But I’ll tell you where that lesson really came from deeper in my life. We share that story in the book. We share a couple of other stories of how it affects your ability to overcome fear and to break through obstacles.
But where that story came from in my life is I looked around and I have two people that I tremendously look up to: my grandmother on my mom’s side and my father, obviously, on my father’s side.
And I look at these two people because they’ve both been able to achieve what most people call massive success. Most people never heard of my grandma, even though she’s won every award you can imagine in every sales team she’s ever been on. She has the key to the City of Los Angeles. She’s Business Woman of the Year in L.A.
She was on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She’s in her mid-seventies and still cold calls three days a week and makes multiples six figures a year in her business. Not only that, she’s an awesome grandma and takes amazing care of mentoring and growing and nurturing our entire family.
Now, what’s amazing is, when I looked at what caused her to be so successful, it was always what she did with the money when no one was paying attention. She never told anyone about it. She never gloated about it. She just quietly did it when no one noticed.
And I remember one day, I was helping clean her office and I knocked over an envelope and a bunch of receipts came out. When I sorted through them, she was paying for her secretary to go through college. Her books, her tuition, the whole thing. Not telling another person. Nobody.
And when I asked her about it, she said, hey, it doesn’t matter. Leave it alone. Don’t say anything.
I said, wow. That’s amazing. And I wondered how many other things she was doing that she never told anyone about. And it created a belief inside of me that life supports that which supports life.
And I said where else is this true. And I looked for the next most successful person in my family. And I looked at my dad. And it doesn’t matter who he is. I’ll just tell you a little bit about him, to see how big of a gap he crossed.
At sixteen years old, he was living in the back of his car. And at sixteen years old, he had actually been touched earlier when he about twelve, thirteen years old. His family was going through struggles around Thanksgiving time. And a random stranger came to the door with a bag of groceries. Because he said, “Hey, I heard your family’s going through a struggle. I just wanted to give you guys this gift from the community. It’s from a stranger. I’m just delivering it.”
And I remember my dad being touched by that moment, noticing that strangers care about “who I am and who my family is.” Therefore, I’m going to find a way to care about them in the future. And it sparked something inside of him. At sixteen years old, when he was living in the back of his car, homeless basically, working a door-to-door sales job, selling cassette tapes back in the day was his job.
The indestructible way to preserve your business for life was the pitch. But when he was doing that, he was saving money to give away to a family on Thanksgiving who was in need.
And I remember I met a friend of his and asked about it. And she said, yeah. I punished him that day. And I’m like, don’t you realize, you’re in need. You’re homeless. He said, laughing, “No, I’m saving to give to a family that’s really in need. Kids and a mom and a dad. People who really need it. It’s Thanksgiving and they need it.”
What crazy person would be homeless but saving money to give to someone else who they think is in more need than them.
Fast forward that. Now he’s got twenty-two companies with combined yearly revenues of over $6 billion. And what the main thing is people watch how much he’s grown over these years. What they fail to recognize is the real “why” underneath of what inspires that growth. It’s always been about finding a way to give more than he could ever receive.
And what’s amazing is I remember he gave a speech to 95 fifth graders in a really tough part of Texas where the dream of their parents was that they would go get a good job like at McDonald’s because at least they had benefits.
And he scratched his head and said that’s way too low of a standard for these kids. There’s way too much potential in this room for that to be the dream.
He walked out of the room. Walked back into the room and said, “You know, this is crazy and I know you’re not old enough to sign a contract, but if you sign it, I’ll stick to it.” He said, “Listen. Here’s what it will be. Good citizenship rules. B average. Community service. Be a good person. Doing the right things.”
He said you do all this all the way through high school. He said, if you get into college, I’ll pay for it. Ninety-five of them. Now, most adults worry about either paying off their own education or paying off one child’s education, which is a big feat, or trying to figure out how to cover it.
He’s promised ninety-five little kids at once, he’d pay for all of them to go to school. He walked out of the room. He got a call from his lawyer and accountant. They said you know how much money you just put on the line? He said I don’t care. I’ll figure it out if they figure it out.
