How to Master Your Life and Business DECISIONS Featuring Tony Robbins

What are the biggest trade-offs that both of you consider maybe negative in order to do what it is you do? Because you're both, I mean, incredibly driven, what I would consider insane schedules, but at the same time you're making massive contributions to humanity. So what are the trade-offs that you would consider like, you know, we work our asses off, we do a lot of stuff, but this is what we had to sacrifice in order to do it?

If you think of it that way. I think if you think of it as a sacrifice, then you're going to build frustration or resentment. I really don't— if you think it's a sacrifice, you shouldn't do it. I think the challenge is that most people have this illusion about life-work balance. And I think that's— if you're going to accomplish anything, it's— people are laughing because you know it's bullshit, right? What's true is life-work integration. So I was just in 21 countries— or 7 countries, 21 days. Who's with me is my family, who's with me is my friends, and I've done well enough to have a plane and bedrooms and all that kind of cool stuff makes it, but when I didn't, we still huffed it together. In the beginning days, it was coach and dragging ourselves around, but I thought it was great for my kids to have schooling, but I thought an education was more valuable, and traveling the earth was a part of that. But, you know, we're in the middle of this crazy schedule, but it's not work, it's a mission. When it's work, it's that. I always ask people, I said, "How would you describe what you do?" And people, I say, "Is it work, is it career, or is it mission?" And most people, of course, say it's work, and that's exactly what it is. It's heavy. If it's, you know, if it's your career, it gives you something more. But your mission, it doesn't wear you out. It brings energy to you. It's fulfilling. And if you can tie your mission in with the people that you love, it's pretty cool. You know, there's some people in this room that are my friends. I see Dean here in the front row here, and it's like we're all on this mission and we find time to connect and be with each other and have a blast with each other, but we're sharing about things that matter. I'm not a person to go to a party and like go in the corner and chitchat. It's like, you want to talk about something deep? Let's rock.

You don't?

Let me go home and be with my family. Let me go do something fun, some of that nature. But in the middle of all that craziness, we were stuck for 2 days, so we went ice racing. A group of my friends and I were with me. Some of them are my security guards, some of them my coworkers, some are partners I have in business. But we went 70 kilometers below the equator and just— or excuse me, the Arctic. Went 200 miles an hour in Lamborghinis. I was doing it like this.

I love that you said you're stuck and you went, you did this versus like going to a spa and getting pedicures.

Yeah, like, who wants to do that shit? I was able to squeeze in a Porsche. And if you can imagine 200 kilometers an hour on pure ice on a lake that's frozen as fast as you can drive. And the beautiful thing about it is like, you know, most people have fears and I've learned to make sure I give myself enough fear to stay intelligent. But here you didn't have to have it, because when you wrecked, you just went straight into the snow. It was just incredible. But we do crazy things together. We have a blast together. We laugh. We cry. We see the impact. And to me, there is no dividing line. And for my kids, all the work we do feeding people— my youngest son, Jerick, when he was 5 or maybe 6, probably 5, we would go— and even in the early days, I was feeding families. And I'd take all my friends, and we'd build these baskets up and make them great. And we'd fed all the families. We had some food left, some baskets left. So we went to this place in Oceanside, this park. And there was a man lying on the ground in the toilet area covered with a bunch of pieces of rags. And so, you know, I gave it to my son and I said, "Come on." He could barely hold the thing, it was so big. I said, "You know, can I help you? Give this to this man." He goes and he set it down next to the man. All of a sudden, the man jumped up and grabbed my son's hand. And I jumped, my son jumped, you know, and then he just did this. And he put it down. My son is 30— What, 1 years old now, 32 years old now. He's just gotten married. He was working on kids. His entire life is about contribution. He's got a heart this big. He works his ass off, but he does it in a way that's so fulfilling. And his wife travels with him, and they have this great life. And he doesn't have to pick between work and mission, and he's not burnt out. And he's probably been to 100 countries, and I'm proud as hell of him. And so it's like, if you can combine your mission with your family, combine your mission with some of your friends, then you're going to accomplish a million times more. But if you think it's a sacrifice, don't do it. Because then all you're doing is you're going to have resentment later on or frustration later on. And you really aren't contributing because you're trading off. You're not giving. Great.

Great. Yeah, ditto. I think I'm a 9-year-old kid. Those of you who know me know I am a 9-year-old child in my body. Pinching myself every day that I get to do the shit that I get to do. It is extraordinary. I could not, would not want to be doing anything else. I mean, there's hard work, and it's, and it's like I push myself more than anybody else, but I love it. I love it. I love it. I cannot imagine doing anything else. And that's the challenge, right? The question is a lot of people are doing something to get to something else, and that's just wrong. And it's a matter of don't do because your parents told you, because you heard on an infomercial, because whatever. Do what is your highest calling in life and love it. And so I don't work at all. I really don't work. And the shit that's work, you know, Dan has told me to get rid of it, so I get rid of it.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, this, this room is filled with some very high achievers. And obviously what I wanted to derive from you guys is just some insights, some how-tos, some what it is you do to just give them, you know, perspective and stuff. And I carefully chose some questions. And this one is, you're both masters at achieving what most people consider impossible. And I mean, really, like what you guys do, most people consider absolutely impossible. So when something is considered quote-unquote impossible, how do you reframe it so it becomes possible in your mind, and how much of that is mindset?

I think impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. When someone tells me it's impossible, I always just look at them. Anybody around me knows that they can't do that. That's part of it. But if they didn't know me, it's your opinion. And they'll say, no, science shows. And I say, yeah, and how many times has science showed something's impossible, now science shows it's possible? Things are impossible till somebody does it. And so I find that, you know, most of your business people, you look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow? It's not impossible to make a business grow. Business has been shrinking for a long time or it's been stuck. The real problem is always, the chokehold is always the psychology and the skills of the leader. Always. And 80% of that is psychology and 20% is the mechanics. Like if you don't know how to read your financials and you're trying to fly the plane of your company, I mean, come on. If all you do is go down, you look at profit loss, and you see what it is, and you have a beer either way, you either celebrate or you get depressed, you know, something, you're going to be in trouble, right? But if you have the skill sets, that's one thing. But you can get any skill set if you have the psychology. And any time a business is not growing, it is not because it's impossible. It's because they aren't innovating. And they're not innovating because they're believing it's impossible. I mean, if we all know what does it take to transform— and obviously, I tell people it takes 3 things to create a breakthrough in anything, in your personal life, in your business anywhere. You need a strategy, but that's not the first place you should look, and it's the first place all of us look. Me too. It's our inherent thing. You wanna lose weight? Well, how do I do it? I wanna grow my business, how do I do it? It's instinctive. We've been trained to think that way, but the problem is the how-to is usually not that complex. I mean, come on. 70% of America, what, 75% of America now is overweight. Is that because it's so complex how to be fit and strong? Right, you know? Only the 1% know the answers. They hide it from you. You have to work your ass off to not hear what it takes. Right? And so, you know, I remember I went to this— I went to a TEDMed Center, and I watched about 12 doctors, one after another, get up and do these stories about how we could just get patients to take their medications and trying to figure out the whole thing. And I was just looking and going, "You're all talking about strategy, and you've forgotten psychology." Because strategy is wonderful. I'm a strategist. I've spent my whole life figuring out strategies. As we both know, a strategy could save you a decade. In business, strategy could save you, you know, it could make the difference between success and failure. But most people have strategies available, or they could get them, or you could create them, but the problem is you've got a story, and your story is why it isn't working, and the story is, "I've tried," what? What? Everything. If you tried everything, you'd be fit, right? If you tried everything, you'd be profitable. If you tried everything, you'd be there, but people say it, you know, "I'm big-boned." That's what I used to say. I'm still big-boned, but I'm— 38 pounds lighter than I was 25 years ago, and I've never gained it back, right? When I was big-boned, that was my story. All the good ones are gone, that's why I'm not in a relationship. Or they're gay and I'm not, or I'm gay and they are, whatever the story is. There's always a story. And what I tell people is, you know, if you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes. But it's hard to do that because when you're in your story, you don't even realize it. So you need a third piece for breakthrough, and that's really what my life's about, which is changing people's states. 'Cause in a different state, we're different people. Can mean people be nice? Yes or no? Yes or no? Of course they are, when they're in a nice state. Can nice people be mean? Sure, they get a mean state. So really learning to train yourself to be in an ideal state where the best of you comes out for yourself, for your family, for your mission, for your world, for your coworkers, to me that's one of the most important decisions in life to make. If you asked me out of all the people I've met, all the things I've seen, You know, what creates a magnificent life? You know, everybody has goals and dreams that are different. Some people want, you know, picket fence. Some want to make a billion dollars. Some, you know, want to have this huge breakthrough in technology. Some people want to write beautiful poetry. Whatever is right for people is what I want them for themselves. I don't want them to be like me or you or anybody else. I want them to have their dream. But to have it, you need two skills. You need number one, to have the science of achievement. It's a science. You have to know how to take your vision and make it real. And most of the people in this room have already figured that out. And this guy sure as hell has, and you have, and I have. So most of us know, and we can all refine our skills in that area. But we know how to take what we dream about and make it real. And if you don't, you can learn from somebody who does. You know, the simplest thing is get crazily hungry for something. We all know when you get so hungry, so desirous, your brain starts coming up with answers. And then it's massive action but effective execution, which is all modeling, which is, I assume, what this is about. Find the best example, compress the time. Let someone else take 20 years to figure it out. You do it in 2 weeks or 2 months or whatever the period is. We should all be standing on the shoulders of the people around us instead of reinventing the wheel. And then there's this thing called grace. You know, you work your ass off, you're totally focused, you're trying to serve something larger than yourself, and you really are executing what works. You need a little grace. Might want to call it luck if you prefer, God, in the universe, but it's there. And we can all achieve. But I think the more important skill, if you ask me, is to have an extraordinary life is the art of fulfillment. And it's an art. It's not a science. Because there's a science to making money. I don't care who you are, if you do certain things, you're gonna have too much financial stress. You do other things, you're gonna have an abundance. There's a science. There's a science to your body. Everyone here is biochemically different, different genome, but there are certain fundamental patterns that if you and I follow them, You're gonna have tons of energy, you're gonna feel good. If you break 'em, you're gonna pay the price and have low energy or disease. But fulfillment is an art. What's gonna fulfill you is different than the other person next to you. You're not gonna learn that from anybody else. You gotta find it, 'cause success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I get those phone calls all the time for the multi-billionaire entrepreneur or politician or businessperson or person just won their Academy Award and they're depressed and they can't tell anybody because they got all their goals, but they're not fulfilled because they really don't have that sense of meaning in their life. They went for something and they got it. They achieved. And if you doubt this, what I'm saying is relevant to you or us or anyone, just think about it. About a year— what, a month ago, we lost what I consider to be a national treasure, Robin Williams. How many of you loved Robin Williams? Look around the room, keep your hands up, look. And most of you didn't know him. Almost every, and then where you go in the world, people love Robin Williams. By the way, was he great at achievement? Oh my God, that guy, he said he wanted to make, become a great comedian, he did that. I want to make the world laugh, he did. I want to make my own TV show, he did. I want to have the number one TV show, he did it. I want to make movies, he did it. I want an Academy Award for not being funny. Not his skill set, drama, and he did it. I want a beautiful family, and he did it, and then he hung himself. Make everybody happy but yourself. Not a good plan. So if I had a gift to give you, it would be maybe make a different decision. And the decision is that no matter what happens in your life, you're gonna live in a beautiful state. A beautiful state. And that could be happy, that could be grateful, that could be being generous. Those are all beautiful states, aren't they? It could be curious. It could be fun, it could be playful. You're not limited to one state, but it's different than suffering. And most people's suffering and all suffering I've ever seen— I've traveled 100 countries, I've dealt with presidents of countries and, you know, presidents of businesses, CEOs, I've dealt with people in prison, I've dealt with, you name it, average people— suffering always comes because you're obsessed about something related to you. You can only be depressed if you're focusing on yourself. You say, "No, I'm depressed 'cause it's my kids and they're not doing well." No, you're depressed 'cause you feel you failed your kids. It's about you. It's about how you think you, what you should have done or shouldn't have done or what someone did to you or didn't do to you in the past or the future, which don't even exist. So I have a simple goal. My goal is help people make a decision that says, "I don't know what's gonna happen. You might get a divorce even though you don't think so. You might find a family, your family with cancer." You might have your house get burned down or have a tornado go by, and if you live in the same place that happens every 2 years and you move back, we should talk, but, you know, some people seem to do that for some reason. You can't control those things. I can't control those things. I don't want those to happen to you or anybody I love or anybody who's even a stranger to me, but they're going to happen. True? Not positive thinking bullshit, just the truth. So if that's going to happen, I say make a decision now that says, "I'm going to live in a beautiful state and I'm going to find beauty in whatever life brings." brings me, because life is too short not to. I see a little buddy over here named Sean. I remember when I got a phone call from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, saying, "We have a young man that's about to die, and he wants to meet you." And he came to the seminar, and then I took him out afterwards. And at the time, if he coughed too much, they said, "You can't grab him." I said, "I want to take him across the fire." They said, "Take him across the fire?" I said, "If he coughs, he'll break a rib." I said, "I'll be really gentle." We're going to do this thing. And he did it. And then afterwards I sat down with him and I said, man, I don't have the answers, but if your body is— you're just coughing and it's going to make you break a rib. Your body is so acid. I said, you should get alkaline. Let me put you together with a doctor. How many years ago was that? Oh, from '36, I was 19. You were 19 and you're now 36. I like seeing you here. So brother, give him a hand. He's a beautiful man. You're a beautiful one. But Sean, what made me think of Sean is Sean lives in a beautiful state. He could be bitching and complaining and whining. What does he do? His whole life is not about himself. That's why he's so happy. He doesn't live in himself. He lives outside himself serving things he loves. He still takes care of himself and he's funny as shit and he likes to seduce women and things like I can't talk about right now, but— I'm married. Oh, you're married now. Okay, well, good. I'm glad to hear it. It's about frickin' time, right, John? Good to see you grew up. Now, the bottom line is this young man over here who now is at a different stage of life, he's always been who he is. I think he lived because he lived for more than himself. I'm sure he felt pain, but we only suffer when we think about what's being done to us or what people are going to think or what they should have done or hadn't done, and you can't control that stuff anyway. I mean, why be pissed when people are going to do that? Are people going to be mean? Yes or no? Are people going to be unfair and unjust? Yes or no? Are people going to be beautiful and generous? Yes or no? You just never know when that shit's going to happen, so might as well enjoy yourself along the way. And I suggest today, if you want, if there's any gift I came by to give you, it's to tell you what you know already, but get you to make a decision about it. To actually decide, I'm going to live in a beautiful state. That doesn't mean I don't get angry or pissed or tired or— you know, suffering arises and you end it the moment you go, Holy shit, I'm thinking about me. If I do this, I'll always be suffering. The human mind is always looking for what's wrong. The human brain is not designed to make you happy. It's designed to make you survive. Happiness, that's your job. And you only get it if you draw a line in the sand, that's how it's gonna be. And I can tell you the few people that do it, I know a few people that have done it, they have magnificent lives. And when you're in a beautiful state, the best ideas come in. This man lives in a beautiful state. Every time I talk to him, I love seeing Peter. Peter's just always on fire. Fire about something. But notice, you know, he's doing unbelievably well. There's nothing wrong with that, but almost everything he's doing is about more than himself. And so that's why he feels so alive. He's not suffering an ounce. He's in ecstasy. He's not lucky. He's living life a certain way. It's a beautiful way. I'm honored to have you as a friend.

Thank you, brother.

Wow.

Now say something better than that.

I mean, like, let's, let's really see how good you are here, man. Oh God, yeah, this guy goes, my mom, like, there's no way to follow this.

What the hell was the question?

He doesn't have to say anything.

Truthfully, he doesn't have to say anything. He lives this shit. I'm just telling you what he lives. He really does. I'm not saying that to blow smoke. This guy lives it. If you meet this man, how many met this man before and he was in a wonderful state? Let me see a show of hands. I don't think I've ever seen him not in a wonderful state. I've seen him have some painful, challenging places, but he doesn't stay there. And look what he's able to create because of it. He's a, he is a 9-year-old boy who's on fire. He's on fire to light the world on fire with what's possible. It's a beautiful thing. I honor you.

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 JoePolish.com and you can get a copy there.

So the contribution I'll make— thank you, Tony. And I think it was about impossible and mindset and so forth.

Yeah.

Is the reality is there is very little that's impossible, period. It just is. And, and your mindset, as soon as you say something is impossible, then you shut down every possibility for solving it, right? And we all know this. The challenge is that it's really hard not to be in that state because we get thrown stuff all the time. What I want to share with you is an experiment which is to say, "Okay, not only how do I make it possible, but how do I actually go 10 times bigger?" You've heard me speak about this, moonshot thinking, bold thinking, whatever the case, whatever terminology you want to give it. And most of us in our life are trying to make a 10% improvement. And we know this. This is, I'm trying to increase my revenues by 10%. I'm trying to increase my— reduce my sales by 10%, save 10% more of the, you know, the lands out there. Whatever it truly is, we all have this sort of beaten into us by life and by the rest of the universe that you can make these small incremental improvements. But the fact of the matter is that there are those in the world that go 10 times bigger. And you, every one of us, can be that. And as soon as you say, I want to not only solve this thing but go 10 times bigger in my work, in the things— and can I say this? In something that you're truly passionate about, not just about earning a little bit more money. I mean, it really should be in something that you care truly about that is bigger than yourself that is impacting the world. As soon as you try and go 10 times bigger, 3 magical things happen. Number 1, even if you have no idea how to solve it, no idea how to get there, you'll be amazed at what you come up with. And what's interesting is our legacy, our past anchors us to where we are today, and you have to let go of that. You truly have to let go of all the stuff in your past, what you thought you'd done, all of the, you know, the infrastructure that you've built to let yourself go. You know, when Elon Musk built Tesla, the reason Tesla was such an amazingly better car is he didn't have 100 years of Detroit to hold on to. He started with a clean sheet of paper and imagined what could be. The second thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger versus 10% bigger, it's 100 times the value proposition. And it's never 100 times more expensive or 100 times harder. And so you get this increased capability. And then the third thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger, to solve a problem 10 times bigger, you've got to reinvent stuff. You have to actually go and figure out, OK, I have no idea how I'm going to solve that, but you're going to start to reinvent things. So when Eric and I were working on asteroid mining, We had to reinvent, we had to have so much computational power on board the spacecraft, we had to come up with brand new sensors and hyperspectral and midwave IR that didn't exist, had never been licensed, because these spacecraft were going to be operating at 200 million miles away, and that forced us to come up with new kinds of capabilities that were not currently possible. And you'll be amazed what those capabilities that you create in your business, in your life, enable you to do. And so there's this massive benefit, this payoff, this dividend that comes from expanding your mind and not being anchored to the past. And so I think that there are very few things that are truly impossible. I think that impossible is a state of mind. And I'll say one other thing: the people in your life are part of that anchoring. And so how do you anchor yourself with a new set of people?

Right?

I'm looking at my dear friend Naveen Jain here with whom we've opened up XPRIZE India and are really working on solving women's and girls' issues in India and providing abundant drinking water in India. I mean, so who do you— how do you surround yourself with amazing people who live in the state of anything is possible? I'm blessed at XPRIZE, at Singularity University, at HLI and PRI. I live that constantly. And so how do you do that? Where are you doing that? What is your nothing is impossible community? Yeah, it is here. It is truly here. And so that's really critically important because once you get into that mindset, then you start freeing yourself from the bullshit that other— that you tell yourself and people tell you because We are living in a world where constant amazing miracles happen. The other thing, because I'll put my commercial into this, stop watching the news. Stop watching the news. You could not pay me enough to have the crisis news network or the constantly negative news network, whatever you call CNN, pollute my mind. Really, I have social networks, I have Google filters and so forth. I was just telling Arianna about this, and hopefully she'll do this. I want on the front page of Huffington Post, I said, I want a slider where I can control the percentage of positive news stories. Right? How would you like that instead of— because right now it's 10 to 1 negative to positive. And that pollutes your mind. And we heard an amazing presentation this morning. I apologize. Who was the gentleman who was talking about that, talking about a few minutes of negative news in the morning? Thank you. Yeah, Sean. It's true. It's like, why would you possibly invest in the world and in the life and all these things if the world is falling apart? If the crisis network is showing you airplane accident, airplane accident, airplane accident. What problem is that the news networks never tell you. There was no school shooting today at this school, you know, or there was— this airplane actually flew LA to New York and actually made it and everybody survived. That's not news. And so we get this disproportionate view, and so our minds are constantly— the mindset you have when you watch the negative news is awful. Not that it's not going on. It's not that there's this amazing hardship and lives that are on the precipice of of hunger and death around the world. But the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate, and you can make a difference in it. And there is no problem. There is no problem we cannot solve, period. End of statement.

So awesome.

My mind is just going like crazy right now. It, it's, it's hard to, um, have enough hours in the day to do everything we're trying to do. This is a perfect time to make a difference in the world, and I know all of you on this line, you wouldn't be here if you weren't that kind of person. I have never seen a greater opportunity to do good things, do good works, make a big difference than right now. And the people on this call, I know a lot of you, and I know people you know. So what I know about all of you is this is the time, this is your time when you're gonna step in and you're gonna make a difference. When we have so much disruption, it creates opportunities, and those opportunities are so important for us to take advantage of in all the right ways. There are people in a time like this who hide out, who have a feeling that they, they can't do anything, so just leave it alone. Yes, you can do something, and you will do something. First of all, in your own families, with your own kids, with your spouses, but also in your businesses, in your communities, because you're leaders, because you're people who know how to step in the breach. You know what it takes to get things started. You've started businesses, you've worked in community organizations. The people on this call have the ability ability to do what so many want to do, try to do, but don't know how to do. I don't need to give you lessons in that. What I need to do, I think, is talk to you about get real, get positive, get going right now. Do not wait for when they say it's okay to go out. You can do whatever you need to do from right where you are. I think so many good things are happening right now. People are learning. We don't have to get in a car. We don't have to get on an airplane. By the way, I haven't been on an airplane in over a decade because of damage I've had in accidents to my brain, and I cannot fly without serious potential problems from concussions. Do you think that slowed me down or stopped me? No way. As long as you have a phone— I'm holding my iPhone in my hand. I don't have a computer. You know, said Kathy, wouldn't it be easier if you got a laptop? Easier for whom? Maybe it'd be easier for you because I'm holding it and there's probably a little jiggle factor going on with my hand here, but there's something organic for me. I love my iPhone and I love my iWatch. My iWatch keeps me exercising. I do 3 miles a day, 2.5 to 3 miles. I will not go to sleep until I've done it. And as Joe Polish Polish, because we're neighbors, there's a very safe place to walk without a lot of other people doing it, so I can get out in the fresh air and do it. If you watch Cuomo in the basement and you hear him talk about keep breathing, keep exercising, keep doing stuff, well, that's what we all have to keep doing now. We have to keep going, we have to keep innovating, we have to keep making a difference. Do not stop because it's tough. Because it's tough, because there are disruptions, there are more opportunities than any of us have ever had. Yeah, I know there's earlier in the decade— well, not the same decade, just the last decade, which is, you know, within 10 years ago, you know, we had slumps, we had problems, we had issues. Nothing like this. In 80 years, I've never seen anything close to this. I mean, this, this doesn't seem real, but because it doesn't seem real, most people who've gone to school to learn how to deal with the economy, how to deal with reality. They don't know how to do what you and I know how to do. We know how to jump in, do what we do best, get things done, and make a difference. We know how to strive. We know how to use our cognitive abilities. Now, I may have created the Kolbe Index, but I did not create ko-nation. That is a God-given gift to you. And it's one we're meant to use, especially right now. We are meant to be who we are. You all, I think, know your Kolbe result. And if you don't, go get it. Go kolbe.com, K-O-L-B-E, and find out who the heck you are. You are not what your teachers told you you were. You were not even what probably your spouse sometimes thinks you are. You get called out for a lot of things that you are or you're not. And right now is the perfect time to go back, look at your Kolbe, and don't just look at it, listen to it. I created an audio for each one of you for your Kolbe result. I think a whole lot of people don't know about that. So, Neil Moore, I know your MO. You need to listen to your result and be reminded. I don't know if I'm allowed to tell people your MO is—

I think Neil will be okay if we do that.

Yeah, but he's got to tell me that. He's got to tell me that. Let's just say this.

He put it in the chat.

Oh, he put it in the chat. 2, 3, 10, 4.

Neil, you are a 10 in QuickStart. God love you. He created you to be one of a kind. Oh, when I laugh, my whole phone— I got to figure out a way to just make this sit up here. If it falls down, it falls down, and I'll pick it up again. That's better, I'm sure. All right, Neil. As a 10 in Quick Start and Gordy as a 9 in Quick Start. Oh, there are so many of you who are Quick Starts on this line and you are out there ready, aim, fire. No, ready, fire, aim. You got to remember that. Randy, don't do it. That is not for you. Those of you who don't have that Quick Start, Tim, yes. Randy, no. I can go through and I could just, I could tell you with each team member, he should do it.

So in the last couple decades, there's been a really important transformation, or I would say expansion, in how entrepreneurs think of themselves. We've always thought of ourselves as ambitious businessmen, individuals who want to make a transformative contribution to our fields. But increasingly, and I think this really started with the Gates Foundation, there's been this conception of the entrepreneur as an ambitious a citizen, someone who wants to make a transformative contribution to human flourishing more broadly. Now, this is something that is definitely necessary. If you look at the state of the world, it's no surprise there are a lot of problems, or we can call them challenges. Just in my field, which is the field of energy, there are one— there are over 1 billion people who do not have electricity. So we throw these numbers around. But think about this for a second. 1 billion people don't have electricity. So that's like saying if there was some completely evil person who went through every single town in every single city in every single state and province of North America and Europe and cut off the power and it never came on again. That's the world that we live in. There are 1— over 1 billion people who live like that. And as you know, there are many other problems in education and technology and healthcare and issues like that. And entrepreneurs have taken an interest in that, most recently Mark Zuckerberg, but here Bill Gates, the most successful people in the world. And I think that's a good thing if, and this is a big if, if we know what we're doing, if we know what's actually going to make a transformative contribution to human flourishing. And I think that if we want to do that, actually I'll say, I know if we want to do that, there is one word, one word that we must know and understand and promote above all, because this is the one word— and I mean this literally— this is the one word that is the fundamental solution to every problem that I mentioned and every problem you can think of. When people understand and apply this word, it solves education, it solves health care, It progresses technology. It makes energy available to people. Just one word. And here's the interesting thing about this word. This word is something people are terrified of. How do I know they're terrified of it? Well, I first noticed this actually last year at Genius Network, and this is going to be a little mean to some people, but it's necessary. Everyone was talking about their different philanthropic causes. Causes, and I don't remember one person using this word. And then I read last year's letter by Mark Zuckerberg, and it was over 2,000 words, and he was telling, here's how I'm going to spend $45 billion and improve humanity in all these ways. And yet this word didn't come up once, nor did any synonym. And it doesn't come up with Warren Buffett, it doesn't come up with Bill Gates. It's almost as if it's profanity. Because people are unwilling to say it. And that's why I call it the F word. And the F word is, shout it out.

Freedom.

Freedom. Flourishing, very good. We'll get to that too. But freedom. Now why is that the one thing? Well, before we know what it is, it's important to know what freedom is. And particularly I mean individual freedom or political freedom. Political freedom. So this, it's really important to know exactly what we mean by freedom. So freedom is the ability to act without forcible restraint by others. It's the ability to act without forcible restraint by others. And that absolutely includes the government. Now, why is this so important? It's because our fundamental nature as human beings is that first we need to think of an idea of how to create value in the world, and then we have to be able to act on it. And life and human survival and flourishing are really that simple. We need to be able to think about an idea about how to create value in the world, and then we need to be able to act on it. And when we can do that, like in the United States of America, for the most part, unfortunately, it's disappearing in many ways. But when we can do that, we get amazing results. And when we can't do that, we get concentration camps. So to just give you one example of China, which is still a place that has massive problems with freedom, but under Mao Zedong, farmers were not allowed to think and act freely in terms of how they use their farms. And so what happened? The government got to dictate to them what they would do, and the government dictated really irrational things. And it was the biggest starvation in history. 40 million people died. 40 million people. That's bigger than most states in the US. Then what happened? Well, the government certainly didn't become totally free, but it started liberating people and it allowed individuals to start thinking and acting about how to use their own property. And suddenly the starvation almost completely ended. It helped China become much more wealthy and the poverty rate around the world got driven down dramatically because of China's situation. So this one thing, this simple thing, freedom, is at the root of everything. If we understand it in that precise way, and you can take any field and this is how it works. So if we're serious about being ambitious citizens, if as entrepreneurs we want to be ambitious citizens, we should be talking about freedom all the time. So that's what freedom is. Now, the question is, why don't we talk about it? It's not an accident. I didn't just reveal something that's never been discovered in history, right? The connection between freedom and human flourishing is absolute. It's been demonstrated many times. Why don't we talk about it? Well, I think there are two basic reasons: lack of study and lack of courage. Lack of study, and lack of courage. If we have a goal as entrepreneurs, let's say we want to sell more of our product, what do we do? We study the science of business. For instance, we'll study the science of marketing. But often when we get into the realm of promoting human flourishing around the world, we don't take it seriously as a science. Just somebody has a good idea and we give them money or we join a cause. That's complete BS. You can't accomplish anything that that way. If you have a goal in life, you need to study what are the root causes of achieving this goal. And there are several fundamental root causes of mass human flourishing. And the one I'm focusing on today is freedom, because that's the ultimate condition that's necessary. So as entrepreneurs, if we want to make this kind of impact, we need to commit to studying the root causes, the fundamentals of human flourishing. We can't just do things and think that we're— because, because we're so smart, we can make a big difference. And this is particularly true with freedom. And here's a fact about history that's amazing and scary. Never in the history of the world, to my knowledge, has any country ever become prosperous through the philanthropy of wealthy people. Never has a country not become prosperous when it has significantly expanded individual freedom. So all the philanthropy in the world won't help people, and freedom will absolutely help them. So if you want to be the best philanthropist, be a freedom fighter. But you need— you need to study it. And the other thing you need to do is have courage. Why do you need to have courage to be a freedom fighter? Because freedom is unpopular. It is not popular as a word, right? People smile when you say freedom because they're vague about it. But if it really means the ability to act without forcible restraint by others. Guess what? Guess what? The vast majority of people in the world believe that they have a right to forcibly restrain others. I'm going to bring up some controversial examples. Some of you will get uncomfortable and this will prove my point about courage. At different points in history, every major religion has had massive violations of freedom. Right now, the leading violator of freedom in the world in terms of a religion is Islam. They— there are people, there are many people. It's a religion of 1.6 billion people, not anywhere near that violent, but a huge percentage who believe that we should be enslaved to a particular religion. Many other religions believe that. Here's a more controversial example, if you think there is one. In my field, energy, I believe that an incredibly destructive movement that is harming billions of lives is the movement that calls itself the environmental movement. This movement opposes— they say they're in favor of solar and whatnot. You may be in favor of anything you want as long as you leave me free to do what I want. But they're against the three most effective sources of power for human flourishing, and that would be fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro. The second two have nothing to do with CO2, so it's not about CO2. They're against every practical form of power. So why isn't Zuckerberg and Gates and Buffett— why aren't they opposing these people, the environmentalists, the Islamic totalitarians, because it's scary, because it's scary to have courage. It's a hell of a lot easier if you're a billionaire to give away billions of dollars to politically correct charities than to take a real stand for the issues that matter most. So what do we do about it? Last time I talked about this issue at a Genius Network meeting, people understandably said to me, "OK, great, I'm excited, what do I do?" And what I said was, well, there are a bunch of good pro— they're not really that good, but they're okay— some pro-freedom organizations, and go find them. And people understandably found this not very motivating. And I thought about this, and I realized, well, what needs to happen is there needs to be a new organization, but really a new movement. And this movement needs to be a movement of people who absolutely 100% care about human flourishing above all. They care about it more than they care about human approval. And so I call this the Human Flourishing Movement. And I just posted the link where people can learn about it today at humanflourishingmovement.com. So you can check that out. But the idea is we are a group of people who take human flourishing seriously, and that means we study the root causes of it. We don't just blindly act, and it means we have the courage to act when we discover what the right root causes are. And I think this movement absolutely needs to be led led by entrepreneurs. The last year has convinced me of this. Because what are entrepreneurs? We're people who believe passionately in the right goal, which in this case is human flourishing. We're willing to learn whatever we need to accomplish it. That's studying. And when it comes down to it, if we're right, we don't really care what people think. So you should join the human flourishing movement. And as a first step, I want to hear F-bombs dropped all over this conference.

There is not a problem in the world that innovation and entrepreneurship can't solve. So you look at me and saying, "What do you know about entrepreneurship? What is an entrepreneur? Who is an entrepreneur?" So I say there are 3 types of people in the world. People who actually can see the problem, and let's call them human beings, right? And there's some of us who can even find a solution to that problem, and we're going to call them visionaries, or even coach, or even consultants. And there are few people in this room who can actually go out and do something about it, and we're going to call them entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are the one who are the problem solvers, who just don't see the problem, who just don't come up with a solution, who go out and do something about it. And those are the entrepreneurs we celebrate. So you look back and saying, if innovation and entrepreneurship can solve all the problem, Why every time we walk, we see a problem and we ask the same question. Why is it someone do something about it? Why can't someone do something about this? Here is a big problem. Why can't someone do something about it? The question you should be asking is, what is it that I can do about it? What can I do about it to solve this problem? That's an entrepreneurial mindset. And that's how you solve a problem. There's not a problem, how big a problem it is. I will tell you, it's no easier to build a $100 million company to then build a billion-dollar company. In fact, I'll argue it's so much easier to build a billion-dollar company than to build a $100 million company. You have to think so small. You can't think big when you're trying to build a $100 million company. You got to be saying, "Why can't we go to the moon? What stops us from going to the moon? What stops us from solving big problems?" And never be afraid to say, "And my company is profitable and I make money." If you want to make a billion dollars, how do you make a billion dollars? You go out and solve a $10 billion problem. And it so happens that those $10 billion problems happen to be large social problems: education, healthcare, clean water, energy. And imagine that if one of you out there solves a clean water problem for around the world for billions of people, and if you happen to make a billion dollars, Somebody's going to say, "Look at that greedy entrepreneur. My hat's off to you." Like, "Mmm." So my purpose in life is really simple. Go out and think about the large problems and see how innovation can solve it. And I think one of the speakers earlier talked about education. Before I go and talk about education, I just want to give you a little bit of background that Peter mentioned. I grew up in India. We actually had no food to eat. We didn't have a place to stay. We moved from place to place to place. And most of my education was done in places where there were no tables, no chairs. You sat on the floor, you wrote on the floor. And despite all that, my sister went on to do a PhD in applied mathematics. My brother had a PhD in computer science and statistics. And I'm the least educated person with engineering from IIT and MBA. I came to this country— I came to this country with nothing but $5 in my pocket and with a dream of making something out of my life. And you go back and say, if a person from India who couldn't speak the language, had nothing, can go do it, what has happened to that spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship in this great country? So I wrote an open letter to the President. Dear Mr. President, let's all work together to bring back the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship to this, our great country. And I gave him the lesson in the history. What made our country so great was because we brought the best and the brightest from around the world. In fact, and then we gave them an opportunity to succeed. So much so, we call this a land of opportunity. And you know what we did after that? When these people succeeded, we celebrated their success. And you know what we do today? Every single person who comes to this country gets a degree from Harvard, Stanford. We send them back to their country and say, "Go create jobs there." If somehow we throw every hurdle in their way for them not to succeed, and if they do succeed, we call them goddamn one-percenters. We don't say, and then we stand up and saying, "Sir, you do not have a right to belong to our society because you are not a 99-percenter, you are a 1-percenter." And we are proud to be 99-percenter. Is that the country we belong to? No! Our country says, "Sir, I want to be just like you, you 1-percenter." So thanks to those 1-percenter, let's all become the 1-percenter. How are we going to go become that 1%er that's going to go out there and everybody wants to be like us? We're going to go solve big problems. Let's talk about education. How are we going to solve education problem? Not the way it's done. Not the way today people do that. People say the reason our children are not being educated is because the teacher unions, because we don't give enough computer to the kids, and because the poor people can't have education. They don't understand just because poor people have poor education, that's a correlation, that's not the causation. If you go back and look at the history, look at the evolution of human brain, there is nothing that says if you're born poor, you're going to get less education. In fact, if you go back from a neuroscience perspective, what makes the education most effective is not what we do today. So what is the brain good at? Brain is extremely good at pattern matching. Brain is not very good at reading. Brain never had to learn to read because brain is optimized for only two things: survival and procreation. For survival, it never had to learn to read. When we were living in the jungle, nowhere it said, "Tiger coming, run!" Nowhere. So what did brain have to do? Extremely good pattern matching. It sees a yellow color behind the bush, it says, it says, "Time to run!" Right? It sees a brown color thing, it says, "Time to run, my lunch is running away!" Right? Brain is hardwired not to ignore the motion. Right? Anytime you can— when I'm talking to you, you can completely tune me out, blah, blah, blah, but the minute I move my hand, there's nothing you can do, you have to look, because brain is hardwired for motion. I could tell you all about how you can fundamentally change education system, because today our education system was not only designed in the industrial era, we teach our children just like the industrial conveyor belt. You know what we do? We group them by the date of manufacturing. How old are you? You put them here. You go to the next station, tighten the screw with the physics. Go to the next station, we're going to teach you history. And we all group them like that, just like the industrial conveyor belt. Every one of us learns differently. What if we group them how you learn? If you learn adaptively, you learn conceptually, you learn graphically, maybe you're good at math, maybe you're good at science. No, sir, we're going to bunch them through the date of manufacturing and we're going to move through the conveyor belt. What if you can come up with an education system that's adaptive, that changes the way you learn? In addition to that, what if we change the system So that as opposed to having the fixed time variable learning, which is 6 months to learn, and if you learn nothing, you get A, and if you absolutely didn't even come to the class, you get D and you move on. What if you change that to, instead of fixed time variable learning, to fixed learning variable time? That means you have to get equivalent of an A before you can move on. It's no different than a video game. You can't go to level 6 until you pass level 5. And it may take you 2 days, it may take you 2 months, it may take you 2 years, but you don't pass, you don't move. So the point is, you can go out and change the education system that's more effective than a private tutor and more addictive than any video game. And it's doable, and I think each one of us has the power to do that. As Peter mentioned, we can solve the healthcare problem. As opposed to looking at building the infrastructure, what if you can build a tablet device that Peter talks about and it is sensors, the whole device could be a $20 device that can be given to a village girl that instead of getting abused, she becomes the village doctor. She can diagnose most common diseases in every area. We can impact billions of people's life. So what is the success at the end? We all are looking to be successful. The success is not defined by how much money you have in the bank. Success is going to be defined by how many lives can you improve. And if you all want to be successful, think big, think impact. How can we impact billions of people's lives? And if you can all do that, we'll all be successful. You're going to come back and join the 25K group because that's what makes it all happen. So at the end, all I can say is think like an entrepreneur. There is not a problem in the world that innovation and entrepreneurship can't solve.

Thank you. You know, enterprise is the most powerful force for good on the planet when the right people are leading it. And that's a big caveat, right? The only reason a business should exist is to create some value. And so I've had this thought for a long time about we are in a world today where business should be much more noble and every— you can't scale the back end of a business until you can scale the sales. Like when we talk about scaling a business, you've got to scale the sales. Money spent on the back end is overcapitalisation until you figure out how to scale the selling, right? And so selling should be a force for good. You know, like a surgeon has to— in 2019, I injured my back badly in Mexico. It's not the right place to do it, right? I had a massive disc rupture. So I was in a wheelchair and everything else, made it back to LA where my wife was, got back to Australia. The doctor in Sydney saying, you need surgery today, it's gonna happen, right? And if not, we don't know how much mobility you're going to get back. I mean, this was the start of a 2-year recovery, surgery, weeks in the spinal ward and all this sort of business. That surgeon had a job to pitch surgery to me.

Right.

He's got a job to make a sale, right? And I live in Perth, so I got to have this surgery before I fly across the country. And of course everyone's saying, oh, don't ever let anyone operate on your back and stuff. And the surgeon's going, "You need surgery." And here's the thing, um, all value lives in the ambiguity. There's no value in the thing that everybody knows about. The value is always in the ambiguity. So I'm going to go to a weird place in a minute, right? With the surgeon, he says, "You need surgery." I go, "I don't want to get surgery. Like, what if I end up in a wheelchair?" And then he gave me one line that was the pitch. He said, Simon, being in a wheelchair is not your biggest risk. And I went, it's not? What is? He said, permanent incontinence. Ambiguity, right? Who thinks of that?

Right.

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

Yeah.

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

So sales for a doctor is actually the start of the healing process. So business should be the most powerful force for good on the planet, but we can only do that when we sell well. And then there's a whole bunch of questions behind that. So people come to us for models and can we help them to sell and can we help them think through their business issues and leadership and structure and and so on. But I think for me, the stuff that people probably don't really realize is at the heart of everything we do. Business is an enormous responsibility. And I think the primary starting point of that responsibility is how well and how ethically and how transparently you sell. So I've been in this pursuit for how do we create a much more transparent sales process where people are making really informed— they're not They're not prisoner clients, they're hero clients. They've bought from you to do something bigger.

Everyone has in their folder here that tool that says 250K ideas. Part of that is a trick in the same way that when I— I don't emphasize it as much as I used to, but for the first 8 years of Genius Network, I would say, "If you're here for new..." new people that would join the group, and those of you that have been in the group for a while, you've heard me say this many times, uh, where I would say, if you don't get at least a 10x return on your investment, I don't want you to renew for the next year. And it's not that I don't want the money, because I want the money, I'd like the money. What I want though is I want you to get a 10x return. I want Genius Network to be a school that pays you to attend. I don't ever want it to be a cost. And what I'm doing though is I'm doing a trick, because if your brain asks and listens for $250,000 ideas, if you are truly asking and looking for that, your brain cannot avoid the question. And so, in a lot of ways, it's a way to— 'cause there's all kinds of stuff you can focus on, but if you focused on what am I gonna hear that's worth at least a quarter million to me, you're gonna get a 10 times return on that. And the idea for the 10-minute talk was how could someone share a concept, a strategy, a methodology in 10 minutes that if someone actually took seriously what it is, and they had to, have to deliver, not all of them do, but a lot actually do, that each minute of that 10-minute talk would be worth $25,000. If you could literally do a $250,000 idea in 10 minutes, that would be a pretty damn good return on investment. And so we've done, like in the membership site, there's so many 10-minute talks that are worth a quarter million dollars, but only to the degree that someone interacts with it that way. So when you're talking about mindset, when you're talking about this, what would prevent someone, even though you're talking about it, even though you're explaining exactly what you did, even though I just shared the whole idea and a lot of people are very capable of saying, this is what I want, and then they go about doing what is needed in order to get it. What would prevent someone from being able to do that? So, 'cause there'll be some people in the audience here that are hearing this but it just doesn't land, it just doesn't penetrate.

Well, I think there's a decision, so there's a choice, but there's an interesting distinction between the word choice, because choice can only come from the inside. You know, in other words, the choice is that you have a picture of yourself in the future and you choose that that's who you're going to be in the future. And entrepreneurs, I I would say probably become entrepreneurs because they have that ability to a degree that the general public doesn't, that they can see themselves a year from now or 3 years from now and they can actually engage intellectually, intellectually with that, that totally makes sense, but also they emotionally commit to it. You know, they're committed, but there's no evidence of it yet. So literally who you are as an entrepreneur constantly gets created by your vision of who you want to be in the future. There's— but that's the choice, but the decision is that you have to give up criticism, complaining, and blaming for the rest of your life. That once you enter onto this path, you can no longer stand back and say, well, if it works— if it doesn't work, I get to I get to criticize, complain, and blame, because you don't. That's the decision, and that is the real, what I would say, the fork in the road. You know, Yogi Berra said, when you come to the fork in the road, take it. And my feeling is that I took this, I took this, the one fork a long time ago, and then there's all sorts of mindsets that build up around being a transformer, and also your behavior changes, and then your behavior becomes automatic habit. And then what you notice is you start noticing other people who have the same mindset. And that's where the payoff is, because our brain is not our intelligence. Our ability to access other people's brains is really our intelligence. And the school system— starting at junior kid— kindergarten now, where they have proms at the end of the year, they teach people to be isolated individuals who think their intelligence is inside of themselves. So you get 20 years of that in the educational system, and it disables you from accessing the intelligence of other people. Entrepreneurs, by necessity and also by choice, really, really access the intelligence. And that's really your intelligence, the creativity and the contributions of other people. But you don't, you don't access other people's capabilities, intelligence, unless you give up criticizing, complaining, and blaming. You can't do it anymore. It's just not part of your life.

Yeah. Well, I want to tell you a story. It's an old story, but change is coming. There's going to be new winners, there's going to be new losers, and actions have consequences, but so does inaction. And you're the hero of the story, and your job is to figure out how to get to next. In order to do that, you have to see the bigger picture to figure out where you want to go, to figure out the plan and path to get there. And that's really what this talk is about. It's a framework to help you imagine how to scale your business and how your industry is likely to scale. Abraham Lincoln said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." And that's a really cool quote. This framework that I'm about to share with you is about creating the future you desire. Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have done it incredibly well. I just saw that Tesla is approaching a trillion-dollar valuation. Think about that. By the way, Tesla is so cool. I'm just curious, how many people here either have a Tesla or want to buy a Tesla? If you do, just put it in the chat because I'd love to see that. But do you have a Tesla? Do you want a Tesla? It's such a cool concept, but every concept, every story, every process has a beginning, a middle, and an end. How do you think it started? What do you think came first? What capability actually prompted them to say, ooh, I think there could be more?

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

The concept is Tesla started with a capability. What do you think it was? Was it the clean energy car? Was it the battery? We don't really know, but I came up with this diagnostic to help figure out how some of the greatest companies have done it so that we can do it. It starts with a new capability. And then you start to stack those capabilities to be able to create a prototype. The prototype is the bait that lets people decide whether they're interested, and if enough people show interest, it becomes a product. And then that product, you can think of that as a way to have people you don't know doing something you do. But then the next stage is when it becomes a platform, and that's where people you don't know use it for things you didn't anticipate. And each one of these is a minimum 10 times scale. So it's like 10 times, times 10 times, times 10 times, but even bigger. And the key is to start to think about what capabilities are going to get people greedy for new capabilities. You don't have to think about the technology, you think about the business need. And so if you're Elon Musk, in the beginning you have to think about constraints like drivable distance. Or it has to be cool enough to get over the hassle factor. But later you're thinking about, I have to have charging stations on most of the major highways so that people don't get stuck in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, the bottom line is, this is a really cool way to figure out what capabilities are needed. Think of it as a roadmap. And you don't have to build the whole roadmap, but if you know what the map is, you can figure out what parts of the territory Match your unique ability, your energy. Be so good that it requires a new name to describe what you do. Right? He did this with Ludicrous. What's that? The feature that when you press it, the car goes from 0 to 60 in a ludicrous period of time. But think about how you can name a certain capability to make people want it. Gosh, he did it again with SpaceX, didn't he? SpaceX is such a great example because if you think about the capability, the prototype, the product and the platform, he's literally inventing something out of this world. It wasn't just privatized spaceships. Realize one of the constraints there was space travel was government-based. There was no public technology to do this. And so in a sense, nobody spent money because it was too risky. But he decided to risk money, time, energy, resources And then he had to make the components reusable. And then he had to figure out how to land humans safely. It's one thing to go on a space mission. It's another to privatize space transportation or shoot for Mars. But it's even more when you start to think about commoditizing space travel, including like cargo delivery and internet. Amazon did this with Amazon Cloud and a bunch of their different features, things that became where that were backstage became front stage. Here, they're going to have a massive industry shipping parts to all over the universe to start to build communities and space stations and stuff. And they've already lowered the cost. It's now less than 1/10 of the cost per pound to bring stuff up. Why is that important? Because it sends a signal to the rest of the entrepreneurs saying, I could have a business in space. And so those are new customers. And so this is a great way of imagining what's going to happen and where you're going to fit. But people rarely try to accomplish things that they don't believe are possible. And this is the tool that helps you figure out what is possible and what your part is in it. And you don't have to predict the future, especially not about technology. And you don't even have to invent the best technology because it's not the best that wins. It's the ones that's the most adopted. So focus on the capabilities that, you know, people are going to want and realize that, that's the magnet that attracts money, talent, resources, and opportunity. Since the dawn of time, we've been confronted with radical new technologies. And even though technology changes, human nature hasn't. And so this is really about human nature and thinking about what people are going to want. And it's really simple if you understand what happens. And I'm going to show you how to do that with this framework. Stage 1 is something I call, so what, who cares? Even in a caveman, there's this back portion of the brain that says, if it doesn't help my survival, it's not worth it. So the question here is, does it help me do what I already do just better? Recognize the game you're playing, how you keep score. Most people are trying to save time, money, or win more often. So the metrics are probably something like that. As long as a new capability helps you do that, You go, this is cool, I want more. Hence Stage 2. Stage 2 is all about new capabilities and what's next. And instead of does it help me do what I already do, it's what could I do or what should I do? And it means you have to start to stop doing some things to make room for the new things you're doing. You're still playing the same game, but at a whole different level with more capabilities. And better results. Stage 3 is game-changing because it's reinvention. It's where those new capabilities, your new identity, causes you to say, I could release a new product, a service, or an offering that's strategic and unique, that takes me out of that competitive red ocean of commodity into something that highly prizes what we do. But it has to be good enough that people you don't know are going to get the results. So you're refining the unique ability or the capability to something that is reproducible, scalable. And it's playing a new game because it's no longer about what you're doing. It's about distribution. So the metrics have to change. And stage 4 is a huge opportunity for scale. It's transformation. And I call it that because it transforms the game and the playing field for other people. They see what you're doing and they're saying, that's so cool. I'll come to you with ideas or money. Can I do it this way or that way? And it's where your core capability is so cool that it's a platform that others want to build upon. And this is what that looks like in, in an infographic. You're going to have that in your downloads. But this is how it looks in my company. And the reason it's important is it not only explains the past, but the constraints help me figure out what strategies come next. And understanding the scaling future helps me figure out the big rocks or planning principles so I can figure out what to call into existence. So we currently have a fund that's run 100% by autonomous AI. And it's getting really great results. So great that I realized that the next stage is to have— it's simple enough that other people can multiply. And so I need to pour more money into the top for it to grow. And the way to do that is to realize I have to joint venture or collaborate with other people. And then the platform is, oh, wow, the backstage capability The insight engine, the technology that made it possible is no longer just the thing that lets me monetize it. It's actually the thing that people are going to want. And that's the concept of amplified intelligence. But it totally changed the way I think about my business. And I hope that this is helping you change what you think of as your business, because your imagination is your ultimate competitive advantage. And that's why I created this form for you. To think about what you're going to commit to. And you can do anything you commit to.

There's this quote from Covey, and I'm interested in your thoughts on it. He talks about how private victory precedes public victory. You know, private victory being like what you don't see behind the scenes, right? I mean, we can become successful, but to the extent that we have our private victory, and public victory could mean a lot of different things. It doesn't have to mean just money. But what are your thoughts on that quote, Joe? Private victory precedes public victory.

I actually very much like it because of Private Victory in the way that you— I think it makes you more authentic. I think it's— so many people that we know that are influencers, that are famous, are some of the most scared, worried, broken, desperate for attention. And I'm talking some of the biggest in the world that everyone thinks has their shit so totally together, if you really knew the fear that because they can articulate, you know, I mean, people that are 1,000 times better at articulating, at public speaking, and don't ramble like I do and all that sort of stuff that the world thinks are so authentic, they're anything but. And part of it is because I don't think they really have. They only, they get the public victories and everyone thinks they're great, but behind the scenes, there's— it's just, it's never enough. It's, it's, it's like the Janis, uh, Joplin quote, you know. Shep Gordon, who— there's a movie, uh, that he done on him called Supermatch. And, uh, he says, um, you know, he made people famous. Like, I have a friend, the singer Alice Cooper, uh, who I've, you know, interviewed and had out at Genius Network before. And I've done a, you know, a bit of work, uh, with his, uh foundation, which is Solid Rock Foundation to help, you know, kids play music and stuff. He just lets— it's open to kids that are many inner city kids and just where they can just go and have a place to be and connect. He's— Shep Gordon's been his manager for like 50 years. They've never had a signed contract, just like that's a really aligned relationship. And so part of it is alignment. Right? So public victory versus private victory is how aligned are you with who you are versus who you present yourself to be. You know, uh, conversation I used to have with this marketer, Dan Kennedy, years ago. Um, we used to go to lunch all the time when he used to live out here. And he said, um, remember once we were having a conversation, he's like, if you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar. And So, I really— Yeah. And I really— So, Shep said in SuperMensch, I've never seen anything good come out of fame. Those that rose the highest fell the farthest, right? And so, the more you try to publicly put yourself out there, when you fail or have a public failing, there's a lot of people in the world that will They just love to see you fall. And, and if you rise to the top stepping on people, they celebrate seeing you fall. They will go out of their way to make you fall. And you've seen that too, you know? Um, yeah, I mean, look, look, I mean, you know, I don't talk about it that much, but I was asked to meet with Harvey Weinstein when he was going through his recovery stuff. And, you know, Harvey was mean to a lot of people. Along the way. And, uh, you know, you karmically, even if, you know, you say you didn't do anything, um, if you're still a bully, people are going to come after you. And they don't, you know, there's a lot of bullies in the world. There's a lot of narcissism in the world. There's a lot of sociopaths and there's a lot of craziness. And, uh, so I've met Covey before, you know, I, I've always liked his line, you know, don't, you know, seek first to understand, not to be understood, and seek to, you know, have people feel understood, right? And so, um, I, I think going, you know, for one, I only want to align myself with people that align with me. I want to be as authentic to my message as I possibly can, also knowing that I'm a flawed human being. I can be really nice and generous and sweet and creative, but if I haven't eaten food for 2 days, I'm going to be moody and desperate for eating. And if I'm sleep deprived, I'm going to feel like crap. So part of it is I just want to, you know, I want to be able to work on the things that I can do something with. There is the Serenity Prayer, even if someone doesn't believe in God. Uh, and I'm not here to tell anybody what they should believe in. It should, you know, it's your life. Uh, you know, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. And that's the difficult part because when you're sort of an ambitious, I want to read all these books, I want to do all this stuff, I want to deal with, you know, I want to feed homeless people, I want to solve the addiction crisis in the world, I want to make sure that, you know, no one suffers in all of these 100 different ways that humans can suffer. I mean, you can't do all that. And, uh, what you can do is what you can do. And so, uh, the private victory for me, I think, would be— and I say I think because I honestly believe, uh, I'm gonna be in a different state a year from now. It'd be really interesting.

You will.

You'll define all of this stuff differently. You'll be a different person then.

Yeah.

Here's what I— you'll be a totally different person by then.

Yeah. I think I'll be able to articulate 10 minutes what I'll have to ramble through in 2 hours or whatever we spend time talking.

That's all right. It's good. Beautiful. This is, this is your private journal that we're going to share publicly.

Exactly, exactly. But, uh, you know, I'm hoping that I can just be like, yeah, you know what, Joe, you, you don't need to do any of this stuff except that which you know really matters. And you're, you're— I'm able to make better decisions. I'm able to be better boundaried. I don't sacrifice my, what I believe is a pretty generous spirit and person and usefulness at the altar of giving, which I recently heard someone say it along those lines. I don't have such a need for people to like me, you know, because I have low self-esteem, I have low self-worth. I want people to like me. I want people to applaud for me. I want people to think I'm cool. And as I say that, I don't want to want that stuff. I don't want it to be like I'm going to try to look a certain way, do a certain thing just so I can have someone compliment me. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. I'm incredibly appreciative of I've gotten some text messages today that are like, man, I mean, one nearly brought me to tears. It was so nice. And there's a part of me, it's like, man, you know, how many people don't get a message like that? And if they, if they did, it would just make their day so much better. And I will sometimes get messages like that and I cannot take it in because I'm just tired or I'm whatever. And I'm like, that's not very connected for a guy that had a movie made about him called connected to Joe Polish's story. So I really want to, uh, you know, I really want to be able to just feel as much as I can the, the beauty and the joy, uh, in the connectedness of life. And I also want to be able to feel those things when things are difficult. I love it. And I want to be, you know, I want to be a contributor. I mean, you know, uh, life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. I mean, produce more than you consume. I don't want to be a parasite. And I want— I don't want parasites attaching themselves to me. And if there's a parasitical person that wants help and no one knows what to do or how to do it, I'd love to be able to at least know what to do in that situation, you know, because I don't think you can punish pain out of people. It's a, it's a weird sort of, um, way that, you know, people are like, how can you sit with like a Harvey Weinstein? And it's like, yeah, it's hard. But I was raped and molested as a kid. If there's anyone that, you know, that's one of the ways you actually heal. My perspective, no one has to agree with me, is it's like when you can actually really try to understand what was the atmospheric conditions, as my friend Don Wood says, what was the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life that caused them to become who they became and where they went sideways. I mean, I think one of the greatest ways to learn is to learn from the mistakes of others. Is to, you know, I have a friend who's an incredible therapist, uh, has been over 30 years, and this guy makes really good money. I mean, he is constantly booked. He's brilliant. He's sat with every type of world leader you could ever possibly imagine, famous, multiple billionaires, all kinds of stuff. And he voluntarily for years has gone to prisons and sat down with sex offenders and just talked with them. And I'm like, why do you do that? You don't get paid for it. You know, you're literally giving up income that you could make with people that are not. He's like, because you want to put yourself in a situation where you can see yourself in all of those people. I'm like, what do you mean like that, by that? I go, You ever had the desire to— he's like, no. He goes, uh, you can think about it. He goes, but when you're able to sit down and see that level of pain, you actually realize just what happens to someone when so much pain is caused to them, how they can cause pain to other people. And it's just, that's how you get really, you know, you're able to help people when you can help the hardest cases. And it's, um, If you think about business and how I will tie this together, Jean-Baptiste, which I learned this originally from Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach, you know, he's the first person to coin the term entrepreneur. In 1804, I think was the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur. And he said, an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield. Another way of saying it, taking resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So wherever you can, you know, make something better, someone has an axe, someone invents a chainsaw, you've created a more effective way of, you know, chopping down a tree, taking down a tree. But you can do that with the mind. You can apply entrepreneurial concepts to every area of life. Think about as a parent taking resources from a lower level to a higher level. Think about a person who spent their life damaging other people, and they somehow find grace, they somehow find healing, they somehow become a productive individual when in a past area of their life they have hurt others. Like our friend Andre Norman, who spent 14 years in maximum security prison, got out over 20 years ago, went to Harvard, became part of a social justice program, now has spent so much of his life for free, in many cases, speaking at schools, going to prisons, helping people in pain. Doing interventions, preventing suicides, you know, crisis. I mean, and he deal— he's like, if it's kumbaya, everyone's loving each other and having a picnic, don't send me there. He goes, that's not good for me. Send me to the middle of a freaking war zone. I know how to deal with that stuff. And, you know, he's just transformed his life. And, and look at how many— I mean, even what we do, you know, because I've been working with him for a couple years now in Genius Now. I know we have saved lives. We have people tell me, I would be dead if it was not for him and you guys helping us with what we've done. If I would have said, nah, he doesn't deserve anything. He was thrown in prison for armed robbery. And once he was there, a couple of counts of attempted murder. No, he's a horrible, awful human. I mean, if you're willing to just write someone off entirely, and look, I mean, when someone is the is hurt by the person, really hard to sit down with the person that hurt them. So there's a certain level of it, but all of that sort of stuff is how I approach. So problems. So entrepreneurs solve problems for a profit. That's what a business does. Back here is one of Dan Sullivan's quotes where it says right there, I'll kind of point to it. Okay, it's blurry on the camera the way I'm looking at the screen, but it says, other people's bad news is your good news. So the face on the left is like, eek, you know, the face on the, on the right is smiling. Other people's bad news, their ah, is your good news, right? So what does that mean? If there's bad news for someone, there's an opportunity for you to make some money if you run into business, right? So you solve problems for a profit. You make it up and you make it real, as you know we say with Dan Sullivan, right? And that means that If you're hungry, that's bad news. But if there's someone— you have food in the fridge, there's a restaurant, you have access to food— that's good news. You break your leg, bad news. Someone can help you, good news. You get COVID, a doctor, someone helps you with COVID you to heal, not die, that's, that's good news. Someone dies, it's terrible, it's bad news. Imagine if there were no mortuaries. Imagine if there was no one to help with that. It would be worse news. The planet is filled with bad news. And when you can transform someone else's bad news into good news in a better way, that's entrepreneurship. If you have someone's bad news, like they're depressed, oh, watch some porn, take this drug, drink this alcohol, eat this crappy fast food. Are you really transforming other people's bad news into good news, or are you taking already existing bad news and making it worse under the fantasy, under the guise of, oh, just come and eat this shit and put this crap in your already sick body, it'll make you a little sicker. That's not entrepreneurship. That's not how I would frame capitalism.

How a lot of businesses are run though, right?

Absolutely. There's a ton of it. I mean, There's so much money. I mean, look at the freaking media right now. Remember when everyone used to say the media was bullshit, as if putting the word social in front of it somehow— who would have thought that social media would have done more to take away or try to sway free speech than anything, which is what we're experiencing today. So, you know, from whatever thing that you can do in the world, if you operate transforming other people's bad news into good news— so you can do that in business, but you can also do that in life. And when you can sit down with broken, hurt people and you can hopefully make them a more valuable, more transformed person, great. But in all of that, you first have to do it for yourself. All of this shit that I'm talking about, if I don't do this for myself, how good of a job am I going to do doing it for other people? And here's the truth, Ben. I have been very useful in some people's lives in the most broken state you could ever possibly imagine. I've had to get up on stages when I was actively addicted and do my best to try to gut my way through running a company and doing a business when I, like Janet, I brought up Shep Gordon, let me tie it all together. He said, "Those that rise to the top fall the farthest." When I was interviewing him for our podcast, Janis Joplin, he used to manage Janis Joplin who died of an overdose. And she was a singer and she had a quote where, "I go out and make love to 20,000 people and I'd go back to my hotel room alone." I may not be saying it exactly like she said it, but that's the remembrance I have of reading that. And so she'd go out and perform to all these adoring fans and she'd go back to her hotel room and feel totally disconnected, totally alone. And she was a drug addict. And there's a lot of famous, well-known people that no matter how much admiration, adoration, applause, money, fame, opportunity, they just don't feel it. And that has a lot to do with connection and community. That has to do with biochemicals, serotonin, dopamine hormones. It has to do with the trauma that you have not resolved underlying. It has to do with the environment in which you live. Those are the 4 categories of of what we look at to give someone the highest, you know, possibility of it. And as, again, my friend Don Wood says, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, you'd understand why they do the things that they do. So I am literally going on a journey of a sabbatical to absolutely change the atmospheric conditions of my current life. Because current life is awesome, but I want to do something. I want to go where no one's ever gone before. What's that whole star?

You know, yeah, you want to go—

yeah, I don't know the exact quote, but yeah, yeah, we could try to quote Star Wars, Star Trek, all the different things. But you know, I want to go—

you want to go where you've never gone before. Well, if I could sum up, and I don't— I have one more question, but I know it's for us right now, it's 3 o'clock Eastern. Do you— should we call it after this, or do you want— do you have time for one last question?

Oh, we can talk as much as you want.

Okay, cool, cool.

So from what I'm hearing in synthesizing this You are ready to change the atmospheric conditions of your life the way, you know, one of the quotes or things that I, there's a few quotes that come to mind. One is you train the world how to treat you. The other one is, um, how you do anything is how you do everything. Yeah. Like, you know, you've trained, you, you've done so much good in your life, but you want to go and emotionally heal yourself at all levels and reconnect with yourself, reconnect with life so that you can do more deep work. And so that you can ultimately impact the world and other people in a, in a deeper level. And you want to do it in a way that's healthy for you and a way that, you know, from the Private Victory, Public Victory perspective, you want to take yourself to a higher level so that ultimately your work can be deeper and higher and change the atmospheric conditions so that you're not constantly ping-ponged by other people's agendas, but you control all that. You've reshifted the situation and you're doing deeper, more meditative, more flow-based deep work at higher levels which is what you want to do? You love the work that you're doing. You know you give great service. And I know you do great work, Joe Polish Polish Polish polish— but you're ready to go step back change atmospheric conditions heal lot of deep internal wounds; change systems right now keeping distracted pulling from really wanna do ultimately set up new condition already more healed person can engage much deeper level of work different types people make bigger impact than currently making mean it's That's kind of how I'm hearing it.

Yes, you summarized it very well. Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, they're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.