Tony Grebmeier On The Art Of Funding Fulfillment And Success (#97)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

[00:00:10] This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.

[00:00:16] Your liquidity event is the largest and most important financial transaction of your life.

[00:00:22] But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time, money and effort wasted. Of the "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave anywhere from 50% to over 100% of their deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.

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[00:01:44] Jeffrey Feldberg: As a husband, father, friend, and serial entrepreneur, Tony Grebmeier's current ventures include co-founding ShipOffers with his childhood friends and he's the creator of the Be Fulfilled brand.

Tony's journey of finding fulfillment was filled with thoughts that it either wasn't possible or even of giving up. Tony's desire to give back and help people happened when his friend John saved Tony's life. Leveraging 24 years as an owner-operator, Tony created the Be Fulfilled journal, which has enabled over 5,000 entrepreneurs to develop a fresh vision for their life.

As the host of the popular Be Fulfilled Podcast: The Real Stories Behind Success, Tony is on a quest to redefine how you determine success. It's the perfect show for anyone on their journey to personal or professional fulfillment who is looking for some additional motivation on the climb up the success mountain.

Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast.

And as usual, on The Sell My Business Podcast, we always take deep dives into different areas. Well, for today's episode, we were doing a deep dive on business success, and I have an absolutely wonderful, incredible, and successful business owner, otherwise known as Tony,

Tony, welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. We're so, happy to have you with us.

[00:03:08] Tony Grebmeier: Thank you very much.

[00:03:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: Tony, there's always a story behind the story. Why don't we start off with, how did you get to where you are today?

[00:03:15] Tony Grebmeier: Being resilient. I think that's the easiest way. You know, by the time I was 18 years old, I had 14 jobs. All things, you know I tried that I didn't want to do eventually decided what I kind of wanted to do. Found my way into radio broadcasting at an early age. And there was something always in the back of my mind, I found it to be easy.

It was fun to meet people. So, I kind of did that when I went through college, there was an opportunity to push buttons at a radio station. And that led to being in a studio one day and our boss came in and said, hey, would you be willing? It's magic. This is the magic stuff right here. Would you be willing to work the overnight shift pushing buttons, and then I'll give you a chance to, you know, speak on the radio at three o'clock in the morning.

And my thought wasn't, there's going to be nobody listening. And if they are, they're all going to be drunk. Mine was thank you for the opportunity. And my son now, I have a 20-year-old and a 22-year-old. My 20-year-old always tells me to say yes until it makes sense to say no. So, I said, yes, I just said, yes, that's going to be awesome.

I said, great, thanks. A little while, went by. And he goes, how would you like to, you know, now work the seven to midnight shift. I said, great. He's like, you know, type up what you want to say and I'll review it. I said, yes. And part of my kind of life has been Jim Rohn talks about it. All life really is difficulties mixed with opportunities.

And I personally believe that we are faced with decisions every single day. And I am just one of those guys who's resilient on just saying yes, why it makes sense, and everything that I've done up until this point. Now I'm going to be, you know, 49 years old here is nothing more than people just presenting you with options.

And I just say, sounds good. Let's go for it. And in that really led to getting onto the internet in the mid-nineties presented with somebody said, hey, do you think you could build this? I didn't even know what the internet was other than I connected to something called CompuServe or AOL. And didn't know there was the whole make-up language behind the scenes of what the browser was made up of.

And I said yes. And then I got busy. There was no YouTube. There was no Google. I got busy figuring out, you know, HTML. And one thing led from HTML to Java, to coding and building websites and figuring out traffic. And eventually landed at an opportunity and a crossroads before there was canned spam and all that kind of stuff of could I build something online that I already knew I can control 7 million visitors a day to all of our sites.

So, I started figuring out traffic and marketing, but I'm not going to be able to sell you today, my friend or anybody like I'm not going to sell that's not what I was created to do. What I was created to do is help individuals to learn how to take an idea or a concept to the next level. And that's what I've been able to do since I was a little kid when I would knock on your door and say, I'll clean your gutters, I'll pull the weeds.

I'll take stuff to the junkyard. I'll just do whatever I can to help you because by helping you, I'm helping myself to learn. And for the last 20 plus years, I've run a logistics and fulfillment company based out of Colorado for online marketers in the health and wellness arena to take products that we manufacture to slap their name, their label on it.

And we ship it to their customers. And we do that almost a hundred thousand times per week. And all of our products and services are pretty much on demand. And I get up every single day with the same kind of excitement and enthusiasm. I can't wait to come into work and see what we can do today.

So, my life is devoted to helping people take an idea or a concept and then take it to the next level.

[00:06:48] Jeffrey Feldberg: Tony. I love that story. And you use one of my favorite words, resilience. It took me down memory lane. For those of us that remember AOL and CompuServe, you don't hear those names much anymore. And I can just see you with your resilience in the backend tinkering, trying to figure things out, but really with what you're saying is with the goal of, okay, how can I take this, apply it, help people achieve their goals? And that I do that enough times. Eventually, I'll achieve my goal, but let's dive in a little bit more on that resilience because you mentioned it at the start and it sounds like it's been a continual theme for you. So, you're running a very successful company and you're making a huge impact out there.

There may be some listeners, business owners who were saying, yeah, Tony, that's a terrific story. And I can see how resilience, in the beginning, made a difference for you. But now you're a big company and you have the capital, you have the resources to do whatever you want to do. Maybe resilience is not such a big thing anymore.

Why would that, I'm going to suspect, you're going to say not be the case and how does resilience play as much a role today as it did back in the day?

[00:07:52] Tony Grebmeier: I love it. COVID, lockdown, wife, and I started talking about. What do we want to do? We can't travel internationally. What should we do? Somehow, we decided to buy a piece of property out in the country. So, basically, sell our home. All of the neighbors that we have met over the last, you know, seven, eight years decide to like, say, hey, we love you guys, but we're going to go try something completely new.

I haven't driven a tractor in my life. I was driving a sports car. I bought a truck. My wife was driving an SUV. Now she's driving a Jeep and I'm getting zero-turn mowers from a push mower. Part of my mindset is to figure it out. I'd show up at the office five days a week by 7:30 in the morning and work until 3:30 to 4:00 in the afternoon.

 That mindset for me is I'm not going to pay somebody to do my job when I'm capable and I still love what I do. So, resilience for me is seeing something and being courageous enough to figure it out. No, I'm not too proud to ask for help. I'm not too proud to say I don't know. Yes. We have tools today and have when I was getting started, which is YouTube.

I spent a good chunk of my day actually going down YouTube strategies to figure out how to do certain things. I learned this way. Some people learn differently. Some people need to see it and then understand and go do it. Some people need to read it, process it, and go do it. I'm a person that just sees and gets it done. So, YouTube is very easy for me and helps my processes move faster. So, I had a great interview the other day with somebody, he told me, he goes, I'm the type of person he was referring to himself that when I'm playing chess with somebody. You're making the move in front of you. He's like I'm calculating four or five moves ahead.

And I go, I relate to that cause that's my brain. My brain sees something now, but I'm calculating the other opportunities that are coming from those moves today. And you have to be careful cause like in chess, if you make one bad move, it's all over. So, I spend most of my time figuring out how to be a better human. Resilience is getting up. You know the Japanese proverb is fall seven, get up eight. There are thousands of opportunities in our day where we are presented to make a decision, just jump in a car. You have to make a decision. And Tony Robbins mentioned, you know, most of what we drive down is an information highway.

It's divided by a double yellow. We're going 80, 90, sometimes a hundred miles an hour and we have to be paying attention. We can't take our eyes off the road. Cause if we do we'll crash, so, all day long, how do I evolve as a human, to be the best version of myself? And I still have this amazing fight in me. I'm nowhere where I want to be.

I'm exactly where I need to be for the time being. But I have crazy visions that my business partner sometimes says, all right, let's pull that guy back for a moment. How do you think we're gonna get there? And that's where my resilience from all the things that I've gone through as a human being from, you know, wanting to kill myself, to getting sober and clean, to almost destroying my marriage and being separated for three years to trying to come to work when I was so, mentally checked out to being a father, but my kids didn't know what dad version they were going to get to not really having parents.

Yeah. I had parents, but they weren't home when I was growing up. I had to fend for myself. And taking all of that knowledge and drinking from that, I can do this cup, but not believing that I can do it all by myself. I do it today with a bunch of support around me, and I believe that you're not weak for asking for help.

It's actually a sign of your greatness and we need as humans to be better at asking for help. So, I'm a big proponent of raising your hand. That was something we were taught when we were kids, but as we got later in our education, our hand went up less and less because we got picked on for asking stupid questions in class.

And you've heard the saying, there are no stupid questions. There are just stupid people who don't ask them. And I'm just somebody who today realizes everything that I want is on the other side of an ask, everything that I'm needing. And so, there's just so, many more tools to leapfrog time today, faster than anything that's ever been available to you.

You can take 20 seconds and ask Siri to ask a question on your phone, or you can just realize that you can do the same thing without using your voice. And you can just type it. I'm a person that uses my voice more than I type. So, everything that I want is just an ask.

[00:11:58] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's amazing. And Tony, thank you for being vulnerable and open with us and sharing a little bit about your past. And let's do a quick diversion here, wasn't part of the plan, but we're just going to roll with this because you've been so, open and vulnerable. You mentioned earlier on that you had some mental health challenges and you went through what sounds like a fairly rough patch in your life.

So, how did you deal with getting through that, and then here you are today and you're changing people's lives? And we'll talk about some of the different companies that you have shortly, but how did you get through that to the point where you are today of being a successful business owner with a terrific company, making a difference?

[00:12:35] Tony Grebmeier: Yeah, I appreciate it. Great question too. October 9th, 2008, my life and everything around me changed. I got a knock on the door from a buddy, as I was trying to commit suicide. John, and he said, you know, Tony, your life has meaning and purpose, but how you're living it right now doesn't and those words were hard to swallow.

 I tried to brush it off oh dude, my life's great. You know, little did he know that in the other room was all this stuff I was about. you know, take myself out of the world with. One thing led to another, that conversation lasted 45 minutes. In part of my mind said, get the heck out of my house.

I just want to get back to doing what I was doing, but then another buddy called and it was a pastor friend of mine. He saw my life on stages and sharing in front of thousands and thousands of people. And you know, it's really hard if you don't have a good vision for your life. Hard for somebody to speak truth into your life and you to see that vision. You'll kind of like say yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I was good at for a lot of my life when I'd get a compliment, I'm like, yeah, don't worry about it. No, it's no big deal. Now later in my life. I allow those things to be spoken to me and I accept them and I'm grateful for the lessons that I had to go through to get to where I'm at today.

But during the dark time, I didn't get sober and clean until 12/15 of '08. So, several months later went by and I had a lot of dark conversations. My mom was a really big proponent in helping me to see that I had some addiction issues. She talked to me on 12/14 of '08 for 44 minutes.

And I kept saying, I don't need help. I got this on my own. And at the 45-minute mark, I said, you know what, mom, I do need help. And I went online, took a test called the only person I knew who didn't drink. And I said, is there any chance you could take me to a meeting? He said, sure. And he took me to a meeting.

I sat in a meeting of recovery and I heard truth spoken for the very first time. And I said I relate to that character, that person that's being described. That sounds like me. And by the grace of God, I haven't had a drink since the day I walked into recovery on 12/15 of '08 and was able to literally take a pretty extensive drug habit. You know, on any given weekend, I could find myself popping enough stuff to open a pharmacy and, you know, I put all that stuff aside started working on myself, repaired my marriage, my wife and I just celebrated 23 years of marriage. We always say we had a little hiccup but we have been able to raise two amazing kids, a 22-year-old son who just graduated college and moved to Seattle and is doing well on his own.

And then we have a junior in college and we're able to show up and be there for them. And we talk a lot about difficulties in our marriage, but difficulties to just relating to the world around us and how do we do it? And we're very open. And I think that's part of that whole ask for help thing.

That's been really big because you know what? Most people want to sweep stuff under the rug. They want to look good. And I had spent a long time until I went to a weekend kind of seminar to work on yourself, where I came up with a statement. I spent a lifetime trying to look good to avoid looking bad.

I spent a lifetime trying to look good to avoid looking bad. And I've realized that most of us are trying to project an image on the world. Like I got this and I'm finally decided I don't get this. And it's okay for me to share with the world that I don't. And so, most of the message that I put out to the people that I coach, the people that I work with, the people that I mentor, people who mentored me as like, hey, I'm just like you, I may be one step ahead, but I'm actually walking beside you.

I'm not better than you, or less than you. I'm just doing the best I can with the data that's coming in. And the way that I process feedback information today. I'm just like, hey, let's figure this out together. So, I use that language at my office too. I don't ask anybody to come work for me. I ask people to come work with me because I don't want to work for anybody.

I want to work with somebody. I want to work to solve problems, come up with solutions, work on creating new ways of doing things. And so, all of that kind of stuff has really come from being a broken man and realizing that I needed help and that I needed to be courageous. And I think all of us have an option in the morning when we wake up, we can choose to be the average, the person we were.

Or we can choose what I believe all of us have the ability to do. And that is to be phenomenal. We are created, for me, I'm going to just be spiritual for a moment. We are supposedly created in somebody's likeness. And that's not just somebody that's like for us. So, I was like, okay I don't think He just wanted me to be average.

I don't think He set out for me to be just some boring dude. He created me to be phenomenal and all things that I do. And so, how do I get to do that? And how do I replicate that day in and day out and not lose any of the fight that's in me? I'm going to wake up some days just, I want to go back to bed some days I'm gonna wake up and I'm like, I don't want to get out of bed. I'm having a hard time. So, he's helped me to learn, to communicate my feelings. It doesn't matter about how much money you make. If you have poor mental health, you're gonna have really limiting self-worth and that self-worth is going to ooze into all areas of your life and try to take you out as a human being.

And so, I work every single day on depositing daily into my self-help bucket. And so, pray, meditate, read a book, call my sponsor. Do something like watch a video on YouTube that has something to do with motivation, personal development, et cetera, attend a meeting, be of service, hold the door for a complete stranger.

By doing those things as my former mentor, Shawn Stevenson, before he passed, he taught me that every human has an ability to create a when life works list. So, when life works list, cause you already know when your life sucks, you already have a list of stuff that you're doing, but what's your win life work list looks like.

And he instructed me to put 14 things down that work for me in my life, eat healthy, get plenty of sleep, drink a lot of water, work out, do the things that you know, that work. And then every day grab four of those things and put four of those things into action into your life. And when you do that, your life just works.

So, a long-winded answer is, you know, when your life is working and you know, when your life sucks. So, when you wake up in the morning, ask yourself this simple question, Mel Robbins talks about The Five-Second Rule. I'm just ask yourself this morning. I'm like, are you committed to having a shitty day, excuse my language, or having a phenomenal day?

And in the moment when you choose, you get into action. And action is the only thing as humans that we need to remind ourselves that we are capable of as we have choices. And what are you choosing today? Have a bad day or have a good day? And I just gravitate to having a good day.

[00:19:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that story. And Tony it sounds like you've been interpersonal development from a very early age. And it was Jim Rohn that you mentioned. I also believe it was Jim Rohn, who said something along the lines of you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And what I'd love for you to share with our community.

How has that made a difference for you both on the personal side and on the business side and by the way, I don't personally, I don't really separate the two, if you got it right on the personal side, you're going to get it right on the business side. There's no incongruency. You've got to have it right internally before you can get it right externally, but for our listeners, how has that made a difference for you?

Because I suspect if you're to look back in the dark days of your life that you may say that maybe some of the people, I was hanging around with weren't the best influences and what made you change and what's been the difference for you with the vantage point of, for our listener saying, Hey if Tony went through dark days to great days and part of that secret of success was the people that he spent the most time with.

That's something to follow. That's an action item, but I'd love to hear that in your own words, how that made a difference of the people who are now in your life, where you spend the most time with?

[00:20:12] Tony Grebmeier: Yeah. I mean, when I look back in my life and the great thing for me is I have a three kinds of coin philosophy. It's really basic, and it hopefully will make a lot of sense for you. I needed to understand before anything in my life, some stuff from my past stuff before I was even created as a human being, DNA that my family downloaded, and then, you know, most of us are just trying to help our children.

If you're fortunate enough to have kids, you're just trying to help your children. And so, you have a lot of safety mechanisms that maybe stuff that trauma that you went through, that you want to help your kids to avoid, et cetera. So, I'm proud to say if I had a hundred friends at the age of 18 when I graduated high school, life, neighbors, et cetera.

I'm proud to say, I probably have 99 today. I don't lose a lot of friends. I haven't replaced a lot of friends. What I did is I realized that, Hey, people are always going to be people and they're going to do what they're going to do. What I needed to work on was more myself. Cause if I take the sum of the people I hang around with my wife, my two kids, and my business partner, that was the sum still is today.

What's really changed is how I spend my time. My time with myself and for a long period of time, I wasn't able to sit still in my own skin. I felt like I needed to go do something to be something. And through this incredible process, this journey and so, I tell people you want to become an archeologist in your life first and foremost, before you become the architect of your life and then become the astronaut in your life, you need to become an archeologist.

You need to understand you. And through the process, I figured out, which is amazing. And I hope this helps one person. That's my goal every single day is to help one person. Cause you know, if you think about it on a large scale, Mother Teresa didn't set out to change the world. She went out to change herself and by changing herself, she went out to impact the world by how she led her life.

Gandhi, you know, went out to change himself by being the change. And I really live with this philosophy every single day that we all have in front of us, without us even knowing it, we have what I call life's dumpster a 10 by 20 packed with everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly, all the stuff we've gone through.

Good friends, bad friends, relationships did or didn't work out money that came and went. Dah, dah, dah, Dah. It's all in life's dumpster. However, on the other side of life's dumpster is people that we love and care about and they unwilling get smashed every single day with our life's dumpster. And we push it into everything, all business transactions, relationships, sports decisions, life decisions, mindset, et cetera.

And we have a limiting belief that somehow has come from what has worked and hasn't worked. When I sit down and individually coach somebody and tell them, I said let's figure out what's in your life's dumpster. So, we get to the board as fast as possible. I went through this and this.

I'm like, all right, great. That's in there. Hey, I just to let you know, I relate to so, much of the stuff that you were pouring into your life's dumpster. I've been through that. And then I try to quickly get to the other side of life's dumpster so, I can get them back with their family as quick as possible, but then I need to help them to acknowledge that they now know that they have a life's dumpster. It's never going away.

But they just now need to know that it belongs where behind them, not in front of them anymore, because now for the first time I had some amazing friends along my journey that all I really did is realized that I was waiting for my friends to change. My friends are not going to change. Tony's going to change.

My friends are going to be curious one day when they look at me and they go, dude, I got to ask you what, like what the heck happened to you? Some that happened around '08, '09 in your life. You are not the same person as you were, you know, in 1998, I said, yeah, I decided to make myself a priority and not an afterthought. So, damn I said, okay, cool. So, now that I'm on the other side of the dumpster with them, and I'm helping them to realize that in front of them is a blank canvas. If you painted like Bob Ross, awesome. Connect the numbers, that's great. Or if you're an abstract guy like Salvador Dali or Picasso. I'm giving you paint, brushes, and paint.

What would you create? And most humans have never sat down to figure out what they want in this present moment, their future to look like. So, my job with all of my friends who now hang out with me or have been around me, know that this is what I'm most passionate about. Helping people to live their best life now, not so, one day they go, when I have the time, I'm like the only way you're going to have the time is to make the time.

And so, today is the only time I've got, and that's why now no opportunity wasted is the most important thing you'll remember is that today is the best day of your life. No matter if you lost somebody or something went terribly wrong in your life. It's like the one day that you physically have the ability to bring change right now and actually considerably see change.

So, when I hand somebody basically these tools and I say, what would you create? Most of them say I don't know. And I'm like, okay. I can't, for me, I can't live in I don't know. I live in the opportunity of what do I want my life to look like? And then I get people to begin to paint, and then we get into recycling and that's when you become the architect of your life.

And then eventually you'll become the astronaut and you can blast off anywhere in the world you want to go. When I take my friends and think about the average of the people that I've hung out with. I'm like the same people are hanging out with me today. I've just changed. I became the best version of myself and that version hopefully is the one that I'm sharing with you on the show.

Sharing with the world when they see me on social or offline, that what is really changed is not the friends Tony associates with, because yeah, I had those friends that I had to get rid of. They were my drug dealers. I had to get rid of some people that weren't averaging good choices for me in life, but the reality was that they didn't do anything to me.

I was doing stuff to me and I had to change the way I thought. And so, a good friend of mine, Jim always helped me to realize that I have what you call a thinking problem. And I had to change the way I thought. And by changing the way I thought, then I can look at the people in my life and say, hey, they did the best they could. Maybe they'll make some better decisions down the road, but right now their humans, and they're doing what they do. So, long-winded answer to get you that really changed comes from me. And obviously whatever you feed yourself, fuels yourself. So, if you feed yourself junk food, you get bad results. If you feed yourself good food, healthy stuff, you get great results. And I think this falls into that same line.

[00:26:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that Tony and you're so, right. I mean, there's, no judgment of bad people or good people. People play the role they're going to play and it's up to us number one, do we follow their lead or do we let them influence us in our lives? They're going to do what they're going to do anyways, with, or without us. So, it's up to us.

[00:26:57] Tony Grebmeier: Everybody, everybody's a teacher.

[00:26:59] Jeffrey Feldberg: People don't want to hear this. If you talk about your absolute worst nightmare of a situation that you went through, your worst life situation of where something terrible was, again, that judgment word terrible, but when something terrible was done to you that you felt looking back, the person who did that, when you look back now was a teacher for you, whether you realize it or not for valuable lessons learned, and maybe you learn those lessons, maybe you didn't, but Tony this is a good segue because you started with ShipOffers and you're doing amazing things on the fulfillment side, but then you took your own life experience and you walk the talk and you talk the talk. You're doing all of it with Be Fulfilled. And it sounds like Be Fulfilled is really a combination of all the things that went into your life to make you who you are. Why don't you share with our community? What is Be Fulfilled? Why just started, what are you doing?

[00:27:49] Tony Grebmeier: Awesome. Perfect. I love it. Easy to talk about. So, ShipOffers provides myself and everybody who we work together to help our clients and customers solve one problem. And that's professional fulfillment. Though, I lacked personal fulfillment, so, go back to '08 my life's miserable. My buddy's telling me my life has no meaning and no purpose. So, I set out on an exploration to try to understand what was really meaning and purpose? Where was I lacking and what was I lacking? And so, one thing led to another and I would come back from events for you who are listening it's going to be hard, but I'll describe it. I'd come back with a bunch of paper and notes from masterminds, workshops, et cetera.

And I realized that. I wasn't very good about that. I'd eventually just throw it in the trash. If I left it on my desk long enough. And so, I guess 2014, 2015, I just had this idea. I'm gonna put my stuff together in a journal. And I'm like, yeah.

Like a notepad, but I'm going to figure out how to do something with it. Cause I want to help people. And I want to help people on a large scale and on a small scale, but I want to intimately have impact on a small scale with people. So, I said, how could I do this? I'm like, woah, I talk a lot about people needing community. I'm like, why don't I go build a community? So, I decided to build a Facebook group called Be Fulfilled, and that group grew to what I would call a very substantial amount of people contributing on a daily basis.

And it felt very good. And I realized shoot, if I got a community, I'm like, maybe I could build my journal and do something different. And so, I put QR codes in 2016, 2017 in a journal. QR codes today, or everywhere you need them. Like you walk into a restaurant, you know, you go to the airport, you see a QR code.

People are like, what's a QR code. I'm like, it's going to be a way that you can get information quicker, just grab your phone, snap a pic. Next thing you know, it'll redirect you to a website. So, I built a course and taught a course all around finding fulfillment, finding personal fulfillment in your life.

And so, be Fulfilled was the culmination of a podcast that I have, a journal that I created, a community that I ran, an ability for people to feel supported despite their past. Because we all have a past. And, you know, you were talking about something that was terrible. you know, I was molested as a kid and I remember feeling so, much shame and feeling so, scared.

And so, you know, worried about there was something wrong with me. And I questioned my sexuality, I questioned about a whole bunch of stuff as a child. And it had a big impact on me. And I realized that I was hiding behind a version of me and you know, it's hard, but it's like something that we talk about.

Shawn Stevenson had made this post one day. He says, you know, it didn't happen to me. It happened for me. And it's hard because you're like why being molested? Why did that happen for me? And from that, when my father was about to pass, he was the one who molested me as a kid. I was able to hold his hand and forgive him for everything that had happened.

And he died of dementia and Alzheimer's, and he wasn't there. It was for me to realize that I have a past and my past doesn't have to own me today. My past is nothing more than just a tool, a reference, a moment in time that I get to look at. I've made some terrible decisions along with my childhood.

I'd done some terrible things to others. So, I was like, all right, how do I take all of this and make something of it? And I wanted to help people despite their past to become anything they want in this present moment and to create a future just with nothing that would hold them back from creating something of a magical, perfect life.

And when I say perfect, there is no perfectness, but what there is the ability to dream. And so, Be Fulfilled is really about helping people in the personal to really just dream big. Again, you know, there's a great quote from Dottie Beracah that says, you know, dream big dream, small dreams have no magic.

And I think that I wanted to be somebody to help people dream. And Be Fulfilled was my personal fulfillment that I was lacking. It was anything more than just I realized I needed in my life. And so, all those notes that I took became daily gratitude. You know, what's one thing you learned today that you can sit around the table and share with your kids? You know, how would you score rate your day?

Like, you know, your health, your finances, your relationships? And I started realizing that this was big in my life. And I started giving it to my friends. And they're like, this has transformed the way that I think. And now we've helped tens of thousands of not just entrepreneurs, humans become the best versions of themselves by what most people would say I'm not going to spend five minutes in journal. Now people are like journaling, 30, 40, 50 minutes before they go to bed. They're getting their thoughts out of their head and they're putting them down on paper. And I think that's one of the most powerful things I would have ever done is to take my thoughts and put them out of my head and down on paper.

And so, the Be Fulfilled kind of brand, and I don't want to call it a brand. I just think it was a way for me to find personal fulfillment, something I was lacking in my life. And now I feel truly fulfilled in what I do. And it's a personal, professional, all kind of thing. It's I want to be fulfilled in my life. And that's what be fulfilled really is.

[00:32:50] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, and Tony, the vulnerability and just the sharing just keeps on coming out. And I really thank you for sharing some of those details with us. And, you know, as you look at your situation for a lot of people who that situation could have happened to. There would have been a justification this happened to me. That's why I didn't realize my potential, but you took that. And despite that, and this goes back to your word resilience, you channeled that energy and that experience into becoming the best version of yourself to be phenomenal to use your words. And I think there are so, many lessons in that.

Here, we're talking about the personal side. We can also translate that onto the business side, where things don't work out as planned, or you failed. These failures are really opportunities in disguise. Usually, it's your future success knocking at the door because you're not ready for it.

And you got to prepare it to go through that. But all that said, congratulations on tapping into your resilience to bring out the best version of you, despite some very challenging and difficult choices and life situations that you had to go through. And I'm curious as you look to the past and as you now look to the present moment, which is your so, right to all that we have. How do you think of those lessons learned those life lessons learned in terms of applying them on a daily basis to keep you on the straight and narrow and getting that phenomenal day heading your way?

[00:34:13] Tony Grebmeier: I love it. So, when I admitted that I had a drinking problem, what I really had was a faith problem. I didn't have any faith in my life and I heard this not too long ago and I love it. Spirituality is for people who have been through hell and religion is for people who are afraid of hell. So, I had a spiritual sickness, a disease.

I didn't have the ability in my brain to put things together. Very easy. I had gone to Catholic School. I got kicked out and had a bad situation. And so, for me, I grew up in several different religions. So, I grew up born into a Jewish household. Didn't get my bar mitzvah by 12 years old.

I'm leaving temple. Dad sent me to Catholic School, got kicked out of Catholic School. And then I lived with a Christian family who happens to be my business partners today, his family. And then I married a nonpracticing Mormon. And I came up with this idea that I put it all in a Vitamix hit puree, and I just came to believe there's gotta be something bigger than you and me.

And through that whole process taught me that a lot of people growing up told me what I needed to do. I had a lot of people say, oh, you should go in the military. Your kid lacks this discipline. You should do this and do that. And I think to answer your question and help bring all this full circle.

I had to take ownership. No, one's coming to save me. No, one's going to go do the work for me. So, if I want stuff to get done, I got to do it. I got to find a way and that's that whole resilience that's, you know, asking for help. That's not being afraid. I love this scene in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade when Sean Connery gets shot and he's down on the ground.

And Brody says, “Indie hurry.” And you know, he's got to go through this maze of kind of making decisions and choices. And he sits at the lion's mouth and he has to decide, am I going to go back probably where it's comfortable, but yet still things are going to happen? Or am I going to take a leap of faith?

And you know, he just took a moment and he's man, I'm going to take a leap of faith 'cause if you really think about life, Isn't it all just about faith? Can you tell me what's gonna happen tomorrow, today? No, probably a little bit like what it is today, but could it be different? And I love this quote from Jim Rohn.

He always says there are only six or seven miserable people in this world. They just seem to move around a lot. So, when I look at my life and I look at everything that I've gone through, man, it's all lessons. What is the world teaching me? And I posted on Instagram yesterday. I said, right now I believe God is teaching me patience. He's like, Son, I created you and yeah, you've gone through some just horrendous, horrible things, and you've done some horrendous, horrible things, but now you can help others to go through those horrendous, horrible things and realize that they're not alone and you can help people stop pushing around all their past.

And help them to create a future. And said, thank you because in doing so, it helps me to realize that I have so, much gratitude for my entire life. I am grateful for the good, the bad and ugly, everything that's happened in my life. I have found gratitude in it because it's all been a powerful teacher.

My neighbor, Todd McGuire says everybody's teaching us something to do and something not to do. And everything is just a lesson and I don't know where tomorrow what's going to happen. So, why spend any of today focusing on tomorrow? Like in this moment with you you're the only moment that matters right now in my life. Jeffrey.

This is the only moment that I have any control over what is going on. And even then, I'm just a guest. So, I'm just answering questions where my wife is, where my kids are doing or where my mom is, where my sister, where my family is? Out of my control. And that's it. And all of that has humbled me enough to realize that you know, Jeffrey, you and I met from a connection, one connection, a phone call to a podcast to endless amount of opportunities. We talked about at the very beginning to where we're at right now. I don't know what tomorrow will bring. So, why don't you just enjoy the moment where you're at right now?

And I couldn't do that before walking in and admitting that I had some issues that I never dealt with. See all that stuff that happened to me and to my childhood was in my life's dumpster. And instead of dealing with it and recycling and working through it, I was pushing it. So, every time I got into a relationship, I always got to that same frickin point.

I'd walk away. I'd be like, I'm done. Though I didn't know why. What I realized was I'd never become an architect in my life. And actually, before I built the next foundation, I started understanding that my past, that archeology side of me, I needed to dig up the reasons why it kept happening. And then I needed to take personal responsibility for it.

My past happened not necessarily a hundred percent because of me. But I got to go through it and then it became a part of me. And then I got to work through some stuff now because anybody's listening to this podcast, I promise you that you have an amazing story and it probably has been painful at times.

And there's an old saying that goes, you don't really know a man until you walk in their shoes. I won't ever walk in your shoes. Nor will I ever try to walk in your shoes, nor will I ever minimize or any potential that you have as a human being, say anything to you to take away from what you've gone through.

I just am here to speak hope and truth that despite your past, you can create any future you want, but you have to make some decisions now in this present moment that you want things to change for you because you are responsible for making change happen in your life.

[00:39:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: Amazing wisdom. And for our listeners, some real nuggets here, because what Tony was just sharing earlier, where he looks to his past and he accepts the good, the bad, the ugly. Not just on the personal side, but true success. If you want to optimize your life for happiness and in business. And business is also accepting, hey, whatever happened, whatever I am, where I am, why I'm there just accept it. There's a reason for it. And really, Tony your words gratefulness and gratitude. Just be grateful for that.

And Tony, let me ask you this. As we begin to wrap up the podcast, there's this one question I like to ask, and based on the stories that you've shared with us, we can go in any which direction, but let me ask the question anyway, and let's hear where you take is on this.

So, you spoke of one movie, I'm going to speak of another movie and the movie I'm speaking about is Back to the Future where you have that magical DeLorean car that goes to really any point in time. And imagine now it's tomorrow morning, Tony, you look out your window. The DeLorean car is there. The door is open and it's welcoming you to come into the car and you can go back to any point in your life. Tony as a young child and adolescent, teenager, adults, whatever it may be. What would you be telling your younger self in terms of lessons learned or life wisdom?

[00:40:49] Tony Grebmeier: If I could do it all over again, I would be a hundred percent present for this birth of my first son. And a hundred percent present through the birth of my second son and all the things that I was so, busy worrying about on the outside that I wasn't taking care of on the inside. I just wish I was there more for my children growing up.

They may say I was a great dad, but deep down inside that's one thing I've always struggled with is that I wish I would've done more. So, when I stopped pushing my life's dumpster, I realized that they accept me for who I am. But I would have gone back there sooner and done the work faster to make sure that I would have been there for more moments with my kids beCause makes moments matter with the people who matter. And it's super important for us to realize and so, funny, you bring up Marty McFly. That's actually something we teach here at ShipOffers. We teach four avatars at our company and Marty McFly and Doc Brown are two of them. And so, it's super important because we all have the ability to jump into that magic DeLorean.

And we're planning our holiday party in where we're going that has a DeLorean. So, it's funny that you bring it up. It's all the fibers and things are connected right now. So, yeah, time travel would be something huge, but the reality is that I don't have a magic DeLorean. And so, in the moment what I've done is become a hundred percent present in my kids' lives today.

And that's the only thing I have control over is when I get on the phone with them and I still make mistakes. Things that are like, hey, I call them. But then something else is going on and I get pulled in a different direction. I'm like, hey, I'll call you back. Then I forget to call back is now just really being aware.

And I wouldn't be who I am today. If it wasn't for an incredible life partner, my wife, she should have all the credit and all the accolades, because she's really helped me to become the best version of myself. She's loved me, despite my flaws. She likes me because, you know, I make mistakes and I'm not perfect.

And she loves me every day, regardless because she knows that I'm working at being the best version of myself. So, my wife, Amber, somebody like just being very present from the moment we met until here we are today. Just spending more quality time with her. I'd probably say it would be my other push button on my DeLorean is just going back to just from the start of really our wedding. Cause everything before that happened so, quick. And just really being as present as possible.

[00:42:59] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Tony, certainly some stories from the trenches, some words for the wise, you've done it all. And I really appreciate that. And I'll put this in the show notes, Tony, as we begin to wrap up this episode for our listeners who would like to find you, online, where would be the best place for them to go.

[00:43:15] Tony Grebmeier: The waybackmachine.org. Yeah, one place will really guide you to everything that we talked about today in some form or fashion. tonygrebmeier.com and from there you can find about, ShipOffers learn about Be fulfilled. I got a lot of free courses you can take trainers and drivers, something that I think every human being should learn about is, you know, what are you doing right now that's draining you or driving in your life? All that stuff is available at tonygrebmeier.com.

And Jeffrey. I don't do anything and take it lightly. I do everything because somebody has made space and time and created something. So, you did that on your calendar to allow me to come on today. So, it's just Thank you for what you. do. And the content you put out to the world and the impact you're making. It means a lot for me, just to be able to spend some quality time with you.

[00:43:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: Tony, thank you and thank you for being the light out there. You're being the North Star for people who are going through some dark times. And you're speaking from a place of having been there. And not that you necessarily would have chosen that, but you've gone through that and it's now become a gift for you and a treasure really to share with all of us.

So, thank you so, much for that, Tony. And so, as we wrap up this episode, thank you for taking part of your day to spend it with us on The Sell My Business Podcast.

And as always, please stay healthy and safe.

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Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

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As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe. 

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