Marketing For True Love Featuring Annie Lalla and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing #409

Greatness usually takes a lot out of you. Everest is not easy to climb, and so it's only those who are willing to actually climb the Everest of personal transformation that true love requires. It requires this kind of initiation. It is not for the faint hearted. It is a gladiator sport. Anyone interested in this game of true love, be willing to roll your sleeves up and know every part of your life that you've squinted at, or shadow or demon or part of your history that hasn't been resolved is going to come up.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com this week we are revisiting a previous episode. Here are some of the best highlights.

One of my taglines is I help skeptics believe in true love. You know, whether they're in single single life or they're in a relationship. I kind of specialize in those people who are on the edge of giving up, either on dating and relationship and finding love or they're in a relationship and they're feeling like giving up. There's something about my particular genus that I can help teach them how to bootstrap faith, to climb back into the possibility of them finding love or making it work with their partner. Because with love, it's not I'll believe it when I see it. It's more about I'll see it when I believe it. So getting someone to believe in it again takes a particular kind of savvy and that's kind of my sweet spot. So specifically, I help singles who are done with dating and ready to actually find their soulmate by showing them where they have their relationship dock blocked like their port is blocked, so they're not able to be dockable by relationships. And then I also help couples who are together and committed in a relationship. I specialize in supporting them through conflict resolution. That's my that's another one of my superpowers is helping teach them the art of fighting so that they can alchemize drama and conflict into intimacy and show them how to create relationships that maximize freedom and minimize shame.

Really, if you have the skill of marketing and you understand how to reach people and I've and I'll do my best to not be joking about this because this is a very serious matter. If I say anything that comes across as sarcastic or using metaphors or allergies, it's simply because of, you know, business. I've said, you know, selling is like seduction. There are certain Things that you need to do in order to properly position yourself, to sift, sort and screen, to find the right sort of prospect. And you can use marketing in amazing, wonderful ways that help other. Other people, that create value, that help yourself, or you can use it in very manipulative, different ways. It's not about marketing. It's about the application of it. It's about the person using it and all that sort of stuff. And I don't know a better application of using my marketing skills than maybe what we're doing right now. And of course, I guess the proof will be the end result.

I actually believe mate signaling is the first unconscious marketing. So it's where marketing was born. But again, it's unconscious. And I just want to distinguish. Like you mentioned earlier, marketing can be used to manipulate or it can be used to produce great amounts of value. And even in mate signaling that the evolutionary biologists talk about, they have honest versus dishonest signaling. And so some animals will signal that they have a particular prowess or a particular skill set, but it's a deceitful signal, it's a fake signal. And if it works to attract the mates, it'll get reinforced, but it doesn't show up in, you know, basically the commercial doesn't match the product. So I just want to reiterate that what we're both trying to create here is mostly honest signaling in the mating game, where the commercial or what you're advocating about what you want and who you are matches the actual human that you're actually creating on offer. It's not a deceitful trick. You want the best version of yourself represented in your commercial, as well as a head nod to your imperfections, your fallibilities. You know what's really going on there, so that it's a holographic image of your totality. And, Joe, you're probably one of the best I know at showcasing who you are, whether it's on a date or on a stage at a seminar, sharing your successes, your superpowers, but also your struggles, your fallibilities, the places you've had to clean up in your life. You're just super transparent about your greatness and your shadow, and I really love that about you. And I think that's the right way to produce a commercial about yourself. When you're in the dating world or when you're introducing yourself to anyone, it builds rapport because people see you as human, infallible, and not larger than life, and they believe it. So I really want to encourage that as we Use marketing to attract partners that we do so in a way that holographically represents the totality of who you are, such that when they fall for you, they're like, wow, you really represented yourself accurately. There wasn't an attempt to dupe me or deceive me.

What sort of advice would you give in the beginning of presenting yourself? When is too much too much, and what are the stages? If you do have a criteria for.

That, there will be a moment where something about yourself that you haven't yet revealed will come up inside as a thought. Like, I would like to share this right now. And I have this rule about if something comes up three times that wants to be spoken, I honor it on the third time. So, like, you know, on the first date, I might not share my craziest, wacky, you know, shadow bit, but over the course of a few dates, it'll come up as like, this is a piece of information about me that's relevant and that's pertinent and is coming up in my consciousness. And if it comes up a second time, then I know it's really wanting to be expressed. It's a part of me that's wanting to be understood. And by the third time, I'll just say, you know, this has come up a couple times, and I really want to not hold it back. I want to be honest and transparent about what's real for me. And then you share that piece. And what I don't want to encourage people to do is to build fake trust where you have to lie or deceive to garner trust. That's dishonest signaling. And so it's really subtle. It's kind of like, how do you know when to put up a boundary? There's no 100% heuristic I can give someone for that, but there's a hack I've given you, which is when something comes up three or more times, it's wanting to be spoken. And so it means there's a part of you that's wanting to be seen, heard, understood, and expressed. And, Joe, you probably tell it on the first time. It rises up in you because you've got so much practice. As soon as something comes up, you might be like, hey, this is something about myself I want to share. But I would encourage people to stay attuned to the dance, the very delicate, subtle dance of the new friendship, the new relationship. And your system will tell you when it's right to share this detail, this piece of information, and then just listen and honor it.

You had Given this analogy of a doc. And I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And since so many people that I know are entrepreneurs, and a lot of them live these workaholic lives and are so busy that they want to. They talk about wanting to have a relationship. They're either a deeper relationship with whoever they're currently in a partnership with, marriage or not, or they're single and just want something. But you had this great analogy about how we kid ourselves by keeping ourselves so crowded with busyness and not being available. And you use the analogy of a ship in the dock. And I would love you to share that, because I thought it was. I think it's pretty profound.

Yeah, well, you know, I was using it in reference to your own life. And I was saying, joe, you know, we've decided that finding a romantic partner for you, a life partner, is really important. But you're always talking about how busy your life is and how you're running from event to event and every weekend's used up. And so I said, hey, you know, think of yourself like a port. You know, like a port that's on the edge of water. And you. Ships can dock, literally, relationship ships can dock at your port, but only if there's room at the port. If there's no cargo ships and all these other things crowding out the port, then there. Even if a relationship that's viable comes by, there's no place for it to dock. So what that looks like in real life is that you meet a woman at a party or at dinner, and you start talking about your life, and she entertains the idea that you're someone she's interested in, or there's a possibility, but the way you're talking about your life or the way you're representing your current reality, she can't see a place where she could fit in. So she doesn't feel welcome. She doesn't feel like she can land. I mean, we've all been walking down the street and being busy. But just think about, you're lost in New York and you're in the middle of Times Square. You need to ask directions. There's some people walking briskly down the street in business suits who you would never dare approach and ask, you know, where's this street? But there's some people who are, like, moving down the street, smiling, kind of slow and languorous, and you're like, oh, that lady. That man would be available to my approach. They're dockable for me to ask a question. So I'll go ask them that question. And so we'll ask the person that's the most dockable to give us help for directions in a foreign city. Similarly, when we're dating, we're looking, is there a place for me in that person's life? Is there a place for my ship to dock? And I think a lot of people claim they want romantic relationship. They claim they want to find true love. But if you look at their dock, it's all crowded. There's no place for anyone to, you know, dock in.

It's the copy, it's the words, it's what you're saying, it's how you're saying it. This is what marketing is. You cannot, in the business world, as David Ogilvy would say, you cannot bore people into buying. And if you want to attract the right sort of person, you have got to frame yourself in the most effective way humanly possible so that it's interesting, so that it is intriguing, so that it's ethical, so that it's honest, so it fits who it is you are. And at the same time, you. You don't want to just cast the net that brings everybody in so that many people can be disillusioned after they get to meet you. It has to be. It has to be real.

I think heartbreak and wounding and trauma breaks and rips our heart. But because the heart is a muscle, and like any muscle, when it rips, it can grow back stronger. And so because you've been through a lot of pain and hardship in your life and you've been quite transparent about it, as a result, your heart and everyone who knows you knows this, your heart is very powerful. It has a profound depth. It's willing to go out of its way to extreme lengths to help the people in loves. And so I actually think you have the ability to love so openly, so vulnerably, that literally books could be written about it. And I just want to make sure that people understand that someone who's been watching your heart navigate through the heights and the lows of relationship, I'm just really proud of it. And so I want to invite people to demonstrate their particular beauty or prowess or way of loving in the ad. And don't play small. And another thing is to ask for what you really want and believe you can have it. When you come from that frame, your ad has a power, and it inspires the other person to recognize themselves as a match. And another thing I want to offer is when you're. It's not just ads you're writing. Every date is a piece of marketing. You're marketing for what's available for them in a relationship. You're on a date, you're saying, time with me looks like this. When you extrapolate from this date, this is the kind of feelings and experiences and thoughts you're going to have if you were in a relationship with me. So don't forget it's holographic. It's representative of the whole. And so one of the things people do in dating is they. They go. They get busy looking for Mr. Right or Mrs. Right. But I would encourage you to start developing yourself to become Mr. Right or Mrs. Right. Become the person that your dream mate would actually fall in love with. Get busy doing that. Rather than looking for the person that can love you, become the person that could most love your dream partner. Who would you have to be? What would you have to have developed? Because if you're looking to be with the most amazing woman you've ever met, she's also looking to be the most amazing man she's ever met. So you want to make sure you can triumphantly offer yourself to that dream partner and sign your name to it. Like, honestly, when I fell in love with my husband, I wanted him to have the most extraordinary woman that would help him in the ways that he most needed and that could use in his development. And if I'd found another woman who could do better, I would have stepped aside. I want him to have the best development opportunity. And so the trick is, is not am I, Am I, Is he good enough for me? It's are you the right person to love them? Because when you fall in love, you want to give him the best. So you have to know I'm the best for them and for what they need in their life. That's what keeps the relationship going. And so that's a few things I wanted people to offer in their. Whether they're marketing with an ad or with themselves in person on a date. It's. And again, you mentioned this in your ad. You fall in love with not a person, but you fall in love with who you get to be around that person. So when you're on a date, always be thinking about how is that other person feeling about themselves around you. So instead of bragging about how great you are or showcasing your skills, you want to also in a date, in a date, you want to be asking questions and having conversations where the person you're having the date with falls more in love with themselves, not you. When they fall more in love with themselves and who they are and they find themselves interesting and intelligent and animated and funny in your presence. Then they fall in love with you.

There's transaction marketing and there's relationship marketing. And you can definitely use certain things to get a phone number, to get an email, to initiate someone, to probably get someone into bed. However, sustaining it requires something completely different. And it also depends on the person because there's just as many people trying to do hookups as there are people that really want to have relationships. And there's a lot of fear in the middle of it all where there's confusion and people simply don't know. And you know, one of the things you said about the word game, I mean, I've heard this from a lot of people. A lot of my female friends will say, you know, I want to find someone that doesn't play games. And I always think to myself, and I want to run this by you to get your perspective on it. Is in a lot of ways people play games. I mean, the planet is filled with people playing games. I think it's a disguised way of saying, I don't want to get hurt. And because if people were playing games that they were winning and that they weren't abusing someone. Assuming there weren't a narcissistic, you know, psychopath. Yeah. That cared about people. I mean, you know, like people that. There are some people that genuinely get off by using and abusing people. However, I don't think that's most people. And I think even people that come off that way just want to connect. They just haven't. They don't know how. They don't know how to connect with themselves. So, I mean, if we're playing games that we're winning and the other person is winning too, we play games all day long. So it's. So the question is not playing games. It's like how you approach it in not getting yourself hurt. And in the process, though, you can put up a lot of walls to connection.

So if you're not sure how to know what kind of game you're playing, look for how much secrecy you have around it, how much you'd want someone else to see it. And transparency is an indicator of beauty, truth and goodness. How transparent something wants to be. The more good, true and beautiful it is, the more secretive and hiding and don't want you to see the behind the scenes. The more shameful win, lose, the more exploitative it is. So, you know, that's it. I don't mind. I just think I want. That's basically, I teach people how to play better games with themselves in relationship, high quality games, games that enrich their own lives and the other person's lives. I mean, play is a divine foundation of reality. So it's what your intention is with the game that's the most important, not the fact that you're playing a game. So when you're dating someone, there's a new little entity being born. This new little nascent, tiny relationship. It's very delicate, and as it grows, it matures. As you have more dates and more interactions and more connection, the entity develops and becomes more mature. And just like a child becomes an adult someday, it has its own identity and it knows what it wants. Your relationship between you and a new woman grows and it starts to have its own identity and it starts to have its own needs and wants, and it starts to assert those needs and wants through your impulses. And so to know when it wants to become exclusive, it's like you have to listen to the relationship speaking through you. What does it need? And every relationship has a point in time where it says, I want to have a name and I want to exist, and I want to have an assurance that I'm going on to exist into the future. And that's kind of the time between two people where both of them start to consider, hey, maybe this. This wants to be in a container that supports its growth and exclusivity. Like stopping dating other people can be a way of creating a container for one relationship to be focused on and to flourish instead of you squandering energy on new relationship potential. Every time you go on a date, when one feels really compelling and intriguing and it wants to grow, you kind of close down your attention to all the other bids and you focus on this just kind of the way you focus on a child so it can get its needs met and be nourished into adulthood. And I don't think a relationship ever, you know, stops growing. But you can smell when exclusivity or the talk about what is us is organic and natural, and it usually is starting to occur for both people at the same time.

So if someone listening to this right now is looking for love right now, I mean, what's the best advice or piece of advice that you can give them?

If you've been looking for Anything more than 3 months to know success, then I suspect there's some payoff, unconscious payoff they're getting from staying single. So when I meet women and their new clients, I often say one of my early questions for them is, you know, first of all what do you want? You want in a relationship, men or women? What do you want in a relationship, in your dream relationship? And then they talk about what they want. And then I would say, how would you know when you get that? So, like, what are the indicators? They'd know when they've arrived at that opportunity. And then I asked this interesting question. I ask, what's something in your life right now that you value that you think you might have to give up if you found Mr. And Mrs. Right tomorrow? They kind of sit. They kind of get confused and they're like, nothing. I would be so happy If I found Mr. And Mrs. Right tomorrow. And I go now, okay, just think about it. If I'm going to wave my magic wand and tomorrow your ideal soulmate shows up, it's believable and it's true. Just feeling your body. Is there any fear, is there any trepidation that comes up in your body in response to the tomorrow? They're here and I ask them to listen. And eventually they usually can find some part of them that's a little bit scared of actually finding that partner. And that part of them that's scared usually has a story about what they might have to give up if they actually found their partner. They think they have a belief that's lurking underneath, like a belief they might have to give up their freedom, their spontaneity, their career, their dog. There's something that they value that they think they might have to give up should they fall in love. And so we excavate what that belief is, because there's always one under there, if it's anything. Past three months of you longing for something and not getting it, there's a part of you that doesn't want it and is ensuring that you don't get it. And we need to go and interview that part, find out what its fair is, honor that fear and give that part an assurance that not only will you not have to give up your dog, your freedom, your spirituality, your spontaneity when you find your soulmate, but what if you actually got more of that? What if you got more freedom, more spontaneity, more push towards your career, you know, more aliveness instead of less. And so once we make that shift in belief where the part that's afraid of giving up something it values actually believes it might get more if it fell in love, then we get speedy, swift movement in the direction of attracting a partner. Instead of looking for Mr. Mrs. Right, focus on becoming Mr. Or Mrs. Right, focus on becoming the most extraordinary version of yourself such that you would be proud to offer this if you were to bump into your soulmate. You're like, I'm a work in progress, but I'm really proud of what I've created and here I am offering it to you. Being an inquiry around what's blocking your port so that a relationship can or cannot dock. Is there anything blocking it? Ask your friends. Is there anything about me that would have someone new that came into my life that might be interested, feel unwelcome?

I'm not a big believer in, you know, be awesome and you're going to get discovered. I'm a big believer in be awesome and do things to get yourself discovered. And very much the whole reason why we're even having this conversation.

I want you to be saying to yourself, to your friends, to reality, I am available, I am dockable. I am taking action in the direction of calling my partner in. And even if no one ever answers this dating site profile, you're congruently saying, I am ready and reality will respond accordingly.

What's that whole cliche? The road to someday leads to the town of nowhere. And if you're not doing some sort of actions to initiate something, the chances of it happening. It's like the Wayne Gretzky quote. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Mine harassed me finally and was like, let's put your match.com profile up. And I was like, what? I'm a fucking dating coach. But he just said, no, we're not trying to find your mate on dating site. But I just want you to have the. You're saying to reality like, I am available. And so we made this profile and I put it up. I never even logged in again and looked at it. But literally a week later when I was at Burning Man, I met my soulmate and my partner and my husband. And I don't think it's an accident. I think something in me shifted once I pressed, you know, pressed send to the profile going up. That came to terms with, I'm single and I'm done with dating and I'm actually ready to find my partner. And here's the description of what I want and what I'm looking for. And I never had to use that profile, but represented a shift in my psyche. I want people to write a list of how they want to feel when they're in love, how they want to feel in different parts of the relationship. Because emotions govern most of our choices, not the rational mind. Everybody knows that emotions have you buy or not buy a house or a car or an opportunity or product. So if you can inspire the kinds of emotions that another person wants to have more of, then that's a successful ad date, interaction, conversation. And the last thing is just remember, every date is practice for relating, practice for connecting, for talking, for loving. And so you want to bring to the practice your highest A game. You know, when Olympic medalists go to do their practice run in the morning, they don't show up half assed and do a shitty run because if they do that, they won't have practice for their highest magnificence on Olympic day. So they bring their A game to the practice run. Actors bring their A game to the audition. Every time you interact with someone, you're practicing for your final partner. So you bring your highest, most intentional beauty, truth, goodness, love. And you use these opportunities to practice being extraordinary in relationship. Even if this person isn't your soulmate, you will have had a win win interaction if they got to interact with you at your greatest. And even halfway through the date, if you know you're not going to marry this person or they're not their partner, you still continue to practice being extraordinary. Because every opportunity is an opportunity to improve your ability to show and receive love. And so it's like even though it's a treadmill, you're not going anywhere, you're getting exercise. And exercise is really important in most of my work with singles, even though I'm ostensibly trying to help them attract their soulmate, what I'm really doing is building up their self regard and their self esteem. And again, self esteem isn't just how confident you are. Self esteem, according to Nathan and Brandon, is basically how much you trust your future self to cope with how reality shows up and to thrive in unknown circumstances. It's your belief in your future self, your resilience. So to build self esteem, I mean, first of all, let me say, and I said this to you before, you attract a person always in relationship who matches your current level of self esteem. So if you want to know where anyone's self esteem is, you just look at who they're dating, who they're married to, there it is, forget how they look. That's their level of self esteem around love and relationships. They may have high self esteem around building software or racing cars, but in the domain of love and relationships, whoever they're with is an indicator of self esteem because you always fall in love with someone at the same level of self esteem. So while I'm helping my Clients find their partners. I'm trying to build their own level of self esteem and I'll tell you the practices in a minute. So that as they're moving through reality, they're going to be attracting higher and higher caliber mates as their self esteem grows. If a human is not connected to their own aliveness and appreciative of it, the full spectrum, their sadness, their fear, their despair, and their existing, their joy. If they don't know how to connect with all those feelings, they won't be able to help their partner connect them to those feelings. So Jo, if you met a woman who can't hold pain, she definitely won't be able to hold you in yours or help you hold your own. If you have a woman who has a limit to the joy she can feel or the amount she feels she deserves, she won't be able to help you feel more joy in your life. So your partner limits how much access you have to more aliveness and emotion by how limited they are in their connection. So as I'm working with clients, I'm working on connecting them to their own aliveness. And the more appreciative and connected you are over your own aliveness, the higher your self esteem. I would stay with you no matter what. As is and is standing for a greatness in you and a magnificence that they're gonna fight for. That's when you have a relationship that's gonna last forever. Someone can leave the relationship because they're too irritated by whatever the other person does, then that's not the relationship for them. The weird mystery about true love is you will not have any shortage of complaints. There's a million things about Evan that drive me crazy that I could complain about all day long. But no matter how bad it gets and how frustrated and it gets really bad. I never. I can never leave. It's not that I don't entertain it in the darks of the depths of despair. I actually do. And so does he sometimes. But we can never actually execute. That's the final test. When. When the bond is so strong and not just the bond between your heart, but the portal. When your partner is portal to your own greatness and you can't deny it anymore. There's no place to run, there's no place to leave. Where are you going to go? You. They're the portal to your greatness. It's a motherfucker. But greatness usually takes a lot out of you. Everest is not easy to climb. And so it's only those who are willing to actually climb the Everest of personal transformation that true love requires. It requires this kind of initiation. It is not for the faint hearted. It is a gladiator sport. Anyone interested in this game of true love, be willing to roll your sleeves up and know every part of your life that you've squinted at, or shadow or demon, or part of your history that hasn't been resolved is going to come up a resolution. And there is only one strong. There's only one force strong enough to keep you in the game. When everything in you says, I want to run, I want to leave. And that's this true love. And this is what I'm kind of fighting for people to believe in. But the thing is, no one can leave when it's the real thing. Just. Just like no matter how crazy your kids drive you, you never just leave them on the sidewalk or abandon them. And most people don't. You have frustrations with your kid, but you never leave. That's the kind of bond that happens when you're in love.

If you're at a place to where you're unhappy, the juice is not worth the squeeze. You're conscious, you feel that you're. For whatever reason, maybe it's not even a bad person, it's just not working. How does one do conscious uncoupling, to use that terminology? In the best ways.

I encourage people to break up from the height of their connection. So if you think of a relationship as a landscape and landscapes have high ground and mountains and valleys and different kinds of terrain and think of a relationship having a vista. The highest vista of the relationship is the highest peak on which which is the most poetic, beautiful, connected, loving moments or experience or parts of the relationship that you can imagine. And so you go visit that part of the relationship. It might be weeks, months, years before the present moment there. Every relationship has a peak of beauty and you want to go visit that peak, associate into it, stand in the place that you're most proud of, the US and from there you have the conversation from the most loving, from the most mutually appreciative, from the most, the place you're the most proud of, the U.S. because if you break up in an argument or an anger, the other person has stolen from them their self esteem and their dignity. And you and the relationship which had its own entity, it lost its self esteem. It doesn't get left as something beautiful that you both shared. It's this dead ugly thing that's kind of bleeding in the corner and I feel like it's an indignity to the relationship. So I feel like you want to break up from the place where you most love the other person, not most frustrated with them. And when you break up from that place, they will trust the breakup, they'll believe it and they'll feel beautiful as they leave the dynamic instead of broken, not good enough, and with their self esteem and dignity depleted. If you want to maximize both people's dignity and grace as they leave the dynamic, you have to break up from the highest vista of love and poetry and beauty that the relationship ever had. And that takes courage. It's really hard to break up from that place. It's much easier to demonize them, convince yourself that they're beastly, and then break up from there. Because then your heart doesn't have to ache and mourn the death of that us, but that us was alive once and it's dying in some way or at least transitioning to the next phase and you have to mourn that. And most people don't have the courage to deeply mourn the death of an us. They want to kind of avoid the whole death process, just move on to the next thing. And I think that's missed out. Opportunity for development Marketing is standing for what you believe in. That's the highest value and then seeing if other people are interested and love is the highest value opportunity for humaning that I've seen available to people on the earth. There's the most growth, there's the most beauty, there's the most truth, there's the most transformation. It's just the best game going for feeling the full spectrum of what it means to be a human being. And so I want everyone to feel it before they die.

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