Live Your Dreams – Tony Gaskins
MUST HAVE RESOURCES
The Dream Chaser by Tony Gaskins
Tony Gaskins – Website
The Launch a Podcast Guide – Start Your Own Podcast
SUMMARY
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Building your dream means identifying who you are as a person, your skillset, your gifts, and turning it into a business. Therefore you should live your dreams.If we will identify our gifts and merge it with our passions, we can build our dream and change our life. Live your dreams if you want that change in your life.
If you have the desire to be more, to do more, to break the generational curse, to do something that your parents were afraid to do or weren’t able to do, then you have that cosmic collision where your path will be crossed with the path of someone who can help you or teach you how to get where you’re trying to go.
If you have that desire to do something, there’s always a way, especially today because everything is at our fingertips. If you have the right mindset, you can live your dreams.
Operate from your heart, passion, and desires.
Unless you build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs.
You may have to balance the dream and the job until the dream becomes the job.
Be bold enough to know what your heart wants and what you want to give to the world and leave behind when you’re gone. Take action and make it happen one step at a time the best way you know how. Live your dreams to impact other lives as well.
Having a vision is enough to get you started and to live your dreams.
If you dream big, parts of it would be blurry but if you can see the first step and you take that first step, with every step, the vision becomes clearer.
Everything is easier said than done but it must be said in order to be done.
Just take action and the next step appears to you.
Miracle and magic happen when you follow your intuition. Follow it to live your dreams.
Live in a way where you’re paying attention, listening, and moving forward without fear.
Living intuitively, walking by faith, and taking the step even though you can’t see is the core of it all.
Many of us are held back because of what we can’t see but if you only do or go what you can see, then you won’t go very far. Thus you can live your dreams.
If we want to have more success, we need to consistently be dreaming up new possibilities and then, getting in the realm that this is possible. Available every opportunity so that you can live your dreams.
TRANSCRIPTION: LIVE YOUR DREAMS – TONY GASKINS
To Live Your Dreams, Always Start Small
Luis Congdon
If you’re lacking inspiration and motivation, and you’re not achieving that big dream of yours, today’s show is all about motivation, inspiration, how to start small, and how to live your dreams.
A dream begins with something so small and it can blow up into something huge. It could land you on Oprah. It could make you millions of dollars or it could make you a big time influencer. In today’s guest, that’s what he’s done and he helps you live your dreams as well.
Kamala Chambers
Tony Gaskin, he’s a life coach, a mentor, a world renowned speaker, has been on Oprah, has a huge online following, and the most important thing about Tony is that he came from very humble beginnings and he focused on his dream to be where he is today.
Today’s episode, we’re going to uncover how he did that and how we too can focus on our dreams to get to where we really want to be. He is here to help you how you can live your dreams.
Tony, thank you so much for being on Thriving Launch. It’s a real pleasure to have you hear. Are you ready to launch?
Tony Gaskins
Yes, I am. Thank you all for having me.
Kamala Chambers
Well, I know that you are a powerful leader when it comes to building a dream life, building your dream online, and I’d love to hear what that means to you and how we even start that process.
Tony Gaskins
Thank you.
Tony Gaskins
I was a writer and I come from a small town. We had that inner city mindset to where we didn’t think we could become much. We thought you had to be overworked and underpaid like your parents, or a drug dealer like your cousins, or a professional athlete like Tracy McGrady because he was the first to make out of where I’m from, in Auburndale, Florida. There was no one to teach you how to live your dreams.
When I became an adult at the age 22, I took my gift for writing and I wrote my first book. I wrote the book giving advice to young ladies on love and relationship because that’s the area I was lost in. I was breaking hearts, and one of my ex-girlfriends and friends told me I should write a book on it. So I did. I was a committed man at that point, in a relationship with my soon to be wife. We got married a month after I published the book. We had our son shortly after that.
I just started using that gift and from that point, I realized we all have something to offer the world.
Tony Gaskins
That’s how it started for me.
In Order To Live Your Dreams, First You Need To Identify Your Gifts
Luis Congdon
That’s really powerful and when you were talking about where you grew up and how there was one person, who’s the first person to make it out of the circumstances, out of the neighbourhood, out of that area, and the limited options that you could have if you wanted to leave. I mean, it’s either be exceptional and leave or be like everyone else and stay in it being unable to live your dreams.
Tony Gaskins
Right, 100%.
Luis Congdon
Sometimes to be able to live your dreams seems hard. When you’re in this situation where the world seems to be suggesting to you that you should be doing the 40 hours a week for 40 years, or you should be selling drugs because that’s the only other option, or just being this incredibly exceptional out of this world athlete, how do you find inspiration and motivation? How do you find the strength?
To me, I’ve had to go through a very similar journey as you and I’m still astounded that somehow, I found the strength to go through that journey and find my passion and really cultivate it. You need courage to live your dreams.
Unlike you, I was adopted when I was 8 years old and came to the United States and grew up with some fairly healthy family or I would say a really healthy family. So, I had a different kind of support once I became 8 years old where you didn’t.
What do you tell people? How do you nurture this passion? How you are able to live your dreams?
Tony Gaskins
If it’s in you, it will come out of you. If you have the desire to be more, to do more, to break the generational curse, to do something that your parents were afraid to do or weren’t able to do, then you have that cosmic collision where your path will be crossed with the path of someone who can help you or teach you how to get where you’re trying to go. This will help you live your dreams.
Right now, in this moment, is a cosmic collision for someone listening to this who says, “My parents did the 40/x40 and I’m doing the 40×40 right now but I want more. I want to do something different but I don’t really have a lot of skill. I don’t really know how to use the computer well. I don’t really have a mentor.” This happens when you are willing to live your dreams.
Technology Helps You Live Your Dreams
Tony Gaskins
Well, here’s your cosmic collision to where now you can look at someone who has done and learn from them. I’m that person. That’s what happened for me. I had a desire and thankful to Google where there’s a will there’s way. There is always a way to live your dreams.
I got on Google and I just typed in, “How to publish a book” and of course, you get taken by the scams and you waste some money and some time learning but I didn’t have a mentor or a team. Google was team and my mentor and I paid for some mistakes. They were costly, going the wrong way in publishing my first book. However, I learned along the way and after I learned, I started to teach to save people the time and the mistakes that I’ve made.
So, if you have that desire to do something, there’s always a way to live your dreams, especially today because everything is at our fingertips.
I got online and I taught myself how to use Twitter. There wasn’t a manual on it but I operated from my heart and I said, instead of posting what I’m eating for breakfast or what I’m going to do next, I want to post things that will motivate and inspire others as their own tweeter. That’s how I started using it and those tweets became retweetable. People started sharing them and my following of 34 followers started to grow into the tens of thousands and then, into the hundreds of thousands. Social media helps you live your dreams.
Then, I took that same blueprint and went to Facebook and then to Instagram. I did the same thing in those spaces and my Facebook grew to now almost 1.7 million people and my Instagram, almost 700,000 people.
They really took off way beyond Twitter. You need to use every tool that could help you live your dreams. I was self-taught but I was operating from my heart, from my passion, from my desires. Whatever I did, I made it make sense to me.
Kamala Chambers
I really resonate with what you’re saying about being self-taught and going down the road with the belief and the desire. Self-teaching is essential to live your dreams.
One thing I love that you said about the cosmic collision. That’s really what I have found my whole success is paying attention for those cosmic collisions because it’s not just about waiting for them.
You took action. You took action and I took action and, I was paying attention and expecting them to happen. Knowing and believing that they were going to happen, this is how you can live your dreams.
Now, I’d love to hear you share with the audience one of the quotes that you had go viral in 2011 and such a beautiful quote and kind of the principles beyond that.
Tony Gaskins
Sometimes it’s really hard to live your dreams. In 2011, I was sitting in the driveway of my job. I was a counselor in a group home working with mentally ill men who had made mistakes in their younger lives. Some of them had different charges for like underage, sex with a minor, and things like that but they were mentally ill.
So, those individuals who weren’t fit to go into jail because of their mental retardation, mildly retarded is what they were labelled were put into group homes. I was working there because I saw the ad in the paper of my college.
I started working there and I remember going there everyday. It was meaningful, fun, and interesting work and I really liked it but before I got out of the car one day, I tweeted, “If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” Now, that was much more wordy because that’s how I write and talk but, the online editors changed it and shortened it and put a coma where I didn’t have one and said, “If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs.” Those quotes written both ways went viral. This is how little things help you live your dreams.
Tony Gaskins
First one went viral like the telephone game. The more sites it hit, it begin to be shortened up and edited for grammatical errors. So, it changed. The next thing you know, I see it all over. I see people posting it without my name and then, I saw it posted with another guy’s name. He’s an entrepreneur that I mentored on social media and he was emulating every tweet I sent. He would repost it on his page. It went viral in his name and then it went viral in an Indian gentleman’s name who is much older but he passed away and his younger sons took over his company. His life embodied that tweet and so, they’ve used it with his name. However, when you search you’ll see 80-90% of the sites says, “Tony Gaskins” or “Tony A. Gaskins Jr.” You need to put all your efforts to live your dreams.
Balance The Dream And The Job To You Live Your Dreams
Tony Gaskins
I wrote it because I wanted to build my dream and I was trying to build my dream but I was building someone else’s dream at the moment. I realized that unless you build yours, someone will hire you to build theirs. So you have a choice to make and you can balance the dream and the job. Keeping balance can assist you live your dreams. I’m all for balancing the dream and the job until the dream becomes the job. That was another quote that went viral. It says, “You may have to balance the dream and the job until the dream becomes the job.” That’s what I was doing. So that’s where it really stands from. It’s just being bold enough to know what your heart wants and what you want to give to the world and leave behind when you’re gone, taking action and making it happen one step at a time, the best way you know how.
Luis Congdon
One of my favorite words is, “clandestined.” It just seems like it was meant to be. You had this passion, you were lit up about something and you did whatever you could to start sharing this passion and this energy. You need to do whatever it takes to live your dreams. I know personally from myself, sometimes, I’m feeling like a dream’s not going to happen, a goal may not happen.
Yesterday, I was talking to one of my clients, clients help you a lot to live your dreams. He’s a copywriter. He works with people like Ryan Laveck and Harlan Kilstein. If you guys are into the copywriting or authors, you’ll know that these are some very big names and this guy works for them. He’s very successful in his own write.
We were talking and he said, “I want to be the next Jay Abraham,” which again, in the world of marketing and copywriting, Jay Abraham, he is at the pinnacle of that world. He works with Tony Robbins and people at that stature.
I could just tell repeatedly he doubted that he could become this person but that’s his dream and what I like about what you’ve done is you took some sort of small action to try to get there. I feel, taking action is important to live your dreams. That’s what we focused on. We focus on you’re doing something really great and you’re climbing the ladder to become Jay Abraham and you have something amazing that’s you and that’s unique to you and you need to start sharing that vision in whatever way you possibly can.
To me, that sounds like what you were doing when you wrote that tweet.
Tony Gaskins
Yes. That’s exactly what I was doing, 100%. This is really important if you are willing to live your dreams.
To Have A Clear Vision Is Important To Live Your Dreams
Luis Congdon
Did it make an impact in your life? Again, I’m just having these thoughts about, “Okay, is it enough for me to just share a tweet with people or go into Facebook?”
I remember when I went into Facebook and I created this Facebook group and I was all jazzed and I told Kamala, and she was like, “Yeah, Do it,” but we didn’t really know what was going to come out of that.
I just said, “I want to create this Facebook group. It’s going to be the most amazing Facebook group for podcasters. It’s going to be a community and it’s going to be free. It’s going to be beautiful.” She is really supportive of it but we didn’t know what it was going to be, really. I just knew I was excited about a community and having people get together and support each other, and share and love on each other. But that’s all I had. Having a great community can help you live your dreams.
My bigger dream was to be wealthy, to be well known in this space, to have a hit show, to have people like yourself Tony come on the show. Was it just enough to share that tweet? If we have a vision and a dream and we don’t know how to get there and all we have is a tweet or sitting down and writing, is that enough? How your vision helped you to live your dreams?
Tony Gaskins
Right. Well, it’s a start. It’s enough to get you started. You may not be able to see the entire vision but your vision helps you live your dreams.
If you dream big, parts of the dream would be blurry but if you can see the first step, and you take that first step, with every step, the vision becomes clearer.
So for me, everything is easier said than done but I believe that it must be said in order to be done. By me saying it, it put it into the universe and it made it real and tangible. That spoken word forced me to take action. By me saying it, I was able to say it. Once step comes after the other and just keep putting your right foot after your left. You continue the step just one step at a time. Consistency is essential if you want to live your dreams.
I saw this famous quote online, “A journey of a thousand miles begin with one step.” I’ve seen it over and over and even now, I’ve heard it on commercials.
That tweet for me was that one step on a journey of a thousand miles. So, I encourage everyone to do something. Just take action and the next step appears to you. You say, “Okay, I did that. Now, what do I do next?” It will appear to you. So then, you start to learn and to search and each step can help you live your dreams.
Like Kamala said, it’s you are in expectation of your opportunity, your blessing, and your moment. You’re in expectation of it. That’s what I consider walking by faith, which plays important role if you are willing to live your dreams. It’s just having the evidence of things unseen, knowing it, and moving towards it.
So yeah, I believe that it’s enough to get started. It’s not enough but it’s enough to get going.
Kamala Chambers
When you’re talking about is what I might call, “Living an Intuitive Life” and just an amendment to Luis’s story to be really transparent, Luis came to me with this idea about growing this Facebook community which had nothing to do with our current business. I said, “Why the heck would you want to do that? It sounds like a waste of time. It has nothing to do with our current business.” He just had an intuition to do it. I got behind it because what I found is when Luis is inspired intuitively, miracles and magic happen. Sometimes you need to trust your intuition to live your dreams.
I find the same thing within myself that when I follow that intuition, real magic happens. That Facebook community led to a whole new avenue for our business which has been very profitable and helped hundreds of people all around the globe. So that’s something I find to be really important piece of what you’re saying. It’s being to live in a way where we’re paying attention, listening, and moving forward without fear. Fear might be there but we’re moving forward anyway. This is how you can live your dreams just by following your intuition.
What role do you feel like that plays in what you’re talking about?
Live Your Dreams Because life Is Too Short To Regret
Tony Gaskins
I believe it’s the key to live your dreams. It’s the centerpiece. The core of it is living intuitively, walking by faith, and taking the step even though you can’t see.
I believe it was Martin Luther King Jr., who mentions about taking the first step even though you can’t see the entire staircase. That’s everything which could help you live your dreams.
I believe so many of us are held back because of what we can’t see but if you only do or go what you can see, then you won’t go very far.
You have to be able to make moves towards the unseen to that part of your vision so that you can live your dreams. That’s really what I mean by building your dream because when you dream, you don’t see, remember, and know it all. However, as you start to build it, it becomes clearer block by block. It’s still a journey. It’s a continuous journey.
I just had an idea last week to do a retreat for people who want to burst their book and at the retreat, I want to be able to show them how to make an outline, how to choose their genre they’re going to write in, and how to create a writing schedule. Then give them a feedback and tell them how to publish, how to do their cover, but then also, how to pitch themselves to get media coverage the same way I got myself on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tyra Banks Show, and all the local outlets in how to build a personal brand, how to do an interview, how to become a speaker. That’s why I have a vision and I couldn’t see it all alone, know the schedule, how it’s going to work out, where is it going to be, but then I started to take one step at time. I got on Google, looking around at places, have my assistant look at places. Then I thought, “Oh, I remember this place in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.” So I told her to Google and she found 10-bedroom mansion. Within 48 hours, we have put a deposit down and booked the space.
Luis Congdon
That’s so awesome. Congratulations. How you live your dreams is really inspirational.
Tony Gaskins
Yeah. Then, I chose the date. That’s what I mean by having that vision and just stepping out and taking that step.
Luis Congdon
You said something really powerful and I really like it. There’s a passage that I really love and I try to extract passages from anywhere possible where there’s wisdom whether it’d be from the Koran or the Bible. It does not matter to me. Where I see wisdom, I will absorb it and try to really appreciate it.
You said something about using the spoken word and in The Bible, there’s a passage talking about everything in the beginning was the word and everything came to being because of the word. I had a friend who told me that the, “word” in Greek, literally translates to be spoken out loud, to be said into creation. I think there’s a lot to be said for that.
I want to ask you one of the last questions I have for you. Did it impact your life when that tweet went viral? Will something like that if I begin to share something in just a small way, can it really make a difference? What difference did it make for you?
Tony Gaskins
It made all the difference because that tweet went viral but that time, I was talking about relationships the most. I tweeted that from my heart and it was shared in over 400 countries and individuals from around the world started to reach out to me. They started to follow me online. It’s a, “Hey, are you that Tony Gaskins who wrote this quote?” And I’m like, “Yes, I’m that Tony Gaskins.”
I remember my partner, he went to Brazil to a conference and the keynote speaker had built the website that had over 2 million users at that time and, he said, “My favorite is, if you don’t build your dreams, someone will hire you to build theirs.” After his speech, my partner went up to him. He said, “Hey, it’s my partner who wrote that quote when it started to spread.” and he’s like, “Oh my goodness. Are you talking about Tony Gaskins?” and he said, “Yes. That’s my partner.” He’s like, “Wow.” Because we live in Florida and here he is in Brazil. Then, he meets this guy and the guy, had it tattooed it on his rib cage.
Luis Congdon
That’s amazing.
Tony Gaskins
It’s in code language. My partner sent me the picture and he started to show me how your small voice as you may see it can become so large.
So, I started sending out every tweet that was an original quote. And so, I have over 20,000 original quotes online. And when I say original, it’s not that it’s never been said before or anything. What I mean is I didn’t read nor hear it anywhere. I analysed my spirit and the feeling that I was feeling, I put into my words. That’s how I know my tweet when I see them because I write and speak in a certain way. And so, I know what’s mine even if it doesn’t have my name on it because when I read it there’s a tingling in my spirit because that’s where I wrote it from.
I’ve seen my quotes on all of the quote pages. Sometimes, as much as 30% of their quotes are my quotes. I’ve destruct partnerships with quote pages that have nearly 10 million followers because in going to their quotes, I would read 6 of them and 3 of them would be mine. I was like, “Wow. This is insane” and I will reach out to the page and they would say, “Hey, we’re so sorry. We just grab them offline. We just grab the most viral quotes offline.” And the reason why that happens is because my Facebook page had almost started to reach 40 million people a week.
So here it was this little guy from Auburndale, Florida, population of 5,000 and I was reaching 40 million a week. Being online and sharing quotes, I literally can’t go anywhere without someone stopping me and saying, “Hello” and asking for a picture. I started to feel like a real celebrity and I don’t even have a TV show but it brought opportunities. I became a speaker for the NBA and NFL. I became a life coach for over 300 high profile individuals that I’ve coached to date and start travelling the world. I’ve spoken on 3 continents, over 10 different countries, built the 7 figure almost 8 figure brand just with my products, my books, my courses.
It changed my life. I was making $20,000 a year as a counselor, working in a field I like but I wasn’t passionate about. It was just a job I stumbled upon to having a purpose based business. To where everything I do is purpose based. Every product that I promote, it serves a purpose. I was able to create my own schedule. Pick up and leave.
Last Thursday, I had a thought that I wanted to take my wife out of town before school starts this week and I was able to get online and book 2 first class flights to Beverly Hills and we stayed at the Montage in Beverly Hills. It was beautiful stay, 3 nights and came back. Got back yesterday morning and it was just on a whim. That’s what it did for me. Just by me stepping out and sharing my voice and my gift with the world and in my way.
Luis Congdon
That’s incredibly beautiful Tony. For all of us at Thriving Launch, your assignment that I want to give you is to start sharing your passion with the world whether it’s you going to your partner, you going to one of your best friends, or you just starting to tweet some of the things that excite you, and making tweetables or just sharing, “Hey, this is what I’m up to. Is anybody interested?”
That’s how it started for me. Tony and I both started very simple and humbly but we started with a vision and a dream. Kamala also, and I know the rest of you at Thriving Launch have a lot of dreams, have a lot of visions and no matter where you’re at, one of the things that I got from you today Tony is, where always exercising this muscle, this muscle to dream and this muscle to have vision and to speak it out loud. It’s not you do it one time and you become a millionaire and then you don’t have to ever do it again. It’s a constant thing that we’re doing.
This is what I love about talking to super successful people because they understand this. If we want to have more success, we need to consistently be dreaming up new possibilities and then, getting in the realm that this is possible and then, just starting with whatever we’ve got.
For me, it was just telling Kamala, “Hey, I want to start a Facebook group and I want to start this podcast.” And I was scared but by going to her, I had the support. By going online and just finding a few people to share the dream with, I spoke this thing into reality just like you have.
It’s been really awesome to have you here Tony. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
Kamala Chambers
It’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show and we’re going to make sure that everybody has a chance to connect with you personally.
Tony Gaskins
Thank you all so much for having me. It’s been awesome.
MUST HAVE RESOURCES
The Dream Chaser by Tony Gaskins
Tony Gaskins – Website
The Launch a Podcast Guide – Start Your Own Podcast
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