Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
How Dr. John Demartini Crushed Life's Toughest Challenges to Unlock His Full Potential | E100
Tue, 29 Apr 2025
Dr. John Demartini’s childhood was marked by major obstacles, from a severe speech impediment and dyslexia to a rough start in school. Told that he would never read, write, or communicate, he defied the odds. At age 13, he left home and embarked on a journey that would take him from street life to a global career as a human behavior specialist and entrepreneur. In this episode, John joins Ilana to share how he turned adversity into fuel for success, the mindset that led him to create the Demartini Institute, and how he overcame his learning disabilities to become one of the world’s most influential speakers. Dr. John Demartini is a human behavior expert, researcher, author, and founder of the Demartini Institute. He has studied over 30,000 books, written more than 40, and shared his knowledge in 161 countries. In this episode, Ilana and John will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:48) Early Life Struggles and Dyslexia (04:47) Surviving on the Streets as a Teenager (08:26) Finding Purpose After a Near-Death Experience (12:10) Overcoming Learning Challenges (18:28) Discovering His Passion for Teaching (31:34) Leveraging Personal Values for Success (34:01) Turning Fear into a Business Ally (38:00) Adapting to Market Shifts (41:30) The Key to Charging What You’re Worth (49:56) Living Life by Design, Not Duty Dr. John Demartini is a human behavior expert, researcher, author, and founder of the Demartini Institute. With over 40 years of research, he has developed methodologies to help individuals unlock their potential by understanding their values. Despite being diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age, John overcame this challenge, turning it into a driving force. He has studied over 30,000 books, written more than 40, and shared his knowledge in 161 countries. Connect with John: John’s Website: https://drdemartini.com John’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjohndemartini Resources Mentioned: The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management by Alec Mackenzie: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Trap-Classic-Book-Management/dp/0814413382 Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. John Demartini and what obstacles did he face in childhood?
They told me I'd never read. I love reading. They said I'd never write. I love writing.
Dr. John Demartini, human behavior specialist with over five decades of experience. He is an international speaker, an author, an educator, the founder of Demartini Institute.
I was born with an arm and leg turned inward and deformed. I had dyslexia. I also had a speech impediment. I slept under a bridge. And then I nearly died at 17. I ended up being told by my teacher that I would never be able to read, never be able to write. And I thought, no, I'm going to mask this thing called reading, studying, and learning.
I'm not going to let any human being on the face of the earth stop me. I've spoken in 161 countries now. Everything they told me I would never do, I end up doing. Give yourself permission to shine, not shrink, and you don't need to get rid of any part of yourself. All of you works.
How do you maneuver through these challenges and keep sane?
First of all, there's a thing called...
Dr. John Demartini, human behavior specialist with over five decades of experience. If you look at YouTube, you can't even figure out how five decades even make any sense. But he is an international speaker, an author, an educator, the founder of Demartini Institute, in which he's teaching worldwide. reached millions in over 100 countries. And I'm really excited about this conversation.
You will too, listeners, because we are sharing an amazing passion of elevating people. So John, I'm so excited to have you on the show. And I want to take you back in time, rewind, and take me to John, the child that is struggling with learning disabilities, with dyslexia. Take me there for a second. How did you grow up?
Born in Houston, Texas, 1954. I'm going on 71. I was born with an arm and leg turned inward and deformed. I also had a speech impediment. I didn't know that until I was about a year and a half. At age four, I was, well, one and a half to four, I was wearing braces on my legs. and putting fingers and buttons in my mouth to speak properly. I had challenges also when I tried to go to school.
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Chapter 2: How did Dr. Demartini survive as a teenager on the streets?
I couldn't put words together, but if I heard things, I did a little better. I ended up leaving home and hitchhiking out to California when I was 14. I got into surfing. I just said, I'm going surfing. And I figured out how to do little odd jobs, make enough money to go surfing. At 14, I lived in California and down in Mexico.
Were you scared? Were you scared to be alone at age 14? No.
Yeah, I mean, I had a close call, got shot at, and I've been stabbed. I've had a few things, close calls. And I hung out with some really savory people at times as a teenager, back in the 60s. You know, in the 60s, you have some interesting times.
Well, also, nobody knew what dyslexia is. We just had Richard Branson a few months ago, right? Nobody knew dyslexia. Nobody could put their fingers on, okay, they're not reading as well, but they're really, really smart. They're going to absorb it in other ways. There wasn't that notion. So you surf all day.
I lived out in California. I flew from Los Angeles to Honolulu. I slept under a bridge. Then I parked bench. The park bench is still there. I went and visited it recently. Park bench is still there. The bathroom is still there that I used to go to. I found an abandoned car. I lived in an abandoned car. I lived finally in a tent in the jungle. And I was surfing.
Were you happy? Do you feel like you were happy or were you miserable?
I don't have this idea that that was terrible. I was on an adventure. My mom gave me a notarized piece of paper. She got a notary to sign it saying, my son is not a runaway. He's a boy with a mission and a dream. And he wants to go to California. He has no relatives there, but he's going to surf.
Oh, my God.
You know, some people have really parents that go, oh, I wish they'd have done this. I'm really grateful for my parents. They were pretty amazing. That's incredible.
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Chapter 3: What was the near-death experience that changed Dr. Demartini's life?
My board was crunched and splintered. I ended up on the rocks and I ended up hitchhiking back from Lanikea into Haleiwa. And then I ended up falling unconscious out in a parking lot at this grocery store. And I woke up three and a half days later in a tent. Somehow somebody recognized who it was and brought me to my tent. I don't have any recollection for those days.
But then a lady found me in the tent and I was pretty sick. And she's the one that helped me recover and took me to a health food store to get me some carrot juice and decent food. And then I ended up going to a yoga class where I met Paul C. Bragg. He's the one that started Jack Lane's career and impacted Donald Trump and many, many people. I mean, I could just go down the list, this guy.
And he, one night in one hour with a message, inspired me to believe that someday I could become intelligent.
Tell me for a second, that accident, did you already say to yourself, this is my sign or not yet? You needed to meet Paul for that.
Well, I remember when I woke up from the unconscious in the tent, face down in a really not a healthy site, I remember saying to myself, if I make it through this, I want to do something more with my life. That was a rough moment. But
When I met him, he said that what we think about, what we visualize, what we affirm, what we feel, what we write out and define and clarify, and what we act upon determines our destiny, determines how we want our life. And we can decide. It doesn't matter what it is. It's just what's inspiring to us, what's truly meaningful to us. How do we define that?
And at the time, I was assuming right before that happened, I assumed I was gonna make surfboards with Dick Brewer on the North Shore at Country Surfboards. And that was my fate. But that night, I really had the first time belief that maybe I could overcome my learning problems and someday become intelligent. And that was like amazing moment.
And I went on a visual guided imagery meditation he took us through. And I saw myself standing in front of a million people speaking. I have in my office in Houston, Texas, on the 52nd floor of Williams Tower, this five foot by four foot painting that Andrew Tister from Melbourne, Australia painted of this vision.
Wow.
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Chapter 4: How did Dr. Demartini overcome his severe learning challenges?
And it's incredible, John, because the people that don't know you don't realize that from this kid that was dyslexic and until age 18 couldn't read or 17, whatever. And now what you read, I don't know, 30,000 books and you wrote a lot of them and right. And you speak in front of thousands or tens of thousands. I mean, it's incredible to see that change.
I could look at surf pictures in a surf magazine. And I could look at girly magazines. I could visualize pretty fine. I just didn't read and articulate and add meaning to things easily. But when I met Paul Bragg, I got to study with him for like three weeks every single day. And he really did inspire me. And he gave me kind of like a formula.
And he gave me a statement to give to myself and say to myself every day. And I started on a journey that was a new trajectory. And I had no idea where it was going to lead, but I just had this sense that this is the new path. And it's not that I didn't like surfing. It's just that all of a sudden, I really had this belief that if I worked at it, I could overcome this learning thing.
So what happened?
Flying back to LA and hitchhiking back to Texas. And when I got to Houston, my mom and dad didn't recognize me. They went, oh, because I had long hair and a beard. It didn't look like a little teenage kid. They taught me into taking a GED and somehow, miraculously, I guessed and I passed. I literally guessed and passed this test. I don't know how I did it. Just guessed.
And then I thought that was going to work, guessing, and when I tried to go to a junior college to try to take classes, try to go back to school, and I failed. I got a 27 on a test. And I remember driving home crying, thinking, maybe this whole thing is an illusion.
All I could do is hear my first grade teacher saying, I'm afraid he'll never read, write, or communicate, never go very far in life, and all that. And I shattered the vision about being a teacher. And I thought, I guess I'm going back to surfing. And my mom saw me on the living room floor when I got home. She saw me on the floor and she said, what happened, son? What's wrong?
Because she hadn't seen me cry in a long time. And I said, mom, I blew the test. I got a 27. I need a 72 to pass. And she just looked at me. And then she finally said something that only a mother could say. She said, son. She put her hand on my shoulder and she said, son. Whether you become a great teacher, healer, philosopher, and travel the world like you dream,
or whether you go back to Hawaii and ride giant waves like you've done, or the return to the streets and panhandle as a bum that you've also done. I just want to let you know that your father and I are going to love you no matter what. We know what you've gone through. We're just going to love you.
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Chapter 5: When and how did Dr. Demartini discover his passion for teaching?
And when you value yourself, so does the world. So I basically prioritized things, delegated the hell out of it. And I was freed and liberated. And my net income went up. And during that time, I also learned from a financial planner about money management. I learned nine questions. Sometime we'll have to do a show on that. These nine special questions that turn you to financial freedom.
I learned these nine questions.
We should bring you to do a show on that. That is interesting.
I like to do that because it's a good one. And I did these nine things and I started to accelerate my savings, my investments, and just kept leveraging, which just drove my business up and created it all over the world. So it was amazing what happened when I learned to delegate. There's no way you can live an inspired life unless you delegate, no possible way.
If you help other people get what they want to get in life, you get what you want to get in life by you helping them find out what they love and only hiring people that have highest on their values, the thing you want to delegate. So they can't wait to get up in the morning and do it.
And do that thing that you hate.
Yeah, they have to love it. So, I mean, they have to have an orgasm on where you want to vomit. Totally.
Thank God for my team that loves whatever spreadsheets and all the things that I hate. Like I just...
I haven't done a bank reconciliation since 1983. I haven't even written a check since 1983. I don't even know that stuff. I delegate everything. Even I tell my girlfriend, I said, look, I'm not the greatest in lovemaking. If I delegate lovemaking to George Clooney, would you still love me? She says, I'll love you even more. So I just delegate things.
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Chapter 6: What strategies did Dr. Demartini use to manage his time and business?
If you don't give yourself permission to be the most authentic you, you're going to be second at being somebody else instead of first being you. You want to find the one thing, as Gary Keller says, the one thing that absolutely inspires you. You know, Warren Buffett tap danced to work because he loves finance and wealth and, you know, numbers and stuff and financial statements.
That's what he loves. That's why he's great at it. I love researching and teaching. That's why I've done well with it. If you hadn't said to John, let's be an entrepreneur and let's open up a cupcake manufacturing company and delivery service. Oh God, I would suck. I'd be going to social security looking for some sort of a handout.
Me too, especially the cooking is so not me.
And you know, people say, well, that's because you're wealthy, you can afford to delegate. I said, I didn't become wealthy and then become delegating. I delegated to become wealthy and people don't get that. It doesn't cost to properly delegate. It costs to improperly delegate.
But that's why I wanted your story, because your story is so inspiring, John. But I will go there for a second, because one of the things that you'll see is, I mean, sometimes fear is real. Like, I don't know how to pay the salaries. I don't know. It's a crappy year. How do you maneuver through these challenges and keep sane?
First of all, there's a thing called a fantasy and an objective. And people confuse those. Let me just elaborate on this because this is a great, because fear is not your enemy. Everybody talks about how bad you got to get rid of fear, overcome your fear. Fear is not your enemy. Fear is your friend.
It's letting you know when you're pursuing a fantasy that's inauthentic and is trying to get you back to that which is a true objective where you embrace both sides of the pleasures and pains in the pursuit of something meaningful. It's a guide. And what we do is we go out and look for a fantasy. I'll use this example.
Imagine you're getting in a relationship and you meet this guy and you think, oh my God, this guy ticks off all the boxes. He's got more positives and negatives and you get infatuated with him. Now your intuition is whispering inside, you know, don't rush it, be careful, keep your eyes open. Who is this guy? Find out about it.
But no, your impulse of your amygdala is going, oh, I got me the guy, you know, found that worm thingy. And you've got a bit of a fantasy. You've got a fatal attraction. You know, you've got Glenn Close on your hand, as we'd say. But then you find out over the days, weeks, months, or years, they find out it wasn't what you thought, and there's now the downsides.
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Chapter 7: How did Dr. Demartini learn to delegate and focus on his strengths?
But many people have fantasies that they know better than the market and better than the people, and then they end up having anxieties and fears because it's not having a demand, and they're wondering, what are we doing? They think they've got to do more slick marketing or something. But that's not it. It's meeting people's needs.
That's what an entrepreneur is, caring enough about humanity to actually find a problem that humanity is facing, a niche that you can't wait to get out and solve, and dedicating your life to solving it. And the greater the challenge you solve that you go after, the greater the potential business you got.
Eventually, it's about solving a real problem, right? And it could be a $1 problem for a million people, or it could be a million-dollar problem for one person. But it needs to be a real problem or somewhere in between, right? But at the end of the day, it needs to be a real problem. But I will say, like, if you still went to whatever, 2000, 2008, I don't know, there were some downtimes.
Even if you have an incredible market fit and you have an incredible business model and you have amazing clients from time to time, it's going to be... But it's scary. What do you do?
I didn't have that in 2008 and 2009 were big years. We're not for you. But about a year ago, maybe when the inflation was starting to kick in, I noticed that there was a change because I was doing a lot online and people wanted live events again. So I had to revamp because I was on my ship just sailing around the world doing online business.
All of a sudden, I'm going, oh, I'm going to go over to another location now and fly somewhere. So there was an adaptation there. But it was basically caring about the market enough to meet the market's needs. That's all it is. If we don't meet the market's needs, business goes down. And there's no forever, it's never have to worry about it. It's a moving target. Life is changing.
People are changing. Needs are changing. You have to care enough about humanity to meet the needs and keep up with it. That's the entrepreneur. That's the game. I had a challenge in 2003 when we started to go to war, when George Bush wanted to go to Iraq. I had about a two-week lull there. All of a sudden, people just stopped.
I didn't really see anything in my life in 2008 or 2009 that didn't happen. I boomed during that time. But I did have it about a year ago. A year and a half ago, I started noticing a downturn. That's what resilience and adaptability is about. But you know, I was speaking in Iran to the government of Iran a number of years ago on change management. I had the government there.
Yeah, I had 200 government leaders and I had 400 leading entrepreneurs there and 22 ministers of the state.
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Chapter 8: What mindset helped Dr. Demartini transform fear into a business ally?
I don't want to mislead people into thinking I have some sort of a knowledge about that. I just wanted to travel the world and teach. I've spoken in 161 countries now, and I had a dream to go to every country on the face of the earth and share my research findings with people. That's it.
I just had one focus, research and have the most amazing synthesized information that they can't get anywhere else and deliver that and do it in a way that inspires people to get into action. If I do that, my dad said, if I give a value to somebody and I give service to people, you will never worry about working.
And my dad, when I was nine, I told him I wanted to buy a baseball and a glove and a bat. He said, son, have you mowed the lawn? Yes. Have you edged the sidewalk? Yes. Have you swept the garage and the driveway? Yes. Have you trimmed the hedges? Yes. Have you done all the flower beds and weeded them? Yep. Have you tightened up the shale? You clipped the hedges? Yep.
He said, son, I don't have anything else you need to do. You're going to have to go to the neighbors to make, if you want to get money, because you make money by serving people. And I don't have anything else needs done. So you have to go to the neighbors. So I went a couple of doors down to the Evans place and I saw an unruly yard and I said, would you like it trimmed and mowed and stuff?
She said, how much? I didn't even know what to say. I said this amount. And she said, well, that sounds reasonable. So I did it. And I had bee stings and burns and blisters. And then I got money from it. And I went out and bought the glove bat and ball. And my dad said, where'd you get all that? And I said, well, I went to the Evans place. And he said, so what did you do?
I said, well, I mowed and edged and put the hedges and I did everything. And he said, what equipment did you use? I said, the equipment in the garage. He said, son, I got to teach you about business. You're going to have to pay me for depreciation cost on that equipment. So I said, oh, crap. I said, I got to pay my dad now. And he made me pay for gasoline, all wear and tear.
And I had to go and use the neighbors across the street and the next door neighbors and the mallows and the Zubrods equipment. And then I told him there were different prices. If I use your equipment in the garage, it's one price. If I do it this way, I started diversifying. And then I got me three groups of three kids helping me. I made, after all costs, $45.
which is probably around $600 or $700 a day's money as a kid when I was nine. And then my dad said, well, now he didn't see me saving money. So he bought me a coin collection set and a piggy bank. So I started saving money. And I filled up things and, you know, I started to learn to save and do it. And then he said, well, now you're going to learn the next step about being independent.
Now you're going to pay for clothing, food, and rent, $750 a week. That's $30 a month, $1 a day, basically. He said, but that's going to buy you freedom. Now you can get up at five o'clock in the morning. All I ask is you be home by nine o'clock at night. You can go anywhere you want, do anything you want. It's your life. So he was training me.
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