First of all, I'd like to give a shout-out to our previous guest, Mike Fisher, for connecting me with Grant Muller, who you're about to hear from today.

And what a story you're about to discover!

Do you know what it's like to passionately want something - to fall in love with somebody - and not be able to express it because society says it's wrong? To suppress and bury who you really are and what you really feel just to try to fit in and not become a target?

Somewhere along the line, you were given core values, like integrity, but without any framework for what "integrity" means. What is integrity? Does it mean you boldly live your authentic life and use it as a driver to make the world a better place, or that you figure out how to fit in and do what you're supposed to for the good of the collective?

Society teaches us values, but it doesn't show us what they really mean. Part of the social contract is that you agree it's okay, that it's "fine" - but fine is a four-letter word.

As an immigrant from South Africa in the 1980s, Grant Muller struggled to fit in after his family immigrated to the United States. So he buried his beautiful native accent and did what everybody else was doing just to avoid getting picked on. As a teenager in the 1980s, he fell passionately in love with his male best friend. In those days, you just didn't admit to that. In order to cope with his feelings, Grant found a new lover - alcohol. This led to more love affairs, first cigarettes, then eventually cocaine. Outwardly he was successful, becoming a millionaire by age 28, and when he got fired, he figured he'd just retire and party for the rest of his life.

Until the check bounced and he found out all the money was gone.

Before you know it, Grant was sleeping on people's couches, getting into worse trouble, and soon facing four long, arduous years in prison!

In a moment, when you meet Grant, you'll walk beside him as he tells you more about his rapid decline from the top of the mountain to the depths of the darkest valley.

He had to do one of the most courageous things a person can ever fathom. And in painfully struggling to rebuild, Grant found the friend of a lifetime who reached into his world and showed him a new point of view.

In short, Grant had to step out of the clusterfuck of fear, regret, and disappointment and into a new, powerful place of peace and contentment.

Grant's hype song is "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks.

Resources:

• Grant Muller's website: https://www.grantmuller.com/
• Claim your copy of Grant's book here: http://www.buytopofheart.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegrantmuller/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGrantmuller/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegrantmuller/

Also, check out Mike Fister's appearance on Fine is a 4-Letter Word by clicking here.

Invitation from Lori:

Like Grant, if, up until now, you've called your life a nightmare, a clusterf*ck, or a dumpster fire... you’ve been living in chaos for long enough. It’s time to let go of frenzy and lean into calm. You are here in this world, living this life, for a reason.

In our program, "Staying Calm in Chaos", we take you by the hand and guide you through how to go from being an overwhelmed high achiever to a calm, grounded, and centered person who has peace of mind no matter what. It comes with some powerful, mind-changing meditations as well.

Check that out at https://get.stayingcalminchaos.com/.

It's time.

Lori: Hello and welcome to Fine is a 4-Letter Word. My guest for this episode is Grant Muller. Grant and I were introduced by a past podcast guest, Mike Fister. And I, of course, do not have his episode number right here handy but I will put it in the show notes. Grant, thank you so much for joining me today.

Grant: Thank you for having me, Lori. It’s great to be here.

Lori: Yeah, let’s just jump right into it. And let me ask you the question that people love when I ask this question, but what were the beliefs and values that you were raised with that contributed to who you became as a young adult?

Grant: That’s a great question. There were a couple. So number one was integrity. Integrity has always been a big thing in my family. And I went on to violate that later in life but integrity was a huge one.

Lori: We’ll get to that.

Grant: Yeah, absolutely. And then I would say, values around taking care of others, making sure that we build community. And that’s been a value that stayed with me for a long time as well.

Lori: Okay, cool. And so, as you were growing up, were you involved in activities that promoted those things? How did you learn that stuff or how was that transferred to you?

Grant: I think it came from watching my parents and my grandparents rather than it being explicit, it was implicit. So when I was really young, when I was seven, we moved from South Africa to the United States. And later, we went back to visit and on that visit in South Africa, we had two weeks of endless barbecues, which is how they love to gather. And it was going to family, after family, after family, after family to reconnect with them. And it was like we were on tour. It was really insane but it helped me realize and see just how connected my family had been to that culture and to their community. And so, in seeing that and then seeing my parents lean in to the community when they need to or give in to the community when they could, really helped inform that sense of community. But it was implicit rather than explicit.

Lori: Sure, as usually our learning is. And even the things that are explicit, it’s those implicit things that really get buried in the subconscious.

Grant: Absolutely.

Lori: That’s how we get wired. That’s how our brains are wired and those beliefs then drive us for the rest of our life. We’re not even aware. They are just wired in there.

Grant: That makes so much sense. I like that, yeah.

Lori: Yeah. So as you got older, how did that wiring work for you in terms of what it led to as you got older?

Grant: Well, I went in a different direction pretty quickly.

Lori: Pretty quick, okay.

Grant: Yes. So although I had that value track in my life, very early on, I learned some other values as well. And again, they were implicit rather than explicit. When we moved to the US, in second grade, I had a funny accent. I spoke like a South African.

Lori: Which is a cool accent but I guess not when you’re a kid.

Grant: In middle school and high school, it’s cool. But in second grade, not so much.

Lori: Okay.

Grant: And then to make matters worse, I didn’t even know what Sesame Street was.

Lori: Okay.

Grant: One of these was not like the other. It definitely was awkward. And so, I was ostracized and isolated very quickly when we moved here. And so, as we progressed through second grade, I learned how to tone down everything that was different about me and to accentuate everything that was the same, which was really nothing. So really, I just pretended to be like the other boys and girls. And so, I learned the value of pretending to be whoever you want me to be so that I’m okay. So that value also attract at the same time. So what that value did is it allowed me to connect to community like I had learned but in a very, very false manner. In a very superficial manner. So I wasn’t getting the real benefits of community. Just the superficial benefits and sometimes things like safety, right?

Lori: Sure. Right, safety because then you were accepted and not outcast, which from an evolutionary standpoint, if you’re outcast, you are food for the lions, right?

Grant: Exactly. So I was safe as long as I could hold on to that image and that later started to tear down.

Lori: Did you have any siblings?

Grant: I had a brother and a sister. Older brother who has developmentally disabled and a sister who was four years younger.

Lori: Okay. So they did not experience the same—

Grant: Exactly.

Lori: Type of—

Grant: Exactly. So my brother was already different but didn’t realize it. My sister was young enough that she was just a cutie with a cute accent at that age, and lost it even more quickly than I did. Because as we’re kids, we’re so impressionable. We lose those accents very quickly. My parents still talk with an accent because they were adults when we moved here. So my sister was in preschool, I guess. She didn’t have that same situation.

Lori: Right, because preschoolers aren’t as cruel as elementary school kids because they don’t know any better. Everybody loves everybody in preschool.

Grant: Exactly. What a great place.

Lori: Yes. Can we all go back and live there.

Grant: With nap times.

Lori: Yes, nap times for sure, and snacks.

Grant: Exactly, yeah.

Lori: All right. So then, tell me more about what happened when you—because you started running with the—if you want to label things right and wrong, but a crowd that wasn’t necessarily for your best interest.

Grant: So as we moved into middle school, my friends, the few friends I managed to hold on to, those friends started getting really interested in sports and really interested in girls. And I wasn’t interested in either one. And I was actually hiding from a pretty shameful secret or what felt shameful at the time. And that was, I had a crush on my best friend. And this was a time in the late ‘80s when there was lots of people in the media and unfortunately again now, saying that we are an abomination if we have same sex love or attraction. So I hid that secret not just from my best friend and my other friends, but I hid it from myself. And I learned how to squash those feelings and deny those feelings just like I pretended to be someone I wasn’t before. It continued on again for my perception of survival. I held that secret even from myself. And right about that time, I discovered alcohol and from that very first drink, everything, for the first time in my life felt like it was okay. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I was okay. And so, it was an immediate love affair.

Lori: How old were you?

Grant: I was in middle school and so—

Lori: So 12, 13, 14.

Grant: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was probably 13.

Lori: Yeah.

Grant: So I learned to drink but I also learned very quickly that my friend would drink, get a little buzz or get drunk and then stop. I would drink, even at that age until I was blacking out. So it was something different. I noticed that he stopped drinking at some point and I couldn’t. I didn’t. Once I started, there was no stopping until my body physically shut me down. And so, it wasn’t the wrong crowd necessarily. He was just a friend who was experimenting like some friends experiment. Unfortunately, I had a part of me that was addiction that I believe I was born with and that I believe was then nurtured by that trauma of pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

Lori: Absolutely, that makes perfect sense. Is there alcoholism in your family?

Grant: There’s not. None that I know of, yeah. No addiction that I know of in my family. And that is a big risk factor but it wasn’t a risk factor that I know of that contributed to this. Now my mom was adopted, so you never know what’s on the other side of the family. But often what I’ve learned is, although there is supposedly, “a gene,” it tends to be more of a nurture thing. So it tends to be more about the behaviors that get inherited, not the actual gene or something, so it’s interesting.

Lori: Yeah, I want to hear more about your story because you have a really, I don’t know, if dramatic is the right word. But you have a really interesting story especially the comeback part of it, which I want to get into. And then the other idea or concept that I’d like to touch on is coming back to the community. That addiction is not caused by but it’s an issue—a feeling of lack of community or lack of belonging.

Grant: Yes, yes. And on top of that, when I was an addict, as an addict, my addiction wants to separate me. So I learned very quickly that as I was drinking with my friend, he didn’t drink the same as me. So I had to find new friends who did drink the same as me. And then I worked through those friends and then it was ultimately me drinking alone. I remember drinking—I had first period driver’s ed in freshman year of high school. And I remember drinking before first period in the morning by myself and then going to driver’s ed and driving with students in the car on the mountains drunk. But it was a very isolated, very separated thing because my friends didn’t want to drink with me anymore. Another example, I remember going to—and I’ve written about this. Going to a party once and finishing an entire bottle of Southern Comfort in the car with my friend.

We opened the door and I literally just rolled into the gutter, very literally and pass out and don’t go into the party. And I believe it was my way of hiding from going to the party and it was my way to excuse myself from the party, but it was bad. It was not fun high school drinking. Not that I condone fun high school drinking.

Lori: Right. But I’m pretty sure that most of my listeners have been—that’s part of our high school memories because it seems like for a lot of people, it’s kind of one of those rites of passage. And for a lot of people, it doesn’t turn into an addiction.

Grant: Yeah.

Lori: It’s something you do when you’re in high school and college and you have a bunch of crazy stories and that’s it. And then there are people like you who that’s not the story.

Grant: And then somehow, as you can imagine that person in high school, somehow, I managed to mostly shield it from authority figures and get away with it. I was very smart about how I did it and mostly shielded it. There were a couple of times I was caught but then it was very much, oh I’m so sorry and it was a big mistake and what a silly little teen thing I did. Meanwhile, I’m selling Kodak camera, what do you call them, film canisters of vodka to support my habit to my friends. So I had a whole enterprise going.

Lori: So you were an entrepreneur at a young age.

Grant: Very young, yeah, yeah, unfortunately. And so, I take the big bottle and make it into smaller bottles and I’d pay someone that lived on the sidewalk outside the liquor store to go in and buy liquor for me. It was a whole thing. But I was pretending to be fine, right?

Lori: Yeah.

Grant: And to bring it back to the theme of your podcast, I did a very good job of that.

Lori: So your parents didn’t know.

Grant: So they didn’t know the extent of things. So I would get caught once in a while. I took up smoking cigarettes because they hated that but it covered the smell of alcohol.

Lori: Right, that was a little bit more socially acceptable maybe.

Grant: So I was very devious like that and most addicts are. We’re very good at hiding from the truth from ourselves and from others. That’s really what addiction is, is hiding from who we really are, hiding from our values, violating our own values, etc. So somehow, I made it through high school. A very average student but I made it through high school and the few parts of my story along the way. But ultimately, what happened is, I found work and money as a new addiction. Workaholism has much more fun side effects than alcoholism.

Lori: Right.

Grant: So I would work 14, 16 hours a day and I was kind of a dry drunk. I stopped drinking and I just applied all of that to working and ended up at an internet start-up, where—this is in the late ‘90s. And we went public. We all got rich. Ferraris and Porsches started showing up in the parking lot. And I remember sitting though in my condo overlooking downtown Denver and thinking—the day after we went public. I was a millionaire. I was in my mid-20s and I thought, is this it? It didn’t make me feel better about who I was and it wasn’t helping me hide from who I was like alcohol was and I started drinking again. Yeah, the story goes from there depending on how far you want to go.

Lori: Yeah. Well, I want to get to the part that you told me in our pre-show conversation about the downfall and then where you ended up living. Because you were living in this beautiful condo overlooking Denver.

Grant: Gorgeous place.

Lori: And then you were living in a place with no windows, so.

Lori: Wow.

Grant: It was like alcohol. It just answered all my questions. And what cocaine does is it allows you to drink longer because it brings you up. And so, that mechanism in your body that shuts you down from drinking too much, doesn’t turn on. So you can drink and drink and drink and drink and drink without passing out. So it was just always more coke, more alcohol, more coke, more alcohol. And within six months, I was fired from that job. But no big deal, I’m 28 years old. I’m a millionaire. I’m going to call it retirement. So I retired early and I just kept partying. And at this time, I was spending about $30,000 a month on cocaine and traveling. And “friends” that were around—when you party like that, you have a lot of friends.

Lori: Sure.

Grant: And one day, one of my checks bounced. And all it meant was I just needed to call and exercise more shares because when you party like that, you’re not balancing your checkbook.

Lori: No, right. No time for that.

Grant: No time for that. And so, I called to exercise more shares and they said, sorry, you have no shares. We don’t see shares in this account. I said, “You’ve got to be wrong. There’s about 16,000 shares there.” And they said, “No, no. You had 90 days to exercise your shares after leaving the company. You failed to do that, so you forfeited your shares.”

Lori: What?

Grant: And so, I lost everything in a moment. About $1.2 million in that instant.

Lori: Oh, my god. And if you had just exercised those shares within the 90 days, you would have had that money?

Grant: Yes. Now the universe is a funny thing.

Lori: Yes.

Grant: Because if I had exercised those shares—they did plummet six months later and have never returned. So whether that money would have ever been mine or not, it was all paper money. By the way, I also believe, if I had exercised those shares and sold the stock and had the cash, I would not be alive.

Lori: I was just going to say that exact thing. That’s where I thought you were going when you said how the universe works. That’s what I was thinking.

Grant: I would not be alive. I used to do lines of cocaine and I’m not trying to glorify this but this big. And I used to think, I hope this one kills me. Please let this one kill me. And often I would do it and drop to my knees. So I can only imagine. And the thing with having that much money, and this is what you see in celebrity culture is, you can pretend that you are fine. Oh, family, my bills are paid. Leave me alone, right?

Lori: I got this.

Grant: Yeah, neighbors, sorry about the noisy party. Here’s $1,000, leave me alone. You can do these things. You can just kind of solve these problems that come up. I had a really, really high-level DUI attorney. I got a DUI and I’m surprised I only got one and I’m so grateful I never hurt anyone. I’m not proud of this. But on the way to court with him, he called me and said, “Oh, do you mind picking me up?” And I was like, oh gosh, because I was so drunk.

Lori: On your way to court for a DUI, you were drunk.

Grant: In case I was going to jail, I thought, might as well ease it. So I pick up my DUI attorney drunk, and because of privilege and money and disgusting things, I got away with it. So there was that really negative side effect of money and access. So I’m really glad that I lost that money. So I hung up the phone. And I looked around the room and said, “You guys, something has to change here. It’s not okay to continue like this. Clearly, we need to sell the BMW so we could buy more coke.” We sold the cars, bought more stuff. The cars were gone within a day. The coke was gone within a week. And the friends were gone after that.

And within a few months, I had foreclosed on and I had to move out of the place and started couch surfing. And it wasn’t long after that that I was on the streets and once in a while, I would find a place to stay. The drug dealer’s house or whatever. And became a full-time drug dealer because you can’t work. And switched to even deadlier stuff like meth, etc. Because you can’t work, you can’t go to a job when you’ve been up for seven days. You’re just crazy-looking and you just don’t have—

Lori: They start to suspect something.

Grant: Yes, luckily, barely. I don’t know. I can look back now and see all of the moments where I shouldn’t be alive. I’ve been held up by gunpoint from rival gang people and drug people so many times. I’ve been kidnapped numerous times.

Lori: Is this stuff all in your book because we’re going to get to talking about your book. You have this book that you wrote.

Grant: I definitely detailed some of those stories. Honestly, it’s the PG13 stuff in my book. And it’s great to read. It’s fun reading or whatever and it seems dramatic, but it’s not the real dark stuff. There is stuff that I can’t talk about or that just isn’t safe for me to put in print. But yes, I take you to a pretty dark place in the book because I want anybody who’s struggling with addiction and almost as importantly, their family members to understand maybe a little bit about why it’s not the same thing as mom’s Mountain Dew addiction.

Lori: Yeah.

Grant: It’s something different. And I want them to understand, why can’t my person stop? And I hope that they can read the book and understand that just a little bit.

Lori: I have someone in mind who needs to read this book. And I’m sure everybody listening has someone in mind but I know exactly who I’m buying this book for, for one thing.

My sister had been advocating for me and had a bed waiting at a rehab clinic and I got to go to rehab instead of prison. And the reason I got to go to rehab instead of prison has nothing to do with me. It has to do with the fact that I had a sister who had the means to advocate for me all day. I had a family to say, yes, we will take him in and make sure he gets to rehab. I had privilege like crazy.

Lori: Yeah. People aren’t watching this. They’re listening to it but I’m getting tears because I can feel the emotion. You are here for a reason obviously and it’s very crazy emotional for me here.

Grant: I love seeing the tears. But the message is here that I want people to see the privilege in my story.

Lori: Yeah, that it’s not lost on you that you had amazing opportunity that a lot of people do not have access to.

Grant: Yeah. And I have friends who didn’t have that same access and who are dead or who are in prison or still on the streets today. Now after that, I applied myself and I was willing to do whatever it takes to get and stay clean and sober. And I’m very proud of myself for applying myself. But I have had—and we’re going back to the community values now. I have a community. I have what I believe is a higher power. My higher power is love. I had a community in rehab and I had a community in 12-step programs after that. And I’ve built a community of friends and business associates and people I love all over the world that help me stay clean today. That help me show up today. So it’s I can’t, we can is what we say in recovery. And part of Top of Heart is about going from me to we. So now, I get to make a ton of money again just like before. I love money. It’s a beautiful thing.

Lori: Absolutely, it’s an energy.

Grant: But it’s just like those drugs and alcohol. It will take who we are and it will amplify it.

Lori: Yes.

Grant: So before in my life, it amplified a greedy, selfish, troubled human being. And now I’m hoping it amplifies someone who wants to serve and who wants to be loved and share love and help lift others up.

Lori: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that’s so beautiful. Yeah, I mean, that’s like the hero’s journey that every Hollywood movie is about. And all the books—they teach you in marketing about talking about the hero’s journey when you’re helping somebody. You take them from where they—and it’s the whole story arch.

Grant: And then look at Donald Miller’s StoryBrand, if you knew that book.

Lori: Yes.

Grant: One of my favorites. It wasn’t a guide. It wasn’t a Yoda. It was many guides. My 12-step sponsor is probably as close to my guide but there had been so many mentors along the way. And so, I think if we’re open to help and we’re open to staying humble, those mentors will appear.

Lori: Was it when you were in recovery that you found the courage, if that’s the right word to be who you are?

Grant: Great question. So I was in recovery, going to the meetings and we share in those meetings about what’s going on with us. And I was sharing things like, what a big deal I was. How much I was selling? Oh, man. I was moving a lot of weight on the streets. I had crews allegedly stealing cars for me. I was running with the big dogs. And it was full of what we call junkie pride. So proud of how bad I was. I’ve always been driven to be significant in some way and so, I wanted to be significant. I wanted to be the worst guy on the streets and I wanted to be the biggest deal in recovery but I wasn’t getting anywhere.

And my sponsor pulled me aside at one point and said, “Yo, you’re not going to make it if you don’t get real here.” And I kept going the way I was. But then one day, I realized I had a night where I almost used. And I went into the meeting the next day and I shared how I really felt and what was really going on with me. And I was blubbering, tears, and instead of people being disgusted or turned off, they were all nodding their heads like yeah, yeah, we get it. You’re in the right place, man.

Lori: Thanks for finally showing up, right?

Grant: Yeah. You’ve earned your seat. Thanks for showing up. And so, I learned for the first time in my life to get real and it was necessary. The only reason I got real is I had to, to save my life. There was no choice.

Lori: And when you did that, you were accepted more than ever before. It sounds like that’s – I don’t want to put words in your mouth but it sounds like that’s what happened.

Grant: Absolutely. I found a community where I belonged. And most important, I finally, like for the first time in my life at 28, I belonged with myself. And so, that belonging saved my life. And they loved me until I could love myself.

Lori: Yeah, that’s a fantastic phrase or thing to happen. I had a mentor one time who said something similar in terms of believing in me until I could believe in myself. And that was in terms of my business but I think it applies everywhere.

Grant: Yes. And we need that in business too, so I love that. Yeah, it was beautiful. Now real quick, so I’ve taken you all the way there. How important that was in my life. During the day, I’m working at the front desk of a real estate office. I always wanted to be a realtor. Finally, got my license and I’m getting real finally in these meetings. Then the next day, I show up at a sales meeting and they teach us how to make a phone call based on a script. And we’re supposed to pretend like we’re interested in the person and follow a formula. And then at the end, we’re supposed to say, oh, by the way, who do you know that needs to buy a house in the next three to six months?

So they were teaching me that to make it in real estate, I have to stop being who I really am and fake it. And I wanted to throw up. First of all, I was unemployable. So this had to work. No one would hire me at that point. And so, I had to make it. And I thought, do I have to pretend to be someone I’m not to make it in this business? And long story short, to cut to the chase, what I found out is, instead of doing that, I went the real way and showed up as I really am and improved who I really am. And my business absolutely exploded. Beyond all of those people who were trying to teach that fake junk.

Lori: Yeah. There’s a lesson there for any entrepreneur, not just in real estate but right, showing up as who you are is what attracts people to you.

Grant: It’s incredible.

Lori: It’s the opposite of—so many people like who you were thinking that I have to be somebody else so that people will like me. And it’s when you are truly who you are. And everybody talks about authenticity and being real but they don’t get what it really means.

Grant: Yeah. It’s just everywhere. I had to get real to save my life and that took a lot of work. And in the book, we talk about a top of heart is mindset, skillset and heart set. And the big part of the mindset is around getting real being who you really are and being okay with that and showing up that way. But here’s the thing, if you’re just real but you’re not happy with who you really are or you’re not moving at a level you’re proud of, then it’s not going to be enough in business. So skillset is around creating that excellence. The way you run through your processes just being engaged with you, I can see you understand that. And then heart set is all around okay, great. I’m great. I do great stuff. I know who I am. I’m being real but now how does it go from me to we. When we bring the we in our business and we run from a heart-centered way, then yes, you’re right. That rocket ship takes off. It’s so fun to watch.

Lori: Yeah, yeah. When it’s about really being of service to others and the money comes because of that but it’s not I’m just going to pursue the money.

Grant: Yeah, yeah. And by the way, and again, I love prosperity. I believe that we can do beautiful things with money. But if it’s the only thing we’re after, which is just like the score. If the basketball player only cares about the score, they’ll never get better. They’ll never be a champion. Champions have a different heart.

Lori: Yeah. And I love that you just mentioned about loving money because money is energy and when you have—the more money you have, the more people you can help.

Grant: Yes, absolutely.

Lori: And a lot of people don’t see it that way because again, they’ve been trained since birth to have the belief that money is evil or if you have money, you got it in some illicit way or it’s not a good thing. Whatever negative beliefs people have around money, the truth is, money is energy. It’s not good or bad. It’s whatever you assign to it and you can do a ton of great things when you have money.

Grant: Absolutely.

Lori: Not just for yourself but for the world.

Grant: Yeah, absolutely.

Lori: I want to go back quickly too, because earlier in this episode, I mentioned that you went from living in the condo with the amazing view in Denver to a place that didn’t have any windows. So just quickly, where were you living that didn’t have any windows when you started working ironically in real estate?

Grant: So I was living in a storage unit. So it wasn’t the tiniest. It was a bigger storage unit.

Lori: It was a luxury storage unit.

Grant: It had a shower and by shower, I mean, a mop like janitorial work. So I’d have to take a bath with cold water and this hose with one hand and just kind of splash myself. It’s kind of funny, I was wearing all goodwill clothes to the office. This is in Boulder. But this dude who was my size had given all these fancy clothing with French cuffs and cuff links to goodwill. So I was dressing like a million dollars, which didn’t fit in in Boulder. I was super dressy, but it’s what I had to wear. And so, it’s funny because we think about those times of struggle, I look back at that time and I was so desperate to get to where I am now. But I look back now and realize, oh gosh, those were the good days. I loved it. It was so cool driving in my really, really, really crappy car from the storage unit to the front desk job for $9 an hour listening to Anthony Robbins. What a great time, right?

Lori: Yes, yes. And so, you just mentioned Anthony Robbins. What other tools or techniques or things did you use to help rewire your brain?

Grant: So a lot of reading. I am a huge fan—my favorite book in the world is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

Lori: Oh, my God, Bob is such a cool guy. I know him personally and he’s awesome.

Grant: That’s amazing. He’s become a huge mentor and friend of mine. He actually wrote the foreword for my book. So if you’re in sales, you need to read The Go-Givers Sell More because that’s my favorite in the series. Mine is so highlighted that the highlighter didn’t make sense because everything is highlighted. It’s so good. So that’s been a big one. And people like Brendon Burchard, anybody who has a positive influence. I’m not a huge guru follower if you will. For me, what really works better than anything else has been to find coaches who have what I want, whether that is joy, peace, love, money, fitness, and hire them. So at any given time, I have four to five coaches I’m working with. And I’m a huge believer in that.

That’s why I ended up becoming a high-performance coach under Brendon Burchard’s high performance institute. And I should say very specifically, I do not work for him. It’s a certification he offers. But what I realized is, we can have the right hearts and be who we really are but if we don’t have the habits to show up as we need to, then it doesn’t make any difference. So that’s why the high-performance coaching.

Lori: I love it. I’m familiar with it and yes, it’s a great, great program. So yeah, all right, wow. You have taken us on this wild ride. Isn’t there a book like a kid’s book, somebody’s wild ride. I don’t know.

Grant: Maybe, I don’t know.

Lori: I don’t have any kids, so I’m trying to think—I know I’ve heard of it. Like Uncle Tim’s wild ride. That’s not it but it’s something like that. Anyway, our friend Grant’s wild ride. We’ll just call it that.

Grant: There you go.

Lori: You should have called your book that. Instead, what is it? What is your book called? It’s called Top of Heart?

Grant: Top of Heart, yeah. And it’s about going from top of mind to top of heart. So top of mind is great like trust is important, but we need to go further. If we don’t go far enough – and top of mind is simply about creating real genuine human emotional connections with our clients and everyone we meet.

Lori: Yeah, awesome. All right, so before I ask you where people can find your book and find you if they want to continue the conversation, I got to ask you because you have a great, fantastic, amazing, positive energy. What is the song that you listen to when you need even more energy? What’s your hype song?

Grant: Stevie Nicks, Edge of Seventeen.

Lori: Ooh, that’s a good one. No one’s mentioned that one before.

Grant: I am a very obsessed Stevie Nicks fan. I mean, I won’t even go into how obsessed I am.

Lori: How many concerts have you been to?

Grant: Oh, anything that comes. I’m going to see her in December in Palm Springs and always the best seats. She is unbelievable. Another great comeback story. She had some incredible darkness in her life. Anyway, Edge of Seventeen just gets me going every time when those guitars come in at the very beginning. Waddy Wachtel, her long-time guitarist starts going, Gets me going every single time.

Lori: I love it. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. Now how can people reach out to you if they want to continue a conversation with you?

Grant: So it’s easy to find me at grantmuller.com. G-R-A-N-T-M-U-L-L-E-R dot com. You can learn about my coaching there. The book is there. All things Grant are right there.

Lori: Awesome. I will put a link to that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for joining me. I feel so honored to have made this connection with you.

Grant: Oh, and I love that I’ve made this connection with you. And if you think about it, what’s so interesting is, I just mentioned what a big influence Bob Burg has been in my life. I met Mike through Bob and now I’ve met you through that connection. So it’s just incredible when you have this top of heart relationships how they’re built from there. I’m just so grateful to have known this opportunity with you.

Lori: Yes. Thank you so much for joining me today on Fine is a 4-Letter Word.