Lessons Learned From My Sabbatical: What Joe Polish Discovered After Being Away For A Year

I was having a lot of pain, and I was like, what the hell is going on? The moment I said, I'm taking a sabbatical, the pain went away. It literally went away. And I had it for nearly two years.

Coming to the stage in about 37 seconds. There's a guy that used to sell carpets, clean carpets, and he used to run around. He has all these wonderful sayings, and the one thing he has is a heart for you. The one thing he has is a heart for you. And he's missed you terribly. He's gone away to make himself better for you. And I told him backstage, I said, dude, you sold out. They're here for you. They love you. You're enough. You're enough. And with that, I want to say, coming to the stage at this time in 2022, fresh off his birthday, is none other than Joe Polish.

Thank you, ned. Thank you. Wow. Well, let's see. How do I do this? Such a weird thing. Just, you know, this time off and then coming back and seeing this and, you know, I would kiss you all on the mouth, but that'd be really weird. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Let me get my bearings straight for just three seconds. Okay, now I'm ready. Well, how do I. Let's see. Clicker. Let me start with this. So I want to share with you a little bit about the last year, but I figured I would offend a few of you first, so let's start with that. Okay, so in the documentary that. Where's Devon? Where's Devon Patel? Where's that goofball? Is he here somewhere? He's supposed to be sitting there. He's on. Oh, yeah. Go figure. So it's actually featured in the movie, the connected movie. It's on the shelf. It's this little thing, the Secret of Success. What's the secret? Pretend you've already achieved it, then offer to sell the secret to others. That's pretty much it, I think. That's so funny. All right, let's start with some memes, because it's a little bit of meme wars going on in the world right now, right? So let's try to summarize the last almost two years with some current events. You know, Neil Young, if you won't censor the guy I don't like, I won't let you listen to Keep On Rocking in the Free World. Fuck Neil Young. All right, crazy idea. Let's divide a country into half capitalist and half communists and check on it 70 years later. Yeah, See how that goes this one's funny. I see people driving alone in their car, wearing a mask and wonder if they lay alone in bed with a condom on. I know some of you have seen these because most of these I got from people in the room that texted them to me. Okay. I don't know if you saw the Sesame street thing on Twitter. And the endorsement of vaccines. And then Robert Malone, who invented the MRNA vaccine, Sesame street character Big Bird. Trusted expert, inventor of the mRNA, biologist Robert Malone, purveyor of misinformation. Yeah. Live an interesting time. Okay. This I just randomly threw in there. It's like a little post it note I put in the drawer of my girlfriend's. You know, where her clothes are, with a bunch of little Paw Patrol things. It had nothing to do with anything. I just thought we would throw it in there. Where's Cherie, by the way? Hey, sweetie. How you doing? Okay. So. All right. The Pfizer loyalty card. After eight boosters, you get a free pizza. Yeah. How to spot a parent that watches cnn. Okay, Einstein. Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. All right, well, and to also set you guys up for just how to think about it, how many of you actually have gotten Covid. Yeah, I have, too. I had it in September. It's fucking lovely, isn't it? If you don't die. I mean, it's tough. It's tough. However, I have some very smart people around me, so I got through it pretty quickly. But there's also. That's a whole nother issue. We'll get into that later. We're going to try to figure out what's the cause of all this. Is it the big tech companies? Is it the communist ccp, Communist Chinese Party? Is it all the globalist rich assholes that are spending trillions of dollars and destroying people's lives so they can make a few billion? Is it drug companies? Is it politics? What is it? I mean, there's a lot of players in this thing, but the bottom line is this one. If the virus found the time to become a new version of itself, so can you. We are here to. I don't know what the hell we're here for. I mean, is this a business for me? Is this like all my friends that we happen to extract money out of? Is it just like a connection network? Is it a mastermind group? What the hell is this genius network thing? So here's the thing I really take seriously that you all spent a lot of Tammy in order to get here. So I've been working on a new book that's coming out in August, most likely. I think the date we have, tentatively, is August 30th with Hay House called what's In It For Them? And we had the whole manuscript completed before I went on my sabbatical, and we were supposed to release it last year, but I said, there's no way I want to release a book in the year I'm taking the sabbatical. And then during the sabbatical, all the time I had to think. We redid the whole book, and it's called what's In It For Them? And one of the things that I talk about is 10 Tammy, even though that's not mentioned much in the book. And the final version that I have to completely edit, I have 10 days after this event ends to complete the book. So that'll be fun. But the Tammy is time, attention, money, effort, and energy. Time, attention, money, effort and energy. So you're all spending that in order to be here. Your time, your attention, your money, your effort, and your energy. And I work out at. I have, like, a couple of gym memberships, but one of them, they have on the. On the wall at all their gyms. It's a gym called Mountainside. It says, effort is your responsibility. Effort is your responsibility. So it's your responsibility to put forth some effort over the next couple of days to meet the people here that are awesome. Many of you are great friends. How many of you? This is the first time you've ever actually even seen me in person. First time you've been at Genius Hour. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I want to meet every one of you. And I know. Well, except for two. There's two here. I really don't want to be honest, but, no, I would like to meet all of you. And this is not just a seminar and an event. This is all the speakers, all the stuff we're doing, all my rambling up here, it's truly just an excuse to put a bunch of badasses together and to connect you with each other. Is Jason Flatland in the room? Where's he at? Oh, right there. Okay. By the light. It's hard to actually see. He's a very handsome fella. Some of you remember what Jason used to look like when he first joined. Like some vagrant just walked. I mean, overweight, like, disgruntled, you know, I mean, it was. It was. It was. It was bad. And then he started doing yoga and kind of cleaned up his act. But Jason is incredibly bright. You Just did. How big was your launch? You just did how much? 57 million. 57 million. He's going to give a talk, and he's going to share with you how the hell to do $57 million in a launch or how he did it, not how everyone could do it, because, frankly, that's a whole other issue. But he came up with the term assembling unicorns. And so that's what we try to do here, is to assemble unicorns. So if you are a farting unicorn, then. I just saw a meme that had a farting unicorn. I think Howard sent it to me. Yeah. How many of you realize what a demented human being Howard Getzen is? I mean, truly. Yeah. If he explains his childhood to you, it'll all make sense. Okay. It'll all make sense. Like, if every one of us explained our childhood to everyone, it all makes sense. Where's Dr. Don Wood? Is he in the room right here? You got to talk to this dude. If you don't know Don Wood, we actually met. We were both speaking at the Spartan World Championships in 2019. He helps people with trauma, and he has this great line where he says, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they are, why they do what it is they do. I love that term. It's great. So the thing is, though, you can actually change the atmospheric conditions of your life, and there's a lot you can do in this world. And it's been really hard. I realize that. Really hard. How many of you have lost someone that you love, has died in the last year or two? Yeah, a lot of you. And there's several of you in the room that lost wives, husbands, you know, parents. It's been pretty hardcore. So I'm not going to pretend that, you know, Kumbaya. There's a lot of difficult shit going on. So we're going to talk about all kinds of things during this event, and every speaker has been curated to deliver some really great conversations. But this is a connection network. That's what I want Genius Network to represent. So I was looking through some different slides, and this I actually shared in at the annual event in 2017. And it's a gaping void image. Where's Jason Corman at? Right back there. Okay. Smart guy. Kind of a commodious sort of individual, though. I mean, so very smart, though. So if you can deal with his abrasive personality, he's a really sweet man. He really is. Because the hardest shells hide the 10, and he's sitting there right next to Craig. Go figure, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Both those guys. Do not take a bubble bath with either one of them. It's really weird. Yeah. Yeah. I miss you too. It's great to have you. It's great. It's actually. So I'm looking at. You know, this is so weird. I just want to stop because my ADD brain wants to stop and say something. Each person that I see and I have, I have to kind of keep going and. Isn't that Hollowell in the room? Where's he at? Right there. Okay. You're gonna love Ned if you've never seen Ned. Ned is the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world. He's written more books on it than anyone. The guy's a genius. You're gonna love it. And I brought him here today to keep me under control to a degree. No, it's so great. Yeah. I've known Ned forever, and he's awesome, and I'm gonna do an interview with him. You're gonna leave here with a lot of capabilities. You're gonna learn a lot of cool stuff, and hopefully you unlearn a few few things too, because unlearning is, frankly more important than learning. All right, so, million dollar racehorse. What's this all about? Many of you have heard us talk about it. If you had a million dollar racehorse, and every time that horse ran a race and won, you'd make a million bucks, how would you treat the horse? You wouldn't shove fast food down its throat. You wouldn't sleep, deprive it. You wouldn't overwork it. You wouldn't over train it. You'd have the best trainers, the best nutrition, the best of everything. You would take care of that million dollar racehorse. So you are the million dollar racehorse. And I can babble and talk about this stuff all day long, but last year, you know, when I took the sabbatical the year before, what prompted it was I got a message on Instagram from a guy named Cole Schneider. And I've been friends with his father mark for over 20 years. Mark is actually the one that gave me the term elf. We're on a golf course playing golf. And he started talking. And this is a rare thing for me because like George Carlin would say, I think golf is a waste of real estate. So I hardly ever play golf. I thought one person would find that funny. Shit, man, you take a year off, you just kind of lose your game a little bit. I have to question my self esteem, which is already bad enough to Begin with, but let's take a drink here and ponder this for a minute. How would I have said that? The internal voice. It would have been more funny. You know, I think golf is a waste of real estate. Like, is it the tone? Is it, what the hell? Bat George Carlin says that people laugh their ass off. I don't. What the fuck is going on here? Okay, all right, back. All right, back to here. All right. It's not that funny. So Mark, we were playing golf and he said, elf, you know, do deals that are easy, lucrative, and fun. And Mark, a very interesting guy. Funny as hell, Crazy, wacky as hell, entrepreneur. I mean, you know, crazy, right? And I said, I love that term. I go, I'm gonna actually turn something. I'm gonna do something with that. Because most of the marketing that we do is designed to be robotic and automated so you don't have to rely on, you know, being a salesperson. You could have your marketing do it for you. That, you know. So I started thinking of ELF in terms of marketing. Easy, lucrative, and fun. And then we developed it into ELF versus half hard and annoying, lame and frustrating. And, you know, for years I talked about it with the first marketing group that I went to, which was carpet cleaners, because I was a former dead broke carpet cleaner, and I learned marketing so I could survive. And all of my carpet cleaners were using the term elf, and we were thinking of elf, and it was giving people a framework on how to think about the marketing that we were doing. And then for about eight years, I just quit talking about it. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. And then one day in Genius Network, I mentioned elf, and then it started picking up again, and I was like, wow, people love that. Because my whole Nightingale Conant program, which is for those of you old enough to remember Nightingale Conant, me and Timothy Poulson. I have to say Timothy now because somewhere along the way, Tim just decides to say he wants Timothy. I don't even know what that is about. So Timothy Paulson. But we did that program together, and it was the number one selling marketing program in Nightingale Conant. They still sell it on Audible and sold millions of dollars worth of that program. All on Elf. And then I started talking about it again and realizing, you know, elf doesn't. It doesn't just apply to marketing. It applies to people, it applies to deals. It applies to a lot of things. So now I put everything through the L filter. So Mark was the one that originally had shared that with me. And his son sends me a message saying, can I call you on WhatsApp? I'm like, yeah. And Mark, I just talked to him two days prior. I had recently introduced him to Paula Abdul, the singer. They were putting together what was going to be a really big deal on this thing that he was working on. And Cole calls me, says, yeah, we found my father in bed this morning, dead. And like, right at that moment, like, what? So Mark was 59 years old. He was worth about $300 million, and he died. And it popped into my head, take a sabbatical. And I didn't even know what that meant. And I was the last person that I would ever think, take a sabbatical. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to reevaluate looking at work because the pandemic had started for us. And when I say us, my company, my team, mostly United States, around March is when it really came in. And I had done a team meeting mid March after filling out an impact filter, thanks to Dan Sullivan and Babs and Strategic coach, a great thinking tool about how do we handle this thing? And so as soon as it started, since I spend almost daily on talking to one or several people that struggle with addiction. And I've been in my own recovery, which is, you know, for many, many years, and the world was getting really dark. And I had this sense that things are going to get really dark. And there's people trying to figure out, how do you run your business? Few people's businesses immediately, you know, a couple of members we had in travel, their businesses were just decimated. And thinking, you know, how do I think about work? How do I think about life? What the hell can I actually do? That would be a useful contribution, you know, what. What am I into? What am I not into? The serenity prayer, which I've said a million times, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And in my co dependent way, I get stuck on the wisdom to know the difference. How many of you think you can change a lot of things that you really. You try to, but it's hard, right? It's a difficult thing. And I Think we have the ability to change a lot of stuff, but the biggest thing we have, the ability, ability to change is ourselves and our perceptions and how we think about things and who we hang out with and where we spend our time, attention, money, effort and energy. And I wanted to really reevaluate work. So I've had this on my. On the wall at Genius network for a long time. Says, be willing to destroy anything in your life that isn't excellent. And there was a lot of stuff in my life that just simply wasn't excellent. I have a great life. I mean, there are people that deal with shit. They're going through stuff. What's happened the last couple years, I cannot even fathom. So please don't perceive anything as I make jokes, as I'm sarcastic, whatever that I'm bitching about, I will bitch. Because I went to the Dale Carnegie course years ago, and there was this one. The book is awesome, how to Win Friends and Influence People. But there's one chapter on don't criticize, Condemn, or Complain. And it's like, I love to criticize, condemn, complain. I mean, there's some people that. So much fun to make fun to talk shit about them, right? And so, you know, there's a lot of things in my life that. That were not excellent, but I do have an amazing, blessed life. So I started to say, like, well, you know, I'm talking about this stuff, but how much am I actually living it? And I think I do a pretty good job. I mean, that's the ego part of me that's trying to rationalize, you know, stuff. But I think I do a pretty good job. And I showed those of you how many of you were here in 2007 at the annual event, okay? So you probably remember this, okay, this is a letter in German, letterhead, written in German on letterhead at a hotel that Einstein was staying at. I think it was 1922. And he had literally written these two letters. And one of them, they sold it at an auction for $1.56 million million dollars for that letter. And it's because of what it said. And here's a little bit about it that's kind of hard to read, but those autograph notes in which Einstein offered his thoughts on how to live a happy and fulfilling life sold at a Jerusalem auction house Tuesday for a combined 1.8 million. Now, the first one sold for 240,000. That said, where there's a will, there's a way. And then the one that I just showed you, it sold for 1.56 million. And here's what it said. It says, a calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness. A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness. And I would always grapple with that saying, okay, I have enough money, and I do currently. Unless, you know, someone comes and takes it all or something, or I make some really stupid decisions, which I've made plenty of those in my life. I've pissed away way more money than I would ever want to admit, but I have. And, you know, there's a lot of things that can be done in the world, but is working. You know, I'm a guy that has spent most of my life where I will trade peace, peace of mind for productivity. I will suffer in order to get something done. I mean, working in the world of addiction recovery is not easy. It's. You know, and I actually pay to do that. I fund a lot of it, but it helps me with my own recovery, because there's this whole thing about the worst day sober is better than the best day. Not sober. Life is hard and difficult at times, and other times, it's beautiful. And I really. When I first read this, I was like, what a profound piece of wisdom. But how do I really think about it? I can have a calm and modest life and be happy, but who am I doing it for? And so one of the things I learned on sabbatical is that the pursuit of happiness is the cause of most unhappiness. If you chase happiness, it runs away. Have any of you remember, like, when you were first dating and you had someone that you were really into, you really liked them, and you were hoping to go out with them, and the more more you pursued them, the more they ran away? Anyone have that experience other than, like, everyone in the room? Yeah. Okay. Elko, my man, thank you for coming all the way from. Yeah. You're awesome. You're awesome. Elko is. You should be up here giving this talk right now about this topic. So here's the thing. Like, I had some PowerPoints, but as usual, I wait till the last minute to put them together, and I didn't do a good job to get them to my team. So I just have notes, paper notes. Yeah. I'm only doing this PowerPoint thing for those of you in the bad seats in the back that can barely see. No, don't we switch everyone around, though? There's no bad seats in there. I hope not. Yeah. I mean, these are the worst seats because they're closer to me. And God knows what variant I'm going to give everyone in the front row. All right, so here's the thing. So I'm going to. I highlighted, as you can see from my handwritten notes, some of the things that I want to share. So before I went on my sabbatical, I was in pain on the left side of my body, left shoulder. And I know a lot about physical pain. Most pain is not structural. It's psychological. It's caused by repressed emotions, predominantly anger and Rage. Dr. John Sarno did an amazing job writing about that. And. And I was in chronic pain almost my whole entire adult life until I met a guy named Steve Ozanich who wrote a very exhaustive book called the Great Pain Deception by Sarno based on Sarno's work, not by Sarno. And if you don't know who Dr. John Sarno is and you have any sort of physical pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, we have a modern pain epidemic. Most of it is caused by it's psychosomatic, it's stressful, it's anxiety. That's for much longer conversation than I have right now. Some of you have heard me talk about that. And I know there's at least 20 people in this room right now that were in constant chronic pain until I shared enough with them until they did their own research and that they're now out of pain. And so I was having a lot of pain. And I was like, what the hell is going on? The moment I said, I'm taking a sabbatical, the pain went away. It literally went away. And I had it for nearly two years because prior to taking the sabbatical, I had a breakup that was very difficult. Shawn Stevenson, my best friend, died. Several other friends died. Mark died. I had, you know, I had to deal with some IP theft, all kinds of things. It was a very, very psychologically difficult thing for me, the way that I was interpreting it, life, even though, again, I have a blessed life. And so when I announced I was taking a sabbatical, the pain went away. I was like, what the hell? This is the weirdest thing ever. And then about a month before I started my sabbatical here in this. The gym at this hotel, I was doing pull ups. And the right side of my body, I literally lost, like, the strength was half of what the left side was, and I was doing pull ups. Like, I'm like, what? On the other side of my body. Before I was getting geared up to start the sabbatical but it wasn't pain. It was just a weakness. I don't know if it was caused by TMS or what. It never came back. I literally. Underneath the lat in the upper part of the tricep and part of my. Right, the pec. The muscle atrophied and never turned back on. And it's something. I'm like, what? The body is so weird. And I just turned 54 years old, and so I'm like, part of me. Oh, is it age? You know, whatever. But I kept with it, and I started, you know. And where's Nick Sonnenberg at? Back here. Only useful thing Nick has ever done in my life for me. Is he. No kidding. Just kidding. He's done three useful things. So Nick. I'll just take this off. So Nick is a very flawed human being, and we have to. But let's put this jacket over here to the side. Well, thank you, Mr. Esprey. Yeah. Biohacker, doorman. Whatever you put. I like the hair. You're looking kind of. Not too much like Neil Young, though. That's like, not. Go f. You got to read the shit that Dave's been writing on Instagram. It's so good. It's so good. How many of you follow Dave on Instagram? It's so fantastic. Yeah. So fantastic. The people that are on the other side are like, fuck, I hate that guy. Yeah. So, all right, so Nick Sonnenberg calls me up. He's like, I'm in town. I'm hanging out with one of my clients. And by the way, where's Chris Voss? Oh, he should be there. Okay. Okay. That's tomorrow. Okay. Okay.

All right.

I was going to say something, but that's good. So Nick says, hey, I'm in town. I've got one of my clients I'm doing some consulting with at her plastic surgery clinic. And he said, would you like to go to dinner with us and meet up? And it's the middle of a sabbatical, and if you can remember, back in November. Well, different parts. In different parts of the world. But it's really hard to go to restaurants. Everyone's wearing masks. A lot of places are closed. And I'm like, sure, yeah. And he goes, well, do you have any suggestions on where to eat? And I'm like, okay, well. So he calls me up to see if I want to go to dinner, but then asks, where should we go to dinner? Which is fine. It's fine. And I'm like, why don't we just do it at My house, and I'll make food. And to make a long story short, he invites this wonderful woman by the name of Dr. Cherie Ong, who's sitting right here. And she comes over with a couple of other people. Jessica Caro comes over and. And Nick. And we're hanging out, and we just became friends. I just really liked her brain. I liked her. She was really awesome. And no thought from either one of us that we would ever, like, start a relationship intimately. That's where people have sex and do weird things. But anyway, her parents are here with her. I just had to say that because I'm trying to. You got to get people used to me. I'm like, weird as hell. You got to be slow about it. It's just a different form of foreplay. But anyway, so we just have become friends. And we'd gone to lunch, gone to dinner a couple times. And then we have this wacky friend named Cindy who wrote a book called Everything. Well, she did all the marketing for Everything Men Know about Women. Have you ever seen that book? She became a multimillionaire with a book called Everything Men Know about Women. And the whole book is blank. Blank. It's just the title. So anyone here saying, I have difficulty selling my shit. I paid $10,000 to come to this event, or I'm in the hunt. You want to mark headlines. Headlines, you know, and so the book is blank. I mean, there's authors that spend their whole life trying to write a book, and they never do anything with it. She becomes a millionaire with a blank book. It's just hysterical, you know? I mean, you could do it with, like, wit and wisdom of Joe Biden. I mean, there's a million different strategies, you know, ethical guidelines of the, you know, drug companies. I mean, there's just so many things that you can. You can do with this, you know, there's so many headlines in my head right now. I'm just trying to look at the clock and realize, oh, they got a little bit to talk. So anyway, Nick introduces me to Cherie. We hang out. And then Cindy, she comes to me and says, you know, why are you not dating her? And I said, well, there's a. This other woman I'm actually interested in, but she's in another country and that sort of. That sort of thing. And. And she's like, well, she's amazing. She's awesome. She's got a great heart. You guys really should be. I'm like, I'm not. She's just a friend. And she's like, no, really, she's. And so she plants a seed and then unbeknownst to me, she's saying the same shit to Sheree in the corner, like at a different, you know, like 10 minutes later or whatever. And then the very last interview for I love marketing. I happen to have Amy Chan. Where's Amy? I always say Amy Chan. Amy Chan. Where's Amy? Okay, sorry. Because of the light, she's amazing. She wrote a book called Breakup Boot Camp. And I'm going to be doing an interview with her and Annie Lala on love relationships. Because what we do is we sell people what they want and we do our best to give them what they need. Right? That's what we do here. So you bedazzle people with marketing and how to make money and how to build whatever your client base is or whatever you're trying to do. And then we smuggle in all of these things related to health and fitness and being a good human being and all that other sort of stuff, and then put you together with what I hope is to be the most non narcissistic entrepreneurial group in the genre of marketing that you could find. Because marketers are brilliant, brilliant geniuses, the ones that really know their shit and have studied persuasion. But they are some of the biggest con artists on the planet. I mean, how many of you have noticed that, right? It's like really great. They can sell anything, but they will sell their mother. They will do whatever they, you know, for money. So part of it is we want to teach you marketing and stuff, but it's this other stuff that is so much more important. And how many of you were single throughout the sabbatical? I mean. Oh, yeah, that still makes sense. I could still try to make that work. How many during my. No, how many of you were single during the pandemic? Or they're still single. Yeah, I mean, it's hard, it's lonely and you know, man, so love relationships. So I did this interview with Amy and me and Cherie had just started dabbling with dating. And Amy makes this comment on this interview, she's like, you know, try someone, you know, try going out with someone that you've not gone before, someone that's younger, someone that's older, someone has a different personality than you. If you, you know, something along those lines. And she said it way more eloquently than I'm saying right now. And when yet when I interview Amy and Annie, I think you'll agree there, you're going to get so much out of it. And it planted the seed in my head saying, okay, I'm going on a sabbatical. I've met this incredible person. You know, I'm already a little jaded from, you know, past things that have happened in. In my. In my life. And many of you have met some of my past partners. Right. And I tend to try to not burn bridges and be friends with people. And also look at, you know, how. How do I do relationships and stuff. And so Nick is responsible for the introduction. So thank you very much for that, Nick. Now, if this thing blows up and she, you know, that's a whole nother thing. No, but. And by the way, here's the best thing about. Well, there's many beautiful things about Cherie, but one of the best things from a public standpoint is that Cherie is the top vaginal plastic surgeon in Arizona. And I can now talk about vaginas in some way, segue them into every conversation. It somehow becomes acceptable. It is unbelievable. I can just get away with even more stuff that I try to already because I'm sort of an inappropriate person to fit. Anyone hasn't noticed that. Right. Okay. But she's loving and incredible and awesome. And so it's been an incredible journey. We started the year of my sabbatical on January 3rd. We went to Florida and we spent seven days meditating for between four to seven hours a day with Joe Dispenza. And that was really cool. And then went to Hawaii after that. And I didn't do much traveling. This was not an external journey. It was more of an internal one. And so the lessons. I'm just going to go through some lessons real quickly, and then I'm going to show you a couple pictures, and then we're going to have way better speakers and presenters than me for the next two and a half days. And you're going to love it. So here's the ones I highlighted. All right, so the people that wanted to. So here's some aha's and insights I got. The people that want to dispense the most advice on how to do sabbaticals are actually the people that have never truly taken one. I cannot tell you how many people are trying to tell me how to do a sabbatical. And you need to do. Have you ever taken a sabbatical? No. Shut the fuck up. I listen because, you know, those that can't teach. I mean, there's a lot of good people that teach stuff that never do it. I mean, there'd be no books in the world if that wasn't the case. All right, so. And by the way, I've said this before, you've heard me say it. Every person that writes a book is, is a speaker, puts themselves out there publicly in a lot of ways. They want validation. They want the world to like them. They want people to like their ideas. Most of them have low self esteem, low self worth, including myself. Not all. Not all. I actually think Dan Sullivan as an example has an incredibly high self worth. Yeah, I tried to over the years see if I can get into that sensitive part of Dan. And he seems to be a pretty confident man. But we'll see. There's always some area. There's always Elisa, Mary. So what was so valuable in the sabbatical is the realization that I don't need to plan anything, I don't need to do anything. And I had this, you know, this energy that needed to go somewhere and it was really uncomfortable and really uncomfortable. But David Bach, were any of you at the, the presentation he gave many years ago where he talked about taking a one year sabbatical? Okay. And it's still on Genius Network. You can find it on YouTube. And it's great. And I had really good conversations with David, with Richard Rossi, with Dan Sullivan, with Ben Hardy, with a variety of different people that were really helpful to help me think through. You know, Ben even helped me. You know, he interviewed me, we did some interviews and I really went into the thing wanting to reevaluate work. So here's some of the things I learned. Humor heals thinking. Time works. We need to give ourselves more of it. I learned a lot about cryptocurrency and blockchain, and I am still a total, you know, infant in my knowledge of it. So crypto, blockchain, NFTs, all very fascinating, very confusing, and will make some people very rich and some people will totally lose their ass and they are changing the world and it may be smart to pay attention to them. Try to understand things that are new before you say they are good or bad. Because in a state of ignorance, it's easy to make judgments. So yeah, you know, I got a few NFTs and stuff. I'll show you a couple of my cryptopunks if we have time. If not, I'll do it later. Here's some other things that I discovered and learned and some insights. We're in the midst of evil. They, in quotes are not doing this for your safety. Recovery work from a life of chaos prepares you for chaos and uncertainty. It doesn't provide all the answers, but it helps. And by the way, I'm going to put all these into a more laid out way if this is useful for anyone. And I'll send them to everyone. You don't really know what you got until it's gone. You also don't know all the bullshit you put up with until you step away from it for a while. We're in the middle of a world war unlike any that has ever happened on planet Earth. It's. It's a physical, cyber and psychic war. And the weapons are truly different because war is organized murder. And you are blind if you're not aware of all the organized murder going on in the world right now. Drug dealers and pimps are truly running the world. They are and utilize as you know, quote, they credit Stalin with this. The useful idiots that Stalin referred to as the media. This includes almost all media. The drugs that kill people are legal and the drugs that can save people's lives are illegal or becoming illegal. We don't need a war on drugs. We need a drug against war. There are less givers in the world than what I once thought. But a lot of true warriors people truly are under a mass hypnosis formation. Some of the people that are considered conspiracy theory people were the early adopters that actually saw much of the truth through the process, propaganda before most other people have. They were insulted, attacked, called crazy, deplatformed, canceled, sometimes lost their jobs, their freedoms, their livelihoods, and sometimes their lives. Life's easy when you live it the hard way and hard if you live it the easy way. By my friend Dave Kekich, who died a few months ago. Some of you were good friends with Dave and that was such a loss and he's such an amazing guy, but he wrote Kekich credos. It's easy to lie to yourself and rationalize your behavior. There are no rules for sabbaticals. You do what you want. And it's easier to make personal decisions when you're not burdened with business decisions. And then for me, not being on social media was way healthier for my brain than reading inspirational quotes on social media. And yeah, so I've got. I still posted once on Instagram, like a video. But I don't have Facebook, I don't have LinkedIn, I don't have WhatsApp. I don't have any social media things. Twitter on my phone. And during the sabbatical, let's see, I started doing this at the very end with Cherie. That's our second ice bath. We Did a couple weeks ago. Where is Michael and Jesse? You guys in the room somewhere? They own a great sort of biohacking place called Optimize. And while you're in town, if you want, if you stay in town, go to Optimize. So Michael is a Wim Hof trainer and these guys are great. And so that's Cherie. She's. See that smile on her face the first time she did it, that was the look on her face. She was hating life and I hate the fricking cold. And during Thanksgiving week we listened to the entire Wim Hof book, the Wim Hof Method. And I'd been doing Wim Hof breathing a couple years ago, but I never did the cold stuff consistently because I hate the cold. And listening to that book and him talking about his wife when she jumped off an eight story building over 25, 30 years ago and committed suicide. And he was left with four kids and no time to grieve. And how he healed himself with a cold and then the weakness, he explained, flipped a switch. And one of the best things that I got out of the sabbatical was I started doing this. And so that video that I recorded for you, that was this morning. I spent nine minutes in my pool this morning. I was freaking shivering when I got out today. But it's actually colder when you go to Optimize the example. It's between 39 to like you know, 40, 42 to 44 degrees. And I've been doing it every day. And then a couple days ago I was there with G. Jim Quick. And there's Jesse on the left of Jim and, or yes, left of Jim and Michael between me and. Yeah, sandwiching a couple dudes, you know, and that's. And so we did saunas. We did, you know, all that stuff. So I'll just real quickly show you a couple other things. Divorce court in 2030. Does anyone get that? Does that make sense to anyone? Those are NFTs. Okay, so divorce Court, so. So here's one of my cryptopunks, the first one that I bought. You just buy JPEGs at the time at the price of Ethereum, I think I paid $407,000 for that. And here's one that looks just like me that I just acquired. How fucking awesome is that? For me none of you give a shit, but I actually think it's cool. But I've created, we're going to create a thing called Recovery Punks and we're going to use cryptopunks and we're going to create a whole community about that. But we're going to get to that. I'm going to bring NFT experts and in Genius Network over the next year, we got all kinds of cool stuff. Got Jordan Peterson coming to the 100k group in April. It's got all kinds of stuff. I'm going to try to get him to come to another Genius Network meeting. All kinds of things. This little thing above the. That's a picture from my office. My brain had too many tabs open. How many of you feel that way? So I'm going to interview lots of smart people here and let me just give real quick thing. Then I'm going to. We're going to take a short share with your partner, meet people sort of thing. But here's the different speakers that we have. So, Andre, what did you think of Andre Norman? He's amazing. There will be a point in time with you or someone you love is in crisis. You're a Genius Network member, call us. We will help you. That is worth more than any amount of investment on learning a marketing strategy, when you need that and when. And we will do our best if we can help. Okay, I'm going to do an interview with Jim Quick. He's going to talk for a little bit first. It's going to be on how to learn how to unlearn memory. Incredibly valuable. Whitney Jones. She's now third time Ms. Fitness Olympia. She won again. She's incredible. We're going to talk about health and mindset. Jason Fladlin, how every single person in the room can do a $57 million launch. If you have the brains of Jason Fladlin. Steve Sims, pretty much about getting what you want. Ned Hallowell, I'm going to interview him. But all these people, we're going to let you ask them questions. Not all of them. Some of them might just give a short talk. But there will be a lot of questions that I would like to come from the audience. This is not about me. I've never wanted Genius Network to be about me. I wanted it to be about the members and you in the group. So Ned's going to be great if you struggle with focus, worry. He's great. Amy and Annie on love, how to develop love relationships if you're single, if you're married or if you need to get out of one. Okay, so we're going to talk about both those. Garrett Gunderson. Where's that handsome fella? Yeah, I don't like Garrett. He's just a good looking guy, sort of unlike that. Just very handsome fella. Looks like Jesus with that hair. Yeah, no, but Garrett is. Have any of you seen Garrett do stand up? Okay, he's formerly known bestselling New York Best selling Times, author of Financial Stuff. But Garrett's got a little surprise for all of you. Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, we're gonna talk about going 10 times. And people ask, you know, is there clicks in genius network? Why are some of the people favored in a certain way? Because they're smarter and better than you are, that's why. Like, what, you fucking think the world is fair? I mean, look, just look at the pandemic. I mean, God, at least you're in America or someplace that you know, you're not in China or some shit Anyway. No, by the way, truly, if you want to be on stage, give a 10 minute talk at one of the events, do something awesome, be a giver. And that's what I want this to be. Just like, there's always people that are like, well, let me figure out what I can get out of this thing versus, like, you know, you know how to get the most out of this. Give the most you can. And so all these people are. There's incredible givers. And so, yeah, and we. I'm here to take a couple of narcissists that are in the room and turn them into hopefully that I think, because my friend Dr. Ramani Devoslav says you can't fix narcissism with therapy. You can only maybe manage it. But there is a thing called ayahuasca in ibogaine, an MDMA guided therapy. There are some deep plant medicine journeys that might get the demons out of you, but you, you know, we'll talk to Ned about that. All right, so here's. And I know I got a wrap in a moment here, so I'm just letting my team know backstage. Is Ken Wells in the room? Not yet. Ken will be here. I'm actually okay. Ken wrote a book called Dare to be Average. How many of you would like to dare to be average? I told him I think the title sucked, but he's like, nope, this is what it means. Ken. I met Ken 20 years ago when I was in a high profile group. I wasn't high profile, but there was a lot of people in there. And he's an incredible, incredible man. I don't know anyone that has met with more famous people, more billionaires, more successful people dealing with the dark side of their lives and helping them. And some of the most well known people on the planet. Some of the most financially successful people on the planet live in constant pain and suffering. And he's a guy that has helped so many. And he's not a guy that's out there trying to be an influencer, trying to, you know, be famous. He just really understood. He's one of the best therapists on the planet. And I was meeting with him. Well, we have breakfast and lunch occasionally. And I've known him for over two decades. And I said, you know, can I interview you about what you do? I think it would be so helpful to everyone here in the room to actually. Because how many of you here never have any stress in your life? It's just fucking Kumbaya Naza, especially over the pen. Right? So I'm going to talk to you. I think it's going to be amazing. Nick and Lyle, my partners in Genius X reinventing and reimagining education in virtual reality, they're going to share some stuff. Derek Sivers. Love Derek Sivers. Derek is amazing. And he's going to be the only one that I'll be doing an interview with virtually because he's in Australia and it's. The traffic travel would be difficult. Is Brett Wilson in the room? Brett? Not yet. Brett will be here. He's brilliant. Our billionaire friend from Canada. He was on Dragon Den. And many of you probably know Brett and then Steven Spencer. Stefan. Stefan. No, I know, I know, I know. I'm getting to that. I'm just messing with you because I did that for years. So Stefan's going to actually, he's going to share with you how to best utilize the Google. You know how Facebook changes their name to Meta? Well, Google is Signet. That's what they're going to change their name to. No, I'm kidding. Remember Terminator? Signet joke. Funny. Okay, no, he's going to actually teach you how to leverage Google. And then who else? Chris Voss. Chris is going to. We're going to have a conversation about something. You're just gonna love it. And then my buddy Baron Baptiste, who's one of the top yoga minds on the planet. Brilliant. Dude. How many of you do yoga? Okay. How many of you are scared of doing yoga? Okay. You're all going to be doing yoga later. Nah, only if you want. So we have a lot in store for you. What I'd like you to do at this moment, though, first off, are you feeling okay? Okay. Okay. If at any point in time you're having any difficulties or challenges, and I'm not trying to be Overly sensitive here. Let us know. And I want everyone here to have an incredible experience. I do want your Tammy to be well rewarded. There's some great people, some great minds here. I want you to get to know each other. There's some resources. You are here for capabilities. You're here for perspective. You're here for just, you know, getting out of your. Your normal world, even though no one's had a normal world. And I know it's. Again, it's been really difficult over the last couple of years. And I really want this to be two of the most. Two and a half of the most valuable days that you spent in a long time. And that is our goal, that is our commitment. Half of that is our responsibility of what I can bring and deliver to all of you. The other is what you put yourself into it. So how many extroverts do we have in the room? Okay. How many introverts do we have? You notice no one says whoa. Okay. Exactly. If you do that shit, if you ever speak and you say that, the extroverts go like this. The introverts are like this. It's really actually kind of funny if you pay attention to that. And I used to go to a lot of events by myself. How many of you are here by yourself? Okay. How many of you would be really offended if anyone came up and introduced themselves to you? Anyone? Yeah, well, don't go meet Craig. Yeah, yeah. He's too many people that want autographs. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, Those are restraining orders. Not. But. So no Craig. So he's actually a rapper, and he's actually a funny dude. So how many of you would love to meet somebody new? Okay. If you see someone kind of by themselves, like, depressed, look on their face, like if Michael Fishman is fucking moping around or something, just go. Just go give them a big kiss on the mouth. But wear a mask. Wear a mask. Okay? Be safe. All right. For your own safety. Anyway, on behalf of myself and truly my incredible team, I couldn't have done any of this stuff I. Without my team over the last year. So usually I will thank them at the end, but I want to thank them right now because in all of the members and everyone. And here's the greatest surprise. On Sunday, I'm doing a panel with every Genius Network member that hosted one of the Genius Network meetings. These people were incredible. And when we looked at the feedforward forms, 98% were eight nines and tens. So thank you all. Thank you all for being here. Thank you Eunice and my whole team. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.