Character, Creativity, and Cutting Through B.S. with Ron Lynch and Joe Polish

My criteria for any business being successful is an innovation. I have a hard time selling commodities because the commodities sell on price. Innovation sells on life changing opportunity. So innovation is key to me. Then there's got to be an audience for it. You can have an innovation. If you don't have an audience, you've got nothing. Then you have to have margin. There's a lot of people that can make products but they don't know how to get their retail price. I very much like to anchor at the highest possible retail price I can find so that I have margin. Because if I'm going to build a brand through direct response, the audience is actually paying for the marketing and I know if I do a great job of that, it ends up in Walmart and I just lost 50% of the retail price in wholesale goods cost to Walmart. The last piece is what I provide and that's story. So when I leave I have all of their data hopefully and their research and how does this work best? And give me your CAD drawings and all, all of the technical pieces like the CEO gets for the company and then I walk away and I rebuild a suite of marketing products for them based upon the problem they're trying to solve and their audiences and then specify audience per creation.

How can you be a domino for someone else? The Joe Polish Show Any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. So Ron Lynch. Ron is a unique creative force in the marketing industry. He's a prominent direct response television producer, screenwriter, director, inventor, author, investor and philanthropist. He has brought in $5.5 billion in DRTV direct response TV orders. He teaches marketing through his four star gold rated course the Marketing Mercenary. This teaches both young marketers and experienced how to think about wealth, money and ethical sales from an audience perspective. It is a Guide that over 200 people have used to launch businesses over the past three years. On March 14, 2020, the first day of COVID he launched Feeding Network charity and Telehealth. Utilizing tech to connect people in need and givers. This Uber meets the Red Cross model connecting over 100,000 members internationally in a matter of weeks. A background in retail operations as a grocery operations director. He has a CEO level understanding of supply chain labor and P&LS. Most often associated is the creative strategist for GoPro in 70 other brands including Rug Dr. Orange Glow and OxiClean, Samsung JJ SC Johnson brands. He has several patents, has had a hand in over a dozen films and produced a library of over 400 television commercials. He's on the board of several tech and food oriented startups as well, including all 33 and the back strong chair. He has authored five books, Friggin Lazy guy and currently has a dozen technology patents in play for three web 3.0 products. Ron has a passion for ethically bringing world changing innovations to consumers that solve real problems as a key to brand building. He's happy to offer counsel and perspective to open minds and hearts. Thank you, thank you for being here. And I do have to give credit to Laura Cattella here because she had her Diamond Day event where we were both at and that's where we had a chance to get to know each other and talk and it was, it was awesome and one of the things I kind of want. So thank you very much Laura.

Thank you.

And what I would. I love this one conversation we had about you have a thing where you do $1,000 cup of coffee.

Yeah.

And so I'd love for you to explain this concept to everybody because I think they will find that kind of valuable, useful thing.

Yeah. So if you're an entrepreneur you probably get the question a lot. Can I pick your brain? And don't like my brain picked. I like my brain with the size it currently is. And so I like to challenge the person to see if they really believe in their idea. And I say absolutely, I have a thousand dollar cup of coffee. I'll sit down with you for a thousand dollars for an hour or two and we'll talk about whatever you want to talk about and I'll give you what insights I can give you about it. And that right there knocks out about 80% of the people that are going to because they actually don't believe in their idea. So the ones that do sit down amazingly start to take you seriously and start to take themselves seriously. And then I can feed them back a document that is only one or two pages long. It's really my notes from the meeting that gives them a clear perspective, kind of in short form of what they think they're doing or where they think they want to go. Because I have some watermarks in business that I learned over the years. So and it's a great tool to one direct somebody towards another vendor that can help them, get them to take themselves seriously and their business seriously or get me to evaluate if I want to work with them. Because evaluation to me is one of the most important things that we skip over in business and in relationships. And I love upfront, direct, evaluative tools.

Well, you know, I'm going to stick with this whole theme here and just ask you how you go about evaluating someone's idea and then determining either a, it's a crappy idea in its current form or you need to fill in these blanks or. Okay, this is awesome. Here's what we do. Before I do that, one of the things you even said to me when we were talking is if they're not willing to spend $1,000 to sit down for a cup of coffee with me, they're never going to pay me any real money anyway. And so I think that's just a great filtering process to begin with. And what are some of the.

I hear laughter. You've done this. You've been there.

Speaking to the mic too.

She's furiously writing it up. Furiously laughing. Yeah, Talking.

Mike, please.

My running joke was I was just going to put free consultant on a business card and hand it to anyone that would. Because that's all. After I sold my company, that's all I did for two years was free consulting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, here's what's funny. He sells his company for millions of dollars and then becomes a free consultant.

You know, Joe, I had someone run up to me at one of your annual meetings and they like with tears in their eye and I, I don't remember who it was. Tears in their eyes. He's like, I did everything you told me to do. Last year when we had lunch, he was three days away from doing a deal with private equity. It's like I did everything he said. They said what you said they were gonna say, that I said what you told me to say. And I got 5 million extra dollars and cut my non compete from 2 years to 6 months. And I was like. And I literally, I felt terrible. I didn't remember who it was. It was a 30 minute conversation.

Wow.

And it turned into $5 million. Probably would have paid a thousand dollars instead to sit there.

Yeah.

Do that.

Yeah. I mean, I like the process because it does your vetting things and you're seeing who's serious about themselves, but also gives me exposure to good ideas. And I'm all about implementation. If I charge someone $1,000 to sit with me for an hour or two, they're probably going to implement what I said.

Yeah, they'll take it way more seriously.

Then it'll probably work. Then what happens to my intellectual stock with them? There's people that I won't charge. Like all of you now in this room, I feel like I have a certain understanding and cadence with. If you called me, I wouldn't say, oh, it's a. But I'm not a person at a trade show floor walking up. Right? That's the kind of the key differences. Known quantities are completely different than unkn quantities, but it's how you kind of separate the unknown quantities.

There's so much of that saying if they don't pay, they don't pay attention. And there's a lot to be said about that. And so I've learned that painfully over the years because my propensity is to try to just want to help everyone. And it's one of these things to where it is a protector of your time, but it's also a respecter of your time. And it's one thing to protect your time, but a lot of people, they just don't respect it. And that's, that's one of the challenges. You know, my friend Dave Keckish would always say the value of any service you provide diminishes rapidly once it's provided. So protect your compensation up front. And so let's go to the assessment part and then I'll open this up for Q and A because I can ask him questions all day long. But I want you guys to be able to ask Ron Dave Kekich K E K I C H Kekich credos. And if you type in, you know, Kekich credos online, he wrote 100 Rules of Life and business. Do we have enough to hand out to everyone here, Eunice? Are we kind of running low on those? But you know the other thing, let's just email them to everyone. Then they can have them. We can just email them a link so they can have all the. They're amazing. But how do. So when you're talking with someone and you're, I mean, I often say this about copywriters too. People, they'll get sticker shock when they hear like a world class copywriter, how much someone's going to pay. And they think that someone's sitting down writing a letter. They don't realize the amount of research, they don't realize the amount of detective work one has to do to evaluate and assess something in order to even build strategy and stuff around it. So I'd love to hear your model.

Oh, so yeah, that's the next kind of step. So there's a cup of coffee, that's $1,000 to see if they've got an idea, then if I agree and they agree that, hey, this needs a second date, there's two second dates. Typically with a corporation, it's a $25,000 day or two where I go in and I do the evaluative process and deliver back a document that's 20 to 40 pages long. And I'll tell you what's in that, what the criteria are. Or it's a $5,000 consult on something very simple. Like if somebody's already got. I just did a consult for a company and they won't care that I said it. It's a company called Circle. It's a beverage company. They have a water bottle that's got a valve and a thing you put in it that's got flavor in it. So you're utilizing water, you're adding the cartridge and it's got. They've got 50 or 60 flavors. So 50 or 60 flavors goes from replacing Gatorade to replacing Starbucks cold coffee. Like there's all this weird stuff that's going in it. It's very difficult to market a clear message to that. And everybody's selling flavored water in the world. But we all know we need to drink more water. So when I went in, I just repositioned the company as water. It's finally your favorite beverage. Because we all know we should drink more water, but we hate it because it tastes like water. So I just took that. So that could be the anchor for the company. Now you can plug in all the fifth flavor cartridges. And it opened itself up at the top to the broadest consumer segment that could let us lay in all the flavor profiles underneath, whether you were an athletic person or a Starbucks person or a fitness person or all of that stuff. So that's like a $5,000 day in a $25,000 day. I actually go in and do research, and they provide me the research. I just know how to log it. So I go in and I go, what's your problem? What's your olution? What's your USP? And I go, what's a USP? So there's a little bit of education in the day. What are the features? What are the benefits? Who are your audiences? And my criteria for any business being successful is you have to have, in my mind and innovation. I have a hard time selling commodities because the commodities sell on price. Innovation sells on life changing opportunity. So innovation is key to me. Then there's got to be an audience for it. You can have an innovation. If you don't have an audience, you've got nothing. Then you have to have margin. There's a lot of people that can make products, but they don't know how to get their retail price, I very much like to anchor at the highest possible retail price I can find so that I have margin. Because if I'm going to build a brand through direct response, the audience is actually paying for the marketing. And I know if I do a great job of that, it ends up in Walmart. And I just lost 50% of the retail price in wholesale goods cost to Walmart. Make sense? Yeah. So it's that then the last piece is what I provide and that story. So when I leave, I have all of their data, hopefully, and their research and how does this work best? And give me your CAD drawings and all of the technical pieces like the CEO gets for the company. And then I walk away and I rebuild a suite of marketing products for them based upon the problem they're trying to solve and their audiences and then specify audience per creative. With GoPro, that was one of the things we did. We actually matched creatives to television stations. So you saw car racing on the Velocity Network and skiing on the Ski Network. Because I would rather have 20 really efficient producing commercials and pieces of content that were pointed at a vertical than one $35 million campaign that's pointed at nothing. Right. That's it.

How did you learn all this? Let's go back to the beginning of what were the things that allowed you to really understand and then first off comprehend marketing, but then structure it into creating campaigns that work. I mean, most people that I know that are world class direct response people have just spent so much time and years studying and learning and writing and the whole. In the real world, it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing.

Yeah, first of all, I agree with that. I believe everything's an experiment. Everything. My marriage is still an experiment. 32 years into it, it's all an experiment. So I came to this differently than most people did. I was a kid who was going to college. I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I wanted to skip school. One day my college roommate said, hey, let's go. I got an audition in a movie. So I went and auditioned for a movie just to skip school. And I got a lead role in a movie that Robert Altman directed. So I was in Seattle and suddenly I had a SAG card. And it was the late 80s, mid-80s, and they were making a lot of movies in Seattle. So there was me and Brendan Fraser and Tom Skerritt's son, Matt Skerritt. We were like the three guys in Seattle with SAG cards. So movies were rolling through town, and we were getting in every single movie. And when I got in a movie, I'd get $1,000 or something for being a day player, saying a few words. I asked to stay on as a PA because I didn't want to go back to my job at the grocery store. Yeah. And so I'd stay on for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days as a PA and I learned how films were made and how sets operated. Production assistant, like, I'll get your water. I'll get your chair, like. But they treated me nicer because I was in the movie. Like, it was kind of a nice position to be in. So I did that for a long time. And I was sitting in the Union Station waiting to film a scene with Jeff Bridges, the dude. And I didn't know him, but I stand next to him. He's kind of tall. He's about six, two, I think Jeff knows him. Really nice guy. And I said, hey, how do I get to be in your chair? Because I had visions of being a movie star now. And he said, it's super easy. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah. Make sure your dad's Lloyd Bridges. Your dad's Lloyd Bridges.

That's actually pretty damn funny.

Is there any other roots? You know? He goes, write. If you can learn to write, you can. Writers always are working in Hollywood. I hated writing like it was the thing I hated the most. But I listened to him. But this is one of the lessons I've learned is do the work first and then the universe rewards you. I do not hope for anything. I do the work first and then the thing shows up.

Right.

So this is truly how this happened. Went home, wrote two movies on a typewriter. We were not in computer land at that point. I was in college writing a typewriter still. And I worked in a grocery store. And this lady used to come through my store every day. And she was a talk show host on the local Seattle afternoon talk show. And her name was Dana Middleton. And, you know, they talked about the soaps and whoever had a new book out or whatever is coming to Seattle. So she came through my line one day, and I said, hey, Dana, I don't mean to bug you, but do you know anybody who. I've written a couple movies. Do you know anybody in Hollywood? She goes, as a matter of fact, I do. She goes, bring me your movies. So I went to King Co's and made some copies, put them in a plastic bag and kept them under my grocery store check stand on the express lane for A couple weeks she popped in and I was like, dana. I got that and I walked over with this plastic bag with these two scripts. And she goes, wow, you really did. You wrote these? I pulled them out. And she looks like. Most people in Hollywood, they just. They say they've written a movie, but it's really an idea for a movie. They didn't actually write it. She goes, well, I'll take these and read them. Do you mind if I give them to my sister? Like, no. She goes, well, I assume that's why you asked me. I'm like, no, who's your sister? She goes, my sister's Kathleen Kennedy. I'm like, this is pre Internet days. Who's that? She's Steven Spielberg's partner. She's produced all of his movies. Mike. Mike. Okay. Two weeks later, I get a call from Kathleen Kennedy, and I'm living in my shitty basement apartment. I just got married and Kathleen Kennedy's on the phone and I'm looking at my wife and it's like four in the afternoon. Like, my wife is like, I don't know who that fucking is. She's not impressed at all. So she says, how do you do this? The dialogue's really good. It's very unusual to have people sound like different people. Most writers, when they do this, when they're young, every character sounds like the same person. I said, I just see it and I take dictation and I see another character come in and I just write the voice. So they liked what I'd written and said, hey, we're thinking about enrolling you in this thing we have called the Chesterfield Film Company. So it's a writing program. So that kind of moved along. And I had this decision whether to move to Hollywood and pursue this or here I was married to this gal and we were just starting out and we had our families in Seattle. And I chickened out. Wow. The gun was to my head. And I was like. I backed off and I went into the grocery business and I ended up being a store operator, grocery store manager. Wow. And then I was building new grocery stores. Like, I accelerated that. I found mentors in the grocery business because I was very hungry. And I learned how to operate retail grocery stores and build new stores. One of the aspects of what we were doing was taking stores in gentrified neighborhoods and turning them from crappy stores into designer, high end whole food style stores. So I went to Austin and I learned from Lex Alexander and I looked John Mackey. And I went to these stores and toured and I really learned how to be a retail gourmet grocer. One of the features of the store were we had these cooking kiosks where we taught the audience in the store to buy better food. So these were people that were buying macaroni and cheese for 35 cents a box. And we had a French chef from a local restaurant who was very cool, and he'd come in and cook at the kiosk, and he'd make bria pasta with Asiago cheese and tomatoes. And, you know, and it was like there was $9 choice instead of the 35 cent choice.

Right.

And we taught the audience to do that. And I said, chef Jacques, this is one day. This is delicious. It's fantastic. And he goes, it's fucking Macalonian cheese. But that was a very important thing for me to learn was you could take something that was the same thing and reposition it.

Right.

It was just macaroni and cheese repositioned as French macaroni and cheese. And we. The cartoon. And now if you're seeing 10 million people through a grocery store in a year and you get $7 more out of all of those people. So now I'm learning about offers. And this kiosk is an infomercial. Yeah. So my friend calls me, says, hey, Sam Perlmutter is coming to town. He's George Foreman's agent. Want to meet him? Sure. So I go, dinner with Sam Perlmutter. Turns out he produces all these Jean Claude Van Damme movies. Dinner. I can't help myself. Like, I wrote a movie. He's like, oh, really? Thanks. Thinking Sean, thanks for teaching. Thanks for bringing this guy, Sean. He goes, well, and of course, we got a bag. Will you read it? He's like, I'll read it on the plane. So I wrote a movie called the Real Vanessa, which was a. I was telling you about this last night. It was a sex comedy that I positioned around Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley. He called me the next day and he said, I just got off the plane, and people on the plane were looking at me because I was laughing so hard. I was crying because I have no idea why I'm doing this, but I'm gonna option this film from a grocery dude. So my friend called me and he said, hey, I heard you sold a script to Sam Perlmutter's agent, George Foreman's agent. I said, yeah. Do you mind if we come in the store and shoot some George Foreman girl spots in the store like you're more than welcome to? So we arranged a deal. They came in. And they used the kiosk because they were doing man on the streets infomercials. You've seen this. How does it taste? How does it cook? So guy again said, hey, how did that work out with Sam Perlmeyer? I said, oh, so far, pretty good. We're negotiating. I think I'm going to sell this because you think you could write an infomercial? I said, absolutely. What's an infomercial? And then I realized an infomercial was a cooking demonstration. So the very first commercial I wrote, I wrote a short form for space bags. The bags you put your luggage, your clothes in and suck out there, suck the air out and can store it. And that. I worked with John Johns at Space Bag on that. Like, he was my first client that I ever faced. Then the second one was for a group out of LA called Silmark, and they had a product called the Ultimate Chopper, which was a food processor. Processor. I still can't say that I've sold a bunch of them, but I can't say that word. Yeah. And I quit my job at the grocery store when became the creative director of this agency. And my first infomercial did $80 million in the first six months. My second one did $100 million. My third one did $100 million. And it was just like, boom, boom, boom. Changed my whole life. And then fourth, fifth, and sixth did nothing. Nothing.

You think you lost your edge or what happened there?

I think that I thought I was so smart and so cool. What? I hadn't realized that the people were giving me products, were very well versed in what they were doing, and they knew exactly how to pick horses. And I did not know how to pick horses. I was picking me, right? My head was so far full of me that I couldn't do any wrong. Pop. God comes along and goes, oh, trip. So then I got real concerned about that. But I learned how to pick.

Wow.

So picking is one of the most important things you do in life. So that's why I qualify. I have tests. If you want to be my friend, there's a test. Not kidding you. If you want to be my client, there's a test. Like, I qualify people to appear in my life on the basis of ethics, morals, values. There's a process to it. And then I'm like, if you can sign up for me, this is who I am. I see who you are, and they go, yeah, okay. And I make agreements right up front with people about who we are and who we're going to be in Integrity moving forward. And I hold them to it and they hold me to it.

That's really cool. I like that. Questions? Throwing the mic, Doing it.

So when I. When I came to hang out with you at your house in Austin a few years ago and we like drank a lot and then did karaoke in your smoky garage, Was that the test? I sang with you. I was in this guy. You should see this guy doing karaoke in a smoke filled garage. It was amazing. But at that house, we had a pretty sexy garage. No, you actually. We did the test earlier that day. You probably don't even realize that we did it. I probably don't. So I'm curious. So I'll tell you guys what it is because one of my very first mentors taught it to me. Do you want to do it?

Yes, absolutely.

Would someone take notes for us? It's very simple notes. Just gonna have to write down a few things. Thank you. Okay, so Joe, tell me three people living or dead. So no fictional characters. You can't pick Tom Sawyer, but you can't pick Mark Twain. You could have known him or not known him. Three people that you strongly admire. Don't tell me why. Just give me three people.

George Carlin.

George Carlin.

Even though there's parts of him I don't admire. Jesus Christ. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the God version that people have. Just the human and what it represents. And. Abraham Lincoln.

Oh, very similar list. Some of those people have been on my list over the years. So let's start with George Carlin. What are three character traits of George Carlin that made him pop to mind now? Not results. Character traits.

He said what he wanted to say.

What kind of person does that?

Someone that has conviction and confidence.

Conviction and confidence. Saying what you want to say is an outcome of the character trait. Conviction and confidence. Okay.

Second, he can say things in a way to where he could. Other people just couldn't say it. I mean, if today it would be very hard for George Carlin to say the things he had in a certain culture. But I'd seen him live four different times. And even some of the stuff I was like, I cannot believe this shit is coming out of his mouth. Someone else would get killed if it wasn't him. So his ability to be able to push intensity right to the edge, but not over.

And what's the trait behind that?

Oh, boy. That trait is.

Courage. Courage. And I know we have three already, but since first two were kind of.

Bundled together and just funny, just humor. He could Package it up in humor and wanted to make people laugh.

Okay, let's go to the JC of Nazareth. Three character traits of him.

Caring, caring, compassionate, compassionate and willing to die for what he believed in.

What type of people are willing to die for what they believe in?

Courageous people that are willing to suffer for the advancement of humanity.

What type of people are willing to suffer? Suffers a behavior. Right. So what's the thing that leads to someone being willing to suffer?

Belief.

Okay. Third person.

And faith.

Faith, too.

Abraham Lincoln. You know, I admire him because he had tremendous mental illness and so many struggles and adversity. And he still just. He just wanted to lead for one. His ability to overcome failure and adversity. I mean, he failed numerous times.

What's the ability?

Yeah, resilience.

Resilience.

Thank you. Yeah, I was searching for that. He had an incredible ability to bring people that hated him and could not get along together and he could create collaborations. He literally, you know, team arrivals. He would bring together, you know, the book about Lincoln, Team arrivals. He would bring rivals together and get them to work together for the betterment of, you know, his belief in the country, in the United States.

So what's the thing behind that? That's the behavior. Person that can do that is he's a collaborator.

Collaborative and incredibly effective communicator.

So articulate communication.

Yeah, yeah. Orator. Orator could communicate.

Right. Okay, now I want you to go someplace dark for a second. Okay. We don't need to pick the person. I mean, you need to pick the person. We're not going to say the name. I want you to pick the antithesis of that. A person that if they walked in the room right now, you'd say, hey, Ron, I gotta stop the interview for a second. Right. Or you'd go, I'm leaving because I can't be in the room with him. Can you. Can you picture such a person? Yeah. Okay, can you give me three character traits of that person?

Evil Anthony Fauci would come to mind. Evil, manipulative, self serving, Narcissistic, Sociopathic. Psychopathic.

I noticed that math wasn't on your first list. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay, so we've got that.

Unethical.

Okay. Yep, got it. Like attracts like. We're very, very similar in a lot of these. So let's go to yet another place. What does the word integrity mean to you?

Being consistent with what you say you're going to do and doing it, keeping your word. Honoring other people. Ethical. Not just doing things right, but doing the right thing.

And what does the word honesty mean to you?

Truthful, Congruent.

So it's very difficult when you first get to know a person who they are. We can get into business relationships or marriages or things that go on for years and years and years, and then we discover that that person was not who we thought we were dating the entire time. This is a very fast shortcut because it's very hard for Joe to sit down at the first meeting and say, this is who I am. That positive list of people. Read his positive list. The first George Harlan Jesus. Oh, no, no. The character traits. I don't even care who the people are. Conviction, confidence. Courage. Humor. Caring. Compassionate. Belief, resilience. Collaborative, articulate. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Joe Polish, right to a T. I know exactly who I'm dealing with. Now you're thinking, oh, the dark side. We've got Joe's dark side. We've exposed Joe's dark side. No, we haven't. What we've exposed is the things that Joe has been hurt by in the past or the things that really are the thorns to him, that should he pick up the bottle one day, which he doesn't do, but let's say he had that night and went off the rails the next morning, he would look in the mirror and go, you were. That would be on the list. Those things would all be on his list. You did this. You did this. You did. That's the. That's why it's such radar too, for other people. So my list. Well, I'll tell you in a minute. The next is I ask integrity before honesty. Integrity and honesty are my two core values because those get us to everything else in life. Integrity means that I do what I say I'm going to do and I don't do what I say I'm not going to do. Most people forget the second half. You have to announce your can dos and your don't do's. And if I know that for you, we've got that agreement that we decide that's what integrity is. And you can live with my definition. I now can trust you in the foxhole. I can walk away from the company and I know exactly what's going to happen because Joe's told me the list of the things he's going to do, things he's not going to do. He can be my assistant, he can be my line producer, he can be my boss, he can be my friend. That's honesty. The reason I asked that before honesty, by the way, is so I know if a person's ever thought about the word? I hear a lot of crazy answers to that question. I hear a lot of it means just follow your heart, whatever's good for you. I hear that all the time. Integrity, it just means you're true to yourself. Just live. No, it's not what it means. Oh, yeah. I hope that this is a tool that you all implement going forward, I really do, because this will be a huge shortcut in life to getting the elves from the right. Honesty is you tell the truth. That's why he said truthful. And I see me lean in to stop him, like, don't say anything else, Joe. Please. Just leave it there. It's telling the truth with tact. Because you have to tell bad truths. You have to tell the ugly side from time to time. You have to have the courage to do it, and you have. You can't sit in the in silence when the truth needs to be said. You have to step forward and go, hey, I got to tell you this. I don't want to tell you this. It's not going to land real great. But it's got to be said. That test I've done with probably 2,600 employees in the grocery industry, which is what made me adequate CEO in that industry. I've done it with every employee. I've done it with every one of my friends. We did that on the deck that night, right? Now, in retrospect, you're like, oh, yeah, that's right. That was the second glass of whiskey.

You know, it's interesting about that too, because I've often thought about the honesty thing. We actually have. Lisa Sini, a genius network member, gave a talk. Oh, this is several years ago. If you love me, lie to me. That was the title of her 10 minute talk. And all of you can watch it in the membership site if you want. And she works in a. She's literally a designer. And a lot of her work has been in assisted living homes. And if someone's like losing their memory, they have dementia and you tell them certain things. You know, it's like, it was really interesting watching how the audience responded because it made people question, like, are you talking about line or, you know, lying by omission, not telling something, right? And it's one of those things where in 12 steps, making amends, it's like, you know, you make amends to others, except when to do so would injure them or others, right? You tell the truth, you make amends, except if you do so, it would injure someone. So I will pause Often on honesty, it's like, you know, the Germans are knocking at the door. You're hiding anyone, no one's here. No, you know, it's like, at what point do you lie? And I've always, you know, I've always had that sort of. And I say this because when I was a young, when I, when I was in, you know, even before high school, I had older people that taught me to shoplift and they taught me how to do drugs and they taught me how to sell drugs. And I was a criminal, basically. And there came a point where I was like, as crazy as it sounds, it was like on, it was a New Year's resolution. I will not steal, I will not sell drugs. I, I just can't do this anymore. And it literally overnight, if, you know, the rest of my life, whoever profits from the crime is guilty of it. And honesty and integrity to me is don't take advantage, don't take advantage of others. And so it's interesting because I don't just want to give an instant response that sounds good because, I mean, I'm clever enough to do that shit. However, it's like every time you do something that goes against your own integrity, it's like you said, you literally give a little piece of yourself away.

Yeah. And when they knock on the door, I say, yes, I'm hiding rats and mice and cockroaches. I just leave something off the list. I just forgot that I had something. Some people in the basement. So taking that forward, one of the more interesting pieces of this again, I've given this 2,600 times in, in an employment setting and then probably a thousand times more in additional after the grocery business, employment settings and friendships and what have you. One of the curious things to me is who doesn't ask for it back very. And I understand why most people don't. Once you pull somebody's guts apart in front of them and you show them, I got all your cards, they recoil for a minute. They're like, holy shit, I'm naked. The people that I really love are the people who go, what about yours? And then you go, oh, this is a keeper. And it doesn't happen very often. You'd be surprised. Use the tool. It does not happen very often that the person that you do this to goes, tell me about yourself. They're so, so, yeah, one, overwhelmed by the experience of it and two, so basking it. Like it's a psychological off balance moment for them. So I don't think ill of them. I just watch because I want to know the character of the people that I invite into my life.

First off, I got something to share with you that I think you're going to find so bizarre because we never talked about this, but what are yours first?

So, I mean, my people change from time to time, but Da Vinci is one of my people. People. Polymath. Polymath has to be interested, has to be curious, has to love creation. Christ appears on my list often for a little bit different reasons. In a way, I love the idea of the rebellion. The way he channeled his anger was so useful. There's a character trait in how you express anger. And you wouldn't think anger is necessarily. Or consternation is on the positive list. But I think we all have to deal with that. So how we deal with that is a big character thing to me because I'm a person with a temper. So how I deal with my temper and had to deal with that over the years is like, okay, that's important to me. So Robin Williams appears often on mine too. Yeah, funny. Spontaneous, empathetic. I think empathy might be in that. Questions of integrity and honesty. I might add empathy in that sometimes because to me, that's the ultimate. And back to the love and trust issues. Without. Without honesty, there isn't love. Trust actually comes before love and that a lot of us experience growing up with our parents. This conflict of. Your parents didn't trust you when you were a teenager, therefore, that's when you felt the love meter drop. And then as an adult, they never reinstitute the trust meter because they realized they had psychological power over you without trusting you. And they love their position as authority. And as you go forward in life, they like to hold on to that authority and you like to relinquish it to them. And so you can do things in life and you're. As an adult, you're still like, God, why my mom, dad still question me or asking me this? Because you're handing over the keys to authority by them not trusting you. And then you go, my parents don't love me. And you have this. What's wrong with the relationship of my adult self with my adult parents? Why can't I resolve this? And that's usually right in the middle of it. Yeah, that. It's a. It's a. It's not an intentional. And as a parent, you could probably, if those of us have kids, could go, oh, I could see myself doing that a little bit because it gives me an edge over. I already got your number, kid. We like that we like to have the other person's number, particularly our children. When you have a kid that's a high performer, then it becomes really wacky and out of balance. Tell me something crazy.

Let me ask you first, how would you define ethics?

Ethical ethics are agreed upon, are an agreed upon lattice work of society. So you find people who. It's a social construct of agreement. We decide what's ethical. I was very curious when Chris talked like, gosh, does this exactly what you do work in every culture? Would this work in Japan? Because it's a very different process of how societally the mind of the Japanese is put together compared to ours. It's a different brain. And so I think that what might be ethical here is not ethical there. And ethics is a religion that we sociologically practice.

Yeah, very good. So here's what's really weird. So I was taught this in a restaurant in Chicago after a strategic coach meeting by a guy that I can. This has lost track of him over the years. This is over 20, probably 22 years ago. And it was your purpose in life. And he had me write, you know, taught me this thing. And he's like, I want you to. It's one of the best ways to learn about other people. We've never had a discussion of what you took me through. And I have taught this to thousands of people. There's a handful of people in here I think I've done probably taken through the Purpose in Life exercise. It's a great thing when you first start dating someone. It's kind of a. You know, I was trying to tell Neil Strauss he should put this into it if he ever writes another book on it. But anyway, so you. The Purpose in Life, you date it. You take a piece of paper, you draw a line down the middle of it, and then you draw a line. And then you have six. You draw six boxes on the left, and you basically list three names of people that you know, and they know you. They could be dead, they could be alive, they could be, you know, parents, they could be friends, teachers, whatever, but you know them and they had a relationship with you. So you both know each other. And then on the right side, you write three qualities and characteristics of each one of them that you like and admire. And then on the bottom column, you write three people that you know of, but they don't know you. And they could be dead or alive. They could be mythical figures, they could be actors. They could be, you know, if you're into, say, you know, Spider man, or it could be you know, it could be a made up fantasy figure, it could be a spiritual leader, it could be a warlord, whatever. And you write three names and then the same thing. And then people write three qualities and characteristics that they like and admire. And then you end up having basically 18 qualities and characteristics. And then people will do that. It takes a few minutes to do that. I have them then fold the piece of paper in half and then read. Well, just say who they are first and then do it. You know, explain who the person is. Just what you do.

Yeah, very similar.

And then, and then I have them read, okay, now leave out the names. Just read the quality and characteristics. And I'm like, that's your purpose in life. The reason you have the ability to like and admire somebody else is because there's qualities. You wouldn't be able to admire a quality and a characteristic if you didn't want it in your own life. And so when you did this, I was like going, this is absolutely bizarre. This is like, it's. I mean, because we never had this discussion.

No, no, no, no.

And which is really cool. So I really appreciate it. And I would just reiterate. He's absolutely right. You know, this is one of the greatest ways to know what another person's value system are, what they care about, what makes them tick. And it's really interesting in a position like this to do it, you know, like. Yeah. And what's funny is I have a lot of different people over the years that I look at. But what happens is you'll see a lot of the same things. When people have a list of 18, you'll often see caring or funny or driven or whatever. The thing is, intense people have intense things. People that are really reflected. But it is a great way to understand. So it's a great test.

And I have had the experience of doing this and having very negative results. And I'll give you an example. I won't tell the person, but the results were, I was sitting across from a sociopath, so what do you think I did? I told them. I told them they were a sociopath.

Looking back, would you have left that one out?

Nope. Because you know what it did? What? Got them out of my life permanently. Yeah. They won't come near me and they're at events and I see them and they see me. I'm saying it by another person, though. I don't believe it's the person. You know, this person stays away from me. And I love that. What are the answers a sociopath gives? Yeah. What were the characteristics, they pick people that are in positions of high leadership and high visibility that are praised. They're all narcissistic answers. I want to be famous like that. And they have a tough time getting to character traits because they don't understand character. And they continue to talk about success, wealth and money. And they'll go like, you could pick Steve Jobs, I'm fine with that. But if you can pick Steve Jobs and you can't tell me one of his character traits, do you spend 30 minutes on Steve Jobs? Like you can't answer the question.

You're so right. Because there's so many narcissists that I've had go through this. And it's always, they pick people with high status. And not necessarily, you know, because even in my book I read there's a big difference between character and capabilities. Hitler had enormous capabilities. A lot of the political leaders right.

Now, oh yeah, he's a talented guy.

Yeah, lots of capabilities. But the character is shit from my perspective of what? Yeah, yeah.

And then you get to truth and integrity and they say, or honesty and integrity and they say things like, you tell your truth, there's no idea about the truth. Like there's no concept of the truth. Their truth is the truth. But it'll become very evident.

What I often will tell people too is you don't have to like every quality and characteristic about the person. Because I know many people that there's parts of them I admire and other parts it's like, not so much. And the older I've gotten and I've met most of the heroes and people I want to meet, and I am less and less impressed with people today than I ever was 20, 30 years ago. Because you learn humans are fucked up. I mean, there's just a lot of crazy shit. And I look at my own self where I'm like, man, don't believe your own pr. That's such a dangerous thing because, you.

Know, super useful in employment to find people that are, you know, in my case, people that are integrators and finishers. I'm a starter. I'm a, I'm an all day starter. So I immediately have to, you know, I'm a writer. I create films. I create like, I got a script, I can direct it. I am not sitting in the edit bay. I will check your edits. I will come in and give my notes on your edits. But it's so hard for me to sit. I can sit on set for four weeks and shoot something, but I cannot sit for Four weeks in an edit bay. I can come in for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour a day, but I'm out. I can't live that way. But I need those people and there's people that love that.

Well, and I think this is quite a few people in the room. Like, I'm a baton runner. I mean, right out of the gate, I'm good with the baton, but if I don't have anyone to hand the baton to, I have a big pile of batons. And so my life is been starting races and there's no one that will take this thing and run the rest of the race for me. I even literally have batons in the back room. Eunice, do you know where they're at? And if you go in the the what's in it for them room with the whiteboard on that little shelf, there's.

Yeah.

Bring the whole bag of them because I actually want to show you guys. I was going to use this and I loved it. I. I think you'll dislike the idea. I think a few of you here will be able to incorporate this idea into your own marketing campaigns and things like that. But I have already gotten quotes for Genius Network batons because the batons are super lightweight and every quick start entrepreneur totally gets the analogy. And I tell the whole thing about the million dollar racehorse and stuff. And you literally have to have a stable of people if you do anything within team in order to, you know, make some of your ideas come to life. Because Dan Sullivan says I can, you know, I can accomplish anything I want in life as long as I'm not the one that finishes it. Don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulist show. Subscribe today@thejopolishow.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit thejopolishow.com.