Becoming An Even More Focused, Productive and Successful Entrepreneur: A Marketing and Business Growth Q&A with Joe Polish, Benjamin Hardy and Jason Fladlien - I Love Marketing Episode #354

In order to have a Genius Network, you have to be a Genius Networker, which is a value creating, giving, reciprocal individual. You have to do genius networking, meaning spending your time with other people with capabilities. And then you will have a Genius Network. It's be, do, have. I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Since Benjamin Hardy joined Genius Network, his life and business have completely transformed. Just one of these transformations has included increasing his income by almost 10x. That's why Benjamin decided to host a special webinar with one of his biggest inspirations and mentors, Joe Polish, as well as a Genius Network member, Jason Fladlin, who is the preeminent authority on webinars. Whether you already have a company you're growing or you're trying to start a company, this episode is going to be valuable for you and your business. You're going to hear Benjamin Hardy share his business and life transformation. You're going to discover why Genius Network is so life changing. You're going to learn how you can surround yourself with some of the smartest entrepreneurs alive. And you're also going to hear a valuable Q and A with Joe Polish, Ben Hardy, and Jason Fladlin revealing some of their best strategies to help you become an even more focused, productive and successful entrepreneur. If you'd like to join Benjamin Hardy, Jason Fladlund, Joe Polish, and 400 more of the world's greatest entrepreneurs at this year's Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to geniusnetwork.com everyone.

Thank you for being here. I'm Dr. Benjamin Hardy. We got Joe Polish here, and we also have Jason Fladlin. And I'm just gonna go ahead and give a quick intro on these guys and then explain to you what this webinar is all about. So if you haven't heard of Joe Polish before, Joe is one of my mentors, one of my greatest friends. He is the owner of Genius Network. And Genius Network is, you know, one word for it is a mastermind. But what do you call it now, Joe? You don't really want it to be called a mastermind. So what do you call it?

You know, we do masterminding, but it's really like a connection network. It's where people that are really highly capable come and they meet each other and share best strategies, ideas, figure out how to solve problems and reach their aspir achievement goals. And it's just an amazing place for tribe of tribal leaders.

Also on this webinar is Jason Fladlin. Jason Fladlan is a member of Genius Network as well. He's someone who I've met and he's considered the number one teacher and really the number one person in the world in webinars. What? You sold over $100 million of product on webinars? I don't know, Jason, if you just give a quick intro on yourself just so people can know who you are and what your background is. Yeah.

So we've been specializing in digital marketing. My company, rapid crush, since 2011 and before that 2007. So all things digital marketing related, that's my jam. So webinars are the forefront of that and which is why Ben tapped into me today, because what are we doing? We're doing a webinar and he asked for my expertise. And that's a benefit of being in a network of people that you can call on that are friends of yours and they just, they do things for you out of the goodness of their hearts.

So just to kind of give you guys a high level perspective of what this is. From basically 2015 to 2018, I was the top writer in the world on Medium.com and most of my writing focused and still does focus on self improvement psychology, things like that. I'm still one of the top writers on Medium, but to be honest with you, it's not necessarily my focus anymore because it helped me to achieve my goals. Basically, I wrote on Medium in a lot of ways to build a platform so that I could then become a professional author. And also at this point, medium.com changed so much that it's not as valuable of a tool anymore for someone like me. I'm probably top five authors on that platform still, but I'm not necessarily focused on it. But most of my writing focuses on self improvement, helping you achieve, you know, achieve your goals and things like that. The reason why I'm doing this webinar today is because for the last five years I've been kind of on an entrepreneurial trajectory and I don't very openly in my writing, share that side of my life. Most of my writing is targeted towards the, towards the reader and helping them improve their lives. I write about entrepreneurial ideas in passing, but I've never actually detailed out my own entrepreneurial journey. And I've learned a lot and I've been quite successful in that arena. And so I wanted to take an opportunity for those people who that is relevant to people. So if this is Relevant to you. You're probably on this webinar because you either already have a company or you want to start a company. I know that a large part of my own audience are entrepreneurs, just given the nature of my writing. And I know that a lot of my following are people, even in Silicon Valley. So I know that this is pretty relevant to a lot of my audience. But I wanted to explain also I wanted to introduce you to Joe Polish, if this is someone you've never heard of, because Joe has been one of my biggest mentors and inspirations over the last five years. One of the things that we're going to be sharing with you at the end of this webinar is basically an introduction to what, like his big event. So Joe has a big event called the Genius Network annual event. It's once a year and Joe will explain this at the end. And it really has some of the most amazing speakers. I've been to the annual event now twice. I'm going to be going for a third time. And in my opinion, it's just an explosive, life changing event. The core point of this webinar was that I wanted to share with you this side of my story. And also we're going to spend most of this webinar doing Q and A. And so again, Jason Fladlin, he's one of the top online business marketers in the world. And Joe Polish, he's been one of the top marketers in the world for the last 20 years. I mean, he's very well known. He's known far and wide as one of the top marketers and connectors in the world. Part of why I wanted to do this webinar was to provide you access to these people. I don't know, Joe and Jason, how much does it generally cost to get an hour of your time or to even get access to. You know what I mean?

I think I charge more than Jason simply because I think I'm better than him. No, I'm totally kidding. I'm 25 grand for half a day of consulting. I think Jason is around that genre also. Maybe for a full day, I'm not sure. But both of us kind of cherry pick who we do consulting with. It's not about just getting money for something. It's about where we can really make an impact. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, I'm kind of speaking for you here, but it's one of these things to where I'll do consulting, but only when I'm aligned with stuff. And to not Even make that sound weird for people listening these high dollar figures. Yeah, we charge a lot of money because we have the ability to produce a result. But all three of us are genuinely wanting to be helpful to people. So so much of our work we put out to the world for free in the form of emails, podcasts, webinars, live casts, even things like we're doing today because we all are kind of our own rags to riches stories in a lot of ways. But yeah, I mean, I learned how to charge a lot of money for stuff because I learned and develop a skill, as our buddy Cal Newport says, that was rare and valuable and shared it with the world. And we have people that are willing to pay the money for it because when they pay us money, it never costs them anything. Even though we're high price, we make people far more than what we charge both, I think all three of us in that realm.

So one of the reasons why I wanted this webinar was because we're going to spend a lot of time doing Q and A and I just wanted to give you guys access. One of the things that I love about being in networks like this is that the level of information that you can get is so high level and so powerful. And so I'm really excited to spend some time like basically us answering your questions. So this is going to be basically, for the next 15 minutes, I'm just going to briefly highlight my entrepreneurial story and how that connects with Joe and about kind of the results that I've been able to get as an entrepreneur over the last few years because of accessing high quality networks and things like that, and also mentorship. But essentially I first heard of genius network in 2014. So just so you all know, in 2014, in the fall of 2014 is when I started my PhD program at Clemson University. So my wife and I, we moved to Clemson, South Carolina. I was starting a PhD program in organizational psychology. And around that exact same time, at about end of 2014, my aunt Jane actually joined Genius Network. So at that time in 2014, I knew that I eventually wanted to be an author. I'd never written a blog post. Benjaminhardy.com didn't exist. I had never actually started writing online, but I've been studying self improvement and even business for the last 10 years. I knew that I wanted to get a PhD. I wasn't actually sure when I was going to start my business at this point in fall of 2014, I wasn't really interested in that. But my Aunt Jane, who is really Close who? Me and her are really kind of close. She runs a great business and she joined Genius Network and I didn't know what Genius Network was, I didn't know who Joe Polish was. But basically over the two year period of time when Jane was in Genius Network, I watched a lot about her change. She became totally, far more motivated, clear and passionate about her life and her business. I saw her business explode, but I also saw her kind of reach a different level. What I call it now is the psychological upgrade. I developed that kind of concept through the last few years studying entrepreneurship as my in a PhD program. But basically I saw her experience a psychological upgrade, which often happens when you invest money in yourself and when you put yourself in big networks and then when you experience huge growth. And so I just watched her change and I watched her business change. And actually one of the things that she let me do during that first semester of school was she actually, she kind of cheated. She let me have access to the network, like to the business portal. So when you join Genius Network, you get access to a membership area and you can watch some of the 10 minute talks or some of the interviews that Jo did. Jane actually let me have access to her membership portal. When I was in my first semester of my program, I was watching all of this Genius Network material. As someone who's been studying self improvement, I listen to all the podcasts, Tim Ferriss and stuff. The level of training that I was watching at the Genius Network stuff, which you can only get access to most of the. Joe puts out an enormous amount of content. He's got a lot of podcasts and things like that. But the stuff that's taught at Genius Network on the stages and at the events, you can't actually get access to that content unless you're a member. And so I was watching this stuff and was just blown away. And essentially what happened was during that first semester I made myself kind of a personal commitment, a personal goal. And my goal was that I was going to become a member of Genius Network before I finished my PhD program. That was my goal. And usually a PhD program is five years. I actually just finished it about three or four months ago. And so basically from that point forward, I started studying and following Genius Network. And a lot of the members who were in Genius Network, a lot of the talks that I watched were like people like Peter Diamandis, Tim Ferriss. There's so many people who have spoken at Genius Network and Joe is going to be able to kind of explain that to you later. And a Lot of basically my heroes, a lot of the influencers, the authors and the entrepreneurs who I followed, studied and aspired. I realized they were part of Genius Network or had spoken at Genius Network or had previously been members. And so I was like, holy cow, this is like where all of these people hang out. Like, this is exactly where I want to be. I just realized, learning more about Joe, that he was kind of the connector. That kind of, in a lot of ways propelled a lot of these people forward, but also brought all these people together. In the beginning of 2015, my wife and I decided that I was ready to get a website. I decided that I was ready to start publishing online. It was $800 to buy the domain name benjaminhari.com and that was an enormous amount of money at the time. We were first year graduate students. My wife was also a graduate student. And my wife was very concerned about me buying this domain name for $800. And she's basically like, if you're gonna do this, you better be serious about it. Like, you know, you've been saying you've wanted to be a writer for a few years, but ultimately I ended up buying that website and started studying how to blog. So I took an online course, a John Morrow course, and I started learning how to blog. And that's kind of where I found medium.com I started blogging on medium.com in about May or June of 2000, I think it was around May of 2015. And within a month or two, I wrote viral articles that blew up. And from that moment forward, I just started getting millions of views. And I wrote on Medium for a long time. It was basically at that point when I started getting a lot of views that I realized I needed to start growing my email list. One of the big things that helped me was that I had one specific goal. I had one specific goal and that was to get a six figure book deal. And so everything was filtered through that goal. And so I knew that I needed to get an email list. And so over a few years, I learned how to optimize that. I learned how to get a ton of traffic and I learned how to get a ton of emails. And I've actually written a lot of articles on how I've done that. But ultimately, over about three years, I went from zero to about 400,000 email subscribers without using any paid advertising, pretty much all through medium.com just getting millions of views. And for about two years, I was averaging about 20,000 new emails a month. And I'm still even right now. To this day, I think this month I've gotten about 600,000 views on Medium. I'm not actually doing anything with Medium really right now, but I'm not getting any email subscribers anymore either through Medium because they've changed all their platform. It was at the end of 2017, I got my first major book deal for what became Willpower Doesn't Work. I had more money than I had had and I felt like I was in a position where I was ready to join Genius Network. That was something I really wanted to do. To be up front. It's $25,000 to be a member of the entry level program. And so $25,000 is a lot more than buying an $800 domain name. This was a big investment at this point. I had already paid for some coaching. Like I had spent a few thousand dollars to get coaching to help me get the book deal, but I'd never paid anywhere near $25,000. But I talked to my wife about it at this point. When I joined, which was in, I think September of 2017, I had about 200,000 email subscribers. I was starting to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I felt like I was ready to make that investment. It was still very scary, but ultimately I did make that investment. One of the things, kind of one of the hidden benefits that I had because my aunt Jane was a former member when she told me that I should give a 10 minute talk. And so one of the things that happens at Genius Network when you go is that a lot of the people there who are kind of the top in their industry, they give 10 minute talks that basically are just high value. One of the purposes of those 10 minute talks is to provide at least $250,000 worth of value in 10 minutes. And that's really one of the purposes of Genius Network is that you pay $25,000, but you should at least get 10x that value in return in your business, or else you're probably not a good fit. There's a lot more involved in Genius Network, but that was one of the things that excited me was the whole 10x thinking concept. So during my first Genius Network meeting, which was In September of 2017, I gave a 10 minute talk all about my blogging strategies. And it really went off well. I ended up being able to give that Talk at the 2017 annual event. Joe invited me to give that talk at the annual event, which was amazing. Basically what happened to me was that at that first Genius Network meeting, I call it kind of a peak experience or A subconscious enhancing experience. But that first meeting blew my mind. It totally exceeded expectations. When I walked out of that meeting, I was just like, this is the next level. I already felt my mind stretch, my future stretch. I was so excited and so clear, based on the people that were around me, that this was kind of the environment that was going to get me to the next level. I decided after that first meeting to join Joe's higher tier group. And his higher Tier Group is 100k per year. It's called Genius X. And that's actually what Jason's in as well. Jason's in there, Dan Sullivan's in there. People like Russell Brunson have been in there, and there's a lot of people that are in Genius X. And so after that first meeting, I was kind of like on this extreme high. And I decided to, you know, I talked to my wife about it and just said, I really know that this is kind of the group. This is the environment that's going to help propel us over the next several years. And I think I should make this. And luckily my wife kind of allowed me to make that level of an investment. And then I guess just to fast forward now to today. Over the last two years, I've been in Genius Network, developed a really close friendship with Joe and Jason and other members of the group, and it's kind of really just changed a lot about my life. I was just kind of budding, kind of a fledgling entrepreneur. And I still am in a lot of ways compared to most of the people in Genius Network. But I can honestly say I've been able to pretty much 5 to 10x my income. And I've learned from people like Jason, you just get immediate access to wisdom and a bunch of givers. And so over the last two years, my business has in a lot of ways exploded. But even more than that, because what Genius Network is, it kind of has helped me in all areas of my life. And so now my business is making well over seven figures. I'm still continuing to learn, continuing to kind of set bigger and bigger targets, prepping myself for the next book launch, excited about entrepreneurship. And so that was kind of just a background of my story that I wanted to share. A lot of the growth in my entrepreneurship is because I've made investments like Genius Network, put myself in mentoring experiences like Genius Network, and surrounded myself with people who are in those networks and learned how to be a contributing member of those groups. It's just an amazing opportunity. I just wanted to kind of share that story with you because wherever you are as an entrepreneur, I believe that you should take those kind of leaps. I don't know if Joe or Jason, you have any thoughts you wanted to share on that before we shift over to the Q and A? Did I kind of do an alright.

Job kind of explaining that I'm a little biased? Because of course I love hearing this and I'm the benefactor of you being in Genius Network and you're such a contributor. The biggest thing that I would say to this, which is a term I've heard from you, is the whole psychological upgrade. One of the commonalities with me is when I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards because people that don't know my story. I didn't learn marketing because I thought I would ever teach it to people, run groups or anything along those lines. I did it because I needed to eat, I needed to survive. And I was always even when I was a Deborah carpet cleaner, before I learned anything about marketing, I actually volunteered to be the Arizona director of the Carpet and Fabricare Institute, which was a trade association way back when. Because I just wanted to be around other people that knew how to do the business better than me. And I actually had to figure out how to learn marketing selling something nobody wants to buy because there's probably not a single person that's watching us right now that looks forward to hiring a carpet cleaner. And when you have to figure out how to build a business that really nobody wants to buy, it forces you to actually learn a lot about marketing. About messaging, about list selection, about identifying people's problems and how to present it in a way to where they'd want to hire you, especially in a low barrier to entry business and on and on. But I always was trying to just get better. No matter what anyone takes away from this, there's one thing that you're never too cool for school. I don't have a PhD. You have a PhD. I failed owning and operating a small business at Chandler Gilbert Community College and I got a C minus in Principles of Marketing. I have no formal education. If there's anything that I've learned it's because of reading books. I mean I'm sitting in one of my conference rooms in an 11,000 square foot building that I own which is my headquarters. And there's 2,200 plus books in the room that I'm in right now as we do this webinar. But I'm like Abe Lincoln, I'm self taught. But you're just a great student if you Want to learn anything, there's someone out there that has put the time, effort, energy into learning the skill. And if you could avail yourselves of those people, you're well served to do it. Three ways to learn. You learn through the school of hard knocks. It's one way to learn. Most inefficient way to learn. You get bloodied, you get beat up, you make a lot of mistakes, whatever. Second way is you learn through the experiences of others. You read their books, you attend their webinars, you go to their seminars, you learn from them, you find mentors, you find teachers, you join groups that are valuable. That's a very valuable way to learn. Then the third, and one of the most effective ways to learn is once you've learned something, you teach it to other people because it really causes you to hone your skills. That's what you are doing. That's why you have so many millions of people that have read your articles, that read now your books. Same thing with Jason. We're all students first and teachers is part of it. But the ultimate situation is to be both.

It's really interesting how many aspects each of us have and how many different facets of our personality. So Ben teaches predominantly self help, improving yourself, morning routine stuff all the way to your environment. Willpower doesn't work, and so on and so forth. But there's a whole other side of Ben that a lot of people don't see that I see more so than everything else, which is the business side. And I mean that in a positive way, not a negative way, like not in a greedy, capitalistic sort of way, but the business side of how Ben obsesses over how to improve his ability to communicate to his audience. Because if he can do that, he can provide more value to his audience. And if he can provide more value to his audience, then that will actually make his business grow easier than any other strategy, technique or tactic that existed or ever will exist. But Ben typically is only seen through the lens to to his audience in one aspect. Not in the business or the marketing aspect, or even in the wealth aspect so much. And that's a huge part of who Ben is as a person. And so I'm just excited, Ben, that you're opening up that part of yourself to this audience here today. So Ben, please address how to approach first things first. It can take a lot of time to organize, clean out, and then attack the to do list from the top of the morning on. Do you take a month to clean it out? Then begin with goals. Hope this question Makes sense here. Thank you so much. So, really, the form of the question that I would like for all of us to answer for the benefit of the group here, is to do lists in really productivity as a concept of what do I work on, what don't I work on? So what's your thoughts on that, Ben?

I mean, as for myself, I usually have, like, one core goal that I'm working towards, and that becomes the funnel, you know, through which I determine if, like, opportunities or people are relevant. It's something that it's kind of like the garden I'm always weeding because as you become more and more successful at your work, way more things attract. And so this is kind of where my morning and my morning journaling come in. Like, consistently aligning myself with, like, what are the things that matter to me? You know, I'll be honest with you. I often struggle with this battle of first things first and also eliminating options that are bad. But for me, it's always been about, like, especially in business, one specific goal, there's one specific target and one specific outcome. And if the things that I'm working on are not in alignment with that, then I can tell that they're distractions.

Joe, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, well, you know, I would. I would have to echo what Ben says about having a challenge with it. There's something when you. When you're first starting out, you know, you have no place to go but up. It, frankly, is a lot easier than when you have a lot of what people would perceive as success, because success traps are harder to get out of than failure traps, especially when things are good and when they're working and when you have a lot of options. And so the challenge is if you have a thousand options, you don't have any options, it seems like, psychologically. So I always have to go back to. Out of all the things I want to do, could do, have available to me, I go through four things. If I'm like, especially have a lot of options. Possibility. Is it possible I can do this? I'm a possibility thinker, so I can imagine anything is possible, but that's a trap. The second is probability. What's the likelihood this would work? Third is how much time is this going to take? And the fourth is how much money is it worth to me in order to do that? And then all under the umbrell. Well, like what Ben said, am I aligned with it? Is this really what I want to do? The question is, what's the result that I want to produce? Is it possible, Is it probable? How much time will it take and how much money is it worth? And that's a really good filtering mechanism because every single day I am presented with all kinds of distractions, options, possibilities. So to kind of say what Ben says, the habits, the environment, the rituals that are developed around the result that you're wanting to produce is critical. And if one of the things that needs solved in your life is you need money, then you got to focus on at least that one foundational aspect that's going to do it. You can only do what you can do. His whole thing about editing, pruning and narrowing down just your options I think is really critical. I have a hesitancy to try to tell people what success should be for them because all of this is an individual thing. If I could direct everybody, my opinion would say, do this, do this, this. But that's not what we're here for. We're just here to give perspective. And so people like a 12 step group, take what you like and leave the rest.

Yeah, for me, the biggest thing is the 8020 rule. And that's the law of the vital few, that for any outcome, only a few of the inputs matter. And so I don't really have a to do list. It's obvious and clear to me, and it's been improved over time, that if I want to achieve this result, there are maybe three things that matter to that result significantly, and then there might be 10 things that slightly matter and then there are a million things that probably don't matter at all. I always try to stay focused on what's the biggest lever that helps me achieve this. A to do list is worthless when you don't have a bigger, brighter future. But if you have a bigger, brighter future, the to do list isn't necessarily going to help get you there. It's an understanding of if my bigger, brighter future is blank, what seems to be the thing that will contribute the most to it. And if that's the only thing you do every day, you're going to be successful. If you do that first and then you say, okay, the rest of the day I'm going to screw around and try this and this. And I don't care if I succeed with any of the rest, then that's still okay because that one thing that you're doing that is most important, the trick is figuring out what that is. And so if you're constantly evaluating, okay, I did this, was it the most important thing or not? Okay, let's try it again tomorrow. And then we'll reevaluate it again and again. It's hard to do, but billionaires do less than millionaires in the sense of activities. They have a few refined activities that they're world class at, whereas millionaires typically, in our experience being interacting with them, they have like a hundred things they're really good at. So technically speaking, they're good at more things quantitatively than billionaires. But billionaires are really good at a few things to a level and a degree that nobody else can match. So there's the answer on that one. Ben, I'm going to throw this one to you. Your environment radically influences you, and it's super important to only surround yourself with the right people. My question is, how do you draw the line and how you decide who to work with and what to do? What are your thoughts on that?

I like the quote from Dan Sullivan that you should surround yourself with people who remind you of your future more than your past. That's kind of like how I frame it. And so, you know, I'm always just looking for people I can learn from, people who I want to learn from, people who I want to contribute to. And so, like, when it came to Joe, just as an example, or Dan Sullivan or other mentors that I've sou. I've been very influenced by their work. I really want to be around them. I want to learn from them. And so I'm always looking for, like, people who have the characteristics or the experiences or the environment that I'm looking for. And then I just look for ways to contribute to that environment and to serve in that environment and to adapt to that environment. As I talk a lot about willpower doesn't work. So a lot of it's just, do these people resonate with me? Are they doing what I want to do? Are they where I want to be in my future?

Joe, what would you like to add to that?

I go back to the term alignment, right? Because I only want to align myself with people that are aligned with me. I do check my gut feeling. There's no such thing as a good deal with a bad partner. I'm at the point in my life where there's, you know, I think of Dan Sullivan's 5 Ways to Get Paid. Money is only one way to get paid. Another way is people utilize you. So I like working with people that actually utilize what it is I offer. I like people that appreciate me, I like people that refer me, and I like when things enhance me. So what I choose to work is when I can kind of not just double dip, but five times dip. I not just get paid money, but I also get paid with appreciation, utilization, referrals and enhance. And my most important thing is enhance. I think one of the most ultimate things is to put yourself into an environment where you're not only getting rewarded financially, but in all other ways. Because there's financial capital, but there's relationship capital, spiritual capital, physical capital. There's all kinds of different capital. I really like relationship capital. That's kind of how I gauge it. I'm not sure that's super easy for people to understand without doing some soul searching, but you have to look at your own value system and who you spend time with. I always think of elf. I want people that are easy, lucrative and fun. I want businesses that are easy, lucrative and fun. I like elf marketing. I like having an elf business versus a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. My criteria is is this elf or is it half? Because you could have hard, annoying, lucrative and frustrating. But I don't like half. I like elf. So I put people, projects and things all through the elf filter.

Awesome. I'm going to go to the next question and I'll start that first and kick it to you guys. Question is this one. This is interesting. A little background. I have a day job in sales and on the side and building and scaling a digital marketing agency. I want to leave my day job ASAP to work on my agency full time. But I want to hear from you guys some thoughts as to when it would be a good time. X dollars and savings agency matching monthly revenue, et cetera, from day, et cetera, et cetera. So my answer to that first is the question is, is your day job fulfilling to you? Because it is very, very okay to simultaneously have a job and still build your business on the side. And I would hate for you to stop doing something that brings you fulfillment and joy to try to just build a bigger business. Because I think that will actually be harmful to you now if your day job doesn't bring you joy. And it's very tedious and very painful. Listen, I've been there. I launched a business doing that where I paint 12 hours a day and then before I would go paint and after I'd go paint. That's how I started my business way back in 2007. And so my goal was to as quickly as possible be able to transition over from working for somebody else to working to myself. Now the thing though was that is I didn't go from one extreme to the other like What I wanted to be in digital marketing wasn't where I started, so I started ghostwriting articles for other people. So I essentially traded one job in for another. I went from a set of working for somebody else by the hour to working for myself, but by the hour. But it was an easy transition because I was selling services, not selling something that's super complicated and selling it really easy. So if nothing else, I was able to buy myself some autonomy and freedom and make a little bit of pay. But it also put me one step closer to what I ultimately wanted to do. And so I was able to improve myself, get a foundation, get a building to build off of, but be able to slide in very easily outside of that business into the other business as well. But very often what you'll see in the real world is if you have a good relationship with your work, it might make sense that they're your first big client. I've seen so often that when you become a consultant, your first person that hires you is the company that used to pay you as an employee. And you find out that they would pay you way more if you were a consultant than an employee. So it doesn't have to be this binary one or the other, or black and white. Typically, binary thinking is usually not the way to go. It's the grays that make the difference. So I would take a look at it and be very clear what you want your digital marketing agency to look like and what steps are needed to get there from first, second, third, fourth, and then are there synergistic ways that you can accomplish more than one thing at once? So can you simultaneously build goodwill over here while improving your acumen over there while still increasing your revenues and so on and so forth. Joe, what's your thoughts on that?

Getting results doesn't take time. It's the not getting results that takes up all the time, which is a Dan Sullivan quote. And I was a dead broke carpet cleaner. Going back to that again. But I would read marketing newsletters a night. I do hard manual labor. But back then I was in my 20s, I'm 51 years old, and I was just wanting to run a business. I didn't want to work for someone, and I didn't even like the business I was actually in because I was actually paying money to run a business. I was going broke. I was literally living. I racked up about $30,000 in debt in credit cards when $30,000 in debt back in 1992 was a lot of money. There comes a point in time where you can either burn the bridges. The real key is once you know that you have the ability to produce a result and you sit and think like, what's the opportunity cost of staying in this existing situation? And like you said, is it fulfilling? Am I learning something? If you're not getting paid well, if you're not appreciated, if you're not utilized, if people don't refer you and it doesn't enhance you, then you got to do it as short as possible and learn how to produce a result so you can get out of that situation as quickly as possible, but at the same time bridge it. Some people stupidly take risks that they don't necessarily need to. Part of it is doing a little bit of soul searching. And when you know that you have the ability to produce a result, if you're an entrepreneur, you know you're an entrepreneur. I mean, if people have to question it, you might need to develop a little bit more skills and see, you know, because what's an entrepreneur, you know, it's producing, it's solving problems for a profit. And once you know that you can create a result, all of the time that you spend not creating result is really the opportunity cost there. So that's what I'll say for now.

Ben, anything to add?

No, I just very briefly, I know a lot of people who I've coached who are in a similar situation and kind of going to kind of combining some of your thoughts. Once you know you can create a result, then all of a sudden your confidence explodes and then you, you know, so a lot of it's just a lack of confidence and kind of going to your 8020 concept. Jason, I've seen a lot of people when they're kind of newbies and this is one of the reasons why I have one specific target. In a lot of ways when you have one specific target, like for me it was get the six figure book deal that really filtered all of my activities. I think that what I see like for example, this person who wants to start a digital agency, I see a lot of people when they're starting, they try to do everything. They try to build an online platform, they try to get their website perfect, they try to master a thousand things and they end up doing nothing. And so I think if you can produce, you're going to your 8020 concept. If they can quickly start producing a key result fast and they start to realize that their money can be replaced from their job, then they can start to optimize. And so I just think whoever this person is who's talking. It's possible that they're focused on way too many things right now. And if they actively just get the minimum viable dose or just get the one result that they're looking for, then they might not even be asking this question.

Yeah, it was harder for me to make my first hundred thousand dollars than it was for me to make my first million. Getting started is always the hardest part. So momentum and then usually these questions answer themselves. All right, then, let's go with Joe this one. What are the best ways to be profitable as a networker? The actual value of helping people make connections and find dynamic mentors doesn't always seem to match the transformational value they provide. Not exactly sure what that means, Joe, but let's tackle the first part first. What are the best ways to be profitable as a networker?

Well, understanding that how much you charge for something is totally the formula. If people want to know the formula of how much you charge for something, I'm going to share with you the secret formula. The formula is it's totally based on your ability to sell it. The difference between someone buying like a Timex watch and a Rolex is are they buying like a watch, Are they buying jewelry, Are they buying status? And so how you position yourself, the level of credibility, the ability to produce a result. So what are you connecting people with? I don't necessarily want to network with people. I want to actually connect capabilities with each other. Someone has a capability. I have a capability. Putting the capabilities together can produce a result. This result is worth X for that person. If you couldn't charge money for what it is that you're selling, and if the only way that we got paid is our ability to produce a result, people would have to rethink what they're networking for. Some people just want to go out and get a bunch of followers. I make more money than many of my friends and colleagues that have millions of Instagram followers, hundreds of millions of views on their YouTube videos, and all of this social media stuff because. Because it's all focused on getting attention. Getting attention. But when you're able to give attention to a particular ability to produce a result and link someone to it, you can charge them for groups, you can charge them for consulting, you can take a piece of the action. I mean, it's all the model that you operate in. We don't have enough time to go over different structures of financial models and things like that. But certainly I talk about this stuff all the time in the emails that I send out to people for Free and that sort of thing. There's all kinds of unique packaging. The biggest thing, though, when it comes to connecting and being a networker is not focusing on what do you want, but focusing on what the other person wants, what's in it for them, getting them to what it is that they want. Finding the pain, the suffering, the opportunity going in and be able to help them link it to it. And then you can, if you're good at it, you can make an enormous amount of money. I've made millions of dollars being a quote unquote networker. But you have to do genius networking, not just network. And that's a distinction.

The word networker has been kind of polluted, right? Because when we say the word networking, you get this picture in your mind, typically, of somebody trying to take something from you, handing out business cards and not really listening to you, just waiting for their turn to talk. It's unfortunate because at the heart of it, that's not what networking is. So I like how Joe really reframes it as connection. Now, here's the one thing that I'll address specifically to that. If you expect to be reciprocated in what you give to match what you'll get in return, you're going to be very disappointed. The world doesn't quite work that way. So you have to be okay with giving $100 million worth of value and only being compensated in return. A million dollars? Yeah. You should have been compensated for 100 million, but you weren't, right? But the wonderful thing about this world is there's a lot of strategic, intelligent ways where even though everybody is always getting the best of you and giving you less in return, you can still be more profitable, more valuable, more prosperous, more wealthy than everybody else, because that's a mindset. It's not necessarily a bank account. And so the generosity of giving. So this is what Joe describes about me. Says Jason's a guy who pays me and then shows up and works. And he does the same, Ben does the same thing. And it's no coincidence that Ben and I have typically gotten the most out of the group. Now, here's the challenge, though. If you don't have a lot to give, that strategy doesn't work for you. And so I always think of myself. And Joe has this book coming out, I think, hopefully soon. It's called what's In It For Them? If I Can Engineer Nine big wins, and only one of those guys comes back to me and says, hey, listen, I want to do some business with you because you Helped me out over here, I would call that a huge success. But I can deliver wins for other people with relative ease. So making yourself more valuable will be something where you can can attract wealth as opposed to pursuing wealth. So the real question is, what's a skill you could cultivate that even if other people took advantage of you to access that skill, you would still be so well off financially that you really wouldn't care?

This is an article I wrote on Inc. It's called what happened when I paid $100,000 to help someone. You read that correctly, I paid six figures to help someone. So if you want to look up this article, I explain a lot of the psychology behind it, but this explains kind of the mindset. When I went to my first Genius Network meeting, I was a little surprised that a lot of the people were asking the question. They even asked Joe, because at the small meetings, there's probably about between 40 and 60 people. One of the conversations was, how do we make sure we get our 25k investment back? And I thought that that was such small thinking, because in that environment, you should be able to get $250,000 or $2 million worth of value if you know how to give value. And so my single thought is this. If you know you have something to give, be very proactive about giving it. I mean, one of the things that Joe says is make it elf so don't make it more work for the person you're trying to give that value to make it really easy and clear as to why it would be helpful and beneficial. So you got to kind of know what their goals are, and you got to know that what you're doing is not going to take time off of their plate because they've already got a million things on their plate. So that's kind of what I've always strived for, is just how do I make it so easy and so useful to the people I'm trying to help that it doesn't take any of their time. It's just adding value to their life.

All right, Ben, I got another one. Ben, would you mind talking a little bit more about the whole body being inside the subconscious mind?

Joe and I have similar perspectives on a book that you should probably read. The book would be David Ozanich. Right. And the book, what is it called again? The Great Pain Deception.

John Sarno. Zanich.

Steve Ozanich.

Steve Ozanich and John Sarno.

Yeah. So I'll just give a very fast overview because this is a big part of the book. I'M writing right now. Personality isn't permanent, but the main idea is that your body. I really want to focus on the business side in this conversation, but your physical body and your subconscious mind are the exact same thing. The core is that your subconscious is connected with your memory, it's connected with your emotions. And a lot of what happens, I just don't know if I want to go too far down.

How would that apply to a business scenario, Ben? How would knowing that help you in business or with making money?

I mean, I would try not to go too deep into the weeds on that, but what I'm talking about is. So William James said, what happens at the subconscious level is expressed at the conscious level. So basically what psychologists have found, and it's just totally true, is that the results you get are subconscious, not conscious. And so what you want to do is you want to consciously upgrade your subconscious. And you do that through powerful decisions, through change of environment, through the people around you. And so, so I'm always focused on who's the future self. Like, who do you want to be in the future, and how can you start operating as that person now? What are the environments that that person's operating in? Because then you can upgrade your subconscious. I mean, one of the things I talk about is subconscious enhancing experiences. Basically, your subconscious represents what's normal to you. So if you're making $100,000 a year, like, that's what's subconscious, that's what's normal. In order to get to a hunt, like in order to get to a million, you've got to upgrade your subconscious. And in a lot of ways, you've got to get exposed to new environments, and then you've got to make those environments and those behaviors and that identity your norm. I don't know, I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but certain behaviors and environments and exposure to thinking are a very fast way. Actually, to be honest with you, my hope with this webinar was that it's a subconscious enhancing experience, that being around Joe, Jason, maybe myself, it's an opportunity for you to get exposed to a level of thinking that's different from your norm, so that then you can start to imagine and process and think about possibly seeing yourself in that scenario.

Nice. Let's go with the super tactical question then to offset that very hyper spiritual question. Right? Can you guys offer any insights into the optimal strategies to build a blog or a website? My plan is to create a platform blog based on the transformative ideas I'm Living, embodying, learning along my own journey. Its purpose is to offer value as an educational platform and also to create coaching clients. So I'll start with this one and then I'll throw it over to you, Joe. And really, at the end of the day, the number one optimal strategy of building a website or a blog, if you will, is you should be able to offer something of tremendous value that other people desperately want and being able to offer it in a way that's unique and specifically empowering to a certain subsegment of that audience. There's a tremendous amount of stuff I just said there that I'll try to unpack briefly and succinctly is, unfortunately, you might have the greatest transformative ideas in the world, but if people are not aware that they should care about those and they're not actively seeking them and they're not desperately wanting them, you will fail almost every single time. I mean, you might win the lottery, but probably not. Right? So that's the first issue. The second issue, though, is once you've identified specifically how to match your message to what the audience is experiencing, keeping them awake at night and troubling them and bothering them, you now have to present your message in a unique way. So when they hear it, if it's for the right person, they'll say, I've never heard it that way. That sounds interesting. Oh, there might be something here. This might have a paradigm shifting capability for me, because it's not the same old, same old. That's the second biggest challenge. The first one is to identify those things that people want desperately but are being neglected, underserved, or not served at all, but want it really badly. And the second is giving it to them in a way that hits them right between the ears, as if you're reading their mind and saying, you're the only one I believe that has the solution for this problem. If you have that, then the rest of it's just window dressing. Then it's just a matter of writing different articles and seeing what hits and what doesn't. Hits, making different offers, seeing what hits and what doesn't hit. But Those are the 80, 20 of that situation right there. Now, that's not, you know, it's a dose of reality. A lot of people don't want to do it like that. And we can all point to occasionally somebody who just follows their passion and gets rich and famous, but that is a very unlikely outcome. So just to be aware of that, Joe, what would you add to that?

Well, I have to preface this by saying, I have never focused on building a successful blog. I mean, you and Ben are way more qualified to answer that question than I am. I don't even need a website in order to do what it is that I do. I only have it because people sort of have this expectation to think that, like, it's important. But I honestly could run my entire company based on referability and just the many, many years of creating value for people, which is how I started Genius Network in the first place. You know, there's not some magic secret strategy that has built it now to what you said, what I would say, as long as there's other people in the world that are having success using a distribution system, a communication system, because there's three things you need in order to sell something. You need a product or service is number one, you need a sales pitcher and marketing message number two, and you need a delivery system. Number three. What most people focus on is, here's what I have. How do we tell people about it? A blog, a website, social media, going back to yellow pages, direct mail, tv, phone sales. I mean, these are all manual or digital or whatever. They're all delivery systems. So a blog is a way to communicate. What I would do based on what you said is look at where are there models of people that are doing something not in the same niche, not in the same category, but they're having enormous success with what you would consider. Who would you look up to and get to know those people, reverse engineer what they're doing, how have they built it, Learn their stories, listen to interviews with them. If you have the ability to reach out to them and create value and get to know them, even if you have to pay those people, that will shave you weeks, months, maybe years off the learning curve. And I'm surprised at how many amazing individuals doing amazing things in the world are not approached in a way of really being of service. So those people would want to reciprocate and help you. That's pretty much how I build to this day. If I want to meet someone, learn something, do something, I'm like, how do I be valuable to this person so I could learn what it is they know how to do that I don't. And that would be applied to a blog or anything for that matter. That's what I would say.

Ben, I want us to add a bunch of value, but I also want Joe to explain what the Genius Network annual event is, what it's going to be like this year. Who's going to speak at it?

Well, first Off. Thank you. Here's what I would say. I sit and think to myself, when I was first starting out in business, and I didn't even have any revenue, but what I had is a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of desire and a lot of aspirations. What I ended up building as Genius Network is I wanted to create the ultimate school for entrepreneurs that would pay them to attend. I targeted people that make at least a million dollars a year or more. And I was like, okay, if I had something that I could share with these people and connect them with that was worth at least a million dollars, how would I get compensated for that training, for that education? And what if I only took 1% of that million dollars? If I was to deliver someone the ability to not only make a million or save themselves from losing a million dollars, how much would that be worth it to the individual so that I could spend, still charge a high price point, but in relation to the value that they would receive, what they would save from not losing it, they would gladly want to invest that money. And it was targeted to a certain audience making at least a million bucks a year. I started Genius Network, which is a $25,000 a year group. But after doing it for several years, and I first started the group in 2006, I did an annual event where it was just everyone that was in the group would come to a location, and I would just bring everyone together instead of smaller, and I would have a few hundred people that would attend. 250 to 300 people that would attend. I would charge $10,000 for it, and I would do it once a year, and I'd bring all kinds of amazing people together and put on this incredible event. And it would be 10 times more expensive than the average event, but it would be 10 times or 50 times better than any other event that anyone has ever attended. So those were some of my original goals, and I've now been able to deliver on that. Going on since 2011 is the very first year I let someone that was not a Genius Network Member Paying $25,000 a year, I would let them come to this event for $10,000. And then I changed the criteria where they have to make at least $500,000 a year. Because I know that people that come to the annual event, they're right on the cusp of, like, getting to a million dollars. And what would I want them to invest in order to get that million bucks? So it'd be 1% of a million dollars is 10 grand. So came up with the price point of $10,000 a person and then delivering on it. So once a year, I do an annual event. It's called the Genius Network annual event. It's the only event that I do for people that are not Genius Network members, which is a $25,000 group which meets three times a year, two days at a time. One of those times is at the annual event. The other group is Genius X, which both of you guys are members of, which is my hundred thousand dollar a year group. And that also meets three times a year plus the annual event. And we don't let anyone even join the 100k group unless they've already been in Genius Network. That's the thing. The focus of the annual event is health, wealth and elf. Out of all of the things that are required to build a better entrepreneur, there's this wonderful proverb that says, he or she who has their health has a thousand dreams. He or she who does not have their health has only one. The reason we're able to be on webinars, build businesses, have aspirations and dreams, is because we're not laid up in a hospital bed incapable of doing that. What else is more important than keeping yourself physically, mentally fit so that you can go out and do the things that you want to do in your business? Health is the first focus. Wealth is not only about making money, but what do you do with the money. There's two types of ways to engage with money. One is the making of it. The other is not losing it, investing it, spending it wisely. Not just building income, but building valuation of a company. Because everybody's going to eventually exit whatever career they're in. If it's a business, they're going to sell it, they're going to turn it over to their family, they're going to lose it. So how do you build a business and really think about not just increasing income, but increasing valuation so when that day comes, you can strategically sell it. What do you do with the money once you bring it in? I bring in experts in all areas of health, areas of wealth, and then elf. The third is elf because you can make millions of dollars, but if you're not doing it in an easy, lucrative and fun way, then nothing is elf in the very beginning. See, that's the kicker here is that most people are going to have to work their butts off, like in some cases, very adverse, very difficult circumstances. Because if you think of this, here's the conditions I want in my life. More money, nice house, better physical fitness, Great relationships, they could be internal, internal goals. They could be external, they could be materialistic, they could be helping groups of people. One thing I'm not going to go deeply into is the reason I run a business is because it funds my passion project, which is to help people that struggle with addiction. Because I'm an addict. I nearly died from being a drug addict when I was younger and I now spend about half my time helping people with addiction. So my goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and to find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share those with the world. Now that's a calling. I don't make any money off of it. It takes an enormous amount of time. But in order to do the things that I need to do, I need to have a successful multimillion dollar business to even make an impact in that particular area and produce results and ultimately save lives. But that's one of my conditions that I want in my life. So in order to get the conditions that everyone here watching wants, you have to set it up. So what's the setup? So health, wealth and elf elf to me is a very foundational thing. So I'll just share with you because I got this list here of some of the speakers as a reminder. So when you're going to bring an annual event together, what are some of the capabilities that you want to bring to people? So for one of them I have Peter Diamandis and a guy named Tim Chang, two incredibly smart people on what's going on with the future of sensors and networks and artificial intelligence and VR, virtual reality, machine learning, all of the crazy futuristic stuff that is happening to disrupt and change the world. And it could make your head spin. But I'm going to have a conversation with them about how do you dance with the future? It's great that all of this stuff is happening, but as an entrepreneur, what do we actually use? What can we use? What is practical versus what is just a bright shiny object? That's going to sound really cool, but it really has no application to your current endeavor. So we're going to have that conversation. I have a woman named Barbara Annis, who's the top jet intelligence expert in the world. You know, we have a lot of complexity happening on the planet right now with men and women engagements, with everything that's been going on. She knows how to make sense of it and how to dramatically improve the way that men and women engage in the workplace and how to really get and utilize and leverage that talent. So Keith Cunningham, the author of one of the best business books that I've read in over a decade, which is the Road Less Stupid. And he's the rich dad to Robert Kiyosaki. So if Robert Kiyosaki told me years ago, I asked him who was the rich dad, he's like, well, there's two influences. One was a guy in Hawaii, but the main one was Keith Cunningham, who taught him what he ended up writing the book Rich dad based on this guy's worth a couple hundred million dollars. He lost over $100 million 30 years ago and nearly had a nervous breakdown. Had to do three years of therapy, reframe his whole thinking on what happened. And now this guy's just like this incredible speaker. And I have an exclusive interview that's not been show of the Genius Network room. And you guys were there during the time when Keith Cunningham was there. He's going to be at this year's annual event, but I'm willing to share that with your audience. We'll talk about that later. I'll try to do this quickly because I know we're on time. Dr. Andrew Wall, who's the top integrative doctor in the world. I'm going to do an interview with him on literally the most cutting edge things related to improving your health, not just physically, but mentally. Dave Asprey, my friend and Genius Network member who's the founder of Bulletproof Dr. Coffee on the latest superhuman methodologies for your health. Then I've put together the greatest panel of copywriters I think that's ever been put together in one place. From the highest earning online copywriter in the world who made over $400 million last year, to a guy who invented direct mail for the political realm. Some people that are not in the marketing world may or may not know these individuals, but between all of them, billions, I mean billion with a B of letters and billions of dollars have been generated by their ability to know how to craft the right words with the right offer and with a message to market match. I'm going to have a very powerful conversation. Me and Jennifer Houdy, who's one of our really great Genius Network members. We're going to moderate this panel. And it's John Carlton, who's one of the greatest copywriters in the world. Clayton Makepeace, another one of the highest paid copywriters in the world. Brian Kurtz, who ran Boardroom Inc. For many, many years. Paris Lampropolis, who's one of the top copywriters in the world, Craig Clemons, Richard Vigori, I mean, these are all very high level people. Then we have a thing called 10 minute talks. What happens is in 10 minutes people share a best practice or strategy that's been worth at least $250,000 or more to them so that each minute is worth $25,000 if they deliver on it. We've got Cameron Herold, who's the former COO of 1-800-got- junk. He's going to talk about free. The second is Brian Scudamore, who's actually the owner of 1-800-got junk. It's a $450 million a year company and he's going to do a 10 minute talk on literally how to create that structure to build and scale a business. We've got Denise Gosnell, who's like a world class IP attorney and she's going to give a 10 minute talk on how she changed her life after her home burned down and she lost almost every material possession and how it shifted her to cut her work life in half and now make more money as a result of this tragedy. We've got Susie Bat is the founder of poopourri. That's the toilet spray that makes your poop not smell. Her company is currently valued at $700 million and she's a rock star. And so she's going to give an amazing talk. Jim do, who's my own personal financial advisor, the author of Beyond a Million on literally how to think about money and what to do to not only make money, but save money. We've got Perry Belcher who's going to do an incredible talk on storytelling. We've got Joe decenna, who's the founder, founder of Spartan Races, which is now $100 million plus company. Over a million people a year go through the Spartan Races. And what is the mindset one needs to literally operate at a whole other level of performance. Elko DeBoer, who is, his name's Elko and he is one of the top entrepreneurs in Amsterdam, Holland and he's an Internet marketer. What's funny about him is he's going to talk about Internet fasting, on how he runs a multimillion dollar business, one of the top Internet market marketers in the world, but certainly in his country. And how he does it by spending less than an hour a day on the Internet, it's pretty mind blowing. He's going to talk about genius focus. We're going to actually he's creating a program that we're going to make available to all Genius Network members for free, called Genius Focus. Then Chris Voss, who is our friend, who is the top FBI hostage negotiator in the world and he wrote the top negotiation book currently, which is called Never Split the Difference, he's going to be giving a 10 minute talk. Then of course we're going to have JP Sears, the redhead funny comedian that people have probably, he's got millions of views online. He will emcee the event along with a guy named Joel Weldon, who's an incredible speaker. And that's just some of the people that are going to be presenting. But it is a tribe of tribal leaders and people come there to connect with each other and find the capabilities. Because as you're writing a book right now with Dan Sullivan, who not how, if you can find the right who's, they bring the how with them. So Genius Network annual event is really a gathering of the top. Who's that? Any that's at that level. So someone is at that level and they're making at least a half a million dollars or more a year and they want to come to an incredible event that will not only teach them how to make at least a million dollars, for 1% of that, the investment's 10 grand or more likely. Save losing a million dollars because it's not even about what you're going to gain. It's about what you'll lose by not having access to it. That's what we put it together for and that's why some of the world's greatest people come to be in that room. And that's what the Genius Network annual event is. And it's taking place November 2nd, 3rd and 4th in Phoenix, Arizona. 2nd, 3rd and 4TH of November. Beautiful time of the year in Phoenix. You can wear T shirts and the weather is gorgeous, sweet.

These types of events are very powerful, not only for what you actually learn, but for who's in the room. I mean, a lot of my own business heroes are in this room. You get to connect with them. It's so fun.

You do have to earn over $500,000 a year or have a business that generates over a half a million dollars a year in revenue. I've been into Genius Network since 2014. The ANN and it's a great way to be in a room full of people that normally never come to events. That's what I like about the annual event. But there is a strict minimum requirement because we want to put people in a room that are not only capable, obviously from a wealth perspective of knowledge and abundance, but also just from an actual real world perspective. Now, if you are in a position yet where you're like, dang, I really want to come to the annual event, but I don't make that much money. There's two responses. One is you can feel bad, which I don't recommend because it doesn't seem to make you helpful or put you in a resourceful state. Or the second one is that could be part of your bigger, brighter future where you would say, I'm going to do whatever it takes. So that way, next year, if I'm not in a position yet to be part of genius, but I want to be part of it and I want to come to the annual event, what do I got to do between now and then to make that happen? Fuzzy targets don't get hit. You ever play blind archery, somebody probably dies. So you want to have a target that's crystal clear and a focus. And it's not just an income, because numbers don't have feelings, right? It's an income, focus, plus, more importantly, a transformational experience. And by the way, I'm not just making this up. This is exactly what Ben did. Ben says, I want to do whatever it takes to be part of this network. And instead of taking six years, took six months, right, Ben?

It took a little longer.

You know what? Nobody. It doesn't take that long to make the decision. You know what? The time it takes about making the decision, that's the time. Time that it takes, right?

Oh, yeah. The decision was once I really got the taste of what. What you guys are talking about, I decided I was going to do it. I said I was going to do it before the end of my PhD program and ended up taking about two and a half years to get myself to the level where I could be there.

Yeah, but you were ingenious before you were Dr. Ben Hardy.

102 and a half years before I was Dr. Ben Hardy.

Bingo. Right? And so I think a lot of this now my question is always, why don't more people do it? Is Ben Hardy a one of a kind, special individual? Is he like Haley's comment, you only see one of 75 years, right? Is he special in a way that none of you on this call are special? I don't think that's true. I think the difference is when you make a committed decision, then all of a sudden what wasn't possible now becomes not only possible, but highly probable. Okay, so go ahead and just keep that there. But a couple questions here today. One is, it says I'm signing up for Genius Network through Ben today. So hopefully that's true. What do you see being the greatest benefit of Genius Network? So, Ben, what do you see as being the greatest benefit of Genius Network?

So there's a few reasons why I love being in Genius Network. One is number one. You know, I. Probably not number one. It was number one initially. Number one initially was what I call the psychological upgrade. It just, you know, it really did upgrade my subconscious. It changed my environment. It changed who I surround myself with pretty much immediately. My peer group became people who were all at a level way above my norm, you know, and so then a lot of it over time, actually, because I've now been a member of the 100k group for 2, 2 years. A lot of it now is just learning from people. One of the things that Joe said is being a member of this group actually will save you millions of dollars, just as much as it could make you millions of dollars. In a lot of ways, my income has accelerated because of Genius Network and because I've been in this group. And at the same time, I've watched myself frivolously spend or waste lots of money on either, whether it be I'm not necessarily a materialistic guy, I don't drive fancy cars and stuff like that. But a lot of it's just business decisions or I've blown a lot of money in the process of making a lot of money. And now I'm learning how to kind of, as Joe would say, like, keep and, you know, make and save that money. So I don't know, I'm just evolving as a person. I think that's the big thing is I'm around a lot of people who are at totally different stages of life. All of them are successful business wise, but also a lot of these people are really just good people. And so I'm a person who loves growth and learning. I love kind of pushing myself to that next level. I get a lot out of it as a human. I'm getting a lot out of it financially, but also I'm learning how to connect with people who I really want to work with. Like, as Joe mentioned, you know, I'm now going to write a book with Dan Sullivan. We're going to co author a book together. And there's no way Dan would never know who I am if I wasn't in the 100k group. And it just affords really great opportunities. More than anything in Joe's forefront about this, it's about making you a better human being. A better opportunity entrepreneur. And that's really what it's forcing me to do. So it's just a lot of fun to be pushed to learn and grow.

Yeah. For me, the biggest benefit was seeing my problem on other people. What I mean is people that I looked up to as heroes that I thought were like superhuman coming into meetings and coming to the annual event and having problems that not only have I had, but I've already solved. And that gave me tremendous power to feel more capable of myself. And then as I felt more capable, I did more. And I think that you're going to see that a lot, that the difference between where you're at and where you want to go is millimeters. It's not miles. That's, I think, one of the greatest benefits. You can't read that in a book. Just like you can't learn how to swim by going to a conference. Right. You experience it though by jumping into the pool. So this isn't a conference. This is a way for you to surround yourself and success becomes contagious. Genius Network is that now do you get the best cutting edge information up to date in marketing and in business?

Absolutely.

You totally do. But beyond that, it's really the focus of being the better entrepreneur. And that's what you really learn, which is not necessarily a tactic, it's more of a mindset. But it's not just you learning it, it's you being around people that are engaging together and you share a moment in time with them that you can't get anywhere else. Trust me, I know because I've been everywhere else and I've spent money everywhere else and I do still spend money everywhere else. But I spend the first dollars with Joe and with Genius Network. Now here's another question. Does it make sense to join the Genius Network if I'm out of the usa? It probably does make sense if everything else that we said to you prior to this makes sense to you. There's a lot of people that do things internationally. The cool thing about technology these days is we can get in a big metal tube and fly through the air and get from one place to another in an unbelievably short period of time. It's not like Oregon Trail where somebody dies a dysentery on the way from point A to point B anymore. So it's really less of where you're at geographically and it's more of where you're at psychologically. With Genius Network is if you're ready for an upgrade in your life and your surroundings. If you're ready to go to a different place level and you meet the income requirement, that totally would be a reason for you to join no matter where you're at in the world. And then here's another question. How helpful would the Genius Network be for marketing highly technical cyber security products? It would be as helpful to you as if you were a dry cleaner or if you were a dog walker, or if you were insert any other business. Because a lot of people don't realize that they're not in the cybersecurity products business or they're not in the blogging on medium.com business or the self improvement business, or the digital marketing business, or the carpet cleaning business. Right. They're in the business of psychology and arithmetic. What that means is being able to communicate to the audience that it makes sense to do business with you and then making sure that it costs less to communicate to the audience than it brings in revenue back to you. So you're not in any other business other than the psychology and the arithmetic business. I often find the problem with most businesses is if you're a cybersecurity expert, guess where you go. The cybersecurity conferences. Guess who you talk with? Other cybersecurity security professionals. And what happens is it becomes highly incestuous. So somebody in the restaurant business one day says I'm going to put a drive thru window up. And then guess what every other restaurant does. They have drive thru. But then some smart guy who goes outside of his industry, he's in the pharmacy business, walks by one day and he says, you know what? One of them drive thrus over there. What if I put it over here? And he does that and everybody calls him a genius even though he just went outside of the normal industry and the norms that were aware of to him and everybody else in that industry, that's a huge benefit that can't be overstated. Is you get your biggest breakthroughs by being outside the jar, reading the label, as opposed to inside the jar where you can't read the label.

Being in that specialized of a field, if this person can become a brilliant marketer, the level of income is probably insane. I mean I know some people in Genius, but also in Strategic Coach who are in highly technical and very scientific and very futuristic, cutting edge science or just really complex technology. Things that are unlike most of their competitors or even colleagues. They're learning good business and they're learning extreme marketing skills, which makes all the difference. It's a very different group. It's a very different type of education and also if you're a highly technical or scientific type thinker. This is going to be a different environment and different personalities you're going to be around. But like Jason said, if you can learn from the situation, it's probably going to be 180 degrees different from what your typical learning is and it's going to open up so much. Marketing is the key to all business. Whoever you are, whether you're a writer or someone else, it's marketing that makes the difference.

This is a really good question. I like it. I would love to join Genius Network and achieve my dreams, but feel I'm too new to the way of life. In parentheses living boldly. So that's the new way of life. Perhaps a coach would be helpful to prepare me to be ready to join Genius Network. If you agree that a coach is valuable option. Do you have any suggestions on career and life coaches? Now here's the thing that I will say to that because it's a mistake I see being repeated constantly with my coaching clients, with people that I serve and which people I help and even dear friends of mine is they think that when I ready, then I'll do blank, right? You got it backwards. You do blank and then you become ready. That's the key distinction now, by the way. It's okay to be prepared and it's okay to say when I'm ready, then I'll do blank. That typically takes a decade. But far better approach, in my opinion, is I'll say the best way to get ready is to start when I'm not ready. And how do I decide if I want to do it? Then if I'm not ready, does it feel right to me? Am I attracted to it? Am I pulled towards it? Do I try to resist it but do so in vain? That tells me you're ready. So Ben today said something to me that I thought was interesting. He says before this webinar we're prepping because he wanted to make sure he got everything right and solid so he'd give you the best of class experience possible. And he says, I want to make sure I'm in the right headspace. And I said to him, I said, ben, forget headspace. Make sure you're in the right heart space. And that would be the same thing that I would say to you because you can talk yourself into really dumb ideas and you can talk yourself out of really great ideas. But the reality is if you meet the income requirement, you have the dates free and there's something calling you. You should do it, because this isn't brain surgery. I would never want my brain surgeon to say, well, I'm not ready, but let's open up the school and see what happens, right? Business is a lot less of an exact science. A lot of business is the person who is ready to act boldly and live. Behind it is the person that's successful, where the intent is often greater than the content. Content that's not true in a lot of other areas of life. I can't just say I really want to be really good at chess and then magically be a grandmaster. But I'll tell you, in business, it's different. The rules don't apply the same way. Gravity works differently in the business world. Half a winning or 80% of winning is showing up. A lot of that, though, is showing up to the right networks because you can be highly motivated and running down the path, but running in the right direction. And so if you're highly motivated and running down the right path, that path would be, I would think, and I'm obviously biased here, would be Genius Network, which is one of the reasons why it's not available to everybody, because who is not in the room is more important than who is in the room. So who is in the room? We know that we can work completely and open and honestly with each other. And everybody has the same feeling going in. They all feel inadequate. They all say, I don't know if I can give enough. And that automatically makes them the best giver in my book, because they feel like they have the least to contribute. So they try the hardest to contribute, and everybody's out giving each other. I don't know how you lose in that situation other than to talk yourself out of not being there in the first place.

I want to reiterate what you both said. I don't even have an affiliate program. You guys are doing this, and you actually are both clients that pay money. We are individuals that I consider all of us incredible givers. Yes, we do run businesses. Yes, we have enterprises that make money. Yes, we create enormous value for people, and we get paid very well for it. And that's our intention, and that's what we attempt to teach other people. One of the things is I have a very high percentage of Genius Network members that are women. Probably one of the highest of all types of mastermind groups in the world, except for groups that are just for women. The reason is I'm really pursuing finding people that are the greatest givers, the greatest capability. And I think this call is a Testament to the relationships. One of the things that's the biggest thing thing about Genius Network is I really want givers. I don't want takers. And so there's a lot of my messaging where I want people to come into the group, being willing to work, being willing to participate, showing up. Now we have a lot of introverts. So I don't mean by participating like you need to do public speeches and stuff, although if you'd like to, that helps. But the bigger thing is like life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. One of my books that's coming out soon, which is called Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker is literally a compilation of my three week emails. But I just want to thank you guys and I hope that everyone watching this realizes that even if you never become a client, I love seeing all the aspirational things like I want to be there next year or whatever. I think that's great. And if all three of us can inspire and encourage people because believe me, I was the dead broke guy looking for guidance, looking for help. And I always want to leave people better off than what they were by an interaction with me. And all of us should share that same belief. And that's the type of group that genius Network is. And I believe any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. So even if you don't come to my genius network because you're not currently at a certain level or for whatever reason you're not able to make it, put yourself into a genius network, which basically means people with skills and capabilities that can help you get to where you want to go if you want to be a better parent. Who are the people that you know that have the most genius in that area and talk with them, learn from them, interact with them. If you want to be in better physical fitness, who do you need on your genius network in your genius network to get there if you want to be a better parent, if you're struggling with addiction, if you want to build a better business? Genius network. In order to have a genius network, you have to be a genius networker, which is a value, creating, giving, reciprocal, individual. You have to do genius networking, meaning spending your time with other people with capabilities. And then you will have a genius network. It's be, do, have be a genius networker. Do genius networking and you will have a genius network. I've put one together together for people if they don't want to have to go through any of that work and that's what we do. So I just appreciate you, Ben, both of you. Not only do you edify me and talk about results, but this entire relationship with all of us is very reciprocal and we help each other out. I want that to be really the thing that we demonstrated for everyone watching is if you really are committed, like Jason said, you can develop some of the greatest relationships in the world. Because when I was first starting out, it, it was lonely. I didn't know who to talk with and I was shy and I was introverted and I literally had to work really hard. And now those things that I've learned, I just want to do my best to bring that to other people in the best ways that I can. And that's what it's all about.

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Sam.