In this Episode
- [02:36]Dr. Gary Sanchez shares how a single Advil pill led to a life-threatening event and spiritual awakening.
- [05:54]Fascinated by transformative experiences, Gary spent years helping thousands uncover their “why,” developing a pattern-recognition system that redefines self-discovery.
- [08:02]A gripping recount of how a near-death experience spurred Gary to completely reinvent his life’s work, leading to pioneering the WHY operating system.
- [13:23]Dive deeper into Dr. Gary’s hospital ordeal, realizing uncommon interventions were more than mere coincidences, hinting at divine purpose and his unique mission.
- [18:51]Stephan dives into the concept of transition from a zone of excellence to a zone of genius, as Gary explains its impact on personal fulfillment and professional success.
- [24:24]Unveil how dissatisfaction, though discouraging, served as a catalyst for discovering one’s true path, offering hope and clarity to others feeling trapped.
- [27:02]Gary and Stephan discuss the danger of busyness, relating it to “The Drift,” a concept that cautions against complacency and idle distraction.
- [32:52]Gary narrates his vision and goal with WHY.os.
- [41:20]Gary reveals a simple yet profound tool to achieve game-changing clarity, inviting listeners to embrace the WHY.os for immediate impact.
- [51:36]Unpacking the nine different ‘whys,’ Gary illustrates how these insights are fundamental to redefining career and personal alignment.
- [58:47]Gain access to the WHY Discovery tool, an accessible first step towards profound self-awareness, maximizing potential, and charting a destiny-aligned path.
Gary, it’s so great to have you on the show.
Stephan, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
I’d love for us to start with your hero’s journey, how you created this incredible business, and how you came to your own mission—your dark night in the tunnel of having the dragon to slay. I think that will inspire our audience here with an incredible journey. Why don’t we start there?
Now, Stephan, this is not what I set out to do. I didn’t wake up 15 years ago and say, “Hey, you know, I think I’m going to create some software to help people figure out what their why is.” I was a dentist. I don’t know if I should say “was” or “is.” Maybe I’m always are. I’m a dentist, but I don’t practice anymore. I graduated from USC Dental School in 1988. The advice that I was given by the gurus of that time was to build a great product, and people would come. “Go out and do the best job you can. People will naturally and mysteriously find out about you and see you, and you’ll have a successful practice.”
So, I spent 20 years doing that, reaching the highest levels you could go to in dentistry, studying with the best mentors, building a beautiful practice, buying all the technology, training a well-trained team, and 20 years later, still blending in with everybody else who said, “Yeah, I’m a dentist, too.” It drove me crazy, Stephan. I’d never worked so hard at something and not gotten the results I thought I would. My practice wasn’t growing. In fact, it was getting smaller. It was getting more and more refined. I was either going to quit, or I was going to find a better way. I went out and hired a coach, a guy named John Assaraf. You’re probably familiar with him.
Yes, he was a guest.
Through him, I learned how to use the Internet. I learned how to do website drip campaigns and SEO, and I learned how to tell everybody all about me. The only problem was, “What am I going to say that separates me from everyone else who says, “Yeah, I’m a dentist, too?’” Since I didn’t know, I just stayed quiet. One day, I heard him interview Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek wrote the book Start with Why. Many of your listeners have probably read that, seen it, or seen his TED Talk—100 million people have now seen that. I was one of them. When I saw that, I said, “Man, that’s what I’m missing.”
I have a great what, but I don’t know my why. I became obsessed with discovering my why. I called Simon and 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 out why I do what I do. When I finally figured it out, my why was to find a better way and share it. That’s when my life started to make sense to me. I’ve always been in search of a better way.
I have a lot of patents, products, and inventions that are better ways of doing things. In my practice, we stop talking about what we do—crowns, bridges, fillings, all that fun stuff. We started talking about why we do what we do and what we believe. That’s when my practice started taking off. We went from just getting by to having abundance, and the right people started coming to us. As my practice took off, I started getting calls from other dentists who wanted me to help them do what I did.
I had to go back and figure out a better way to do what Simon was trying to do. I figured out a way to help people discover their why. I figured out the right questions and sequence in about an hour. And so, I started doing this for anybody who would let me. Over the next seven years, I worked with thousands of people for free, helping them figure out their why and build their messaging, marketing, and branding.
I would do this at events. It was almost like a magic show. I’d be on stage, bring somebody out of the audience with me, discover their “why” in front of the audience, and then build their messaging, marketing, and branding right there. As I did this over and over, I started to notice patterns, trends, and similarities. I figured out that there are only nine different whys, which was the most important thing.
Once I figured that out, I could teach others to do what I was doing and collect more data. With that data, I developed the algorithm and wrote the software. In 2016, I launched the WHY Discovery, which found your why, and I gave it to hundreds of thousands of people to test. I had made more “why” discoveries than anybody in the world, but I was only about 70% accurate. Thirty percent of the time, I got it wrong.
If everything in your life—your passion, purpose, direction, messaging, marketing, and branding—is based on your why, it’s important that you get it right. The software was 100% accurate, and I got it right every time. Then, in 2021, I launched the WHY.os or WHY Operating System Discovery, which finds your why, how, and what and builds your message. It takes about eight minutes.
That’s the quick version, but that’s actually what really happened. I developed all of that while still being a dentist trying to do this. I had one foot in each thing, which means you’re not doing either very well. I also went to this event in Santa Fe. It’s called Zozobra. It’s like a Burning Man-type thing, but it’s like a one-night more of a show. It was for a buddy’s birthday, so we ate and drank a little bit too much. I woke up the next day with a headache. I took a couple of Advil and went back to bed—no big deal.
One of the Advil didn’t dissolve. It lodged in my GI tract, and it burnt a hole right where there was an artery, and I started to bleed internally. I didn’t know it. So, I drive back to Albuquerque, where I’m from. It’s about an hour away. I went to the gym, worked out, and came home, and I just really started feeling bad. I just started throwing up. Blood was coming out everywhere. I went to the hospital, and they made me wait 11 hours because it was a busy weekend.
They gave me an aspirin, which made it worse. By the time they finally admitted me, my blood pressure was 60 over 30. I’d lost half my blood. The blood in your GI tract acts like a laxative, so you have to use the restroom a lot. So, I get up to use the restroom. I’m not in a private room, so I lock the door behind me. As soon as I lock the door, I pass out. I hit my head on the sink and ended up on the ground.
Luckily, I woke up. There was blood everywhere. I wake up, push the door open, and then pass out again. The next thing I knew, somebody had found me, and I was in bed. They’ve cut all my clothes off. I have the two pads on, and they revived me and took me off to surgery to try to get to that bleed and stop it. They couldn’t get to it where it was. It’s on this one curve. So, they wait, and they do a CT scan to see if I’ve stopped bleeding.
When they’re pumping all the dye into my arm to do the CT scan, my arm starts filling up with blood clots. So now, they have to do an ultrasound to see where the blood clots are. The doctor comes in and says, “Gary, you have these blood clots that are growing into your lungs, and if we don’t stop those, you’re going to die. But if we try to stop them, you’re bleeding internally, and we can’t stop the bleeding.” I said, “So what are we going to do?”
He says, “I don’t know what to do.” And right then, my phone rings, and it’s a buddy of mine, a cardiologist at the hospital. He says, “Hey, Gary, I didn’t even know you were in here, but I don’t like what they’re going to do, so I’m going to take over.” And so, I was in the ICU for nine days. A lot of crazy stuff happens to you in the ICU. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there before as a patient, but a lot of stuff happens to you in there.
What finally happened was I had to go to bed one evening with an IV of heparin to stop the blood clots and hope I didn’t bleed, which I didn’t. So then they could finally treat it with heparin, and I could treat it with medication. And I finally got out of the hospital. I went back to my practice a couple of weeks later, and one of my patients, who was in his mid-80s, took me aside and said, “Hey, Gary, you got a second chance at life. When you get my age and look back on your time here, will you be glad you stayed a dentist, or will you wish you’d taken this why thing to the world?”
I’m compelled to help people understand who they are by helping them discover their why, how and what so they can live the life they were meant to live.
I said, “I’m going to wish I’d taken this why thing to the world.” He said, “Well, then you know what to do.” So, I left my dental practice and have been doing this full-time for the last four years. Does discovering your why, how, and what make your life easier? It can, but it can also make it much harder but more fulfilling.
That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing—this is what I should be doing. I’m compelled to help people understand who they are by finding their why, how and what so they can live the life they were meant to live. I never expected to be doing this—this is not what I set out to do—but I’m so glad I am.
It seems like you wouldn’t have taken that leap if you hadn’t had that “do or die” moment where you almost died. Is that true?
Yeah. I’ll tell you what it felt like to me. Did you ever see those TV commercials? I think it was T-Mobile, and the guy walking with the phone said, “Can you hear me now?” “No, no. Yeah, I can hear you.” It felt like that. It felt like it was God tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Can you hear me now?” And I’m like, “No, I got this. I can handle this.” “Well, how about now, when it was just the bleed? Can you hear me now?” “No, I can’t hear. I still got this.” “Well, then, when the arm thing happened?” “No, I still got this.” “Can you hear me now?” “No, I still got it.”
“Then, when it was the blood clots growing into the lungs, and the bleeding and being told you’re going to die and nobody has an answer. Can you hear me now?” “Oh, yeah, I can hear you. I can hear you loud and clear.” That’s what it felt like because I didn’t have an answer, and I didn’t have any way to handle that one on my own. A lot of crazy stuff happened to me in the hospital that wasn’t a coincidence.
Do you believe that there are no coincidences?
Yeah, I don’t think there are coincidences. I think there are lessons to be learned and people put in your path to help you with things you go through. I’ll give you an example. My entire life, I have weighed the same 162 pounds. I could eat like crazy or don’t eat anything at all. I always weigh the same. But right before I went into the hospital, right before this, I’d put on 17 pounds. It made no sense at all. I had to have those 17 pounds when I was in the hospital, or I would have died. When I got back out, I was 162 pounds.
There are lessons to be learned, and people are put in your path to help you through your experiences.
Oh, wow. It’s like a bear going into hibernation.
I saw on the scope the hole in my GI tract. It’s called a dieulafoys lesion, and it doesn’t heal fast. When they went back in after I took the IV of heparin and checked again, it was gone. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation or your listeners where you have thousands of people praying for you. I had never had that before. It is an amazingly humbling position to be in. It feels like I can’t let these people down. There’s a lot of people praying for me. It’s a different perspective.
I think I heard this before from psychic Michelle Whitedove: Group prayer can actually change the course of a hurricane.
I believe that there’s nothing it can’t do. But it’s weird when it’s you. It’s different when it’s someone else sitting in that bed. When you’re the one in the bed, and they’re telling you you’re going to die, a totally different animal. I was thinking, “I’m going to die from a freaking Advil.” That’s how I’m going to go out. I wasn’t even in pain. I didn’t feel anything. He walks in and says, “You’re going to die.” I’m like, “I can’t be. I’m not hurting.” But I was anyway. That’s how I ended up fully on this journey. I felt like I had someone tapping me on the shoulder.
If this hadn’t happened, would you still be a dentist?
Probably. I would have.
Knowing somebody's WHY allows you into that space of who they are and gives you the words to connect with them on a much deeper, much faster level to make better connections even faster. Share on X“Can you hear me now?”
Yeah, I would have tried to do both still. I walked away from a practice that was doing great. I worked three days a week and had four-day weekends every week. It’s what I wanted to do. But I don’t know if I would have had the guts, if you will, to walk away until I was forced.
Yeah, it’s funny you used that term.
It wasn’t easy to make that decision.
It takes a leap of faith.
I knew I was really good at that. I knew I’d spent 32 years becoming that dentist, gaining all those skills, and it’s hard to walk away from that. I’d invested 32 years of my life, millions of dollars, so much energy, and then to walk away to something I don’t know. I don’t know anything about what to do. I don’t know how to speak on stage. I don’t know how to develop software. I don’t know how to make all these connections. I don’t know who I need. I didn’t know anything about that.
And yet you did it because the universe conspires to make your personal legend a reality if you commit to it, like in the book The Alchemist.
It’s different talking about and hearing about it than when it’s you. Minor surgery is surgery on somebody else. If it’s on me, it’s major. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s major. It’s the same sort of thing with that. It sounds great when it’s someone else. “You’re walking away from what you’re doing. Are you kidding me? Why would you do that? You don’t know what you’re doing. You spend all that time.”
That’s not only the conversation I had in my own head, but it’s conversations people had with me, except for that one man. So, if there are listeners struggling with the decision to do what you were meant to do or keep doing what you’re doing, the leap of faith was worth it. The fulfillment, the enjoyment. Is it easy? No, it’s not easy. Did I make a lot of mistakes? Yes, I made a lot of mistakes. Did I waste a lot of money and time on different things? I didn’t know what I was. Yes. Was it perfect? No. But am I so glad I did it? Yes. Would I do it again now that I know what I know? Yes.
The proverb, “Leap and the net will appear.”
Exactly. And that’s kind of how it felt. So I met you. I’ve met so many wonderful people along this journey. I’ve connected with so many different groups of people. You know, now, in my dental practice, I was. Yes, I was helping a few thousand people. Now, I’ve helped many, many hundreds of thousands of people.
Wow.
The impact you can have in helping someone, at least in my case, is figuring out who they are, what they want to do with their life, and what direction to go. Every single day is full of ahas and fun. Right before our call, I did this with the marketing team of this biotech company. The excitement that they got, “Finally, finally, I know who I am. Finally, I can say it. I can tell someone who I am. Finally, I have the words to say to the world exactly who I am,” rocks their world. I get to do that every day. So, it’s been a scary, fun, and exciting new journey.
The impact you can have in helping someone is helping them figure out who they are, what they want to do with their lives, and what direction to take.
A few analogies or principles come to mind that are relevant to discuss based on your journey. One is this idea of the zone of excellence versus the zone of genius. That’s from Gay Hendricks. Another one is being a jack of all trades and a master of none. So, if you’re trying to spread yourself across multiple disciplines, be a dentist and be a change maker in the area of personal development and professional development, those are disparate things. Trying to do both at the same time wouldn’t be impactful in comparison to just going all in.
No. What happens is that you let a lot of people down. I worked in my dental practice with my brother, and I wasn’t there for him. I didn’t want to be there anymore. He knew I didn’t want to be there anymore—you could just see it. I wasn’t excited about the things I used to be excited about. I knew that I needed to leave. I used to go to all these very high-level training weekends, courses, or events, and I would see what dentists around the world were doing.
I said, “Man, I can’t wait to learn how to do that.” I went to one right before all of this, and I sat in the audience and said, “Man, what they’re doing is amazing, but I have zero interest in trying to learn that.” That’s when I knew I just needed to go. The people that are on both sides, you’re not helping either of them to the level that you can. So, it takes its toll on you. You’re doing twice the work with half the impact. You can’t be in both places at once.
You can’t do both things to the level that you really want. It was a blessing that happened to me because it forced me to decide to go all in, whatever that turned out to be. It’s way better. When I walked away from my dental practice, I hadn’t been back to it once. I don’t miss it. I miss the patients. I miss the people. I don’t miss the profession and doing it anymore. I was done. What I’m doing now is just so much fun.
And, of course, some parts of it are not always perfect, but you know it’s what you’re supposed to be doing. There is a lot to be said for that. Everything in my life has led up to this. All the training, things, people, and way all the stuff led up to this being the right choice. People can see it in me. My friends can see it in me. My family can see it in me. My wife and kids know, “You’re doing what you’re supposed to do. Before you were a dentist, it’s what you did. It’s not who you are.” And now I’m actually getting to be me.
But even when you were a dentist and studying dentistry, you were just not sure what you wanted to be. You were studying different disciplines and taking general classes, but now you can. But if you could have connected the dots, you would have recognized where it was all leading, like a divine conspiracy. But I’m curious. What is an example of something that now makes total sense that you were on some detour or strange trajectory or fascinated about something that was not necessarily part of the plan for your dentistry career?
I thought forever that I should have never been a dentist. Let’s go back to when we were in high school. One of the worst things I hated was when my parent’s friends came up to me and said, “What do you want to be?” I don’t know. I’m 16 years old. How am I supposed to know what I want to be for the rest of my life? “Well, where do you want to go to college? Why do you want to go to that college?” I don’t know. How am I supposed to know that?
I went where some of my friends were going, and you go to college. I went with a major of undeclared. How am I supposed to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life with what I’ve learned so far? I don’t know. I kept that as long as I could until I finally had to decide. I picked biology because it was what I had a really good grade in, and it seemed interesting. That holds them off for a little while.
Discovering your why can transform uncertainty into clarity and reveal your path forward. Share on XThen, “Well, what will you do with your biology degree?” I don’t know. What can I do with it? So, I just picked dentistry because my dad was a dentist, and I knew a bit about the lifestyle. It wasn’t a lifelong dream, but I had a great time there when I got into dental school. I had a great time learning. There’s so much learning to do; you’re helping people and growing. That aspect of it was wonderful. There were many times when I felt like I was playing small in being a dentist, and this wasn’t what I should have been doing. But when you look back on it, if I hadn’t picked dentistry, if I hadn’t felt the way that I was, if I weren’t getting the success that I thought I should, I never would have had the motivation to go down the path of what is my why.
Job dissatisfaction was a huge gift because it spurred you into some action.
Yes, it was. I don’t know that that would have happened otherwise. It might have, but I don’t know that. One of the nice things about being a dentist is that it gave me a nice lifestyle, allowing me to explore those other avenues. So, in essence, I should have been a dentist. I should have been on the path that I was on. But I didn’t know it, and I didn’t like not knowing that at the time. I don’t know why this is happening to me instead of for me.
“Why did I pick this? Why did I not know? How did I not know? How could I have not known? How could nobody help me? Why am I here? This isn’t the right path for me.” All those conversations go through your head every day. But now I’m so invested in it. After eight years of college, I now have a spouse, kids, house, cars, and stuff. You can’t walk out on them. I have responsibilities, expenses, and bills.
I can imagine some of your listeners have experienced this or are experiencing it, living it, or going on that path right now. I thought it was the wrong path when it was actually the path I had to go on. A friend of mine pointed that out to me. He and I grew up together, and he got involved in partying like crazy—drugs, alcohol, all that stuff. He hit rock bottom at age 22 or 23. He got involved in personal growth, got a mentor, got involved in real estate, and is now one of the biggest real estate guys here in New Mexico. But he found his “why” at 22 or 23. I didn’t find mine till 55. He’s had 40 years of runway to create and have the impact he’s wanted. I’ve had less than 10 years. So the earlier you find who you are and what you were put here to do, the longer the runway you’ll have to make that impact.
You don’t necessarily have to hit rock bottom or have a dark night of the soul. You could be more proactive, listening to the whispers, the still, small voice, and take powerful next action from that, rather than wait for a big, bright neon sign from the universe that you’re on the wrong path.
I agree with you. What I’ve seen and experienced is the downside of busyness. “I’m too busy. I have too much going on. I have too much on my plate. I don’t have time to think. I’m just trying to live.” It’s the do versus be. Sometimes, it takes, at least for some of us, that smack in the face, that beat down, to stop and say, “Can you hear me now? Are you listening? Are you just still doing it?”
When you mention the downside of busyness, I think of a book you may have read, Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. He also wrote Think and Grow Rich. Have you read either of those two books?
Yeah, Think and Grow Rich. I have it sitting around here somewhere right now.
The 13 principles. Amazing stuff. He wrote Outwitting the Devil and didn’t publish it. Then, after he passed, his widow didn’t publish it either, even though the manuscript was finished. She was afraid, and he was afraid when he was alive that, there’d be a lot of blowback. Like, “How dare you have a conversation with the devil and then publish that? This is witchcraft or sorcery, or this is the devil’s work,” or whatever.
In this conversation that Napoleon had with the devil, the devil shares some of his secrets to winning people over and weaning them off of the connection with the Creator and the heavens. That is the most powerful tool he has. It’s called The Drift. The Drift is not you just suddenly flipping to become dark or something. It’s just you become more and more asleep, more and more complacent, bit by bit.
That relates directly to the downside of busyness. When you get busy and complacent, you want to unwind. You kick off your shoes, binge, and watch some stupid Netflix nonsense that lowers your vibration. You don’t work on the really meaningful stuff and what you’re here for.
That’s very true. Busyness becomes like an addiction or whatever the word would be, but it becomes what allows me not to have to think about that stuff so that I can. “Well, I’m too busy to think about that now. I will when I have more time.” “So, how about if I give you a little time, and that’s kind of your little smack in the face that slows you down long enough to say, huh?” Am I really doing what I should be doing? Am I on the right path? Or am I doing things I shouldn’t be doing?
Well, that smack in the face can be a lot more painful than a Mack truck hitting you.
Yes. Or being told you’re going to die—more than an Advil.
I forget who gave the presentation, but it was many years ago, and he shared an analogy that the universe or God will drop these feathers that will land gently on your shoulder as little nudges, little hints, that you need to make a change or pursue something different or follow an intuition. Those are easy to ignore. If you ignore them, they will eventually turn into bricks. When the bricks land on you, those hurt. You can also ignore the bricks. If you ignore them long enough, then eventually, the Mack truck comes.
Set a goal to become a millionaire for what it makes of you to achieve it. Do it for the skills you have to learn and the person you have to become. – Jim Rohn
That’s pretty accurate. That was my journey right there. It led to a shift in direction. Once the direction was shifted, the focus became bringing the why and the WHY.os to the world is when things started to happen. I love that quote by Jim Rohn, “Set a goal for what it will make of you to achieve it.” That’s how it’s been, what I’ve had to become to do what I wanted.
So again, for all the listeners, set a goal for what it will make of you to achieve it. There was so much I didn’t know how to do. I didn’t know how to speak on a stage. I didn’t know how to do online marketing. I didn’t know how to do webinars. I didn’t know what to do. You don’t have to do any of that.
Before you knew how to do a root canal, you didn’t know how to do a root canal.
Exactly. So, it’s what I have to become in order to go where I want to go.
There’s this great quote. I think it’s in the Bible, or maybe it’s in the Talmud. That’s in the way that you want to go. In that way, you will be led. So, if somebody wants to go down a dark path, angels will be summoned and deployed to assist you on that dark journey. But if you want to go to the light and make some sort of revelation of light in the world, then you’ll be assisted in that way.
That’s why I think that’s valuable for the listeners. The fear that I don’t know enough, that I don’t have all the tools, that you’re not good enough, and all those other fears that come with it will be overcome when you set a goal. Depending on where you want to go, you will find a way to become more connected to what you need to get there.
And the dream that a goal could be seemingly impossible, yet everything’s possible.
Set a goal that scares the heck out of you. My vision for the WHY.os is to be the first step in self-awareness. There are many ways you could figure out who you are. You could use tools like Myers Briggs, Kolbe, StrengthsFinder, or DiSC. You could sit in the woods for a year. There’s so many different ways you could do it. But if you just start by finding your why, your how, and your what, it will make all the rest of that so much easier.
The fear that I don’t know enough, that I don’t have all the tools, that you’re not good enough, and all those other fears that come with it will be overcome when you set a goal.
My vision is to be the first step people take when figuring out who they are because it’ll make all the other methods even better, more powerful, and easier. My goal is to impact a billion people in the next 15 years. That’s a scary goal. I don’t know how I’m going to get there. I know I am. I don’t know how. Once I set that goal, I can’t tell you, Stephan, how many people have said, “I want to be part of that. I want to help you get there.”
It wouldn’t have excited me if I had set the goal to impact 10,000 people. I wouldn’t have to do anything different. I could have let it happen, but people wouldn’t have come to help me do that. But that’s scary stuff when I set it to impact a billion people. What do I have to become? How do I have to think differently? How does my team have to think differently in order to make that happen versus 10,000? Yes, we’re going to buy 10,000 on the way. We’re already way past that. It’s a scary thing to say. But it’s exciting to say, and it’s exciting to see who steps up with you and wants to go on the journey with you.
Earlier, I alluded to a divine conspiracy or divine setup. I want to circle back to that briefly and explore how you see it. In retrospect, you mentioned a couple of things in that whole hospital journey. One, you luckily woke up. So you said, “Luckily, I woke up.” Well, there’s no luck involved. That’s my opinion. I want to hear you talk about that for a minute.
You were in the bathroom, and you passed out, hit your head, and you luckily woke up. How did that occur for you? Do you think an angel poked you until you metaphorically woke up? And then the phone rings, and out of all the people that could have called you, it was your friend who was a cardiologist. That very much feels like divine intervention, too. So, yeah, just elaborate a bit on that.
Interestingly, I check into the error while sitting in the waiting room. I showed the nurse my phone a picture of when I got sick so she could see what it was. She said, “Oh, yeah, you have an upper GI bleed.” Well, then I went back into the triage area, and the doctor just handed me some pills and said, “Make sure you take these first.” I took them. I said, “What was that? What did I just take?” “I just gave you some aspirin.”
My vision is to be the first step people take when figuring out who they are because it’ll make all the other methods even better, more powerful, and easier.
I said, “Aspirin? I have an internal bleed, and you just gave me aspirin.” “Well, I thought you said you had chest pains.” I said, “I didn’t say I had chest pains. She asked me if I had chest pains, and I said no, but my neck hurt because I was getting sick so much, not chest pains. Now I have aspirin in my system, which makes you bleed more, right?” Blood thinner, which is exactly what I don’t need to take. Then they put me back out in the waiting room.
I’m the last person to get seen. I am 99% sure I’m the only one in the waiting area who had insurance with this hospital. Everybody else didn’t have any, and they all got seen before me, which couldn’t figure that one out. But I finally get checked in. I’m laying in the bed in my room, and the nurse comes in, and I said, “You know, I’m not dumb to all this medical stuff because I am a dentist. Is somebody going to come and help get this bleed stopped?”
She said, “We can’t get ahold of anybody until the morning.” I said, “By the morning, I will be dead. Look at my vital signs. I will be dead by the time they get here.” “We can’t get a hold of them right now.” I said, “I need somebody to help me now, or I’m not going to make it.” She says, “Well, I’ll try to get somebody.” They let me up, and I went to the restroom. When I locked the door and passed out, when I woke up, the very first thing I saw was I was lying on my arm.
For those who can’t see me, the first thing I see when I wake up is a wristband that says, “fall risk.” Do you know what that means? It means you can’t go anywhere by yourself. But they let me go by myself, and I passed out and, like I said, woke up, opened the door, and fell back asleep. About six months later, I’m in a golf tournament, and the guy I played against that day says, “Hey, tonight, I want to introduce you to my wife.”
At that event that night, he says, “My wife is a doctor over at Pres Hospital.” I said, “Pres? I just spent a lot of time in there.” She goes, “You did? What happened?” And I started telling her, and she goes, “That was you?” I said, “What do you mean?” She goes, “I was the doctor that was walking down the hall when they had put you in that bed, and they were letting you die. I walked in, and you weren’t hooked up to anything. I got everything hooked back up.”
She told me everything she had made happen, but everybody was freaked out, running around and yelling, and nobody was helping me. The odds that it’s my buddy’s wife that I just happened to meet, and she happens to be walking by when I needed that help again is another one of those things that just doesn’t fit together. Every step along the way that happened to me, things that, like I said, with my buddy that calls me, he hasn’t ever.
He hadn’t reached out to me in years. Yet there, he sees me, has my number, calls me, and takes over. A lot of things happened to keep me here for a reason. Because when I finally got out of the hospital, that same doctor called me, and he said, “Gary, I couldn’t tell you this when you were in the hospital, but if you weren’t in the shape that you’re in, you would have died. Most people who went through what you just went through don’t make it.”
I was put on the ICU floor. There are no showers in the bathrooms in the ICU. Do you know why? Because you don’t make it out of the ICU. There’s no reason to shower. That’s uncomfortable knowing you’re in a room you’re not supposed to ever make it out of. It was just a lot of things that happened in a row that gave me the major smack in the head to this, “You’re not on the right path. You need to change directions.”
For our listener who may be a little bit uncomfortable about their own path, perhaps because they recognize or maybe relate to your story of not paying attention to the signs, getting comfortable or not getting uncomfortable enough and kind of maybe complacent with their current trajectory, what is a powerful positive next action that they can take? I know I’m setting you up for this. I know it’s going to be perhaps an eight-minute task for them. What’s that thing they’re going to do that will give them some much-needed clarity and direction?
People don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are. Help them figure out who they are. It’s easy to help them figure out what they want. Take the steps to figure out who you are. If you don’t take the WHY Discovery I developed, find another way. Pick a path. Figure out who you are so you can figure out why you were put here. You can figure out what you want, decide, take action, and move in the right direction.
People don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are.
You’re gifting our listeners that eight-minute WHY Discovery tool. I don’t see any reason they would find a different method or modality. They should do this first, and if it doesn’t resonate, they can try something else. But I see no downside, only upside. They will potentially reap a huge upside with a minimum commitment or investment.
I feel the same way. I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to sell somebody something.
But you’re selling them on something free. This is a no-brainer to me. I’ve taken the assessment and gone through the process, so I know my why, how, and what. You can share some of the insights from my assessment with our listeners.
So your audience knows you went through discovering your why, how, and what. Your why is to contribute to a greater cause, add value, and have an impact on the lives of others. If you have a pen or paper, write Stephan’s “why:” to contribute to a greater cause. His “how” is to challenge the status quo and think differently. His “what” is to create trusting relationships or be the trusted source. So let’s go through that.
Stephan’s “why” is to contribute to a greater cause and have an impact on the lives of others. That means that he uses his time, money, energy, connections, and resources to push other people forward, to be that pebble that starts the ripple effect that goes on and on in the lives of others when they do better, feels like he does better. How does that feel to you, Stephan?
It’s spot on. And just one small example of that. Maybe not small, but this podcast, which I’ve been doing for nine years and have invested nine years and multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in this podcast, and I will continue to double down on it. It’s a labor of love. I haven’t made any money off of it. I can point to a few clients for my SEO agency that have come out of it, but for the most part, it’s been an expense, a cost center, and I’m not going to quit anytime soon because of that. That’s not the point. That’s not why I do it.
If everything in your life—your passion, purpose, direction, messaging, marketing, and branding—is based on your why, you must get it right. Share on XThat’s Stephan’s why. How he does that is by challenging the status quo and thinking differently. He doesn’t follow traditional paths. He does it his way. He doesn’t follow the recipe. He may follow for a little, but he will put his “Stephan stuff” in there. He thinks outside the box. He pushes limits and imagines the extraordinary. He gets people to think outside of the box they put themselves in so that ultimately, what he brings is to create trusting relationships, to be that trusted source, to be the one that others can count on, to be the one that’s going to be their trusted guide, to take them where they want to go. How does that feel to you?
Yeah, it’s spot on. An example of me challenging the status quo is all the episodes in the last several years about psychic abilities. Some people probably have left my community because of that. That’s okay. They weren’t meant for me then, and I wasn’t meant for them. But my position is that we are all psychic. I believe that with my whole heart, that’s true. That certainly goes against the status quo. That goes against conventional wisdom, and it probably sounds a bit crackpot to a lot of people.
You were going against the status quo before your new way of going against the status quo, right? When you were the opposite of that.
Well, I was very much into biohacking before that and had many biohacking guests talking about how broken the disease maintenance system, also known as our healthcare system, is and how to be the CEO of your own health. That’s another way I challenged the status quo before all the psychic stuff, which happened because of a spiritual experience that most of my listeners were familiar with back in 2021.
But before that, yeah, biohacking. Because I saw it as an important resource and consciousness shift for people. Before that, I studied personal development, mindset, and all that sort of stuff to knock people out of their comfort zone. Because I got knocked out of my comfort zone, it changed my life. It saved my life.
And before your spiritual awakening, you were kind of the opposite of spiritual awakening, right?
I was agnostic for 42 years—very disconnected. I know what that’s like. I know how lonely it is when you feel the universe is not friendly. It’s at best indifferent, if not malevolent because I was there.
That’s not typical or traditional. Ultimately, though, you bring that trusted source, the person you’re there for. You keep secrets. You are a confidant. You are someone that people can reach out to, and you’re going to be that trusted guide for them.
People really do believe that I care and sense that I care. They feel that because I really do. I’m not just positioning or providing a throwaway message of availability and interest in other people’s lives and best outcomes.
So, for the listeners, how long would it have taken me or anyone else to know that Stephan wants to help others and have a bigger impact by getting them to think outside their box and being that trusted source? How many conversations would I have had with him to know that about him? Would I ever know that? What would have to happen for me to know that? What kind of experiences would we have?
I don’t meet with anybody in person, on Zoom, or anywhere else unless I know their WHY.os. What are we going to talk about? I won’t even know who I’m talking to. I’m going to have to rely on hope. Well, I sure hope I figure out who they are.
Or you can rely on your psychic abilities and then ask me about my psychic abilities. You can get the questions from above, like I do. I don’t have any prepped questions for my guests. I tune in and get guidance on what to ask while the conversation flows.
But if you want to connect and help someone in a way that they want to be helped. Everybody knows the golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. But the odds that Stephan and I want to be treated the same way are very low. But now that I know who I’m talking to, I know his language. I know the words he needs to hear to feel heard. I know what’s going on behind the eyeballs, so I can connect in a way that’s valuable to him versus just me.
Imagine one person who speaks only Spanish and one who speaks only English. What kind of conversation can they have? How deep can they go when they don’t speak each other’s language? Knowing somebody’s WHY.os allows you to understand who they are and gives you the words to connect with them on a much deeper, much faster level so that you can make better connections even faster.
It seems like a no-brainer that every person on a CEO or business owner’s team should take the WHY Discovery. Then, the CEO would align that person’s why, how and what with their job, duties and responsibilities.
There’s a big difference between being able to do something and loving what you do.
Exactly. And almost the opposite, which is finding a job. Here’s what we need that person to do. Here’s the right WHY.os for that. There’s a big difference between being able to do something and loving what you do—totally different things. Let’s say you show up at my business, fill out your resume, and put it on there, “I’m good with numbers.” “Hey, wonderful. Stephan is going to be our new bookkeeper. We found our new bookkeeper.” How long are you going to have the energy to be a bookkeeper?
For me, five seconds.
Five seconds. But based on your resume and capabilities, you could be a great bookkeeper. Based on your WHY.os, you’d hate it. You just wouldn’t have any energy. You could do it really well, but you just wouldn’t want to, so you’d run out of energy. You figure out what you want done and then find somebody who will love doing it. Not based on whether they can do it but on whether they want to do it. That’s how you build an inspired team. That’s how you put the right people on the bus and in the right seat. That’s a great concept, but not easy to do unless you know their why, how, and what.
So there are nine different whys. My why is to contribute to a greater cause. What are the other eight?
There are nine whys; one is your why, one is your how and one is your what. In fact, the WHY.os Discovery that I developed is not just like a little quiz. There are over 4,000 possible question options, and I use logic-based programming, so you’ll need to answer about 30 to 35 questions. But it goes all nine levels deep and puts them in order from most important to least important. The top three are your why, how and what.
The first one is “contribute.” The second one is “trust,” which is what you need to create relationships based on trust. The third is to “make sense of the complex and challenging.” The fourth one is to “find a better way and share it,” which is my why. The fifth is to “do things the right way to get predictable results.” The sixth is “challenge,” which is your “how”—to challenge the status quo and think differently. Think outside the box and push limits. The seventh is to “seek mastery and understanding.” Dive in deep and look for the nuances. The eighth one is “clarify,” which means to make things clear and understandable, first for yourself and then for others. Then the last one is to “simplify to decrease complexity. Make it easier to understand, easier to do.”
Here’s the other thing, Stephan. What does a dentist know about figuring any of that out? I didn’t figure it out. I figured out the questions to ask, but the results kept coming back the same. So, I didn’t take the results that I was getting and put them through my language. For example, you and I go out for a hamburger or a meal, and I say, “Stephan, how’s your hamburger?” And you say, “My hamburger sucks.” I said, “Oh, sounds like you don’t like it very much.” He’d say, “No, that’s not what I said. I said, my hamburger sucks.” If I don’t use the words that you say, you don’t think I heard you. Everything about those nine whys came from what people said. It was not my interpretation of what they said, not my filtering of it, but the actual words they used and their descriptions came from exactly what they said. That’s why it resonates. That’s why the two most common words I hear every day are exactly what you said. I say, “How does that feel?” “Spot on.” I hear that all day, every day.
When you told me earlier in this conversation that you got to, let’s say, 80% accuracy for a while, to get to near 100%, you had to get lots and lots of this data and then find the commonalities and all that.
Your why is housed in the limbic part of your brain. That part is responsible for feelings like loyalty and trust.
Here’s something that might be valuable for your listeners. Once I figured out the nine whys, I got to those whys through stories. Your why is housed in the limbic part of your brain. That’s like the middle part of your brain. That part of the brain is responsible for feelings like loyalty and trust. 100% of decision-making happens there, but it doesn’t have the capacity for language. So you can’t tell somebody why you feel a certain way. You just do.
The only way I could get to your why was through stories. You would tell me story after story, and I could see the pattern in the story. It’s very time-consuming and mind-numbing to listen to all these stories. Once I got to the nine whys and figured out there were nine whys, I figured a different way to get to them that didn’t require stories, didn’t require listening to, didn’t require interpretation. That’s what’s made it so accurate.
If you’re listening to this right now and you have your own process, figuring out a way to get to the answer without having to be there becomes infinitely more valuable and scalable. If I’m the only one who can help someone figure out their why, which I used to think. You should think, “Oh, I’m special. I’m the special one.” I put in 10,000 hours, and I did all this. I’m the only one, nobody else can do it. And I thought that for a while until a friend said, “If that’s true, how big of an impact are you ever going to make?”
I thought, “Huh, well, maybe it isn’t true then.” Then, I mind-mapped my whole process, taught other people how to do it, and got more data. I figured out a different way to get there, where it was all about what those people would say instead of the stories they would tell. What are the words that you would use? If you’re listening and you have a process, a system that you want to take to more people, figure a way to get to it that doesn’t require you to be there, and then you can license it or give it or whatever you want to do to other people to use.
What happened to me the first time was that I taught a lot of coaches to do what I was doing, and then they took my process and made a little tweak and said, “Oh, it’s my process now.” It drove me crazy. I was like, “No, that’s not the right way. You can’t do it. That won’t get you what you think it will get you.” And yeah, now you call it your process, but it’s not very valuable. So once I turned it into software, I knew it was 100% accurate and could license it to anybody.
And if they screwed it up, I just turned it off, and they can’t do it anymore. But I gave it to them at a price point and in a way where they can now use it everywhere as their tool, as the first step in working with them. And then they have all the other stuff they do on their own that I have nothing to do with. The rest of the process is all of them. The first part is systematized so that I know they will get the right result immediately.
And now I can speak, you know, like right before I saw you a genius, I spoke to an audience of a couple thousand, and they all discovered their why, so now I can help them do it versus talk about it. They don’t need another person to tell them, “You need to know your why,” and not have a way to actually do it. Everyone talks about it. Simon Sinek, Tony Robbins, and Michael Hyatt talk about it. I could go on and on. Friedrich Nietzsche.
All these people talk about the value of knowing your why, but no one’s ever helped you figure out how to do it, how to get it, and how to have it. That’s what I did. That’s why I feel like it’s something I have to do and bring to the world—solve one of life’s most challenging questions. Now, you can actually have it as well. So take it. I will give everybody the why so you can figure out your why. The WHY.os is the next step up. If you want it, you’ll see there’s a really inexpensive way to do that, too. But you’re going to get the WHY for free. Everybody’s getting it.
Awesome. Where do we send them?
It’ll be your gift to them on how they can find their why. If they want to take it further, they can get to their why, how, and what. And if they want to go further past that, there’s a way to get all nine levels deep—something else I’ll put in there for. I created a clone and put over 4 million pieces of data into that clone.
I wish I could be with every one of you, but since I can’t, I’ll give you access to my clone, where you can ask me any question about your why. “Hey, my why is challenge. What does that mean? What should I be looking out for?
For example, what career choices would be great for me, and what wouldn’t be? Maybe I’m looking to date somebody with this “why.” Would that make sense?” There are so many questions you can ask me that will allow you to take it even further since I can’t personally be with every one of you.
Sounds great.
Anything we didn’t talk about? A lot, I’m sure.
Plenty. But I think this is a great place to leave our listener to. Now, take action. Take your free assessment. Go through that process and identify that “why” to get alignment in your life.
Just so they know, it won’t be free if they just go to the website. It’s not free to anybody else, but it will be free to your listeners who have listened to the podcast. It’ll be your gift to them.
Awesome. This was such an inspiring and powerful story about finding your purpose, following it even when it was uncomfortable, and reaching the brink. You probably wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t made a shift. Thank you for sharing with such candor, vulnerability and love.
I haven’t shared this on a podcast before in this way, so I’m glad I got a chance to talk because somebody will be out there in the same spot. At least, that’s what I’m assuming.
Thank you, Gary, and thank you, listener. Thank you for being part of my tribe and wanting to make the world better. We’ll catch up with you in the next episode. In the meantime, have a fantastic week. This is your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.
