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How Dr. John Demartini Crushed Life's Toughest Challenges to Unlock His Full Potential | E100
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- [00:00]
Ilana Gulan
Wow. This show is going to be incredible. So buckle up and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career, fast track to leadership land, dream roles, jump to entrepreneurship, or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success. So subscribe and download so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay, so let's dive in.
- [00:36]
Dr. John Demartini
They told me I'll never read. I love reading. They said I never write. I love writing.
- [00:41]
Ilana Gulan
Dr. John Demartini, human behavior specialist with over five decades of experience. He is an international speaker, an author and educator, the founder of demartini Institute.
- [00:53]
Dr. John Demartini
I was born with an arm and leg turned inward and deformed. I had dyslexia. Also had a speech impedimen. I slept under a bridge, and then I nearly died at 17. I ended up being told by my teacher that I would never be able to read, never be able to write. And I thought, no, I'm gonna mask this thing called reading, studying, and learning. I'm not gonna let any human being on the face of the earth stop me. I've spoken in 161 countries now. Everything they told me I would never do, I'd end up doing. Give yourself permission to shine, not shrink. And you don't need to get rid of any part of yourself. All of you works.
- [01:27]
Ilana Gulan
How do you maneuver Susie's challenges and keep.
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Dr. John Demartini
First of all, there's a thing called.
- [01:46]
Ilana Gulan
Dr. John Demartini, human behavior specialist with over five decades of experience. If you look at YouTube, you can't even figure out how five decades even make any sense. But he is an international speaker, an author and educator. The founder of demartini Institute, in which he's teaching, reached millions in over a hundred countries. And I'm really excited about this conversation. You will too, listeners, because we are sharing an amazing passion of elevating people. So, John, I'm so excited to have you on the show, and I want to take you back in time. Rewind and take me to John, the child that is struggling with learning disabilities, with dyslexia. Take me there for a second. How did you grow up?
- [02:34]
Dr. John Demartini
Born in Houston, Texas, 1954. I'm going on 71. I was born with an arm and leg turned inward and deformed. I also had a speech Impediment. I didn't know that till I was about a year and a half. At age four. I was, well, one and a half to four. I was wearing braces on my legs and putting fingers and buttons in my mouth to speak properly. I had challenges also. When I tried to go to school. My first grade teacher put me in normal reading, then remedial reading, and then finally with a dunce cap. There were dunce caps in the 50s, 60s. I ended up being told by my teacher that I would never be able to read, never be able to write, never be able to communicate, never nothing, never go very far in life. My parents didn't know what to do with that. The only way I made it through school is by learning to ask questions, which I'm known for today because I had braces. I've wanted to be freed and travel, and I've traveled an incredible amount of. I've done more traveling than most people and barely making it through elementary school. Learning to ask questions to the smartest kids. I dropped out. I left home at 13. I was a street kid.
- [03:43]
Ilana Gulan
Where are your parents at this point? I would be so devastated. And I know that you eventually have a really good relationship with your mom, et cetera. There's some beautiful stories there. But what happened at that moment? What did they do? I mean, they probably freaked out.
- [03:58]
Dr. John Demartini
My parents saw that I was going to have problems in speaking and learning reading. I had dyslexia. My dad tried to teach me practical things when I was nine. I ended up creating my first company. I had nine employees when I was nine. My dad was teaching me how to be an entrepreneur kind of street kid. I had to pay $7.50 a week to live at home.
- [04:23]
Ilana Gulan
Whoa.
- [04:23]
Dr. John Demartini
Pay food, clothing and rent. It's interesting because I'm so grateful for that. My dad said, I want you to know how to deal with the real world. He made me save money on a coin collection set. He got me a piggy bank when I was 9. And I still have that piggy bank. And it's never been open since 1963.
- [04:45]
Ilana Gulan
I need my kids to listen to that because they want allowance. I need them to pay the bills to be here. But John, why do you think the instincts for them to teach you that? That's so interesting.
- [04:57]
Dr. John Demartini
My dad thought that I had a little landscaping company, thought, well, maybe that's what he'll do because he can't read very. I didn't read Till I was 18. Really. I was making it through elementary school by asking smart kids Questions. What did you learn? What did you get out of that? And if I heard it, I could get more sense out of it. But reading it wasn't making sense. I couldn't put words together. But if I heard things, I did a little better. I ended up leaving home and hitchhiking out to California. When I was 14, I got into surfing. I just said, I'm going surfing. And I figured out how to do little odd jobs, make enough money to go surfing. At 14, I lived in California and down in Mexico.
- [05:39]
Ilana Gulan
Were you scared? Were you scared to be alone at age 14?
- [05:44]
Dr. John Demartini
No. Yeah. I mean, I had a close call. I've been shot at, I've been stabbed. I've had a few things, close calls. And I hung out with some really savory people at times as a teenager. Back in the 60s, you know, in the 60s you have some interesting times.
- [05:59]
Ilana Gulan
Well, also, nobody knew what dyslexia is. We just had Richard Branson a few months ago. Right. Nobody knew dyslexia. Nobody could put their fingers on. Okay, they're not reading as well, but they're really, really smart. They're going to absorb it in other ways. There wasn't that notion. So you surf all day?
- [06:18]
Dr. John Demartini
I lived out in California. I flew to Los. From Los Angeles to Honolulu, I slept under a bridge. Then I park bench. The park bench is still there. I went and visited it recently. Park bench is still there. The bathroom is still there that I used to go to. I found an abandoned car. I lived in an abandoned car. I lived finally in a tent in the jungle and I was surfing.
- [06:41]
Ilana Gulan
Were you happy? Do you feel like you were happy or were you miserable?
- [06:45]
Dr. John Demartini
I don't have this idea that that was terrible. I was on an adventure. My mom gave me a notarized piece of paper. She got a notary to sign it saying, my son is not a runaway. He's a boy with a mission and a dream. And he wants to go to California. He has no relatives there, but he's going to surf.
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Ilana Gulan
Oh my God.
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Dr. John Demartini
You know, some people have really parents, they go, oh, I wish they'd have done this. I'm really grateful for my parents. They were pretty amazing.
- [07:09]
Ilana Gulan
Incredible. Yeah, I mean, it's brave.
- [07:12]
Dr. John Demartini
My dad said, he said to me one time, he said, by the time you're seven, you've already got your formative years and done. And I want you to know how to be an entrepreneur. He didn't use that term, but how to be on your own and self sufficient. And I knew how to do that. Even if I had to panhandle money, I still figured out how to do it. And I used to bark on the Lures street in Honolulu on the South Shore. I used to bark at Lewers street and make enough money to go to Three Brothers Smorgiesborne for a buck 75. You can eat until you can drop, you know. I learned how to be, I guess you could say a survivor, self sufficient, whatever. So learning how to ask for what I want and learning how to figure out how to sell what I needed kind of became a thing on the street. So I'm grateful for that. I wish I could take my kids and drop them off on the freeway and they would do that. But they ended up getting the American Express, going shopping and going out to dinner, you know.
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Ilana Gulan
Exactly. Mine would call an Uber. That's not helping me. But did you feel lost or scared or what am I doing with my life or not yet?
- [08:23]
Dr. John Demartini
I had moments. I mean, I had moments where I got picked up by some really interesting characters. I had gangs attack me. I mean, I had moments, but I wouldn't change a thing. I figured that the way I look at life is it's all on the way, not in the way. And anything you can't say thank you for is your baggage. Anything you can say thank you for is your fuel. So I always say, how did this help me fulfill what I'm up to? And those days I wanted to go surfing, and then I nearly died at 17.
- [08:51]
Ilana Gulan
Oh, we'll talk about that because that's a big fuel. Because again, I can see the bricks that formed John. That's incredible to who you became. And that did become fuel. So talk to us about that moment. At age 17, I was surfing a.
- [09:08]
Dr. John Demartini
Big day at Laniakea on the North Shore. And I ended up having some alkaloid cyanide, kind of poisoning from what I was eating. It affected my diaphragm. Stopped my diaphragm. When you're riding a big wave and your diaphragm stops. It was a scary moment, let's put it that way.
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Ilana Gulan
Wow.
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Dr. John Demartini
My board was crunched and splintered. I ended up on the rocks and I ended up hitchhiking back from Lanikea into Haleiwa.
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Ilana Gulan
And.
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Dr. John Demartini
And then I ended up falling unconscious out in a parking lot at this grocery store. And I woke up three and a half days later in a tent. Somehow somebody recognized that it was and brought me to my tent. I don't have any recollection for those days, but then a lady found me in the tent. And I was pretty sick. And she's the one that helped me recover and took me to a health food store to get me some carrot juice and decent food. And then I ended up going to a yoga class where I met Paul C. Bragg. He's the one that started Jack Lane's career and impacted Donald Trump and many, many people. I mean, I could just go down the list, this guy and he one night in one hour with a message inspired me to believe that someday I could become intelligent.
- [10:27]
Ilana Gulan
Timmy, for a second, that accident, did you already say to yourself, this is my sign or not yet you needed to meet Paul for that?
- [10:37]
Dr. John Demartini
Well, I remember when I woke up from the unconscious in the tent, face down in a really not a healthy sight. I remember saying to myself, if I make it through this, I want to do something more with my life. That was a rough moment. But when I met him, he said that what we think about, what we visualize, what we affirm, what we feel, what we write out and define and clarify, and what we act upon determines our destiny, determines how we want our life. And we can decide it doesn't matter what it is, it's just what's inspiring to us, what's truly meaningful to us. How do we define that? And at the time I was assuming, right before that happened, I assumed I was going to make surfboards with Dick Brewer on the North Shore at Country Surfboards. And that was my fate. But that night I really had the first time belief that maybe I could overcome my learning problems and someday become intelligent. And that was like amazing moment. And I went on a visual guided imagery meditation. He took us through and I saw myself standing in front of a million people speaking. I have in my office in Houston, Texas, on the 52nd floor of Williams Tower, this five foot by four foot painting that Andrew Tischer from Melbourne, Australia painted of this vision. Wow, it's really inspiring. It was such a lucid, tear jerking, epiphany moment that I just knew that I knew that I knew this was it.
- [12:08]
Ilana Gulan
What's more interesting is that you were so far away from it now. You weren't already a speaker for 4,000 people and now you're imagining a million. Like you were so far away.
- [12:19]
Dr. John Demartini
I had a speech impediment. I had to have a guy named Jackie Roy that I was living on the North Shore with, who has a friend and a surfer. He's the one that read for me. I had difficulty reading. He used to read for me. He always wondered, why are you asking me to read man, you can do it yourself. I said, well, no, I like the way you read. I didn't want him to tell him that. He didn't know that until maybe eight or ten years ago in Los Angeles. I met up with him and he didn't even know that I had learning problems. He didn't grasp it.
- [12:46]
Ilana Gulan
And it's incredible, John, because the people that don't know you don't realize that from this kid that was dyslexic and until age 18, couldn't read or 17, whatever. And now what you read, I don't know, 30,000 books, and you wrote a lot of them and. Right. And you speak in front of thousands or tens of thousands. I mean, it's incredible to see that change.
- [13:09]
Dr. John Demartini
I could look at surf pictures in a surf magazine and I could look at girly magazines. I could visualize pretty fine. I just didn't read and articulate and add meaning to things easily. But when I met Paul Bragg, I got to study with him for like three weeks every single day. And he really did inspire me. And he gave me kind of like a formula and he gave me a statement to give to myself and say to myself every day. And I started on a journey that was a new trajectory and I had no idea where it was going to lead. But I just had this sense that this is the new path. And it's not that I didn't like surfing, it's just that all of a sudden I really had this belief that if I worked at it, I could overcome this learning thing.
- [13:51]
Ilana Gulan
So what happened?
- [13:52]
Dr. John Demartini
Flying back to LA and hitchhiking back to Texas. And when I got to Houston, my mom and dad didn't recognize me. They went, oh, because I had long hair and a beard, you know, it didn't look like a little teenage kid. They taught me into taking a ged and somehow, miraculously, I guessed and I passed. I literally guessed and passed this test. I don't know how I did it, just guessed. And then I thought that was gonna work, guessing. And when I tried to go to a junior college to try to take classes, try to go back to school, and I failed. I got a 27 on a test and I remember driving home crying, thinking, maybe this whole thing's an illusion. All I could do is hear my first grade teacher saying, I'm afraid he'll never read, write or communicate, Never mount thing, never go very far in life and all that. And I shattered the vision about being a teacher. And I thought, I guess I'm going back to surfing. And My mom saw me on the living room floor. When I got home, she saw me on the floor and she said, what happened, son? What's wrong? Because she hadn't seen me cry long time. And I said, mom, I blew the test. I got a 27. I need a 72 to pass. And she just looked at me. And then she finally said something that only a mother could say. She said, son. She put her hand on my shoulder and she said, son, whether you become a great teacher, healer and philosopher and travel the world like you dream, or whether you go back to Hawaii and ride giant waves like you've done, or the return to the streets and panhandle as a bum that you've also done, I just want to let you know that your father and I are going to love you no matter what. We know what you've gone through. We're just going to love you. And it took a pressure off me because I feel like I've started to let myself and them down. Because I thought I was going to go back to school and all. But when she said that, my hand went into a fist and I look up and I saw that vision that night that the guy painted. And I saw it, and I thought, no, I'm going to mask this thing called reading, studying and learning. I'm going to mask this thing called teaching, healing and philosophy. And I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm going to travel whatever it is. I'm going to pay whatever price, give my servants of love across the planet. I'm not going to let any human being on the face of the earth stop me. I got up, I hugged my mom. I went to my room. I got a dictionary out, Funk and Wagnall's dictionary. And I started memorizing 30 words a day. And I would read it, write out the word, write out the definition, pronounce it, put it in a sentence 20 times each, for each of the 30 words, 600 of those repetitions.
- [16:22]
Ilana Gulan
Oh, my God.
- [16:22]
Dr. John Demartini
At the end of two years, I had 20,000 words new in my head. And I was reading dictionaries and reading encyclopedias. And now it's just under the 31,000 books now. And I just never put the books down. And I grew my vocabulary. I learned on how to resolve some of the dyslexia. I learned that if I take people that I really look up to, that I really admire, that I really do extraordinary things instead of living in their shadow, but to stand on their shoulder by identifying where I already have what I see in Them instead of thinking, well, I don't have this, I want to someday get it, I would just go, where do I display and demonstrate the traits that I admire in them? And I documented where and when until the quantity and quality matched in my mind. And then instead of living in the shadows, I was able to play in the playing field of opportunity. And I didn't subordinate and try to be somebody I was, and I was able to be me. And all of a sudden, little by little, you could see on the audio recordings that I was doing, the dyslexia was dissolving away. Today, people don't even believe I did have that now, hardly. But if I let you listen to some recordings back in my 20s and 30s, you'd go, Whoa, that's awesome. What's happening here?
- [17:35]
Ilana Gulan
That is absolutely incredible that you were able to recover basically and you learn. And I think you also had this beautiful gift at age 19 that instead of asking for something, you actually wanted to read and to learn and to grow. Right. What was it? Remind me.
- [17:51]
Dr. John Demartini
Well, the very first book I picked up when I was 18, this is right? At 18, right. My birthday, I got a book called Chico's Organic Gardening and Natural Living. I saw this at a little health food store. Because once I went to that health food store, I went back there and I saw this at a health food store on this little swivel thing. And it was a long haired hippie guy with this other farmer named Chico. And the guy looked like me. And I thought, if that sucker can ride it, I bet I can read it. So I picked up that book and that was the first book I ever went through. The entire book, page by page. I can't say I read every part of it, but I actually went through the book and looked at pictures and read what I could of it. And that inspired me to eventually get into organic gardening also, which was interesting. But that was the very first book I ever tried to read. I got another book by Adele Davis on nutrition and I finally put that down. It was too much. But I just started to go to that dictionary and read. And now I've got a pretty good vocabulary and I can speak nonstop.
- [19:00]
Ilana Gulan
And you wrote many books. I'm still recovering from finishing my first. But tell me for a second, John, entrepreneurship is really, really hard. I mean, it has its hard moments. You've been at it, apparently. It's even more than 50 years now that I'm looking at your childhood, right? How do you maneuver through the challenges, through the hardships, through the fears like did it ever occur to you, darn it, I don't want this, I'm going to work somewhere, or that wasn't even a thing. Like, your vision was so clear. Was that speaking in million people, like, where did entrepreneurship catch you?
- [19:38]
Dr. John Demartini
The very first student I had was a 375 pound afro american woman. She was this really lovely, inspired lady that asked me to teach her yoga. Okay. Cause I was studying yoga when I met Paul Bragg. I figured, I'm gonna study this thing called yoga. And I had a yoga instructor. So that was my first student. I was 18 years old. She came up to me and asked me to do it, and I thought, okay, I'll teach. Then I had a guy who came up to me and saw me meditating out on the sun, and he asked me if I could teach him meditation. Now, that guy's been with me 52 years still. He's still there.
- [20:11]
Ilana Gulan
Whoa, that's incredible.
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Dr. John Demartini
Yeah, he's a doctor today. Now, what's interesting is then I had about 17 students get out of a class and surround me at a library and wanted me to mentor them on mathematics that I was studying. It was only algebra because I had to start over, but they wanted me to do it. So I started teaching in the library and tutoring when I was 18. I was learning 20, 30 words a day. 30 words a day. And I just kept growing my vocabulary and people started saying, this guy is really committed to learning. Most kids were going to school. You know, parents, you know, they just.
- [20:48]
Ilana Gulan
Do the basic minimum, force them.
- [20:50]
Dr. John Demartini
No, no, no, no. I was there every minute, every hour. I was using my time, and I excelled because of that. I went from the bottom to the top. Then when I went to the University of Houston, I started to do yoga under these trees. And people gathered up around me and started asking me questions because I guess I look kind of like a weirdo. And 100, 125, 150, sometimes 400 people would gather every day. So I would start to do classes. And what's interesting, the very place that I used to do these classes. University of Houston now has the Bauer School of Entrepreneurship building on top of the space. And that building was inspired by two of my students to build. And they asked me to come and speak there at the opening. They didn't know that I used to teach on the base of this building.
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Ilana Gulan
How special is that? Oh, my God. What a beautiful closing.
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Dr. John Demartini
It was a tear jerker. It was a tear jerker. When I told him that I didn't know that I had inspired the formation of the college at a class I did, but they didn't know that I used to teach on that spot.
- [21:56]
Ilana Gulan
If you're feeling stuck, underpaid, or unappreciated, or you're simply ready to take your career and life to the next level, I have the perfect solution for you. We have a program that helps you fast track and leap your reputation and career. Become the best version of yourself, get the dream role you deserve, move up to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or even build a portfolio career. This program helps hundreds a year, and it will help you gain the income, influence, and impact that will transform the second part of your life. Watch our free training today@leapacademy.com free training. The link is in the show notes. Now back to the show. One of the beautiful things that you talk about is also how you're a master delegator. Like you're able to somehow get people to do everything else. And you just go and do what you're incredible at, which is the reason why you can change a lot more lives. So can you talk to us a little bit about that?
- [22:55]
Dr. John Demartini
When I graduated from professional school, Cause I was teaching six or seven nights a week in my apartment at professional school, and every opportunity to teach, I was doing it. And then when I graduated, I went out into practice. And it was interesting. About two weeks into practice, I was doing everything. I had one assistant that I hired, but I was doing everything.
- [23:18]
Ilana Gulan
That's what's so hard about entrepreneurship. That's so hard. You put all the hats. You have all the hats, right?
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Dr. John Demartini
I started out doing everything. I didn't have a lot of business savvy. I think I took one little class at University of Houston on a business class. And I really can't say that was my forte. I was studying biology and pre med and more of the sciences and humanities and stuff. I got in there and I was doing everything. I was doing a bank reconciliation. One day I was doing a bank reconciliation, and they said, we got a new patient. And I said, I got to finish this bank reconciliation. I said, not yet. And I thought, wait, my patient's number one. What am I doing at bank reconciliation? And then I thought, this is insane. I could hire somebody to do this for 20 bucks in those days, 1982. And I could be going out and doing way more in my clinical. But I got it that day, that really ridiculous thing of trying to get a bankruptcy. And so I went over to Walden's bookstore and I went through the business section, right? All these books and I found this book called the Time track by Ellipt McKinsey. It was on time management. And I read that, devoured it, dog eared it, and I summarized that book and it changed my life. Because imagine this. Imagine a piece of paper or a series of them, and they've got five lines, six columns in it. On the far left column, I wrote down daily actions. I wrote down every single thing I do in a day, personal and professional. And then I imagined what I might do over a three month period. Everything that I did. And I made a list of everything. And as I was doing this, and this was like many pages, I did a lot of stuff. And I didn't do vague stuff like sales or marketing or this. I broke it down into daily actions, the actual actions of what I did to make that come true. And when I was writing that, I was thinking, man, I am majoring in minor stuff and mining in major stuff. I am doing low priority stuff. It was obvious as I was making this list, this isn't going to build my business the most efficient way. What am I doing this for? When I did that exercise, I went to the second column, how much does it produce per hour? And I extrapolated the best I could, how much money is being made by each of these actions. And then I had a real wake up call. The very thing I went to nearly 10 years of college for wasn't the most productive thing. I could be doing the clinical in the cubicle, working with a patient. I was limited to about maybe 1800 an hour. But if I go out, I always say, a man with a mission has a message. If I go out and I do a presentation and educate people, the larger the audience, the more patients and I could delegate clinical to clinicians. And I went bang. When I saw that, I realized I'm majoring in minors, majoring in majors. And I made a list of everything I did and what it was producing. And I had 30% of them that were zero income.
- [26:15]
Ilana Gulan
Wow, that makes a lot of sense by the way. It's interesting. Oh man.
- [26:19]
Dr. John Demartini
When I got through that, I realized, and I looked at that even at home. Cause I'm doing stuff that's making nothing at home instead of going and producing and hiring people to do that, right? So I realized that and I prioritized that list. And the top one was speaking. The second one was training doctors to do the clinical work and teaching them how to do it. And the third one is then only working with the highest, most influential, most powerful people, as prioritized Patients. When I got through that, I then went to the third column and I did how much meaning does it have on a 1 to 10 scale? 10 being, I can't wait to get up and do it. I'm inspired by it, I love it. And one being, oh God, I hate it. And I broke it down and I reprioritized that according to meaning. Because you know, when you're doing something produces per hour, you're serving other people's values. When you do something that's meaningful, you're serving your own values. You gotta have a win win sustainable fair exchange to make it where you can't wait to do a service, they can't wait to get it. So I reprioritize that list of meaning. And then I looked at where there was overlap, what was the most meaningful and the most productive. Luckily for my case, there was overlap. And I realized, wow, the most meaningful and the most productive were just facing me. I was looking at them. And after prioritizing that, I went to the next column. I said, well, if I'm not doing it and I'm doing other priority stuff, low priority stuff, I'm holding myself back from producing the most. So I said, well, how much does it cost to hire that person and delegate that? And I learned from that book a lot of great stuff about what to do about that. And then I took not just their salaries, but three to four times that was really the cost. You know, the space usage, the training, the insurance, the bonuses, everything.
- [28:09]
Ilana Gulan
It was a lot.
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Dr. John Demartini
Yeah, three to four times the amount. And so I wrote down how much would it cost to delegate everything to somebody who's masterful at it, that loves to do it, that's high profile, an A person, not a Z person. And then I prioritized that according to spread what it caused versus what it produced. Then I did the next column. How much time is actually allocated for that per day? What's really the time I'm doing. So I could really structure a job description accordingly. And then the last column was the summary of all the variables and prioritization of all the variables. And then I divided that into 10 layers, all that list, there were multiple pages, I divided it into 10 layers and I created job descriptions layer by layer. You delegate the lowest priority stuff first and the highest priority, you end up duplicating last. You're the last person, you delegate what you do, right. So I just did this. And in 18 months from opening my practice with one assistant, I had five doctors, 12 staff members, and my net income was Way more than tenfold. And. And I was doing what I loved and I was doing something that was meaningful. I wasn't overwhelmed, I wasn't frustrated. And I learned that if I fill my day with high priority actions and dedicate my life to what's highest in priority, my day doesn't fill up with low priority distractions. And if I delegate anything that requires external motivation, some sort of extrinsic need, you know, MacGregor said there's theory Y and theory X. Anything that requires an incentive or a motivation for on the outside to get me to do, I delegate. Because anytime you do low priority things, you devalue yourself. Anytime you do the highest priority things, you value yourself. And when you value yourself, so does the world. So I basically prioritized things, delegated the hell out of it, and I was freed and liberated and my net income went up. And during that time, I also learned from a financial planner about money management. I learned nine questions. Sometime we'll have to do a show on that. These nine special questions that turn you to financial freedom. I learned these nine questions.
- [30:11]
Ilana Gulan
We should bring you to do a show on that. That is interesting.
- [30:14]
Dr. John Demartini
Okay, I'd like to do that because it's a good one. And I did these nine things and I started to accelerate my savings, my investments, and just kept leveraging, which just drove my business up and created it all over the world. So it was amazing what happened when I learned to delegate. There's no way you can live an inspired life unless you're delegated. No possible way. If you help other people get what they want to get in life. You get what you want to get in life by you helping them find out what they love. And only hiring people that have highest on their values. The thing you want to delegate so they can't wait to get up in the morning and do it so you.
- [30:48]
Ilana Gulan
Don'T have to and do that thing that you hate.
- [30:50]
Dr. John Demartini
Yeah, they have to love it so. I mean, they have to have an orgasm on where you want to vomit.
- [30:56]
Ilana Gulan
Totally. Thank God for my team that loves whatever spreadsheets and all the things that I hate. Like, I just.
- [31:05]
Dr. John Demartini
I haven't done a bank reconciliation since 1983. I haven't even written a check since 1983. I don't even know that stuff. I delegate everything. Even I tell my girlfriend, I said, look, I'm not the greatest in lovemaking. If I delegate lovemaking to George Clooney, would you still love me? She says, I'll love you even more. So I just delegate Things I need.
- [31:25]
Ilana Gulan
That for my husband, George Clooney is not bad at all.
- [31:29]
Dr. John Demartini
I only have three or four things I'm good at. Teach, research, write, and travel. That's it.
- [31:33]
Ilana Gulan
Oh, and I love to travel. And you travel. You put me to shame. And I think that I'm a pretty good traveler. And by the way, I think you also delegate driving. Is that so?
- [31:42]
Dr. John Demartini
I haven't driven a car in 35 years.
- [31:45]
Ilana Gulan
How the heck do you do that?
- [31:47]
Dr. John Demartini
I don't even have a home. I've sold all my homes. I had 11 homes one time I sold all my homes. My wife wanted them, she passed away, so I got rid of them all. I live on my ship. I sail around the world on my ship. That's it. Now I basically delegate stuff. I haven't driven a car in 35 years. I haven't cooked because it's not what I love doing. I love teaching, researching, writing and traveling. And guess what they told me I'll never read. I love reading. They said I never write. I love writing. They said I would never go very far. I've traveled 21 million miles by flights and 2 million by sailing. They said I would never amount anything. Well, I got multiple.
- [32:23]
Ilana Gulan
Not bad.
- [32:24]
Dr. John Demartini
Yeah. 50 times financial independence now. So everything they told me I would never do, I ended up doing. But I never got to thank the woman who told me I would never do it.
- [32:32]
Ilana Gulan
Oh my God, that's good.
- [32:35]
Dr. John Demartini
I said in my head, in my mind, thank you for giving me a void that drove my values.
- [32:40]
Ilana Gulan
But now the beautiful thing is that you took that and that became your fuel to find the thing that makes people just go supersonic. Right.
- [32:50]
Dr. John Demartini
You know, I have a value determination process on my website. You may have seen that already. It's a 13 question kind of thing that helped me out because 46 years ago I asked myself, what is it that makes people walk their talk and not limp their life? Why do some people do what they say and others don't? What is it that drives people? And I devoured the literature in that field, but I found out that most people, when they looked at their values, they were looking at what that ought to be. As David Hume used to say, what it ought to be instead of what it is. I want to know what it really is, not what it ought to be what it is. So you can then structure your life according to what's truly self determined. And I learned how important values were. I've been teaching all about them for 46 years. Because the hierarchy of your values dictate your destiny, tell me what they are, and tell you where you're going to spontaneously go.
- [33:37]
Ilana Gulan
And that, to me is so, so, so important, John, because I obviously lived whatever society thought, right? Society thought that I should be an engineer. So I was an engineer. And I would write code and I would be excited about cloud and data centers and whatever crap I was supposed to be excited about. But that was how society has you wired, right? And it takes almost like this massive momentum to move yourself and to dare to say, you know what, that doesn't actually inspire me. I want to do something different, and I don't care what it looks like. But that is the scariest thing that I don't care. It's really scary.
- [34:14]
Dr. John Demartini
If you don't give yourself permission to be the most authentic you, you're going to be second at being somebody else instead of first being you. You want to find the one thing, as Gary Keller says, the one thing that absolutely inspires you. Warren Buffett tap dance to work because he loves finance and wealth and numbers and stuff and financial statements. That's what he loves. That's why he's great at it. I love researching and teaching. That's why I've done well with it. If you hadn't said to John, let's be an entrepreneur and let's open up a cupcake manufacturing company and delivery service.
- [34:46]
Ilana Gulan
Oh, God, I would suck.
- [34:48]
Dr. John Demartini
I'd be going to Social Security looking for some sort of a handout.
- [34:52]
Ilana Gulan
Me, too. Especially the cooking is so not me.
- [34:55]
Dr. John Demartini
And, you know, people say, well, that's because you're wealthy. You can afford to delegate. I said, I didn't become wealthy and then become delegating. I delegated to become wealthy. And people don't get that it doesn't cost to properly delegate. It costs to improperly delegate.
- [35:10]
Ilana Gulan
But that's why I wanted your story, because your story is so inspiring, John. But I will go there for a second, because one of the things that you'll see is, I mean, sometimes fear is real. Like, I don't know how to pay the salaries. I don't know. It's a crappy year. How do you maneuver through these challenges and keep sane?
- [35:30]
Dr. John Demartini
First of all, there's a thing called a fantasy and an objective, and people confuse those. Let me just elaborate on this, because this is a great one, because fear is not your enemy. Everybody talks about how bad you got to get rid of fear, overcome your fears. Fear is not your enemy. Fear is your friend. It's letting you know when you're pursuing a fantasy that's inauthentic and is trying to get you back to that which is a true objective where you embrace both sides of the pleasures and pains in the pursuit of something meaningful. It's a guide. And what we do is we go out and look for a fantasy. I'll use this example. Imagine you're getting in a relationship and you meet this guy and you think, oh my God, this guy ticks off all the boxes. He's got more positives than negatives and you get infatuated with him. Now your intuition is whispering inside, you know, don't rush it, be careful, keep your eyes open. Who is this guy? Find out about it. But no, your impulse of your amygdala is going, oh, I got me the guy. You know, found that one thing. And you got a bit of a fantasy. You got a fatal attraction. You know, you got Glenn Close on your hand, as we'd say. But then you find out over the days, weeks, months or years, they find out it wasn't what you thought. And there's now the downsides. But you know, any relationship over time will make you learn that there's things you like and things you dislike and they're nice and balanced and you're never going to get one without the other. But a fantasy is, you're going to get an advantage over a disadvantage, a positive over negative, a pleasure out of pain, a one side thing. And the Buddha says the desire for that which is unobtainable and the desire to avoid that which is unavoidable is a source of human suffering. So people suffer when they go after fantasies and unrealistic expectations that aren't really executive functioned, not real objectives. See, when you're living by your highest values and you're prioritizing your life, your blood glucose and oxygen goes into the forebrain, activates the medial prefrontal cortex, the ventral portion, and creates an objective reasonable mind that's not emotive, not impulsive and instinctual. Where we distort subjectively our reality, we're now seeing things as they are, not as we fantasize them to be. And when we do, we set real objectives. And the purpose of the executive center in the brain is to transform fantasies into true objectives. And the second we set up a fantasy with a pleasure's without a pain, we are designed to have a phobia and an anxiety and an uncertainty to come up to let us know we've done that. So our phobias are really basically let us know we're addicted to ophelia Our nightmares are letting us know we have a fantasy. When we set true objectives and we mitigate the risk and we calm down the fantasy and we now have a strategy, we increase the probability of achieving as an entrepreneur. And that means we're not going out with a fantasy that we know better than the customer. We know what they need. Let's just project that onto the customer. We go out there and actually do the research to find out what people are willing to buy, what do they want, and we actually meet and find sustainable fair exchange and equity between ourselves and other people where we can't wait to deliver it, they can't wait to get it. So there's a demand and supply balance. The second we do, we're on our way. But many people have fantasies that they know better than the market and better than the people. And then they end up having anxieties and fears because it's not having a demand and they're wondering what are we doing? And they think they've got to do more slick marketing or something. But that's not it. It's meeting people's needs. That's what an entrepreneur is caring enough about humanity to actually find a problem that humanity's facing. A niche that you can't wait to get out and solve and dedicating your life to solving it. And the greater the challenge you solve that you go after, the greater the potential business you got eventually.
- [39:02]
Ilana Gulan
It's about solving a real problem, right? And it could be a $1 problem for a million people or it could be a million dollar problem for one person, but it needs to be a real problem or somewh. Right? But at the end of the day it needs to be a real problem. But I will say, like if you still went to whatever, 2000, 2008, I don't know, there were some downtimes. Even if you have an incredible market fit and you have an incredible business model and you have amazing clients from time to time it's going to be. But it's scary. What do you do?
- [39:33]
Dr. John Demartini
I didn't have that in 2008. Nine were big years. I didn't.
- [39:37]
Ilana Gulan
We're not for you.
- [39:38]
Dr. John Demartini
But about a year ago, maybe when the inflation was starting to kick in, I noticed that there was a change because I was doing a lot online and people wanted live events again. So I had to revamp because I was on my ship just sailing around the world doing online goods. All of a sudden I'm going, oh, I'm going to go over to another location now and Fly somewhere, you know. So there was an adaptation error, but it was basically caring about the market enough to meet the market's needs. That's all it is. If we don't meet the market's needs, the business goes down and there's no forever. It's never have to worry about it. It's a moving target. Life is changing, people are changing, needs are changing. You have to care enough about humanity to meet their needs and keep up with it. That's the entrepreneur. That's the name of the game. I had a challenge in 2003 when we started to go to war. When George Bush wanted to go to Iraq. I had about a two week lull there. All of a sudden people just stopped. I didn't really KSC anything in my life in 2008 or nine that didn't happen. I boomed during that time, but I did have it about a year ago, year and a half ago I started noticing a downturn. That's what resilience and adaptability is about. But you know, I just do. I was speaking in Iran to the government of Iran a number of years ago on change management. I had the government there. Yeah, I had 200 government leaders and I had 400 leading entrepreneurs there and 22 ministers of the state.
- [41:00]
Ilana Gulan
That's so surreal. That's so crazy. That's amazing.
- [41:04]
Dr. John Demartini
Yeah, it was really kind of. It was like sitting at the United Nations. Everybody had their own microphone and speaker and it's really amazing. But my topics was on change management. I said when people are engaged and inspired by what they do, they make incremental change very fluently because they're congruent with what they do and their fluency is proportional to their congruency. But when they're not inspired by what they do and they're an amygdala and they're holding on and attaching to job duties or whatever, then if you try to change them, they say, well, you didn't pay me for that. And and because they're not engaged, they're not inspired by the outcome. And so I was explaining on how to increase engagement and how to have higher according to values and link job descriptions to values to engage people to have resilience and adaptability for change. And this is something that many entrepreneurs get trapped in and engaged in. Where they are not engaged, they get rigid in about. Well, it worked over here, it's supposed to work over here.
- [41:59]
Ilana Gulan
Now the reason somebody like this calls you is because from very early on, like before I even knew about what a personal brand is you knew that you need to grow your personal brand. And that, to me, is really inspiring. Like, yes, you also do good and you create amazing change. And you know how to really cultivate that personal brand for yourself and write the books and go speaking. And what triggered you to understand that this is the future? At least for me at techie, you know, I didn't even realize until I woke up and said, oh, my God, I'm a nobody. What made you create that and know about it?
- [42:39]
Dr. John Demartini
I don't want to mislead people into thinking I have some sort of a knowledge about that. I just wanted to travel the world and teach. I've spoken in 161 countries now, and I had a dream to go to every country on the face of the earth and share my research findings with people. That's it. I just had one focus, research and have the most amazing synthesized information that they can't get anywhere else and deliver that and do it in a way that inspires people to get into action. If I do that, my dad said, if I give a value to somebody and I give service to people, you will never worry about working. And my dad, when I was nine, I told him I wanted to buy a baseball and a glove and a bat. He said, son, have you mowed the lawn? Yes. Have you edged the sidewalk? Yes. Have you swept the garage in the driveway? Yes. Have you trimmed the hedges? Yes. Have you done all the flower beds and weeded them? Yep. Have you tightened up the shale? You clipped the hedges? Yep. He said, son, I don't have anything else you need to do. You're going to have to go to the neighbors to make, if you want to ask, get money, because you make money by serving people. And I don't have anything else needs done, so you have to go to the neighbors. So I went a couple doors down to the Evans place, and I saw an unruly yard, and I said, would you like it trimmed and mowed and stuff? And she said, how much? I didn't even know what to say. I said, this amount? And she said, well, that sounds reasonable. So I did it. And I had bee stings and burns and blisters. And then I got money from it, and I went out and bought the glove, bat and ball. And my dad said, where'd you get all that? And I said, well, I went to the Evans. And he said, see? What did you do? I said, well, I mowed and edged and clipped the hedges, and I did everything. And he said, what equipment did you use? I Said, put equipment in the garage. He said, son, I got to teach you about business. You're going to have to pay me for depreciation cost on that equipment. So I said, oh crap. I said, I got to pay my dad now. And he made me pay for gasoline. All wear and tear. And I had to go and use the neighbors across the street and the next door neighbors and the Mallows and the Zubrods equipment. And then I told him there were different prices. If I use your equipment in the garage, it's one price. If I do it this way. I started diversifying and then I got me three groups of three kids helping me. I made after all costs $45, which is probably around six or seven hundred dollars today's money. As a kid, when I was nine, that's incredible. And then my dad said, well now he didn't see me saving money. So he bought me a coin collection set and a piggy bank. So I started saving money and I filled up things and you know, I started to learn to save and do it. And then he said, well, now you're going to learn the next step about being independent. Now you're going to pay for clothing, food and rent. 750 a week, that's $30 a month, $1 a day basically. He said, but that's going to buy you freedom. Now you can get up at 5 o'clock in the morning. All I ask is you'd be home by 9:00 at night. You can go anywhere you want, do anything you want. It's your life. So he was training me. So when I was 9, I rode my bicycle 35 miles in different directions and then raced home. When I was 12 years old, I started to do a little bit of hitchhiking stuff. 12 I started riding bikes, many, many miles. I started hopping trains at 12, going on 13. 13 I started hitchhiking at 14. I hitchhiked across America and down into Mexico. So my dad trained me on how to be self sufficient because he said, you're not gonna make it in school. I mean, I did a little bit of the drug scene in the 60s. Like everybody in the, like everybody else, everybody did that. When I first hitchhiked to California, I got a ride and I got my way into Austin. I met this chick that I'd met in Freeport Beach. I found her number and I contacted this girl. She picked me up, we went to dinner, then we went to a Ted Nugent concert at the Armadillo Club in Austin. So afterwards she was a hot Chick. So we got to go backstage and I got to get stoned with Ted nugent back in 1968. So that was my first day on the road going to California. It was not that bad.
- [46:38]
Ilana Gulan
Not bad. But let me ask you for a second, John, because one of the things that we run into a lot in Leap Academy is that people, even though they give a lot of value, even though they mean really well, they don't know how to charge their worth. So the minute somebody calls them to speak or to do something, sure, I'll do it for free. Of course. Of course, of course, Right. And there's this confusion between being nice and charging your worth. And to some extent people will treat you the way you're perceived to be treated. So if you're always coming for free, you're just going to be the person that is always brought to free. But then you won't be able to do more than two a year because you know. So how do you maneuver to be able to charge your worth basically and live up to that? Did it take something specific from you? Was just a muscle that you built?
- [47:30]
Dr. John Demartini
I was 23 years old. I was doing classes at my apartment. Every night I would speed read books. I'd get up at 2 o'clock, do yoga to 2:30, speed read books to 6:30, read four to seven books. By then I was speed reading. At 6:30 I go jog and come back, clean up and go to class. At the end of class, when I finished the clinic at 7pm, I came across the street to my apartment and I taught every single night what I read that morning. And I had this little bowl out at the door and it said, love donation. Aw. And I said, love donation. Like, pay me if you get a value, pay me. And I think I got five bucks. The first night I said, that's not going to cover my bills. And so I said, minimum love donation, five bucks. And I think I got 10, 10. And then I said a minimum love donation, 10 bucks. And then I think I got 20. And then I said, minimum love donation, 20 bucks and still got 20, 30 bucks, 40 bucks or something. And then I finally got pissed off, which is purposely inspired spiritual service, educating the divine. If you're wealthy. I'm just making up something here. And I said, minimum fee, 20 bucks. And the night I put minimum fee 20 bucks, I got $360 that night.
- [48:54]
Ilana Gulan
Wow.
- [48:55]
Dr. John Demartini
And I go, whoa, that's interesting. I'm waiting for other people to decide my worth and they're making sure they don't decide it. They're waiting for me. And so when I did that, I went. Each time I raised it, I got a little bit more. And then when I valued myself, I got a lot more. So I gradually started to go and increase that. Well, I made a goal. I actually wrote out an escalating amount that I wanted to keep doing. And I used to carry cash in my pocket on what I wanted to make in a day. And I eventually carried 30,000 a day. And I made 30,000 a day. I started charging 30,000 a day for my service, and I got it. But I had to do it in steps. I couldn't go from $20 to, to.
- [49:39]
Ilana Gulan
3,000 because I think people will eventually pay you what you believe you're worth. Not they believe now, some people won't be able to afford you, that's okay, but they will pay what you believe you're worth. And I think that was such a beautiful example. Again, speak up.
- [49:55]
Dr. John Demartini
I realized that until you value, don't expect the world to. And I realized whenever you want to change it and raise it, I had an exercise. I did write down 100 benefits to the clients of the new fee and 100 drawbacks to the clients of the old fee. And then make sure you deliver something of extra value and make sure you have something that nobody else can do it. See if they can get the same thing from somebody else, they're going to go to the lowest price. But if they can't get what you have to offer. So I made sure that I read things, learned things, presented things, outlined things in a way that nobody else would do. I didn't copy everybody else. I stayed away from matching anybody else. I didn't subordinate to anybody else. I just went for original ideas that served. I said, Since I was 20, I create original ideas that serve humanity. Original ideas that serve humanity. And I basically just kept focusing on something they never get anywhere else. I ask people to this day my signature program, the breakthrough experience, which I've done 1,232 times. I said, how many of you learned something today and yesterday that you could have gone your entire life and never have learned if you hadn't have been here? Every hand goes up every week, so I make sure that they can't get anywhere else. If you do and you can distinguish yourself, it's easier to help sell that.
- [51:11]
Ilana Gulan
But based on everything that you went through, what is the biggest advice that you would want to hear when you were younger?
- [51:19]
Dr. John Demartini
Well, I can't say I would change anything.
- [51:21]
Ilana Gulan
It was all for A reason. It was all for a reason.
- [51:25]
Dr. John Demartini
But I would say to somebody today, identify what your values are. Your life demonstrates them. And don't try to be injecting the values of outer authorities into your life. And try to live by what you ought to do. Live by what you are. Be true to yourself. Give yourself permission to be yourself. Because the magnificence of who you are is far greater than all the fantasies you'll impose on yourself. Now. See, whatever's highest on your value. Spontaneously you're inspired to act on. You literally have spontaneous action potentials in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. When you're living congruently, it really shows it. Science shows it. So the second you do, you spontaneously want to act. And you're most effective and efficient at doing something you can't wait to do. So finding that one thing, as Gary Keller says, that really lights you up, that you can't wait to bring to the world. To me, that's the first place. Then dedicate yourself to prioritizing your life and working your way up slowly but surely by delegating everything else and getting on with doing what you love doing. If you do that, you have a higher probability of getting to have an inspired life. Otherwise you won't. You're going to be doing something at a duty, deontological duty, instead of ontological design. I'd rather live my life by design than I would by living it by duty. Quiet life of desperation is by duty. And life of inspiration is by design.
- [52:44]
Ilana Gulan
And speaking of life by design, where are you right now? You said some pretty inspiring places.
- [52:50]
Dr. John Demartini
Santa Catalina. Magnificent 1887 Palace Hotel Resort. I'm here with my beautiful girlfriend. We just flew in yesterday from Melbourne, Australia. I'm waiting for my ship to pick me up when it'll be here in another couple days. And I'm going to stay here at this magnificent resort until it gets here. I start a program tomorrow on value applications, training in the United States from here. And then the second that's done, I'm back on my ship. And we'll be sailing off to. I believe we're going to Tenerife and then over to Madeira and then over to Morocco and then back to Portugal and Gibraltar and Cadiz. So I just do what I love.
- [53:29]
Ilana Gulan
Doing, which is teaching, teaching and traveling. John, this is so, so, so inspiring. Thank you for coming in the show, sharing all the wisdom, sharing the inspiration and showing what's possible when you're actually doing what you love and you just continue. So thank you, John.
- [53:47]
Dr. John Demartini
Thank you for the lovely questions. Thank you. For whoever's out there, give yourself permission to shine, not shrink. Do what's extraordinary, not ordinary, and just know that you don't have to be second at being somebody else. And you don't need to get rid of any part of yourself. All of you works.
- [54:13]
Ilana Gulan
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends now. Also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30 minute free training@leapacademy.com training. That's leapacademy.com training. See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Ilana Gulan Show.