Proximity Is Power: The importance of being around amazing people Feat. Sean Stephenson

If you want to be around amazing experiences, then you need to be around amazing people that know how to manifest them with ease. And when you're around somebody socially like, what I love about Joe Polish is Joe is somebody that he's got a million things going on his plate. But you know what? If you call up Joe Polish and you're in town and you say, hey, you want to catch a five o' clock movie? He will see if he can clear his schedule to go to that movie with you. Now, find me many CEOs of successful companies that will be okay with clearing their schedule to go to a five o' clock movie with you. And Joe is one of those people. And that's one of the things I'm proud of, the fact that my success in business is not because of the things that I've done, but the people I know. So Joel Weldon started this conference off, and he was introducing Joe, if you recall, he was talking about how, like, oh, how sweet. Joe Polish. He showed up at Sean's hospital room and was there with him all night. Raise your hand if you remember him saying that yesterday, early in the morning. Yeah. So you want to know the whole story about that? Okay, so, first of all, I almost die. I fly out of my wheelchair, my wheelchair tips over, I hit the cement, I break almost all the bones on the right side of my body, and. And I get a concussion. My brain's swelling, they're gonna possibly take me into surgery. I am messed up at the hospital not too far from here, and it's late at night. I'm on a lot of meds, okay? And I think I'm gonna die, right? And in walks Joe Polish. And I thought he was my priest, okay? And so I'm sharing with Joe, like, in this moment of concussion, disorientation, I start telling Joe Polish every bad thing I've done in my life. But when you tell Joe Polish every bad thing you've done, he's like, that's nothing. That is not that impressive compared to. Compared to three weeks when I was a teenager. But he's talking to me, and I am not joking. I've since become friends with this person, so don't take offense to it, but I look over and there is a woman in 8 inch stilettos and a pencil skirt. And I am looking over at this woman. I'm looking at Joe. I wave Joe closer. I'm like, did you bring a hooker to my hospital room? Should we call Gabor right now? Like, is this really that? Well, anyway, the hooker turned out to be his girlfriend and. One of my best friends. Now, so that went well for nobody. But then we have a bad story for me. Hold on.

Am I not on?

You ruined every joke. Every.

That was Crystal, who I was with, and she's back there videotaping everything you just said.

I warned her in advance that I was gonna call her a whore, but she was like, go for it. So I got the permission. Anyway, so the next story. You see, the reason why I'm friends with Joe is because we're constantly laughing together, okay? It's fun to get together with somebody that every time you know you're going to be with them, you're going to belly laugh. Raise your hand if you have somebody in your life that you know when you see them, you're going to have a good time and you're going to have a belly laugh. Raise it up. If you don't tell me, no matter how many stupid things they do to you, you keep them around, right? You're like, ah, that's kind of like Joe and I's friendship. You know, I'm just like, I gotta keep him around. The belly laughs are worth it, right? So fast forward to this year. I've not shared this story on any stage yet, so it's very personal. And that's why I want to open it up, in all honesty, to the Genius Network. And it's kind of a story to let you know about why this organization is so important to me. There's a few things you may not know about me, one of which is I watched people succeed like Eben Pagan, and learned so much from Eben. And then I watched people that was Eben's apprentices, like Craig Clemons, succeed because of following the work and actually moving nearby Eben and learning from him. And I thought, you know, that's what I want to do if I want to succeed in life. So, well, before I ever had the $25,000 a year to pay to learn about marketing and business and network with amazing folks like yourself, I moved to Arizona with my wife to be close to the Genius Network and Joe Polish, because I knew that y' all get together several times a year and you go out for dinner, and maybe if I could just hang out and catch people on the way out of the building, I could get invited to these dinners and I could learn about what to do with my business and I could become closer with Joe. And this is something that I really learned from Tony Robbins when I was a young kid, which is Proximity is power. If you want to be around amazing experiences, then you need to be around amazing people that know how to manifest them with ease. And when you're around somebody socially like, what I love about Joe Polish is Joe is somebody that he's got a million things going on on his plate. But you know what? If you call up Joe Polish and you're in town and you say, hey, you want to catch a five o' clock movie? He will see if he can clear his schedule to go to that movie with you. Now find me many CEOs of successful companies that will be okay with clearing their schedule to go to a five o' clock movie with you. And Joe is one of those people. And that's one of the things I'm proud of. The fact that my success in business is not because of the things that I've done, but the people.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

And so I moved to Arizona, and I've had so many different experiences that grew my business because I basically became a. A good apprentice. And if you're in this room, you probably mentored a lot of people. But are you still a good apprentice to somebody? You know, I've watched Joe quote Dan all these years. When Dan speaks, Joe actually is quiet. This is a huge thing, right? But when Joe speaks, I'm quiet. Because at the end of the day, I know what Joe tells me to do is going to make my life better. And this year, I went through a very personal thing. After 23 years of being in business with my business partner, I finally realized that it was time to go out on my own and that things were getting very tumultuous. Raise your hand if you ever realized that your business partnership needed to break up, but you were scared to do it. Raise it up high. Yeah. Imagine if that business partner was your father. So I'm having this awareness that at 38 years old, it was time to go out on my own and do things. And if I was going to fail, I needed to fail on my own. If I needed to succeed, I needed to succeed on my own. Now, let me be clear. I love my father. I love my family. I just was done being in business. With them. But I was scared. I was scared out of my mind. And I went through. And most of you don't know this, but I went through a four month darkest period of my life this year. So dark, I actually considered killing myself. And you know how hard it is to be the motivational speaker that gets up in front of a crowd and tells people you can go through anything, you can handle anything, and look at the things that I've done. And then to be in that dark of a spot. But do you know, it was the Genius Network and Joe Polish that pulled me out of that spot. And I want to tell you why. And if you have not joined Genius Network or you're one of these members that's like, do I want to re sign? Listen up. Is Denise here? Denise Gosnell, Where's Denise? Is she not here? All right, well, Denise is a lawyer in this group. And I called her up and I said, you know, you mentioned to me if there ever was anything that I needed, you would help me. And so I started to talk to Denise about what's the ramifications of ending a long term business partnership with somebody with where there's contracts and assets and all this. And she carved out time for me and started working as my attorney. Then I called up Michael Fishman and Elaine, where are you guys? Yeah. And they came over to my office and I cried on their shoulders. And then I called up Michael Bernoff. Michael raised your hand, Michael. I said, I am so fucking scared. I'm angry. This could end my relationship with my family. They're going to take it so hard. How am I going to do this? And he sat at my dining room table and he counseled me using the best material in MLP and hypnosis and walked me through the process. You know how hard it is to be a success world thought leader, a therapist, person that's supposed to have it all together, who's scared out of his mind. And honestly, it was only because I reached out to these people. But do you know who I reached out to last? I reached out to Joe Polish last. And I'll tell you why. Because I was scared. You know, I'm scared to reach out to Joe on these things because he's like my big brother. He just rips the band aid off. Joe doesn't pad things with Shawn Stevenson. Apparently I've abused him enough on stage. No, apparently I believe he knows I'm strong enough to take it. I called up Joe and I said, joe, what do I do? And I was waiting and he said, sean, you know what to do. Stop dicking around and being a pussy and pull the plug. You know, whenever I quote Joe, he's like, I didn't say it that way, but that's how I remember it, okay? And so Joe said, this is what it's like to own a company, Sean Stephenson. You have to do what's best for the company. You have to do what's best for your mission and your vision. And then what was so hard about it was I sent off a packet in the mail with all the legal documentation to my family to let them know I was done being in business with them. And, you know, you all can have your own opinions about how I should handle it or what's going to happen next. And I don't have my own answer here about how to handle a breakup in a family business. But I can tell you the reason why I went through a dark period is after that, I had incredible jaw pain and. Kevin Donahue, where are you? Kevin? Kevin? You came over right after I got back from the dentist, and they had extracted my last molar that made physical contact in my mouth. So now I can no longer chew solid food. Everything has to pretty much be blended before I eat it. Now, this happened at the same time I'm going through this legal issue with my family, and at the same time, I go on Facebook about two days after Kevin Donahue, you came over and you brought me soup, and I had an incredible conversation with you. But two days after that, I open up my Facebook account, and I see that my tenth and final friend with my bone disorder, disorder I've had my whole life, had died in an accident similar to that accident that brought me to the hospital that Joe brought the of his, too. And so here I am, I'm questioning, what did I do ending this partnership? It was a true divorce. I was separating from somebody that I loved that brought me birth, and I was in this excruciating jaw pain. And I called out to many of you on FaceTime, and I cried with many of you. And Joe had the strength to just say, you have it in you, Sean, to do what needs to be done to forward your mission. And then seeing the last person with my disability that I knew die brought my own mortality into my face. And there's no way in these four dark months that I'm now just coming out of, I would have made it had it not been for. For each of these people and many more that I acknowledged in the Genius Network. You see Genius Network, it's not where we come together to learn about business and marketing strategies. Get over yourself if you think that's what this is. What this is, is this is the best group of firefighters in the world. And your life is gonna catch fire, and I don't know when. And some of you are already there. And when you catch fire, you're gonna need a firefighter. You're gonna need a team of them. You're gonna need people that are gonna tell you you're not crazy. You're go. They're gonna hold you when you cry. They're gonna see you as you slam your hand down on the table saying, why do I have to go through this? And they're gonna tell you, because you are playing a bigger game with your life than you see possible. See the genius network. This is a group of firefighters, and we come together because when your life is on fire, I, as another member of yours, you can call upon me because I know it's only a matter of time. When you do big things, when your heart is on fire, things catch fire, and you need people to help you put them out. And I do hope if you're not one of those queasy, light, stomach people that thinks like, oh, I could use my $25,000 somewhere else. I could buy a used car every year, then join this group. Shut up and leave our. Because I only want to be around people who see the value here right now. Thank you so very much. Love you. Love you.

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