Think & Grow Rich – the $5 million, 12 minute a day SECRET with John Mitchell

John Mitchell began his career as a certified public accountant. He became an entrepreneur at the age of 30. He worked in seven different sectors during the next 20 years. He started a reverse mortgage company in 2004 and grew it to be the largest in Texas and the fourth largest in the country. His business was sold in 2013. He started Think It Be It in 2014. In 2019, he was named the University of Texas’s “mental coach” for athletic coaches.

John Mitchell teaches the “SCIENCE of SUCCESS” at the University of Texas, as well as a 12-minute-per-day strategy that can double an entrepreneur’s revenue in a year. He wasn’t as successful as he thought he should be at 50 until he came across the book Think and Grow Rich, which has been read by over 100 million people. Think and Grow Rich claims to have a “SECRET” to success, but the book only gives you half of the secret. Feeling the pressure of 50, he decided to “man up” and figure out the full secret and a practical way to apply it.

His earnings quickly increased by a factor of two. He progressed to the point where, four years later, he was bringing in MID SEVEN FIGURES every year. A 25-fold increase over his previous 20-year earnings. He’d become LEVERAGED, and he was enthralled by the power of combining two scientific principles to “UP” one’s chances of success. This 12-minute-a-day strategy works because it FOCUSES you on only the things that move the needle. Triples your DISCIPLINE and inspires you to come up with new, realistic business ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

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Think & Grow Rich – the $5 million, 12 minute a day SECRET with John Mitchell

Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. He teaches the science of success. He teaches at the University of Texas along with 12 minutes a day technique that typically doubles entrepreneurs’ income within a year. In fact, when he turned 50, he discovered something life-changing at 50, who wasn’t as successful as he thought he should be. Then it came to him, he found the top book in the world on success and apply that book, literally word for word in his life. That book is Thinking and Grow Rich, and he’s here to share that wisdom with us and so much more as we talk about $5 million, the science of success, and how we can level up as entrepreneurs. Please welcome to the show with me, John Mitchell out of the great state of Texas, John, how are you doing?

John:

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Brett.

Brett:

Absolutely. For listeners to get to know you for the first time, would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

John:

Like you said when I turned 50, I wasn’t as successful as I thought I should be. I’ve been a nerd for 20 years. I really had two goals in my life to make enough money. So I didn’t have to work and find the woman of my dreams. So if you have fallen short on both of them, and you’re on the money always made $200, $300,000 a year. But when I turned 50, and I know this may sound materialistic, I’m like I’m not going to have an exceptional life unless I start making a million dollars a year. So that was a challenge. on the girl at 50. I have never been married. Although I did a lot of interviewing. Although my friends maybe have called it baking. I prefer to call bak, interviewing. But anyway, at 50. I’m trying to figure out well, how do I change this, my history, and the history of low six figures a year. so one night, this pearl of wisdom, constantly find the top book in the world on success and apply it and literally work toward my life. Well, I don’t even know if there is one. But above all others. I do a little research discover there’s one book that’s been read by literally 100 million people in the next best selling book on success has been read by less than 10 million people. So that book is Thinking and Grow Rich, well, exactly what I was looking for. So I like to make a beeline to the bookstore, get the book, read the book. You know, once I read the book, it says it’s a secret for success. But the author only gives you half of the secret. it’s on the reader to figure out the other hand, and so I’m bummed out and I probably book around for three weeks. Then one day, I just wake up and go just man and figure out the full secret. so I just immerse myself in the book for like two months. and what emerged was, I figure out the full secret, I figure out a focal point and a technique to apply it. quickly my income starts doubling in a new business, I started in the reverse mortgage business to where four years later, I’m blessed the netting $5 million a year, which was 25 times what I never made before. And, of course, I felt blessed and what was so cool, Brett was I could see why that’s happening. I mean, it worked because I was focused only on what moves the needle. I tripled my discipline so I could do those key habits I couldn’t do before. I had new ideas coming into my head every single week that just weren’t coming in before. I just became fascinated by the fact that you could take two key scientific principles and apply them to your life and so materially impact your success. To wrap this up, I ended up selling my company, and a couple of months thereafter I met the former Chancellor and the President University of Texas and he said hey, you got a thesis at the university. So why don’t we teach it together? So that’s sort of my journey. Today with my partner, Kelly Hetfield, she and I focus on taking auditors to net seven figures a year by teaching our methodology.

Brett:

Absolutely love that book, Thinking and Grow Rich. In fact, I just read or listen to an audio version of a little bit smaller condensed version of that. But it’s an amazing book. I’m looking forward to applying those principles in more of those techniques that you’ve been using and talking about the $5 million of the science of success. But before we even go into that, I want to take one other step back, John, I believe we’ve all been given certain gifts in this life, I want you to go back to maybe your high school days, your college days, I believe these gifts have been given to us to be a blessing help to others, some people come strengths, some people call them superpowers, I believe their God-given gifts, and they’ve been given to us to be a blessing and help to others. So I’m curious, what are those one or two strengths, gifts, or superpowers you believe you’ve been given? How does that help how you help and bless people today?

John:

You know, that’s a great question that really is and my superpower, I think is taking the complex and making it simple. I discovered this when I was about 27 years old. I see that it ended up playing such a pivotal role as I read Thinking and Grow Rich, and figuring out how to decipher all the things that it says in there and make it simple. That’s hopefully what I’ve done.

Brett:

So take taking the complex, making it simple. It’s not an easy thing to do. That’s a great segue into the next part of the show, which is talking about the $5 million science of success. So John, what’s the number one secret when it comes to being becoming an entrepreneur that’s netting $5 million a year?

John:

Think and Grow Rich is college-bound about applying science to your life after success, which is something most people have never even thought about doing it. It’s all predicated on one simple fact 95% of your daily actions are unconscious. So to have a higher level of success than you currently have. You have to influence those unconscious daily actions, I mean, it is pure math and this idea that 95% of your daily actions are unconscious, that we hear facts all the time, you don’t know if they’re true, or not true. as I work with people, I’m making google it because this is so foundational, that and if you Google, what percentage of my daily actions are unconscious, in big dark letters, it’ll say 95%. That ends up being the dominant hub with people, once I get that what I’m sharing with them? Is it life-changing for them? Because they see I got it to influence those unconscious state reactions, and he’s gonna show me how to do that. Does that make sense?

Brett:

It does, so 95% of our daily actions are unconscious. It’s just a mathematical equation of how much time are we spending on the subconscious and influencing that, which could help us influence everything else? Is that a fair summary so far?

John:

Righ. Let me go one step deeper on this. So think about this. We are all innately wired for survival. What that means is that if 95% of your daily actions are unconscious, then and you’re in wired for survival, then when you wake up each day, you’re innately wired to be fear-based reactive, and they hope that’s exactly the opposite of the way you need to be if you want to be productive, creative and happy. So it causes you to play the game of life at 20% of your potential. And if you’re a driven person, let me just say, what I’m sharing with your audience today is only for driven people. If they’re not driven, this isn’t for them. But if you’re driven and you realize you’re playing the game, live to 20% of your potential, that’s a big problem. and you got to learn how to override that. That natural bias towards survival each day, you basically do it through this 12-minute program.

Brett:

I think it does. Make sure I encapsulate that for our audience. So, we’re all wired for survival. That’s our default position. What would you say the other two fear were?

John:

It’s your fear-based, reactive, and negative, and all those things are great for survival. But they’re the opposite of what you all do if you want to be productive, creative, happy.

Brett:

Got it right. So I’m trying to think of another analogy for this? We’re naturally, I think of the physical, where we may not want to work out right away or eat healthily or sleep well or break enough water, our default position is to before we’re working out and helping to do the certain things we should be doing is to be less productive, let’s say, less organized, it’s almost like =mc2? Where you have a lot of chaos and disorganization. But until you put that effort into making something organized, are you going to be really productive? Our default is fear-based, reactive, negative, kind of like if we’re not working out, but we can move into the ProAct, pro-productive, creative, happy, which is where we all want to be. Now, it’s just mathematical or it’s just an effort on that 20%? I probably did a great job on that. But what do you think helped me out there?

John:

You’re good. Here’s the thing that understands this one step. Further in this sells the human mind works. So the conscious mind says your intention is influenced by logic. But the subconscious mind controls your everyday actions. It’s influenced by repetition. He doesn’t care about logic, here’s an example. Let’s say you want to lose weight. Well, the conscious mind says intention to lose weight based on the health benefits. That’s the logic. But the reason people hard to lose weight is because they’re not influencing the part of their brain that controls their actions, what they’re eating and exercising. The point of this is that part of the brain only is influenced by repetition, that logic only influences the setting of attention. It doesn’t influence the actions. That’s why this 12-minute technique influences the unconscious daily actions that follow that.

Brett:

I think I did. That’s incredible. So I want to dive right into this. When you say driven, hungry, think humble? Be open to what you’re about to say, also be driven, hungry to actually make a change or do level up what you’re trying to do? So with that in mind, with that mindset that we’re going to take right now, walk us through that 12-minute technique.

John:

So here’s how it works. The book Thinking and Grow Rich says there’s this secret for success. As I said, he only did half the secret that he gives you is that everything starts with a thought, Well, where do you go with that? I was puzzled by that. Once I dug into it, then I saw that the real central concept of Thinking and Grow Rich is what you envision in detail on a daily basis is what shows up in your life. The thread is when you step back from your life and you create immense clarity, 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. You feed that clarity to yourself every day. It takes 12 minutes a day. After about 21 days, the science kicks in the subconscious mind starts subset accepting programming, and that influences your daily actions and then those enhanced improved daily actions create the life you want and you achieve your goals.

Brett:

Okay, excellent. We’re gonna do some examples of this, by the way, you can learn more about John Mitchell by going to thinkitbeit.com. So, what you envision in your life is what you become. So the more we can have clarity behind what we want, and what we want to become, the more we’re actually going to be moving in that direction. Is that a fair summary?

John:

Right. and if you don’t mind, let me go a little deeper on this, that I mean, you got it. One of the things that people say to me often is, how does doing something 12 minutes a day, take your income to $5 million. Actually, we live 20 years, low six figures a year. Here’s the part of the story I did tell you when I turned 50, my mom was dying, she’s dying of pancreatic cancer. And, and I remember every day after work going to the hospital to see her, and then I walk in the back in the parking lot, and just crying my eyes out because I knew I was losing her. I didn’t want her to see that. But it also made me think about my life. My parents gave me everything. I mean, they sent me to Jesuit High School in Dallas, when they probably didn’t have the money and looked at my life, and I’m like all I’ve got is an average life, I’m not making a dent in the world. it was sort of that motivation, feeling like I was letting my mom down, that caused me to really dig and figure out the full secret and as I look back now, that was so life-altering, and you have to honor my mom. Ended up once I started making millions a year, I set up a foundation for single moms. So hopefully, that honors in some way. Today, I teach what I learned to other fellow entrepreneurs.

Brett:

Got it. So your mom and the relationship you have with her and then her death, and that experience help feel the fire to make some of this change to use that as a way to feel the change. Is that a fair summary?

John:

Right. Brett, one of the things I noticed when I was 50. I was trying to figure out what’s the problem is, work harder than everybody around me, and one of the things I thought was that if you’d asked to write myself as an entrepreneur on a scale of one to 10, I would have told you how it’s an eight. But when I cross over to the other side, netting seven figures a year, I’m like, boy, I’m not avoiding and I was closer to a three or four. It reminded me of that bill, car sales quote, you are what your record says you are. Well, my record was saying I was a net six figures a year guy. If I wanted to net seven, I had my games and entrepreneur. I was just confusing, working hard with being competent as an entrepreneur. Does that make sense?

Brett:

It absolutely does. Yeah, it’s like the ultimate scoreboard. I think Mark Cuban says it well out of the great state of Texas as well. It’s like, the ultimate scoreboard is his business. It’s 24/7. It’s 365 and the scoreboards there on the results of the sales, the revenue of all of the things. So as an entrepreneur we can kind of, at times, we have to be careful not to get caught up in the feelings of our performance versus our actual performance. Is that what you’re saying, John?

John:

Right. I really started thinking about what does it mean to be a competent entrepreneur, and what I came up with, and it comes down to, first of all, you got to be working on your business, not just in your business. I’ll give you an example of that. You know, one of the things I teach our viewers is this idea that you got to set aside time to just think, a couple of times a week, and I call it deep thinking. this is a technique that the top people in the world like Elon Musk and Bill Gates do and I’ll show you the power of this. So I was in the reverse mortgage business. We were like, the fourth biggest in the country and the biggest in Texas had 175 employees gross and about 25 million in net and five. As I’m doing one of these deep-thinking sessions, it comes to me that I ought to be in the title business, because every reverse mortgage requires a title policy. I was given that away and so I’m like, walking in the title business. Well, that one idea ultimately netted me about $6 million. What was cool about it was Brett, the bad idea was in my head, but I had to go deep to pull it out.

Brett:

It makes perfect sense. I mean, part of what we do here, and I get people to ask me all the time, it’s like, why don’t you in the 1031 exchange business? Because I’m a 1031 exchange expert, qualified real estate broker and we’re the Deferred Sales Trust and we just refer that all out. I just completely just referred all out. There have been thoughts of like, Well, why not just print that in the house because people say it’d be good to have both. They were already there. It’s been a thought for that. But that makes perfect sense. It’s almost like, there’s that gold in your brain? That million for you, it could be a million, it could be 100,000, whatever it is for different people, different places in their life. But until you’re doing that deep thinking, you do not even know it’s sitting there. So what have you found the best times to schedule that? What day of the week? What time of day? What what do you do, John? What is your rhythm of scheduling those?

John:

Well, I’ll walk you through this. I have a gift for your audience. so you know I’ll share with you exactly how this works. So you got to pick, when are you going to do it? Where are you going to do it? Well, I pick Wednesday because it’s the middle of the week and Sundays, because it’s the end of the week, and you’re more reflective. As to where to do it, I pick my favorite place in my house. I live here in Austin. so I get to go out on the deck. So once I start the process I get my thinking tablet, which is basically a pad of paper in a nice leather binder. I get in my nice comfy place. I start this process and really read it’s a three-step process, the first 10 minutes and the thing session, typically take 30 minutes, but for the first 10 minutes, I let whatever come to me come just whatever it is, then, after nothing else is sort of coming. Then step two, as I figure out the question to ask myself, changes how the brain functions when you ask yourself a question. So you figure out the question, then ask yourself a question. then just let your mind go on that question. Then, at the end of the session, step three, you should draw a line under the line saying you wrote and put the two or three takeaways. then you put the three or four action steps might that may come out of it. then you go to your next week to dues and put those action steps on next week to do so you’re connecting your thinking to your actions. so that’s essentially how it works.

Brett:

Okay, so let me see, I think I got that. It sounds pretty simple. What you’re saying? So Monday, when these incentives are your days, is you do that for mid-week, and a good time to do the end of the week for reflection. 30 minutes, pick a favorite place of the house, In the first 10 minutes, you’re just completely trying to relax your mind and relax to see whatever thoughts are going to be flowing. What comes let that come. Then the next step would be figuring out the question to ask yourself, which we’ll dive into here in a minute. But whenever you figure out that question, then you’ll ask yourself that question. Then you let your mind go, maybe start solving that question, and you’re going to take two or three takeaways from that at the end of this thing. Then two or three action steps to take write those down. Then you’re going to schedule that for the next week to get those going. Is that a fair summary so far?

John:

Right. I’ll give you an example. I’ll tell you why it works. an example if that’s okay. So, the reason it works is that let’s say you get your week rolling on Monday, well, you have a lot coming action, you’re hearing things, learning things, talking to people, but at the moment, you don’t actually understand the significance of what you’re hearing. You hear it, but you don’t understand it necessarily. When you give your subconscious mind a couple of days to process it and give it a venue for outputting that input. I mean, it’s amazing. this is on the surface, it sounds like Well, yeah, I think I’m thinking twice a week. Well, first of all, this isn’t normal thinking this is deep thinking but the bigger picture is most people have never ever tried to proactively influence their subconscious mind. this is the first step to doing that. once you start again, conditioning, that subconscious mind, amazing things happen. I gave an example to one of my clients. So he’s in the storage facility business up in Portland and he makes a couple of million dollars a year that doing it and he’s like a lot of our clients and our clients are already netting a million or more in half or under and so he does a thinking session. I asked him to think about what moves the needle in his business. When he comes back and says, Well I think getting properties I’ve recently acquired or getting them finished out and in producing revenue is what moves the needle. I’m like, and I don’t see that, I’m like, let’s do a thinking session together. So I asked him, I said, Well, what’s your special talent? He tells me, he says I’m really good at seeing opportunities and stories that other people don’t see. And, and so I’m like, let’s just think about this for a second and do the same thing together. we think for a couple of minutes, and I say wait, I think what moves the needle in your business is really bringing more properties into your evaluation pipeline, and heavy metrics around that? Well, he took that one idea. Now it literally doubled his net. Now he’s netting $4 million a year. then the idea was already in his head, we just had to pull it out. But that’s the power of this. And I’m going to give your audience a gift on this. If they’ll go to thinkitbeit.com/cg for Capital Gains Tax Solutions, I’m going to give you a five-minute video in a guide on what questions to ask yourself as you do this. I’d love to teach your audience exactly how to do this

Brett:

Absolutely, go to thinkitbeit.com/cg for Capital Gains Tax Solutions. So you got to be doing these deep thinking sessions, you got to do the work, you got to start to condition the subconscious mind, you got to ask yourself the right questions. That’s part of what the guide will give you. Some questions, could be what moves the needle in your business, what’s your special talent? Then write down what comes to mind write down the action steps, then schedule those action steps. We’ll talk about that. What does that look like for the following week, John, on average, so you come up with a couple of ideas? For example, the guy says, my best talent is finding these deals, I have a special for seeing these deals. So what is it that he implemented that next week to help him apply what he just learned?

John:

Let me back up just a little and talk about what I think like six or seven things that reflect the competence of an entrepreneur. I think you’ll see what I mean by this. So the first thing for an entrepreneur to be competent at is figuring out what moves the needle and then focusing on it. So that’s the first thing, they also have to be growing, they have to be bringing in the wisdom of experts into their head every week in areas that are strategic relative to what they want to accomplish. Because that is they’re smart enough to be highly successful, just on our own thoughts. They got to be highly organized, you can’t be a six or seven on organization, and then a million-year, you got to be a nine or a 10. That’s fairly simple. You got to plan your day, the night before, you gotta time block your day, you got to highlight the top three priorities, each that we have, we give people a system to do that. You got to be innovating your marketing, which really means you got to be measuring it properly. Once you’re measuring it properly, then you can continually innovate it can. You also got to have an eight-player culture where you’re an A player leader, and you’re building a culture of A players and there’s a whole art to that. But those are the things in my view that determine the competence of an entrepreneur, and the syncing sessions will stimulate things around those things that the entrepreneur will figure out the days to focus on each week.

Brett:

So we’re up against timing. So when you go to schedule this. You’ve already hopefully time blocked your day, organize your day, organize your week and then you’re squeezing in a 30 minute part on this number one priority or this new priority or walk us through that strategy there to make sure we’re getting these things done first thing in the morning. So we don’t get caught in our daily routine and then all of a sudden you lose energy, we kind of just put it to the back burner? So walk us through the strategies to get this thing done.

John:

Well, you got to read your 12 minutes a day. First thing in the morning and one of the things I think you’d find interesting is sometimes people will say to me, Well, I don’t know, this won’t work on me. This works for everyone. I mean, it’s pure science, it can’t work. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for everybody. what I mean by that is, it takes real effort to create the clarity of the 12 minutes a day disease, creating the clarity, candidly, is hard. Now, my partner and I help people with that. But that’s why we’re selective about who we work with when we work with people, our goal is always to double their income within a year. And, so we’re really selective about who we work with, we even give a money-back guarantee, and that causes us to be really selective that we’re working with driven people. So, and I think what’s different with this from everything else in the success and human achievement field in the coaching field, is that everybody else is teaching you strategies. Well, hey, Brett, you got strategies that come naturally, here’s what you need is to get great strategies to show up in your daily actions and thoughts and show up automatically without thinking. That’s exactly what this does these show up automatically without thinking.

Brett:

I love it. I think I’m resonating completely with this. I think my audience is too. I think we had the 30 Minute deep session. What is the 12 Minute look like every single day?

John:

Keep in mind, the thinking sessions are two times a week, 30 minutes, a session. Whatever they pick, the 12 minutes a day is the first thing every morning, again, once you’ve created that clarity, exactly the person, you want to be exactly what you want to accomplish, and how you’re going to achieve your clearly defined goals. That’s what you’re feeding yourself. Every day. and the methodology the mentoring, we call what we do, mentoring plus methodology, mentoring teaches you the six or seven habits, the methodology causes, you were really three things causes you to be able to do the habits automatically without thinking causes you to be focused only on what moves the needle. it causes you to be upright on a daily basis from confidence. And I say that, because you’re going to feed yourself like seven things, what your business looks like, three years from now, the four or five milestones to get there, your business plan, your strategy for success, the two or three things that move the needle, the ledge finish should go to the next level your C st mission statement and values. think about that bread, if you’re feeding all that to yourself, you have this amid a sense of control over your life. That control transfers to being confident. It’s 1000 times better way to operate than how most entrepreneurs operate, where they’re fear-based, and they’re uncertain and they’re stressed. I mean, it literally is 1000 times better.

Brett:

It makes perfect sense to me, and I never had it put this way. I think about the times when we go to like these real estate conferences, or these leadership conferences or go to church and we have these experiences where we’re getting clarity, we’re doing some deep thinking, we’re hearing some great input? We’re starting and we come away with it’s like as a camper, I go to Christian camps growing up, and I love them, I want to call my kids to them now too and you’d have that week long of like, those everything structured, and then you come away with like this new sense of energy and vision and enthusiasm? But if you’re not feeding what’s been put into you, how do you keep that going? You’re saying it was 12 minutes a day if you’re clarifying who you want to be, what you want to accomplish, the actions that you need to be doing to do that, as well as the vision for the business itself. What’s going to help for you it’s almost like it’s just continuing to keep that fire going. Is that a fair summary?

John:

It’s sort of like the opposite of meditation. You know, meditation quiets the mind. Well, this focuses on the mind, but I think it’s good. What do you say?

Brett:

Yeah, that’s a great point. This gets it in shape. It’s like the warm-up before you go perform. It’s killing the mind, the body, perhaps the spirit, the emotions all kind of connected, maybe the meditation gets things quiet and gets it focused on certain things. This gets it to take action. So absolutely love it. We’re way over time right now. So I want to wrap up, and I’m probably gonna have John back on because there’s so much more to cover here. But John, for our listeners who want to get in touch with you right now and take some action to get the method and the mentors, you remind them one last time, where is the best place to find you?

John:

thinkitbeit.com/cg or just the .com. But if you add CG to it, I have a special page for your audience. And, can I add one very quick thing to this. So this just happened to me not too long ago. So my stepdaughter had a baby just like two or three weeks ago, and ginger and Ahmad, my wife goes over to see her the day after the baby was born. For some reason, Ginger, and Hannah led me along with the baby. I’m hoping that little boy, nothing can help precious life is just how precious life is. I’m thinking this little boy is going to have he probably live for 100 years? There’s gonna be good things that happen to him, it’s gonna be bad things that happen to him. But what comes what his life is going to turn out to be as a function of his ongoing mindset, and his ability and courage to take a hold of his life and create the life he wants. I say that to your audience because every one of your lives is precious. if it’s not exactly what you want it to be, you got to have the courage to change it. And, and what I’m sharing with you is a new way of doing the game of life. and if you feel that scarcity of time that’s what I was feeling at 50. You know, I think that motivation, and just imagine the idea of playing the game of life just enough, higher level. It’s such a game-changer.

Brett:

Absolutely. John, thanks for being on the show. Thank you for sharing that story. That’s very inspirational. thank you for sharing all the wisdom with us today.