The Ultimate Gathering of Industry Transformers: Joe Polish's Genius Network Annual Event with Dan Sullivan, Joe Stolte, and Joe Polish - 10xTalk Episode #223

The number one addiction that most entrepreneurs have is actually workaholism. If they go away, you know, and they don't have the structure, they don't have the schedule, and they don't have the interaction, they're actually experiencing cold turkey, you know, they're experiencing withdrawal and they say, I just don't know what to do with free time. And yet it's their lack of free time that gradually destroys their lack of productivity and creativity, you know, makes them a non functioning entrepreneur. And you bet your life on your ability for your brain to create your business, then your brain doesn't work anymore. So I think just from the first four, if they just showed up for the first four, and you have many more on the schedule, but it's also the interaction. I get to meet all the other Genius Network clients who are not in 100k. I get to meet all the 25k clients. And we always have a good representative of strategic that come there. But it's the thinking about your thinking that you actually do that I would say is the biggest takeaway.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to www.gienstruitnetwork.com. hello, this is Joe Polish.

And this is Dan Sullivan.

And we also have a special guest with us named Joe Salty, because both Dan and I utilize his AI platform. He's the CEO of Daily AI and we're both users. Welcome, Joe.

It's good to be back.

Yeah, yeah.

What are we going to talk about today, Dan?

We're going to talk about your annual event because both Joe and I are customers, we're clients, we're fans, and we show up at your annual event. And this is a chance for people who aren't in Genius Network yet. And I would include all my clients in Strategic Coach who are not in Genius Network gives them an example where they can get a real taster over a period of two days, sometimes more than two days, but two days of getting a sense of just a remarkable environment. And Joe is one of the finest curators in the world of getting really, really interesting speakers. So this event is coming up in December of 2023, and I just want everybody to take advantage of an opportunity. It'll be the best $10,000 that you spend that year in terms of who you meet and what you take away with you.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Is it 10,000?

It is $10,000. Unless someone's either a Genius Network member, which is our $25,000 group or our 100K group, which is $100,000 investment. And that's part of being a Genius Network members coming to the annual event. But this is the one event that I do a year that someone that is not a member can actually come and meet the vast majority of people that are members of Genius Network. And also as a standalone, it is a great event. Sometimes people cannot do Genius Network for the year for whatever particular reason, but they want to come to the annual event. And the annual event brings together what is accumulation of some of the greatest topics, conversations and people I want to introduce to the entrepreneurs. And I always have a waiting list of, of over a hundred people that want to give presentations. And so it's a really curated event because we get to see Ingenious Network. As you know, Dan, you've been in it since 2010 and Joe just recently joined. We have 10 minute talks. And I came up with that whole process back in 2012 was the first year that I did the 10 minute talks. And my whole thinking behind it was really high level entrepreneurs. And that's what this event is for. It's not a cheap event. You, you know, people are like, what's the difference between this and another seminar? Well, it's not like anything that most people have ever seen. The quality of the people, I mean, as many people come to Genius Network for not who's in the room, but for who's not in the room. So you're going to meet a lot of incredible, very successful entrepreneurs. The food is great, the location is great, the conversations are great. We're not pitching people. It's not a orchestrated event to try to figure out how to enroll everybody. As a matter of fact, the only time that we do any sort of invitation into Genius Network is when we do a morning session which is optional and I'm not even there. And it's a panel of Genius Network members where people can ask some questions and things like that. So it's not a sales event. I really don't like those types of events where the only way that they can make money for their high level event is they have to be pitching everybody into something. So what's great about it is it's really meeting some of the greatest minds. And so this is not the main reason why people come. It's just for people that don't come at every year, they're like, well what is this? What am I going to hear? So this year, just so I can remember them all, I've got my laptop sitting next to Me here. So who's going to be speaking? Well, there's this guy named Joe Polish, and that's me. Here's what I try to focus on. So there's health, wealth, and ELF is sort of the theme of what Genius Network is. It's mental and physical health. Because what is more important than taking care of this vessel that allows you to do what you do so that your mind, that's your body, and that's your sleep, that's your exercise, that your fitness? And we want to build a better entrepreneur. And in order to do that, I sell people what they want and do my best to give them what they need. What most people usually want is more money because they think money can solve all problems. And as you say, Dan, if you've got enough money to solve the problem, you don't have a problem. So there's certainly. We want to get the money issue out of the way, and we want to teach people things that will help them make more money. However, that's the second part. So the first part is health. The second part is wealth. It's how do you make money and how do you not lose it? So we definitely have topics related to that. And then there's what I call elf, which is how do you have an easy, lucrative and fun business, and hopefully an easy, lucrative and fun life, versus a half business or a half life, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. So we get people to really think about what are they doing and how does it align with them. So I have James Nestor, who's a good friend of mine. He wrote a book called Breath, and the guy's an absolute genius. If people have never read the book Breath, they usually don't have a context of how something like breathing when you're awake and when you're sleeping and how you do it has so much impact on everything from your teeth being straight or crooked to your energy level to your ability to think and focus, your ability to get good sleep, your ability to grow muscle, the ability to deal with a parasympathetic system or a sympathetic system. And so it affects everything. And so I'm going to have a conversation with James. We've had him on Zoom before during the pandemic, and everyone just loved it. So he's coming in person, and it's.

Especially recommended for mouth breathers.

Totally. Here's the funny thing. My entire life, even though I went through hundreds of yoga classes and take a deep breath and all this sort of stuff, most people that even teach breathing actually don't even know what they're talking about. And most people over breathe, they train themselves to gasp for air. I have a deviated septum. So it's actually, it was really hard. I had to train myself so I could start breathing through my nose. And for almost my entire life until I actually met James and really learned how to breathe effectively, I would wake up with a dry mouth. There'd be occasional snoring or a lot of snoring, depending on stress level. No snoring you can cure most sleep apnea. There are many things, asthma that can be eliminated, cured, if you want to use the term. And by the way, I'm not a doctor. You have to check with your doctor. This is not medical advice. Let me give that disclaimer. I've just seen people get off meds, I've seen people get rid of their sleeping machines. I've seen people do all kinds of stuff when they learn how to breathe. And for a really inexpensive piece of mouth tape, which costs nothing, I wake up with more energy and I'm 55 years old right now and I'll tell you like I am in a much better physical shape than I was and I've worked out and exercised most of my adult life. I was just missing that one element. So it's going to blow everyone away. So I got James Nestor and then of course we got Steven Cutler, who is one of the world's, if not the world's foremost, expert on getting into a flow state. And so why do I pick these two topics? Well, no matter what business strategy you have, the energy that you bring to it, the state that you're in physically and mentally, are you engaged? This allows you to have a really strong foundation. So Stephen has written the majority of the books with Peter Diamandis that are all bestsellers. His latest book, Nar Country Getting Old Stain Rad is a subtitle, was just nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. And he's been his own human lab rat about what gets you into a flow state. And I had him come to Genius Network earlier in the year. He loved it. And we're going to have a conversation and he's going to share, you know, the latest research and the things that a person can do to get into an amazing flow state. And here's the thing too. It has been proven that if you are working in a connected flow state, you are five times more productive. So if you're working a 10 hour day and you're in a disconnected, stressed out, overwhelmed, grinding state, if you are in flow or In a connected state, you can accomplish the same amount of. Of productivity in two hours as you could 10 hours. So if you just take that and even if you increased the way you work in your engagement, in your connection, even 10% in a year's time, it would change your life, it would change your income, it would change how you feel, it would change the enjoyment that you have. So we're going to have a conversation with Steven. We also have one of our Genius network members, Martha McSally, who is the first female combat fighter pilot in the US and she was also a senator and congresswoman. And she's going to talk about courage, and she's going to talk about what it requires to go and face the things that you fear and how to operate in a state to where you can be more of a badass. She's funny, too, because she talks about all these books that are written about how to be a badass and all these things, and she's like, all these books are written by people that really are badasses. I mean, what have they actually done except come up with a title? And so she has been on many missions in the military. She's awesome. And she's got a great method to help people there. So I think Martha is going to just really be super powerful for so many people. Another person we have is Dr. Anna Lemke. And Anna wrote an amazing book called Dopamine Nation. And she's a Stanford doctor who is one of the smartest minds in addiction. And of course, my relationship with her developed out of Genius Recovery and the stuff I'm doing with addiction recovery. And if anyone wants to get it, the book is great. She's been on Joe Rogan, she's been on Andrew Huberman. And after getting to meet Ana, she is a person that actually has learned so much about how we operate as humans, has everything to do with biochemistry. It's dopamine, it's serotonin, it's more than dopamine. But we are in a culture of dopamine seeking. You know, here's a simplified version of it. If you had a mouse or a rat, and the dopamine was extracted or removed from that rat's system, and that rat was hungry or starving, and you place that rat in front of food, but it had no dopamine, it wouldn't eat. It would not have the motivation to even eat. So when people are like, they're not doing what they want to do, or they're doing things compulsively that they don't want to do. It's because dopamine and it's how you're pursuing it. And it's not that people need more dopamine. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I'm working with Iran with a dopamine nation workbook, and what we want to do is we want to introduce this research to our genius network members and so we will talk about this at the annual event is how do you actually set up your life so that you dopamine fast if you need to? Because a lot of people are full blown dopamine addicts. They cannot wake up and not look at their phone. And you have people saying, well, don't look at your phone in the morning. There are people, they cannot not do it. I mean, it is like a craving state. And they wonder, why am I not doing what I want to do? Why can't I put my phone down? Why am I staring at the screen? It's because you have trained your dopamine system to be depleted if you don't. And it's really fascinating what I have learned from her. And I already knew a lot about the biochemistry aspect of it, having been a person who spent half a million dollars when I was an addict on acting out in addictive behaviors. And then when I got, you know, through recovery, I spent another half a million on therapy. So I've learned a lot about the biochemical aspect of it. However, when I met Anna, it just added a whole nother layer of what causes people to behave the way that they do. So I think just those topics alone, which aren't how to build a landing page, they aren't marketing strategies, they're just simply how to be a more effective human and how to get this vessel that we do our work with to feel really good and really connected and what to do to not feel really good. So for instance, let me just say a couple of things on this and then I'll move on what I've learned through ANA. So if you eat chocolate, you'll get a 55% dopamine hit. If you have sex, it's around 150% dopamine hit. If you get into a cold plunge you, it's a 200% dopamine hit. If you snort cocaine, it's about a 225% dopamine hit. If you snorT crystal meth, it's about 1,000% dopamine hit. So you know why people eat sugar or why they pursue certain things. They're dopamine seeking and if you live that way. But how do you get healthy dopamine? You know, getting into a cold plunge is a way healthier way to get dopamine than is snorting cocaine. So real connection is way different in terms of how your body interacts with it than pornography.

Joe, I think you were the person along the lines of this that introduced me, and I went and read the book on it. But the entire Nazi hierarchy during the Second World War for about four years, and also their frontline troops, the German troops, were on perduvin, which is basically. It's methamphetamine.

Yes.

And the big thing that pertuvan does is it removes all sense of empathy for what you're doing. So you can do very violent acts that a normal person, they would fall apart simply because it's just unnatural what they're doing. Not only that, but they could fight for as much as 72 hours straight without getting tired.

Yeah, they could eat less food. They fight more aggressively. It removes empathy. They can do horrendous things. They could torture people, they could kill people. And if you look at the wars going on right now, if people knew how many drugs those soldiers were being fed. And then when they come back and they're so depleted and they're so stressed, their nervous systems are so overridden, why do you think there's so many suicides? So. So much of this has to do with the biochemistry of humans.

One of our early annual events that was called the Game Changer that led to the Free Zone program. We raised it for a cause, and it was PTSD for veterans. We had about four or five veterans there who had done three or four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. And some of them almost killed. They were saved by the medics. It was very, very interesting. And I said, so what do you find the scariest part of being Special Forces frontline combat troops? And they said, the scariest part for me was when I left the military and I had to go out in civilian life. I've never been so scared in my life because I didn't have a mission, I didn't have buddies, I didn't have rules. And you really understand how combat can be a drug in itself, especially when you're very mission driven and everything like that. This really relates to workaholism, which I think probably in the room of almost any genius network or strategic coach event that we have, workshop or meeting, the number one addiction that most entrepreneurs have is actually workaholism. If they go away, you know, and they don't have the structure, they don't have the schedule and they don't have the interaction they're actually experiencing cold turkey. You know, they're experiencing withdrawal and they say, I just don't know what to do with free time. And yet it's their lack of free time that gradually destroys their lack of productivity and creativity, you know, makes them a non functioning entrepreneur. And you bet your life on your ability for your brain to create your business, then your brain doesn't work anymore. So I think just from the first four, if they just showed up for the first four and you have many more on the schedule, but it's also the interaction. I get to meet all the other Genius Network clients who are not in 100k. I get to meet all the 25k clients and we always have a good representative of strategic coach that come there. But it's the thinking about your thinking that you actually do that I would say is the biggest takeaway. And Joe, when was your first introduction to Genius when you would have attended a annual event before you came into the program?

Yeah, my first Genius experience was last year's annual event, which was amazing. I went in with a completely different set of expectations. And what happened is most of the people I spend time with and want to call to hang out with or to have an experience with, I met for the first time at Genius Network. I met people that invested in my company daily. AI the person that was sitting immediately to the left of me at my table on day one. We became good friends. And now their four year old son and my four year old son are like best friends and they go to the same school. And you know, it was just like I had all these very cool serendipitous moments where there was at some point in the discussions, on the second day or third day, I was like, hey, I just feel like I'm going to go in the hallway and just kind of stretch and walk around. And then like three people that basically got the same intuitive nudge to come do a stretch and walk around, we all just started chatting. And those are like some of my favorite human beings right now that I hang out with. And you know, I went to Genius, I've heard nothing but really incredible things about the event. And I thought, hey, I'm going to come and it'll be a cool business event. I'll probably meet some business networking. And I did. I mean, I got tremendous network value, if you will, from the business. But what surprised me is I have like a lot of the people that are becoming My best friends, you know, in this new season of Life with Kids and all the things, I met them at Genius and then deepened the relationship throughout the year through the events. So I don't know where you put that on. Health, wealth and health. Maybe there's something else that rhymes with that that's like changing your personal life. But I got a tremendous upgrade to my personal circle. That of course comes with business benefits, but, boy, was that an unexpected benefit. Yeah.

So what I take away from what you just said, Joe, if you want to meet your most interesting neighbors who live closely, meet them at Genius Network. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Don't try to sort it out yourself, you know, by knocking on doors to find out if you have interesting neighbors. If they show up at Genius Network, you know, they're a good neighbor.

Yeah, it's remarkable. I wanted to go back to something, you know, just to talk about a Genius Network moment here. We all just got back from the Genius Network 100K event last week. And Dan, you always have brilliant things to say. One of the many brilliant things you talked about was Viktor Frankl and you made some comments about him and, you.

Know, man's Search for Meaning.

Yeah, man's Search for Meaning. Just extraordinary book. And, you know, he created Logotherapy, which is, you know, one of the great three sort of psychotherapy modalities. And I just wanted to relate that conversation back to our discussion about dopamine. And what I've observed is that, you know, logotherapy is basically, I'm going to butcher this, but it's basically purpose. Do you have purpose? And the absence of purpose is sort of the root cause of all sort of psychological ailments. That was sort of his frame on it. Someone would probably articulate that much better than I did. But I couldn't help but think, you know, inside of this world where we have so much dopamine and we're learning about dopamine from different people in the workaholism. How many of us, and I bet the number is very small, have tremendous clarity on our purpose, where that purpose is outside of our day job, suffer from the same ailments? How many of them? I don't know, but I would suspect that there's far less of them that suffer from the same reactive nature to dopamine and these kinds of things. And I think like surrounding yourself with a variety of, like, people and a top tier people at that helps you find the surface area and potentiality for purpose outside of what you do in your business. And I think it's too easy for us as entrepreneurs to go, hey, you know, my business is my purpose. There's something beautiful about that. But there's something even more beautiful about wrestling with what do you do with your time after? Freedom of money is, you know, a thing in your life where you don't have to worry about money. What do you do with that time? And I think people are terrified by that, and it's a much more difficult season of life or problem to solve.

Yeah, I would say that if I had to do a synopsis of strategic coach clients when they come into the program. When they first come into the program, the number one problem is workaholism right off the bat. The other thing is they have really bad sleep. And their number one worry is they're worried about their brain. Well, I'm pushing 80. I'll be 80 next May. And last 10 years, I've been at my most creative, you know, in what we've doing. Part of the reason is that, you know, I've got a wonderful partner, business partner, who also is my lifetime partner in person. And she said, you got to take free days right off the bat. And I have to tell you, if I was back and where we were living that time, you could still see the scratch marks on the floor where I was dragged to free days. And it took me about three or four days into it. It was a trip to Cape Cod. And about the fourth day, I said, geez, a lot of things I was worried about that I was going to stay and work on don't make sense anymore. Why was I even working on those things? But we've been hard at it, I think in America especially, we've been really hard at it, of maximizing financial success. And the whole trick is that if you took care of yourself, you would be a lot more Joe. I think you're the greatest connector in the world. I've told people that. And they says, well, how can you know that he's the greatest connector in the world? I mean, do you know all the great connectors in the world? I said, I don't have to know other great connectors, but Joe is the greatest connector in the world who actually has standards you carefully curate. And you do not get to know anybody that you don't think is going to be valuable, first of all, to your own health and wealth and your sense of ease and the way you run your company. But I think you have an instinctive sense that this is an appropriate person for my best clients to be introduced to.

And I'll just say really quick, Joe, one of the things really stood out to me at the annual event last year is I wasn't as familiar with how much work you're doing with, like, genius recovery. And there's so many projects that you contribute your time, money, talent, treasure, energy towards that have nothing to do with your primary business. And I think that's probably why you're happy. That's probably why you're such a great connector. That's probably why everyone wants to be around you and be at the event. And I just wanted to call that out is like, that really stood out to me in the event. The amount of purpose you have that has nothing to do with your main business.

Thank you. Yeah, you know, I try to integrate things in. It is a connection network. And I try to do things that help me feel connected. And so I want to really be connected with purpose, with people, with projects, things that make me feel like an artist that has a trust fund, which is my business. And my business helps bring in the revenue. And then with that revenue, I can do other things that I think make me a whole human. Because all work and no play makes Joe a dull boy. Right. And I say that from experience because I like what Dan was saying. Primary reason I joined Strategic coach back in 1997 was I was very driven, but I was driving myself in the walls. I was driving myself off cliffs. And there's nothing wrong with ambition except, you know, in recovery, they say self will run riot. And when your drive and where your ambitions are literally making your life insane or uncontrollable or the pursuit of happiness creates more unhappiness, then you gotta reevaluate and take a look at where things are. So, yeah, I mean, I do a lot of stuff that it'd be a real shame to take, you know, 30 years of studying and learning marketing and persuasion and just utilize that just to sell, you know, more courses and stuff to people. I mean, to me, genius recovery is one of the most important things because I. I want to be a hero, to use two things that Dan Sullivan talks about, which is, who do you want to be a hero to? And what are you, you know, passionate and excited about? I prefer the word excitement more than I do the word passion. It's more like what lights me up. And I really like helping entrepreneurs and I like bringing them together. And I like ethical giver entrepreneurs. I want to create the greatest connection network of givers with ambition to protect themselves and better boundary themselves from narcissists, from sociopaths. From psychopaths, from takers, and also get them to look at themselves. Because the driven entrepreneur. These are the type of people that join our groups. They're very quick, high, quick start. If you wanted to use Colby, you know, we had dinner with Kathy. Colby, who's. How old is Kathy now, Dan? Like, 83.

I think she's about four years older than I am.

Yeah.

And so you're talking about decades of relationships with people, and we harness that and we utilize it. And that's how. Dan, you said this really funny statement to me. I don't know if you remember this. You were like, you know, I like working out and exercising because it's really easy to pick off people in my age group because they just don't take care of themselves physically. And, you know, there's a lot to.

Be said about, wait till your 70s. They're easy pickings after 70, you know, don't compete until 70. And then only with your own age group, you know. Little story. When Joe first joined coach, he had another coach, and then he jumped up the next year. And he had a lot to say when he came into his first workshop. And I like that. You know, it's the ones who sit there and they don't say anything. I have a real problem with. The ones who bounce off the walls are, you know, first of all, they're good for entertainment. But the other thing is that usually, you know, they have a lot of really keen projects and really, really interesting insights. But Joe gave me his business card, and the business card said, joe Polish, the most obnoxious marketing genius in the world. So I took it. And then the next workshop, I asked him to just have lunch with me, and I said, joe, I think that this card served some purpose in your past life, but I don't think it's aligned now with who you are. So why don't you just cross out obnoxious and just write down the word useful. Joe Polish, the most useful marketing genius in the world. And Joe was all rings and ponytails and everything. And the next workshop, he came back and he was all clean cut and everything like that. And my sense is that he had gotten sort of trapped in a defensive position. So in order to not be called obnoxious, he called himself obnoxious to, you know, beat the other person to the punch. But my entire experience of you is that you're just incredibly useful. And that's a very, very, very important concept in my life, is that people are just useful, which means that you're paying attention to what other people need and other people who they should be meeting and who they should be connecting with and collaborating with. And you stand in a, what I would say, a complete dimension of your own in my mind as being this absolutely most useful person and enormously generous with your usefulness to. But you've developed a set of standards that it's wasted effort and wasted time. And I see every year your discernment has gone way up about yeah, yeah, famous, wealthy and everything else, but not fit for my company, not really fit for my gatherings together. There's a lot to be learned just from knowing you for 26 years. You know, there's a lot to be learned from you of just how your standards have kept going up and how you can size people in situations up a hundred times faster than you could 26 years ago.

Absolutely. And it comes through a lot of exposure, a lot of training, a lot of getting in the ring with people that you don't want to be in the ring with and witnessing a lot of manipulation and learning who. I used to ignore some of the red flags. Then I started paying attention to red flags after you get betrayed or after you suffer the consequences of ignoring potholes and warning signs. Then I had to develop another skill, which was to notice the yellow flags, because the yellow flags are the easiest ones to kind of, you know, you get this sort of tinge in your gut or this feeling. And I've really learned to develop spidey sense muscle of who to associate with and who not to. And you know, when you're dealing with the entrepreneurial world, you're dealing with a lot of crazy ass people and a lot of them are very creative and a lot of them just need some guidance and some direction. I mean, I give people a lot of grace because I work with addicts a lot. I mean, you know, a active addict lies, cheats and steals. And many addicts are not bad people, but they're doing bad things. And so I have a certain level of giving people slack and have an acceptance, but I also keep continuously improving my boundaries, my discernment. And I only want to bring things to people that really will expand them and will really help them. And ethics is a really important thing. Even though my whole book, what's in it for Them? Is a bunch of capabilities that I do my best to share and offer to people that have been helpful for me in my life, have been helpful for others. It's really a book about character. And so if I could choose, I want people to come to Genius Network and Learn a tremendous amount of capabilities. I want them to unlearn things that have not been serving them. I really want them to look at their life and look at who they're connecting with. Because there's no such thing as a good deal with a bad partner. So make money, reach your achievements, but do it in a way to where you really win. Because some people make money, but they don't win. And some people live in a workaholic life. We live in this world where I think people's what they admire are often the wrong trophies. That's what you say, Dan, you know, status versus growth. If you spend your life pursuing status, yeah. You may have a lot of people that think you're amazing while you're crying inside. You know, you may find yourself utilizing an ego which used in the right way, in a healthy way is important for business and growth and standing for something. But used in the wrong way, it will absolutely wreck you. And a lot of people, their, their whole lives are built up around status, status, status. And when the applause stops, they live a paid existence.

And so, yeah, yeah, I always say that there's a fork in the road that everybody has to make whether their life is going to be about growth or status. And the growers just keep growing. But the status people are trapped when they made the decision, in other words, that their life got fixed the moment they made the decision for status. Okay, it's like alcoholics can be 45 years old and intellectually brilliant, but emotionally they're still 13 or 14. When they first decided that instead of dealing with it emotionally and growing through the situation emotionally, they used an artificial means to make themselves feel good. And when they go through rehabilitation, they have to go back to their 14 year old and start doing all the growing they were supposed to do over the previous 30 years. And it's tough, you know, it's very tough. And I think that now that we're Talking about the 2023 annual event, we should talk about having a marvelous speaker who's created this AI newsletter. I think he should be main platform in 2024.

Well, you know, let's say this because we're going to have a session on AI and the funny thing about AI is as you both know by the day, there are advancements in amazing stuff that are being utilized. So what we're going to do is share what we feel are the most expanding, useful, doable applications utilizing AI in an entrepreneurial venture. Like for instance, let's take something that's genius recovery, which is my 501C3. The goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy. So how are we utilizing AI with recovery? Well, we have the Genius Recovery blog, and there's not AI written, but Ken Wells, one of the top addiction therapists that I know, Brilliant guy. He's been doing it for years. I just interviewed him at the 100k group, which you both were at several days ago. We use AI to create all the artwork that's on the blog. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to translate all of the blogs into different languages so that people that struggle with addiction worldwide in different countries, can access that education. We're also utilizing AI to read the articles in different languages. In order to do that, I have Peter and Josh, who are my AI guys, because we recently did a How to Utilize AI workshop for our Genius Network members. And we have a recovery bot. But people can ask questions, and not only will it give them answers, but it will read it back to them so they can dialogue with it. And we haven't released it yet, prime time, but that's one of the things we're doing. We're utilizing AI to help put together the recovery kits. You know, it's an educational platform, how to find meanings, and it's free. I mean, we make it available for people that struggle with addiction. So we're utilizing AI in lots of ways for that and of course, all kinds of stuff in business. And so Joe Stolte, and I'm very careful to use the word use. Right. I mean, we use a lot of stuff. I use all kinds of tools. We use. My thing with using, though, is as a human, no one wants to be used. I want people to utilize me, but I don't really want anyone to use me. So when people come to Genius Network, I don't want anyone using anyone. I want people to utilize each other. I want it to be a truly collaborative environment where people can come and find the things that are going to help them with their health, wealth, and health. They're going to meet cool people, they're going to become friends, they're going to get different perspectives and they're going to look at different ways to do it. So let me do this. We'll wrap this when we talk about maybe some AI stuff. So I want to mention the other people that are going to be there, because people always have, like, well, $10,000. How am I going to make my money back. And I don't want this to be a cost for anyone. I want it to be an investment. And I'll ask you to describe Mark Young. So Dr. Mark Young, who you're very good friends with, you guys do a podcast together. I'm going to be interviewing Mark and he's going to present. He's made millions in marketing, but we'll come back to him. So I've got Mary Morrissey, who's a dear friend of mine. She has built one of the largest long running seminar training mastermind coaching businesses in the world. I mean, has made just hundreds of millions of dollars in her organization over the years. And she's very wise and her clients love her and she does very big events and she's had her dark night of the soul and she knows about the history of basically being in the seminar or mastermind world than most people that have completely diluted and ruined many of the perspectives that people have about seminars and stuff. So she's going to present and she'll just be so valuable to so many people. My friend Damon John, who's one of the sharks on Shark Tank, I will be interviewing Damon about evaluating deals. What do you get into? What do you not get into? He's been on Shark Tank since the very beginning. I've had him at Genius Network, you know, the past. And he's going to share this, the latest things of what's going on in the world and how to evaluate, you know, what you say yes to and what you say no to. I also have, I've not announced this publicly. This will be the first time I'm going to interview RFK Robert Kennedy Jr. Who's running for president. And the reason I don't even know if I'm going to vote for him yet. However, I'm fascinated by how much he is willing to put himself out there in the face of so many forces that do not want him running, that are despicable in the way that they're actually treating him. And what I like about RFK is for one, he's in great physical shape. He is a great voice to taking care of yourself physically. Secondly, he's the only presidential candidate that I'm aware of that ever openly speaks about addiction recovery from the age of 14 to 28. He was a heroin addict after his father was assassinated and he goes to up to nine meetings a week as he's running for president. I met him for the first time about two weeks ago and I find him to be a very charming, very connected Very caring person. He's just got tremendous courage to call out the deception and the propaganda. And I find him to be a very fascinating thing. And we're going to have a great conversation with Q A from the audience. He knows a lot. He knows a lot about the world, about politics, about history, and I find him to be pretty awesome. So we're going to have a conversation with rfk and then of course there's some other surprises, but I won't mention those ones. And we're going to talk about AI. So, Joe, what I would like you to do as part of the AI team. So I want to have an AI session and a tech session. My goal is that alone is worth a hundred thousand dollars to everyone that comes to the annual event this year. So we give them, here's what you can do, here's how you can do it. And this will be a 10 times return on the $10,000 investment just for the annual event. For some people I think it'll be worth a million dollars. But the goal is to have everyone say, yep, that was worth a hundred thousand dollars. And so that's one of the things that I would ask and task you with is to helping with the AI team that we actually come up with that we're able to present that and then give tools to people that they can utilize.

Done. I mean, in comparison to running for president. I'll do that on Wednesday, you know. No, that's great. Happy to be a part of it. And I think what's awesome about AI is that that's actually fairly easy to deliver on because there's so many opportunities to save time, make money, be more helpful, be more useful to 2 or 3 or 4, 10 extra capabilities with AI and not in a way where it has to be hard. You know, I've been reading lately that there's an increase in something called AI anxiety.

Yeah.

And I think that the way that we can do it is even distill it down to the things that you can use that are like as easy as using electricity to get the lift. But also I think the other thing that we can maybe do is just help give folks that come some mental models around, like how to think about AI because it's going to change so often, it's going to create so much uncertainty potentially that if you just learn how to think about it, that in and of itself, you know, many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars could avoid being spent by doing the wrong things or taking the wrong actions. So challenge accepted and excited to help and to contribute?

No, thank you. And what's great about it is, see, for me, it's a challenge, too, because every year I have to, you know, and every year people are like, that's the best event you've ever done. Every year we hear people say, that was the absolute best event I've ever attended in my life. I hear that all the time. And to me, it's always a challenge, like, how do I make this year better than the previous? So I never rest on my laurels, you know, I mean, I could deliver half of what we do and people would still be blown away. But for me, it's a challenge for me. And so I always have to task myself with being able to deliver upon it. Because the smartest people in business and some of the top entrepreneurs, which are the ones that come to this event, they can come up with better ideas sitting by themselves in the coffee shop, writing on the back of a napkin than they can going to many seminars. So if you're going to ask them to spend their time, their attention, their money, their effort, their energy, which I call Tammy, to take, you know, two and a half days away from their business, it's going to be in Scottsdale, Arizona, December 1st, 2nd and 3rd. It's a beautiful location. And if they're going to come out and spend their time, they're going to travel, they're going to pay for the event, they're going to pay for the hotel, they're going to fly themselves there. It has to be really good. It has to really bring a return. So for me, I want people to feel, yeah, this was the best place I could have spent those two and a half days. And they're going to walk away with things they could use. You know, I've been to many TED conferences and, you know, TED has this tagline. I spent a day years ago with the original founder of ted, Richard Saul Wurman, who shared with me the whole history of what he thought about. And him and the current owner don't get along too well. But that being said, they have a tagline, which is ideas worth spreading. And. And I thought to myself, well, you know, what do entrepreneurs want? They want ideas worth using. And so how do I share ideas that aren't just good ideas, but they can actually use them? Because getting excited and motivated is one thing. Being able to leave and to utilize, you know, words from Dan, Dan Sullivan. People leave with more direction, you know, more confidence, more capability, more clarity, and they're able to make their lives better. And the cool thing about Collaboration is in collaborating together. And a lot of this I've spent many years in Strategic coach is that a lot of people talk about joint ventures. They talk about affiliate stuff. They talk about, oh, let's do a deal. But real collaboration is where you put people together in a room, and together they're able to support and make each other better. And that's always been the goal with Genius Network, is to have that place, that room where everyone can go to and they can develop some of the greatest relationships that they've ever had. And I do my best to assemble unicorns, and I assemble people that are really good people, and they leave there feeling better than they did before they showed up. One other person, Dan, I want to ask you to speak to is Mark Young. So Mark is. How old is Mark now? He's like 72.

He's in his mid-60s.

Sorry, 66, I think I just said.

Yeah, because he's just got in Guinness Book of Records for the oldest rookie professional race car driver.

Right, right.

And he beat Paul Newman by six weeks. Paul Newman had the record, and Mark has the new record.

Yeah. So what I want to say about Mark is that he met racing cars because learning the free day concept, Right. He races cars. He ends up becoming one of his best friends. Now is the guy who's in charge of the marketing for many of the largest retail stores in the United States. So this guy can get product placements and products into, you know, Kroger, into all the big retailers, you know, drugstores, everything. And he's an absolute marketing genius. And he knows online marketing, he knows offline marketing, he knows retail, he knows consumer products. I mean, he's just a world of knowledge. So we're going to have a great conversation for all the entrepreneurs and businesses saying, okay, you all have products and services. How do you sell them, how do you package them, how do you get them distributed? Where do you go? But yeah, Dan, you know Mark very well. So how would you describe him?

Mark is just a great guy. He came up off the, you know, blue collar Detroit, and we share a lot of background together. And he was a cop. He was a beat cop in Detroit for seven years, out on the beat every night. Then he got into marketing. He's got his doctorate in hypnosis, but he's taken a huge interest in healthcare. So he's probably among people who aren't actually medical doctors. He's got a better handle on fitness and health than anyone I've really met. And we have a podcast called American Happiness. If you're going to be an American, you might as well be a happy American. So we talk about the eight mindsets that you have to be to have a happy American. He's just a tremendous thinker about things, marketing. And some of the stuff he's probably going to talk about in your talk is just mind boggling. What a small entrepreneurial. I mean, they're not a huge entrepreneurial company that's small, but they're product placement advertising. So it's all products and how they get placed, you know, in stores, how they get placed on the media so that you're actually appealing to the right person at the right time anyway. But he's got a lot of very, very interesting experience, very deeply politically involved. And so he's been at the center of certainly the last four or five presidential elections. Just a great guy.

Totally. And so the beauty is there's a lot of marketing gurus and people that are very famous that have not accomplished even a fraction of what someone like Mark has done in his business. So, bottom line is, to utilize your terminology of industry, Transformers, who are the people that what I strive for in Genius Network is to bring the best in the world or one of the best in the world in their categories together and have them meet each other. That's the whole goal. It's a connection network. And this is just a place where we come together and have great food, great conversations, great location, great people. And it ends up becoming a place to focus on health, wealth and health, amongst other things. So I have the top flow expert in the world that I can find and get that I'm aware of, you know, speaking, top breathing expert, you know, one of the top seminar and personal development people in the world, the first female combat fighter pilot in the world, the top dopamine expert in the world, one of the top marketers in the world, one of the top investors in the world, and a guy who happens to be running for President of the United States that has a pretty damn high favorable rating right now. So these are all industry transformers. So if this is at all appealing to you, it's December 1st, 2nd and 3rd. It'll be in Scottsdale, Arizona. And the website for this is geniusnetworkevents.com geniusnetworkevents dot com and that's what my annual event is all about. So if you are a entrepreneur that's running a million dollar plus business and you want to meet some of the most amazing people, then go and apply for it. We sell it out every year.

I just want to make one correction to what you said, Joe, go ahead. You mentioned that it's quick start people in the Colby that come to the meeting. And one of your greatest fans and one of the best entrepreneurs I know is Sasha Kurzmer. And Sasha Kurzmer is the number one site survey company in Toronto. So Toronto has the most tower cranes of any city in the world. They have about 240 tower cranes in the city right now, and this is about 200 projects. And Sasha is the site surveyor on about 85% of them. And as Colby, he's a nine fact finder to Quickstart.

Wow. Well, there's always exceptions. Yeah.

Yes. And I said, you know, Sasha's just as creative as I am. He just has to start six years earlier.

That is funny. Nine, two. Like I'm a five, two, nine three, so that's brief. Well, here's the thing. Let me say this last thing, too. So this year I brought in January starting, I brought the top add ADHD psychiatrist to Genius Network, who I've known for years, Dr. Edward Hollowell. Then I brought Steven Kotler. I had Doug Brackman, who wrote the book Driven, and he's got a new book coming out, but he talks about the hunter and the farmer and about 5% of the population estimates that are hunters and the rest are farmers. And so the majority of people that will come to like a group like Strategic Coach or Genius, not all, but a lot of them, the majority, not the minority, are hunters. Outside of the room, they feel weird because they're 1 in 20. Right. Just like entrepreneurs. Most people are not entrepreneurs. It's only a small percentage of the population. If you just take 5%, right. And you have all these people that are fetishizing entrepreneurship and stuff and trying to get a lot of people, they really aren't built to be entrepreneurs, to think they're entrepreneurs. And so what's funny is I had Doug Brackman came to Genius Network. I've known him for several years, but he had never come in person. And I've done interviews with him on Zoom, but he'd never come in person. He comes to Genius Network a few months ago, just not as a member as me interviewing him. And he's been around groups for his whole life that he's been doing this. And he said, I love this tribe. I have found the best group. And he goes to Eunice, my assistant, he's like, gives her a credit card. Sign me up. I'm becoming a new member of Genius Network. And I think it's so Cool that the author of Driven ends up joining Genius Network. We do interesting things, like I interviewed Gino Wickman, who's a member of also Strategic Coach, who wrote Traction and invented the Entrepreneur Operating System, at the same meeting I had Robert Cialdini and the guys that run the Cialdini Institute are members. BJ Fogg, who's the professor that wrote Tiny Habits at Stanford, one of his students created Instagram, and he's one of the top behavioral researchers on habits in the world. And then our 100k member and genius Network member Chris Voss, who wrote Never Split the Difference, the top former international FBI hostage negotiator, all three of them. The top negotiation guy in the world, the top habit guy, professor, and the top influence guy in the world, all at the same time. That's the sort of stuff that we do at Genius Network. These are not just speakers. These are friends, and many of them are members and all together. And then I brought Gino up at that meeting, had all four of them, and I was like, how cool is this? Four of the world's leading experts in these categories. That's the sort of stuff that happens at Genius Network. These are the type of people that you will meet at the annual event. And that's what it's all about. So it's for awesome people. That's my spiel. That's my promotion for the annual event. And I appreciate you guys sharing what you have and also being clients, being part of it. So unless there's anything else that you would add to what we've said, I will just invite anyone to check out geniusnetwork events.com don't miss another episode of 10X Talk. Subscribe today at 10X talk.com subscribe if you'd like access to the Show Notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit 10xtalk.com 223.