Tell me about your vision.
Harry, what I would like to do is leave the world
a better place than it was when I got here.
And I believe that the book that I've just finished,
The Real Impact Daily Inspiration is my legacy
and that's how I'll be able to accomplish that.
I sincerely believe that this book
is gonna change a lot of people's lives
if they use it the way that it was intended.
Thank you for sharing that.
I was reading part of the book.
In that book, you mentioned a lot of great insights.
And I'm excited to keep reading more and more.
So thank you for that.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, if I talk about your legacy,
how did you come about using the book
to leave your legacy?
How did that start?
Well, it didn't start out that way.
I was on a podcast because my real estate investor students
were so successful, I got invited to be on a lot of podcasts
about real estate.
And the host asked me,
Dennis, why are your students so successful?
What do you do?
And I explained to him that,
well, I have them change their habits.
If they can form success habits
and do things that successful investors do,
they will become successful too.
And then the host said,
well, Dennis, what is the main habit?
What is the number one habit that you have them change
that would make the biggest impact?
And I said, form the habit of reading something positive
every day that will move you toward your goal.
So after the podcast, I thought,
wouldn't it be great if there were an app or a tool
or a book or something that will help people form that habit
so that they can change their life?
And then I realized, wait a minute,
I've been collecting poems and quotes
and short stories for years
and I can put all those together in a book
and make it so that it's really easy to form a habit.
Now, habits are not normally easy to form
because you have to do them consistently.
And if you ever stop,
then you're forming a habit of not doing it.
So I thought, well, it's not gonna take long.
I have all this stuff already.
I'll just put it together
and I'll have a book in a couple of months.
It actually took five years
because I had to take a lot of things and move them out
or it would have been too,
the book would have been way too large.
And then I had to do a lot of research.
I had to contact a lot of people to get permissions
and that whole process took a long time.
Then once it was written, it had to be proofread
and it had to be formatted and edited.
I mean, it just went on and on.
So finally at the beginning of about 2024,
I was able to put it all together.
And then I realized I had something
that was really powerful
as I started getting feedback from people on Amazon
and the people that had read the book.
And I thought, well, I need to get the word out on this
because I'm not young anymore.
I won't be around for 30, 40 more years, I'll be gone.
But this book can still be helping people
long after I'm gone,
much as books by other authors,
Aguimendino, Napoleon Hill,
and the list goes on and on.
People, Jim Rohn, people who are not here anymore,
but they're still speaking to you through their books.
So my goal now is to get the book in front of as many people
as I possibly can.
And if it's okay with you, Harry,
I would like to give it to everyone
who's watching in today.
Is that okay?
Yeah, it's good.
If they will go to realimpactbook.com
and scroll down to the bottom,
there's a link there that says podcast listeners
or podcast attendees.
And if you click on that, put your information in,
the book is automatically sent to you, no strings attached,
you won't be put on a mailing list.
And I think it'll be something that you'll enjoy,
it's the ebook.
And I sincerely believe that if you read it
and you like it, you'll probably say,
hey, this is a great gift.
I could give this to a young person, a graduate.
It has lots of stories that older people would enjoy
because people are people they'll recognize.
So I think it's a good thing to get the word out
and whether you pay for it or not, it's irrelevant to me.
If it changes your life, that's my goal.
That's the real goal.
And the book was devised to make it really simple
to form this habit.
So I hope when you read it, you'll enjoy it,
but I also hope you'll form that habit.
Thank you for sharing that with us, Dennis, today.
I wanna get into the nitty gritty.
Obviously there's a lot of questions I'll have
as I read the book more and more.
But let's go to your journey as a leader,
journey as an entrepreneur.
According to you, why do you think leaders
hide from funding their vision?
And how can those leaders then lean into funding their vision?
Well, if leaders have the vision
of wanting to pass along what they know,
then what they should do is something to leave
the information that they've learned
or to teach it to other people.
So I would suggest that anyone that's been successful
in any venture, super successful, leave breadcrumbs
so that others that are aspiring to do the same thing
can find those and move their station up in life.
I would really emphasize that I would hope
everybody would do that.
What if everybody tried to help everybody else up
instead of pulling them down?
Wouldn't it be a great world?
Yeah.
Why do you think then leaders hide from funding their vision?
I don't know.
Most of the people that I've been associated with
that are really successful are not hiding.
Like Walt Disney said,
there's always a lot of people willing to help you
no matter what you're trying to do.
There's always people willing to answer questions.
So I don't really think that it's a problem.
Successful people, part of the reason
that they were successful is because they get along
with other people so well.
And for that reason, the people at the top
are mostly pretty friendly and easy to get along with
and anxious to help others out.
Thank you for sharing that.
You mentioned your story about your life
and you mentioned your story about your students
being more successful and you helping them see
one habit that we want something positive
that's related to your goal.
How did that come about?
I'm assuming there's a lot more in the book about it.
And what other tips would you have for other people
listening and the leaders listening?
Well, my students were successful
because I insisted that they were.
I didn't just say, okay, you're gonna go form this habit.
I insisted that they form the habit.
For example, the habit of reading,
I gave them a list of books and in priority order,
I said, you read this one first.
And then I also gave them listening material.
And I said, listen to this and those were assignments.
And so as they came back to the class week after week,
we would discuss and if they hadn't read the book,
I would know it.
And so I would go back and say, look,
you're not going to progress unless you learn.
And the way you learn is by reading
from materials from successful people.
And it wasn't long before they realized
I wasn't going to let them get by without doing it.
And the reading and doing the assignments that I gave them
and doing their numbers every week
pretty much guaranteed success
because real estate investing is just, it's numbers.
It's a numbers game.
If you ask enough people, you're going to get a deal.
And then if you ask enough people,
you're gonna sell the property.
So I taught them success habits.
And the number one habit was move towards your goal
every single day.
And an easy way to do that is just by reading or listening.
Thank you for sharing that.
My gosh, I have more questions
on things you just shared with us.
Absolutely.
What would you say Dennis that when you held you back
in your years, when you were teaching or learning and growing,
when you didn't have a coach like yourself talking
to you about these things?
Well, actually I did.
I had lots of mentors throughout my life.
In fact, the book is dedicated to my mentors,
to my high school band director, my college band director,
to my business mentors.
And those people gave me books
and gave me inspiration and motivation
and held me accountable.
So it made it pretty easy to succeed
when someone's holding your hand and pulling you along.
Now don't get me wrong, I had a lot of problems
and I made a lot of mistakes.
And that's where a lot of the inspiration
in the book came from, because when I was down
and was not motivated and didn't feel good,
I knew what to do.
I went and found another book or listened to a success tape.
And it wasn't long before I was excited again
and I went back and started moving forward again.
You mentioned more and more reading.
I am someone who reads a lot more than I do.
I have found that I can learn a lot of things
when I read the books.
When it comes to execution, I fall short a lot of times.
What, how would you help, if I was one of your students
who was struggling with that, what would you do?
What would you help me with?
And how would you help me in that case?
Well, I didn't leave anything to chance with my students.
It wasn't, you'll figure it out.
It was you go do this, you go say this,
you go see these people, you do, you know.
So it was, the students were successful
because once they signed up for the program,
I was kind of like their dictator.
You've got to do this.
And if you come back and if you haven't,
well, I'm not gonna put up with that
because you're wasting my time, you're wasting your money.
And so I was kind of a strict leader,
but they appreciated it because in return,
they were really successful.
They made a lot of money.
They ended up with lots of property.
And so by the end of the training,
they no longer feared me.
We were friends and I was friends
with another successful person.
And the thing that thrilled me most
is that many of my students passed my success
tremendously, I'm so proud of my students.
And then in the front of the book,
when I decided, well, I need something
for promotion in the front of the book,
I called many of the students up and said,
would you write me a short testimonial
about how you felt about the training
and if you think it would help anyone else.
And so there's, I don't know, several pages of stories
in the beginning of the book written by my students saying,
if you do what this person says,
you'll have a lot of success
and it'll be a good thing for you.
And I really appreciate them doing that.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.