How To HEAL From Trauma & Addiction | Joe Polish

I was raped and molested as a kid. I was paid money not to say anything about it, which wired in my head that sex is shameful and dirty unless you pay for it. That later led to sexual addiction.

Can you share a little bit about your story and how you came from, you know, some of the traumatic things that happened in your childhood and early adult years to now being such an amazingly connected person?

My mother died when I was 4 years old. My father was really traumatized by that. And then our whole childhood, every year or two, we would move to a different town. Childhood, we're moving a lot. I was real shy. I was really introverted. Used to get picked on as a skinny kid. And then I had a period where I was getting molested. And when I, you know, was 18 years old, it was the worst state of drug addiction. When I was about 16 years old, I started smoking pot daily and I started taking speed. You know, there was this rush to it, and I was super shy and introverted, and it just pulled me out of my shel. Problem was I didn't have good boundaries. And so all of a sudden, I just wanted to be high all the time. So I was just taking a lot of drugs. I weighed 105 pounds one week, just because I had gone almost the entire week with hardly eating anything. I was just like looking in the mirror and I looked like I was looking at a skeleton. I was looking at a skeleton with skin. And I was just. I was such a fucking wreck. And. And I was like, I, you know, I need to do something now. Didn't happen right away. I mean, it still went a few more months.

So today I'm sitting here with Joe Polish, who is one of my dearest friends and has absolutely changed my life since I've just gotten to know him over the past year. And Joe has a story that is truly one of resilience and transformation. And not only did he come from a really traumatic and very, very challenging background that a lot of people probably wouldn't have survived and, and became built. Been able to build the empire that he's built today. He is now someone that they call the most connected man in the world. And I truly believe that he connected me with one of my childhood heroes who I'm now good friends with. And he's the founder and CEO of Genius Network, which is one of the most sought after entrepreneur organizations in the world. And he also has Genius Recovery, which is reshaping how the US Shapes how the US thinks about addiction and recovery, and also is the the author of multiple books, one of which is his newest book, what's in it for Them? Which is an incredible book that I'm almost finished reading myself. And oh my gosh, the list goes on and on. And you're an expert in marketing. That's how you started. You started a carpet cleaning company and became an expert in marketing in order to sell carpet cleaning services. And you were so good at that. You were featured on ABC's 2020 and then went on to found Genius Network, which now has over 350 members. I am one of them and I will be a member for the rest of my life. So thank you so much.

First off, Hannah, it's great to be here. Yeah, we've had a. It's been one hell of a year, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So much stuff. And so I, I love seeing everything you're doing too, and just the growth and all this. So. And by the way, if we. We'll probably knock over these books like dominoes at some point during this, so just, we'll let the viewer know. We won't even edit that if that. If that happens because I may do it, I may hit the table. But no, it's great to be here. And yeah, I'm just a person who was really driven and entrepreneurial and I'm involved in all kinds of stuff. Genius Network is all about connection. Genius Recovery is about connection. Everything that I do is really about connection. Because growing up I was extremely disconnected. So I was shy, I was introverted. If there was any thing that I've done that is about connecting other people, it simply was a byproduct of me so, so badly wanting and seeking that myself. And so I think that's what a lot of people often do is they have their biggest life issues and personal business and they figure out how to try to build a business around it. Or at least that's assuming you are a solution focused human and many people are not.

Yeah, yeah. And studies show that nine out of ten entrepreneurs have lived or witnessed some sort of trauma in their childhood particularly or in their lives. And your definitely someone who has witnessed that. So can you share a little bit about your story and how you came from, you know, some of the traumatic things that happened in your childhood and early adult years to now being such an amazingly connected person who has some of the most amazing relationships in the world and has really figured it out in all areas of life, you know, from wellness to health to relationships to finances and business.

No, thank you. So let me say this. I'll preface it by saying that I'm still figuring things out every day. I'm friends with a singer named Alice Cooper, and Alice lives actually here in Arizona. So Alice, me and him have the same birthdays, except he's 20 years older than me. So he's in his mid-70s now. And he had a song I used to listen to when I was around 18 years old. And it was called, you know, I'm 18 in. In. The lyrics are, I'm 18. I get confused every day. I'm 18. I just don't know what to say. I'm 18. I want to get away. And now I also used to be a drug addict when I listened to that song, which is kind of ironic because I have an interview with Alice at one of the Genius Network annual events where he's been sober for many years from alcohol, and I've been sober for many years from drugs and variety of other behaviors and whatnot. But it all stems from childhood and the experience. And I'm happy to share my story. And I also want to say to the listeners, there's a lot of people that share really difficult stories, and they use it to manipulate other people. And so I try to be very careful not to have anyone, like, you know, feel sorry for me or whatever, because we've all had shit. And there are. Every day I talk to people that have had experiences. I'm like, oh, my God, how did you even survive this? Let alone, you're a really amazing human being? So I. I come across that all the time because some people that are really hurt, really damaged their life becomes damaging other people, and other people somehow learn to transmute it. And. And I. It does require a lot of work. But so, you know, quick version is I was. That is relevant because I could spend an hour just talking about, you know, crazy stories. But my mother died when I was four years old, so. My mother was a former nun. She left the convent because the story I heard, she had gotten ill. She met my father in church. They ended up getting married. I have one brother who's a little over four years older than me, and she died of ovarian cancer when I was 4. My father was really traumatized by that. And then our whole childhood, every year or two, we would move to a different town. He was a locksmith. He didn't make a tremendous amount of money, worked really hard. He was, you know, poor guy was just very traumatized. As I've gotten older, I have a lot of empathy. And you're able to witness parents, including Ones that have done sometimes bad things weren't very good. And I can only speak from own experience because there are some people not suggesting anyone should accept abuse from anyone as if it was okay, because it's not okay. And at the same time learned enough that, like my friend Dr. Don Wood, who's a trauma therapist, he says if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they are the way that they are. So the atmospheric conditions of my life were, you know, my father, my mother dying. And so he never remarried. And we would. He would go and try to establish a business, which he did to a certain degree. And right when it started to work, he would uproot and go move to another town and have to start all over again. It was some weird form of self sabotage and just chasing something that he unfortunately could never find. And so throughout my childhood, we were moving a lot. I was real shy. I was really introverted. Used to get picked on as a skinny kid. And then I. I had a period where I was getting molested, you know, so I was raped and molested as a kid. I was paid money not to say anything about it, which wired in my head that sex is shameful and dirty unless you pay for it. That later led to sexual addiction later in life. Didn't understand that in the very beginning, what that even was, because you even hear the term sex addiction that conjures up like, oh, pervert, someone that just wants to have sex all the time, or today, like a lot of porn or whatever. But it could be sexual anorexia, where you're not able to be sexual with somebody. Very similar to anorexia. There's binging and purging. Almost all forms of addiction are, you know, deprivation and excess. And so throughout my life, it was. There was no real balance, you know, in my childhood at all. It was very unstable. And when I, you know, was 18 years old, it was the worst state of drug addiction. So my first core addiction I thought was drugs, but it was real. It was really sexual addiction. The drugs just happened to be the way that I escaped the reality that was never okay. I never felt okay. And it was weird because when I was about 16 years old, I started smoking pot in high school daily. Back then I went to a high school in Mesa, Arizona. I. I would hide a bong in my locker. It's hard to get away with that now. They have metal detectors at this high school now, but back then you're just, you know, doing whatever. And I started taking speed and There was this rush to it, and I was super shy and introverted, and it just pulled me out of my shell. It was the most bizarre thing. I became very social and actually became quite popular in high school. And I wasn't a jock, I wasn't academically skilled. I was just a partier. But I was able to be very social. And so this fear that I lived with, I was able to numb it. Now, that was good because I saw, huh, you know, I mean, you. You can actually interact with people in ways to where before I was afraid to talk to people. It was the most bizarre thing. And all of a sudden I became very social because these inhibitions lifted. The problem was I didn't have really good or any good boundaries around moderation. There was no such thing as moderation. And so all of a sudden I just wanted to be high all the time. And what I've learned now from, like, my friend Dr. Anna Lemke, who wrote Do Nation, she's this great addiction doctor at Stanford, the biochemical aspects of it, like, for instance, when they do studies on rats, if you take, if you eat chocolate, give them chocolate, it's 55% increase in dopamine. Sex is 150% increase in dopamine. Cold plunges are 200% increase in dopamine. Cocaine is a 225. That's why I liked cocaine, because it would just like, you know, the neurotransmitter dopamine, the anticipation, neurotransmitter, just. It would. In the moment, it's, it's intense pleasure, but it leaves you feeling depleted. And then methamphetamines is a thousand percent increase in dopamine. So I was just taking a lot of drugs. And so at my worst state, you know, and I left out a lot of stuff in the childhood. I'm not going to go all into it, but I weighed 105 pounds one week just because I had gone almost the entire week with hardly eating anything. And, and I remember this, this. I lived in this crappy house with, you know, several roommates. I mean, like, everyone did drugs all day because when you're a drug addict, you hang around other drug addicts. I mean, your lifestyle tends to be around other people that are living that sort of lifestyle. And so I was, you know, selling drugs in order to support my drug addiction. And I was kind of functional in some areas. But as I started to deteriorate and get skinnier and skinnier, all of my friends and like, people were scared even when they would see Me, you know, friends that weren't partying all the time, they were like, man, you need help. You need help. And my attitude back then is, screw you. It didn't even occur to me. And there was a time where I actually thought that everyone did drugs. It's like, how do you go throughout the day and not like, why wouldn't you get high? I mean, it was. It wasn't like, delusional, but it was just like. I thought a hell of a lot more people did drugs. Well, it was probably delusional. What am I thinking? Of course it was. I wasn't living in a state of, like, fantasy completely, but I was living in a state of hoping. And most addiction does live in fantasy. So it's. It wasn't there all the time, but it was there a lot of the time. And so, yeah, I ended up. The quick version is. If there is a quick version of this is. I. I was one week. On average, I weighed about 120 pounds. There's one week where I just. Was just free basing cocaine every single day. There was a three and a half month period where I would. Free basing means smoking cocaine. And I was literally three. Not a single day I missed in three and a half months. And I was just a rail. I mean, I was, you know, I'd wake up to get high. I'd get high to go to bed by taking downers, drinking at night, you know, waking up and getting whatever speed and drugs that I could. And I remember finding some change, literally in. I had this piece of crap pickup truck that I was getting change from. I had found some change in between the seats. And I went to McDonald's, which I don't recommend anyone eat at McDonald's, but. And I bought Chicken McNuggets. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna go home and eat them. And I get home and I was gonna. It was gonna be like kind of a ritual because I was so broke at that. That particular period of time. I didn't have any money, and I put them on the kitchen counter. And then like a friend shows up with drugs. And all of a sudden I didn't care about the food anymore. We spent six hours just getting high. And then finally, you know, and you can't eat when you're on amphetamines. You have no appetite. And so I went to the, you know, the kitchen and these things were like, rigor mortis had set in it whether. But I ate them. And I was just, like looking in the mirror and I looked Like, I was looking at a skeleton. I was looking at a skeleton with skin. And I was just. I was such a wreck, and. And I was like, I, you know, I need to do something now. Didn't happen right away. I mean, it still went a few more months, but there was one period of time where I was in the. In the living room, and there was this crazy roommate we had that busted in with a can of lighter fluid. And back then, I had long hair. You know, it was almost. You should see all pictures of me. I have a handful. They're. They're quite. They're quite funny. Dyed blonde hair. I mean, my hair was more blonde than your hair was. And it was spiked at the top and long in the back. It looked like some crazy mole. I sort of kind of look like a blonde version of Theo Von with, like, longer hair in the back and more spiked. I used to use eggs, egg whites, and Knox gelatin to spike the hair because the mousse back then wasn't as good. I'd have a blow dryer, and I'd hang upside down in order to get. So I look like a complete freak. But this guy shows up and just screaming, I'm gonna burn this freaking. You know, I'll try to not use too much profanity, but he was shaking, like, squirting lighter fluid all over the freaking living room. And it got all over my hair. And this guy's losing his mind, and he holds up a lighter and lights it. He's. I'm gonna torch this place. And I'm, like, talking him down, like, put it down. Put it down. And I had another friend that was there kind of in the corner freaking out, like, you know, just didn't even know what. I wasn't screaming, but, like, oh, my God. Like, what. What is going. It was a scene out of a movie. And I talked him in the. Turn the lighter, you know, calm the hell down. And at that point, I was like, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to die, like. And so I packed up all my shit. I moved to New Mexico and ended up living in a trailer with my father for a couple of years. And the first six months were absolutely grueling because that's when I ended up getting sober. But I didn't go to a rehab center because I didn't have the money. And so I was taking Tylenol and Advil and aspirin every day just because the headaches were, like, insane. So I had to get. I had to withdraw with really not any real structure or support. But what ended up happening was I got a job working at a health club, eventually selling gym memberships, which is funny because I was like this skinny guy, so I'd always wear long sleeve shirts and everything. And it's funny that the woman that hired me, I'm still friends with her to this day. Yeah, I became. It was called Tom Young's Fitness in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And I was selling $30,000 a month worth of gym memberships, which back then, you know, we're talking, this is the late 80s, was pretty damn good.

It's still pretty damn good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today I'm trying to think of, like, how much, you know, gym memberships were. But that's where I first had my exposure to really sales in person, even though as a kid I was selling newspaper subscriptions door to door. And I learned that, you know, you got to sell something. And so then I ended up getting offered a job. After working at this place for about a year, one of the members ran a mental hospital and he offered me a job as a mental health tech. I'm like, what's a mental health tech? Well, you know, you come to the hospital, you'll, you know, you just observe certain people. You just do paperwork and things like that. And so one of the things they had me do was I would drive the patients that were alcoholics or drug addicts to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous, NA meetings, Narcotics Anonymous and CA meetings, Cocaine Anonymous. I would sit in those meetings. I drive the van with the people that were in the hospital for drug treatment. And I would drive and sit in these 12 step meetings that were oftentimes at churches or places that would just contribute their space for 12 step meetings. And I sat through those meetings never realizing how valuable later in my life that would become, not just for my own recovery, which was not. I wasn't really doing recovery. I didn't really even understand it because, you know, I just had a part of me that didn't want to accept the fact that I was like an addict. And so I had become sober from doing drugs. But that's only stage one sobriety. Stage two, sobriety is dealing. You know, stage one. Ernie Larson wrote a book called, you know, Stage two Recovery years ago. And stage one is you quit doing the behavior or the drugs. Stage two is dealing with the under underlying issues which cause you to use, you know, drugs and addict as an addictive way of coping with life or dealing with life in the first place. And that always has to do with human relationships. So addiction is a connection disorder. I got sober, but I was still very disconnected. But my life was starting to work and so I. Except I had not yet dealt with the core addiction, which was the sexual addiction, which all goes back to trauma from my childhood. It was so hard to. Most of my childhood I can't even remember. So I've, you know, obviously many moments I do remember, but huge, probably 95% of my entire childhood I have no memory of. So, you know, so what ended up happening is over the years, look, I'm in my mid-50s now and I've done a ton of work. I've done thousands of in person meetings, from 12 steps to men's groups to yoga retreats, to plant medicine journeys to emdr, to all kinds of somatic therapy, to diet, to exercise, you name it. I'm. Now fortunately, I have an addiction recovery foundation. And it's not because I'm somebody angel, philanthropist or anything like that. It just helps my own recovery. And the way that you. I always tell people, if you think your life sucks, spend time with someone whose life sucks as bad or worse than yours and be helpful, be of service to that person. And it's amazing how that does wonders to make you feel better. So when someone's sitting in a 12 step group as an example, it's the much of the bond is that you're there with other individuals that have gone through similar mutual suffering. And when you. Whatever you think is most private, like I'm the only one that feels this way. I'm the only one that has this shame or this guilt or this regret or has done this stuff that I can't imagine if anyone found out, you know, that I did this, you know, I would be exposed. You know, there's so much of that. What you learn through a lot of recovery work is that that which is most private or seems most private is most public. So many humans are going through this stuff. So many people have been sexually abused. Yeah, I mean, and so that I could say more, but I should probably shut up.

And I think your story is amazing. And I, you know, have a different story, but very similar and connect with you on so many levels. And I know when I met you, I was like, oh, this is like my person, you know, my people, my family. So would you say that that was the biggest rock bottom moment in your life when you realized, like, I'm gonna die if I don't get out of here and really made.

That was one of them? You know, there's Life has a series of defining moments. I wish I you would just have one dark night of the soul, or maybe none at all. But I've had quite a few. I mean, I raised a child for a year that I found out while pursuing soul custody I was not the biological father. And that was after doing, you know, intensive recovery and doing well and going to, you know, meetings for sexual addiction, Sex Addicts Anonymous. You know, there's several different, you know, let me say that too, because about, about sex stuff, because I always want to preface this, because if there's any addiction that has a lot of shame attached to it and tons of people, especially young people, so many young people watch porn continuously are addicted to porn, addicted to dating apps, you know, love addiction, sex addiction, very much misunderstood. Certainly it's carnal, it's, it's pleasure, it feels good. I mean, all forms of getting high. And, you know, addiction could be, you know, I have a friend, Chris Doyle, who I've interviewed, and he's not a famous guy, he's just an amazing interventionist. And so when a family's dealing with some really hard, you know, usually drugs, alcohol, substances often refer people to work with, with Chris. And I've asked, you know, a thousand people, what's your definition of addiction? And I could rattle off all kinds of definitions of addiction, but the real simple one he said is two words. Can't stop, can't stop. You know, it's not about willpower, it's not about intelligence. It's not. It's just you, you have a compulsivity. So it's doing something that you want to do or you don't want to do that has negative consequences attached to it, right? And it can make your life unmanageable, manageable. It could destroy your life. So that could be gambling, it could be work, it could be food. Let's go back to work. You know, many of our friends are, you know, because workaholism is a respectable addiction, which is a subtitle of a book on workaholism. So you get status, you make money. I mean, I am surrounded by, by work addicts that the world admires. So many influencers. You know, I always make this joke that a lot of people that are not willing to get a therapist walk into a 12 step group, really do some intensive work. What a lot of them do instead to give the illusion they're doing the work is they start a podcast. You know, and we talked about this a lot with, with mostly guys. And so there's a lot of these people that you'll see like, oh my God, they're so amazing because they have Gabor Mate on there show or they have, you know, who's actually I've had on my show, you know, a couple times I've had him at my event. He's a great guy. So, you know, they have these incredible minds but that has nothing to do with actually doing the work. So. So sexual addiction has a lot of shame attached to it. And my favorite definition of intimacy, because sexual addiction is an intimacy disorder. So you know, you can have substances, you can have gambling, food, sex, work, gaming. You know, there's a lot of people that are addicted to gaming. But sexual addiction has a certain type of shame that's attached to it because it's what it's called, sex addict. Oh, should I be scared of a sex addict? Does that mean they're pervert? Some are, you know, they're, they could be dangerous. But almost every form of violence, 90% of the time drugs and alcohol were involved. If you look at the stats from sexual assault or rape, most of the time someone's under the influence of some sort of drugs. There's 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States. 40% committed a violent crime, 60% have not. We're putting a lot of addicts in cages that haven't committed a violent crime, but they broke the law. So there's a lot to it. So it's a connection disorder. I can explain the pandemic and wars through the lens of addiction, which I'm not going to do. But we live in a culture that is filled with people trying to scratch the itch. And I believe addiction is a solution. It's not a problem. It's the solution to pain, depression. Now it is a solution that comes with problems, it creates problems, it can destroy your life, it can wreck other people's lives. So all that just as a context. So it's a connection disorder, disconnected. And if you're disconnected, you're going to look for a way to try to feel a particular way biochemically, you know, in your brain, in your body and your being. And so intimacy, my favorite definition was given to me by a guy who spends his life pretty much sponsoring people with sexual addictions. That 80 year old man that when he first told me this and he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. So if you don't feel safe in the world, you're going to look for a way to scratch, to feel safe, and you're going to. You want connection. But if you're so for me in my life, when you have your introduction to sexuality with very. It could be violent, it could be aggressive, it could be humiliating. And when you're a child and that's done to you, you then have created this identity about yourself and you don't feel, you know, So I actually understood what it felt like, you know, between the ages of 8 to 10 years old to be used like a. Just a piece of meat, you know, I was just an object of someone's, you know, twisted ways to whatever the hell they needed to do, whatever happened to them. That's the weird part about it. I mean, I know this person had bad things happen to them too. Doesn't make it okay. I just understand, you know, and so. So that being said, going back to the dark night of the soul hit rock bottom. You know, I had the situation where I was, you know, just do it. When I was in my. I became a millionaire before the age of 30, teaching other service businesses how to build and grow their business. So going back. I'll take a detour here for a moment. So I learned marketing because I needed to eat, I needed to survive. Never thought I'd write books. Never thought I'd speak in front of anyone. I mean, I was afraid to give a public spe. I mean, I remember the first time I really gave a talk. I like people like, oh, the first three to five minutes, you might be nervous. I was a freaking wreck the entire day. But I still just did it because early on I would be like, you know, you're either either frozen scared or you're moving. Yeah. Or you're just. You're frozen stiffer, you're moving, scared. That's the words I was looking for. You're either just, you can't move forward or you're just moving forward. And so I had to operate with courage, as have you. Right. The thing. Courage never feels good. Confidence feels good. But like, I guarantee you and a lot of people will not. As you sit with certain people that you'll interview, especially if you haven't built much rapport with them or you don't know them too well, you show up in front of the mic, you show up every day to, in some cases to. To go to war. And not like war like you're going to shoot someone. But, I mean, it's just fucking hard. But you Keep showing up. And so part of the thing about people that achieve success in any area, part is just showing up. And if you can't muster the strength, the perseverance, or just the desire used in a good way. So most people's desires are actually not used in very productive ways. They're actually used in ways that hurt themselves and others. And that's why the number one killer from substances of people in the United States is sugar first, tobacco second, alcohol third, and opiates fourth. I mean, people kill themselves with substances. One of the highest causes of death with young people right now is suicide. In a world that you would think, oh, there's all this self help, there's all this great stuff, there's so many things to do, but there's incredible disconnection. We're more connected electronically than ever before in human history, but we're more disconnected as humans. So for my carpet cleaning business, going back to that, I got into the business I just needed, you know, I just needed a way to pay my bills. And I had a friend talk me into, you know, buying some carpet cleaning equipment with some money that I had saved delivering newspapers and, you know, basically going to New Mexico after I had become, you know, where I was getting sober when I left out of the going to New Mexico stories. The first few months when I was getting sober, I had a job delivering newspapers. Not adult paper routes, not kids on bicycles, but like, literally they would have these newspapers and you'd show up around 10:30 at night, p.m. and then you deliver papers throughout the night while people were sleeping, and you'd put them on doorsteps and stuff. And I was so used to staying up all night anyway because I was previously a drug addict. And then I ended up getting the job at the Tom Yun's health club and selling gym memberships. But the first few months when I was just. It was like. And it allowed me to actually make money doing the, you know, working seven days a week. And so a lot of addicts and you say entrepreneurs, I don't know. That's an interesting stat. I'm sure it's accurate. That have been traumatized. The reason they work so much is it's. It's also a form of that because you become pleasure deaf if you are traumatized and you're looking for higher levels of ways to just feel okay in the world and work and activity and accomplishment is better than shooting up heroin. It's better than robbing liquor stores. Right. It is, though, a way of oftentimes not facing some of the stuff in. In the. The complex thing about it is when does it become healthy? When is it unhealthy? Like, I'm not here to say sex is good or bad. It's how you interact with it. Work. Work is not good or bad. Gambling, I mean, pick anything. Although gambling is probably not that much of a. But I'll tell you, like, you take crypto as an example right now, just at the moment where there are millions of people that are crypto addicts. You know, they're staring in front of computers, like doing day trading. It is highly charged, high adrenaline, tons of dopamine, lots of anticipation. You know, every time you look at your phone, you are giving yourself a dopamine hit. Social media addiction is huge. And people that have grown up in it are oblivious oftentimes to the fact that you are a biochemical machine that is having tech companies with their algorithms dictating your behavior like you're a freaking puppet. And so. And if you. If you're not aware that that could be happening, you can get sucked into the matrix and so that sort of thing. So when I have my carpet cleaning business, I, you know, I was broke and I learned marketing because I needed to eat, I needed to survive. I turned my carpet cleaning business around. And one thing I really pride myself over all these years is somewhere along the way, I had developed an ethical code. Never take advantage of people. Do not rip people off. I heard this quote early on in my life. Be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're going to be the same people you meet on the way down. And it's like. And that has so come true. I mean, I often tell young people, we live in a hustle culture. There's going to be a lot of people that are going to somehow convince you that success at any cost and to just, you know, sell, sell, sell. There's nothing wrong with opportunities. It's a big, big difference between pursuing an opportunity versus being an opportunist. And if you have to take advantage or you're in a business where someone has to lose in order for you to win, change the model or get the out of the business. And if you're seeing people that are taking advantage of other people for means or money, you know, not a good thing. And I understand the draw, like when you're young, you know, Ferraris and Lamborghinis and big houses and mansions and expensive jewelry and, okay, you know, it's all. And that's. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just how you interact with it. And so if the goal is status, you're gonna hang around people that you know, are they going to elevate my status? You're going to view everyone through the lens of how big are their followers, how much money do they have, who do they know? And you know. And you can get access to all kinds of stuff through fame and notoriety and all that. I have a love hate relationship with it because of course there's a part of me that wants the world to like me and think I'm really cool and all that sort of stuff, but man, it is super seductive and it can misinform you if you pursue that. So my whole thing is pursue growth, not status. And so in a world of marketers where 25%. My buddy John Carlton, who's a copywriter, last time I talked to me, he goes, I think 20, and he's one of the top copywriters in the world. He's now in his 70s. And he said, I think all the marketers and the influencers and stuff, I think 25% of them are psychopaths, 25% of sociopaths, 25% are narcissists, and the other 25% are normal people. Yeah, whatever.

That's just people in general.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think there's probably not that many psychopaths or sociopaths in general, but in the business world, tons of coos that are. I mean, like, here's the unfortunate thing, Hannah is like the people running the world at high levels now, it's shifting quite a bit, which I like seeing. You know, I just was talking to Bobby Kennedy last night, who's a buddy of mine. He's great. He's been in recovery for 40 years. This year goes to a 12 step meeting every day, meditates every day, works out every day. I think he's the first presidential candidate that I've ever met that's not a narcissist. And I've met a few.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you have to be like most of the leaders of the world. They are extremely traumatized narcissists.

Absolutely. The other thing too is Gary Halbert used to say this to me all the time. He's the guy I first learned marketing from. Crazy ass copywriter who was, you know, an addict. We used to have lots of conversations back then. He died in 2006. But he said the world advances on the backs of its neurotics. So the world does indeed advance as a result of crazy people. The question is, are these Crazy people, destructive. And some are, you know, some are and others aren't. So, you know, my goal is like, keep elevating my consciousness. I always think to myself, ten years from now, I'm going to look back and I was like, I had that. I was doing that podcast with Hannah, and boy, I said some really stupid shit. And I'm just pontificating some stuff that I think is true, but, boy, I wish I would have really rethought that. So I just come from the state that, you know, I. Trying to do the best I can.

Yeah.

You know, I'm trying to figure stuff out. I'm always seeking, I'm always learning. But, you know, business is great and building a business, and we can talk about any of that stuff. But the, you know, that was probably a lot more than maybe the listeners needed to hear what I would say. Wherever you're at in your life, if you have pain, if you have struggles, if your life is unmanageable, if you find yourself hurting yourself or others, if you find yourself being taken advantage of because you're a giver. I mean, I really care about reaching givers. You know, even my book, what's in it for Them? The whole goal of that book is to take givers that are genuinely caring and help them better boundary themselves from takers and to also know that if you're a giver in life, it's not a matter if you're going to be taken advantage of, no matter what sort of walls and things you are going to get taken advantage of. But that's how you develop the ability to smoke out and to identify and to develop your spidey senses of who's a taker and who's a giver so that you can spend more of your life. You know, there's that great Zig Ziglar line, is you can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. But my friend Martin Howey gave me a caveat to that. That's actually not true. You can help a lot of people get what they want in life that won't do a damn thing for you. They will take advantage of you. And some of those people will use and abuse you. And it's unfortunate. That sucks. But it's through those experiences that if you realize that you don't lose unless you lose the lesson, you either winning or you're learning. Right. So when you go through those experiences, you like, oh, I ignored that red flag. The red flags were there. I just ignored them. And Sometimes there's yellow flags. And I didn't even know what yellow flags were in the very beginning. I didn't even, you know, but now I notice all that stuff. So I do. I still, you know, in the state of trying to be helpful and, you know, I try to be accommodating to people. I don't ever want to be a jerk. I mean, one of my, you know, sometimes you have to shut people off because they're just so annoyingly persistent without any regard for. For how does this fit into your time and life? And they want what they want so badly that they don't consider, you know, how this comes across. That's rare. Most people are actually trying to do good stuff. But the thing is, is like, I just want to better boundary myself. And by the way, if anyone wants to know what someone is about, if they're trying to reach a highly influential person, as an example, author speakers. Look at what the hell they write books about. If you want to know what someone's trying to figure out in their life, what are they writing a book about? What are they teaching a seminar about? Why are they talking about those? That's what they're interested in. So, you know, in learn the difference between people that are truly successful and reporters of success. Because the world is filled with reporters of success that have not had any success. They just talk about it and they can be eloquent and people. But like, have they made money? Have they really changed other people's lives? You know, and get, you know, get rid of this nonsense of like, we're going to change the world. If anyone's going to change the world starts with one life. 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, you know, do that and then you really know if you got something, you know. And so anyway, I love that and.

I, you know, I. I was on a plant medicine journey. You've been a massive part of this transformation I've been on over the past, past year. And I joined Genius Network not knowing much of anything about you or about addiction or anything. You know, my brother's a. Struggles from addiction and has his whole life. And now I realize I do too. I didn't. I didn't really know that, but, you know, I was on a plant medicine journey maybe four or five months ago, and all I heard for seven hours was you saying the opposite of addiction is connection. The opposite of addiction is connection. And I just felt extreme, excruciating physical pain throughout my whole body. And that's when I realized, like, oh, I guess I'm an Addict because I'm, you know, everything from work and money and success to food has been my most difficult one I've. For a year. I mean, I was doing drugs from 14 to 23, probably, you know, very, very frequently, even though I was still a high producer, high achiever on the work days and then a complete addict on the weekends. And every kind of drug in the book. And relationship addiction, always, never single, always relationship to relationship to relationship, specifically with addicts. You know, so it's. That was really big eye opener for me and realized that so many people, because of you, I realize so many people struggle with addiction. They don't. They may not even know it or want to admit it, and it is a disconnection problem. And I realized how disconnected I personally was and how if I just sit there with myself with no stimulation and no company, I'm miserable.

Right?

Yeah. And I didn't want to live my life that way. And that's why for me, I was like, before this kind of journey, I was on a podcast and they're like, oh, what are your goals next? I'm like, oh, I just. I'm going to be a billionaire. That's my goal. But, you know, and I. And then someone challenged me on that and we're like, well, why do you want to be a billionaire? I was like, well, the more money I make, the. The more impact I can have. And they're like, not true. Yes, you can do a lot with money, but you can impact one life at a time, and money doesn't build that relationship. You can buy someone something or buy a well in Africa and help with water, like, things like that. But you can also have this conversation and you can change somebody's life and save a life and have an impact that way. That has nothing to do with having more money. And so that really is what made me slow down and be like, what are my intentions? And is that just a means for me to continue to be disconnected and continue to hit dopamine hits for the rest of my life? Because obviously the likelihood of being a billionaire is a lifelong goal and probably never going to happen. And it's a way to stay disconnected forever. And it's. I didn't want to live that way.

And yeah, that's a huge insight. I mean, it's really a huge insight. And people could maybe minimize the significance of that because they're only going to see things through the lens of their life where they can say, well, you know, you're just trying to pursue money and what is all this sort of stuff and everything like that. But ultimately, you know, this is our lives. I'm not here to tell anyone what success is, and it would be foolish for me to say, hey, Hannah, here's if you do this, this and this, you're going to be successful. Now, there are things like if you say, I want to run, you know, a marathon or I want to be in an Ironman, and I want to do it in this period of time, and if I do that, you know, I'll be successful. And there's. You can be specific and give strategies and diet and exercise and trainers, and you could actually reach that goal and say you've had success there. But that doesn't mean you're a successful person. I mean, I. I know a lot of people that are extraordinarily wealthy that I would not consider successful at all. And I know people that, you know, make not a lot of money, that are some of the most caring, compassionate, kind, connected, happy people that don't harm other people, that inspire other people, that are incredible. And I know people that have more financial means that it's completely misused. And I say all of this never poo, pooing money. I mean, money is a great tool. Like people that say money can't buy happiness. It's like, silly. I buy happiness all the time. And I also say, you know, if you think money can't buy happiness, you haven't given enough of it away, because there you can change someone's life. They can't afford medical care. They can't, you know, support their children that have gotten into some really crazy life situation where they were taken advantage of again. It could often lead to illness or just something that had nothing to do with them doing anything wrong. They could be a, you know, an innocent bystander and have had, you know, their. Their legs taken out from under them. And you could support people in those particular cases, which is way different than going out and just giving money to everyone that wants to borrow it. And you know this already. One of the downsides of having some sort of financial success is the beggars come out of the woodworks. I mean, you live in a world where people simultaneously are resenting you for being successful while also begging from you because they want your money. And you have to discern between, well, how do I use the money? What's the best way? You know, this is a really interesting book called Happy Money, which talks about the ways to use money in a way to make yourself happy. But I look at money in serious Ways and also comical ways, because it is bizarre. People will lie, cheat, steal, kill other people for money. They will do heinous crimes in order to get money. And I often look at some of these people going, my God, if you use that creativity in a more productive, ethical way, you could change the fucking world. How do you get so off track? And usually it's because of trauma. It's usually because they just haven't dealt or they had terrible mentors. Like winners find ways to win and losers find ways to lose. And people often get really bad training. And the funny thing about doing addiction recovery for all the years that I've done and the rooms that I pursue, which dictates so much of how I view the world currently, which is in some ways good and maybe some ways not. I don't know. Like I have sat in rooms with billionaires, Academy Award winning actors and actresses because I started doing high profile groups that I would literally join thinking that was the way to do addiction recovery. Let's find the very best addiction expert in the world and hire them. And I often found myself using that as a cop out from doing real work. Sometimes like the cliche, go to a 12 step group in a church basement in a bad part of town. You may get better recovery from that than going and hiring the famous psychiatrist that wrote a book, right? But I've sat in plenty of rooms with people, NBA players, NFL players, politicians, clergy, famous musicians that the world admires. And if you saw the struggles and the difficulty and the challenges some of these people had, you would not want their lives. But outside of those rooms, everybody wants their life, everybody envies them. And it's just like you have no fucking idea, like the pain and struggle that people go through. And so I want to be a hero to entrepreneurs and I want to be a hero to people that struggle with addiction. I'm not that concerned all that much with academia, although I know a lot of people in academia that are pretty cool. But I know a lot that are complete and bureaucrats and, you know, all that sort of stuff. I mean, I dabble in politics a little bit because I'm just trying to use my connection abilities to influence, you know, certain people to try to stop the tyranny. You know, that's why I've done interviews with a lot of pretty well known people in that world. But for the most part, there's this Ram Dass line is we're all just trying to walk each other home. When I can step away from the business, when I can step away from stuff like, what are we here for? We're here to be connected. We're here to feel good. We're here to do good work. Sometimes that is. Let's go out and make money. Go for it. If you're an ambitious person, don't waste that talent. Don't feel guilty about wanting, you know, if you want to, you know, if I, if I say that, you know, a Ferrari is just like some weird status symbol, but you really want a Ferrari. Who gives a shit what I think?

Yeah.

You know, go get your Ferrari. Go, go get whatever it is you want. Just don't, you know, don't let it own you. Own the things that you get, you know, if you want the big house. And, you know, I've learned, you know, I had a big house. You've been in the house that I sold?

Yeah.

Beautiful. One of the nicest views of the entire town of Paradise Valley. I spent two and a half years remodeling this house in the mountain. And by the time I was done, I couldn't enjoy it anymore because it was. This is like. This is not. It drained the life out of me. And I realized I never owned that house. That house owned me. How stupid, how much of like, of time did I waste with a material item that just caused me stress, you know, but, but that's the beauty of pain. The first chapter of my book, what's in it for them is be a pain detective, you know. Yeah, up to this point we've been talking about my struggles, but that's what. When you can transform pain into productivity, when you can take pain and trauma and you can turn it into some sort of triumph, you know, I'm trying to find analogies that rhyme with the T word or the P word or whatever. But, you know, the point is when you can take your shit in your life and use it as some sort of fertilizer for yourself and others, then it all makes sense. Because I would go to 12 step meetings early on in recovery and I'd hear people be like, you know, addiction is a gift. I'm like, how is this a fucking gift? I hate this. I can't control my life. You know, I'm trying, I tell myself, you know, there was this lyric from this song called Bad Houses by this crazy ass industrial band called Big Black. And it had a line that said, I tell myself I will not go even as I drive there. And I would be like, I'm not going to go to that house. I'm not going to go to that place. While I'm driving to that place. And that draw is so painful psychologically. And then you get there and you fuck up your life, and you're like, why did I do this? And what I would say is, I wish. You know, what I love about you is that you're doing a lot of heavy work at an age I wish I would have done that stuff because I spent a couple decades of my life being a pretty functional addict, gotten sober from drugs, but I was going out and spending money on escorts, paying for sex, because I had an arousal template, which everyone does based on my first introduction, which was very maladaptive and very dysfunctional to sexuality. And I didn't. I wanted to be connected. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to have sex. I wanted to hold somebody. And I didn't know who to trust because I was betrayed. And then I would get in these relationships that they would lie to me and they would betray me. And what ends up happening, though, is you're all doing that to each other. You know, you find people whose dents match your dents, and relationships are messy. They. They are. And then you oftentimes, in the process of trying to become whole, you know, I mean, you're gonna have maybe some soap operas, you're gonna have some crazy, and no one wants to talk about it. It's not like, you know, that's funny is. You know, social media is pretty much an advertisement for a life that nobody lives.

Yeah.

You know, it really kind of is. So you gotta take it as a grain of salt. You can learn stuff. You can read quotes, you can get business advice. It's entertaining. But, man, don't take, like, even before social media, people like, media is bullshit. Putting the word social in, it doesn't all of a sudden make it real. It's all bullshit. You know, and when I say it's all bullshit, that doesn't mean there's not good stuff in there. You just got to sift through it. You know, there's there. There's some diamonds in. In the rough, but most people are just wanting to get attention and wanting to get views and, you know. You know, everyone has a freaking microphone these days. And. And that's fine, but just, like, really say does, you know, what do I want solved in my life? What do I need to make work? And what's the best ways to go about doing that? And am I willing to be committed to something that matters because everyone cares? Not the recent one, but the annual event before, I said to everyone in the audience, you know, how many of you care about your family? How many of you care about your health? How many of you care about your clients? How many of you care about your business? How many. You know, but you know, different things that I asked and everyone raised their hand. I go, okay, but are you committed to them? Because you can say you care about your kids, but you haven't seen your kids in a long time. You spend no time. You know, you care about your health, but look at what you eat. You're not exercising at all. Right. You know, are you committed? So caring and commitment are two completely different things and we can confuse one with the other. So.

Yeah, yeah, I, I think it's, I mean it. I'm the, the whole, like you, Everything you see online and everything you hear from people, we talk about this like, don't hate the messenger or what's the quote? You told me if, if you judge the message by the messenger.

Yeah, so. So this crazy ass, grumpy, curmudgeonous marketing guy, Dan Kennedy, very smart guy. I mean, all his books are great, you know, as long as I wouldn't recommend his advice on how to deal with. There's this funny thing. I had Dan speaking at one of my events. I used to speak at many of his events early on in my careers in the 90s, and I used to speak at most of his events. And we used to have lunch every week when he lived in Phoenix for a couple years. And we would talk about people in the expert business, in the information marketers and whatnot. And the quote was, if you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar. And you got to take all of it with a grain of salt because a lot of people have really great advice that don't follow it. I mean, the majority of people that write self help books are not very good at following their advice. And some are, some are amazing. So this is not like to throw a whole industry under the bus. It's not, there's just a lot to be said about that term, those that can't teach. And I always have to, you know, you have to check yourself before you wreck yourself sort of thing where it's like, if I'm dispensing this advice, am I doing it as a cop out to give the illusion that I live this way? Or is it because I'm trying to live into this message that I had? And everyone, I think, does that to a certain degree. You know, you, you've seen James Bond movies, right?

Yeah, yeah.

If you go see a James Bond movie, think about it. Lots of talents can kill people. Has all kinds of the coolest shit, like all the gadgets and the cars and things that, you know, a watch that can, you know, blow up a country, like all that stuff always gets the girl, always saves the world, or at least parts of it. But life is not that cool. Life is mundane. Life is boring. If you were to just do a movie of a real hour and a half or two hours of someone's life, no one would want to watch it. Except, you know, we all have those moments where that scene could have been a great movie, right? But life is mundane and boring. And so we find oftentimes escapism into fantasy and everything. So. But the point is, we wake up every day and we write a love story, we write a comedy, we write a tragedy, we write a drama. You know, we could write something magical or we can write something that's horrific. A lot of people wake up every day and their life is a horror show. It's a horror movie. Yeah, you know, it's a drama, it's paint, it's a fucking soap opera. But we're the CEO of our life and you can write whatever you want and you can sleep, start writing a different script. You can just change the ending a bit. You can just change the beginning. It's a bit of a game, but you want to design a game that you actually like. Now, all that being said, and for timing purposes, what I'd like to do is come back and do, which I'm happy to, if you will, have me, to come back and do an episode just on business strategy and how to build and grow a business and how to position yourself and how to, you know, how to add tremendous value to people. How to get, you know, how to go after high end clients if you want. Because I run one of the highest level groups in the world. I, you know, we've not talked about that today and that's fine because I think, like, if I would say, here's a book on how to make a million dollars or here's a million dollars, most people would say, I'll just take the million dollars. They don't want to do all the work over here, they don't want to read the book, they don't want to do all that sort of shit. People just think, oh, if I can just go get the money, I'm going to solve all my problems. But I'll tell you, that's why the majority of lottery winners within A couple of years are more in debt than they were before they won the lottery. It's also why they changed lotteries over the years to not give them all the money up front, but to divvy it out because they know that everyone loses it if they get a big. Because anything received free of charge is seldom valued. If you don't like there's a big difference between earning money versus inheriting it or having a lucky deal or worse, making money by taking advantage of some people. Everything you frickin do, you're either making a withdrawal or you're making a deposit. And people that take more withdrawals that take more than they give, I think it will eventually catch up with you. I'm thinking about like I own many websites. I own transformation.com, hotseat.com, spaceuniversity.com like all kinds of. Some I won't even rattle off but it's like I, I have finish last. My buddy Tucker Carlson. I mean Tucker, oh, Tucker's a friend of mine, Tucker Max, you know, he, he, he wrote, you know, Hope they serve beer in Hell. He's, he's a crazy guy, but he's a great writer and very smart when it comes to books. And he had a, one of his four number one New York Times bestsellers is Assholes Finish First. And it's basically his like fucking ridiculous dating life and the guy's transformed quite a bit. I actually he even told me that I was the impetus for him doing plant medicines years ago when I had. I'm the first person in the world to have before and after brain scans of doing Ibogaine and 5 Meo DMT that all. Eventually that was done like at this stage nine years ago. But I was sharing that with Tucker and Tucker for whatever reason he told me he started going down the whole path of really, you know, now he's a real, he writes about it and real skilled expert. But you know, he wrote this book called Assholes Finish first at a stage in his life where sold a lot of books and it's funny but I think assholes finish last. It depends on where you catch them in the stage, you know, because you can, when someone's young and they're attractive and they got a lot of energy, you know, you can go out and you know, do a lot of stuff. You can burn a lot of bridges and still go to the highest ranks of status and fame and success. But let's see those people 10 years later. Let's see those people 20 years later, did they really win? You know, so the way to win is not just winning the game or winning the battle, it's winning the war. And I don't mean a war like a violent war. It's like, because life is difficult, it just is. And if your life is not difficult, then you're going to be faced with challenges. And I don't think life should be a struggle or life should be difficult all the time. There's going to be moments of connection and there's going to be moments of disconnection. The question is, how do you build your stamina? How do you build the relationships that you have? So for instance, my book, what's in it for Them? It's a lot of capabilities of how most people want to know. How do you meet all these well known people? Because they look at that as access. They look at that, oh, I'm going to be more successful if I go meet all these famous people. So I try to sell people what they want, but give them what they need. What they really need is not capabilities, they need character. Because if you give capabilities to someone with shitty character, they do a lot of damage. If you take a driven entrepreneur without ethics and morals and without caring compassion, they will destroy the fucking world. Or at least try. So, you know, my whole thing is let's empower people that are givers to be better givers and to be more discerning with who gets their time, attention, money, effort and energy. And how do you find that in people? You look for the pain because almost all money and opportunity comes from transforming other people's bad news into good news. And if you can transform your bad news into good news and you can then share that with other people, that's doing pretty damn good in the world. I mean, you getting in front of a microphone consistently and doing this just to talk to people and then put that out there and share that with people. Someone, not everyone, but someone's going to hear something that's going to be, oh, you know, that makes sense, that has planted a seed. And I think the best thing we can do is, is plant good seeds, water and nourish those seeds. Don't worry about the criticisms because you're going to get attacked. You probably already do. People are going to talk shit. But most criticism, like if a friend really cares about you and they know you and they know your intentions, they may say, hey Hannah, or hey Joe, you might want to do this a little bit different. I respect that because they have rapport and they know me, but someone that just talks shit that doesn't know your intentions or knows what you put into it. Most of it is just, you know, self hatred turned outward. That's what most criticism is, the toxic criticism. Or they just may not like your political beliefs, or they might not like entrepreneurs. They might like your hair, you know, whatever. But. Yeah, but there's a lot to learn. So what I would say is that what is the best thing that's come out of you? How long have you been doing the podcast now?

Let's see here. Well, I officially launched it Tuesday with Robert Kiyosaki, who you introduced me to, and. But I've done nine or ten episodes now.

Okay.

So just doing a little bit of a backlog. So.

Yeah. So what are the. Well, you've been doing interviews and stuff for longer than that, but officially launching. That's. Yeah, this. See, what no one knows is all the setup that it required in order to do. There's a ton of setup.

It is, yeah.

People like, oh, it's a. Just do a podcast. Yeah, whatever. I've been doing podcasts since 2010.

And you have a new show now, a general show, because you run. I love marketing. You've been doing that for many years, but now Joe. The Joe Polish Show.

Joe Polish.

Yeah, the Joe Polish show.

For the longest time I would not. Because I remember me and Dean Jackson trying to talk Tim Ferriss into doing his podcast before he even had a podcast when he was on our podcast. I love marketing. It was probably like 2012 or whatever. And he's like, no, I don't want to do a podcast. I don't know. And we cannot find the unedited recording before the show. We're still trying to find it because it'd be such a funny conversation to have. So I didn't want to do the Joe Polish show because there's so many. Whatever. The Blankety Blank Person show. Even though I had been doing podcasts before almost any of them. Because I recorded my very first podcast in 2005. Then we officially started a consistent one in 2010. And. But the thing is, there's a big setup to do it. But what are the top, like one to three lessons that you have learned or insights that you've gotten so far just from doing this?

From the podcast. Preparation is key in everything in life. Relationships are the most important thing in life as far as what life is all about. And it's the most important thing to me. And it's what I really, really love. It's like if all I could do was this. And talk to people that I look up to and respect and absolutely love. That's all I would do. I would. I would not run any of the other businesses. I wouldn't care so much about the. The milestones or accomplishments. I would just be a forever student and forever connector. And I. I love connection and helping people. And then three is my biggest fulfillment that I find is in sharing messages and stories of other people and hoping to have an impact on as many people in the world as I can, one person at a time. And I think, you know, from me, I was so broken and so alone and so disconnected for so many years and hated myself so much and had had no real connection with anybody that I want to help people find that connection, similar to what you have done. Because I was suicidal at 21 years old. And now I literally have the most amazing, incredible life that I could never even have fathomed could exist. And that has only been possible through relationships and connection. Like you.

I love it. So let's just take this as a preparation P, relationships, R. And either T for teaching or M for messenger. So prepare for that. Be in relationship with people that you want to talk to, that you vibe with, that have shared interests or values or. Because knowing you, you'll probably do this. People that you completely disagree with, but you're curious as to why they think the way they do. Because I'll actually do interviews with people that I oftentimes don't even like that much. I don't do that much of it. But I have done it because I want to see their. Their point of view. I want to understand. You know, it's the whole Stephen Covey thing, you know, don't seek to understand. Seek. Don't seek to understand. Not to be understood. Right. Because a lot of times we just want people to understand us. When it's like, well, do we understand them? Are we seeking to understand so relationships? And then you like inspiring people, you like being the messenger. And so. And you said, if I could spend all my time doing that, what I would say is design the game to do exactly that and hire as best you can or set up a model. Because some people, like, I'll tell you, I've had hundreds of employees. I have equity in 35 different companies. My world consists of genius recovery for addiction recovery. So geniusrecovery.org, anyone that struggles with addiction. It's an educational platform which 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 and share that with the world. We now have physical recovery kits that we just started where we want to put a recovery kit in as many homes in America. And we have a goal of saving 20,000 lives a year. Of the 100,000 plus people that die from opiate addictions, I've never paid myself a penny from that organization. It truly is designed to just put that out there. And I'm only able to do that because I run a successful, profitable business. Which side? Genius Network, which is my entrepreneurial connection network. And then I have a 40 acre ghost town called Cleater, Arizona. I also sit on the board of a public company currently not sure I'll do that for a long time. So we're in, we're in the mining business, right? So I've, I have a lot of stuff. I write books, I do podcasts, you know, but, but it ultimately my whole life is around connection and reducing human suffering. So everything that I do is like, is it elf easy, lucrative and fun or is it half hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? And I have a guy who's like this great doctor of Chinese medicine, great therapist. He wants no employees. He doesn't want to attend to it. He works with high level entrepreneurs. His view is that they're all stressed out all the time. I don't want to deal with any of this bullshit. He has a really structured life, he doesn't work weekends. He's very happy, he's in great physical shape, he has a great marriage, you know, very insightful guy. And then a guy like me that wants to do all this crazy ambitious, I don't know how to do that as a single person operation. So I have to hire people. And you, you have big ambitions. So the thing is we got to look at the business model we have. But we look at what do I really want to do and what's going to be my stupid human tricks. They're going to produce the result that I want. And there's a lot of people that do thought leadership stuff. I mean, you could put this podcast in the category, mine included in thought leadership. But any idiot can come up with a thought. Thought leaders sound good. And there are some truly brilliant thought leaders that are far more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. What I like though is I like result leaders, you know, because you can have great thoughts. But you know, like Ted has this tagline ideas worth spreading. But I thought, you know, years ago, what, what is Genius Network? Genius Network is ideas worth using you know, I want people to be able to use the ideas, not just spread them, because who gives a shit if you're just spreading an idea, if nothing ever becomes of it. So there's some really interesting ideas that sound good, but they're utterly wrong. And there's some really great ideas that are amazing that could lead to, you know, so it's all how you interact. But again, preparation, relationships and teaching and, you know, I asked you that and you may refine it a bit, but I would say that contains, as Dan Sullivan would say, your unique ability. You know, you show up, you prep for it, you go into relationships, you find a model to ask questions because the beauty is, and you already know this, questions are more important than answers. Most people are always looking for answers, but you just need to ask the right questions and you need to ask the right questions to the right people. And then once you do record those questions, record video, audio, whatever, print, put it out into the world and then build all of this into an AI system. So many years from now, you literally are crowdsourcing all of this incredible knowledge. And I think that's, I think we're going to reinvent a whole new educational system. I mean, I just like, yeah, there's all kinds of shit that I'm not going to talk about it.

I could talk to you forever.

Yeah.

But, well, I know we're over time, so I thank you so much. I definitely do want to have you back and, and I'm going to have.

You on the Joe Paulist show too, because I'm, I'm going to get, I'm going to get to a thing where I'm going to, I'm going to dig into your psyche and what you're doing and what, what matters. Because for one, you know, what I've witnessed in you over literally a short period of time is, is really a transformation. One of the reasons I acquired transformation.com I wanted that website for 20 years is it's a forcing function of what does transformation actually mean? I've had some areas where I've transformed myself from a drug addict to something, to being dead broke to, you know, having some success, to doing a lot of things. I mean, you know, even the Maha movement with Bobby Kennedy and Kelly means that all became, that all came out of an introduction I made that started Maha. Now, history will tell if that ends up being a good thing or not, but you know, the fact is I've had some transformative things in my life, but there's, there's others that I really want to transform, and unlearning is more important than learning, so we're always trying to learn, but I'm to trying. Trying to unlearn a lot, too.

Yeah. Yeah. And. And, I mean, you're just so connected, and we didn't even get to get into all these questions, but, yeah, it's your genius network. We got to meet Tucker Carlson, Bobby Kennedy, Jordan Peterson. Cali means have dinner with them. It was like a dream come true. And at a surprise. We didn't even know that.

Oh, yeah, don't tell people. Oh, when people hear who's coming next year, they're going to.

Oh, my gosh, Trump.

I won't say anything for now, but, yeah, we're gonna.

I want Trump on my podcast. Someone's like, oh, how do you get Trump on your podcast? I'm like, oh, let me work on it.

Someone's actually working right now and setting up an introduction with. We'll see what happens. We'll see.

Hopefully. I can second that. But, you know, awesome. But Joe also has an AI clone, which is incredible. I think it should be. It's, like, priceless because of all the information that this guy has, but it's free, so. AskJoePolish.com.

Yeah, just go. And you can. You can even have a Ask my AI clone if you activate your video on your phone, what color shirt you're wearing, and I will tell you what color shirt you wear.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

And then he also gives out his book for free. Life gives to the giver. Just Joe's free book dot com, so you can find them all over the Internet. And we'll hopefully have you again on the next one.

Yeah. Look forward to it. So good luck, everyone, and it's always great being with you. Thank you.

Thanks, Joe.