Keeping It E.L.F. (Easy, Lucrative, and FUN!): How To Build A Great Business Where Everybody Wins with Tommy Mello and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #460

So I'll say some fundamental stuff. So it takes just as much effort and energy to get a singular sale as it does to get repeat business over and over again. So you can either be in the transaction business or you can be in the relationship business. So whenever you're selling anything to anyone, don't just try to sell them something once. Try to develop and sell a relationship. Because the lifetime value of a client, you know, this is Jay Abraham, who's a great marketer, good friend of mine. He said, you do not know how much you can afford to spend to acquire a client until and unless you know how much they're actually worth to you. So you know, how much do you spend to acquire a client? The biggest lesson that people I think would be helpful when it relates to marketing is the number one reason why most people don't do good with marketing is they undervalue the importance of it. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to www.gienstruitnetwork.com. so you're running a gigantic company. Your company's now valued at a billion dollars, which is pretty amazing and awesome. And he wanted to do an interview with me for his podcast which is.

Called Home Service Expert.

Home Service Expert. So he's one of the top in the world. Not like in the area, in the country, in the world. So Tommy is amazing and he's going to interview me.

I'm Tommy Mello, Home Service Expert. Today I'm in Tempe, Arizona. Been in this office about a decade ago and I'm interviewing in my mind, in most people's minds, one of the top networkers, period, in the country and in the world. I was walking up, you got Joe standing next to Jeff Bezos. I mean he hangs out with Richard Branson. It's crazy how connected he is. And I said, I'm going to Vegas. He's like, you gotta go talk to Chris Voss. Never split the difference. And I came to one of the genius a part of the Genius Network and just meeting top bestseller after bestseller, you name it, he knows him. He's an expert in marketing, sales, coaching, networking. He's the founder of Genius Network. 2006 to present Piranha Marketing started in 1994. I know he doesn't look at age over 30. 10X Talk co founder 2012 to present I Love Marketing. Started in 2009. Amazing to presence. He's killing it on YouTube. Over 115,000 subscribers. Joe Paulus is the Founder of Genius Network, one of the biggest high level groups in the world for entrepreneurs. He also curates the annual Genius Network event and the 100k group. Genius Network and the 100k is home of some of the most successful entrepreneurs alive. Joe has also helped thousands of businesses and generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients. He's been featured in Inc. Fortune, Forbes, among lots of many others. Joe also hosts three of the top ranked marketing and business podcasts including I love marketing, 10x talk and genius Network. And one of the greatest things he does is he gives back. He's a recovering addict and there's not much he hasn't done. I've never talked to him about sniffing glue, but pretty much everything out there Joe has done and I think he's going to share an amazing story. He's spoke at the last two events I've had. He's going to be at the big event in November called Freedom. And I just wanted Joe to be part of my circle. I want to be part of his circle and the wealth of knowledge, the marketing. The coolest thing about it is he started in the home service space. Why don't you tell us in the beginnings, just you could start in high school just how you had to turn your life around and then just how you started dominating home service.

Yeah. So it's to me, first off, it's great to be here and there's a lot we can talk about. So when I started out in business, I was a carpet cleaner. And the reason I got into that business, I was a addict. In high school I was a cocaine addict. And at my worst state I weighed 105 pounds from free basing cocaine. There was one week where I just didn't eat anything and I got as low as 105 pounds. And so I moved away and went to college in New Mexico State University. Lived in a trailer with my father for a couple years, mainly to get sober, not really to go to college. I just happened to go to college. While I was there I never got a degree in anything, but I did start exercising and working out and I started doing sales. And as you know, it doesn't matter how technically skilled you are if you don't know how to sell something, that's challenging. So I got a little bit of sales training by selling gym memberships. Then I got a job in a, literally a mental hospital. And I would drive the patients to AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous meetings. And I would sit there as an employee and I would listen to These people with just the most difficult challenges. And that was my first exposure to community, because I grew up a very shy, introverted, scared person. Never thought I'd teach anything to anyone. I didn't want to public speak. I mean, I was. It was hard to even ask someone out on a date, let alone present myself in front of group. So I came back to Arizona trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. I had a friend I went to high school with that said, you know, I work for this carpet cleaning business. I run the phone room. And the guy that's the owner of it, he is a alcoholic, but he did $600,000 in business last year. And I was like, my God, that's a tremendous amount of money. So he's like, you want to go into a carpet cleaning business? And I'll set up the phone room. We'll hire some, you know, employees after we get it going, and. And then we'll build a big business. And so I took the fifteen hundred dollars, which is all the money I had to my name. I bought a portable steam cleaner, and I got business cards that said professional carpet and upholstery cleaner, whatever that means. Right. And this was back in literally eight, late 1989, early 1990. And I start this business with this guy. His name was Sean, and he was getting drunk every night also. Even though he worked for a guy that was an alcoholic, he. And so after about two months of just painful trying to get anything done with him, I took his name off the business account. And here I was stuck with this chemicals and equipment and business cards and said I was a professional. That proceeded two years of pure hell and misery, going $30,000 in debt, trying to figure out how to make this business work. So back in that point in time, that was a lot of money. $30,000. And so what I ended up doing was I. I had this entrepreneurial fantasy that I must be a business owner. I want to do this sort of stuff. And, you know, I think my friend Gary Halbert, who I ultimately learned marketing from, he says the world advances on the best of its neurotics, and there's many ways that you can go broke. And one of the dumbest ways to go broke is doing hard physical manual labor. And I. Not only was I doing hard physical manual labor every day, I was paying money to do that. I was going into debt to do that. And I think there is a distinction between people that are willing to work through very difficult, hard times and people that just have an entitlement attitude and want things to be easy. Like, today I teach easy, lucrative, and fun versus hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Have elf versus half. But in the beginning, I had nothing in my life that was easy, lucrative, and fun. It was all hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Sometimes it can be hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating. So I have this chemicals and equipment, and I'm just annoyed. And I one day, I have a friend named Pat that I have another friend named Pat who actually is here in the building with me right now. But this is a guy that I also went to high school with, and he calls me up and he's like, do you want to go, you know, jet skiing this week? I have a really wealthy friend who's a big real estate investor. Yeah, this is a good story to actually share with anyone in business, but especially people in service businesses. And my friend said, you want to go jet skiing at Segura Lake, which is a lake out here in Arizona. And when you're broke, you don't have a lot of motivation, let alone any discretionary income, to do anything. I'm literally almost starving at this point in my life, and I am working my ass off trying to figure out how to make it work. And he said to me, you know, you want to go jet skiing? I'm like, nah, you know, I got a lot of work this week, and I'm just trying to make it work. And I was starting to go to night classes to learn how to get my series 63 and series 7 license so I could be a stockbroker because I had to get out of this carpet cleaning business. I was trapped. It wasn't working. I didn't like it, but I didn't have any other options. So I'm like, I'm going to try to figure out what else to do. So I tell my friend, I, you know, I can't go. But he mentioned he had this wealthy friend that had this. This business. And so I said, well, you know, yeah, maybe I'll come out and go jet skiing with you guys for a little bit. Because I was like, maybe I could talk to the rich guy and he can give me some advice. So I drive my piece of crap pickup truck out to Segura Lake. It's hot as hell in the middle of summer in Arizona like it is right now. That time we're recording this, and I have a chance to sit on the tailgate of a pickup truck with this rich guy, and my friend Pat and this rich guy's other friend were out on the Two jet Sk. And so I said to him, I said, I hear you do really well in business. And I have a small carpet cleaning business, and I'm looking to get into another business because it's just a really difficult business. I was wondering if you have any advice on what sort of industry I could go into. And he said, well, is there anyone in this business that you're in that's making money? And I said, well, there's a couple companies in the Phoenix area that do over a million a year, and that's a lot of money to me. And he said, well, if there's other people that are making money in this business and in the industry you're in and you're not, there's nothing wrong with the business you're in. There's something wrong with you. And I was like, well, no, no, I've gotten certified and I'm trained. A lot of these companies debate and switch advertising, and I do a really good job. I care about people, but they've been established for a long time and it's. It's difficult. And he said, look, young man, he goes, if you also told him that I had spent, you know, the last couple of years getting certified. I told him about that. And he said, well, look, young man, you're like most people. You think the grass is always greener on the other side. And he goes, if you think you're going to go into another business or another industry without learning how to make a business work, you're going to repeat the same bad business habits that have caused you to be a failure like you're having right now in your own business. And I was like, well, that's not the motivational talk that I wanted. And I still made excuses. I said, well, yeah, but a lot of these companies have been around a while. They're willing to, you know, do things ethically that I'm not willing to do. They do high pressure selling. He goes, look, he goes, what you need to do is you need to learn fundamental business skills. If you can learn how to make a business work, then you can take those skills anywhere. He goes, if you try to learn the skills of another industry, you're going to spend another six months, another year, another two years learning the technical skills of another business so you can go out and repeat the same bad business habits that have caused you to be a failure in this one. So that really, he wasn't giving me. I don't remember this guy's name at the time. This was the most instrumental conversation I'D ever had with anyone else that changed the trajectory of my business. So I now call those types of people or events or books, dominoes. The first dominoes. So he. And it's the whole. When the, when the student's ready, the teacher appears. He didn't say anything that probably someone else was not saying to me or books that I was reading or cassette tapes. Because back then there were no. There's no Internet. I mean, I was listening to Nightingale Conant programs and cassette tapes and things like that. But what I did when he said that to me, I made a commitment that I am not going to get out of this business till I figure out how to make work. And I said, I live in America. I have a lot of anxiety, I have a lot of stress. I'm a neurotic person. I was, you know, recently, you know, a full blown drug addict a couple years prior. And my life was hard, but I was a hard worker. And I had this drive and I had this dream and I had this vision. So I, I kind of used it as a game where I said, you know, there are other people that are making more money than me. They know something that I don't know. What the hell do they know? And how do I figure it out? And that's when I started reading. That's when I really made that. And let me say this, Tommy, I know I'm going on a rant here. People care about things. Everyone here that's watching us, listening to this, people we're going to talk to. If we have, you know, family members, team members, everyone talks about how much they care. We all care. But how committed are you to doing something? There's a big difference between caring and being committed. Yeah, I care about being in great physical shape. I care about eating healthy. I care about, you know, my business practices and in my marketing. But am I committed to learning how to do it better? So I made a commitment after that trip and I said, I'm going to figure out how to make this work. And my business that I hated became a lab rat experiment for me to say, let's figure out what works and what doesn't work. And that's when I really started reading. I didn't have the solutions to my problems yet, but which was how to get business, that came later. But it only came later because my mind was open. And I now realize that, okay, I'm going to figure out how to make this work. I'm not going to give myself an escape hatch, because we all have escape hatches. We all have rationalizations, everyone, including myself. We all have alibis. Every time I blame, every time I say I can't do something and I do it all the time, we all do it as humans. What I did though is I quit doing it in that context there. And I was like, I'm going to figure out how to make this business work. And with that I became receptive to all of the available resources. Like anyone that's in service business, you can and will transform their life with what you present to them. You're not going to do it for them, you're just going to give them a plan and a path. It's their choice to pick it up and do something with it. And that guy gave me that sort of insight and awareness, but it required the effort. I still worked my ass off, I still had a lot to learn. But I started a friend gave me a newsletter on marketing, on direct response marketing. And I read it and it totally changed the way I thought of marketing. And then I started becoming a student of marketing and I realized there's no relationship between being good and getting paid. You can be really good at what you do and there's no relationship between getting paid. There's a huge relationship between being good, being a good marketer and getting paid. But I didn't even know what marketing was at that point in time. I had to learn that. What I did is I turned my carpet cleaning business around by creating education based marketing. And then in 19 end of 1994 I started teaching it to other carpet cleaners. And by 1997 I was voted the cleanfax, which was the largest trade magazine at the time, back in the 90s, the person of the year. And I was on the COVID of the Australian magazines, the UK magazine, New Zealand magazine. I became the most well known person in the world in the carpet cleaning industry. That would never get me dates and bars or anything, but it actually a lot of people knew who I was and I started teaching what I learned to other carpet cleaners. So I not only transformed my service business, I actually started helping other people do that. And that's very similar to what you've done. You figured it out for you and now you are teaching other people. I mean, I think sitting here right now talking about that is a byproduct of you having learned a tremendous amount of stuff and you just want to share it with other people.

Well, you're talking about a business with hardly anything in 1992 to be famous for that career in 1997, that's five years. What were the basics that you just said? Okay, you studied marketing, you started reading Readers are Leaders networking. Obviously you networked to be in the top uk, but what were the five main lessons you took that you said, man, I wish I would have known this before. You've got a lot of marketing, you know, even when you, you took a picture of the Valpak and you're like, you need to let people learn about the product or they call in and listen about it.

Right.

But give me your top five. And I think these things are still true to this day.

Yeah. Okay, so I'll say some fundamental stuff. So it takes just as much effort and energy to get a singular sale as it does to get repeat business over and over again. So you can either be in the transaction business or you can be in the relationship business. So whenever you're selling anything to anyone, don't just try to sell them something once. Try to develop and sell a relationship try because the lifetime value of a client. You know, this is Jay Abraham, who's a great marketer, good friend of mine, he said you do not know how much you can afford to spend to acquire a client until and unless you know how much they're actually worth to you. So you know, how much do you spend to acquire a client? The biggest lesson that people I think would be helpful when it relates to marketing is the number one reason why most people don't do good with marketing is they undervalue the importance of it. Almost 50% of the cost of any product or service usually goes to what it costs to actually sell it. And that's if the person selling it has their act together. And most people really don't know what to do. So the first is selling relationships, not transactions. The second is direct response marketing. Whatever sort of messaging you're putting out into the world, make sure that you give people the ability to get a response back when you. When I was going to college, I ended up going to a community college and I failed owning and operating a small business. And I got a C minus in principles of marketing, which is really funny. And that was Chandler, the highly esteemed Chandler Gilbert Community College. And they would show examples of branding and big companies like Coca Cola and you know, just big GE and brands back in those days. Now you got probably one of the most well known brands is, you know, Coca Cola, which is pretty much Liquid Satan. And then you have Apple and things like that. But small businesses don't have the budget, they don't have the ad budget to you know, advertise a service business like your Louis Vuitton or like your Rolex or, you know, there's not going to do it. And so you have to put messaging out there that really speaks to the title of my latest book, which is what's in it for them? You know, people don't care about you, they don't care how much you work. And especially had to figure out how to successfully sell something that nobody wants to buy. Nobody wakes up every day and says, man, I really hope that the garage door breaks. I hope the cat pees in the corner. I hope the husband spills his coffee, you know, help the kids drag mud through, you know, the living room. You know, I had to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. So I had to figure out how to speak with an emotional language where you're using headlines and you're using offers. And so you can either be a world class copywriter like, you know, Roy William was right, who has this magic ability. But if you don't have those skills, what you can do is you can educate people. And so one of the first things I did, and here's what, so you can call this a third one, is any problem in the world can be solved at the right sales letter as a quote by Gary Halbert. And so when I learned that words can have someone, you know, fall in love with you or hate you, motivate you, repel, attract, I mean there's, you know, my favorite definition of selling is getting someone intellectually and get in this from Dan Sullivan, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And so when I'll say that to people, like think of selling getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result with the keywords good for them. Because there are ways to get people intellectually engaged in a future result that's bad for them, like eat this crappy food, watch this porn. I mean, there's all kinds of toxic things that are sold to people. But when you really care about humans, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. You start wording your marketing more importantly. And the difference between selling and marketing is selling is what you do when you're on or face to face with somebody. Marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you properly positioned. So by the time you're talking to Them, they're pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to do business with you. And I've said that a thousand times. People that listen to my podcast, they've heard me say that definition over and over again. But I've had enough people say to me, thank you for the reminder. And I, I actually have to remind myself too. So my good friend Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence, I just went to on Sunday this week. I mean, a few days ago I went to breakfast with him and his wife and then a couple of my friends because we had done a two day event on how to use AI and then we also went to dinner. So I spent pretty much most of the day with Robert Cialdini and he's the father of influence. He wrote this amazing book that I read early on in my career, wrote it 30 years ago and it's brilliant. It's how to persuade people with reciprocity and social proof. And he has these liking. Exactly. Yeah, the seven principles. The latest one called unity. Right. Because if you think about your group home service freedom and you know, there is a belonging, people don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood. Nobody wants to hire service businesses. Some things are bought, other things are sold. Like people wake up and they buy food, they go to movies, other things, you need to sell stuff to them. And I landed in an accidental industry where I didn't, you know, when I was a kid, I wasn't thinking, one day I'm going to be a carpet cleaner. It didn't occur to me. But you know, it's like it's an accidental industry. And a lot of people that are in service businesses, they just find themselves there. But the beauty of it is there's amazing things that you can do with the service business. There's, as a matter of fact, if you want job security, go into the service industry right now because the amount of people going to trade schools and getting trained on it. And the other thing is most people don't understand what service means. So I asked Eunice, my assistant, who's amazing, to bring me one of my first templates of my consumer awareness. Guys. So before the Internet existed, my first version of a sales letter was a consumer guide to Carpet Cleaning. So I got this idea from one reading Gary Halbert newsletter that any problem in the world can be solved with the right sales letter. So I wanted to hire a copywriter to help me with this. I was learning about copywriters, so I Found this guy and I paid him eighteen hundred dollars because that's what he wanted. He would help me create a consumer's guide to carpet cleaning. And so I would spend, you know, several hours a week for about a month training this guy. Everything about carpet cleaning. So I created this consumer and I got all this stuff memorized, but it said consumers Guide to Carpet Cleaning. It says, you know, read this guide and you'll discover. See, people don't want to learn anything. They want to discover stuff. Like, I don't want to learn shit, I want to discover stuff. If we said learn everything you can from Tommy Mello is way different than discover the secrets of a guy running a $200 million a year business. You know, it sounds way more compelling little words. And so Robert Cialdini, the reason I brought him up, his second book was called Pre Sway.

Yep.

And so persuasion is what do you do before the moment of influence? So anything you put in front of somebody advance is marketing. When I was first trying to get business, I was knocking on doors, I was making phone calls, I was handing out business cards. They knew nothing about me. So to use like Dan Kennedy language, this marketing guy I've known forever, you can either be an annoying pest or a welcome guest. And if you don't have any marketing and you're just trying to sell someone, I would use this. It's kind of like tapping someone on the shoulder in a nightclub that even made eye contact with you. They turn around looking, you're like, would you like to sleep together? What would happen? You're probably going to get slapped in the face or they're going to call the cops. Right? Right. However, unless you know you're like some famous person or a friend introduced you or whatever. But that's how many people try to generate business. They develop no rapport. The people have seen nothing in advance and they think that yelling is selling. So the consumer guide. I ended up, you know, using my credit card to pay a copywriter to write my consumer guide. And it said Consumer Guide to Carpet Cleaning. Read this guide and discover seven questions ask a carpet cleaner before you invite them into your home. Eight Mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. Six Costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning. Crawling critters and crud. A guide to the slime, grime and livestock that's seeping, creeping and galloping through your carpet. How to avoid 4 Carpet Cleaning RIP offs. The difference between value and price. Which method cleans best, blah, blah, blah. And then they would open this consumer guide.

How would they Receive this.

I would run ads that said, you know, free report reveals how to choose a carpet cleaner.

And that would be radio.

Oh, no, I would actually run Val pack flyers that I would put out newspaper ads, money mailer type clips. I did do radio. I did test radio. I had mixed things with radio. What I found about radio though, for me now, you in the Phoenix area, you're everywhere. When now, if you can go back to 1992, if you can imagine that, right, there's no GPS, there's no cell phones. We're using manual Thomas guides. And I would run ads on the radio. And I'm living in Valley, so I had a place in Chandler, Arizona, and I'd get calls from way up in Glendale. I'd have to drive all. So I found that the radio until it was. That was sort in the same with tv. I even did some certain spot TV ads like in Sun City, in different locations where it would only be seen in certain areas of the Phoenix Valley. Because many people that. I think Phoenix is what, like the sixth largest city in the United States.

Yeah, it's massive.

Yeah, but it is big. So. But the consumer guy was my first form of really effective marketing. Then I was like, people would call me up and they're like, I'd like information. I'd say, well, can I send you my consumer guide to carpet cleaning? It'll teach you everything you need to know about how to choose a carpet cleaner. And I'll include also an offer in there where you can get your. Well, we'll do a free room of carpet cleaning as long, you know, for homeowners only. We don't want to do it for renters, where we'll clean one room up to 200 square feet free of charge. And if you. And while we're there, we'll do a carpet audit and we'll give you a quote for the rest of your house if you're happy with the free room we do. So I actually wanted. I didn't want to price discount my services. I wanted to create reciprocity by offering a free room of carpet cleaning. So I made more money giving away free rooms of carpet cleaning than I ever did trying to price discount my services. And when I started teaching that to other carpet cleaners, man, the resistance I got. We can't give away free services. We can't 100% guarantee our work. I was like, if someone's unhappy with your work or you did a shitty job, would you give them their money back? And they would say, yeah, okay, well then you're already offering a guarantee. You're just getting no marketing value out of it. Because if someone was ever unhappy with what you're offering and you would give them their money back, then you already offer a guarantee, but you're not broadcasting that. So I've started doing things like make, you know, powerful guarantees. So one of the things I did to the list is risk reversal. If somebody wants what you're selling, the only thing that stands in their way of buying it from you is fear. And if you remove the fear, they will buy. So I wanted to do all my advertising to help remove fear. Because the number one question in all consumers minds is who can I trust? All day long, everyone that's watching us right now, anything, they're going to buy, any food that they're going to put into their system. If they get in an Uber and the person's driving like a maniac in their mind, can I trust this person? For the first time in my life, I drove a Waymo driverless car yesterday. I got into a car, it's like an Uber. Yeah, they're only. And literally I got into the front seat. There is no one in the car. And this thing drove me to Phoenix because I was going to a location that if I was to drive my Tesla there, I knew it'd be a pain in the ass to park. So I got and I just was curious to see because I had a friend in town that my AI friends that were running the AI event we were doing for Genius network members. He was driving, you know, on this Waymo and he loved it. I was like. And I'll tell you, like, at first I was like, okay, this is really weird. I am in a vehicle that is driving and there's no one in it. But after a few minutes I was like, this feels more comfortable than being in a car with someone where I feel like I have to attend to. So why do I bring that up? I started using free recorded messages where I said, okay, I got the consumer awareness guy. But oftentimes people would call me and they'd say, well, I want my carpet clean tomorrow. There wasn't enough time to get it in the mail today with the Internet and social media and YouTube and text messaging and all of the things you could not do that there was no streaming video back then. I didn't even have my first website till 1996. And so there was no way to do it. And so what I realized is, okay, how about if I take the consumer awareness guide and I create a free recorded message. So I started running ads warning, don't call any carpet cleaner until you listen to this message. Learn seven questions, ask the carpet cleaner before you invite him into your house or four mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. Call anytime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And people would call and they would listen to me talking. A free recorded message. Now what's funny, you can do right now with AI that took months to do back then. You can literally create stuff instantaneously. So all of these marketing tools, because the beauty what AI can't do is I've got some of the best offers, some of the best copies I've test, I've spent millions of dollars even in the late 90s from what we can even track. By 1999 we've been able to track through our, our Piranha marketing members over $800 million in revenue that had come in from my ads. And there were people running free messages for chiropractic services, real estate, you know, home remodeling, heating, air conditioning, pest control, florist, printers, painters, using my free recorded message model offering, you know, 24 hour free recorded messages. And now it's several billion, you know, fast forward to like, you know, that that has been generated. But all I did was I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards and I needed a way to generate business. I figured out a methodology, it worked for me and I was like, man, if this would work for me, I wonder if I could create a business teaching it to other people. And lo and behold, I did and it worked. And that's the beauty of sharing and teaching. And the last thing I'll say about the Uber thing, I didn't feel like I had to talk to anyone, even though I know they had cameras, you know, while I was in the car. Of course, right. But I didn't have to attend to anybody. When someone would call and listen to a 24 hour free recorded message. Everyone has phone call fear and when they would call up, is this person going to try to sell me? But when they were listening to a free recorded message, they were more receptive because they didn't have to respond. And what I learned is the same information that it's how you present it to somebody. You could have a beautiful painting and you could have it duct taped to the wall or you can have it in the Louvre and you know, in Paris and you know, the Mona Lisa, you could date to the wall, you know, in the dark room or you can literally display it in a certain way. So how you present yourself, and that doesn't mean it needs to be nice. As a matter of fact, if you try to make it too fancy, you already know this from social media. Neatness rejects involvement. Ugly works. So sometimes you want to make things look homemade. You. And you want them to not look homemade. You want them to be homemade. You don't want to over produce it. And with a consumer awareness guy, there was like, literally there were no fancy graphics. It wasn't full color, it was black and white. And this thing has generated billions of dollars for businesses all over the world. And it just educates people on how to make a buying decision. The number one question it says, with this information, you can make.

It's a buyer's guide.

Yeah.

And what's interesting is I read this book by Marcus Sheridan. They ask, you answer. And I think he took all the notes out of your book because he.

Owns a company called River Pools.

And he started writing an article a week, posting it online, lots of answers. Then he figured out HubSpot. If you send the link out in.

HubSpot, it tracks where the people go.

So they're learning about financing, builder grade. You could actually match the right technician.

To show up to the house prepared.

And if they spend more than 20 minutes on the buyer's guide, the closing rate goes above 80%.

Yeah.

Because now they get to know you. They. You're answering their questions. So the CSR that's answering the phone would say, Listen, Mr. Polish, if you don't mind, I'm going to send you a buyer's guide that's going to give you every single thing you need to know before you buy a door. And if there's another Mrs. Paul, she's going to want to know everything as well. So if you wouldn't mind, could I get your acknowledgment that you'll take 20 minutes to look over the buyer's guide? Now, I know every page you looked at, what you read, how much videos you played. And River Pulls is booked out over two years.

Let me kind of back up some people. It may be, they may be too young to remember this, but you know Bill Phillips, the guy?

Oh, yeah, eas.

So. So I took the same marketing strategies that I was teaching to carpet and upholstery cleaners. Bill Phillips hired me in 1996, and that's when I was charging 3,800, you know, a day for consulting. You know, now it's funny because I charge 50,000 a day when I do consulting. And I try not to do it. And I only do, you know, some six grand an hour is what my consulting fees if people want to hire me for consulting. And back then I was charging 3,800 and Bill was like, I'm not going to pay someone nearly $4,000 a day to come and, you know, teach me to how to run my. Because he was already doing 60 million a year in revenue back in at that time. And 18 months I took him from 60 million to over 200 million in revenue with the same methodologies I was teaching the carpet cleaners. It was no different except the application of where he applied it in a very big niche and he had a big team. And so he ended up writing a book called Body for Life that wouldn't even have existed had he not met me. And I started doing consulting with him. And he literally sold that company for $300 million in 1999, which is a lot of money back then.

Yeah, it's a lot of money. It's billion dollars. You know, I got that book and I was watching Bill Phillips and I was a kid and I was working out, playing football and that's. I bought Arnold's book and I bought Bill Phillips book. And it's hard to imagine you were behind that. There was another certainty that happened every day. I went out to the mailbox. There was an AOL CD in there.

Yeah.

And that's how they blew up. But it's important. And some of these things, I tell everybody I'm going back to guerrilla marketing. The old school stuff, relationships, you know. I listened to Grant Cardone once say he was all wrong by listening to millionaires. He goes, when I started hanging out with billionaires, I realized they don't work hard. Millionaires get up early, they go in cold plunges. They have these rituals and they do amazing things. But billionaires are connected. They know who to call at the right time, at the right place, right time. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, you know, billionaires, you know, really successful millionaires. And I don't think there's a big difference, but it seems like the billionaires have really focused on delegating more. I bet you when you're with.

Absolutely. Look for the knowledge that I have, One of my biggest limitations is the ability to hire and attract like talent that I can delegate to and being able to let go. I mean, there's a part of me that if you're a perfectionist, you oftentimes have a hard time to delegate. I think it was Ronald Reagan that said he said that leadership is reading a letter that a staff writer wrote, knowing that I could do a better job writing it, but knowing it was good enough. And so I sent it out anyway. And it's really easy to, like, talk about this than actually do it, but being able to delegate and being able to hire. So I'll tell you a couple stories to that. So I became Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. And I've interviewed Richard. I mean, hours and hours of interviews with Richard, because I used to do trips to Necker island, and we'd be there for, like a week, and we'd have mostly breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Richard every day for, like, a week straight. Because I packaged up Richard because he's like Shamu the whale. You know, you go to SeaWorld to see Shamu, and so, you know, I package up Richard and showed them a way to monetize his island, Necker Island. And when I first started doing these trips, it's now more than two and a half times the price to rent that island simply because of how I showed them how to package it up. They've made millions as a result of what I started with them. And. And out of all the conversations ever had with Richard, the one that was probably the most valuable that I could share a lesson of is I was just. Me and him were in his kitchen in one of the houses on Necker, and I was looking for, like, an orange or a banana. And Richard's is. We're sitting in there, and I'm like, so, you know, Richard, when's the last time you were in a grocery store? And he's like. He looks up, like he's thinking. He's like, I've never been in a grocery store. And I'm like, like, what are you talking about? Like, what do you mean, you know, better grocery store? He's like, I don't think of it. I go, what about when you, you know, he signed the Sex Pistols? I go, did you ever go get beer for Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten, which are, you know, the members of Sex Pistols? He's like, no, I don't think I've ever been in a grocery store. And I'm sitting there going, this is like the biggest. Like, there's no way. That's my. What's. I'm thinking in my mind. I go, when's the last time you did your laundry? And he said, I don't think I've ever done laundry. And I go, what do you mean you've never done laundry? He goes, what about when you're a kid. He's like, my mom did my laundry. And I'm like, you've never done laundry? He goes, no. He goes, joe, he goes, you hire people to do that stuff. And he said, he goes, one good hire will save you thousands of hours in your life. And you know, because Richard, people love watching. I've done a couple of interviews I've made public. Most of them were for people that came on the trips because we would charge literally 40,000 to $75,000 to go on those trips. And they were very exclusive. And that's when we first started doing the super high end stuff. So I haven't released most of those interviews. But you know, people watch the interview and they get all gaga because, you know, it's Richard Branson. But he doesn't really explain a lot of stuff. People get all, you know, he's an intuitive entrepreneur, so it's hard for him to explain what he's doing. So there's that example. Let me think of another one with billionaires and with delegating, because that. But I'll tell you, if someone wants to get really great insight into super wealthy people and people that are really into regular self help and they watch these how to Get Rich gurus, which most of them are full of shit because there's people that are reporters of success and then there's people that are actually successful. Is read the book how to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. He died, but he is super hardcore. In the beginning of the book how to Get Rich, he wrote every word of the book himself. It was not ghost written. And that's one of my favorite books because it's so hardcore. And I think he just really slams a lot of people that are promising people the moon when they're, you know, selling stuff. So. Okay, so you know Matt Mullenwig, he's the founder of WordPress. Yep. Okay, so Matt, I brought him to Necker Island. I originally went on a trip. I invited Tim Ferriss and Matt to go to Vietnam with me and a couple of my buddies. John Butcher is a friend who was organizing the trip. And so we go to Vietnam for like nine days. And Matt's there. And I got to know Matt, he's a cool dude. So I invite him into one of my Necker island trips. And so at this Necker island trip, Janik Silver would come to my trips. I eventually turned the Necker island trips over to Jannik and let him run it because I got sick of all the mosquitoes and all that. There's too Many damn mosquitoes on Necker. It's beautiful. But if you, if mosquitoes like you, it's a real pain in the ass. But so we're sitting there with all these marketers and they're Internet marketers and they're talking about opt in pages, and Matt Muller. We got the time, I think 10% of every website in the world was on WordPress. Now it's far bigger. And he was worth a quarter billion dollars at the time. Now he's a billionaire. And he was leaning in, listening to this conversation. Everyone's talking about an opt in page. And Matt, owner of WordPress, which There are millions of opt in pages. Like, you know Dean Jackson, who you've had on your show. Yeah. Invented the squeeze page in 1997. He's one of the original OGs that invented the stuff that, you know, he's the guy that I've been doing the I Love Marketing podcast with for, you know, going close to 15 years. So all these marketers are talking about opt in pages. Matt Mullerwick, founder of WordPress, leans in and he's like, you guys are saying opt in page. What is an opt in page? And they all look at him like he's an idiot. They're like, how do you know? Like, how do you not know what an opt in page is? And something clicked in my mind at that point. Like, he doesn't need to be the king or the queen, he just needs to be the chessboard. So in your particular case, you're not trying to be the king or queen, you're just trying to be the chessboard. And you bring on the kings and the queens and the knights and the bishops and the pawns and all the things to play a chess game. So if you want to play a different game, you have to really define what you know, what are you trying to do? And so do you want to be an industry transformer? So I wanted to transform the carpet cleaning industry and I did. And I want to transform the addiction industry. I mean, one of my biggest goals with all these marketing skills is I want to, you know, I have genius recovery, which is my addiction foundation. And I want to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share it with the world. In the current way that we're trying to treat addicts is punitively. And you cannot punish pain out of people. If someone is depressed or has anxiety or sad or struggling with trauma that's manifesting as addiction, throwing them in prison unless they're committing violent crimes. You have to protect society. That's one thing. But there's a lot of people that are extremely in pain, mental and physical and spiritual anguish. And people are trying to look at them as moral degenerates. And there's a lot of workaholic entrepreneurs that don't feel good about themselves unless they can get an adrenaline rush of business deals. So part of it is, like, going, okay, I've learned a lot about marketing, what you put in front of people and positioning yourself. How do I actually do this in an area where I'm quite I knowledgeable about and that I suffered a lot with my own life, which is addiction recovery, and how do I use my marketing skills to do that? And when I'm able to do that, I find more meaning in building a business. I find more meaning doing stuff like that. But you can apply everything we're talking about to anything. It could be for profit. It could be, you know, what are you trying to do in the world that's going to make a big difference?

You know, the networking side of things is people are like, man, you're just. You were a kid from Michigan. You started this garage door company. You were the technician. You were the inventory, you know, and then slowly, the same thing happened. Somebody handed me the email. Then the richest man in Babylon, then the ultimate sales machine.

So reading was all of those.

And then I became addicted to reading. And then I just slowly got connected to people, and slowly, you know, came to your event. More than a decade ago, we used to come in and just right across from the bowling alley, same spot.

Right.

And I'm just curious because getting in front of Jeff Bezos, getting in front of you could go on the list. It's hundreds, if not thousands of people now. What is it that really clicked? When was the first time you figured out that's how Alex Hermosi said, don't. Don't ask me what you could do for me? People always say, what do I got to do to hang out and learn from you? Just do it. Like you just said, I figured out a way to solve Richard's problems. I did the business plan. I made him a ton of money. Therefore, he gave you the time.

You said something really, you know, And I don't know if I talk about this, not a lot. So you gave me the impetus, though. It's a good distinction. So people constantly come to me. They don't really kind of understand what I think. I do a pretty good job of writing about in my book what's in it for them, where I literally go through the process of how to connect with people authentically, not using fake flattery. I mean flattery works. I'd be lying if I would say flattery doesn't work. You know, enthusiasm covers many defenses deficiencies. However, you know, having some substance to what you're doing is. It is valuable. And people often come to me and say how can I help you? And when you're so damn busy you don't even know what you need help with because there's like a hundred things and oftentimes if you what they're doing is they're putting work on you. It's like reverse delegation. When you hire people to do work for you and then they bring more work to you, that's like the worst, you know, and so, you know, just doing it, what you said is important. So you don't build a great reputation by talking about what you're going to do. You build a great reputation by actually doing it. So if you being able to anticipate being able to understand what someone's value system is, being able to focus on like what Dan Sullivan we've done episodes on this. What are their dangers, what are their opportunities and what are their strengths? So having a DOS conversation where you can ask the R factor question, which is if we were to meet, you know, a year from today, three years from today, what needs to happen both personally and professionally for you to feel happy with your progress? This if you ask people if you utilize Socratic selling in order to identify what people are interested in, what they want is really valuable. You can back in. Before the Internet existed, Harvey McKay, who's now 90 years old, just sent me a message yesterday. He wrote, you know how to swim with the sharks without being eaten alive? And he had a thing called McKay 66 which you can do an Internet search on. I write about it in my book, you know the, the McKay 66 method. It's gathering information about the person that you're wanting to align yourself with. So instead of saying how can I help you Find out would actually be helpful for them, Start doing it and impress the hell upon them that like oh my God, you actually created value in advance. So let's go to the consumer awareness guide. What's the number one question in all consumers minds? Who can I trust? I made my advertising valuable. People wanted to do business with me because I wasn't just advertising to sell something to them. I was offering to give them free valuable information for them to make a buying decision. And they had trust and rapport with me in advance if they listened to a 10 minute recording of how to choose a carpet cleaner. And it would start out, hi, this is Joe Polish. I own, you know, Fiber Tech professional cleaning Services. I've provided this information to help you make an informed, intelligent decision on how to choose a carpet cleaner. If all you want is a brush the dirt off cleaning, we respectfully ask that you call another cleaning company. However, if you want to know how to choose a carpet cleaner, I'm about to share all that with you. And then I would literally talk. And so by the time they called me, they never asked, how much do you charge? They asked, when can you do the job? Because I established trust and rapport. So let's take that to billionaires. Or really busy people are like, you know, how do you connect with the Richard Branson's of the world or Jeff Bees is the world? Well, when I first people, you know, always ask, how'd you meet Richard Branson? Well, a friend named Ben Altadana called me up one day in 2006 and he's like, would you like to go to dinner with the Richard Branson? I'm like, okay, what's the catch? He's like, well, my friend Mike Faith is organizing the dinner in San Francisco with a group of about, about 12 to 15 people, you know, and it's a minimum donation to his foundation, virgin Unite, of $5,000. And so I thought about it for, you know, a few seconds. I said, I'll donate $15,000. Like, I want to meet Richard Branson. Right. So I then go to the meeting and everyone's asking him about global warming and climate change and all that. And anyone that really has, like, read books like Fossil Futures and different stuff, realized that the environmental movement is filled with a tremendous amount of scam artists. Things start out as a mission or no, they mission, then they become a business, then they become a racket. And so there's all these big categories.

Al Gore.

Yeah, exactly. No, an Inconvenient truth is I met Al Gore twice. I mean, I think he'll be exposed to one of the biggest frauds in history. I'm sorry I said that for people that like Al Gore. But anyway, so the fact that this is live is even more funny. So. But yeah, look, and this is coming from a guy who millions of dollars that I've raised have gone towards things related to the climate. I know things that are being really good, good related to climate. And I know a lot of people that are using it as a grift, which can really speak to a lot of stuff. So, anyway, get me back on track. Where was I going with this? Because some of.

Richard Branson.

Oh, yes. Yeah.

So, okay, so you paid 15 grand.

15 grand.

And everybody's asking about global warming.

Yeah. And so I was like, what was it like to hang out with the Sex Pistols? What was it like to sign Boy George? You jump out of a balloon. So he took a real liking to me because everyone's asking him all these serious questions, and I'm like, this is a guy that does crazy. Let me ask him about crazy shit. And then. And about five minutes into it, he's like, how old were all of you when you lost your virginity? And it's so weird because they're there in the presence. If it wasn't Richard Branson asking that, some of those people never would answer that question. And everyone's going around, and then you really realize intimidation and posturing and positioning, which I always dislike when people use ways to try to intimidate people. Great book written in the 70s is winning through Intimidation by Robert Ringer. It doesn't teach you how to intimidate people. It teaches you how to not get intimidated. Because a lot of people, their modus of operandi is to try to instill power and control and manipulation. And I hate that. I mean, I. I like people that are actually conscientious, empathetic, and caring. And so it just became a more fun conversation. And. And then he started talking. And then I said, well, you know, you got your foundation here. And I told him the story of how I gave Bill Phillips the idea to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation. And with my idea, Bill Phillips became the single largest individual contributor in the history of the world to the Make A Wish Foundation. And I. And Richard's like, wow, can you share that idea with me? And so I said, yeah, you know, just. How do you want me to send it to you? Text or email? And so he gave me his email. I think I was the only one there that he gave his email to. And so I sent him information, but I was thinking I'd like to, you know, interview Richard. And I think at the time, his net worth in, I don't know, it was like 3 billion or something like that. And he had, you know, just a tremendous amount of employees. And. And so if you do the math, if you're a millionaire, take a million dollars. For someone to net a million dollars, you have to make $3,000 a day? Approximately every single day, 365 days a year. Yeah. Okay, if you're 5 million, what's five times three? You have to make $18,000 a day. If you're a billionaire, that's a whole nother level. So I was thinking, okay, how do I do something for him that would be valuable, not so I can just ask him like everyone else does for something. So I said, you know, how about if we use education based marketing for your foundation? So I started doing interviews with his team members and stuff. And then I said, how do we have you come out to one of my events? And they wanted a donation. So that was a couple hundred grand. So people are like, you know, let's see. People then say, well, I don't have that much money. I don't have 15,000 to take someone to dinner. Well, I was a deb bro carpet cleaner not 10 years prior. I didn't have any money. I was completely broke. Right. So I had to figure out how to. So if you don't have any money, and this is chapter two of my book, what's in it for Them? And if people really want to go deep with this, literally read my book. I talk about Tammy, if you don't have money, you probably have time, you probably have energy, you probably have effort that you can put in. So if you don't have any money to put into relationships, put in your time, attention, money, effort, and energy. Those are the things that you can spend, research people, figure out what's important to them, present it to them. We all want something. I want something. Everyone watching this wants something. One of the things I say is if you want something from somebody, make sure that your give is equal to or greater than you want. And so I had to figure out what I could give to all of these people that I meet that will make it valuable to them. So I don't come across as like a beggar. Like, all kinds of people want to work with me, be around me, learn from me, all stuff. But they show up with like, oh, can I have this? Can I have that? And it's just like, that is not the way you develop. You can be enthusiastic and persistent. You know, if you're not persistent to a degree, but if you're persistent as an. As a taker, I like persistent givers. I don't like persistent takers. As a matter of fact, someone has tremendous amounts of stuff to give. They better chase my ass down because I am a busy guy that has too many things going on all the time. Not because anyone, no one forced me to do it. No one holds a gun to my head and tells me to take on all these projects and do all this stuff. Me and you are both driven entrepreneurs. We do it to ourselves because we want to grow.

Well, explain that, explain some of the things you talk about that I want. Some home service expert listeners, which we just passed a million downloads. We're like 1.1, so pretty happy.

Congratulations. That's awesome.

Hunters are 5%. Explain that whole.

Well, I learned this from Dr. Doug Brackman. He wrote a book, I believe he wrote it in 2017. He's got a new one coming out soon, but he wrote about book called Driven, about the driven entrepreneur. And there's hunters and farmers, and about 5% of people in the world have the D2D4 gene. It's a genetic mutation which causes them to be a hunter. And hunters are very restless sort of individuals. Most of them have trouble sleeping. Most of them are not very satisfied with almost anything because the reward receptors in our brains require greater stimulation because the hunters need to go out and kill. They need to go out and get food, they need to gather, they need to feed the tribe. And so hunters are pack animals. So the majority of people that join mastermind groups probably listen to things like this, read a lot of books, listen to podcasts at double time speed. It never can seem to consume enough stuff. Most of them are hunters, not all, but most of them are hunters. And then when someone betrays them or lies to them or lets them down, assuming you're dealing with hunters that have ethics, because a hunter without ethics and boundaries are some of the tyrants that we see run in the world that are destroying and damaging people's lives that are very high leadership positions. So a hunter without good boundaries and without ethics and integrity is a very dangerous sort of individual. But the hunters that are really, well boundaried and really empathetic and caring build some of the greatest businesses. They provide jobs, they do great stuff. And so hunters need to get into a pack and they're easily influenced by other people. So. So it's that whole line, you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. You got to be very careful what you expose yourself to. You know, if you look at television, television, everybody on social media, even tv, before Internet existed, is trying to television to somebody else's life. So lasting happiness does not come from consuming values of other people. It comes from developing your own and living the mountain bikes. So for the hunters, which are most people that are the high Quick start. Type A, often labeled as add, Distractible, which I certainly have. Add. It's a hunter sort of thing, and it's a reward receptor. So it's being aware that the pursuit of business, like the alcoholic poet Charles Bukowski, he had this poem which said, you take the writer away from the typewriter and all you have left is a sickness which started in writing in the first place. You take the entrepreneur away from business, and all you have left is a sickness which got them running a business in the first place. Is it going to become a disease dis ease, or is it going to become a drive that you do and accomplish things? So part of it is finding some contentment and finding some joy and fulfillment. Hunters need to hunt, though. If someone, you know, takes that hunter thing and you become an athlete, you know, you have to do something that makes you feel accomplished. So for the people that are watching this, I've often said this to young people where, if I would have known being successful was this much work, I would have stuck with being a loser, you know, because it's really hard to tell a young person that you're probably going to have your heart ripped out of your chest in a relationship or a business betrayal. Not once, but probably many times. You're going to have people that will betray you. You have people that will mislead you. You have narcissists and psychopaths and sociopaths, because a lot of those hunters come in those forms. And that is not to discourage you, though. That's just part of life. Up here. On the wall behind us, there's this one that says, other people's set, yellow faces, other people's bad news is your good news. So everyone that's watching this right now, almost all the money that will come, not all, but almost all of the money that's going to be made in the world is transforming other people's bad news into good news. Garage door breaks something, you know, fix it, fix it, right? The cat peed on the carpet. Dog pooped in the corner. Kool Aid was spilled. Bad news. Good news. If you can call someone out and they can fix it if you're hungry. Bad news if you can go and get some food, go to a restaurant. Good news, broke your leg. Bad news, if you can have a doctor, you know, my doctor's a trauma surgeon. I mean, my doctor. My girlfriend is a trauma surgeon. She's amazing and she's sweet and she's empathetic and she's the doctor sometimes. No, she. Well, you know, I should just say she's a vaginoplastic surgeon. That's a whole nother conversation. I love the fact that I can insert the word vagina into certain conversations and get away with it. Because of my girlfriend's positioning as she's an amazing. It's funny is Daymond John just posted about her her on his Instagram doing an eboo treatment. Damon John from Shark Tank. And so did Dana Kilpatrick, you know, and she, it's so funny because nothing about her thinks of how to use this as marketing positioning. If you give something like that to a marketer, they're like, they go crazy with it. But see, my girlfriend is a farmer, she's not a hunter. And so the creative types. So what I would advise farmers is pay attention to some of these crazy hunters because they have really good ideas. But the best way to work with them is look at their wild racehorses bucking around all the time. And if you could find a way, like the analogy, you've heard me talk about this and I like sharing it because it's, it's a good reminder is the million dollar racehorse. I've told this story to quite a few entrepreneurs. If you had a million dollar racehorse that every time this horse ran a race you'd make a million dollars, then you would have the best food, the best trainer, the best rest and relaxation. You wouldn't have the horse running in too many races because you would exhaust it. You wouldn't have the horse up at 3am Drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, snorting cocaine, watching porn. You know, you might if you want to have a toxic horse, but basically you would take care of the horse. And if you do, the horse wins races. Well, if you have a million dollar racehorse in your life, make sure the track is clear. Make sure you're looking out for that horse. Because, because the horse depends on the trainers and the people around it and they depend on the horse. And oftentimes people get really pissed. I mean, I guarantee you, because it happens with me, happens to you, happens with any driven entrepreneur. The people around us think we're all.

Nuts half the time because you do this to yourself.

They think we're nuts because we are nuts compared to the way they operate. But we need farmers and farmers need hunters. And so part of it is, how do you see, even with my, my book, you know, what's in it for them? I have to think about this all the time. Everyone I interact with, if I want to have, and I have literally thousands of relationships, there's that Dunbar law, which is you can only have like 150 relationships. That's true in most cases. I think I violate that to a certain degree and I don't know. Violators.

One of the exceptions.

Yeah. But there's also a lot of other areas that I am completely inept at, so I can sit here and talk about all kinds of relationship stuff too. But I also don't want anyone to think that I'm masterful in other areas. I mean, when God. God was dolling out brains, I got about 2% of my brains on how to design.

You thought he said trains and he said, I'll pass.

Exactly. Yeah. So I focus it. So here's the thing. We all have skills and we all have talents. Part of it is finding where to put your Tammy. What? Your time, attention, money, effort, and energy. And how do you leverage it? You know, time, like productivity is maximum results, least amount of time. Leverage is maximum results, least amount of effort. What People. People that work for you, work with you, listen to you. The thing the best learn to get the most out of this podcast is listen to Where's Tommy Productive? And how does Tommy leverage things? Like, when I look at you, you're a massive leverager. I mean, there are people that are way better in social settings. Like one of my team members, Mike, back here. So he's back here. Mike is way better at social situations than I am. He's nicer, he's more chummy, he's less distractible. He has more patience. I can't do that. Eunice, who's been with me for 28 years, super sweet. There are some people where I'll be like, I need a firewall between me. Eunice, please show up here. Help me out with that sort of stuff. So, you know, we all have to use the tools in our toolbox. And I'm constantly trying to get better in certain areas, but I've also made a decision that. And it came from Dan Sullivan. If you spend your life trying to get strong at what you're weak at at the end of your life, you have a lot of really strong weakness.

Mrs. You know, it's interesting.

I'm brain farting.

There's a book that just came out from the guys here, Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. Ben Hardy.

What's the Latest? Well, there's 10 times is easier than.

Yeah. So 10 times easier than one. So here's the deal. I'm at my doctor's office, naturopath. I'm on for peptizing on all this. And he goes what are you really good at? If you had to name one thing. And I'm like, one thing. I'm like, I like to encourage others. Like, I like to motivate people. I like to figure out their why and continue to push them back towards that, to remind them. Right. And he's like, that's what you should be doing 98% of the time. He's like, I read a book. He goes, you should. And I'm like, I know. But it's interesting because a lot of times we focus on things like, I want to be well rounded. I want to understand everything, but I don't anymore. I don't want to be well rounded. I want to be the best at what I do. I want to be a specialist. I don't want to be a general practitioner. I want to be just really, really good at what I do. The best.

Yeah.

And then find people that are smarter, better. I'll tell you this. A lot of times when you don't have a lot of money, you look for a bargain. You hire somebody and you're like, well, I'm better than everybody here, so I'm just gonna do it. I love when I walk in a room and I have people around me, like, here.

Yeah.

And I say simple things like. Like, you're way better than I am. You tell me where to go, you tell me what to do.

You.

You get me ready for this.

Yeah.

And that's what's nice, is a lot of people, if you're in your business and you're still saying to yourself, I gotta handle it or it won't get done. Right. That's a reflection on your leadership and who you attract. And I would just say you need to re evaluate who you hire, because you should be impressed and they should be guiding you and what their specialty is, like a CFO or control or. Or a cpa. You know, there's so many things that I think we try to be well rounded at. You talked about nine principles in networking, and I don't know if you got those all. It seems like you're a photographic memory.

Well, I know some of them, but I can make it a lot easier. Just let me. I probably can't speak to every one of them, but, you know, how are they suffering and how can I help? Okay, that's the first one, so be a pain, detective. Okay. So that's. See, one of the ways that I connect with people is what most of the very successful wealthy people that I know, no one even knows. I know them because I Met them in recovery. So, you know, I know a lot of business entrepreneurs, but I also know professional athletes, NBA players, NFL players, I know actors and actresses, I know politicians, I know musicians and artists. And a lot of them are world famous. And I got over my, you know, intimidation thing of being around people when you're around very successful people that the world admires, but you also realize that they're humans. And a lot of them, their fame came out of brokenness and pain and hurt. That a lot of people become lopsided losers and some people become lopsided winners. And rarely do I know a balanced person that stays balanced for long periods of time. You know what I think life is the treadmill of shit. Never goes away. Away. You don't walk out back, you know, of your beach house and you look out at the beach and everything's beautiful and you're rich and you have no debt and you have the beautiful family and the beautiful partner and you got all the material stuff. You've got the internal peace. I mean, it's not how life is. Life is boring, life is mundane. Life is a lot of work. And there are moments of extreme bliss and happiness and a lot of moments of pain. There's something I have on the wall here that says my life is an entrepreneur. And it's from gaping void, the ones that do this image and it says hell yeah. Oh, oh, oh fuck. Oh, oh fuck. Oh. It says hell yeah. So there's two hell yeahs and a whole bunch of oh that are. Maybe we could do a, you know, when we edit this video, we can do a picture of that and plop it on so people can see. But there, you know, the thing is though, life is the only thing worth living for. Life is suffering, life is pain. And I think part of it is, you know, to transform the suffering. Humans want more woo and less. Ah. So be a pain detective. And if you can bring sunshine and stuff to people's life, you will bond with them, you will connect with them. And actually I think you get a real joy out of it because I mean, you know how good it feels when you help somebody out. People that say money can't buy happiness for one you haven't given.

I haven't given enough away yet.

Yeah. And there's a lot of people that, you know, the world sucks for a lot of people. I always remind myself that there are 3 billion people on the planet right now, that their dreams would come true if they could trade places with me or you or anyone in this room. There's seven people in this room with us right now. Now, if they can change places with these people for an hour, and oftentimes I will forget that, but I do my best to bring it back. So how are they suffering and how can I help? Second is invest Tammy time, attention, money, effort and energy into relationships. You have to invest in it. You don't walk around with an entitlement attitude. And if you want something from somebody, make sure your want is equal to or your give is equal to or greater than you want. And then chapter three, be the type of person they always answer the phone for. So this is one of the principles. Principles. And I use this as a test. The next 10 people, 5 people, 10 people that text you, call you, social media, whatever, when you look at them, do you get like you're excited or do you get like, oh, like obligation. And try to evaluate why? And I always caution people, if you owe them money, that doesn't mean they're the. It means you owe them money and you need to, like, you need to be a responsible human. So if you're treating your relationships with responsibility, because what is responsibility? It's responding with ability. You know, it says react. Don't respond when people are losing it. They're react to like, when they're responding. You know, people like, why me? Why me? Why not you? Why not you? Like, okay, you know, yeah, you can look at everything as a challenge. You can look at it as an opportunity. So be the type of person they always answer the phone for. And if people are not responding to you, change your approach. If you're not getting what you want, try a different way to approach it. The fourth principle is be useful, grateful and valuable. None of this is rocket science, but I don't want people to like me because I'm showing them a high status sort of thing. Like pursue growth, not status. People that pursue status, they will get a lot of followers. They will get admiration. They will also get envy. They will get people that think they're annoying. And if your focus is status instead of growth, I think long term, it's like eating cotton candy versus nutrition. But try to be useful, grateful, and valuable. And then chapter five, treat others as you. And then we cross out you, you, and we put they treat others as they love to be treated. You have to deal with people at the level at which they respond. I write in the book that you always want to try to be nice and you want to be cool. One of my favorite quotes early on in my life was, be nice to the people you meet on the way up, they're the same people you're going to meet on the way down with the exception that there are some people that you can be generous. You have to make the decision of deal with people at the level at which they respond and how they want to be treated. Treated. The six is avoid formalities. Be fun and memorable, not boring. You can usually gauge the value of relationships by how often you laugh together. So when I say easy, lucrative and fun, if you are not surrounding yourself with people that are easy, lucrative and fun and you're always having to beg them to do stuff for you or you're always having to sell them on the mission, it doesn't mean there's anything maybe wrong with them. They just not may not vibe with you. Or, you know, I have this great motivational poster that's, you know, I got from despair.com that says, you know, sometimes the best solution to a morale problem is to fire all the unhappy people. And that's. I just think it was humorous. So. Yeah. So, you know, look, if you're having dinner with someone or you're watching a couple and they're not even like smiling or talking to each other, I mean, they're probably not having fun. So go to clown school, go to improv. If you're not funny, try to hang out with funny people. Try to, you know, life is hard and if you can find things, you know what comedy is, is comedy. Pain plus time equals comedy. That's what comedy is. And so you can look at things in your life right now that might be so painful. But I guarantee you 10 years from now, if you at least say, what did I learn from it? How's this going to help me grow? You're going to look back at that painful moment and you're going to laugh your ass off about it. And most things in people's lives that are breakthroughs came out of adversity. So instead of wanting problems and bad news to go away, invite it. There'd be no business if there wasn't pain. There'd be no business if there wasn't bad news. What a business is is sol problems for a profit. The reason you're going to be a billionaire, I'd give you two years. And you will literally be have a net worth of a billion dollars based on what it is you're doing is you have to solve a shit ton of problems to make that that billion dollars. But the fact is that is a byproduct of value creation. You're not out there Fleecing people. You're out there educating people. You're doing a fricking podcast, trying to help people, sharing the stuff you've learned. This is an incredible service. And the infrastructure of not only the United States, but most countries in the world will crumble if there were not trade services and blue collar workers and people influencers. And they want to be famous and they want to be YouTubers, and that's great. But what are you influencing? Are you influencing you? I want to be a thought leader. Any idiot can come up with a thought, be a result leader. You know, be a true result leader. Help people get results, and then you can make as much money as you want and you never have to make an excuse for it. If you're creating value in the world and you're making a lot of money, good for you.

Do more of it.

I think there should be like, literally foundations and charities for successful people, people that work their ass off, where people like, come to them and say, you know what, we put a team of people together. Tommy, you've been working your ass off for like, you know, 15 years straight. You've probably not taken enough time off. We're going to help do some stuff. We're going to give you an award, we're going to celebrate you and say thank you for your contributions to society. And you know what, if they did that to, like, certain people, not all, because there's a lot of shitty.

John Rulin does that.

Yeah, yeah, the giftology guy. And so basically, basically what would happen is you would be like, wow, instead of people being envious of my financial success, they would realize that I've paid a price for this. Feel sorry for the rich guy with a house on the mountain, you know, however, if they really got to know some of these people, they'd be like, these are good people. And there are rich people with houses on the mountain that are. So I'm not saying, you know, believe me, it's not. Money does not create the value of someone. I know gardeners and I know people that like, make no money money that are some of the most amazing, happy, connected, loving, caring people. And at the end of the day, you know, when you're on your deathbed, all that money shit, you know, your fair weather friends are not going to be around. Who's going to be around are the people that were with you through hard times and difficult times. So make sure as you have success in your life that you know how to discern between the givers and the takers, because it's Real easy. When you become a big influencer and you're putting out stuff and people like you, you to misinform yourself that these people actually care about you. So this book is really about not deal friends, but real friends.

Well, real quick, let me dive into that. I know we only got about 10 minutes. I think things change, right? One of my buddies, Ken Gooder, said, at your growth rate, with the way you're reading, he goes, a lot of people aren't going to be able to keep up with you, which means there's going to be new people that need to come into your life and you need to run around, you know, run with the bulls and so. But also I got kids I grew up with just like you do and like. And they'll never not be friends. And you know, sometimes it's family members as well. So what is the best way to approach that? Because I, you know, this is a important question I think is you got somebody that's relied on you or you relied on them and then you just realize maybe you don't like answering the phone. Maybe they have nothing good to say. Maybe the cup is always half empty. Maybe they're always just saying, yeah, that's a great idea. But you always got a lot of ideas. You're going to finish, finished one, whatever it is that just kick you when you're down. How do you, how do you take some of those people. You talk about it. The book is getting. How do you bring those people that breathe the life and energy out of you? Just get them out.

Yeah, a lot easier said than done. I mean, for instance, if there's someone that's an abusive relationship and they have children and they're not in the financial ability to easily unwind themselves, they do need to resource themselves and they need to, you know, develop hopefully a level of relationships and sounding boards. So. But there are certain people, you know, there is a. On the wall, it says be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And Dan Sullivan has this quote where he says the skills you get you out of Egypt are not the same skills to get you in promised land. You have to look at relationships and there's a point where the advantages and the disadvantages and the disadvantages outweigh the advantages and you either need to change the relationship relationship, minimize your involvement. Sometimes that's harder if they're family members or you just need to cut it off and you, you have to walk through the world without apology. In Al Anon, which is was created for people that have, you know, in relationships with addicts, family members and whatnot, there's a great line that says, say what you mean, but don't be mean. So appreciate people, you know, thank them for their contribution to their life. But, you know, some people, their purpose in life is to serve as a bad example. And so you could, you know, I would always say be courteous until that no longer works. And if you're dealing with a narcissist or a complete taker, what they want is attention, and they want acknowledgment. And no matter how you acknowledge them, you're an asshole. You're, you know, whatever, however you pander to them, they just keep coming back for more. So it's kind of like if you're on a. Consuming lots of carbs and junk food and sugar, you know, how you wake up the next day and you want more junk food, carbs and sugar. Sugar. We get into trauma bonds with people, and if it's really difficult, I would always say go to support groups. Go get different perspective, have someone. Because silent battles are the hardest battles to fight, and we're sick as our secrets. And so most of the difficulty, we find people whose dense match our dents. And it wasn't until I did a lot of 12 step groups, a lot of therapy, where I realized that a lot of the toxic relationships that I had in my life when I was an addict was because I myself was toxic and I needed to clean up the trauma. I needed to work through the shit that I write in this book, like, about how I would want to get the attention of people that did not pay attention to me. Why did I find myself helping people that were abusive and unappreciative to me? What part of me wanted that, that wanted that validation? So the more you can esteem yourself and feel good for your contributions, the people tend to go away. And I'm not gonna bullshit anyone and say it's easy. Sometimes you have to. To just, you know, take it head on and say, you know, I'm sorry, but this relationship.

Tough conversations.

Yeah.

Very few people are willing to have them. Right. And that's why it's tough. And they do it to themselves. They don't even realize it. Yeah, but what is that book called? Fierce Conversations. Yeah, it's just tough, man. And until you get used to confronting those, it gets easier.

Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Listen, we got 10 minutes. I want to dive into a few things. I. I know we didn't make it through all the knows, but I want to talk a little bit about 10x talk podcast and the idea of 10x thinking. And sometimes you just, I could 10x my leads, I get 10x. But is there something like a breakthrough in my mind that just changes the industry? There's three ways to make money, right? You get more customers, you charge more, you keep them coming back more frequent. And that's where my whole life was lives is how do I do all three of those? But when you think about 10x thinking, what do you mean by that? What does that mean to you?

Well, it's two things. One, it's like how 10x doesn't always necessarily need to be 10x growth. It could be 10x more free time, right? It could be, you know, it could be 10 times better connection and better happiness. So there's, there's many ways to get to 10x. The first thing is it takes just as much effort to manage tiny projects as it does bigger ones. And there's more juice that comes with the big 10x thinking. But in order to have a breakthrough, you got to break some something. And so I think it's really good for people to do an audit of their life personally and professionally on a regular basis, at least annually. And you list, you know, who are the elf people in my life, who are the elf projects and who are the half people. And you know, I helped Arianna Huffington. I don't agree with her politically. I helped her with her book thrive back in 2014. And we did a lot of interviews, you know, hours of interviews. And one of the best things that came out of it was, was this line where the best way to complete a project is to drop it. So oftentimes, you know, people use persistence and don't give up, don't give up, don't give up. Well, the best way to get out of a hole is to quit digging it. So sometimes the best thing you could do is give up certain relationships, give up on it. It's not fulfilling you, it's not fulfilling them. You know, quit putting yourself through that misery. Don't prolong it. You know, pull the band aid off. There's that sort of stuff. But the thing I wanted to point out though is entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves, themselves. So I took a one year sabbatical in 2021 and I had to set it up. In order to have the conditions that we want in our life, we have to set it up. So I had to take, you know, I took about six months to figure out how am I going to take a year off with A business that's totally built around me running Genius Network. And my team did a phenomenal job. And my members, my team got my members to lead. Lead the group. And it was amazing. I mean, it actually worked way better than I thought it would. I was scared shitless. I was like, oh, my God. But at the same time, I was more scared of what would happen to me if I didn't do it. And I knew the world was going into a dark place when the pandemic started. Because I talked to addicts. A lot of my time is spent talking with people that struggle with addiction. So I have a different, you know, I'm just not this business guy. I'm in this weird sort of place. And so with Breakthrough Cruise, you have to get away from it. I mean, you. And when I say it, sometimes, you know, that's, you know, doing yoga every day or taking a shorter sabbatical or getting away from technology. I don't think all of the outside things are the issue, though. They definitely influence us. It's the internal stuff. So your nervous system, your sleep. So here's the way that I look at it is one elegant idea is worth more than a thousand semi good ideas. So one of my favorite quotes is from the Book of Survival by Anthony Greenback. And he said, in order to get through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do. And when you're faced with a really difficult situation that seems impossible, the way to get through an impossible situation is you simply need to know what. What to do. So my friend Dr. Alan Barnard, he has this line where he says, it's impossible unless. So whenever you're trying to have a breakthrough, do some thinking time, sit down and say, who would I need to be in order to be over there? And you do this all the time, even if you're not conscious of it. There's no way a guy like you is growing like you're growing if you're not constantly coming face to face with your identity. How many employees do you have right now?

750.

750. You have a lot of outside influences, so you have to have parts of you that are receptive so you can be guided because you're hiring all these people to help you. But you also have to have Teflon to know how to discern. And you are making wrong decisions all the time. All the time, all the time. Because you can't do this sort of shit with this, without it. But you're making a lot of right decisions and you're willing to do that and not have it define you as a loser. Because all day long me and you are losing. Losing. Things aren't working. Things are breaking down. But you know what? Because of that, there's a lot of things that are working. And the things that are working, as long as they work a little bit better than the things you know, that's how you build a business. It's part of it. So the treadmill of shit never goes away. What happens is your resourcefulness, your ingenuity, your way to look at it, the way you frame it. You know, Dan Sullivan says the problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. And getting results doesn't take time. It's the not getting results that takes up all the time. So if you want to get results, results in your life, it's not that getting results takes time, it's all the other you're doing. So being a pain detective, having the ability to notice like one thing. Yeah, yeah.

You need to get your focus. And I will say that it's definitely not easy when you have adhd, it's not easy, but recognizing your weaknesses is half the battle.

Yeah.

And understanding Jeff Athos once said, unlike baseball, when I hit a grand slam, I don't get four runs, I hit 10,000 runs. But it's knowing they failed at a lot of things. Listen, you think Amazon didn't fail 9 out of 10 times on most of the things they rolled out Home services for Amazon Home services has failed three times. So. But you don't need everything to work perfectly. But you can't be afraid to try. One question I have before we close out and then I'm going to ask a few closing questions and we'll go.

Over for and those of you that have hung with us this long, and I know we've not, I appreciate it. So I hope it's been valuable. And we will. We have a bunch of people on, so this is good.

So I don't know how you do it. You take a year sabbatical. My brain functions when I go to an pick up an ice cream cone, I'm looking at the presentation and it'll just remind me of, oh my gosh, we need to wrap the rollers in something more. And I never call it a roller. I call it a self lubricating lifetime warrantied 12 bearing machine press roller. So I get all these ideas from all these Other things. And I can't imagine just being away saying, but also, you have this other business that's helping recovery, so. And I know you're not just doing one thing, and neither am I really, but Rogers is my main, main focus. How do you do that? How do you just say, nah, it's hate handled.

I don't know if I could summarize in, like, a minute. You know how I do it? I just do it. And so I wake up every day, I bumble my way through life, and I do my best to do what I can, and I read and I listen and I learn. I always try to approach it from a beginner's mind, and I try to intuitively think about, is this a good thing to do? And I'm willing to make mistakes. I'm willing to learn, you know, life is the only thing worth living for. And I don't expect life to be perfect. And I also try to look for the. The joy and the mundane. And I also know I'm not going to change the world. The world. When I die, the world's may. Some parts may be better without me. In other parts, who knows? Some people will be sad. But, you know, you're at a funeral, and it's. You know, there's a point where you're. I don't like going to funerals. You know, I just wanted a. Dear friends a couple weeks ago. What's that? Is that in Utah? Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a point where everyone's like, let's go have lunch. You know, life goes on. And so, you know, my friend Dave Keckage said, things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they're going wrong or seldom as. As they seem when they're going, well, lighten up. You'll live longer. And that's coming from a guy that's paralyzed from the chest down that was a multimillionaire in his mid-30s and a beautiful girlfriend. House on Huntington beach, all the external trappings of wealth, and in a freak accident, lost his ability to walk. Never had sex again, never had children. Took an hour to two hours every day to get out of bed. You know, I have people like Sean Stevenson, who was my best friend that died. I didn't take the sabbatical because I was inspired. I took the sabbatical because I had a brain breakup. I had several friends die. There was a lot of pain. And, you know, so oftentimes there's things that force you to take a look at stuff, and when things seem really shitty and really difficult. I also have now learned that in the moment when things suck, it's life's way of saying, pay attention. Physical pain, mental pain, sometimes you can't always get out of it. But I'll tell you how I do it all. I just do the best I can and I listen to people that are smart. I try to stay connected. If there's one word that I'm all about is connection, you know, I do it. If I become disconnected, my life sucks. But in the middle of busyness or boredom or mundane, if I start feeling shitty or I'm not doing well, if I can just connect myself. And oftentimes that's yoga, cold plunges, saunas, talking to a friend, you know, helping others that need help. It's the connection that always brings me back. That's my North Star.

Okay, I'm gonna go through speed rounds. How do people get all hold of you? Andrew, you got to read this book.

Read my book. What's in it for them? And, and certainly I don't want to just have people talk to me because I, you know, there needs to be a process. Joe's freebook.com is a great. If someone doesn't. I love money. If someone wants to join Genius Network, you have to make at least a million bucks a year. It's a high level group. You're in the group. There's a lot of amazing people in the group. Most of the people that benefit from this stuff is, is don't give me anything because they're not at that level. So Joe Polish is my site. It's my Instagram, it's my social. Although I don't really like social media that much. I'll say this. So, yeah, Joe's free book.com, i give away a book called Life Gives from the Giver. That's good. You can download it for free. It's awesome. You'll love it. If anyone's struggling with addiction, it's all free. We don't charge for anything. One day we may put together recovery kits that will be donations. If people can't afford it though, my goal is to just put out information to help people because a lot of people struggling with addiction, they don't have financial resources. So geniusrecovery.org the starting point for that is read the open letter there. And we have a blog that's written twice a week by one of the top therapists, not written by AI Even though we are building Genius Recovery all into AI so people can just ask questions on where to go. Where to start, how to get help. And so that is my foundation. And if anyone's ever in the Arizona area, come visit my 40 acre ghost town called Cleater, Arizona.

I need to go there. Yeah, last thing and we are done.

We're over.

Time. Time. Joe's going to be at freedom event, freedom event.com November 1, 2nd and 3rd in Orlando. He's speaking there and everybody, man, everybody was crying in the audience saying, man, I do have a problem and I didn't even really realize it and I got something I gotta face and you put it all out there and you know, home service. So is this like the perfect match? I know you haven't really thought about it because it's November. What are the some of the things you love? Home service, that's where you got your start. What is something they can expect In Orlando here, November 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

I'm going to share how to put more intensity into the work you're doing anyway. You're going to wake up every day. We all have the same 24 hours as everybody else. It's what we do with it and the leverage we get out of it. So how to get more out of the time that you have by doing less. So it'll be a mix of elegant ideas. How do you solve one problem that solves 10 problems, 50 problem solves problems, and subtraction, you know, how do you multiplication by subtraction. How do you make more money by doing less? By doing less of the dumb and doing more of the stuff that actually works. So now that we've had this as a setup, and I have this big group of binders over here and all of this wisdom that I have, I'm also going to have for everybody that signs up for your event. We'll give them a control tool audit. And that is all the kinds when they need more business. It is filled with all kinds of stuff that you can do to generate business. The media, the use, the cost, the roi. If you're successful, how do you automate it? What are the comparisons? What are the anomalies and changes to make so that I'll create a special control tool audit for your group of people. This alone will be worth the cost of admission for anyone that comes to it. And I'll get that to every one of your people that come to the event and that'll be helpful to everybody and it'll make them a lot of money.

Well, if Richard Brands is listening to him, you guys should come watch them too. Well, thanks, Joe.

Thank you. Awesome. Don't miss another episode of I Love Marketing. Subscribe today@ilove marketing.com subscribe if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit ilove marketing.com 460.