Return On Genius: How To Maximize Ideas, Execution and Connections - I Love Marketing Episode #203

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and.

This is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish, and I'm a little tired today, Dean. I had a party over my new house, and I had a bunch of people over, from Dr. Alan Christiansen, who wrote the Adrenal Reset Diet, to our buddy Sean Stephenson, to a whole slew of other individuals. But I'm tired. I didn't get enough sleep, and that's not a good thing. You don't really become a very good marketer if you're constantly fatigued and lethargic and your brain doesn't work all that well. So.

You must be happy to be moved in.

No, I'm not happy to move in because you know how people have a punch list? Oh, no, you know, punch. A punch list is like, you know, I actually said to someone last night there, they didn't know what a punch list was. And so depending on what part of the world you're in, maybe that doesn't make any sense to some people, but it's. It's. After you move into, you know, wherever. Any place you move into, office business, it's all the little things that need to be knocked out. All the little.

The red dot that you. That's what a lot of builders do, is they'll give you some red dot stickers to put on everything that needs some addressing.

Well, yeah, I mean, I would literally, I would use an entire office supply store with all this stuff. But no, so. But I don't have a punch list. I have a punch novel. I mean, there are so many little things now. The house is beautiful. People see it. They're like, oh, my God, are you so happy and everything. And again, I don't want to whine too much because granted, I, you know, I'm not living in a third world country. I have a beautiful home and all that sort of stuff. It's just the sheer complexity is so beyond me. And Dan Sullivan did a great episode a long time ago about upgrading my, you know, my operating system with the new home and how to view it. All of those things have been incredibly helpful. It's just that, you know, when you're right in the middle of it, it's, you know, like this morning, I wake up with not enough sleep to people having to fix and seal the new front door because it rained like crazy in Arizona last night. So water leaked in and damaged the front of my floor, which needs to be ripped out. You know, now this will probably officially be the Fourth flood that I've had in the house. But it really wasn't like. It wasn't really like a flood. It was more just water was seeping in, but it did damage the hardwood floor. So we now need to, you know, rip that out and redo it. And than just every little thing from TVs working, because the TVs are on the wall, but there's no Cable or Apple TVs or Amazon Fires or any devices hooked up to watch television. And probably is a good thing because what's the point of watching TV anyway? Although, yeah, when I was away, my real dear friend John Butcher, who has this, he's the chairman of Precious Moments, the figurine company and also my lifebook, he literally flew into town six days while I was out of town, some of that time with you, and he literally showed up and put up all the artwork, furniture, laid everything out. I mean, it was incredible what he helped me with and just did it just to be so helpful and nice, because I've helped him a lot in his different businesses and we're really dear friends and whatnot.

Did you film the big reveal, like an HGTV special?

We actually did film it. I never put it up, though. I mean, I have to almost look at the video and see if I'd be willing to do that. Right, right. Because there's some shenanigans that are going on in a whole slew of people and everything. But. So, yeah, so that's what's going on with the house now. Once I get it set up and I get through it, as Dan Sullivan says, nothing feels good in the middle. I'm still in the middle of this thing, and there's still months of little transition stuff. But I also lived in my last house for 16 years, so it's a big change of environment and just getting used to where every damn light switch is and all that sort of stupid stuff. But, yeah, anyway, it's all good in a lot of ways and it's frustrating in others. But I want to mention this. Before this person calls in, we have a special guest who's going to call in because we called him right before we started recording and said, hey, can you call in? And he's like, yeah, I'll call in in a few minutes and we'll reveal who that is and you'll hear him. And a lot of people know who he is. We've actually interviewed him before. Real bright guy. But he's going to call in. Wait. Or maybe he isn't. Let's See, Wait, I spoke too soon. Sorry, I got the time wrong. We need to leave. Like. Okay, so he's not going to.

In.

I'll just say, okay. You're a schmuck, you.

Yeah, fine, a schmuck. Yeah.

Here, I'll actually. I'll actually.

Mr. Ari Mizel.

Yeah. Yeah. So here I'm going to record on my iPhone a video and just so people could see what I actually do. So I have a little iPhone here. I'm going to record a video of me on the phone. Hey, Ari, this is Joe. I'm actually recording this podcast with Dean Jackson right now. Just mentioning that we're going to have a special guest called. And then you send me this text, Mr. Les Dewey, who didn't have his schedule right, that he cannot call in now. So everyone is hearing me record this live to you right now. So if you have any integrity whatsoever, at least call in and say hi. And if not, we'll just at least let everyone know to read your book anyway, because it is good, but you as a person are a little flaky. Okay. All right. Have a great day. And I'm kidding, by the way. Everyone's hearing this. You're going to have to go and.

Listen to this episode.

So, yeah, that's the deal with Ari. But I just sent that little video off and he's like, sorry, guys, try the app.

It's awesome.

He sent over an app that supposedly we can record our podcast with. It gives really high quality sound. And, you know, the only downside with some of our episodes, and we know.

This.

Sometimes the sound quality isn't as great as we would like it to be. Whenever we can do it in studios, whenever we. And we do put up a lot of really high quality professional videos. And what a lot of people may or may not know that, you know, our podcast is not our primary business. Some people, that's what they do, they do podcasting and they get sponsors and they do all that stuff to pay for it. I mean, we pretty much out of pocket have done this for four years, and I have spent literally, you know, over $100,000 on stuff related to the podcast, to interviews, to video, to website development and everything. And, you know, and we still put as good as stuff other than me maybe babbling or rambling on too long at times. We do our best to just try to bring great knowledge and insight and strategies to people. And what I always go back to is if some people just go through some of our original episodes on putting together education based marketing Using consumer awareness, sort of messaging and copy the nine word email. I mean any of those little things will transform someone's business if they adopt them. Small price to pay for not having always sometimes the best quality recording. And like today I'm at New house and there's no recording equipment here so we have to do this on the phone. But it is what it is. So subject for today. Dean return on Genius. Great concept. Let's talk about that and what it means and how people can think about it. And it's something that I've been applying to our my 25k group and that you've been really having a lot of discussions with me on. And I think it'd be really useful for all of our listeners to think about.

Yeah, that's something. That's why I think it's good that we can talk about it because anyway, I'm totally laughing.

He goes, we're going to talk about it. We're friggin sitting there in the middle of. Because we rarely look at our phones while we are recording a podcast. But that message I just sent exactly the same time. You got to read what he just wrote back.

I just saw it.

Well, what does it say?

I just saw it at the same time. So he saw your email and he texts back and says such a dick. And here we are getting all serious into our topic and we both saw it at exactly the same time. That's so funny.

That's great. All right, so go ahead. Sorry for the distraction. I just thought that would be comic relief.

So yeah, you know that concept you and I have been talking about for a while now and I thought, you know what, let's kind of talk about it live here. Because it really is a, you know, has a big impact and I want to kind of get this out there so that people can start kind of thinking about it and let's, you know, get on record with it and kind of look at expanding the concept. And so when I was, we first started talking about this, I was, I've been recognizing now a lot of the things in my life and a lot of the things that, that have the, the highest yield are things that are sort of ongoing environments that you kind of put yourself in. You know, Dan Sullivan has this great conc. Abundant neighborhoods. And you know, when you're in a, you know, you go to strategic coach and you're in a room where the conversations are about a 25 year plan and about thinking about your thinking and about growing your business 10 times and about wanting what you Want and all these things that are, you know, shaping as entrepreneurs the way that we think have long term and massive return on our investment in those things. And so I've always been in favor of documenting and paying attention to and presencing the actual return on things. And I think that all of these kind of thoughts have been coming together and when I said to you this, that kind of thought, return on genius, that thinking about the environment that you've created. So Genius Network, 25K, an environment of the highest level direct marketers, entrepreneurs in the world, everybody, you know, kind of gathered there. Now when you look at it, some of the things that kind of go into how to calculate a return on genius are really being able to measure the impact of what we kind of talk about as the two things that tangibly make a difference. Either an idea or a connection. You either meet somebody and you're able to do business with them, or they're able to provide a service for you, or they're able to, to act as a multiplier for you. They're able to introduce you to somebody else. You could do a direct joint venture with them. Or you get an idea of somebody who's had an experience that you're going through right now, or maybe something that you've never thought of and you get an idea that you're able to execute and it can change, I call them vector changers. It can change the vector of where you're headed. If you're just looking at charting the trajectory of where income and your business growth is going, and you get an idea that just changes that vector by just a couple of degrees and you look over time, you're in a completely different, you're in a completely different place because of those changes. And so it's funny, when we were talking about it, I kind of presence to the idea of saying what if immediately when people come into 25k, that the thought is thinking about it as a 10 year investment, that it's a 10 year process, that if you look at it that instead of $25,000 for one year, it's $250,000 over 10 years. And you start to think what would be if you draw kind of a graph of that, where you've got a line going up increasing by 25,000 a year from 0 to 250,000 over 10 years, maybe on a 30 degree angle, then you start to pay attention and look and see what are the results, what's the return on being in that environment, being attached to that, having that as an asset in your business. It's almost like we look at it, we talked about this idea of even getting people to think that long term way by setting it up that that genius Network is a $250,000 lifetime membership and you can pay $25,000 a year over 10 years, no interest. And just to get people thinking and committed to that sort of a process rather than, you know, people coming in and looking to just get a quick hit or come in and try it out, but not really look at the proactive way that they're looking to get a return on that investment and how they're looking at actually monetizing this. And you talk about it that over the whole idea is that somebody joins 25K and that you talk about that they want a 10 times return and if they can't get a 10 times return that you don't, you don't want them to renew. Even though, I mean, not that you don't like them, that you don't.

But.

You'Re to set the bar really for the type of expectation that people have that you're looking for people who are going to take things and you know, have a vehicle that can multiply ideas and connections. You know, that's why when you set the bar kind of as high with a $25,000 entry point, most of the people, you don't have a business that can support making an investment like that. So they're not in a startup situation typically where they're trying to now look at this as how do I get a business started and get it going. These are people who have successful businesses already and you know, so one of the key concepts of looking at how to get that return is this. You know, I have this fundamental belief that ideas really are more valuable than execution. And we've maybe talked about it, but maybe not on the, on the podcast. And you know, I say that because it's always so controversial that people always say, you know, what's more valuable? Ideas or execution? And you know, of course people will say, well, an idea that's not executed is worthless, so execution is really what it's, what it's all about. And you know, that's true, but you have to grant along with that that there is such a thing as flawless execution. And if you can execute an idea flawlessly, the only thing that can improve that is executing a better idea. And so, you know, if you've already got an execution engine, if you've got a business that's successful and you're, you know, it's fully going and you can have an idea that you can insert into this existing machine that you already have. That's a valuable thing. Or you have a contact, somebody. A contact which can be a shortcut to execution as well.

Yeah, you talked about so many different things that I want to. I want to kind of speak to several of them and point out how this framing of thinking about return on genius, what it's meant to me, what it's meant to genius Network, how it and why that applies to everyone that is listening. I have differing opinions about your whole thing about ideas being more important than execution. I mean, I'm of the mind that, you know, if you don't execute it, an idea is worthless if it isn't applied, if it isn't executed, or if it doesn't change perspective. Because there's a lot of ideas that people hear. I mean, I have thought a lot about the entire world of personal development, all the books that I've read. Anyone that listens to our podcast is probably listening to other people's podcasts. They're probably going to seminars. They're. They're educating themselves. I mean, you know, people that do nothing but listen to music or play video games or watch television. And there is useful television and there's relaxation television, there's mindless television, there's escapism television in the same way that the consumption of how to be it, music, talking, word chanting, whatever. Then there's the spiritual realm. I mean, there's all kinds of things that people consume. And a lot of times you can hear ideas and how to and advice, and you don't execute on any of it. But what it does is it kind of feeds your head and it allows you to think about the world. It allows you to basically get better. And some things, you just hear them and they don't really get applied per se in a executable, strategic or tactical way into your business, but it shifts you as a human being. I mean, most people can say, I've read a book that has changed my life. And you could be, well, how did it change your life? Did you start the workout regimen? Did you implement the business methodology or the plan? And it'll be like, no, but it changed the way that I think, and it changed. And by changing the way that I think, it slightly altered the way that I behave. And so a lot of that has to do with kind of like your return on genius. And I'm of the mindset, though, that if you hear a really good business idea and you don't do anything with it. Well, you know, I mean, you didn't do anything with it. And I've always liked. I think it was Emerson that said, you know, you asked for a new idea when you haven't used the last one that I gave you. And a lot of people, especially people that will continuously go to any sort of school. And I don't mean school in terms of, like, formal schools, although it could be that, but I mean, like, any sort of guru or any sort of seminar or any sort of institution or any sort of methodology, and they'll keep going back. They'll keep going back. There's reasons why people do that that are in many cases, more about entertainment in some cases than they are about anything that the person or the company or whatever is even saying. So are you tracking me on all this? So it doesn't sound like.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, I get it. And I think that there's a place for that, too. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So as it applies to what you said, I mean, you know, like, the whole, like, you take me and you, you're more. You're a great idea guy. And I'd say for both me and you, as IT app, probably more. In our partnership on. I love marketing. I definitely take more of a role of implementing and executing and making things move along. But I've said this publicly many times. I mean, if you want someone who's just an absolute strategic marketing genius, I mean, that's you. I mean, you're very methodical when it comes to hustling, though, I'm more of a hustler than you in this realm. Yeah. You know, so a lot of people are like, yeah, you know, Dean's really freaking smart and really awesome. And I always make jokes like, yeah, and I'm the one that works my ass off getting all these, you know, all this other shit together so we could set the stage for Dean to run the race that he runs, because I kind of keep the track clean for him. He kind of, like, shows up and rambles, and I, you know, work my ass off setting all this other stuff up. But, you know. But that being said, as it comes to return on Genius, the big shift of that idea is there's a lot of it that hasn't even been implemented per se. And even as we talk about it, we're kind of in the execution process. But for years in Genius Network, I played a trick on everyone's head when they would come to their first meeting at Genius Network. And for people that don't know the background. Genius Network is my discussion group. We used to call it a mastermind group until we realized it was way more than a typical mastermind where people are all sitting around and just talking about ideas. We have thinking tools, we do planning. It's very much for successful entrepreneurs that are running million dollar plus companies. I have a billionaire in the group. I have many people that are doing $50 million, $70 million, $100 million, $200 million, $300 million a year. The average person is probably 10, $20 million a year company. If you had to average it out across everyone in the group, there's over 150 members currently. They pay $25,000 a year. And that originally started that I would facilitate this great discussion group for myself and then ended up falling in love with it. And this was nine years ago from the time that we're doing this recording when I was like, damn, actually I like this. I would do this even if I didn't get paid for it. But the fact that I charge for it for one brings in the right type of person. Everyone knows that everyone there is paying. They're all very smart people, many of them way smarter than me in so many different areas. But I facilitate this sort of discussion group. But what I realized early on is that if you're a really high level person, you can come up with better ideas sitting by yourself in a restaurant, a coffee shop, a library, anywhere with a notepad or a napkin, scribbling out your ideas in your head than in many cases you would get at most seminars. So how do I create something that is far better than other things that are available? How do I get people that run the top events, run the top seminars, run the top groups? You know, how to get people like Dan Sullivan, who's coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone in the world. How do I get him to actually pay money to come to my event? How do I get Peter Diamandis? How do I get Jeff Walkers, the Brendan Burchard's, the Dean Graziosis? You know, people like that. How do I, you know, Dr. Daniel Amen. How do I get those sort of people to actually pay money to come to a school, a group, something that I set up that would be so valuable to them? And I realized, well, you know, it has to be about elegant ideas, it to be about the right type of people? Because you mentioned, you know, it may be an idea, it may be a contact. You know, a lot of people think, oh, they're coming for ideas. And they realize when they Come to Genius Network, they're getting contacts that it would take years for them to like get these contacts and they show up to a single meeting and like Jesus, you know, that was worth my investment fee. Forget, forget any sort of ideas. But even with that, I used to say if you, and I still say this, but I shifted it. I would say, you mentioned it earlier, I would say if you come to a, if you come to the group, if you don't make at least a 10 times return within a year, I don't want you to renew. And that's kind of our policy. And I had that as a policy for a while and I'm shifting it because what I've learned is that some people like a JJ Virgin. First year she's in Genius Network, she attributes a million dollars directly to being in Genius Network. But not everyone does that guy like a. Dean graziosi started between 10 to 20 million a year in revenue when he first joined. Already a very successful business. His company did over 200 million in a year. I mean he definitely 10 times his business. But what I realized is that there is a setup stage and some people, they don't just benefit financially. But I wanted, I came up with that policy because I wanted people to come to those meetings with a perspective saying I have to look for quarter million dollar ideas. Because if I just didn't establish some sort of framework, you know, then people are like, well how do I evaluate this? And when you're dealing with like the type of people that I'm dealing with, they have so many options. They're not out there looking for a group. I mean they're not like oh my God, I really need to join a group or oh my God, I really need a guru to help me how to run my life. I mean these are pretty functioning people. You know. The biggest thing that they're looking for is people that they can relate to that are like them. Because as you know, many of the, one of the biggest challenges why people join Vistage, why people join, you know, eo, why people join a lot of, you know, entrepreneur. They're just simply lonely. I mean especially really successful people. Not like lonely like they have to be held or they have no friends. Although that does exist. Lonely in terms of like they're surrounded by people that don't, that don't think like them, that don't have the ambition levels that they have, that don't have the risk taking that they have, that don't have the internal drive almost to the point, sometimes demonic and addictive. To get shit done and so they can come and find those people. So it's not always about money. And if you're worth millions of dollars, adding another million dollars is not going to alter your life all that much. But if you could free up their mind, if you can take anxiety away from them, if you can have them feel good or have more fun or take more time off, you know, and multiply in different ways would make all the difference in the world. And so I've realized that over the years. But here's the big kicker and why we're doing this episode about return on Genius. If you don't frame it for someone that think of this as a 10 year investment versus a year, they are so apt to just say, you know what, there's so many options thrown at me. I'm going to take this one because.

People, I'm going to try this one next. I think I'm going to try this for a year. I'm going to try this other group or I'm going to try something else.

Yeah, right. And they never commit. And if someone doesn't commit to saying, I'm going to really get, you know, if you don't commit to working out and exercising, you're not going to do it. If you don't commit to your relationship, you're not going to do it. If you don't commit to, you know, a meditation practice, you're not going to do it. If you don't commit to reading a book, you know, that you picked up and you're going to read like, you know, 10 pages and then you're on to the next book and you're on. And so people run around like that. And what I've learned is that a lot of wealthy people, they're kind of like seminar junkies with a lot of money. They bounce around from event to event to event. I mean, I go to Peter Diamandis adventure trip, which he got the idea from the trips I would do to Necker island, started doing these 40, $50,000 person trips. And there are people there that are so successful, I mean, worth millions. At the last trip we just went on, there were five billionaires on the trip. And these people jump around, they just do it on private planes and they go to like expensive shit. So it's like people are gonna spend their time doing something. But what I've learned is that when the, and this is the caveat, if the training is good, if the relationships are good, if the setup is good, if it's a restaurant and the food is good. The more you, you commit to that, the more you get out of it as the years go by. And the people that have been the most successful in my platinum group that I did for professional cleaners to my Genius Network group, the longer they're in and the more they develop the relationships, the greater the return. And so we call it return on genius, which really came from you. The return on Genius Network comes from making that commitment. And so when I started saying, okay, if you pay $25,000 a year and if you don't make $250,000 the first year, well, it's like, well, shit, okay, maybe you drop out, whatever. And before I would actually want people to do that now I said, you.

Know, like, what if this is a.

10 year thing and you literally, I don't raise the price, but it's $25,000 a year for 10 years and it's 250,000 in 10 years. Not only would everyone make like a 10 times return on that $250,000, which would be 2,500,000, but in a 10 year period with the types of relationships and the type of contacts and the type of business models, they're probably going to make millions of dollars. Their business and their lives are going to dramatically change. Their health will get better. Even though they're getting older, they'll probably get in better shape. And we're seeing that for people that have been in the group since the very beginning. And you know, it's like, okay, well then how do we convey that? And so to all of our listeners. So this doesn't sound like I'm just talking about me, which of course I'm talking about my own company as an example, but like, how would you apply that same sort of idea for what it is that you do? I mean, a carpet cleaner, although it's not in terms of ideas and teaching and stuff, but a carpet cleaner, let's say the Average job is $200 to go clean someone's carpet. And a lot of people don't do it every year, but they, you know, I like just moved into this new house. I've probably got, you know, between furniture and, although I've got metal floors in one level of the house, concrete floors, bamboo floors, I've got really nice throw rugs, you know, I've got a probably, you know, about $170,000 into furnishings and stuff that I have purchased over, you know, it's a lot of money. And if I think in 10 years, if I had to pay A carpet cleaner, let's say, you know, $500 a year, you know, over a 10 year period. What, what would that be?

5,000?

Yeah. Make sure you do the math right here. Now that seems like a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money at all considering the maintenance of this stuff versus if you kind of just do it. Onesie twosie. And what would be the return on my furnishings if this stuff was properly maintained? Now that's a service business in most cases, most people view as a commodity. But if you're in the idea business, if you're in the transformation business, if you bring something other to someone about, you know, either making them money, saving them money, or reducing their stress, and most people are in one of those sort of like whatever it is they sell probably either makes people money, saves people money, or makes their life better, reduces their stress. It could be an entertainment. I mean, what would be the return? If you thought of it as a 10 year process or a three year process or a, you know, and a lot of people would be like, well, you know, I'm my business, that wouldn't apply to me. I sell cars and people buy cars every. You know, well, maybe you need to rethink how you think about this. The whole point is this is about thinking about your thinking, as Dan Sullivan would say, and getting people that are your clients to think about what are you actually selling, what are they actually buying? Because I'll tell you, it's a game changer. When I start talking to everyone in Genius Network, like, what have you done so far? Okay, what if we look at this, if you're in this another eight years, what do you think is going to happen? And then they say, start setting goals. And they start saying, oh, if I leverage Joe's connections here, if I go to the annual event and I make these sort of connections, here's the type of return. And then everyone that really takes this seriously realizes Genius Network at $25,000 a year, when you're looking at it from a singular thing, sounds really frickin expensive. But when you start looking at it as an investment, you're like, this is the greatest freaking investment to build and grow my business that I could probably ever make.

Exactly.

If I leverage it. And that's the whole point because we're always trying to sell people on this shit. Like, oh, you should join, you know, this $25,000 group. Oh, let's position it so it looks like the most exclusive thing ever. When you realize you're going out and Buying cars that cost you more money every year than what Genius Network makes you going to this thing and you're going that thing. And if you say this, you know, like people like, well, I can go to this seminar for $2,000, or someone invited me and it's like, well, do you know that not only is that seminar 1/10 as valuable as this thing would be, but you didn't just save like, let's say one cost 25,000 for one thing and then another cost like 5,000. Oh, well, I saved myself 20 grand a year. Well, no, you didn't save anything because what you did is you spent six days, or you spent four days, you spent eight days. How much is that time worth? And what if you actually took those same days and put it into something that was ten times more valuable and you looked at it from a 10 year framework? Do you think your life would be different? Do you think things would change? And now I'm saying all of this with, of course, the caveat being, if you're going to play this return on Genius game, you actually have to be in the business of something that actually is capable of doing what it is you're saying. So you're not doing a gimmicky bullshit pitch. That's the thing. So I just wanted, I wanted to just speak to that based on everything that you said that to summarize a lot of this. It's just a perspective shift. But if you shift a perspective in your own, like, to all our listeners, like, okay, how can this return on Genius shift your thinking about what you spend your time and money on? Like, if someone listened to every one of our I Love Marketing episodes, which would take an enormous amount of time. We're over 200.

200 hours episodes.

But I guarantee you, if someone went through all of our episodes, never bought anything from me, or you never went through your breakthrough blueprints, never bought any of our. Any of the stuff that we sell, just simply listen to that. There is no way they would not have a better marketing education than any four year college degree. That would cost them infinitely more. Not only more, but the amount of time would be greater. The amount of ineptness and shit that they would have to unlearn would be painful. I mean, like, we could eliminate a marketing degree in college and save someone a tremendous amount of time and have their education be free to them if they can just grasp that sort of concept. And some have, because we have people that have become millionaires listening to I love marketing.

Mm. It happens all the Time, I mean, that's, you know, I had just did a breakthrough blueprint here in Florida a few weeks ago and had a guy from Philadelphia came and he has been a listener of the podcast. He's been with us almost right from like, like he said if he thought he got on like episode four, but went back and listened. And he's been, you know, all the way with us for that whole time. And when, you know, when we meet people like that, just to hear their, you know, the changes that it's made for them and the, the results that they've gotten, it's almost like you're, you know, everybody that we end up meeting like that. It feels like we already know them. They certainly feel like they know us because we've been, you know, sort of intimately in their ears for 200 hours now, you know, and anything that they, that they do, you know, there's lots of executable ideas that we have within those 200 hours, for sure. One of the things that, the baseline things, My belief on that is ideas are more valuable than execution. That's my belief. You can argue exceptions to it or whatever, but I think ultimately ideas trump the thing. Ideas that you can execute within your existing system.

Well, wait, wait, wait, let me go to that. Not so I can debate or argue with you on that. So I can get a deeper understanding of what you're meaning, what you mean by that. And because a lot of people do.

I either if you, you can't execute unless you're executing an idea, right? You're not, you're, you gotta, can't execute nothing. You gotta execute an idea. So just like the execution people say, well, ideas that aren't executed are worthless. That's absolutely true. But you can't execute nothing. If you're doing any level of execution, you're executing something which is an idea, right? Yeah. And so what I'm saying is that you can execute that idea flawlessly. You could try your hardest. You could do it, you know, absolute, at the best efficiency that you could possibly do it. And the only thing that's going to improve that execution is executing a better idea.

So the bottom line though is if we, you know, let's say, for instance, I love marketing was a really good idea when we, you know, a podcast.

Let'S say, here's the thing. There's, there's, there's the thing, you could execute all the mechanics of a podcast. You could be able get the highest quality studio sound, you could get the best equipment, you could get the best web Design the best everything around it. But ultimately, what people judge a podcast by is the ideas that are coming out of the podcaster's mouth at the end of the day. Right. There are lots of podcasts out there, but why do some podcasts rise to the top while others mire in, you know, the depths? Because.

Well, some of. Some of it, you know, is because of marketing.

It's because of marketing, but it's also because, you know. No, but there's no value, right? I mean, you can go through the mechanics of a podcast, but if you're not. If there's nothing, if there's no value, which is ideas, as far as the podcast goes, that's, you know, that's what's gonna make one podcast more valuable than another.

Okay, but let me, Let me play, Let me play devil's advocate here, though. Someone. If someone hears. If someone goes to a seminar or hears an idea or listens to, say, our podcast, or Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss or, yeah. John Lee Dumas or, you know, name one, whatever, right? 10x talk, you know, whatever. And they list a lot of times, people or they go to seminars or whatever, and they, you know, they hear all this stuff. They can actually delude themselves into thinking. Hearing about ideas means they're actually taking action. When you've seen the whole psychological trap of someone who's reading so much, they actually think they're doing shit because they're just. They're consuming a bunch of stuff. But if they never take. Like, if I would have said to you, hey, Dean, there's this idea of, I love marketing. Let's do a podcast. But I would have never, you know, I got the website. You know, I did all this stuff to set it up. We brainstormed what we should call it, and, you know, we ended up calling it I Love Marketing. Because we're like, shit, we love marketing. Marketing makes a big deal. If we never would have executed upon that, it never would be real. We wouldn't be sitting here talking today. So that's the part where I'm trying to.

Right, but do you think that. And there's part of it.

It.

The idea of calling it I Love Marketing is in itself an idea. That is part of the reason that this podcast in particular has been as successful as it is. If we had come out of the gate and had a podcast called I Love Joe and Dean, right? It's not the same. People wouldn't be gathering in meetup groups all around the world to meet up because they love Joe and Dean. It's not the same.

Right. I'm just thinking about what I could say to that right now, but I won't. I'll just. Yeah, right, right, right, right. I mean, I think they do. I think those groups do exist though. But I think they're just called I Love Joe and I Hate Dean.

No, you know what they're called is they're called JR's apartment.

Yeah, yeah. The hate, the Hate Dean part. The Hate Dean part.

I can see the sign, the directional sign to the meetup. The I Love Joe and Dean with the Dean scratch.

Well, that would be the, that would be the living room and then the bathroom would be I Hate Dean.

That's so funny. But, you know, the whole thing is that, that, you know, it's just as people say, that, you know, and I agree with you that if you're not going to do anything, then it's all worthless because you're not executing. If you're not going to execute anything, then that's equal. But if you're executing something, the best thing you can do is execute the best idea.

Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you.

Okay, so that, you know, that kind of thing like, you know, and that goes to every, every single thing. Joe, if you take like, you know, if you're running, you can have a strategy and say, I'm going to run full page ads in magazines, or I'm going to run full page ads in the newspaper, or I'm going to run radio ads. That's your, that's your, that's your strategy.

Right.

And you can execute that. All the things that you could do are get, you know, go through the motions of creating the ad, of creating the, the buying the media, putting it out there. But what's going to make one more valuable than another is the idea that you choose to apply to that execution. Yeah, by the way, by the way, the.

One of the reasons that I want, you know, I always am thinking about our listeners and how they either understand or perceive or misconstrue what we're talking about. And so the reason I want to place a heavy emphasis on the application implementation and usage of ideas is I don't want anyone using the excuse, well, you know, I just need a better idea. So therefore I can't take any sort of action whatsoever. You know what, like, even though I meditate almost daily, I've had so much crazy shit going on with this house, I've actually been missing some days of meditation, believe it or not, which pains me because if you are too busy to Miss meditation, then you really need to kind of fix things up. So that's what's kind of irritated me. But you know, Gary Halbert would always say, you'll accomplish more through movement than you ever will through meditation. And I used to, that used to be a mantra. And I actually believe sometimes you'll accomplish more through meditation than you will through movement, especially if the movement is a useless sort of thing. However, as it applies to business strategy, getting off your ass and doing something. Because as another thing Halbert would say is everything's a clusterfuck until it's as smooth as silk. And a lot of people, when it, when it comes to ideas, they want things to just fucking work. And they don't work all the time. You just have to get shit going. And then you have to course correct and you have to shift and you have to learn and you have to get, get, you know, an understanding of this is the right direction. This isn't. And so I don't want anyone using this whole, you know, execution versus ideas as an excuse for not getting off your ass and doing something. Because no matter what we talk about here, if you don't do anything with.

It, it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

That's kind of my, my thing, you know, it's not about like, let me debate who's right or wrong. I mean, I.

No, no, no, I get it, I get it. And I think that the key thing, even just enough talking about it is the key thing to understand is that there they go equally, you know, there you can't have one without the other.

Right, Right. Yeah.

So you know what to the, you know, if you're. The great thing about an environment like Genius Network is that the people who are in Genius Network who are candidates for Genius Network or maybe considering Genius Network are already people who've figured out the execution to get to a million dollar business at least. Right? So that's the thing where, that's where now they've paid the dues, gotten to the point where they've already got the mechanism in place that you can, that those ideas now can make a huge difference on something that you're already executing. Because if you're already running full page ads or newspaper ads, radio ads, whatever, if you're already running those ads and they're doing okay, they've gotten you to where you're going, imagine, you know, what could happen if you all of a sudden find an ad that gets four times the amount of response that you get.

Yes. Yep.

That's an Idea. Absolutely. And that's an idea that you're only probably, you know, gonna get in a room of people who are the top direct marketers in the world. Right. That, that's already on their, on the radar there. So that, that goes along, those two go along hand in hand. But the other kind of presumption here is that you're in the business that you're in for the long term or that you're, you know, you're, you're an entrepreneur that's evolving and moving forward, but with a long term vista, you know, not that I think it's more valuable to the people who are, you know, having that kind of a vision. Like I, when I tell people about Dan Sullivan's 25 year vision as a 70 year old man with a 25 year vision, it's like, you know, where else are you going to find that kind of, you know, conversation going on? It's crazy, right?

Well, yeah, yeah. Not only, not only that to the, is it crazy to the average person, it's completely normal to him because he's rearranged his whole definition of normal. But the thing is Dan truly is more excited about his future than his past. And the average 70 year old, I mean, I hate saying this because I have a lot of friends that are in that age category, some older, that they don't have that perspective at all. They actually, they, you know, most of my relatives, if I talk to them at all, I mean my parents have been passed away for a long time and you know, many of my closest family members and aunts and uncles, they have, they have died. The ones that are remaining, not all of them, but most of them, I mean they just are dreading their existence. And by the way, I want to plug this, we won't go in the conversation about it, but check out Joe volunteered dot com. Yeah, we talked about it on a previous episode. Chip Franks set that up by listening to talk about a guy who heard an idea on episode 186 about what we learned from Abundance360. I talked about, about creating like an Uber for linking volunteers with organizations that need them. And Chip Franks took the idea and he executed upon it and he's building this thing out and the receptivity of it is amazing. And he's beta testing it in Austin, Texas and all of that.

It's a winner.

Yeah, it's a great sort of idea and you know, it's to bring a lot of hope and reduce suffering to many people from you know, children to animal shelters to disaster Relief to nursing homes, to all kinds of different ways. And I'd love to have people look at it and see what this guy has actually built. And this is not about making a lot of money. This is something that's just simply designed to help people. And we have to actually finance the thing. And most of it is out of our own time and effort. And Chip is a fricking rock star.

So.

That being said, but the thing is that brought up me thinking about older people, they just don't have that fricking perspective. But when you start looking at it like this, I mean it's like talk about return on genius. What about return on your life, return on your.

Well, there's the thing is that's an idea, you know, Like I look at every and I look at these environments and you start to see that it's not about trying one out now and then switching over and trying another one over here. It's about collecting the them, it's about bolting them on, layering them on to your, to your, your world as a multiplier, you know, and you look at it like how they all intertwine. Like you're not that idea of thinking about your future being bigger than your past. Always, even at 70 years old, with a 25 year old Vista and a mindset that's your, you know, your, Your VISTA is 10 times. Those are ideas that shift the way that you think and they're going to shift the things that you actually execute. You know, because if you, you'd approach your business differently if you were thinking about it with a 25 year vision.

Right?

It's so, I mean, it's so that, you know, what is the, what is the return on that? What it really down to is getting to a point where you have that awareness. And this I, you know, I talk about this idea of return on genius and I've been using these words, this return on in all kinds of different contexts. And I think it's a way of thinking that you're looking at something and seeing if you're making a monetary investment in something, looking at it as a, as a multiplier and looking at it as a somewhere when you can get where you become sort of self sustaining in that. So if you say that we take 25k as an example and we chart out that trajectory of 25,000 a year for 10 years, $250,000. So in year one you've spent 25,000, in year two you've spent 50. So going on like that that if in year one, the day you start, you start paying attention and you're looking at the very first meeting that you're at, you start thinking and noticing what are the ideas that I could execute here or who are the contacts that I could forge a relationship with or who could I get to execute something for me? See, when you're. The luxury of having a successful ongoing business with money that is that you can invest in your business, is that you get to shortcut and think about. I think that the two most valuable questions that an entrepreneur can ask are what and who and not get concerned about the other. You know, a lot of times people get buried into the how to do something and you know, rather than focusing on what is possible and that's what you're going to be exposed to in those environments, you start to see what other people are doing. You're hearing about what kinds of things they're executing, what ideas they've had, what results they're getting. And you start to see that those are all ideas that could stimulate another idea for you. So you start to see, well, what could I do? Is one of the greatest questions that you can, that you can ask. And that's strategy. That's, you know, thinking strategically like that. And then the next valuable question is who, you know, who can execute this for me? That's kind of the thing where if you have the right who, they'll bring the how with you.

You know, which, which, which makes the whole point of thank God you have me in your life because you'd be hosed.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Think about how, I mean, you, you would literally be on a street corner with a nine word email begging for money. What would you, if you had to, like, if you literally had to be out there on the street with a sign, what would it say? Like, what would be the most effective sign for the people that are here that have zero integrity whatsoever but happen to somehow stumble across. I love marketing. And they want to, they're not really homeless, but they want to act like they are and go to get the, get the whole get up on and go stand and, and literally beg for money. Yeah, I've watched some YouTube videos of people that actually do that. They act handicapped and they do that, that. Oh my God, it's crazy. There's this one lady that they follow who literally goes and acts like a crippled woman and sits on a street corner and makes money and then she like literally goes around and then has a car pick her up.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen some of Those things like busting them on like 2020 and stuff like that, right?

Yeah. I mean, what just scumbag human beings those people are. Anyway, no, but anyway, I'm just joking. Although it would be kind of funny if you actually had the special nine word email, just in case. Is it like a backup here? We got a wrap, Dean. And so I want to say a couple things and I want you to like, summarize how to get the most out of what we talked about today. Although I think there's a ton of really valuable perspective that we gave Ari, who in the beginning was originally going to call in, but then he found he couldn't. He actually wrote back a text that I just for comic purposes, I have to read this. He wrote, I hope a skunk gives birth in your house, because I saw that too. Yeah, I texted him. We just read what you wrote on the podcast. And so Ari, he was going to actually talk about return on Genius of what he's got through the relationship of meeting me. And we just went and spoke at his less doing event in New York. And prior to that I was was at Michael Fishman's Consumer Health Summit. And prior to that I was on Peter Diamandis adventure trip. And then I flew back into town and literally moved into my new house. And on Sunday I went to Christie's auction and we got a tour of Christie's auction with Arianna Huffington. I met her and her daughter Isabella, who's an awesome artist. We actually did a tour of Christie's and I recently did that part podcast episode. We put up the talk that I gave to artists on I Love Marketing. So I want to bring up some episodes that are up there. We're now over 200. And so to all of our listeners who have been with us since the very beginning, I know there's many thank you for obviously listening and sharing and the wonderful comments and reviews that we've gotten over the years. We really, really appreciate that for everyone that runs an I Love Marketing meetup group in different parts of the world, thank you for doing that. You can go to meetup.com and find I Love Marketing meetups. If you want to start one, you can go to the website and we have a download where you can do that. One of our great team members, Casey Jones, recently passed away. Young guy, he died. He worked with me and my team for over seven years. It was very sad for our team. I'm still trying to figure out how we, you know, even so much work that he did for so many people. And he was such a great contributing team member. So that's been one of the sad points of what has happened recently. On a positive note, we've been putting a lot of interviews and stuff that I've done up on. I love marketing, which you'll actually see. We recently put one up for Tony Shame. My interview I did with Tony a while back at Zappos headquarters. And then we've got some. We're going to put some Genius Network talks from the Genius Network annual event is going to be put up as podcast episodes so that people can see some of these incredible talks. And of course, me and you have a whole slew of different topics that we're going to be covering over the next few weeks and months, and different people that we're going to be interviewing and boy, what else? Oh, and one thing that, based on this return on Genius Idea, one thing that I've actually noticed is that what it does is a lot of people will send letters and messages to my office or they'll get through to me or that one of their big goals is to join Genius Network. And I actually love that because a lot of people, they're like, hey, they're not where their business isn't at a level to where, for one, they financially even qualify to do it. But what it does is it actually creates an aspiration. And one of the biggest benefits of thinking long term, like you were saying, is you actually can identify things that you aspire to. And if you don't have that aspirational thing, you're going to spend more time just doing stuff than really even thinking very strategically about what you're doing and why, you know, and that's, that's why I think it's. It's so important. So how would you. How would you take everything we've talked about and what's the next steps, if there is any. I mean, just I'd like you to kind of summarize and then we'll. We'll wrap this episode.

Well, I think that, you know, we just started at the end here to talk about this idea of, you know, being on the alert for, you know, the two. I think the two multiplier questions are what and who? And that really is the, you know, ideas and context and kind of just framing that, being aware of that. Because a lot of times people hear about a what, but they're immediate, immediate response is to want to know how rather than shortcut the process and find and ask themselves the question who can do that for me rather than how Do I figure out how to do that? That's, you know, how you do it is you figure out who. That's the entrepreneurial multiplier. Right.

That's where Genius Network started.

That's exactly it.

Yeah. Who are all the geniuses that you need?

Right.

You know, because like Halbert said, any problem in the world can be solved at the right sales level. I think anything can be solved with the right Genius Network. Like, who are those people? What are the capabilities and how do you find them and how do you make those connections?

Yeah, absolutely. And so as the group grows, the, you know, the Genius Network is just becoming more and more and more valuable. So it's amazing to see what the potential is over 25 years here if we can, you know, build, continue to add geniuses.

Yeah, exactly. Cool. So that's a perfect time for people to go look at the website for the annual event that I have this year, which is geniusnetwork events with an S geniusnetworkevents.com check it out. That's our event. It's $10,000 if you, if you get in, we will sell it out. It will be in beautiful Arizona during October, October 26th and 27th, 2015. And we've got all kinds of amazing people from not just entrepreneurs and marketers, we've got just incredible minds like Sean Achor, who's one of the world's leading happiness experts, who did an amazing TED talk to Peter Diamandis, to Dan Sullivan. I mean, I can't, I can't remember everyone off top of my head, but we got Master Kip, we got a lot of people doing 10 minute talks, sharing a best practice or strategy that's in most cases been worth a quarter million or more to them. And they got 10 minutes to share it. So it's ideas worth using. And Sally Hogshead, who's just an amazing marketer. Victoria Labotte, she's great. Yeah, we got Tony Robbins, we've got John Paul DeJoria. Yeah, John Paul DeJoria from Patron Tequila and Paul Mitchell Systems. And Shawn Stevenson is going to give a 10 minute talk. And Cameron Herold, who wrote an amazing book called Double Double. Just an incredible speaker and just a whole lot more. It's just going to be great. And then everyone, of course, can meet everyone, including us and all these individuals and you and all kinds of other people that we have speaking that I can't even remember who the hell they all are. But you can check it out at. Yeah, yeah, it'll be good. And so it's a connection thing. And so please post your comments about what you got out of this episode. What has it done for your thinking? Spend some time really asking yourself the questions that we went over and ponder this. And subscribe to ilovemarketing.com if you don't currently, if you're not currently subscribing, pop over to itunes and subscribe there or wherever you can download this podcast. You can go to our website and do it from there. And any famous last words, Dean, that's awesome.

This is a big idea. I think it's we got some more episodes to do about it, but it's going to be good to watch it evolve.

Yep. There you go. All right, everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Dean. And we will talk to everyone on the next episode of I love Marketing. Take care.

Sam.