Joe Polish | Why Integrity Is Your Greatest Marketing Tool

Welcome to the Radical responsibility podcast. I'm Dr. Fleet Mahl and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change, helping you find alignment with the person you were always meant to be. Let's get started.

Foreign.

What if transformation isn't just about thinking differently, but feeling differently? Science shows us that true change happens when we align not just our minds, but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts. This Heart Mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind All Access, Membership and Community, a space designed to help you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live with greater clarity and purpose. With over 1000 hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs, you'll learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists and experts in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset to and heart set, regulate your emotions and unlock your full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course we've ever produced, a treasure trove of Wisdom worth over $10,000 and growing, plus live gatherings and an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're ready to step into a more heart centered, connected and conscious life, I invite you to join us. Click the link to learn more and and start your journey today.

What if the biggest obstacle in your business isn't the economy, your competition, or bad luck, but the person staring back at you in the mirror. In today's episode, we explore a pivotal mindset shift in entrepreneurship, taking radical ownership of your circumstances. We'll hear how Joel Polish went from a struggling carpet cleaner to to a leading entrepreneur by replacing blame with accountability and why mastering the fundamentals of business can change everything. But that's not all. We'll also dig into the role of integrity in marketing. Joe reveals how to use influence ethically, build trust with your audience, and create value that keeps customers coming back not because they were pressured, but because they were truly served. If you're ready to grow your business, strengthen your reputation and lead with both courage and integrity, this conversation might just be the turning point you've been looking for. Let's get started. My name is Dr. Fleet Mahl, your co host for this session, and I'm thrilled to be here today with none other than Joel Polish. Welcome, Joe.

Thank you very much, Fleet. Good to be here.

Oh, really been looking forward to this. So, you know, Joe, before Genius Network, before the stage, before all your bestselling books, in my understanding, you were a broke carpet cleaner at one time, just hustling to survive. So we. What was the exact moment or maybe a conversation, a breakdown, a realization when everything changed for you? I'm wondering if you could. You know, I hate to ask somebody to encapsulate their origin story in two minutes, but we got a lot to cover here and maybe you could hit the highlight of some pivotal moment where everything shifted for you.

You know, there. There were a lot. It would be hard to say one thing, but I'll tell you my very first mentor. This story, which I've written about, I've talked about before, is when I went jet skiing. So this was back in 1992, maybe 91. But it was, you know, I was Seguro Lake out here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, which is where I've lived most of my adult life. And I was frustrated. I wanted to get out of the carpet cleaning business. It was just tough work. I was literally going in debt on credit cards. I wasn't making any money, but I didn't want to work for someone. I wanted to have my own business. And so a friend talked me into going jet skiing. At first I said, no, I've got work to do because it was on a weekend and. And when you're broke, you don't have any discretionary money to go entertain yourself. And so he made this comment, the guy was a million dollar real estate investor. And I thought, well, maybe I'll go talk to the guy that has a lot of money and he could give me some insight. So I lug myself down in this beat up Chevy pickup truck. I had Chevy Love, if you remember those things, they spelled luv. And I finally had a chance to sit on the tailgate of the pickup truck with this guy and there were two jet skis. I don't know his name. I can't remember his name. I wish I could have ever tracked him down, but I never did. But nonetheless, the story is what's important. So we were just sitting there and then my friend Pat, who I went with, he's the one that invited me. And then this rich guy that also had one of his friends, there were two jet skis. So I finally had a chance. It's me and him. And I said, you know, I hear you do really well. And I have a small, you know, carpet Cleaning business. And I was wondering if you have any advice on what sort of business to go into, where it would do really well. And he said to me, he goes, well, is there anyone doing well in the business you're in? And I said, well, there's, you know, a couple companies in the Phoenix area. They, you know, make over a million dollars a year. And to me, that's a lot of money. And he said, well, if there's other people doing what you're doing and they're making a lot of money and you're not, there's nothing wrong with the business you're in. There's something wrong with you. And I was like, well, this is not the motivational talk I wanted to hear. And I said, well, I'm certified. I don't do bait and SW twitch advertising. I care about my clients. There's just a lot of these companies that have been established. You know, I'm. I do a really good job. I was even the Arizona director of the Carpet and Fabric Care Institute. So I used to volunteer to bring all these educational classes to Arizona. And he said, well, young man, you think you're like most people. You think the grass is always greener on the other side. And he goes, what you need to do, if you're going to go into another business, you're going to spend another six months, another year, another two years learning the technical skills of another industry so you can go out and repeat the same bad business habits that have been causing you to fail in this one. And, you know, and again, he just wouldn't let up. And I was like, well, you know, so. But I was listening to him, and he said, what you need to do is you need to learn fundamental business skills. And if you learn how to make a business work, then you can take those skills and apply it to any industry that you go into. So when I left that trip, I was super sunburnt. But I was thinking, you know, I'm a motivated guy. There's a ton of stuff I don't know. A few years prior, I was a drug addict. So I'd gotten sober from being an addict. Drugs and alcohol, at least the sex addiction and the work addiction and the behavior addictions that would come later. Having to deal with underlying trauma from my childhood, which included a lot of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Nonetheless, though, I had a lot of personal problems. But I was like, I live in America. It's a great country. There's other people that seem to care less than me, that are doing better financially. They know something and I don't. So that flipped a switch in my head that said, I'm no longer going to blame this business. I'm going to figure out how to make it work. And it was because of that mind shift change. It really is when the student's ready, the teacher appears sort of thing. And that was the most instrumental conversation I had up to that point in my life that I actually listened to. I mean, the messages are always there, the advice, the know how, the tools, they're always available. And it's just we either are not hearing them, we're not accepting it, we're not aware of it. You know, we're not at a place where we're able to hear it. And I was disabled to hear it that day. And all of a sudden I took a business that I hated, I mean, hated it, and I said, I'm not going to get out of this business until I figure out how to make it work. And it became a lab rat experiment for me. And then I started studying. I didn't have my solutions to business to, you know, making more money. As an example right away, that came from the study of marketing, which came, you know, frankly, a couple months later is when I was first introduced to a newsletter written by, you know, Gary Halbert, a copywriter who ended up becoming a dear friend of mine. But that's opened the door for me. It's like this gal that I helped with her recovery, you know, many years ago, probably like 16, 17 years ago, she painted something for me that I still have in my office. It's about recovery. But it said recovery didn't open up the gates of heaven to let me in. It opened up the gates of hell to let me out. And in a lot of ways, that conversation, it didn't get me to this great place. It just helped define a path I could take. So that's the best way. I would answer that question as succinctly as I could with still providing context.

The mindset shift that you made there is the most foundational mindset. You shifted from blaming it on the industry you were in or the economy or whatever, or bad luck or why are other people succeeding to taking ownership that it was you and you had to figure it out. And, you know, that's probably the most foundational mindset shift in any of us could make. But then you shifted in educating yourself. And, you know, today we're going to be talking mostly about marketing, sales and marketing. So I know, you know, you sometimes talk about the persuasion trap and you Talk about people that, you know, get either tempted or fall into approaches to marketing. They're manipulative and so forth. And you talk about the difference between marketing that inspires and genuine influence, as opposed to manipulative marketing. So how did you go about learning marketing from the beginning with integrity? I mean, because you could say, I got to learn marketing. You could start chasing all the tricks and all the, you know, but it seems like you embrace some kind of marketing with integrity from the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, I did, and I still do. And it's interesting because some of the best marketing that I've learned has come from some of the biggest con artists you'd ever meet. I mean, truly, it's weird. The marketing world attracts a very clever, creative sort of brain. And if you spend a lot of time studying human influence, you know, one of my favorite people who's also a dear friend of, you know, 30 years, is original godfather of influence, who's Dr. Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence. I mean, I just had dinner with him and his wife, you know, two weeks ago. So I'm dear friends with him, and we are constantly. I've had multiple interviews with Robert. He's been a genius network many times. And we talk about the ethical use of influence because so many of the best marketers and influential people are liars. They're exaggerators. I always say that, you know, hype used ethically, and the word hype even has a connotation of like, bs. But hype used ethically is massive enthusiasm for what you're selling. Hype used unethically is lying, cheating, misleading, exaggerating, selling something that really doesn't deliver upon the promise. And some of the best marketers, the very best thing they're good at is selling the thing, not delivering the thing, not making sure that the thing, the product, the service, the experience, whatever lives up to the hype. So my premise on this is that even if you can get away with it, you don't really get away with it. I mean, you know, when you're pushing the envelope, you know, when you are taking advantage of somebody and people, you know, have experienced a salesperson who is. Could care less about their situation and will say whatever they need to say in order to make the sale. So some of it comes from desperation. Other in marketers. And I understand that, you know, there's times in my life where I've been desperate. And, you know, when you're an addict, as an example, you lie, you cheat, you steal. I mean, there's no Way not to be an active addict. And you may not be lying and cheating and stealing from other people, but you're certainly doing it to yourself. And if you're lying to yourself, it's a heck of a lot easier to lie to other people. And so if you were to ask people like that though, they would deny it, you know, because that whole famous thing, people judge themselves by their intentions, they judge others by their actions. I mean, I've met some really interesting narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths in this marketing world. I was talking to my friend John Carlton, who's a copywriter I've known for, you know, many years, since the 90s. There's no scientific way to define this exact thing, but he's like, yeah, most marketers, he's like 25% of them are narcissists, another 25% are sociopaths, another 25% of psychopaths. And he's like, the other 25% are normal people. And I'm like, well, you know, I don't know if that's accurate, but we both laughed about it. And why does that happen? I mean, when you're studying all the different ways to influence people, I mean, look, you know, Fleet, a lot of the marketers, they're reading books on building a cult. They're reading, you know, propaganda stuff by Edward Bernays. I mean, they're watching all of the things that can be done to influence people. So there's nothing wrong with selling and marketing. You know, selling is what you do when you're on the phone or face to face with somebody. Marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you, properly positioned. So by the time you're talking to them, they're pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to do business with you. So how you position yourself and how you promise things have everything to do with selling people, you know, and it's how you sell. It's not necessarily that selling is good or bad or marketing is good or bad. It's how you go about doing it. And so some people are just very extremely manipulative. And what happens is they, they hang around, birds of a feather flock together and they all sort of reassure each other. You know, you take the term funnel hacking as an example. Well, what does that mean? It means like, you know, stealing someone's funnel. And then you sit around and say, well, yeah, we're going to steal this person's there all of a sudden a person that has influence over Groups of people will start teaching the approach. And if there's anything about it that is taking advantage of somebody and someone was questioning it, but then they see a person of authority doing it, all of a sudden you believe that is the standard of how things should be done. And then it perpetuates within the industry. So early on, I mean, I was learning marketing from Dan Kennedy, who was writing a lot of my sales copy. I mean, very bright guy. And there was a ton of people that would enter that world that were just very sketchy and they would steal a bunch of stuff and they would have no qualms about it. It was, you know, there. There's entire industries, like the infomercial industry. You look at retail stores, Walgreens, cvs, you look at their own brands, and then you look at the popular brands they will knock off. I mean, there's so much of the business world that is just knocking off other people's stuff. And there's very little respect for intellectual property. And, you know, I've got debates with people that do it and in their mind are completely justified, but I'm like, look, if someone did it to you, how would you feel? And if you would feel that it's taken advantage, you know, don't do it to other people. Would you sell something to your best friend or your mother or your father that, you know, you're selling to your clients? You know, unless you hate your mother or father, treat people really well. Because one thing I heard early on is 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 I've seen people that, you know, I've been in this for a long time. I've had my marketing company since 1994, and I've somehow managed to circulate in this world of sharks. And there's amazing people. There really are. There's really good, caring, wonderful people that change the world with their influential abilities. And there are other people that are just like, you know, they're like parasites. One of my very first jobs was taking care of 150 aquariums at a fish. A pet store that was called Fish Warehouse, and it was in Mesa, Arizona. The boss was a total jerk, but I worked so hard and I was getting paid nothing. And there was the Plecostomus, which is, you know, one of the fish that would attach itself to the glass and, you know, basically eat up the waste. And they're bottom feeders, basically. And there's. Every industry has Bottom feeders. And there are some bottom feeders that make a lot of money, but they sell crap, they don't clean up crap. And so I'm just using that metaphor as a way to do it. So yeah, I mean, the trap is be careful who you hang out with. Cut all ties with dishonest, negative or lazy people because you will like the value systems of people that you hang out with. And if you know it's inherently wrong, then don't do it. There's no such thing as a good business deal with a bad person.

Well, there's so much there to follow up on what you share. You know, Cialdini's book, you know, it makes it clear in there. I mean, some marketing is just out and out manipulative and lying and so forth. But there's a science of influence that's kind of neutral and you can use it to good ends or bad ends. Right. So our motivation and who we are and integrity is just everything there. And today with AI, I just heard yesterday about there's now AI tools by which somebody can set up a whole automated system to scrape the web for other people's marking successful marketing, take it, put it into their stuff and re. Put it out into the world. Completely automated. I mean completely. I'm saying no.

It's so easy to steal everything if you really want to and not.

Yeah, so yeah. And you know, maybe there's short term wins there, but there's economic wins and there's winds of the soul and wins of the heart, but even the long term economic wins. I think authenticity and genuineness is at least I firmly believe it's going to prevail in the long run.

So do I. That's why I preach it.

So, you know, customer acquisition can be very challenging and very costly and there's all kinds of different, you know, methodologies of marketing to get in front of a customer and then sales processes where we're selling, especially if it's higher ticket items, but given how costly that is, it's equally important to hang on to the customers we have. So I wonder if you could talk about the real reason customers leave. Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs can fall into a victim position or a victim mindset about why people are leaving or why people want refunds or why people even why people aren't enrolling their programs instead of really understanding the whole process of value and the needs that they're meeting or not meeting, the pain they're addressing or not addressing with their customers.

Yeah. So there's many reasons people leave. And it depends on the type of category. So, for instance, I remember this story about Tide Laundry detergent in the 50s where they were surveying their customers and they would switch to a different brand, and they were asking them, why'd you change? Why'd you quit using? And most of the answers were, we just wanted to try something new. We were bored. And so they knocked themselves off and they created, I think it's Procter and Gambler. They created Surf. So it's like Tide surf. Both of them have to do with oceans. They switch the color scheme of orange and blue to blue and orange, and they came up with the same product, which is laundry detergent. So someone's going to stop using one product. You might as well own the brand that they switch to, right? And so there's things where people simply get bored when it comes to, like, groups. As an example, people in the, you know, book business expert business, mastermind business. Most of it is if they don't like the group and they're not getting value, you know, they're going to switch to another group. One thing about entrepreneurs are most of them are not monogamous. They're very promiscuous when it comes to groups and ideas and podcasts and gurus and all that sort of stuff, right? They're going to jump from one group to another. When I first started Genius network, I had two massive AHAs. And this is going back in 2007, and I had been running coaching groups since 1998, and I had my platinum group, which was about $1,000 a month group if they paid monthly, or 10 grand a year if they paid in full. So I decided to start a $25,000 a year group in 1997. I was one of the first people to, you know, to be doing these things. And two big insights I got. The first was how full of crap most people that claim they make money and are doing big launches and, you know, they take pictures in front of their planes, in front of their cars, and then they couldn't afford $25,000. But they're sitting there telling people, we're going to teach you how to make a million dollars in a month. And it's like. And you cut a check for 25 grand. So one, I started to really learn how full of crap many of the experts were. The second is there's a lot of people that are seminar junkies with money than people that are broke that are seminar junkies. And I say this having been a broke seminar junkie to use Those terms. And so the reason people drop out of groups like that, if they're getting value. I was talking with Dan Sullivan on our podcast last week about this exact thing. When someone leaves Genius Network, when someone leaves Strategic Coach. But these are. People have made a million dollars in a year. Why would they leave a group that, you know, costs 35,000 a year, that they like and have given video testimonials and have referred other people into it? What is happening? And Dan, who's been coaching now for, you know, 40 plus years, he said it's always social reasons. It's always some personal thing going on in their life. Their marriage, their kids, their health. They can be depressed. I mean, you know, so with the trauma work and a lot of the work that you've done and I've done, I mean, we see people when they're not wearing their business hats and you know how hard it could be. So it's often very hard. And they usually don't tell you the reason why because they don't want to admit what the real reason is. And we have a lot of people that will drop out of the group. And then a year or two goes by and they join back in because they were doing better when they were in the group. Then some people are like, I've got what I needed. I'm going to go out. You know, and it always irks you. You know, I mean, when. And I'm a real relationship guy. I mean, one thing you can do to give the viewers and the people that are listening to this some perspective is people don't easily refund a relationship if they have a strong bond with you. It's hard for them to leave. They still will. I mean, you can service people through the moon. And it's always difficult, especially in the very beginning. It's like, I went out of my way to help this person. You can be the most valuable person ever. I mean, my newest book is like a follow up to how to Win Friends and Influence People, which I love that book. It's a great book by Dale Carnegie. And I never would have wrote what's in it for Them had I not read that book. But one of the things that I say is, it's not about just winning friends and influencing people. It's winning the right friends and influencing the right people. So when you're going out of your way to service people, you know that famous Zig Ziglar line, you can have anything you want if you help enough other people get what they want. It's a Great line, but it's not always true because you can go out of your way to help people get what they want. And some of them will use you. They will misuse you, they will abuse you, they will steal from you, they will lie to you, they will take advantage from you. You will bring them into your world, and then they'll do deals with, like, they'll try to steal your employees, they'll try to poach your clients. And I've had every one of those things, from embezzlement to everything under the sun. And so I will say to young people that as a joke, I'll say, if I would have known being successful is this much work, I would have stuck with being a loser, because you have no idea all the crap that you're going to endure. But yeah, you know, I mean, just do your best to service the heck out of people. Identify what their wants are, what you know, quantify and remind them what they're actually getting as a result of working with you. And when I say remind them, you can do it very subtly. You can share other success stories. You can constantly involve, you know, other clients and show how they're utilizing the same thing in a different way. And that just reminds people of the value that is already there that they often are forgetting about. And, you know, the only time you will lose a customer to a competitor is when you allow your competitor to pay more attention to your customer than you do. With the caveat that some people treat their customers like crap, but they're the only game in town. Like, if you're in a town and there's only one electric company or water service or a garbage service, you don't have to be very good at caring about your customers. There's no other place for them to go get electricity. But if you have competitors and they're offering something similar, you know, be the best that you can be. Don't try to enroll people that are not right fit. That's part of the battle with losing people, is you're attracting people that shouldn't even become customers and clients in the first place. And it's really hard for people to walk away from business, especially if you really need it and you're just starting out and you need to get, you know, whatever revenue you can get, you'll often put up with people that are not going to be really aligned. So I'm very big on alignment. I'm very big on speaking to your customers and your prospects and finding out what they want and delivering in a particular way, like Genius Network. You know, people think of it as a mastermind group. It started out that way, but it, you know, if people want hardcore digital marketing as an example, you know, Ryan and Roland are way better at that stuff than I am. I mean, my groups are about health, mental and physical health first, wealth, not just making money, but not losing it. So you'll see a lot of groups always talking about how to make money. And a lot of people are making money, but they suck at keeping any of it. And then the third is, I focus on elf doing things that are easy, lucrative, and fun versus hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And I personally would rather not even talk about any business stuff. I just simply do it because people need to justify the investment that they're making so that they can get a return on the investment. But what makes someone a good business owner is being a better entrepreneur. And if you're sacrificing your family, if you're sacrificing your health, if you're a functional addict and you're making a bunch of money, but, you know, every night you can't even sleep and you're hating your life and you think, you know, the most important thing is another business deal that's not what I would call, you know, a happy life. And so, you know, I'm not all things to all people. There's groups that are focused on things specifically for the health field. And so I, you know, in my business, my team is trained to refer other people to other groups that would be a better fit if we're not the right fit for them. And I think it's just the conscientious way to do. Are we perfect at it? You know, no, but we. I think we're more thoughtful about it than almost anyone that I know.

Well, I know I've actually been involved in your process with some of your folks around Genius Network, and I aspire to be part of Genius Network one of these days. But there was no pressure. There was no high pressure. It was very educational process. It was very transparent. I really appreciate that because I've experienced the other again. There's so much to follow up on there. And, you know, I wonder, you know, Matt, there's sometimes, you know, at Heart Mind Institute, you know, we're doing big summits out to consumers. You know, we enroll 30, 40, 50, even 80, 90,000 a summit. And we're monetizing him with the lifetime access package, which has huge value, and we offer, so. But refunds drive me, Casey. I don't know how refunds drive But I try to take it personally, you know, but sometimes I. We feel like we're getting a lot of just remorse refunds, like quick remorse refunds. And we feel, well, we're getting too good at marketing here. We're getting so good at marketing. People are buying it when they don't really want it, you know, so maybe that's part of the problem there. But I'm curious, I want to ask you about, you know, whether somebody's doing, you know, some kind of email marketing funnels, whether they're doing webinar funnels or masterclass funnels. And you know, you often hear add value, add value, add value, Lead with your bust up, add value and you gotta sell. But there's this principle of reciprocity that people talk about sometimes. And I have to tell you, I don't see a lot of it, you know, maybe it's at play there somewhere. But I see more people looking for value, you know, that we're really hitting, you know, what their pain point. But the idea that we've added so much value and now they feel like they want to give back or they want to purchase our product out of reciprocity. I don't really see any evidence of it, but I've heard a lot of marketing gurus talk about it.

Well, I'll tell you, I mean, if you utilize reciprocity in the right or wrong ways, I mean, Robert Cialdini proved the reciprocity story back in the original version of Influence that he wrote in the 90s, right, where he would have his researchers in airports. This is pre 9 11, where they were studying all kinds of people, con artists, religious leaders, salespeople, people in the compliance industry, as he called it, right? Getting people to comply. And the famous story that he had was they were in airports and there was the Hare Krishna's that they found that women were more approachable than men. And they originally used to wear the robes, the maroon and yellow. It was obvious they were Hare Krishnas. And then they just started wearing normal clothes and street clothes and they would have a woman that would have plastic flowers and they would be in the airport and they would go up to someone that was, you know, going to their flight or you know, off of a flight and needing to head home. But they're busy. These are busy travelers. And it was a perfect target market because they're all new, they're not seen like a lot of the same people. So what would happen is they wait for someone to come by, they'd go up to a man or woman say, I'd like to give you a gift. And they would go to put either the plastic flower on the men's collar or a woman's blouse or dress. And they would then step. The person would be like, thank you. And then they would step back, say, would you like to donate to the cause? You know, they didn't realize that they were being hooked into being given a gift and then being asked to give money. And what they found is that something like 8 out of 10 people, 9 out of 10 people, it was harder for them to take the flower, the gift, and give it back. Some did. But most people would reach into their wallet or their purse, their pocket, and pull out a dollar or two and give them the money. And then they would leave. And then once they were out of the view of the person that gave them a gift that they didn't even want, that they just gave money to, they would take the flour off, throw it in the trash can, go onto their flight or leave. And then about every hour or so, the, you know, the Hari Christians would go and get the flowers out of the trash can and do it all over again. And what he found is that you can use reciprocity to get money from people by giving them something they didn't even ask for in the first place. So it certainly works. But when I read that, I also, you know, at the same time, I was listening to some J. Abraham tapes for these seminars he used to do in Australia that were $5,000 sets of these tapes of a recording of a $25,000 a person's seminar. And Jay's a dear friend. I've known Jay forever. I've spent hundreds of hours talking to Jay. And he had this thing where there was two carpet cleaners that hired him for 45 minutes for $2,000, because at the time, he was 3,000 an hour, and they didn't have $3,000. So they scraped together $2,000 to hire Jay for 45 minutes. And what he told them in 45 minutes was lifetime value of a customer and go out and give away a free house of carpet cleaning. And the way that they would survive in the beginning is referrals and repeat business and maybe tips. And so they spent the first month going to church trade shows and things and just giving away houses of carpet cleaning. And they ended up getting tips and referrals from people. And I had this small carpet cleaning business. I just read that in Influence about reciprocity. And so I came up with, well, I don't think I need to give away a whole house of carpet cleaning. I can give away a free room of carpet cleaning. So I came up with this idea to give away a free room. And I created a thing called a carpet audit, where I would go in and I would evaluate the condition of somebody's carpet. And I would uniquely present myself because all of the other companies were giving free quotes and free estimates. And what happens is a lot of people become free advisors so that people can get the lowest price right. And so I didn't want to play that game. And when everyone is playing a game that you don't want to play in, reinvent the game, Come up with a different way to tweak it, but make it ethical, make it compelling. You know, my friend Dean Jackson, who we've been doing the I Love Marketing podcast with since 2010, he has this great line where he says, a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. And if you can give value in advance, you will instill reciprocity to somebody and they will want to reward you. And so, to go back to the Hare Krishna example, if you can get money out of people using a gift or using something that they don't even want, first off, that's unethical. Secondly, it's conning people. You use the principle of reciprocity to guilt somebody into giving you something. I was like, well, what if you could apply that same thing, offering something to people that actually want it, but you remove all of the risk. You instill things. So, for instance, what most people do in the information business, where they're selling expertise, consulting courses, summits, things like that, what they do for bonuses, is they give people more things similar to what it is they are buying in the first place. Like, if you're selling a course on how to build abs, maybe you're going to include a free book or free video course or training on diet or on, you know, building your chest or, you know, tracking macros, whatever it could be. But the funny thing is what I learned, and over the years, I'm very particular about what we feed people. Like when we do Genius Network meetings, there's no seed oils in our food. It's all organic. It's extremely healthy. You know, during the holidays or things, people often send us cookies and, you know, and I even tell them I don't eat that stuff. You know, like, so don't send us any crappy food, because that's not really a gift. So, that being said, though, most people like eating junk food, right? They like eating desserts and cookies and all that stuff. And we learned early on that if you sell a course to someone and you have their physical mailing address, because I learned all of the marketing stuff before the Internet even was a thing. I had my first website in 1996, but prior to that all of the stuff I was studying there was still. It took years before it became online commerce like it is today, obviously. And so we would send everything, courses and cassette tapes, manuals, spiral bound books, I mean all of this stuff, videos on VHS tapes and then it became DVDs, all that sort of stuff. And so we already had everyone's address. And if they ordered my course, which came with a one year unconditional money back guarantee, they could keep the course for an entire year. And I had all of these different levels of guarantees that if you didn't double your business, you know, if it didn't pay for itself many times over, you have up to a year, you can send it back. Now clearly I knew the course worked. I wouldn't make a strong guarantee selling something like that if I didn't know it worked. And we had tons of evidence to support it. But like what you said earlier, people would still send it back and it would drive me crazy because it was like, this will help you if you just use it, you know. And early on I think everyone has to go through those stages where you just cannot understand where someone's begging for help, they're drowning, you throw them a life jacket and they send it back. You're like, what is wrong with this person now? Part of it is because of shit going on in their life. You have no idea all the different issues that people have. They could be depressed, they could be going through a divorce. They may not resonate with, they may not want to implement anything. There's a million reasons. So what I found though is if you send somebody a non relevant gift like a box of brownies. We first learned this by I had a friend that I met in Yeo Young Entrepreneurs Organization, eventually changed the name to EO that had a company called Fairytale Brownies. And we used to buy a bunch of fairytale brownies and just send it to every person that bought our stuff. And if people ate the brownies, they actually it would lower refunds. And I was like, well why is that? Because it's harder for people to send something back when you've given them a gift that they've consumed. But if it takes them a while to implement your ideas and its knowledge, it's a lot easier to send back a book that they'd never read or a course or a video training that they bought online. And I think a lot of digital marketers get very lazy because they don't do the logistical things like get someone's physical mailing address, sign a book for them. I do all that stuff. You know, I will send a personal. Every birthday I'm sending videos to our members and saying happy birthday. And you can automate a lot of this stuff with AI. But for the most part, these are real videos that I record myself and just send them out. They're not these AI generated things. Now I don't see anything wrong with doing a automated AI video. What I like to do though, especially using AI, if I'm utilizing or using AI, I tell people I'm using AI. I don't like to trick people. I think it's like, you know, if they're smart, they kind of know. And in my world, people are always looking up to genius network of where they're going to learn strategies. And then there's all these automated things where people try to act like they're on a live webinar, but they're really not on a live webinar. Well, just don't say it's a live webinar. Then if it's really not a live webinar, they may never know. But you're lying. I think you're better off to even have a suppression of response and just say we're going to have this webinar if it's pre recorded, fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It's when you're saying something is something that is not and you're clearly lying in order to make a sale. And so I'm mixing in two things here. But the reciprocity thing, it's not reciprocity works. Flattery works. It'd be silly for me to say flattery doesn't work. Telling people things just to, you know, inflate their ego works, but it's how you do it. That's the distinction.

So you also really emphasize no pressure sales. You emphasize you want to be a welcome guest with your potential customers, your existing customers. You don't want to be a pest. Your low pressure sales. And so what is your blueprint for creating compelling offers and sales processes and marketing that really works, that doesn't have the pressure and the hype that a lot of us think you have to get through the noise to reach people.

A part of it is just how you fish. You know, all of this is Fishing. And so, you know, only the hungriest fish are going to snap at the crappiest bait. So you want to part of People love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. So they hate to be sold in a way that is pressure. Now does it work? Yeah. I mean, I bought things because someone was so persistent and so good and so clever and such a, you know, such a wordsmith or they just happen to have what I wanted at the exact time that I was looking for it or my FOMO was for. The thing was pretty intense and I bought the thing. And plus I learned how to sell. Selling Kirby vacuum cleaners, door to door sales of newspaper subscriptions. I actually think it's really valuable for people to learn how to sell in an environment where you have to overcome objections. I mean, the best marketers probably had some really good sales training. I mean, it's rare that someone just is a really good marketer if they've not had to go out there and, you know, kill what they're going to eat for the evening. You know, like you have no money and you got to go out and sell a vacuum cleaner to somebody or you got to sell a newspaper subscription. You got to do something door to door. I mean, it's a bit of a lost art. But you know, the people that go and sell door to door, pest control or solar, they're training themselves how to handle rejection. It's really that is as important to develop the ability to have people say no. So you can do the reps and get good at being able to be selective. So if someone is not able to effectively sell and stand up for what it is they're selling to make a living, I honestly don't think they're going to be very good at understanding what it is that I'm going to say next. Because people think they can bypass hard work. Like I talk about, have an elf business, have marketing that's easy, lucrative and fun versus hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. It's way more elf to have someone well positioned so that selling becomes easy and ideally unnecessary. Because if you do your marketing right, selling is manual marketing. And when you do your marketing right, which my friend, you know, Robert Cialdini wrote a book after influence called Pre Suasion. It's not the influence moment that matters, it's what you do before the opportunity to influence that matters the most. That's where I go back to. Are they pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to do business with you. So how do you position that person? Well, Part of it is the track record of what the product or service that you're offering is or what it's done. If it's brand new, then you borrow from what you've done in the past to demonstrate. I hired someone. There's a company that goes to all of these, not all of them, but a lot of the biggest online events and biggest two, three day events. And then they have their high ticket sales and they'll enroll people into a group. And I'd hired this person. They're very, they're smart, they're one of the best in the world at what they do. And they're hired by a lot of big people. And one of the people on the team was saying, well, when are you going to do the first soft close? And then when are you going to see the audience? And then when are you going to. You know. And I was like, I'm not doing any of that stuff. And they're like, what do you mean? How are you going to enroll someone into Genius Network? And I'm like, we don't do a sales pitch at Genius Network. Like, and when I start my Genius Network meetings and there's new people at the annual event, which is the only thing that I do that people that are not members can go to, I say that there's not going to be any sales pitch here. The only time where you can enroll is an optional breakfast session where there's going to be a panel of Genius Network members and I'm not even going to be there. And you can, we'll explain what Genius Network is. You can decide there, but you don't even need to go if you want. The way that we sell here is we demonstrate value. Now, I couldn't say that in the very beginning when I was first starting out, you know, I didn't have big name speakers. I didn't do the stuff that we do today. I had to demonstrate with strategy. I had to demonstrate with stuff that actually worked for me first, worked for other people, and then be able to show the audience that it could work for them if they actually use it. But I'll tell you, like, I think the dog and pony show marketers, and there's some that are really good and believe me, I know how to do it. I mean, people. I had the highest clothes in Glaser Kennedy history back in 2011 when I taught lessons of that I learned from Gary Halbert. And I play. I was the first person to play a video sales letter to a live audience. And I had 500 people out of a group of 1200 that stood in line to buy the stuff and there was a countdown timer and half of the people walked out because they thought they missed out on it. Get to all the sale. And that video has been on YouTube for years. I mean people have studied it just how to sell from the stage. But even then I was doing it in a very non threatening way. I was playing a video, I was letting people decide, it was just very compelling. And so if you can make a really compelling offer, you don't have to rely on pressure talking people into something. If you have to convince people to get your stuff because they're either not positioned well or you've not compelled them, you're just going to have to work harder and you'll oftentimes piss people off because it's uncomfortable when someone is trying to get in your pockets. And some marketers, they literally take their audiences and metaphorically speaking, even though it could happen in a real live event, you know, everyone's pitching, you know, they're just shaking people upside down trying to get all the money to fall out of their pockets. You know what I do is I use education based marketing. The vast majority of how I sell is the successes of other members. So that's social proof and using, you know, testimonials or you know, a lot of the testimonials are just demonstrating, you know, people that are in the group. And it's not even like go join Genius Network. I mean we're at a point right now where we're creating, you know, we have waiting lists for people. And so and that's the best position to be in, where people, more people are available that want what you're offering than you have available. Because then you truly have real scarcity. Not fake scarcity, not manufactured scarcity, but you have real scarcity is a good position to get yourself into and just educate people. If you don't have the copywriting skills of a world class copywriter, which it's a lot easier with AI these days. But still, people that don't understand the psychology of marketing, psychology of selling, they can use AI all day long and they are still missing the elements, you know, and the premises of being compelling. But it helps. It definitely helps. And so like with carpet cleaning, I had to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. You know, when people are like, well what am I going to learn from some guy that taught carpet cleaning? I'd be like, if you have anything more exciting or sexy than carpet cleaning, you can probably figure out how to use, you know, education based marketing. I used to have consumer awareness, still do consumer awareness guides, free recorded messages, you know, videos, all kinds of stuff. Now you know, books. Anything you put in front of somebody is marketing. So if you're putting something in front of somebody and you're not getting them to respond favorably, I. E. Give you money, opt into your list, go through the next stage, set up the discovery, call, you know, call your office. If you're, you know, a surgeon, you know, whatever your thing is, then you have to take a look at what you're putting in front of people. So you need three things in order to sell something. You need a product or service, you need a sales pitch or marketing message and then you need a delivery system. And what most people focus on is here's what I'm selling, how do we tell people about it? But you got to tell the right people about it, right fit clients and you have to have something that's compelling. And so if you really just get into the psychology, I mean my latest book, what's in it for them? That's the line. Even if someone never reads my book, what's in it for them? And if you can identify what it is they want, then you deliver it to them, you talk about it, you write about it and then you don't have to seek them out, they seek you out. That's my approach, a follow up question.

I wanted to ask before we finish. So, and I hope people are picking up here, I mean what I'm hearing, I'm reading between the lines as I'm listening to you and you've done a lot of self education over the years in marketing, you studied the classics, you've studied everybody, you've really been educating yourself so you understand this inside and out. And now there's all these learner play tools as you've alluded to, but you can use them with that knowledge. So even if we're going to do everything right in terms of pre qualifying people, you know, and getting the right people and so forth, and having a great offer and a compelling offer and educating people even before all that, if we don't have good product market fit, you know, we're going to kill ourselves trying to sell something. So I wonder if you evolved into the knowledge industry and I'm assuming there's probably a lot of folks on this in our audience here who are in the knowledge industry, in the coaching industry and similar things. How did you determine, you know, what was going to be the right product to Offer to the market that you were inspired? I mean, were you focused on the audience that you wanted to find some way to help, or did you have an offering and then you wanted to go find the right audience? Or how did it work for you to figure out that product market fit to make the job of both marketing and selling there easier? And so you can do it with integrity because you're selling stuff people really need.

I've done both. But if I had to say, the majority of the time has been spent on finding being a student of markets, not being a student of. I got this thing here that I think people would benefit from. Let me try to figure out how to sell it. I would look for. You know, Gary Albert used to have this analogy that if you were going to open up, up a hamburger shop and you could only have one thing that was the most important, he would ask people, and obviously, since we're not having an audience here, to say, what are all the things that you think would give you the greatest advantage of having a hamburger stand? People would say, location, the best food, great employees, good advertising budget. There's all kinds of criteria that people would come up with that would give them supposedly an advantage. And Gary said, if I just had one thing, I could beat all those other ones. And the one thing is a starving crowd. So if you have a starving crowd, it doesn't even need to be good food, right? It just needs to be someone wants it. So what is, to use that metaphor, what is the starving crowd that exists? And do you have the skills, the know how, the ability to develop or deliver something that will solve their problems and look for problems? Like the first chapter of my book, the latest book is Be a Pain Detective. Look for the pain. Wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity. And so, you know, I could sell things in the carpet cleaning industry, like how to clean carpet, but the thing that most people wanted was how do you get more business? You know, I'm just trying to make my company work. And here's the thing that's a problem, though, with marketers. I have a friend named Keith Cunningham. I don't know if you've ever heard of Keith, but Keith, real bright guy. And Keith, you know, talks about how as many businesses die from indigestion as they do from starvation. And so, you know, most people think we just need to teach Big Bill how to get more business. But if I go into most companies that already have customers and clients, they put all of this effort trying to get new customers, but they're Neglecting the ones they already have. You already know that the lifetime value of a customer, it's five to six times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to get a repeat customer. You know, and I prefer calling them clients, not customers because even the word customer implies someone that buys something from you, whereas the word client implies somebody you have a relationship with. So I don't want to be in the transaction business, I want to be in the relationship business. And if you focus on long term relationships, you need to spend less money on marketing for new leads and new clients and just going deeper. And we live in a world of shallow. People are, you know, it's this social media world where quick hits, let's get them, let's get them into the funnel. Let's, you know, let's do whatever we need to do. When in reality, that old, you know, Russell Conwell, is it Conwell, A story, Acres of Diamonds. I say this from the brain of a guy who's been around doing this for a long time. I'm 57 years old, so if someone's in their 20s, you've never read Acres of Diamonds. There's so much truth in that old story where you're sitting on diamonds right in front of you, but you're not harvesting them, you're not looking for them, you're looking externally, when sometimes you just simply need to look at your happy clients, dialogue with them, and ask them to introduce you to other people just like them. The word introduce is better than the word referral, by the way. That's been proven where if you want to get referrals, don't ask people for referrals, ask people for introductions to people just like them. That little shift can change everything. And so, you know, go deeper, don't go shallow. And you only need a few tools in your toolbox in order to, you know, to really make this, this, you know, this sort of work.

And by the way, I mean, I think people are going to get why they want to own this and read the transcripts and get the transcripts and highlight their transcripts. There's so much to learn here. But you mentioned anxiety and you connected anxiety with like, where there's anxiety, there's a potential need to meet or a pain to solve or there's a potential client, right? Yeah, there's a lot of things, you know, sometimes people think, well, it's already all being done and everybody's all, you know, I'm just trying to get started. You know, there is so much anxiety in today's world, there's gotta be a lot of potential to be successful in terms of finding solutions for people's anxiety.

Totally. And that's where the opportunities are. So, Dan Sullivan, who's a dear friend of mine. So me and Dan been doing a podcast since 2012. I got him into the whole podcasting world, and he says, other people's bad news is your good news. And this is really hard for some people to wrap their head around. However, think about it. Almost all money, not all, but almost all money is made transforming other people's bad news into good news. Meaning if you're hungry, that's bad news. But if you can go to a restaurant or call up a food service to deliver food to you, that's good news. You can go to a grocery store, that's good news, Right? If you break your leg or your ankle, that's bad news. If you can go to a doctor, that's good news. If you're bored, that's bad news. If you can go to a movie or you can listen, you know, download some music, then that's good news. So almost all problems that people are trying to solve, when they have those problems, that's bad news. But it's good news if you show up with a solution to those problems. And if you don't identify where the anxiety and the problems are, you may be trying to sell something that might be cool, it might be useful, but the anxiety is not severe enough. The problem is not severe enough for people to want to solve it. So the more that you can solve a problem that people are ardently seeking a solution for and they have not yet found it, and you show up in front of them with the attitude of what's in it for them and you actually have a solution. It may not be the permanent solution. It may just be simply helping a little bit. You know, this doesn't need to be save the world sort of stuff. It could be, you know, selling coat hangers. You know, they need coat hangers, right? So the thing is, though, is you want to look for bad news and you want to transform it. The companies that I don't like are people that are selling hopium, where they try to give the illusion that they're actually solving someone's problems, but they're really just taking their money, they're looking at bad news and they're making it worse. You know, there's a lot of industries, you know, alcohol, porn, toxic foods, that they give the illusion that they're actually helping people. I mean, have you ever seen an honest beer commercial. Like, I'm sure there are some. But it's like everyone's good looking, everyone's sober. I mean, come on. But you know, you're selling alcohol, you want people to get inebriated. So there's big lies, like, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Which are great marketing slogans. I have a friend that actually knows the guy that came up with that. He swears the guy's really cool and wants to introduce me to him. But I'm like, well, you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. It's a great slogan for getting the human brain to be like, let's drink too much, let's hire some hookers, let's do some drugs, let's gamble our money away. But what doesn't stay in Vegas is guilt, debt, STDs, all these other things that could come from that slogan. Or you have like the alcohol industry. Drink responsibly. Well, it's kind of like an NLP command. What's the first word? Drink. You're commanding people to drink responsibly. But the majority of alcohol is bought by like a small percentage of problem drinkers. So these people are not drinking responsibly. And that's where the vast majority of money is made in the alcohol industry is from people that are excessive drinkers. They don't want anyone to drink responsibly. Responsibly. They just want a virtue signal that they actually care about it. So those are not businesses that per se, solve problems for a profit. They actually exasperate problems. So if we're talking about, you know, going back to how I would look at ethics is sell something that solves problems for a profit and really delivers on it. And again, you know, I mean, people may not agree with what I'm saying. And I know there's a lot of people that are in industries that, you know, are. I would consider questionable. You got to choose how you're going to make a living. And you got to choose. You know, here's the thing, though. If someone goes through your whole summit and they listen to all these people, they're going to know more about marketing, they're going to know more about positioning, they're going to know more about business than 99% of all business owners ever get exposed to. It's just how you use it. And on the road to success. I have a new book that'll be coming out next month that I'm only releasing to early on because I want to see how people look. But it's called Winners Find Ways. And I've crowdsourced what winning actually means, because in this country and in most countries, we view success as money. But I never tell someone what success is. It could be being a great parent. It could be spiritually in a place where you feel really connected. It could be being in great physical shape. It could be, you know, feeding homeless people. It could be some humanitarian project, right? And the other people, it could be, you know, Ferraris, Maseratis. Who buys Maseratis anymore? McLaren's, whatever. Actually, I did see a cool Maserati yesterday. But nonetheless, I don't care what someone like wants. And if you really want something and you're not hurt anyone to get it, you know, don't make apologies for what you want. It's who you become along the way. You know, success isn't what you get, it's who you become. And how you get it, I think is more important than what you get. And a lot of people like, I want to get this bestseller. I want to get this. This big pot of money. Well, how are you getting it? And if you can do things where you feel that you're expanding other people and you're expanding yourself, you're probably going to only get there by solving a lot of problems. And it's going to be painful because a business that works is solving problems for a profit. That's what it is. And so I look for problems. I look for pain. Not just in other people. I look forward in myself. I always think, like, what the hell would make my life way better if it existed and can I create it? So most of the things that I've sold in my life were just solving problems that I had. And once I figured out what that recipe is, I then offer that recipe to other people. That's kind of if there is a formula. That's been my formula for 30 years.

Well, you did a great job of answering the original question. Product mark a bit in great depth. You know, I just have one last question. I know you don't call Genius network a mastermind. You call it a network. You make a distinction, distinction there. But nonetheless, I'd just like to ask you about, because I would bet, you know, just like you said, you know, the entrepreneurs who are attending this summit are going to be exposed to, you know, information that 99% of entrepreneurs are not going to be exposed to. And business owners are struggling without sufficient information on how to really do it and succeed. And. But I bet even among the entrepreneurs attending this, some of the vast Majority have not joined a mastermind or network like Genius Network. And I wonder if you could just talk about the value you found and getting together with other entrepreneurs instead of being on that solo hero's journey where you're all by yourself and all your struggles to get around other peers and people a little further down the journey than you are and successful people to learn from that. I wonder if you what's the value you've seen with all the people coming year after year to Genius Network?

I think that people that are driven entrepreneurs, like the guy that wrote the book Driven is one of my Genius Network members. He's in my 100k group. His name's Dr. Doug Brackman. He's got two PhDs. And the people that join mastermind groups and join, they go to seminars and listen to podcasts at double speed and buy more books than they could ever read by a factor of probably like 10 times. Those are the hunters, they're not the farmers. Like, the vast majority of people are not entrepreneurs. There's probably 1 in 20 people that have the psychological makeup to be an entrepreneur. And the ones that are driven, that are often called ADD or high Quick start. Like my friend Kathy Colby created the Colby Index. Quick starts. People that are labeled Type A, they do well in tribes, they're tribal creatures. And if you give a hunter good boundaries and ethics, they will change the world. If they don't have good ethics, they are charlatans. They will fleece people. And there's a lot of hunters that are out there as, you know, dangerous killers. And there's others that are just taking care of the village, they're taking care of the world. And so my preferred way, even though I've read over a thousand books, I've interviewed probably 2000 people, I am a curious. I have gone to more seminars, more therapy, more 12 step groups. I mean, you name it. I do a lot of stuff personally and professionally to constantly educate myself. My preferred way to learn is in groups with properly curated people. And so what I try to do is surround myself with ambitious givers, not takers. And what is a taker? A taker is a person that shows up with a want, because we all have wants. Wants. But their give is less than their want. A giver is someone that wants something, but they show up with a give that's equal to or greater than their want. And so the people that I surround myself with are givers. And I try to curate givers in my life, not only for Genius Network, but for my own life, because I like hanging around givers. And if you're a giver, you are a target for takers. And so you have to boundary yourself. And that doesn't. It doesn't come except from getting screwed. It doesn't come except for having your heart broken. It doesn't come except for being betrayed. Now, if you can skirt all of those issues and not have those pains in your life, then you got really lucky. And good for you. But for the most part, biggest givers that I know have been through hell. And the people that I really appreciate are people that have gone through massive adversity and they've learned that suffering is the world's greatest teacher. It really is, and it sucks. And I hate to say to givers that you're going to get taken advantage of, but in the beginning, I ignored red flags, and when I did, something bad happened and I didn't even notice the yellow flags. But the longer you're on the planet and the more, you know, I don't think the treadmill of crap ever goes away. I just think you resource yourself. You learn how to navigate it, you learn how to set things up. And you often learn that your attitude of how you take it in because life is going to happen, it's just how you interpret it. And that really comes from hanging around other people that are a good sounding board. So I always want to have a good sounding board, you know, and a great way to save time. I'll give you know, since we have to wrap. One great way as you pursue your ambitions is ask yourself the question, what needs solved? And spend your time listening to podcasts on what you're trying to solve. Unless you, you know, just need a break and you want to listen to music or whatever. Frankly, I mean, I think you're better off mastering one book than reading 50 books. Read one book that's really good five times versus 50 different books just so you can have a checkbox. To think you're somehow accomplishing something because you're reading and listening everything. So ask yourself what needs solved, because what you can spend is time, attention, money, effort, and energy. I call it Tammy Time, attention, money, effort and energy. Spend your Tammy on what needs solved. Secondly, quit watching things that you already agree with, especially politically, because it just reinforces the echo chamber. So listen to things that are the polar opposite to get a deeper understanding of what humans believe in. Gary Halvard would always say, take the bus once a week. If you start having success, meeting in nice restaurants, staying at nice hotels, you're making a lot of money. You lose touch with how most people live. Take the bus. Most people won't do that. But, you know, that's why we take our members to prisons before the genius network meetings. You know, people are like, oh, you know, I'm not getting a wi fi signal. What if you lived for 10 years and you didn't, you couldn't even make a phone call, you know, without having to get permission from a prison guard. What if you could only shower three times a week and you could never pick what food you're going to eat. It's given to you. I mean, you think you. Your life sucks. Put yourself in a position. Go volunteer at an animal shelter. Go volunteer at a recovery clinic, a burn unit. I mean, put yourself into a different frame of mind. So in another way to save time is don't take advice from people that haven't done what you're trying to do. Everyone has opinions, but I'm often surprised. Like, everyone has an opinion on marketing, but, you know, like my partner, she's a brilliant doctor, brilliant plastic surgeon, and people will respect the fact if you're a doctor. But marketers often don't get any respect because you like, someone that's never read a marketing book is going to give you an opinion on how to run or create. So listen to people that have been there, done that. That'll save you a ton of time. And again, I said this earlier. Cut ties with dishonest, negative, and lazy people. Determine who you want to be a hero to, which is a Dan Sullivan concept. Who do you want to be a hero to? What are the problems that group has? What do you need to do to develop the skills to put it together and be okay with. In the real world, it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing. Be willing to test a lot in order to figure it out. And it's not supposed to be easy. In order to have an elf business, you may have to work really hard to develop something that's easy, lucrative, and fun. But if it was so damn easy, everyone would do it. And that's the beauty of this, is it's supposed to be difficult. And when you've gotten to that level, then you can be like, ah. Because anything received free of charge is seldom valued. Like, when you get in really good physical shape, it's because you worked your ass off to get in physical shape. When you build a business, it's probably because you did a lot of stuff. So you got to be willing to work through the burn and do the reps. So if they've only listened to me, listen to the rest of the interviews, invest the time on doing this stuff and whoever you resonate with, follow that person, take their advice and most importantly, don't listen to it it actually do something with it because these are just ideas if they're not followed with execution and action.

Absolutely take action. Massive action. So this has been incredible, Joe. And it so exemplifies what this summit's all about, which is about succeeding in business and succeeding in life. That's what Hartmya Institute's all about. And you know if you succeed in business in all the non ethical ways you were talking about, you still gotta live with yourself and that's not gonna be a happy ride in the long run. You can numb it out as long as you you can, but sooner or later you're going to pay the piper. So succeeding business, succeeding life with ethical marketing. Thank you so much Joe. This has been incredibly illuminating. And talk about an acre of diamonds, a lot of stuff there to mind. Thank you so much.

You're welcome Fleet.

Thank you for joining me on the radical Responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe. Subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you. Take care.

It is Ryan Seacrest here. There was a recent social media trend which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment. But a better trend would be going to chumbacasino.com it's like having a mini social casino in your pocket. Chumba casino has over 100 online casino style gamepl all absolutely free. It's the most fun you can have online and on a plane. So grab your free welcome bonus now@chumbacasino.com sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary vgw group void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply.