okay.” We went in there and he gave me a menu. I looked at him and I said, “How the heck does this work?” I can order a pizza and a hamburger and that man’s going to bring it to me. Explain to me how this works again. This is incredible. That’s how it was. I didn’t have any of this wealth, but around me was tons of wealth.

By the time I reached fifteen, I remember thinking to myself, “I want that stuff. I want the Porsche. I want the Ferrari. I want the beautiful blonde sitting in the car next to me in the big house on the hill.” All that great stuff, great vacations and all that stuff. What’s the path? I went and I talked to my parents and I said, “How do I get that?” They thought about it. As any immigrant family will let you know, the pinnacle of success is becoming a doctor.

My parents told me, “You become a doctor. You go to a school.” I was like, “Great. Sign me up for that. I’ll be a doctor.” They’re like, “Okay.” I’m like, “How long does that take 2, 3 years?” They’re like, “No, it takes 8, 10, 12 years. Specialty, 14, 15 years.” “What happens then?” “You got to get a loan. You’ll be in debt for another ten years. You’ll be fat, old and bald like the dude next door. Maybe by the time you’re 50, you’ll have a mortgage, a wife and eight kids.”

You won’t have time because you’ll be selling your hours. You’ll have to wake up at 5:00 AM and come back at 8:00 PM. Maybe by then, you’ll have the house in the car, which by the way, the bank will own, you will not. Very quickly, I discovered that it was not going to be a path that worked for me. Very unceremoniously, I packed up my stuff in a single backpack and I left. I left the keys on the counter. I didn’t come back. I burned my ships. I decided I was going to go out and find my fame and fortune in the world. As a kid, I was fifteen with no friends and no money. This was pre-internet, pre all those times.

Take us into that decision. What was going on for you when you decided at fifteen, I’m going to walk out and do this on my own? What was going on for you?

Growing up again in Los Angeles, at school, I never fit in. I never belonged. There was never a group that I belonged in. As an adolescent, I got involved in multiple criminal activities that adolescents would get involved in. We went to liquor stores and we had this little Greek kid and he was very small. He would walk into the store. He would fit just right under the sensors. He’d wear baggy clothes.

We would create some kind of distraction on it. We’d open up a Coke, spill it and something would happen. The store owner or manager, whoever’s monitoring the store will get busy. He would stuff his pockets with nude magazines, with those little tiny bottles of liquor, cigarettes, glue or whatever we could get. He would rush out under the sensors and we would just pay for the Coke or whatever and get out. We would sell that stuff in school.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Any immigrant family will tell you that the pinnacle of success is becoming a doctor.

 

We always get busted. We were terrible at crime. We had no business being in the crime business. They would put us in detention. Here we are, these little juvenile criminals in detention. Who’s in detention? More juvenile criminals. It was the best business we had ever done. We would get caught again. They didn’t even have second detention to send us to. We’d be going back and forth through that. By the time I was fifteen, I realized, “Crime was not good for me. I am not good at crime. I’m a failure at crime. I will not be doing a crime. I need to go out there and figure out something to do.”

My why was I wanted the wealth. I wanted success. I wanted to climb the ladder. There was not a path for me to do that in those days. I was going to forge a path. I was going to make a path. I was going to go out there with machetes and cut the entire forest down until there was a path for me. That’s what I did. I started sleeping in abandoned buildings, which was much more glorious than it sounds, and on the beach as well. Sometimes abandoned buildings near the beach, because LA was in a building boat.

I quickly learned that if you could watch realtors, when they opened up the buildings, there was a code to these boxes where the keys were held to these mega buildings that they were building. You could put that code in, get the key, sneak in at night, sleep and leave in the morning. By the way, I don’t espouse anybody to do this. It’s highly illegal, but I would do that. I would sleep in this luxurious building, maybe the plumbing didn’t work or the electricity wasn’t on. I wake up in the morning and get out.

Eventually, I got into the electronic music scene. I learned that I could sleep at clubs behind the speakers, which was another great thing for me, in front of the speakers is very loud but behind the speakers is super quiet. I started hanging out there thinking, “I got to learn something about making money.” I had the books. I had the fortitude to read Think and Grow Rich. Og Mandino, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer. I read every self-help, personal development, old-timey, new timey, all of those books.

I knew that there was a possibility for me to break the mold, to break out of what one of my mentors called TikTok. To get out of that world and get into a new reality for myself. I didn’t quite know what the path was in those days. Hanging out in the clubs, I realized that there was money being made. I thought to myself, “It’s got to be the promoters.” I tried throwing a couple of parties. I started looking at the promoters. I was like, “These guys are broke as hell. Everywhere where they’re going, they don’t have money.”

They’re bailing before the party’s over, so they don’t have to pay people. They’re not driving fancy cars. These are not wealthy individuals. I thought, “It’s got to be the musicians because musicians make money.” Nobody in those days appreciated DJs. People who played other people’s music. Which led me to how did these things happen? Week after week, night after night. I looked around and I was like, “It’s got to be the property owners’ real estate.”

Nope. These were all break-ins. All these warehouses were borrowed from some big corporation that owns 50 warehouses and whatever. We’d figure out a way to get in then some guy would climb the power pole and steal power. Another guy would turn on the water main and there’d be plumbing. The party would go on until the morning in these warehouses. I thought to myself, “There are these guys that hang out at the door all the time.” They’re well-dressed and have several beautiful women with them. They sometimes have bodyguards. They had nice cars, nice apartments. What are they doing? What do you think they did?

They were the doorman. They were the gatekeeper.

They were the drug dealers. They were the ones that were dealing the illicit substances and subsidizing the failure of everybody else to keep these parties going because it was highly profitable for them. Drugs are a very lucrative business. I thought to myself, “Let me do that.” I realized I was bad at crime. I looked back to my adolescents, my younger self talking to my older self, “You sir, should not be doing crime. You get caught every time.”

I pictured myself in multiple prisons around the world and thought, “No, I can’t do that.” It hit me. What if I could create a legal drug? What if I could create a version of the most popular drug at the time that there was no supply of because it had just been made illegal called ecstasy. I didn’t get the memo that it was impossible. I went out there and I did it. I managed to get myself a girlfriend with no money and nowhere to live.

I figured out how to get a girlfriend. I managed to convince her to let me cook up prototypes in her kitchen while her dad was out at work. I think he was like the principal or the superintendent of some school district or somewhere. The guy would leave. I would sneak in through the back, a window or door or something. I’d come in and cooking it up in the kitchen. Finally, we got a formula that worked. I didn’t have enough money to buy a capsule machine. She and I would be rolling them up into little balls, and all kinds of people would be coming over. We’d be giving them, “Try this, try this, try this.”

Finally, we got a formula that worked. I called everybody I knew and I said, “This is amazing.” I called authors, writers and all types of people. I found them in the yellow pages, in the phone books in those days. I would call people up and ask them for advice, ask them to come try it. When we had a formula that worked, I knew this was my second reason why I was going to be successful. I had to burn my ships again. I did it once when I left home and I had to find a way to sell the stuff, distribution.

It led me back to the clubs. I had a backpack full of these little baggies filled with these little balls that we hand-rolled to look like pills. I had a little insert card in them with a butterfly in those days. I didn’t know what I was going to call it. I walked up to the biggest drug dealer in the club. These days, if you have tattoos on your face, they call you Post Malone and you are a platinum record star, girls love you, you are harmless. You’re probably a TikTok star or YouTube star. You remember in the ‘80s and ‘90s, should you have tattoos on your neck leading to your face, you are most certainly a criminal, a freak or both.

Straight out of prison.

You must have a solid vetting process because there's a big buzz around you when you're super successful. But when trouble pops up, there are only a few who will stick by you. Click To Tweet

Nobody had tattoos on their faces. Tattoos were not visible in the ‘80s unless you were a sailor or a part of a gang or something. This guy had tattoos on his face and on his neck. He had those three little tear things, which I think meant he killed somebody in prison or killed three people or some crazy thing like that. He had the gold teeth. He had the bodyguards. He had the girls around him. It was straight out of the movies. Here I am, this teenage kid with this baggie full of herbal goop, walking up to this man who sells bonafide drugs from a criminal enterprise.

I walked up to him and he’s like, “What do you need kid? I got nothing. We’re all out. We’d been out for days.” I said, “No. I’m not a consumer. I want you to sell my stuff.” He said, “What the heck is wrong with you? Are you a cop?” He’s like looking at me. The guards are patting me down looking for a wire. I said, “No. I’m definitely not a cop, but I want you to sell this stuff.” He’s like, “What is it?” I’m like, “It’s just like ecstasy. It’s fantastic, but it’s legal. It’s herbal. It’s natural. You’re not going to go to jail, sir.”

In that moment, he looked like he was about to kill me. There was no happiness in this man’s face. Although, I don’t think I ever saw happiness in his face. By the way, I write about this in my book, Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult, which was just released. In that moment, I remember thinking to myself, “You are not leaving that spot until this man buys whatever it is that you’re selling. You are either going to die tonight or get him to sell what you’re selling. You are going to make a sale.” I didn’t move. I’m sure he said other things to me.

At that moment, two people walked up to him, two party goers. I remember them asking him and there was a negotiation that went on. He motioned to me, the bodyguards moved aside. I thought, “What’s he pointing at?” He’s pointing at the bag of pills. I handed him the bag of pills. He grabbed the bag. He grabbed my backpack, which was filled with pills and said, “Come back in two hours.” He handed it to them and had an exchange. He said, “By the way, kid, you better not be messing with me. Don’t leave the club.”

I’m having a little bit of a freakout and pretty certain that my young life was going to end there and then in that club. I came back a couple of hours later and I didn’t know what to make of it. The bodyguard motioned me to come forward. The girls moved aside. I moved forward. I’m standing there, sweat and bullets looking at this guy directly in the eyes. I can’t tell what’s going on. I do notice in the background, people are partying, happy and having a good time. I see the empty baggies everywhere. This guy probably emptied out 30 of them himself.

I’m looking at the guy going okay and he looks at me straight in the eyes, the silence for about 30 seconds. He says, “Kid, how soon can you get me more?” All the tension was released at that moment. That was it. It went from 1 drug dealer to 10 to 1,000, to 10,000. We were all over the world. I had all the buildings in Venice beach. We were renting them all. We had telephone operations, telesales operations.

I was making this stuff for $0.25 a unit. We were selling it for $20 retail. Mostly cash business, mostly direct to consumer in those days, completely legal. We got calls from Urban Outfitters, Tower Records, GNC. We were selling in any store you could possibly imagine. Larry Flynt from the Hustler Enterprise, the famed pornographer bought our product to sell to all the sex shops around the world. We were being sold in 32 countries. We were in over 30,000 doors.

What was it called? I’m trying to think about it back then.

The drug dealer looked at me at that moment too. As he was handing it to his first customer said, “What do you call this stuff?” I had a moment where I was like, “Holy crap.” I looked at him and I said, “Herbal Ecstacy,” and the name stuck. It was called Herbal Ecstacy. I remember one day, I was in my teens. We’d been in business for some time and the news broke that we had broken the billion-dollar mark. This was pre-internet, pre-Facebook, pre-mobile phones, pre-access to free data, pre-access to any of that stuff. We had broken $1 billion.

Sam Donaldson was in a limo outside of my office waiting to get me on Nightline. He drove over, the great Sam Donaldson. Montel Williams had sent me tickets to be on his show in New York. CNN wanted to have me on, Wall Street Journal has a reporter outside. We were the hottest thing. Everybody wanted to know how this long-haired teenage kid had broken $1 billion in revenue. We were on the cover of Detail’s magazine. We had two Newsweek covers, LA times, New York Times. You name it, we were there.

The London Observer did a feature piece on the cover. They called me the Willy Wonka of Generation X. I stepped into my office. I would normally sleep 2, 3 hours on those days. I would usually fall asleep on the factory floor, on the floor one my offices, or the call center, anywhere just because I was intent on making this company successful. I remember having a panic attack when the news broke because I did not know what $1 billion meant. Not theoretically or hypothetically, I literally didn’t know how much money $ 1 billion was. I barely knew what $1 million was. That was my panic in those days.

I figured out what it was. I started doing all the publicity. We did all the shows. I write about it in my book, Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult. It was absolutely a wild ride. I wrote about how the mob tried to take over the company at some point. The Japanese mafia, the Yakuza tried to get involved. We had government intervention in the company and it was a wild rollercoaster ride leading to an interesting several years, to say the least.

Why couldn’t somebody just copy it?

A few people tried. We had the formula patented in those days. We had trademarks, but we were first to market. You could copy my product, but you couldn’t copy me. I was the long-haired, rebellious kid doing the TV, doing the media. It’s like Coca-Cola. Can you make brown sugar water and sell it to the masses? Probably. Can you compete with them? Not really. They’ve got first to market and distribution. We had that cinched up.

What’s the best part of building a $1 billion company and the worst part of building a $1 billion company?

The best part is the $1 billion, which has fantastic. Money is great. I tell people often that the greatest injustice you can do to yourself in America is to be poor. The poor pay more for everything. The poor are penalized for being poor. The rich very rarely pay for anything that the poor pay for and are incentivized to be rich. If you believe have a choice, please try to be rich. I’ve been broke and I’ve been extremely wealthy. It is far more fun to be extremely wealthy.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation

A good friend of mine talks about the root of all evil, where they say money is the root of all evil. He used to like to say that, “The guy that said money is the root of all evil didn’t have any.” The guy that said, “Money can’t buy you happiness didn’t know where to shop.” It’s true. It’s a blast and super fun. You’re hearing it from somebody who’s done it and who does it.

The worst part of it was trying to figure out who likes you for you, who genuinely wants to be your friend and who wants to be around the fame and fortune. I can only imagine what somebody like Jeff Bezos, the Founder of Amazon or Elon Musk has to go through because it must be very difficult to forge long-term meaningful relationships with people. You must have a solid vetting process because, in those days where you are super happy, super successful, there’s a big buzz around you, everybody wants to be around you.

When trouble pops up, there are only a few that will stick by you. Those are your real friends. That’s the most difficult part is realizing that there are people in the world that are not interested in you, but only in self-enrichment. Having your BS detectors refined to a point where when you reach those levels of success, being able to fair it out, the people that are the fakers is absolutely essential. I, unfortunately, didn’t have that in my teens. As I got older, I’ve developed it and my BS detector has gotten a lot stronger in the years to come after Herbal Ecstacy.

What happened to Herbal Ecstacy? You’re on top of the world and then what?

The government doesn’t seem to like very much when a young Iranian kid, in his teens develops a drug that is unregulated. They don’t like the idea of not being in control. What they did, along with some big pharma companies is they lobbied against us. Laws were passed. Our ingredients were banned. It slowly fizzled out. We had a bunch of different products in those days.

From there, I went on to solve a different problem. I went on to solve the problem with smoking. I figured, “People have been smoking for hundreds of years. Smoking creates smoke char and carbon monoxide. There’s got to be a better way.” It turns out that you can heat any plant substance, tobacco, cannabis, whatever and get the active elements, what you need, the cannabinoids, the THC, the nicotine without burning it, without heating it to 1200 degrees but you had to have the system for regulating the temperature, I patented that.

We developed the first world’s first vape. Digital vaporization was invented by me in those days. I patented it. I wrote the first book on it. That is the forerunner for all the technology that you see in vapes. We invented that industry. It didn’t exist before us. I created those patents. I wrote a book. That company went public. I decided, “I want to get back into the pill business.” At this point, we were having our first kid. I thought I got to figure out a way to make my brain sharper.

I want to be limitless. I want to function optimally, even as I’m aging, because aging is BS. I want to beat it. Maybe I won’t beat it. One day, I’m going to die. It’s all our destiny. Until then, I want to die with my boots on and sword drawn and be a badass. I came up with this pill called Excelerol. We’ve got two versions. One called Excelerol, one called FOCUS+, which was a nootropic, a brain supplement. It’s still available on Amazon. It works great but, in those days, it’s very expensive to produce. We use real ingredients. It was like $120 a box of this stuff.

I was looking for distribution thinking, “How am I going to sell this?” We sold some to GNC. We sold some to the different avenues. This was in the early days where this guy named Jeff Bezos was getting somewhere with his company. You could email Jeff, Jeff@Amazon.com and he would respond. We heard through the grapevine that Jeff Bezos was opening up his platform, the bookstore, Amazon.com to third-party sellers. People like you and me to sell whatever we wanted to on those platforms.

I thought, “That’s cool. That’s timely. Let me try putting this stuff up.” It took me fifteen minutes. The whole process of opening a seller account, listing the product, the whole thing. I put the product up, Excelerol and I went to sleep. I didn’t think much. I thought maybe I’ll get a couple of orders in the next few weeks. I’ll work on this. I woke up the next day we had thousands of orders. “This is interesting. Who is this Bezos guy?” I read up on Jeff Bezos. I learned that he’s not this nerdy Silicon Valley guy that we see that we think he is.

This guy is a beast. This guy’s a leader in the industry. This guy comes from Wall Street. This guy comes from one of the biggest Wall Street firms with expertise in acquiring top talent and bringing cheap money from Wall Street, billions from Wall Street into Silicon Valley. He’s building this platform. This is no joke. This was never a bookstore. This is a key to world domination in global commerce. When I realized that, I decided I was going to devote the next several years of my life to mastering the Amazon platform. That’s what I did. I learned everything there was.

I spend most of my days impacting other people to sell on the Amazon platform. I teach a course where I train people, how to do everything from how do you find the perfect product? How do you sell it on Amazon? Why do you sell it on Amazon? How do you create a business that creates these predictable recurring revenue streams? Which is what I do and I love it.

As I listened to your story, you’re always in search of a better way. You find a better way and then you share it. You did that with the Herbal Ecstacy. You’ve done that every step along the way. Take us into your mind or do you just see a problem? Do you have a problem and you want to solve it, and then that’s what leads you to it? What got you in those different directions?

For me, sometimes that’s the case. My superpower is that I am a predictor of trends and a very accurate one particularly when it comes to consumer products. I know what’s going to be hot five years from now. I know what’s going to be hot ten years from now.

How do you do that?

I don’t know how I do it. I think it’s my obsessive nature. I am an obsessive human being. When I get interested in something, I dive deep. Back in the days, where people read books, I would be at the bookstore. I would be spending thousands of dollars on books. I would not come home any night without having a stack of books on topics that I was interested in. I still do it to this day. I order on Amazon. I will watch videos. I will read books. I will get audible. I will watch the TED Talks. I will dig deep. I will go into my new detail about a topic that I’m interested in.

There is no hack to hard work. You have to get out there and put in the sleepless nights. Click To Tweet

I will look to where the opportunity is. My friend, Jay Samit, who wrote the book, Disrupt You! and his new book, Future-Proofing You. He is a former executive at Sony. He talks about solving the bigger problem. For me, it came naturally the solving the bigger problem because I start with curiosity. I’m not looking for a why. I’m not looking for a reason to do what I’m doing. I’m following what my fascination is. I follow that fascination and see where it takes me. This brings me to what we teach at Amazon Mastery. My FBA seller course, which is FBASellerCourse.com for anyone who’s interested.

I’ve got a free one-hour course that I’m happy to share with any of your audience. What we teach is to find the distribution first, find what the market is hungry for. Find the competitors, find their vulnerabilities, then it’s easy for you to put a product out on the market. It’s low hanging fruit. That’s how you win. If you come out with a product and then you’re like, “How am I going to sell this thing?” That’s the long road.

You’ve got to educate people. Education is the kiss of death when it comes to product launches because you’ve got this thing. You’ve got a mousetrap. It’s better than every other mousetrap out there. I don’t know that as your consumer. You have to spend all your money educating me. What happens while you’re spending money educating me?

Somebody else comes along.

The competitors are selling and selling. People’s attention span is short in the days of TikTok, Instagram and the internet. What most entrepreneurs don’t understand, probably the single most important thing, comes from us being taught. This whole generation is being taught that you matter, that everybody cares about what you’re interested in. Nobody cares about you. People care about one thing. I, they care about themselves. That’s it?

Nobody cares about you, your story, your brands. All that stuff is BS. All they care about is what you’re going to do for them. When you go on Amazon and you buy a product, that person, if it’s one of my students will be an expert at crafting that story in a way whereby the time you get to that listing, you’re already clicking buy it now. The way that product is presented has pre-suaded you to believe that it’s your decision to buy it.

We are decision architects. That’s what we do. The old models of selling are dead. The old models of disruption selling and knocking on people’s doors and shoving stuff down their throats are dead. We’re in the Amazon era where we believe as Robert Cialdini in his book, Pre-Suasion talks about pre-suading people and becoming decision architects.

Give us an example of a product that you did this with so that we can see it in action. Somebody took a product and took it to Amazon after they found their market and it took off.

Excelerol would be a good example of that. FOCUS+ is one of the supplements that we talked about. Another example might be matcha tea. We’re one of the largest producers of matcha tea in the country. We make a specific matcha tea called Matcha DNA. Matcha is a green tea. It’s high in antioxidants. It’s got all these benefits. You can just Google it and learn about all these doctors and celebrities. The Kardashians are drinking it. Gwyneth Paltrow is drinking it. We started off by I’m a big matcha drinker. I thought, “I’d like to buy some matcha. Can I get some on Amazon?”

I looked on Amazon and there wasn’t any. There was a couple of brands that were expensive and they were just the big bulk market ones from Japan. I thought, “Fukushima just happened. I don’t want to buy anything from Japan. There’s radiation out there, allegedly.” I’m going to go with Chinese tea. The Chinese are good at teas. That’s the one thing I am going to buy from China.

I went out there and I found a supplier that produces it for us. We started selling matcha tea on Amazon. Went gangbusters. We sold tons of it. I did my research. We researched that there’s a huge market of people looking to buy matcha tea. There was no supply on Amazon. Now there are a million sellers selling it. We’re still the leader, but there are $ 1 million sellers selling macho.

I thought, “That’s a market that we can feed.” We went out there and we started introducing matcha. This is another thing that I teach my students is that you want to capture all areas of the market. We’ve got multiple brands that we sell in multiple categories. We sell the most expensive one. We sell the cheapest one. We sell the mid-level one. We knock ourselves off.

We sell knockoffs of our own product. We do all kinds of things to make sure that we dominate in that field. That’s what you have to do. If you want to win, you have to find a niche. You have to exploit the weaknesses of your competitors. You have to come in and dominate that niche and maintain, and hold on to that dominance.

When you talk about dominating the niche, how do you do that? What I think I’m hearing you say is, you found something that you were passionate about, went on Amazon and researched it and found that nobody’s dominating this market. “We’re going to go dominate it.” You created a better product, took that product to the market. You found ways to keep competing with yourself to be both sides of the coin almost, to push your brand up. Is that what you did?

That amongst other things. I remember I had at this point been selling on Amazon for a little while and there are certain hacks, and tips and tricks that we teach on how you get your product to rank, how you get your product reviewed within their terms of service. How you can successfully get that product visible and selling on the Amazon platform, that’s what we did.

It’s very interesting because Amazon is a very effective place to sell products. The one thing that I would say to you that maybe I would push back a little bit on in your description is the passionate part. I was interested in the tea. I was a fan of the tea. Maybe you could argue that I was passionate about it or maybe not. I’m thinking, “I’m passionate about hanging out with my family and my kids.” I’m passionate about all kinds of stuff that doesn’t make me money. It’s one of the most common myths that people tell you.

Scott Adams talks about it in his book, How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Scott Adams is the writer of Dilbert, which is probably one of the most famous comic books in the world. Passion is something that they pitch people because they don’t want to tell them that they’re a little bit smarter than that. When they ask these big entrepreneurs, they say, “What’s your secret?” I go, “It was just passion.”

They don’t want to tell you that, “You know what? I’m an aggressive cutthroat. I cut three guys below me and I’m just a little bit smarter than you. I got access to a trust fund. You’re never going to make the billions that I make.” No one’s going to tell you that. It doesn’t look good for Mark Zuckerberg to tell you those things or Bill Gates to tell you those things. Instead, what they’re going to tell you is, “You just got to have a lot of passion and drive in life.” I know people all the time that have become billionaires, multi-millionaires from products that they do not give a care about.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Inspire somebody to stop selling their hours and let their money work for them intelligently.

 

The passion part of the component, it’s nice to have. I’m passionate about a nice steak meal, a nice rare fillet mignon grass-fed steak. It’s not going to make any money. I’m passionate about tea. I’m passionate about doing this stuff. I’m passionate about talking with you on this show. This is fun. This is a great show. I’m excited to be here. You have to separate that from the activities that make you money. Making money as a system, it’s a formula. It has very little to do with what you are passionate about. If you’re interested in something, your interest, your fascination in something opens up a pathway, a journey to things that could make you money, but it’s not a precursor for success or wealth.

You’ve separated passion out from your business because you can be passionate about so many different things, but interest is definitely necessary or is it interest necessary?

Not really. I know lots of people who make money doing things that they have very little interest in. I know a guy who runs a very high-end fashion brand of women’s clothing. He doesn’t wear that. Every time I see him, I’m like, “Where’d you get your clothes?” He’s like, “H&M, Ross.” I’m like, “You run this like multi-million-dollar clothing company.” He’s like, “I don’t like that. I like to wear sweats.” He’s like, “I get good sweats at Ross and they’re 50% off.”

What do you see then as the key ingredient to making money?

I don’t think there’s any key ingredient. I don’t think there’s anyone thing. You got to have grit. You got to have resilience. The one thing I would say that’s key is you got to be able to go out there and take some punches. You got to be able to be knocked down. The people I see coming through my Amazon FBA Seller course, the people that come through my Amazon Mastery course, the ones that come in with the attitude of, “I’m going to throw my chips on the table. I’m going to see where that little roulette ball lands and maybe it’ll land on one of my numbers.” Those are the ones that fail.

The ones that come in and are like, “You see that nail, I’m going to drive that thing through that piece of wood.” Maybe I’ll use a hammer, if that doesn’t work, I’ll use a sledgehammer. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to shoot that nail. I’m going to hit it with a rock. I’m going to drill through it and then put it in. It doesn’t matter. That nail is going in. If you go to business with that attitude, you are going to succeed. You are not there to try. There is no participation trophy in business. There are people out there who will eat your lunch.

One of my favorite quotes is that “While you are sleeping, your enemies are planning your demise.” I write that quote in my book, which is one of my absolute favorite ones. It keeps you on your toes. You got to always be on your toes. The world is predatory. There’s no sleeping in the Savannah. You’ve got to be always on your toes, but more so than that, there’s no hack to hard work. There’s no hack to getting out there and doing the work.

There are all kinds of people on social media, preaching things. They want to sell you a course. They don’t want you to get rich. Even a lot of the people out there who sell their Amazon courses, mine, by the way, which is free and I will give it to you if you reach out to me. They don’t tell you what they’re doing to make money. They tell you what they want to tell you for you to think you’re going to make money, but them make money off you by selling you whatever it is they’re selling.

It’s like the stock market guys. I was a highly leveraged commodities trader. I did extremely well. I traded hundreds of millions of dollars in commodities, gold, oil, pork bellies, all that stuff, coffee futures for years. I tried all the different courses. I realized at a certain point that the guy selling the courses are making more money, selling the courses than they are in the markets. I was making more money than them in the markets. It’s like that. There is no hack to hard work. You got to get out there. You got to put in the sleepless nights. I paid my dues. I’ve slept on the factory floor.

I’ve gone from millions to a billion to broke to millions again. I’m continually on that path of learning of self-discovery of figuring out what I need to do to take myself to the next level. I have no illusions to think that I don’t have to wake up tomorrow and work hard at something. The fact is I’ve put myself in a place where I can relax and do the stuff that I love to do. It’s only because I spent all those years doing all that stuff that I didn’t want to do.

I love what you’re saying because you’re not sugarcoating it. Here’s what I have been thinking about as I’ve been listening to you. You said this at least twice. You said, “I burned the ships.” How critical was that to you having the motivation, the grit and the desire to get up every day and go do it when things didn’t look good?

As my friend says, “You got to go all in.” I don’t believe in half-assing things. I love watching these historical shows where you see these historical battles. You see these guys. These were guys who most people don’t know. The Vikings controlled England for nearly a thousand years, maybe longer. They ruled England. England was ruled by Vikings for 1,000 or more years. You look at that and you’re like, “What did they do?” This is before even naval navigation. These guys went on these wooden boats that they carved out from trees, left everything behind. They went out. Their swords were drawn for glory. That was it.

They burned all their ships. They were there to win. They would colonize places where they landed. That’s what you got to do. I think people have to be intelligent about the decisions that they make. If you’ve got a family, if you’ve got to feed the kids or whatever, you can’t leave everything and go off on some crazy venture. You need to have stability but it’s that stability that’s going to allow you to have the bandwidth to succeed.

You need to have stability that'll allow you to have the bandwidth to succeed. Click To Tweet

We talk about foundational thinking in my course. I tell people, you got to have four pillars, a four-legged table much more secure. Three-legged table, not so good. Two-legged table, not good at all. One-legged table, you’re a tripod. The first leg should be a career, a job, a trust fund, whatever it is money where you don’t have to worry about eating. You don’t have to worry about your family being taken care of. You don’t have to worry about if you want to take the wife out for a nice dinner, that it’s going to give you problems or the girlfriend or the husband or whatever.

The second pillar, you should have some money and cashflow-positive real estate. I tell people this all the time, “You got to buy at the right time when the market conditions are right. You got to find great deals, but you can do this with little or no money. I’ve bought houses on credit cards. I bought houses on eBay. There are all kinds of things you can do, but leaning towards cashflow positive real estate.” If you can’t get into it for whatever your restrictions are, you can at least start learning about it.

The third one is compounded interest. Why is Warren Buffett one of the wealthiest men in the world? Berkshire Hathaway is one of the most successful funds out there. It’s because of compounded interest. He’s been investing since he was a kid. If you leave money in and you compound interest over time, that’s going to add up to something. The fourth pillar, the fourth foundation, is an e-commerce business. I recommend Amazon. Amazon’s what I do. It’s one of the best, but it’s not the only one. We teach people how to sell on Etsy, Walmart, eBay, Poshmark, all these different marketplaces that are popping up. If you have these four pillars, these four foundations, nothing could ever shake your world.

You wake up in the morning, “The real estate market tanked. No problem, you’re cashflow anyway. It’s okay. It’ll get back up. We wait for a cycle.” “The boss fired me. No problem. You got your compounding interest money. You got your real estate.” “All those stuff failed. You got your e-commerce business,” and vice versa.

If you have those foundations, you might be unsettled for a little bit in life, but you’ll never be knocked out. If you look at these guys, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, look at what they do best, it’s diversification. It’s building those foundations. Those guys have hundreds of pillars. Do you think if Amazon went down tomorrow that Jeff Bezos would be crying? He’s got so much money. He’s got so many things he’s going. These guys are good. There is no one thing that’s going to shake their world. That’s what you have to do. You’ve got to build your life in a way where you can never have a day that’s that bad.

What is the chain that keeps you going? You’ve already done this multiple times. You’ve got the money. You’ve got the stuff. You’ve got the family. What’s keeping you motivated? I can feel your energy. I can feel you’re fired up. Ready to go fight, create something and go do something. What is it that’s keeping you going?

That’s a good question. I spend most of my time traveling with my family. We go to all great places. I’m a family man. We collect cars. I collect exotic cars, Porsches. Me and my son, my seven-year-old like to go out into the garage and fix these cars. We don’t know what we’re doing, but it’s fun to look under the hood and take a look at that. Spending time with my family is what fires me up. It’s what excites me. Outside of that, at work, I get excited about two things. One is when somebody buys a product that I’ve built, designed or developed.

The second is when somebody calls me up and says, “Shaahin, I made an extra 60,000 this month on Amazon. Thanks to you. I can quit my job. I can walk in tomorrow and tell my boss to beat it.” That excites me, when I can inspire somebody to stop selling their hours and let their money work for them intelligently. I’ve got students that have 3, 4 Vas, virtual assistants in Nicaragua, Venezuela, in South and Central America, in South Asia, Southeast Asia, working for them, running their business and they’re on the beach. They’re traveling. Those VAs are running that business. While they’re sleeping, they’re making money.

If I can empower people to have that freedom, I always say, “Freedom is the ultimate luxury. The new luxury is time.” If you have all that money and you can’t take a break, have a nice lunch with your significant other, take your kid to the park, do whatever you want, when you want with who you want, you’re not really wealthy. That’s why the cost of a private jet somewhere is exponentially more than a first-class ticket on any airline because it offers you the ultimate freedom.

In my world, what I would say is your energy comes from when you find something better and then you share it. People love it because they appreciate that you shared that better way with them and it’s brought them results. It worked. It was better. I feel the same way when I can share something that’s better and people love it. Even a better restaurant, even a better anything. “Have you been to this place?” They love it. It brings me a lot of joy. I can see you doing that same thing on a bigger scale. The last question for you. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever given or the best piece of advice that you’ve ever gotten?

As far as advice goes, the best advice I’ve ever gotten is topical and it’s time-sensitive. The advice that I got as a young person might not apply now. With that said, in very general terms, I could say, don’t work in a vacuum. Build a mastermind or join a mastermind. Like with my Amazon Mastery course, we have a mastermind where people sign up with us. They’re immediately with a hundred other people that are selling on Amazon. Find a mentor. Getting somebody who is where you want to be and incentivizing them to conspire for your success could be the ultimate hack to getting there a lot faster.

If people are reading and they want to get in touch with you, how is the best way for them to do that?

You can email me directly. We have the one-hour Amazon Mastery course. I’ll offer that to all your audience for free. It’s normally $200. We’ll give it to them for free. Just use the code WHY and email me at DarkZess@Gmail.com. That’s my direct Gmail address. I get emails to zero every day. I will answer all emails directly. You can also check us out at www.FBASellerCourse.com or ShaahinCheyene.com. My book Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult just dropped. You can get that on Amazon and check that out. We also do a show. We’ve got a podcast called Hack and Grow Rich.

If you want to check out Hack and Grow Rich, make sure to like, and subscribe to us, dislike us, whatever you want to do. Give us some love, give us some attention. You can get us on Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, wherever podcasts are heard. Gary, if someone’s reading this on our channel, how can they get ahold of you and subscribe to the content you’re producing?

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Love the path you’ve been on, including the ups and downs.

 

Have them come to WHYInstitute.com. The best thing for them to do would be to go Discover Their Why. They can use the code Podcast50 and Discover Their Why for half price. It’s only $47. You’ll see all that you need there. You can connect with me there as well.

Thanks for having me on.

Thanks for being here. I love the path that you’ve been on, the ups, the downs, the stories, the realness to it. You’re not trying to sell something that requires no work because that doesn’t exist. If you were to have told me, “I’ll do everything for you. It’s not going to be any work for you. Give me your $1,000, and you’ll be rich.” Not a real story. You’re like, “You’re going to have to go work your butt off. You’re going to have to put the hours in. There’s no substitute for burning the ships and jumping in with both feet, going all in and getting it done.” Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. I’ll look forward to reading your book.

It has been fun. Thank you so much.

It’s time for our Guess Their Why segment. I want to think about Walt Disney. What do you think Walt Disney’s why is? He imagined a place where people were happy. He imagined Disneyland, Disney World and he built it when people told him he shouldn’t. He wanted to contribute to the youth. He wanted to contribute to people’s imagination. He wanted them to have a great experience and to have a great time. I believe that Walt Disney’s why is to contribute. To contribute to a greater cause, add value and have an impact on people’s lives.

When I think about him, he was able to surround himself with other people that he brought with him. His brother, Roy, who was the how guy, but lifted them up. He lifted up the people around them to be creative, to be fun and to be funny. That’s what somebody with the why of contribute would be. What do you think Walt Disney’s why is?

If you love this episode, if you love this show, make sure to go to the platform that you’re reading on and rate us, give us a review because it’ll help us to bring the why to the rest of the world, so that we can impact and help one billion people discover, make decisions and live based on their why. Thank you for reading, and we will see you next week.

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About Shaahin Cheyene

BYW S4 4 | Herbal EcstasyBorn in Iran Tehran in 1975, Shaahin Cheyene is an award-winning writer, filmmaker and a prosperous businessman who is committed to share his enthusiasm to accelerate intelligence through his most recent company and products. Cheyene is the CEO and Chairman of brain nutrition start-up Accelerated Intelligence.

As a teenager in the 1990’s, Cheyene jump initiated his career by inciting and leading the “Smart Drug Movement” with his invention of Herbal Ecstacy, a refreshing, herbal supplement made to energize the body. He realized early in his career about guerilla branding and he still makes use of it to sell his products today. Shaahin Cheyene has developed over 200 award-­winning products, selling millions of units globally. After pioneering the breakthrough components for Herbal Ecstacy, he extended his company’s offerings with Ecstacy Cigarettes, an herbal substitute for tobacco that many have put to use to quit smoking. It went on to become the most effective herbal cigarette on the earth.

In the early 2000’s, Cheyene’s career naturally progressed and matured. He started to work with several major pharmaceutical organizations to broadcast the technologies and great things about herbal medicines to the mainstream. In this process, Cheyene was accountable for the proliferation of several plant medicines now applied to popular naturopathic health regimens.

In 2000, Cheyene invented, branded and developed a revolutionary new medicine delivery system called the Vapir Vaporizer. His creation quickly spearheaded the burgeoning vaporization industry. He also published the definitive book on the science of Vaporization, Vapor: The Art and Science of Inhaling Pure Plant Essences. Shaahin Cheyene credits the production of his top-selling health supplement Excelerol to his career-long love of naturopathic herbal solutions. He remains true to his objectives to nurture and assist in improving the health of everyone with herbal alternatives to harsh chemicals.

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Contributing To The Success Of Others And Making A Positive Impact In The World With Dan Dominguez

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success

Dan Dominguez believes in the power of your why to make a difference in your organization. He exists to positively impact the lives of others. In this episode, he joins Dr. Gary Sanchez to share insights on contributing to other people’s success, making a positive impact in the world, thinking differently, and delivering solutions. Learn how you could change perspective, turn the complex and challenging into an opportunity to move forward and prosper in your organization.

 

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Contributing To The Success Of Others And Making A Positive Impact In The World With Dan Dominguez

 

If you’re a regular follower, you know that every episode, we talk about 1 of the 9 whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why, so you can see how their why has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of contribute. If this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause, something that is bigger than yourself. You don’t necessarily want to be the face of the cause, but you want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. You love to support others and you relish the success that contributes to the greater good of the team.

You see group victories as personal victories. You are often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate, and you are often acting as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources and connections to add value to other people and organizations.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Dan Dominguez. He exists to positively impact the lives of others. He does that by challenging the status quo and looking at things from a different perspective. What he brings is the ability to make sense of the complex and challenging to help others move forward faster.

Dan’s diverse background as an academic scholar, college mascot, Army Ranger, sales leader, marathon runner, track and field, cross-country coach, and Rotarian allows him to connect easily with almost anyone. He does that as the Chief Growth Officer here at the WHY Institute. Dan and his wife, Monica, are proud parents of their two daughters, Jazz and Sophia, along with 24 sheep, 4 dogs, and 3 chickens.

Welcome to the podcast, Dan.    

It’s great to be here, Gary.

This is going to be fun. I’ve been looking forward to this. Let’s start with telling everybody how you got to where you are now and how you got to the WHY Institute. Start back with your childhood because you’ve got a fascinating path that you took along the way.

It’s great to tell this story, Gary, especially from the perspective of my why, how and what. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the South Valley. I went to Rio Grande High School. If you’re familiar with Albuquerque, the South Valley is more of the poor side of town. Even then, I remember always wanting to help people but always wanted to do things my own way. I was in the student council, but I was friends with all the game kids and I also played football. I wasn’t the kid that you could put into a group even in high school. I knew the football players and I knew the student council kids, but I also was an honor student. I graduated number nine in my class.

I was that kid that you couldn’t put in a box but I love to help. Where it comes from for me is I always had great teachers and mentors that took time to mentor me and help me. I grew up always wanting to give back. It led to me wanting to be in the Army. I remember when people said, “Why do you want to be in the Army? You have a full academic scholarship to the University of Mexico.” I said, “I feel like I want to give back because this country has been such a blessing for my family as immigrants. We’ve done so well to be able to do everything we’ve been able to do. I feel like I’ve got to give back.”

Here I was in the Army ROTC Program at the University of New Mexico, and then I had an extra semester that I had one class I had to take. I remember saying, “I’ve got to be here.” I tried out for the cheer team and I became the mascot. I am probably the only person in history to be the Commander of the ROTC unit at the university while at the same time being the college mascot.

There are many stories that make more sense now in my life since I know my why of contribute, my how of challenge, and my what of makes sense. Make sense gets me in trouble with my wife all the time because I want to solve problems. She’ll come to me with something and I say, “Here’s what you’ve got to do.” She says, “I don’t want a solution. I wanted you to listen.”

Take some time off to find something you really love whether you’re getting paid or not. Click To Tweet

It’s been a long journey. I went from graduating high school to going to the University of New Mexico and going into the Army. Even there, Gary, I was a Quartermaster Officer. The Quartermaster Officer in the Army is a logistician. There’s no reason for a logistician to go to Ranger School, except that it was offered and I did it. “Why do you want to go to Ranger School? You’re not in the Infantry and Combat Army.”

I was one of those rare people that was a Quartermaster and also an Airborne Ranger, which I had no use for those battle skills as a logistician, but it was nice for me to have that background because it gave me a great perspective of what the warriors on the ground were feeling when we weren’t getting supplies to them in time. I’ve always been an out-of-the-box thinker and wanting to contribute to people. It’s funny because when I have that introduction, people are like, “You did this but you did that also.” That happens all the time.

You left out a little piece in there, at least I think you did. Weren’t you more than just one mascot?

I did both, Gary. At the time, myself and a good friend, Raven Choni, were the mascots. We were Lucy and Louie Lobo, and we’re two guys. Usually, it was a guy and a girl, but there were both of us that did it. You never knew who was going to be in which costume. I did it for one semester. It was one of the best times I ever had being in that mascot costume with the little kids where they don’t know that there’s a teenage guy or a 22-year-old guy inside the suit. They think, “You’re Louie the Lobo.” They want to say hi, get your autograph, and take pictures with you. It was a blast.

I’ve been going to the Lobo basketball game since I was about four years old. When you were the mascot, I was back here watching the games. I had some good seats where Lobo Louie and Lucy used to come by all the time. I do specifically remember there was a time when all of a sudden, Lucy got taller. Now I know what happened. That was you.

That could have been, Gary. You never know.

You went from an interesting high school to going to UNM, leading the ROTC, being the mascot, going off to be in the Army, and then becoming a Ranger. How long were you in the service? What happened to you when you got out?

That was about an eleven-year journey between the ROTC time, and the time I was on active duty. I spent three years on active duty with the 3rd Armored Cav, and then I was in the Reserves again. It was a total of about eleven years. It was a time when junior military officers were valuable to Corporate America. I remember being in the Army, and coming from my background, I was making $34,000 a year. I thought I was the richest guy in the world. They were giving me all this money. After going through college and you’re poor all the time, I was like, “This is great.”

This was also 1993 when the job market wasn’t great. A lot of my friends are graduating and don’t have jobs. I had a job, I could buy a car and do all those things that you do when you get your first job. A recruiter comes talking to us and targets junior military officers and says, “We’ve got opportunities for junior military officers with your leadership to work in Corporate America.” I get recruited out of the Army. Immediately, they double your salary and you can make bonuses based on how much you sell as a salesperson. I’ve always loved sales.

It was almost a no-brainer because I remember talking to Monica about it and saying, “Here’s the decision we have to make. I can stay here for twenty years and I’ll have retirement and all this stuff. The travel is about 50%.” She said, “When you say 50%, will you be gone half the year?” I said, “No, maybe two overnights a week.”

She’s like, “That sounds a lot better than being gone half the year and deployed. When you travel, are you going to be sleeping on the ground outside?” I said, “They’re going to put us up in hotels.” She said, “That sounds better. Is anybody going to be shooting at you?” I said, “No, they won’t be shooting at me. What’s the decision here? It sounds like a good idea.”

I left active duty service and went to work for a pharmaceutical company. We launched a drug called Prilosec. At the time, it was new. Nobody knew about it, and it was dangerous because it had a black box warning. Now, it’s over the counter. It was cool to be with a company that launched a product that revolutionized the way people treated heartburn.

That led to me meeting people in the gastroenterology field and becoming a device sales rep. I started selling endoscopes to a gastroenterologist for a few years and then landed at Baxter Healthcare, where I stayed for seventeen years. I advanced there, leading small groups of salespeople, to leading an entire national sales force at a high level and meeting our numbers every year. I’m doing a job that I love because we are helping patients all the time.

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success
Contributing To Success: It’s not so much the challenges they’re having. It’s the contrast between knowing it now versus before they knew it. It’s a process.

How did you end up at the WHY Institute?

This is a lot of fun. I tell people these were the two things that changed my life. In 2019, you and I were at the Country Club right after the Ryder Cup and we were talking. It was in October and it was a Saturday. I had a toothache and I said, “Gary, can you get me in on Monday? I’ve got something wrong with one of my teeth.” You were nice and you said, “Yeah, Dan. Call the office, we’ll get you in, and we’ll get you looked at.”

At that time, I had also made a decision that I didn’t want to be at Baxter Healthcare anymore. I wanted to do something different. I didn’t know why, but I was no longer happy. I was about 30 pounds heavier than I am. I was stressed. My wife and my young daughter were stressed. I wasn’t enjoying work. I made a decision I was going to leave that.

You found out through the grapevine and through our friends. I sit down at the chair and you’re like, “Dan, I heard you’re leaving Baxter.” I said, “I left. I’m done. I’m not working there anymore.” You said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I don’t know. I’m going to take some time off to find something I love. Whatever I do next, it’s going to be something I would do whether I was getting paid or not.” You asked the question, which was great, “Dan, do you know your why?” I said, “No. What is that?”

You explained to me what the why was but more importantly, you sent it to my phone. You said, “Take five minutes.” I took five minutes and I discovered that my why was to contribute to the success of others. Back then, you were busy with dentistry, so you didn’t take me through my how and what. I went through your online course to discover my how and what. I even paid for it. I went on and did it. I said, “This is me. I’ve discovered my why, how and what.” All of a sudden, a lot of things made sense to me.

You asked me the question, “Dan, do you like to help people?” I said, “Yeah, doesn’t everybody?” Similar reaction to our friend, Jerry. You said, “No, not everyone does. There are eight other whys, and everybody is driven by their why and they do what they do.” Suddenly, I realized that’s why I was unhappy in my corporate role. I didn’t feel like I was making a difference in the lives of the people that I was leading because I didn’t have the freedom to do things my own way, and it didn’t make sense. When stuff doesn’t make sense to me, I’m not happy and I have dissonance. I decided to leave.

It’s funny, my friends were like, “You have no plan. You left.” I said, “I have a little bit of a plan.” I took my financial package, looked at it and said, “How long can I not work?” My financial advisor said, “You can do it for a couple of years, Dan, and then you’ve got to get back to work and start putting money back into your retirement.” That’s what I plan to do until I met with you. We went to lunch at the Chinese restaurant across the street from your old dental office and we talked about it.

You were smart. You used my wife to contribute to talk to me in my language. You didn’t say, “Dan, I’ve got this great opportunity for us to do amazing things that are better and different.” You said, “Dan, I need your help. We can use someone with your skills in sales at a high level to help us get the WHY Institute to where we want to go.” As soon as you said, “We need your help,” I raised my hand and I said, “What do I need to do? Let’s do it.” I showed up at your coach’s meeting that you had that same month at the Canyon Club. I get to meet a bunch of WHY coaches and I was bought in from then on.

For those of you that are reading, Dan’s why is contribute, which is what we’ve been talking about. He wants to help and he wants to be part of other people’s success. He wants to contribute in a meaningful way. His how is challenge, to do things differently, not follow the way everybody else goes, and beat to his own drum. His what is what he does has to make sense. You can hear his how of challenging the status quo and doing things his own way, coming through loud and clear. We had your why, how and what wrong first. Remember?

Yes. I wanted to be the right way. This was before we’ve done everything that we’ve done to make the WHY Discovery and the WHY.os more accurate. At that point, I did an online course where I listened to you and then I got to pick my how and what off a list. I said, “I’ve got to be a right way guy because I was in the military. Trust is important to me. I want to trust people.” That’s not how you pick your how and what.

You thought you were getting a Chief Growth Officer with a contribute right way of trust, which would have been a good fit for you because you’re a better way, clarify and simplify. When we started looking at it, the more you saw the way I worked, you were like, “There’s no way you’re right way. You don’t follow rules.”

We started even looking at the way we behave at the golf course. You said, “Dan, would you go to the golf course and play the holes randomly?” I’m like, “Yeah, I would. Why not? That’s fun. You don’t know which hole you’re going to.” We realized that my how was more challenging the status quo. There were many things in my life that pointed to, “Dan, you like to do things your own way. If it’s something people aren’t expecting it, you’re more than likely to do it because that’s how we get things done and that’s how we contribute.”

I remember specifically being on the tee box in the first hole and I’m like, “Dan, how are you going to play this hole?” You’re like, “I’m going to hit it over there.” I’m like, “What do you mean you’re going to hit it over there? Are you aiming somewhere?” You’re like, “No. I want to get there. Wherever it is, that’s where I’ll play it.” I’m like, “I never thought of that. That’s the right way?”

Ask the right questions and make wise decisions. Contribute to the success of others in the most meaningful way. Click To Tweet

I’ve done why interviews with hundreds of people. I’ve helped many people discover their why, how, and what, and there’s no way I could be right way. You hit it and then you will find it and then figure out what happens. Let’s have some fun with it. It’s fun to play completely differently every single time. That’s why I’ll never be a single-digit handicap or at least not consistently because I can go from a 73 one day to a 95 the next depending on the breaks I get because I’ll take chances that others probably wouldn’t.

It was interesting when we both realized that. I was buying into the whole right way thing because of your military and whatnot. As we started to look back, I said, “How did any of that path that you were on make any sense to a right way person?” Who’s going to go from boxer, to football, to ROTC, to mascot, to Army, to Ranger, to all the steps that you’ve done along the way? How does that fit together? When we realized it’s a different way to think, then it became so clear and you’ve gotten to live into that. Now, you have fun with it and you understand it. What was that like for you when you had it the way you wanted it versus when it was right?

The conflict, and you remember probably, was as a right way person, there were certain things you were expecting Dan to do. Then Dan probably showed up on time half of the time. He’s always running late because he’s doing something helping someone trying to do something extra. I wasn’t able to come up with the processes and systems and build them because that’s not my strength. I’ll be creative. I’m a connector. As a contributor challenge, I love to connect with people of all different walks of life. That’s why I talk in my bio about the fact that I’ve got such a diverse background. It’s hard for me to meet someone that I don’t have something in common with.

If you say college mascot, “He’s got nothing.” “By the way, I was in the military.” If you say, “You were in the military. What do you do?” “I was a Quartermaster.” “You don’t know anything about combat.” “By the way, I was a Ranger.” “How did you do that?” It always comes back to that. I was feeling like I was letting you down because you’d say, “Dan, did you get all that codified so we could repeat it?” I was like, “No, I didn’t do that. Let me try to work on it.” I’d sit down and five minutes later, something else would come up and I’d go work on that. You and I would meet a week later and that wasn’t done. I knew that I was in conflict trying to be right way.

Once you said, “Dan, your strong point is to do it your own way, be different, and bring us all those ideas.” I love our pairing because, as a challenge, I come up with lots of ideas. As a better way, you can call those down to the good ones. For a challenged person to have a better way around to help them get rid of those crazy ideas, the bad ones, and take the ones that are better and implement them. We’ve had a lot of fun with a lot of ideas that we’ve come up with within the nineteen months we’ve been working together.

You discovered your why, how and what, and then you had a revelation about why you left the corporate world. What was that revelation?

There were a couple of things, Gary. First, as a contributor, I want to help people. I was lucky that at Baxter where I spent the majority of my corporate career, I had bosses that were always good at allowing me to do my job my own way. It was always like, “Dan, here’s the quota. Here’s the timeline you’ve got to do. Lead your team. Don’t break the law. See you at the end of the year and let’s celebrate.” Those are good bumpers for me.

I then went into a situation where we changed leadership. There was nothing wrong with the new leader, he just had a different way that he wanted to do things. He was more of a, “Let’s do it my way. If you don’t do it my way, we’re not going to get along well.” When you put those barriers on a person who wants to help others at any cost, wants to do it his own way and it has to make sense, it was in conflict with my WHY.os. I suddenly started not having fun. I had the whole country. Where do you think I would want to have a meeting if it was December? I’d want to go to Florida, “Let’s go to Florida. Let’s go to Phoenix.” That’s where I bring my teams in, and we’d have our December or our January meeting.

Now, I was like, “We’re going to have our meetings in Chicago because that’s where our headquarters is. We save on hotel and flights.” Who wants to go to Chicago in December? Not me and neither do any of my team. All of a sudden, my autonomy and my ability to do things my own way were gone, and it didn’t make any sense. I’m like, “If you’re going to tell me exactly how to do everything, why don’t you tell the people that you’re telling me to tell how to do things and then you can get rid of the middleman?”

I took myself out of that loop and said, “I don’t want to do that again.” It was great that I met with you. I remember it was October 21st, 2019 that I discovered my why, and my official last day at Baxter was October 19. It was serendipitous and then we had those great conversations. I got to meet some of the coaches that we work with and learn from them. I still keep in touch with them.

Let’s talk about this concept of bumpers because that came from you when we talk about somebody that has a challenge in their WHY.os. For those of you that are not intimately familiar with it, Dan wants to help, but he wants to do it his own way. You can’t tell him how you want it done because he’s going to find his own way to do it anyways. Tell us about this concept of bumpers because this came from a conversation you and I were having when we were struggling a little bit with saying, “How do we keep you on course?” It dawned on me and I said, “He was in the military. How did they keep him on course?”

The concept of bumpers for anybody, if your child or somebody you work with has a challenge in their why, how or what, you’ve got to understand that for us, tell us where the boundaries are then give us room to play. Don’t tell us exactly how to do it. Tell us what needs to get done, what are the rules, and then let us play. Then we’ll have some fun.

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success

Contributing To Success: We don’t lie about what we do. We just highlight what appeals to you based on your why.I posted about my WHY.os day. My Friday was I woke up at 4:00 in the morning and I was on my computer answering emails. I set some appointments with clients. I work until 6:00 in the morning, then I had chaos going on because Sophia and Monica wake up. I have to get them out the door. They have from 6:00 to 7:00 to get ready. I spend family time with them from 6:00 to 7:00. I then had a golf tournament. I went and played golf tournament for about four hours and then I had some meetings.

I also had to meet with Sophia’s principal at school. I went to the school and I set up my computer at their school in a room that they allowed me to borrow. I did some appointments and I sent out some more emails. I did some more communication with clients. I then met with the principal. I had coffee with Monica. We picked up Sophia from test practice and then we went to dinner.

If you’re somebody who’s right way, that probably sounds like chaos to you. For me, it was so nice to say, “All I need is a flat surface and an internet connection. I can do my work from my car. I can do it from the office. We have a great office here at the WHY Institute, so I can go there and do it or I can do it from my home office.”

At the end of the day, what does Gary want? What do you want from your Chief Growth Officer? “Dan, let’s go make connections with people that want to join the WHY Institute. Let’s share our message. Let’s grow this business so we can help a billion people discover their why.” What does that feed? That feeds my why of contribute.

When I see what a difference knowing my WHY.os made for me, I want to give that to everyone I can. The best way we do that is to get amazing coaches like the ones we’ve got in our first 97 to 100 that we’re getting to help us get to 1,000 coaches and get us to thousands of coaches, so we can help the world know their why because it makes such a difference.

As you’re having the opportunity to talk to coaches around the world, what are some of the challenges that you’re seeing they’re having in helping people discover their why? They’re talking about the concept of why but what’s it like for them? What are you hearing when it comes to discovering somebody’s why?

It’s not so much the challenges they’re having. It’s the contrast between knowing it now versus before they knew it. I got off the phone with one of our newest coaches, Bill Summers, in Texas and he said, “Dan, I’m using the why, how and what as a framework for everything that I do.” He’s writing a new book and he’s organizing his chapters that way with his co-authors, “Tell us why you do what you do. Tell us how you do it and tell us what you bring.” That’s what’s nice about this process. What coaches tell me is when I know the why, how and what of my client, I can plan my coaching around their why, how and what.

For example, if you’re coaching Dan, you don’t want to give Dan a step-by-step, “This is what you’ve got to do every day,” plan. He’s probably not going to do it. If you tell Dan, “This is how you can help people. This is how you can do it your own way. These are the only rules you’ve got to follow. Do it your way. Does that make sense to you?” “Explain it to me.” Then you’re going to have a great client that’s going to be happy because you’re talking to me in my language. That’s what they find gratifying about learning their client’s why because they can talk to them in their language.

It’s what we call the platinum rule. Don’t talk to people the way you want to talk to them. You can talk to them about a better way, clarify and simplify. If their contribute challenge makes sense, you’re going to talk to them like you did to me, “Dan, I need your help.” “I’m not going to tell you how this is better. Let me tell you how this is going to help a billion people.” When you talk to me about that stuff, I was bought in. It’s the unfair advantage of helping people by talking to them. It’s not about lying about your product. We don’t lie about what we do. We highlight what appeals to you based on your why.

If they only spoke Spanish and you only spoke English, it would be tough to communicate. Imagine being in a country where you don’t speak the language, and maybe you had that experience when you were in the Army. You run into that one person that speaks English and you’re like, “It’s nice to talk to you. I can get something accomplished here because we speak the same language.” Has that ever happened to you?

That happens all the time. This is some stuff we talk about. I have found that when we share our top 3 of the 9 whys as our WHY.os, I have amazing conversations with people. For example, if I meet a fellow contribute, we talk the same language, so we tend to have a good conversation. If I meet a contribute challenge, then we have an even better conversation. It’s like we’ve been friends forever. If I meet somebody whose contribute challenge makes sense, we’re finishing each other’s sentences. It makes so much sense that we connect.

Alex, who’s a mutual friend of ours, got the same top three as me in a different order. I would have never thought that we would get along so great from looking at us. He’s an attorney and he’s a tall, athletic guy. He walks around like he owns the place. He’s different because his why is challenge. When I met him, I didn’t know what to think of him and I didn’t know that I would get along with him, but his contribute is strong. It shows in his work as a personal injury attorney.

When we worked with him to get to his WHY.os, I realized he cares about people, but because he leads with challenge, it doesn’t come across right away. The more I got to know him, the more we got along. When we figured out his entire WHY.os, we have the same top three in a different order. We clicked. We hang out and text each other all the time. We have a good time because we think alike. That’s a key factor that I’m sure our coaches are finding. When they talk to people who have similar whys, they get along great.

The challenge is to think differently and not to follow the way everybody else beats their drums. Click To Tweet

What was it like selling for seventeen years without knowing somebody’s WHY.os and now selling and connecting with people when you do know their WHY.os?

It is a completely different world, Gary. If I had this tool when I was in the Army to know my soldiers better, it would have been extremely helpful, but definitely in sales. It is nice to be able to present to someone in a language that they understand and they are listening for. In sales, especially working for a Fortune 100 company where we have a huge marketing program, everything we put out has to appeal to everyone. You’re throwing stuff against the wall and you hope something appeals to them.

When you know their WHY.os, you talk to them in what you know is going to appeal to them. This is what’s important to them. It doesn’t matter why it is. At WHY Institute, we found a better way to help people discover their why. It’s a clear way and it’s simple. We lead better, clearer and simpler. If I’m talking to someone whose why is mastery, I will spend time on the nuances. I will send them the full definitions of every single why because they’re going to want to know that.

Before we talk, they’ve already got their questions and they’ve done all the reading. I know that they’ve read our entire website and every link because that’s what they do. I’m concentrating on how this is going to help them learn at a deeper level and how to talk to their clients. The same goes for everyone in their whys. We adapt our presentation to that person because that’s what they’re listening for.

What’s it like for you to meet somebody now and not know their why or WHY.os?

It’s tough. I will give people the why even if I’m only going to work with them for a little bit because I want to know how they tick and what’s important to them. It’s interesting you say that because I’m working with Sophia’s school, and the principal is a nice lady. She was my oldest daughter’s third-grade teacher, so I’ve known her for a long time. I said, “Janice, I’m sorry but if you want me to help, I need to know your why.”

I had her take the WHY Discovery and we found her why is trust. All of a sudden, a lot of things make sense. Working with her, it’s trust, mastery, right way. It’s different from me. I needed to know that because now I know how I can help her. All this challenge stuff that Dan does, I have to tamp it down a little bit for her because trust is important. I can’t show up late.

Mastery is important. I can’t pretend I know stuff. I better know stuff before I show it to her in right way and follow the process. That’s how she runs a successful school and that’s what’s important to her. I know how I want to make sure I present myself to her, so she doesn’t say, “Get out of here, Mr. Dominguez. I don’t need you here.”

Let’s talk about relationships. How has knowing your WHY.os, your wife, Monica, and your daughter, Sophia and Jazz, helped you as a family to connect, work together, and understand each other in every aspect of the relationship?

Sophia knows her why, which is challenge. She’s an old soul. She’s read all the nine whys. She considers herself a pet why-ologist. She’s challenge, clarify and make sense. You’re thinking, “Why did you do this with your daughter?” She reads at a high level and we let her take the WHY Discovery. When we came out with our WHY.os, I said, “Let’s have her take it.” We had her WHY.os and it’s nice to understand why she always says, “Dad, why do I have to do it that way?” I’m that way and that’s okay. As somebody with the how of challenge, I don’t like it when other people do it to me. “I asked you to do it. That’s why you should do it.” “Why Dad? What if I can do it this way?”

Now, I understand both her and my oldest, who also had the why of challenge. I understand that they see the world differently. I understand I should allow them to and give them bumpers. As soon as you give them bumpers and let them run, “Don’t burn the house down.” That was simple, “Don’t break the law and we’re going to get along fine.”

With my wife being a why of clarify, I realized why it’s important for her to ask all the questions. When I left the Army, she’s like, “They’re not going to be shooting at you? You’re going to get to sleep in a hotel?” She asked all the questions to get me to come to my conclusion. She asked the right questions so that I understood the decision I was making but then she also understood. It used to drive me nuts how many questions she asked, but now I see it as a positive.

We bought a car, Gary. I knew that if we went to the dealership, she was going to take that poor salesman through a three-hour torture session. She has lots of questions about everything before we invested in that car. I did the smart thing. Knowing her why, I dropped her off with the dealer and I took Sophia, and we went and had lunch and did something else for a couple of hours.

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success
Contributing To Success: The key to overcoming this challenge is for you to identify where you will be able to make the greatest possible contributions, and then commit to focusing your efforts on those areas.

When we came back and we talked to the nice gentleman who was selling us the car and she had all her questions answered, I didn’t have to sit through it because I knew it was coming. She was satisfied. We were able to buy our vehicle and drive it home after she asked all her questions. Once she was clear, we were able to move forward but I needed to let her have time to do that. In the past, I might have said, “It’s blue and it runs. We have the money. Let’s buy it.” That would drive her nuts. Now, I allow her to ask the question she needs to ask so she can move forward.

There’s one flaw with that plan. The flaw is you need to send her in to ask all the questions to beat him down so that by the time you walk in, he’s like, “Take the car for free.”

Gary, the gentleman we bought the car from is a mutual friend. I’m not allowed to disclose the terms but I can tell you, she did a good job with it.

Dan, you’re right in the mix of everything. What do you see is the future for where we’re going, what we’re wanting to accomplish, and how quickly we’re going to get there?

What’s been exciting is I’ve been here for a while, and I knew nothing about the WHY Discovery. I knew nothing about executive coaching and this world. You introduced me to a whole new world. Going from absolute zero knowledge to now having done more Why Discoveries than anyone else other than you and Jerry, and having worked with many coaches and learn so much. I see the immense value that the WHY Discovery and the WHY.os Discovery have for the coaches that we talked to.

We went through an exercise where we took testimonials from coaches. To hear them talk about the difference that the WHY Discovery and the WHY.os have made in their lives and the lives of their clients, gives me tremendous confidence that we’re on the right track. We’ve got a tremendous team working on the backend to make sure that our website works, all our links work. Everything that we send out looks professional and good.

When I look at where we were in December of 2019 when I joined the team and where we are in September 2020, we’ve made leaps and bounds, and where we’re going and the people we’re working with. We’ve got coaches from ICF, John Maxwell and Marshall Goldsmith. We’ve got coaches from every major coaching organization in the world. We’ve got people that are certified in Kolbe, DiSC, StrengthsFinder, and all the assessments that are out there, and they all say one thing, “As long as I start with why, everything else falls into place.”

I can’t wait to see where we take this. I don’t see us being able to hold back. We’ve been careful about not launching something big that we couldn’t handle the growth and that we had the infrastructure. Now that we’re building that infrastructure, I can’t wait to present this to the world at large and get to a billion people knowing their why.

Dan, one last question, what is the best piece of advice you’ve received or you have ever given?

The easier question is probably the best piece of advice I’ve ever received, and that’s someone you talked to, Paul Allen. He talked about how important it is to take advice from people that think like you. I would have never thought of that without the why. Somebody with a why of clarify, for example, could have great advice on how to do something, but it’s not going to resonate with me because I want to contribute. However valuable that advice is, I may not be able to apply it because it doesn’t resonate with me.

Those people that we connect with, it’s more important that we connect and take advice from people that think like us because it’s going to be easier to implement. Not that I couldn’t implement clarify advice, better way advice, or advice from somebody whose why is mastery, but it will be simpler and easier because they’ve traveled that same path that I have. I love that.

Not that I don’t take advice from other people, but I listen intently when I do get that opportunity to talk to people with my why, how or what because they resonate with me. It’s a lot easier advice to implement. Mike Koenigs, who you’re working with, I listened to him. He’s a challenge guy. A lot of what he says, I can take and implement. I work closely with one of our coaches, Melahni Ake, whose why is also challenge. She and I clicked. I can take some of what she does, the hacks that she has created to get through and be productive with the why of challenge. The same thing that probably Mike has had to do. It’s helpful.

Dan, thanks so much for being here and taking the time. I’m going to see you every day. We’ve wanted to do this for a long time because you get to meet many people but now, even more people are going to get to know you. Everybody loves you. It’ll be fun to see how you progress as we progress on this journey. Thank you for being here.

Grab the opportunity to talk to coaches around the world so you could discover your why. Click To Tweet

Thank you for having me, Gary.

It’s time for our new segment, Guess the Why. I thought we’d do something fun. If you’ve been watching TV, one of the great series that’s out there is one called Ted Lasso. My wife and I have been watching that and a lot of our friends have been watching that. It is so funny. If you haven’t seen it, start watching it. I’d love to know your perspective on what you think Ted Lasso’s why is. I know what it is and it’s similar to Dan’s why, which is contribute.

He wants to help. He sees the positive in everybody. He wants to uplift the team, individually and as a team. He always wants to make things better for people in any way that he can, whether that’s picking up a broom and sweeping or sitting and having a conversation with somebody. He loves to make the world a better place by helping each person get better. For me, his why would be contribute.

Thank you for reading. If you’ve not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com with the code, PODCAST50. If you love the Beyond Your WHY show, please don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you’re using so that you can help us bring this message to the world. Also, to help one billion people discover, make decisions, and live based on their why. Thank you for reading.

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About Dan Dominguez

Dan Dominguez exists to positively impact the lives of others. HOW he does that is by challenging the status quo and looking at things from a different perspective. WHAT he brings is the ability to make sense of the complex and challenging to help others move forward faster. Dan’s diverse background as an academic scholar, college mascot, Army Ranger, sales leader, marathon runner, track and cross-country coach, and Rotarian allows him to connect easily with almost anyone and he does that as the Chief Growth officer at the WHY Institute.
Dan and his wife Monica are proud parents of their two daughters Jaz 32 and Sofia 9 along with 24 sheep, 4 dogs and 3 chickens.