Review of the Genius Network Annual Event and a Joe Volunteer Update - I Love Marketing Episode #227

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 welcome to a After the Crazy Genius Network annual event podcast. We have a very special guest with us on the line who we actually did an interview with before in the past, and it's Mr. Chip Franks who's in the Austin, Texas area. Chip, how are you?

I am doing great.

Good.

Well, first off, Dean, why do we have Chip on the line here? I don't know what's going on.

I don't know.

I don't know how he got on it either. It was just, I think we were talking about it and then he was right there beside us and just felt awkward not to include him.

You know there's anybody on these calls now.

Well, now we're saying calls, but it is a podcast. But none of us are in the studio right now. We're actually all on the phone because.

This is the best we could do.

And so here we are. But no, the reason that Chip is with us is because you've got some really cool updates you're going to share. You're right in the middle of doing an Indiegogo campaign for Joe Volunteer, which we would like everyone listening to immediately. Go to Joe Volunteer. Well, go to Indiegogo and type in Joe Volunteer and take a look at this really cool model that is being launched to help lots of people. I'll have you explain what Joe Volunteer is in a moment. In case people have not listened to the previous episode we did with you or heard me talk about it on. On different episodes. But you know, Dean, before we get into that, Dean, I mean, why don't you update everyone with what's up with you and what's going on and what we're going to talk about.

I mean, this was. This was awesome.

We had.

I just got back from Phoenix, came out to see you do the Genius Network event and what an amazing event it was. It was so great to just connect with everybody.

You know, the thing that always amazes.

Me about these events is that, you know, they just keep getting better and better. Like, I mean, even just in recent memory, like I'd say even in the last five years, you know, that event has grown from being, you know, maybe a hundred person event in New York to now. How many did we have there in Phoenix? 330 or 40 people. 330, yeah. And just, I mean, the amazing quality of the conversations that go on there, that was. I was telling somebody else about this that we were sitting at lunch with somebody. We were sitting and just listening. You know, the, there was a group of, you know, office mates all having this kind of lunch beside us. And the topics of conversation were all like reality TV and their personal politics of all the people that are going on there. And it struck me the contrast of what happened. So on the night of the end of the event, you and I had dinner with Chip and Alex Epstein, who wrote the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and Dan and Babs and Genesis Rothblatt. And the conversation just struck me, here we are having a conversation about something like the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which led into a whole thing about philosophical frameworks and then Dan bringing in and we're talking about this idea of, of wanting what you want and then shifting conversation to Joe Volunteer and making an impact on the world. And it just, that right there struck me as the amazing polarity between what happens in the real world and what happens at a genius level, genius network level of conversation. I mean you're having just so much better, more valuable, more meaningful, fulfilling conversations in every way. That's just one of the, that's just, that's just what surrounds the event, let alone the actual content of the people who are, who are presenting. I mean from all the 10 minute talks, people who are giving talks that have, you know, these are people who are used to doing multiple day events that people pay them lots of money to come to condense all of that down into 10 minutes of incredible wisdom and to share that with people. Some of the ideas that came out of the 10 minute talks were just phenomenal. I mean we had so many great New York Times best selling authors that were sharing, I mean, and then Tony Robbins And John Paul DeJoria and this whole, you know, it was really interesting. I really like, we had a great episode with John Paul DeGioia. He just is such a down to earth guy. And what struck me about that is that here's a guy that you know, he started with in his car, basically. You told the story even on our podcast of basically getting to the point where he's living in his car with his son and selling the Paul Mitchell hair care products, basically salon to salon to get that started. But he knew that he was in a business that was creating customers. I think that when you really get that idea that it's not just a one time thing, I mean he's selling something that once you turn somebody onto being a Paul Mitchell user that they're going to continue to repurchase and repurchase and repurchase and he's done that again and again. He did that with Paul Mitchell, did that with Patron, did that with now with Rock Mobile, where they're all, it doesn't matter how small you start because you know that with each month it's getting better and better and better and growing as you're gathering customers, but just the humbleness of not being afraid to start at the bottom. You know, so many people right now we see they want, they've got these big ideas, grand visions, but nobody is willing to start going door to door building relationships, to build a foundation on something. They want to go instantly to a level where they're this big, mature company. And so I think that there is a lot of wisdom in that. It's just listening between the lines of it.

Right, right. No, I agree. Even as an aside, to this day, anyone that would ever want to dramatically improve their mindset and their ability to be a marketer and be influential and be persuasive and to really get through, build stamina would be get yourself a position doing sales. Even if it's for a short period of time, there's a lot to be said. It's kind of dying in so many ways. The day of the door to door encyclopedia salesperson is kind of history. But you know, cleaning supplies or you know, any form of multi level, which, you know, you know, my opinion on multi level, I'm not a, I'm not a huge fan of multilevel. Although many good products and services are sold through, you know, a direct sales or multilevel, you know, sort of framework. You know, I'm a big believer of lead generation where you have people that are asking and raising their hand versus going out to cold prospects right now. That being said, you know, I remember selling Kirby vacuums, which, you know, and literally going in and using pressure is what you're taught, you know, do not leave the house until you know someone, you know, cover every objection you can sell them. But you know, I'm not a, I'm not, I don't like putting people under pressure. What it did though is it literally puts you in a position where given the choice of eating or starving, most people will not starve. When you're put in a position where you actually have your back against the wall and you have to produce a result in order to survive, you get good. And I mean, there's so many people that try to become information marketers or try to become authors, speakers and teaching how to, how to achieve a result, be it from teaching a parent how to talk to how to be a better marketer, to how to get in physical shape. And there's a lot to be said about someone that really has done it for themselves where they raise themselves from six, you know, from failure to success. And then they're teaching it versus someone that's watching other people do it and saying, hey, I want to be a speaker like Brendan Burchard. I'm just going to go do that. But that, you know, but they've never really have done anything other than read a book or whatever. They didn't have to go through a bunch of shit. And, and I'll tell you, I mean, I think people are like, how did you successfully sell stuff to carpet cleaners? I've been asked that question thousands of times. And I'm like, well, because I was one of them and I understand what it's like to struggle. I understand what it's like to spend two years learning about chemicals and carpet fibers and going to get training and going to conventions and trade shows and knocking on doors and cleaning restaurants at three in the morning and cleaning shitty apartment complexes that don't pay you for 90 or 120 days when they have no electricity and there's cat urine in the carpet and it's 120 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona. And you're doing that and being broke and still not having any other options except figuring out how to get more business by knocking on doors and handing out business cards and then having to do the hard manual labor after they've said, yeah, we'll have you. And by having done that it put me, I understood the mindset of the, of the carpet and upholstery cleaner out there who's a hard working person trying to get by and struggling and. But it was the face to face selling, it was being in the trenches that taught me what it is I needed to know to have an awareness of the struggle and the pain that people go through. And if you're going to be like, I'm going to teach, I'm going to lift people to a higher consciousness or.

I'm going to transform people, I'm going to try and remove their suffering or whatever. Yeah, the whole, I heard a comedian talk about how the importance of stress and how we're supposed to feel stressed, yet we take all these pills and stuff to not feel it. But he's saying stress is how the rent gets paid. You're supposed to feel nervous that the rent is due on Monday so you get out and do something about it. You know, it's funny because he said if our ancestors, if our caveman ancestors had access to the pharmaceuticals that we had, we would not. We'd be extinct. If the last thought in the last man alive's head was, man, that tiger looks like he's coming right at me.

Yeah, yeah. Give you a Prozac, you know. Chip, what are your thoughts on all of this nonsense as you sit there listening to me?

No, this is great. And actually, I agree completely. Like the door to door sales. I actually did that throughout college. Door to door sales with it. And that is hard work. And I guess you know it too, Joe, because you've done it. And I think Dan Kennedy talked about it, and he said that direct sales prepares you extraordinarily well for being a good marketer. Because marketing is essentially sales on a mass level. And, you know, it's. And if you're talking to somebody face to face and convincing them to take an action, I mean, that is an extremely valuable skill to take and to multiply it through your marketing. So that's fantastic. Yeah.

Let me say something. Can you go ahead and continue your thoughts here? Because you just reminded me of something I want to say.

No, go ahead, Joe. That's fine.

Okay.

So like, one of the things, for years when I would do seminars to service businesses, mostly carpet cleaners, but all kinds of different service businesses, because in the late 90s, once I learned marketing, I was using 24 hour free recorded messages and consumer awareness guides. In the late 90s, every major phone book in the United States had one or multiple versions of free recorded message ads influenced by my marketing and my advertising and my licensees and all of my cleaners and different companies in industries that were using my stuff. So we have literally millions of dollars being generated out of phone books for clients using 24 hour free recorded messages to educate, you know, people on how to, you know, hire a carpet cleaner or karate school or chiropractor, pest control service, or heating air conditioning service, or home remodeling. I mean, just a whole variety of industries that I was, you know, had licensees in that were selling, you know, my marketing strategies and what I would do. When I would do these, you know, one day seminars to people, they would always talk about how they had their logo or they had their company name or they had, you know, their phrase. You know, like in carpet cleaning, they would say things like, we don't cut corners, we clean them. You know, as if that's going to freaking make people flock to do business with You. But that's the sort of stuff that happens in almost all industries. And today there's this heavy emphasis on, you know, build a brand. Build a brand, look good. You know, what's your brand, your personal brand. And I've never been a big fan of brand for just the sake of build a brand meaning if you don't have any substance or integrity or results producing products or services or value creation, even if it's in the form of like, you sell freaking. Let me think of something absolutely ridiculous. You sell coffee mugs that are designed to have your, what do you call those things, like trinkets and trash, where they have like your name on pens. I mean, even if it's just stuff that's purely entertainment, like Halloween costumes or whatever, let's say it doesn't transform the world or cure a disease or whatever, you know, there's. No matter what the product or service is, there's this emphasis on, you know, build a brand, build your brand. And what I would say to. When you're saying about be a direct sales preparing you for marketing on a mass scale, going back to the original definition in the early 30s of marketing from. Who was it? John E. Kennedy? He said, salesmanship multiplied. Is that who it was, Dean?

That was Albert Lasker.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So I said, what is marketing at salesmanship multiplied? And what I would say to these companies, I said, when you go to door to door and you're going to knock on the door, let's say you're going to go to a residential home and you're going to try to sell Mr. Mrs. Jones carpet cleaning when they open up the door. So, you know, you knock on the door, they open up the door. I go, would you just stand there with your company name on a big cardboard sign and you would smile and say, look, good carpet cleaning. Pointing your finger here. Look how, you know, I go, that's the equivalent of. Yeah, well, I mean, you wouldn't, you wouldn't. What would you expect a salesperson to do? You would expect a salesperson to ask questions, talk about the benefits of what you offer. You wouldn't say, no matter what happens, at 250 words. After you've uttered 250 words, don't say anything else. Shut up and don't say anything else. I go, you would never put those sort of restrictions on a salesperson. But you talk to all of these people that are, quote unquote, experts in marketing and advertising, like yellow page reps or someone in a magazine or newspaper, because back then There was no Internet, so. So when I was talking about yellow pages, that's how we generate a business today. It's no different. The only thing that's changed is the delivery systems in the media and the mediums that are actually used to convey messages. Call it social media, call it websites, call it Twitter, call it whatever, but basically you wouldn't put those types of restrictions on a salesperson if you're expecting that salesperson to go out there and sell. But people did it to their marketing all the time. They would say, well, you don't want to clutter up your ads. You don't want to have long form sales letters, you don't want to have a bunch of words, you want it to look really clean. You want to have your company name, you want to have your logo, you want to just share your brand. I'm like, how many effective salespeople do you know? You take a very well known brand like Nike. Could you imagine if you went in one of the Nike shoe stores and there's a salesperson in there or just a person that's not even common salesperson, just someone there that works there that's supposed to help and they didn't even say anything except say shoes, just do it, you know, I mean, if they just like said the logo, would anyone buy Apple, which is probably the most respected brand in the world? Coca Cola is probably the most well known brand in the world. Let's just take the Apple stores, which did massive amounts of things for Apple. If people just went in there and there was no one to actually educate them and they didn't do the workshops and Steve Jobs didn't start doing the keynote presentations and all of the education that Apple provided, the really well done videos, how well would those Apple Stores have done with selling computers if all they did was rely on their brand? The point is, when you go out and learn how to sell, what you're learning how to do is how to interact with other human beings. And you're learning what their obstacles are, what their objections are, all of their questions, all of the things that they don't know. And when you're putting yourself in a position to go out there and convince people until you actually can learn, like what you say, Dean, a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. You would be very well served to convince people until you actually learn how to structure or do things so it's compelling. Now if you're one of those lucky people that never have to sell face to face and you just simply Intuitively get it, and you know how to weave together the right words, and you go into a niche where everybody already wants it and supply and demand is on your side, and you have all these advantages, great, maybe you can shortcut all of this stuff. But even if you're one of those people, literally if you spent two weeks going out and everyone that's listening to this, unless they're millionaires and they don't give a shit about more money and they don't care about making more sales, whatever, if you're actually someone trying to get ahead in the world and you really want to do something that most people don't have, the stamina, the courage, the balls, and this could be male or female to do. If you literally went out and gave yourself two weeks to, to do a face to face selling position, selling anything, I swear to God, two weeks from now, if you actually did that, you would have insights in understanding that you could spend 10 years reading books about or going to seminars about that will not give you the same sort of perspectives that you would get from literally in the trenches, going door to door, face to face, commercial, residential, whatever, simply trying to sell something.

I think the important thing is being face to face with people. You look at even the greatest infomercials ever. I mean, you know, Kevin Harrington talks about this, that the, you know, when he found the guy doing the Ginsu knives, which was one of, you know, maybe the first infomercial that was out there, it was a guy that was doing that demonstration at a fair and doing it to a group of people, an audience of people, and he had honed every single word he could visually and really see the reaction of people. He could see what drew them in. He could see what lost their interest. And, you know, honing that in the presence of your real, your real audience is the key to making something that you can then cam and clone. You know, no matter what, being in front of people is the ultimate feedback, you know?

Exactly. I mean, and be it, be it, you know, if you go into, say, Costco now, people that are in other parts of the country, they might not even have any idea what the hell we're talking about half the time. When I talk about stores or certain.

Sort of products or services, club or con. Yeah, Sam, Yeah, Costco.

Or if you go to a trade show or a fair or you see someone doing Vitamix demonstrations or vacuum cleaners or giving out food samples, any place where someone is actually trying to demonstrate something that if you really want to even learn how to Sell, watch qvc, watch home shopping, watch infomercials and study what these people are doing. Because some of the greatest salespeople are carnival barkers. These people that are out there because they're not going to eat if they don't get people into there and extract their money. And the more that you actually watch, people that are in the money extraction business that are selling something that nobody even really needs. That's why I think like right now, at the time we're recording this episode, there's the Arizona State Fair going on. And I love going to those things because not only do they have the piece of crap teddy bears, all the stuffed animals and stuff that they, you know, that they are people are trying to win, but they actually have all kinds of booths where people are demonstrating everything. Yeah, you know, Jacuzzi's to landscaping and I mean, God, it's, it's just such a smorgasbord of marketing lessons. Sitting and watching who is successful and who isn't, who's doing lead generation, who's really standing there waiting for people to come and talk to them versus people that are out there in the aisle willing to have people reject them when willing to look annoying to some people. But you know, those are the people most likely to go home with. You know, you're going to spend three days there and you can either sit on your ass and wait for people to come talk to you because you're timid, or you don't like this sales stuff or whatever. And if you really don't do that, you shouldn't be, you know, at trade shows. But, you know, basically it's, I will go to those things all the time and just pick up so many marketing lessons. And I've been, I've been doing this shift for years. I even sold trade show packages to carpet and upholstery cleaners and restoration companies that teach them. If you're at a trade show, here's the banner, here's the lead generation mechanism, here's how to capture emails, here's all the stuff that you do. Here's give away educational materials. Sign up to get a consumer awareness guide physically mailed to you to email to you. Here's a free recorded message fly. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff, but a lot of people just sit there and their best strategy is a bowl of candy. And let's see if people walk up, which isn't a bad idea, but you should have something more than that. If all you have is a logo and you've Got nothing else behind it. Or you're trying to build a brand but you don't have that other aspect of it. It's kind of like having a car that looks really nice but there's no engine. And that's where people get all confused with the brand thing. They actually think I'm against brand. I'm not against brand. What I'm against is thinking that just putting something really nice or appealing or having a jingle or having something that positions you, but you don't have any substance behind it. You don't grow a business that way. And if you're just going out there trying to get followers on Facebook or you're trying to get views on YouTube, it's the electronic equivalent of getting a bunch of people that like you or follow you. But if you don't have a call to action, if you don't have a way to put them in to what it is you're ultimately selling, that's going to put money in your bank account and put value or results in theirs, you can be very well known and broke. And so, you know, selling is where it all comes down to now going back to, you know, having just done this event, you know, people are like, you know, how do you get 330 people at $10,000 a person? And you sold it out. You know, I mean, we sold it.

I know how, I know how, how'd you do it? I know how you start. You start almost 20 years ago inviting six people to your office in Phoenix for a brainstorm pretty regularly. That's how you start exactly what people don't. And I mean that, that is such an important thing. That's where I was going with what Jean Paul DeJoria was saying. How do you build Paul Mitchell into this multi billion dollar brand? You start in the trunk of your car, going door to door to the salons in Southern California. That's where, that's how you start. And what people don't appreciate or understand is that what we witnessed in Arizona with 330 people and Tony Robbins and John Paul DeJoria and all these billionaires and New York Times best selling authors and everybody there, that's not a one off thing. That's not something that happened overnight. We're looking at, I always use this analogy of that we're looking at at a 20 year old oak tree that's beautiful and magnificent and has maturity and a lot of people want to plant a seed and then water it a little bit and instantly have that 20 year oak tree, you know, but the way to start that is to, you know, that's the old saying, right? When's the best time to plant an oak tree? This 20 years ago was the best time, but the second best time is today. You know, start by doing the thing that you can do today with the vision of what it's going to look like in the end, you know?

Yep, yep, exactly.

Guys, I just wanted to add to that too, because we're talking about John Paul de Jurea.

What are you doing here?

Yeah, yeah.

Hey.

Hey, guys.

Nice to meet you.

But we're talking about John Paul de Jurea. And one of the things that I really took away from this is him being an encyclopedia salesman for two years and developing that mindset. Something that just shocked me when I heard this was that he said he wasn't able to pay his bills until two years in the business on time, and not pay off the bills, but actually pay them when they were due. And it took him two years to get to that point. And I was just thinking about how many of us as entrepreneurs or whatever, would have already given up or moved on to the next place, bright, shiny object by then. But he did that. And it does take time to build the business and get it started and get it running. So I just say I was very, very impressed with him. He was fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, see, the thing that our listeners need to be careful of, and I need to be careful of this too, because it's very seductive and it's very appealing and it will cause you to be delusional about what is required in terms of the setup in order to have the conditions. Is that what you see featured all the time in magnificent ways is the rare unicorns in the world, like a Mark Zuckerberg, or the individuals that just land on something and it becomes not only very successful or they're very young or it's a very new company. Now, certainly with technology, you can accelerate things and cut years off the learning curve and the progress production. With technology, you can scale very quickly and do things that it took us years to do. I mean, just from the standpoint of. I mean, Dean, when we were first doing marketing, if I wanted to do a direct mail campaign, first we'd have to write the offer right. The letter. Then we'd have to get it printed, then we'd have to put stamps on it. For instance, when I first created my Consumer Guide to Carpet Cleaning, which I still tell that story. The reason that I still tell that story and probably always will is because if you can't get the psychology right. The technology is not going to fix fucked up psychology for you. So it's kind of like what Steve Jobs says is the Worldwide developers conference in 1997. He said, first we focus on the technology then than the, you know, the psychology. We get that, we get that part right first. And so what happens is people, you know, see all of these, you know, people that do things very quickly and they actually, they almost develop it. You know, the best way I know how to describe it, I think it creates an entitlement sort of attitude or expectation, like going, well, hell, you know, this person just did this. You know, these guys created Instagram and sold it for billions of dollars. You know, I mean, I don't, you know, what am I doing here? I'm making 30 grand a year and I'm working my ass off. I'm just going to go do that. And the challenge is they keep trying something, keep trying something and they may never stick with anything. Like you were saying, Chip, like John Paul DeJoria. They don't stick with it. And then, you know, they end up feeling like, wow, you know, life is really unfair. And they really believe that. I mean, they really believe life is unfair. And I'll tell you, I mean, life is indifferent. I mean, life is unfair in some ways. People may be unfair, however you want to call it, but life is life. I mean, you know, it's just what it is. And so the thing is, what I'd like to convey with all of this message here is have realistic expectations and simultaneously be a big thinker and simultaneously look for things that are, shorten the learning curve. I mean, the message I'm conveying here is not work your ass off your whole life and then you're going to be successful. The message I'm conveying is, you know, it's a whole thing, you know, work hard, work hard versus working smarter. You know, work work smart, not hard. You know, smart people actually work hard on smart things.

And so work hard on smart things.

And that doesn't mean work hard continuously with no time off, with no rejuvenation for years on end. I mean, I'm not a big believer in that message either. I mean, I'm a big believer in do things that you certainly know are either producing a result. And if it's not producing a result, identify that early on and keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking, or if you're not producing any result, shift into different gears. Change the message, change the market, change the Product, change the service. But certainly one of the best ways to look around is this. Yeah, you know, you've heard me tell the jet Ski story before where I was in my car cleaning business, dead broke, frustrated, and I'm searching for another industry to go into. And I come, I go on a jet Ski trip and a really successful multimillion dollar real estate investor, you know, who I was talking with, you know, because he was wealthy and I wasn't. And I said, you know, you do really well in business. I'm in this cleaning business, I want to go into another industry where I can make some good money. Do you have any recommendations? And this is of course, before I learned marketing, I was kind of just lost trying to figure out what to do. Here I'm doing hard manual labor, going broke, can't pay my bills, going deeper in debt on credit cards, and I'm talking to this guy, trying to get some advice from a successful person. When I'm in my early 20s saying, what do you recommend, industry? I go to thinking that the solution to success is not what I'm doing in the industry I'm in, but what opportunity could I go into that would give me a better chance of making money? Because certainly I was playing a losing game. And he said to me, is there anyone in the carpet cleaning industry making money? Anyone in your industry making money? And I said, yeah, there's a couple of companies in the Phoenix, Arizona area that are doing well and you know, but they've been in business for a long time, they're well established, you know, they have a good name recognition, all that sort of bullshit excuses. And I go, I'm certified, I've gotten trained, I don't use bait and switch, you know, and I don't, but you know, they've been around a long time, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, well, you know, if there's other people making money in your industry and you're not, there's nothing wrong with the industry that you're in. There's something wrong with you. And I continue to make excuses. And then he said, well, look, you're like most people, you think the grass is always greener on the other side. And if you think you're going to go into another industry to make money, you're going to spend another six months, another year, another two years learning the technical skills of another industry so you can, can go out and repeat the same bad business habits that have caused you to be a failure in the one you're in right now. And it was that Non motivational speech, but reality that he said that made me think, you know what? He's right. There's other people that are doing well in the same exact thing I'm trying to do well in and I'm not. They know something that I don't. And he said, what you need to do, young man, is you need to learn fundamental business skills. And until you learn fundamental business skills and apply them to the business you're in or whatever business you're at, you're going to go from industry to industry, jumping around your whole life and you're never going to succeed in anything. And that's when I made the commitment to myself that I'm not getting out of this business until I figure out how to make it work. Because if I don't figure out how to make this work and other people have, no matter what I go into, I'm going to carry with me that ignorance that not knowing what the hell to do. And so it was because of that commitment that I gutted my way through figuring it out. But what it did though was that conversation allowed me to see the world through different lenses and it allowed me to say, I am asking the wrong questions and I'm looking for the wrong thing. I am blaming my industry, I'm blaming my customers, I'm blaming my circumstances. When in reality these are opportunities here for me to figure out what the hell to do. So the point is, if you're in an industry or business, people are like, you can't make money selling books. Do you know anyone else making money selling books? Well then obviously not the book industry. That's messed up.

Maybe you're a shitty writer, maybe you're.

Shitty marketer, maybe you're writing about shit no one cares about, you know, so maybe the title of your book is terrible, you could have a great book, but a lousy title. I mean there's a ton of amazing. There's a lot of that. Yeah, yeah.

And there's a lot of. And there's a. The only asterisk that I would put beside that entire philosophy is having the awareness to realize that, you know, I just want to be aware of saying, you probably wouldn't say that to a person who's in the cassette tape duplication business, for instance, where the industry is dying, where everything is gone digital, where you're moving, as long as you're in, as long as you're on the train, that's where that industry is headed then. Yeah, that's absolutely right. But sometimes just having the awareness to Recognize when sometimes it is the wrong train, you know, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, certainly like if you're in the, you know, horse and buggy business, like you ain't gonna be doing there. And so, I mean, I would be very, I would be very concerned if I was in the auto industry right now. If you're not paying attention to what test is doing as an example, you know, things like that. If you're in the taxi business and you think Uber is just a flash in the pan, I mean, there are certain things that you just have to pay attention to. Okay, so all of that being said, everything we talked about, if people truly want to get on a path, then keep listening to what it is we're saying. Go out and maybe get yourself a sales position. As far as the conference, over the next follow up episodes, I'm going to actually publish some of the things that were learned, some of the lessons that were taught. I'm actually doing a live cast on Tuesday, November 17, where we're going to actually play highlights of the speeches that took place at the annual event. And I'm going to do it with Dean Graziosi. We're going to do it live at his office.

Office.

And if anyone would like to participate in that, then get your butt registered at this website. We'll also put it@ilovemarketing.com and so go there and sign up for this right now. It's genius. If you're listening to us on itunes, the audio version of this and you're not on ilovemarketing.com to click on the link. So I'll just give it out right now. Go ahead and write this down. It's Genius Network events. GeniusNetwork events with an S. GeniusNetWorkeVents.com livecast L I V E C A S T so GeniusNetWorkeVents dot com livecast that's Tuesday, November 17th. It will be at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern and it will be live and it'll be an hour to 90 minutes. So block, give yourself a couple of hours because it will be awesome. And you will see how we're going to show some of the live episodes. And I'm going to put together a package that will have videos because people are like, how do I get access to some of the stuff? And we're going to package it up with some really great stuff. So if you want to participate in that, check it out. And that will be our livecast. So that's happening now. What I'd like to do, we did Something really cool at the Genius Network event. And a lot of people recruited into this. And it all started on episode, I think it was 186, where me and you did a podcast about what we learned from Peter Diamandis Abundance360 event. And I talked about how I wish there was. I was in a nursing home and I saw a lonely person, and I literally got choked up. And I was with my girlfriend, and I went in the corner and started talking with her and about how I felt empathy and I felt sad because how many people have lost their husbands, their wives, their loved ones, their families don't go visit them. They may not have any family at all, and they're in a nursing home, and they're sad because they're just alone. I think one thing that's helped me be a good marketer over the years is that I have empathy. And I cannot stand seeing people that are suffering. And the problem is there's so much suffering in the world. You know, what do you do about it? You know, how do you be spread so thin? And we talked about different ideas, and I said, you know, I wish someone would create like, a match.com but for, you know, volunteers, people that want to volunteer in nursing homes, animal shelters, disaster relief, recovery clinics. Because I'm such a big believer helping people with addictions and any sort of organization from children's hospitals to anything that would need volunteers. And that there's all these people that want to volunteer, but trying to find who needs volunteers, or if you want to call people, it's really difficult to have organizations that need the help, want to help, but there's all this bureaucracy involved in just linking them together. And if someone could create, like an uber volunteers. So people that want to volunteer can find places that need it on an ongoing basis, or if there was a massive storm or earthquake or whatever. How do you corrally all these human resources that are sitting there? And part of it is if you feel depressed or anxious or you're an addict, I mean, one of the very best ways to help yourself out of a mental state funk is to go and be of service to other people. And I, you know, we've known this, and we, you know, it's been proven that, you know, one of the best ways to get out of your own head and feel better is simply go and help someone in need. And so Chip Franks, who's on the line with us, you know, is an avid listener to. I love marketing. And he hears that episode, and he has a son named Alec. And you know, the short version of it and you know, of course Chip can tell it better than me is he has a son named Alex and he literally would take Alec to hug stations in assisted living homes and his son with down syndrome would hug the people there and vice versa. And it would make everyone feel better. He had a real affinity with this because he knew plus Chip is just a really caring, nice, sweet human being. So he wrote up an entire business plan, registered a URL called joevolunteer.com named it after me because of that episode. But the whole premise is any average Joe can be a volunteer. And he sent me this whole full blown business plan. And then I loved what he had written up. He thought through this thing in such detail about how do we start it and beta test it in the Austin, Texas area and then how do we build this nationwide and then hopefully how do we turn it into this global platform that helps reduce so much human suffering in the world. World. And it's all in the starting phases now. There's an Indiegogo campaign that is live right now as we're doing this, and we announced it and played the video that has me in the video and has Chip telling the story. And it's a short video and it's on Indiegogo right now. And we are raising $50,000 to build the app and to start this thing. So I want to just let everyone know, go see it, Go look what we're doing. And what comes out of an I love marketing episode where someone like Chip takes action for something really that is built around benefiting humanity. We would love to have you go and either support it if you could, and if nothing else, go look at the video and share it. I mean, anything from Twitter to Facebook, any sort of social media you can do. Email your list, anything you can do to help share it right now. At the time we're doing this episode, we've just passed the $30,000 mark in terms of contributions to help fund this thing. And for every dollar that is invested, two people will get the app. That's my spill on it. But the people at the Genius Network annual event, literally many of them have donated. Peter Diamandis made a thousand dollar contribution. David Bach, who we recently did an episode with, made a thousand dollar contribution. Mike Koenigs made $1,000 contribution. Even if you can only do a dollar, any amount would be helpful. But Chip, why don't. I've said enough. Why don't you tell your version of this and anything that you'd like to share with The I love marketing listeners about Joe volunteer because it's twofold. One, I want to get this thing funded and I'd like to involve everyone in. I love marketing. But secondly, in the midst of this, if we have a successful campaign, which we will, we will come back and do a follow up episode sharing with people how we did this for people that have a for profit, nonprofit, benefits, corporation, whatever, any cause, product, service that you want, crowdfunding, we can come back and actually do a future episode sharing what worked and what didn't work so that all of our listeners can actually learn from what we are doing here.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Joe. And actually I wanted to throw Dean in with that too because Dean contributed a thousand bucks as well and we really appreciate that. And actually, while we're doing this podcast, we just got a donation from JJ Virgin. It's kind of cool. Yeah, that just rolled in as well. Folks, if you're listening to this, one of the things that we learned and we will talk about what. What worked and didn't work. But I think that there is a lot of gap from listening to this podcast on your phone or in your car. I usually listen to it on my car, but from actually saying, hey, I want to listen to this or this is a great idea, let me go take action on it. But there's a big gap between hearing that and actually getting to a computer screen and being able to do that. So one of the things that we just did is we set up a text way to do this. So if you want to get involved or hear about this or become a Joe or just. Or see our Indiegogo campaign, if you can pull out your cell phone and obviously don't do it while you're driving. But if you're at a light or something, if you text the word Joe's J O E s to the number 38470, just do that and it will ask you a couple of questions real quick and then it will get you all of the information and we'll send you a link to the Indiegogo campaign. I ask that you take a look at the video on it and just see what it is. I don't want to ask for your money up front, but if you see it and it resonates with you and you like it and you like the idea, then please consider donating to it. And one of the things I'll tell you about this is that every dollar that we get is cherished and we will take it and we will stretch it and we will make it work. And we're very responsible, resourceful with what we do, and we'll never throw money at a problem that can better be solved with resourcefulness. But every dollar that goes towards it will be creating this app and getting it out in the Austin, Texas area. And we're trying to get it to 100,000 people initially just in our test market of Austin. And again, that $50,000, that means every dollar that someone donates to people get the app. And if you stop and think about that, that's to people that are out doing good and volunteering with people and easing human suffering. And there's, you know, I'm biased with this, but there's really not a much better use of money than being able to help other humans with something like that. So, yeah, that's what I'd say with it. And Joe, I appreciated getting to talk to the Genius Network event with it. The people there are just amazing and just willing to help out and do a lot of things with it. You guys were just talking about how something is how sales and building a business can be difficult. I can tell you that. Part of me as an entrepreneur, I want this to be big and I want it to help a whole lot of people. But it is hard work. I mean, it's tough, and you expect things to happen faster than they do sometimes. But we are not giving up on this, and it's going to keep going and it will be a global deal to where it is a way of life for humans to say, you know what, let's go out and help someone else this weekend. Are we going to see a movie? Are we going to go to Bob's house or. Or are we going to volunteer? And you'll be able to open up your phone and say, well, the animal shelter needs help. The veterans center needs help. And be able to do that with your family and make that a way of life. I mean, I honestly think that we can change the world with this.

I'll tell you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chip. And, you know, can you give out the text number one more time so that people, if they want, yes, you.

Need to text Joe's J O E s to the number 38470.

Does that work only in the United States or does it work in Canada.

Or just the U.S. you know what?

That's actually a question. I don't know. I think that's a United States number. So for those of us that are international, if you do, go to joevolunteer.com right now while the crowdfunding is going on, there will be a pop up that will take you directly to the crowdfunding as well. So if you are overseas, there's actually. If you sign up to be a Joe, and of course, Joes are what we call our volunteers to go out and help people. You'll be on the list to know what's happening. And when the app is available and it's ready, then you'll be one of the first folks to be able to download that. But if you go into there, it does have international numbers and we can set it up with that as well. Yeah.

So thank you. And I do want to reiterate to all of the. All the listeners out there, this is something that in the midst of learning marketing and building and growing a business, there are some projects that are so important that I just not only want to be a catalyst to get them off the ground, but I want just to do them because I feel like they need to be done. It's like a lot of the stuff I'm working on behind the scenes right now is creating the documentary on addiction, helping other people that have platforms to help people with addictions to help. Because I think addiction is the modern form of human slavery. The way that addicts are treated, the way that many of them are imprisoned, ones that haven't committed violent crimes, people that simply. They're addicts. And through Joe volunteer, there's a lot of ways to actually help that. But even if you're one of these people that doesn't have really addiction in your family or close to you or in your own life and you don't resonate with it, if you can think of all of the different forms of human suffering that require other people to help, if you're ever depressed, if you're ever suicidal, if you're ever in a really bad place, you know, if you've done this before, that anytime you find someone that just simply needs help and you can direct your efforts to them, it helps you. In many cases, it alleviates it. I've said this a million times. Sometimes a gym membership or going and volunteering will be more valuable than a therapist because it puts the focus on service to someone else. Now, obviously, different people have different levels of. Some people have really bad mental conditions where they cannot function without other people's help. And if you're ever one of those people that have struggled, you know, I certainly have where, you know, you just don't even want to exist anymore and someone has helped pull you out of that, or someone has been there you know how valuable that is, especially those of you that have supportive friends or supportive family members. But there are millions of people that don't have access to that at all. And they don't have money and they don't have resources and they don't have capabilities. Then there's children and then there's animals that are put in situations that are horrible. And we just want to eliminate as much of that or at least ease so much of it. And I know this can do a huge thing, but it requires marketing, it requires telling the story, it requires building the technology and chip. Literally, in the midst of running his own business, which is a real estate business, he's devoting amount of his time in his life because, you know, in the same way that I devote a lot of time to, you know, my, you know, passion projects, this is something that just, you know, needs to be done. And, you know, that's the beauty of entrepreneurs is they don't just watch a movie about some human condition thing and say, oh, that's really sad, or oh, more people should do something about it. You know, he's actually doing something about it. And so we're all doing something about it. We just want to ask you to do something about it and use it as an inspiration for whatever your thing is in your life. There's a model out there. There's a list of things that need to be done, conditions that you want in your life, and a setup that needs to be done in order to do it together. We want to help collaborate as best we can and bring people together to make shit happen. And so that's what we're doing with Joe Volunteer. And we hope you, you, you know, support it. And we also hope that it inspires you to not only be a Joe, but to also look at, oh, you know, I didn't even realize you could create something like this. And as you see us create it, we want it to be, you know, a role model. You know what's funny? Human human beings look at other humans as role models. I look at cool businesses as role models. If I see someone doing something really like all the marketing that me and Dean have been teaching on, I love marketing for going on what we're going on, like five years now, Dean.

Yeah, exactly.

We have talked about model after model after model. And there are people that have become millionaires that have never bought anything from us simply by applying the strategies that.

We give away for free.

Free on. I love marketing, and those are models. And so I want you to look at the models that we're doing and say, hey, how can we do this here? Because, frankly, I feel really good when I see people take our ideas and go and do something useful in the world with it. So therefore, that's why I don't have any qualms about inviting people to come Joe Volunteer and make a contribution. If you've gotten any value from I love marketing whatsoever, like, let's say you've listened to this and you're like, shit, I've learned something from this podcast. It's been worth, you know, a thousand dollars to me easily. You know, donate or not donate, but contribute, Contribute, you know, a thousand dollars to this. Or now, if I want to start getting all capitalistic here, buy our stuff.

You could also do that.

Yeah, we're not. Yeah, we're not opposed to that either. I've been.

Not at all here. You know, I have. As we're talking here, Joe, I think a great episode that I'd like to do with Chip is to spend an hour specifically applying the eight profit activators to Joe Volunteer to kind of get. See how I would approach a marketing standpoint of getting something like the 8 profit activator, creating a blueprint for an organization like Joe Volunteer.

Can you do. Would you like to do that without me on the episode? Because I'm all for. I would love that. I think that would be really useful for only Joe Volunteer, but useful for the listeners. And. And also, you know, it would give everyone an opportunity to not have to listen to me babble for, like, you know, piping in and interrupting.

It's happy to have you on, but I'm happy to do it without you. I mean, I think it would be a good. I think it would be a good episode that would be instructive just on how to think about applying VA profit activators to a specific thing. And it would be very helpful for, you know, to create a blueprint for. For Joe Volunteers, too.

I would be honored to do that. So I'm definitely up for it.

All right, well, that. Well, that will be done then. I'll let you guys plan that logistically, and then we'll go from there. Now I'm getting ready to fly out of town because I'm going to speak at a Dan Kennedy conference. And so by the time everyone listens to this episode, I might have already done my talk. But either way, any final things you guys want to say on this episode?

Well, I don't think I need to tell you this, but give Dan a big hug because you know he loves that.

Right.

Of course.

Dan Kennedy. I'll try to have, I'm trying to see who's going to be there where we could really mess with Dan Kennedy. But yeah, I'll figure it out. And then AJ, The CEO of gkic, actually attended the Genius Network annual event and loved it, of course. And yeah. And so anyone who's listening to this that was there at the event, I really appreciate it. It was the highest level marketing event that had ever taken place in the history of the world. And next year's event, if anyone wants to attend next year or get on the waiting list, it will sell out months in advance. Just go to geniusnetworkevents.com and just sign up and you'll be notified. It'll be October 3rd and 4th, I believe are the dates in Arizona for next year's event. I'm going to give out the livecast link one more time so you can register for that. It's geniusnetworkevents.com livecast and that's taking place on Tuesday, November 17th at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern. And then of course go. And right now, if you haven't done it, you know, if you're in America, text Joe's to 38470 and check out Joe Volunteer. And if you are not in the United states, go to joevolunteer.com and while the Indiegogo campaign is active, you'll be able to watch it. And if you happen to listen to this episode many, many years from now, look at Joe Volunteer and become a Joe. Any average Joe, male or female. And if you can't contribute for whatever reason, financially, you're not able to or whatever, please share it with people. We would really appreciate it. While it's fresh in your mind right now, post it on Facebook. What's the Facebook page for Joe Volunteer?

It's JoeVolunteer.com on Facebook. So if you just search Joe Volunteer, then we have a Facebook page for it and we share a lot of good stuff on that.

Yeah, exactly. Any famous last words, Chip?

Actually, you know what, I just wanted to go off script a little bit here and talk about the Genius Network event because I know that you guys, obviously you go to all of them and you've been to it, but this is my first one and I've actually seen the events on DVD and I got a lot out of them and took voracious notes with it. But I can tell you as someone that's an outsider coming into it, there is nothing like being there. And I got to rub elbows with people that I consider my heroes like you Dean and Dan Sullivan and tech Max, Naveen Jain and Steve Sims. I mean, just all kinds of people. What's really cool about that is you see the people that have actually done it, that have gone out and built beautiful businesses and that are doing great things in the world and it makes everything real to you. It makes it visceral, like, hey, this can happen. And I can tell you that just coming back from that, I've been so motivated and on point fire because of the things that I learned and the people I met. Really the people I met is just fantastic that my business has already taken off just in the short time I've been back from it. I really appreciate that. I'm glad I got to go to it. Folks, if you're listening to this, please put it on your goal list or go to this livecast obviously that Joe's doing so you can learn a little bit more about it. But really make every effort you can to go to it because can be and actually it will be a life changing event for you.

Awesome.

I appreciate it.

Well, thank you guys and so thanks to all our listeners. You can subscribe to I love marketing on itunes. And until next time, go out there and be awesome and have a wonderful day or night or whatever time it is in whatever part of the world you're at listening to. I love marketing. Take care.

Bye guys.

It.