Clients You Must Avoid to Save Your Business (And Your Sanity)! Feat. Chris Voss & Daymond John

I will just say that we had a conversation where we were on the phone catching up and you were telling me about how you're using half versus half. And I was so fascinated by what you said. I was like, we have got to share this with all the Genius Network members. This particular insight and awareness and skill and technique and listening that you have has been very valuable. So that's why I've got— yeah, that's what I want to talk to you about. So I'll let you take it from there.

Yeah, well, I mean, when I first heard about it from you, it just made sense. This is a really liberating idea. And it's a little bit harder to embrace early on when you're hungry for clients, customers, that there are a lot of people that you should just not take in, you should not talk to at all, period, ever. And maybe one of the key liberating moments for me was we were We're going to run one of those Facebook lookalike audiences things to target marketing. And Facebook is, they got these insidious algorithms. You might as well take advantage of them, right? Not just the bad guys. And they came back and they basically said, there's 2 million people that fit your perfect client profile in the US. And I'm like, 2 million? We're going to walk away from the vast majority of people out there and there's still 2 million people that we got to get to and we got to serve. And so we really began to accelerate along those lines, just adopting, embracing the idea that you planted in us.

Yeah, and so what he's referring to is ELF versus HAF.

We'll get into that. I got some slides. I get—

He's going to pull this weird FBI shit on me here. No, I'm kidding.

So, I wanna run a couple and I wanna talk. And so, if you guys would put my PowerPoint up. This first one is really, it's an advertisement, but it's not really an advertisement for me. Is that thing ready?

Yes, I think it's. And there you go, you can see it up front here on the monitor.

So that's not a bad video, right? I got that directly as a result of being a member of Genius Network. We talk about the benefits of being part of Genius Network and the stuff that ends up just kinda coming your way, falling out of the sky, sky or that the universe attracts because of the people that are involved in Genius Network. And then we were at a meeting and somebody came on and they call it the perfect intro video. We could do this perfect intro for your business. And they knew I was going to be at the meeting and they made it for me and gave it to me. And so, I mean, there's so many additional fringe benefits from the kind of people that are attracted to what you've built. And I just want to bring that as an example. I wanted to thank you for it.

Thank you, thank you.

So to get into the Alf Half thing, and also, you know, I wanted to welcome you back. I had to put that in. You know, and I knew I was gonna be late. I apologize for that. But first of all, it's not a sin to not get the deal. It's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal. 'Cause every one of you as an entrepreneur, your most valuable commodity that's engaged in every single negotiation you're engaged in is what? Time. And this is why this stuff kills you. Now it's not only a sin to take a long time to not get the deal, it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal. And in my company we've always said no deal is better than a bad deal. And we learned that the hard way because we had a deal in 2009, 2010 that was lucrative. The L in half could be lucrative. But it was blood money. And for a long time, we didn't even think we're going to get paid. Almost a year's worth of work, a lot of money that I promised people. It just went really bad. It turned into blood money. My opinion of lawyers deteriorated as we went through it until I finally found a lawyer who knew what they were talking about. By the way, if you get a dispute between states, if you're in one state and another one, the other person, if they're cheating you, He's in another state. Find a lawyer that's comfortable with being in the Northern District Federal Court, Northern District of Virginia. The Northern District of Virginia is affectionately known as the Rocket Docket. And the other side who's trying to bury you with motions and legal fees, if they're wrong, as soon as they get to the Rocket Docket, they settle with you right away. Or as soon as they find out where they are, they settle. And I went back and forth with lawyers that kept telling me there was nothing you could do. And we finally came across a female attorney and she said, "The rocket docket is where you want to be." And we settled quickly. So, you know, just as a side note, great place to be. But it took us a long time. It was a bad deal. It was blood money. It was a lot of money and it was blood money. And then that was before I learned what you're talking about, and so now it just makes sense. So it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal. All right, so else, easy, lucrative, fun. Bing. And all right, so we got little pictures for each one, because I figured hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, what does this look like? These are types that you will see and you will start to look out for. And again, the lame, the lucrative. Lucrative is still blood money. Just because there's a lot of money there, that's one of the things that's going to make you vulnerable to this whole concept. And then finally, frustrating. Now, I learned about this concept called the drama triangle way back when I was on a suicide hotline. If you've been in crisis intervention or therapy, dysfunctional behavior and dysfunctional relationships, you've probably come across a drama triangle at some point in time. And so since there were some F-words already used, used earlier, I'll go ahead and go with them because they're great adjectives. For people that are making a point of fucking with you and soaking up your time and sucking the life out of you. And if they're calling suicide hotlines, then they're also business people and also the people that you interact with. And they told us there are basically 3 types, the rescuer, the persecutor, and the victim. And then they play one role And as soon as they suck you into a role, you know, like, I need your help. You know, if they're being victimized, you know, I'm really in a jam. You got to help me figure this out. And you offer some suggestions, which we would do on a hotline, then they'd attack you for those suggestions. They become immediately, they'd switch from one position to the triangle or another, keeping you off balance. And as I was knocking out the profiles for the halves, I'm like, this is a drama triangle. It's exactly what this is, because these people are going to run this game on you. Some of them can't help it, some of them because they can. You know, I went to somebody, somebody was cheating me, and I had a friend said, he didn't cheat you because he could, he cheated you because he couldn't help himself. So what their motivations are doesn't matter. But it's still happening, and it's still keeping you off guard. So in our Halfs, you know, this is. I took Joe's. I thought Joe's acronym was dead on. He's got a great gut instinct for human behavior. Might you get sucked into it? And you know, my company, we think about the different kind of emotions because we want to diagnose what's going on. Like if I'm getting frustrated. If you're getting frustrated, the negative behavior, frustration is about the future. You get frustrated over something that you envision was going to happen in the future and you're having trouble getting there. So if you feel frustration and you're not sure what's going on, it's very much about someone or something is denying you access to something in the future. That's what frustration is about. Annoying is about something that has happened. As you begin to isolate where this is coming from and interpret your gut instinct, and then you can trace it down a little bit more. But very much like the drama triangle, they're going to move around on you. When they call you on the phone, or they try to engage with you for whatever it is. So, it's not just one type of behavior, it's different types of behavior that bounce around. And it's invisible. This is death by 1,000 cuts. So, we implemented this in our company early on. Our director of business development, a young lady named Davy Johnson, who's brilliant. She's just so much fun to work with, and she learns fast. For her, mistakes are learning accelerators. She loves making mistakes. Some people are horrified by it, she loves it. She gets smarter faster by screwing up. So I started telling her about the half-elf thing. I said, this is what it is. Let's start to look for it and let's develop our own profiles. What do they say so we know right off the bat that we will turn and walk away? So we've implemented this with a tremendous amount of success. And then I just recently asked her, I said, so what's it costing us?

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Because you gotta— you guys gotta know what it's actually literally costing you. I'm working on a book on real estate now, and the guy that I'm working on the book, it's his opinion that a half costs you two halves. Every bad customer is costing you business with at least two good customers. Start to think about how that's picking your pocket. So then I ran it past Davey. I said, what do you think the costs are? Of halves versus wholes. And she said, there are at least 2, if not 3. Now, think about what you make an hour, or you're making a gig. Like when I got out of the FBI, you know, there's some guys used to brag like, I don't work for less than $1,000 a day. And one of my friends pointed out to me about the person that said this, he said, first of all, when he gets a $1,000 a day gig, it costs him 3 days. So he's really working for $300 a day. And then it costs him 2 months to get that gig. So he ain't working for $1,000 a day, he's working for $1,000 for every 3 months. But people tell them this stuff in their head, like, would you take a million-dollar gig? Well, what if it took you 2 years to get your million dollars? You didn't make $2 million, you made a lot less. So this is what they cost you. And that's just in delivery. And she said, I think they actually cost us a lot more in preparation, probably 5. The amount of time your most valuable commodity spent on one half, you could have served 5 elves. And then finally, since she keeps track of that, she says, and our halfs are not repeaters. The alfs are the repeaters for a whole variety of reasons. So ideally, it just begins to catch you. Ideally, you're beginning to see how just self-destructive it is to not start learning the difference and walking away. And our biggest problem and my company's biggest problem right now having, adopting this, meeting the demand, intentionally walking away from more and more people. Our biggest problem is meeting the demand of the else. You're going to have the same problem because you're going to discover them. And you hear it echoed. You've heard it echoed with the different people you've heard talk about being successful in business. I got successful as soon as I stopped saying yes to a lot of stuff, started saying no to more. These are people that their gut instincts, whether they realize it or not, say no to the haves. The more people they said no to, and then I'm real— and if you think about it, these are the people, their gut instinct is developing more and more. And there's a line that I'm going to throw out that I learned from Dan Sullivan, because, you know, Dan, he's got a line that we're going to share in a second in behavior. That as soon as it comes out of somebody's mouth, they run the other direction, just not interested in them. And so we're going to get into that, and those are on your tools. But is there anything— I've been talking the whole time— anything you want to add?

No, I'm just really loving this because it is just seeing the concept of elf versus half. And in Genius Network meetings, we do the tool where people list who are the people, the projects, the things that they're doing that are elf and which ones are half. So that they can eliminate more half from their life and have more elf. But, the depth that you've gone into this and then identifying phrases which you're going to share and stuff is incredibly valuable. So, to me, this is validation and acknowledgment of stuff. And then, this is what real collaboration is where you take an idea and a concept and you give it to someone else who's very smart in their particular area and they're able to use it. So, to me, I'm just sitting there going, "I love this." I mean, I really do. I don't know if it was the— what organization that Dan told— you mentioned this years ago, Dan, where something like 80% of customers in some businesses are not profitable, and they are supported by the 20% that are. Because the pain-in-the-ass people, if you want to take the 80/20 rule— and of course, there's nuances and variations. But the fact of the matter is, as you're saying this, I'm sitting there thinking, who are the 12 Genius Network members, who are the ones that have been the half? And the amount, you know, that whole squeaky wheel gets the oil sort of line. Well, Peter Diamandis has the flip side of that, which is the squeaky oil gets replaced, right? Not the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And there are a lot of clients, you know, that whole rule of, you know, the customer is always right, you know, Dan's talked, it's bullshit.

Yeah.

Because if you think the customer is always right, you never get any sleep, you never have any free time. You know, the customer is not king. It says that, you know, the customer is king. Well, no, they're not. The customer is a partnership. And I even, my very first marketing course, it was clients, not customers, because customer implies someone that buys something from you. Client implies someone you have a relationship with. So this really represents to me about how to develop relationships, not just people that want something or they want to, you know, want the best price, they're skeptical and all that. So I, I'm just commenting, it's, it's, it's great. So I appreciate it.

And some of this is really hard for people too, because you think of yourself as a good person. You don't want to abandon someone. And this is absolutely abandoning people who are just not for you. And it's not their fault. You're not blaming them. You're not getting mad at them. Bad fit. But it's just not letting them soak up your life because they're going to hold you back. They're going to do all— there's just nothing good. And you're not good for them. I mean, if they're a half for you, you might be a half for them. Yeah. So you're not necessarily doing them any favors either. Exactly.

Yeah. It's a right fit or wrong fit client for you. Yeah, you know, and look, people that are total leeches, there's plenty of other people they can suck the lifeblood out of those people too, you know, if you want to just add a compassionate twist on what Chris is talking about here.

Yeah, and then, you know, these also represent the complainers, the trolls, the rock throwers. I mean, there was a comment earlier, Brett, the Canadian dude.

Yeah, Brett Wilson.

You know, he talked about people asking, you know, what about the negativity? Like I get pretty, overall on Instagram, I'm really supportive. And still I get some negative comments and I put something up and some guy said to me like, look, are you, the negative comments on your post, does that get you down? I'm like, did you look at the ratio?

Yeah.

Like look at the ratio. So once you start adopting this, people that are for you, you don't got to serve everybody. Customer's not always right. The critic is not always right. And the critic is usually wrong. And you're just better off like, no bad on anybody. We're just going to walk away, which also gets to— I don't have a lot of presentation on how you deal with a half. But the short answer is walk away respectfully. Like, however you walk away.

Respectfully.

Now that doesn't mean when you walk away, you're still not going to take some shots. And when we're teaching this in real estate, one of the agents didn't want to collaborate and be victimized by a particular half and walked away. And they were unsure as to whether or not it was a proper thing to do to walk away and got a follow-up just critical email. We were going to do business with you, but you refused to do this. And because you refused to provide the service that we wanted from you, then that's why we're not going to do business with you. And they were beside themselves. And they called me on the phone. They're like, holy cow, did we do the wrong thing? And I'm like, that's predatory behavior. And a predator gets angry with a victim for not allowing themselves to be victimized. Victimize. So just by taking this approach, don't assume that it's going to be all sunshine and roses. Because the people that you will not allow them to victimize you, a predator becomes angry with a victim for not being a victim. So you're going to take some heat no matter how respectful you are when you walk away and you need to walk away respectfully. The last impression is a lasting impression. But don't assume that because you're nice and respectful, that that's always going to trigger the same type of behavior in return. You're going to take some heat. And that's confirmation that you did the right thing. Yeah.

That's great. I'll just say this, because I'm loving this conversation. I think it was Bill Bacharach wrote Value-Based Selling for financial service people. And I think it was in the '90s. He had like 5 ways he categorized clients. The first one was great clients. They love you, they refer you, they're a pleasure to deal with. The second was sometimes worth helping. So sometimes they were okay. The third was fun but hopeless. They're nice people, but they never really give you any money. But they're not evil people. The third is— or fourth is uses you for information. And the fifth is doesn't trust anybody. And so, if you were to say, take that as an 80/20 rule, there'd be like 20% that were great clients, then maybe the sometimes worth helping could be turned into a great client. Then the fun but hopeless uses you for information, doesn't trust anybody. And when I heard that, you know, and here I was with my marketing methods, ELF marketing, using free recorded messages, consumer awareness guides, education-based marketing, all of these methods to sift, sort, and screen. Price shoppers, pain-in-the-ass clients, doing all of this marketing in advance to deliver to me people that were pre-interested, pre-motivated, pre-qualified, and predisposed to give me money. So, I already had built-in marketing. But then by the time you get them, there's all these other things. So, Dan has the opportunity filter where there's 5 ways you get paid. You get rewarded with money, people utilize you, people appreciate you, people refer you, and then they enhance you. And I was always reading these books on how much is each minute of your day worth, how much time in all these books on closing and marketing. And I was like, you know, until Dan showed me that, I was like, you know, the number one criteria for me doing business with someone using Dan's model is do they enhance me? Do they utilize me? That's why I have a Genius Seller Group. I don't sell business opportunities. I like people that can actually do something with what we offer. So I like dealing with players with money. That works for me, right? They've already proven something, that they have a capability. So, and then, you know, do they appreciate me? Because I like to be appreciated. Do they refer me? And 5, do they pay me? I am a capitalist. I want to make money, but that's not the number 1 thing that I look at. And then I, so I take the opportunity filter, the other model, and then elf versus half. And my brain now has just been trained to use that as a filter when I encounter people. And I kind of like, is this person elf? Is this person half? If it's half, half, can it become elf? You know, that sort of thing. And this just adds a whole nother dimension to it. Because now there's a language gene that you have identified because of how much you know about negotiation. And in your background, there's like, wow, this adds a whole nother layer to it. So to me, I'm seeing such an incredibly useful possibility and capability here that we're now sharing with everybody. So yeah, I'm loving this stuff.

Yeah. And the point is implement it. I mean, listen to how I'm putting it, listening to how somebody else puts it. Listen to how Joe Polish puts it. It'll begin to resonate with you as soon as you start road testing it. And you just have to. So the parent, and a lot of people do this and a lot of people start combining these. Some of this is fascinating. You get somebody who wants to see a listing of your costs. Bad sign. Start, you may not be ready to run for the hills now when you hear that, but we are. And if you start paying attention and pulling your own data, which I'll show you some of the ways to do that, You're gonna go running from the hills. This is a predatory move. And the parent as predator, 'cause they're gonna help you. And I've heard people on supply chain negotiations, this is one of the procurement person or supply chain person, who often dangle big contracts. And with this move, they've told me they have to be really careful about who they buy from, because if they become the biggest buyer of that provider of the service, they'll put them out of business. I think about that as an ethic to start with. Like they're intentionally engaging in a practice that if they become your best customer, they will drive you out of business. And this is what that looks like because they're saying like, you know, I could help. I need to see a listing you caused. I saw an email once from a company that said, in the interest of having a great relationship, we need to see a listing of all your costs. Like, first of all, how long would it take you to pull that together? Okay. Think about the time suck on that. The one more thing, those always asking for one more thing. You know, it seems reasonable. Or the parental sort of predatory move here. And as I said, these move back and forth. They want to know, well, what was the cost of this component? Because we don't want it. So, when you drop that out, then we want a discount. And you're not sure whether or not you should comply with this, because they're taking an approach that they're just helping you. I'm cost optimization. I'm good at this stuff. I'm going to help you get better. I'm going to be the parent. I'm going to help your business. So we get this a lot. I need to know how you're going to do it. No, you don't. And I actually said to one company once who was really driving at us hard on this, I said, be happy to tell you once we've made a mutual commitment.

Legitimate.

And then they kind of went dead silent. Because the other thing why they will punish you for not engaging in this behavior, there are a lot of people out there that will do it. So they've been conditioned that it's what legitimate people, business people do. It's not what real successes do. But a lot of people that are on their learning journey, their way along the ladder, they think early on, well, you know, I mean, they're just trying to, I'm collaborative, I'm cooperative, I'm trying to serve you. The customer's always right. My heart is in the right place. You don't realize that these are traps. But when they tell you, you know, we got a real problem. I need to know how you're going to fix our problem. That feels good to you. You feel like the savior. That's one of the reasons why this becoming a victim in social interactions, Suicide hotline or in business is so seductive to you because then you get to be the savior and that's the whole point. Or they triggered your sympathy because they're a victim either of you because you're failing to cooperate or circumstances. You know, we're in a really bad place. You know, we need you to help us.

We need you to save us.

We need you to rescue us. Somebody's coming to you to be rescued. If you're running a charitable organization, maybe, but it's going to be very costly. And if they drop— anytime somebody's dropping the F-bomb on you, the word fair in any negotiation, that is a victimizing word. Just want what's fair. We want a fair offering for you. We want a fair price. Well, if you don't give them a fair price, then what are you doing? You're treating them unfairly. They're becoming a victim. They've made you the aggressor. And that, when we first started developing the Black Swan Method, that was the first word that jumped out at us because that comes up in almost every business interaction you have. Somebody is going to drop the F-bomb. At some point in time on you. And it is one— it's emotional blackmail when somebody drops it.

Hmm, that is really good. I'm listening to you talk about this, and I remember when I was selling my courses to carpet cleaners, like, at the head, you know, we're very focused in that niche. And not less than 10 times I had received a letter. Sometimes they came in by fax because I started selling these things in the '90s, and I'm I remember one person had sent over before they were to buy my marketing course, please send me the name of 5 clients, what their phone numbers are so I could talk to them, how long they've been using your stuff, how much each one of them has made as a result of this whole list of demands. And I'm reading this like an entire letter, like to buy like a course that comes with a 1-year, 100% money-back guarantee. And they faxed it and I wrote on the fax, no, and faxed it back.

Yeah, clap for that one.

It was so funny. But yeah, so these are all the things that they say, and this is— yeah, you're absolutely right, the fairer they are.

And if you'd have done that, how long would it take you to do it? And you're not getting paid while you're doing that, right?

Exactly.

They're keeping you from an elf.

Yeah. No, you are showing how people gaslight people in negotiations here.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Look, maybe you guys think this way, and maybe you guys, if some of you start talking about win-win negotiation right off the bat, that's a habit to get out of. If that win-win comes out of your mouth when you're talking to us within the first minute or two, you're not far from me hanging up the phone on you. The predators use win-win to soften the other side up. They're testing you to see if they can prey upon you. Anybody that gets really excited when they hear this, what the other side really means is, I'm going to win a lot. That's I win. So if it comes up early, we learned a long time ago, watch out.

And can I say this also, Chris, because on that one, You know, when we were talking about this and going through this on our conversation, when we first started talking about this, you know, I thought, man, you know, I've said win-win. I want win-win. I don't lead with it. It's not the first thing out of my mouth. And I do genuinely want win-win. And, you know, the more I've thought about this is Franklin Covey, you know, with 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I mean, he has popularized— I mean, so many people have read the book, think win-win. So, I think in a lot of ways what he wrote a book about, a lot of people that are predators have actually used that as a way to basically steamroll people.

Yeah.

So it was a really interesting distinction when you got me to see that and think about, OK, is it the people intentionally want to win-win? Or is it they don't know any better? And it made me rethink about that whole term.

My Harvard colleagues, and I can't remember which book it was in, but they put a graphic up a long time ago and they characterized the claim value win-lose negotiator, the create value was a win-win negotiator. And then they put up a grid showing how people did against the other side. And when a claim value win-lose negotiator comes up against a create value win-win negotiator, the claim value negotiator almost always destroys them. Now, the win-win, win-win, they come up with like they maybe get a B-grade outcome. But the claim value, the predator knows that if the other side is really collaborative, really win-win, they are vulnerable and I will destroy them. Now, have you given up on whatever? Is a phrase right straight out of the Black Swan Method. 100%, we have taught people this, but it's contextual. Now, this is ridiculously effective. If somebody is ghosting you or it appears they've given up on it, the context of this is they've got something they'd have to have given up on. "None." Now when I get this, and I get this a lot in an opening communication, my gut instinct is, "How can I have given up on something when I never even spoke to you?" But the predators are out there picking up the Black Swan Method too, and they're only picking up the stuff that they know, and this no-oriented questions are very, very, very powerful. And so I will always entertain a brief conversation with these people to see what they're like, because to me, if the opening conversation is, have you given up on buying my SEO, or whatever the hell it is that they're hustling, I'm like, I've got a really bad feeling here. I'm going to go ahead and engage and see if I can confirm that this is a very predatory person. And without exception, so far, it's been a predator on the other side when this is the opening line. So some of you might be using it as your opening line. You're finding it's very effective. I can't help that. My data is every single time somebody uses one of my lines on me out of context, they're using it because it's sucking a lot of people in and it's out of context. And like I said, I'll go ahead and talk to him to confirm my data. There's a lot of this stuff we go ahead and talk to people just to confirm our initial diagnosis. Most of these, my data, this hasn't failed me yet. If this is an opening line, the person on the other side is bad news or bad fit, to be fair.

Yes.

And one or two, because these are two different things. Somebody says, I have a great opportunity for you. Now, that's either a predatory line or an incredibly naive line, and either one of them is going to suck the life out of you. And because what that means is you're going to have to do all the work. I, after all, I brought you the opportunity. Thank God for me. And it's also the way the predators will suck you in, because people get taken hostage to the future. Opportunity. Yeah, I want opportunity. And you find yourself in a real downward death spiral trying to get that opportunity. When people want to put me— we get calls all the time. There's going to be 20 billionaires in a room. It's a great opportunity. Thank you, but no. Because what is that telling me? It's such a great opportunity, they don't want to pay me anything, and they're relying on me 1,000% to then do all the follow-on business and do all the work to mine the opportunity on the other side. And there are some very legitimate groups that are constantly trying to get me or somebody in my staff in to speak for nothing. 'Cause the opportunity is so great because of the value of the people that are gonna be in the room. You're just gonna be lucky to be in a room with them. It's a great opportunity. And they're shocked. I mean, they get mad at us 'cause they got a lot of legitimate people they could put in a room. And we're just not there. And then the feedback that we get is that these guys are being unreasonable. And we're like, all right. You could take that approach. But we're not— we've seen it enough times, we're not sucked into this great opportunity thing.

Let me ask you a question on that too, because what level of rapport do you have to have with someone? Because I'm not paying you to be here, you're a paying Genius Network member, and you're on Genius Network faculty. And we also have a great relationship. We help each other, that sort of stuff. And I've done a lot of presentations at places that don't pay me a speaker fee because I do leverage what's going to be in the room or what's going to happen in the strategic byproducts. And there's others where I know they're just using it because they're trying to get a free speaker. They're trying to do that sort of stuff. So what is your evaluation process for when you're willing to not only do something or pay? I mean, why do you pay to be in Genius Hour?

And that's a great question which I have asked myself. I have a great opportunity, but I gotta have a good answer, right? Because I am here, right? And I gotta know why. Joe doesn't approach you with his hand out. Joe and the people that you want to be associated with, they come to you with something for you. And so, I'm ridiculously easy. I am very into reciprocity on almost any display of generosity. Like if you've come to me and you've actually brought something to me, and Joe was doing nice stuff, like almost everybody here, you know that Joe has been doing nice stuff for you before he ever asked anything of you. And I attended a couple conferences. I mean, you refer me to people, you start sending people my way. We didn't have any kind of a financial relationship. A relationship, you know, your phrase, life gives to the giver. Somebody approaches you bringing value first, then like, wow, yeah, I mean, I'm going to do a free speech, a free speech in Berlin for a group based solely because the guy that asked me to do it has already done some really big favors for me. Now, I would never do that favor for that group ever. But I'm doing it because he asked me to. And he benefited me with no expectation of any sort of return first. And that's the difference. Somebody who's started by actually helping me out. And then the generosity gets started and it's hard to pay back because somebody, life gives to the giver. I mean, Joe Polish, somebody really smart says that a whole bunch of times. And that's the difference. But if somebody starts out basically with their hand out, I'm like, okay, well, that's the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. So if they start with an approach with their hand out or their hand in your pocket first, that's how they're always going to be. And that is not you. And that's the difference.

Thank you.

I have a fascination with this idea that enterprise is the most powerful force for good on the planet when the right people are leading it. And that's a big caveat, right? The only reason a business should exist is to create some value. And so I've had this thought for a long time about, You know, we are in a world today where business should be much more noble. And every— you can't scale the back end of a business until you can scale the sales. Like when we talk about scaling a business, you've got to scale the sales. Money spent on the back end is overcapitalization until you figure out how to scale the selling. Right. And so selling should be a force for good. You know, like a surgeon has to— In 2019, I injured my back badly in Mexico. It's not the right place to do it, right? I had a massive disc rupture, so I was in a wheelchair and everything else. Made it back to LA where my wife was, got back to Australia. The doctor in Sydney saying, you need surgery today, it's going to happen, right? And if not, we don't know how much mobility you're going to get back. I mean, this was the start of a 2-year recovery, surgery, weeks in the spinal ward and all this sort of business. That surgeon had a job to pitch surgery to me, right? He's got a job to make a sale, right? And I live in Perth, so I've got to have this surgery before I fly across the country. And of course, everyone's saying, oh, don't ever let anyone operate on your back and stuff. And the surgeon's going, you need surgery. And here's the thing. All value lives in the ambiguity. There's no value in the thing that everybody knows about. The value is always in the ambiguity. So I'm going to go to a weird place in a minute, right? With the surgeon, he says, you need surgery. I go, I don't want to get surgery. Like, what if I end up in a wheelchair? And then he gave me one line that was the pitch. He said, Simon, being in a wheelchair is not your biggest risk. And I went, it's not? What is? He said, permanent incontinence. Ambiguity, right? Who thinks of that?

Right.

He said, you can travel the world from a wheelchair just like you do right now. But, you know, if we don't get this sorted, all the nerves are going to die to the lower half of your body and then you've got bigger problems. And I went like, let's go.

Yeah. I mean, talk about an irresistible offer, I guess.

So sales for a doctor is actually the start of the healing process. So business should be the most powerful force for good on the planet, but we can only do that when we sell well. And then there's a whole bunch of questions behind that. So people come to us for models and can we help them to sell and can we help them think through their business issues and leadership and structure and so on. But I think for me, the stuff that people probably don't really realize is at the heart of everything we do. Business is an enormous responsibility. And I think the primary starting point of that responsibility is how well and how ethically and how transparently you sell. So I've been in this pursuit for how do we create a much more transparent sales process where people are making really informed— they're not prisoner clients, they're hero clients. They've bought from you to do something bigger. So I come from this small little town where you'd go down to the butcher's and get meat and bring it home. And once a month they'd send the account to your parents. No one ever handed money over the counter. It was all trust-based to business globally. And the bigger question is, isn't that how business should be? So, I mean, there's lots of other things I could talk about. For me, that's a really big driver. What do we do to make business the most noble thing we do?

Well, and look, even the way you talk, and I mean, it's clear that you, have a lot of, a lot of knowledge and a lot of doing the reps under your belt on how to present, right? So, and you're very non-threatening and you are very much— you come up— we're going to get into drawing. So this— I got my iPad here. I'm so— I actually want to learn from you about how you, you interact with this too, even, even before the filming of this is interesting, you know, just think about the setup and stuff. So I've always I really like the whole concept that people love to be sold, they hate to be pressured, right? So if you do selling in a certain way, it's enjoyable. You're helping lead someone to where they want to go. And I despise the unethical use of marketing and selling. I don't know how you would frame this, but I will often say to people that are early on learning about marketing, they're like, they'll have, I don't want to do anything gimmicky. I don't want to do anything too hypey. And I'll say, well, hype used ethically is massive enthusiasm for what you're selling. Hype used unethically is lying, misleading, bullshitting, exaggerating, saying things that simply aren't true. And they're, you know, everything involves selling. Everything you do is either going to attract or it's going to repel. And so going back to your whole living in a small town, people knew each other. And when you're in a big open sea, a lot of people can get away with fleecing people. They can get away with selling crap in a box. They just find a new customer, client, patient, victim, whatever they want to call them, and then they go on to the next one. So there are people that are in the transaction business, and then there's people that are in the transformation business. Anything meaningful and good in the world, selling was involved, like everything. So it's not the selling that's good or bad, it's the methodology. It's the match to the person, if it's a right fit client, that sort of thing. So all of that being said, How— let me back up. The person listening to this, there's people that are in service businesses. Most of them are just entrepreneurs and founders. They're running their companies every day. Their ability to make a living has to do with their ability to go out and make sales and to acquire clients. There are investors. Of some people that are running billion-dollar companies, but most of them are just small business owners and they're just looking for ways on how to most effectively present and package what it is they do. So when you go in to help someone, what are the obstacles that you often see that stand in the way for them getting the results? They have their business, they have their product, their services, and they're just not effective at selling. What are the obstacles?

Well, I suspect you've heard this a lot of times too, right? I hate selling.

Yeah.

You know, like, because selling's so foot-in-the-door selling came from the door-to-door vacuum cleaners of salespeople of the '50s and '60s. And they used to buy leather shoes where the sole of the shoe was wider than the foot of the shoe.

So they slammed.

So, yeah, put the foot in the door and then they slammed the door. They can't get the door closed. You keep shouting your pitch through the door. Right. And it was, it was an aggressive full contact, I'm just going to wear you down style of selling, right? And then that evolved into pressure-based selling, gift of the gab. I'm just going to, you know, I'm just going to conversationally manipulate you into saying yes. I'm going to get the triple yes pattern set up. I'm going to find, you know, I'm going to have 101 closes that I can, you know, pluck out and all this sort of business. And salespeople used to be the purveyors of information. So if you want to buy a TV, you, you went to the shop and you talked to the salesperson. You said, so I want to buy a TV. And they kind of educated you about what you could have and what was available, right? Well, that's gone because everybody comes to you now having researched a bunch of stuff, right? But you're no longer a purveyor of information. You're a purveyor of realization. And there's a big difference, right? And so for someone to realize that they don't just need this thing, but they need you, they have to connect to you in a way that is way deeper than will ever come from gift of the gab, foot in the door, 101 closes, and that sort of thing. They have to connect with you at a profound level. And so what that actually means is that the business owner has to connect with what they're selling at a much more profound level. It's time to draw.

It's time to draw.

If that's okay.

Yeah, draw something and then I'm going to ask even how you came about the whole drawing thing. But I want to just have you demonstrate how you communicate.

Sure.

So one of the things we've been— one of the things I spent a lot of time thinking about is if you think about, you know, a company might sell lots and lots of products. But there is some kind of company genius that sits behind all those products. There is a central thread of genius. So if you think about the Virgin brand of companies, right? They do all sorts of different things, credit cards, airlines, like a bunch of different stuff, right? But there is a core genius that sits behind it that is common to all of them. And what is that genius? And so company genius usually starts with a who. The founder or the originator of the idea of the thinking, right? And there's 3 components to that. The first component is what is that person's philosophy about what they do and the people they serve and the competitors in the marketplace and everything else. I'll give you a classic example. I've worked for a lot of years with a company called Austal Ships in Australia. And they're currently a $51 billion company. They're building— they're now a Navy shipbuilder. They're building a reasonable percentage of the US Navy fleet. They build for navies all around the world. They're also the number one high-speed ferry company in the world. And one of the four guys started it 30 years ago with $20,000 each, now worth $51 billion. And one of the original founders, the main guy, a guy called John Rothwell, at 14 years of age, put an outboard motor on a bathtub and drove it into the shipping lane. He's kind of obsessed with the ocean, right? But he has a fundamental belief that there should be no lives lost at sea. That's a philosophical view. Like that no matter what happens to the superstructure of the vessel, the hull should protect people on board, right? Now that drives a whole lot of stuff about how you go about doing what you do. And then there's the high story or the history. And these are the wins and lessons. So in life, there's really 3 things. There's wins, losses, and lessons. We get to make a choice about the last 2. Do we interpret it as a loss or a lesson? Right. So what are the wins and lessons they found along the way? You know, they started out building aluminum recreational boats, then they started building crayfishing boats. And then he was on a ferry in Hong Kong. It was rocking around everywhere, people getting sick. He said, I could build you a better boat. They said, "Build one and if we like it, we'll buy 50." So they built one and then they bought 50. When the tsunami hit in 2000, the US Navy had a destroyer sitting off the coast of Indonesia ferrying stuff into shore 'cause the port was full of sunken boats. And one of Austal's ferries was sailing past with the brand on the side and the captain of the US destroyer said, "Get me that boat 'cause this thing could travel at 30 kilometres an hour, low draft." It was a catamaran. you know, it could carry 100 trucks and all this sort of business. And after they'd finished the work, he said, we could use something like that as a Navy warship. And they went, yeah, we could build you something like this. Like, what are the wins and lessons and sort of have a go. And then the expertise. What is the formal and informal knowledge that you've acquired?

Right.

So that comes from the founder, the who. So it's like a triangle, right? And the first side of the triangle is the who, the founder. Second side of the triangle is the what, which is the bigger big idea that people got to market with. And that always starts with context, which is why does this thing even matter? And specifically, why with you? Like, what gives you the right to go and offer this? You know, who do you think you are kind of thing, right? Why, why should you actually even matter to anyone that's looking to solve this problem? The why. Interesting thing about context is that is usually the first thing that leaves the sales conversation. And the moment context leaves the sales conversation, all value has left the sales conversation, which is super interesting.

Yeah.

People, you know, get into product specifications so quickly and the context is gone kind of thing. And so that is exited, right? And then the second thing is concept. So this usually is where we're starting to map out, here's what this looks like, here's how we do it. Blablabla, like the product spec or the specification of service. And then the third part of the what, which sometimes people don't want to talk about, is consequence. So does it work? Can you prove it? Have you got cases that show that it works? What happens if it doesn't work? What are you willing to do as a company when it didn't pan out? So, you know, I say to clients, you know, I think companies have to take a risk. If you've taken money off somebody, you have a responsibility to say, we are all in until we get there. Yeah, we have your back. So if it takes longer than we thought, it's going to take longer than we thought. But we took your money on the concept, right? So we're all in until we get you because we're meant to be able to get you there. That was the deal, right? It's a bit like if you think about— I'll come back to that. But if you think about One of my favorite models is this futures model that says if we're talking in the present moment, and let's say I'm selling to somebody, and a lot of sales use false scarcity and urgency, like only now until the break finishes, or while stocks last, sorry, or while stock lasts and that sort of thing. The only urgency that matters and the only scarcity that matters is the customer's scarcity and urgency. So I might be selling to someone saying, if we look at the present moment, And we, you know, time always wins. Time beats everybody. And so if you look down the track 12, 24, 36 months, people say you can't predict the future, but we actually can. I know that in 12, 24, 36 months, you're either gonna be in a green zone where you're in an absolute ideal outcome in the context of this thing that you're struggling with, or you're going to be in a red zone where you're probably in crisis. And people think the pathway between where they are today and where they want to be is a straight line, but it's not. Time bends everything. Time compounds everything, good and bad. It doesn't, it doesn't care. And so if you drift, which is why that red line occurs, if you don't take action, if you don't make decisions, if you just drift, like if you don't clean your teeth, they're going to fall out of your head. I can guarantee that, right?

Yes.

And it will accelerate as time goes on. You'll be fine for 30 years, and then they'll just start falling out really, really fast. Because time compounds everything. But it also compounds the upside. And the only thing that drives that green line heading up is great decisions and action. The difference between ideal and crisis is the difference between drift and decision. Right? But the problem is people come to you and if I was selling to somebody, I'd be saying, you've come to me because you feel like you're already down the track where the gap is huge between ideal and crisis. You're starting to feel some pain. That's why you've come to me. You know you're on the red line. But right now in this moment, we're as close to that green line as we're ever going to be. You can't be any closer than you are right now. Now in models, just kind of side note, the choreography of the model is as important as the model. I think the thing that I did, lots of people use models, but I think the thing that I did was I applied stage magic and comedy and the choreographic patterns to walking through a model for impact and lacing punchlines all the way through the model. So right now you're as close as you're ever gonna be as a punchline. And the idea of a punchline is there's been setup, setup, setup, and then bang, a paradigm shift in a heartbeat that they can't walk back. The moment I go, right now, you're as close as you're ever gonna be. You can't walk that back. Cat's out of the bag. And you've got a decision to make. Are you gonna jump onto that green line and stay there? And here's what I know. And I would draw a version of my genius model if this is a company.

Your 3 circles.

I've got a framework. That can put you on the green line and help you ride the curve because no one falls off that line, they just behave their way off the line. And so we're going to keep applying that to keep you on that green line as we go up the curve. And here's a really big kind of footnote for everybody. I can't guarantee the outcome. I can't guarantee that ideal outcome. The economy could go bust, there's a whole bunch of stuff, right? But I should be willing to guarantee the pathway because I'm saying I can take people there. And it's interesting for people in business, particularly small business owners, right? When you want to put a guarantee on something, particularly if it's a complex sale, a product or a service or a physical product with something else attached or some complexity in it, you don't have to guarantee the end outcome, but you'd better guarantee the pathway because all people want is a sense of certainty. And if you say, I've taken hundreds of people there before, and if you follow the pathway with me, as long as you don't behave your way off that green line, we'll get there.

Yeah. Well, let me ask you, so let's just make the assumption that if in the perfect world everybody is able to have a pathway that takes people to a bigger future, and as you call it the ideal here, that, that does help and benefit them. What do you do in situations, or have you been in situations where people have plopped down a good chunk of money to hire you and your team to come and develop the models, help them, and you realize your pathway sucks? I mean, this is not good. I mean, there's a lot of missing parts. I mean, because a lot of marketers and salespeople think marketing and selling solves everything. And I know a lot of people that can make a lot of money but they have very bad reputations. They've screwed a lot of people, but their marketing and their presentation skills are enormous. So along the way, because before we started recording, and I'll bring you to this, we'll talk about it, is what it does for the teams, the alignment, because we were talking about that before we started recording. And I'd love for you to talk about what comes out of this. Well, what I'm seeing here is You know, this is great. This is a great model, right? I mean, you have an enormous ability to simplify complex things so people can understand them, and that's a real valuable skill for anyone. The question becomes, when do you match the ability to present this with the deliverable?

So here's the thing. If you're going to challenge somebody, right? And you know, I I talk about having a fist in a velvet glove, right? If you're selling something to somebody who has a problem, you can pretty much assume at some point you're gonna have to slap them. With love, right? So, you know you're gonna have to do it. You have to develop the ability to be able to slap someone and have them hug you and go, "Thanks so much for that," right? It's way easier to slap someone when you're drawing a model Because they're looking at— it's not you slapping them, it's the model. We know this model is true, right? I'm going to host a whole lot of onboard masterminds in March for— we're going to the Antarctic, right? With Peter Hillary, the son of Edmund Hillary. And he's got this, you know, he says, I've got a— there's this line called the experience line. You know, you can get people to move into action if you take them through an experience rather than just talk about it. And so part of the marketing for that, I've been doing some webinars where I'm saying to people, put aside all the agendas and all the labels, like forget labels like climate change and global warming and all of that, like forget all of that stuff. Just put all the agendas aside. If there were two futures for the planet, a green one where the planet is loved by the human species and is thriving, and a red one where the planet's abused by the human species and is dying. What line do you think we're on? And 100% of people say the red one.

Mm.

I'm going, right, well, we should do something about that. So we're gonna go to the Antarctic, we're gonna get a bunch of, you know, about 100 really great thinkers together, and we wanna do two things. We wanna have great business masterminds who are on board. And what if you've got 100 great marketers and said, Climate change was the greatest product on the planet. How would you market it? You almost certainly wouldn't say, "Go and sit in the road and shut down London," like the stop oil protests. You would say, "We need to sell this thing." But the moment you go, "Is the planet on the green line or the red line?" Everyone goes, "It's on the red line." You've just slapped people. Put all agendas aside and all labels aside. What line are we on? It's really obvious. We know it's obvious because The pandemic cleaned up the planet. Look how fast it healed. Clear skies over China, dolphins in the canals in Venice again. Like, the planet healed.

Yeah.

In 2 years of no movement of the human species with planes and things like that. So we know that we are creating a red line without any other science needed, 'cause we just stopped moving for 2 years and look what happened, right?

You know, this is so interesting too. So let me ask you from a real perspective. Real personal experience here because like, so for instance, RFK, who's an environmentalist, I love his take on oceans and plastics and just pollution and all that. Also, whenever he's asked about climate change or whatever, 'cause I think climate change and the people really pushing it, I became Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. So I mean, I've spent a lot of time, I mean, I've raised millions of dollars and a lot of it has gone to climate-related stuff. And there's so much of the climate thing that is a total grift. It is people pretending like they wanna help the planet and they're actually worse than the people that they're attacking. They use it as an excuse. It's a grift. It is a veneering, freaking virtue signaling nonsense for a lot of it. And so like Alex Epstein who wrote "Fossil Futures," who I think knows more about energy than almost anyone that I've ever known. And so I've seen arguments on both sides of this. What do you do when you have someone that is so tied into their, like say they're full-blown, the planet, 'cause the planet can't defend itself. Now, when you go to the model, I mean, the way you framed it, it's great. I mean, whatever side you're on, you just gave a sort of perspective on doing it. What do you do when you run across someone who's like, okay, the climate change thing, it's a total hoax, it's total BS, and there's this, you know, it's just being used to exploit, and you have that sort of, how would you use the model to explain, to—

Yep. So if you think about this model, you know, if you think about it in two parts, there's this first thing about need to jump onto the green line. Like right now we're as close as we're gonna be. We need to jump on the green line, right? And the jumping onto the green line— and this is true in group coaching programs, it's true in almost all products, honestly— to jump to the green line is almost always some kind of cleanup or reset or recalibration. So it still links to what you said before when, you know, someone really— they're not on the path at all or they can't even get onto the path. And you're gonna take 'em on as a client or whatever, how do you have that conversation with them? We would say to them that jumping to the green line is gonna be a reset, a recalibration, or a cleanup. We need to find your mess and fix it. And because they already know they're on the red line at some subconscious level, question has to be, what's the mess you're hiding consciously or unconsciously? There's 3 levels of conversation in every conversation. The first one is the known conversation. This is the problem they know about and they know you know about it and we can talk about it. There's the second level, which is the hidden conversation. It's the problem that they know about and you know about it, they just don't want to talk to you about it. And then there's the unknown conversation. You have an insight on it and they're not even aware that it's there. And that's the hardest one to open up, right? And so, you know, it's a prospective client who's not even close to ready to work with you. You might say, "Listen, in your circumstances, we need to find out if we're gonna be able to jump over that reset line when we get to it." And it's just the model doing the heavy lifting. It's not you making a judgment. You're just going, "If you wanna get on the green line, clearly we've gotta reset something, we've gotta clean up, we've gotta recalibrate." If it was the climate thing and someone's saying, "This whole climate stuff is BS," I'd go, "So let me draw a model for you. Do you think we're on the red line or the green line?" Like once I get to the end of the choreography, "I think we're on the green line." "Really? Explain how the planet healed itself during COVID when we just stopped moving around." I mean, put all this science aside. I'm not even gonna try and quote any scientific studies or anything else. What's your reason for how the skies cleared over China and India, how the water's cleaned up globally, You know, when human impact on the planet significantly reduced, how do you explain that?

Right.

If you think we're already on the green line. And you know, sometimes people say, you know, there's this, they can hear it. They know that, they go, yeah, well, I, you know, like, it doesn't matter, we're still on the green line. Now you get to say, does that sound like a really intelligent response? 'Cause the model's doing the heavy lifting.

And I'm just sitting there thinking from, The devil's advocate position from, let's say, and again, 'cause I'm really seeing like to what, where does it break down and how do you address it? Because I know you've had these conversations 1,000 to 10,000 times. I mean, you're the world's expert in this area as far as I know, in terms of this method of presenting communication through drawings. So let's take the COVID example of the skies cleaned up. Well, then you say, well, okay, maybe the sky's cleaned up, but look at the damage to humanity that happened in the process, the oppression, the mandates, the generational psychic trauma. At what point does, you know, so I'm still not sold that that is a thing. What would you do?

So then I might say, well, maybe there's a third line. This is this whole idea of choreography, right? You hold back stuff until you need it.

Okay.

What if there was a line in the middle that was actually an amber line that's just going up and down from highs and lows? So we had good moments and we had bad moments. Is that acceptable? And people go, well, no, that's not acceptable. No, because every low moment is just one step away from the red line. And why can't we get from the high moments and get onto the green line? So let me ask you this question. Is the green line a reasonable goal to go after? Because when people are arguing a point, they're usually arguing— so there's this, there's a hierarchy.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out. And if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, Or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I've got a cartoon of a guy lying on the road and a car's about to run over him. And the caption says, "Encumbered with a low self-image, Bob takes a job as a speed bump." Right? And if you said to Bob, "What do you do for a living?" He'd say, "I'm a speed bump." And he's describing his role at the task or activity level. Now, if I'm Bob's new team leader, Clearly Bob's not engaged in his job. So I come along, you elevate the conversation by asking people why. "Bob, why would we have you lying in the road being a speed bump?" And Bob goes, "Because I work in the traffic slowing process." "Interesting, Bob." Now I've done this in conference rooms full of people. So then I say to the room, "Is a speed bump in a traffic slowing process valuable?" Everybody goes, "Yes." And I go, "Not on an autobahn in Europe." It's completely context-dependent, right? So process and task has no inherent value. It's just stuff, right? So then I say, Bob, why would we have a traffic slowing process? Now, for about 10 years, I facilitated the Road Safety Council in Western Australia.

How—

and that we had set a goal for zero harm by 2020. Every other state said, that's ridiculous, you can't hit a goal of zero. We're going, what other goal makes sense? Like 1,000 deaths, is that a good goal? That's nonsense, right? Yeah. And the 3 big components of road safety is road design, vehicle design, and driver behavior, right? And so you get to outcome. So we run this process to get to an outcome, safer drivers or better road design or better vehicle design. Now the proponents of each of those 3 will argue with each other over which one of them is more important, right? So then you say to Bob, why? For what purpose do we want to have better road design? In this case, you're a speed bump. And there's this line that exists across here. Above the line is problem. Below the line is solution. Above the line is what I call compelling self-evident value. So I say, Bob, why do we want safer roads. And at that point, Bob will probably say to me, "I don't know. You're the boss. You tell me," because people peg out of the conversation about 2 levels above where they spend most of their thinking time. I say, "Bob, 100 meters up the road from where you're lying on the road, we've got a school bus pickup and drop-off point. And we have to protect kids' lives when they're leaving school and coming to school at the start and the end of the day." You're not a speed bump, Bob. Your job is to protect kids' lives. In a heartbeat, his whole view of his job just changed. So he might want to still take a sick day before he thinks he's protecting kids' lives. If he's supposed to start at 8:00 AM and he wants to take a sick day, he just might not ring in until 9:00. When he knows he's protecting kids' lives, he still could take a sick day, but he'll call in the night before, right? And here's the thing about this. This is a hierarchy between abstraction and— oops, sorry— and specificity. What happens is if I put 100 reasonable people in the room and say, "What should we do to protect children's lives?" They'll say, "Whatever it takes." None of them will say, "Well, whatever we can afford." They'll just say, "Whatever it takes." But the moment I put 100 people in a room and start saying, "Should we focus on road design, vehicle design, or driver behavior?" They'll start to argue. People only ever argue about solutions. They don't argue about problems. And so if I want to talk to people about climate control, my question is going to be, should we pursue the ideal line for planet health where humans and the planet coexist in a symbiotic way that does no harm to either? Should we pursue a green line pathway that offers coexistence without harm? And most reasonable people would say absolutely. Is it fair? Is it reasonable for us to tolerate an amber line that harms and then doesn't, harms and then doesn't? And is there anyone that would suggest that we should be okay with this red line where we're existing on the planet but either humans or the planet have to be harmed for that to happen?

Yeah, you know, it's so interesting as I sit and watch this because I have to kind of remove my personal biases and things that I feel that I know, not at anywhere an expert level because I always seek out people that know more about stuff with me. I see more exploitation being done under the guise of environmentalists and save the planet. So I already have this built-in bias of distrust and what I don't like about it. And I see it being very exploitative of people. And the people that seem to suffer the most of energy restriction are people that need it the most, poverty-stricken people, the low poverty, and the ones that complain the the most about it and are trying to act like the champions are many of the people that go and speak at three-letter organizations that run the world and fly there in their private planes while simultaneously talking about, we gotta save the planet. And these are just the biggest con artists. And I'm like thinking, okay, so I could see them using this to get everyone to see, oh, we're going towards a red line while they're simultaneously just full of crap.

And so, I mean, these are tools. Models are tools, right?

Yeah.

And all tools, the ethic of any tool is attached to the person holding it, not to the tool. Like, you know, I can put a scalpel in two different people's hands and one's going to harm and one's going to heal.

You've probably never seen my video, Selling Evil, have you?

No, I didn't.

Oh, I did it. Oh, it's so funny because you're talking about people would go into stores, they would talk about TVs and stuff. I use an example of a DVD player, like if anyone types in "Is selling evil?" into Google or any search engine, there pops up a 3-minute and 50-second video that I was being filmed for in, I think it was 2010, and it was for a movie, a documentary, and this part never made it into the movie. It was B-roll, and one of my team members happened to watch it at the time, and he's like, "This is really good." Click, uploaded it on YouTube, and then it became this video that's been used in universities to explain selling. And I give my favorite definition of selling, which I'll use this as a segue to ask you about, you know, what people want. You have a great model, and I'd love to have you draw it, um, where I, I say my favorite definition of selling came from my friend Dan Sullivan. And I had asked Dan, you know, several years ago, you go, you know, what's your definition of selling? And he just said, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And then I go on to say, well, the key word is good for them, because you can get someone intellectually and emotionally engaged in a future result that kills them, like cigarettes, or like watch porn, or eat crappy food, or harm people, or whatever. So in order to use selling in a way that's not evil, you want to help people get to a better future that's good for them. And then I say that, you know, everything that I say, you say, anyone says is designed to attract or repel. And you can use You can use marketing, you can use it like a gun. You can use it for self-defense, you can use it to rob people, to harm people, to kill people. And so the key is to make that distinction. But I said that, you know, when you go to a store— and again, you got to understand the time. It's funny, people watch it now like, what the hell are you talking about, a DVD player? No one buys DVDs anymore. But at the time, you know, people— I mean, they still sell DVDs at like Best Buy and stuff, but in 2010, like You know, we've still not made that transition. Right. And so what I say is, you know, salespeople are the biggest educational force on the planet. Where do you learn most things about financial services and financial instruments or about anything? There's a salesperson who's incentivized that does the education. So now the world has shifted, of course, in a lot of ways. And so what was you said earlier? I actually wrote it down on my iPad. You said, you know, we're purveyors of realization, right?

Yeah.

And so, you know, the funny thing is I used the DVD player. I said I would never go and read a manual on how a DVD player worked. How did I learn? There's a salesperson that I was in some store that showed me this stuff. At this point, you have sold billions of dollars worth of stuff from, you know, your clothing brand to everything. How many deals have you invested in Shark Tank now?

I think I've invested in 112.

112. So what do you look for where it's a hell yes? When, if you hear something or see something, what are some of the elements to know that this is something worth investing in?

I learned the first maybe 5 seasons, 6 seasons, I was really— and everything I've invested, I'm excited about. The hardest thing on Shark Tank often is to say no because so many great people have made it through so many stages to get there. I mean, there's some people that are just like, all right, get the hell out of here. Most people. And I used to get really excited about the product and all this stuff, and I still do. It is purely the person. Most of the— because if you look at all my investments, let's say out of 112, let's say I have 90 left. I put them in buckets, 3 buckets. 1/3 of them are the walking dead. Nothing to do. I'm not going to call them, ask them for the money.

I'm going to—

within 3 years, I'm going to do a write-off and whatever it is. Another third of them, superstars. They're rock stars. If I call, I'm going to interrupt the business. Call me when you need me for me to do some of the heavy lifting. Right. And then the one-third is right in the middle. But I really looked at the founders, period. And the same as we were talking about communication, Chris Sacca will say that all the biggest deals were never done in San Fran. He had 12 meetings a day. They were always when somebody went up to his house and they got to hang out for a while. And almost all my deals that I find value and I'm excited about is because I like the person and we keep, it's like Christmas every time we talk. It's like when you and I talk, we don't wanna talk 'cause we got too much work to do after that. Like, oh shit, I just told Joe I was gonna do this, this, this. And you get excited about it. And it's always been the person because that deal will shift, that business will grow or we'll just start another one. But it's always been the person.

Yeah, I want to emphasize this too, because I'm going to do an interview with Rick Sappio also, which I don't know if Rick's here yet, but is he? Because I think he was sitting over there. I saw his name tag. But anyway, he's invested in quite a few businesses. And basically, I asked him the same thing when I was with JJ Virgin at her event that she did at the same hotel a few months ago. And he said, it's always the person. And I'll ask Rick so he can I can even add to what you're saying here about this, but you then have dissolved this whole belief then when people say, oh, I could have invented that. Someone came up with this idea, but I had that idea. It's not that. It's the person.

No, it's bullshit, right? Because first of all, look, I went on Shark Tank because the last thing I wanted to do was get pitched on the clothing company. It was '08. Nobody was buying clothing when they couldn't— they couldn't make, you know, sell, pay their mortgage. Right. And Jay Abraham has always said that there's only 3 ways to deal with a customer, right? You acquire a new one, you upsell a current one, or you make one buy more frequently. So try to supersize everybody's fries.

Right.

And I was sitting there saying, well, what is my skill set? Taking inventory. Am I a great designer? No, there's nothing great about putting a big-ass 05 on a sweatshirt. There's no great design in that. Right. I'm a great marketer, but now I have the pipe I have Samsung and I have distribution. So I'm gonna go to Macy's and say to the buyer, listen, I got 10 clothing lines, 8 of them are dead, but because you know I'm an authorized vendor, I'll take back goods, I'll support marketing, whatever the case is, right? I want more real estate. I want electronics, I want cosmetics, I want dishware, or whatever the case is. I'm only getting pitched clothing companies. I go on Shark Tank and the only thing I don't want is clothing companies. Guess what happens? I do Bombas socks. They'll do $1.4 billion this year, right? I couldn't even sell my own socks. The way that I sold socks was when you're sleeping, I sneak into your laundry room and steal one so you can go buy another pair. That's the only way that I know how to sell socks. But these guys go out there and sell socks and do $1.4 billion. By the way, I'm the number one— I have the number one company ever invested in on Shark Tank. So when you see those other underachievers, I call my fellow sharks arts, you remind them of that. Bomb the socks though. That's what I— so, you know, so the bottom line is it was the people because— and let me tell you something, when they called me, I called them first after I do the deal. Great socks, guys. Let me tell you something. First of all, giving back absolutely to the homeless, 100%. What you do?

All right.

All right.

I want to create some Flavor Flav socks. I had all these brands. They were like, no.

I was like, why?

Narrow and deep.

Sesame Street.

So what would they do? They would do Sesame Street.

Why?

Because daddies and daughters can't dress the same. But now all of a sudden my little girl is coming to my room going, Daddy, put on your Elmo socks.

Right?

My daughter and I and my kids and I are like, oh man, we're buying for today because we've given away to these people in need and we're gonna buy these for Christmas gifts and tell other people they're giving to the people in need. So they changed my entire way of thinking. Way of thinking. And it was because purely they were great operators, but we got to know each other and like each other.

Let me ask you, this is a little off— I didn't think I would talk to you about this, but I'm going to ask you since it kind of lends into it. So, you know, I can't tell half the time if these people that are presenting these things, which ones— I've gotten better at it, uh, you know, but I'll tell you, I had to lose a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of stress and people blowing a lot of smoke until I realized that there are people that they have it, they are going to do whatever it takes. Doesn't mean they're gonna succeed, but they're gonna do whatever they possibly can to make it a success. And other people, it's just bullshit. They're selling a dream that they really have no intention of going the whole race, and they're hoping that at some point they're gonna exit or sell it off to someone and and deposit their, you know, problem or their supposed vision. So they're coming to you with an idea, and if they don't have a track record, how do you evaluate if it's worth betting on that person? What are the characteristics, or what are the things that you look for if someone has not had quote-unquote successful businesses, that they've done this before, and they're asking for money? And I've never built any of my businesses by raising money. Anytime I need money, I find what people want, I figure out how to sell it to them, and that's how I raise my money is I do it by selling stuff that people want to people. And there are businesses that require startup. There are businesses that are capital intensive in the beginning, and they want to scale or whatever, you know. But I'll tell you, words like monetize and scale and all this stuff, these Silicon Valley words, are some of such bullshit. It's just hidden ways for people to con their way through getting people to get— and I think some people's business models is just raising a bunch of money and selling it off and then doing it all over again. And, and it's— I'm very suspect now, uh, of things, and I wasn't in the beginning. I mean, Jim could speak to this. I have literally thrown away probably $5 million, like, just on bullshit.

Sure.

And it didn't sound like bullshit in the beginning, but you look back going, oh, okay, yeah, they were just— it's kind of a con job. And so, uh, what do you look for?

Well, you know, my wife and I were in Switzerland. We lived there for a while. And this UBS is a big bank. They came to us and they were raising something like $50 million. And they cordially and just made me feel like I was so honored to be invited to this presentation they were gonna put on. And they invited this other guy and he said, well, he'd give them my name. So about 10 guys were in this room in Switzerland and UBS had their best guys in Switzerland, Geneva, pitching this new fund that was going to invest in China. So they were in there and they made you feel very honored to be there. And so I sat there listening to him and my guy here, my friend, he was listening and I couldn't understand it. I just didn't understand it. Let me understand, hands up in the room. And I was the guy that felt like a bit of an agitator because everybody else was nodding their heads. Everyone's going like this. And it just didn't add up to me how you could buy— how are you going to invest in China? Well, how do you get it out? The first thing I said, how do you get it back? Well, we're going to sell the companies and the economy is going to go up and they're going to make all the money because China's doing so well, a billion people. Well, how are you going to get it back? How are you going to actually exit strategy? What are the rules of the game? All that. And it's UBS. They looked at me like I was a dunce. Which reminds me of another story, same way. Anyway, so I was the dumb guy in the room. The guy with me put in $5 million. Now, what would you say if they didn't do a good job, how much would they lose if they didn't do a good job? Like of the fund? 10%, 20%, 30%? Yeah, they lost all of it. That fund, $50 million was gone, you know? And it's like that. Another, you know, I was in New York and I was just putting my company together. I got this company and now I'm just a salesman selling mutual funds and then so a salesman selling real estate. And so hire some guys, I'm going along with them. I need an accountant and I need this and need that. You know, I don't know how to do that because I didn't learn how to do that. So I thought I better learn how to do that. So there's a course in New York that you go to and it was a like an 8-hour course and it says for $400 and I'm living in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada. So $800, you go there and learn how to be a businessman, you know. I'm in, you know, 24 hours, fly the plane, night flight, get back, you know. So I go. So I'm in this room with 400 of these guys in suits and ties and real smart guys up there, and they were talking away, and honestly, I didn't understand a thing they were saying. Nothing. And it said that you can learn. I mean, I paid $400 to learn, you know. So, you know, I sat on my hands, because a lot of times I want to talk, but other people— so I just sat on my hands. I sit on my hands and not talk. So I'm sitting on my hands, sitting on my hands. I said, excuse me, my name is Peter Thomas. I said, I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I honestly don't understand a thing you're talking about. And the room went, whoosh. The room of all these big guys, you know? It went down like that. And I'm thinking, oh my, just chill. I just felt, you know. All of a sudden, this big deep voice comes from the back room. My name is Robert Chernick, he said, and I'm a CPA here in New York City, and I don't understand a thing you're talking about either. I look back, you know, there's Robert, and next thing goes, I don't understand, you know. All of a sudden the whole crowd started to move around, you know.

No wonder your mic is scratchy there. I mean, you're pretty excited.

Yeah, they shut the meeting down. They literally shut the meeting down, you know. And I went to the back and met Robert afterwards. Wow. And talked to him. And he became my friend for life, and I hired him. He's my CFO for 30 years.

I didn't even know that story. Yeah, that's good. Here, let me— sorry, more for aesthetics. I just want to make sure you look good on camera here. Awesome. No, that's great. So, um, yeah, so don't—

but the answer, really, the answer to the question, Joe, is if you don't understand it, don't do it. Yeah, just, just say no and don't be embarrassed about it. Just like, I still get embarrassed, but, but I do it. Force yourself through the Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful.

So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, they're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.