Unlocking Success: The Power of Understanding Your WHY from Dr. Gary Sanchez

0:00So if everything in your life, your messaging, marketing, branding, your passion, your purpose, your direction is all based on your why? Pretty important to get it right. Discovering your why is massive. Well, Dr. Gary Sanchez doesn't just start with why. He helps you decide what is your why, but not just your why, your why operating system. Most people don't know what they want because they don't know who they are. If you can help them figure out who they are, it becomes infinitely easier to help them figure out what they want. Knowing who you are helps you decide what it is you want to do with your life.

0:32If you're struggling to find your purpose and your why, Dr. Gary Sanchez. So, Gary, let me ask you then your definition of success. How do you define it? Well, I would define success, Brad, as step one, like maybe three steps. Step one is discover yourself. Who are you? And then once you know who you are, discover what you were meant to do, what you were put on earth to do, and then do it. And when you're doing that, right? And then when you're doing that, that's success to me, because you'll have unlimited energy. You'll have passion for what you're doing. And the money is, you know, is great.

1:12But the feeling of success is even better. You know, if you go way back, you know, the old dentist Gary versus Dr. Gary versus, you know, the why Gary, how did you get to that thing? How did you evolve through that? Because obviously, as a young kid, that wasn't your definition. No, you know, and as I was, when I was a young kid, the question I hated to get the most was, hey, Gary, what do you want to do when you grow up? I don't know. How am I supposed to know what I want to do? So I kind of live life by default, right? I just kind of went off to the college that my buddies were going to. I picked a major that I was good at.

1:52I went to dental school because my dad was a dentist. I had no idea how to figure that out. And so I just kind of chose what seemed like the right way to go. And then what happens to a lot of us, Brad, is we get invested into it, right? Get out of dental school. Now I've got eight years of college. Get out of dental school and you start accumulating things, right? Houses, cars, spouses, kids, all that kind of stuff. And then you're stuck. If it's not what you were supposed to be doing, well, you got to hang in there, buddy, because you've a lot of responsibility and a lot of overhead. And I think that happens to an awful lot of us.

2:27I know it happened to me. And that's when, so when I got out of dental school, Brad, the advice that I was given by the business gurus of that day was build a great product and people will come. And I'm sure, right. I'm sure you've heard that. It's usually pretty true though. I mean, if you build a great restaurant, people will come, if you know, that sort of thing, it's pretty true. I go back though, Gary, when you said, you know you fell into what the thing i do i always ask my kids you know what do you want to try first like not what do you want to do for your life what do you want to try first and and that philosophy because i said you're going to probably try five or six different careers five or six different jobs in the beginning and get through that how did you go like how did you break out of that whole dental thing what was it that happened that got you to break out pain pain was it.

3:19And the pain was blending in with everybody else who said, yeah, I'm a dentist too. So Brad, I built a great product. I spent 20 years going to the best institute, studying with the best mentors, building a beautiful practice, buying all the technology, training a well-trained team. And when I said, you know, we had a great product, most dentists take 20 hours of CE a year. I was taking 250. We had half day staff meetings every week for years to develop our processes and systems and policies so that we could deliver on what we said we would deliver. We did have a great product, but people got used to it.

3:59And that was just the way it was. You know, going to the day, go to Gary. That's just the way they do things. They didn't realize what they were getting because they stayed with us, but they weren't telling others about us like I thought they would. You know, we do a great job, go tell everybody. Well, they didn't do it. And we didn't have the, maybe the confidence or whatever it was to ask them to do it, to ask for the referrals. We just expected and hope. We relied a lot on hope. Yeah. I remember when I read my dentist back in Brisbane, Australia, Dr. Patty Lund wrote a book called Building the Happiness Centered Business.

4:32And he's part of the condition. I had to sign a contract when I became his customer that I would refer to people of equal or greater value than myself to him every year that I was a customer in his dental practice. I read that book. I know that guy. Yes, for sure. And I think it's interesting that coming from dentistry to go to why, I don't think most people understand that dentists are one of the highest suicide rates of any profession on the planet was, was it, you know, when you talk about that pain of, of jumping across, did you have a formula for success or did you have a, this is how success happens type thing?

5:12Or did you just make the cut? Yeah. So, you know, in life for me, I, I, I have always had this formula, which was find somebody else who's already doing what you want to do, figure out what they're doing, copy them until you can do it as good as they can, and then figure out a better way to pass them. And that's how I became the world champion in racquetball. That's how I did so many different things in my life is I found someone else who's already doing it. And I did that in dentistry as well. But what I didn't do was that when it came to marketing. And so since my practice blended in with everybody else who did what I did, I was so frustrated, Brad, that I was either going to quit or I was going to find a better way.

5:54And so I went out and hired a coach. I hired a guy by the name of John Assaraf. I'm sure you probably know him. And through John, I learned how to use the Internet. I learned how to do websites and drip campaigns and SEO. So I could tell everybody all about me, how wonderful I am. But the only problem was, what am I going to say? What am I going to say that makes me stand out from everybody else? What am I going to say that doesn't make me sound desperate or like I actually need new patients? And so since I didn't know, I just stayed quiet until one day I heard him interview Simon Sinek, who wrote the book Start With Why.

6:29and that's when I heard about this concept of why, right? And so, man, I watched that TED Talk 10, 20 times. I read his book multiple times. That's what I'm missing. I have a great what, but I don't know my why. So I became obsessed with that. I got to find my why. I got to find my why. I got to find it. So I called Simon, and I said, hey, Simon, I need you to help me discover my why. So he and I spent about eight months together going back through my life looking for clues, trying to figure it out. And when I finally figured out my why, which is to find a better way and share it, that's when my life started to make sense to me.

7:03I have a lot of patents and products and inventions that are better ways of doing things. So in my practice, Brad, we stopped talking about what we do. Crowns, bridges, fillings, all that fun stuff everybody loves. We started talking about why we do what we do, what we believe. We believe that life is better when you have great teeth. In fact, you can't have a good life with bad teeth. and everything's revolved around great teeth, better life. And that's when my practice took off. That's when we stood out from everybody else. And that's when the right people started coming to us, those that believed what we believe.

7:38And as my practice took off, that's when I started getting calls from other dentists saying, hey, can you help me do what you did? So I went back and figured out what Simon was trying to do and I made it better. So instead of taking six or eight or 10 months to help someone discover their why, I could sit down with you, Brad, and in about an hour, help you figure out your why and then build your messaging, marketing and branding right there in the spot. And so I started doing this for anybody that would let me. And I did it for thousands of people for free. I found a better way and I wanted to share it.

8:08So I helped anyone who would let me. So if you're in my chair, Brad, getting your teeth numb, you're going to get your why discovered. If you're sitting next to me on an airplane, you're going to get your why discovered. And I started to notice patterns and trends and similarities, right? And that's when I figured out that there's only nine different whys and that one of them is your why, one of them is your how, and one of them is your what. And that led to developing the software and the YOS discovery. And I know I'm probably jumping way ahead. But the question you asked me was, how do you go from dentistry to developing software, building the Y Institute?

8:51How does that happen? Right. Because there's probably people listening right now that are at that same stage of like, hey, is this really what I should be doing with my life? Like, like, is this the right path? And so here's what happened to me. I felt, Brad, like I had solved one of life's mysteries. Forever, people have been saying, what's my why? What's my why? I can't figure out my why. They've been told by guru after guru, right? Simon Sinek, Tony Robbins, Michael Hyatt. You go on and on and on. Hey, you got to know your why. Got to know your why. But no way to actually do it. And I figured out how to do it every time it was accurate.

9:26I had done more why discoveries, Brad, than anybody in the world. And I was only about 70 % accurate. 30 % of the time I got it wrong. So if everything in your life, your messaging, marketing, branding, your passion, your purpose, your direction is all based on your why, pretty important to get it right. And so my software, the first thing I built was the why discovery. We've got it right every time. And then when we added the how and the what, the YOS discovery, same thing. It's super accurate. But what actually happened, one day, it was about four and a half years ago, I went to this event in Santa Fe called Zazobra.

10:03It's kind of like a Burning Man thing, but it's like a one night burn this big puppet thing. And it's supposed to, you know, it's kind of a big event. And I was there for a buddy's 45th birthday party. So we definitely ate and drank a little bit too much. Woke up the next day with a headache. So I was like, man, took a couple Advil, went back to bed. No big deal, I didn't think. But one of the Advil didn't dissolve. And it lodged in my GI tract and it burnt a hole right where I had an artery. And I started bleeding internally and I didn't know it. So I just wasn't feeling good. And I drove all the way back from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, which is where I live.

10:42And I even went to the gym to try to work it off. And I just kept feeling worse and worse. And when I got home, I just started throwing up blood and blood started coming out everywhere, a lot of it. And I knew obviously something wasn't right. So I went to the hospital and it was a busy weekend. So I had to wait 11 hours in the ER, just throwing up blood. And by the time they finally admitted me, my blood pressure was 60 over 30 and I'd lost half of my blood. And so I wasn't in a private room because it was so busy that weekend. So I get up to use the restroom. And as soon as I locked the door behind me, everything went black.

11:17I just passed out and I hit my head on the sink and I ended up passed out in the bathroom. And luckily I woke up because if I hadn't woke up, I don't think anybody would have found me or checked on me. And I pushed the door open and then I passed out again. And the next thing I know, I wake up in this bed and they've cut all my clothes off. There's people running around. I got the two pads on. They had to revive me off to surgery to try to get to that bleed. And they couldn't get to it where it was located. They couldn't cauterize it. So they just waited. They decided to do a CAT scan to see if I had stopped bleeding.

11:52So when they pumped all that dye into my arm, something went wrong and they blew out my arm. And it started filling up with blood clots. And so then they do an ultrasound to figure out where the blood clots are. And they're growing towards my lungs. And the doctor walks in and says, you know, Gary, we got a problem here. He said, those blood clots, if they get into your lungs, you're going to die. but if we try to stop the blood clots, we can't get to the bleed. So you're going to die. And I said, well, what are we going to do? He said, I don't know. And right then my phone rang and it was a buddy of mine.

12:28It was a cardiologist at the hospital. He said, Hey Gary, I didn't know, even know you were in here. Uh, I see what's going on and I don't like what they're going to do. So I'm going to take over. So I was in the ICU for nine days, a lot of crazy stuff. Have you ever been in the ICU as a patient, a lot of crazy stuff happens to you in there. And when I got out, what finally happened was I had to go to bed one evening with an IV of heparin, blood thinner, to stop the blood clots and hope I didn't bleed. And since I didn't bleed, they were able to treat me with blood thinners and I could finally get through it and get out.

13:02And when I finally got back to my practice a couple of weeks later, one of my patients in his mid-80s took me aside and He said, hey, Gary, you know, you got a second chance on life here. He said, when you get to be my age and you look back on your time here on earth, are you going to be glad that you stayed a dentist? Are you going to wish you'd taken this why thing to the world? I said, I'm going to wish that I'd taken this why thing to the world. And he said, well, then you know what you need to do. And that's when I just walked away. I mean, my practice was doing great. I was only working three days a week, 40 weekends every week, making a ton of money.

13:35and I walked away because it's not what I should have been doing with my life. So what I'm doing now is so in alignment with my why and my how and my what that I have unlimited passion for it. So Brad, the question, you know, when you discover who you are, does that necessarily make your life easier? Well, you know, here's an interesting point, though, and this is what I see a lot when I talk about success with people, Gary. Sometimes it takes you getting fired to go and be successful. Sometimes it takes you dying, or almost dying, to go and be successful. I don't want people to have to almost die, or get fired, or do something to go chase their thing.

14:29And that's why I wanted you on here today. Now, I want to go back and have a little bit of fun just for a second. Get out of the deep dark moments of Gary almost dying to the fun time when I took YOS and I had you come to Nashville and chat to hundreds of my customers and and uh you laid me bare up on the screen you're like okay let me tell you Brad's why his how let me tell you his what and it was just like everyone was laughing and having fun with it but let's go back first to the the why how and what and let's explain those three phases first. Okay. So your why is why you do what you do. So it's so funny when I talk, when I speak at events, someone will, when we talk about why someone will always come up to me and say, oh yeah, you know, I agree with you that my why is so important to know.

15:20In fact, I know my why. I'll say, great. What's your why? And they'll pick up their phone and they'll show me pictures of their kids. Oh, my kids are my why. Or my new business is my why, my new book. That's my why. Now, what they're talking about is very important, but that's a short-term motivation for doing things the way they're doing it. When their kids grow up or their business moves on, they lose their why. What we're talking about is something even more profound, why you do what you do everywhere you go. And for those of you listening, Brad has my same why. So that's why when we look at each other, we're probably thinking the same thing.

15:54His why is also to find a better way and share it. Like before the podcast, you were telling me a whole bunch of new better ways that you've come up with on how to do what you're doing. And so he's always in search of a better way. He's rarely satisfied. He's always looking to improve things, always wanting to push things forward, always looking for something that's better. Does that feel right? Well, every one None of my business partners would agree with you 100%. And your wife. Oh, yeah. Okay. So that's step one is your why. Now, your how is how you bring your why to life, the process that you use.

16:35And so for Brad, Brad's process is to simplify, to decrease complexity, to take complex things and break them down to the essence of like one, two, three steps. Here's what you need to know. Let's just make it so that you can actually do it. It doesn't help anyone to come up with a better way if they can't do it. So you simplify things to just a couple of steps. And then what you bring is your deliverable. So what people can count on from Brad is a way to contribute, add value, have an impact on the lives of others. So Brad will use his time, his money, his energy, his connections, his resources to push other people forward because he wants to be that pebble that causes the ripple effect that goes on and on and on in their lives.

17:28Because if they do better, Brad's done better. Does that feel right? Yeah, buddy. I go back to, you know, making things better has just been a thing of mine all the time. Like I even remember as a kid, I had a job working at Pizza Hut when I was in college. and it was like, how many pizza boxes can you fold in one minute? I set the record at 49. It was like it just had to be better, faster, bigger. But the whole modeling thing, my first ever model I taught in business is the five ways to multiply your profits. And every single recipe that I look at has been modeled and that comes back to my knowledge.

18:07But also when Buckminster Fuller said, you either create a model or an artifact and that comes to the third thing, then how do I have everyone else help me do this sort of thing? So my coaches around the world, I want them to be better. My business owner clients, I want them to be better so they can make their staff better. It's like give them the tools so they be better and it just makes life easier. But when we do that and when we talk about that, it goes into and it brings me to the nine different areas. and that matrix of the nine really is kind of cool because I love sharing the matrix with people and say, okay, guess what is yours type thing before they even do the whole thing.

18:47But let's get into the how aspect of it because I think finding your why, actually, let me ask you a question about finding your why.

18:59A friend of mine came to me one time and we were talking about purpose, which is like another word for your why sort of thing. and he said to me, Brad, you know what? Luckily in life, I was given my purpose. You know, he had a son born with, on the high on the spectrum, nonverbal. And he said, you know, I got given mine. Some people have to find theirs. Some people have to create theirs. Some people have to, you know, decide theirs. But I was given mine sort of thing. Is it something that changes over time? Is it something that, like if I did your test this year, Or am I going to find it different in 10 years time, do you think?

19:36No, I don't. Just like you said, I've been looking for a better way my whole life. I mean, when I go all the way back to when you were a kid and with your pizza boxes or your models or anything, we could ask your parents and just say, has he always been, has Brad always been looking for a better way? And they're like, you wouldn't believe what a pain that kid was. And so what, but what you said was really important. So there's your why and there's your purpose. So you have one why, but you have many different purposes. You have a purpose as a parent, a purpose as a spouse, a purpose in your business.

20:10He has, the gentleman you were talking about, yeah, he was given the purpose of his child, but he also has other purposes. But he brings his why to all of them. And you're always finding a better way, whether it's with your wife, with your coaches, with your new AI product, everything that you're doing, you're always in search of a better way, but you have a lot of different areas and purposes that you apply it, right? And so that's how I look at it as you have one why, but multiple places that you apply it, which is your purpose in that area. Fantastic. Fantastic. When we move from, so I understand, I find out my why is that, when did you go from just helping people find their why to go into the operating system of the how and the what?

20:59And how did that happen? How did that come about? And why is that important to us? Yeah, because knowing your why is step one. You know, Simon Sinek says, start with why. Yeah, great. Start with why. He's totally right. But don't finish with why. It's right. It's just the first step. And when you add your how, you get to see yourself in. So knowing your why is like seeing yourself in one dimension, going from not knowing to knowing, from unaware to aware. But when you add your how, how you bring your why to life, now you get to see yourself in two dimensions and things become clearer. But even clearer is when you know your why, how and what.

21:41And you get to see all three. You see yourself in three dimensions. And something, I don't know if I've shared this with you or not. The YOS Discovery, which is the tool that we developed to find your why, how, and what, actually goes all nine levels deep. You'll see your top three are your why, how, and what. Those are the things that bring you energy. You'd love to do that all day long, and you'd do it for free if you could. The middle three of the nine are kind of energy neutral. Still important to you, but not as important. But the bottom three are the things that zap your energy, that take energy from you.

22:21In fact, number nine, a lot of coaches call it divine nine. You know, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Well, that number nine is like your weakest link. And if you spend a little bit of time on that number nine, it brings everything else up. is the easiest way to see improvement in everything is focusing a little bit of time on that last one. So there's a lot of depth we could go into this, but knowing your why is step one. Adding your how and your what brings more depth to it. And your why OS, we call that your why operating system. That's where your messaging comes from. That's why somebody would choose you.

23:08If you're looking for a better way, if you want it brought to you in a simple way where you can actually do it so that you can have a bigger impact, well, Brad Sugars is the one for you, right? That's why someone would choose you. And that then becomes the messaging for your website. The better able you are to articulate what you believe, the more you will attract those people that believe what you believe. So you could, here's a little tip or a little trick for everybody listening. If you know your simple YOS, you can copy it, paste it into chat GPT, copy your current messaging, paste it in there and say, create my homepage messaging based on my why, how and what that is authentic to me and will resonate with my ideal client.

23:58It's fascinating what it will bring for you. It'll just create it right there for you so that it feels right. It's not a message that some marketing team came up with. It's what's authentic to you. And that's when you're comfortable saying it and talking about it and living it and being it because it's real. I know when I've taught my coaches for years, when you get on stage, you've got to tell people your story as to why you want to be a coach and why you love mentoring and coaching them. Because there's not a lot of people that choose the profession of coaching for the money. You know, it makes good money, but it's they don't choose it for that reason.

24:41They choose it because they want to give back. They choose it because they want to see others succeed and all of those sorts of things. I want to touch on something, though, that you mentioned there of improving number nine. Now, I've often been taught, and this is where I want to see the dichotomy of this one. I've been taught things like, you know, if it's your weakness, just put it aside, focus on your strengths, like the Marcus Buckingham books and all that sort of stuff. But you're saying we should actually take a look at that number nine and improve upon that. Help me understand that. Yeah.

25:17So I thought exactly the same way you did. And once I saw the nine, that's not how I talked about it at all. I talked about it just kind of like you would. I said, well, you know, your bottom three are the ones that you really don't care much about and you want someone else to do. But when we had our YCon event, which is where all of our coaches get together, one of the coaches presented on the Divine Nine. And I thought, man, I'd never even thought of that. And when she said what she did in her own life was focus more on number nine, that's when her number nine was actually trust, creating relationships based upon trust.