Create The Vivid Vision For Your Company and Manifest it's Future | Joe Polish

It's one thing for you to see the vision, to have vision, but if you can't communicate it and your team doesn't see it too, it'll get lost in translation and it just becomes another idea. And so if that's the case, it's done all the time. So a vivid vision may be the exact tool that you need to help take your company to where you want to go. And in addition to that, we found that it helps to recruit top talent to align your current team, AKA create unity, delegate the role of implementing ideas so that you can just focus on what you're best at. Stay focused on your North Star as a leader. Have clarity when scaling up and getting key vendors and partners and clients all on board. Today we're going to talk about how you can create your company's future to be a place that you and your team want to visit. And no need to take notes because at the end of the session we'll send you over a PDF that has the recap of this presentation. So there was a study that was done at Stanford University. And imagine there was two students that that were sitting face to face with each other. So one was given a list of 25 well known songs and then instructed to pick one and tap out the rhythm on the table to the other person who was supposed to guess what the tune was. And out of 120 tapped songs, the listener only guessed three. Right. The person tapping out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was hearing every note perfectly in his mind. He was surprised to find out that the listener only guessed 2.5% of the time and didn't realize that that person for the most part was just hearing these monotonous thumps on the table. This study can oftentimes happen to us as visionaries. You may have a crystal clear vision in your mind of what you want your company to look like, but then when you explain it, you hear the sweet sound of music. But unfortunately, oftentimes what can happen is the others listening, whether that's you, your team or your vendors or your partners are just hearing these random taps, not seeing how the whole vision comes together. And so this really comes from under communicating your vision.

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 Joe's free book and you can get a Copy there.

And so, as an entrepreneur, it's one thing for you to see the vision, to have vision, but if you can't communicate it and your team doesn't see it too, it'll get lost in translation and it just becomes another idea. And so if that's the case, it's done all the time. So a vivid vision may be the exact tool that you need to help take your company to where you want to go. And in addition to that, we found that it helps to recruit top talent to align your current team, AKA create unity, delegate the role of implementing ideas so that you can just focus on what you're best at. Stay focused on your North Star as a leader, have clarity when scaling up and getting key vendors and partners and clients all on board. So, like Alex mentioned, this brilliant concept was created by Cameron Herald, one of our Genius Network members, and his phenomenal book, Vivid Vision. And back in 2015, I was just starting Conscious Copy and Co, and I was at a dinner where Cameron was there. And I remember in passing, he gave me the advice to create my own vivid vision. He said, read the book and do this. And so I created that document and painted a picture of what I wanted my company to look like three years into the future, as if it already happened. And there were parts of me that was like, who do I think I am? Because I was fresh out of college, I was a nobody in the space, and I was just starting off this copywriting company. But after I created my Vivid Vision, I started to notice these synchronicities that were aligned to my vision occurring all around me. One of the most important ones happened to be meeting Joe Polish. But in addition to that, I wrote down that I wanted to work with the top leaders in the entrepreneurial space. And I ended up attracting in and getting to work with some of the most amazing clients, many of them which are here. And I also wrote in my Vivid Vision that I would love to speak on some of the industry's top stages, like Genius Network and Traffic and Conversion. And that became my reality in less than three years. And along that journey, Cameron reached out and said, hey, would you be open to writing some vivid visions for some of our clients? And I saw this as an amazing opportunity because I was so enrolled in the concept from experiencing it myself. And so my team and I have written over 300 of these in the last five years. And I found that there are six ingredients to ensure that your vivid vision pops and you really can use it as a powerful tool in your company. That is like the heartbeat of the business. So let's dive in to those six ingredients to craft your vivid vision. The first one is to get into a vision state. So your current state in your business has built your current company. And so there may be parts of your business where you feel overwhelmed or frustrated or maybe some anxiety. And if you start writing your vision from this frame of mind, you will build more of your known reality, AKA more of the same. It's also really important not to write your vision, kind of squeezing it between meetings, because if you're noticing some of the complexities in your business and you jump to writing it, answering that question, what is my vision? Some ideas may come out like, well, for my team to stop asking me so many questions and solve the problems on their own for once, or to have my business not feel like it's taking over all my time and energy or more profits. Obviously, there's a couple modalities that I found to really help myself and our clients get in a vision state where you feel open, aware, optimistic, and centered. Some of them include breath work, much like the practice that Jason Campbell led us through this morning. Meditation, or even just walks in nature. After that, it's important to ask yourself the question, what would I love? I learned this from one of my mentors, Mary Morsi, who said that this is one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves because it filters through to the truth of things. A couple years ago, I was leading a vision expander session where we were helping a client to gain clarity of his vision and then our team to write and design it. And I kept noticing him say things like, well, this is what it should look like, or this is what the market's going to do, therefore, this is what we have to do. And I paused him and I asked, but is this what you would really love? And he looked at me like, a little silly, like, what would I love? But then I shared, you're about to invest three years of your time, your resources, your money, your team, your life into this. So let's make sure that we're not building ourselves a golden jail cell like this, meaning that you arrived, but because it was something that you didn't really want, you end up feeling trapped. So important to ask the question, what would you love? Then from there, you want to make sure to paint the picture when you're writing out your vivid vision. Wake up your five senses. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it smell like? If you're walking into your office, what's the buzz around the office or how are people collaborating? For one of our clients when they sent over a draft of their vivid vision and painting the picture of their market said our lead generation is dialed in and we wanted to breathe some life into that and really paint the picture. So we helped come up with we have a steady and consistent flow of leads booking calls. By the time our prospects get to a conversation with one of our enrollment specialists, they are pre qualified, pre motivated and pre positioned to want to do business with us. And we often hear things like it's like I've been seeing you everywhere and hearing about you everywhere. Raise your hand if you can see how you can actually see or experience that a lot more than just our lead gen is dialed in after painting the picture. The fourth ingredient is you want to use present tense language or reflecting back focus into stepping into your vision as if it's already happened. Like Cameron Scharce wrote his book for example, using language like we have achieved this growth versus we will or it looks like this when painting the picture of say your headquarters versus it's going to look like this or over the past three years we've experienced or achieved these profits versus in the next three years. Then number five is when creating your vivid vision to make sure it pops is you want to use affirmative language. As I was sharing, I learned this the hard way. Where one of our core values at Conscious Copy used to be aligned action. It said positive momentum over scattered motion. One of my mentors reminded me that that if I was going to be referring to that my team over and over again multiple times a day and we have scattered motion inside of one of our values. Even though that's not what we wanted then we were going to bring that forth. So we updated the value to we believe in aligned action. We grow with positive and focused momentum. Then finally number six is you want to communicate from where, not how, right now. So this is a photo of Tina who is a CEO at Thrive Health. When she came to me, her and her husband have created this really unique supplement company that has quickly become one of the top probiotics probiotic companies in the health space with a world class culture and eight figure growth in a couple years. But the challenge that she was running into was that with all of the rapid growth she wanted to maintain company culture while attracting in new hires and as the founder she wanted to get really clear of where she was taking the company next. But every time she would sit down to map out what her vision is, she would get stuck and in her head. Our team interviewed her and she got clear of the vision. But then she was. By having the tool, she was able to use that to make sure that she was recruiting top talent that could help implement the how to recap. The six ingredients to crafting your vivid vision is to get in a vision state. Ask what would I love? Paint the picture. Use present tense or past tense, reflecting back. Use affirmative language and think where, not how, right now. And when you do this, you'll have this powerful document of vivid vision. And you can really use it as a filter to help discern if an opportunity is aligned to your vision or if it's a seductive distraction. So if you want to create your company's future to be a place you want to visit, it's really important to communicate that vision that you see in your mind.

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 Joe's free book and you can get a copy there. One of the top sleep doctors in the world is actually on with us. He sent me a private message, and he had. It's now gone away, but it said, michael Bruce, can you pop on real quick? You know, you had sent me a private. Hey, Joe. Yeah. Well, if you mind sharing what you sent me privately, I. You know, of course. And so, by the way. So, Michael, from a credibility standpoint, how many times you've been on Oprah? I've been on Oprah twice. I've been on Dr. Oz 40 times. 40 times. Okay.

Yeah.

He's been on every form of media on the planet. And I've interviewed him. We've got great interviews with him online. His website's thesleepdoctor.com. i mean, the guy's a smart dude. But you sent me a message about practice, and I think it just speaks to what Evan's been talking about. Yeah. So, number one, Evan, love your stuff, brother. Like, really good, great information, really helping people out.

So I want to say thank you.

For all that you do. Obviously, Joe, you know I fucking love you. I'm glad to have you back. So here's. Here's the deal.

I use YouTube in a very different.

Way, and I think there's a. I think there's a way that people can also use it that might be alternative. I came in late to the discussion. So I hope I'm not repeating something.

Evan, that you might have said.

What happens for me on YouTube is I don't make money on YouTube. People find me on YouTube and then pay me money to endorse their products. So the more YouTube videos that I do on sleep and migraines, sleep in pillows, sleep in mattresses, those get out.

And then people say, oh, wow, you.

Know a lot about migraine, Michael. We've got a migraine treatment that has.

To do with sleep.

Would you be interested in reviewing the science for us? And then they pay me some ungodly sum of money every single month to endorse their product to my website on television and things like that. And so YouTube provides almost like an audition, I would argue, in some cases. But to be clear, they're not looking for perfection. And that's also part of Evan's message. They're not. They're looking for authenticity.

Right.

So Sam was a perfect example. Train flying by, the whole thing. That's got to be his kitchen, because nobody else is going to set up.

A studio that looks like that.

So now it's personal. I'm in Sam's home. Sam is giving me advice. He's not giving everybody advice.

Right.

And that feels better. I want to take Sam's advice because guess what? He's in. I'm in his fucking kitchen. Right? Like, come on. That's the best. I've done all kinds of videos. I've worked for everybody you can possibly imagine. Everybody wants me to just be me. And so I think that is the. That's the message that I've been hearing from Evan and from Joe. And I just wanted to impart that, that it can be bigger than YouTube. And when people notice you, they're gonna pay you money.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah, that's great. There was a question on here also, Michael, about, like, what if I don't have a business but want to start doing where did it go? Videos and monetize them? I mean, part of it is if you start putting out good content into the world and a lot of people start following you, then I guarantee you, it becomes a business. I mean, if you want. 100%. Yeah, 100%. All I started doing was putting out sleep content. Now I have arguably the strongest sleep brand in probably the world at this point, at least online. So it's crazy. Well, let's talk about business ethics, because I'd like to get your perspectives on this. I mean, I went on 2020 the very last year that you actually, I think the last month that you worked.

There and Barbara Walters.

Yeah, October 99 and Barbara Walters did the story and at the time, Arnold Diaz, the investigative reporter, and we did a story on how to basically not get ripped off by a professional carpet upholstery cleaning company using bait and switch advertising. And that they ended up putting ethicalservices.com on the ABC website. And it created this idea that I had of if I could link consumers to service business, businesses that want to provide a criteria of ethics, you know, guaranteeing their work, carrying proper insurance, employing people and not having them do any sort of high pressure selling to make a livable wage, you know, agreeing to never use any dishonest or misleading advertising, that it will be a great way for consumers to find those people. And there's so much as a marketer for what I do for a living, you know, the number one question in consumers minds is who can I trust? And so I always want to do everything I can to teach my clients to convey trust and obviously to live that. Because Dan Sullivan, my good friend, he says money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And so I always think about when you're out there being an entrepreneur, when you're out there doing things, create value and you get paid for the value you create. And if you don't create value for other people, then you're not really providing a service. You, you're taking advantage of people. And that has everything to do with character. I mean, you know, it's not a gimmick, it's not a technique. It's literally how you conduct yourself and how you treat other people. And so I wanted to get your thoughts because you had to face that on a daily basis. You know, your own character representing the different medias. But it was you, it was your face that was out there and trying to serve the audience. What are your thoughts? Thoughts on business ethics, communication, that sort of.

Joe, there was such a need for what you then provided because of communication that was untrustworthy. It might, might be an honest company that you could trust. But how do you, how do you know?

Right.

I tried to do that in my personal career. But you codified it in a way that was so much needed. That's why you, that's why it was very successful, I think because people want to know can I, can I trust this person or not? I don't know. It's admirable how you did codify it and turn it into something that could become a reality on A very wide scale. I tried to do it on a personal scale, I think just by making sure people understood that I meant what I said and that I wouldn't associate myself with something that was shady or wrong. And I had a funny experience on that one time when there was.

A.

Sponsor on the Tonight show, the old Tonight show, that made a linoleum like floor covering and it wasn't right really, because nails would come up through it and stuff. And I said, I won't do this anymore. And they said, you're in breach of contract because you're supposed to do the commercials. I said, no, I won't have anything to do with it. I thought maybe that would damage my. But the, the net result was I was more in demand afterward than I would have been if I had gone ahead and done it. But I couldn't live with that and say the things they wanted me to say about it. So I made that attempt to do it, but it never occurred to me to put it together in a way like you did and make it into a really widespread entity.

Well, you know, one of my goals is to transform the way that Americans act, actually buy and locate service companies, because you've got all these wonderful companies, but they simply don't know how to get the message out. And then you've got all these consumers that want things and they just want to find the right company. And if I could help develop a system where people can find people they can trust and people that are trustworthy and are willing to put their butts on the line because people have the ability to report on them, I think it will just provide a tremendous service. It is what I wanted too, because I thought, you know, if I need to use a painter for. If I need to use anyone, and I simply could figure out a way to find them and eliminate the possibility of getting ripped off or dealing with the company, how good of a value would that be to me? And then I thought, you know, that would be a good value to everyone.

Tell me something. Do you think in the world of finance now with Bernie Madoff and this kind of thing, would there be a way of investors finding out about whether somebody has got a Ponzi scheme going or whether is there some. Is that going to happen?

You know, I think so. I recently read a survey where 98% of high net worth individuals, when asked would they refer their current financial advisor planner, 90 out of 100%, 98% said they would not, they would not, they would not. And now this is. I don't Know if it applies to all across the board financial planners, but for high net worth individual. And if you sit and think about it, how much distrust do people have? So I think ultimately it comes down to literally asking the people who do you in creating a vehicle of communication where they can give feedback. I think there could be an EthicalServices.com version for every sort of business. But it would require not the person who's the marketer or whoever saying we're the best, but actually asking the real people that are, what do they trust exactly. Creating a vehicle for that. I think ultimately when it comes to sharing valuable things with consumers and how they make decisions, I think ultimately one new thing that is happening with technology, with the Internet is there's a guy I interviewed named Rod Beckstrom and he's one of the co authors of a book called the Spider and the Starfish. And the analogy is that if you cut off the head of a spider, the spider dies. If you cut off the arm of a starfish, the starfish will grow another arm and certain species of starfish will grow. If you chop the starfish into pieces, it will grow an entirely new starfish. And so the point was a centralized organism versus a decentralized organism. And so the concept was that things like Wikipedia, you know, like someone types in Hugh Downs, they can find information, not always, always accurate, but with anyone. I mean you can find. And you've got right now as we sit here and do this interview, there's literally tens of thousands of people not getting paid working on building this starfish called Wikipedia or Google has aspects or Craigslist, you know, and one of the things he said is that like Al Qaeda is actually a starfish. You kill, you know, bin Laden or.

You kill somebody, it's not going to end.

It doesn't end. 12 Step Groups is actually a starfish. There was a catalyst named Bill W. And Dr. Bob that in the 1930s found a solution to people dealing with alcoholism. You know, prior to that there was no people either were institutionalized or died or just suffered from this condition of addiction. But that was a starfish. And so I think what is happening today, if you look at a lot of the things that technology gives us an opportunity, are certain movements, they just expand because they. And it could work in both ways. It could be very negative, a very negative starfish, or it could be very positive. And so I think with the current events of what's happening is as long as there's a catalyst that creates positive change, then it becomes, it just grows. And I think. I think it will grow not from a CEO in the future. I think it will be large groups of people. And I hope that's the positive thing that comes out of it.

That makes a lot of sense.

And that's why I want ethical services to be. I want it to be a starfish. So it's not like me saying, here's what Joe Polish or my company thinks is, you know, ethical. It's like, here's how. Here's a criteria and the consumers build on that criteria and then the consumers own it. It's not. That's how I really.

That shows a face in human nature that the fascist mind doesn't have. Fascist mind believes that humans are intrinsically evil and they need to be governed by some dictator or something. But if you have faith and human nature is wonderful and because in the news business, we say good news is no news. And I guess there's a reason for that. Because if you've got. If you've got a charming news story, it's really not much news unless it's unusual or tragic or something. We tend to think that humans because of that are bad because focus is on the bad deeds of certain people. But if there hadn't been a countervailing force since before history began of cooperation and empathy and everything, we'd still be in caves eating raw meat, you know.

Absolutely.

So humans are basically good and we've got to deal with part of them that isn't so good. But you've got to have faith in it. And I think that's what you displayed with that. The starfish idea, I think, shows the humans. And if you believe that, then there's a lot of hope for humanity. If you build things on that instead of building them on the fascist approach.

Well, absolutely.

It's about evolving versus devolving. What I want to share with you on this particular sheet, I'm going to go through it. It's the art of marketing your story. Now, this presentation here in this short time that I have with you here is just a setup. I actually am going to share with you interviews that I've done. If you want them, if you want them, I'll be happy to provide them with you. I have the top mark marketing podcast in the world on itunes every day. Currently, about 40 to 50,000 people listen to an hour of me babbling about something related to building and growing a business. So my podcast is called ilovemarketing.com there's over 200 hours of very valuable things on how to Build and market your business. I'm also, I am speaking here because I am genuinely interested in the whole fascinating world of art. And the reason I threw my first pot since I was 18 years old three weeks ago. And it was good. Yeah, it wasn't that bad. But I swear, it's like I still feel very clunky, but other than doing drugs, and this is going to sound so damn weird, other than doing drugs, when I used to do ceramics, that was the only thing where my head ever felt like it escaped, where I wasn't stressed out, I didn't have this low level anxiety. And I've built a multimillion dollar business. I reach a lot of people. I do a lot of cool stuff. I'm Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. I've interviewed Richard Branson more than anyone on business. You know, I've got Tony Robbins speaking at my next event. You know John Paul dejorie. I know. You know, I ran Arianna Huffington's last book campaign. I mean, I hang out with cool people. But you know what? It was when I was throwing ceramics where all of that other external crap that I do to try to find, feed my ego or do whatever actually made my mind feel good. And I'm really genuinely interested in art. And artists are interesting people. Some are very quirky, some are very weird, but they communicate in different ways. But we're all weird. I mean, this is like the, you see Star wars, right? This is like talking to the Star wars bar. I mean, just a bunch of quirky individuals. But I think entrepreneurs are the same way. Entrepreneurs are just weird, quirky people, but they're more like corporate athletes and so on. I love marketing. On our podcast we talk about how to frame your business, the art of marketing. Your story. Marketing is a story, your story. And it starts with where you are now. What's your story? How can that become the basis for sharing your art? I believe a painting or a sculpture or whatever without a story attached to it has meaning to you, but it doesn't have meaning to someone else unless you leave it up to them to make the meaning. And that's fine. And a lot of people may want to do that. But if you don't have a system for selling what it is that you sell, you're always at the mercy of the consumer system for buying, which is price. If someone does not have any other criteria on how to make a purchase, they're going to default to the only way that we know how to do, which is price. So couple things is the Artist tools, before, dirty, and after. I want you to think of your business from now on as having three units. There's the before unit, which is getting people to appreciate who you are, what you do to get business. That's a before unit. And what I write here is getting people to appreciate your art. Starts with appreciating where people are first. Where are they? Who are they? Understand your collectors and your customers. The dirt unit. After someone is doing business with you. When someone is sitting there and discussing with you and you're talking with them or they're looking at something, I would consider that they're kind of in the during unit. They're interested. They're stepping foot into this place where they actually may actually purchase something from you either now or later. That's the during unit. So to create art that stands out means differentiating you and your art. How are you positioning yourself in your art so it's experienced as unique? Positioning is critical. There's that saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, while a mental picture is worth 10,000 words. So when you can attach a story to something, a great headline, titling your art is just as important. I've helped many book authors become best sellers. And the title of the book in many cases is more important than the entire book. And a lot of people don't want to hear that. They're like, well, you know, I spent two years writing this book. Well, you should spend maybe a month coming up with the right headline and testing it and coming up with titles. And the same thing with art. After. After someone is giving you money. Once someone has interacted with you and your art, what are they doing to ensure they never forget it? How could they share your art with others? Sending thank yous, reinforcing the value? They got referral systems. I mean, this is such basic advice, but I've used it my whole life. In business, I heard early on, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. If someone gives you money, send them a personal thank you, follow up with them. When someone gives you money and buys your art, it does not satiate the urge and the excitement that they had for buying it. I mean, it doesn't satiate it like it's done. It actually excites the urge. People selling is like seduction. All of the stuff you do before you ask someone to marry you or go on a date or sleep with you or whatever. That's all the foreplay, it's all the setup. And if Someone is willing to give you money once, they will give you money over and over and over again. And a lot of people don't realize that, that as soon as someone buys a piece of art, they are in the best possible state to give you more money or to get, give you a referral. So the after unit is what you do to orchestrate referrals. And with all of you here, every business card you have, every. I mean, put those people into a database and when you're here next year, send them a, hey, it was so great seeing you last year. Send a picture with a piece of art that they bought. If you can take pictures with your clients holding the art, do that and send it to them. Now, some of you may not like doing stuff like that, but again, if you like money, I think those things help. So expanding your gift with marketing. You can impact people's lives with your art. And the bridge is marketing. Your mission and desire to impact the world will be supported by marketing. Marketing carries your message. So what's the best piece of business advice you've ever received and how did it change your business path and your direction? I think it was.

Well, I received a couple of them. The first one was somebody said, don't spend all your money, kid, because it's.

Really, really hard to make money and.

It'S 10 times harder to keep it. I think that was one of them. And I think the other one was.

You know, it's all about the numbers.

There's only two ways to do business. Increase sales or decrease cost. That's it. And don't do anything because it's an ego play.

Increase sales or decrease cost.

That's it. And those things probably have been the ones and everybody else knows all the other ones. Of course, do what you love.

Of course do your research and everything else. But the room knows that already. So FUBU has, it's had 6 billion in global sales. What are the key elements, secrets and requirements of building like a $6 billion brand that people here can utilize well in the days that we built it, I think that there are a couple of things. First of all, you know, in business.

It'S purely about distribution. I think that you can have the greatest idea in company or whatever the.

Case is, but you don't have a.

Way to distribute it. It's a pipeline, it's a challenge. I think that to understand and don't fall in love with your product where you think that you're creating something new.

Because we will never create anything new.

It will only be a New position.

Or a new angle on it, a new price.

I always say Twitter was, as I.

Shared with you before, it was a.

Note on a pigeon's leg a million years ago. And I didn't put three sleeves on a T shirt.

I just created a movement around it. So it's always a different positioning.

And I think those are the ways. And then after you get to a certain level where you have brand equity, I think it's creating a large amount.

Of really amazing strategic partners.

You know, licensing, whether it's a territory or licensing a different angle of your product is important. I'm not going to understand what they necessarily want in Japan, even though they want Fubu in Japan. It's a different culture as well as I can do my men's business.

But you and I were two guys. If you wear a 32 and I wear 32, there's two sizes, 32, there's 32 long, 32 short. If I sell a pair of seven.

Or a pair of eight jeans to a female, there's 17 sizes because the thighs are too big. The butts, there's gaps over here. So I would license that business to an expert in that area because I don't have a lifetime to learn the ladies business as well. So I think that strategic partners are very valuable.

My name is Nick Nanton. I'm originally from the island of Barbados. My family's been there for 300 years. They came as Welsh pirates in the 1600s. So as I was growing up, my dad kept asking me what I wanted to be. I kept telling him I wanted to be a pirate. So the older I got, the funnier I thought it was. You can imagine, the older I got, the less funny he thought it was. Until one day he came up to me and said, hey, Nick, I figured out what you're gonna be. I said, what's that, dad? He said, you're gonna be a lawyer. That way you can still pillage. That's my only bad lawyer joke of the day. But I really am from Barbados. I started playing guitar at 6, started songwriting at 16, because I liked girls and they liked songs. And I put out my first record at 18, of which there's still 800 copies under my parents bed. Why? Because all the things I'm gonna teach you today, I knew nothing about. Now that I know all these things, I want those records to see. Stay there until that place burns to the ground someday. So I did all this stuff. I went up to the University of Florida at 18 years old. Go Gators. And I figured out there's 50,000 students there and they had a thing called a student activities fee. Every student put a little bit of money in this fund, which was a big fund. They let a bunch of 20 year old kids run it. So I figured I should get involved. So I got involved and helped bring in lots of talent. I brought in Bill Cosby, President Bush, Don Shula, Bobby Knight, the cast of the Real World, New Orleans. And I figured out that these people were really just like you or me. I'd been producing records. I had been working with. I still work with a drummer from Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker. I was working the band Sister Hazel. I was making music videos. And I realized that really all these people had certain things in common. So I did what any person would do. I went to law school. And so why did I go to law school? Two reasons. My brother went to med school, so I had to do something. And secondarily I wanted to be the president of a record label. I knew lots of presidents of major corporations were lawyers. So I went to law school, continued doing media creation and stuff. And then I got out of law school. And so I got married after my first semester of law school, had my first son a week after I took the bar exam. So life and fast forward has always been kind of my forte. So I got out of law school and this whole thing called Napster happened while I was there. I don't know if you caught on that. So that whole business kind of didn't exist when I got out. And so my business partner Jack's like, well, hey Nick, I know what you should do, but you're not going to like it. I said, what's that? He said, you should practice law. Because I went to law school. The first day in law school, they asked what kind of law you're going to practice. I said, I'm never going to practice the state of law in my life. And so they thought that was good because they do the look to your left, look to your right thing. They're not going to be there. They thought it was going to be me, but it wasn't. So I got the last laugh there. So out of law school, he says, hey, we can position you as one of the top experts in the entire world as an entertainment lawyer. Does that interest you? I'm like, yeah, it does. He goes, well, what you probably don't realize is you have two unique skill sets. Media creation. I had made music video videos, I'd made magazine ads. I'd just done a bunch of Media creation. And you understand celebrity buzz building and PR because of the people you've worked with. Okay, cool. What you may not realize about me, and this is him talking to me now, he said, nick, what I have a specialty in is personal branding and direct marketing. He had marketed and sold over a billion dollars worth of products and services with those two skill sets. So if we put the four of those together, personal branding, direct marketing, media buzz building, PR and media creation, we can position you as one of the top entertainment lawyers in the country. So I bid. So we did it. Within a year of me practicing law full time, I was billing it over $1,000 an hour. And I'm in Orlando. Not the place matters that much. But most of those deals go down to LA or New York. So I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that to tell you that it worked. So I did what any 20 something year old kid who's billing $1,000 an hour would do. I went to Jack and said, this is awesome, but I don't want to do it anymore. He said, great, what do you want to do? So I want to travel the world and teach people how to do what we did because we just created a freedom for now, if anyone follows our formula, they can work less, make more, they can work more, make more, they can have more of an impact. That's what they can do. So he said, that's a great idea, Nick, but you have one big problem. So what's that? He said, you're your only testimonial. Duly noted. So he said, you should write a book. So I said, like an E book. And he's like, well, everyone's doing ebooks. But no, you'll never get the same type of credibility you'll get from an actual physical hard copy book. So I bit again. We wrote a book called Celebrity Branding youg. It took about six months to write it. I did what I call drive by writing. It's like the computer's open and I kind of walk by and do a little bit of that because I don't sit down for very long if you haven't noticed. So we wrote the book Celebrity Branding youg and we took the book and we were getting ready to launch the book. And I did what I thought he had done on his last book because he had a three big book deal with McGraw Hill, him, the publicist. Everyone brought in this guy whose only job was to make the book a best seller. So I tried to study what he was doing. He wouldn't Tell me anything. And I tried to replicate it from our book. I also emailed everyone I'd ever met and said, practically, I will fly to your house and wash your d if you will buy my book. So we launched the book. Also my son. It was Halloween Day 2008. My son was in a pirate costume. Jokes later, and I filmed a video and it said, r mateys buy my daddy's book. Shameless. I know, but it worked. The day the book came out, we had seven bestseller lists, and my life's never been the same since. I travel around the country and now the world. I gave away a thousand books is how I made my first seven figures. I gave away 1,000 books is how I made my first seven figures. So you don't make money by selling a book. You make money by having a book. Big important point. So now I do that for over 2200 clients all around the world. And the thing that I want to break down for you today is that's my story. Why I told you my story is because of one thing. Branding is simply storytelling. Most people will try to confuse you about what it is. It's simply storytelling. Tell your story, and that's building your brand. And ultimately, you want other people telling your story for you. So you have to figure out how to tell that story in a way that's effective, that they will want to pass it along to. So we'll do a little exercise here. Try to fill in the blank for me. Tastes great. Less melts in your mouth, not in your. Got not milk, but. Or got. I messed that one up. Got not beer, but milk. Yeah, right. That's it. So how do you know all these things? Repetition. Right? So the reason why you know all these things is because brands have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars just cramming this stuff in your head. I also know you now watch entirely too much television, but brands spend billions of dollars putting this in your head. So how many of you here have about a billion dollars to spend on your branding? Well, damn it, I usually get at least one. But here's what you got to do. So the only way to combat that, truly, is personal branding, because it's the one thing that you have that no one else has and will never have. So you can either spend money trying to create associations with nameless, faceless objects and words, or you can make people connect with you personally. And so that's what we specialize in. That's what we teach people how to do. So what you have to do, you have to tell your story so that people understand who you are and where you came from. You kind of have this life, and you've got where you start and where you end. And we have this whole journey in between. And things happen to us, good things, bad things. And most of us tend to want to close the door on the bad things, right? And just forget about them. Well, all those things make you uniquely positioned to be the only person in the world to help your prospect the way you can because of what you've been through. So don't forget those things. That's part of telling your story. Okay? Now, storytelling is really interesting. There's the left brain and the right brain, right? So the left brain is the analytical side, the right brain as. No, it's the creative side. If I asked you which side of the brain do you think stories appeal to? Which one would you say? The right side, the creative side. It's actually wrong. That's why I ask. So the left side of the brain is actually what stories appeal to because it helps you make sense of things you otherwise wouldn't understand. So it takes a bunch of facts and puts them together into something that you want to believe in. And it makes sense out of it in the analytical side of your brain. So think about, would you rather watch Braveheart or read a book on the history of Scotland? Pray for it, right? Want to watch Mel Gibson kick some ass? So that will give you. That's how that works. Now, every time you tell a story that people connect with, there's a chemical in your brain called oxytocin that's released. That is not what Rush Limbaugh got in trouble for. That's oxycontin. This is oxytocin. This is a chemical you have in your brain. When you give someone a hug, when you have sex, this is released. You can actually get the same effect from telling a story. Also, when this chemical is released, it builds trouble. So if you tell a great story, you build trust. Now let's talk about how to really use this to your advantage. Now, all these things I'm telling you can be used for good or for evil. I ask that you only use them for good. So anyone know what Dunbar's Rule is? I learned it from reading Peter D. Mandis book Abundance. Basically, you can have a hundred relationships with. You can only ever have really 100 relationships at one time. Been researched. I didn't do the research, but they tell me it's true. So think about it. If someone watches Oprah every day, Oprah takes over one of those 100 spots. So if you watch Oprah every day, you take over one of those 100 spots. I think your brain can definitely distinguish between your mother and OPRAH Being at 1 and 100 or whatever. But the whole point is you create relationships and Oprah is creating a relationship through media. So let's talk about the effect of media on storytelling and your brand. So you can create many media formats that are one to many, but feel like one to one. Well written newsletters, CDs, DVDs, Internet videos, emails to your list. Those feel like one to one communications, but they're one to many. If you show up in your client's mailbox or inbox regularly, you will get Dunbar's rule effect, media effect on your clients and prospects. You will actually become their friend in the business. And if you have a friend in the business, how many people do you call to get a quote? One you call your friend in the business. So it makes price irrelevant, it makes competition irrelevant. All based on building your personal brand. But you cannot do that unless you tell your story. So in closing, what I want you to understand is that building your brand is nothing more than telling your story effectively. Telling your story effectively through media. Media is simply a medium for telling your story. And when you do it effectively and you connect with people on a one to one level using one to many media formats, you can connect with lots of people. You can create relationships. The trust factor will go up. They'll get oxytocin, their brains. They will actually feel like they are a part of your story if you let them in on it. And so they will ultimately feel like if they went to your competitors, they, they would be tearing down what they've helped to build. So go out and tell your story. That's how you build your brand.

Thank you.

What are some strategies and tactics business owners should be thinking about using to bring in cash, like right now? Well, I mean, there's a lot of different ways. One of them is most people don't think about barter. I've set up lots of things for people, but if you have something you can create or you own that you have margin in, or it's sunk cost and you. And it has, and it has value to anybody. And you can exchange it for anything. That can either be cash converted, used in lieu of what you buy, or there's another word, I don't want to get too sophisticated, triangulated. You could mean we've done, geez, I've done 50, 60 billion million dollars.

Excuse me. Of barter.

And I could tell you some great barter stories the other. I've been to your house. You have a lot of art and shit there that you've bartered over the years.

I mean, this is me truthfully.

I drive a gt, I got a GTS Mercedes I traded a day for. I got a. And I'm saying this just to demonstrate not to be arrogant. I've got a, a G Wagon, 63AMG. I traded two days for. Christy has a Porsche we traded for, you know, my whole backyard I traded for. But it's understanding value perception. If you have something that you have in oversupply, expertise, for example, and that expertise has high perceived value and you can exchange it to somebody that you can, you can demonstrate needs it or needs the not it. Because you're not really selling the expertise.

You'Re selling the result, the saving, the money, the productivity, whatever it's going to be worth.

And you can get anything we used to do with car dealership just as an example, we would create barter profit centers. And I'll go through real quick because it's pretty cool. We would basically look at. And most people don't know it. If you have car dealers there, they know it. It's a very huge amount of volume that goes through not just volume of cars, but just buying, purchasing, you know, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. We would go through everything they were buying. Got to keep my eyes focused on the camera. And then we would see what we could trade for instead of purchasing. But when you're trading, you can trade soft for hard on different multiples. And I don't want to get too sophisticated, but we would trade a car for two or three times the value in something else that we would normally pay cash for. So let's say we were going to buy chemicals and we needed cleaning chemicals or lubricating chemicals, we would go to that company and we trade them either automobiles that normally would have, let's call it a 15% margin or less, but we would trade it 2 or 3 to 1. So we would get margins of something like literally 60, 70% to our advantage for something we would normally write a check for. We would also trade for things I could liquidate on the open market for a multiple, excuse me, for a higher margin you can trade. I don't want to get too sophisticated. You can JV with people. Again, if you have anything that you sell, you should ask what else do people buy right now, before, during, after. Instead, if it's still being purchased, then the next Level is what else are my buyers buying? And if they're buying it from people they don't know and they're just basically trying to find them anyhow. This goes back to relationships, Joe. You have the ability, with the trust, the credibility that has been very hard won by the years you've served your clients or the value you brought your clients. If it wasn't yours to say, look, this is. And by the way, I have a concept that's called the Aikido school of marketing. And the essence, anybody that knows what aikido is, it's the martial arts methodology that uses the power of the enemy against the enemy. If you use the problem to your advantage, you could say, look, it's a little unusual for me to be introducing you to blank, but I know that you're going to be purchasing or using these services or products now, and you probably don't know who to trust. We've built a very strong relationship where hopefully you trust us and our judgment. We've done a very, very comprehensive job and we've found what we think are the best providers. We've negotiated in behalf of all of our clients. A preferential price, extra terms, extra guarantees, bonuses. And if you don't know who to trust, we would like to very strongly recommend this. You can choose anybody you want, but we're also ombudsman. You can do things like that all day long. And I hope I'm not getting too rogue on you. No. You know what I. What I like about what you just said? When I was a carpet cleaner back in 1990, one of the ways I came up with a free room of carpet cleaning was I heard a one of your I don't know how many thousands of dollars. You were the most expensive seminar guy in the world back in the 90s. When I first started listening to your stuff, I remember listening to one of your first set of J. Abraham tapes in 1992 was the first time. And you had some carpet cleaners. And I think back then you were charging like three grand an hour or something and they could not afford you, these two guys that owned the carpet cleaning business. And so they scraped up $2,000 to hire you. And I think you gave them 45 minutes for two grand. And what you told them is you explained lifetime value of a customer and you are great at explaining the whole J. Abraham. You don't know how much you can afford to spend until and unless you know how much a client is actually worth to you. And so you'd explain to them lifetime Value of a customer and go out and spend a month giving away carpet cleaning for free. Because what will happen is you will develop reciprocity and then they will refer you and they'll do business with you again. And so what happened is they went to churches and trade shows and neighborhoods and just offered like an entire houses of carpet cleaning. And people would tip them and they'd refer them and things like that. And I was like, huh? So I was like, what if I just gave away a free room of carpet cleaning? So I started doing that, and then I created a thing called a carpet audit. Because I didn't want to do a free quote. I wanted to do something different. And I developed this system for myself. And then I went to a dry cleaner of clothing, was my first joint venture, who was already had a developed relationship with people that were bringing their clothing. And I said, can I clean the carpets in your house or your. Or your dry cleaner here to show you the services I do, and if you like it, then can we talk about offering services to your clients? Because I wanted him to see my, you know, my services. And so he agreed to let me do his. The store. And so I cleaned the front entrance. It wasn't a ton of carpet, but it was the front entrance to this dry cleaner. Now what happened is I instilled reciprocity. But then over like the first year, he referred me and I gave him 10% commission of every job that I did. And he referred $25,000 worth of business to me that year. And what my offer was was a free room of carpet cleaning to all his clients. And another thing that I learned through you is that if you offer someone a gift, even if they do not avail themselves of it, you still get the benefit of the reciprocity by. And you genuinely do it. You don't want to do it as a gimmick. I mean, if you are offering something to someone, you give it to them, right? And so what ended up happening was all of these people that stopped going to this dry cleaner. I asked after I did a few jobs and people reported back, I was like, can I have your list? And I will call them. I will. Physically, there was no Internet back then. This is like literally manual marketing, right? And putting postcards and signs on his store. I even got him to put little door hangers over the clothing that said, you know, ask us about our free carpet cleaning. But here's the point as it relates to everybody. I then started teaching carpet cleaners to go out and say they're going to hire a landscaper, a pool cleaner, an electrician, a painter, a pest control company, all of these, you know, asphalt like everything you know and they're going to, you have a relationship with them, you know, different service businesses. And the fact is like why is your interior designer writing to you about a carpet cleaner? Why is your carpet cleaning writing to you about a real estate agent? And all of a sudden it became this whole joint venture thing. And so every time one of my carpet cleaners wanted to add another hundred grand to their business, I would say who is the joint venture? Or refer that you can develop and establish a relationship with that can refer that business to you. And right now that opportunity I think exists in greater levels than ever before because there's this anxiety and there's all these people trying to figure out and many of the comments that people have posted here we with these ideas. I mean I think that's just a way to look at it. And I only bring this up because I was a Deborah carpet cleaner that was just trying to figure out how to learn marketing. Still doing the carpet cleaning myself and I still manage to build and grow my business doing all this sort of stuff. And now with that level of knowledge and how easy it is with the Internet in the, in the spreading of messages, there's just such a great, and the need of it is such a great opportunity. Joe, if you like, you know this, I mean we've done, I've got 150.

Different ways to do strategic alliances, JV's.

Co branding partner, barter everything if you like. We've got, geez, I don't know, three or four programs that we have sold for a lot but we don't push them very much. I'll be happy to give you the best one on ones and you can put them on your member site, give them free to everyone as long as they don't banter them to anybody else if that helps. So Michael's title is Maximizing the value of Digital Analytics. Please help me welcome Michael Loeban. Thank you sir.

Look, over the past 72 hours, how many of you have seen an advertisement that you didn't care for? Or how many got the newsletter that you did not quite understand why it was sent to you? Or maybe you came to the website and it was so difficult to use, you actually left the website. So why is this happening? We are living in an amazing time when we are able to collect all the information about our customers, when we are able to collect the data and data about how different devices Are performing what people are doing, what people do not do on our websites, and yet they suck at actually using that information. So, as Joe mentioned, I worked with many organizations, and what I was able to understand working through this company is that there are actually three ways that you can begin using analytics and how it can help you grow your business. Would you like to know what they are? So it actually boils down to three simple concepts. Number one is what we need to measure makes sense. Number two is we need to understand, which is a little bit more difficult than measuring, and few companies do it. And we need to influence once we're able to understand, which is even more difficult. Let's start with measurement. How many of you follow sports? Baseball. Football. Great. And when you turn on TV and there is a game, what is the number one thing that you want to see or to understand what's going on? You want to understand the score. So a couple of weeks ago, we had Olympic games. I turn on TV and they see this, and I'm as puzzled about what's going on as that guy over there. Right. I'm looking at this. It seemed like a score. I don't know what game this is. How many of you know what game this is?

Curling.

Curling, right. I could not understand the point of it. That's besides the point. But I could not understand who was winning. And then I had an epiphany moment. I was looking at it and I realized, well, you know what? This is not just a scoreboard. This is a typical marketing dashboard that my clients give me. I look at marketing dashboard, and many of you probably can relate. I look at it, shows the numbers, and ask them, do I look at it like this or do I look at it like this? Like this. It makes even more sense. Or maybe like this. So if you are looking at the information, we are looking at the marketing dashboard, but we still are not quite able to understand is the campaign profitable? Are they making money or not? How many of you feel this way when you're working with as an agent? So your marketing team gives you the information and you are not quite sure are you winning or not? So if you cannot read the scoreboard, how do you know who's winning? So the way we look at how to measure is actually fairly simple. And Jennifer, I'm so glad that you had this discussion just a few minutes ago, because really, the power of analytics comes down down to our ability to break down the marketing process in as many manageable components as possible so then we can understand each one step. Number One, well, it's all about exposure. How many people see our advertisement? How many people click on our advertisement? Step number two, maybe people come to the website. How many landing page views we have. So how many people landed on our website? How many people decided to click more? Step number three is maybe people were intrigued by the website and they decided to contact us. So how many successful form submissions we had? And step number four, maybe there was some kind of transaction. Maybe they decided to buy something or maybe a conversion happened. Now, most of the organizations have something like this. One thing to keep in mind and the reason you want to break down your marketing process this way. One is it obviously becomes much easier to measure. The other one is a lot of times people think, well, the marketing funnel needs to be as short as possible. That's not necessarily true. Sometimes, as we've discussed today, you want to have more marketing messages because that ability allows you to test them and see what marketing message is the most powerful in your sequence. And you know what the last and the main reason you want to have this type of marketing funnel is that you can optimize each one of those steps and merit 10% increase in each of seven steps that we've seen here can produce 100% compound increase. How powerful is that? So great. We have our scoreboard, right? It actually is something that is valuable to us. We have total sessions, we have our form views, we have number of form submissions, we have now number of appointments. It actually makes sense. What's not enough? Well, the reason on what's not enough is I know how many appointments, I know how many people visited my website and how many converted. But I don't necessarily understand why this happened. How many of you want to be funneled? How many of you want to be clicked through? How many of you want to be measured or submitted? We don't ask customers yet as marketers, that's how we think about marketing. So what if we decide to flip it? How do we focus or go from measuring what to understanding why? Because if we can understand why something is happening, we can influence it. Now, it is easier said than done, right? You have a fancy dashboard, you maybe have five or six different dashboards. How do you actually understand what is going on in the mind of your customer? And there is one powerful way to do so. It's called the narrative. Now, I have a nephew, right? My nephew is five years old. And when my nephew doesn't understand something, I do not try to give him more data. What I try to do is I try to tell Him a story. If there is one thing that you remember after this presentation should be this. The most important part. Part of writing a narrative is writing. Is writing a narrative. It's not to get more data, it's not to produce a dashboard. It's to write a narrative. What does it look like? Let's take a look. The way we build our narrative is we answer either ourselves. So we get our marketers, our agency to answer three simple questions. Who are the people that we are marketing to? What are they doing? And the results. And then you write it out here. Here's our who. Let's say I have a group of people. It's represented by Amy. Amy from New Jersey never shopped before on my website. What happened? She is intrigued by the promise of my advertisement and she arrives on the mobile landing page. What was the result of it? Overwhelmed by 30 plus different offers Amy leaves the site in less than 20 minutes. That's my narrative. Wahoo. What results now what do you think works better when we are trying to analyze our marketing campaigns? Just the dashboard on a dashboard and a narrative. Narrative. Somebody used this word today. Humanize us. That's exactly what it does. What you want to do is humanize your marketing so you can really understand what people are doing not just to measure their behaviors. Great. Now we understand that we the narrative but what happens then? So now I know why somebody why Colin came to my website and Colin did not buy. Why did that happen? Colin? I can do this method probably would not be very effective. Why can't you try to do something else? In my opinion marketing is all about influence. Right? If we see advertisements that we do not click on, if we see the websites that are too difficult to process we do not know what we need to be doing on that website. It means that the market really did not influence us to make a purchasing decision. So the question that I want to pose in front of you today is how do I influence my audience to make the right decision? Yesterday during the webinar training Jason was saying if I know that there is something that is right for you, you to buy, I have to give it to you. Right? It's my obligation to sell it to you. I'm paraphrasing. I apologize but he'll probably give you a better word. So how do you influence this? Well a lot of organizations do what's called testing, AB testing. Unfortunately that is not enough. So what we put together is what we call an influence quadrant. So let's take a look. So we have our customers, we have Our prospects, we have incremental testing and we have exponential testing and we have four different quadrants. Now quadrant number one is what majority of marketers are doing right now. It's newsletter subject line, right? I'm sending out newsletters and they want to try a different subject line. As was discussed today when Jennifer was planning to send out the message. The question is can they test it? And that's great. They are testing a subject line. But what if I want to present to my customers something new that was not available to them before? Maybe what I can do is pilot a new subscription service. A couple of years ago, Burberry, Burberry brand was the first one that started to online during when they were presenting different clothing and then when they had, when they showcased new products during their fall collection, they were the first company to start selling those products during that ceremony. Now every major brand doesn't. So what they did, they pilot a new service and they tested it out. Now you can have exponential testing with your prospects so people never purchased before so you can enter a new GM market. And it's bullshit when someone says, well in order for me to enter a new GM market, I need to do this, this and this, this. All you need is a landing page and see how many people respond. And last one is if I have prospects and I want to do incremental testing, landing page testing where I try new ideas. So in marketing, in order for us to grow our understanding, what we need to do is have similar type of quadrant and make sure that our testing falls into each of those quadrants. So if I had to answer Joe's question, there are only three things that I would say. Break out your marketing process into manageable steps. Build your narrative and identify two or three desired behaviors that you can test or one maybe for each quadrant. And I'm going to leave you with this. Thank you very much.

This is really cool. Let me see, just by a quick show of hands, how many of you guys know Joe Foley or are clients of Joe Foley's? So a good percentage of the room and a lot of you don't know who Joe Foley is. And this is really exciting for me because I kind of get to tell you, especially if this is your first meeting, just the caliber of people I'm sure you already know you're in the room with. And Joe I first met back in 2011 when he joined 25K. And Joe and I just really hit it off right from the get go. And he's one of the, what Joe does is the way that he serves his clients, he does kind of like product development. If you are in the information business, he creates, it helps you create and develop products. Manuals, books, courses, CDs, DVDs, all of this kind of stuff. He also works with other kinds of businesses where he fulfills for them and ships on behalf of them. And when they get orders like say like supplements, golf clubs, I mean, you name it. And he ships about 10,000 orders a day out of his facility on behalf of his clients. So he's doing some pretty good volume. And 16 months ago, when Joe and I began working together and I got a really good look inside of Joe's business and really got to talk with him about how he wanted me to help him, one of the things I told him was, was, is like if you start focusing your efforts on creating win win relationships and we were focusing specifically on his clients, I said that alone is going to increase revenue in a huge way and it's also going to give you so much more satisfaction from doing what you do. And I'll tell you, those of you who are in 25k who have seen this unfold over the last 16 months, because I know I've talked with a bunch of you, especially like Jeff Hayes. I helped Jeff and Joe come together on some stuff. And when I was sharing Jeff to Jeff about it, Jeff was even telling me, wow, Kevin, that wasn't just a win for Joe, who you're working with, that was a huge win for us too. Today I'm going to share the four step process that Joe and I developed. And it's all about relationships. And it's all about relationships and five specific areas of your business. With your prospects, with your clients, with your employees, with your vendors, and then of course with any of your business partners. And the reason that this is so important is because when somebody is in a relationship with you and somebody is in a win win relationship with you, they are committed to you and they're also committed to anything that you do together. In fact, when you do something together that's powerful, that strengthens that relationship. And so Joe using this process, over the last 16 months, he has created an extra $2 million in revenue, actually 2 million plus in revenue for his company. And just most recently he picked up the biggest client of his career using this same exact process. And, and the client that he picked up, actually Manny, was kind of instrumental in helping make that happen is a company called the Truth About Cancer. Now I don't know the actual financials of that project, but what I do know is that when that order was placed, it took Joe and his team working 24 hours around the clock for four weeks straight in order to fill that order. And this is actually a copy. This is kind of an example of some of the stuff, stuff Joe does. But this is the actual product that he shipped out. You know, it's got some books, it's got CDs, DVDs, that kind of thing. And when the order was finished and it shipped in boxes this size, it filled seven semi trucks. So I mean, that's a good size order. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to share this four step process that Joe and I developed. But as I do, and you know what, I don't want to, like I said, it's all about relationships. And what I want to make sure that you understand is that it's really simple. But please don't let the simplicity kind of cause you to say, okay, well, you know, I already know this stuff. And I've heard this before because Joe kind of thought that too until I told him. I just completely blunt with him, I said, yeah, you might know this, you might have heard this before, but you're not doing it and you're not getting the benefit of it. And so as we started working together and we laid out this process, the first thing that we did is we gave Joe a way to just let him be himself and just connect with people in a way that was just authentically Joe. And so when he found himself in conversations, even Joe will admit this. I'm not telling anybody anything that Joe wouldn't freely admit to, but he would put his salesman hat on. And now we found a way for him, him to just like when he was connecting with people, just to be completely him and say, hey, you know what, if he's talking with somebody who he believes he can help, he's just like, you know what, I would love to have a conversation with you and find out if there's a way that I might be able to help make your business more profitable or make your life a lot more easier. And that just opened the door. And then so now the second step is he just sets up a time to have that conversation, if not right there on the spot, depending on the situation. But. And once he's in that conversation, once again, this was important for Joe to like not have to put on that salesman hat now that he's in a sales conversation. So what we did is we formulated three specific questions that he needed to be asking his clients. And by doing that, it got him 100% engaged in listening to his client on that conversation. And, and not with listening with the intent of like, okay, as soon as I get to a point where they tell me a way that I can help them, let me jump in and tell them that, no, he stayed 100% engaged, fully listening. I mean, if he's doing this over the phone, he's taking notes, he's letting people know he might be recording the conversation for future reference, if need be. If he's doing it in person, he's writing notes and 100% engaged in listening, knowing full well that he'll get his opportunity to talk later. And so he stays in this listening mode. And I'll tell you what, the feedback that he's gotten from doing this, because, like, most people never get listened to. And when he just listens, it connects him with those people in such a powerful way. So then the third step, then he just sets up a time to have a follow up conversation with them. And what this does is it gives him time to think creatively, it gives him time to talk with other people about what's going on. And I'll tell you, I've had lots of conversations with Joe at this point in time over the last 16 months where he's in. I mean, Jeff Hayes is a perfect example. You know, I was kind of like mediating with Joe behind the scenes when he was talking with Tate. And like, hey, Joe, you know, this is what you need to do now when you reconnect with Tate. And so it gives Joe that time to think creatively so that he can reconnect and connect in a powerful way with that person. And then the fourth step is that on that conversation, he just demonstrates that he gets them, that he, that he understands where they're coming from. And it really starts with just him just kind of re, you know, giving some of their own verbiage right back to them. Okay, like, Jeff, what we talked about was this. I just want to make sure I clearly understand everything you were talking about. So we talked about you wanting to do this and this and this and this. And once he confirms that, now he's just like, okay, they're collaborating together and realizing that this is a back and forth dialogue. And all Joe is doing is just getting their ideas out of their head into the here and now. And now he just offers to be their guide as they move forward in making everything that they're talking about a reality. And see, this is what's made all the Difference, difference for him. And it's just so powerful to watch this unfold in his business, with his relationships and anybody who's ever interacted with him in this way. Now, I mean, I have heard comments from people in 25K talking about how, you know what, I've loved Joe before, but my gosh, now I really love Joe. I mean, he is just like, just doing things in a little bit different way. And so in closing, I'll just say to you that the most powerful thing that you can do in your life, in your business, is focus on these relationships in your business. And once again, it's relationships with your prospects, with your clients, with your employees, with your vendors and with your business partners. And choose the one category where you can swing the needle in the biggest way, where you can make the biggest impact, and start there and start focusing on building that relationship in a win win situation using this kind of a process. And then once you've done that, I will tell you what, once you've had that experience and you've seen what's come from that, the natural thing is you're going to want to just do a whole lot more of that.

One of the things, like I'm looking at some of the talking points that you and I could dive right into, and the very first one is why relationships are essential to the success of any business. It's not just real estate that is, or we think about things that tend to be sort of people, businesses. You think there are people inherent in every business, whether it's the team in the internal business, the, the interaction between your clients and customers and potential customers, those relationships, the suppliers, the. It's all about the people.

It is every single business. Even if you're a tech person in a back room in a dungeon and you never leave your basement, if you have a product or a service to sell, you can't do it without people. What I love, which I say all the time, is all success is predicated upon the ability to create, nurture and sustain healthy relationships. So here's what everybody can relate to. I would imagine most of us entrepreneurs listening now, right? We've probably all watched Shark Tank, if you haven't watched Shark Tank. The basic premise of Shark Tank is that entrepreneurs go into the tank to get money and just as importantly, the connections, which are the partnerships, which are the strategic relationships that the sharks can provide for the entrepreneur that would otherwise become close to them and offer them opportunities to grow their business. The entire premise of Shark Tank is predicated upon strategic relationships. So there's happiness in the business. We also know that for peak performance in the book the Art of Impossible by Steve Kotler, I'm not sure he talks about for peak performance. People matter, because when you're faced with the challenge, the research shows. And I love this now, and I love that we have functional MRIs that can show it. Right. For the hardcore science people. But we'll get to that later, maybe, is that if you're faced with a challenge and everybody can think about this in their personal or professional life, and if you have, I'll just say gross oversimplification, you have a support system behind you that will cheer you on. You will be. Your odds of being successful are greater than if you don't have people in your corner. Right. So there's that aspect, the third aspect, which just is amazing to me. Like, I love this stuff. So we've only started to live later in life recently. Right. And so, sorry, guys, but, you know, women tend to live longer than you. There may or may not be a reason for that. I don't know. It could be the luck of the draw. But anyway, men. So men haven't lived as long as women, but men are living into their 70s and 80s. But that's very new news. So Harvard did a longitudinal study of over 700 men. Think 729, don't quote me, but over 700 men for the 79 years of their life. And what they found is that the men that will live the longest and are, in fact, the happiest are the men that have significant happy relationships. And that was. They could predict that from midlife, like at 50, had nothing to do with blood pressure, cholesterol level, nothing. That, to me is incredible. So if that doesn't make the case for all success is based on relationships, I'm at a loss.

Yeah. If you're defining your success as living and being here on the planet to get to play the game longer, that's really. Yeah, that's a big.

But also. But also Dean. But happy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not just existing.

Right.

And so what's success for me?

We, as entrepreneurs, this is the greatest news, is that, you know, we get to use our business also to create this happy, successful. Whatever our definition, we get to define what that is. So a big piece of it is relationships. And you see everything going now. It fits in so perfectly, you know, with this whole idea of the cooperation game that we've all been playing. I mean, that's what makes us as a species. The most successful species in the planet is Being able to cooperate with other people so that not everybody has to self, you know, be self sustaining with their own little world. We get to create in a bigger system, and that requires cooperation.

Well, it's the personification of who, not how.

Yes.

I don't have to be the hunter and the gatherer and the cooker and the Right. Thank God, because if I was the cooker, you'd all starve. But, but it's the classic if you cannot cooperate, if you cannot collaborate, and companies that do that, well, we call that a high functioning team.

Hello, this is Joe Polish, and this is a very historical moment, and you'll know why in just a moment. I'm sitting in a very nice restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, with three of the most fascinating and coolest people that I know. And that would include Kathy Colby, the creator of Colby.com, which many of you have heard about and have done. Mr. Dan Sullivan, founder of the Strategic Coach program, the highest level coaching program in the world for successful entrepreneurs, and Bab Smith, who actually runs Strategic Coach and is phenomenal. And so we're here today, and the historical moment is this. Dan actually showed Kathy Colby for the very first time the multiplier game, which is a series of cards of some of the world's greatest thinkers. And Dan's twist on it, which I'll ask Dan about in just a moment. But I first want to ask Kathy. Colby has created this cool thing called the Colby Profile that literally God knows how many people have done the Colby. You have any idea, Kathy?

About a million.

About a million. Okay. And we're all quick starts at this table. At this table. All of us, quick starts. And what is your Colby, Kathy?

I have a two, in fact, finder, Itty bitty. When it comes to details, I'm a generalist. I'm a six in follow through and an eight in quick start. That makes me the theorist and a 4 in implementer. So I'm in my jeans today.

I'm going to go garden shortly.

Awesome. Now we're all quick starts, which means we're very much idea people, low follow through from my standpoint, where I have lots, you know, come up with a lot of ideas, but I don't get anything done without having a team around me. And that's what you help people do. And I was first introduced to Colby through Strategic Coach. And so our quick starts, are they crazy?

No, we're just insanely original and come up with ideas that may or may not work and we need other people to sort through them. And figure out what the good ones are. This is a good one, Dan. And so we need collaboration, but so does everybody.

Well, there you go. We need collaboration, and we all want to. So now Dan has created the Strategic Coach program. So real quickly, Dan, a strategic coach. You know, anyone that knows me has heard me quote you a bazillion times. I think you are the most amazing thinker I've ever met in understanding entrepreneurial thinkers and how to make entrepreneurs better. And that's what Strategic Coach does, right? Pretty much.

Well, I really. I looked at the most productive people.

And the most productive people were entrepreneurs, and I just decided to spend my.

Whole life making the most productive people more productive.

So that's our mission statement. And one of the things along the line that we've taken a look at.

Is how do entrepreneurs continually multiply themselves? So that's really the reason why I.

Created this game for entrepreneurs, but I.

Think it applies to everybody. And so Babs and I, in our.

Company, what we're looking at is we're.

Constantly trying to multiply ourselves inside of our companies so that our company has greater impact in the world.

But the best way to do that.

Is to actually help all of our clientele multiply themselves. Awesome.

Awesome.

Now, Babs, in a moment, I'm going to ask you, and I don't want to be too sneaky on you, what it's like to be married to Dan Sullivan. So are you ready? Are you ready for that?

Okay.

What's it like? What's it like to be married? I'm being married to Dan Sullivan because I have a lot of great ideas, and he and I collaborate a lot on all these different ideas. So when I met him, he. I was really into helping good people get better, and I just wanted to help a whole lot of people, and I loved all the stuff he was creating, and so I thought we could get together and do it for more people. But it's a lot of fun because I'm a 2, 2, 3. Sorry, I'm a 3, 3, 9, 2. So our Colbys are really, really similar. Dan, did you say what you're Colby 22, 10, 4. He's a 22, 10, 4. Well, for the record, I'm a 5293. Okay.

Yeah.

And so, you know, we just have lots of fun because we have people surrounding us who can help make things.

Work, because otherwise we'd be in trouble.

And you guys have created, literally, Strategic Coach has some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, helping them become better and What Dan refers to them as industry transformers. So if you're an industry transformer or you have the making of transforming your industry or uniquely packaging yourself, that's what Strategic Coach is all about. So going back to the historical moment, the multiplier game, Dan created this thing called the multiplier game and showed it to Kathy Colby for the very first time. What are your thoughts on it, Kathy? What did it do for you?

I mean, it is so neat. It is so fascinating. One of the things that tough for people, with all our quick start and our ideas that flow out, it's being able to synthesize them into something that we can focus on and make them work and be able to share our process. And what Dan's done is taken the historical wisdom from so many people. Yeah, way too many old white guys.

About some women in here.

But aside from that, it's taking these wonderful philosophical points of view and helping us pick narrow and discuss just how we need to do what we're doing. And it's au courant because it's what do I need to do today? We just had the best time. He put me through it, and when I say through it, he let me play. And we've had such a good time and it was so meaningful. It brings out the kinds of things you're thinking about that need to put on the table. And it's on the table right here.

Yeah, well. And what's really cool is there's probably going to be different variations of this, and so far, only 10 of the cards have been shown to the world and there's going to be 50 in total. So if someone wants to play the multiplier game or get more information about this, what do they need to do?

Dan?

Well, we go to our website, which is www.strategiccoach. www.strategiccoach.com.

And that's basically it.

The IMP information about the multiplier game.

Will be on the website and that's.

That'S the best way to do it.

Or join the Strategic Coach program if you're an entrepreneur. And you can get that information by calling 1-800-387-3206.

I like it.

Yeah, you know, hey, look, I am a marketer. Piranha Marketing. What do you expect? So, and Kathy Colby, if they want to do a Colby, they go to colby.com.

Yeah, I forget the www do that, but it's K O L b e.

W kolbe.com and what, what would be the first place for people to start with Colby? Just the I start with the Colby.

A, find out about yourself and then you take the B and find out what's causing you stress. What are you trying to do that works against your grain, but use it with your co workers, your collaborators, your team, your family, because it's the interactions that really tell us whether we're going to get it done.

Because we need.

The difficulty is around this table. If we were all to work together for very long, we'd have so much fun playing, but we wouldn't get much done. So we would all have and we do our teams that we work with. And I think that's incredibly important. Every human being is equally capable of creativity, but we do it differently. This conative stuff is as important as you're thinking and your feeling. It's what you do. So these guys, you guys are our number one client at Colby. The strategic coach is our number one. We've been working together for over 20 years. You had what, four people when you started? When we first met you, it was about four of them. And we said to them, hey, you two are great, but you better bring in some others to fill in the gaps. We have had a 20 year collaboration of friendship and it's built on what everybody should have. Clients who are friends, they trust. We work together, we build ideas, we share. We want Dan to come and speak at our professional growth seminar because everyone we work with and train needs to know what he does. We're going to play this game. It's this kind of energy that makes work and makes everything you do so much fun. I mean, it's been great working with you guys.

You know, it's funny too, because we have like, Vic Conant.

Sure.

Lloyd Conant, Earl Nightingale started Nightingale Conant. And I still to this day have the number one selling marketing program at Nightingale Conant called Piranha Marketing. You can now buy it on audible.com, which is owned by Amazon. But basically, we live in a day and age right now where there's so much content, there's so much information. What you just said will impact the person who's listening and takes it seriously and really thinks about it. And there's so much really interesting and valuable and useful information out there. We're drowning in data. I think people are still starving for wisdom. It's the ability to take what you just said and really believe it and integrate it and make it part of your life. Back in 1967, there wasn't a ton of self help books available. Yeah, he was the guy.

He started the industry Learning by listening.

There are so many people that will watch this and listen to this, that have no idea that because of the strangest secret in the industry that started, they're probably doing what it is they're doing. Especially people that are information marketers or people that are authors, people that run seminars. I mean, I mean so much of it had been influenced by that. And so I think people would be far better served to. Instead of reading a bunch of books or attending a lot of seminars, is to master a book, master an idea, really hear something and do something with it. So when you heard that and you and Judy were listening to it over and over again and you changed your thinking, the question which sounds, I mean, I have my own version of how I think about this. I would almost like to ask you, if you can, to describe how does one change their thinking? I mean, you hear an idea and you change your thinking. Because I've seen some people that you give them an idea and man, they do something with it. And other people, they hear it. It's kind of like the Stephen Covey quote, you know, to hear and not to do is not to hear, to to understand, but not to do is not to understand that sort of thing. So how does one change your thinking? Because you just laid out the essence of the strangest secret. And for someone that takes that and changes their thinking with it, it could change their life. I mean, your story of how you went from basically being a loser at selling to being the top one out of a thousand, that's a big deal. And you did it by shifting the attitude, which of course your behavior and everything came after that.

So how does one do it? Well, you know, in Genius network we have really geniuses. You've got Dr. Robert Cooper, a neuroscientist, and you've got so many people that are experts in the. I don't know any of that stuff. I mean, I come from the construction world, you know, no formal college education. But I do know this, that when people do something that works and you know, I did this and that works, you know, if I want to do it again, if I did the same thing, it probably would work again, right? That people see that. So that's really what happened that day in that beat up Volkswagen with the crack. And I looked and I said, what happened? Same product, same territory, same price, everything was the same. What was the variable? My thinking. What if I could think that way every day and like that I became a different person.

Because I'll tell you, I mean right now, every Time I meet with you, you are enthusiastic, you are excited. I mean, I've never seen you looking. Not that you don't get this way, but I don't see you get overwhelmed. I mean, I look at myself and I make jokes about how I can go in different moods, and I've all these dysfunctions and all this, but you're just smiling, you're happy, you're effective, you are on all the time. And so it's really an expression of you have really integrated this into your whole being. I mean, this is who you are.

Well, it's what Earl said. If that's what you want, that's what you think about. That's why I have a wonderful wife, I've got great kids, I got a terrific career, I live in a wonderful place. And if it isn't, we improve. Let me just tell you what one other thing that Earl taught me that very few people have ever heard, because he taught it to me in my fishing boat up at Lake Powell. We started when he and I became friends. And for the last three years, he lived here in Scottsdale.

And last three years of his life, yes.

And I took him out fishing to Saguaro Lake, bass fishing, because he liked to fish, fish. And we talked about the idea of changing or improving. And he taught me the 51% rule. He said, joel, so many people go through all these different changes in their life. You know, they change spouses, they change homes, they change jobs. They're always changing. Here's the rule. He said, If 51% is positive, you improve it. If 51% is negative or more, you change it. So if you're living in a home and there's not 51% positive about that home, then go get another home. So we have lived in our home 45 years, right? It was 1900 square feet when we bought it. It's 8600ft now. It's increased in value tremendously, but we have improved because we had a great location, we had a terrific piece of property. There were things wrong with it. So when it's 51% positive, you improve it. A marriage isn't 100% perfect, but ours was 51% or more positive. So instead of changing spouses, and I'm sure there was many days Judy would have said, there's got to be somebody other than you, right? But she was 51% positive. So she kept me. And now we've had the 55, 53 year run for doing it. So that same thing is to the business that you're in. I mean, everybody's looking for another business. What about the business you've got? If you made a list of all the things that are positive and negative, if you have more positives than negatives, then you improve it. Then you take marketing, you use all the things that you teach, and you become part of Genius Network and you start getting new ideas and you grow. And that's been our one word motto since hearing that is improvement. So everything's got to improve. I mean, I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm 75, coming up my next birthday. And there's nothing physically I can't do that I've ever done before. And many things I can do now that I never could do before because I want to keep improving. That's why I'm paying you to be part of Genius Network. I want to get ideas like that and started a whole new business online of my speaking program as a result of Genius Network and all the ideas that are coming. And what about you? As you're listening to this, are you thinking about what can you improve? Don't worry about change. Change the bad things. Improve the others that are 51%. And I'll never forget the day sitting in the boat when Earl told me that, that it made so much sense. And when you think about your job, your relationships, your income, we can improve those things. And that's why we need speakers who have ideas that can move us into action. And there are things, you know, that could help people improve. And that's why speaking is such a great way to grow your business. If you can talk to your customers about ideas to help them grow. And you do that at every monthly meeting. I mean, I listen at the end to all the testimonials of all the things people got out of those two days in this wonderful facility you've created. Or at the annual event. Now, coming up to my third one at that. I know what's going to happen at that. You just need one good idea, but.

You have to act on it totally well. Okay, so that was a great lesson for the person watching this if they really want to take that seriously. Now I got to show you your business card. You have this business card that says, success comes in cans, not in cannots. And then of course, it says, here's what you can do. Keep this can in a conspicuous place as a reminder to yourself of all the things you can do. And here's what we can do for you. Custom corporate seminars and audio programs. Leadership, sales and personal development. And then the ingredients of what's in this can. Because how many of these have you distributed?

Over half a million.

Half a million. So it says ingredients, commitment, courage, faith, goals, imagination, creativity, honesty, persistence, knowledge, defined values, focused thinking, a sense of humor, and a positive I can attitude. And of course, that's on the back there. Like the ingredients and do not open can contents inedible only the message, the label is important. And so you have. Your Success comes in cans.com is the website. But the point is like, for one, it's unique. I think this is really clever marketing. But there's a point behind it. Success comes in cans. So everything that you just described is really. It's not a matter of can, it's a matter of won't or whatever resistance that someone puts up. I mean, both of, both of us are converts of a system, right? I utilized my marketing to get me out of a trap. I was a Deborah carpet cleaner, doing good work, ethical, I cared. But it had nothing to do with actually making any money until I learned how to translate a communication into an offer and get people to actually start hiring me for my carpet cleaning services. And then, of course, I turned that around and that led to me teaching others in that industry. And then that led to, you know, what I have today? Well, in the same thing, you're a convert of your own system. So anything else you'd like to say to the whole ability to what you can do with speaking? Because we will cover some of the mechanics of speaking. You have a whole system where people can actually learn. Oh, yes, people can hire you if they're willing to cut a check in order to do that. The thing, though is get them to. To believe that there is a possibility. And so on the tail end of what you just said, which was very motivating and inspiring, I want to try to clinch as much as I can for those people that are out there going, you know, yeah, I've just. I've been bumbling around, I've been failing, and I actually can shift that very quickly because you can. I've always loved the saying, today is the last day of the way you used to be. Or every passing moment is another chance to turn it all around. And every moment of everyone's life, there is the possibility to go ahead and make that shift and do something. And I'd like to utilize our conversation here to be that vehicle for the person that's out there watching that is just literally on the edge. And there's that fear. And so that's kind of What I want to go into, and I think, you know, one of the biggest things we hear all the time is, well, yeah, you know, speaking. But I'm scared. I mean, I don't want to get up and front of crowds. I'm an introvert and all of the things that come along with it. So I want you to speak to. What is the message on that can? And I want you to speak to the fear that people have with speaking. Then I want to talk about how do you actually do it?

Okay. I don't know. You need to talk to Dr. Sean Stevenson. He's the psychologist. He knows how the mind works. All I know are very simple truths, and here's what I can say. If you're terrified of speaking, speaking, don't speak. Make a video where you don't have to get in front of an audience if it's. That's the case. Or do what Ben Feldman did. Do you know who Ben Feldman? I do not. Ben Feldman was an insurance salesman for New York Life Insurance, and he died in the early 90s. I heard him speak in an event. He was considered, along with Joe Gandolfo, the two greatest and insurance people that have ever lived in the insurance industry. Ben Feldman was a short, stocky, overweight, bald guy that lisped, that was terrified of people.

Wow.

And I heard him speak at an event behind a curtain because he couldn't see an audience. There was a stage with, like, a shower curtain and a chair. And he was introduced from behind the curtain. And in a very quiet, nervous voice, he Talked for about 40 minutes about how to sell insurance to insurance agents. The standing ovation must have been three or four minutes long. And he never stepped out from behind the curtain, really. And he was a legend because what he said was so important. He never got over his fear of speaking. He was 81 years old when he died, and he was speaking up until the end. And he never conquered the fear. He spoke behind a curtain, but his message was so powerful. Earl Nightingale, the dean of personal motivation that we talked about earlier, was a very ineffective speaker. If you saw him today on a one to ten scale, you'd give him a two or a three. Stood behind a lectern, didn't look up, and he read his speech. And he changed lives because what he said was so clear, was so powerful, so impacting, and so effective. So you don't have to be different than who you are now. If you start doing it and using you as an example, when you were doing that first meeting, when you were Terrified. And you've shared your addictions and your insecurities more than anybody I've ever known. Is so open with that. But I don't know exactly. But I'm taking a guess that when you finish that event, when you got almost $5,000 in registration fees and $12,000 in product sales afterwards, and looked in the mirror that maybe next morning and said, you know, Joe, maybe you could do this again. You just did it and look at the results. Okay? Now, when you do all these meetings and speak and you always share that you don't like to go to cocktail parties, you're not an outward, gregarious, normal kind of person. Like, I mean, this is the way I am all the time. I just love to talk to people. I'm happy. And why not? I mean, that's a choice. But if you're not, it's okay.

I just think you have more dopamine and serotonin than I do.

Well, you know what I eat and drink, right?

You know, you do some really effective marketing in wild things, seafood, but you.

Also do some unique things.

You go in and you actually train your vendors. You, you know, you do all kinds of stuff. And I don't want to. I mean, you can name names if you want, but I don't want to. You know, But I'd like you to kind of walk people through what you do and how you do it. What have you done that has been a game changer that has made you money, that has created bonding and relationship and engagement with your clients? And what are some mistakes that you've done? I'd love to cover both of those in our conversation today. Just, you know, let's talk about some best practices, some best strategies, and let's talk about some lessons.

Well, first and foremost, the money making thing. There's things that have made us money in the past. To me, completely unsatisfactory to my level of expectation as far as what I've learned, what I've implemented, what I've done, first and foremost. I don't know if I just grew up with this, but I sincerely have, and you know, this too, a genuine, authentic love for people and the energy, like a positive energy thing. And I love to make people feel that they can achieve new things. I like to be out of the box. I'm an out of the box thinker, but I like to be. That intimacy thing goes back. I think that one of the first kind of engagements that, that we had was I was sending you over some seafood so I could introduce my Company and instead of just sending you over seafood and go, hey, check this stuff out, you know, Jeff Moore or whatever, I went into a conference room and I. I knew what all of your. Your team, what their favorite type of seafood was. And I went in, put a flip cam up on a deal, and started talking to that camera. It's about 11 minute video. Talked about the seafood, where it came from, came from, made fun of you, which is always a lot of fun to do and. But just gave everything. And I remember the response that you have was like, you could do this as, you know, like a consumer awareness guide. And it's like, right, I do this all the time anyway. And so that really kind of hit for me. And when we did this gourmet giveaway, which is a completely untargeted and not, you know, the way I want it to go as far as wild things. But everybody that ordered in wild things, when we built this list of 2,000 people over the last few months of people that have ordered our seafood, everybody got a video from me. And at first it was me like, hey, Rakim, man, thanks. You know, I saw that you ordered this. I absolutely love what you ordered. You ordered the wild king salmon. I want you to know that this is caught hook and line off the boat of southeast Alaska. And, you know, and I would explain it, and I'd explain what's going on and how we believe that the best way for us to share our experience is to give it away for free. And that's exactly what we're doing. I mean, there was a thing, but I used their name. And it was like, whoa. But then that became. And as I'm sharing it and talking to Dean about it, he's like, when. When does this become a thing? When you get 2,000 orders in a day. And I'm like, so then I started to do. Not with the name, but make it still very personable and look in the camera and things. And that was convertible, but not nearly as exciting as when you use somebody's name in it. And so I learned that, you know, to be able to do that. And then everybody's. I'm starting to get people in these in the Breakthrough Mastermind deal, saying, you know, have just record a bunch of names and stick it in there. That's just so not me. You know, it's the connection, it's the energy. It's the thing on Thanksgiving Day, when I look at my text and it's you and Renee hiking, and you're saying, I don't even know what you eat on Thanksgiving, you know, okay, is it seafood? Is it what? You know, what is it? That meant the world to me. And if I know that that means the world to me, I'm sure that's special to everybody. And I know that, you know, as far as network, as far as you're not building a network of people because you have this thing in your mind going, network, network is good. Network good. No, you love people. You like connecting people, you like helping people. And to me, I think that that is the ultimate. To become somebody's trusted advisor, to become their friend. And trusted advisor to me is the ultimate position that I can have. Whether it's with my business, whether it's my friends, family, you know, my friends, anything is something that really gets me going. I started my mastermind group Thursday night boardroom because I had all this video and I just wanted to share it. And then it just all of a sudden is built into this group that's got 90 members in it, you know, and they all come every other Thursday and they don't. 90 don't come, thank God. But, you know, it's that love of people, that energy that we get from people. But seeing the stuff that you've done, seeing the power of the master, I'm.

Just gonna fumble around with the spin.

Here while you talk that you.

The power of the mastermind that you taught me. And that was the thing that we did last year was I worked with a major broadline distributor and I'm a tiny, tiny bit of this broad line distributor. I'm 25 million dollars. They are a 42 billion dollar corporation. So I mean, they're doing 2.2 billion dollars worth of seafood. I can't even, you know, they can't get the janitor open the back door for me. But as I started to look at the power of the mastermind and bringing a group together that has, you know, similar thoughts and similar passions, I put a mastermind group together of six suppliers we call the gang of six. And we put this group together, we met at this distributor's home office with all their executives going, what are these guys doing? And all of a sudden I was able to put this mastermind group together of suppliers and some of them competitive suppliers where I had to kind of keep the glue. I was the glue that kept it together. And it was a two day mastermind. And now I'm running a mastermind group of suppliers that act as one. And it's a $650 million group, not just a 25 million dollar group. So I learned that at Platinum. I learned that bringing like minds together is just as powerful as things can.

Can be.

But just the engagement part, really being sensitive. I think Wyatt Woodsmall was the guy that said, when you can articulate the needs, desires, challenges, fears, and aspirations of the other person, not better than they can to themselves, but better than.

Not better than they can to you.

But better they can to themselves, you have passed the tipping point of becoming that person's trusted advisor for life. And then all you have to do is continue to add value to the relationship, and they will eagerly receive it for life. And I was like, you know, that's my motto. You know, I have another one that's learn to teach. Teach to know, Know and share and share with passion. And that one's like a bumper sticker over my door. But it's every breath I take. You know, it's stuff just. And I think that you're probably. I would. I know you're this person. You're learning something not for the consumption of Joe Polish, but you're literally. You can. As a guy with add, you can't learn stuff for the consumption of Joe Polish. You are literally listening to this saying, I'm going to share this with Peter. I'm going to share this with Dean. I'm going to share this with Jeff. I'm going to share this with somebody. You're learning it, and you're obligated to learn it on behalf of somebody else. And I think that that, to me, has always been a big driver for me. Again, making money on this stuff. I think that you can get so big and grandiose. I was telling these stories to Jay Abraham, and he's like, man, these are all great ideas, but can you assign a dollar figure to it?

Well, no, no, no, no, no.

And he stopped me. He goes, this is gonna sound really weird coming from me. And I said, what? He goes, if you can't assign a dollar figure to your activities and these. These really cool plans and this way to bring people together. He goes, you have a business plan based in arrogance, because this is now about you, and it's not about what you're driving. And so at that very lunch, I learned that all business, since the beginning of business, ever has one overriding purpose. Take away all the fancy stuff and all that kind of stuff. Every business has one overriding purpose, and that is to drive new business, increased and or more profitable consumption of our product or service. And if that is irrefutable, and we understand that, that Is it then? At the core, we all share a basic common language. And so I had a meeting today down the street here with a big time VP at this place, and we talked about that, and then we were able to talk about the three challenges. And then I was able to even pull out the R question and use that. And this meeting, I left and my VP was with me that I took to the airport before I came back here. He goes, man, he goes, I'm your biggest fan. And he goes, that was the best I've ever seen. And I'm like, literally, as a lifelong learner, I'm able in my mind to go, that was. I love marketing. Episode 111. That was the 10x talk deal from this one.

This was this.

And I'm able to catalog this stuff, but I learned it to share it. That's great. And that's been probably the best thing is to learn it, to share it.

Yeah.

You know, and part of it too is, I think, which is hard for some people, is you always focus on the mindset of the person that you're selling and what the hell is it that they want. I mean, you're not. I don't hear you constantly talking about, you know, your seafood and where it comes from or, I mean, you know, all that stuff. Those are features. But I mean, you're. You're always thinking about what's in it for them. And as much as a skilled marketer kind of gets that and understands that a lot of people, they, they got things to sell and they're constantly thinking about what, why they need to sell it for themselves, not, you know, what value, you know, can people give them, not what value can they give other people.

Well, yeah, and I think that from, from that point and, and again, this is something that I learned from you. I learned it from Eben. I learned it from Core Influence from Frank. On the back of my car, I was talking, there's five questions. And these questions, everybody's like, oh, there's seafood questions. This is a different card. Yeah, these, these are seafood questions. And I said, no, there are five questions that when we ask these questions from every single customer we meet is we find out that 75% of the time, the customer is not using the best available option in their restaurant, no matter how accomplished the chef is. And over the last six years, we've saved the restaurant operator three and a half million dollars in annual food costs just by asking these questions. These questions have nothing to do with seafood and everything to do with the customer. It's funny. There's a story back in 2011, I'm at experts Academy, and I'm talking to David Bach, who I'm a big fan of, and the guy that encouraged you to buy this building. You know, all that stuff.

He tries to take credit for that.

He does.

We did it in the genius interview, too, and. Oh, God, you know what? I just remembered how I connected. Connected with you. And I'll. I just remembered now.

Good.

Fantastic.

We had a conversation prior to this recording saying, how the hell did you come into my world? Yeah, it was.

It's still. But it's a good story, though, and it's about walking your talk, too, by the way.

It's.

So I. I give my card to.

David.

David.

Jeez, Give me a card to David Bach. You know, it's hard to remember his name. He's only got 12 New York Times bestsellers. And I hand him my card, and he goes, what are these questions on the back? And I go, those are the questions I ask every single customer when I meet him. And he goes, this is genius. Well, you know, I don't see. Like, genius to me is like the great kazoo on the Flintstones with the big head and all that kind of stuff. I'm like, dude, I sound genius just.

So I don't forget the questions, you know?

And he goes, I have seven questions I ask every prospective client. He goes, why aren't those on the back of my card? I go, I don't know. He goes, is it okay if I put my questions on the back of my card?

And I'm like, yes, for a license.

Yeah.

It's like, it's not prior art, buddy. He's just like. And we had a great conversation, and we talked about the stickiness of coaching, and you were just talking about. And he goes, what would you suggest? He goes, I'm going through a change in my coaching. And I said, you know, you hire somebody and you've got this program that works, works for people that do it. And he goes, right. I go, so, you know, it works. He goes, right? I go, where are the people when you give them that program? And he goes, what do you mean? I go, where are they mentally? I go, you could explain this, this great program and what it's going to do for them, you know, P90X what it's going to do for you. Right. Losing weight. It's not about losing weight. It's not about any of this stuff. It's about the things you have to do. And I go, david, when you Hand them this program, this coaching program and stuff. They might not be ready for it. And so they might be thinking, you're building this big, you know, entertainment center, cool thing that's gonna have my TVs and whatever in there and all this kind of stuff. But all of a sudden you show up and you give them a box from Ikea that they have to build themselves. They're not there yet. It's gonna stay there. And so it's meeting the customer where they are no matter what you've got.

Very good point.

Boom.

Get them there and say, oh, hey.

Look, see that brown thing?

Don't step on it, it's gonna make your shoe smell. And then you keep going. And so it's. Meeting customers where they are is without a doubt the greatest marketing strategy. But again, you can't fake that. You can't walk in there and you can't. I'm here to meet you, I care about you. It's like, say that.

Right? Right. Well, in the beauty of technology, I think one of the advantages, there's many disadvantages of over communication. You know, I think most people don't admit just how much of a complexity keeping up with email and all of the different eye candy that's available, you know, from a million different sources. There's so much interesting stuff out there. The one thing is like, it's harder these days to be a fraud. It's harder to deliver crappy service and not get found out quickly because of reviews, because of how people talk. So I think keeping things in check. And I was just in Costa Rica. I've got quite a few mosquito bites on me right now. And it was interesting because we would go out to. A couple times we went out to a restaurant, so we had a full staff of people waiting on us hand and foot. And they were amazing people and the food they were making was awesome. But anyway, we went out in this little town and most people are on island time. I mean, they're just taking forever to greet you, taking forever to bring you menus, taking forever to, you know, everything. Like, they're very slow.

This is Joe on free days, going tick tock.

No, but I'm saying, like, it would be like three weeks if you waited. It like took a long time. And I made this comment to Rene, I said, you know, I go and how many? There were like four different places that like supposedly had credit card machines, but they were broken. I'm like, you all have smartphones. Get square. I mean, how hard is that? Right? And the thing I Was like going, you know, so there are places where it doesn't matter. You can still have to be like, fabulous. But the analogy I came out of it is like, if there was anyone, and I'm sure they're there, but we didn't experience any of this where they literally just served people quickly. Like they would greet them, they had their act together, they had like anywhere near like just a four season service attitude. How they would just dominate. I think, you know, maybe not.

They'd be called a foreigner. You're not here. Get out.

Yeah, but, you know, it was also. But the point I made is like, you know, in business you don't have to be like the best in the world. You simply sometimes just have to show up. You just have to be a little bit better than your competitors. And what I'm always surprised by is that a lot of people in business, they act as if it's so damn difficult to deliver a good service. It really isn't.

I mean, most people suck.

I mean, you know, it's so funny.

You talk about being just a little bit better than the next guy. I have a friend that's in our mastermind group and he is a hugely successful attorney. I mean, seven figure guy, it's never worked more than 25 hours a week.

Week.

So we've got names for him and they're not, they're not happy names. But his whole thing ever since he was in college was I'm just gonna be 10% better than the average guy. And it's like, right. And in that he became the best in the world what he does. But it was just that. And you're right, it's just, it's, it's. This is. You want to be served the way you want to be served. I want to be communicated in a way that it's, it's compelling. Is dean will use. And I think that they're all prepositions, but it's at to or with. And it's like, are you talking at them? To them or with them? And at them gets clicked deleted. Two is like if this is important. Yeah, I'll probably read it with. It's like, oh man, I got an email from Joe. Cool, man. What's going on? Okay, cool. You know, or hey, this didn't come from Joe, but it came from Rochelle. But you know what? I like what he's doing here. Yeah. And it's so it's at to or with. And it's like reviewing your copy and saying, is this at to or with? Now the thing that drives me crazy is when people send an email to somebody and say everyone and they use this big third person crowd thing. Those emails, you might send a million emails out, but those are all one at a time conversations. Don't treat them like you're standing on a stage. Stage.

Yeah, exactly.

At to or with. Where is this communication?

Yeah. So. Yeah, no, that's awesome.

What would be your advice to start if you, if you were coming in to take over somebody else's business, what would be the kind of thought process that you, that you have, that you go through?

You know, it's funny for a lot of you guys are entrepreneurs, you're in it, you don't really think about how to teach it. But. But as I've been able to look back and been an opportunity to speak a good amount of, you know, I've realized that there's obviously we look at most people trying to create customers, clients and vendors. We're trying to create fans. It's a different conversation. Customers are transactional. They come and go, but fans never leave. Most companies, they have conversations on how they can drive more revenue, create more sales. But how many companies have conversations and how they can create more fans? We have Ideapaloozas every single month where we get the whole team together and we say, what are things we can do to create more fans? In every part of our business, it's a different conversation. And so from there, you know, we said, all right, if I want to break it down, if there's like notes, I would say there's three E's that I think you can focus on. Eliminate friction, entertain always and experiment constantly. And I think if you want me to, I can go through them kind of briefly.

Let's do that.

I'm gonna.

Let's do this too while we're doing it. What I'd love is. This is fantastic. The time's just lying here. Well, I'd love to see in the chat here put. Just type in the type of business that you're in so we can riff on some of these ideas. Kind of think like, what. What kind of business are we talking about? And I'd love to hear your. While you're sharing those three, let's just kind of get that loaded up and then we can talk about it here.

So love it. I'm seeing a lot. Okay, beautiful. So eliminate friction. Starting point. What are the. What, what are the friction points in your industry? What are the frustration points? So we start there. What are the friction points? You know, and for us we looked at baseball too long, too slow and too boring. Number two, you get nickel and dimed. Number three, which many people may not see. I don't believe anybody in the world wakes up and wants to be sold to, advertised to, or promoted to. Yeah. When you go to a ballpark, what do you see all over the outfield walls?

Right.

Ads everywhere.

Because they've got that captured attention.

Let's bring in some revenue, guys. How can we create some more sponsorship revenue? Not how do we create more fans?

Different conversations, these impressions.

Yeah, let's monetize, let's make more money. And so we did the craziest thing at the worst timing ever. On February 25, 2020, two weeks before the pandemic, we announced we were becoming the first ever ad free stadium and ad free team. And we got ripped up by the industry. People are like, you're traders. What are you doing? We threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars right before we went into a pandemic. But we said a, we don't believe people want to be sold to, marketed to, or advertised to. How do we create something, a better experience? The only person we work for is our fans. We don't work for our sponsors. And so when you come to our ballpark, you will not be advertised to, you'll not be sold to. It's a time to escape and have fun. We made that decision. What happened, Dean? Merchandise went skyrocketed even more from all over the world. And now merchandise has become a seven figure brand in itself. And it's well outdone our advertising. But it was, it was the courage to attack that friction point. So we're continuing to attack that. And I don't want to keep going here, but we're also attacking the game of baseball. We invented a new game, banana ball, which is two hours long. If fans catch a foul ball, it's an out. All right, you can. Oh, my.

The fans get involved.

Yeah. Yes. Get the fans first. You can steal first. It's a two hour, fast paced game and you could search it, but we developed that because we realize, we watch our fans, we videotape our fans in the crowd, and we realize every 30 minutes we take pictures. No matter how much entertainment, the breakdancing first base coach, the banana nanas, all that fans still leave early. And so we had to get better. So we're going to attack that friction point, that one more. And we did a banana ball game two weeks ago, and 98% of our fans stayed till the end of the game versus 60% during a regular game. So anyways, eliminate friction. So whatever industry you're in, you know, put yourself in the customer's shoes. We go undercover every night at our stadium. I got next Wednesday, I'll take off the tucks, I'll park with the fans, I'll walk in with the fans, I'll sit with the fans, I'll eat with the fans, and I'll take notes all night. Not on what we're doing. Well, on what the friction points are.

Ah, this guy's frustrated. Looks like with this. Or this is. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Or this is a friction point. He's in line here. Look at how he's acting. Oh, he's saying this to his friend and all those. When Walt Disney was alive, he said, when he's going to Disney, I said, whenever I go on a ride, I always ask, what's wrong with this thing? And how can it be improved? He was constantly attacking friction. So I know I've spent a lot of time on that. But I think anybody can look at their industry and put yourself in the shoes and say, what frustrates me.

You ever watch that show Hotel Impossible?

I'm aware of it. I don't think I've watched it much, but definitely aware of it.

I had Anthony on the podcast years ago when the show first came out, and that's constantly. What he's doing is looking for friction. His every episode of the show is him arriving at a new property with the eyes of somebody coming as a guest. Like, what would. What do you see? And he's observing as a hotel general manager. He's like, this sign is crooked. Look at these. Flowers are dead. This is. There's dirt here. He can tell just in approaching a hotel whether there's an engaged general manager. Somebody cares about this property by the way you arrive. He did one in Miami and there was in South Beach. All the hotels are right up on the road, and there's parking off site. So he pulls up, there's a sign that says valet. And he pulls in and he gets out of the car, and he's waiting and waiting. And we've all been at valet parking. And if there's nobody there, any second, a guy in a polo shirt is going to come running around the corner. But they show the ticker. 12 minutes he's waiting there. Pokes his head into the entry and says, is there a valet? Go, oh, yeah, just leave your keys with us at the reception. And so now every single person arriving at the hotel is having some level of that and how he Solved it was he took a little rider, put it under the valet sign that said leave keys at reception. And now nobody's going to have that same confusion friction. Just little things like that can make a difference in any business.

And you don't know, you don't know until you get in their shoes and you.

Those eyes. That's exactly right.

My car bottomed out when I was undercover because I went to a parking spot where we don'. Park. And then as I walked in, we have parking penguins at every one of our games. People that park your car dressed up as penguins. It makes no sense, but we think it's funny. And they pass out freezy pops to little kids and say, stay cool tonight. But I pulled up and I was walking in and our two parking penguins had their back towards me and the fans, they were eating burgers. All right, I took pictures of this. I was blown away because you have this perfect vision that doesn't always get executed when you put yourself in the customer's shoes. And so that's very important for us.

On stage, that whole Disney thing. Every time you're above the surface, you're on stage.

There you go. There you go.

I'm looking through what kind of businesses we're talking about just to spur some ideas. So there's finance and medical, spa, dental, coaching, legal, teaching, English speaking, marketing.

Well, finance is good. I mean, I, it's like, you know, I don't like to give names, but, you know, my bank, and we'll just call it bank of Chamerica. I don't want to give, I don't want to give any names away, but what do you want to do with your finance or bank? You want to be able to talk to someone. And how many times do you call and says, you know, listen closely as menu options are changed. Dial 1 for this, dial 4 for this, give your organ number for this. Like, what are they asking for? And so that's a little friction point. Anything that keeps you from being able to do what you want to with a brand is a friction point. And so like finance, you know, how quickly can people, you answer people's questions, you know, and often that's just done on the website, you know, often it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, so those things I look at from the first impressions, I love it. Legal, legal. Literally paying emails, like, I saw someone legal. Like, all right, hey, this email, 5 minutes is going to cost you this. 10 minutes is going to cost you this. So now it's like, you Want help, but you don't want to talk to him as much. Like, that's a broken system too. Charging for minutes. You know, I think a lot of those things are frustrations. If you put yourself in the shoes, like, that stinks. I just wanted an email. Oh, it took you 45 minutes.

I'm afraid of that.

That you're 10 minutes and they're building 10 minute increments or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So then you don't have to do marketing because you create a better experience.

And you know, that's funny. Thinking about Richard Branson again, what they did with Virgin Airlines was thinking, what does everybody hate about travel, about flying and what does everybody love about flying? Like, everybody loves new planes. Yeah. Everybody loves leather seats and everybody loves wide things and leg room and their own, you know, their own entertainment system and change tickets whenever you want. And yeah, all of that, looking at it, removing all of that friction, making the, the best things.

Actually, the other ease, I think someone's saying, what are the other E's?

Okay, yeah, let's go.

Oh, okay. Two elements. And this one, eliminate friction is kind of tough for me because you talk about the negative. The next one I love is entertain always. And I think people have, oh, you're in a yellow tux. You run a baseball team, an entertainment team. I'm in, you know, I'm a dentist, I'm a. In finance. I had to, I had to look up the definition of entertain because I'm like, oh, you're an entertainment business. The definition of entertain is to provide enjoyment and to provide amusement. Are we all in the entertainment business?

Yeah.

And would it hurt that in addition to whatever you are to also be in the entertainment business while that's happening?

I mean, yeah, I think if we think of everyone, that we're a host of a party at our house. No matter what we do, we're a host of a party and you entertain people at your house. And so how do you treat them? You know, what's the experience? You take their coat, what's the last impression? When they leave, do you thank them? Do you give them a hug? And I think a lot of times, I think Shepkin said it best. The last impression leaves a lasting impression. We look to entertain at every single touch point and so to make it kind of an. That's who we are. And I think we all have those. So, you know, when people have their last experience with you, what's. Is there something fun that's sent? What's your email signature? How do you Enter invoices Like, you know, we were bad at this for a while. And invoices, I think are a great opportunity to entertain. And I can. I can share one of our. Our Bananas invoices if you want. I think that might be all right. Let's see. Let me pull up one.

We got Jesse permission to share here.

What's that?

I don't know whether.

Denise, maybe we'll have to give you permission.

Oh, I. I can't. I don't know if I. Well, I got it up on my screen.

I thought you were going to share the screen.

No, I can. It's actually. Well, it's got a name of a company on there, but I'll just. I'll just read it. Okay, I'll just read it. It's. Congrats. This is your day. The day you've been waiting for. Today is the day you get to pay. You may think you've had days like this. The day you bought your first house, the day you bought your first car, or maybe your first all inclusive vacation. But nothing is quite like bananas Payday. So pull out your money order, savings bond, bitcoin gold, cash, credit card or check and make that payment like we know you can. We believe in you. This is your moment. Now seize it. Your life will never be the same. Love, Jesse Cole.

I love that.

And so just the mail that goes.

With it, or is it the.

Oh, yeah, there's a body that has it. But this is the invoice that they open or if we ever mail it. And so again, you know, we get responses from our invoices, not just paying, like, oh, that made me laugh today. Thank you. It's those little things that we think matter. And that's why I believe every company is in the entertainment business.

We love it. That's so great. Looking for those opportunities, like looking at all the assets that you have your. You know that moment when somebody gets their ticket with the video, like you were talking. The famous cd, baby.

Yes. That's where we're inspired from it.

Exactly. And that's the thing is looking paying attention when you're inspired by something. I've constantly observed this. I was in London, and outside of London, there's a place called the Cowley Manor Inn, which is this country spa. That's an old English mansion that's been converted to this. And when I walked in and sat down at the desk to register, there was a little stack of cards, right? Like half of an eight and a half by 11 that said today's available spa. Appointments. And it had the times and what was available at the things. So I'm checking in at 2:45 and I see a thing that said massage 3:30. And immediately I thought, oh, I've got. I can go drop my bags off and I can get a massage. And that 100% of the reason that I got it was because it was there at the moment that I checked in. Now, it's a little bit of a system for them to do that every day and print that out. And there's probably people that would argue and say, well, can't we just have a standardized postcard that says, welcome to the spa, here's our services. And you see, I mean, you're smiling because I know, you know, the difference in that. That the little bit of extra effort that it takes to make it today's or to make it personal is a. Is a big thing.

Well, I think another Disney thing. Every. Everything speaks and those details matter. We. Every day we paint our bases yellow. Like. Like, it's a little detail. I don't know how many people actually see it, but we paint our bases yellow. It's just, you know, to stay on brand and have fun. I love that. Dean. I think one thing to think about is too, like, what's your s'? More? You know, we all know s', mores, you know, and, you know, as a kid, we had in the great scene in Sandlot, we thought about this and actually put it into practical use. We said, we're gonna have s' mores as a last impression, free s'. Mores. And so we set up all these little fires after our game, like, and we realized we could only service, like 10 people at once. And their hands got messy. And it was playing with fire. It didn't actually work all right, but it was that extra idea. And so we said, what's our s' more here? What can you do? And so, like, during games, we hire a mobile car wash and to pick one or two fans and just wash their car. So when they randomly. Randomly, we don't tell anybody, but at the end of the night, they'll go there and they're like, we have a little note said, hey, thank you. Your car was washed. We appreciate you being a Bananas fan. And it's a little note. And so those touches. And now we give away banana cream, banana whoopee, the moon pies. And so you give away these free things. And it's that extra little s' more that they weren't expecting. And I think that's the last impression that we're constantly investing in not the marketing, but the time and the money to come up with those ideas.

What do you think holds your people back? What do you think holds people back from succeeding like this? Like in doing, you know, coming up with two.

Two things, I would think. I guess it's direct roi. You don't see it. It's playing a long game as Amazon focuses on all the time. It's. You don't see. I don't see the direct rock of handing someone a banana moon pie or handing someone a free cookie at the end of the night. And also it's fear of no one else is doing this. We get letters and emails from the league every day about things they say we shouldn't be doing because we push the envelope. But I think it's fear of what happened. I mean, this was tough. Putting on a yellow tuxedo and speaking and knowing that people think that I'm all about attention and all about. It's all about myself. Well, actually, it's draw people into what we're trying to do. It's draw people into the message. And so, you know, I think Jeff Bezos said it best. You need to be willing to be misunderstood. And I think most people, when they come up with something brand new or different, they are misunderstood. A dentist. There's a singing dentist. I know that I saw a dentist on here. There's a singing dentist who got national exposure. He was all over Good Morning America Today show. Most people were probably like, oh, that's fun. But some people were like, dentists shouldn't be singing. Do your job, dentist. Do your job. And that's it. But he got national attention and his business grew dramatically because he was willing to have fun. And I think that's the question that we want to have, is does the message, does the purpose, does the impact matter that much that we're willing to be misunderstood, get some criticism and jump into the deep end?

I did a video in Toronto. I spend summers up in Toronto, normally, and in Yorkville. And there's a cafe. This great Italian guy, young guy, has a little cafe. The whole front opens up and there's just a little seating area in there. But you would you walk by and he was calling out to people, like, he would be like, you know, as the ladies are walking by, going, ciao, bella. Like, everybody greeting everybody, right, with this, with these great things. And I sat there and they had a table that was sort of half in, half out of the thing. And I could see the ladies coming up the sidewalk before he. They're in his eyesight and I could see them kind of like, you know, getting ready. And then when he comes, because they know what's coming. And he's like, so. And I would call it. I did the video about return on enthusiasm.

Oh, I like that.

Is that this guy is just enthusiastic. You walk in and he's greeting everybody and smiling at everybody's like, it's so. And Italian itself is such a sing songy, happy kind of language that it's different than going to, you know, just a regular coffee stand or taking anything like that. It's. It's different, you know.

Oh, good. So good. Turn on enthusiasm. That, That's. That's. That's a key. I love that. Yeah.

Our friend Sally Hogshead has a new book coming out called different is Better than Better. And that is so great. I wonder, is she on with us? I don't know whether she was able to come on the call. She ended up having a. Broke her arm, which. That's a problem. So I know she's got a surgery coming up, but.

Odine, do you want me to finish the last E just to show.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Just the last one. We've learned is experiment constantly and again, Bezos. Our success is a direct function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day. And so we actually judge our people by the experiments and the stories. We incentivize stories over sales. What fans for stories are they creating? And that's mostly based on experiments. So everything we do when we meet weekly, monthly with our team, we said, what experiments are you doing in your department this year? What are you inventing on behalf of our fans? And so that is huge. And like, you know, for instance, we started doing a live stream of our games. We said, what are we going to do that no one else is going to do?

What.

What's. What's normal? Do the exact opposite. And we said, well, can we mic up players every game? Can we have a drone flying during the game? Can we let our fans choose who's going to pitch, who's going to hit? And we asked all these questions and started asking, what if? And then we said, all right, what experiment are we doing today? What experiment are we doing tomorrow? Our director of entertainment, he knows we have to do one new promo every game that we've never done in front of a live audience. And most of them failed badly. But it teaches that idea of experimentation is how we're gonna get better and improve the experience we don't want people to ever become, say we're not relevant anymore or we're not enjoying the experience because they're not doing anything new. And so the experimentation, I think, helps build fans on a regular basis, I imagine.

Do you get everybody on the team, Players, staff, everybody involved in proposing experiments?

Yeah, yeah, we had to. I mean, like, you know, oh, you got this one guy who's thinking about ideas. Yes, I do. Ten ideas every morning. I'm sick. But we get our team together. So, for instance, one example, we've never done it with our team until this year. Our actual players. We've always done it with our staffs and different marketing and operations, merchandise. We get our team together. So. All right, guys. You know, again, we want to be the most fun team in baseball. I want this to be the most fun you've ever had playing baseball. I want this to be the best time of your life. Let's come up with some ideas on how we can do that. First, let's think about celebrations. When you guys score a run, what's some unique ways that we can celebrate like no other team in the country? I said, Everyone, bring three ideas. And so you have 30 players. That's 90 ideas. We started putting them on a whiteboard. This is before, like, the game. It's ridiculous. At like, 4 o'. Clock. And one guy's like, all right, we're gonna run through the crowd, the whole team. We're gonna get a shopping cart and ship someone around the crowd. We're gonna do the Lambo leap. We're gonna take pictures. We're gonna bring a selfie stick, take pictures. And they just started coming with ideas. And every night they test a new celebration that they've never done before. It's because the players took ownership that what could they come up with? And now they're fitting on our brand. They're going crazy on TikTok, and it's just. They get to see that feedback loop. As you know, now We've got more TikTok followers than every Major League Baseball team. So whenever they do that.

Yeah.

Now when they do one of these TikToks, they see get 100,000 views, they're like, oh, it works. And so getting the players involved was huge. And it didn't happen until this year, to be honest with you.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

This whole. And then you keep the keepers and keep something becomes a standard thing, but it's that whole. We always encourage people to look at that experience timeline as a living, breathing document that you can innovate within that. Look at the benchmarks, the. The categories, the where things are. First of all, looking for friction and then looking for opportunity. Like what you were saying about the car washes and those. Everybody in every business has that opportunity.

Well, I think it's what Andy Stanley said, do for one what you wish you could do for many. And that guides us every night, our players, we have 12 players go into the stands and deliver roses to little girls. They get down to a knee and they drop it down. And then we have one player go on a date with a fan. And one, it's usually a grandma, but sometimes it's like a little girl and they get to have dinner, and only one person gets it. But it's an experience, hopefully they'll never forget that will create a fan for life. And so I think often we say, how do we scale that? How do we do that for so many people? Well, just come up some unique, unique moments that could be special for one.

And then the people around it, they're telling that story, too, about right.

You're right.

You're right.

That's a way for everybody there.

Okay.

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