How To Create Your Winning Formula A Conversation From $35K with Joe Polish

If you wake up every morning, yell at your spouse, kick your dog, smoke five cigarettes, drive to McDonald's, order a big Mac, then you proceed to like, bitch and complain all day long. You've just built really good habits about doing that if you consistently do it every day. So whatever you're doing to win, you are doing things in a certain way. And whatever is not working in your life. So what's going to make for a great year? What's going to make for a shitty year? And there's always these life circumstances, you know that the philosopher Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until I punch them in the face. And so what is the plan B when life punches us in the face, you know, how do you actually deal with that? So the more wins you have and the more that you can identify what is a winning formula, the more you can use that and the more you can identify what losing is. And the losing formula, which often is not you, it's the environment. How can you be a domino for someone else? The Joe Polish. Any problem in the world can be solved at the right Genius Network. Some of you may remember this book. So it's a moonshots and multipliers. Insights, wisdom and strategy from the top entrepreneurs, influencers and thought leaders. And it is freaking awesome. And some of you that are here actually participated in this. Who remembers participating in this? Joel did I know someone else is who did? Nope. Not you. No. Quit trying to insert yourself into this one, Dave. You weren't. No. No. But you did okay. Trying to see who else is in the room that would be in here anyway. I can look through it, but it's great. There's like so much good stuff in here and it's basically crowdsourcing the ways that people have had success. You know some of the questions and we're going to do what's your best business decision? What's the biggest, most tangible profit enhancing, addition, modification, replacement activity approach you've discovered and added to your model of marketing in the last year? And what is the lesson for Genius Network members? What are three things you do differently or better than your competitors that drive your business success? How might everyone in Genius Network utilize any of these? What three books do you think every Genius Network member must read at least twice and why? Incredible insight. It's one of my favorite things that I did. And like any smart person, I didn't do it again. And so I'm like, this is one of the coolest fricking things. How many of you ever done that you like, work your ass off, you make a masterpiece, you're like, fuck that, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to snatch that failure out of the jaws of success. So basically what we're going to do though is I want to learn how you guys win and I want to help you get clear on winning because. So our Genius Network member, BJ Fogg, who is the professor at Stanford who wrote the book Tiny Habits, one of his students used his methodology and created Instagram. BJ's book Tiny Habits, I think it was 2021, was voted top business book of the year, Amazon top business book. Some of the top authors on habits have learned from BJ have been coached by bj. Nir Eyal, who wrote Hooked and many other books, who's also given 10 minute talks at Genius Network. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, Habit Sacking, you know that that was learned from BJ Fogg. So BJ's a smart dude and he basically describes behavior. All behavior he can put through the lens of B equals map. And how many of you know what that means? What is it? Mike, if you could too, please.

Behavior is the.

It's when motivation, ability and then a prompt called a trigger, but now it's called a prompt.

Perfect.

Yeah, it used to be called map, Matt, but now it' called map. So motivation, ability and prompts. So in order to behave in a certain way, do you have the motivation? Like I want to exercise and work out, I want to get in better physical shape. Well, you may be super motivated, but do you have the ability? Can you, if you want to lift weights and build muscle, but you don't have access to like weights or strength training, do a lot of push ups, but you're going to do more with like resistance training or you don't know how to eat. Well, how do you learn that sort of stuff so you get the ability and then prompts to remind you to actually do it. So all of the stuff that we're designing with AI with Parth is going through the lens of how do we prompt people to do return on Genius, how do we remind ourselves in order to do stuff? So Tiny habits, you know, simple examples. If you're not exercising, you know, put your running shoes in front of your bathroom door and you're going to stumble into them the first thing in the morning when you got to go pee and you're like, oh, prompt, put my running shoes on. Right. So whatever, you know, he looks at the, you know, slightest, you know, habit you can do. I mean for him, he wakes up every day and the first thing he says is thank you. You know, it's just his to express gratitude. So motivation, ability and prompts to behave. Oh, I'm sorry. It's going to be a great day. Where'd I get thank you from them? He's so ungrateful. He just wants it to be a great day. I can't believe. Are you filming this for. No, I screwed up. Sorry. But. I'm sorry. Say that again.

We did that eight, eight week.

Someone throw him a mic. Yeah, we did the eight week, eight.

Or ten week class. That was really awesome. I got a lot of that and so did my wife. And she's generally resistant to kind of classwork like that.

I can't imagine being married to you. How she would be resistant or psychedel.

You really just can't imagine being married to me.

Stop your sentence there. No. What? This tiny habit will change your life. After my feet touch the floor in the morning, I will say it's going to be a great day.

And they say I have a bad memory.

He also says if you get up and talking about what Sam said yesterday, like you feel like you have something really difficult that day that you're facing and that this doesn't feel congruent. To say that when your feet hit the ground, then add the word somehow at the end it just opens up possibility and doesn't have you like lying to yourself with a affirmation that maybe doesn't feel right in the moment, but it's. He calls it his Maui habit. When your feet hit the floor.

Yep.

Every day just start on that, you know, higher vibration but add the word somehow if you believe, you don't believe it when you're saying it.

Yeah.

It just kind of opens up to more opportunity for.

No, thank you. No, that's super helpful. And by the way, any of you that want to go through that course, isn't it on the membership site? It is, yeah. Boy, there's so much good stuff, Barry. You got your work cut out for you to get. Yeah.

What's the name of that course again?

What do we call it? It was an eight week tiny habits course, but it was. We called it something though I can't remember what we called it. But we will find that out because. Yeah, but yes, it's eight weeks on habits, on instilling the habits you want and applied to any area of life, business or. So the reason I bring this up, and I'll come to you in a moment, Sam, is I want you to Think of winning you. So I've learned a lot about habits from BJ and from a lot of sources. And I don't think there's good habits or bad habits. I just think there's habits that produce. Like if you wake up every morning, yell at your spouse, kick your dog, smoke five cigarettes, drive to McDonald's, order a Big Mac Egg McMuffin or whatever the hell you order, then you proceed to, like, bitch and complain playing all day long. You've just built really good habits about doing that if you consistently do it every day. So whatever you're doing to win, you are doing things in a certain way and whatever is not working in your life. So one of the things where I said, hell yeah. Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. 10 years period. Well, what's going to make for a great year? What's going to make for a shitty year? And there's always these life circumstances. The philosopher Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until I punch them in the face. What is the plan B? When life punches us in the face, you know, how do you actually deal with that? So the more wins you have and the more that you can identify what is a winning formula, the more you can use that and the more you can identify what losing is. And the losing formula, which often is not you, it's the environment. Because there are some environments where, like for instance, if a plane crashed into that side of the building, if something exploded in flames, if a bunch of Oompa Oompas ran here with machine guns, and this all happened at the exact same time. I don't give a shit how skilled you are. That's going to be pretty freaking complex. That is complexity. What the hell are you going to do right now? Ray, on the other hand, would figure out how to turn into some weird art, but still, it would be pretty. So there are certain things in life where the environment is just not going to work. So some games in life, the only way you win is you don't play. So how do you win? Like Nick Sonnenberg. Nick Sonnenberg, Nick Peterson downstairs, he has this great line where he says, Come on, you've heard this a million times. I know what it is now. You never win a race you don't want to be in, right? So if you don't want to be in the race, you're not going to win it. So part of, like, how do you win? See, what a lot of you don't give yourselves enough credit for is a lot of your success. Yeah, it's Ingenuity, it's timing, it's influence and salesmanship. You actually constantly make decisions. Good race, bad race, Good race, bad race. Because you all have skills. You know, Martha, I'm going to come to you too. After Sam. I want to hear how you think about winning because you've also put yourself in environments where you knew the chances were so stacked against you. You know, we've had conversations of being a senator, being a congresswoman, female first fema, female combat fighter pilot in the United States. Pretty serious thing. Constantly having to think about how do we make this work in very difficult, high pressure sort of situations. So, Sam, what is your definition of winning? I'm just curious and it doesn't need to be a lot. I want to hear the short version of Sam's definition of winning. Winning.

Talking about a definition for winning. I always look at life as learning. What I mean by that is if life was a. Perform this, then we can't make mistakes. If life was a rehearsal, then it's okay to make mistakes. If life was an improv, there are no mistakes. And it really depends on the way you look at life, the way you. Your relationship to anything you're learning, anything you want to achieve is probably going to cause the greatest hindrance if it's in a negative way, in a disempowering way.

Okay, so let's. Let me see. He's so polite. I'm such an asshole. So, no, and seriously, no, thank you. And by the way, I know Sam quite well and he knows me quite well, and he is a genuinely amazing human. So I get. Here's a distinction I want to make. So, you know, you're either winning or you're learning. I get that the only way you fail is if you fail to learn the lesson. I get that. So if you. But winning, though, I understand that all the things that don't work out, there are things to learn in almost every single person's business here came out of something in their life that didn't work. There was something that wasn't working. And you figured out how to make it work oftentimes for yourself. You identified it for other people and you built a business that helps other people or informs other people or sells products to other people. Or let's say in your case, you ship things. You figure out how to get things from here to there for people. But when you're winning, you're actually winning. And I'm curious, like, let's say you're like, what is that? What is that thing? Does that make Sense. Am I making it more confusing?

So, okay, so what is that? It is arriving at the destination desire and it's creating a spike of serotonin for you to be satiated after a dopamine psych kept on happening over time through that motivation. It got you to where you want. I think the true winning is making a decision, creating a path and arriving, but maintaining your the ability to be flexible and to be accepting of the changes along the way instead of fighting the struggle, fighting the obstacles to arrive.

Where you want to go.

Very good.

Just as a side note, and I hope I'm answering the question.

No, no, you are. When you are.

When you arrive at the destination, the challenge is a lot of people are just focusing on arrival. They're not focusing on celebrating the arrival. They're not focusing on giving themselves time to settle and enjoy that before they move on to climb another mountain. And that exhausts our nervous system when we don't give ourselves an opportunity. And I'm saying this specifically because this is a room of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. It's important for us to give ourselves the opportunity to allow ourselves to celebrate what we've achieved, give ourselves a bit of time before we move on rather than jumping a lot of. And this is, this is not just for entrepreneurs. You have musicians that have created an album that hit number one. And the first question is, okay, so let's start working on the second album instead of just giving yourself a moment to pause and once again I go back to that word. Slow down. We cannot feel. If we don't slow down, we can't really connect. If we don't slow down, we can't really appreciate any moment. And just to touch upon that, just to add something to that. Speeding up compromises your self esteem. Because if we rush through life, what we're saying is these moments don't matter. That's why we don't want to spend too much time on anything. Whether it's a task or sometimes spending time with a loved one, everything is just calculated to the degree that we just want to quickly get it done and move on. And something as simple as to some people showering is, is just like a bird. I just want to get over it.

Get it over with.

When you can really just give yourself a bit of time to enjoy these simple moments. Because they are moments in your life and the more you rush through them, the more you are telling your unconscious mind these moments don't matter. And that's why I'm not spending time, I'm not actually slowing down to Appreciate.

Well, let me say. Okay, thank you. And so here's one of the things I want to get at. So say, for instance, now I don't even think Paris, you can even really hire Paris. He has like a group of copywriters that you have probably do all the grunt work or you've really designed some Paris AI that you don't even do shit anymore because you're lazy. I have no idea. But basically, if you wanted to win, if you wanted to win with sales and you had a particular niche or product in Paris could write that sales copy for you, and he wrote a winning sales letter. In that environment, you would have an ad that is a winner. And so Marty Edelston, so Brian Kurtz used to run Boardroom Inc. Which was at the time the largest consumer non advertising consumer newsletter in the world that people would pay for. And it was called Bottom Line Personal. And they built it up. You know, they ended up doing books and infomercials. At their peak, they're about $150 million a year, company 20 or whatever. And so I'd gotten to know Marty. I met originally ken Glickman in 1991, who was the VP of marketing for Boardroom, Inc. And Marty was a total character, really brilliant. That's probably. Maybe you wrote for. Did you write for Boardroom? So the reason I bring this up, though, is that Marty had that sign at the office that said, the control is the enemy. And I'd love for you to explain what a control is, because when it comes to winning, there's a winning formula that we all have somewhere. And there's many losing formulas too. And your job as a marketer, if you're in marketing, is to beat the control. But what is the control? And some people, they don't have a control. They don't even know what a control is. And I think behavior is very similar.

Yeah.

So behavior of all kinds, what gets measured gets improved, right?

Yeah.

So a control is the advertisement, direct mail piece, video, sales letter, whatever it is that you're using that is bringing you your result. That's the best one you have. And so it gets the name from the scientific method. There's a control group and experimental group, because you're constantly testing against that control to beat it, because if you don't, sooner or later, it will fatigue and stop making money for you. So you have to constantly be testing against it. And that's what they meant by the control is the enemy. Yeah, even the controls, your best friend, because it's your cash cow, it's the enemy because you have to try to beat it to stay on top. Otherwise you're gonna slip.

Yeah. And another way to look at it is the enemy of the good. The great is the good.

Right.

And Marty had another thing over his desk. I could have butcher it, but was like, good, better, best. Don't. Do you know the one I'm talking about?

Good, better, best. Something to your rest until your best is better and your better is best. Like that. Yeah. Ye. He actually let me go to Janelle. Then we'll come to you. And I'm sorry for the bouncing around.

But no, I just wanted to piggyback a little bit on what Sam said. And just the whole fact of winning is to you what is winning? Because so often we do what society wants us to win, and that's really not winning. And like Ray said yesterday, it's the authentic prayer pursuit, really, of what is meaningful to you. And so often, as we know, entrepreneurs were chasing, chasing, chasing for that next thing, and we win. And then we don't take time and celebrate it. We don't feel good about it because we're ready to taste it the next thing. And then there was a great book I talk about a lot. Larry Wilson wrote the book Play to Win. And that so many of us, no matter how much success we have, we're actually playing not to lose. That we'll do everything we can to risk, to not risk, to make sure that we're safe so that we don't lose. But instead, if you transform, then you say, I'm gonna do everything to play to win. And believing that whatever you do, you're gonna go with it, with all you have, and then you're gonna learn, like you said. So we have to just change that attitude about ourselves and be willing to have the courage to play to win.

Every single person in this room has a different perspective on this. And I have. I have no right, nor does anyone have a right to tell you what success should be for you, because it's your own life, Right? And when people try to lord their power, like one of the Kenkich credos. Eunice, can you get me a credo, please? You got one. And let's make sure we get one for everyone during lunch. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, perfect. Well, thank you very much. Okay, so I think it's number last. Where is it? Okay, number 88. I've read these freaking things a thousand times. You think I know every, memorize all of them. But the source of lasting happiness can never come from outside yourself through consuming values, but only from within yourself by creating values. Producing more than you consume is the only justification for existence. Now, my interpretation of this, My interpretation is that the source of lasting happiness can never come from just reading someone's book and saying, I've Met Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I did a workshop at the Covey headquarters years ago. You know, great guy, great book, amazing book. Now, if I said my life needs to be the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and if I don't live that way, I'm a failure. I'm trying to adopt someone else's methodology. And it could be anything. Four hour work week. It could be whatever. It could be atomic habits, it could be Dan Sullivan, it could be, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, whatever. Like, there's all these influencers that are telling people what they think, which is great, because why the hell not, right? If you have something to say, say it. But the source of lasting happiness can never come from outside yourself through consuming values, but only from within yourself by creating values. So whenever I take information in or take knowledge in, I always try to layer it through. How does this feel to me? What's a gut check on this? And I used to ignore that so much that I would inebriate it and be intoxicated or, you know, seek out all the different behavioral addictions that I. That I struggled with for many years. And so. And then producing more than you consume is the only justification for existence. There's producers in the world and there's parasites. You know, how many of you like Ayn Rand? Yeah. So, you know, I brought this up because I think it's cool. So, Patrick Giantempo gave me Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, and I have a signed copy for Myyn Rand. So, which is just really, really cool. But, you know, she talked about producers and parasites and things like that, and not everyone agrees with her, but she, you know, when they've surveyed top entrepreneurs, Atlas Shrugged is listed as one of the most influential business books for many of the top entrepreneurs in the world. And Lior can probably speak to that, I'm sure. But anyway, so the thing with consuming values is you all have a value system and you consume a lot of stuff, but you are winning in a particular way. And I want to start an open conversation and a dialogue and I want to capture it. So there's some questions that I have that we have put into a link that we're going to send, send to everyone. So those of you that are watching online, if you're like, sam, I don't know if you're going to eat lunch in 12 minutes or 13 minutes, which is when we're going to eat lunch. But if you have time, we'll put the link in the chat. Please fill it out. But here's the questions I'm going to ask all of you, and you can go put them up, please. Yeah, if you got them. And we're going to send you a link and all these questions, you just fill in the blank and we're going to. And I really would appreciate if you put thought into it. And so we did a session last month, the last Genius Sound Network meeting, and we also did a session at the 100k group about a signature result. What is the signature result that your clients produce? Because one of the things I'm trying to figure out is what is the signature result of Genius Network? So when people are coming to, there's. There's many things that people get out of my group. There's many things that all of your customers and clients and your patients get out of working with you. What is the signature result? So that's the one thing for your clients, but what's the signature result? Producing skill. What's your stupid human trick? What is your method of winning? Because I think when you get off track, if you go far off track, not that you can't get back there, but it's a lot harder. So part of it is the moment you get off track. You know, Sam said, you know, Katy Perry, she got into a particular state, didn't deal with it. Perhaps if you get into a state, it may not deal with the underlying trauma, but. But it's very interesting of how do we get on a winning track and how do we stay off the losing track knowing that we're going to lose all the time, knowing that life is filled with suffering, knowing that life is filled with all kinds of complexities and things that we don't even know we don't know. So the first question is, how have you found ways to win in business and life? I would just love to hear some of the ways you do it. Two, what challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? Three, what specific strategies or mindsets helped you turn challenges into victory? Four, can you share a specific story where you turned a potential failure into success? Five, how did you define winning in business and life? And six, what's the most influential book that you can attribute to helping you win in business and in life? And seven, what's your one sentence? Winning formula. So those are the questions I'm going to ask you. And I want, I'm very curious and interested and I know everyone will learn a lot from this process. However, the real thing to do is I want you to become really in touch with your winning formula and how you have alchemized some of the most difficult challenges in your life so that you can not only be more aware of just how capable you are, but you can resource yourself. Because one of the most important things to do is, and I think Martha's problem, masterful at resourcing herself in difficult sort of situations, which is we could have a whole frickin our conversation just on that. So how do you resource yourself? How do you take care of yourself? We're going to learn about habits and we're going to apply this to marketing, we're going to apply it to business. And I hope that it becomes a book that all of you write a book for your kids, for your family that you really want to influence and you do it in a way to where if it was never published, just documenting it for the people that matter to you. You're going to think of who are the most important people in your life, that if you could transfer anything to them because there's the good parts and there's the bad parts. Right. So if you could, what would it say? And we're going to utilize some really cool AI stuff and I'm going to tap into all my AI experts on how do we assimilate all this information and how do we pull out the very best stuff out of it. And that's one of my goals. But it's an experiment. It's an experiment to see what we come up with and how many people in the room here have written a book. Not ghost written a book, but have written a book. Okay, so did the book do more for you as a person than what it did just by publishing the book? If you look around, everyone's like, they shake their heads.

Yeah.

When you have to answer questions and really be thoughtful about stuff like that, I can say, yeah, fill out this thing for me. I'm going to put it all through AI. We're going to find what the commonalities are. We're going to find the really unique things. Yeah, we're going to do all that stuff. But it's what it's going to do for you. And that's the journey that I want to invite everyone to go on because I think we can crowdsource some of the greatest winning formulas that Everyone can learn from that's going to give everyone different perspective. And this moonshot and multipliers, I'm like, man, when I was looking through that going, we're onto something here. And I registered the website Winners Find One Ways. And I did that several years ago and I've been sitting on it because I really like it. I saw it on the back of a guy's shirts at some game or something. I hardly go to any sporting event, so I can't even remember where this was. It was at some sort of sporting event. But you know, I had the whole, and I'm terrible at explaining sports stuff because I don't follow sports, so. But it said winners Find ways. I'm like, that is a great freaking line. And every time I come up with something that I think is cool, I try to see if there's a domain name available, which is a terrible habit that I have. It's cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. So like several years ago, me and Eunice looked at these 4,000 plus domains that were registering every year at $30,000 a year. And we have been doing it for 10 years. And to add insult to injury, these websites were not redirected anywhere. They weren't up for sale. They're just sitting there because, yeah, whatever. So I always remember that Ned Hallowell says, add is a gift, it's not a curse. So I tried to tell myself. But basically. So I registered Winners Find Ways. And I was talking to Steven Kotler the other day and I said, you know Steven, I have all these books I want to write, but I got to figure out the order. So I also have the website Assholes Finish Last because Tucker Max has a best selling book called Assholes Finish First. And Tucker's a friend of mine and of course it's all his shenanigans of dating. And you know, it's porn in print basically. But it's funny as hell. And you know, it's like assholes Finish First. But I'm like, I want to see if there's enough scientific evidence to actually show if you live your life as an asshole to show a kinds of examples. How, how do you really. Well, you may be rich, but if you're an asshole, right, because if you send an asshole to an empowerment seminar, you just got an empowered asshole, right? So the thing is, winning is not just money. Winning is not just health. Winning is a lot of things and it means different things for different people. But I said, what do you think about? He's like, huh, it's interesting. I have to think about the title. I'm not sure I'm totally sold on that one. But then I start talking to him about winners find ways. After I just went through 90 minutes of, like, helping him win, try to market a $250,000 coaching thing that he wants to start, right? And he's like, that's really good. You know? And I said, well, here's what I want to do with my genius network members. He's like, that's freaking awesome. I love that idea. He goes, I could get behind maybe writing a book about that. And so. But again, you know, he's. He's backlogged on books because he's one of these days. He's been nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize. And, you know, it's funny, when I was interviewed, he's like, I'm the biggest Pulitzer Prize loser that exists. But basically. So that's my idea, and that's what I'm inviting everyone. If you would like. How many of you like this idea and are willing to participate in this. Okay. How many of you are like, screw this. I'm not doing it. Anyone? Yes. Because parts. You haven't won anything yet in life. You're so young. Okay, Just remember what I said. If I would have known being successful is this much work, I would have stuck with being a loser.

You talk a lot about Steven Kotler and being in flow. You can be five times as productive. I think that would be an awesome 8 week if you could get him to help us get into flow. Because the idea is good, but how do you really do it? I've read a few of his books, and I think the idea is awesome, but I can't say I know the methodology very well.

I will propose that to him. Have you listened to his. My favorite Steven Kotler stuff is. You can't. It's not a book. It's an audio. It's him talking. It's called Mapping Cloud nine. Mapping Cloud nine. You can get it on audible. It is brilliant. And it's funny, too, because you can see Steven when he's in flow or not in flow. And you know, how many of you. When you're in flow, when you're. You're doing good, but when you're not, you're just like, oh, my God, I'm a puddle of dysfunction. Right? So. Yes. Can we throw a hey, Mike. Up here? Okay, let's do you first, and then we'll come back to get, you know.

The question of winning, you know, one. As Paris was talking about this control, right?

Yeah.

What is the control? We measure. And, like, I'm glad that the conversation didn't end on just destination, because sometimes we think winning's destination. Right. One question, like, for me with high performance, is like asking yourself, the control is, am I playing my best game? Right, Right. Because the secret really is that most people in here, 80%, looks like most people's 100%, right? So John Wooden said, if you win the game, John Wooden was a coach at ucla, and he said, if you win the game but didn't play your best, you didn't really win the game. If you lose the game but played your best, you. You didn't really lose the game. So the. The control is, am I playing my best game? And, you know, I know we talked about flow, and, you know, there's a playing not to lose. As Janelle said, there's a playing to win. But, you know, in sports, when you're in the zone, it's not really playing not to lose or playing to win. It's playing for the love of the game. So when you talk about people who are in the zone, you ask anyone, what does that mean when you're in the zone? They say the same thing. The game slowed down. The game came easy. And what it really boiled down to is like, real presence in the moment of playing your best in the moment, being present in the moment, raising each moment, and then everything slows down around you. So that's.

Thank you for that. And by the way, did you, John, watch my recent interview with Steven Kotler? Because I believe we actually described the process of getting into flow, which is in deeper elaboration in his latest book, Country Getting Old, Staying Rad is the subtitle. And I believe I sent a copy of that to you. Yeah. Did you read it? Okay, so. But I will ask Stephen about this. He's also creating some stuff for me for. Because if you. The Johann hardline, the opposite of addiction is connection. So if you despair, suicidal addiction, on one spectrum, flow being bliss and connectedness, like, what I really hope to come out of this is it is not a destination. As a matter of fact, most of you are hunters. You're not farmers, you're driven. And it's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase. And so me and Cherie have this hanging up on the wall in this little area between the kitchen and the master bedroom, and it says, it's Alfred Sozuk, S O U Z A. I don't even know who that is.

Is.

So here's what it says. For a long time, it seemed to me that life was about to begin. Real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. Yeah, let's do a couple. We need to break here in a minute. But. Yeah.

Well, a couple things about Steven Kotler. He was here, I think it was February or January last year. 2023.

Yeah. And then I had him earlier this year. And then I had him at the last 100k meeting a couple weeks ago.

Oh. So we were out to dinner and I asked him which book to read to really understand flow, because that was really intrigued by what he was saying. He said, the Art of Impossible.

Yeah.

So. And this is more of a hey, what can you get out of Genius network, how things happen, where these connections take place. So I'd already written four books, and I was about looking at writing this book now. And I took his book and I read it through like four times. Then I wrote a 15 page paper on it. Then I wrote a six page paper and I wrote a one page. It sounded like I'm crazy over nine months. But when I got through, I said, I'm going to write this book using flow, the way he's doing it, rather than the way I've done it in the past. And I was able to write this book about five times faster and much more fun.

Not.

Not as narcissistic. It was not as cathartic. It wasn't as cathartic as that.

A cathartic narcissist.

Where am I going there? But the point was that, you know, I don't think we realize how much we just kind of go into flow. We're not doing it intentionally.

Right.

And that what I realized from him was that being much more intentional about it each time. So each time I wrote a chapter, did exactly what he said to do it. Each time. It would take me maybe two or three minutes to get in flow. Once I really practiced and understood what was going on in my brain and everything else he talked about. But the key here, Joe, is that book is a result of being here, ingenious in front of somebody who had something really good to give to us powerful. And then actually pursuing it down. And you get a really great result from that.

Yeah. What Dan says is more is caught than talking. Right. If you're just around smart people that are yeah. And so that's why we're also asking, what's your favorite book? Because you all here just need one more book in order to get to that place. And you know, Stephen has a program flow for writers too, which is his favorite one that he teaches. So I will talk with him about seeing what we can do on that. So who was next? And then we'll come to Ray. You, Ray. Okay. Okay.

So his comments on being present for the game like that resonated so much because when I'm in a flow state in my creating the big misconception, like the more you want to have a roadmap to somewhere else you feel like you need to be, the more you're really holding yourself back from a sort of quietness that's going to allow for you. You know, often I think of, I try to think of different analogies and like, if there was an analogy of like, you know, even navigating through this room without bumping chairs and being able to navigate quickly, well, I could imagine that if this room were clear, it would be easiest. But if I'm going to be in places that aren't anything but the present moment, then I'm going to bump into stuff as I try to navigate through this room. But if I can really just be really present with where I am, I can walk in and around and probably do it the quickest and most effective. And it's sort of like, I don't know, like, your desire to be anywhere but where you are will usually put on the brakes for you to allow thoughts that will be of help for you to slip into your mind. And for the other stuff I talked about that I don't feel like I'm in control of. So it's like this. I think to some point it comes down to a sort of an acceptance or a self love or gratitude or something of that sort of feeling of where you are and the excitement of where you can be. But it doesn't. You can't, you can't scrub away where you are. You can, you hold on to excitement because you know that, oh, if I'm like in here is a fun possibility and in that playfulness you will be able to realize where to go. But if you are, are feeling like you need. Now, I'm not a. I know I, I know I could probably bend it. Like reading books is something I, you know, stuff too. And like even I started to watch that podcast. I started to watch that podcast last night, but it was late and I ended up getting maybe halfway Through.

Oh, the one on Stephen Cobbler.

Yeah, she sent me that.

Yeah.

And it was so interesting, interesting to, to realize the science behind some, some of these things. But I'm, but I, I feel like in my own life this sort of flow states are. I mean, there's lots of little things that I do that I, when I tried, like when you just gave that questionnaire, I was like, okay, how do I. What are some of the things that help me? And I think one of them is, is a story I tell myself about me. Like, like, fine, find a perspective of yourself and your position that's soft enough to you to realize that where you're at is really good place to start because all of the growth sometimes is incremental steps. And those incremental steps will stack and build momentum and compound quickly when you can get real present with sort of opportunity. And it doesn't need to be, it doesn't need to be anywhere else because when you get there, you realize you're dealing with the same shit. You're going to have to figure that equation out or else you're never going to be present to enjoy where you're at, you know.

Okay, so listen here, Mr. Eckhart Tolle. So no, you're masterful at explaining presence through the lens and also demonstrating it too. Can either. Eunice, if you know, or Parth, since you just categorized a whole bunch more of the books. Check if we have a copy of the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and chapter two, where he talks. Have you ever read. You probably didn't, right? So he describes very effectively what he calls the pain body is where we're hurting. Right. And he says in some people's pain bodies are so. They're nasty creatures, they're difficult, they make your life a fricking mess. And, and you know, one of the things that is. I've never been able to figure out how to market this. One of my desires is to reduce human suffering. And I want to reduce human suffering for high achievers because most people that make a lot of money and have a lot of stuff, they're. They're not only. No one feels sorry for them. Not that people should, because most of them wouldn't want anyone to feel sorry for them. They just pay a price. And there is a cost to putting in the effort, in the risk and everything in order to be successful. So no one feels sorry for the person with a big company or a lot of money. And they don't know the silent battles that these people fight. And when you're successful, you simultaneously have people that are begging money from you, resenting you, suing you, oftentimes in ways that aren't even fair because you're a target, while envying you. And they want what you have, but they don't want you to have it. Because jealousy is wanting what someone has. Envy is wanting what someone has and not wanting them to have it. Maybe that might be the wrong definition, but I've. So when you're. So. One of the things I want to do is reduce human suffering. And that's why I do the work in addiction recovery, because I know the suffering. It's real human suffering. When you are looking for finding something other than yourself, and you just can't be present. So your whole notion of presence is the answer. And it's really. You know, I don't know if anyone's ever read the Power now or A New Earth or any of Eckhart Tolle's books and then went and knocked out a sales letter and made $10 million. It's really not that kind of book. But in terms of human. But in terms of human happiness, it's fucking amazing. And I think most spiritual leaders and gurus that write books are so completely full of shit. I don't know Eckhart Tolle. I'm hoping one day that I can get him somehow to come and do an interview or whatever. So if anyone knows him, let me know, because I will do whatever I can. And I like Michael Singer. You know, Michael Singer, the Untethered Soul. You have a whole story behind Michael Singer. Yeah. So. Yeah. But thank you. Thank you for that and anything else, because I'm going to.

No, I just feel like nothing ever, to some degree, at least in my art and. And that movement and flow, that's the one constant that doesn't change. Like, I like, even when I arrive at that point, like, you still got to be. You still got to get right back there in order to get any. Make any more progress. So it just seems like now everything else is resistance and breaks.

Yeah, well. So here's the thing. So. So I think you can help a lot of people solve some connection and fun problems and whimsical and creativity things. I think you can add a lot of joy to people. And I want to. If it's possible because it's very hard to get artists. I don't want to put you onto something that isn't going to be good for you. So I'm saying this for entertainment purposes only. So I think a Lot of people here would love to do a podcast. Talking with them last night, trying to say, how do we come up with a day modern? How many of you think he would make one hell of an interesting podcast guest? Right? So. And there's a lot of people here that could put him on a podcast, but I don't want to pull him away from his art and all of a sudden try to turn into an info marketer. And every fucking marketer here and every person is going to tell you you could do courses. And I think that's terrible to have you do that. So part of it is keeping you. How do we amplify what you do? Share what is shareable and makes sense, but also have you stay in your happy place. But I'd love to see you make a shitload more money. I'd love to get your message and what you do and how you say it out, because there's a lot of people that will translate what you're talking about, that will not listen to entrepreneurs and their young people and their kids and to translate it to people here that have children. So what I want to cook up with you, because we talked about it last night. Do you have anything you could sell? And he's like, well, no, everything I do is commission sort of thing. I go, is there something you can create a mold of? He's like, well, that elephant, did you happen to bring one?

Yes.

He's like, I have a broken one. But, you know, in order for me to mold it, you know, I would need to make at least 25 of them. And I asked him, how much would that cost? You know, it's a couple hundred bucks, 250 bucks, maybe more. I don't mind even sharing the numbers. I think you should sell stuff like that for 1,000 to 2,000 bucks. And I said, why don't you? I haven't even seen the damn thing yet, but put it down there. And if anyone wants, if they're interested, if we can get 12 people to buy two of these for a thousand bucks each, then. Then he'll do a podcast with you, if you would be willing to do that. If that's. So I'm trying to come up with a momentum because I think in this process I want to come up with, because you are one of the most incredible artists I've ever met, and I think you're just a cool motherfucker and I think you have wisdom, and I think if you keep talking about this, you're going to get. I mean, you have winning formulas is here and I think it's fascinating and I like, I just like edifying people that I like. I like finding cool people and telling the world about it. So. But they got to make money and they got to have a way to do it. You're not giving speeches, you're not selling courses. So, you know, for you just getting on podcasts, that doesn't make any sense unless people are buying something, right?

So I do, I do enjoy talking about this subject. I'm passionate about it because it seems, it seems like the source of the magic. There's something to be said about the mindset that somehow evokes from the surroundings magical opportunities that I'm not in charge of or I'm not in control of other than awareness. And so that is a subject of interest for me.

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