Making Marketing Work: The I Love Marketing Live Virtual Q&A With Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, and Michael Fishman - I Love Marketing Episode #384

There's a lot of ways to make money. There's many fewer ways to make money and also be fulfilled in the process and to stay, to stay engaged and to find fulfillment in what you're doing. I think a lot of people get into professions and pursue them for, you know, their entire careers and most of their lives and then end up trying to find fulfillment in charity, which is a wonderful thing, and other activities and other pursuits. But, you know, I always feel like it's an opportunity missed and also a little bit sad when people work their whole life at something that makes them money or even rich, but doesn't bring fulfillment. So it's not right or wrong. But my preference and my suggestion would be find something that you know has a lucrative opportunity, but also something that you really care about that speaks to your soul, where you can be of service or help people in their lives or do whatever, you know, whatever it is that you can do that feels good to you and that represents an income opportunity for you and your family and anyone you might choose to share those rewards with.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Have your marketing campaigns gone stale? Listen in as Joe Polish, Dean Jackson.

And Michael Fishman, a trusted advisor of.

Brands on marketing, positioning and business growth, share how to make money, shortcut results, attract business and feel totally fulfilled in the process.

In this episode, Michael, Dean and Joe discuss what they do if they had to make money in a pinch, what marketing really is and how to stand.

Out in a saturated marketplace.

And.

And they'll reveal the number one realization that could change your life today.

If you'd like to join world renowned.

Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to genusnetwork.com first off, everyone, welcome to the I Love Marketing Meetup group with Dean Jackson and Michael Fishman, our special guest today. Michael, are you on?

I'm here, Joe. Hey ya.

How do you like being stuck downstairs in my office building? Kind of, you know, in the corner.

Oh, I actually like it quite a lot. I love it here.

Yeah, See what it says behind you. I want people to. In the chat as we're getting rolling, some people are going to join. Michael, if you could just start talking. So well, let's ping you if you can pin yourself. Let me see if I can pin you. All right, so you see Michael Jackson there? See, it says genius is business is, love is, and so we take that to the Genius Network annual event when we have been, you know, used to do them in person before this thing called a pandemic. And what I'd like you to do in the chat is I'd like you to write, genius is what to you. What does genius mean to you? Business is what to you. And love is. And see where it says love is your true nature. Love is life. Love is unconditional. And then genius is born of silence. Genius is creating future. Then business is energy express. So whatever you think, if you have any thoughts that come to mind while we're having people join us, we've got 78 people that are on with us right now. And that will continue to go up. Just go ahead and post whatever comes to mind. Let's take about a minute to do that. What does genius mean to you? And then I'll introduce Michael and Dean Jackson and the rest of the crew. Well, what's up, Dean?

Thought you'd never get here.

Yeah, look at that. Genius is constant and never ending. Business is personal and personal business. Genius is creative. Let's see. Love the goal. Geniuses connection to provide extreme value. Genius is unlimited possibility. Come on. If you just joined us, I want you to write genius is. See, I'm going to pin Michael Fishman again. You'll know who Michael is in a moment. Smart dude. See, behind him it says genius is. Business is. Love is. Pick one. Genius is. Business is. Love is. And go ahead and write. Write it in there and I'll read all these later. Oh, he's being brought water. You have better service in this place than I do. Hey, by the way, D. Jackson, Michael Fishman is actually downstairs.

Okay, well, there you go.

In the. In the Genius network, Piranha Marketing.

Together yet separated.

Yeah.

And the guest cell.

Yes, exactly. So those of you that have never been to my office, I have an 11,000 square foot building that is really cool and kind of empty these days. We have a few team members here right now. We have the lovely Giselle who's sitting over here off to the side.

You're trying to make me feel bad.

What's that?

Yeah, my building is only 2200. You want. You make.

Well, if we're trying to do a better than me. If we're trying to do a status play, that means my building's five times larger than yours.

So that's.

I guess that means I'm. If you. If you. You know someone's values based on the size of their building. I'm not even gonna go There, by the way, is Dr. Don Wood on? I just saw him. Don, are you on? Yes, I am. You know what, this is awesome. Great to see you. Yeah, I'm so glad I got on.

This is great.

Glad to be here. You know, real quickly, just tell. Let me give you a quick setup for Don. So I met Dr. Don Wood. He's a former professional hockey player and I met him at the Spartan World Championships last year. Our buddy Joe decenna is the founder of Spartan Races. Crazy guy. I don't know how many of you have ever done a Spartan race, but. But Don, I heard him speaking on a panel and I was one of the speakers there the next day. And so we started talking about addiction recovery. And so he has this great process where he takes people through a four hour process to help remove traumas, which he's actually. I've gone through his process. It's incredible. So any of you that are experiencing or have a loved one that's experiencing trauma, Don is one of the most amazing people on the planet for that. And even the guy who won the Spartan World Championships last year, he had actually gone through Don's process, what, like a week or two before the race? Don. About two days. And he ran on Sunday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm going to ask you real quickly just to give the elevator, like, explanation, elevator pitch of kind of what you do. The thing, though I've utilized this line so many times, I credit Don with it because I think that's the right thing to do, is when you hear an idea, you always cite the source. And, and he said if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, what they do makes sense. And that is really a profound statement. And so Don, tell people what you do and kind of how you do it. Well, yeah, just real quickly.

What I did is I started studying.

Trauma because of my wife experienced a traumatic childhood and my daughter experienced trauma. And so what I realized is they weren't treating it right.

They were teaching everybody to live and manage and cope with it.

And I was saying, this doesn't make any sense. So I studied trauma and I realized.

We can fix it. It's a glitch. It's the way our mind stores the.

Information and memory that keeps looping and.

Keeps the nervous system activated.

And so you keep feeling these emotions, fear, anger, whatever. And the emotion is a call for an action, but there's no action required. So why would you want to live with anxiety and all these different things.

When they're just calls for something that.

That can't be done.

And so in that four hour process.

I can get the mind to reset.

That data that's being stored in high definition.

The way we store trauma is very, very bright and intense.

That's what's activating your nervous system. When you eliminate the effects of that.

Trauma, your performance goes up. So that's what I did with, you know, Rob Killian.

That the Spartan.

As soon as I got that, his mind to be able to stay settled, he could stay present.

And it gives him more power.

He's able to be more efficient in.

The way he runs.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So, Don, you know, at some point, me and Don are going to do an interview just for genius recovery. So for all the work I do with addiction recovery, those of you that know me, that's my two worlds are helping entrepreneurs and helping people that struggle with addiction. Go ahead and put your website or any place that would be good for them to find out more about you, Don, in the chat, if you could, that'd be great.

All right, thanks.

Okay. And I'm going to announce. Let's see. Boy, there's so many friends here. I know.

It's great, isn't it, to see the. I always love to kind of scan the crew here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some really awesome people here. Hey, Deborah, thank you for sending me the makeup. You know, we actually put. Gisele actually put it on me earlier today just to tone me down. You know what? My shiny. I didn't shave my head, though. Here's the deal. I was at Michael Fishman's three day Consumer Health Summit, and it was morning, noon and night at the Sanctuary Resort, which is the nicest resort in Arizona. And the, you know, Bob Castellini, his family owns Sanctuary Resort. If you ever come to Arizona, stay at the Sanctuary. They have an incredible restaurant called Elements. And so Bo McMillan, who's the head chef there, has won Iron Chef and one Top Chef. He's actually coming over my house in about a week and a half with Mark Tarbell, my other buddy, who won Iron Chef. And I'm going to have two Iron Chef to Iron Chef chefs in my home doing a cooking show.

What would really complete the set is if we had the three Foot Chef to come with that.

I know. Well, first off, Mark Tarbell and Sean actually loved each other. So, you know, so we're gonna do a cooking show. And here's the thing. If you want, in the chat, if you could ask a winner of Top Chef and Iron Chef a question on cooking, what would it be put it in the chat. I'll ask Gina on my team to keep those questions for me. And I'm going to do a cooking show and I'm going to ask them like, how do you cook healthy? What if you don't have a lot of ingredients in the house? What if you don't have a lot of money? What are the essential things that somebody needs in their kitchen? So I want to. Most people are not going to have a world class chef prepare food for them, so what can you learn from them? So I want to do a cooking show that actually teaches people how to just be more effective with what they eat, how they cook, how they make it taste, all that sort of stuff. So working on some really cool stuff. What is the dish to win a man's heart, huh, Dean Jackson? I think you would know the answer to that. Okay, so let's see. Boy, I'm just looking at all these awesome people. This is so good. All right, let me give you some background on Michael then we have a special guest and we are going to do this one. I have got a whole list of questions but I'm going to kind of do a free, a free form thing. And I've known Michael for almost two decades. Brilliant, brilliant marketer. He's very polite, very, he's a nice guy, almost too much so I will give him shit throughout this entire thing if he's like too courteous. However, let me give you the quick bio of him and then we'll get into some of the questions and I think this could be a real game changer for those of you that are with us today. So Michael Fishman, he's been in Genius Network for eight years. He's an acknowledged leader in advising and connecting founders of direct to consumer health and wellness businesses. From his early 20s, Michael knew that helping companies who help people would be the focus of his professional life. Michael created the Consumer Health Summit founder community in 1994. So he's been doing this for a while as a private invitation only group for leading founders and personalities who operate customer centric businesses at scale with both purpose and prowess. He, he's been leading the community and curating the participants and faculty at their annual gathering ever since. Which I again just finished. This ended yesterday. Also for nearly 30 years, Michael's been a leading advisor on marketing positioning and accelerated business growth to a range of consumer health businesses helping to grow companies such as Rodell Bulletproof Athletic Greens Thrive market as well as a long list of leading personalities who serve large online customer communities. The psychology that enables compassionate communication and committed customer engagement has been his passion and the lens through which he sees business growth. As a speaker, he shares his origin story, clear messaging, customer care and work culture combined to take companies and personal brands from merely good to the admired best at what they do. So you've been an advisor, Michael, even to many companies that I have equity ownership in, such as True Rest, which is the amazing float podcast company to bulletproof to thrive market to that sort of stuff. So what didn't I say about you that people need to know so that when they're asking us questions about building and growing their business, their brand, whatever, they know who the hell you are other than what I just said.

Well, first of all, thanks and I'm so happy to be here. I haven't had much sleep, so I'm going to do my absolute best because I love you and I love this platform and you know, just the learning platform that it is for everybody is just wonderful. So I acknowledge you and Dean for doing this and putting your hearts into it. The thing I love the most is understanding how to understand the consumer experience, both in ways they can describe and ways they could never describe because it's happening in the part of their brain that's responsible and accountable for their survival, which is the amygdala, which for, you know, right now in 2020, most people's amygdala is sort of on fire. At least, you know, we have this consideration around Covid and some of the other crazy things that are happening in the world. So I think it's really important for every business to understand that and to message and communicate compassionately and even just under normal conditions, to understand, you know, in what way how can their business communicate compassionately? You wrote in one of your emails the other day, Joe, you know, I think about like to be proud of your marketing, to not do marketing that you're uncomfortable with, not do marketing that brings you any discomfort as a business owner that proves to be an irritant to your prospects and customers in any way. So, so language and the experience of marketing and the experience of courting prospects and bringing them through the one or more gateways into your business and having that be done in a way that's predictive, not just of a transaction but of a relationship is something I'm very passionate about.

Awesome.

Awesome. And by the way, let me acknowledge Dave Strean. So again, I always want to do a shout out for Dave and Charlie because they we're doing the Scottsdale I love Marketing meetup groups and then when the pandemic started, we went virtual, and now it's kind of morphed into these different sessions like we're doing today. It's great to have you here. So, Dean Jackson, let's start this thing off. I want in the next hour to be able to impart some things to everyone that is here listening. That will literally be what I like to refer to as the first domino, be it a strategy, a concept, a way to think about things, of framing. We've got some real smart people here with us, so, you know, let's just. Let's just see who's the brave person that just wants to blurt out and ask the first question. Unmute yourself and ask a question to me or Michael or Dean, and let's see if we can make you guys some money or give you some direction, confidence, and capability. So who would like to go?

Hi. Can I go?

Good day. I mention your first name? I'm trying to see who's. Who's talking.

Hey, there he is.

Can you see.

Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead. How are you, man? And by the way, I don't. When I don't mention your name, it's because I'm afraid of mispronouncing it. So if I'm like, hey, dude. Hey, what's up? You know, just know that I'm insecure. I don't know. I don't want to screw up someone's name. So how do you pronounce your name again? Because I've said it wrong.

Sorry, sorry. I'm cracking up. My name is.

Yes.

Man. All right. It sounds like you're in a whim storm, but go for it.

Okay.

Okay.

My phone is on.

Sorry about that.

No, sorry.

All right.

Can you. Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Go for it. Hey, I took off the.

Okay, so I've been following you guys.

For a while, as you can see.

What I want to know. I feel sometimes a little out of.

Place, because, first of all, I'm still my only business.

My business that I had was kind of tied to my 9 to 5, right? And since the COVID has been affecting us now, I'm not in the US I'm out here in the Caribbean. And then some of the things that you guys think, it's, like, so out.

There, so to speak.

It's like, you know, I can benefit from it because I'm here in the Caribbean. So I'm thinking, what is the best thing that I could take from you and from you guys that I could implement for Myself for my life and for the business that I hope to create. Because I'm still trying to figure out what business can I get into that could take me more internationally. In a sense, I could do it on a global aspect. If you hear any noise, I'm at the airport right now. So I'm on my phone as opposed to being on my laptop.

This is great.

This is great.

Okay, so you're at the airport on your laptop. So the question is, what can you take from us? That, because you're still trying to figure out how to go international kind of what to do, you're like, what do I do with my life sort of thing. Okay, that's right. So, well, here's. Okay, let me do this in a way, so it's useful for everyone, and let me break it down this way. And I'm going to ask Michael and Dean to speak to this. So going back to the, you know, title of our podcast, which is I love marketing. There's a million things I love talking about, obviously. But since we're on the subject of marketing, my assumption is that most people are here because they want to get better at marketing. So the question is, what the hell is marketing? And we've defined it in many different ways, but it is. It's what you say and who you say it to. It's the, you know, it's the offer, it's the list. And so part of that question, you know, Dan Sullivan has a really great line of, who do you want to be a hero to? So instead of me saying, hey, there's a lot of money in this business or this industry or you can sell things to people, the fact is, like, Robert Collier is a guy that wrote he's passed away, but he wrote a book on copywriting in the 50s called the Robert Collier Letterbook. And he says the job of a marketer as a copywriter is enter a conversation that's existing in the prospect's mind. So as marketers, we want to enter a conversation that's existing and in the minds of our prospects. Now, in the midst of COVID it's not too hard to figure out what's going on in a lot of people's minds. Fear, paranoia, scared, pivoting, all of these different sort of things. But in terms of, you know, me nor Dean, nor Michael or probably anyone could really tell anyone, here's the business you should be in, or here's what you should do. Unless we're purely looking at financial things, for some people, that's all they want. When it comes to connecting with who you want to be a hero to, what would you devote the time, the energy, the effort to learn and go through all the crap that someone has to go through in order to build and grow a business? If you really kind of say, I would devote the time, the money, the energy, the resources to figure out how to help create a result or value for this group of people, that's a good place to start. I mean, I think everyone, including myself, is always trying to figure out what we want to do when we grow up. In terms of marketing, though, so here's why I'd like to take this. So, Dean, what would you say is the purpose of marketing? What's the purpose of this? I love marketing, and I want to ask Michael Fishman the same question. Like, what is marketing? Like, what is the skill that we're always talking about, that we run conferences about, that we write books about, that we've done hundreds of episodes on, like, what is it? And how does somebody use it? And let's go to Eudine and then we'll go to Michael. Okay, you ready? Here we go. The.

Do you remember seeing Ray Dalio had a. He's the guy that wrote Principles, and he's a. He's a billionaire, billionaire hedge fund guy, but deep thinker about behavior and about how people en masse act and getting in front of those. Those predicting what those behaviors will be and making the economic bets or placements of capital that will get in front of those mass actions and affect wealth in a big way. And he explained. He had a video that explained the markets. What is the market and what was really impactful about it is that he talks about, let's say, the auto market. As we hear those words, we talk about the market. What the auto market is is literally the aggregated count of microtransactions between one person buying a car and one person selling a car. And the number of times that that happens is the aggregate of it is the auto market. So when they say that the auto market is $14 billion or whatever it is, I don't know, but that 14 billion is made up of, on average, individuals buying $10,000 cars, right? So marketing is really about identifying what are those. It's all the foundation of commerce is the exchange of goods and services for money. So marketing is about setting up and enabling that exchange, finding people who have a good or a service and helping them connect it to the people who have the money to take advantage of the desire for the need for the want to get this product or service and connecting them. That's really what marketing is. One person at a time. And when you figure it out, you've heard me talk about what I call the scale ready algorithm is that in order to make marketing work at scale, that's such a word of the times, right? We hear these things at scale. What ultimately has to work is that we have to figure out how to make it work in the micro. That's the thinking that leads to something like the nine word email. Because when I'm approaching a marketing problem or a marketing challenge or equation, I'm looking at it like people look at Sudoku puzzles, Sudoku or Sudoku, whatever it is, I'm looking at it like people do crosswords. I'm trying to figure out what's going on in the minds of these people. What are the inherent drivers. Michael talked about the, the survival brain, the amygdala, the things that are driving all of this. And it's our intel intellect, the cognitive layer of it that's just the conversation around it. But if you're, if it's against what the main drivers are, you're not going to be able to get very far. You have to align it with and get in front of the thing that people are going there. So the other factor about you, shua particularly is that you are in the Caribbean, you're somewhere other than America. But the, and even that, even that I said that you're somewhere other than America shows my selfish American centric view of the world because that's what we all do as we imagine us as the center of it. But the real thing is that there's no borders in Cloudlandia. There's no borders in Cloudlandia. We're here in Cloudlandia having this meetup group and instead of limiting the meetup to Phoenix where Dave's running a meetup group that surround gets people from Phoenix and I was running one in Winter Haven and we get 15 or 20 people to come to a meeting. We can have a meeting in Cloudlandia at a specific time zone at 2:30 in the afternoon which opens up the world from Hawaii to Bangkok for people to gather and get here at the time. So we've got a huge opportunity there. So there are lots of marketing opportunities. If you just take a look at what's there present for you, what are your capabilities, what are the things that you can do to provide, you know, serve people 100% in the cloud or uniquely, you've got an opportunity to meet people in the cloud but you Be that conduit through which people can experience your part of the world like that. One of the great things is, what island are you on?

Schwab.

Where.

Where do you live?

I'm in St. Lucia.

St. Lucia. Okay. I've been to St. Lucia. And so you didn't say hi to me. Well, I didn't know you then. I didn't know you back then. But the thing is, you've got the opportunity to appoint yourself to be Cloudlandia's ambassador to St. Lucia. That you can be the most famous person in Cloudlandia about St. Lucia. And you can. For everybody traveling to St. Lucia, you can be that it could be one of their dreams that they get to someday meet schwa. And you as an influencer within, you know that you're a personable guy. You see, you know your friend. It's just your smile is engaging. Right. And so you've got this opportunity to introduce the entire world to St. Lucia and be. And then introduce the businesses and the places and the people and the tours and the experiences and the restaurants and the things for everybody who's coming to St. Lucia or to find the artisans, the craftsmen, the creators, the producers of St Lucia and introduce them to the world that you can ship something that's made in St. Lucia anywhere in the world. Right. There's just so many opportunities like that. When you start thinking about, I'm not just limited to St. Lucia. What's the population of St. Lucia?

We approximately 170,000.

That's a great size. Yeah. So, I mean, but even that, even on its own, that's a great size of a platform there. You know, you can. There's no stopping you from being the most famous person in St. Lucia. And matter of fact, I could become the most famous person in St. Lucia by running Facebook ads just surrounding St. Lucia. And I could become the most famous marketing person in St. Lucia. Funny, right? Like you've got that opportunity. You just need to think about what are you passionate about? What is the thing that you can do for people? What is the good or service that you can provide that's going to be valuable to people so that they would exchange their money for it. That's market. Okay.

As you said, I think, as you mentioned, I think I'm just my personality. I think I'm personal. I. I'm good at customer service because that's what I do. I just love for people coming savior coming to St. Lucia to let them know what to expect and even to meet them here at the airport and take Them around and, you know, be a guide or something to that effect.

Just really show them. Yeah. Or have it, you know, that you're creating that opportunity. The concierge, you're their man in St. Lucia. I mean, that's such a. I don't think probably anybody's thinking like that in St. Lucia. And then you could almost create your counterpart in the other Caribbean islands and have a syndicate of ambassadors to Cloudlandia that you're associated with. All of these people. Then, you know, people who are coming to buy homes in St. Lucia or to retire in St. Lucia or to vacation in St. Lucia or hold retreats in St. Lucia or.

Well, hey, Dean. So hold on. Let's just assume that St. Lucia, everyone translates their target market with. Right. So that in case anyone's getting lost on, like, talking specifically about that and saying, how does this apply to me? Let's go to Michael. I want to hear Michael actually share on this particular topic. The one is discovering where to put your time and energy in marketing, for one, and then how to think about what you've been talking about here, Dean. Because I want. I want to. I want everyone to. I mean, I see the applicability everywhere, but I'm not sure everyone else does. And I want to make sure everyone that's listening kind of gets what you're talking about. So do you want to say anything else? Because I want. I do want to hear Michael's take on this.

I want to hear Michael's take, too.

Okay, so, Michael, now hit us with some funny shit. This better be good.

Well, there is a Chris Rock joke in my response, but it just took me a minute to get to it. So, first of all, to Schwa, who sounds and feels like a great gentleman, there's a lot. And this is. And don't forget, whoever's listening, this is for everybody. But I'm answering Schwab's question, but it's for you and the person in your seat, too. There's a lot of ways to make money. There's many fewer ways to make money and also be fulfilled in the process and to stay, to stay engaged and to find fulfillment in what you're doing. I think a lot of people get into professions and pursue them for, you know, their entire careers and most of their lives, and then end up trying to find fulfillment in charity, which is a wonderful thing, and other activities and other pursuits. But, you know, I always feel like it's an opportunity missed and also a little bit sad when people work their whole life at something that makes them money or even rich, but doesn't bring fulfillment. So it's not right or wrong. But my preference and my suggestion schwa would be find something that has a lucrative opportunity, but also something that you really care about, that speaks to your soul and that you really care about. So where you can be of service or help people in their lives or do whatever it is that you can do that makes it. That feels good to you, and that represents an income opportunity for you and your family and anyone you might choose to share those rewards with. With respect to marketing, for me, there. There's a. There's another aspect that's embedded in marketing that no one ever really talks about, is that it happens within economic requirements and the economic model, meaning you can acquire customers at an acceptable cost per new customer based on what you know, a customer is worth and what we call the lifetime value, how long they stay with your business and what they spend over the life of that relationship. So there's an economic model that needs to be framed and operated inside of. And then to Joe's point, there's the list, which is, you know, who are the community of people that are likely prospects, you know, Which when marketed to, there's enough response for the economic model and the cost per new customer to work. And then there is the language and the other aesthetic attributes of the marketing message that actually conduct the courtship, if you will, and secure the desired behavior, the provision of an email or the. Or the request of more information or in some cases, an actual transaction. So, you know, and I've never said it that way this morning, and marketing is. There's an infinite number of ways to define marketing, and Joe and Dean are genius at it. And in many respects they frame it differently every time I hear them do it. But that's the way I would say it this morning. And you know, the other pieces and the joke I promised you and I only know two jokes, and this is one of them. Chris Rock said, when you go on a first date, it's not you, it's your representative, right? Like, you bring the best possible you, but once you're in the relationship and further on down the line, you get. People get to see your warts and your sensitivities and the stuff that you didn't show the very first time. You know, my belief, and this is something that I've come to realize recently, is that the voice of the court, like right now, for most companies, the voice of the courtship is, let's call the marketing voice. And then luckily, hopefully, the desired behavior Provision of an email, request of an inquiry, or a transaction. There's the marketing voice, the courtship voice. The desired behavior happens, and then thereafter is the relationship voice. So the voice changed from courtship and marketing to relationship. And so most people consciously don't recognize a change in the voice, but somewhere in the brain, it's registering that you're now in a relationship with someone that you've never heard from before and never spoken to before. Because the fundamental nature of the voice, the message and a lot of the words and just the entire spirit of the message has changed. And so I believe that when the voice of courtship and the voice of the relationship are one in the same and there's continuity there, that people are saying yes to a relationship with a voice that actually is the voice that they'll hear after they say yes. And I think that leads to fewer refunds, fewer buyers remorse. However, buyer's remorse manifests, returns, refunds, shorter relationships. A congruent and continuous voice from courtship and on through relationship is the way to maximize the relationships with people that are saying yes to you.

Very good, Very good. You know, let me follow up with this because there's a lot of questions here. We could not possibly answer all of them. See, we'll go to Barry's first. Okay, Copying Ella's question above. So I guess this came from Ella, Joe and Michael. If you had to start all over again from scratch and you had six months to make it work, what would you focus on and why? That's an interesting one. So I'm going to use the if you had to start all over from scratch, assuming I had no money. Okay. Because, you know, depends on resources. I mean, to use Don woods line of, you know, the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life. So, you know, you still have your brain. You still have, you know, what you've learned. If I still had that, I would not immediately jump in. I would think I would. I would sit down and do a version of Keith Cunningham's Thinking time or a version of Dean Jackson's 50 minute focus finder. I would take every idea that's in my head and I would write it down. And that's, I think, one of the biggest dangers with social media and distraction. One of the things that screws me up is there's, you know, we're more connected electronically than ever before in human history, but we're more disconnected from people and the amount of just stuff. I mean, how many of you have. Oh, should we decide if we should be on this? I love marketing Meetup group Today, or should we watch this video? Or should we actually work on our business, or should we write a sales letter? Should we spend time with the family, the kids? Should we be online looking at dating apps? I mean, there's a million fricking different decisions that everyone makes. So part of it is, it's like Dave Keckich says, an hour of effective hard discipline, precise thinking can be worth a month of hard work. So what is the one hour of thinking that you could do that could be worth a month of hard work? So if I had to start over from scratch, I would sit and look at, okay, what's everything that I could do? Make a big list of it. And then, like, what's the possibility that this could become real? And I rate things. High possibility. What's the probability that I can do this? And then how much money is it worth and how long is it going to take? And so things that have a high possibility, high probability could make a lot of money and don't take a tremendous amount of time. Those are the things I would focus on first from a money standpoint. And then, of course, I filter everything through. Is it easy, lucrative, and fun? Is it aligned with my value system, that sort of thing? So there's no simple way to answer that question, because that's just how I would do it. If anyone. I'd love to hear what Michael would do. I'd love to hear what Dean would do in that situation. What I would focus on, though, is a conversation that we've had a lot here on. I love marketing, which is, you know, and Dean's the one that got me thinking about this. If there was some law passed that you could no longer charge for what you sell, and the only way that you could get paid is based on your ability to produce a result. What do you know how to do in your life that can produce a result for somebody? And if you just produce that result for them, they would pay you for it or would want to pay you for it, Because I don't think I'd have any difficulty ever. Like, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm not going to go work for somebody. I work for my clients. I work for my Genius network members, but I don't have a job. If I wanted to get a job, though, I could easily get a job just by identifying someone that has a problem in the area of addiction, in the area of, like, managing their lives, in the area of marketing, that I could just show up and work for them for free, just to produce a result and say, If I produce this result for you, will you pay me? And many people will. Not talking about the result I'm going to do, but literally going and creating the result. And that's what always strikes me as interesting is people go and put out resumes, they put out things. You can hire us and we're going to do this, this and this for you. What if you didn't just did that shit for them? What if you didn't try to get them to hire you to build their website? What if you actually built their website, not hire them to build up their social media? What if you just did it for them? You just started doing it and then you say, oh, by the way, I just drove like, you know, 5,000 followers to your Instagram page and here's what I did. Would you like to start paying me for this? And I can, you know, like a lot of people would say, absolutely. So those are just some ways that I think if I had to start over, I would. Now, if you don't even have to start over and you're in whatever business you're in, how do you take what I just said and just start doing that? You know, high possibility, high probability. How much time is it going to take? How much money is it going to make? Is it easy, lucrative and fun or is it hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? That's just the way that I look at it. So those are my thoughts, you know, like a 12 step group, treat everything here, take what you like and leave the rest. Michael, how would you respond to that?

Yeah, well, look, I appreciate the practicality of anybody's existing expenses and you know, the life they've built and the life and the people they need to support. You know, with that said, and I don't know who said this, and I'd be, I'd love to credit them if I did, but somebody said patience is the fastest way, you know, you know, building. I mean, look as Joe and Dean and also Jay Abraham, like three masterful guys who talk about un, unutilized assets, right? As Joe just pointed out, one asset is a skill, another asset is a list. Like with Dean's nine word email methodology, or talking about what Joe just said. If you have the ability to do something like your superpower that comes naturally to you, could be something that someone else is struggling with that they'd be happy to pay you for. So there are ways with integrity via the nine word email methodology, via teaching people to do things that you're great at that they're struggling with. There are some Ways with integrity to create income in the short term without being opportunistic or making choices in that process that you would later regret or could tarnish your reputation for trying to get income up to speed in a rush that puts you at risk for making decisions that you wouldn't have otherwise made and that you could regret later. And then look, with respect to patience is the fastest way. The other way is to get a job that hopefully covers that monthly nut or some significant portion of it, and then to build the venture of your dreams and to do it brick by brick the way you otherwise would if your resources were unlimited.

Yeah, by the way, that's a good point too. You know, some people who could you go work for to help finance the future that you're trying to lay down? And I'm more apt to just be absolutely honest with people. I mean, I've had a lot of people that have come work for me and I know when I'm a stepping stone for someone just wanting to learn a skill or make money until they can do their own thing. And I tend to, I will gravitate towards people that are just blatantly honest about it. If someone's trying to work for me, but, but they're just there long enough so they can take what they want. I mean, anyone that you do business with or work for, if they're decent people, I mean, you have to determine what decent person is. What a person who's utilizing you, not using you. I mean, at the end of the day, I always loved what Barry Seamus said. An employee is a behavior rental agreement. You are renting someone's behavior. And I will say that at Genius network meetings, I've said that quite a few times. And my whole team will be in the back and then, and in the moment it'll look like, oh, how does your team think about that? But then I'll say, but I'm a behavior rental agreement. I have to behave doing certain things. Curating a really powerful meeting with a group of amazing million dollar racehorses for three days, bringing awesome stuff. But they're renting my behavior. So Jordan Peterson has a great line about work. I mentioned this on a previous I love marketing meetup group where I, I watched a video with Jordan Peterson on it. And if you haven't followed Jordan Peterson, he wrote a book called 12 Rules for Life. He's a brilliant guy. He lives in Toronto and he says, you know, the reason they call it that it's work and you're getting compensated for it is because you have to pay people to do certain work. If you didn't have to be incentivized to get paid, would you do it? And there's a lot of things that I do do in my work that I would do even if I don't get paid. But there's a shit ton of grunt work that I have to do in my life. No matter how much some motivational speaker is going to be like, I never work a day in my life because I love what I do. That's the biggest crock of horseshit on the planet. They may love what it is they do, but there's certainly things that they have to deal with that they don't love as part of their work. And there are some exceptions where people that are amazing singers, amazing artists, they just happen to be in flow and they get paid a ton of money. I'm not saying that doesn't exist, but that's certainly not some fantasy that I want to like, tell people. Well, you know, you just need to find your passion and be so excited about it and you're never going to work another day in your life. You know, as long as I've been doing this stuff, I love my life, I love my business. I think it's awesome. And there's a lot of shit that if I wasn't incentivized for pay, I just flat out wouldn't do it. So. So that's just the reality of it. So the reason I bring that up is there are certain things certainly, who do you want to be a hero to? What would you die for? What matters to you? So much so that you're willing to do the difficult things in the midst of that business enterprise that are required in order to make it actually work. So, Dean, do you want to say anything to this? Yeah, I love it.

I mean, part of the thing, the. The frame of when people ask that kind of question is the presupposition is you don't have any money and you're in a hurry because you got six months to make it work. They always put that deadline on the thing we've all been talking about. Your capabilities that you have are an asset that you have. I'd take an assessment of what do you know how to do then? Who's the most valuable? You could contribute that capability to the, you know, to a business that has the highest opportunity with it. And I. The difference that it would take is approaching companies from what I call the receiving doc as opposed to the purchasing department. And I'd look at saying to the Things of. Rather than going to the purchasing department and trying to convince somebody to buy your service so that you can sometime in the future deliver some result to them in the receiving dock is just go right to the receiving doc around the back door and they're going to be welcomed with open arms. Because almost every business has excess capacity. They're still looking for new business and they're 100% willing to accept new business coming in. So for you to be able to go and create that for someone is a. Is an amazing thing. And that's kind of a. That's the approach I would take, is start looking for those opportunities. If I was really down on it, I'd pick one thing. Like, I mean, if I was young, had no. It was completely like broke and dropped into a new city kind of thing. With six months, I'd probably go to an independent hotel and arrange with them to get a room and board kind of thing to work on bringing in new business opportunities for the hotel on a Runway kind of thing. But it starts with your capabilities deployed in the. For the benefit of someone else and you getting paid out of the benefit that you're creating for them. You're creating the money for it to go. That's really. That's what Charles Koch, the Koch brothers, that was their model of building their whole business. When they took over the business from their father in the 60s, it was doing 23 million million and they grew it 5,000 fold to be the largest privately held company. One of the largest privately held companies, over $100 billion in value now by focusing on providing value for other businesses and participating in the outcome.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah.

So, you know, actually an exciting thing.

If people were actually forced into that position, they would be. It would be so much better for them because unfortunately most people are. They're hesitant to invest or put themselves. They're hesitant to, you know, take that approach with, with people.

Yeah, you know, let me, let me do this because there's so many comments here. This is where I get. I don't know why I've always put myself in the position of why I'm reading the questions and picking them. I think, Dean, that should be your job. But. All right. You know, let me mention this though. Joe Di Maria, who's been listening to our podcast for many years, he's now a genius network member. Awesome guy. I'd love to ask him because, you know, he's been in the position of, you know, not knowing anything about this marketing, having a job, figuring out what to do, trying to figure out how to start his business, going through all the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and stuff. And now he's, you know, created something awesome. And he's just a genuinely, you know, good guy. And I like how, you know, you never know how someone's going to use marketing. That's a challenge with this world. And Michael Fishman's fantastic at explaining, you know, the ethical use of marketing. And it's such a mixed bag because a lot of people, they, you know, they're opportunist and they, you know, they overhype stuff and things like that. But, you know, this is one of the. In the but is if you utilize this marketing in the best of ways. I have never learned a skill that's been more valuable and effective to me, not just for making money, but for pushing through what I'm doing. With addiction recovery, with connecting people. I mean, it's. It's just such a valuable skill to have. And a lot of people misinterpret. Oh, we're just trying to figure out how to teach you how to sell products or services. It goes way beyond that. Joe, could you impart any advice, based on what we've been talking about so far, of any recommendations for people on how to get the most out of. Not just the conversation today, but we've got a whole body of work. Like, I love marketing podcasts, which I think you've listened to most of them, that are totally free and available to everyone here. They don't even need to buy anything from us ever, if they don't want to. And I'd love to hear your thoughts if you could share.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So, first and foremost, I was very blessed to see kind of like this bomb of a bunch of people in the comments here that are like, my people that have shown up to your stuff. So, first of all, thank you guys for being here and for always showing up. Thank you to Michael Fishman for just being an awesome dude in general and just, like, always bringing incredible knowledge for you guys who are just coming here. I mean, my business started like a decade ago, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And the biggest thing that I was always worried about was I was trying to invent solutions instead of finding people that had already figured out the answer.

Right.

A lot of the time, like, you're searching around in the dark, trying to invent new things when you should just be swiping and deploying what's already working somewhere else. So when I found Joe's stuff or Dean's stuff. Like a decade ago, I went into shameless plagiarism mode, which is something that I was talking about with my people today. It is incredibly valuable to go into shameless plagiarism mode at the beginning rather than trying to be the architect of, you know, everything you're doing. Swiping and deploying is an incredibly valuable, viable method for building things when you're just getting off the ground. So for me, it was always about implementation. Now, there's a couple questions you can really ask yourself, and I talk to my own community about this all the time. Whenever you're trying to shortcut your path to implementation, the biggest thing you need to be remarking on or taking notes on is what is your ideal outcome. This is in sorts what we call a mastery goal. So I've talked to Joe about mastery goals just in developing programming for like genius recovery or if we were going to do something about, you know, creating program and how to be a better, more successful genius network member. Your mastery goal is always written from the point of view of your audience. So for you guys who are creating content, use the mastery goal as a creator. For you guys who are implementing, use it as a, you know, the subject. Your mastery goal as a creator is always written in the point of view of the people that are going to be digesting it. So it's always written as now I can blank because you taught me to blank. That means you as the creator, go into the mind of your prospect from the very beginning. Okay, so super valuable. Just a real quick headspace change. The other shift that you can do as a learner is to break that down for yourself. Because I learned how to do this amazing thing from Michael Fishman or because I listened to this episode of the I Love Marketing podcast, now I can blank. So what is important is what that now allows you to do. The biggest thing is, you know, we'll take our notes or we'll listen to a show or we'll go to a 10 minute talk at Genius or whatever that is, and we won't remember, like why we thought this talk was great. We'll have notes that are sporadic, that aren't detailed, that don't really have action around them. You know, we'll spend a few days hanging out with friends, we'll fly home, we'll go back, we'll look at our notebook. This treasure trove of gold that we thought we had won't make any damn sense. So the biggest thing in your notes when you listen to an I love marketing podcast. Always, always, always make sure you hit these points. Why is this important for me? So what's my ideal outcome? All right, do I need an accountability partner? Do I need an accountability partner? Is huge. Okay, who is going to do the work? Is it me? Is it the speaker's team? Am I going to reach out to them after this or am I going to reach out to a third party team? Is it someone on my own team? Always make that note. Okay. And the last thing is, what is your next or first best action to get this done? Okay, for me, maybe it's all recorded video on my phone and send it to the team just for accountability. Now if I know they're going to do it. If it's I want leverage. You know, Joe, we've seen like the bottom of. I think it's the elegant idea sheet where you could get leverage involved. If you take a picture of it, maybe that's what I'll do. My next best action is to take a picture and send it to the Genius Network leverage email. So shortcutting your implementation is more about accountability and giving yourself the outs so that you are not the repository for like these amazing genius talks and having to listen to like hours and hours of amazing stuff and putting it all on your shoulders to remember everything. It is a total pain to do that you will shortcut your ability to implement. And my entire career and my success has totally come off the back of these two guys, Joe and Dean, who are just absolute geniuses. If you guys do nothing else, start the show over, listen to the first like 10 episodes and just do everything that they say, you know, like eight profit activators can be your bible. I still have my original 32 page consumer awareness guide. So like these things are just a function of doing the work. So I won't grandstand anymore, but just do the work. The biggest thing is implementing the knowledge is there. These guys are incredible to be doing this for all of us. I'm eternally grateful to you, Joe and to you, Dean. One of the biggest, coolest moments of my life was being on. I love marketing after having started my career listening to it.

Yeah, you know what, thank you, Joe. And that's actually a good episode. I'll ask Gina to post the episodes with Michael Fishman that we've done with Jodi. Maria, if you can post those up there, Gina. And then of course the annual event, which is geniusnetworkevents.com if anyone wants to fill out an app, let me point out Something too, because I am at a point in my life where I get between 50 to 200, you know, messages a day that people are requesting help with this interviews. Part of the reason we did the I Love Marketing podcast is a lot of people that aren't at the level of being able to join Genius Network from a financial standpoint. But I wanted to just help people because at the end of the day, I was a Deborah carpet cleaner living off credit cards. If I wouldn't didn't start buying books and courses when early on, I never would have learned any of this stuff. And so I've now spent over, you know, $2 million on my own marketing education. And fortunately, it's been an investment. I've wasted a lot of money, too. And we try to help people not be advertising victims and not just make money, but how to, you know, not waste it. And part of it is I actually had to learn a lot about how to deal with people in a way to where they wanted to help me. And so a lot of people reach out to me. They don't even send me messages like, I read your book, which people can read my book. At Joe's freebook.com, life gives to the giver. They haven't listened to any episodes, but they reach out with this assumption that just because they have need for help, that I should just somehow devote my time and energy to help them. And one of my psychological problems, which I've had discussions with several of you that are close friends here, is I love trying to be accommodating. I want to be helpful, to be people. I have a hard time saying, no, I want people to like me. All that sort of stuff that comes with, you know, just me being who I am. And I, I, I've had to learn how to draw a line in the sand. And I'm constantly trying to guide people. So if someone will happen to get a message through to me and they're just, I'll say, you know what? Listen to my episode, episode number 29, which I'd like to ask Gina to put on it. Episode number 29 of I Love Marketing that we did the first year we started. I love marketing, and it's how I do relationships. Because one of the biggest questions people ask me is, how do you meet Richard Branson? How do you meet all these people? And actually describe, here's what it is you do? And so I'm going to make a point here. So there are friends that are on this with me, people on my team, and friends that are here that will send me private messages during these. I love marketing meetup groups where people are pitching them while they're here, like they're coming to. So there are a couple of people that are on every one of these free meetings we do that are here just to try to sell shit to people and hoping that they can. Now that is not if you're desperate, if you really badly need money, if you're starving. I understand the psychology of where can we find clients and maybe I could sell something. But that's not the way you go about doing it in any area of life. The way you do it is you create value first. You know, if someone's on here and I say go ahead and post your websites because I know that person. So we got Shane Saunders here. Okay. He has breath me dot com. I know Shane. Shane's awesome. I know Don Woods. Don is awesome, right? I know Joe DeBarrie. I know a lot of you. I mean, you know, I'll say post your stuff in there but if I don't know you, if we've never done business, don't post shit to buy things or offer things in the thread. That's not cool. And I'm not saying that like I'm bitching at you. I'm just saying if you do that here, you're doing it in other areas of your life. And, and that's not a way that is attractive to people. That's a taker energy, it's not a giver energy. So when you actually promote or offer or put out your website, think about how you're doing that because that's how you're doing everything. And the beauty of marketing and selling. People love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. And the best type of marketing is where it's proper positioning, where you have done something in advance, where people ask you to actually sell them. And so utilize these conversations to think, you know, how do you actually develop a relationship with the person I want? How do I genuine like the reason I wrote the book Life gives to the giver is I really want to help what I've learned, like how do you do things for people in a way to where you don't have an agenda. You create so much value for them that they just naturally want to associate with you and and give you money. Because I've made way more money just being useful than ever did trying to figure out the best closing techniques or how I'm going to say something in a way or how I'm going to mirror somebody or how I'm going to. I mean, there's just so much trickery. And if you spend your life studying cult behavior and manipulation, like, you can't help but come across as an asshole to genuine people. I mean, there's a lot to be learned from studying, you know, people that are in the compliance fields, people that are closers and all that sort of stuff. But it also, if you take that shit literally, I mean, you just, you scare people off. In the auto industry is an example of, you know, that did that. Like it's an entire industry that had so much high pressure that people were afraid to go to a car lot because immediately they're going to be swarmed. And so how, you know, so much of your marketing is, is it's a relationship business. And if you're transformational, you're going to approach people differently than if it's transactional. And when it's a transactional energy, it just doesn't work well. So I just wanted to say that I've thought about saying it on the last several meetings because it happens at every meeting. But I want to, you know, I want to actually say that here because if there's anything that I've learned, it's just, man, you're, you know, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. You're going to run into people 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. And if anyone wants like at least, you know, and I don't know everything, I'm always constantly learning how to do stuff better. I mean, I have a lot of people that tell me on my team that tell me daily what a dumbass I am in some area and how I need to fix it and improve it. So I always try to keep myself in a coachable state and I try to impart what works and what doesn't work. I mean, that's a big reason why we even do these. Is worth trying to share the things that work for us so that you can do more of the things that if they work for us, these recipes will work for other people. So, Michael, you're one of the most offensive humans on the planet. So how do you, how do you, I mean, how do you, how have you successfully built all of this stuff you've done with such this obnoxious energy about, you know, I'm totally kidding. Let me ask you, how does one use persuasion and marketing in ways that is like, that doesn't, that is effective, but isn't over the Top, because the world of marketing, you know, a lot of people run away from it because they've had a bad experience with marketing done to them versus most really great marketing. It doesn't feel like anything's being done to you. It's really value based.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, a couple things. Number one, when people find you on Google search or however they find you, the number one differentiator for your business is not. And it's going to depend. There's a lot of businesses represented here. But in general, before people either figure out how it is you do what you do, what your methodology is, they have to feel safe. When they get to your, let's just say e commerce for the moment. When they get to your page through a combination of their conscious evaluation and their limbic response, they need to feel safe. So when people get to a webpage, their brain either says, green light, you're safe here, keep checking it out, or red light, you're not safe, head for the hills. Okay? So, you know, it's important to understand what those attributes, what the words and attributes are for your business with the help of a designer, with the help of a sensitive copywriter that can help you craft and frame an experience that people are actually willing to listen to you and learn about your product or learn about your methodology for helping them be better in whatever way they want to be better. Another thing is the truth tends to work really well because it sets up an expectation that you can actually deliver. And you know, particularly if you're, whether you're a personality or. Well, if you're a personality, like your personal brand, the business is your name and face, your message and your methodology. The number one differentiator before the methodology or the, or the how you do what you do is you. You can, you know, for personal brands and coaching, whether it's health, finances, success, relationship, whatever, you can take the same methodology or the same prescription for success verbatim and have 10 different messengers say it. And the 10 different messengers will attract 10 different audiences with the verbatim same guidance. Because the number one differentiator is the person, not the guidance. So they resonate with you. They resonate with your physiology, they resonate with your energy, they resonate with you before they get to what it is that you do, what you do. The other thing is, you know, two other things. Number one, I call this the flag in the moon. When you're standing on the moon and you put your flag down, the only one standing there is you, right? Jerry Garcia said, don't be the Best at what you do, be the only one who does what you do. So I'm saying those two things, two different ways of saying the same thing. Identify the ways in which, whether it's the source of your ingredients, the methodology, how you prepare taxes, how you practice law, whatever it is, that is a true differentiator. And for sure articulate what you're best at, but also look really hard at what you're the only one that does that. And I would lead with that, assuming it's meaningful. The other thing is, there's another gentleman here. I think it was Mark who asked about credibility. And credibility is best expressed. This is counterintuitive. Credibility is best expressed. Credibility is better expressed with transparency versus actual credentials. There's a lot of doctors out there, and if you're a doctor of any, you know, do, Maryland, dc, whatever, that's great. Or an attorney or an architect, or whatever, whatever your credentials are, if you have them, great. But if you don't have what you think are the credentials, I mean, if you're an attorney or an architect or whatever, you need to have the credential. We get it. If you're a surgeon, you need to have the credential. But like in health, which is the area of my expertise and my purpose of my career and my life, is like Tim Ferriss, who a lot of us know. Tim doesn't have a medical degree, to my knowledge. He doesn't have a graduate degree of any kind. But he can acquit himself very, very well in a discussion with any doctor or any scientist in the areas of really deep prowess and deep study that he's gone into over the years. So it's not a credential, but it is a story, and it is a deep prowess and knowledge that he has. You know, there's a woman named Kris Carr who wrote a book called Crazy Sexy Cancer. She's had stage 4 cancer for probably almost 15 years now, and thankfully, universe permitting, she's still here and thriving. She's not a doctor, but she has a very powerful and engaging and incredible personal story around cancer and has a huge tribe of people that want to maintain their health and many of whom are addressing cancer. So in the, you know, I encounter people all the time who feel insufficient or feel like underdogs because they don't have the credential that they think is needed for them to really make an impact or get traction in the marketplace that they are really called to serve. I speak on stage quite a bit, and I used to talk about this. I made this up and I already own the URL, so don't for it. But if some. And we were talking about put it.

Out of your mind.

What's that?

Just put it out of your mind. Don't even go for it.

Don't even think about it.

We were talking before about cooking, and I had this example that I like sharing a lot, which is if I wanted to create a cooking course and I know nothing about cooking, and I call it the Helpless Cook. And my pitch is, look, I know nothing about cooking. I don't know the first thing about it, but I'm going to go on this. I'm going to take this personal journey and I'm going to learn how to cook and we're going to video the whole thing and you can come along with me and learn how to cook with me. It's called the Helpless Cook. Would you like to join me on that journey? And so if you think about it, my credentials as a cook are zero, but my credibility is sky high because I told you exactly who I am and exactly who I am. So credibility is better established with story and transparency than it is with actual credentials. And, you know, I'm really, you know, I hope there's, hopefully there's quite a few people on this that can take that on in terms of entering a category that they were concerned or fearful about entering. Or just stand tall and louder and prouder at what you're already doing based on what I've, you know, just shared with you.

Well, that's such a great insight, Michael. We had, we had something, you may have been there at the last Genius Network event where we had Evan Carmichael and he was on with Ben Hardy. And Ben was in that position of I'm, I'm helpless and we've got the world, you know, one of the top guys in the world about YouTube marketing. And we just, Ben took the, you know, humble position of being in that helpless situation, having the ear and attention of someone who's an expert at this, and allowed Evan to shine and give his best advice. And we all benefited from seeing it all unfold. It was one of the greatest things that we have had happen at Genius Network. And we kind of talking about it afterwards that it's one of the benefits of being in a Genius Network like that, to be able to have access to the people who are able to help, but coming to them, not too cool for school. Like, we're. Look at how cool we are. We already know everything about marketing and about that. But to be putting yourself in that Transparent. We don't know anything about this. And winners are magnanimous people. We want to help people. We want to help people.

Well, somebody at my Consumer Health Summit founder community yesterday, maybe Joe can fill this in. I think it was Joey Coleman, who's a master at customer retention and lifetime value, but I think it was Joey who said they can, you know, they can argue with your data and they can argue with your numbers, but they can't argue with your story. You know, we hear about story all the time. You know, so much so that I think when we hear about methodologies around telling stories, it almost becomes a dismissive reflex because it's like, oh, yeah, I heard so and so, and 10 other people talk about stories. But, you know, in that respect, it's almost underrated because it's discussed so much. Yeah, but it really is the. I would assert the number one pillar of credibility as opposed. Because credentials are everywhere, but credibility actually is not. So it's, you know, can't stress it enough.

You know, can I say something to that also, Michael, about credibility versus believability? There's a lot of people that are not credible at all, but they're believable. And that's what actually gives a lot of marketing a bad name, is you have people that are so believed, but they're frauds. And then you have people that could be, you know, just the very best. The best solutions that, you know, they just know their stuff and they have the most difficult time selling. And that's the, you know, that's the challenge with Expert versus Marketer, which I did this great interview with Evan Pagan years ago on Expert versus Marketer. And so you have. So what would you say to making your credibility believable?

Well, I guess I got to say, I'm not clear on the distinction there. If you could say it again in 15 seconds.

Yeah. So you could have credibility. I mean, you may be saying the same thing, but just the words. There's a lot of people that are extraordinarily credible, but if they're not believable, if their marketing is not compelling, like Dean Jackson says, you know, compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. How do you take that credibility and have it be compelling so that people will do. Will seek you out, do business with you?

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because there's another moving part here. You know, part of the credibility is your story. You know, either it can be partly established with credentials. I think it's very powerfully established, as I'm saying. With story. But then there is the messenger, him or herself. You know, there's another sort of axiom that I came up with a long time ago, which is that when. Let's take what I reverently call a messenger, a personal brand, a doctor, a coach, advisor of some kind. And the thing that I say is when ego is more prominent than the message, trust heads for the doors, right? So we've all seen people on stage where their degree of, like, self orientation, it just seems about them so much so that even if the words are valuable, it's hard to actually receive and assimilate them. Because, like, the thing that's confronting you the most is like, it really looks like that person is about themselves when that person is clearly about contribution. It's so your brain just more readily accepts and receives and assimilates what it is they're saying. And that's part of the dynamic of how people choose their messengers, right? I said before, you can have 10 messengers saying the same exact words, and they'll attract 10 different audiences. And the audiences will also be of varying sizes depending on that levels. Person of what I call ego, or better said, self orientation. So for me, when I think about quantifying it, if I see someone on stage or on a video on a website, you know, like, I kind of like, you know, like ego. 20 to 30% contribution, 70 to 80%. Like if we had zero. Zero ego is like zero inbox. Zero ego is not the game. Zero ego. No one's getting out of bed in the morning, right? You have to have a purpose and it has to have some meaning to you. But if you're comfortable in your own skin, if you're disproportionately about contribution, you will just show up in such a way that in people's conscious experience and in their limbic experience, you will be an accessible, trustworthy person. And, you know, I realize it's a qualitative dynamic, but, you know, we've all encountered people, especially like in the get rich quick space that, you know, we just. We just don't feel we want to spend our money with them. And there's good, and there's generally good reasons for that. And sometimes it's not the words, sometimes it's just how they. How they conduct themselves.

Sorry, I'm talking and I had myself muted. I always love when I do that. I just, like, start talking and so. Well, then how do you think Dean Jackson, who we clearly know is like unscrupulous character, I mean, has made it as far as he Has. Do you think it's because he invented the squeeze page and he was able to buy himself a lot of time with that one?

Dean is actually a beautiful soul that everybody follows and deservedly so.

Yeah. Dean, do you think, like, on a karmic level, I'm going to be struck down for all the sarcastic bantering I do with you over all these years.

Not think you stay in such close proximity to me that you're going to be protected under my halo of all the good karma.

Well, let's do this, because we're going to. We got about another 10 minutes before we wrap up today, and I. And I do want to mention all of the. This list of questions. Dean, that. I think we're going to make Dean responsible for this. And, Michael, you're willing to participate in this? So we have now collected over a thousand, close to 2,000 questions that people have submitted for. I love marketing, and it's really interesting. I'm waiting for our AI system to just feed all of these questions in there, and then we can just perfectly respond to everybody with the exact answer that they're looking for. But until. Until we get there with that technology, you know, we have all these questions, and I. I'm thinking about, like, you know, us doing podcasts and episodes on these and then turning them into books and then organizing a system where any sort of marketing question, ultimately, people that love marketing can go and figure out anything they need related to marketing. Isn't it great? We have a landscaper here. It's okay. We can just. Everyone's got it. You know, it's like, I pay for this, too. They always pick the time to come.

I've got the. We've got the cleaning people out right outside my door, vacuuming up and banging around. And it's like, so, so funny. But what are you going to do?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, so Giselle's out there, like, getting off, you know, probably very politely.

Quiet on the set. Yeah, yeah.

Poor guys. Like, look, man, I'm just trying to do my job. How the hell do I know there's a Zoom meeting going on inside your building?

Exactly.

So, yeah, what I want to do. Michael, how would you organize all of these questions that people have submitted to us? I mean, we do a good job. Everyone seems to really like these meetings, and it's not like anyone could complain. It's not like we're charging for this stuff. We're doing it for free. And so if anyone wants a refund, you know, I mean, I guess they could have It. But the. What would you do with all these questions that we get that we're not able to answer? I mean, we do answer some of them, we do write emails about them, but a lot of times they don't get to the person that asks them in the way. What would you do with all this data, Michael, knowing you've been doing this stuff for 30 years and you're a big data guy?

Well, you're not in my superpower at the moment, but we need a moderator. Well, I was going to say you could put it up on a platform where people could submit answers like a Reddit type scenario and then just, you know, moderate, have it moderated and edited for, you know, just the worthwhile stuff.

Okay, here's what I'm going to do then. So Joe demarie, I think who's really good at curating content and helps people put together courses. I'm going to throw this one on you, Joe, to actually think of because I actually, I think there's a real benefit here. So there. Because I would love for people to, you know, come to. I love marketing. And by a chat thing, how many of you found what we talked about today useful? If you could put, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how would you rate the usefulness of the conversation that we had today? If you could just put that in the chat. Be curious to see. Awesome. Wow. Better than I expected. 15, 108? 10. I think the lowest number I've seen so far is an eight.

Joe, are you underestimating me or what?

Of course, Michael. I mean, I always underestimate you. I mean. Yeah. What have you not talked about, Michael, that you think. But you've read some of the questions here. There's a lot. What would you share that you think would in the next few minutes that you think would be really useful to leave people with? And do know that we have an archive of all of this. If you want to hear this conversation again, we're going to put it up as an I love marketing podcast. Dean Jackson has great podcasts to listen to. Cloudlandia with Dan Sullivan, I do 10x talk with Dan Sullivan and Dean, even the two episodes that Dean did earlier today with Janet Atwood, my friend Janet Atwood and Clark Bartram, which is great. So we want to keep obviously delivering stuff to people. We want to organize it in the best ways. But yeah, Michael, there's so much that you could speak to. What do you think would be. What didn't I ask you about? Or that you haven't talked about, you think would be good to share?

Well, look, I mean, I was grateful to find just be awaken up after a three day event to share some of the things that I think really are the key pillars to not only like strong bedrock, but the ability to really scale once those kinds of things are in place. But, you know, one of the things we talked about the last few days and we've talked about it, and we talked about it in almost every genius network meeting, and I also don't think it can be repeated enough, is that, you know, take good care of yourself. I mean, it's hard to take great care of your employees and it's hard to take great care of your markets and your customers without honoring and taking great care of yourself. You know, last night we were with Chef, as Joe said, we were with Chef Bo McMillan from Elements Restaurant at the Sanctuary Resort here nearby in Paradise Valley. And he talked about how he supports his team and how he greets them and how he treats them because he knows that the connection and the appreciation between and among his team members is what enables the best dining experience in his restaurant. But keep in mind, hospitality happens in every business. Not just businesses we think are hospitality. So whether that's a law firm, a plumbing contractor, or whatever, hospitality is something that needs to be focused on in setting the table. Danny Meyer, who's a restaurateur, says that hospitality is present when things are happening for people, and hospitality is absent when things are happening to people. And just the switch of those two prepositions, 4 and 2, is like the difference between night and day in servicing and keeping customers or clients for as long as humanly possible. Not, you know, just because they love you so much and they tell stories about you and they become your raving fans and ambassadors as well. And really, there's no set. It's very rare, if not impossible to find a company with a dysfunctional internal team but that has happy customers and clients. I mean, it's incongruent to find that. So a happy team equals happy clients and customers. And a happy team comes from a happy you.

That's good. That's good. And you know what I very much dislike about Dean Jackson? That he doesn't complain hardly about anything. Now, I think that takes his toll on him because I think if you don't express your shadow side that, you know, you, you end up having probably a lot of deep depression that we never see Dean. But so from a, from a gratitude I want to share, first off, you share Something, Dean, then I want to share a story before we end for today. How would you like, what are your thoughts?

I think this, I think our moderator idea would be a great thing. The thing I think we get so many questions that come in. That would be. It would be good to have one where we've organized the top questions that we're going to answer and answer them.

Wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Dean. Angela Sanders is coming in and she just popped in on video right there thinking she's all sneaky and stuff. Come on, you're in Australia. You think that gives you a free reign just to not have your video be perfect the entire time? I'm just messing with. Sorry, Dean, go ahead.

That's so funny. So yeah, that, that would be a good thing. I just. They fly by, don't they? Like I'm looking Now, it's already 4 o'. Clock. We've been doing this for hour and a half already.

Yeah, but if you were in Arizona, it'd only be one o'.

Clock.

Exactly. I'm gonna need to move right away.

Yeah.

What time is it in Australia over there, Shane?

It's already tomorrow.

6:00Am now, but just, just before it started at 4:15.

Just before 6.

Yeah.

So you got up at 4:15am? Yeah. Hopefully for something better than listening to.

Me, it's always amazing value.

We'll always get up for the amazing value. Yeah, I love it.

Thank you.

And those of you all over the world, I know we have people in different countries right now, so thank you guys for joining us. Sorry Dean, my apologies.

What else they got up from Michael, that's really. You put that you lead, you know, you lead with what you got here. This is good.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me share this. So Michael, where do people follow you if they want to? Michael's an incredible consultant. Michael's helped very big name companies build their brands and stuff and give them strategy. So if people want to work with you, follow you, what do they need to do?

Sure. I appreciate that. Well, if you are a founder of Health, Wellness, Nutrition, those kinds of companies, apps, wearables, supplements, food, beverage, anything in health and wellness and would like to be considered for the Consumer Health Summit, there's an application link@consumerhealthsummit.com and if you want to reach out to me for any reason, including to clarify anything that was discussed here, I'm happy to support you follow up, answer a question. If you want to reach me for any reason. Michaelonsumerhealthsummit.com Cool.

And Michael, why Don't you post if you want anything in the chat, if you feel free. Dean, how are you going to keep all this going while I'm on sabbatical and have it be, like, anywhere near as good?

Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.

Now everyone's like, God, once he's gone, this is going to get so much better. So I just want everyone to know that when I am gone, if you think this is good now, it's going to be infinitely better. Because, like, look, I mean, I'm a pain in the ass. I'm like, I'm distractible. I just blurt things out. I mean, we have some incredibly talented people that are going to help organize my life. And I'm going to go immerse myself in music and art and recovery and health, and I'm going to come back with some incredible insights, because, frankly, I think a lot of people, the way they work, it doesn't work. You know, there's a lineup from my friend Kathy Colby back here that says you can't see it for, like, I could probably move the computer, but it says, I'll go point at it right there. It says, the time to quit working is when working is no longer working. And there are some areas of my life that I just. You know, I have another sign. Well, I'll show you guys this, too. Let me move the computer. So this is what I'm looking at. A big screen right there. Because this is in our big genius network room. And this is not a laptop. It's a desktop. That's why I'm kind of being weird when I move this thing around. But it says, be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And so I'm going to really go take some time to just think about how I can be most useful. Because my biggest thing is to help people that struggle with addictions. And I want to use my marketing skills to do the best thing there. So if anyone has friends or family members that need help in recovery, we do have a great addiction platform. There's no cost to anything. It's geniusrecovery.org, geniusrecovery.org, there's videos, there's links to meetings. If you're struggling in any way, shape, or form yourself. We have links to all kinds of different support groups that are free, and there's videos and podcasts and different things that we think will be helpful. And I mean, the world. A lot of people are in a lot of pain right now. So a Couple book recommendations, who not how. Fantastic book. You can get it on Amazon right now. Go buy it. Also, highly recommend this book, Breath. You've heard me talk about this before from James Nestor, who's now become a friend. This guy's awesome. I've actually had a couple of hours of phone conversations with him in the last couple weeks, helping me with my breathing and sinuses. It's awesome. One of the best books I've read on health in literally several decades. It's unbelievable. And so, I mean, I've learned stuff in this book that I never heard from doctors or anyone. And so pick up a copy of Breath. Okay, so here's the last thing I'm going to share and then we'll call it a wrap. So I talked about this, I think two meetings ago when we're doing the. I love. So some of you may have heard me talk about this, but I. Several years ago, I was having a. I was a speaker at an event that had about 800 young people all trying to figure out how to make money. And I asked the group, I said, how many of you in the room are worth a million dollars? And so a whole bunch of hands went up and. Well, no, actually, I'm sorry, not a whole bunch of hands. There was maybe in that audience of 800 people, probably like 20 hands that went up. And I go, is there anyone worth 5 million? One hand in the back, 10 million? One guy in the back. I go, okay, how many of you would like to be worth a million dollars? So a whole bunch of people raised their hand. So I'm going to ask you from the screen. I can. How many of you would like to be worth, say, if you're already worth a million, how many would you like to be worth an extra million dollars? Okay. Okay. How many of you would like me to give you a million dollars? Anyone? Okay, so here's what I said to the audience. I'll make you a deal. I'll give. Would anyone in the audience pluck out an eyeball? There's an eyeball. How many of you would pluck out an eyeball for a million dollars? Anyone here give me an eyeball for a million dollars? No. Well, So I said 5 million, 10 million.

Would you be my eyeball, Joe?

Yeah. Yeah. Would you pluck out an eyeball beat for a million dollars? Think of the vision I would have.

So.

So here's thing. So then I. So no one raised their hand, and so I said, anyone, you know, lop off a leg for, you know, 50 million? No. One did it. So I asked the same question at Michael Fishman's Consumer Health Summit. There were a lot of people there that were millionaires. And I said, would anyone take out their eyes for a billion dollars? No one in the room would do it. I go, how interesting that you're already worth a million dollars. But people's focus, you already have something that you people like. You know, I'm not worth any. It's like, so when I feel like the world sucks or I feel like my life is terrible, I remind myself I'm not blind. I mean, there are people that wake up every day that endure struggles that I can't even fathom with. And for some reason, I don't know if that'll work for you, but it makes me feel more resourceful. It makes me feel grateful. Whenever I feel shitty, I'm like, I'm not blind. I have hearing. I can talk. I can help people. I'm not laid up in a hospital bed. So out of all of this marketing stuff that we're always going to talk about, the fact is it's that proverb. He or she who has their health has a thousand dreams. He or she who does not have their health has only one. Make sure you get good sleep. Don't work yourself to death. I mean, life is going to be a struggle for a lot of people for a while because of what we've been through. But you're resourceful, you're smart, you're powerful, you're here learning about stuff. Just think of all of the wonderful things you already have when it feels like life sucks. And that just helps me. That's the analogy. And if that analogy will help you share it with someone else whenever they're feeling down and it tends to work. And so you might hear me say this a lot because I've been really thinking about this, you know, this whole concept. So that's it. That's my wrap. Is there anything else Dean or Michael you guys want to say before we end this I Love Marketing meetup?

That was the best.

Great to spend some time with you guys and gals. Have a wonderful rest of the day and we'll hope to see you on Friday. Take care. Bye. Bye. Don't miss another episode of I Love Marketing. Subscribe today@ilove marketing.com subscribe if you'd like.

To access the show, notes, resources, or.

The exercise to help you take action on what was discussed, Please visit ilove marketing.com 384.