It’s Not The Person Who's Toxic, it’s actually THIS Feat. Dr. Ramani Durvasula

Let me ask you to define narcissism, and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists, because I think that'll help with the foundation here.

So I think the key here, number one, what is narcissism? It's a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, inability to manage any kind of disappointment. And that tends to be manifested as rage, chronic validation seeking. But all of this, envy of other people, but all of this, the core of it, and this is what gets forgotten, is that it's all based on a deep, deep insecurity. Everyone looks at the narcissist, they say they're charming, they're confident, they're successful, they're smart. That doesn't mean if you're those things, you're narcissistic. But if it's built on that core insecurity, that's why the person needs to be grandiose and entitled. Because if I was that fragile inside, my temptation would be to protect it. It's like if you broke your arm, what. What do we do? We put a cast on it. Why? So the arm doesn't get broken again or the bone doesn't get agitated or moved. When you have a broken inside, you're that insecure, you're going to protect it. How do you protect it? I'm the shit. I'm the best. No one's better than me. Why should I have to wait in this line? I'm the best, after all. Everybody move out of my way so I can be the first in line. Why am I not the vip? All of that's protective. All of that is them putting this carapace around this fragile interior. So anything from the outside that cracks it. Marital breakup, somebody else beating them at what they do, getting more sales, having more money, having a bigger yacht, having a better whatever that is going to piss them off. And that's where you see the rage and the acting out. That's narcissism, okay? There's different kinds of narcissism. There's grandiose narcissism, which is sort of textbook. Come to my palace and be palacey with me. And I'm so great and you're so lucky to be my friend and I'm so beautiful. That's what we classically think of narcissism. But then there's the malignant narcissist, and that is somebody who's downright dangerous. They're malevolent, they're exploitative, they're manipulative. They smell like a psychopath. But you're going to learn in a minute why a malignant narcissist isn't a psychopath. They're slightly different creatures. There are the more vexing, covert narcissists. These are people who don't look like narcissists. They look like victims. The world was never fair to me. I never got a fear shake. You know what? Maybe he succeeded because he got more money to start with than me. I would have been. I would have been better than him if my dad gave me money up front. You know what? I'm too good to show up to a job. Why should I do that? Like, I got all these ideas, I'm the next Steve Jobs. Like, let the world find me. That's covert narcissism. They look so hang dog and so silly all the time that people often think they're depressed. And they come to a therapist's office who thinks they're depressed and treats them for depression for three months and then wonder why they're not getting anywhere. And this person, well, the world is against me. The world is against me. The world is against me. Their grandiosity is, why doesn't the world see how great I am versus the grandiose person who says, look how great I am. And then there's even what we call noble narcissists. These are the people who do lots of charitable work and have these big rescue the elephants, rescue the world, rescue everyone kinds of profiles, but they're doing it solely for validation.

That's the same as a communal narcissist.

No, same as a communal. Same as a communal or noble narcissist. These are the people who you think like, wow, they're saving the world. They're so charitable, they're so wonderful. But then catch them behind closed doors and they treat their partners, their families, anyone, one to one, their staffs, absolutely horribly. So they only have empathy when they're on stage or they're saving an elephant.

I mean, I see so much of that, especially in the stuff that I've done in the nonprofit world. Yeah, it's cosmetic.

It's very cosmetic. Yes. But the work is being done in the name of seeking validation versus for the meaning and the purpose or just the higher purpose as you will, of doing the actual work. That's narcissism. I'm sure you're wondering what's the difference between that and narcissistic personality disorder. There was a wonderful book by Alan Francis called Twilight of American Sanity. I don't Know if you've read it, but it's a fantastic book. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder only entered the world of psychiatry in the 1970s. This is a late entry. Freud wrote about it. Otto Rank was the first person who wrote about it. These were early, early analysts and obviously theoreticians, but we didn't make it into diagnosis until the 70s. Francis was one of the people who wrote about it. When Trump got elected, he wrote this book about narcissism and he's like, trump doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. Why not? Because in order for something in the dsm, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Health, Mental Illness, you have to. In order for it to be diagnosis, it either has to be causing the person subjective distress. Think about a depressed person. They're uncomfortable, they can't get out of bed, they feel sad all the time, they're angry. Or it has to be causing them social and occupational impairment. You look at somebody who's got. Seems to the world a fine marriage, or at least the person thinks it's a fine marriage or relationship. They seem to have perfectly fine kids, at least to the world it looks like that. And the person thinks that and they're not having any distress. We don't get to diagnose it, which is why the majority of people with narcissistic traits don't get diagnosed, because nobody ever lays eyes on them.

Yeah.

So that's there. That's why the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorders, about 1 to 5%. I'm spitballing here, because we don't have the numbers. The prevalence of narcissism in the American culture is probably closer to 30%, that gap.

So 30% of.

I would guess so, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, it's one in three. But now when we go to psychopathy, we jump the rails. Narcissist insecure. Okay. When the mask gets pulled off the narcissist, and he and I were talking about his program about, you know, getting people ready to go to prison, one of the things he's going to run into most, and this has come up when I've taught at jails and prisons about this to the clinicians there, is that they're so insecure now, the mask is off.

Shame.

You're a bad guy. Like they're. I was once supposed to do, I think, an interview with Steve Madden. I was telling him for this thing on narcissism, and he was actually willing to subject himself to talking to me. And then at the 11th hour. I think he had something more interesting to do. Surprise, surprise. But he acknowledged it. He said the thing he was most frightened of was going to jail or going to prison. And he did. And so it shatters them. A psychopath is not insecure. They have no fear, they have no anxiety, and they're completely stress resistant. Which is why they make, for example, great surgeons. They make great CEOs, they make great anyone who needs to say, completely calm at a time of tremendous danger. Right. So nothing bothers them. That's just why they make great hired assassins. I mean, anything that requires you to be calm, cool and collected under conditions that are difficult for people to do them, they're dangerous.

I was watching a show on drug lords and gangsters and mob leaders and stuff, and they were talking about the brain scans and some of these people in fearful situations. For most people, it doesn't even register like it doesn't bother them at all. So is this a genetic.

Yeah. So the belief of psychopathy is. It's definitely biological. And the imaging studies have shown that very clearly. There's likely. The genetic piece is still being argued because think about it, far, far more men have been diagnosed with psychopathy than women. So we don't see. There's almost no research on female psychopaths, though we see them. An interesting speculation would be someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Is she a malignant narcissist or is she a psychopath? Like, I've watched everything on her I can. Because you don't see women in these situations much. She's somewhat. I haven't talked to her, so I don't know. Right. But the key with a psychopath is they feel no remorse. That's the issue. They feel truly no remorse. The narcissist actually does feel some remorse for anything from even smaller time stuff like infidelity to big ticket stuff. I embezzled $20 million. So a madoff type reaction, psychopathy. Okay, that's a great. Absolutely didn't register. It's like, this is really inconvenient that you're doing this to me. But no circumspect sense of how this impacted other people.

Do they fake it?

As if they.

They fake it. They can fake it. They absolutely can fake it. But it really. It's like an aftermarket thing. Like about. This was about 10 hours too late. Like, this should have been what you led with. Another one. Was that guy Larry. God, what the hell was this? Larry Nasser. He was one of the physicians in the whole gymnastics issue of, of all the gymnasts who were sexually abused. I dug deep into that case because he felt so psychopathic. All he never, ever expressed remorse to the girls and young women he harmed. All he said is, basically, this is a pain in the neck. Why are you wasting so much time? You're hearing similar discourse from a gynecologist who sexually abused countless scores of girls and women over 20 years at USC. Just, no, you're inconveniencing me with all these proceedings. I'm like, oh, my God, you've destroyed hundreds of lives. There's no. That doesn't register. A narcissist would show more guilt and shame under those conditions.

So a sociopath.

Sociopath. This is a less articulated condition. A lot of people incorrectly interchangeably use the term psychopath and sociopath. The psychopath is considered to be, again, that calm, cool, callous, calculated, smart person who's just able to barrel through in a remorseless way. And we have much more evidence that that is a central nervous system phenomenon. The sociopath is likely someone who was. And again, criminologists, and everyone argue about this, that may be more of something that was created by the environment, Somebody who was beaten up a lot by a father or a caregiver, somebody who grew up on the streets or under conditions of tremendous, tremendous deprivation or danger. And that under different conditions, the story could have probably gone a little bit differently. They also tend to be more combative. You'll probably see a lot more sociopaths in prison than you will psychopaths. Sociopath gets into a bar fight. A psychopath would never diminish themselves in that way. They'll find a way to slowly destroy that person's life or kill them, and no one will ever know the difference kind of thing. So whereas a sociopath, they'll fight, they'll get into a street fight, they'll get into a bar fight.

They'll.

They're less regulated. They tend to be less successful. The big difference that's been brought up in the literature is a psychopath at some level doesn't understand the function of rules. They're like, why is this a rule? She did me wrong in a drug deal. Why can't I kill her? Please help me understand this. A sociopath knows he shouldn't kill her and still will.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So there's a not knowing. But that said, even though there's a not knowing in psychopathy, psychopathy cannot be used as part of the insanity defense in the United States that has been taken off the table.

I mean, is there any idea how many People in the United States as an example are North America. Are sociopaths.

Psychopaths, I would guess with psychopathy merciful, it's probably under 2%. It's a pretty low frequency phenomenon. It's rare, it's terrifying. And interestingly, some of the professions, like I was reading some research on the top 10, 10 professions that have psychopaths in them, and amongst those were surgeon, CEO and clergy. Those are the professions that attract psychopaths.

Wow.

Wow.

So statistically speaking, if there's anything there, then there's 30% of this audience a.

Narcissist, then maybe, yeah. I mean, again, I don't want to.

Be the ones that you.

Just because I love this group has been amazing. But what you might have find in a group like this because everyone is so successful is sort of what I consider just sub threshold narcissism. Like just enough cockiness to get you into trouble. And I would love to sit with each and every one of you and find out what your close personal relationships are like, because it may very well be that that's where it's not working as well as it could be. And again, you may have also gotten lucky, Joe, because you're you and you might have gotten 100% entrepreneurs where there's not a single narcissist in the room. Listen, is a little of it gonna make you successful in business?

Sure.

Because if her and I are vying for the same job and I like, oh, she's so sweet, I'm gonna give her all the intel, we're in this together. I may not get the job, but if girlfriends like, girlfriend's like, yeah, she's going, she's like, I'm not telling her everything. That's, you know. Is that narcissism? I think it's probably a heavy handed use of the word. But that, that lack of empathy, I mean that, that to me is what the whole thing sort of hints hinges on. And then when we talk about the origins of narcissism, I think people can self reflect. But I got to tell you, so far my alarms maybe have gone off one and a half times today at the most.

How do I develop one of the most amazing entrepreneurial group of givers without narcissists in it? Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video. Or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Like, how awesome would that be? Because I'm part of many other groups and speak at a lot of different things and some of them are just filled with narcissists.

Part of it is how much of your discourse is an us, them discourse. Like we're the chosen and everyone else is a loser. I haven't heard that once today. You know, whereas other groups will say, you're the chosen being here, those other schmucks don't know what they're doing. So if someone else was doing what you're doing and kept saying, Joe Polish is a hack, he's an ass, he's an idiot, that's probably going to generate sort of a more kind of a narcissistic kind of groove. I have not once here heard another entrepreneurship development program to be spoken about in such a bad way today. So maybe they're out there, but as a, as a newbie who's here with fresh ears, it's not like this group exists to denigrate and devalue others. I would say that kind of energy would probably cultivate that, that sort of sense, we are the chosen, it's us, and nothing's better than us. So that kind of you're not. Even though this feels incredibly exclusive and everyone I'm meeting, I'm like, every neurotic, where is he? Tucker is like, don't let it bother you. I'm like, oh my God, everyone here so successful, smart, and yet it's. But everyone's humble, you know, so. But I think that might do with the curation.

What's funny too, like, I don't ever want this group to be known for me. I want it to be known for the people in the group, you know, that sort of thing. And what I've noticed about a lot of people that lead groups is they have to be the star. They have to be the. I really just try to curate, right? Because there's people that are way smarter, way better speakers than me. I just am a curator, right? And a lot of groups, if they're not the main star there and everyone's beneath them, it just doesn't work for them. They can't function that way. And it's quite fascinating. Now, having said that, I've said this jokingly that anyone that writes a book, anyone that's a speaker, anyone that puts themselves out there publicly has some level of low self worth, low self esteem, wants the world to applaud them. They want validation 100%. How do you know if you're a narcissist? Meaning, oh, I'm point, like, how do I identify certain traits that I could as an aware, if I'm aware, can do something to better myself?

So let me ask you this. Do you have contempt for human emotion?

Meaning contempt.

Like, you know, she's, let's say she all of a sudden starts, you know, like, huh, don't be such a whiner. Yeah, don't be such a whiner. Or like she starts telling us something personal and it's like, oh, come on, get over it.

I rarely say stuff like that because I'm with the work that I do in Genius Recovery with. One of my main goals is to reduce suffering. Even with this group, it's not a great. I haven't figured out how to market it. It's a lot easier to tell someone how to come into here and build and grow a business than it is to reduce entrepreneurial suffering. But I'd rather reduce entrepreneurial suffering because if I can lower that, then they're going to succeed in far greater levels.

But is that a long way of saying you don't have contempt for people's emotions, in other words?

That's right.

It's rare.

I would say don't feel that feeling or try to shut it down or.

Even just be grossed out by feelings like, you know, people, oh my God, like there's too many people talking about their feelings. I don't want to be bothered with this.

I'd say in the past, maybe I may have had a tinge of that, but I don't think, I don't think.

To me, when I say people, I get probably at least 10 emails a day from people all over the world who email me and say, shit, I've watched your videos, I think I'm a narcissist. And then they'll give me examples of it. And yeah, they're pretty spot on. Like, they probably are. And at this point, likely things have gone wrong. Likely a partner left them, they're alienated from kids, they might have lost their jobs, they've had a wake up call and now they're reflecting on that. And so I think that again, it is that awareness that you really don't have empathy, that you do have contempt for other people's feelings and that people really do believe they deserve special treatment for no other reason than because they're them. You know, they're too good to wait in a line and that they have Been that screen person at the flight attendant or the clerk or whomever. And they're like, ew, I'm that person. I can't handle disappointment. I tell clients, but it takes me probably about three to six months before we get to the you're a narcissist session. It takes a while. I really have to get them to trust me.

How do they respond when you say that?

And they're like, yeah, you're right. Or you've got my number. Only once somebody got mad. But by and large, they're like, yeah, you know, I'm down with that. And so. And then we start doing the work, which never really works, but that's okay.

Let me ask you about that, because there seems to be the notion that there's not a lot of hope for these people.

Depends on what you call hope. Right. And I think I was sharing with you a particular story of somebody I was working on, a real titan in his field, like, probably, if not the most, one of the most successful and in the entertainment industry at that. So kind of household name. And what was fascinating about this guy was when we got down to it, and he's like, he was copped to being a narcissist. Then he got mad at me. He said, you know where you fucked me up? You made me a self aware narcissist. Now I know I'm an asshole. Like, I was pretty blissfully, like, not owning my being an asshole. Now I know I'm an asshole. But then he became very aware of his contempt for people's neediness, for people's emotion, for people's feeling. Like that really, really bothered him. And then where we really ended, in the long story short, towards the end of our course of therapy, he became a little bit more mindfully aware. But in all that awareness, he said, I'm not made for human relationships. He said, he's heterosexual. I will never be able to give a woman fully what she needs. It is wrong for me to be doing this. And I said, thank you. I was waiting for you to get there on your own. And so he has lots of friends. He has a very robust social network. He has kids. I mean, it's not like this guy is sitting in an apartment somewhere. I mean, he's got a very rich life. But that idea of intimacy, that one on oneness, he does not have the bandwidth, he does not have the interest, he does not have the capacity. And he finally had the sense to say, I don't have it. And I said, how about you don't Ruin anyone more lives. How's about you pull out of that game for a while? Maybe forever. He's older, and so he's like, yeah, I'm done. And we figured out how he was gonna have sex because he still likes sex and you can pay for it and pay for it with the same person so it didn't feel unseemly. And she'd show up at a regularly scheduled time every other week, but she'd be out at 2am he got what he needed in terms of touch and closeness. He'd get massages and, you know, things. I mean, we really thought this through. But then he's like, yeah. I said, really? You should stay away from close relationships. This ain't your Game, Boy.

Fascinating.

Is that a win? I think so, yeah.

Better than the alternative.

He was fine with it. He said, I have been swimming upstream my whole life on this one. Three marriages, you know what I mean? He just couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. Some people kind of can. Sometimes we can get people to be okay at work, but they can't do the relationship thing. Because I think the intimacy bandwidth you need for a job is obviously far less than you need for a close relationship.

You know, what's great about that is so not only do you have a real perspective and understanding about the art of productivity and organization, but you also think as a marketer, because you're helping, you know, it's not just making decisions on stuff. It's literally how do you actually monetize and maximize that? Because I always think two of my favorite words are productivity and leverage. Productivity, maximum results, least amount of time. Leverage, maximum results, least amount of effort. And when you combine those two, you simply, you're better. I mean, you become better.

Let me give you another example. I think kind of ties in with that. One of the things that we teach our clients, both at a personal level and at a business level, and even with big corporations, is what we call the seven information management questions, which every individual and every business needs to answer, regardless of whether it's a for profit, a not for profit size. So it's what information do we need to keep? In what form? Is it paper or is it electronic? And if it's electronic, or what program is it going to be electronic? How long does it need to be kept? That's records retention, which in companies has to do with risk management, because you can't. Now, it's very dangerous to keep all kinds of information because if you're sued, all of that is going to be subpoenaed, and you're going to pay for that. And it's going to cost a lot of money. Who's responsible for filing it? That's teamwork. That's job descriptions. And in a family, it's in a husband and wife. Who's responsible for filing it? Who needs access to it? That's permissions. If it's a locked file drawer or if you're in a software program, who has access, who has the passwords and all that. And then how do we find it? That's version control and naming mechanisms we were talking about. There's so much information out there that nobody can find anymore in companies. I mean, I can tell you some stories that are just. Oh, they're just pathetic. And then the last one is, how do you back it up?

Gotcha.

So here's the interesting thing. When I go into corporations to do training programs for people, employees are not really very interested. You know, their employer has said, I just went to do some internal bank auditors, you know, and it's like the auditor got real work to do today. And besides this. So I say, how many of you left home this morning with more pieces of paper lying around than you prefer? Well, 50% will raise their hands. And statistically it's true for 80%. So I say, everything you're going to learn today applies at home as well. Well, now they're listening because they are wanting to tell not what they're going to go home and do, but what they're going to go home and tell their spouse to do.

Right.

So all of that, all of the things that we teach around the seven information management, we apply in a personal level. At a personal level. And then people, people are engaged. So give an example. We were talking about what I call the art of waste basketry. I mentioned that 80% of what we keep, we never use and how difficult it is to throw away. And I asked the audience, how many of you have difficulty throwing things away? And a lot of people raised their hands and I said, how many of you know someone whose life is really hampered by the stuff they keep? You know, like, they can't have people come into their house because they don't want them to see the mess or they can't go places. You know, it's like, I can't go to the movies tonight because I really got to pay the bills. You know, I put it off long enough that I can't do it anymore. Well, most of the people raised. Everybody raised their hand. Everybody knows somebody like That. I mean, a lot of them, it's them, but they didn't.

Well, and then they're not going to want.

They're not going to admit it. But, I mean, every single hand was raised. How many of you know somebody whose life who isn't able to accomplish their work or enjoy their lives because of their stuff? And everybody raised their hand, which has happened. I mean, I've done this thousands of times, and it always happens. So we're talking about, okay, how is it. So why is it so difficult to let go? Well, I wrote a book a number of years ago called Love it or Lose Living, Clutter, Free Forever. And in the research for that book, I discovered a very interesting fact, and that is if there is someone who has a great deal of difficulty letting go of things to their own detriment by their own choice, it's not like they choose to keep it because they like it. It's like they're not really comfortable, but they just can't let go of it. If I ask enough questions, I will find out that that person, at some point in their life, had a severe emotional loss. I was doing a book signing at Barnes and Noble, and a young man in probably his 20s walked up and he said, my mother died when I was six. He said, my apartment is so full of stuff, I haven't had anybody in it for months. He said, I come home from work at night and I say, okay, tonight's the night. I'm going to clean it. And he said, the only flat surface I have is a studio New York apartment is a bed. And he said, I start kind of sorting on the bed. And he said, because I become physically paralyzed. He said, are you telling me that I have to deal with the grief of losing my mother before I can deal with this? I said, I can't answer that question. I'm not a mental health professional. But I can tell you what I've seen, that if you will find someone that you trust to come in and work with you to help you put what you have into some kind of order, because what is true is the more organized you get, you have an ability to then to measure whether you're using something and whether it's valuable, and then you can begin to let go. Told that story at a convention one day, and a woman came up and she said, you just saved my marriage. I said, wow, that's pretty dramatic. Tell me what you meant. And she said, I came to this convention with the intention of going home and telling my husband, to whom I've been married 13 years that I was leaving because he keeps all this stuff. I have allergies. I can't dust the house. He won't let go of it. And then she stopped, and literally the tears started running down her face. And she said, his mother died when he was seven. So I said. She said, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I now realize that it wasn't that he wouldn't get rid of it, but that he couldn't. And I'm willing to go back and give it another try. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I'm willing to try again, now that I see this side of it.

That's interesting. That's cool.

And so I said, may I make suggestions? She said, sure. I said, go back and say to him, you know, I never understood before how important all this is to you. Let's figure out how we can keep it so that I can live with it and you can live with it, too. It changed everything because he felt heard always before. And I see this all the time. It's like, you don't need this. Yes, I do. You don't need this. And there's this constant angst. And as soon as he was given permission, now, it still took time, but I stayed in touch with him for months afterwards. And she said it was vastly improved. And there were times when he even say, oh, I really can get rid of this. Well, I told this story at the bank auditors, and at the break, one of the women came up and said, My husband died 10 years ago, and I have all of the stuff in the house that I just have not been able to get rid of. So we were talking about these sorts of things, and at the end of the seminar, she came up and she said, I just figured out how I can get rid of this stuff. And I said, tell me. She said, I decided that every time I give away something of his, I will give away something of mine as well. I get goosebumps just telling that story. I said, one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about what I do after all these years, that's something new in 35 years. I never heard anybody suggest that. But isn't that an awesome idea?

Yeah, no, totally.

And look at all the people that are being blessed, the people that are on the receiving end of what is being given away. There are now two people being blessed. And the person who's had 10 years of stuff in her house that, you know, she feels guilty about. Every single morning and every single night is being freed.

Yeah.

So, Dr. Barbara Hemphill, this is the therapy. That's great. That really is great because that takes things to a whole nother level of the impact. And I love the way you articulated it because we're talking about a subject that really undermines people's ability to function and relate with each other. And even just that level of understanding. I sat and think about my own behavior when I was interviewing your dear friend Tracy Parks. I talked about. I have a. And she talked about digital organization. And I sort of have a hoarder sort of behavior about me. And the way that I think about it is I hold onto stuff because I see the marketing and business potential of it.

So.

And so, like I'd mentioned with her, it's not like I collect lint or old socks or I can't throw out clothes. You know, I mean, it's not that sort of stuff. It's, you know, I look at, you know, a lot of emails and I see, oh, this could be used as a template. This could be used as a model. But deep down inside, there's this psychological thing. And I have a person that works for me named Nate, who actually happens to be sitting in the. The room right now. But, you know, he's been helping me with, you know, project management stuff. And one of the conversations we were having a week ago was just the ability to get rid of stuff that is so hard. And he said, you know, in order for me to help you, I want to. He had thought about this and he, you know, showed me some questions that he had. And the top one was, what are you afraid of? Like, what. What is the fear? Is it opportunity, loss? Is it. You're not, you know, I mean, what. What is it why you're holding some of this stuff, which is really important to get to.

I mentioned the art of waste basketry, which is a series of questions. Would it be difficult to get again? Does it exist in another place? Is it recent enough to be useful? But the last one is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen if I didn't have this? So when I'm working with someone, that's the question. There are two questions that I'm always asking. One is, what's the worst possible thing would happen if you got rid of this? Whether it's deleting something from your digital storage or whether it's throwing away something and it turns out you were wrong, what would happen? And is that a price you're willing to pay? And that goes back to what I said earlier, which you can keep everything you want if you're willing to pay the price. I think about a client I had who had a PR firm in Atlanta many years ago. Go and I set up a filing system for her. We use a numerical filing system where we tie. This was paper filing back in those days, and it was a paper filing system, but we tied it into an electronic search engine so you could find it. She had 35,000 files, but we could still find anything in five seconds because she could do a search. But the price she paid was a whole room, two full time file clerks. And it was a choice she was willing to make. And that's not a moral issue. It is not a moral issue. It's like this is the lifestyle. It's like some people love to be around books. I mean, it makes. It's like some people love to be about waterfalls or, you know, something else. It's your environment. That's the reason that I call my company Productive Environment. So it's when you keep all of this, is it making you more productive? So the question is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen? And then the second one is, does this help you accomplish your work or enjoy your life? So one of the things, one of the services that we offer for companies, Tracy mentioned it when we were interviewing, was a productive environment day. And this is an event. If you take any 100 employees and say, if you had the time, are there things you could comfortably throw away? 99 out of 100 would say, yes. But nobody goes to work and says, oh, I don't have anything better to do today. I'm going to clean out the files or I'm going to, you know, the place I love is in the kitchen under the sink. That's where the cartridges go for the printers that we don't even have anymore. You know, that kind of stuff. Nobody says that. And if somebody does do it, because there's always somebody in the company that really likes to, to do that. They like doing that. But if they do it, people look at them and say, are you mad? We have this project we're working on. And besides that, in order for me to clean out, I have to ask you, is this the most recent version or do we need to get. And it's like, get out of here. I have real work to do. So we go to management and say, I mean, if you look at the price that companies pay for clutter in terms of storage of things. Let me give you a Scenario of this. When I first started in this business.

We could just walk around my building.

When I first started in this business, the way decisions were made about paper was every executive had a private secretary. In the early 80s, every manager and every executive had a private secretary. And every private secretary had a file clerk. And every company had a file room, and every file room had Mabel. And when you as an executive were done with a project, which in those days was all files, you would hand your file to your private secretary, who purged it, who filed it, who gave it to her file clerk, who organized it and filed it within the office for like say a year or two. And then at the end of that year or two, she walked it down to hold to Mabel. And Mabel had the records retention program for the whole company. And so Mabel filed it as long as it was supposed to be filed for the company. And then it was either purged or it was shipped off site to Iron Mountain or wherever. That's the way that was the decision making structure about information. Bill Gates put computers on everybody's desk and we said, oh, we don't need all this before now. Granted, there was too much infrastructure. There were in New York when I was there, I saw file clerks reading books because they didn't have enough work. So I mean, that was. It was. But it's a classic case of the pendulum swinging too far. We went from having way too much support to suddenly having none. And now an executive who's never done any kind of admin stuff like that at all is supposed to figure it out and they don't have time to.

Right.

So what happened is they started just stuffing things in file drawers. And then the file drawers get full and nobody wants to clean them out. Nobody wants to make a decision. So we move them out in the hallway, and then nobody wants to clean out the files in the hallway. So we move those down into a storage room, and then nobody wants to clean out the storage room. So we move them to off site storage. All right. I have a client right now that has six buildings and they are downsizing to two because the economy has hit them hard and they cannot afford private offices, file clerks, I mean, file rooms, file cabinets, all of this. They estimate that they have 50 million paper documents that they have to decide what to do about before they relocate.

Wow.

Because there was nobody making decisions. Now here's the scary part. I think as a country, we are headed toward the biggest information management disaster in history. If we do not teach employees, give them permission, and empower them to make decisions about digital information. Because if you have 1,000 pieces of paper and you have to find it for some reason, you can hire temporaries who know nothing about anything and say, I'm looking for pieces of paper with these words on it, and they can flip through the papers and they'll find them. If you have 1000 digital documents and they are filed, who knows where? You and Tracy talked about all the places they could be filed.

Right.

First of all, you may not know where they're filed or you may find them, but they're now created by a program that you don't even have access to anymore. So although the screen says that document is there or that video is there, but the program that was used to create it doesn't exist. And so we're just piling up stuff and piling it up and piling it up. So go back to the productive environment days. The way productive environment days are done. We turn them into games. We get management on board. Management has to participate. This is not something that management says to employees you're going to do. So either management does their office first so that their office has already been done, or they participate on that day. We start the day with bagels and coffee or whatever. Because when employees are eating, they're always happier.

Right?

Right.

And while they're eating, I do a seminar.

I start with steamed spinach and stuff.

I don't.

Okay, well, whatever.

Me too.

That's good. We start with a seminar called Sometimes It Takes an Expert to take out the Trash, in which we talk about the art of waste basketry and clutters, postponed decisions. And there's only three decisions you can make. File, act, toss, and all of those things. And we set up shredding bins. We bring in shredding companies, recycling bins. We set up a trash to treasure. So, like, you know, here's this mug that I got, and I don't like it anymore, and I'll put it on the table. And the rule is that any employee can come in all day long and take anything they want, as long as they take it home. And we give our prizes, you know, prizes for the funniest thing and the oldest thing and the most unlikely thing, the most unusual thing and stuff like that. So then we. And we send them back and everybody starts cleaning. As my mother used to say, many hands make light work. When we're all doing it together, then we can communicate about things. And the camaraderie, you can see it happen at the beginning. People are like, you know, and Then it begins to pick up, you know, and then people get really excited. You know, it's like, great. Well, then we come and eat lunch together because we want them to tell stories about what they're finding and what they're doing. Then in the afternoon, while they're doing their lunch, I do a seminar on digital cleanup, or Tracy does a seminar on digital cleanup. And then we go back and have them clean up their computer and do the same thing. Well, let me give you one example. A company, 400 employees, they were getting ready to move. A classic client for us is either someone who's trying to move to what I call almost paperless, because I don't think paperless is viable, but I think almost paperless is desirable. So when somebody's moving to less paper, that even rhymed.

I just liked how that.

Yeah.

Or they're relocating. Because when you're relocating is the one time you have to consider all those things and are you going to pay to move it? So they were getting ready to move, and I was fairly new at doing these. And this was a. I had worked with this gentleman that owned the company as a. At a bank before. And so he said, I'm getting ready to move. You know, I thought maybe you could help me. What do we want to do? And I said, give me your most cluttered department. I said, give me one day. And so he said, okay, client services. So we went into client services. Like 25 people we did that day. At the end of the day, he said, okay, 11 more days. So we did 12. 12 days in the 12 different departments. At the end of the 12 days, we had shredded alone 33,000 pounds of paper.

Wow.

And we deleted almost one half of the files off their server.

Wow.

So you're empowering people to do it now. The question you asked me before we started interviewing was, how do you maintain it? That is, you do an annual day like that, that becomes part of. Of the company culture. And people, when they know it's going to happen, then it doesn't get so bad. I have one client that does it on St. Patrick's Day and on Halloween every year. That's their company culture that they do half a day on physical and a half a day on digital.

Wow.

I love it. That's such a great idea.

And then what happens is employees are saying, I'm going home. I mean, every time we do this, I'm going home, cleaning out the attic. I'm going home and cleaning out the garage. So we have something, some companies that will actually Contract with Goodwill or somebody like that to bring a tractor trailer on site so that employees can bring the stuff when they come. Because a lot of times employees have the stuff at home that they want to get rid of, but they just don't have time or they don't whatever. So they know then that's a way they can do it. So it creates a win win.

Relationships are the key to success in your business and in your life. Why is Genius Network the most sought after network and mastermind? Well, it's the relationships. But really, why? Why are the relationships themselves so important? Well, as Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy have shared with us, relationships are your who. And it's the who's in your life that lead to a growing or declining business, a thriving and supportive marriage, or one heading towards divorce. And is the place that you fulfilled the most fundamental need of being connected.

Uh, you took my part.

Wait, what?

That was supposed to be my line.

No, I said right before this that I was gonna do that part. So you didn't listen. Just go with me.

You always say I'm not listening. That's not true.

No, stop. I can't believe you're doing this in front of Genius.

Because I'm not gonna be the one to apologize. You always make me apologize.

Well, it's not my fault, so I'm not going to.

Fine. How many of you can relate to having any argument ever with someone close to you? You can go ahead and type in the chat if you have ever had an argument with someone close to you. And then there's the period of time after the argument where you feel disconnected, both physically, emotionally. You feel upset or hurt by things they said or how they said it. You can even feel guilty for how you acted or how you showed up during the disagreement. We call this the argument hangover. It's that period of time between having an argument and fully resolving it emotionally. Even think about the topics that sparked a disagreement. A lot of times they're not life altering things or things that are actually that important to you. But how you act during the disagreement is what creates that argument hangover period. And how long does that last for you? Is it hours?

Days?

Weeks?

Months?

We've heard couples being in argument hangovers till they are able to fully resolve it and reconnect. And here's the thing. As the leaders and entrepreneurs that you are during this argument hangover period, you're not as creative. You're not showing up as the most inspiring leader. You're not modeling the best relationship you could to your Children, Right? So the impact of the argument hangover is even beyond how you feel. So then people mostly only see two choices. One, avoid getting into conflicts altogether or avoid that person slowly stop talking to them as much or be more distant from them. Slowly the relationship can dissolve. How many potentially great who's have been eliminated from your life because of the argument hangover?

And this topic is so impactful right now that we were given a book earlier in this year for the Argument Hangover, which actually hit shelves now on February 2nd. So this 10 minute talk is Fighting Smarter 101. And in the next seven minutes, you're going to know how to keep argument hangovers from ruining the most important relationships in your life. You're going to have the 5R process to fully repair from any argument hangover and feel prepared to handle any challenge with the certainty that you can strengthen that relationship.

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 and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Now, getting honest here and go ahead and type in the chat. Would you consider yourself a great communicator?

We want to know. Type it in the chat.

So we'll give you a second to type that in there. Yes, yes, yes. Sometimes. And honestly, this is a place to be authentic and no judgment here. So taking a look and we have to be honest with all of ourselves, we're a little biased in our own favor because it's easy to communicate when people do what you want them to. So if people are agreeing with you, they're always a yes to your requests. Is that really being a great communicator? See, masterful communicators strengthen relationships when there isn't agreement, when people do not agree with you, when they don't do exactly what you ask them to, when they don't see things your way. Now, Chris Fawson never split a difference. Said life is a negotiation and negotiation is a game of empathy. So masterful communicators, truly masterful being, do not avoid conflicts. They lean into the conversation, they stay in communication and they seek to be more understanding and be more empathetic to use that opportunity to actually strengthen that relationship.

Now, being empathetic sounds nice in theory, but what often happens instead is you do more damage by how you fight than the original cause. And here's something that's important to say for those that think, oh, I don't do damage, I just get quiet. Getting quiet and shutting down can do just as much damage because it isolates the other person. So how do you know that you're doing damage from how you fight? Well, ask yourself things. Do people in your life ever feel conversations go unresolved? Do they ever feel invalidated or misunderstood? Do people ever feel resentment is building up between you? Two important questions to really reflect on for yourself. The goal, though, is not to avoid conflict, but to shorten the argument hangover period. Now, it's counterintuitive to people to think you shouldn't avoid conflict. No, because conflict is actually where innovation can happen. Conflict is where there can be a deeper level of understanding yourself, the other person. And in romantic relationships, healthy conflict can lead to more intimacy and a deeper connection between you two. So instead of avoiding those benefits, focus on shortening that argument hangover period, which again is how long you're disconnected, both physically and emotionally. But you need a process for this, a process to repair. Because saying I'm sorry is not enough sorry to say hit to you. Sorry about sorry, but saying I'm sorry isn't enough because number one, if you always default to that, it starts to mean less to the other person. And two, it doesn't really show them that anything was learned from for there to be change in the future.

That process is the five Rs to repair from a conflict. So the first R is to reflect. Request a pause for yourself to consider expectations and the root cause. So here you are in a conversation and it's getting to a place that's really not constructive because you're both really reacting. So I would say to Jocelyn, you know what? I think we just need to take a pause here. We'll come back to this in about two hours. Now, for those of you reflecting, you may also currently be in an argument hangover with somebody else. So you can reflect now about that relationship if you really wanted to strengthen. So what you're going to reflect on is your disappointments because all disappointments in your life and in your relationship come from unmet expectations. Now, often you aren't even aware of your unmet expectations in the moment. So it's not clear to you, so you're not even going to share it. So they go unexpressed. And this is often what causes us to react, to have emotional triggers. So you're reflecting on what expectations that go unmet do I have about myself or this person, and what's the real root cause of either this conflict or being in an argument hangover with this person? So then the second R, while you're taking this personal time, is responsibility for the role you played and the impact your actions had. So this person was in a conversation with you, so that means you were a part of it. Now, I know often some of us say, well, it was their fault, they started it. Now, it is not a question of if you had responsibility as a leader. You will look at where you had responsibility, where you can take responsibility for the actions and the things that you said that had the impact on them. Now, it's not a place to say, oh, well, that wasn't my intention, or why did you take it that way? No. Can you take responsibility that what you said and what you did had the impact that it did on them and have the responsibility for that?

So the third R, after those first two, which are on your own now, you're coming back to reconnect, and you're going to share where you're taking responsibility and validating their perspective. Now, here's what's tricky about this step. That part of us, we can call it the ego in that argument hangover period, can want to stay distant. You may not feel like reconnecting because you're still frustrated. You still feel like they need to say something to make it better. But the goal here is to reconnect faster. In our experience with thousands of couples, a lot of times the relationship dissolving isn't always because they're fighting too much. You know what it's related to. They're not reconnecting fast enough after a disagreement. And so resentment builds between them the longer that the two of them wait to reconnect. Now, when you come to them, you're not saying, all right, tell me what you learned. Tell me how you're sorry for what happened. You're going to start with, hey, here's where I'm taking responsibility. I reflected, here's what I realized, and validate their perspective. Was there a place that you were unwilling to. To acknowledge how they felt or how they saw the situation?

The fourth R is to remind. Remind this person of what your commitment is to the relationship and what your agreements are. So this is the place that also goes kind of overlooked because we think of relationships at times as the function that serves us. But what is your larger purpose? What is your commitment to that relationship? So I might say to Jocelyn, now, inside of all this, my commitment to you is that you feel supported and that you feel loved. And my commitment to the relationship is that we both live the lives that we know we came here to live.

I'm on board for that.

So sharing your commitment for the relationship as well as reminding of what your agreements are now, right there, you might have thought, well, I don't have agreements for this relationship. Perfect. This is a time to put in place agreements you have between the two of you. And if you do have agreements for, you know, example, Jocelyn and I have agreements in times of conflict, of not to raise our voice, not to swear and not to turn our back and just leave the room without saying when we'll come back. So we remind each other if we forgot the agreements or if they're broken, we remind each other to come back to them.

So the fifth R is to reconcile. Reconcile the conflict into opportunity. You can either see conflict as something that shouldn't happen, that tears you apart and you resist it, or you can see conflict as something that leads to more connection, more understanding yourself, healing something between your relationship and those new ideas and solutions can come from that. So together, can you look at what new opportunities showed up because of this disagreement? So let's look at your personal commitment. If you would type in the chat, which step are you going to commit to being even better at in your relationships? Is it reflecting more, not just brushing things under the rug, but actually reflecting on the disagreement? Is it taking responsibility? Is it aiming to reconnect faster and not letting it be days before you reconnect? Is it reminding people in your life of what you're committed to? Or is it starting to reconcile that conflict is an opportunity instead of something that shouldn't happen? All right, so since it's a little hard to see the chat, I'm going to guess there's a mix of it all. Thank you for typing in the chat.

Now, implementing this 5R process will keep unresolved argument hangovers from ruining the most important relationships in your life. And as Ben Hardy wrote in who Not How, Relationships are the purpose of Life. So as now, a masterful communicator, someone committed to great relationships and great who's. You don't avoid conflict. You seek to shorten your argument hangover period as well as not have them escalate through the things that you say rather than just what the root cause was. And you stay engaged in the conversation. You get more understanding as you see this as opportunity to truly strengthen that relationship. And by doing so, you can live a truly successful and fulfilling life.

I'll ask you about relationships, married couples, you know, family members, friends. How does Colby impact? How does it become a useful tool as it relates to getting along, staying together, having fun.

I've had people ask me, what's the right MO for me to marry. I had an offer Several years ago, $20 million if I would allow this guy to make a little handheld thing where you could walk into a bar and it would click if you. Someone else in the room had the right MO for you. So it was a dating game $20 million, 20 years ago. I said, I can't do that. Why? There isn't a right or wrong MO in a personal relationship. There is a right or wrong attitude about an mo. If you don't respect the significant other for who she is, and you don't nurture that, and you don't provide opportunities for her to have the freedom to be herself, whatever her MO is.

Or his.

Or his. I was kind of talking to your eyeballs.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, whatever. Whichever. Jeffrey. If you don't give that freedom, and it comes with respect and dignity, if you don't do that, you're not. You shouldn't be in this relationship, because that's not a loving relationship. What is love about? Love is about really caring for value and nurturing the other person. How do we show love? Not by what we say we feel, oh, I love you, I love you, I love you. Yeah, show me. It's all about show me. And show me is conative. And you show me how much you love me by how much you give me the freedom to be myself and how much you nurture that and how many opportunities you provide for it, or whether you say, my way or the highway, or you say, I love you so much, but I can't let you do it that. Because that isn't what he or she needs. Sometimes your needs are in conflict, and we can measure that. We can tell you the degree of conflict, we can tell you the mode of conflict. And then, as I said, every time we see an issue, we give you a solution. We'll tell you what to do about it. Often it means this thing about togetherness, you know, was that the 70s or the 80s went in, togetherness came in. What a bunch of bull. You shouldn't be together a lot with someone if what he or she does drives you crazy. You can love each other and not spend so much time together. So I tell people who have very conflicted, conflicting, different mo's when they travel together, if she wants to stay in the hotel while you go to the museums. Don't make her go with you. If he wants to read all the historical landmarks along the road, you get out and look at the flowers. You don't have to read it together. I always suggest meals together. So go on vacations. Because eating is a wonderful, wonderful. But there's a whole cognitive thing to eating. But eating together is really important. The rest of the time, togetherness can mean we got there together. But then we, my husband and I, we both love art. We will go to an art show. So we arrive together, we go our separate ways, and at the end we say, okay, we're going to get together at such and such a time we get back together. But I can't do it the way he does it. And that's worked so successfully. Then we can talk about the art and we can enjoy the art and we take each other back to see certain things of art, but we don't do art the same way.

Wow, that's actually cool. Well, in a humorous way, can you use Colby to belittle people and make them feel bad about themselves?

Not in a humorous way, but I.

Seriously just making a joke here right now.

That's not a joke. I won't go. I like to be funny with you, but I. No, don't ever belittle anybody about their own.

I recommend not doing that. Yeah, that's a good idea.

No, no, wait a minute. That's not true, Kathy. That's not true. We laugh all the time in our family about. Yeah, that's just your follow through or oh, your fact finder needs more information.

Right?

My grandkids tease David the aide. In fact finder, they will say, the moment you ask a question of dad instead of just grandma will give it to you right away. Mom will give it to them right away. Dad will get out his computer and Google it and see how much information he can find to give you. You know, little kids, they've got his number. We all, by the way, I can tell mos with my grandchildren within the first couple hours of their birth. But you can see in the way little kids play because their play usually is striving. Conation only comes out when you strive. It does not come out in pure recreation. It doesn't come out when you're doing it just for the heck of it. It is the instinct to strive that brings out the conative. That's a very important point. So in a family, there are times we are not striving and so we know each other's mo's. But you can't get me to come up with an idea if I'm in downtime, because I'm not going to go there. I don't have any ideas. Grandma and Grandma, what are we going to do? You think up something, Grandma and Grandma, you always have something. I don't feel like doing it because I don't feel like doing it. And the actual affect kicks in in the creative process. The way I view it is if you don't care, you won't ever use your conative energy for something so you can withhold your conative energy. Okay.

Talking about your grandchildren.

Not that I ever like to do that.

I know, that's your thing. You love your grandchildren. If you could only share a couple sentences or, or a paragraph of life advice for them, summarize it in a paragraph, what would it be? What would you say to them on how to live a fulfilling and successful connected life?

I've written that for most of them on the day they were born, and I've written it for the older ones on the day they went to college or whatever appropriate time. And it's pretty much always the same, same thing. Understand yourself and give yourself the freedom to do what you are destined to do. I mean, it's always words to the effect of fight for the freedom to be yourself. And yes, you often have to fight for that.

Awesome.

What are you most proud of with your work? I mean, you've impacted, I mean, gosh, probably millions of lives.

I don't believe I've ever been asked that question before. What am I most proud of? I am most proud of what I'm going to do next year.

What are you going to do next year? Do you know?

I never. The part of the answer to that is I know some things I want to do. I don't know exactly how I'll do them or how well I'll do them. I'm proud of the fact that I'm always thinking what I'm going to do next. And I kind of don't take pride in what I've done in the past, because that's the past. I take pride in what I'm going to be doing.

There's this old punk band, the Ramones. They had this, you know, I don't care about history. That's not where I want to be. That's one of their lyrics.

But fact finders are proud of things in the past and I don't begrudge them that. Belittle it or disdain it. It goes back to relationships. When I'm in A relationship, either a family relationship or friendship or client. And I am praising them. I will praise a fact finder for something they've already done because anything else is false. Praise to them because they haven't done it yet. I will praise a quick start for something they are going to do and thinking about doing. Because the past means very little if you're not a fact finder. So you learn what and how to say things to people. And by the way, because I'm a little itty bitty too, in fact finder, I don't live in the past and I don't remember specific details of a lot of things. It's just not what a two in fact finder does means. I can't hold a grudge. It's one of the blessings that's useful. It is. I don't waste any energy on a drug. I'll say, why don't we invite so and so to something. Say, Kathy, don't you remember what she did to you? No. What has she did? Well, eight years ago, fact finder, eight years ago she did this. And I said, oh, wow, I'm so glad I don't spend any time remembering that.

All right, so after everything we've talked about, what are the next steps for people that are listening to this, watching this, to take and to apply it?

Get to know your cognitive Strengths. Go to infoolby.com if you want to talk about seminars or hearing a speech or the new things, but go to Colby.com click on take the Colby A. Get your kids to go to the Colby Y. Have a family meeting. Get your employees together and do a seminar. Get I do them by Skype. We don't have to have the money of flying around. There are all kinds of ways we can but take action. Hire the right people by using the Colby Right Fit program. Do it. What have you got? Well, I said to the Sun's coach many years ago, what have you got to lose? Because they were losing so badly. And he said, okay, I guess, Kathy, last I looked, you're 5:3, but maybe you could help. That's when they went to the finals.

Wow.

One of their coaches said, I'm better than some 5 foot 3 woman with a piece of technology. Listen to me. They've never gone back to the finals. Wow. Wow.

Well, there you go. So if you want to go to the finals in your own life.

I'm.

Thinking of a marketing pitcher. You know, I'm a marketing guy.

What can I say?

Any famous last words?

I love you.

I love you.

Too.

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

One of the things that it says we can talk about is three skills to heal any damaged business relationships.

Okay?

That can happen a lot, can't it?

I mean, that it happens a lot. Like a lot of 80% of my practice, right? My clients. So here's what happens. Think about a business relationship with co founders, right? It pretty much starts off like a marriage, right? You come together. It's lollipops and rainbows. You're going to do this better than everybody else, right? You have the honeymoon phase. You're going to set the world on fire. And then one day you wake up and you realize you can't stand them, right? So, and sometimes you literally wake up and realize you can't stand them because you've been in denial Also sounds like a marriage, right? Anyway, so what do you have to do when that relationship becomes damaged? You have to re establish the trust. Because without trust you don't have a relationship. So before we talk about reestablishing trust, let me just tell you what you need to do to establish trust in a relationship. First question I will ask somebody is, well, are you trustworthy? You can't expect somebody to trust you if you're sort of kind of shady, right? So be trustworthy and then be authentic. Be genuine. Most of us can smell a rat a mile away. And be respectful. So those are the keys to developing the trust. When the trust gets broken, this is what we need to do. And people don't like this when I first say this. So just everybody take a breath. Whatever created the distrust or the broken trust, think about take some personal responsibility for the situation. Even if it's only 1%. Because takes two to tango. If you think that you're going to be able to mend a relationship and re establish trust by the other person taking 100% of the blame, you are waiting for Godot. It just won't happen. Their ego won't allow it. So take some personal responsibility that's real and acknowledge it. That's the first thing. The second thing is use the imagination like we said earlier, with empathy and put yourself in their shoes and imagine the situation from their perspective. But you have to be genuine with it. You have to be authentic. And I even have my clients, no joke, stand in front of a full length mirror and make the case of your business partner. Here's what happens with that. That's amazing, Dean. Our brain doesn't know that it's imagination and role play, right? Our brain doesn't know that it's not true. Just like you got to be careful how you talk to yourself. Because your brain and it starts to create a new neural pathway.

Yes?

Right. So it ever so slightly shifts your mindset to becoming a little bit more open to re establishing the relationship.

Right?

And then finally, and I don't know, I don't know if you heard my 10 minute talk, but consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there's more than one truth. Because truth is not objective and it's not a zero sum game. Because if it is, if I'm completely right, baby, you're wrong. And we're never gonna. We're never going to heal this. Right? So your truth is based upon your perspective of the situation, which when a relationship is damaged, it's very different, right? And your life experiences which makes it so different. So if you do those three things, that will start to heal. And that happens in marriages and that happens in business partnerships. And you need all three.

Yeah.

It really is interesting, the ability of our minds to role play in our minds without like to play things out. I read, I mentioned Jordan Peterson. He's got his book 12 Rules for Living or Life. And one of the rules that he has is treat yourself like someone you're responsible for helping. And it was a really interesting thing because it gets you to detach from yourself, do yourself with empathy. Right. And to really, you know, to look kindly on yourself and get yourself the help that you need. But I've been thinking about that from a marketing perspective. We've been thinking about how to take that and transfer that to our prospects, to the people who we're starting a relationship with. We were able to run ads for books and generate leads and start relationships like that. And again, these are all relationships. That's what I think. When you're saying there's so many different flavors. It's the same skills of, of starting a new relationship.

Don't tell anybody.

What's that?

Don't tell anybody. It's the same skill set, but it.

Is platforms, of course, that same thing, the same questions is, are you trustworthy? Is what we're really trying to come to. That's why when people are referred, when somebody refers somebody to Genius Network, it's always comes with a much more elevated trustworthiness because I. They know the person that's referred to Genius Network, they're coming in now and transferring that trust onto this mutual. Onto the community and onto Joe and the people they meet in the context of that. But when you're coming into something new and they're observing from the outside, they're coming from, you know, they were wandering in the desert and they come across this, this environment of what looks like a fun place they're coming in, but they don't have any context for what's going on. And so thinking that way of treating your prospects like someone you're responsible for helping flips the switch that primarily the people. I would say the lower EQ way of thinking about prospects is trying to find the ones that you can sell.

Or giving them what you think they want.

Right. But more importantly, focused on what you want, which is you want them to buy rather than you want them to get help.

Exactly.

That's a really. That's a different. That's a lower. I think you could really take the low EQ approach and Equate it with the low income approach being a lot of the using low EQ strategies in lead conversion marketing, you're probably not going to have as a better as good.

Yeah, there's a lot of wealthy people that have low eq because, you know, maybe that's true. But, but, but to your point about treating yourself like, you know, I tell people, don't talk to yourself the way you would never let other people talk to you.

Right, Right.

So you wouldn't let people call you stupid or dumb, so don't call yourself that. And from a marketing perspective, gosh, Jean Dean, it's absolutely true what you're saying. If you take the intelligence perspective of meet the client where they are, give them what they want, not what you think they want, and know, like, and trust. And you're so right. When you make a referral, like, when somebody ever refers me, like, even when Cameron referred me to genius, I felt such a responsibility, like, oh my gosh, like somebody put their trust in me. You cannot blow this. And even when Eunice asked me to.

Give this to do this, I'm like.

Oh my gosh, I better show up with my A game. Because you never want to let somebody down because they put their trust in you. That's sacred. I feel it's sacred.

So when you hear the term toxic person, what comes to mind? Thoughts, words, Images? Selfish? Negative. Mike Koenigs. All right, all right. So for those of you that struggle to come up with a word or idea behind this, I'm going to rephrase this a little. Can you think of somebody in your life who you choose to limit your time and attention with because they are draining and because they just, they kind of suck the life out of you? How about the Debbie and Donnie Downers of the world? The people that are negative about everything and everyone. What about an employee? I was listening to a podcast recently and the guy actually referred to a wrong fit employee as a swamp monster. Somebody that makes you want to drain the swamp to get rid of the problem. What about a business partner? Somebody who you know down in your gut that it is the wrong fit for you, but for whatever reason, you have not found a way to part ways, even though every interaction leaves your sanity tested. So that today is what we are going to call toxic people or toxic relationships. So I want to take it one step further and actually put a little spin on this. By having just one toxic relationship in your life. Think about how that productivity, how much that productivity in dollars is worth to you. That's what makes this a $250,000 idea. Because just a couple hours for most of you in this room of lost productivity is like just tossing thousands of dollars out the window. So when you think about when you're stressed out, burnt out, and not yourself, how much is that worth? How expensive is that? So today I'm going to actually share with you a very, very personal story about not only how a negative a person, a negative, toxic person can affect your life, but also three key ways that I have found that can help you free yourself of a toxic relationship. So there's a date and time that I will never forget. That date is December 11th of 2016. A mere 74 days ago, it was a call from my brother to say that our youngest sister died. Gone. Taken from us at the ripe young age of 17. She had fought a battle with cystic fibrosis her whole life. But as you can see from the outside looking in, she was a normal, healthy kid. Imagine how you would have felt in this situation. For me, my shock turned to devastation. Devastation to tears and tears to guilt. Guilt because I allowed a toxic person, a toxic situation, to take a relationship from me. And in my personal situation, it was my father. Maybe you can think of a time where you have had to deal with a toxic family member. You know, I look at it, and toxic people are takers. When you're looking at givers versus takers, toxic people take. For me, my dad took my confidence. He took my financial freedom at such a young age that no other person should have to deal with at that point in their life. So again, maybe you have been faced with a toxic family member. And if you have, you may have been faced with the most difficult but most necessary decision to have to cut them from your life. So during a time of grief, I was also faced with another emotion, and that was fear. I was going to have to go to this funeral and I was going to have to face my father, somebody who's caused a lot of pain and anguish in my life. And, you know, I was gearing up for this funeral and all I could think about was, okay, I need a power word. So I was literally googling power words, something to get me through this time. I was leaning towards strangers or courage, because those two words just seemed to make a lot of sense for what I was going through. And then a single, solitary F word hit me in the face. And it's not the F word that we hear a lot around here. It was freedom. Freedom from toxicity, freedom from fear, and freedom from allowing anyone or Anything to ever impact me negatively again. And that's what brings me to my first point that I have for you. In dealing with toxic people, it's to free yourself from the bounds that they place. Now, I'm going to piggyback on Craig and I'm going to make everybody close their eyes. So close your eyes, and I want you to think about a toxic person or people from your life, and I want you to think about the negative emotions that comes with that. Now I want you to imagine releasing that person from your life. You're no longer dealing with fear, frustration, anxiety, depression. You're no longer interrupted by that person or people. Now open your eyes. How does that release feel? Is it freeing? Do you feel less stressed? More sane? There's actually a quote out there. I'm not sure who wrote this. I wish I could give it credit somewhere, but it says, respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy. It's like Joe says all the time, be willing to destroy anything in your life that isn't excellent. And that brings me to my second key point here, and it's to break the cycle of toxic relationships before it starts or before it gets so out of control that you don't know how to go back. So what do they say? They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. Took me 24 years to break one. 24 years old. I found myself in a marriage where I literally cried almost every single day from verbal, emotional, and near physical abuse. And at the time, I wasn't pregnant, so I didn't have an excuse to cry every day like I do now. My poor husband. But that's where this F word comes back into play. Can you think of a time where a light bulb has gone off in your head and you're like, you know what? I am allowing something to happen in my life that is not okay. It goes against my values. And you know what? Enough is enough. That's exactly where I was at. And that's where the F word comes back into play. When I reflect back on that time in my life. It wasn't strength or courage that allowed me to leave that relationship. It was freedom. It was that feeling of freeing myself from a toxic relationship and being able to move forward. And you know what? It felt darn good. So that brings me my third and final point in helping you to deal with toxic relationships in your life. And that is that no matter how dark of a situation you are in and how dark the person is, that you are dealing with. There is some silver lining. There is something positive for you to focus on. And by shifting your mindset, that is where the breakthroughs come in. That's where your insights come into play. Can you think of a time where you have had to free yourself from a toxic relationship? And can you think of the consequences that came with that? Was it in the form of a lost relationship like I had with my sister? Again, a simple shift in mindset, focusing on the gains versus the losses. That is what is going to help get you through. Because you know what I gained when I left my husband and I cut my father from my life. I gained an awesome husband who is my rock. I gained a little girl who is the light of so many people's lives. That's her unicorn hair by the way. Like she literally tells me to put a unicorn in. I have another girl on the way. I started a business that fulfills my passions. My income more than doubled. But more than anything else, more than anything else, I gained freedom. Freedom from feeling judged in how I deal with toxic people. Freedom from allowing anybody to affect me in that negative way. Freedom to say I love you to somebody before I can't anymore. So my action for you is to decide what does your freedom look like from toxic people and toxic relations relationships and act on it today. Not tomorrow, not next week, next month, today. And then take the negative energy that you are applying to that situation and put it to good use. Dive into your passions. Spend time with people that give you energy and excitement for life. Because that's all you've got. When I walked into my sister's funeral, I'll never forget how I felt. I had decided consciously when I walked in there that no matter what, when, why, how, whatever context, I interacted with my father again because I knew it will happen in the future. It didn't matter who he was, because I was free. I knew within a couple minutes he was the same manipulative person even at his own daughter's funeral. But that was okay because I was free of that. So there was a song that played and at the funeral that I'll never forget the lyrics, it said, I owned every second that this world could give. I swear I lived own every second that this life can give you. This is your life and you have the freedom to do with it or with whom you please.

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.

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