Our episode today is focused on personal development and a long time favorite book called, Think and Grow Rich. If you have read the book or are familiar with it, then you will like our guest’s approach to it today. Our guest today is John Mitchell and he shares with us a secret he discovered while reading and implementing the lessons learned in Think and Grow Rich.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Take some time each day to envision with emotion what you want for your life.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
- You can visit our guest’s website at: www.themissingsecret.org
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- Connect with our guests on social:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mitchell-76483654/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinkitbeitcompany/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkit.beit/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Think.It.Be.It.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
You’ve heard of the legendary book Think & Grow Rich. It’s been read by over 150 million people worldwide. But here’s what’s interesting. The book says there’s a SECRET for creating success. But the author only gives you half the secret. Our guest today, John Mitchell, is here to give us the full secret, & a 12 minute a day technique to apply it. This technique caused his own income to go by 25 times, over the $200,000 a year he was making the prior 20 years. John teaches his methodology at one of the TOP 5 business schools in the country. So it’s vetted at the highest level.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] Tom Dufore: Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week, we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today with the new year upon us, I thought it’d be a great way to start our podcast season of the year with some personal development and goal setting.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the book called Think and Grow Rich. It’s been read by over a whopping 150 million people worldwide, but here’s what’s interesting. The book says there’s a secret for creating success, but the author only gives half the secret. Our guest today is John Mitchell, and he gives us the full secret and talks about a 12-minute technique on how to apply it. John teaches this technique and method at one of the top five business schools, so let’s go ahead and jump into my interview with John Mitchell.
One of the drivers and really interest in wanting to have you on is to talk about the book and your research and all the work that you’ve done on the book Think and Grow Rich. It is a classic out there. I’d imagine most people who probably listen in read it or at least familiar with that. I’d love for you just to give us a little backstory here. How’d you end up pursuing this idea and going after this Think and Grow Rich idea?
[00:01:26] John Mitchell: Well, I’d love to, and I’ll tell you something, Tom. I think your audience is going to find our conversation interesting, but I dare say that some of them are going to find it life-changing. I became an entrepreneur when I was 30. In my 30s and 40s, I was in seven different businesses, and I get to be 50 years old. Tom, I’m just not as successful as I think I should be.
I got two goals in my life. One is to make enough money so I didn’t have to work, and the second one was to find the woman of my dreams. Well, I’m falling short on both of them at 50. When I hit 50, on the money, I’d always done pretty well. I’d always made $200,000, $300,000 a year primarily from just out working all my friends. When I hit, 50 I saw I had to start netting $1 million a year to have the exceptional life I always dreamed of.
Then on the girl, at 50, I’d never been married. Anyway, at 50, I’m like, “Well, how am I going to change things?” I don’t know. It’s probably three months after I turned 50, a pearl of wisdom comes to me. Find the top book in the world on success and apply that book literally word-for-word to my life.
I remember that coming to me and I jump out of bed and I do the research, and I discovered there’s one book that’s been read by literally 150 million people and it’s the top book of the world on success by a factor of 10. Of course, that book is Think and Grow Rich, which I bet you’ve read, right?
[00:03:04] Tom: Yes, I sure have.
[00:03:05] John: I’m like, “This is setting up perfect. Who knew that there was one book that was above all the rest?” Tom, I go out, buy the book and read the book, and then I discovered the problem. The book says there’s a secret for success, but the author gives only gives us half of the secret. I’m bummed out. I’d mope around for probably three weeks. One day, I just get up and go, “John, come on, man up. Figure out the damn secret.”
I immersed myself in the book probably for two or three months and read it 20 times to figure out the secret. Ultimately, I figure out the secret in a 12-minute a day technique to apply it, and I start applying it to a new business I was starting in the reverse mortgage field. Tom, suddenly, my income starts doubling and doubling and doubling to where, approximately four years later, I’m blessed to be making 25 times the $200,000 to $300,000 a year I’ve been making the prior 20 years.
Of course, I felt tremendously blessed, but, Tom, what was particularly interesting, I could see why I was happy. I would just play in the game of life at a higher level. I could do things I could never do before, and I just had a level of control over my life I never experienced before. I became fascinated that you could take two key scientific principles and apply them to your life and so materially impact your success.
About 12 years ago, I’m like, “Okay, I finally had enough money so I didn’t have to work.” I thought, “I’m going to share this with the world.” A month or two after I sell my company, I meet the former chancellor and president here at the University of Texas, and he says, “Hey, you got to teach this at the University of Texas. Why don’t we teach it together?”
That led to he introduces me to the athletic director here, and the athletic director says, “Hey, I want to learn this 12-minute a day technique.” That led to becoming the mental coach for the 18 head coaches. Today, I teach my class, The Science of Success, The science of Leveraging Yourself, which is really what I would call advanced leadership of self. I also teach my methodology to adults through my book Missing Secret.
[00:05:39] Tom: I’d love for you to talk through some highlights from the book just to get us started here on that.
[00:05:45] John: Think about this, Tom. I throw this question out to your audience. How do you create success in life? Just how do you create success in life? When I talk to people in person, they’ll stumble around for an answer because nobody is usually ever asking that question. Then the more pertinent questions, well, I’ll recap what they said, I go, “How’s that working for you?” “Well, not so well. Not so well for creating the exceptional life.”
I believe that this is the case because nobody gave them the alternative. Nobody gave them a “way” to do life. They’re just winging life, and that’s what produces the average life. Here’s something that I promise you will surprise you. When you’re winging life, your intelligence, intellect, and logic is not directing your actions because 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. They’re in the moment and they’re reactive. Since they’re unconscious, your conscious mind intelligence, intellect, and logic is not directing and controlling your daily actions, yet those daily actions are the very thing that determines your success in life. I fix that with this 12-minute a day morning routine.
[00:07:16] Tom: I mean, it’s a natural lead-in for me to say, well, can we talk about the 12-minute daily routine? I’d be a very poor host if I didn’t ask that as a follow-up.
[00:07:25] John: Do you agree that most people are winging life?
[00:07:27] Tom: Yes.
[00:07:28] John: Yes, right. Well, let me share with you the secret, and maybe the easiest way is just to tell you the story of how I discovered the secret. Like I said, well, 50, I’m not as successful as I think I should be, but, Tom, there’s a little bit more going on with me than than just feeling the scarcity of time.
My mom was dying of pancreatic cancer. Every day after work, I’d go see her in the hospital and I’d hold her hand and love on her. It was just everything I could do to keep from breaking down in front of her. Every night, I’d go in the cold dark hospital parking lot and cry my eyes out. I mean cry like I have never cried before, like for 45 minutes to an hour. This is going on for six to eight weeks.
Obviously, I’m feeling the impending loss my mom, but I never experienced crying for an hour a night straight. That was what was going on. What I came to realize, maybe not at the time, but I felt like I was letting my mom down with my life because my mom and dad gave me every advantage. They sent me to Jesuit high school in Dallas when they really didn’t have the money. They sent me down here to the University of Texas at Austin, and I didn’t have to pay for a thing.
As my mom was leaving this world, all I had to show for my life was the average life. I hated the average life because I just knew I was capable of so much more. Ironically though, I saw that that that feeling of letting my mom down and that intense dislike for the average life was like rocket fuel and causing me to go deeper into Think and Grow Rich and figure out the secret in a way that nobody else ever had.
I remember that night, I was blessed to figure out the secret. It feels like it was yesterday, but this particular night, it felt different because it was snowing. This night, I go see my mom, love on her, cry my eyes out for an hour, and start driving home and I see the the big snowflakes hitting my windshield. Tom, it really just felt different. I didn’t know what that meant, but it just felt different.
I get home and I plop myself in my comfy chair, and I decide I’m going to read some more of Think and Grow Rich. I start reading it, and that night, the first thing I read is that your daily actions determine your success in each year of your life. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve never thought about it quite that simply, but sure, the cumulative effects of your daily actions are going to determine your success in your career, in your health, in your marriage. Okay, I buy it.”
Then the second thing I read is that 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. They’re in the moment. They’re reactionary. 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. Okay. Well, I’m thinking about that, and then I’m ready to go to bed. I wash my face and brush my teeth and put my little head on the pillow. Tom, I cannot stop thinking about 95% of your daily actions are unconscious.
I start thinking about that and ruminating about that, and it’s like a lightning bolt hits me. I’m like, “Whoa, wait a minute, if your daily actions determine your success and 95% of them are unconscious, then I don’t control the very thing that determines my success. Even worse, my intelligence and intellect is not directing those actions because if they’re unconscious, my conscious mind houses my intelligence and intellect.” I’m like, “What’s driving my actions then? Well, if they’re unconscious, it’s my subconscious mind. It’s wired for survival, which causes us to be fear-based and reactive. What’s striking my actions is innately being fear-based and reactive.”
This was like truly a lightning bolt hitting me. I remember sort of sitting up in bed, and looking at now at the backyard and seeing the snowflakes falling and just a surreal moment. It starts to occur to me that, oh, the reason I’m not more successful is not from lack of intelligence or lack of drive. It’s from having a false belief about success for 50 years, and that false belief, and I dare say that every member of your audience has the same false belief that they control their daily actions, when in fact they don’t.
I’m like, “Well, clearly, you have to gain control over those unconscious daily actions if you want to have a higher level of success.” Now the full secret starts to come to me. Here’s the full secret of Think and Grow Rich. What you envision in detail with emotion on a daily basis is what shows up in your life. Tom, what that means is, and let me say it again, what you envision in detail with emotion on a daily basis is what shows up in your life. What that means is you create immense clarity about each area of your life, exactly the person you want to be, exactly what you want to accomplish, and precisely how you’re going to achieve your clearly defined goals.
Once you create that clarity, you put it on a template I created. In fact, the template helps you create the clarity. Then you start feeding that clarity to yourself every da. It takes 12 minutes a day. Once you do that, there’s three effects of it. The first effect is you have this immense sense of control over your life. Well, of course, you would. You’re feeding the succinct articulation of your desired life to yourself each day, of course, you’re going to feel control.
Second thing you experience is confidence, which is directly related to that control. You also feel way less stressed because the mind thrives on order, and you’re creating immense order in the mind. Then the third thing that happens, now this doesn’t happen immediately. Those two things will happen immediately, but the third thing, you’ll start seeing the right actions happening automatically without thinking once you’ve rewired your autopilot. That’s how it works.
[00:15:12] Tom: It sounds awfully simple, which I like. However, sometimes it seems the most simple things are the most difficult things to actually do. I love the 12-minute routine. I don’t know if you’re able to talk through some of the points that go into that or into your worksheet and what’s involved with that. Then I’d love for you to share how you started incorporating this into your day-to-day routine.
[00:15:36] John: Right. Well, first of all, because I may forget to say this, obviously, for someone else to do this, they have to customize my template to their unique life. I created an AI algorithm where all they got to do is answer approximately 50 questions, press a button, and 10 seconds later, the template is customized to their life. Pretty slick.
Let me give you an example. I mean, we’ve been talking the 30,000 foot view of it. Let me give you a practical example of it. This pertains in my marriage, but I want to convey that the core concept around this is that 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. Again, they’re in the moment. They’re reactionary.
The example is like with my wife. We had going each morning. Off we go. She does her thing, I do my thing, and then we reconvene for dinner. Now, keep in mind, in my 12-minute day technique, I’m affirming to myself regarding my marriage that I’m flexible, patient, and thoughtful, and I’m affirming what that means relative to our relationship. I’m also affirming that my wife is different than me. She does things slow and is people-oriented. She’s sort of perfectionist. I’m the opposite. I do things fast and I’m task-oriented. That’s all the stuff I’m feeding myself every day.
Well, now, she’s preparing dinner, and she’s about to get it on the table. I’m thinking. Now, keep in mind, I’m just thinking this. This is not coming out of my mouth. I’m thinking this. I’m like, “Babe, let’s get the food on the table. I’m hungry. Let’s go,” but I’m not saying that. What happens is at the first hint of my impatience, a thought from my subconscious bubbles up to go, “John, here’s an opportunity to be patient.” Well, what happens? Well, I consciously take control of being patient, and I am patient. I don’t say, “Let’s go.” I don’t ruin the the dinner from stressing her out.
You can imagine the impact, like in my Life GPS template, I got 50 things in the various areas in my life. You can imagine, when you can get yourself to do the right actions consistently and all your intentions consistently instead of sporadically, boy, you’re just playing the game of life at a higher level, and that ends up being the difference between having the average life and the exceptional life. See, that’s the difference between winging life and having an actual 12-minute a day way of doing life.
I was guilty of this. In my past life, if I was hungry, I would have expressed my frustration. That’s a problem. I think, foundationally, let me explain the science behind this because you’re– and this is, again, simple. Here’s how the conscious mind and the subconscious mind work. The conscious mind is setting your intentions based on logic. Subconscious mind is controlling your daily actions for 95% of them, and it’s only influenced by repetition.
The example is this. Let’s say you want to lose weight. Well, conscious mind sets the intention to lose weight based on the logic of the health benefits, but the reason people fail to lose weight is not obviously from lack of intention but lack of influencing their subconscious mind relative to what they’re eating and exercising. You can see when you’re feeding the succinct articulation of your desired life to yourself every day, that’s the repetition the subconscious mind needs to make the right actions happen automatically from, just like in my example, the unconscious thought bubbling up my conscious mind to that moment, being patient instead of being reactionary as would be how someone that’s just winging life is rolling.
[00:20:08] Tom: You’re exercising your subconscious mind. That, to me, is what it sounds like. It’s just daily exercise of going through this to help provide intention or intent to give direction to your subconscious mind. Where are you headed? What are the things we want to be? Regularly thinking about to train our subconscious mind to be going through that. I think that’s fantastic.
[00:20:31] John: Right. Well, I told you before we got on here, I wanted to make you have the same epiphany I had. Think about this. How many epiphanies in your life have you had that radically changed your life?
[00:20:44] Tom: Not many. It’s been a few. Those big, big life-changing aha moments, for sure, yes.
[00:20:51] John: Well, I’ve had four in my life, really. Obviously, the epiphany I had was that 95% of my daily actions are in the moment and they’re unconscious. Since you’re unconscious, I don’t control the very thing that’s determined my success. I also see that my intelligence and intellect is not driving my actions. That was really the epiphany. My question to you is, do you believe that 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious?
[00:21:28] Tom: I would say absolutely, even though I think I have a plan and try to plan out my day and prioritize what I want to do, but most of the time, I’m just doing. I’m just kind of right going through the day. I’m executing and going through that.
[00:21:43] John: The takeaway for you and the audience hopefully is to really embrace this epiphany that, “Oh, wow, 95% of my daily thoughts and actions really are unconscious, and because they’re unconscious, my intelligence and intellect is not driving them. My God, I got to fix this, and this guy John Mitchell has a 12-minute a day way to do it.”
I would say one thing in terms of credibility to this, it was really tough to get my methodology approved at the University of Texas. It’s down in the business school, and according to US news and world reports, our business school is considered one the top five in the country, right up there with Harvard and Stanford. It was really hard. Took me two years to get it approved. This isn’t another get-rich-quick scheme. This is something that has been vetted at the highest level. I don’t know. Hopefully, that makes people feel a little better about the viability of this.
[00:22:54] Tom: How can people find out more about the 12-minute routine or habit or connect with you or gather that information to start implementing it if they’re interested?
[00:23:06] John: Right. Well, go to themissingsecret.org. I have a nine-minute video that explains the full secret and how to apply it. One other thing I might mention is, a few years ago, I decided, if I’m going to spend my life explaining this and teaching this, I want to go to the top expert in the world on success and show them what I created, him or her, and see what they thought. Is there something similar to it? Is there something? Is there a flaw in it.
I decide that Darren Hardy is that guy. I write a big check. I fly out to La Jolla, California. I bring the Ginge with me who I met from doing this methodology. She’s my wife. We go out there and we spend three days with Darren. The moment comes. I show him my template, put it in his hands. I explain how it works. Tom, he says to me, “John, this is really good.” He says, “People aren’t going to spend 12 minutes a day on this.”
I’m like, “Darren, how the heck can that be? I mean, it 25X my income. Time magazine did cover story on the science behind it, and we’re applying the central concept of the top book in the world on success. I mean, what do you mean they’re not going to take 12 minutes a day to do this?” He sort of smiles and kicks back and goes, “John, the dirty little secret in the success business is that more success is merely a preference for the vast majority of people.” He says, “This is only for the 2%.” Tom, the effect of that conversation was I’m like, “Oh, I’ve been looking at the same from like everybody’s a John Mitchell. How unenlightened is that?” Then I’m like, “Okay, we’ll just go find more John Mitchells, people that are out there making $200,000 a year want to go to netting a million.”
I go and I start doing that. I’m like, every time I teach my methodology, and I’m luring a man because I gave him a money-back guarantee that if I couldn’t double their income within a year, I would give them their money back. I would typically charge them $20,000, teach it over eight weeks. If you played out the math, over three years, it’d be a 35 to 40 to 1 return on their money, and as a money-back guarantee.
I did that for a year and a half, and it worked every time. I mean, it’s pure science. It cannot not work. You got to do it. It won’t work if you don’t do it. It evolved, and I would document every time with video proving it worked, but I saw how unleveraged that was. That led to doing my book, but I think the the lesson is that if you’re not in the 2%, this is not for you. When I say in the 2%, I’m talking about the 2% that want to play the game of life at their full potential.
[00:26:33] Tom: Thank you so much for that. The place to connect here is themissingsecret.org. Is that right?
[00:26:40] John: Right.
[00:26:42] Tom: Perfect. Well, John, thank you so much. This is a great time in the show. I like to make a transition, and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
[00:26:57] John: Not to get into a long discussion, but back when I was about 40 years old, I had the chance to buy 12% of the Dallas Cowboys. I got to know Jerry Jones because I was blessed to own this really cool Italian restaurant in Dallas that was voted most romantic restaurant. I came up with the idea that, as it turned out, Jerry bought 80% of the Cowboys, and there was ultimately 12% that was owned by the FDIC, believe it or not. I had came up with the idea to put that 12% in a public shell company, and it’d be the first sports franchise to be owned in the public markets.
Well, to make a long story short, ultimately, the FDIC was really incompetent, and they didn’t have a partnership agreement that they were to sell the interest. Ultimately, the deal falls apart. I got to know Jerry and we got to it, but the deal ultimately falls apart. To put the numbers in perspective, my 2% today worth a little over $200 million because I was going to get 2% of the 12% for putting it together. I had the money lined up.
Well, the lesson is I didn’t need the partnership agreement to begin with because it had already been vetted by the attorneys who originally loaned the money on the interest at the bank. The lesson is, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you get smarter as you get older because I realized I didn’t need the partnership agreement probably eight or nine years after that happened. That’s the lesson.
[00:28:50] Tom: Let’s look on the other side. A make or two, a highlight.
[00:28:53] John: I guess the highlight was taking my income to a little over 5 million a year after 20 years of 200,000 a year. I don’t know. I don’t want this to sound like bragging because I feel so blessed, but I was pretty damn proud to be able to figure out how to do that.
[00:29:11] Tom: Well, the name of the show is Multiply Your Success. We always ask if you used a multiplier to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you’ve run.
[00:29:21] John: Well this one’s easy, Tom. I mean, it’s a difference between working harder and working smarter. The leverage, I’m leveraging myself through science. That’s what this 12-minute a day technique is. Rather than winging life, I’m feeding the succinct articulation of my desired life, and it’s purely science-based, and it just gives you this immense control of yourself.
[00:29:47] Tom: The final question we ask every guest, John, is, what does success mean to you?
[00:29:52] John: Oh, it’s simple. Just playing the game of life at my full potential and maximizing myself. Maximum impact, maximum enjoyment.
[00:30:03] Tom: As we bring this to a close, John, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
[00:30:09] John: Well, maybe two very quick things. This 12-minute a day technique gives a person, certainly gave me an edge in life. My life experience has been, if you don’t have something that gives you an edge in life, you’re going to get the average life. Maybe the other thing I would leave your audience with is a quick story.
I guess four or five years ago, I became a grandfather for the first time. I had coerced my my stepdaughter to name the baby after Ginger. We go over the day after baby Genevieve was born to Hannah’s house. Keep in mind, I’ve never had kids myself. We’re over there, and all of a sudden, they hand the baby to me, and they walk away.
I’m holding this precious little girl that’s a day old, holding her to my chest. I feel the warmth of her body. Tom, I start to cry. I mean, really, tears are flowing down my face, and I realize how precious life is. I’m like, “She’s going to live for 100 years. The quality of her life, her enjoyment of life, her her impact of her life is going to be determined by the thoughts that are going on in her head most of the time.” I’m like, “My God, I’m going to impact those thoughts.”
The lesson I think for the audience is your life is precious. Your life is precious. When you put your head on the pillow tonight, just think about your life. If the next five years are like the last five years, are you going to be happy with that? If you’re not, stop winging life. Just learn a way to take control of your life and create the life you desire. It only takes 12 minutes a day.
[music]
[00:32:13] Tom: John, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when he talked about a question that he asks people, and the question he asked is, “How do you create success in life?” He said, “That’s a question people are not often asked.” Even for our podcast, we ask how you define success, but he’s asking, how do you create success in life?
Takeaway number two is when he talked about 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious, and I thought that was a great way to describe it. Your subconscious mind is working all the while and really driving a lot of your actions and behaviors. Recognizing that is very important. Takeaway number three is when he talked about and gave this very specific phrase, he said, “What you envision in detail with emotion on a daily basis is what shows up in your life.” He said it twice. What you envision in detail with emotion on a daily basis is what shows up in your life.
Now, it’s time for today’s win-win. Today’s win-win is really taking these ideas and this concept of envisioning in detail with emotion on a daily basis what shows up in your life. Take some time each day. John has a 12-minute program that he talks about, but take some time to envision in emotion what you want for your life. Maybe even just thinking about, what do you want for your life? Personally, professionally, spiritually, for your health. What do you want in these areas of your life? I think this is a great way to get the year started. Maybe you’ve already done some goal setting, and this can be something for you to help improve or maybe adjust some of that.
That’s our episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. Remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com where you can schedule your free, no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
