The argument in one line.
The most successful people solve bigger problems than others, so instead of wishing for fewer problems, you should build the capacity to handle larger ones.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You're employed full-time in a corporate or bureaucratic environment and feel stuck, invisible, or like your ideas don't matter despite performing well.
- An early-stage entrepreneur or creator who's hit a wall after initial success and needs permission to reframe problems as a sign of progress, not failure.
- You're considering a leap from employment to self-employment and want a mental model for why the discomfort and uncertainty actually predict success.
SKIP IF…
- You've already built and scaled multiple seven-figure businesses — this is foundational mindset work, not advanced operator strategy.
- You're looking for tactical systems, frameworks, or step-by-step processes rather than philosophical reorientation on how successful people think.
The full version, fast.
The mindset shift that separates millionaires from everyone else is not wanting fewer problems — it's wanting the capacity to handle bigger ones. The most successful person in any room is defined by the size of problems they can solve, not the absence of problems. Four frameworks anchor the interview: problem-size thinking reframes failure as capacity-building; the success tax frames setbacks as the price of admission for bigger outcomes; modeling proven practices accelerates the path by borrowing what already works instead of reinventing it; and AI functions as the new tractor — a leverage multiplier that makes the average person capable of output that previously required a team. The owner mindset, as distinct from the employee mindset, is trained comfort with operating without guardrails and reorienting quickly when conditions change.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00hostMau Montaner
00:00guestDean Graziosi
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:38
01 · Cold open: deeper fail = quicker success
Montage of Dean's keystone lines - bigger problems, the most successful person solves bigger problems, what if you wished to handle bigger ones.
00:41 – 01:27
02 · Employee vs. owner mindset
Mau asks what separates the two. Dean reframes the difference as time horizon - career feels safer with guardrails, but big-company bureaucracy makes your great idea invisible.
01:27 – 02:55
03 · Roller coaster analogy
Owner mindset = the scary roller coaster, no guardrails. Career mindset = the little kid roller coaster. Dean stress-tests this with the COVID pivot - 'we are done. Oh no, no, we switched, we are virtual.'
02:55 – 04:00
04 · Re-hook + 'I am the problem solver'
Dean re-airs the bigger-problems framework word-for-word and lands it with his inner self-statement: 'I am the problem solver.' Functions as the mid-video re-hook.
04:00 – 06:00
05 · Childhood: parents married 9 times, moved 20 times by 19
Origin story. Twin-brothers parable - same alcoholic father, opposite outcomes. 'With a father like mine, what else could I do?' Each moment can be the thing that holds you back, or drives you forward.
06:00 – 08:00
06 · Success tax
Dean's central reframe. Twenty unknown checkboxes between you and the breakthrough. When something sucks, you are not stuck - you are paying box #7 of 17. 'Aren't we really just who we believe we are?'
08:00 – 10:15
07 · The cheat code: model proven practices
The Brazilian rainforest analogy. 20-mile trek to a sacred place. People charge into the woods, get bit by spiders, run back out. The cheat code: pay $5 for the map from someone who has walked it for 20 years.
10:15 – 11:20
08 · AI as the new tractor
Setup. Most artists fear AI will take their humanity. Dean's pivot: AI can make you more human. You can't avoid it; avoiding widens the gap.
11:20 – 12:50
09 · Tractor + internet inflections
1800s farmer: 40 hours per acre by hand vs. 30 minutes with a tractor - compounding leverage forces you out of business. Internet was the same. AI is the third inflection.
12:50 – 14:20
10 · Context-loaded AI = smartest business partner in history
Most people use AI like a brilliant employee with zero context. Dean's pitch: spend an hour loading your story, values, constraints, goals - turns generic AI into the smartest business partner imaginable. (Soft pitch for Mastermind event.)
14:20 – 15:41
11 · Close: if your maker showed you the video
Final reframe - imagine your maker plays you the video of the man you could have been. Which life do you choose? Wish granted: you can decide today. What do you say no to? What do you say yes to?
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The most successful person in any room is the one who solves bigger problems — not the one with fewer problems.
- What if you didn't wish for less problems? What if you wished for the ability to handle bigger ones?
- As you get more successful, your problems don't shrink — they get bigger, which is the metric most people misread as failure.
- The employee mindset has guardrails — like a children's roller coaster that can't fall off; the owner mindset trains you to be okay without them.
- Most people start their career fully intending to run the company someday — bureaucracy is what makes great ideas invisible and ambition disappear.
- The success tax is real: every level of success you reach brings a new set of problems, costs, and responsibilities you didn't have before — and you'd better be ready to pay.
- You could go through the hardest moments of your business again today — but you would not stress the same way, because you now know you survive them.
- AI is the new tractor: it doesn't replace the farmer, it multiplies what one person can cultivate — refusing to use it is the equivalent of insisting on a hand plow.
- Modeling proven practices means starting with what already works, then adding your innovations — not starting from scratch in an area where someone else has paid the tuition already.
Bigger problems are the destination, not the obstacle
What it teaches
Four reframes — bigger problems, success tax, model proven practices, and AI as leverage — that together explain why the path to breakthrough always runs through difficulty first.
01Cold open: deeper fail = quicker success
- The most successful person in any room is the one solving the largest problems, not the one who has avoided them.
- Wishing for fewer problems is the wrong prayer — the useful ask is for the capacity to handle bigger ones.
02Employee vs. owner mindset
- Career paths can feel safe because they have structure, but that same structure tends to make great ideas invisible inside large organizations.
03Roller coaster analogy
- The owner mindset is not fearlessness — it is a trained tolerance for operating without guardrails and adapting when the plan collapses.
04Re-hook + 'I am the problem solver'
- Naming yourself the problem solver — even silently — is a practiced identity shift, not a personality trait some people have and others don't.
05Childhood: parents married 9 times, moved 20 times by 19
- Every formative hardship is either an anchor or fuel — the same circumstances produce opposite outcomes depending solely on the frame applied.
06Success tax
- The success tax reframe converts setbacks from evidence of failure into checkboxes on a fixed list — knowing you're on box seven of seventeen changes how the difficulty feels.
07The cheat code: model proven practices
- Uncertainty about how to start is the primary reason people stay where they are — finding someone who has already done it replaces the paralyzing question of how with a map.
- Modeling someone who has walked the path for twenty years does not eliminate the effort required — you still need hunger and the will to keep going — it just removes the part where you get bit by spiders.
08AI as the new tractor
- The tractor and the internet were both dismissed as threats before becoming requirements — ignoring the current inflection point does not make it go away, it just widens the gap.
09Tractor + internet inflections
- AI does not replace the human or creative dimension of work — it eliminates the boring, repetitive, and administrative layer that consumes time without adding meaning.
10Context-loaded AI = smartest business partner in history
- Generic AI gives generic answers; context-loaded AI — fed your history, values, goals, and constraints — functions as the most informed thinking partner you have ever had.
11Close: if your maker showed you the video
- The choice between safety and the version of yourself you could become is not hypothetical — it is made in ordinary moments, by what you say yes and no to today.
Terms worth knowing.
- Success tax
- The idea that a fixed number of setbacks, failures, and self-doubt episodes must be worked through before a major breakthrough arrives, reframing each hardship as a checkbox on the path to success rather than a reason to quit.
- Model proven practices
- A learning shortcut where instead of figuring out a new skill or business from scratch, you find someone already succeeding at it and copy the steps, tools, and decisions they used to get there.
- Owner mindset
- An orientation in which a person accepts the absence of guardrails, takes responsibility for outcomes, and pursues their own vision, contrasted with an employee mindset focused on safety and incremental advancement inside a company structure.
Things they pointed at.
07:38storyTwin-brothers / alcoholic-father parable
Lines you could clip.
00:07
“The deeper you fail, the quicker you're gonna get the success.”
00:32
“What if you didn't wish for less problems? What if you wished to have the ability to handle bigger problems?”
04:07
“I'd rather get to the end of your life and be like, maybe I didn't get as successful as I want, but I lived it. I squeezed the juice out of all of it.”
05:55
“What if you were actually paying your success tax?”
07:17
“Aren't we really just who we believe we are?”
08:02
“The biggest thing that stops all of us is the word how.”
10:12
“We're not the smartest people in the world. We just find the best in the world with what they do and model them.”
13:49
“In an hour, you go from a generic AI that gives you a little bit better answers to the smartest business partner you could ever have in history of the world.”
15:25
“What do you need to say no to today? What do you need to say yes to today?”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 00:41denseBigger problems mindset (cold-open + setup)
00:41 – 02:55denseEmployee vs. owner mindset
02:55 – 04:00steadyRe-hook + problem-solver identity
04:00 – 05:55steadyOrigin story + twin-brothers parable
05:55 – 08:00denseSuccess tax reframe
08:00 – 10:15denseModel proven practices (rainforest map)
10:15 – 14:20denseAI as the next inflection
14:20 – 15:41steadyClose: maker's video + wish granted
Word for word.
metaphoranalogystory
00:00The more you put yourself out there, and I wanna tell you for your success, the more you take on bigger challenges. The deeper you fail, the quicker you're gonna get the success.
00:11Hell, I love. People think as you get more successful, you don't have as many problems. They get bigger.
00:17Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah.
00:19And what I always say is if I'm in a room with successful people, I know the most successful person in the room solves bigger problems than everybody else.
00:28Mhmm. So here's something that'll blow your mind. What if you didn't wish for less problems?
00:34What if you wished to have the ability to handle bigger problems?
00:41You know, you talk a lot about the difference between having an employee mindset and an owner mindset.
00:48Mhmm. And I always while reading that, it caused me an immense curiosity to know how you got to that, but also what what that difference looks like. Like, what does an employee mindset
01:02look like different to how an owner mindset looks like? Thank God for people who decide to go all in on a career. Mhmm.
01:10Or you and I couldn't build what we built. And especially if you provide a place where they can grow and impact have impact and escalate with with raises and and, uh, responsibilities, the difference to me is time.
01:24Because I believe that most of us start, and again, this is just my perception. Yeah. I think most of us start with a similar mindset.
01:31Meaning, you go into a career and say, I'm gonna go in this, I am gonna kick butt in this job. They are gonna notice me.
01:38Mhmm. They're gonna see me. They're gonna promote me.
01:41I'm gonna be a manager. I'm gonna run this. Maybe I even run this company.
01:44Yeah. And unfortunately, so many bigger companies are set up with such bureaucracy 100%.
01:50That you get lost, and your great idea becomes invisible. You gotta live into your full potential.
01:56So I so I feel the difference is career feels a little safer.
02:01Yeah. It's got some guardrails. You can't fall off the cliff.
02:04It's like that meme. It's like the little kid roller coaster. You hope it goes well, but it continues to go up.
02:09On the other side, the the the creator, the innovator, the entrepreneur mindset, the owner mindset, you train yourself to be okay without guardrail. You know that it's not the little kid roller coaster.
02:19It's the scary one that goes, I got this. There's no problem. It's all gonna crash.
02:22How can I do this? You know, COVID came. We're done.
02:24Oh, no. No. We switched.
02:25We're virtual. We got this. We could do good.
02:27No. No. No.
02:27Nobody wants to watch virtual. Like, it's like, how many times in your career let me ask you.
02:33Were you like, we finally got this. We are dialed. And three months, six months later, you're like, what am I doing?
02:39Why did I take this debt? Why am I doing this thing? Nobody's gonna come.
02:42How many times have you experienced them? It's more than I can tell you. I don't remember going through it.
02:46Could you go through it again? A thousand percent. Would you stress the same?
02:49No. K. It's Especially knowing what I know now.
02:52So the part I wanna share is that an owner mindset, entrepreneur mindset, you start having the nerve to go after your dreams, and whether they win or lose, you win.
03:04And if you love it, don't don't feel bad for that. I'm talking about those that are in a job that wake up every day and go, alright.
03:12I'll get through it. And you wake up, you're 55, and you're like, the hell happened? Kids are out of the house.
03:17I'd rather get to the like I said, I'd rather get to the end of your life and be like, maybe I didn't get as successful as I want, but I lived it. Yeah. Yeah.
03:22Yeah. I squeezed the juice out of all of it. Right?
03:25I love that. So the more you put yourself out there, the more you take on bigger challenges.
03:32The deeper you fail, the quicker you're gonna get the success. People think as you get more successful, you don't have as many problems.
03:41They get bigger. And what I always say is if I'm in a room with successful people, I know the most successful person in the room solves bigger problems than everybody else.
03:50So here's something that'll blow your mind, maybe. Take one thing from this podcast, take this.
03:56What if you didn't wish for less problems? What if you wished to have the ability to handle big ones? Something goes wrong in a boardroom, was like, do we do?
04:04Walk in. I got this one. Give it to me.
04:05I love that. The building's on fire, he's running out. I'm running to make sure we got everything done.
04:09I'm the I I solve problems. I literally I don't say that out loud, but that's one of my inner self beings. It's one of my I am the problem solver.
04:19Tell me about your childhood. How how was that? How'd you go from from your childhood to where you're at now?
04:26You know, everybody has their story. For me, my parents were married nine times between the two of them.
04:32I moved 20 times by the time I was 19. I I'd go to school some days without lunch money when I was living with my dad, and I would just tell my friends, hey, I'm just not hungry. No.
04:41I'm I'm trying to get ripped or some I'd make something up, but my dad didn't have the dollar for lunch money that day. Right? And I think as you look at this, and this this is something I think is really important.
04:51Each one of those moments can be the thing that held you back, or each one of those moments could be the thing that drives you forward.
04:59And I'm not trying to oversimplify it, but I'm gonna tell a simple little story that I heard ages ago. Twin boys. Okay.
05:05One of them is in jail, in and out of doing drugs, in and out of trouble, was in jail. They said, and the other brother became really successful, married, happy family, doing really well with his own business. They interviewed both.
05:17Their father was a severe alcoholic that used to beat him. They interviewed the kid in jail Mhmm. The man in jail and said, what happened?
05:23Why are you in jail? And he said, with a father like mine, where else could my life go? And when they interviewed the successful brother, he said, with a father like mine, what else could I do?
05:32I, uh, I'm here with my daughter. I've I have four children. I'm married.
05:35Feel blessed. Married to the love of my life. And I watched so much dysfunction that I just decided God gave me an example of what not to do.
05:43Yeah. And I could use that as fuel or I could use that as an anchor. But what if all the stuff you went through was actually designed for you for a bigger reason?
05:52And I've used this word that somebody told me about twenty years ago. What if you were actually ? But it was a journey.
05:58It was. There was times you thought about quitting. Right?
06:01A thousand percent. Many times. Times you maybe compared yourself to your dad.
06:05True? I just need to do something completely different because I don't wanna be in the shadow. I'm just making stuff.
06:09Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
06:09Right? And I believe, what if God, the universe, whatever you believe, has a checklist? And there's 20 things that you have to check off paying your success tax before you get the huge breakthrough where you impact lives, change the world.
06:22Yeah. And you don't know how many. Maybe maybe you have to go through 20.
06:26Maybe I have to go through 30. Maybe one of the guys here has to go through three. Right?
06:30But what if, you know, he's been thinking a lot about because his dad's innocent. I'm making this up. Yeah.
06:35Yeah. Yeah. And he's thinking about quitting, but he still got up and did it.
06:39You know, didn't have the money for the studio, but found the money. Even though somebody let him down and the builder took their down payment, he still got up and he's doing it himself. Check.
06:47And what if you look at it and go, the situation I'm going through sucks. What if you just thought this doesn't feel good? What if I'm checking another box of how many I love that.
06:57Success tax I gotta pay? And what I always say is, what if there's an absolute number?
07:02I gotta get through 17 self doubt and failures. Number 18 I got chills talking. Yeah.
07:07Yeah. Number 18 is my turn. When you look at it differently, you go, this one sucks, but that's number seven.
07:13Let's go. I'm closer. Yeah.
07:14Right? And and I realized as a kid that I started I I found a way to do that. And I I wasn't a study of anybody.
07:21I just got lucky in that way where I was like, this stinks, but what if it's building my character? What if it's making me stronger?
07:29And aren't we really just who we believe we are?
07:32I was very curious to ask you if you thought that maybe that's how finding your purpose also looks like. If you think that maybe we need to take action
07:42and then figure out what that why is or what your purpose is. How how do you think that looks like that? You want the cheat code?
07:49I do. Please. The absolute cheat code.
07:51This is when we're not taught in school. That's why my 19 year old daughter's with me here today, and I love she's working with me because she gets to see real life stuff. You know what the cheat code is?
08:02Find something you think you like, and then find somebody who's amazing at it, and model what they do.
08:09Mhmm. The biggest thing that stops all of us is the word how. I wanna go into the new business.
08:14How? How do you start? Do I start with an LLC?
08:17Do I start with hiring people? Do I start with marketing? Do I start with a bank account?
08:21Is it an s corp or an LLC? Do do do I need to raise money? How?
08:25How? How? How?
08:26How? I'll stay where I'm at. What if you just find somebody who has already done it?
08:31Let's see what they've done. Think of I always talk about the the rainforest in Brazil as a joke because I I watched a documentary on it. Right?
08:37Yeah. And it's crazy how thick it is and dense it is and how many things can kill you in it. Yep.
08:42Right? So here's what I'll say, here's the cheat code. It's really simple, and you should write this down or think through it.
08:46Model proven practices. What does that look like? I use this simple analogy.
08:50Imagine going to Brazil, and there's a 20 mile trek. Old, indigenous, beautiful place. It's got rivers and mountains, everybody wants to go there.
08:59It's spiritual. You feel amazing when you get there. You know how most people approach it?
09:02They get to the they get to the thing. It's 20 miles that way. Great.
09:05And they run-in the woods. Yeah. They get bit by a spider.
09:07They fall into a pit. They they don't know where to sleep. They run back out and go, that is crazy.
09:12I am never doing that. I'm never gonna see this beautiful place. But what if you looked down a little bit, and there was a guy and a girl there, and they'd been walking those woods for twenty years, and they had the exact map.
09:23This is where it's halfway point is where you sleep. It's really safe in the cave. It's where you can get some fresh water.
09:28Avoid this because there's snakes in this area. Avoid these spiders. What if you just walked over and , the cheat code?
09:35Yep. So you still need the hunger to get through the woods. You still need to drive.
09:40You still need not to quit. Those are just you still need courage. Courage is a big muscle.
09:44You gotta move forward. But who's gonna win? The person that's modeling proven practices with the map or the person that just runs into the wilderness?
09:50So the part is investigate the areas where you think you wanna go. Find somebody who's living success in that area and start modeling them.
09:59Just by through their lens, could say, I would love to be where they are. I know it took them twenty years to get there, but could it take me five?
10:07That's great. We're not the smartest people in the world. We just find the best in the world with what they do and model them.
10:15How you are personally using AI and and what you feel
10:19why you think it's important for people to learn about AI. Okay. So I'm gonna start here.
10:24Not that everybody wants to hear about AI, but I'm gonna tell you half of them, especially if you're an artist, if you feel like it's gonna take away your humanity, if it's gonna replace you, there are weird emotions that go on. Yeah. They're just the r.
10:37But the fact that matters, and please hear me, it's here, it's coming, you can't avoid it. And avoiding it will just widen the gap.
10:45And what if I told you in next five minutes, you'll realize that AI can make you more human. Mhmm. Right?
10:51Okay. You're already in a screen. Everybody's already in a screen.
10:56So think about I've used this analogy before, but I'm gonna use it again. In the eighteen hundreds, if a farmer planted an acre of corn in other parts of the country, they use different things of acre, just a plot. Yeah.
11:08Yeah. It took about forty to fifty hours to plant an acre of corn by hand. When a tractor tractor came along, the newest technology, you could plant an acre of corn in thirty minutes.
11:17If you didn't have a tractor, could you stay in business? Compared to the rest of the people? No.
11:21No. Because no matter how much you work Yeah. Forty hours, the other person could do, what, A 100 acre.
11:27Yeah. Right. Just Yeah.
11:27You can't it's compounded. You buy time back. It's not just time.
11:31It's leverage. Think about when the Internet came back. There was a lot of people that said, no.
11:35The Internet's crazy. It's gonna go bad. It's gonna end the world.
11:38Would you do business with somebody today if you said, hey. Why don't you email that over? And I'm like, oh, I'm not online.
11:42Yeah. It'd be How do I get the how do I get the contract? Yeah.
11:45The I don't even like FedEx. I'm just gonna put a stamp on this thing. I'll mail it to you.
11:48You have it in about twelve days. You'd like, team, don't do business with them. No.
11:51It'd be impossible. Impossible. We are the first generation to go no AI to AI, so it feels it it's personal.
11:59Some people might be watching right now and go, I finally launched that business. I'd unlock my creativity. What if I told you that literally AI is the greatest time saver that's ever been invented and it doesn't cost as much as a tractor.
12:12If you think about, should never replace the human part of you. You should never replace the passion of writing a song. You should never replace the passion of how you play, how you sing, and all that.
12:23It can never replace you. But done wisely, if you audit all the things you do on a regular basis, I would bet my life in less than four automating, accelerating, augmenting, letting AI do the boring, the mundane, the repetitive.
12:40I would bet my life in four weeks. I could show you to get fifteen hours a week back because it not only saves time, it allows you to think better. One of the things we teach is how to get AI to know you.
12:54Right now, most people use AI. It's like having an employee that you hire.
12:59It's a great employee, but you have no context. They don't know the music you like. They don't know your life story.
13:04Don't know your purpose. Don't know your constraints. Don't know what your six month goals are, one year goal.
13:09Don't know where you failed in the past, where you've succeeded in the past. You just hire a great employee and go, hey. Let's make make our business go a little better this month.
13:16Thanks. Goodbye. And walk in the other room like, now if they're great, they might give you a great generic answer.
13:22Hey. We can, uh, do better marketing, and, um, we'll do three songs a month, not, uh, one a year. Whatever.
13:28You're like, that was kind of crappy answer. Yeah. Me help you.
13:32But imagine if you spent hours teaching that great employee, that super smart employee that has access to everything that's ever written in the history of the world and said, hey. I want you to be my I want you to help me write a business plan for the next year of my life.
13:47But let me tell you, this is where I've been. This is my father. This is what I've done.
13:50These are my values. This is what we stand for. This is the studio we have.
13:53This podcast we have. These are our best episodes. These are the best songs I've ever written.
13:57And you just loaded all that context, and then when you ask, it says, hey, let me just tell you what I think your best plan is.
14:04In an hour, you go from a generic AI that gives you a little bit better answers to like the in history of the world. And you use it like that as well? What we teach.
14:15It's what we're gonna teach at our event.
14:20I don't need that roller coaster. So, you know, we opened up a restaurant and, you know, life was good. We raised our son and you imagine if Hopefully.
14:30Of the man you could have been? That was With your studio in the other room. Jamming with people you love.
14:37And and the and and the singer that you admire the most shows up out of the blue one day and jam and make this hit and you watch all this. Mhmm. You're like, oh my god.
14:45And you knew all the complexity in between. Yeah. Which one would you choose?
14:49Did you choose a safety net? No. I would go for the for for the one that I hadn't Even though it was the roller coaster.
14:55The the adult roller If that was the case, you got to the end of your life, and your maker gave you one wish, what would it be?
15:03To do it. Do it again. Right?
15:05Yeah. You know, I tell everybody wish granted. Do it.
15:08You're here today. Yeah. You can make the decision today.
15:12What do you need to say no to today? What do you need to say yes to today? The thing you've been saying no, you know you need to say no to for five years.
15:19What if today you just go life too short? No. I'm not doing this anymore.
15:23Or yes. I'm starting my music career. Yes.
15:25I'm jumping in. Yes. I'm gonna start the business.
15:27Yes. The creativity. In a moment, we can make that decision.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Dean Graziosi opens cold with a montage of his own punchlines - deeper failure, bigger problems, the room of successful people. It's a 30-second cold open that doubles as the thesis: stop wishing for fewer problems, start training for bigger ones. The rest of the conversation reverse-engineers how he got there.
