FROM UNDERDOG TO ENTREPRENEURIAL ICON | DEAN GRAZIOSI | SHEKHAR NATARAJAN

Dean Graziosi (0:00)

Take uncomfortable action. What you do when no one's watching is really who you are, and know that if you stay persistent, there's no way you can't reach your goals.

Shekhar Natarajan (0:14)

Your story is a remarkable story of an underdog. But if you were not an underdog, would the story have been the same?

Dean Graziosi (0:30)

I think if your purpose is deep enough, your fear can never be strong enough.

Shekhar Natarajan (0:40)

I always use this, like when people ask me, I use this line quite often. I say, poverty was my origin story, not my destiny.

Dean Graziosi (0:55)

I keep that as an edge. I just, it stays in me because I wear a T-shirt every day of my life. I drive a pickup truck, but I probably keep that underdog edge. Maybe it got me here. I'm afraid to lose.

Shekhar Natarajan (1:23)

Welcome to yet another episode of Tomorrow, Today with Shekhar Natarajan. It's my incredible honor to have Dean Graziosi on my show. He's basically a legend, probably most of you know.

But there are many stories that I could relate with Dean, like the underdog story, the guy he's become. He's an inspiration for many.

Dean, I know that there's a new book coming out. I congratulate you on that. But before all of that, I just wanted to get to know Dean as raw as I could probably get to know. Then we can talk about your book and all of the stuff. There's a lot of stuff which has been already written about you and a lot of things that you have actually shared with people. But I would like to unpack who you are as a person, and which is like you're a wonderful human being, and I just want to get to know you more.

Dean Graziosi (2:16)

Thank you for that. I appreciate it and I look forward to it.

Shekhar Natarajan (2:21)

Dean, a lot of people have heard your stories about your mother and your father. Rarely, they have heard stories about your grandfather.

How did he come about in the United States, the role that he had to play in your life, and all of that. So just take me to your origin stories of immigration, and how your dad, your mom, and others I've heard enough. I guess like you talked a little bit about your grandfather.

Dean Graziosi (2:54)

Sure.

I think my grandfather's had an impact on my life, and though I never met him. I met all my other grandparents except for him. He died when I was four years old.

But he's had an impact on my life because to think that, I went back to Italy 10 years ago. I took my father to Italy, to the little town that my grandfather left, his dad. And the Graziosi family, my family still lives in the same house. And they told us the story, now my dad had heard the story, but now we got it from the relatives on the ground that were told the story. But he left this little town, Sterno, Italy, and the only thing his father could give him was a donkey.

And he took the donkey and went into town, sold the donkey, still didn't have enough money to buy a ticket to the United States. So he made a deal to give the money he had and to shovel coal in the coal engine at the bottom of the boat and got a ride to America. And I just picture, Shekhar, I picture this man landing in Ellis Island in New York City, didn't speak the language, not one penny in his pocket, no relatives there. And he was the crazy one in the family that left. They said that it was, they never heard from him again. They always wondered what happened to him in the States. He was the one that left when everybody stayed. And I just think of that innovation that, like what I also thought is he wanted a better life for himself, but he had to be selfless knowing it would probably take a whole generation for him to be able to hand off something. So I have so much gratitude for this man who I've never met. He just left this little town. He came to the United States, started as a gardener, then a landscaper, then he had his own landscaping business. And by the time it got to me, two generations, not five, two generations later, I get to partner with Tony Robbins and Matthew McConaughey and do all these great things that, of course, is a journey in itself that we can talk about. But it just gives me this feeling of the, and I don't know if I'm going to say this properly, but kind of the immigrant story, the chance where you don't have the resources, so you have to learn to be massively resourceful. And I just always think if that man could get dropped off, they barely could not speak the language and not have money, and his grandchildren could live the life like me and my sister do, then how could I not be resourceful with everything at my fingertips? How can I not look at what I don't have? How does it make me look at the opportunities I had that he never did and he made it? So he's had an impact on my life and I never met the man.