Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Minneapolis. Well, you're near Minneapolis. Is that right, Jeff?

Jeff Griswold
Right next to Minneapolis.

Greg Voisen
Okay, yeah. And I have Jeff Griswold on the air with me and their company. Wise guide. Really, it's called effective learning. Right?

Jeff Griswold
Yeah, Effective Learning Systems is the company. Yeah, app is The Wise Guide App. Right.

Greg Voisen
So the parent company behind it. And they have an application that from the standpoint of personal growth really has many different modules and categories. We're going to talk about the love capes. We're going to talk a little bit about his father. But I want to give a little bit background about Jeff, Jeff obviously, is now the CEO of the company, and you're running it. And the application has improved tremendously. Under Jeff's wing of doing this. Jeff, basically he has a background, he has got an MBA in business administration or business. He was with McKinsey. He had an interesting upbringing with his father because his father had such a love and a passion for this and the love tapes. And this has been around for how long now? Jeff? What's that? When did your dad start this?

Jeff Griswold
1971

Greg Voisen
Okay, so it's been around for many, many years. Yep. For all those of you listening, and are seeing us on a zoom call, and are on YouTube. This basically is audio format that's in an application that you can get at iOS, and Android. And we're going to let Jeff explain exactly how its improved millions of lives. When you go to the website, you'll see that the statement there is that they've improved millions of lives. So they have meditations, they've got all kinds of programs going on, to get more focus, to have more clarity, less stress, less worry, to love better, to sleep better, to train better, listen, better, eat better, more confidence, weight loss, be free. So there are lots of modules, let's put it that way that you can subscribe to and we're going to talk about that. Also there you can learn more about how it works, the pricing the program, and so on. So Jeff, tell us a little bit about you know, your history. Your father started this. And you had your own career. You were doing something else. And obviously, this attracted you enough to come back in and help dad pull it up by the bootstraps and modernize it, and polish it up and make it better. What compelled you so much to want to do that versus staying in your own career that you had at McKinsey?

Jeff Griswold
Well, I think it all goes back to my upbringing. So it was a fairly unremarkable upbringing and suburban Minneapolis. You know, nice house, nice neighborhood, good schools. All that. What was remarkable about it was, what my father was doing at the time. And what I saw growing up, he was a pioneer in the development of personal growth. And so I had the opportunity as a kid to meet some amazing people like Norman Cousins Buckminster Fuller, Wayne Dyer. And, and got exposed to me I was doing and learning about meditation and, and mind development at a very young age. And I saw how much of a personal impact what my father was doing had on his students. You know, we didn't have daycare back then. And he would teach these programs over weekends. So going to his classes was my daycare.

Greg Voisen
So your mom, your mom was involved as well. Right?

Jeff Griswold
Mom was involved as well. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, he developed these fantastic techniques that he was teaching to people, and really changing their lives. And so that was just part of my DNA growing up.

Greg Voisen
And did it start with the love tapes?

Jeff Griswold
No, it started with the, the workshops that he would teach over the weekends, okay, people, people would come in, you know, maybe like 35 people in a room for on a Saturday and a Sunday about eight hours each day. And he would teach them the techniques, he would guide them through these meditations, the visualizations, the affirmations, the things that would help them change the way their inner mind works, to create a better life for themselves. And, and that problems,

Greg Voisen
and that is the elixir for this program. Right? In other words, he has a methodology, which is used for years, which includes visualizations, affirmations, all kinds of things. But explain a little bit about that. Do you have the secret formula that dad has left with you? That yes, has helped people change their lives? And if you can, I would say share it with the listeners, what is the process that really significantly has made an impact on a million people's lives.

Jeff Griswold
So the main thing you have to understand is that everything that we do every feeling we have every behavior, we exhibit, every habit we have, comes from a thought inside your mind, typically a subconscious thought, right? Right. I mean, think about the difference between somebody who just can't seem to get themselves off the couch, and just, you know, hangs around watching TV all day versus somebody who just, I need to get up and do something to go work out, I need to, you know, go work on this site business or something like that, um, you know, a bunch of different examples you can give of people with different habits, different behaviors, and the only difference is the way their mind works, their subconscious thinking. And we developed our subconscious thinking our inner thought habits through a lifetime of experience. Unfortunately, a lot of that experience is negative, right? A lot of us grow up with, you know, negative thoughts being given to us over and over again. And as we're young, we accept those things. So a lot of people believe things about themselves, negative things about themselves, that limit their potential, right? Oh, I'm, I'm no good at this. Or I'll never be that. And you accept those things. So when an opportunity comes up to do this, or be that you don't take it? Because what that's not me. Right. So and that applies to so many areas of our lives, whether it's relationships, whether it's fitness, whether it's your attitude towards money, being successful.

Greg Voisen
Weight loss…

Jeff Griswold
Weight loss..yeah..

Greg Voisen
So what is the so if the secret elixir is, you know, these audio programs, right? With, I'm not going to say subliminal messaging, but the reality is a lot of people will use subliminal messaging in those kinds of programs. Is your program to designed in other words to kind of work at a level on the subconscious, so that people reprogram it, or put new RAM in, as we say, right, but when our computers get too clogged up, you know, there isn't enough RAM, we can only do so much. Maybe it's about clearing out all that stuff, right?

Jeff Griswold
Yeah, I think you just said it very, very well, because, you know, your mind isn't a computer, but it operates a lot like one, right? And there's that old phrase in computer programming garbage in, garbage out, right. If you program yourself garbage, you're not going to be successful in whatever you do. Right. Um, so. Yeah, so the key is, number one, identifying that negative Thinking. So you can see in yourself, it's like, boy, you know, I sabotage my relationships or I talk myself out of opportunities that may have been something good for me. So identifying that negative thinking, but then replace it with productive, healthy thought habits. And that's what the programs do. The programs guide you through the process. Like one of our, one of our taglines is just listen, right, because all you have to do is listen to you get these programs, you find a program that you want to work on, whether it is weight loss, whether it is productivity, whether it's overcoming procrastination, or we're doing better in business or getting a good job,

Greg Voisen
Worry…anxiety

Jeff Griswold
Worry, anxiety. And all you got to do is put that on and listen, listen once a day for 30 days, and you are well on your way to reprogramming your inner thought habits to be much more healthy, positive and productive.

Greg Voisen
You know, the content and that your dad's put together and you have on these programs. Explain how the app works. It's obviously an iOS app. It's an Android app. People can get it at either one of those stores. Correct? Yeah, yeah. And download it. And then once they download it, you have a free trial period, correct?

Jeff Griswold
Yeah. Well, it starts out it's free itself. You could just get the app and have it for free. And there is content available to you for free on the apps.

Greg Voisen
And but not all the content?

Jeff Griswold
Not all the content. Exactly.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Because there's a lot of content, how many programs are there Jeff, what is the library? How big is it?

Jeff Griswold
It's, it's over 120 I can't over 120, I should probably have an exact count. Right, but I think it's 122 or something like that. Okay, um, but yeah, over 120 different titles. And in in a, you know, several different categories, whether it is, you know, health and fitness, worry, anxiety, productivity, you know, weight loss, things like that. So, we have a bunch of different categories, a lot of different programs. And so what I tell people when they're interested in the app, download the app for free. start browsing around, look in the different categories, see what titles seem interesting to you. And then I always suggest start a subscription. And you'll have a seven-day free trial, you're not even charged for seven days, that gives you full access to all the programs. And use those seven days to listen, every once in a while, go through the programs, find out the ones that you want. And then you'll have a choice at the end of seven days, you can do one of three things, just cancel the subscription, never get charged anything. And just stick with whatever which is free on the app to if there's like two or three programs that you think these are the ones that are going to change my life and I want to focus on, you can just purchase an individual title, and you'll have access to that title forever. Right. So just a onetime charge forever.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, it comes up for me as you were talking about habits earlier, and I know how important changing habits are. And we've had the gentleman from atomic habits on here. And Tiny habits, which is the gentleman from Stanford, send all the research on habit change. And every time the consistent message between tiny habits and Atomic habits is really small, incremental steps. Tell us if you would, how this program wise guide and the application could help somebody make these small incremental steps in reprogramming so that it becomes now part of their DNA, it becomes a new part of them. It's how I wake up in the morning, it's how I'm inspired. It's how I lose weight. It's how I find love. It's, it's all of those things wrapped into these many 122 programs. Yeah,

Jeff Griswold
Yeah. So as far as small incremental steps, um, I guess a couple different ways of thinking about it. Number one, is if you if you look at the 120, some titles that we have, you know, you can get overwhelmed. It's like, Boy, I've got anxiety, and I'd like to lose some weight, and I really could get a better job. And so all these titles, boy, I can listen to all of them. they'd all helped me. So just start out with a couple. Right? I'm just focused on one. The other part of making small steps is that, you know, it's not a listen to this once and you're done. Like, you know, you can read a self-help book, right? Right, read it, I'm done. You know, you may never incorporate those habits in your life, even though you know, you enjoyed it a lot. This thing is a, do it every day, just for a little time, every day, just listen, every day. And slowly, your habits will change, your attitudes will change, your inner thinking will change. So again, it's just incremental, day to day, keep getting better and better. As we say,

Greg Voisen
I think one of the things that you have at the website is focus. And many times it's been said, if you have focus and curiosity, you can find three passions. If you can link those three passions together, you can develop a purpose if you can develop a purpose, and you can then write goals. And then you can have the grit and determination. Now, whether or not that's the right string. The important part is focus. And I think you have that at the website for a reason. And it's actually at the top of the little man with the bread with the with the brain. And I think what your program would do, honestly, is help people focus. It's like anything. Like we get notifications, we get reminders on our computers, we have bells and whistles go off on our phones, we're always being reminded to do something. Does the app has the app Incorporated? Some of those features as reminders to actually open up? And listen? What is the methodology that the listeners might see?

Jeff Griswold
Oh, for the app itself? Yeah. So um, it has a feature in there where you set a reminder for when you want to listen to a program. And so that's, that's up to you, it's the app doesn't drive it, it's not going to, it's not going to tell you to do anything that you didn't tell the app to tell you to do.

Greg Voisen
But you can program it to remind you.

Jeff Griswold
Yes, yeah, there's a reminder feature in there. Um, and so. Yeah. So that helps you realize you when you talk about focus, though, the program's themselves. Um, so let me explain, there are a few different types of programs that we have, because we want to help people work on improving themselves anytime they can. Right. So one of our main collections of programs are meditative, right. So they're designed to be used when you have a chance to relax, close your eyes. And listen for a while and focus on guided meditations, it's a guided meditation for about 25 minutes. These are perfect for when you first wake up in the morning, or when you're going to bed at night. Or if you have a chance during the day to take a break from the hecticness. You know, turn off your alerts and things like that. And just, you know, take, go through the breathing exercises, go through the visualizations, and recharge your batteries. But we also have programs that are designed specifically to use while you drive. So if you're commuting a lot, you spend a lot of time in the car, you can listen these things while you drive, they're not telling you to close your eyes and relax, obviously. But they deliver the messages to help you change the way you think. And the way you see yourself and, and help you achieve your goals.

Greg Voisen
Well, look, we all know that people have an opportunity. Obviously, most people on my show are authors, but you are author, you and your father are authors. You're just authors of audio content. If you go to Audible, you know, and people do books. A lot of people want to listen to books. Now. A lot of people want to basically listen to podcasts. I mean, let's face it, it's like the one of the biggest industries around. So the point is, is that you can get this material in the format that you want it now, one of the things that I think is important is that you cover so many different topics, right? From love, to concentration, to focused anxiety to whatever it is. And these meditations are designed to reprogram the mind to actually help you look at this in a whole new light in a whole new way. That's what a guide is. Meditation we do, are you actually also helping people with while they're doing those meditations, any kind of mantra or, or statement that they're creating for themselves? That's the creating a new life for them?

Jeff Griswold
Kind of, kind of, but that's up to the individual. Right. So one of the things in all of our programs, all of our programs have affirmations, right. So that's part of it, when you're you get into that deep, relaxed state of mind where your mind is much more open to change. And we deliver the affirmations in two different ways. One is first person and one is third person. Because psychologically, those have different effects. And using them together is tremendous. But we say, as you listen the affirmations, find, you know, one or two that works specifically, or particularly well for you, write them down and save them to yourselves to yourself, even when you're not listening to the program. And I know like, there's one that I still use today, because I have a, I never needed to really lose weight. But I knew I had some bad eating habits. And one of my bad eating habits was something I clearly was programmed with. Driving down the road, I see the golden arches and McDonald's I want french fries. Yeah, this reflex. Yeah. So one of the one of the one of the affirmations in tickets are while you drive achieve your ideal weight program, is I choose to eat healthy foods. Just as simple I choose to eat healthy foods. And I realized, you know what, that's actually really powerful for me. And when I get in a situation like that, where I find myself having that reflex of doing something, I know is not good for me. I just say that to myself, I choose to eat healthy foods, right. And suddenly, it's like, Wait, that's not a healthy food, I don't choose that. And so it kind of empowers me to, to reject a habit, a reflex that I don't want. And you take that little piece, you can apply that to so many things in your life. If you just think about the bad habits that you know you have right now. And you can identify when those habits kick in.

Greg Voisen
Right. But the psychology behind it, I choose to eat healthy foods versus I won't eat unhealthy foods is a huge difference. And the way you've created the positive statement, the positive psychology is so important. And I think most of my listeners know that. But the reality is sometimes you say I won't eat those McDonald french fries. And I think that's an important point. Versus affirming. I will eat healthy, I would choose to eat healthy foods. Then when you pass the McDonald's, you're more apt to say hey, that isn't I know that's not healthy. I'm going to go to the nearest Panera and get a salad or whatever. Yeah, whatever it might be, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Griswold
We just realized I'm actually not hungry. Right? That was just an impulse that I didn't need to, you know? Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Speak with us about the love tapes. I mean, your dad's pretty famous for those. Right?

Jeff Griswold
Yeah. You know, in fact, you mentioned the whole thing about being an author. You know, a couple years after I took over the company, I got a call from the buyer at Barnes and Noble saying, congratulations, you know, your father, Bob Griswold is the number one bestselling author in spoken word audio Barnes and Noble for this last year, and it's like, Wait, you mean above like, Dr. Phil, and Wayne Dyer and all these other? It's like, yeah, he is the number one bestselling author at Barnes and Noble for a couple of years. So. Yeah, I'm sorry, I went off on that tension.

Greg Voisen
A little bit about the love tapes, because they're your father's creation. Yeah. And they've been around quite a while. And they've made a big impact. So if you wouldn't speak about it, what it is that he's speaking about, and what he is trying to help people transform in their lives.

Jeff Griswold
So, it really comes down to all those techniques that he developed by working with these, you know, wonderful people that he worked with for a number of years by teaching these workshops to 1000s and 1000s 10s of 1000s of people in his weekend workshops You know, seeing what works. Um, and so the techniques are really about bringing together a recipe of different techniques, like I mentioned, the affirmations, first person and third person. It's the visualizations that he's come up with that have very specific goals in mind. So if you listen to the programs he's taking through a visualization of like being surrounded by a ball of energy, there's a psychological background to what that is doing with you.

Greg Voisen
I think Self Love is a really important thing. Yeah, it's one thing to love another person, it's another thing to let your ego continue to remind you, that you're not enough. Yeah. And I'm certain that the tapes, I haven't listened to all of them, just a few. But that what they're doing is they're creating this positive affirmation for people about themselves, who they are what they want to become. Because you can't be anything for anyone else. Unless you have self-love. And that isn't selfish. It's, it's truly an important element of our persona. And yeah, ego eats away at you, and tells you you're not enough, which it can do on a regular basis. You can fall down that horrible path that you were talking about, into negativity, into depression, into despair, because you've allowed that subconscious part of your mind to continue to reinforce that.

Jeff Griswold
Yeah, yeah. And the foundation of every program that we've done, and probably the best selling. One in our entire collection, is self-esteem. So we focus a lot on self-esteem, loving yourself, respecting yourself, seeing yourself as valuable. You know, you mentioned depression before, one of the interesting aspects of depression is that, you know, people are sad, every once in a while he gets, you know, bummed out about the things not going well, or anything like that. But the critical factor of that depression is the sense of worthlessness that somebody has that as a hallmark of depression with what makes a difference than passing sadness. Once you lose that self-worth. And you're not loving yourself anymore. It's, it could be very dangerous. And so, you know, again, the foundation of all of our programs is self-esteem. Whether you're listening to, you know how to exercise better or stop smoking, you know, if you don't have self-esteem, you're not going to improve yourself.

Greg Voisen
Well, you do, you and your Dad, they have made it very easy for people to improve their lives through these 122 tapes. And if people want to learn more, they will go to thewiseguideapp.com. And that is –t-h-e-w-i-s-e-g-u-i-d-e-a-p-p.com, we're going to put a link in our blog to that. Now you are providing our listeners with a discount code link. So if you would explain what it normally would cost for somebody to subscribe. And if you're an inside personal growth listener, and you use our code, you will receive a 30% discount, Jeff has kindly provided that to us. And I would recommend everybody out listening, take advantage of this. It's a great opportunity, because this isn't an expensive.

Jeff Griswold
No, it's not, it's not so and just for as a baseline, um, the if you do an annual subscription, it's just under $100 a month, I'm sorry, just under $100 a year, right? If you choose a monthly subscription, it's just under $15 a month. And so if you sign up with it, the link in your that you'll post or use the discount code inside Pro personal growth. So insight, personal growth would be the code where you can save 30% off of your first subscription payments. So it's a monthly subscription. You'll get 30% off the first month, and then I'll go to Saturday

Greg Voisen
about 11 $11. About $11. Yeah, they do an annual subscription. And it's around 100. That'd be about $70. Yeah, exactly. Is that right?

Jeff Griswold
That's exactly right. Yep. Okay. So again, insight, personal growth. So if you can The wise guide app.com/insight personal growth, you'll get that discount automatically if you go. And so that'll be the link that we provide you. Right? If you go to it any other way, just type in the insight, personal growth, discount code, and you'll get that, that discount so

Greg Voisen
well. And there's two ways to get to this. Because you can do this by going to the web and typing in your browser, thewiseguideapp.com, you that'll take you to a website, and if you want to access your account, you can, you can also access your programs through that as well. If you're mobile, and you're on an iPad, or you're on a Samsung device, or any other mobile device, or your phone, an iPhone, or any kind of phone, you can just go to the stores, either the iOS or the Android store, and download the application and access your account to listen to it in your car, you know, through your Bluetooth, whatever you need to do. Jeff, is there anything else that you would like to, you know, inform our listeners about, as far as the programs are concerned that the discounts and how this is going to work? I think it's been really informative. I think you've, we've talked about a lot of areas. But more importantly, I think for our listeners, it's been about reprogramming the subconscious. These programs are designed to work at a subconscious level. When you get them you'll see that it's also a meditative program, take these apps, wake up in the morning, and listen to a guided meditation, whether you're a meditator who likes to go in silence or not, I think frequently I mean, guided meditation helps a new meditator actually get started. Because to sit in silence, I know I'm my listeners know, I'm a devotee of self-realization fellowship. And so, you know, we've spent hours and hours meditating. But that doesn't just happen, you know, we tell new people coming in, you know, 15 minutes, you know, then from 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then from 20 minutes 25. And then you work your way up. And I mean, if you can get to an hour, you're doing really good. You know, so I would recommend that this would be a great way to start that process, and a great way for you to also program the subconscious. Because as Jeff hasn't said, but I will say, the monkey mind takes over when you just sit in silence, and the monkey mind will tell you all kinds of things. You got to do this, you got to do that. You can't be sitting here, where are you? Where are you doing this? You have too many things to do. And before you know it, you're looking down at your watch going I have to get up and you've only been there 10 minutes, right? Yeah, yeah. But this really does help prevent that, doesn't it?

Jeff Griswold
It does. Yeah, it's, uh, I know, the monkey mind. went way too. Well, I think we all know that. Yeah. And the anxiety that goes along with it.

Greg Voisen
Well, and we live in such a busy world. I mean, let's face it, we're were constantly getting notifications, emails, demands on our time. And unfortunately, people take far too little time to think and reflect and contemplate. And you can do that after meditation. The reality is the point of meditation is to make a higher connection, in most cases, especially from the Eastern philosophies, but in this case, it's really to make a connection with the subconscious and reprogram it, and you have to do that first, before you can actually go into the other things.

Jeff Griswold
So yeah, so um, a couple of thoughts when you said they're asked about anything to add a couple thoughts when you talk about the monkey mind. And the benefits of meditation have been documented pretty clearly, you know, in terms of relaxation and, and focus and things like that. But what we've done is we've taken meditation to the next level, right? We've made it productive meditation, because just spending some time silent, relax, doing breathing exercises, and things like that is wonderful. And that's how a lot of people meditate. But with us, we've taken that and added on the aspect of reprogramming the mind for a prescriptive goal that you have in your life.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and that's, that's important, Jeff, and I'm glad you brought that up. Because look, there's many ways you can go. We're not saying not to just meditate and complete Science, but you supplement that with something like this to help you achieve a goal, whether it's weight loss, or confidence, or whatever, or reducing anxiety or whatever it might be. Really quick story when I was very young. Yeah, young father, I had lots of problems with anxiety and to the point where the anxiety was debilitating, and a lot of people listening out there have had this. So I ended up going to Scripps Clinic, and they put all those electrodes all over me. But I could see myself on the screen, I could actually see what was happening to my brainwaves. And I realized that this was self-induced, I thought it was something else that was doing it right. And as soon as you realize that you self-induced this anxiety, you learn how to control it. And ever since that biofeedback which is what it used to be called. And they still do it today. I learned what I was doing that was creating the actual anxiety and the anxiety attacks were so debilitating, that I wouldn't go to a restaurant, a lot of times, I wouldn't leave the house, I wouldn't get in an elevator, I wouldn't do a lot of things. And people, let me tell you, it's a real thing. Your heart starts to be sweat, you think you're having a heart attack, you believe that the whole world is spinning. And it's all self-induced. So these tapes will help to prevent that anxiety. So any of you out there dealing with that, this would be a great place to go and listen to the wise guide. programs. And Jeff, pleasure having me on inside personal growth speaking with me today, spending a few minutes of your time, again, we'll have a code in this and a link so that you can go up and look at this. I encourage everybody to go look at the website, try the app for free. Like he said, download it, and then use the code. Do we have an expiration date on the code?

Jeff Griswold
Um, let's see. It'll go to Christmas. How about that? Okay. And in now, and I mentioned Christmas, you can gift the app as well. So even if you don't necessarily think you need it for yourself, I'm sure you know somebody who could benefit from this too. So there's a gift feature on there as well.

Greg Voisen
Well, I appreciate you, Jeff. I appreciate effective learning, and the wise guide app and all that you guys are doing to change millions of lives and reprogram the mind and give them a new RAM being on insight personal growth.

Jeff Griswold
Thank you so much, Greg. I really enjoyed it.