Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Thanks for joining us on episode 1537 of the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. I'm Dennis Henson.
I challenge you to invest in yourself,
invest in others,
develop your influence,
and impact the world by using your time,
your talent and your treasures to live out your calling.
(00:20):
Having the ability to form good habits like daily reading is
key and one way to be inspired and to do that
is listening to this the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend
Scott Materer.
(00:42):
But you've also told a lot of other people,
hey, this is a good book.
Maybe, maybe I should read it too.
And it's like a ripple.
It's like the butterfly effect.
You did a little tiny thing that didn't mean much to
you and didn't take much of your time.
But you help a lot of people by doing that and
(01:03):
do it often.
Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God
wants you to be,
then you must learn to use your time,
your talent and your treasures for your true calling.
In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast,
you will learn to invest in yourself,
(01:24):
invest in others,
and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
In this podcast episode,
I interview Dennis Henson.
I asked Dennis about how he reinvented himself through reading and
(01:44):
teaching others.
I also asked Dennis to share how reading helped him form
a framework for his life.
And Dennis also shares how his book Real Impact Daily Inspiration
can help you develop the habit of daily reading.
I have a great book that's been out for a while
now called Inspired Living.
Assemble the puzzle of your calling by mastering your time,
(02:05):
your talent,
and your treasures.
You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com
it'll take you to a page where there's information and you
can sign up to get some mailings about it as well
as purchase a copy there.
I'd love to see you get a copy and share with
me how it impacted your world.
(02:26):
With a proven track record spanning over five decades,
Dennis J.
Henson has solidified his position as a leading authority in the
business world.
Beyond his successful entrepreneurial ventures,
Dennis is a dedicated educator,
inspiring countless individuals to achieve their goals.
Through his best selling books,
captivating workshops and international speaking engagements,
(02:47):
Dennis initially made his mark in the real estate investment world.
He founded Vanguard Marketing and investments in 2003 and continues to
serve as president.
He served as President of the Arlington Real Estate Investing association
and over the past several years he has taught individuals and
classes in real estate investing.
His books the Royal Flush of Real Estate Investing and A
(03:09):
Millionaire's Treasure Map to Real Estate Investing were widely hailed.
More recently,
he has dedicated much of his time to a broader focus
of helping people develop the mindset and habits for true success.
Taking what he has learned through his dedication to reading,
his proven personal practices,
his business experience,
and his systematic approach to self improvement,
(03:29):
Dennis has developed a transformative training program that empowers individuals to
reach their full potential.
Drawing on his wealth of experience and educational background,
he has distilled his insights into seven secrets of success by
embracing these timeless principles.
As his mentor Tom Hendricks would say,
you can no more fail than water can run uphill.
Dennis new book,
(03:50):
Real Impact Daily Inspiration,
is intended to help people develop the habit of reading daily
content that will improve their beliefs in themselves and inspire them
to action.
Welcome to the show,
Dennis. Well,
Scott, thank you for having me.
I appreciate it very much.
Absolutely. So we're both not too terribly far from each other
(04:11):
physically in distance.
And so before we started recording,
we were both commensurating about the end of winter,
the cold weather that we're having down here in Texas.
Hopefully by the time this releases,
it's a little warmer for everybody,
but it's a little chilly today as we're recording.
So I shared a lot in the intro about some of
the things you've done and the work you've done,
(04:32):
both in the investment world as well as in business and
leadership and entrepreneurship.
And now you're also working here,
putting up your book and coaching Arthur,
all of these different things that you've done.
And yet I always think intros never really show the whole
story of how we got from where we started to where
(04:52):
we end up.
Would you mind sharing a little bit more about your background
and your journey and what brought you to this point where
this is the message that you're putting out into the world?
I don't know if there's enough time to get all of
that in this podcast.
When I was in high school,
I hated school.
And one day a college band came and they brought their
(05:15):
marching drum section.
And when I saw that,
I thought,
oh my God,
I've got to be in that.
So that changed the path of my life.
I had terrible grades,
and so I decided I'll do anything to be in that
drum section.
My colleague,
my band director,
said, now you're really going to have to change your grades.
So I did.
I pulled them up to A's and B's,
(05:35):
and I went to Jacksonville State University and I got in
the drum section and I graduated and became a Band director.
I taught band for about five years,
but my goal was to become a college band director.
Georgia Tech offered me a position in 75 and I moved
to Atlanta to take the position.
But I hadn't signed the contract.
(05:56):
And a big company out of Tennessee contacted me and said,
you're the kind of person we want in our company.
And I said,
I'm not interested.
I've got the dream job.
I'm not going to do that.
So they said,
look, we'll give you a round trip,
a ticket to Memphis,
we'll pick you up in a limousine,
we'll buy you a steak,
give you a big cigar.
And I thought,
what have I got to lose?
(06:17):
In 75,
getting to fly on a plane was a big deal for
a young kid.
Hadn't flown much.
So I went to Memphis.
They picked me up in the limousine and to make this
long story a little shorter,
they offered me 20 times what Georgia Tech was going to
pay me.
So I left the music world or the teaching world and
(06:38):
went into the business world.
When I started with them,
the first thing they did was they gave me three books.
Think and Grow Rich,
Greatest Salesman in the World,
Margaret, you know,
and Success,
the Glenn Bland Method.
When I laid those books down,
I was a different person than the person that picked those
(07:00):
books up.
I was just on fire.
I could not wait to get in front of a prospect.
And I really made a lot of money.
I was very successful with that company and that was my
business career.
So during that period of time I would see these commercials
(07:21):
on TV about real estate.
Mark Harrelson had out a program,
how to wake up the financial genius inside you.
And I purchased that.
It was like four cassettes and a book.
And I thought,
I can do this on the side and make some extra
money. And so that's when I started really investing.
I had already invested some back in the 1970,
(07:44):
but that's when I got serious.
I bought a little apartment complex and some homes in Valdosta,
Georgia. Then I moved to Athens and I continued to invest.
So let's fast forward to moving to Texas.
About 30 years ago,
I moved to Texas and I started investing in real estate.
Here in Texas there wasn't a close by real estate group.
(08:08):
There wasn't one in Arlington.
There were groups in Fort Worth,
there were groups in Dallas.
But the Metroplex is a big place and the traffic gets
bad sometimes.
So to drive to Dallas was sometimes an hour and a
half and then the round trip.
So that took a lot of time.
Same way with Fort Worth.
(08:29):
Arlington's close to Fort Worth,
but the ones in Fort Worth were in north Fort Worth.
And Fort Worth is very long,
so it's another hour and an hour back.
I thought,
if I'm going to get to consistently go to these meetings,
I need to start one myself.
So I started the Arlington Real Estate association of Investors ara
and it grew and grew,
(08:50):
and I brought in speakers,
and we.
It was.
It was a lot of fun.
I taught some classes.
I thought,
if I want to learn about real estate,
if I want to learn about short sales,
then I'll announce an elite class so that I'm teaching short
sales. And next month,
or two months from now,
and then I have two months to learn everything there is
to know.
And so I learned by teaching.
(09:12):
One day,
one of the members came up to me and said,
dennis, I'm going to retire in about three weeks,
and I'm going to let you mentor me.
And I said,
mike, I'm really too busy.
I have my real estate business.
I'm trying to run these meetings.
I really don't have time to take on individual students.
(09:32):
And he looked at me funny,
and he said,
you didn't understand what.
I said,
dennis, in three weeks,
I'm going to retire,
and you're going to mentor me.
And I thought,
we'll see.
He said,
let's go out to lunch.
I'll buy your lunch,
and we'll talk about it.
So you make a lot of.
You make a lot of decisions based off of free meals.
(09:55):
So he bought me a lot of burger.
Can you believe that?
Okay, so he was cheaper than the steak.
But still after.
After we finished eating,
he had on a suit like this.
He reached into his pocket and put out a checkbook,
handed it to me,
and he said,
here, fill this out.
And I said,
do you mean the amount?
(10:16):
And he said,
yeah, fill that out.
So I thought,
this will end this.
There's no way he's going to continue to bug me about
teaching him when he sees what I put down,
because my time is worth a lot of money.
So I put down a figure there that I knew no
one in their right mind would pay,
handed back to him,
tore the checkout,
signed it without even looking at it,
(10:38):
handed it back to him.
That's when I started teaching.
That was about 2005.
So over the next 15 years,
I had 400 students,
more than 400 students.
And they just blossomed.
I really worked hard to try to see that they became
successful. And because of that,
I was invited to a lot of other groups Expos and
(11:03):
podcasts were just coming on.
So there was a real estate podcast that had me come
on their podcast,
and they were interviewing me and they said,
dennis, what makes your students so successful?
I said,
I haven't changed their.
If they change their habits to success habits,
they will become successful.
And he said,
(11:23):
what's the number one success habit that you would have them
for? And I said,
form the habit of reading something positive every day that leads
you towards your goal.
In this case,
the goal was real estate investing.
So after the podcast was over,
I thought that was a good answer.
Wouldn't it be great if there's some kind of a tool
(11:44):
to help people form that habit?
A book or an app?
And then it hit me.
Whoa, wait,
Dennis, since 1975,
you've been collecting books that motivated you and poems and quotes.
So you could put all those in one book.
And people could form the habit regardless of their time limitations.
(12:09):
So if between appointments they have 10 minutes,
they could read a short story.
Or if.
If they have five minutes,
they can read a poem.
Or if they get home and they're exhausted and they forgot
to read that day,
they can flip over to the back of the book to
the quotes and read a quote.
Take seconds to do that.
Or if you're at the airport waiting on a plane,
(12:32):
you can go to the list of the books in the
back and have one of those books with you all the
time. You can read for hours.
So I thought,
this shouldn't take long.
I have everything ready.
I'll put it together in a couple of months.
I'll have the book.
I can use it with my students,
and I can make.
Going to make it available to everyone.
Six years later,
(12:53):
2004. Last year,
2004, the book finally got published.
And to tell you the truth,
Scott, I worked on that book almost every single day for
six years.
So I put my heart and soul into it.
It's kind of my legacy.
But I sincerely believe that the book would change a lot
(13:14):
of people's lives.
It'll make them better real estate investors or anything else that
they want to do or want to become.
So I try to make that short,
but that's a lot.
Good. Let me ask you a follow up.
First off,
tell everybody again the name of the book.
It's Real Impact Daily Inspiration.
(13:35):
And that's why I wanted to ask the follow up.
So you said,
Real Impact Daily Inspiration.
Connect the dots for me on how you mentioned the success
habit. Daily reading,
reading something that's positive and nice.
How do you think that habit begins to lead to the
other kinds of success that people might want to have.
(13:59):
There's a trick to it.
It's like this.
In the beginning of the book,
it says how to use this book and the magic formula.
The only way you can use the book is you have
to decide what you want.
That's really big.
So many of the super motivational speakers say,
if you know what you want,
I can help you get it.
(14:21):
The lamp on the front of the book is supposed to
represent Aladdin's lamp.
And it tells the story about a young man who found
a lamp.
And when he was cleaning it,
he realized if he rubbed the lamp,
then a genie appeared and gave him through three wishes.
But he had to.
He had to give the genie what he wanted.
(14:43):
That's the power of the story.
You got to decide what you want.
So once you decide what you want,
you start reading a little bit about it every day.
Something that's motivational and inspirational,
educational. It keeps you on track.
Okay, here's what I want.
It reminds you every day,
I want this.
I'm moving in this direction,
(15:06):
and I really.
I know this words.
When I was in high school,
I literally hated high school.
And then that drum section came in and I saw them,
and my mind just exploded.
Every morning when I got up until I went to bed,
all I was thinking about was,
you have to learn the drum rudiments.
(15:27):
You have to learn the cadences.
You have to pass your grades.
You have to do whatever is necessary to get to be
in that drum section.
And that kind of thing,
that kind of devotion to a single thing will change anybody's
life. And you don't have to wait till something comes along
(15:47):
to blow your mind.
You can just have a desire and say,
wouldn't it be great if I could do this?
Maybe somebody that's young would say,
I would really love to be a doctor.
But then their butt got in the way.
Okay, I would love to be a doctor,
but I don't have the money.
But I don't have the education.
(16:08):
But I don't have the connection.
But they got to get their butts out of the way
so that.
Look, you wouldn't have had what?
To become a doctor,
they have to move their butt.
That's right.
Okay. These desires are not random.
Right. You're given the desire.
Everybody wants to know,
what's my purpose in life?
Your. Your purpose in life is being given to you all
(16:31):
the time.
It's called desires.
Wow. I'd love to do that.
That's a Desire,
lock in on it and go do it.
If you want to be a good real estate investor,
lock in on it.
Do you want to do single family?
Do you want to do apartments?
Do you want to do commercial?
Do you want to develop land?
What do you want to do?
And then once,
(16:51):
then start reading about it,
studying about it.
In 10 years,
you'll be teaching other people how to do it,
that it's just amazing.
Zig Ziglar said,
little by little,
a little becomes a lot.
If you just read 20 pages in the 200 page book
every year,
you'll read 20 books by the end of a year,
(17:13):
which is 19 more than the average person.
That will set you apart.
And Zig,
did he practice what he preached?
He read three hours every single day.
Can you imagine that successfully was.
He's been dead for four or five,
six years and he's still successful.
When I go out to speak,
I'll say,
(17:33):
how many people here have heard of Zig Ziglar?
Now I'm not talking about just in the United States,
anywhere, any country.
And then 90%,
95% of hands go up because he's famous.
But it didn't start out that way.
He was a pots and pan salesman.
Yep. When he decided,
I can do this,
I want to,
(17:53):
I'm going to teach other people how to make their lives
better. And that's when he wrote his book see you at
the top,
which is,
which is part of this book,
the story about see you at the top.
I got in touch with Zig's secretary.
She's still alive and living in Dallas and she collaborated with
(18:13):
me helping me write the story.
So the story is very authentic and it's very powerful.
All the stories in the book are authentic and powerful.
Some of them,
I took some liberties to make them a little bit more
interesting. But mostly they're pretty much the way things happen.
So I've got to.
I want to circle back and ask some more about some
(18:35):
of what we were just talking about.
But before I go there,
one of the things I'd like to highlight on the show
is how our personal belief system,
faith journey,
that kind of how we connect to.
You just mentioned that we're given things from outside of ourselves
sometimes. And whatever name we put on it,
whatever version of that we have,
(18:55):
how that affects kind of the decisions we make and the
journey we're on.
Would you mind sharing a little bit about how your spiritual
walk or your faith journey has affected you?
The first book I started to write is called Seven secrets
of Success.
And the first secret of success is getting your mind.
And under that is faith.
(19:15):
Faith has always played a significant role in my life.
It provides meaning,
purpose, and guidance.
Faith will work miracles.
As you read the stories,
you'll see that people like Lou Holtz.
By the way,
Lou wrote me a letter thanking me for putting him in
my book,
which was just.
(19:36):
That really made my day.
But anyway,
he got fired from his first.
Really, his first coaching job,
and. And his.
And the head coach said,
you need to find something else to do,
Lou. You just don't have what it takes to be a
football coach.
So Lou said,
I think he did okay for himself.
(19:58):
Lou decided I couldn't play for Notre Dame because I was
too small,
but I can be the coach.
So he decided,
I'm going to become the coach at University of Notre Dame.
And he had faith when no one else did.
No one else.
But it was.
If you talk to him in the position that he was
(20:18):
in, it's funny.
Him becoming the coach at Notre Dame was about as apt
to happen as him becoming the Pope.
How could he possibly do it?
But the story of how he did it is just amazing.
It's so inspirational.
And he finally got there and won a national championship.
That's what faith can do.
(20:40):
Another story in the book is Rudy.
Rudy wanted to play at Notre Dame,
but he wasn't built to play football.
He was a.
He was short,
and he didn't have the grades to get in to school,
but he was determined that he was going to put on
that uniform,
that blue uniform and that golden helmet and go out on
(21:03):
that field and play for the Fighting Irish.
And he did it.
And that took a lot of faith because he got knocked
down so many times.
And in my personal story,
I had faith that I was going to become a member
of that drum section because I wanted it so bad.
I could taste it.
(21:23):
I could feel it.
I could smell it.
It never,
ever left my mind.
I even went and told my teachers in high school that
I'm going to be going to college.
And they.
Some of them actually laughed out loud when I told them
that. That's how funny it was because I was such a
poor student and ended up not only going to college,
(21:45):
I became the drum major of the band.
I got a BS Degree,
I got a master's degree.
I got my.
I started.
I got the first step toward a doctorate,
and then I got a fellowship from University of Mississippi to
finish my doctorate.
But I went into business instead.
So is just amazing what can happen if you know what
you want and you have faith and believe that you can
(22:08):
get there.
So circling back to the.
That daily habit idea of,
I think a lot of times when people hear about,
for instance,
having a reading habit,
just sticking with that example,
they think that the magic behind it is the information that
they gain,
the knowledge they gain.
What is it?
What's the difference between reading a book?
(22:28):
Not that reading a book for knowledge is bad.
That's not what I'm saying.
But what's the difference between what you're talking about and the
folks that say,
oh, I've got to go read a book.
That's going to teach me something?
Back in the 5th century,
a group of monks got together and said,
we need to get closer to the scriptures.
We want to be more a part of the scriptures.
(22:49):
So they developed a process called Lectio divina,
where every day they would take one scripture.
They didn't read the entire Bible,
they would just pick one scripture and they would read it
out loud,
and then they would imagine themselves being part of that scripture.
(23:10):
Then. I'm sorry,
they'd read it silently.
First imagine themselves being a part of it,
read it out loud,
and then they'd spend the rest of the day and that
night contemplating.
So I was doing a podcast and one of the hosts
said, that sounds like lectio divina.
And I said,
what's that?
And so I looked it up.
(23:31):
It's going into my next book,
Real Impact two.
But it's true.
It's about.
It's not about reading and gaining knowledge.
It's about reading quality things that have to do with where
you want to be or who you want to be.
Because if you can visualize yourself having already succeeded and feel
(23:53):
what it feels like being there,
then the entire universe turns towards you and pushes everything towards
you as you're moving toward it.
Now, that is a law of nature,
and it can't be changed.
But if you plant a seed just because somebody don't believe,
if you plant one kernel of corn,
(24:15):
it could turn into thousands of kernels.
It doesn't matter if they believe that or not.
If you plant the kernel of corn and you water it,
you take.
Keep the weeds out,
it's going to turn into thousands of kernels.
And those thousands can turn into millions and millions.
That's just a law of nature.
And so is faith,
and so is believing and seeing yourself already there.
(24:39):
So like with.
When I started teaching real estate investing,
I saw myself teaching lots of students,
and I ended up teaching lots and lots of students.
I made lots of good friends.
And the great thing is I love it when they come
back and say,
oh man,
Dennis, you changed my life.
I'm so glad.
(25:00):
And even on Amazon,
the reviews,
some of my students have gone in and left a review
on Amazon and talked about how the training,
what a powerful effect it had on them.
You know,
that idea of reading to inform your belief and program your
mind to look for things,
I think is something that a lot of people miss.
(25:22):
Because like I say,
a lot of folks read for knowledge.
And again,
it's not that knowledge is bad,
but there's more to it because you have all the knowledge
in the world and if you don't do anything with it,
it doesn't really change anything.
Yes, you need to have something out there pulling you say,
I would love to go to Europe and then the butts
start coming in.
I'd love to go to Europe,
but I can't afford it.
(25:43):
It can't take that much time off this that when I
was in college,
of course I was in the drum section and there's these
things called drum and bill course.
And at the end or in every summer they have dci,
which is a national competition,
and all the great drumming,
bugle chords come and play and it's just amazing.
(26:04):
Now, when I was in college,
I was so poor that I would buy five chicken pot
pies for a dollar and six cokes for a quarter.
That's how much things cost back then.
And that's what I lived on for a week.
And some of my friends in the band,
they would have me over for lunch because they knew I
(26:24):
was starving to death.
But at the end of every year,
I found a way to go to dci.
It was usually in Chicago or somewhere up in the Northeast,
which was a long way and I certainly couldn't afford an
airline ticket.
But some way I would get there.
So if you set your mind,
(26:47):
just move the butts out of the way and go get
it. It will pull.
It will meet you halfway.
Wanting it pulls it towards you and you're going toward it.
So that's a life changing law of nature that most people
don't even realize that's available to them.
Yeah. In my coaching and work,
I call it finding your why the big enough driver to
(27:11):
get you moving even when things are.
Even when it's going bad,
even when things are rough,
even when you think you can't do it.
It's the thing that's big enough to make you do it
anyway. Yeah.
So how has the daily reading habit and the how has
what you're talking about,
how have you put that in practice in your own life?
And how has it affected where you've ended up?
(27:34):
When I went to work with henco back in 75 and
I read those books,
it was like I had taken a drug.
It made me feel euphoric.
I was,
gosh, I was motivated and that felt so good.
And of course my goal then was to meet certain sales
standards and that was fine to,
(27:55):
to reach those.
And the big checks coming in,
that was fun.
But I got in the habit of looking for more and
more because I couldn't not have that inspiration.
I could not have that euphoric feeling.
Well, back in 75,
in the years after that,
there wasn't a Google,
(28:15):
there wasn't even an Internet.
So the only way you can find a good book was
to find somebody that was super successful and go and ask
them, what are you reading?
What kind of book?
Have you read anything lately that gave you inspiration?
And it's amazing how they're anxious to share.
So I got a lot of books that didn't do very
(28:35):
well. I read them anyway.
But the ones that really motivated,
they reached into my soul,
plucked my heartstrings and really pushed me.
It was that drug.
I kept a list because I thought I may need to
go back and read this again someday because I can't find
the drug I need,
which is the next book.
So for 50 years I read and kept list of the
(29:00):
things that motivated me.
And if in that book I saw a poem or a
quote. I met Jim Rohn back in the 70s.
Now this is before Jim Rohn was anybody.
He was just another guy that came to our group to
help teach ourselves good.
And he really insisted that we keep a journal.
(29:21):
You can end it because you don't ever know when you're
going to come back.
Need this information,
you may need it someday.
So that's when I started capturing things.
Capturing things.
And that's how over the years I was writing a book,
didn't even know it.
But by reading,
continually reading things that continue to motivate me,
(29:44):
even when things go bad,
when you lose everything and people turn their back on you
and you're disappointed,
you can always go and read something positive and it'll turn
your situation around,
turn your attitude around,
make things feel better.
And they also let you know other people are struggling too.
(30:05):
They look what happened to Lincoln or look what happened to
Blue Holtz or Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Those are names you think those are super successful people.
Did they hard time?
Yeah, they did.
They got knocked down a lot of times and just continued
to get up.
Which gives you the motivation to say,
my life's not over.
(30:27):
I can still make it big.
So that's the effect that it's had on me.
Yeah, it's always interesting to me.
You hear the story of a,
quote, overnight success,
somebody who's made it big.
And it's.
That just means you don't know the whole story because very
few people wake up and are that kind of success without
(30:47):
some intervening stuff happening between.
I'm not going to say it's never happened because there's probably
an exception out there that would prove me wrong.
But there's.
I would say there's a lot fewer of those than there
are the people that there was a long grind before they
became an overnight success.
Randy Owen was being interviewed.
He's in the Alabama group,
super, super successful musical group.
(31:09):
And one of the reporters said,
how do you deal with your overnight success?
And he looked at him really funny and he said,
overnight success.
What about all those bars we went to for 10 years
and there was nobody there and they were there that were
having fights and throwing beer bottles at us.
(31:30):
We didn't have any overnight success.
So actually I went to university.
I went to Jacksonville State University with Randy Owen.
Isn't that funny?
We're the same,
exact same age.
And he was there when I was in the drum section.
So what?
I know this book is focused on that daily reading habit,
but you mentioned earlier,
(31:50):
you said success habits,
plural. What are some of the other success habits that you've
seen people form that have moved the needle?
The book has an underlying meaning and I like to use
acronyms because I was in music.
You use acronym for everything,
for the spaces and lines and so forth.
(32:11):
So the underlying message in this book and habits would be
DFW down to Fort Worth and then I live in Arlington.
A D,
F W A desire,
faith, will and action.
Now if you can do those four things,
(32:33):
you can have anything you want.
The first thing you got to do is you got to
figure out what is that desire.
Then you have to believe with all your mind and soul
and heart.
You've got to feel it and smell it and breathe it
and see it.
Then you have to have the will to know.
It's not going to be easy.
(32:55):
Things are going to get in the way.
It's going to look like at times it's impossible.
You're going to get knocked down and stepped on.
But if you have the will to get back up.
It's just like in the Rocky story.
The bayone bruiser or the leader was fighting Ali.
And no one thought he would last around.
(33:19):
But he not only lasted around,
he knocked Ali down and actually probably the match.
And he stayed in there for 15 rounds.
The judges gave it to Ali because he was the world
champion. You have to beat the world champion.
But when Sylvester Stallone saw that,
it moved him so much that he went home and wrote
(33:42):
for three days and created the script for Rocky.
So that's.
That will is so powerful.
And then,
of course,
if you don't,
none of it is worth anything.
Dinos said,
my dreams are worthless.
Everything is dusty if I don't take action.
Because without action,
that is the conduit between you and what you want.
(34:06):
It's the bridge.
You. You can't get across the river without getting on that
bridge and taking the steps.
These daily readings,
that's part of the steps to get you what.
And it keeps you centered.
If the human mind is very powerful,
but it's also very erratic.
(34:28):
It thinks of a thousand things.
When you wake up in the morning,
your mind could go through fifty to a thousand things before
you have breakfast.
It's just going in all different directions.
But you got.
But you need to put a rudder on your boat.
And the rudder is the daily reading habit that moves you
in the direction that you decided you wanted to go.
(34:50):
You can change it if you want to.
Something may happen.
You want to change it.
But then you just change your daily reading habit to that
other thing.
What this book can do if people use it the way
it's intended is literally change the direction of your life.
Musk is talking about sending a spaceship to Mars.
(35:12):
What if he's off one degree,
One degree.
What would that do?
He would miss Mars.
Hundreds of thousands of miles.
It wouldn't even be close.
What if we could change a young person that's graduating from
high school or college or just getting into high school?
What if we could change their life in a positive fashion
(35:36):
just by one degree?
That's what this book's intended to do.
And it doesn't matter how old you are.
I'm 77 years old and I'm still learning and moving in
a certain direction.
And my direction is the thing that I really want to
do. That's why I'm sitting here.
I want to get the word out about this book.
Because I want to leave the world a better place than
(35:59):
it was when I came.
So because I was here a lot of things happened that
were very positive,
helped a lot of people.
So I've got a few questions that I like to ask
all of my guests.
But before I ask you those,
is there anything else about your book or what we've been
talking about this morning that you would like to share with
the listener?
(36:21):
Well, Scott,
I think we've covered it pretty thoroughly.
I hope everybody will find the book and read the book.
I hope that you'll go and leave a review.
And one other thing,
I want to plant a seed in your mind.
If you want to feel good today and help someone today,
here's an easy way to do it.
If you just read someone's book,
(36:43):
maybe mine or someone else's,
and you thought,
oh, that was really good,
go to Amazon,
find the book,
leave a star review,
leave five stars,
and then say,
I just read this wonderful book and I liked it because
now you will have just made the author's day.
I don't know,
whoever the author was,
(37:03):
they'll read that.
Oh, gosh,
a five star review,
that's wonderful.
You made someone today.
But you've also told a lot of other people,
hey, this is a good book.
Maybe I should read it too.
And it's like a ripple.
It's like the butterfly effect.
You did a little tiny thing that didn't mean much to
(37:24):
you and didn't take much of your time.
But you help a lot of people by doing that and
do it often.
Do it once or twice a week or even every day.
Every time you find a good book,
go leave a rating.
Awesome. So my brand is inspired stewardship.
And I run things through that lens of stewardship.
But that's one of those words that I've discovered over the
(37:47):
years, means a lot of different things to a lot of
different people.
So when you hear the word stewardship,
what does that word mean to you?
To me,
stewardship means helping other people,
doing everything you can to make the world,
the community,
your family,
your personal life.
(38:07):
I think that the best thing that people can do for
other people is to be happy and successful themselves.
If, if someone is successful and opens a company and hires
100 people,
you've paid 100 people a salary to go out and feed
their family,
live a happier life.
(38:29):
So I think stewardship is doing everything that is possible that
you have the gifts to do,
to have as many other people.
And if you make,
if you're successful and you make money by doing that too,
that's okay.
But that's not how you,
(38:49):
I feel you should look at it Zig Ziglar said,
if you happen,
people get what they want,
you'll get what you want.
And so he devoted his life to helping people get what
they want,
and didn't worry so much about the money,
because it just came.
And I believe that can happen to everyone.
So this is my favorite question that I like to ask
(39:10):
everybody. Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine.
With this machine,
I could take you from where you are today and transport
you into the future,
maybe 150,
maybe 250 years.
And through the power of this machine,
you were able to look back and see your entire life
and see all of the connections,
all of the ripples,
all of the impacts you've left.
(39:32):
What impact do you hope you've left in the world?
That's pretty easy,
because I visualize this quite often.
I used to wonder,
did Socrates ever think that people would still be quoting him
a thousand years or hundreds of years after he's gone?
Or did Napoleon Hill ever think that Think and Grow Rich
(39:54):
was going to make millions of millionaires?
So while I was thinking about that and walking one day,
I was listening to an old recording of Napoleon Hill.
It was right after he had published Think and Grow Rich.
And he said,
here's my new book,
Think and Grow Rich,
and it's helping thousands of people become successful.
(40:15):
And over the years,
it will help millions.
And I thought he did know.
And, Scott,
that's how I feel,
too. I think a hundred years from now,
people will still be reading not only this book,
by the laws of nature,
some secrets of success.
I think people will be saying,
(40:35):
wow, I'm glad I wrote this book.
I'm. I feel like I'm going to be kind of like
Wallace Wattles now.
If you haven't heard of Wallace Wattles,
you need to go look him up and read his book.
But he's been dead for more than a lot,
more than 100 years,
and people still think back on him and think,
(40:57):
I'm sure glad he came around because he changed a lot
of people's lives.
So I'm hoping that's how.
And I believe that's how people will feel about me.
Awesome. So what's coming next?
What's on the roadmap as you continue on your journey?
Real Impact 2 is about 80% finished.
It's many of the stories I didn't put in Real Impact
(41:20):
one, then Real Impact three.
It's funny that you mentioned spiritual Real Impact three.
Three is a spiritual number.
So I decided I didn't want to put a lot of
really religious things in these first two,
because I wanted.
I didn't want people to lay it down and not use
it. But I saved all of those powerful stories.
(41:42):
The story of Stuart Hamlin is so powerful that I can
just think of the story and start to tear up.
That's how powerful it is.
That's going to be in real impact 3.
I'm working right now on the laws of nature.
I mentioned a few of those as we Talked today.
The seven secrets.
I've been working on it for 50 years,
and hopefully that's going to be coming out.
(42:04):
And I've just finished a series of real estate books.
They're in formatting right now.
They're done,
they've been proofread,
the covers are being designed and so forth.
So there's five of those.
The first one's already published.
The Royal Flush.
Then there's how to get started.
The five Ms.
Of real estate investing.
(42:24):
That's the skills.
66 ways to find deals and all the money you'll ever
need. So that's a series,
and I think a lot of people will enjoy,
especially if they're just thinking of getting into real estate.
This is really.
It's pretty much what I taught my students,
and they were super successful.
So I wanted to capture that and share it with a
(42:46):
lot of other people.
Awesome. So you can find out more about Dennis Henson and
his book over@realimpactbook.com
of course,
I'll have a link to that in the show notes as
well. Dennis,
is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?
Sure. If you go to realimpactbook.com
(43:07):
and scroll down to the bottom where it says podcast attendee
and click on that.
It asks you for your name and email.
You will be instantly.
It's not a.
Somebody's going to find it and send you the book.
You'll instantly receive the download of the book and it's free,
(43:28):
and you will not be put on any kind of a
mailing list.
There is a little place there where you can say,
contact me when you have other books published.
If you click that,
the only email you'll ever get from me is,
here's my next book.
But I want this book to get out because when you
read it,
you're going to think,
(43:48):
oh, this is a great anniversary graduation gift.
You're going to think,
oh, my.
My friend's son's graduating.
Here's something that I can give him that's inexpensive but better,
really have an impact on him.
You can give it to people in nursing homes.
And in fact,
on that same website,
(44:08):
there's a little tab that says help the children.
I'm giving these books away to schools that don't have high
budgets, to nursing homes,
to senior citizen centers,
and I've started a GoFundMe.
So if you want to help spread the word,
get the book out and help some people,
just donate a dollar or $5 or 10 or 1,000
(44:31):
or how much effort that you can afford to help people.
And I think once you've read the book,
you'll see why I believe it will help a lot of
people. Awesome.
That's a great gift.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
Thank you,
Scott. Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.
(44:56):
As a subscriber and listener,
we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
but act on what you've heard and find a way to
live your calling.
If you enjoyed this episode,
please, please do us a favor.
Go over to inspired stewardship.com
(45:16):
iTunes Rate all one word iTunes Rate.
It'll take you through how to lead a rating and review
and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so
that you can get every episode as it comes out in
your feed.
Until next time,
(45:37):
invest your time,
your talent,
and your treasures.
Develop your influence and impact the world.
Thanks for joining us on episode 1537 of the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. I'm Dennis Henson.
I challenge you to invest in yourself,
invest in others,
develop your influence,
and impact the world by using your time,
your talent and your treasures to live out your calling.
(00:20):
Having the ability to form good habits like daily reading is
key and one way to be inspired and to do that
is listening to this the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend
Scott Materer.
(00:42):
But you've also told a lot of other people,
hey, this is a good book.
Maybe, maybe I should read it too.
And it's like a ripple.
It's like the butterfly effect.
You did a little tiny thing that didn't mean much to
you and didn't take much of your time.
But you help a lot of people by doing that and
(01:03):
do it often.
Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship
Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God
wants you to be,
then you must learn to use your time,
your talent and your treasures for your true calling.
In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast,
you will learn to invest in yourself,
(01:24):
invest in others,
and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
In this podcast episode,
I interview Dennis Henson.
I asked Dennis about how he reinvented himself through reading and
(01:44):
teaching others.
I also asked Dennis to share how reading helped him form
a framework for his life.
And Dennis also shares how his book Real Impact Daily Inspiration
can help you develop the habit of daily reading.
I have a great book that's been out for a while
now called Inspired Living.
Assemble the puzzle of your calling by mastering your time,
(02:05):
your talent,
and your treasures.
You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com
it'll take you to a page where there's information and you
can sign up to get some mailings about it as well
as purchase a copy there.
I'd love to see you get a copy and share with
me how it impacted your world.
(02:26):
With a proven track record spanning over five decades,
Dennis J.
Henson has solidified his position as a leading authority in the
business world.
Beyond his successful entrepreneurial ventures,
Dennis is a dedicated educator,
inspiring countless individuals to achieve their goals.
Through his best selling books,
captivating workshops and international speaking engagements,
(02:47):
Dennis initially made his mark in the real estate investment world.
He founded Vanguard Marketing and investments in 2003 and continues to
serve as president.
He served as President of the Arlington Real Estate Investing association
and over the past several years he has taught individuals and
classes in real estate investing.
His books the Royal Flush of Real Estate Investing and A
(03:09):
Millionaire's Treasure Map to Real Estate Investing were widely hailed.
More recently,
he has dedicated much of his time to a broader focus
of helping people develop the mindset and habits for true success.
Taking what he has learned through his dedication to reading,
his proven personal practices,
his business experience,
and his systematic approach to self improvement,
(03:29):
Dennis has developed a transformative training program that empowers individuals to
reach their full potential.
Drawing on his wealth of experience and educational background,
he has distilled his insights into seven secrets of success by
embracing these timeless principles.
As his mentor Tom Hendricks would say,
you can no more fail than water can run uphill.
Dennis new book,
(03:50):
Real Impact Daily Inspiration,
is intended to help people develop the habit of reading daily
content that will improve their beliefs in themselves and inspire them
to action.
Welcome to the show,
Dennis. Well,
Scott, thank you for having me.
I appreciate it very much.
Absolutely. So we're both not too terribly far from each other
(04:11):
physically in distance.
And so before we started recording,
we were both commensurating about the end of winter,
the cold weather that we're having down here in Texas.
Hopefully by the time this releases,
it's a little warmer for everybody,
but it's a little chilly today as we're recording.
So I shared a lot in the intro about some of
the things you've done and the work you've done,
(04:32):
both in the investment world as well as in business and
leadership and entrepreneurship.
And now you're also working here,
putting up your book and coaching Arthur,
all of these different things that you've done.
And yet I always think intros never really show the whole
story of how we got from where we started to where
(04:52):
we end up.
Would you mind sharing a little bit more about your background
and your journey and what brought you to this point where
this is the message that you're putting out into the world?
I don't know if there's enough time to get all of
that in this podcast.
When I was in high school,
I hated school.
And one day a college band came and they brought their
(05:15):
marching drum section.
And when I saw that,
I thought,
oh my God,
I've got to be in that.
So that changed the path of my life.
I had terrible grades,
and so I decided I'll do anything to be in that
drum section.
My colleague,
my band director,
said, now you're really going to have to change your grades.
So I did.
I pulled them up to A's and B's,
(05:35):
and I went to Jacksonville State University and I got in
the drum section and I graduated and became a Band director.
I taught band for about five years,
but my goal was to become a college band director.
Georgia Tech offered me a position in 75 and I moved
to Atlanta to take the position.
But I hadn't signed the contract.
(05:56):
And a big company out of Tennessee contacted me and said,
you're the kind of person we want in our company.
And I said,
I'm not interested.
I've got the dream job.
I'm not going to do that.
So they said,
look, we'll give you a round trip,
a ticket to Memphis,
we'll pick you up in a limousine,
we'll buy you a steak,
give you a big cigar.
And I thought,
what have I got to lose?
(06:17):
In 75,
getting to fly on a plane was a big deal for
a young kid.
Hadn't flown much.
So I went to Memphis.
They picked me up in the limousine and to make this
long story a little shorter,
they offered me 20 times what Georgia Tech was going to
pay me.
So I left the music world or the teaching world and
(06:38):
went into the business world.
When I started with them,
the first thing they did was they gave me three books.
Think and Grow Rich,
Greatest Salesman in the World,
Margaret, you know,
and Success,
the Glenn Bland Method.
When I laid those books down,
I was a different person than the person that picked those
(07:00):
books up.
I was just on fire.
I could not wait to get in front of a prospect.
And I really made a lot of money.
I was very successful with that company and that was my
business career.
So during that period of time I would see these commercials
(07:21):
on TV about real estate.
Mark Harrelson had out a program,
how to wake up the financial genius inside you.
And I purchased that.
It was like four cassettes and a book.
And I thought,
I can do this on the side and make some extra
money. And so that's when I started really investing.
I had already invested some back in the 1970,
(07:44):
but that's when I got serious.
I bought a little apartment complex and some homes in Valdosta,
Georgia. Then I moved to Athens and I continued to invest.
So let's fast forward to moving to Texas.
About 30 years ago,
I moved to Texas and I started investing in real estate.
Here in Texas there wasn't a close by real estate group.
(08:08):
There wasn't one in Arlington.
There were groups in Fort Worth,
there were groups in Dallas.
But the Metroplex is a big place and the traffic gets
bad sometimes.
So to drive to Dallas was sometimes an hour and a
half and then the round trip.
So that took a lot of time.
Same way with Fort Worth.
(08:29):
Arlington's close to Fort Worth,
but the ones in Fort Worth were in north Fort Worth.
And Fort Worth is very long,
so it's another hour and an hour back.
I thought,
if I'm going to get to consistently go to these meetings,
I need to start one myself.
So I started the Arlington Real Estate association of Investors ara
and it grew and grew,
(08:50):
and I brought in speakers,
and we.
It was.
It was a lot of fun.
I taught some classes.
I thought,
if I want to learn about real estate,
if I want to learn about short sales,
then I'll announce an elite class so that I'm teaching short
sales. And next month,
or two months from now,
and then I have two months to learn everything there is
to know.
And so I learned by teaching.
(09:12):
One day,
one of the members came up to me and said,
dennis, I'm going to retire in about three weeks,
and I'm going to let you mentor me.
And I said,
mike, I'm really too busy.
I have my real estate business.
I'm trying to run these meetings.
I really don't have time to take on individual students.
(09:32):
And he looked at me funny,
and he said,
you didn't understand what.
I said,
dennis, in three weeks,
I'm going to retire,
and you're going to mentor me.
And I thought,
we'll see.
He said,
let's go out to lunch.
I'll buy your lunch,
and we'll talk about it.
So you make a lot of.
You make a lot of decisions based off of free meals.
(09:55):
So he bought me a lot of burger.
Can you believe that?
Okay, so he was cheaper than the steak.
But still after.
After we finished eating,
he had on a suit like this.
He reached into his pocket and put out a checkbook,
handed it to me,
and he said,
here, fill this out.
And I said,
do you mean the amount?
(10:16):
And he said,
yeah, fill that out.
So I thought,
this will end this.
There's no way he's going to continue to bug me about
teaching him when he sees what I put down,
because my time is worth a lot of money.
So I put down a figure there that I knew no
one in their right mind would pay,
handed back to him,
tore the checkout,
signed it without even looking at it,
(10:38):
handed it back to him.
That's when I started teaching.
That was about 2005.
So over the next 15 years,
I had 400 students,
more than 400 students.
And they just blossomed.
I really worked hard to try to see that they became
successful. And because of that,
I was invited to a lot of other groups Expos and
(11:03):
podcasts were just coming on.
So there was a real estate podcast that had me come
on their podcast,
and they were interviewing me and they said,
dennis, what makes your students so successful?
I said,
I haven't changed their.
If they change their habits to success habits,
they will become successful.
And he said,
(11:23):
what's the number one success habit that you would have them
for? And I said,
form the habit of reading something positive every day that leads
you towards your goal.
In this case,
the goal was real estate investing.
So after the podcast was over,
I thought that was a good answer.
Wouldn't it be great if there's some kind of a tool
(11:44):
to help people form that habit?
A book or an app?
And then it hit me.
Whoa, wait,
Dennis, since 1975,
you've been collecting books that motivated you and poems and quotes.
So you could put all those in one book.
And people could form the habit regardless of their time limitations.
(12:09):
So if between appointments they have 10 minutes,
they could read a short story.
Or if.
If they have five minutes,
they can read a poem.
Or if they get home and they're exhausted and they forgot
to read that day,
they can flip over to the back of the book to
the quotes and read a quote.
Take seconds to do that.
Or if you're at the airport waiting on a plane,
(12:32):
you can go to the list of the books in the
back and have one of those books with you all the
time. You can read for hours.
So I thought,
this shouldn't take long.
I have everything ready.
I'll put it together in a couple of months.
I'll have the book.
I can use it with my students,
and I can make.
Going to make it available to everyone.
Six years later,
(12:53):
2004. Last year,
2004, the book finally got published.
And to tell you the truth,
Scott, I worked on that book almost every single day for
six years.
So I put my heart and soul into it.
It's kind of my legacy.
But I sincerely believe that the book would change a lot
(13:14):
of people's lives.
It'll make them better real estate investors or anything else that
they want to do or want to become.
So I try to make that short,
but that's a lot.
Good. Let me ask you a follow up.
First off,
tell everybody again the name of the book.
It's Real Impact Daily Inspiration.
(13:35):
And that's why I wanted to ask the follow up.
So you said,
Real Impact Daily Inspiration.
Connect the dots for me on how you mentioned the success
habit. Daily reading,
reading something that's positive and nice.
How do you think that habit begins to lead to the
other kinds of success that people might want to have.
(13:59):
There's a trick to it.
It's like this.
In the beginning of the book,
it says how to use this book and the magic formula.
The only way you can use the book is you have
to decide what you want.
That's really big.
So many of the super motivational speakers say,
if you know what you want,
I can help you get it.
(14:21):
The lamp on the front of the book is supposed to
represent Aladdin's lamp.
And it tells the story about a young man who found
a lamp.
And when he was cleaning it,
he realized if he rubbed the lamp,
then a genie appeared and gave him through three wishes.
But he had to.
He had to give the genie what he wanted.
(14:43):
That's the power of the story.
You got to decide what you want.
So once you decide what you want,
you start reading a little bit about it every day.
Something that's motivational and inspirational,
educational. It keeps you on track.
Okay, here's what I want.
It reminds you every day,
I want this.
I'm moving in this direction,
(15:06):
and I really.
I know this words.
When I was in high school,
I literally hated high school.
And then that drum section came in and I saw them,
and my mind just exploded.
Every morning when I got up until I went to bed,
all I was thinking about was,
you have to learn the drum rudiments.
(15:27):
You have to learn the cadences.
You have to pass your grades.
You have to do whatever is necessary to get to be
in that drum section.
And that kind of thing,
that kind of devotion to a single thing will change anybody's
life. And you don't have to wait till something comes along
(15:47):
to blow your mind.
You can just have a desire and say,
wouldn't it be great if I could do this?
Maybe somebody that's young would say,
I would really love to be a doctor.
But then their butt got in the way.
Okay, I would love to be a doctor,
but I don't have the money.
But I don't have the education.
(16:08):
But I don't have the connection.
But they got to get their butts out of the way
so that.
Look, you wouldn't have had what?
To become a doctor,
they have to move their butt.
That's right.
Okay. These desires are not random.
Right. You're given the desire.
Everybody wants to know,
what's my purpose in life?
Your. Your purpose in life is being given to you all
(16:31):
the time.
It's called desires.
Wow. I'd love to do that.
That's a Desire,
lock in on it and go do it.
If you want to be a good real estate investor,
lock in on it.
Do you want to do single family?
Do you want to do apartments?
Do you want to do commercial?
Do you want to develop land?
What do you want to do?
And then once,
(16:51):
then start reading about it,
studying about it.
In 10 years,
you'll be teaching other people how to do it,
that it's just amazing.
Zig Ziglar said,
little by little,
a little becomes a lot.
If you just read 20 pages in the 200 page book
every year,
you'll read 20 books by the end of a year,
(17:13):
which is 19 more than the average person.
That will set you apart.
And Zig,
did he practice what he preached?
He read three hours every single day.
Can you imagine that successfully was.
He's been dead for four or five,
six years and he's still successful.
When I go out to speak,
I'll say,
(17:33):
how many people here have heard of Zig Ziglar?
Now I'm not talking about just in the United States,
anywhere, any country.
And then 90%,
95% of hands go up because he's famous.
But it didn't start out that way.
He was a pots and pan salesman.
Yep. When he decided,
I can do this,
I want to,
(17:53):
I'm going to teach other people how to make their lives
better. And that's when he wrote his book see you at
the top,
which is,
which is part of this book,
the story about see you at the top.
I got in touch with Zig's secretary.
She's still alive and living in Dallas and she collaborated with
(18:13):
me helping me write the story.
So the story is very authentic and it's very powerful.
All the stories in the book are authentic and powerful.
Some of them,
I took some liberties to make them a little bit more
interesting. But mostly they're pretty much the way things happen.
So I've got to.
I want to circle back and ask some more about some
(18:35):
of what we were just talking about.
But before I go there,
one of the things I'd like to highlight on the show
is how our personal belief system,
faith journey,
that kind of how we connect to.
You just mentioned that we're given things from outside of ourselves
sometimes. And whatever name we put on it,
whatever version of that we have,
(18:55):
how that affects kind of the decisions we make and the
journey we're on.
Would you mind sharing a little bit about how your spiritual
walk or your faith journey has affected you?
The first book I started to write is called Seven secrets
of Success.
And the first secret of success is getting your mind.
And under that is faith.
(19:15):
Faith has always played a significant role in my life.
It provides meaning,
purpose, and guidance.
Faith will work miracles.
As you read the stories,
you'll see that people like Lou Holtz.
By the way,
Lou wrote me a letter thanking me for putting him in
my book,
which was just.
(19:36):
That really made my day.
But anyway,
he got fired from his first.
Really, his first coaching job,
and. And his.
And the head coach said,
you need to find something else to do,
Lou. You just don't have what it takes to be a
football coach.
So Lou said,
I think he did okay for himself.
(19:58):
Lou decided I couldn't play for Notre Dame because I was
too small,
but I can be the coach.
So he decided,
I'm going to become the coach at University of Notre Dame.
And he had faith when no one else did.
No one else.
But it was.
If you talk to him in the position that he was
(20:18):
in, it's funny.
Him becoming the coach at Notre Dame was about as apt
to happen as him becoming the Pope.
How could he possibly do it?
But the story of how he did it is just amazing.
It's so inspirational.
And he finally got there and won a national championship.
That's what faith can do.
(20:40):
Another story in the book is Rudy.
Rudy wanted to play at Notre Dame,
but he wasn't built to play football.
He was a.
He was short,
and he didn't have the grades to get in to school,
but he was determined that he was going to put on
that uniform,
that blue uniform and that golden helmet and go out on
(21:03):
that field and play for the Fighting Irish.
And he did it.
And that took a lot of faith because he got knocked
down so many times.
And in my personal story,
I had faith that I was going to become a member
of that drum section because I wanted it so bad.
I could taste it.
(21:23):
I could feel it.
I could smell it.
It never,
ever left my mind.
I even went and told my teachers in high school that
I'm going to be going to college.
And they.
Some of them actually laughed out loud when I told them
that. That's how funny it was because I was such a
poor student and ended up not only going to college,
(21:45):
I became the drum major of the band.
I got a BS Degree,
I got a master's degree.
I got my.
I started.
I got the first step toward a doctorate,
and then I got a fellowship from University of Mississippi to
finish my doctorate.
But I went into business instead.
So is just amazing what can happen if you know what
you want and you have faith and believe that you can
(22:08):
get there.
So circling back to the.
That daily habit idea of,
I think a lot of times when people hear about,
for instance,
having a reading habit,
just sticking with that example,
they think that the magic behind it is the information that
they gain,
the knowledge they gain.
What is it?
What's the difference between reading a book?
(22:28):
Not that reading a book for knowledge is bad.
That's not what I'm saying.
But what's the difference between what you're talking about and the
folks that say,
oh, I've got to go read a book.
That's going to teach me something?
Back in the 5th century,
a group of monks got together and said,
we need to get closer to the scriptures.
We want to be more a part of the scriptures.
(22:49):
So they developed a process called Lectio divina,
where every day they would take one scripture.
They didn't read the entire Bible,
they would just pick one scripture and they would read it
out loud,
and then they would imagine themselves being part of that scripture.
(23:10):
Then. I'm sorry,
they'd read it silently.
First imagine themselves being a part of it,
read it out loud,
and then they'd spend the rest of the day and that
night contemplating.
So I was doing a podcast and one of the hosts
said, that sounds like lectio divina.
And I said,
what's that?
And so I looked it up.
(23:31):
It's going into my next book,
Real Impact two.
But it's true.
It's about.
It's not about reading and gaining knowledge.
It's about reading quality things that have to do with where
you want to be or who you want to be.
Because if you can visualize yourself having already succeeded and feel
(23:53):
what it feels like being there,
then the entire universe turns towards you and pushes everything towards
you as you're moving toward it.
Now, that is a law of nature,
and it can't be changed.
But if you plant a seed just because somebody don't believe,
if you plant one kernel of corn,
(24:15):
it could turn into thousands of kernels.
It doesn't matter if they believe that or not.
If you plant the kernel of corn and you water it,
you take.
Keep the weeds out,
it's going to turn into thousands of kernels.
And those thousands can turn into millions and millions.
That's just a law of nature.
And so is faith,
and so is believing and seeing yourself already there.
(24:39):
So like with.
When I started teaching real estate investing,
I saw myself teaching lots of students,
and I ended up teaching lots and lots of students.
I made lots of good friends.
And the great thing is I love it when they come
back and say,
oh man,
Dennis, you changed my life.
I'm so glad.
(25:00):
And even on Amazon,
the reviews,
some of my students have gone in and left a review
on Amazon and talked about how the training,
what a powerful effect it had on them.
You know,
that idea of reading to inform your belief and program your
mind to look for things,
I think is something that a lot of people miss.
(25:22):
Because like I say,
a lot of folks read for knowledge.
And again,
it's not that knowledge is bad,
but there's more to it because you have all the knowledge
in the world and if you don't do anything with it,
it doesn't really change anything.
Yes, you need to have something out there pulling you say,
I would love to go to Europe and then the butts
start coming in.
I'd love to go to Europe,
but I can't afford it.
(25:43):
It can't take that much time off this that when I
was in college,
of course I was in the drum section and there's these
things called drum and bill course.
And at the end or in every summer they have dci,
which is a national competition,
and all the great drumming,
bugle chords come and play and it's just amazing.
(26:04):
Now, when I was in college,
I was so poor that I would buy five chicken pot
pies for a dollar and six cokes for a quarter.
That's how much things cost back then.
And that's what I lived on for a week.
And some of my friends in the band,
they would have me over for lunch because they knew I
(26:24):
was starving to death.
But at the end of every year,
I found a way to go to dci.
It was usually in Chicago or somewhere up in the Northeast,
which was a long way and I certainly couldn't afford an
airline ticket.
But some way I would get there.
So if you set your mind,
(26:47):
just move the butts out of the way and go get
it. It will pull.
It will meet you halfway.
Wanting it pulls it towards you and you're going toward it.
So that's a life changing law of nature that most people
don't even realize that's available to them.
Yeah. In my coaching and work,
I call it finding your why the big enough driver to
(27:11):
get you moving even when things are.
Even when it's going bad,
even when things are rough,
even when you think you can't do it.
It's the thing that's big enough to make you do it
anyway. Yeah.
So how has the daily reading habit and the how has
what you're talking about,
how have you put that in practice in your own life?
And how has it affected where you've ended up?
(27:34):
When I went to work with henco back in 75 and
I read those books,
it was like I had taken a drug.
It made me feel euphoric.
I was,
gosh, I was motivated and that felt so good.
And of course my goal then was to meet certain sales
standards and that was fine to,
(27:55):
to reach those.
And the big checks coming in,
that was fun.
But I got in the habit of looking for more and
more because I couldn't not have that inspiration.
I could not have that euphoric feeling.
Well, back in 75,
in the years after that,
there wasn't a Google,
(28:15):
there wasn't even an Internet.
So the only way you can find a good book was
to find somebody that was super successful and go and ask
them, what are you reading?
What kind of book?
Have you read anything lately that gave you inspiration?
And it's amazing how they're anxious to share.
So I got a lot of books that didn't do very
(28:35):
well. I read them anyway.
But the ones that really motivated,
they reached into my soul,
plucked my heartstrings and really pushed me.
It was that drug.
I kept a list because I thought I may need to
go back and read this again someday because I can't find
the drug I need,
which is the next book.
So for 50 years I read and kept list of the
(29:00):
things that motivated me.
And if in that book I saw a poem or a
quote. I met Jim Rohn back in the 70s.
Now this is before Jim Rohn was anybody.
He was just another guy that came to our group to
help teach ourselves good.
And he really insisted that we keep a journal.
(29:21):
You can end it because you don't ever know when you're
going to come back.
Need this information,
you may need it someday.
So that's when I started capturing things.
Capturing things.
And that's how over the years I was writing a book,
didn't even know it.
But by reading,
continually reading things that continue to motivate me,
(29:44):
even when things go bad,
when you lose everything and people turn their back on you
and you're disappointed,
you can always go and read something positive and it'll turn
your situation around,
turn your attitude around,
make things feel better.
And they also let you know other people are struggling too.
(30:05):
They look what happened to Lincoln or look what happened to
Blue Holtz or Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Those are names you think those are super successful people.
Did they hard time?
Yeah, they did.
They got knocked down a lot of times and just continued
to get up.
Which gives you the motivation to say,
my life's not over.
(30:27):
I can still make it big.
So that's the effect that it's had on me.
Yeah, it's always interesting to me.
You hear the story of a,
quote, overnight success,
somebody who's made it big.
And it's.
That just means you don't know the whole story because very
few people wake up and are that kind of success without
(30:47):
some intervening stuff happening between.
I'm not going to say it's never happened because there's probably
an exception out there that would prove me wrong.
But there's.
I would say there's a lot fewer of those than there
are the people that there was a long grind before they
became an overnight success.
Randy Owen was being interviewed.
He's in the Alabama group,
super, super successful musical group.
(31:09):
And one of the reporters said,
how do you deal with your overnight success?
And he looked at him really funny and he said,
overnight success.
What about all those bars we went to for 10 years
and there was nobody there and they were there that were
having fights and throwing beer bottles at us.
(31:30):
We didn't have any overnight success.
So actually I went to university.
I went to Jacksonville State University with Randy Owen.
Isn't that funny?
We're the same,
exact same age.
And he was there when I was in the drum section.
So what?
I know this book is focused on that daily reading habit,
but you mentioned earlier,
(31:50):
you said success habits,
plural. What are some of the other success habits that you've
seen people form that have moved the needle?
The book has an underlying meaning and I like to use
acronyms because I was in music.
You use acronym for everything,
for the spaces and lines and so forth.
(32:11):
So the underlying message in this book and habits would be
DFW down to Fort Worth and then I live in Arlington.
A D,
F W A desire,
faith, will and action.
Now if you can do those four things,
(32:33):
you can have anything you want.
The first thing you got to do is you got to
figure out what is that desire.
Then you have to believe with all your mind and soul
and heart.
You've got to feel it and smell it and breathe it
and see it.
Then you have to have the will to know.
It's not going to be easy.
(32:55):
Things are going to get in the way.
It's going to look like at times it's impossible.
You're going to get knocked down and stepped on.
But if you have the will to get back up.
It's just like in the Rocky story.
The bayone bruiser or the leader was fighting Ali.
And no one thought he would last around.
(33:19):
But he not only lasted around,
he knocked Ali down and actually probably the match.
And he stayed in there for 15 rounds.
The judges gave it to Ali because he was the world
champion. You have to beat the world champion.
But when Sylvester Stallone saw that,
it moved him so much that he went home and wrote
(33:42):
for three days and created the script for Rocky.
So that's.
That will is so powerful.
And then,
of course,
if you don't,
none of it is worth anything.
Dinos said,
my dreams are worthless.
Everything is dusty if I don't take action.
Because without action,
that is the conduit between you and what you want.
(34:06):
It's the bridge.
You. You can't get across the river without getting on that
bridge and taking the steps.
These daily readings,
that's part of the steps to get you what.
And it keeps you centered.
If the human mind is very powerful,
but it's also very erratic.
(34:28):
It thinks of a thousand things.
When you wake up in the morning,
your mind could go through fifty to a thousand things before
you have breakfast.
It's just going in all different directions.
But you got.
But you need to put a rudder on your boat.
And the rudder is the daily reading habit that moves you
in the direction that you decided you wanted to go.
(34:50):
You can change it if you want to.
Something may happen.
You want to change it.
But then you just change your daily reading habit to that
other thing.
What this book can do if people use it the way
it's intended is literally change the direction of your life.
Musk is talking about sending a spaceship to Mars.
(35:12):
What if he's off one degree,
One degree.
What would that do?
He would miss Mars.
Hundreds of thousands of miles.
It wouldn't even be close.
What if we could change a young person that's graduating from
high school or college or just getting into high school?
What if we could change their life in a positive fashion
(35:36):
just by one degree?
That's what this book's intended to do.
And it doesn't matter how old you are.
I'm 77 years old and I'm still learning and moving in
a certain direction.
And my direction is the thing that I really want to
do. That's why I'm sitting here.
I want to get the word out about this book.
Because I want to leave the world a better place than
(35:59):
it was when I came.
So because I was here a lot of things happened that
were very positive,
helped a lot of people.
So I've got a few questions that I like to ask
all of my guests.
But before I ask you those,
is there anything else about your book or what we've been
talking about this morning that you would like to share with
the listener?
(36:21):
Well, Scott,
I think we've covered it pretty thoroughly.
I hope everybody will find the book and read the book.
I hope that you'll go and leave a review.
And one other thing,
I want to plant a seed in your mind.
If you want to feel good today and help someone today,
here's an easy way to do it.
If you just read someone's book,
(36:43):
maybe mine or someone else's,
and you thought,
oh, that was really good,
go to Amazon,
find the book,
leave a star review,
leave five stars,
and then say,
I just read this wonderful book and I liked it because
now you will have just made the author's day.
I don't know,
whoever the author was,
(37:03):
they'll read that.
Oh, gosh,
a five star review,
that's wonderful.
You made someone today.
But you've also told a lot of other people,
hey, this is a good book.
Maybe I should read it too.
And it's like a ripple.
It's like the butterfly effect.
You did a little tiny thing that didn't mean much to
(37:24):
you and didn't take much of your time.
But you help a lot of people by doing that and
do it often.
Do it once or twice a week or even every day.
Every time you find a good book,
go leave a rating.
Awesome. So my brand is inspired stewardship.
And I run things through that lens of stewardship.
But that's one of those words that I've discovered over the
(37:47):
years, means a lot of different things to a lot of
different people.
So when you hear the word stewardship,
what does that word mean to you?
To me,
stewardship means helping other people,
doing everything you can to make the world,
the community,
your family,
your personal life.
(38:07):
I think that the best thing that people can do for
other people is to be happy and successful themselves.
If, if someone is successful and opens a company and hires
100 people,
you've paid 100 people a salary to go out and feed
their family,
live a happier life.
(38:29):
So I think stewardship is doing everything that is possible that
you have the gifts to do,
to have as many other people.
And if you make,
if you're successful and you make money by doing that too,
that's okay.
But that's not how you,
(38:49):
I feel you should look at it Zig Ziglar said,
if you happen,
people get what they want,
you'll get what you want.
And so he devoted his life to helping people get what
they want,
and didn't worry so much about the money,
because it just came.
And I believe that can happen to everyone.
So this is my favorite question that I like to ask
(39:10):
everybody. Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine.
With this machine,
I could take you from where you are today and transport
you into the future,
maybe 150,
maybe 250 years.
And through the power of this machine,
you were able to look back and see your entire life
and see all of the connections,
all of the ripples,
all of the impacts you've left.
(39:32):
What impact do you hope you've left in the world?
That's pretty easy,
because I visualize this quite often.
I used to wonder,
did Socrates ever think that people would still be quoting him
a thousand years or hundreds of years after he's gone?
Or did Napoleon Hill ever think that Think and Grow Rich
(39:54):
was going to make millions of millionaires?
So while I was thinking about that and walking one day,
I was listening to an old recording of Napoleon Hill.
It was right after he had published Think and Grow Rich.
And he said,
here's my new book,
Think and Grow Rich,
and it's helping thousands of people become successful.
(40:15):
And over the years,
it will help millions.
And I thought he did know.
And, Scott,
that's how I feel,
too. I think a hundred years from now,
people will still be reading not only this book,
by the laws of nature,
some secrets of success.
I think people will be saying,
(40:35):
wow, I'm glad I wrote this book.
I'm. I feel like I'm going to be kind of like
Wallace Wattles now.
If you haven't heard of Wallace Wattles,
you need to go look him up and read his book.
But he's been dead for more than a lot,
more than 100 years,
and people still think back on him and think,
(40:57):
I'm sure glad he came around because he changed a lot
of people's lives.
So I'm hoping that's how.
And I believe that's how people will feel about me.
Awesome. So what's coming next?
What's on the roadmap as you continue on your journey?
Real Impact 2 is about 80% finished.
It's many of the stories I didn't put in Real Impact
(41:20):
one, then Real Impact three.
It's funny that you mentioned spiritual Real Impact three.
Three is a spiritual number.
So I decided I didn't want to put a lot of
really religious things in these first two,
because I wanted.
I didn't want people to lay it down and not use
it. But I saved all of those powerful stories.
(41:42):
The story of Stuart Hamlin is so powerful that I can
just think of the story and start to tear up.
That's how powerful it is.
That's going to be in real impact 3.
I'm working right now on the laws of nature.
I mentioned a few of those as we Talked today.
The seven secrets.
I've been working on it for 50 years,
and hopefully that's going to be coming out.
(42:04):
And I've just finished a series of real estate books.
They're in formatting right now.
They're done,
they've been proofread,
the covers are being designed and so forth.
So there's five of those.
The first one's already published.
The Royal Flush.
Then there's how to get started.
The five Ms.
Of real estate investing.
(42:24):
That's the skills.
66 ways to find deals and all the money you'll ever
need. So that's a series,
and I think a lot of people will enjoy,
especially if they're just thinking of getting into real estate.
This is really.
It's pretty much what I taught my students,
and they were super successful.
So I wanted to capture that and share it with a
(42:46):
lot of other people.
Awesome. So you can find out more about Dennis Henson and
his book over@realimpactbook.com
of course,
I'll have a link to that in the show notes as
well. Dennis,
is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?
Sure. If you go to realimpactbook.com
(43:07):
and scroll down to the bottom where it says podcast attendee
and click on that.
It asks you for your name and email.
You will be instantly.
It's not a.
Somebody's going to find it and send you the book.
You'll instantly receive the download of the book and it's free,
(43:28):
and you will not be put on any kind of a
mailing list.
There is a little place there where you can say,
contact me when you have other books published.
If you click that,
the only email you'll ever get from me is,
here's my next book.
But I want this book to get out because when you
read it,
you're going to think,
(43:48):
oh, this is a great anniversary graduation gift.
You're going to think,
oh, my.
My friend's son's graduating.
Here's something that I can give him that's inexpensive but better,
really have an impact on him.
You can give it to people in nursing homes.
And in fact,
on that same website,
(44:08):
there's a little tab that says help the children.
I'm giving these books away to schools that don't have high
budgets, to nursing homes,
to senior citizen centers,
and I've started a GoFundMe.
So if you want to help spread the word,
get the book out and help some people,
just donate a dollar or $5 or 10 or 1,000
(44:31):
or how much effort that you can afford to help people.
And I think once you've read the book,
you'll see why I believe it will help a lot of
people. Awesome.
That's a great gift.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
Thank you,
Scott. Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.
(44:56):
As a subscriber and listener,
we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
but act on what you've heard and find a way to
live your calling.
If you enjoyed this episode,
please, please do us a favor.
Go over to inspired stewardship.com
(45:16):
iTunes Rate all one word iTunes Rate.
It'll take you through how to lead a rating and review
and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so
that you can get every episode as it comes out in
your feed.
Until next time,
(45:37):
invest your time,
your talent,
and your treasures.
Develop your influence and impact the world.
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