Business Innovators Radio - Grant Wattie: How To Create The Business You Want Through A Transformed Marriage

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Grant Wattie is a former world-renowned portrait photographer who’s become a mentor and coach. He specializes in guiding couples and entrepreneurs through the trials of troubled marriages and unfulfilled lives, empowering them to achieve business success and lasting love. As the founder of the Million-Dollar Marriage™ Program, he’s assisted over 5,000 individuals. Grant’s inspiring journey from adversity to happiness motivates listeners to harmonize a fulfilling marriage with their entrepreneurial dreams. Join him as he unveils the keys to a life and business you truly desire.Learn more at: grantwattie.comRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/grant-wattie-how-to-create-the-business-you-want-through-a-transformed-marriage

You're Blah-B-B-B-Hodding. The Station of the planet. Resistance is future. The revolution has begun. You're listening to Revelepreneur Radio, helping you break the rules and build the business you need

for the life you want. And now, broadcasting his pirate signal from somewhere beyond the status glow. Here's your host, best-selling author, marketing and media strategist, Ralph Brogden. Hello and welcome to Rebel Pernuba Radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I'm Ralph Brogden.

We talk about how life and business are connected. We talk about building the business you need so you can live the life that you want. And hopefully your life is a wonderful tapestry of rich and fulfilling relationships. So today's topic is going to be really interesting. It's how to create the business you want through a transformed marriage. So I love the way that idea kind of brings together everything that we're all about in building the business you need so you can live the life you want and have great relationships so that your business isn't sabotage by the fact that you've got marriage problems or relationship problems or you're struggling with life and family and work balance. So today's guest is going to help us make a lot of you. sense of this. His name is Grant Wadi. He is a former world-renowned portrait photographer who's

become a mentor and a coach, and he specializes in guiding couples and entrepreneurs through the trials of troubled marriages and unfulfilled lives, empowering them to achieve business success and lasting love. As the founder of the million-dollar marriage program, he has assisted over 5,000 individuals. His inspiring journey from adversity to happiness motivates listeners to harmonize a fulfilling marriage with their entrepreneurial dreams. Join him as he unveils the keys to a life and business you truly desire. Graham, welcome to Rebel Per Dover Radio. Thank you, Ralph. It's wonderful to be here. And I really want to acknowledge you. I've just been listening to some of your wonderful podcast, your episodes with Gary Marla and another one with Steve Sims.

And I think it's a wonderful work that you do. You know, it can be really quite lonely as a business owner, as an entrepreneur and just being off to plug in and listen to some of that wonderful guests that you've got is wonderful. So thank you for the work you do. Well, thank you for the encouragement. Yeah, Steve and Gary. And, wow, so many over between 300 and 4.4. 400 episodes now that we've done of this and talking with people from all backgrounds.

It's really a wonderful experience. I learned something from everyone I talked to. And so when I saw your topic for discussion today, I thought, wow, that's something that will bring so much value to our listeners. How to create the business you want through a transformed marriage. Before we get into that, tell us a little bit more about who. you are, what you do and who you help. Yeah. Yeah, thanks Ralph.

So essentially I help successful business owners, you know, as you mentioned, get the business and life they want by transforming their marriage. Just a little story. I was listening to one of your episodes and you mentioned Jay Abraham. And the interesting thing was he talks about how he spent $500,000. on mentoring, you know, when he was going through this midlife crisis. And I'm telling this story because it just relates exactly to what I do. And anyway, he would buy a week at a time, right, of this person's time.

And then if he didn't use it, he would give it to his friends and his family to try and fix him. But the interesting thing is through all of that, you know, the question was asked, well, what did he actually learn? And he said, the interesting thing is, you know, for business owners, for entrepreneurs, you know, they're always chasing this shiny object. And so what happens is, you know, when you get the, you finally get the outcome, you know, you get the fancy car or you or you, the new wife or the new yoga instructor or whatever. You know, what he said was you're still not happy. You know, the heavens don't open. The angels don't sing.

we don't reach nirvana, we don't find the happiness that we really, really want. And so for him, the journey is the journey is the outcome. You know, the journey is what it's all about, the process, enjoying the journey. And I'd go a step further to say it's actually happiness is within you. You know, the shiny object is within you. So that's who I help. I've been on that journey myself and we can kind of get into. my own personal story about that.

But I help business owners and entrepreneurs because I have been one my whole life. And then, you know, I had everything and lost it all. And now I've been on that journey to find inner peace and inner happiness and kind of the shiny object that's within. And then tapping into that to then get the business you want. So it's almost like the life you want is already inside you. in terms of the outcome. And then it's about creating whatever you want, kind of like the booby prize. You don't need it to be happy.

Yeah. Because it's already within you. I'm glad that you mentioned Jay Abraham. He does talk about his therapy and how many tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on that. And it reminds me also, Tony Robbins, you know, he's talking about success and personal development, personal power for all these years, a wonderful track record. but he's had marriage problems. He went through a divorce and then a remarriage. And no judgment because these things happen.

But it just underscores for me that there's always opportunity for us to learn and grow in our relationships. There's always a temptation as well as business owners and entrepreneurs that we get so focused on whatever it is we're building that we're leaving something. something undone at home. And that's where the rebelpreneur mindset is, let's figure out the life that we want first. And then figure out how to design the business to give us the life that we want. So we're not sacrificing our marriage and our health and our relationships in the process. So that's, that is, it's encouraging that people are finding that out. after they've gone through it, how to fix that, even better if we can learn those lessons now

and not have to experience those hardships. You started out as a portrait photographer. What happened that caused you to shift from doing that to helping entrepreneurs as a mentor and a coach and relationship and marriage counseling? How did that come about for you? Yeah, it's a really interesting story when I look back. You know, very quickly, I was raised on a farm on an orchard and always, you know, I was looking forward to my first day of school.

And so I went to school on my first day, went up to some boys on the playground, asked them to play with me, and they told me to go away. And so that's when my entrepreneurship was born. I think most entrepreneurs have brought from this feeling of like I don't really belong. I don't really fit in. And so then to prove that I would fit in, you know, I became focused on achievement. I became a deep thinker, read a lot of books, you know, always searching for it, you know, how can I, how can I really belong in this world? And so I focused on sports. I focused on achievement. You know, I'd kind of do anything that was entrepreneurial.

real like I can remember going for a run one day as a in university and seeing all these long lawns and knocking on the door and saying, hey, would you like your lawns mode? And by the end of the run, I had a lawn mowing business. If I'd only known about franchising then, I would have had the first lawnmowing franchise. But that's just an example of how I was as a young person.

So I went to university, got a horticulture science degree, and then my boss wouldn't give me a raise for my first house because I had a baby. So I quit and went into financial services selling, which I'd never, you know, I'd never done that before, but I kind of had to. And then went into sales management. And again, I was really unhappy. So a friend was running a portrait studio and I said, oh, that'd be really cool, creative. So I became a portrait photographer.

And then eventually we had the largest studio, one of the largest studios in the world. But we transitioned from that, you know, having done the strategic course, you know, Dan Sullivan's, you know, what do you really want to do kind of tying back into you if you had a blank sheet of paper and you had your ideal client. So I had done some work for a princess and she introduced me to the king and queen of Malaysia and, you know, the prime minister and some billionaires. So we transitioned our business to, you know, producing beautiful. handcrafted portraits on on canvas and we'd paint them with oils and put a gold frame. And, you know, they sort of went from a $2,000 family portrait to a $50,000, you know, work of art. And so we had the most glamorous life ever. But the interesting thing is, Ralph, you know, I almost lost it all because I'd lost myself.

You know, I'd lost my values. and, you know, for me, the most important thing was my family. And through that process, one day I was really searching and said, well, who am I? Because I'm living this kind of double life. I'd fly to Malaysia and we'd be picked up in limousines and stay and, you know, eat and drink with, you know, the king and the queen and that sort of thing. And one day I said to the king, you know, what's it like being the king? You know, look, this amazing palace, you know, You've got, there's gold and everywhere, and people running around looking after you.

It looked like a dream. You know, are you happy? And his answer shocked me. He said, no, I'm not happy. The palace is like a prison to me. You know, I'm at the beck and call of the government. I can't do what I want. I can't even go shopping.

And then that just ruined my whole definition of success. He had all the money and the power, but he still wasn't happy. It's like what Jay Abraham said. you know, the heavens don't open. And then I went to see Narjab, who was, you know, became the next prime minister of Malaysia. And same thing. I said to him, you know, are you happy? And he said, no, I'm not.

I've just come back from a party with the Sultan of Brunei, you know, party for Michael Jackson, showed me a gold camera. He got as a present gold like a camera, solid gold. And I just couldn't believe it. And he said, I'm not happy. You know, I'd be happier if I was as rich as my mate, the Sultan of Brunei, who at that time was the richest man in the world. So that completely shattered my definition of success.

I just, I was really confused because I thought, you know, we had quite a good life back in New Zealand. Sorry for the long story, but here's the crunch line. I went back home and picked up my daughter, and I was driving in the car with her. She was eight years of age. And she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, Daddy, why do you go overseas?

all the time. And, you know, I tried to say, well, it's because of the money and it's better business. And she said, well, we've got a nice house. We've got a nice car. We don't need any of those things. I just want you and mum. And she had tears in her eyes. She was crying. And it broke my heart, Ralph. It really broke my heart because I knew then that I wasn't being, you know, true to my value. So I didn't want to die and be at my funeral and say, well, I wasn't true to myself. So somewhere along the line, I lost myself and then became the journey of therapy and coaching and leadership development. And, you know, that was kind of 20 years ago. Powerful. Yeah, what a powerful lesson. Do you think that what happened?

happens is we say and mentally and emotionally we believe, and we're honest that our family is the most important thing. But do we justify all the things we do in business that takes us farther away from family and our core values? Do we justify that by saying, I'm doing it for them, doing it for the family? Is that how we justify it? Well, most people do until there's a wake-up question. because, I mean, it's not wrong, and I wouldn't make anyone wrong for doing that.

It's just, you don't know any better, right? You know, you get your degree or you go out there and you run your business and it takes a lot. You've got to put a lot into it. And it's very easy to then lose yourself because, and so the people I see, they come to me because their wife says, look, I'm not in love with you. I love you, but I'm not in love with you. I'm not. We've lost whatever we have.

when we're friends, when we're more like flatmates. You know, I, and for the second half of their life, people want more. They say, I don't want to live like this for the rest of my life because I've got a health challenge. The kids have left home. You know, you know, I was one of my, you know, I think of a guy who, he was a chairman of a global billion dollar company. You know, he had assets.

He had just sold a lot of the. him and he said, I've worked so hard, now I have it all. But my wife just said to me, you know, you're out. So she kicked him out and he was living in a little flat. And he said, I don't know what to do anymore because he had, was chase success and got achieved, you know, his sense of self and belonging came from external attachments, you know, external achievements. and he still wasn't happy.

So then they needed to have these emotional affairs to try and connect and and try and belong and try and find love. And that just wasn't working for him, obviously, because his wife kicked him out and he didn't know what to do anymore. Yeah. So this is a huge issue for a lot of entrepreneurs. And if it's not a problem yet, either it's not really a problem or you have figured out how to solve the problem

or you are unaware of a problem that is brewing in the background and probably you need something you need to be paying attention to. So what do you do? I mean, where do you start with someone who comes to you with that situation? Outwardly, they've got the success. They finally built the business. But their wife or their spouse says, I don't love you anymore. Where do you even begin to help someone like that? What's your process?

Well, it starts with admitting like an alcoholic that you have got a problem and you can't solve it yourself anymore. So that's where mentoring comes in because otherwise it's like you go and do a few sessions of therapy, which I'm not, you know, I've been a therapist. I've worked with 10,000 people. So I'm not saying that it's not helpful, but it's like rolling the boulder up the hill and then it rolls back down again. You know, you need a solid process to actually rediscover.

discover something within yourself that's within you all along. So I call it the the B do have problem. It's like, I've got to do this so I can have that, so I can be happy. Whereas the truth is we were born, we were born with joy and happy. Like my grandkids, they're just happy, they're joyful. You don't have to do or have anything to be happy. and so the journey is finding your way back home to what you already have inside you

without doing anything. So counter-insuratively, you've got to let go of your strengths and everything that you've done to achieve, you've got to do something that's very counter-intuitive to you. And that took me a lot of lessons, you know, a lot of wax around the head with four-by-two to say, wake up, Brian. You know, you just about lost your family that you love,

love, you, you know, all these things that happen to us, you know, wake us up. And it's a question of whether we're listening or not. So hopefully that answers your question a little bit. Yeah. So when someone listening to this right now, if they recognize themselves in what we're talking about, what are one or two or three things? would communicate to them right now directly that would help them get moving in the right direction? What would you advise them? Well, there's a little parable that Anthony DeMello,

the Jesuit priest, he has these wonderful stories and this one resonated with me because it's the story of a farmer that found an eagle's egg in the paddock. And so he put it into his barnyard with the chickens. And so it was raised with the chickens and it scratched and it pecked the earth. And it grew up, you know, its whole life thinking it was a chicken. And then one day a magnificent eagle was flying high above. And he said to his friend, what's that? You know, this amazing bird flying, soaring majestically in the sky.

And his friend said, well, oh, that's the eagle. But don't worry, we're just chickens. you know, will never fly high like that. You know, so the chicken, the eagle was, who thought it was a chicken, was destined to be a chicken its entire life. And it's this kind of understanding that there are two parts of us. There's the best of us and the not-so best of us. I won't say the worst of us.

But there's a part of us that are chickens just scratching around. And we're just limited by this idea like I was, you know, that I don't belong. And there's something wrong with me. It's a lie. And then all of my strengths are put on top of the lie. And that's like putting icing on top of cow dung. You know, you can try, but the underneath it, it's still dung. And so using your strengths to try and, you know, find happiness or, you know,

happiness and your marriage and business, you know, satisfaction. And that doesn't mean that you can't achieve on top of that. But you're doing it from more infinite potential. You know, you're able to do it effortlessly and fly because you know deep down inside that you are magnificent. You know, there's you've got infinite potential and all you need to do is let go of some of the shit that's stopping you. And excuse my language.

but I just get really passionate about this because so many people were tied up in their thoughts and their ideas and their conditioning from their parents. You've got to work hard. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. And now we've got artificial intelligence, and there's just so much information,

and people just get lost. So it's a journey back to within yourself, to finding your magnificence to being the very best version of yourself. How do you work with people? I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so just tying that back into one practical thing. So if you get that idea and you understand it,

you could say, okay, well, what does that actually mean? Well, there is a version that you know of as being the best of you, right? There was the most kind, kind, patient version of me. And then there's also the version of me that's anxious and searching. and, you know, gets greedy or hungry for more and what's, you know, there are two versions of me. So all I have to do is I recognize that and get in touch with that. And then whenever I get triggered into anxiety or fear, I just use a very simple process, which is called stop. So S stands for stop.

T stands for take three deep breaths. Just breathe and relax. O's observe, you know, what I am I thinking? What am I feeling? And we're not our thoughts and we're not our emotion so we can just let it go. And P is proceed with kindness. Just be kind to yourself and relax and then choose to be the best. I'm going to be the best of me in this moment.

So even though I might be triggered by this, you know, interaction with my wife or the kids, I'm just going to come back and relax and choose to be the best of me in this situation. and live life the best, you know, the best, always choose to be the best of me. And that becomes like a mental fitness process. I love that acronym, stop. Stop, take three deep breaths, observe, and proceed with kindness. I love that. I think that entrepreneurs more so than any other segment of the population are probably the last people to reach out for help.

because we are used to bootstrapping, doing it ourselves, solving the problems head on. But that can also be our downfall because if you're in this situation, first of all, you got there not realizing it until it's too late. So you've kind of already shown that this is beyond your entrepreneurial expertise. This is beyond perhaps even self-help, and that's where you come in as a coach. How do you work with people? How do they reach out to you? What do you do with them? Tell us about your program, the million-dollar marriage program.

Yeah. So as I said before, I mean, essentially, you know, I'm working with entrepreneurs, business people who have found themselves in a mid-life or marriage crisis or some sort of, existential crisis. They're not happy. It could be a business failure. And they're really wanting to do something different because this could be their second marriage or their third marriage, you know, not typically in their 40s, 50s, 60s. And so, you know, I take them on a journey to get an outcome. So it's not just one or two sessions, you know, to get them over a little hump. It's more like you're going to go from this island to this island where you really want to be. As you said right at the start, designing your dream life.

This is what I want to create for my life. This is who I want to be. This is how I want my relationship to be. This is how I want my family to be. This how I want my business to be. But again, it's how you have to be because you can't outdo who you're being. you know, I can't do loving things if I'm being nasty, if I'm being anxious, if I'm being fearful, if I'm being angry.

You can't outdo who you're being. So you've got the perfect results. Life has a perfect accounting system. So I work with people that are really serious about change. They come to me. I don't know how they find me, Ralph, but people Google and they see something and they say, you know, I like your journey. You understand business people.

You know, I'm not really a coach. I'm not really a therapist. I'm not a mentor, but more like a guide or help people to get the outcome that they really want. Wonderful. We can help people find you. Isn't to make a billion dollars. It's to create a beautiful marriage and family and a legacy because, you know, relationships are struggling.

You know, people are hurting, especially with entrepreneurs. It's a lonely existence. You know, you need your partner. You need your kids on board and to feel isolated and lonely and trying to run a business and then coming home and feeling like you don't fit in there. You know, that hurts. And it doesn't hurt you. It hurts your partner.

It hurts your kids. And then they've got issue. you know, my mission is really, I don't want that for anyone. And so if you're going through that, then reach out and let's talk. You know, I'm here to help transform the consciousness of the planet. Just one person at a time. I can't do the whole, not Gandhi, but I can't help one person. Well, the website is grantwati.com, and that's G-R-A-N-T-W-A-E-A-E.

t-t-I-E dot com in case you're listening. And if you're on the website, we'll have the link directly to Grant so that you can reach out and get the help you need if this is something that is bothering you, something that needs to be addressed. Don't wait until it's too late. But reach out to Grant, get the help that you need. So you can create the business you want through a transformed marriage. and through that you can create the life that you want.

So this has been eye-opening on many levels. I hope that it inspires people and motivates them if they're going through this to get the help that they need. So any final thoughts or words of wisdom that you'd like to leave us as the last word? I mean, everything I say is supported by my wife, Christine. we're coming up to our 40 year anniversary, you know, we've been together and and none of this would be possible. I wouldn't be able to say this. And really, she is the strength behind me and our family.

And she's also a leadership coach and mentor. We went on this journey together. So you really can have it all. You know, you can have a wonderful marriage and a great business and the life you want. and, you know, as Roomy said, you were born with wings. So why would you prefer to crawl through life? And my final message is if you're crawling, you don't have to crawl. You've got wings.

And it really is possible to create the life you want, the marriage you want, the family life you want, and the business you want. And, you're really, that's what I've got to say. Wonderful. And thank you so much, Ralph. Thank you, Mr. Grantwati, grantwati.com, and I appreciate your sharing your expertise with us on Rebelpreneur Radio. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ralph.

It's been a pleasure being with you. You know, I love your style. You're very easy to relate to. And the work you do is fabulous. Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.

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