Lessons from Multi-Million-Dollar Launches with Jason Fladlien and Joe Polish

Most of the selling occurs after somebody says no. People buy when they run out of reasons to say no, not when they decide to say yes. Caveats. Because we have to say them in marketing rooms. They're already targeted. They're already qualified. They're the people that should say yes, but don't. This is who we sell to. We sell to the people that know that they should do it, that they're desperate to do it, that doing it is the very best thing for. For them. And yet they still hesitate. Why? Why have answers?

How can you be a domino for someone else? The Joe Polish Show. Any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. All right, what I will say, this is Jason Fladman, and Jason needs no introduction simply because I don't have one. So what I will say instead is.

That.

Used to be a monk.

True. Okay, we'll talk about that a little bit.

We'll talk about that. Then he became an info publisher. He studied from all of the greatest marketers, writes, copy, talks, teaches. He's known as the top webinar trainer in the world. The most recent webinar he did had over 58,000 people on it live. And you're the first one that I was aware of that Zoom actually hired to teach them how to run webinars and whatnot.

Still the only marketer that they've brought in to do that.

Yeah.

Wow.

So he's very bright. We're not going to have a super long interview, but we're going to ask him a few things. I'm just going to have him do what he always does, which is share key ideas that could be valuable and helpful and useful. And. And since we have Dr. Robert Cialdini and his lovely partner Bob at in the back. What do you think of Robert? Let's start with that.

So I was in the Vatican last year, and I was like, who's that guy in the row standing next to Robert Cialdini? Right. That's what I think about that. Cialdini has changed my life in many ways. So thank you, sir.

Yeah. Awesome. So let's have a seat. All right, so what did I not say about you that's useful for the setup? And then let's get into some strategy and methodology that everyone here could. How to think about things, because not only kind of what to do, but how to even think about it. And. And so I do that, and then I'm going to ask you to kind of define a couple of things, and we'll get into it.

Yeah. So I was thinking like, so this morning when I was walking here, I ran into Sri Kumar, who's over there. We never met before, but I told him, I was like, hey, I got to speak tomorrow at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles because I'm speaking at a donor dinner for iskcon, which is part of the Hare Krishna movement, part of the religion, and I'm going to help them raise funds. Quarter million dollars, I think. So I'll be selling tomorrow. I'm really excited about that. Right.

Wow.

And then on Sunday, I have a two hour call with Alex Hormozi because his new book launch is coming up. So I don't know if any of you saw the last book launch that Hormozi did for $100 million leads. I did a full day of consulting with him to prep for that. What he had coming in and what he left with were two very different things. So we're going to start that process on Sunday. And so that's really exciting. And then here I am today, impromptu, speaking to you, selling you on the concept of selling. So there's three different, very unique environments that I'm operating in. Three very unique, different ways. But at the heart of them to me is selling. But the challenge is what I do. You can't put into a box very easily. As our friend. Well, you know what box is burn off, let's say yesterday, right? The block, the box, there is none. So it's difficult because when I say selling, like, what are some of the thoughts that most of you think when you hear the concept about selling? Go ahead and yell them out if you could please. Or whisper good or bad, just in general, right.

So when you hear a salesperson or selling what? Pressure.

Trust, manipulation. Manipulation. Put up a wall. Put up a wall. Selling is healthy. Well, yes, I agree. Right. But like if people's knee jerk reaction to selling, both being sold to is uncomfortable and the concept of you selling is also uncomfortable. It's very, it's very tough to get an audience to feel good about wanting to sell themselves, sell their products, sell their services. And it doesn't have to be you motivating a team of people to sell you. And where does that come from? Where do you suppose that comes from? It comes because you get lots of bad examples of how to do it wrong. If selling was surgery, all the patients would be dead. Because surgeons do it right for the most part. Although leading death cause a preventable death is the. We won't get into that shit. Right. By the way, people ask me how did you get so good, Jason? There's two things that made me so good. One is I took lots of seed oils and I got extra vaccinations. So that's what made me really good. Yeah, I kid, I kid, I get, I kid. But the whole point of this is, is we don't have good examples of what selling is when it's done right. But if selling is done right, it is the most impact that you can have on the market you serve. So when I, we joke and we mess around with it, but what I ultimately do that has served me the best is I find the very best products for the markets that I'm playing in, whether myself or with partners or with consulting clients. Step one is find the best ingredients to cook with. And then step two is be the chef. So I don't want to play a game unless I'm already favorably advantaged to win. I don't want to chop down a tree with a dull axe. And so the number one thing that if you're a really good salesperson to do is stack the deck in your favor before you even begin. So get the best offer you possibly can. That requires the least amount of selling possible to sell it and then sell it harder than anything you've ever sold in your life. That is the key to success in this business. But most people are resistant towards it because they haven't seen the model that makes that work well.

Okay, so since we are talking about selling, so. And we got Robert Cialdini here, which is awesome, right? So his first book was Influence, his several books. But then he, many years later, he wrote a book called Pre Suasion, which is what to do in advance of that moment of influence. And so after 20 years of doing my best to share, teach, make a living in utilizing marketing, teaching marketing with carpet cleaners, I would always tell people I had to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. But people have an aversion to marketing and selling because of all the unethicalness about it, the pressure, that sort of thing. And so when I started saying, well, think of selling is influence or persuasion, and think of marketing as storytelling, people interpretatively. So if you're more persuasive and more influential, you're going to be more effective. If you tell a better story, you're going to enroll people more, not just sell them. And so I loved, and I think I heard it from you, where anything you put in front of somebody is marketing. And only, you know, Halbert would say only the hungriest fish are going to snap at the crappiest bait. And so a lot of people, I've always thought, you know, one thing I would talk with Gary about is three things you need in order to sell something. You needed a product or service, you need a sales pitch or a marketing message. And then you need a delivery system. And most people focus on, here's what we have, how do we tell people about it? But social media, webinars, books, door to door, these are all delivery systems. So Dean Jackson has that great line of compelling offers 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. So if you are trying to convince people into something you've already lost. Totally, yeah. And so with persuasion, with the things that you set up, like there's a Kekich credo quote that I helped Dave, which is with some of the credos. And one of them is position yourself at the top of other people's agendas. Because everybody has a want. We all have wants. We're wanting creatures. Right. And so people have their own wants, their own agendas, their own desires. And so whenever you can position yourself at the top of their agenda, you become, you know, you teed it up sort of thing. So how would you define marketing? And then I'd like to talk about how do we do it? Yeah, like how do we just do it?

So I did the launch with Iman Ghadazi earlier this year, flew to Dubai, 16 hours. We land there and we do a five day challenge. This is the model. 500,000 people are going to go through this challenge. Roughly speaking, leads. It's a $1,500 product. And I say to them, when we start consulting, I say, what's the target of conversion? And the target of a conversion is 1.5% on a $1,500 product. So I know lots of numbers, but stay with me here. Right? So we need to sell one and a half people out of 100 across a half a million people. And if you do the math on that, that comes out to about 11 people million in sales. Right. That's a lot of money on a 1.5% conversion, meaning 98.5% of people will say no. Then we start to play with it. Because this is the difficulty I have with all the clients that I work with and all the audiences that listen to me and all the people that I try to impact and try to train. And it's very frustrating for me. Most of the selling occurs after somebody says no. And when people hear that, they think the immediate no. We don't sell something to somebody until we thoroughly educated them for at least an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 5 hours, 10 hours, 20 hours. Right? You have, you've heard me say this before, Joe, Whatever you're selling, put information in front of it and you'll sell more of it. I've now since updated that. Whatever you're selling, put transformation in front of it, transform somebody into your best customer and then put the product in front of them. That's what we're trying to do here. So what would it take for you to put somebody in the state of being your best customer before you ever ask them to offer you money? And I'm breaking this down to Iman and the guys and I'm explaining to them, I say, listen, we're not doing this for the 497,000 people that will say no because out of a half a million 490,000 plus people are going to say no under every circumstance. I say we will go the extra hour or two or three each night on these calls for the 200 or 300 or 500 or 1000 people who should say yes, but for some reason aren't going to say yes. Who must say yes to save theirselves, to improve themselves, but are resistant to saying yes. So we don't do it for the 400 some odd thousand that are going to say no. We do it for the 500 to 1000 that will say yes under the right circumstances because they need to hear certain things in order to know that this is a good purchasing decision for them. Right. So do the math. If we go from 7,500 people to 8,500 people, what's the, what's the profit increase on that launch? And the, the profit increase is $1.5 million by getting a conversion rate of going from 1.5% to going to 1.7%. 1.7% from 1.5% a point. Yeah. 2, 10 means 1.5 million to start with. Because once you acquire the customer, you know what the best sales letter in the world is? A really good product. We had the kids downstairs. I was going to say a really fucking good product, but I didn't, I didn't say it right. Right.

Yep.

So the real selling starts after somebody buys your product and has a transformative experience. And then they say, if I have another problem, I'm going to look for you first before I search elsewhere. And this is. So it's 1.5 million on the beginning and then it goes above and beyond that. Right. And with Iman, we did such a good job. So he paid me my admittedly high fee. But it was so good that he says, I'd like to give you a present. What kind of watch do you like? And I say, you know, it would be an even better present. I said, this is on my wife's vision board, you should get this watch. And I think the watch he gave as a gift was more than the fee that I charged. So this is real selling is when everybody takes advantage of you and you get the ultimate advantage. So I delivered value in excess of what I charged by far. So even what I charged was high, it wasn't enough. And now we're in a percentage deal and we're doing all that kind of stuff. But the challenge with this Joe is I'm breaking this down. And it's hard to relate to this because we're talking eight figures in 48 hours. We're talking industry leaders like people like Hermozi that I'm working with and everything. And people tend to check out and they say, well, I can't work with Jason or I can't approach Jason or I don't know how this applies in my business. And I am not very good at most things in life and I'm marginally good at a few things in life and then I'm exceptionally great at one or two or three things in life. So I can't get more than 2,000 views on a YouTube video. Just fucking can't do it right now. It's been two years, I'm trying to figure it out, don't know if I can pull it off or not. So I have a specialized skill and in most instances how it shows up in a day to day life isn't to the big impact that we're talking about. These are just the examples to the extent that it could be. But let's take that lesson like let's take the lesson with Iman. Number one way that you can increase the sales in any business is just to stay with your customers longer than anybody else will. So if we're on calls and the audience says, whoa, you won't give up on me. Everybody else has. So if I'm going to choose anybody to work with, I'm going to choose the person that stays with me longer than everybody else stays with me. Does this track, does this make sense? Okay, that doesn't matter how good your technique is. You could suck, but you won't give up on them. So you're demonstrating the sincerity in which you serve the market. And so when I started, how I really got good at this business is. And this was so stupid. I came from small town Iowa, right? If God, you could buy a mansion for like $25. You know, now that I'm in Los Angeles, you can't buy a broom closet. I can't afford one. I don't make enough money, right? And so back then when I was doing webinars in the early days, I'd be like, I got 100 people on this call and I'm jamming with them. I did the full pitch, the formal presentation. Hundreds of slides just smashed it out. They're not buying yet, but they keep asking me questions. And I do the math in my head. I'm selling like $200 products back then. I mean, big time Iowa boy, right? And I'm like, if I can just close one more person who should buy but isn't buying right now, then I'll make 200 bucks an hour. Oh my God, $200 an hour. I'm rich, right? Because I used to paid houses for 12 bucks an hour. So I'm like, can I spend 60 minutes? I have like 12 people in the chat that are asking questions, Can I just answer them and maybe I'll make a sale. I make two sales, I just made $400 an hour, right? I am beside myself. And there's still like eight people in the chat still chatting. I'm like, can I do another hour? So now it's two hours of just trying to do closes and trying to help people and I make another $200. I'm like, I'm rich. I don't have to get better, I just have to do this. Now imagine multiplying that for the next 12 months of spending four to six hours a week in mass selling multiple people, one to few, selling one to 10, one to 12, one to 15, one to 20, and you get your repsons. How good can you become in one year? So I thought I was just making money, but what I was really doing was understanding the heartbeat of the market. So write this down. You really deserve the riches when you fully understand the heartbeat of the market. So when I'm sitting there in Dubai, we go live at 9 o' clock at night, Dubai time. By the time I come on, it's about 10:30 because Iman does the formal presentation. Then I come on and do the informal presentation, which goes for either until I run out of energy or I run out of questions, whatever comes first, right? So we get done at 12:30, one in the morning. And we're just communicating with the audiences, and we're communicating with the audiences, and we're determined if they should buy and if so, what would make sense for them to buy or if they shouldn't buy. And right before we go live on day two, which is when we made the offer, I said, guys, we don't even know the heartbeat of the market yet. This V1 of this launch will determine the heartbeat. And then I say to them, once we know the heartbeat of the market and I don't say anything more, and we all laugh like evil laughs, like, ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha. We got billions of dollars because we could just take it over. But it's not like that. Right? But they understood the implication. Once you understand the heartbeat of the market, you can serve it to the greatest depth of degree ever possible. But I learned that by going nose to nose and toes to toes with audiences. Because here's a writer downer. This is like the biggest lesson I could ever teach you. If I could only teach you one thing, it would be this. People buy when they run out of reasons to say no, not when they decide to say yes. Now, caveats, because we have to say them in marketing rooms. They're already targeted. They're already qualified. They're the people that should say yes, but don't. So how many? Don't raise your hands because this will be embarrassing, but just raise them mentally. Right? How many things do you know you should be doing right now that would be good for you that you're not doing many of them, right? John, I don't have to sell you on doing them because you know you should be doing them. You're already sold on the concept of doing them, but so what's stopping you from making the change from not doing to doing? And on the flip side, how many things are you doing right now that you know you shouldn't do? I don't have to sell you on stopping them, but yet what stops you from stopping them? This is who we sell to. We sell to the people that know that they should do it, that they're desperate to do it, that doing it is the very best thing for them. And yet they still hesitate. Why? Why have answers. So we took the closes with Iman. Right. Sorry. I know it's supposed to be an interview, right?

It's fine.

No, no, Just stay there looking pretty.

Okay. The less I have to work, the happier.

So. So I have a team of these copy cubs that I've hired because when everybody's saying AI is Going to replace jobs. I'm creating more jobs and hiring more people. To your point earlier, when everybody says to do X, do the opposite. You'll probably end up better. So I have five copywriters right now that all we do is analyze. So we took the five days of closes with Iman. Five days, 10, 15 hours. And we've catalyzed hundreds and hundreds of closes now that we're using. And that because I do all this off the top of my head now, it's all intuitive, so it means that I don't remember even doing it. I'm reading it later. I'm like, whoa, I said that? That's fucking awesome. Excuse me, Right? That's pretty cool, right? So I have answers to that. So, like, why not hypothetically, like literally, why do you suppose people hesitate and say no when they should say yes? What's one of the reasons why, Mike?

They don't think they could do it.

They don't think they can do it. Right. They don't have the. They don't have the time to do it. They don't have the time to do it. They don't have the money to do it. Fear, fear, fear.

The thing with. If you remove the fear, they will buy.

So every single objection is only one objection. And it's fear. And it's more specifically fear of loss. And it's even more specifically fear of loss of some sort of self identity of who they are as an individual. Because if I try this and fail, I will feel like a failure. If I try this and it doesn't work good, I could be embarrassed in front of my loved ones. If I try this and it doesn't work out, I have to admit that I made a bad decision. Now, all of these aren't true. You know, thoughts aren't facts. But to everybody else, they all think that their facts are. Their thoughts are facts when it's not right.

Yeah.

So we have to help them unpack that.

No, totally. And hold that thought.

Because I want you to. I will hold that thought. That isn't a fact.

So you can hold that thought. You ever done any medicine journeys?

When I was 14, I did a lot of mushrooms and acid. Does that count?

No.

Okay.

That was for. That's like my friends that go to Burning man, get high in a camper and call a spiritual. So all right, so I did this. Were you here in the room when I did the interview with. This is one of the coolest moments because I did an interview with Robert Cialdini. Top influence. You know, Psychologists in the world. BJ Fogg, you know, runs the behavior lab at Stanford. Top habit guy, behavior guy in the world. Chris Voss, now the top negotiation expert in the world. And then we had a cameo from Gino Wickman, who was here. And you know, but it was, it was the three of us and we brought Gino up for a few minutes. So I did an interview with all them in the segment in there. It was about the ethical use of influence, negotiation and marketing.

Right.

Because that's one of the reasons me and Bob have had such a really great relationship where you share very common values on, you know, don't exploit people with, with the use of these, these are powers, these 100% true superpowers. So one of the things with everything you're saying as we're talking about fear and stuff, if someone is not a right fit client, like they are broke, they don't have any money, and you are, let's call like these boiler rooms that like, let's call your credit card company and extend the limits you can buy. I mean, you are, you are hurting people to do that. So to your point earlier, these, you're saying all this with the caveat that you qualify right fit and wrong fit people that you're trying to sell to because they're, you know, no matter. Like if I had Jason Fladlin pitching all of my. And we have done that before. We've actually. Me and you did, we did those calls. Yeah, yeah. It was fantastic. And we learned a lot. And so this is not for everyone. You gotta make a million bucks a year, I mean, from just an income. And then what are the other things that we do in Genius Network, we look at reputation, we look at a lot of stuff before we say, is this person a right fit client? We tell people to go to other groups when we know that what they're really after is not really what we're going to provide here. So I just wanted to throw that in there so that because I, I'm to the point of redundancy, I don't ever want. Because you are masterful at this. And I don't want someone to interpret like whenever, you know, you can sell anything to anybody because you really, even if you could, you shouldn't do it. Right.

So. Yes. Yeah, so that's a great point. And this is why I'm so prone to information. Because if you empower a consumer to make a better decision, then that's a great service. And if that better decision is to say no to you, fantastic. You should Love that. But inform consumers make better decisions. So let's do a better job of informing our consumers. Most of you have an I have a dream speech inside of you that your audience has never heard of. So how can you expect them to really, truly value what you can offer to them if you're not articulating it to them? And that's a problem, because they will go to a second rate or a third rate competitor who will do half as good a job, charge twice as much, and they will continue to suffer because you can't get out of your own way.

And then the smart people get so frustrated because they're like, why is that happening? Well, because you just haven't built that capability.

You are not willing to do the things that you consider beneath you or that you find uncomfortable. And those are the very things that would unlock more audiences for you to serve at a higher degree. And this is why I'm so passionate about this. Right. So if I was dealing with a client. So what was the objection that you gave earlier, Michael?

They don't think they could do it.

They don't think that they can do it. Right. So you should know several different ways in order to serve somebody with that question. Because the more perspectives you can give somebody to see a problem, the more insight they can get to that problem. So if they only look at it this way, they get one perspective. If they look at it this way and this way, they get another perspective. And you got to look at selling to your audience like picking a lock. Let's try this combination. If it doesn't work, let's try this combination. Qualified, of course, that they're the right fit and that buying from you is cheaper than not buying from you. Okay? So you should always make saying no more expensive than saying yes. And then everybody that is the right fit for you will say yes. And so. Sorry, what was it again, Michael? What was the. Was the objection? They don't think they could do it. They don't think they can do it. Okay, so there's a simple formula that I do for that is the number one thing you can do with somebody to serve them. The easiest thing I could teach you is to first just agree with them. Yeah, of course you can't do it. You're right. You're totally. You can't do it at all. And as you fail to do it, what is the first and second and third steps that you need to do? So you can fail in a way that will make you better tomorrow than you are today because you can't do it. You are totally right. It's impossible for you to do it. Knowing that it's impossible, what should we do about it? Right? And that's one of the ways in which you can help somebody get past something that they're stuck with right now.

Take away your first thing was like, take away from them.

And I mean. And so again, you got to remember, that's one of several different ways in which I can go to that specific issue. I could do it the other way, too. Sorry, again, what was the objection?

They don't think they could do it.

They don't think that they can do it. How much of a percentage of belief that you can actually do it would you need to move Forward? Is it 7%? Is it 3%? Is it 9.6728%? What would you need to know to be true? So you can think you could do enough of it to feel confident to say yes today. Right? And that's a different way of doing it, is you chunk it down, you take this big scary I can't do it, which is a binary term. It's either yes or no. And we turn it to in what situation would it be possible for you to do it? And we try to chunk it down to what percentage specifically, right? Howard Getzen's son. One day, Zach, right, we're at 100k dinner. I don't remember where we're at, but it was pretty cool. And he says, I got a productivity problem, Jason. And he says, I can't work past a certain point, and it's really bothering me. And I said, hey, Zach, I need to be you for a day. I need to fill in for you, and I want to do the best job possible. So how will I know when to be unproductive? That's the question that I asked him. And so this is a good close structure, right? This is when you assume what I call utility. To me, there is never any thing that is negative. There is, does it have use or does it not have use? And how can we make it have use? So I said, I'm using this as a skill. Teach me the skill of how to be unproductible. I want to learn. And what we learn is when the clock hits 4:01pm For Zach, he can't get past it. So I got him to agree with me that if he could just work to 4:02pm he would consider that productive. Now, does that make sense? No, it makes zero fucking sense in the world. Excuse my French. I lived in France earlier This year. Don't recommend it, by the way. Right. Long story, no time to get into. Doesn't make sense. But all objections are sticking points where people can't move past him and when they're stuck, they don't get any results. So our goal is to unstick them, to get them to move where they can't move forward right now. And again, caveat only to people that are qualified who should buy that not buying is more expensive than buying. And so these are techniques that we use. And I'll tell you what really crystallized this for me, what really made the impact on me, where this really became true. Most people will not tell you what's really holding them back until you've earned the right to know that information. And one of the best ways you can earn the right to know that information is to stay with them longer and show the sincerity in your heart that you want to help them. So I'm on a call one day with many, many, many people, hundreds of people. And there's a woman that. It's about three or four hours into this call, and she says, here's what's stopping me. I don't know if I should do this or not. And she says, I was in a abusive relationship and I got out of it. And then I went to these women's homes and my ex husband followed me around and always found me. And he would terrorize me and he would hurt me and he would beat me, and I was broken. And I've just. It's been nine months since I finally gotten free from him, and I'm just feeling like I can stand on my own two feet again. Would it be irresponsible of me now that I'm just getting back on my feet to take on this new challenge? It was a business thing, right? Should I be starting a business right now? And my answer isn't yes or no to that. My answer is I got to find out more facts first. And so I asked some questions for her, and what she really just needed is somebody in her corner because she hadn't had that before. That was the game changer for her. And of course, we can provide that because the real selling happens after the product is purchased. That's where the real selling occurs, is in the fulfillment that's more important. But mostly you spend so much time on what's in the package and not enough time on the gift wrap. So people are like, yeah, that's not that good.

Okay. So, yeah, this reminds me of. Remember the call we had with the Individual that had brain cancer.

I told this story the other day to my client. Yeah. And Joe did the very best thing he could. And I was so proud of him in that moment. So Joe and I are on the call selling people on Genius 10,000 pop. Get in there. Right. Fun. Really fun.

Let me context. So this is the annual event. This is probably what, five years ago maybe. And I had taken the very first Gary Halbert newsletter where there was this criteria and I was like, let's create a criteria. Let's send a letter out to everyone and invite them onto a. And I'd never done anything like this before where I actually get on and I hired Jason, you know, basically for moral support because I think I was doing most of the talking in those calls. But it was. But he's masterful. So I was like, let's design this selling to the affluent. Because there's all these books written about how to sell to the affluent and everything, but they're mostly written by people that don't sell to the affluent. And I'm like, my clients are affluent. Right. If there's like, let's actually do some selling and we'll record it and we'll document these conversations. What we say and we don't say. And so we start booking these calls where they can schedule a 30 minute call and talk to me and Jason and we're telling them we're going to see if you're a right fit for Genius Network and you're going to have an opportunity to talk with us. And so it is a sales call and we're telling the people in advance. This is being recorded. Right. So they're agreeing to this. Right. So we're doing these calls and we are literally closing almost every one of them because of the pre suasion. It's what we did in advance that actually set the stage. And then I'll turn over to you. So this one guy. Yeah, he has.

And we could probably dig it up. Producer versus parasite. Eunice, that whole funnel and everything. And yeah, Joe and I were just closing the lights out. What I love about Joe is Joe can't get out of his own way, so he's still gotta be there. So he's like, you go on and close them. And then I sat back and you did all the closing. I got every client. Right. It's the same thing I do. Right. You send me out to do your work and then I do your work, you do my work. So how it nets out positive, Right?

Yeah.

So we get on the call with this guy. And I thought I was going to have to step in and do it. And Joe's like one of the few people in the world that understood this because he understands it at an intuitive level now because service is in his heart. So technique is not required when service is in the heart. We use technique until we get to service in the heart. And the guy says, I've just been diagnosed was brain cancer and I haven't been given much longer to live. And so we're having the sales call with this guy and we're walking him through and we're just talking what it's like. And most of the time we just spent on just dealing with this big issue of him having this and just being there for him and feeling empathetic towards him and seeing whatever can we do to support him. And then after this conversation, which had zero selling 27 minutes of just be like, this is tough. This is a tough conversation. Right. Really connecting with them. We get ready to wrap up. And Joe says, well, with all that said, would you still like to come to the annual event? Which is the perfect question you can say to somebody in that situation.

Let me with the caveat. I said, what turned it is. I immediately said, well, you can't come to this event. I mean, like. And I was sincere. I was like, I can't, you know, I'm not going to sit here and try to sell you this event. And he. So we just talked to him.

Yeah.

And he was like, he so badly wanted to come to this thing. I mean, he was like. And I'm like thinking, oh, I can't have this guy come to the. Go and spend the time. But in lieu of what he said, you know, that's what. Yeah.

So like at the end. And the guy said, and I've thought about this call hundreds of times because he needed to enroll in a future of optimism. He needed to enroll in something that he could have purpose with for whatever remainder of his life occurred. And if we didn't grant him the opportunity to say yes, we would have. We would have deprived that from him. And so he.

And he came to the event and at the very end, he got up to the mic and he was just so stoked. He's like, I'm so happy that you, you know, some of you were there. And it was like, it was powerful.

And he became a 25k member. And unfortunately, he didn't make it for the full year. He passed away.

Yeah.

As we all will one day. Spoiler alert. Right?

He wanted the community though, and it really, you know, there's that, that definition of selling from Dan I, Dan Sullivan, I asked him years ago, I said, dan, what's your, you know, favorite? How would you define selling? And he's like, and it's become my favorite definition. 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. So if you get someone intellectually engaged in a future result and then get them to emotionally commit, if it's not good for them, you're not using selling in a caring, ethical way. But if it is good for them, as long as it's legal, moral and ethical, do what you need to do in order to get them to the bigger future that is good for them and they want to go for it. So from that context, he wanted to be there and it was, he needed.

That, he needed that. And I remember this from many years ago where I learned this close in an old Zig Ziglar book, Secrets of Closing the Sales. And there was this example that he gives of this guy sits down and he was selling like fire alarms, I think it was. And he says, you know, he starts a sales presentation and the guy says, well, I don't know if you know about me, but you know, this terrible thing happened to me and this terrible thing happened to me. And then when I was getting on my feet again, my car rolled over and it wrecked and I'm wiped out, like financially and physically, I'm in pain and I've had all these surgeries. And he goes on and on and on for 45 minutes. And then the sales guy says to him, after he's all said and done, he goes, okay, and would you like to have your house burned out on top of that? And the guy says, you make a good point. And he signs up and he gets the fire alarm, right? So the real lesson for that is don't tell your customers how to spend their money. Who are you to tell your audience what they should and shouldn't do and what they should and shouldn't value and how they should and shouldn't spend their money? Now, most people do it the opposite. You assume that people shouldn't invest in things that they want to invest in, and then you don't allow them to invest with you. And they go to second rate people. They go to people that aren't as good as you. And it just frustrates me so much. The best customers I have ever got are the ones that have been the most resistant Initially to the change. And the reason the resistance is there is because. What's the old quote? We fear not. It's the Marianne Williamson quote.

The one.

Yeah, it's. It's not. We don't fear our inadequacies, we fear our. Yeah, we fear our full potential more than we fear our weaknesses. And so this is so often the case with selling to the best clients, right? So if you can help that person that nobody else can help, you will win a larger book of business than you could ever think possible. So I'm selling 22 year old kids on YouTube live. I could do better selling in a crack house. Okay, Right. The conditions would be more favorable. So we have 54,000 people on this YouTube live and they're younger kids memeing and all that kind of stuff. And it's not going very good because Iman, the script that we had for day one, which I didn't have a chance because they brought me in at the end to really work the magic that I could try to work and the pacing wasn't quite right and it went a little bit long and you know, people were getting agitated and they're like, get to the point, get to the point, get to the point. And then they bring me on to face the unruly mob of 54,000 mostly young kids, right? And I'm supposed to sell them. And I, and I, this is day one. I don't have a product to sell, I just have an idea to sell. And I said to the group of kids, I say, there was a Stanford experiment that was done many years ago. It was a marshmallow experiment. You've probably heard of it, right? Put a marshmallow in front of a kid and says if you eat it right now, that's all you get. Wait 15 minutes, you get two. And then they measured the kids and the ones that ate the marshmallow right away and they measured the ones that didn't. And they measured them all through life. And what they found many years later is the kids that could delay gratification for a short period of time were much more successful than the ones who could not. And then I said, they wondered if they could teach it. So they went to the kids that couldn't delay gratification. They taught them how to delay gratification. They turns out they were just as successful in life as the kids that can naturally delay gratification. This is the first thing that I say to the audience. This is pre suasion. We're setting them in the state of Mind to be most receptive to the message. The state in which you hear the message is more important than the message itself. Write that down. You put them in that state of mind to be the most receptive to hear the message they need to hear. This is what I say to the young audiences. Then I say, listen, I want to get to the end just as fast as anybody does, but if I skip to the last five minutes of my favorite movie the first time I watch it, would it still be my favorite movie or would it not be? Right? And if I get nine women pregnant, I don't get a baby in a month, right? I didn't say that one. Right. I didn't say that one. But then I asked the audience, see, this is state management, right? This is me just showing off at this point, right? I asked the audience, I say, you have to wonder how that serves you if you have that attitude. You have to wonder how that will show up in your life if this is the attitude that you take. And now this is what they do on YouTube. I didn't get this until I was live in front of an audience of a crazy bunch of people. They would put Ls in the chat if they didn't like it. One person would start with an L. And then a whole social media experiment of people, social proof to the max. I dropped that bomb on them and all the L's turned to W's, W's, W, Ws. And I'm like, all right, cool. Now I can actually get through to this audience. Okay, so here's what we did, because we didn't know what would happen. Our main broadcast platform was YouTube. And when a video drops in 24 hours, it reached half a million people if the algorithm plays nice. Now, we didn't know if a four and a half, five hour YouTube live video would suppress distribution in the algorithm. And this was a test. So we came up with the idea of my closes would be cut out of the YouTube replay. So it would only be an hour and 10 minutes of Iman's presentation, which was wonderful and it was masterful. And then all the closing that I was doing got cut out. And that was true for the five days we did. Five days of this, right? The amount of people who were there live that went to watch the recording on YouTube, and when they found they couldn't watch me close them for 15 hours worth of closes, the amount of anger that was created from that was greater than any anger I've ever seen from closing too hard or selling too much. They Were so disappointed that they couldn't watch me sell them again even after they bought. And that is the final lesson that I want to leave you with. This is what it looks like when it's done right. When it's done right. The selling experience is so transformative that the selling is as valuable as any other piece of content that you can put in front of your audience. So hopefully that inspires you and let me know how it works out for you.

So thank you. So what I want to say. So you've been in Genius on and off for how long?

2014.

2014. And when you first came here, you're already a very sharp marketer. You live, eat, and breathe this stuff. But you had a beard. You look kind of like a homeless vagrant.

Yeah.

And. And you were how much overweight?

I was about £240.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then you got a transformation. So you've leveraged. Like I said earlier, you're, you're, you, you've. You're one. From a financial standpoint, you've invested a lot, which I greatly appreciate, because this is, you know, this aspect of the business is not a nonprofit. So. So we've done many things together. We've gone many places together. There's young people downstairs. This is our very first Genius youth. It's great to have them hear the possibilities of what one can do when you have mastery over a particular skill. What advice would you recommend? Not only for people here, there's a handful of new people in Genius that are here this meeting. And for the young people downstairs, how do you get the most out of something like this?

You put yourself in a position. I just did this. So I brought five people on my team, and I said, I want you to go in the conditions that I was in when I got good, which meant I didn't have any money. Like, I had no expenses, no bills to pay. I was living with my dad when I started in a shitty little apartment in Muscatine, Iowa. And all I did was vow to be good at a skill. And I did whatever I took to get good at the skill because if I could acquire the skill, the money would follow. So put yourself in a condition where you can get the skill. So you want to go work for somebody that's doing these things, because the best way to learn is to be hands on in the pressure in the environment where all this stuff is happening and see how it works. So put yourself in a position to go, you know, spend as little and require as little as you possibly need. To live so you can invest as much time as you can in the environments that will accelerate those skills. And so if you're a young person, here's where you won't get hired if your character traits don't show up. We don't need you to be good at copywriting, we don't need you to be good at selling, we don't need you to be good at anything on social media. We don't need none of that shit. What we need is you to demonstrate your ability to show up. For you to have the right attitude and character attributes for me to say you won't be a waste of my time if I work with you and that stuff, anybody can learn. These are soft skills, right? If you run into a challenge, here's what most people do when they run into a challenge. They say I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do. When you run into a challenge, say I don't know what to do. Here are three things that I thought about that I could do. What are your advice? The people that get help the most are the ones that are willing to help themselves the most. So you have to have the right attitudes. The skills are easy to acquire, the attitude is what scarce. So think about what kind of character attributes would put me in a position that people have. Wisdom and experience would allow me to accelerate the learning curve. And you can learn in one year what I had to learn in 10 years. These clients I'm working with right now, the best clients I work with are 26, 27 year old kids who are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year because they started studying me when they were nine. When they were nine. That's more scary than exciting to me, right? Like if you got flatland in your brain when you were 8 years old, you're fucked. But, but they could stand on my shoulders and they could stand on other people's shoulders and connect them together. So being young is a significant advantage because I can't even learn a new thing anym without 27 attempts. And when you're young, your brain is so fertile and it's so spongy and you can learn so quickly and you know, we were in the changing of the guard, Joe. Like going offline to online is where I started. The technology was very difficult and social media was everything was invented after I started marketing online. So you have. I had a kid, Cole, call me. I know we got to wrap up. I had a kid cold. Call me one day. He's an 18 year old kid and he says to me, hey, Jason, I'm surprised you even answered. Which is a great way to open a cold call, by the way, because it totally changes the frame. And he was like, I'm a young kid. What should I do? And he goes, I work at a social media agency right now. It's my first job. And I'm like, his first job is working at a social media agency. When I was younger, there was no way you could apply to work at a social media agency, right? So I told the young man, I said, listen, I'm going to give you advice, and if you follow this advice and you prove to me that you have followed this advice, document it, send it back to me. If you do everything I'm about to tell you, then I will talk to you 30 days from now and we'll have another conversation, because nine times out of 10, they won't do it. And so I lay it out for him. So 30 days later, he comes back and he did everything that I asked him to do, which is my qualification process. Okay, good. He can take advice, he can listen. And so the kid comes back, and 30 days later, and so we have the conversation. I said, what did you learn in those 30 days? And then we post mortemit. And then from that, I give him specific advice related to him, and he goes back out. So if you're young, like, you are at the perfect intersection where the technology is mature enough that you can leverage it, because people like me are the pioneers that came home with the arrows in the back and the maps to point the trails out, right? And so you can leverage that. And you're young, so you are way more able to capture information and use it right away than I am. Or people that are geriatric, like Joe Polish over here, right? And so you just. But you lack wisdom. I'll tell you what the. What the youth lacks the most, Joe, is this, like. And this is the way that I look at it. I had these two beautiful German shepherds, and they were as big in my emotional healing as any other form of therapy that I ever did. I'd walk in the mountains of Southern California with these two dogs, love them to death. And when you have to make a decision of, when do you put a dog down? That's when you learn wisdom. When you make these incredibly difficult decisions that don't have right or wrong answers. They're just tough. And as a youth, you have less of those decisions that you've had to make, but you will make them one day. So guys like me and guys like Joe, we've had to make incredibly difficult decisions. And whether we made the right one or the wrong one, if we were smart, we took the wisdom from that decision into the rest of our lives. And so as a young person, you want to leverage our wisdom because you have more energy than we do. You have more opportunity now than we do. You have a future that you can mold much easier than we can do. I have three kids. I can't return them to the kids store anymore, right? Whether I want them or not, I got them. You have less restrictions than us older folks do. So take the advantage of that, combine it with the advantage of our wisdom and then you can get 10 years worth of knowledge in a single year.

That's awesome. Don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulish show. Subscribe today@thejopolishow.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit thejopolishow.com 34.