Secrets of Success In Business, Relationships, and Beyond: The Sixth ILM Zoom Meetup! (Featuring Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm) - I Love Marketing Episode #381

And so when I asked him to mentor me, I said, look, man, you're crazy busy, all right? Because people ask me often, joe, how did I get a shark from Shark Tank to mentor me? And I looked at Kevin and said, I want you to mentor me, but here's the deal. I've got to make an irresistible offer to the but wait, there's more guy. The as seen on tv, the Shark Tank guy. And so I said, kevin, your time is so valuable. I will always value your time and I will make it easy for you to, to mentor me. And then I'm going to be your best student. And that's really what it's all about.

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

What are the secrets to success that the greats aren't telling you? Shark Tanks. Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm share how to enjoy success both personally and professionally in today's episode of the I Love Marketing Podcast. In this episode, Kevin, Mark, Dean and Joe discuss the importance of mentorship, how to set up a winning business, and how to keep everything in harmony so your business and personal life can thrive. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to.

Apply, go to geniusnetwork.com so Kevin Harrington, an original shark on the hit show Shark Tank, the creator of the infomercial. So it's his fault. A lot of these goofballs that you see selling things on tv, Kevin was the one to figure out how to use that medium to actually sell and advertise. He's a pioneer of the as seen on TV industry and co founding board member of the entrepreneurs organization EO with my buddy Verne Harnish. Founded in 1987, Kevin Harrington has pushed past all the questions and excuses to repeatedly enjoy 100 times success. His legendary work behind the scenes of business ventures has produced more than 5 billion in global sales, the launch of more than 500 products, in the making of dozens of millionaires. He has worked with amazing celebrities turned entrepreneurs including Billy Mays, Tony Little, Jack Lalanne, Kim Kardashian, Kathy Hilton, 50 Cent and George Foreman, to name a few. Kevin's been called the entrepreneur's entrepreneur and the entrepreneur Answer man because he knows the challenges unique to startups and has a special passion for helping entrepreneurs succeed. Kevin is an investor who also advises dozens of companies, both public and private, and is a world Renowned and sought after speaker, he teaches entrepreneurship on a daily basis. His website is KevinHerrington TV now. Mark Tim. Mark Tim has been a serial entrepreneur and exponential thinking practitioner for almost three decades. He has started more than a dozen companies, several of which have multiplied and been sold. He's spoken professionally for more than 25 years, given thousands of speeches to over millions of people around the globe. Mark's greatest value comes from being a master collaborator who brings people together to accomplish far more than anyone imagined. His strategic vision enables him to see future possibilities and strategically position assets and systems to take full advantage of of what's next. Today, Mark believes his most important role is the CEO of the most valuable business in the world. His family of six young adults with his wife Leanne. His own experience of dealing with entrepreneurial challenges fueled his passion for helping people balance the demands of family life and business. And his website is Mark Tim with 2M's.com, mark Tim T I M.com Kevin and Mark. What did I not say about you guys that would be good to frame this so that everyone knows who the heck you both are and how smart you are? What did I not say that everyone should know?

I'll throw this out. I mean, Mark and I both were mentored by Zig Ziglar. And when Zig passed away, Tom knew both of us. And so Tom ended up hooking us up to write the book, Mentor to millions. So it's a really powerful situation that Zig Ziglar had connected us. And he's been gone for about eight or nine years, you know, so this is kind of how it all got started for Mark and I.

You know, I have to share this story too, because years ago, Dan Kennedy took me to one of the big success events where he was speaking at in a stadium. And there was a couple of people doing a pitch. And I was a young guy, I was in my 20s, and it was early on, this was probably 1993, and I was in my 20s and I was sitting there on a couch listening to Zig Ziglar get a pitch from this company on doing an infomercial with him. And I had just been reading Dan Kennedy stuff, Gary Halbert stuff. I was new into the marketing field. I'd written, read the classics, you know, Claude Hopkins and all that sort of stuff. But I just started learning about infomercials. And since Dan was a consultant for Guthrie Reichner, I kind of had a little bit of a background. And so after they left, I spent an hour, just me and Zig. Ziglar waiting for him to go on stage, just talking about stuff. And he was genuinely one of the nicest guys, just a cool dude. And the guys that were pitching him on the infomercial, I was so early on in my marketing study, I still realized they didn't know what the hell they were talking about. It just wasn't even a good pitch. And so Zig was kind of like, yeah, I don't know how to think about that thing. And then he got up and did his thing. He was fantastic. So you guys have been in Genius Network. You both have spoken at Genius Network. We did one together. The first launch, I think, of a hologram at sort of a marketing event, which was awesome. And there's a lot that. That you guys have to share. So, Dean, you know these guys, too. How would you frame this? And let's. Let's make this as valuable as possible for everybody that's watching today.

Yeah, I'm excited that you guys are here. I mean, haven't seen you in a while, Kevin, but good to see you here.

Thank you, man.

And, you know, I always look back when I talk about what you were able to do. Part of what it was, when I think about it, is just being able to observe and to see an opportunity and just ask, why not? I mean, when you tell the story about how you decided to take the Ginsu knife presentation that had been doing all of this time live, you saw on cable television that there was, hey, wait a minute. Nobody's showing anything on channel 30. How come I can't show something on there? And just no fear, but to go and ask, how come there's Nothing on channel 30?

Right.

And be able to do that. And so I think that having all of that experience, one of the greatest gifts of being a mentor is being able to convey all of that thinking, all of the stuff that goes into it, so that you can, by observing a mentor and taking it all in, have shortcuts that go all the way. So I'm excited to hear what you guys are up to.

By the way, you got a great memory. You're remembering the 30 channel 30 and everything. That's pretty good, man, because that was the channel.

It was.

But, you know, I think that mentors can help, and I've had a lot of mentors in my life, and maybe we could talk about some of that. But they tend to be able to help you think exponentially.

Right.

And so that's what I think. A lot of times people are trying to grow their business, and, you know, whether It's a shortcut or whatever. I try to find ways to grow a business exponentially that achieve very fast growth. And so, I mean, just an example of that. I started the infomercial industry back in the early 80s. By the time I got to 1990, I had about 100 infomercials. They all had gone like this and then like this in the United States. And I said, oh, but I invested in the production, into the assets, into the manufacturing of the product, into paying talent royalties and upfront fees and things like this. I said, so is there anything else I can do with these assets? And I thought, well, wait a minute, how do I create exponential growth here? Let's go to Europe, let's go to Latin America, let's go to the Middle east, let's go to Asia. Let's go, you know, boom. We took 100 infomercials and went into 100 plus countries and we exploded the company and it grew to $500 million in annual sales. And I appreciate the kind words as you and I have hung out a bunch and played some golf and been at the genius programs and I love marketing podcast in the the book mentored to millions actually is a journey that Mark and I take between us. I'm the mentor, Mark is the mentee. But it's not without both of us having a ton of mentors in our life in prior situations.

Also, you mentioned about being exponential part of the thing. The distinction that I see between being a mentor and a teacher is often there are teachers who can teach things that they're teaching, what I call book reports, things that they've observed or learned academically kind of thing. But a mentor is really kind of teaching as from field reports of actual things, experiences that you've had. There's a real difference between just kind of, you know, conveying knowledge and conveying wisdom. And that's really what. Because you've had so many experiences too. Once you know somebody, you've got a mentor relationship with somebody, you have the advantage of not having to make the same mistakes that they made. And you start from where they've already got to. That's where that saying, on the shoulders of giants.

Right?

That's really what.

Yeah, let's actually talk because you guys do have a new book, mentor to millions. Explain how you guys met, how you and Mark met, especially since the way you frame the book and whatnot. And by the way, tell everyone how they can get the book later because I don't mind pimping your guys's book while we're doing an interview. I mean, what I like doing is introducing somebody to thinking and knowledge and capabilities and skills. And then if they have any additional stuff that's going to be on the topic. If everyone likes what you're hearing today, go deep with it and get a copy of Marks in Kevin's book.

Kevin mentioned it just briefly that we met each other through Zig Ziglar being our mutual mentor. And we had reached out to the family and connected with the children after Zig passed away. Kevin wanted Zig's legacy to go through his kids and I wanted it through mine. And so we're like, hey, we have a duty to honor our mentor and extend that. So we had connected with the family, the family was working with Kevin, they were working with me, and boom, they decided to connect the two of us. So we met through a personal introduction. Now, it's important to understand that because. Because Kevin wasn't in my inner circle, I wasn't in his inner circle, didn't even know who he was. So all these people say, well, I don't know how to get to that person, or I don't know how to meet that person. I don't know how to get this mentor. But if you raise your hand and say, I'm ready for a mentor, oftentimes that mentor will show up. Maybe not in your inner circle, but somebody in your inner circle knows who they are and will introduce you to them. And in this case, the children of Zig Ziglar said, these two people need to meet. And so we met and then we began our own journey. And I quickly saw, and I really got excited about Kevin's exponential thinking. I joke affectionately and say, kevin Harrington doesn't have a plus sign on any calculator he owns, not even on his cell phone. Like, the guy only knows how to multiply. It's multiply or nothing. There's no such thing as linear in his vocabulary. And I loved that. And so when I asked him to mentor me, I said, look, man, you're crazy busy, alright? Because people ask me often, Joe, how did I get a shark from Shark Tank to mentor me? And I looked at Kevin and said, I want you to mentor me. But here's the deal. I've got to make an irresistible offer to the but wait, there's more guy. The as seen on tv, the Shark Tank guy. And so I said, kevin, your time is so valuable. I will always value your time and I will make it easy for you to mentor me. And then I'm going to Be your best student. And that's really what it's all about, if you will. If you get the right mentor, then you need to then become their best student. That's the exchange you got to implement. You've got to actually do the things they're telling you to do. I mean, Joe, how many times, Dean, how many times have you mentored somebody? And the next time you saw them, you asked how it worked out and they're like, oh, I haven't had time to do that. I'll do it next time, but give me more good of what you've got. It doesn't work that way. And so you're not going to continue to mentor them. So Kevin and I met through Zigzag. We met again. We connected because we had this mutual appreciation for Zig's quote of you can have everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. And Kevin's living out his life in abundance. I'm trying to as well. And so we connected. We went on this journey of mentorship together. And you mentioned right up front, I love that you mentioned it. How can people get the book? Well, here's the deal. After doing all these interviews, people are like, how can I get a mentor? And where do you find a mentor? So Kevin and I decided we're going to put together 30 days of mentorship. So if you wanted a shark as a mentor, if you go to Kevin Mentor KevinMentor.com and you go buy the book wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, it's out there right now for pre order. You can get it anywhere that you can find a book online and then come back to Kevin mentor. We're actually giving 30 days of mentorship with Kevin and I. That way after 30 days, you've developed a new habit for mentorship and you're not going to worry. You're going to raise your hand and have the confidence to ask for a mentor. So that's our quote. Pimping of our book is to give away 30 days of mentorship from Kevin and I just for them going out and snagging an advanced copy of the book.

You guys are salespeople. I mean, you have sold. I mean, you teach people how to sell. And there's so everything that is a business strategy here. What I've often found kind of interesting, I'll go to big events and they have an air of professionalism and they have speakers talking about leadership and management and culture and all that, which is all critically important. And I've gone around and asked people, why are you here? What are you at this event for? What do you want to learn? And almost, when you get through all the bullshit formalities, it's like, we need more customers. We want people to buy stuff from us. How do we do it? We're trying to figure out how to do it. So if it's framed as leadership or culture, whatever, if you have an entrepreneurial enterprise, you're solving problems for a profit. And so you guys are. Are master salespeople. And so here we are on. I love marketing. Which, of course, that would imply that people either love marketing or want to learn more about it. So I want to go, like, even Kevin, mentor. You certainly are giving value to people. Hopefully they will become a client. Hopefully they will buy things. We're putting books out there. We all have books. When I say we, I mean every. You know, me, Dean, you guys, we all have books. Books are seeds. They're things you meet people and then, you know, you, Mark, I mean, you're just like. I've seen you in the short time we've known each other, which is probably been like three years, I've seen you put together so many business deals. This is like your thing. And Kevin, of course, one thing I'm going to get into is like, how do you manage it all? I mean, like, Kevin having been a shark on Shark Tank even before this happened, he was probably the biggest deal maker of anyone I've ever seen. How do you manage the massive amounts of opportunities that are presented? Because everyone here, I think even though they're looking for opportunities, making their opportunities a reality, I think the biggest inhibitor to success is the constant distraction that comes from all of that. So the first thing I want to talk about is selling and marketing and how you guys define it, how you think about it. So the Zig Ziglar quote, you can help enough people, you can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. I have lived by that mantra for a long time. And then I have a friend named Martin Howey that showed up to my office one day, and he was speaking in front of a genius network. And he goes, you know, that quote is not always true because you can help a lot of people get what they want that won't do a damn thing for you, that will actually steal fruit. And I've had that happen. So I want the right context of that, because I actually believe all the money that we make in the world lies in helping someone else transform Their future. All money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. There are ways to use sales and marketing unethically. There are ways to use selling and marketing to change the world and do amazing things and help people's lives. So there's all that distinction. So my question with that is, how do you decide who to help and where you apply your energy? Because both of you, all of us, are limited with our time, our money, our energy, our attention, and our skills and our capabilities. So how do you guys think about that? And then we'll talk about selling and marketing and how to basically become wealthy if anyone wants to talk about any of that stuff.

The first concept of helping a lot of people that don't come back and help you or they might steal from you. I mean, believe me, I've taken friends in from grade school and high school into business and found out, yeah, they were stealing from me. They were this. It's not going to work 100% of the time, okay? But I'll give you a great example. I met Arnold Morris, the Ginsu guy, in the early 80s, almost 40 years ago, and I caught a fair deal with him.

This was.

I'm watching him pitch, and I'm thinking, this guy is doing this every day, dozens of times a day at the Philadelphia home show, but then he goes to the Iowa State Fair. He's been doing this for 15 years. Wow. If I were him, how can you reach more people? I mean, this is part of the process of me thinking, yes, there was this downtime airtime that I filmed and put him on. But I was also thinking, if I was Arnold, would I want to pitch to 10 people all day long over and over and over, or pitch one time to millions and put it up on tv? So that was a twofold exercise of helping Arnold and putting Arnold's videos then across America. But Arnold loved the relationship so much. And yes, he made money, but he also brought me Billy Mays and he brought me other people. Mark and I talk about this story because on literally the week, Arnold was passing away and he had a massive stroke and he was down but not out. He had a few days left. His wife called me and she said, arnold needs to talk to you. And I had heard what was going on and I knew what I thought. I knew what to expect. And Arnold was. He had one last pitch for me. Okay? He had brought into something unbelievable. And by the way, he had a hard time communicating it because of his stroke. But God bless him, Arnold, 38 years later, was still bringing me deals. And this is again, that gusher of help, somebody, and it's all going to come back to you. So I have lived my life just like that for many, many years too, Joe. And so that's just to finish that story. But I do want to talk about managing all the deal flow and all of that, and I've learned quite a bit over the years, because if you do too many deals and you don't do them the right way, you can't do it all and you can end up messing up all of them, okay? So one of the most important things that I do now with every single deal, and especially being on the Shark Tank show and getting the profile, because a lot of people would say, oh, guess what I'm gonna do if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna call Mark Burnett and ABC Television and tell him that you cheated me, you lied to me, you ripped me off, whatever, right? I mean, people, there's a hostage holding situation going on with a lot of the sharks, okay? Lots. You know, there's. I don't even want to get into that in this call. But the bottom line is, is that every single deal I do, I try to make sure, I make sure that all the deliverables are defined on my part. In other words, I'm gonna do one meeting a month. I'm gonna do one phone call a week, and is it a 30 minute call, is it an hour call, is it a two hour call? I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to do four board meetings a year, and at least one of them will be in person and three, I mean, and this is before COVID now. But the bottom line is, is once I started putting the deliverables and the, you know, and the true things that we were going to do and I was going to do, and participating in this venture, it cleared things up. And going through that exercise on the. Was very good because if we just sign a deal, all of a sudden these people are calling me every single day and they're like, hey, Kev, I need this, I need that. I'm like, hey, I've got 35 ventures that I'm involved with. I can't talk to 35 people every single day. So then I started delineating how and when and where we communicate and follow up, et cetera, et cetera. So I think I learned a lot as I was doing deals. And now my life runs on a schedule. And it runs pretty good. I mean, we go from one to the next to the next and it's from one venture to the next venture. And the book launch has been a very aggressive part of what we've been doing the last few weeks. It's interspersed, we're doing 200 podcasts over a number week situation that has to get interspersed into me running 35 businesses also. And I say running 35 businesses. No, I said that wrong. Equity owner of 35. But I'm not the CEO of any one of them and that's the, the difference. So I'm an advisor, a consultant. I'm not a employee typically hardly of any of the ventures, you know. So that's one of the things that's important, I think, in cutting deals, structuring deals, is to make sure your partners have a clear vision of how you're going to play and participate in the venture.

I learned painfully that there's no such thing as a good deal with a bad partner and that if you think even if it's a great idea, a great product, a great, you know, if you have a bad partner, it's a. Any yellow flags, which I got that term from my buddy Patrick Giantempo. People are like, what are the red flags? Well, a lot of times I didn't see the red flags, but there were yellow flags. And yellow flags actually will kind of be indicators that there's a red flag coming. My current sense of this now, and I don't know if I've even told you Mark and Kevin about this next year. I'm taking next year as a sabbatical, I'm taking a year off. And Genius Network is going to be run by the Genius Network members. I have equity in 21 different companies. I have a lot of things to manage. I have a foundation that helps people with addict recovery. And so I have a lot of things and over the years I've had to learn through all of the upsets, through the mistakes, through the failures, through the rip offs, through all the, all the different things on how to have a better tolerance on how to navigate the crap that happens in business. I think business success is less about it gets easier. Even though I teach ELF easy, lucrative and fun, if you're an achievement minded individual, you keep wanting to climb the next mountain. If you climb a mountain, you know there's another mountain to climb. There's that sort of stuff. And so in the process, I think the tolerance to all of the crap that happens is what makes you resourceful and allows you to navigate it. So I'd be really curious how you guys Navigate bs. How you navigate all the bullshit, how you navigate when things fail, how you psychologically deal with it. Because I think resilience and stamina and being able to still do what you need to do in the face of exhaustion at times, in the face of we're in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, this has been psychologically dismantling and debilitating at horrible levels for so many people. And the ability to show up, run a company lead, still have enthusiasm. I'd really love to kind of just hear how you guys do that on a psychological level of dealing with complexity.

So for me, those of you that get the book, those of you that read will know that. Joe, the book starts out with me sitting at the end of my driveway, okay? I'm literally at the end of my driveway, and I don't want to go home. Now, the reasons to not want to go home would be like, I filed bankruptcy. Like, I screwed something up. I lost a lot of money, but I don't want to go home because I just crushed it. I had an amazing day. I made 100 decisions with confidence and clarity. I have one of the biggest sales of my life. I don't want to go home because I know everything is going to stop when I get home. I'm going to leave a world of confidence, clarity, and go home to a world of chaos and confusion. And that's where I was at. And that's where a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people get into business so they can be a mom or dad that they were put on this earth to be, be a parent they were put on this earth to be, and then all they've done is created a busier world that prevents them from being that person. And then their family, their spouse, their kids, they resent the fact that they're entrepreneurs. And so what I did is I flipped it all on its head, and I said, what if the most valuable business that you will ever own, ever operate, ever even be a part of was the one you're going home to, not the one you went to that day. And that day, I truly became CEO of the most valuable business in the world, which is my family. And so I said, what if I go to Genius Network and I take two pages for my business and two pages of notes for my family, and I go home and I teach them what I learned at Genius Network? And what ended up happening is, is that how I get through it, Joe, how I can make sense out of the insanity and how I can get up each day When I'm just beat. I mean, Kevin and I are not kidding. 200 podcast we're going to do for this thing. It is like. I mean, it is a grind. But the reason I can get through it is because my family is my most valuable business. I'm sharing with them, I'm teaching with them, they're asking about me. They're giving me energy to keep going when I'm exhausted. I was putting my youngest daughter to bed the other night, and I literally almost fell asleep just putting her to bed. And she reached over and she said, you can do it, daddy. Just a couple more weeks. You got this. You know, people need this book. And because she knew, like, she knew what I was doing, she knew what I was going through. But before I had that driveway moment, they didn't know what I was going through. They just knew that I missed everything they did and that I was on my phone all the time, that I was distracted all the time. And so they resented what I was doing instead of being a part of what I was doing. And so now I went crazy, guys. I mean, I incorporated my family. You can look up on Indiana incorporation Register and see 2B Tim's LLC. My youngest child is the same shares that I do in the family business. But that's just what I had to do. That's the extreme steps I had to take. And in the book, mentor to millions, we actually end each chapter or we try to taking the lessons that we learned in business and applying them to our most valuable business, our families. And so I truly believe I am CEO of the most valuable business in the world. And it's that business that allows me to do everything else I'm doing, to do the deal flow with Kevin, to manage the businesses, and to get up every day, even in the face sometimes of exhaustion, and keep going because they fuel my fire.

So if you and Kevin were to get in a physical fight, who do you think would win?

I gotta tell you, Kevin was a wrestler. All right? So the dude would take me down in like two seconds. All right. I may be a little taller than him, but I've seen him move, and the dude is in shape. I mean, I want to be as physically strong as Kevin. Harrington is one of my mentor, you know, no doubt about it.

You're a gentleman, Mark. Thank you.

You know that. So Kevin, that's what they call him, the Hurricane Harrington. That's hysterical. How old are you, Kevin?

63. I'll be 64 in a couple weeks.

Look at him.

This dude does not look like 63 or 64 years old, preteen Swedish boy.

Look at him.

Yeah, I got good genes. You know, my mom and dad left me. Good, right?

Absolutely. Well, also, you know what I think it is though? Some people manifest stress in chaos in different ways. Like someone can ride a motorcycle down the freeway speeding, and it just gives them such a great adrenaline rush that they love other people. It fills them with cortisol and they're stressed out of their mind. And you somehow, I mean both of you, you manage to take on like what you were just talking about, Mark. I mean, if you just look at the comments that people are posting, I mean, so many people are finding this really valuable. You guys take the energy of business and manufacture it into enthusiasm, into good stuff. The question is, when does it become too much? What causes you to have a meltdown that you can share in a way that would help all of the people that are listening and watching right now navigate the path to business success? So the book Mentor to millions, Secrets of success in Business relationships and beyond. It'll, you know, September 22nd, Hay House, which is great because Hay House is doing my next book, but that's not coming out until I'm done with my sabbatical, so. Co authored by the original shark from the Hit Tank. Hit Hit Tank. Hit Tank. I'm a dumbass. What can I say? The creator of the infomercial and pioneer of the as seen on TV industry, Kevin Harrington and his mentee, which is what the book is based around. Mark Tim mentored a million millions shares business and family lessons that anyone can identify with and learn from from Kevin that turned into important lessons and his multimillion dollar successes to Mark's advice on translating business success to home life and leading your family like a business, which he just talked about. A great book for yourself or as a gift to business owners, current or prospective mentee or mentors. Pre order a copy of Mentor to millions today. Get it@getmtm.com and as a token of appreciation, you're gonna also you'll get the link so you can do the mentorship from Kevin and Mark. That's so go to get@mtm.com and order the book. And someone even posted they've already ordered the book and by the way people.

Have posted they ordered the book. Thank you very much. We can't wait for you to get it and would love to love to connect and see what you think from it. So thank you.

I think you eat like crazy business like it's exciting to you. Kevin. I see you get so enthusiastic, whereas other people, it becomes overwhelming. It's really a question about finding the balance of building and growing and succeeding in business versus when does it distress you? When I interviewed Hugh Downs, who recently passed away when he was 87 years old, I interviewed him, and he had the world record for time on broadcast television when he was on 2020 for many years. And that guy interviewed every past and current president of his time, and he said, stress is valuable. Stress, like lifting weights and building muscles in business. It makes you strong, distress, breaks you down. But every person experiences stress differently. They experience deals differently. You know, when you're first starting out, you know, you're. Which is so cool about your book. I mean, you're actually walking people through a process. It's a bit. I mean, you're literally taking a book and mentoring people through a book. So. Yeah. So my question is, like, what's the fine line? What causes you to have a meltdown? I mean, when does Kevin Harrington and Mark Timms say, you know what? This is beyond my scope of capability. If I try to do this, I'm going to crash.

So the first thing I found in the early days, I would say, well, we can only launch one or two products a quarter a year, whatever it was. And we found out that we were failing three out of four, four out of five times. So if we're only going to launch two products, we only got the chance for two successes. We might have zero successes. So I started ramping up the number of things we were launching, and I used a formula called test for. So I went from doing five, six projects a year to 25, and then eventually to 50 projects a year. But out of the 50, I was pulling 10 to 12 winners. And that was bringing me the hundreds and millions of dollars and sometimes billions of dollars coming from these projects. So now that was all automatic how we operated, because we had. It was put a product into sort of a system that was already developed. We had the producers, we had the writers, we had the studio. So we'd get a product, we could produce the show, we could test it, and boom. Really, what we were hampered by was cash for inventory and for production and for building the business. So that became more a function of, we can't do too many products because we can't roll out a lot of winners because we got to have all kinds of cash to do that. So then we started raising capital. But the other thing is, I was going down two paths, one of product development and another, I started mentoring public companies and taking equity positions in public companies. I know Tim Ferriss has done well with this when he got involved in some at an early stage. I mean, I had a project recently, Joe, that a few years ago the stock was 10 cents a share. It was $5 a share before in May of this year. So it went from 10 cents to $5. And from May to today it's gone from $5 to $20. Do the math. If you got millions of shares and all of a sudden one deal can pay off a lot of money. So I've had multiple deals like that in my life. One that went from a dollar to 21, from 10 cents to 21, that went from a dollar to 18. So it's again, those are the ones you focus on. And literally every single December I sit with my son and my team and I say, okay, what deals are taking too much of our time with no upside? Because why we're going to get out of them, we're going to give the equity back. I don't want equity in a company that's not going to pay me any returns. But they're calling me every day, right? So, you know, so I had to, I've had to change my style of how we do deals, who we do deals with. And if we find in the middle of all of that that somebody's dishonest and we can't trust them and they're stealing, we're out of there real quick. And you know, so we just. Unfortunately, I go into a deal assuming I got a straight up partner that's going to be honest. We find out not very often, but occasionally that we've got somebody that we don't want to do business with. So I think those are a couple ways that I could frame that. Do you have any questions on that or you want to go back to Mark?

No, that was actually super valuable. And I love the whole thing about. There comes a point where you got to ask yourself the question, is the juice worth the squeeze? And if someone's calling you and you're still doing stuff and nothing's happening, there comes a point where I've always liked the line. In the real world it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing. And I think when you have tested enough things in the marketing world, you start looking and evaluating any sort of business adventure that way. And, and even with the best of intentions, sometimes things just don't work out and getting out. The best way to get out of a hole is to quit digging it. And so A lot of people think persistence, persistence, never give up stupid advice. In some cases, some things, the best thing you could do is give up. When I did this whole thing, remember when I was helping Arianna Huffington with her book thrive back in 2014? Me and her don't really agree on a lot of political stuff, but I definitely agree with. With the stuff that she was talking about related to sleep and rest. And one of the best things that came out of six hours of interviews I did with her was basically the best way to complete a project is to drop it. And so there are some projects that dropping it. But I'll tell you, early on, you want everything to work. You think everything's going to work, and what happens is you realize some people work and other things don't. Even my friend Kathy Colby, on the back wall, one of the gaping void images, it says, the time to quit working is when working is no longer working. And that's more about, like, if you're up late at night and you're trying to read a book, and you've read a whole page and you don't, you know, put the book down, go to sleep, you know? So I think business deals sometimes, and I think you explained that very well. So, Mark, what would you say?

I'm gonna actually just give people the formula. So Kevin and I really have kind of defined a formula for how to really maximize mentorship. So, again, remember, the book is called Mentor to Million. That millions is not millions of dollars. It's millions of people impacted. But the formula goes like this. In fact, I'll do better than that. Since we're on a video call, you can see behind me, this is a brick wall. This is not a digital thing. This is a brick wall, okay? So I'm gonna use this brick wall that convey the formula. So when you find the right mentor. All right, so you find the right mentor, and what they do is they give you bricks. Now, I love brick because it's so strong. We build houses with it. We build foundations out of it, but the mentor gives you bricks. Now, you, as a mentee, if you become the best student, so your job is to be the best student. You got to collect those bricks. You need to collect as many bricks as you can from your mentors, and then you start building something out of it. But here's the deal. If you stack up your bricks, if you go to genius network meetings and all you do is collect bricks and you stack them up, your kid, any. Anybody can knock them down, okay? They just fall right down. Because they're strong, but they're not held together by concrete and mortar. So you get the right mentor. That's the bricks. You collect the bricks, you become their best student. And then. And here's the most important piece of this whole formula is you then have to teach what you've learned from your mentor to somebody else. That's the concrete, that's the glue that locks it in. That's the mortar. And if you take those bricks and you build a foundation, and then you start teaching other people what you've learned, now, you can build a business on that, you can build relationships on that, you can build a family on that, you can build anything that your passion leads you to on top of that. So you follow that formula, you get the right mentor, you become their best student, and then you teach somebody else what you've learned. And that is the secret to impacting millions. You know, Demetri, you said something in there, and I just want to call him out because he said it in the comments. I was reading him when Kevin was talking. He's like, oh, man, Joe, you're gonna send me a. He goes, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to turn around and I'm going to buy a book, okay? I'm going to take your free book that you're buying, then I'm going to buy a book for a mentor. So get this. I mean, if you were to buy this book and give it to a mentor and then buy a book for yourself, and then the last thing is buy a book for somebody you need to be mentoring, okay? That's the trifecta I'm talking about is complete that three pronged equation, and then you're gonna start impacting millions of people. It is absolutely going to happen.

Who do you think is a better pitch man between you and Kevin? I mean, we should have a pitch off here and see, you know, because frankly, I mean, look, these guys are, you know, they love selling stuff, right? I mean, you both genuinely love selling and you're, you know, you're both selling.

Ziggler was our mentor, huh?

Fair.

I mean, which one of you can do the pump and all that better? I mean, who can?

Mark's better at that one.

Yeah, we should know. Seriously. Well, like, yeah. I mean, I think you guys made, like, a really phenomenal match by collaborating together and doing stuff. I want to actually do what I do, which is connect people. So Dimitri does influencer websites. He's done my websites. Not all of them, but many of them. Joe, polish.com and stuff. I mean, he has all of these connections with different famous influencers and famous entrepreneurs and stuff. Like I don't like the term influencer, by the way, just so anyone knows. I mean, like, what are you influencing? You can be influencing bullshit and calling yourself an influencer. But so I like result leaders more than I like thought leaders.

So my new word on it is integrator. So rather than influencer, we call them integrators because people who integrate the ideas versus just influence.

Yeah. Well, so in your case, like, so they have a book here, Demetri, we have all these people that want to learn about marketing. Let's use their book that a lot of people are buying here. I mean, I think most probably everyone here is going to buy the book by the time we're done talking about this. And so you've done all of this, what have you. What could you recommend them that you've seen from a digital marketing thing that would be very helpful or useful for Kevin and Mark. That's something that does not exist because I know, I think you guys should exchange contact info privately in there and you guys should talk. But anything you want to suggest?

Yes, thank you for asking. And actually I want to ask Kevin a question that can kind of be a topic for people, for everybody here to benefit from because what I've seen Kevin do really well as well as a number of others with personal brands. But most people with personal brands don't do this well, which is Kevin, you've built your personal brand in a way that's allowed you to build all these sellable and scalable assets. So you've like leveraged it to create a lot of wealth and a lot of impact versus most people I see who build personal brands. They really, they build their businesses around their personal brands and they don't have scalable or sellable assets. So now for you, it's been deal flow and all the things that you've been done to amplify businesses. So could you speak to a little bit for people either not building their personal brands and either they go partner with somebody who is do they do it or people who are building their personal brands but haven't found a way to leverage that to create.

I can pre frame that for a second.

Kevin. Good. Sure.

What Kevin's done is Kevin has built his personal brand on the back of his getting things done, of creating informers, all the things that he's done in the field. Then the legend of Kevin kind of grew into who he is rather than Building the brand of sort of fake it till you make it kind of thing. Get yourself famous first and then leverage that fame into being able to do something is, you know, Kevin Strikes is a guy who could care less about the personal brand. Sometimes can be a liability for him too.

Right.

I think, Dean. Good points, Dean. I think I would say this. I started as an entrepreneur and wasn't worried about my brand. I was just building businesses and making money and having fun. And then when I realized that the world of TV was changing, I was the as seen on TV guy. Like I owned as seen on TV Inc. As seen on TV.com I mean, scnantv.com, that asset, without me spending one dime, was generating tens of millions of dollars in sales, no advertising, millions of dollars in profit. And I owned it, okay? And so, I mean, it was worth a lot of money. And so I focused on that. But then when I started seeing, oh, TV is dropping, there's a 50% decline in television viewership. They're on Facebook, they're on Instagram, they're on Disney plus now, right? So I said to myself, wait a minute, the old way is shifting. I've got to look into what's going on in this world. And as I started realizing this new digital world, here's people that I was watching, people that had really done nothing, but they were promoting themselves as big brands and crushing it out in the market. I'm losing deals, I'm losing product deals to them because they were doing better on the brand building side. So that's when I said, okay, I'm going to jump into this space also. And you know, like, I didn't jump real hard, but I just said, I'm going to start creating content, start doing some collaborations. And little by little and year by year, I've been doing these. In fact, this is one of the ones that came out of the Ziggler relationship. Here's one of Zig Ziglar's greatest books ever. Secrets of Closing the Sale. But what does it say here at the bottom? It's now re released with Kevin Harrington, 18 chapters that I wrote in the new release version. So Zig was a man for 80 some years on the earth, it was one of the most powerful people on the planet, delivering speeches all around the world in front of tens of thousands of people. And in one swoop, I co brand myself with him. And not only that, the day that he passed away, they put a Facebook page up. He had never done Facebook before, but he's now passed. So they set one up. 4.9 million people are following Zig on Facebook, which was part of the access that we had to be able to sell this book to the people that are the 4.9 million followers. So, I mean, these are the kinds of things that. That I focused on is collaborations, partnerships, you know, et cetera. And I've had a lot of fun doing it. And I still don't have the biggest brand out there, but I feel very good with where I am. Because, Dean, as you mentioned, the bigger you get, sometimes you gotta be real careful. So I feel comfortable with where I am now.

I wanna jump in here and say something about Kevin. Cause it's not something he would say himself. And it kind of goes along with Dimitri Socrates about. So Kevin gets a lot of deal flow. He's built a brand, a personal brand that people can access him. That's one of the things. He's one of the busiest guys that I know. But people can access time with Kevin because if they have the right pitch, he'll give them time. Okay, so what I love, though is, is that most people think of a shark like a shark deal. You watch Shark Tank? Oh, that's a shark deal. And that implies that the shark gets the better end of the deal. But what I love and what I learned from Kevin, and this is something all of you can learn, is that he puts more time into making sure it's a fair deal. Now, let me give you an example. Someone might offer him 50% of their company and he's going to be like, whoa, no, no, no. I only want 25% of the company. Why? Because he knows as soon as it starts to scale that 50% is too much. Because it's not a fair deal for what he wants to put in the company and what a fair deal is. So Kevin stresses out and puts more time into making sure it's a fair deal. Because the only scalable deal on the planet is a fair deal. If it's a shark deal, it's not scalable. If it's a generosity deal where I do something for you one time because I'm generous and you think I'm going to do it every time and it starts to scale, I'm out. So generous deals are not scalable. Shark deals are not scalable. The only scalable deal on the planet is a fair deal. Now I'm going to tell you something else. I've actually watched Kevin take deals that he negotiated that were fair deals. But all of a sudden, he saw the other person wasn't who they said they would be. He doesn't sue them, he doesn't say, oh my gosh, he just tears it up, hands it back and gives the deal back. And even if he's got some time invested in it, it's worth far more to say, I'm gonna just give this deal back. He goes through a cleansing ritual every year and actually returns two or three deals every single year with him and his son done. That just aren't working out. And you don't want to hold someone accountable in a deal that's not a fair deal, that's not scaling. And so that's an important lesson for everybody to realize. If you get the best deal, you brag to your buddies, you tell your friends, oh, I got a great deal. But likely that's a one time deal. You'll never get it again. So you want to find fair deals and you want to really put more energy into making sure it's fair because then it's scalable.

That's awesome. I think probably worth noting, Joe too, that you know, Dimitri's in a unique situation in that, you know, Dimitri has been the beneficiary of mentoring relationships. I remember the first time I met Dimitri was in Chicago at Eben Pagan's event where he was a young, wide eyed, you know, upcoming entrepreneur. And that, you know, Eben has been kind of had at that time was actively taking an interest in young scholars. What did he call them?

Dimitri. So Eben was doing the, I think it was just the entrepreneur scholarship program that actually helped them out a little bit. And then I was co running Maverick Next, which was a similar program for.

Yeah, which is great. And that's kind of. And you've blossomed into this amazing entrepreneur yourself and it's been a great thing to watch.

So I mean, look at Dimitri though. Look at this freak show. Look at his hair and everything he looks like, I mean, in spite of.

That, look at him.

I mean, in spite of the hippie, I can still somehow do business.

Yes, exactly. And that goes, that comes through because of the context of that he's, you know, through these relationships, met other people that he's been able to transfer that trust to do though now he's the guy that does all of the integrator websites. So it's congratulations. You gotta have the goods, you gotta do the work. You can't just ride on your laurels, rest on your laurels or whatever. You gotta be able to do stuff. And so you took that position and did great things.

So let me, let Me say this because if we're on with, like, the guy that invented the infomercial, it seems to me that there's some, like, every seven minutes we should be doing a picture or something, right? I mean, it seems that's the.

So somebody needs to be saying, but wait. Because, you know, when Kevin's on stage, but wait. And the entire audience will say, there's more.

The best line that I think I can remember from an infomercial is Ron Papille with some sort of. Sort of onion slicer. And he said, the only tear. He said this on the infomercial. The only tears you will cry are tears of joy. And I'm like, you know, you gotta be a salesperson to come up with that. So I would like either you, Mark, or Kevin to demonstrate to us what is the best way to pitch your book to these new people that have came on with. Whatever you get in it, just go for it. I mean, it's simultaneously demonstrating a pitch to everybody while simultaneously pitching everybody. I mean, we could, like, front stage, backstage. Which one of you wants to go.

I'll give it a shot. So I would say to any entrepreneur, first of all, are you an entrepreneur? Do you always make the right decision? Do you ever make the wrong decision? Do you ever wish you had somebody you could run an idea across before you make the final pull on that deal, before you make that spend? Well, oftentimes you need a mentor. And Mentored to Millions is a new book that I've written that teaches you how to get mentors in your life, how to find them, how to vet them, how to make sure that you become the best student of that mentor once you join them and they're there to help. And mentors, in many cases, don't even charge money or equity or percentages. It's their way of giving back to the entrepreneurial community. And so what could be so bad that you could get the right team, the right kind of mentors behind you? And this is really the book. Mentored to Millions is a journey that I take with one of my mentees, and we share a magical transformation during the process of that. So the book is powerful. It's got 40 years of my entrepreneurial experiences in the book. And I teamed up with Mark Tim, a powerful entrepreneur that has created multiple $10 million businesses and now is on his way to building $100 million company due to the mentoring that we've been through. So for $18, you can buy the book. You're going to get an unbelievable value there. But Wait, there's more. You're going to get 30 days of free mentoring from me and Mark. Okay. So, I mean, we're doing live sessions, we're doing virtual sessions, sessions, we're doing taped sessions. We have created tremendous amount of content on this site for those that buy the book. So for $18, you get me for a month, you get Mark for a month, but you get a book that's got 40 years of my experience to teach you how to get mentors in your life. And I also tell you in the book, some of the mentors that changed my life, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the mentors that I've had in my life. So is it worth $18 to take the plunge? I hope so. Thanks for listening.

So, Mark, you need to do the call to action. Where do they go to the website? How do they get it?

They go to KevinMentor.com we'll send you over to get the book, wherever books are bought and then you come back, show us that you bought it. We'll hook you up with the 30 days of mentorship. But our challenge goes a little bit further, and that is thanks to Demetri. We want you to go out and buy a book for your mentor as a thank you. You buy a book for yourself and then buy a book for somebody you should be mentoring. And if you're out there saying, I wish I had this person as a mentor, I'll tell you what, you send them this book and say, read it and talk to me in seven days. And then when they read it, say, how would you like to be that mentor that was in that book for me? I guarantee you, you will get a big yes.

Wow, that's pretty good.

When you were talking, Kevin, about running 35 different things and you were going to the point where you're looking for the winners and scaling them up, you know what I real I was wondering about that process is do you separate the scaling team versus the scale ready team? I've been kind of thinking about a lot of things that I do. What's the most important thing is finding the winner is finding what I call the scale ready algorithm, getting something scale ready. And then once you've got that, like you'll be finding a winning show or a winning infomercial that works and then you're ready to scale it up. And they are two different animals. How do you separate that?

In your world, it typically is two separate functions because you've got the creative side, the development side, and then You've got what we call media or the rollout side now. Now it's important though. So yes, there's two separate functions with different heads generally of those departments. But the one thing that's important is oftentimes you've got to do some pivots on your creative as you're going. So the creative folks never leave ultimately the project because they're responsible for the revisions going forward. Because you do price testing, you do all kinds of different variables out in the marketplace. So sometimes you get certain media outlets that have different results than others that aren't as good. So now maybe you have a special show for certain channels and. Or I say show ads, you know, so you've got to tailor the ads to the audience, et cetera, et cetera. And so yeah, but it generally the creative side is people that are doing the creative, they're not rolling out the infomercials.

Right, Exactly.

Separate talent basis for sure.

How do you balance your time? Because you're the. All the money is in scaling is in ramping it out. You're spending money to crack the code to get the one and then all the money comes from the rolling out of it.

Interestingly enough. Now if you go, if I go back to my TV world, the scaling was actually easy because we use five or six different media agencies and so we could just give them parameters, monitors. And you know, I give one guy 100 grand a week, this guy 50, this guy 200. And you know, we'd monitor every single buy on a daily basis. And if they did good, we'd give them another week and we'd give them another week. And some of these would go for 18 months doing that. But that, you know, so it's the monitoring of the scaling is the key because I did end up with a digital group one time that ripped me off. They were ramping up it up showing me these amazing numbers and we were just kept giving them more money for scale, for scale and then found out that the numbers weren't actually the credit card numbers. These were call ins and it was all garbage in, garbage out. So you know we like really controlling the reporting side of things. Also I love to tell this mentoring story and it's. And there may be some people out there that are entrepreneurs that have gotten to a point they need some capital or something. And so the very first time I was building my business in need of capital, this is back in the 80s, people said well you just got to go to a bank to get financing. And so I went to one bank and got turned down in second. And by the time I got to the fifth bank that turned me down, I said, wow, this isn't working, and was ready to give up. And then I thought, well, wait a minute, there's got to be somebody that I can bring in, a mentor of some type to help me here. And so I reached out to my network of folks that I do business with. And this is one of the ways I say to get good mentors. You've got a sphere of influence. You're in business, you're writing checks to accounting firms, to legal, to phone centers, fulfillment for me, fulfillment centers, media companies. I reached out to all of the people that I wrote checks to because they should want to help me because they're going to keep getting those checks. And I said, I need a finance expert because I need to go do some things to build the business. And I got the name of a guy that was a retired bank president. And so I ended up following up with him, met with him, and he took a look at my business. He got excited. He says, I love what you're doing. He said, but you went to five banks and you got turned down, right? And I said, yeah. I said, I showed him what materials I use. He said, I know why you got turned down. He says, I'll get you the money, no problem. Give me 90 days because I got to clean some things up. And he said, I'll get you the $3 million. I'm not going to charge you a dime. And I'll probably get it from somebody that already turned you down. And the no brainer for me to do it. We shook hands 90 days later, I had 3 million in my account. And we 10x the size of the business from there to $500 million. So people sometimes, Mark likes to talk about raising your hand as a mentor, as a mentee, somebody that needs help. You need to raise your hand and say when you need help. And that's what I wasn't afraid to do this. And I know we all get a lot of people coming to us raising their hands. So you can't pick everybody. But this was a game changer for me. And that's ultimately one. You know, it's in the book. Mentored to millions, obviously, but I just feel very blessed to have had some amazing mentors in my life.

We'll let you go in a minute, but you'll do this then.

Okay.

Tell us something about Shark Tank. That would be surprising. How many episodes of Shark Tank have you been on?

I did 175 segments. There's five segments to a one hour show. So I did over 30 shows. 31 hour shows.

Okay, so what, they just keep rerunning?

They were all on last week, by.

The way, I saw Cindy Kitty last week. Yeah. Which, so what is something that you took away from that, that would be very valuable for everyone to hear about your experience on Shark Tank, from anything from deal making to, you know, getting in fist fights with Mr. Wonderful or anything. John is a good buddy of mine. Is yours too, who's, you know, anything. Yeah.

Never forget Barbara Corcoran.

The very first.

This is what I'm. I'll share some better stuff. But Barbara Corcoran, she mentioned something on the very first year. She talked about, I feel like I was a prostitute because I, you know, this and that. And they came down from upstairs, they said, barbara, this is the ABC network, it's the Family Network. This is owned by Disney. You can't talk about prostitution. Okay. So she was always funny as hell. I mean, and by the way, Barbara has endorsed the book, mentored millions. She's a great, great lady. And I'm gonna, I'll say this. I learned a couple things from Shartan, a couple of my deals that actually worked. And people say, why did you buy a cat toilet training product? I'm watching, the lady comes out, the cat jumps on the toilet, goes to the bathroom and jumps off. And so I'm like, why did I buy that? Because the virality of watching the cats jump up on the toilet. And by the way, the same product was used in Meet the Fockers when De Niro had the cat jumping on the toilet. Right? So I said, said, I'm going to get this product on so many shows because they're going to love this.

It's.

First of all, we're on ABC network, Shark Tank, we're going to get on the View, we're going to get on Good Morning America, we're going to get on the Today Show. I got on all of those, Wendy Williams, we got Wall Street Journal, I mean, we had dozens and dozens and dozens of articles and TV networks that did segments. I went on the View and pitched it with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. And we were selling, selling millions and millions of dollars worth. So sometimes you do a deal for crazy reasons. It wasn't necessarily a great financial thing that I thought about, but I made a lot of money on that one. So I think there's reasons to do deals sometimes. And there may be ulterior motives. I Guess is what I'm saying. But the biggest challenge that I had from Shark Tank was people were very, very selfish. And it was all about them. I've got the best product. I want your money. You should invest. And this is why. And so it's, you know, these were ones. Getting a small equity stake in a private company is not necessarily a safe way to invest. I have hundreds of small equities in private companies hanging on my wall. And they can all be used for toilet paper.

Okay.

Because they're worthless. And I'm just going to say that, that when you're raising money, think of the shark and how you can accelerate their payback. And this is why Mr. Wonderful loves to talk about, give me a royalty, right? Give me 50 cents on every donut you sell or something, right? Well, it isn't so crazy, because if he's going to put a million dollars into a company for 10%, when's he going to get it back? But if he gets a royalty on sale, So I call it an accelerated payback. And when you had Nick Sonnenberg call me and I g him some mentoring on how to pitch and how to get a deal, this was one of the things I shared with him that a lot of people don't do. In other words, listen to this pitch. I want $100,000 for 10% of my company, and I'm going to give you, Mr. Wonderful, 100% of my profits until you get back all your money, plus a return on your investment, and then you still own equity for the rest of your life. So that's a better pitch than just give me money because I need it. Right. And it appeals to the investing side of the shark. That's awesome.

That's really helpful. So good. And Kevin is always great to have you here. Thank you. And me and Kevin have some great interviews. If you just type in Joe Polish, Kevin Harrington.

Can I toss up? And I've been watching a lot of the comments that say, hey, I need a mentor. I don't know where to find one. How can I get one, et cetera. Well, number one, you've taken the hardest step, which is in a public forum, to say, I need a mentor. Okay, there's likely someone that's going to show up as a result of that. I already saw a couple people show up just because somebody said, I need a mentor. But I was on a program the other day, and someone said, well, I don't have a network. I don't have a place to get a mentor. I can't Find a mentor. I said, well, do you have social media? And they're like, yeah. I said, okay, here's all you got to do. You just got to put these words in there. Go to your social media, all your social media platforms, and say, I'm ready to grow my business, but I need a mentor that can show me how to do it. Will you introduce me to that person? And not only did this person have a network that they didn't even realize and didn't know to tap into, but within a matter of hours, there were so many people that showed up that they are now interviewing their mentors. They're interviewing, they're talking, who's going to be my mentor? And this was someone that said, I don't have a network. I can't find a mentor. And all they did was go to their social media channels. Now, it may not have been that person. It may not have been the person who ran, but they forwarded on to someone else that said, I know this guy, and you could help them. And they started getting connected. That was about 10 words that I just gave you that. If you post in this chat, if you post it in your social media channels, mentors will show up. When you're ready, the mentor will show up, but you've got to show up first. We literally want to. I mean, I don't mind being bold enough and saying it. There's no back end of this book, by the way. There's no coaching Mastermind Upsell not. Because our goal is to get a million of these books out there in the marketplace. We believe that that's our impact in the world, is to get this book in a million people's hands. Make mentorship part of our everyday vernacular, make it part of our everyday habit to have mentors and then be a mentor. And that's why we just, we told, hey, Al, no backend, no coaching, no courses, no nothing. Just get this book in as many people's hands and try to inspire people to pass it along. Buy it for their mentor. Buy it for someone they should be mentoring.

Hey, Robin, do you want to ask a question? Robin? Farming. Farming.

Let's see. What is the worst advice you got.

From a mentor and how did you.

Know not to take it? Well, oftentimes, you know, if you. If you get bad advice, you know, if they're already a mentor, you sometimes don't know that it's bad advice. So this is the worst kind of mentorship relationship you can have. It's when you fail to ask this question of your Mentor, tell me about your failures. Because a mentor that hasn't failed or isn't willing to talk about their failures is going to consistently give you bad advice. And so the worst advice I got was getting advice from someone that thought they were the be all, end all. They didn't need to learn anymore, they already knew everything. And they were just telling me a one way path, a swim lane that went only to one place. And so I had to learn that the hard way way. You need to find mentors that have failed because they're going to be vulnerable. They're going to help you when you fail and you will fail. That's part of the entrepreneurial journey. And then the other question you need to ask of any mentor is who's mentoring you? Because I guarantee you, if they don't have a mentor and they're not continuing to learn, they're not going to be a good mentor either. So I can't really speak to one particular thing that was bad advice, but I can speak to bad mentors. Bad mentors are people who don't have mentors. Bad mentors are people who are afraid to talk about their failures or actually think they haven't failed. And they make really bad mentors.

Great, awesome advice.

Thank you.

Thank you, Shane and Angelina. These guys are really amazing experts in just sleep and biohacking and health and all kinds of stuff. So what question would you have, Tim?

Just wanted to ask.

We've learned a lot of lessons from our kids, from our family.

Angie and I both run our business. I love what you were saying about that. Yeah, we really, really resonated with that because I've learned so many things from my kids. What have been the really stellar sort.

Of things that you've picked up from running your family as a business, that.

You'Ve applied into.

Your business in general.

And even like directional changes too, that.

Have come from family.

Yeah. So in my case, I can only share what I share with you because I got it wrong longer than I got it right. I want to be clear about that. I mean, I'm not afraid to admit the failures that I had in that family space. And I was winning in business and I was failing at home and knew that wasn't right. I knew that wasn't why I was put on this earth. And it was just a real strain every day to know that I could be so good in one area and so confident one area. And in another area I felt chaos, confusion, and lack of clarity. And so first and foremost, I know what it's like, to get it right. And I know it's, like, to get it wrong. And for me, what I had to do is I just had to integrate. You know, Demetri had it right. People say work life balance. Well, work life balance is a myth. It doesn't exist. There's no such thing as balance because you're always being pulled off balance by one or the other. But you can integrate. You can take those two worlds and integrate them and make them part of it. And so it started with me sitting down with my family and saying, from here forward, you will be my most valuable business. You will get my first and my best, not my last and my least. And then I had to prove it and show it to them. And one of the ways I proved it was I actually started taking them with me. For three years, I didn't go on a single business trip where one of my kids didn't go with me. And I was proving it. And guess what? What relationships were built. I learned more about my kids, and they learned more about me in hotel rooms, in Uber cars, on plane flights, because we weren't distracted by our habits of our home. We just had each other, and we could pour into each other. And the relationship I now have with my kids, my young adult kids, is so strong, it's beyond anything I would have allowed myself to say publicly five years ago. But today, like, we're all in. And the best way I can describe it is this. For those of you that have little kids, okay, or even any kids, you remember the day that they put their hand in yours, like, your heart melts, and it's just an amazing thing. But then somewhere along the lines, they drop your hand and they say, I'm too cool for school. I'm not going to get caught holding your hand, right? And then that's it. You think, oh, my gosh, it's over. But if you do this right, if you double down and you become the CEO, if you really lead your family and you mentor your family, and you make it so that they can come to you with anything, and you have open exchanges about Joe Polish Genius Network and things you've learned in business, and you take them places with you. What ends up happening is that later in life, when they are at that critical teenage stage, they grab your hand for a second time. And that time, they grab your hand and say, I choose you. I choose you to lead me into adulthood, to be my mentor for the rest of my life, to teach me how to be a mom and a dad, to teach me how to be a colleague, a co worker, to teach me how to be a husband and wife someday. And when they choose you, that second time, it's forever. You get to do this forever. And that's the coolest thing about it. So when I talk about what I learned from my kids, it's because I've opened up this channel of communication. They're not afraid to call me out and say, that's a bad idea. Dad. You know, we're part of this family business too. You got to get this right. Okay? My family, this last Sunday, even my young adult children, my niece had a baby prematurely in the hospital for two weeks. They've got a mountain of bills they can't even even see over. We came together as a family. We took one of my products and we got together and we produced this product and we committed that the revenue from this product is going to go to my niece. Now, it was their idea. This is what they do. Now they get business. You know, my kids are. My son, who I think I brought to a genius network one time, he just bought his first house at 22 years old. And he's going to flip it because he learned from one of the masterminds. He got a connection by a guy by Evan Pagan, actually, and his business partner, James Melnick. And James gave him his course. Okay. Because he was in, I call it contagious proximity. He was in proximity to be contagious by awesome cool thinkers. He met James all by himself. James gave him the course, he took the course, and now he's buying his first home and flipping it. And I had nothing to do with that except for to bring him to that mastermind. Okay? So that's how it works. So I can't point to just one thing. I can point to everything. Because my family is my most valuable business and they're part of everything I now do in business because I'm all in to be their CEO. Dad.

Love that. Fantastic.

Thank you. Yeah.

You know, by the way, Shane and Angie, why don't you guys put your give out your website real quick because what you guys do is really helpful because so much of my world is health, physical and mental wealth. Making money and manage, not losing money and then elf easy, lucrative and fun. You guys are, are doing really great work and I've gone through some of your materials. It's top notch. So I'd actually like. We'll have you guys as a guest on a future sort of thing if you want to do it. But tell everyone your website. Yep.

So breathe Me dot com. Breathe.

Me with an E. Yeah, breathing this whole thing that if all of you stopped doing it in a few minutes, you would all. So, Coco Wong, question from Malaysia. It seems to be harder to. I'm going to let you take this one, Dean. To find mentors in Asia, Would mentors in the US Be happy to mentor us who are in Asia, given the different time zones and culture? Also, should we find mentors who are from the same industry? The bigger question here is just simply, how do you learn from, you know, other people? You can get mentors in any particular area, but I'd love to hear what you would say, Dean, and then Mark, and then we'll take another question.

There's no more borders.

There's no more world. There's no more, like geography doesn't matter. We're in contagious proximity to anybody with an Internet connection that can meet by zoom just like this. I mean, it's just. So we're all. Doesn't matter where we are. We're here in Cloudlandia together, and it's as if we're all in the same room. That's the great thing, is this life is just so great right now that instantly we can travel, teleport to any place on the planet. And time zones are just, you know, it's a great app. There's a great Miranda app that shows you anywhere in the world what time it is. So it does the conversions for you. So you just dial in what time. In most cases, there's zones of overlap on every time zones. You just need to learn what those are within your waking hours. But yeah, yeah.

And as far as same industry or different industry. You have any comments on that, Mark?

I agree exactly what Dean's saying. I mean, we live in a global world right now, you're a click away. I mean, there's. I don't know how many countries are represented on this. There's hundreds of people on here and there's multiple countries. And so you can plug in at any way. And it's not limitation in terms of mentoring. I mean, I've had some great pitches from people that are completely out of the country. And we've mentored them, we've taken them on, and we've helped them, and we love doing that. I mean, again, through one of my mastermind. I have one of my kids there. It's a theme. I bring one of my kids and then I lose track of them and they're sitting down with somebody. So Blake is the speaker. My daughter is so Inspired by what he's doing, that she comes home and she sets up these collection bins in her high school and she starts collecting shoes. And next thing you know, this other high school finds out about it. And then next thing you know, the all the schools in our county find out about it. And so she started her own organization, Shoes for Change. So she shoesforchange us, I believe. And within a matter of weeks, she collected 1500 pairs of shoes. We went to Africa, hand delivered those shoes. Blake's company helped pave the way to get us over there and connect us. And we put five. We put 1500 pairs of shoes, and that allowed us to put shoes on 500 kids feet, many of which had never had their own pair of shoes. Okay. And so that. And now, as a result of that, that we connected with some kids over there that we're now mentoring, and we continue this relationship even today. So geography has no boundaries. And so, you know, it's that concept of contagious proximity. You put yourself in proximity of other people to be contagious, and the next thing you know, you're going to start making a difference around the world, and a difference is going to be made. That's again, I want to remind you, the point of the book is millions impacted. And I got to tell you, you impact a million people, you'll never worry about money again. That's why the book is not about money. It's about impact.

Love it. Love it. Let's do a question to Ella. Ella, you want to ask a question?

Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. And I really love what you guys are doing. I've been lucky to have some great mentors in my life. My career and my business especially, wouldn't be anywhere near where it is now without them. So my question is, when I started working with my first mentor in business, to be honest, I have no idea what he saw in me. I was a disaster when it came to how things were organized, and I was so new. So what are some things that you, like you said you get pitched to be a mentor to people. What are some things you look for, whether it's organic or somebody pitches you in terms of people you'll take on? I love that question. And right now, because there's so many, you know, there's so much noise, you know, out there, and so many people are reaching out. We're on a lot of media. We were on headline News on Sunday, 1.1 million people. And so we've got a lot of people reaching out to Us. But if you follow the formula that I use with Kevin, which is value your mentor's team time, like, really put a value on that time. One of the things I said that Joe can really relate to is I said to Kevin, I will make this easy for you, Okay? I will make it easy for you. So right off the bat, he's like, wait a minute, okay. He values my time, he's going to make it easy for me, and he's going to become my best student. So that's kind of the trifecta. So you've got to reach out. Just like Kevin was talking about on the Shark Tank. If people look at what's in it for me. Well, what about what's in it for the. The shark? So if you look at it for the mentor, and it's not about can I pay the mentor or give equity, all of that, it's more about can you. Do you value their time and the wisdom they're going to give? Are you going to make it easy for them? And then do you commit, Absolutely. Commit to implementing and acting on the wisdom they get? Because I don't care who you are as a mentor, if you give good advice and people don't act on it, you don't want to mentor them anymore. You don't want to mentor. You don't want to put time and effort into it. Because we want to spend see you act. We want to see you act now. So that's really kind of the formula and the criteria that you can use to get a mentor and the kind of language and the kind of words that you need to be using.

This is from Kathy. Mark, is your book going to help me as a clinical practitioner in a solo practice?

Oh, I mean, here's the thing. We were not put on this earth to be alone, Period, Joe. We weren't put on this earth as human beings to be alone, okay? We're supposed to be in community and be in relationships with other people. We certainly were not put in this world to be in business alone, okay? That is for sure. So this book is going to help you. Because the biggest thing is this is not a how to book. Let's just be clear. It's not a step by step book. It's not a how to book. It literally is a journey of a mentor and his mentee. And when you finish this book, you close the last chapter, all right? And I will tell you, Tom Ziglar, son of Zig Ziglar, was the first person to read the book. And a little spoiler Alert. He said, that's not an episode log. That is an epic log. There are very few people that close the last chapter without tears in their eyes. And I won't give away why, but it's because you can be profoundly changed and you can be forever altered by having the right mentors in your life and by becoming the right mentor. So can this book help you? Heck, yeah. I don't care what your occupation is. I don't care where you're at in this world. This book is for everybody because we all need mentors and we all need to be a mentor, period.

This is from David Hill. Is there a difference between a mentor and a coach? He also said, I love how you talked about how to focus on deals, how you decide what programs and trainings to focus on. There's so many different trainings and online programs and challenges today. The reason I ask you is because I can look at all those people as mentors. How do you decide? So what are your thoughts on difference between a mentor and a coach?

I think there is a difference. Now, I'm going to say this, and I won't confuse everybody, but coaches can be mentors. Okay. But not all mentors can necessarily be coaches. And so. And there's a big difference between the two. Oftentimes, I'm just going to say it right out there. Oftentimes, there's a monetary transaction taking place in a coaching relationship, but oftentimes there's not in a real mentorship relationship. Now, I'm not saying you can't pay for a mentor. I'm not saying you can't compensate a mentor, but oftentimes the best mentors in your life, there was no comp and no dollar transaction taking place. But oftentimes in a coaching relationship, there is a quid pro qu. There's some kind of exchange taking place. And so I often will separate those two that way. Yet on the same token, I've actually hired some coaches that then became mentors. Okay. We entered an exchange in a coaching relationship, and then we developed a know like and trust of each other that transcended and superseded the coaching relationship and became a mentorship relationship. And so. So that's kind of my definition of the difference between a coach and a mentor is the mentor is kind of all in to listen to you and understand where you want to go in your life and then pour wisdom into you without a quid pro quo exchange of any kind. And a coach, there's often that exchange taking place. That's the difference.

Okay. Anything else I didn't ask you any famous last words or any final calls to action.

No, I mean, you asked all the right questions. I would just say at the end here that if you're listening out there and you have a product, a purpose or a passion that the world needs, that could impact the world, the fastest way to get that to the world is by surrounding yourself with the right mentors and then becoming the right mentor yourself. And what my wish and want for you is for that journey to start right now. Awesome.

Love it. All right, man. Thanks brother. I really appreciate it. And give John my best and we'll continue the journey and look forward to seeing all the success that people have. And after everyone reads the book, please share this podcast I'd ask you to if you found this valuable, share that you just heard this episode. It's coming out soon. Tag Mark Tim Tag Kevin Harrington. Thank you so much. Have a good, wonderful day.

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Sam.