Joe Polish and others discuss how to get the most from a Genius Network. Focus on deep conversations with a few high-caliber people rather than shallow networking. Give a 10-minute talk that can spark products, books, and revenue. Help others first and stay open to cross-disciplinary serendipity.
Chapters
Would love a couple of you to share to people that are new because there's quite a few new people here.
For the first time.
How would you recommend they get the most out of being in Genius Network?
Spend some personal time going deep with a few people instead of just trying to flutter about with a whole bunch of folks. That's number one. You just amazed at the caliber, the quality, the experience level. If you think about it, everyone here probably brings 30 years of wisdom. So when you think about it, you have centuries accessible, but you're not going to get there without going deep. Second one is I make a rule of making sure you do a 10 minute talk. It forces you to communicate to a high level audience, which everyone here is practice. Empathy, compassion, skills you really see through a filter. But I think it forces you creatively to innovate. And in my opinion that's the most important thing to do in this economy right now, is innovate constantly. And one 10 minute talk, at least for me, almost always turns into a book, into a product and revenue that's oftentimes a million bucks. So to me, that's the big value. It's just pushing yourself.
Totally.
Like Renee's 10 minute talk back in.
2012 completely changed my life, ignited a movement and it was purely because of the talk tool, you know, but after we started pulling out, the talk tool actually went to the bathroom and I was gonna try to skip out and not play full out. And I just got this huge message like, oh my God, you are not gonna to live with yourself if you don't get up there and do the talk. So, you know, you really need to just play full out and just get out of your own way and let the whole room raise you up.
The paradox in getting value out of something like this, and I have something similar, is instead of thinking what's here for you, think of what, how you can be generous and supportive of others. Because if you think about what's here for you, it makes sense. You paid money to be here and there will be outcomes for you. But that's actually not the best way to get the outcome. The best way is really for this entire room to be tripping over each other to help other people. And in so doing, you know, there's just a lot of grace, there's a ton of generosity and you actually will get more than if you get out into this room for yourself, if you get out into the room for others, you will have the biggest outcome. And it's paradoxical, but that's exactly how it works.
The similarity I see between this and the TED conference is everyone here actually has not a lot in common other than being here. We're so deep in our own space that we're actually like world experts in that space. And when you go to the TED conference you'll be sitting with this nuclear physicist and then this guy who's saving the oceans in the world who invented RSS and Verisign and Demi Moore and no one has anything in common but its idea is having sex. And you end up in these discussions with people that you don't know why you're talking to them because you don't even understand their industry. But then all of a sudden a couple things click with something. You talk someone else. I think that's what I come into this group for is that same trust that everyone here is a complete expert in their space and I know just by having some engaging conversation with them it's going to go somewhere.
