Shorten The Gap with Mark Lack and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #260

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jax and Joe.

Polish and we have a guest today. His name is Mark Lack. And I don't think you're going to be lacking after we're done with this, but it's Mark Lack. How are you doing, Mark?

I'm doing fantastic. It's an honor to be here talking to both of you guys and excited to add some value.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'll give you the quick bio of who you are for people that don't know. So Mark is most commonly known for being one of the nation's leading authorities for millennials, specifically in the area of personal development, entrepreneurial development and sales training. Like many entrepreneurs, Mark, he failed in school, as did I, only to graduate and grow a six figure coaching company his first year out of college with very unique marketing strategies that involved no money out of his pocket. And ironically, he actually majored in marketing. So Mark is also the best selling author of shorten the Shortcuts to Success and Happiness which is endorsed by world renowned experts John Assaraf and Brian Tracy, who are both good friends of mine. And in addition, Mark is an integral thought leader and advisor on the board of multiple charities. So at the time of us talking with you now, Mark, how old are you?

I just turned 26 last week.

26? Yeah. You know, that was the year I actually first started making money. I actually made a quarter million dollars when I was 26 selling how to marketing courses to carpet and upholstery cleaners after I sold my carpet cleaning company, having used very unique marketing strategies to turn it all around. So it takes me back to that year, which was really my first when I was 26, that was my first full year of being like information marketer. And it was awesome and I was on fire and really excited and all that sort of stuff. So we'll talk about all those sort of things.

That was 1994.

Yeah, yeah, talk louder. Dean, you sound, you sound a little low. I don't know what sort of muffling thing you're talking into. You need to be screaming here. Yeah, he doesn't sound very good right now, does he, Mark?

He's a little low compared to yours.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we can make fun of Dean, by the way. This is a very informal sort of sort of thing. That's what we want to do. That's what it's all about. Yeah, no, you sound really low, Dean. Like you're not excited to Be here today or something.

What's going on, Dean?

Yeah, we got Mark Lack on the line. I mean, come on, step it up.

I thought you'd be excited. Gene.

I'm going to call back in. You do that. Yeah, call back in. So what I'll do, Mark, I'll ask you how, for people that don't know you, how do you describe who you are, your story, and what you do to basically overcome challenges, take action, and create breakthroughs and all the stuff that you've been working on?

Well, it's about 10 questions loaded into one there. So I guess I'll just start with kind of a quick background on my story about how I got to where I am. Is that good?

Yeah. Yep.

Awesome. So, you know, my story kind of started back around when I was the age of 14. I was begging and pleading for my parents to get me into this extremely expensive hobby called paintball. And at the time, I had pretty much quit everything that my parents have ever put me in, sports and everything like that. And so begging and pleading for them to start spending a good portion of money on this expensive hobby called paintball didn't seem like something that they wanted to do. But through persistence, I was able to persuade them. And them being great parents, they supported me. And what I wanted to do was become one of the best professional paintball players in the world and travel all over the globe, competing professionally, making at the time what I thought would be good money. And so, keeping a long story short, my parents got me into paintball around the age of 14, and by the age of 17 and 18, I had made over $300,000, traveling over a quarter million miles around the world, competing professionally, playing paintball. And what it taught me.

That's a little more than a dollar a mile.

Exactly. Yes. And I earned all the flight miles, which is great learning that at a young age.

Yep.

But what it. What it really taught me was it made me mature at a young age because I was traveling the world, guys in their 30s when I was a teenager, and it really taught me the mindset for success doesn't really vary in any other industry, because at that time, I was heavily investing in my personal development and my mindset, and I was noticing a very common trend amongst the things that it took me to become successful and one of the best in the world at paintball and what it takes to become one of the best in the world and super successful at virtually anything. And so I've carried the principles and the mindset that I learned from paintball. At a young age into the entrepreneurial space and as you kind of touched on earlier in my bio, ended up heavily investing in my personal professional growth to the point where I ended up writing a book just to vet all of the things that I had been studying onto a paper. Didn't want to waste 180 pages of a word doc, so turned it into a book. Use a lot of the strategies and tactics I learned for how to work your way through gatekeepers and get people to endorse you, tying them into a vision, which is part of how I got Brian Tracy and John Ashrath to endorse my book and some other cool people that were mentors of mine at the time and ended up really wanting to become one of these people. I had studied a coach, an expert, an author, speaker, and do more than just be the student and benefit from learning it. But I wanted to go out, share with the world, mainly other young adults, the things that I had been learning that I know they weren't learning and still aren't learning in school. And so one of my big passions is really working with and teaching and educating and empowering other young millennials, how they can really break the mold that I think many young people have been forced into or taught would be the right path for them and teaching them what's really possible through my example. And so that's. I know we keep getting dinged on the line.

Yeah, sorry. I don't know if that's Dean back there making all that noise or what, so no worries.

Well, I digress. That's kind of how I got to where I'm at today. So happy to go deeper if needed.

No, no, that's great. You said that things in school that you weren't learning and that students still are not learning, what are those things that you consider that are, no pun intended, lacking in school and what's being taught? Because, I mean, I have my own perspectives on this, clearly, but I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Yeah, you know, I think it's a really big list, at least in my opinion, it's a big list, having just come out of the college education system not too long ago. But to keep it short and swee, I think some of the most important things that are lacking in the school system is people learning how to actually control their emotions. We call that emotional intelligence, emotional mastery. I think that's one of the most valuable things I've ever learned, and it kind of ties directly into the second one, which is awareness. Awareness of your emotions. And how they influence your awareness of your model of the world, your beliefs, your habits, and a lot of the things that really control you, how your environment controls you. They don't teach you really, how to network and build important relationships. They don't teach you how to effectively communicate and express your unique value to a business. If high school prepares you for college and college prepares you for a job, then why the hell doesn't college have at least one course that teaches you how to actually land a job and have a successful interview? There's so many things that I could rant about that the school system, I believe should be teaching but doesn't. I mean, you and many other amazing mentors that I look up to and respect. The opinions of very few people have ever looked back and attributed their success, their impact, their happiness on the things that they learned from school. Many of them didn't even graduate. And so, you know, just the sad thing that I see is that so many kids want so many things, life, but they're not really. There's a ding again.

Yeah, I don't have no idea. Sorry about that. I'm not. For all of our listeners, that's usually not a normal thing to have this many dings on the line, but. Dean Jackson, are you still with us? Yeah, I don't. I mean, Dean has kind of left the building. It's very weird, but no big deal.

I was gonna say, I thought you'd be excited for this call.

I am, actually. No, I mean, this is actually more exciting than Dean. It's so fun to talk about it when he's not here, but he'll go back and listen to this and be like, what? Really? You really said that, Joe? That's not very nice. No, but. Well, first off, I completely agree with what you're saying. I am not a big fan of the way that quote, unquote, formal education prepares people for life. Because in the real world, I can't point to anything that I really took away from college. I have a friend. I will not mention his name because he is massively involved in the academic industry of colleges and recruiting students and all that. He made this comment that college and universities in large part is just daycare for adults.

Yeah.

And I wish it wasn't that way. Granted, for every. I'm sure there's some really great instructors and professors and I know some very smart people, but in terms of teaching entrepreneurial skills, it doesn't really happen. Which, of course, this is a normal thing for all the people you're meeting in the entrepreneurial world and for what you're doing and who you've become. Where did the light bulb go off though? The paintball? Sort of. Was it your parents? Was it some sort of individual? Was it an activity or was it something you really don't know what to point to that gave you that first initial introduction that became a pursuit and a drive because being, you know, when I was, I mean, you've probably heard me talk about this when I was between the ages of 16, 18 years old, I mean, I was just an angst ridden young person trying to figure out how to get through life. Incredibly shy, wasn't functioning all that well. I used to smoke a lot of pot, I used to take drugs, you know, and looking back, it's because I was just in mental anguish and it was just a way that I, I kind of escaped. But I was a pretty bad drug addict when I was 18 years old. And personal development is what pulled me out of that hole. And also going to the right environments and moving away from all of the relationships I had that I had built that were supporting my very toxic lifestyle and reading books and eventually getting introduced to all kinds of people. Even like Tony Robbins, he started out personal development when he was so really good personal friend of mine, that was the stuff I would listen to and.

Read.

Way back when. But it wasn't until I actually started studying marketing that that translated from personal development and mindset to actually figuring out how to make money and run an entrepreneurial venture. So I'd like to kind of talk about those things because the other part of my question to you in the beginning was what did you do to overcome challenges, take action and create breakthroughs? So yeah, all three of those could be hour long topics.

I'm. Yeah, well, for me, from, for me, one of my light bulb moments, I think we have many light bulb moments from a collection of our experiences throughout life as we go into new chapters of our life. And one of the big ones for me that kind of shifted my perspective and the way that I started to think, feel and behave was around 18, 19 years old, ironically watching a Tony Robbins video where he said something along the lines of just the fact that you're alive means that you have the moral responsibility to be the best version of yourself possible experience all the world has to provide to you and to give something back by becoming more. And at that time of my life, for some reason, I mean that just rocked my world and I was just an entitled 18 year old, 19 year old punk and didn't really understand life. And so many of the things that I wish I knew back then that I know now through studying, but yeah, I mean, that was just such an eye opener for me. And at that moment I just realized that who I was being was not going to get me the things I wanted in life. I think if you sit down with almost any 18 year old and ask them things that they want, they'll give you a huge list. But if you ask them what they're doing to work towards those things, or who they're trying to become to manifest those things and work closer to becoming the type of person that will achieve those things, very rarely do they ever have a list for that. So at the time that kind of rocked my world. I was like, wow, I have all these things I want, but I just kind of complain and bitch about why I don't have it, rather than focusing on becoming the type of person and learning the type of things that I need to have and earn those things. So it kind of led me on this path to really committing myself to what Tony calls constant, inevitable improvement and what I refer to as self mastery. And so at that moment in my life, I made a commitment to focus on becoming the type of person that I needed to become to really make my life a masterpiece and achieve all of the things that I want to in life. And so that's kind of like one of my big principles that I teach with a lot of young people is the three pillars of life. You've got be more, have more, give more. The middle pillars have more. Most people are trying to have more things in life and achieve more things, but very rarely do they have a list of things for how they need to be, who they need to become, and things they need to be giving or value that they need to be adding. And so, you know, if you focus on the being and the giving, usually the having always takes care of itself. And that's something that I really wholeheartedly believe in and focus on so much of my energy every day. On who I need to be giving and adding value to and who I need to start becoming as an individual, how it usually falls into place.

Right? That's cool. That's cool. So, you know, you know what, I'm always a little suspect of everyone in the personal development industry because so many of the top people in it are all personal friends of mine. And I see which people are really authentic and which ones are totally full of shit. And it's very interesting too because when you, you know, navigating the world. I also know that everyone's human and that you're not always in an up state and everyone has challenges. And you know, I happen to be in a position in my life now where some of the greatest advisors to people in all kinds of different areas, you know, when they're having relationship breakdowns or whatever they call me. And of course being you know, an addict and having sat through you know, numerous 12 step groups and gone to tons of therapy, I mean I know what it's like to live in a broken state and I know what it's like to live in a place where, you know your is working and it's functioning and stuff. When I see young entrepreneurs that are really. Because I thought I was so damn smart when I first learned things early on and actually I think I was pretty good because I put in the time, I really read a lot, I really learned a lot. I implemented, I tested things. I always believe that the 5% of the people that are the most successful are the ones that are willing to do the things that the other 95% are not willing to do. Dean, have you finally joined us? Okay, you know, I know the story with what's going on with Dean because he sent me a text and weather where he's at in Florida is like messing up the connection. So he lit, I guess he's only getting a clear connection when he's calling in through like a Skype line or something and the Internet keeps going in or out. And so I said, well, you know, this is me doing something I really don't like doing, which is multitasking while I'm, you know, doing an interview. And I just said, just call, just call in Dean and we'll make you just tell the story and people will, you know, be forgiving of it. So anyway, if he never shows up, I don't know how we're going to do this. So those of you that are Dean Jackson fans, sorry, it's, it's me and Mark. Until Dean ever, you know, can get.

Get on the line, just have him patch back in with his muffled microphone.

Something. Yeah, I mean, come on. And so anyway, so where was I? So I was, you know, like, like friends of mine that are in the, you know, the personal development space when they're young, you know, and they're shots. I often say, okay, let's see where they're going to be five years from now. Let's see where they're going to be ten years from now. Not only will they stay on this path, will they maintain A really killer reputation because I mean, I can, I've been doing this stuff for over 25 years now. And I can point to people that, I just have a gut sense that this person thinks they're so damn cool that, let's see, you know, but they're too much of hustlers. They're, they're, they think they're too, they're too cool for school and just watch what's going to happen. And I've learned how to gauge the difference between confidence and arrogance and people that are acting like they have integrity versus people that don't have integrity and all that sort of stuff. Now the reason I'm bringing all of this up is I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about what I consider what would make greatness and how does someone succeed. But success is always a kind of a loaded sort of term. And when it's coming from someone that is young, some people are like, well, what am I going to learn from someone that's 26 years old? And why the hell should I listen to that? Which is the same sort of obstacle that I used to have when I would go teach seminars. When I first started doing seminars to service businesses, carpet upholstery cleaners. I'd be in these rooms with people that were twice my age trying to tell them how to run their companies. And the funny thing was I actually knew what the hell I was doing back then. I dispensed advice that worked. It was the best in the industry. I ended up licensing my stuff to frickin 10 other different industries. In the late 90s, every major phone book in the United States, in every major city in the United States had one or multiple versions of my 24 hour free recorded message ads running. My stuff had sold hundreds of millions of dollars for my clients and I was a hotshot. But not realizing I was about to encounter some real life traumas. Never in a situation where I went bankrupt, which most people do, and never in a situation where I screwed people out of money, which that happens with some people, not intentionally for many, but it's just, they get overzealous or whatever, or get too involved and too dispersed. But I got into really personal crisis sort of situations that really tested my ability to function. And I went through some very bad years with behavioral addictions and all kinds of crazy stuff. Now the reason I bring all of this up is I wanted to ask you growing up or currently, what were some of the biggest challenges up to this point in your life that you've had to face to overcome where you take the stuff that not only you can read in the book and you can learn, but literally have you had any major train wrecks that you've had to endure or go through that really you learned a lot of lessons from that you can maybe share.

You know, I have to just be completely transparent and honest. I know that a lot of people that come from adversity have a whole different model of the world from their experience. And you know, I think that you can go and pick down on pretty much anyone's life and say, oh, they had a struggle here at some point. But I'm such a Pollyanna over the optimistic person where I try to find a silver lining in everything. But to be completely transparent where I'm coming from. I feel like I've had great parents, I've had a great life, a great upbringing, and I don't haven't really had any terrible adversity or trauma or paradigm shifting moment in my life as a result of adversity. I struggled, I think like most teens maybe at a higher level, which pushed me to where I'm at today with insecurities and depression that many people don't even know that I had. And it led me to doing crazy things to myself to change who I was, try to be liked to, you know, force me into a position where I was online search because I grew up right when the Internet started to get big. So I was online searching for ways to overcome depression and insecurities and, you know, somebody picked on me. I found the best way to get back at them. Not like get back at them, but like, have a comeback for the next time. And so I really was fueled by my insecurities and depression that not many people knew. I had to utilize the resources of the Internet to figure out how to change my state because I mean, who wants to feel depressed or sad or insecure and confident? And so I was fueled by that type of challenge in my life, which I think was sort of the tipping point at 18 for me when I sort of discovered Tony Robbins, who led me to some of these other amazing mentors that I've grown up studying. But again, being totally transparent. I mean, the law of relativity, everything is relative. But I have to say, I've grown up with some pretty amazing parents and have had a pretty amazing life. And that's one of the things that fuels me to want to become a better person. Because I look around and one of the reasons why that saying from Tony Robbins really rocke World at 18 or 19 is because I really have had a great life and I have absolutely no excuse in the book to possibly come up with some reason or excuse for why I shouldn't live an absolutely amazing life and why I shouldn't be able to as a result of having more, give back to the world more. And I mean that in a true way. Like, I haven't come from like the lower class, if you want to call it that. I came from like the middle class, but, but through studying psychology. The reason why most first time successful, first time rich people come from the lower class is because pain motivates change, where comfort creates mediocrity. And so I could rationalize that coming from the middle class and having a state of comfort would fuel me or actually should keep me in a mediocre state like most of the people I grew up with and went to school with. Where most people coming from a lower class have more fuel and pain to motivate them to change and grow. Which is why most first class rich people are from lower class, not middle class. Yeah, I mean, that's just being totally transparent about my background.

No, no, and that's great. And I think there's some really key points there too, because what I learn is what I've learned. And again, this is only my perspective. And maybe there's some scientists out there that really knows the exact percentages, but most people that I know that have created success usually comes out of a state of pain and adversity, not out of inspiration and everything working. And so when I someone that really could be complacent and chooses not to be or doesn't need to work that hard and does, that's always more impressive. And I also say that with a caveat that you never know what the hell's going on in someone's head. You don't know the traumas, you don't know anything that happened to them. You don't know the exposure, you don't know the brain chemistry. There's a lot of things that make up the anatomy of a successful person versus the anatomy of an unsuccessful person. The thing is, you're very well read, you've done a lot of stuff. You're constantly working on yourself and you're hustling like crazy. So let's kind of go through what it is you know, and how you do it and create as much value for everyone that's listening so that they can be inspired to pursue and do the things that they want to do if they're already kicking ass and Taking names, how to, you know, improve that even further. Because at the end of the day, that's what we do these podcasts for is just to hopefully offer as much value and help to people as we can, even if they never buy anything from us. It just makes me feel good to know that taking our stories and sharing it with other humans is hopefully making the world a little bit better place. So what do you think usually stops entrepreneurs and business people from achieving greatness?

I think what stops most people from really going after their dreams and achieving greatness is what's happening between their ears. I don't really think that there's any roadmap or recipe or formula or proven strategies and tactics. I like to just call it a recipe, like something in a kitchen that you can follow and duplicate a result of. I think that almost any recipe for any outcome you want is somewhere out there in the world that you can learn or model or copy from somebody who's already proven the result and can show you how to do it yourself and ideally in a shorter period of time. So I think that that's never the problem, although I think that's what most people rationalize is the problem is, oh, I don't know how. I don't have the resources, I don't have the connection. That's usually all bs, just belief systems people have created. But I think the real thing back to the BS and belief systems is it goes right back to what's between their head. The old cliche saying 80% of success is psychology, 20% is the strategies and tactics goes right back to validating what I'm saying, which is I think what really ultimately holds people back from achieving greatness or achieving their dream life or whatever big results and goals they have in life boils down to what's happening between their head. And it ties right back to what I was saying is lacking in the formal education system, which I'll digest. But psychology. And that's one of the things that I study so much on. And even when I get hired to do marketing or sales consulting for people in the coaching and expert space, a lot of the times it ends up being things we have to talk about around psychology and belief systems and their model of the world. But I think. And again, that could be a whole seminar, as you know. But I really think it boils down to psychology, and I'm happy to dive deeper into that without going on a tangent. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, let's. What has been your learning process? Because I think that would be kind of Instructional. I mean, we could talk about the things that you know and things that you do, but.

How did you go.

About knowing the things that you know? How did you learn? And speak to it in any way you want, like what was useful, what was a waste of time, what was the most impactful? You know, did it any of that, you think? Because there's a lot of millennials that will probably listen to this, and anything that could really give them some elegant solutions and ideas, I think would be great.

Okay, so I'll start with the fact that most people don't even know what learning is. And I'll copy a sentence from Tony Robbins, which is, learning is nothing more than the creation of a relationship between two or more things. So if you can understand that if you're trying to learn something new or teach something to somebody that's new, all you have to do to quickly teach or learn is build a relationship between two or more things. And so if I can use sports as a metaphor, a lot of times metaphors and analogies are such great tools for teaching and learning, which is why the Bible is covered with them, is because metaphors and analogies are simply assimilations between two or more things so that you can quickly build a relationship between something you maybe didn't know or were trying to be taught and learn with something that you already know. And that's why analogies and metaphors are so great, which is why sports metaphors are used all the time in leadership, business, military, because it's such a great metaphor for life, so you can quickly create relationships. Whenever I'm trying to teach or learn something new, I know the fastest way to do it is to build a relationship between two or more things so that my brain will quickly learn it and hopefully retain it better. But I think one of the other things that's really shifted my ability to learn things really fast and really well is first learning from people who have a proven track record. I think nowadays, since we live in information overload era, so many times people are getting the wrong information from the wrong people, and it's tough to know who's the right person to learn from. Who's, you know, that's why I love what you're doing here with, I love marketing and some of the other amazing things that you put out in the world because you're such a great syndicate and platform, so to speak, for delivering qualified people and their content to the world so other people can say, wow, I really resonated with that person. I want to start learning more about them, but learning from people who have a proven track record that can teach you the things that you want to learn in the fastest, most efficient way possible. I'm working on a pitch, right, not a pitch, but a presentation right now that I'll probably do for my TED Talk, which will be about context and patterns. So I'm not 100% polished in my ability to articulate what I'm trying to present with context and patterns. But one of the best ways that I can teach it is through a simple example and metaphor, which is that a lot of times people say, Mark, you know, you talk about you were depressed or insecure and unconfident, you know, when you were in high school and even college, how did you quickly make such a fast turnaround? And because I started to understand context and patterns, somebody will say, mark, you seem so confident nowadays. Or Mark, you're so confident. And also in what context? I might be confident going up to a stage and speaking on stage, but maybe I'm not confident walking up to a really high level net worth person. Or you know, maybe somebody's confident with their friends or to adults or when they're selling on the phone, but they're not confident selling in person or going up to a beautiful girl. So any type of results like oh, you're confident is only based on the context, like Joe Polish, Mark lack. We're both really smart guys in what context? So understanding that everything falls into a category of context. So you can't say, oh, Joe's rich, in what context? Joe's smart, in what context? Oh, Mark's confident. In what context? Knowing that every single thing in life falls into a context category. And that if you can be aware of the context of which something is being delivered in, it helps you understand to better control your emotions, better learn things in a faster, more concise, realistic way. And then the patterns category falls into if I'm confident in one context, then the patterns I'm modeling how I'm holding my physiology, where my focus is going, what my breathing pattern, my eye contact pattern, my linguistic, internal or external patterns, what I'm speaking to myself inside or what I'm speaking outside to people when I'm in the pattern of confidence, how can I model that pattern of confidence and put it into a context that I want to be confident in? Me. Meaning if I'm confident maybe talking to a small room of people in that context, can I model the same patterns when I'm confident, when I want to be confident in new context? So as soon as I Started to understand that you could basically take any result you wanted to achieve, Learn the patterns you needed to model to achieve that result using one of the simple ones, confidence. I know how to be confident. Anyone can be confident, right? We've all been confident at times. Model that pattern of what it is when you're breathing, confident talking, confident, holding yourself constantly. And then take that pattern of being confident and drop it into any context. And now you can be confident. When I teach people how to be better speakers, I simply say, start modeling the patterns of being a good speaker. What would they do? How would they speak? And they start speaking more loudly and more certain. And they start breathing more full and start making better eye contact. And I say, great. So you know how to act like a great speaker. You know how to model those patterns because you've seen them, and you can model them pretty easily. Now drop that acts or modeling those patterns into the context of speaking in front of an audience. And just make sure that you're playing the role of modeling those patterns. Instead of getting caught up in saying to yourself, I'm not confident in the context of speaking in front of an audience. Bullshit. Just start modeling the patterns of confidence in that context, and instantly you can be confident in any situation. And that's just a simple example in the confidence space. But I've learned to use context and patterns in all the areas of my life, and it rapidly allows me to produce results much faster.

That's really good stuff. I mean, it's. It's kind of like, did you study a lot of nlp or how did you go about gaining that perspective?

That perspective was kind of a compilation of so many of the things I've studied. I've definitely studied a lot of NLP and psychology and strategic intervention. And a lot of the things that have to do with just psychology, the whole umbrella of psychology, I'm just super intrigued with because, you know, everything in life is just a reflection of what's going on in your brain and how you're perceiving it. So I think one of the most important assets anybody could ever learn how to really master is their own psychology. And so that's something I'm really passionate about learning. And I kind of have just compiled this whole thing on context and patterns from all the things I've learned. Not that the word context or the word patterns is new to anybody, but the way that I'm trying to present it, I think is pretty new because it's just a collection of a lot of things I've studied. But I found it to be really beneficial when I teach that to people in a more contextual way for their own life.

Wow, that's really good, though. One of the things that I really see about context, too, is you hear a lot of people that content is king. Content is king. And it's like, well, context is king because content is everywhere. But context makes everything make sense. No, that's very good. From your perspective and experience, what does it take for someone just starting out to be successful? I mean, you've had some great success very early on. Everything you're saying obviously leads and does in one way add to that question, but I wanted to go deeper with it.

I think that one of the first things to do. Your question was of the sorts of, what does it take for somebody to become successful early on? I think one of the first things is for you to identify what would success mean to you. I mean, I think it's so ironic that people get into business not really identifying what success will mean to them. They maybe set a goal, but does that really mean that that's the success? Because a lot of times people achieve their goal in business and they just raise the bar and then achieve a goal and they raise the bar. Not there's anything wrong with that. I think that I do that and everybody should be doing that. But what I really mean is I don't think a lot of people take the time to identify what does success actually mean to you in all areas of life? Because if it's just about money, that's bullshit. That's really just a means to an end. You only want money because of what you think it will give you. And if you haven't even identified the things that you believe money will give you. Like, for me, I look at money as decision units. I just want more money because it'll allow me the ability to make more decisions and really fuel the things that I want to do in life. The impact goals and income goals I have and go out and experience more. The things in the world that I want for myself and that I want to give other people the experience of, usually from an education standpoint. But again, identifying what success even looks like. Like, a lot of times, if I do relationship counseling, I talk with people about. Have you ever even talked with your partner? About what? How they know they're loved. Like, if you don't know, if you can't express to your partner so your partner knows how you know how you're loved. So I. I can. It's so easy for me to make My girlfriend feel loved because I know exactly how she needs to be talked to, expressed with, you know, all the context of which she will feel loved. I know exactly the patterns I need to model for her to feel loved.

And is this the same girl you brought over my house on Halloween?

This is.

Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure you're with the same girl, because it's not. Then I would give me a real say. You know, I could, I could make fun of you, but unfortunately you're still with it. Well, fortunately for it's good that you're still with it, but for the purpose of me trying to turn it into a joke, it just doesn't work at this point because it's very good. I like what you're saying.

So my point is only that for most people to achieve success at a young age or early on, it's most important for them to identify the bullseye. Right. Back to another cliche saying, how can you hit the target if you haven't identified it? Back to one of those things. How can you achieve success early on? Well, identify what success even looks like early on for you and then create the plan and reverse engineer how to achieve it based on what other people have done to achieve it. Again, come up with the context of what success means to you and then reverse engineer the patterns to achieve it.

Okay, well, this is a big one, because as simple as it would say, and everyone could shake their head and say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Most people really don't know what the hell they want to do when they grow up. And I mean, people that are even 60, 70, sometimes 80 years old, they really don't know what the hell they want to do. And they never really did. And there's always this, let me find a purpose. And I think in a lot of ways, people go to college and universities because it's sometimes easier to sign up for a, you know, to get a degree in a particular category than it is to actually figure out what's going to be, you know, fulfilling and exciting in your life and what you even want. And so there's all kinds of bizarre things that humans do to avoid, you know, really determining what is most important to them, because so many things they want or think. And that's why there's so much in pursuit of the external, from the money to the cars, to the houses, to the image, to the status, to the relationships or whatever, because the internal world is very difficult and complex at times to figure out what is it. So getting clear on where you fit what's your circle? What's your skill set? What's the capabilities? I mean. I mean, defining what success means. What if someone's like, I don't even know how to think about that. How do I get closer to that? Most people really do know. If they stop long enough and really think about what turns them on, what's important to them, what do they resonate? They can obviously get clear on it. It just seems that that pursuit for a lot of people is really mentally challenging. And they spin a lot. They spin without really knowing. Knowing where they're gonna land. Do you have any suggestions on getting clear on, like, you know, not per se, what's your purpose in life, but more like.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. I was ready to answer five minutes ago.

Good. Well, I'd say shut the fuck up next time. This way you got.

Everything you said ties right back into a lot of the things I already touched on first. I'll start with. It goes back to be more, have more, give more. You said a lot of people are trying to figure out how to. To have more things. It's fucking easy, Joe. Focus on becoming the best version of yourself possible. And by being. Another word, replace being with growing. And then the other side was giving. Replace giving with contribution. If you've studied anything about psychology and how it relates to human potential and success and happiness and fulfillment, you'll realize that the two biggest pillars or foundation of your success, happiness and fulfillment in life always comes back down to your growth and your contribution. When you're most miserable in life, you're probably focused not on what you're grateful for, and you probably haven't done a lot of growing and contributing. Anytime that I want to feel my best or if I look back on any of the best days I've had throughout the week, it's always the days I had the most growth, most contribution, or one or the other. And of course, always, always maintaining a level of gratitude. And so, you know, for people that are trying to figure out who they want to be when they grow up or what they want to do, I think that that's some BS that we've been conditioned to believe that we're supposed to figure out who we want to be when we grow up or what we want to do, that doesn't mean anything because you can become the person you thought you wanted to be when you were young. And usually it doesn't turn out even remotely close to that when you grow up. Or you can focus on having the things you want to have or doing most of the time people make the wrong decisions anyways. The reason why is because they're coming from a place of what to make it an easy metaphor or analogy, right? They're coming from their mindset of softw. If you really want to know what you should be doing in the world and who you should be when you grow up, you can't make that decision with your mindset of software 1.0. So back to my thing you need to go to. And it's not my thing. I don't mean that in an ego way, you know, but just what we've been talking about. You need to go back to focusing on being the type of person you need to become to make your life a masterpiece and being the type of person you need to become. And when I say being, I really mean growing into the type of person you need to become to have the things you want to have. And as a result of being more, you tend to have more. And then you have a responsibility, I believe personally to give more to the world. And not that you have to first be more, to have more, to give more, but you can be giving the whole way through. But again, I think most people have this whole misconception of I need to know before I decide. Like I need to know what I'm going to do before I decide. I need to know what I'm going to major in or what I want to do with my life before I decide what I'm going to major in. It's much of BS I think first people need to focus on becoming their best self. Never stop growing. Constantly and never endingly improve who you are in all the areas of your life. Your mindset, your emotional mastery, your relationships, your communication, your health, your financial security, your ability to communicate, your ability to love. All of these things. You should never stop growing. When you stop growing, you fall back into what the things you were just talking about, which is like software 1.0 mindset. What do I need to do to achieve these things? That's stupid. Just who do you need to become? Who do you need to surround yourself with? What type of value need to bring into the world? World? The having always falls into place. So people trying to figure out their purpose, your purpose in life, or at least the foundation of which should be built on growth and contribution. Growing into the best person you can possibly become in all areas of life, consistently and never endingly and contributing beyond yourself and giving more to the world. You never have to worry about anything else when you're focused on growth and contribution yeah, no, that's awesome.

That's awesome. I agree. Do you end up giving your parents advice or how does all this land for them with what you. You do?

I don't necessarily like to call it advice. We have conversations. If they happen to be educational and they take something away from it, wonderful.

But you never said they'll say, dad, look, let's get your shit together here. Let me talk to you about this.

No, I mean, again, right, in certain contexts I have maybe some, some better advice than he does, but in, I would say many more contexts, he has much better advice. My dad's a really smart, successful entrepreneur and father and grateful to have him. There's certain areas of things that I have a deeper depth of knowledge in. So in that context, I'm able to educate him in some areas, but I wouldn't be where I'm at without him.

That's awesome. So what about for someone who's already achieved, not only what others would achieve is a high level of success, maybe money and achievement and accomplishment, all that, but they themselves are already operating at a pretty high level. What strategies would you suggest that they use to do even better, have more freedom, make more money, create a better version of their already existing life?

That's a great question. And coming from a 26 year old perspective, I can only give the perspective I have at my age, which my answer would probably change by the time you asked it to me next year and the following year. The following year. The advice I would give today at age 26 would just simply be from, you know, all of the wealthy people I know, whether it be billionaires or, you know, celebrities or anything like that, people that are in the top 1% of the 1% of their industry or niche, those types of people. A lot of the times I see struggle with understanding that all you're ever trying to do in life is chase or achieve an end state. And what I mean by that is the only reason why you want to buy a bigger house or a nicer car or private jet or prettier girls or anything like that is because of the way you think having that thing or experiencing that thing will make you feel. Feel. And so that's the one thing that never deviates amongst any human, regardless of if they're dead broke or if they're a billionaire or if they're super successful or whatever, or if they're depressed or happy. Everyone's always chasing some type of an end state. And you experience it every day when you go to the bathroom, when you're Hungry. Those are end states. You're trying to. You're trying to either gain in a state or change a state, and it changes all throughout the day.

You know, I'm thinking about the bathroom thing here as you discuss. Kind of weird, but. Yeah, no, no, it's. It's a perfect example. Yeah, it's a perfect example. If someone doesn't get that, I don't know what else we can do to help.

I had to boil it down to the simplest way possible.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Idiot.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

So no matter how successful somebody is, if they're already at that place in their life where they feel like they've done everything, experienced everything, they're still trying to change certain end states. And most of the time when somebody hits what we'll maybe refer to as burnt out because of their success, and they've, you know, had all the money, so they're able to have all the experiences they wanted with their money to have the freedom. And that's what happens a lot of the times is people who are really wealthy or really successful or really famous, they have essentially gotten to a place in their life where they have experienced almost everything. And so referring back to Tony Robbins, six human needs without getting into what they are, one of them is variety. And most people that are really wealthy and really successful don't have a lot of variety because either their lifestyle, their business has been so conditioned where, you know, every day they're super busy and so they're super certain about so many things. And money allows you to have a lot of certainty because most people hate uncertainty and surprise unless they get the surprises that they like. But most of the time, if we said things are uncertain and going to change, people would say, oh, no. Which is why most people are driven into a lifestyle of comfort and security with nine to five job, because they're not willing to have the uncertainty and the risk of being an entrepreneur, starting your own company. And so. So most people, I feel like, that are really successful hit a place in their life where they have too much certainty and not enough uncertainty or variety or any synonym for that, adventure, surprise, risk, whatever. And so focusing back on how you can get more variety, more adventure, more risk, or have more growth and contribution in your life, I think that people that hit that place in their life, the reason why you see a lot of celebrities or a lot of successful, rich, wealthy people have drug overdoses and things like that, is because the fastest way to change your state is through drugs and alcohol. Not always. It can be eating, it can be working out. But most people fall to one of the fastest ways to change your state, which is drugs and alcohol or smoking or anything like that, because it's the fastest way to change your state. And all we're ever trying to do is change our state. So wealthy people, successful people, rich people, celebrities, anybody in general. But we're talking about people at the top, they have too much certainty. And so one of the fastest ways they can change their state and get variety is through drugs, alcohol and things like that. Unfortunately, that's one of the vehicles people use to get to their end states they desire. But in reality we can get a lot of those same types of rushes or change of states through growth, contribution and gratitude.

Right? Yeah. And I'll tell you, I think a lot of people become like the very successful people because I mean, we won't go too much into here, but I'm literally in the midst of creating a platform with a couple partners called Artists for Addicts to help people that have addictions in engaging artists, all kinds of artists, from musicians to writers to sculptors to painters, et cetera, and very high level achievement. People actually pursue a lot of the success and a lot of the fame out of a real missing connection with themselves and others. And, and some of the incredible drives that, quote, unquote, you know, not that I know many normal people, but if, you know, like regular people, whatever that means to someone would look at it and be like, oh, you know, I'm not that famous, I'm not that sort of, you know, person. What a lot of people don't realize is that that drive comes from in some cases, a very unhealthy sort of mind. And a lot of times the drugs and all of the crazy shit that ends up happening was just trying to numb the craziness that got them there in the first place. And that's a whole other discussion. But yeah, I mean, people are running around constantly trying to change their state. And I think one of the things you mentioned early on is just awareness. I mean, I think a lot of people aren't quite aware of it. And one of the things that if you think about the stuff you're talking about, in order to have the perspectives and take the learning that you've learned and develop it in your own value system. This requires a really constantly looking at your own perceptions, your own awareness and how you actually see the world, which that is very much a part of self mastery. And most people never achieve it because they're not willing to dedicate the time and even think about it.

I totally agree. Yeah, I mean, self mastery is something that I think you never accomplish. It's just a never ending journey. And most people aren't committed to constantly never endingly improving themselves. And that's one of the toughest things. It's not. That's bs. I won't even say that. I won't even let that be an excuse that it's one of the toughest things to do. And I say an hour a day will pave the way. Just one hour a day, every day for a year is nine 40 hour weeks. So over the course of 10 years, that's 90, 40 hour weeks. Over the course of 20 years, you just keep stretching that number out. And so if you don't have an hour a day to improve yourself, I mean, it adds up. It's the compound effect and it adds up quick.

Okay, so let me ask you this. Unless I want to make sure that I didn't cut you off on any last thought that I threw in there, I wanted to ask you about productivity because in order to do that, in order to take an hour a day as an example, you have to shut off the social media. If you're one of the people that are sucked into screens, what are your best tips and techniques for becoming more productive and getting more of the right things done? It's a simple question, but there's a lot to it in. I always like hearing people's productivity ideas.

Okay, so every day I write down two things I need to get done. It sounds like you're breathing on the mic.

Yeah, I was trying to pretend I was Dean Jackson for a minute.

I just wanted to make sure the tips could be heard. I write down two critical things that I need to get done each day, two urgent things I need to get done each day, and five important things I need to get done each day. And it starts with the two critical things, then the two urgent things, and then the five important things. And I go in that order, the two critical things, and maybe even sometimes the two important things are usually the highest income and impact activities that I can do for the day. And then if I can get through those and have time left over for the important things, then I focus on that. Another productivity tip is always making sure that on your critical, urgent and important things that none of those are things that you don't love to do and aren't great at, and that you're outsourcing and delegating any of the low income, low impact and trivial activities that can simply be again, outsourced and delegated to people so you can focus on the things that we'll call your superpowers. And again, those should always be the highest income and impact activities first thing in the day. So that's probably the shortest, easiest, best. One of the best productivity tips for most people is if you can just map out each day two critical, two urgent and five important things and then make sure that none of the low income and low impact trivial things are on there that you should be delegating and outsourcing. You'll be in much better shape.

Cool. Cool. No, that's very good. Do you have employees?

I do. I have one full time employee and then a handful of independent contractors. Okay, cool.

So what are the most effective ways you discover for increasing someone's influence? Their credibility, their persuasiveness? Because certainly from the time that I've known you, I don't know if hustler is the right word, but you certainly pursue what it is you're wanting to pursue. And what you mentioned early on is the ability to influence and persuade and develop relationships with people you want to meet and all that. So what are some things that you know that you could share that would be valuable?

I think that there's a distinction. I think a lot of people nowadays are getting really good at, at credible by association. And that's something that I think that is valuable in any sort. I mean, just by joining 25K, the Genius Network. I'm plugging for you right now, Joe.

I want that to be the rest of the remainder of the interview. Just constant subtle pitches for people to buy. My.

That's what I'm trying to do here. Good. Just by enrolling in the genius network in 25, you're automatically going to be perceived if you record the right things and interview the right people and take pictures of the right people and leverage that in your personal branding and on social media and target it to the right people and put the right taglines with it and really make yourself perceived as a more credible person by the people you're associated with Nowadays. A lot of people are getting really good at that. I mean, and you know just as well as anybody having one of the most best events for what I'm referring to that a lot of people nowadays leverage that as their unique value proposition is, hey, come to our event because we're going to have a celebrity here, we're going to have an Olympic gold medalist here, we're going to have a super important business person here. And you know, this is the place to be. And so. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think that that's genius from a marketing standpoint, whether you're marketing to get people at your event or whether you're marketing to increase your influence and perception of credibility. Because credible by association is something that I don't think will ever go away. It's why companies pay celebrities to hold up a Gatorade bottle or any other sort, because people want to buy what other credible people that they look up to have or the people you're around. Like, I just interviewed one of my friends, Tai Lopez, and I've been targeting that video to all of Tai Lopez fans. And I'm getting like off the charts return on my ads and off the charts viewership for paid impressions and organic impressions because I'm strategically associating myself with Tai Lopez and only targeting Tai Lopez fans. This interview right here, if it's okay with you, I'll post on Facebook natively and target it only to people that are interested in Joe Polish. I Love Marketing and 10X Talk, your other podcast. And so it's like, so then the people listening to this, who are listening this now. So this is a marketing tip for you. I'll be perceived as credible by association. You might resonate with my message because I leveraged Joe Polish and his marketing thing that you perceive as credible, and now you'll perceive me as credible. And so that's one of the best tactics is learning to invest either the time, energy and money, either financial capital or relational capital, or using your intellectual capital to get around people that other people would perceive as credible. And if you do that enough times and market it to the right people and do it in the right way and do it elegantly, you'll be perceived as a more influential, credible person. And that's like one of the easiest ways to be more perceived as an influential, credible person.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, obviously I'm a master at doing that myself. And so.

Exactly. That's why.

And by the way, you know, people, people are enamored with other individuals. And so it's kind of an endorsed marketing campaign, a joint venture, an endorsed mailing. Back in the direct mail days, we would, using the cliche, but still incredibly useful and obvious and valuable things like know, like, and trust. You know, you find who do people know like and trust or want to, you know, know, and they like them and they trust them and you link yourself up with them. All of a sudden you get that. Now, obviously, the key of doing this with integrity is not ever abusing the relationships. Because there's this guy, I won't mention his name because he's a complete dumbass, but he's gone around and I did help this guy tremendously early on in his career as a young guy. And he's almost too over the top. Too much of a hustler, too much of a trying to link someone too much about himself. And it wasn't apparent. I've seen him now, I've seen him implode because he has taken advantage of relationships. He's the kind of guy that name drops and says, oh, this other person is going to do this thing and get involved in this thing, and therefore you should too, before the other person is really fully committed or before he's even delivered upon that thing he's doing with the other person. He's already using that association to sell other deals before the, you know, the current projects he's working on or even done. It's sort of like borrowing from someone to pay for someone that you borrowed from and on and on and on.

Not like the government.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Very, very good point. And so I'm seeing all of this unravel and in my attempts to even make this person aware of what he's doing, he becomes even more like, more arrogant. And so I got to the point where I'm like, well, I'm just going to sit back and watch him, you know, self destruct. Because I've attempted, you know, more than probably anyone ever would to really, you know, intervene and try to stop him from imploding. But it's, you know, people can take the linkage. The worst thing you could do is, you know, associate with someone to, you know, not only lift yourself up and to establish credibility, but do it in a way to where you're not yet able to deliver upon what it is you're proposing. Because in today's day and age, with the Internet and with reviews and how quickly things get out there, I mean, it was a lot. It's a lot harder to be more of a scumbag today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Most people that are young and in their 20s wouldn't even know what the hell I'm talking about right now. But back before the Internet existed, the speed of how much. If you got a shitty reputation, the world will find out about it instantaneously. And there was periods of times where you could actually hide it. But I mean, one of my favorite lines is, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. I mean, one of my interests in doing interviews like this with young people is I like looking back 10 or 20 years from now and saying, hey, let's see where Mark Lack goes. Let's see where this person goes. I remember I interviewed my buddy Matt Mullenwig, who's the founder of WordPress, and I interviewed him. God, I think, I think it was in 2009. I've had him speak at one of my events too. But I did this interview with him which we actually put up on I Love Marketing. One of the early episodes we put as a bonus, and I think he had 13 million people at the time using WordPress. And I asked him this question, where am I going to see you 10 years from now? It's going to be cool because I'm going to literally send that interview to Matt when we hit the 10 year mark and say, hey, see what you saw back then. Let's see if your predictions were right. And sure enough, he's already surpassed what he said on that interview of where he thought he would be in 10 years, which is really cool. But that requires a certain way of being. And what I will say is that from my perspective, the thing that's made me the most money and the most opportunities and the best opportunities and the best learning has always come from just really focused, focusing on developing genuine relationships with really amazing people. People say time is money and yeah, I mean, you're never going to get your time back. It's just that relationships really is where I see the real value for me because I've never gotten any opportunities or money that did not come out of relationships. And so the more that I focus on developing those sort of relationships, the better it gets. All right, let me go to another question. So from your perspective, what do, And I don't know if you'll feel even like, yeah, I think I can answer this question, but I'll ask you anyway. What do deep, meaningful relationships look like? And how can someone listening to us cultivate more of them in business and in life?

I think in my personal opinion, a deep, meaningful relationship is going to be centered around trust, which is kind of like an obvious one, I would hope. Trust that the person is who they say they are. Trust that when they say they're going to be there for you, they'll be there for you. Trust that if they say they're going to do something for you, they do it for you. And they really stand by their word and they stand by you. And so in business, I think one of the best ways to cultivate more relationships, whether this is personal or professional, really in business, it's super important, since I think most people totally have the wrong approach in business and in life. But most people come to a relationship in business and they go and network with the mindset and focus of I'm networking because I'm focused on all the people in this room that I can potentially get something from. And when you're focused on making a relationship based on what you can get, not what you can give, I think you're already starting off the relationship from the wrong place perspective. And I think one of the reasons why I've been able to develop some really key relationships in my life, both personally, professionally, is because I come into a relationship first looking at what I can give. And I love meeting new people where when you've just met each other or even years down the road, you're still kind of fighting over who's going to give, whether that's fighting over who's going to pay for the bill, or fighting over how I can add more value to you or how I can make more connections for you. Having a key relationship built on, you know, I'll say unconditional giving or unconditional loving, I think is one of the most important things that people should be focused on. But unfortunately, most people look at relationships as accounts that they try to take withdrawals from but that they've never made a deposit in. And again, making a simple metaphor for people to really visualize. What I'm saying is if you walked up to a bank account that you've never made a deposit in and ask for a withdrawal, they would look at you crazy and think you're an idiot. Because how could you ever take a withdrawal from an account you've never made a deposit in yet? That's what people do constantly when they're networking is they try to find somebody that they can take a withdrawal from that they've never first made a deposit in. And so if you're listening and you can take anything away from a great networking tip or even relationship tip in general, it's focus on all the relationships, the key relationships that you want to make deposits in because. Because you can have hundreds of accounts, relational capital accounts that you've made deposits in that we'll use the word will appreciate, and you can make withdrawals from later. I'm sure, Joe, you can think of a dozen, if not 100 friends that you've added value to unconditionally without Asking for anything that you knew if you were to call them up, they would do a favor for you. And that's really what I'm referring to is thinking about the people that you could call and ask something from because you've unconditionally given to them and probably haven't asked anything from in a while or haven't asked for anything from ever, and you've just unconditionally given to them. That's really, I think what the foundation of all relationships should be built on is trust and unconditional giving. And that works in personal life or in business for networking.

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. I get hit up from people that are constantly asking me to do things for them because they hear of me being this connector and this and that, and they want me to connect them to something, but they've never done anything for me. It's quite interesting. And I have always operated where I never ask anyone to do anything for me without creating value for them first. And because of that, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of probably deposits that I've made where I can make withdrawals very easily with no questions asked simply because of operating that way. So, yep, it's a great way to operate. So I'm going to ask you a couple more questions and we'll wrap this up.

I'm ready for marketing questions if you've got marketing questions, since I know that's a lot of has been centered around mindset and personal development, which I'm happy to talk about because it's a passion, but I'm ready to go into any space or category. Just fire away.

How do you pick up girls? I mean, what's your tips for picking up women?

We're not talking about this.

You said anything. You said any category. And by the way, I'm totally just kidding. We don't need to talk about that.

I know.

Well, first off, since this is going to be on. I love marketing. Why do you love marketing? What's it mean to you?

I love marketing because I look at it as the same way I would look at building a relationship again, making deposits before you'd ever ask for a withdrawal. So I look at marketing as an opportunity to just make an example, invite somebody to dinner to get to know you a little better, pay for the dinner, hopefully have your dinner, be fun, enjoyable, educational, depending on what your outcome is. And then invite the person back to an opportunity for another dinner, a vacation, and then work your way to a place where you're dating and then getting married and that's really just one of the cliches. You know, a lot of people's marketing is let's go on a date or let's get married right off the bat when I'm first meeting you. But I look at marketing more as an opportunity to really just invite somebody to their favorite restaurant, something I already know they want because I've done my research and ask them really key questions to extract the information I want. If you're on a date, the best thing you can do is talk 80 to 90% of the time about that person and ask them questions about themselves because their favorite thing to do is talk about and learn about other things about themselves and how they can benefit. You know the old cliche saying, what's in it for me? And so, you know, I look at marketing as a vehicle to be able to focus and provide the things I know somebody already wants, deliver it to them, and hopefully build a relationship with them through that marketing. And depending on what my intention is, take them up what we'll call an ascension model to, if they want, continue to invest maybe their time, energy and money in some of the products or services that maybe we're providing to them, but only after first earning their trust, understanding who they are, and pre qualifying them. That's kind of a drawn out version of how I see marketing.

Yeah. Cool, cool. So how do you go about converting people that meet you, either through one of your books or through an interview or something like that, and giving away content for free to the point where they're actually giving you money? What is the thing that causes people to write the check? And it could be your own stuff. It could be just what you notice because there's a lot of people that look at this, a free podcast, and they'll go, oh, the way that Joe Polish makes money and builds his genius network is he has a podcast. And it's like, well, I mean, that's not quite how it works. If you want to look at my podcast as great models of making money, they're actually not. Because I don't pursue sponsorship, we don't really heavily focus on trying to monetize the stuff. I mean, the podcasts that I do are more passion projects and just being helpful and useful and having an excuse to interview interesting people and talk about stuff we want to and put it out to the world that they are. From a time standpoint, it's not actually the very best and highest use of my time as it relates to money. Part of it is doing it just to do it. But a lot of people will look at that and they'll be like, oh, that's their strategy. We just need to to do a podcast, when in reality you actually need to make offers. You really need to know what, you need to even identify who is your target market. A lot of people get all kind of screwed up when they watch things from the outside and think, well, if I just start doing this, that's marketing. If I just build a big Facebook following, that's marketing. If I have a lot of people on Snapchat, all this sort of shit. But at the end of the day, the ability to get someone to give you money and hire you for money and to go and get checks is a marketing issue. It's a positioning issue, it's an offer sort of issue. So how do you go about making offers and getting people to give you money? Because that's to me, what's the most interesting marketing methodologies.

Okay, so I will reference one of my favorite definitions of selling, which I know you resonate with and like a lot as well, from Dan Sullivan, which is selling to me, and I'm copying Dan Sullivan's definition, is getting somebody intellectually engaged in a future benefit and getting them to emotionally commit to taking action towards the achievement of that. And so for me, before I can really ever tell somebody what I think is going to benefit, I have to get to understand them better. And so if I'm using my content online to build a relationship and get them interested, then I have an ascension model and a funnel that kind of pre qualifies people. That allows my company to really figure out when people opted in and raised their hand for free. Strategy call. I use those all the time in my company and they work extremely well with an average dollar per head of about five grand per person and about an 85 to 87% close ratio. Because my company vets the people, pre qualifies them on the phone and based on data, then once they pre qualify, then they have to fill out another questionnaire. They have to fill out a questionnaire just to even get on a call with somebody in my company. Then somebody in my company talks to them and pre qualifies them. So it's micro commitment. Micro commitment. However, many prior micro commitments, they took priority that then they talk to them in my company who either says yay or nay. And then if it's a yay and they get to talk with me for free, then they have to fill out another form. And then based on the data in that form, that's another Micro commitment. And then I know I'm saying all this stuff which is probably totally deferring people from wanting to reach out to me now, but if you would like to talk with me, that's probably going to be the process you go through. And then they fill out another form in which case I review before our call with somebody in my company set up. And so by the time I get on the phone with the person, I've got lots of data, they've taken lots of micro commitments showing me that giving them my time and advice for free is giving it to somebody who's pre qualified and without being egotistical, worthy of the investment of my time, where I could be spending it, somewhere where I could be getting paid. And then I do exactly the definition of Dan Sullivan, right? I get the person intellectually engaged in a future benefit that's good for them and then get them to emotionally commit to taking action towards the achievement of that goal or benefit or outcome. And I always have to first spend the majority of my call, maybe we'll call it 40 yards of the hundred yards, just building rapport and getting to understand the person. Build rapport, build trust and build certainty that this is going to be a good relationship, that we should even focus on what working together would look like. And so a lot of the time it's just having fun getting to understand and learn about the person in their world and what their goals are. And then, and only then do I know if I can support them in moving forward. And if I can, great. We explore that possibility of a couple ways that that could look. And if it doesn't make sense, then I'm more than happy to refer them to other people because I want to be a vehicle of value whether I can deliver it directly or whether I can simply be the filtration process that then makes a connection for somebody to add value in that way. And so if you're listening and you want to have a free call, awesome, that'll be the process you're going to go through. But yeah, I mean that's really what I do when I get high end clients for a VIP day or for a six figure annual contract to focus on strategies and tactics and branding and mindset. Any of the things that they fill out on my, I have a 300 page, not 300 page, 300 questions and a questionnaire that I send anybody to be a client. But yeah, I mean it's really about understanding the person and knowing how you can best serve them. And if you can't, then out of integrity, you should refer them to somebody. If you're in the industry and you know the value that they need, you probably know people you can refer and you can either refer them out of goodwill or you can refer them for a commission and a referral from the other potential JVs or affiliates you have associated with you. And then another big one that I use all the time, which I think so many businesses, businesses don't really leverage and capitalize on in their marketing and their languaging of their value proposition is risk reversal, which Jay Abraham, a good friend of yours and mentor of mine, talks about all the time, is risk reversal and how I'll mitigate the risk on all of my clients and say, look, if you have a $5,000 VIP day with me and at the end of the day you can honestly tell me that the investment wasn't worth it and you're not confident and certain that the information you learn is going to be worth tenfold in the short few months or within in the year and get a 10x investment or 10x return on your investment or more, I would hope at a minimum of a 10x, then tell me at the end of the day, I'm happy to give you a full refund on the spot. So I do it in a much more elegant way than that. But the gist of it is I mitigate the risk on my clients. So even after delivering professional service and value and understanding and questionnaires and all the things I could do to truly understand and serve them in the greatest way, I still, on top of that, mitigate the risk by saying, hey, look, in this engagement, engagement, to show you a reflection of my confidence and certainty, I'm willing to take all the risk in this engagement moving forward. And I'll do that in this way or in these ways. So risk reversal is a huge one.

Yeah, got it. And it is. I mean, if someone wants what it is you're selling, the only thing and they have enough money to pay for it. The only thing that stands in the way of them giving you money for it is fear. And if you can remove the fear, then they will buy.

Exactly.

And if someone can get that, it gives them a whole lot to work with on how you go about removing the fear. Now, that fear can be removed through irresistible offers, through very powerful copy, through letting them try it to 100% money back guarantees to if this doesn't change your life, I'll pay you. I mean, there's all kinds of different ways that one can go about doing that, but I always look at part of the marketing job of if I have something that I know will be helpful for somebody and they truly, if someone can't afford it, then you can either figure out a way to make them afford it and still get paid, or you simply cannot do business with that person if they simply can't pay for it. But if someone can't pay for it for something and they want it, or they want the result that your thing will do for them, then fear is the thing that's standing in the way. And if you remove the risk, then you've just made it infinitely easier to sell what it is you're selling. And it's amazing how many people will avoid everything to avoid taking the risk out of someone doing business with them. And therefore they wonder why they can't sell shit.

Yeah, I mean, it's just like Gary Halbert talks about of a lot, lot of the times, if you implement really powerful risk reversal in your business, a lot of the times, even if it doubles or triples Your sales and 5 x's or 10 x is your return rate most of the time, hopefully the way your business is set up already, you could 5 or 10x your return rate. As long as you double or triple your revenue and your profit, you're still going to be profitable. And so when you break down the numbers for people and show them how, even in some cases you can 20x your return rate, if you only double your sales, it will still be profitable. And so I help companies grow rapidly from just that one thing alone there. Because a lot of the times you can double, triple, quadruple 10x your sales, regardless of what happens to your return rate because of the risk. Again, if you do it in an artful and elegant way and you know how to mitigate your risk by adding the risk reversal so that it still becomes profitable. And you have the lowest possible risk of having somebody ask for their money back because you know how to elegantly, you know, give them micro commitments and opportunities to, you know, basically throughout the call, I'll say, throughout the vip, I'll ask people all the time, I'll say, are you getting all the value on the. Are we on the right topic? Are we on the right subject? Are you confident this is valuable? Quantify the value for me emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally, financially, wherever possible. Great. So the first hours already been worth a quarter million dollars. So by the time we get to the next six hours, you'd be an absolute scumbag to tell me it wasn't Worth it, because by the end of the day you've already told me it's worth $2 million over the next three. So you can elegantly and artfully mitigate the risk for yourself by still providing the risk reversal for the client and just getting them to recognize the value of what's truly being delivered. But yeah, I mean, risk reversal in a lot of the ways you mentioned, and there's literally an infinite amount of ways you could come up with ways to mitigate the risk on your client and still protect yourself from having too many return rates so that you're still profitable. But yeah, I mean, we could go on about so many different marketing tactics and strategies that work. I'm sure if you listen to all your podcasts from all the people you've interviewed, you'll probably collect all of them. You were saying if somebody can't afford it, hopefully in your business you're providing information and content into your marketplace for free, which is one of the ways you're generating leads. So if somebody can't afford it, tell them to go back down and just keep studying all the free stuff that you're providing.

Yeah, I've had people that told us they've become millionaires by just listening to I love marketing content. I mean, so if anyone.

It's true. Yeah, as long as you apply it.

Yeah, you got to apply it. But it's. Yeah, someone wanted a great marketing education. Start with episode number one of I love marketing marketing.com and just go through them. There's a shit ton of stuff there. Okay, is there any question that I should have asked you or any topic that we should have discussed that we have not?

It's a great question to always ask. I'm sure one will come to me. But we've done a great job. It's been a really good interview. You're a great interviewer. I've done like 4, 500 interviews and you're definitely one of the best. So I think we've covered. I think we've covered a lot of ground and covered a lot of great content. Maybe I'm just trying to think if there's anything. One of the most. I guess I'm looking at some of the notes that I wrote down here. Before we had our call, we talked about risk reversal. One of the things we hadn't talked about the importance of marketing. And this might be a no brainer for some people, but one of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs in marketing making is not consistently running small controlled tests and making sure that when they're constantly running small, controlled tests that they're testing and measuring all of the metrics and analytics of those tests to see what's working and what's not and what they could potentially scale. But that's where a lot of great innovation will stem from in your own business, is constantly running small, controlled tests. And that's been one of the best things for our company. Whether it's sending. Whether it's not sending an email and a phone call or a written letter, but rather mailing somebody an iPad with a video on it with the background and the lock screen as like a screenshot of a call to action with the arrow pointing the slide here, and then the next one in the background is pointing up to the one app on the thing to click and watch a video. And then having your video autoplay for 30 seconds and then having the person call you after and be like, that was incredible. You sent me a freaking iPad. Or whether it's mailing something, somebody, a really dream 100 client, mailing them calling their assistant and saying, hey, what's the shoe size of your CEO? That's a weird question. I'm going to mail him a really nice pair of Ferragamos or something. Okay, cool. His shoe size is this. You have enough risk by telling me his shoe size and then you mail like a $400 shoe with a note in it that says, hey, I just wanted to get my foot in the door. And then some catchy little thing for him to have a reason to call you for a value proposition. And then say, hey, when you call me or we go out to lunch, I'll give you your other 400 shoe. Hope they fit.

Well, you know, I've been doing that for years. I've just never done a $400 pair of shoes.

But you get the point, right?

Oh, yeah. No, no, no. I mean, truly. I've been having people send a single shoe for shit since the mid-90s, and I used to do it all the time. Yeah, it's a killer idea.

There's a thing on Amazon. You can buy this little piece of plastic that locks a dollar bill inside. And the only way to unlock it is if you roll this little metal ball around through it and get it to the other side. And when you do, it unlocks. And so depending on the value of the CL 20 or 50 or 100 in there and say. And then you give them a little map with exactly how to roll the ball through the maze and say, this will be the first proven way that I'll show you how to unlock money. Call me and I'll show you how to unlock more profits in your business. There's just so many cool little ways that you can test and stand out. And you could do an iPad for $99. You don't have to do an expensive pair of shoes. It's just the thought and the creativity of it. You could do this little thing on Amazon that cost like $4 a day. You buy a bunch of them, put a $20 in it or a $1 in it. You can be testing so many unique, creative ideas to stand out in the marketplace and differentiate yourself and just test and see what happens. And you'll be shocked when you find stuff that works that could totally, dramatically, rapidly shift your ability to increase your income and your impact in the world and stand out and get in front of key relationships and develop the right people in your network. Like just small, controlled, consistent tests that you monitor and track the metrics and analytics and results of and decide from there what you want to scale. I think that was the one thing I wanted to touch on. So now I did, so I'm good to go. That's awesome.

Love it. Love it. So where can people go to get your books, products, and engage with you?

You can get everything, including social media on shorten the Gap dot com. That's just shorten. And.

And why did you title your book shorten the Gap?

So ironically, I named my book shorten the Gap before I changed my company to shorten the Gap. I titled it shorten the Gap because my book is really a collection or a buffet platter of about $100,000 worth of information I had invested in learning for myself that I was like, I got to share this with the world with other young people. I got too much rattling around in my brain and I'm trying to talk with other young my parents and friends, and they just want to hear it. So I just started like spewing it out into the computer and synthesizing it into chapters. And then I was like, wow, this could actually be a really great little, like, manual or a buffet platter and a collection of things that I know and believe from learning, doing and applying in my life actually produces results that I'm after and I think other people are after as well. And so it's 37 chapters of a collection of things again, right? Like a buffet platter of personal development, business development, entrepreneur development, mindset, and 37 things that it truly to a person's ultimate success, happiness and fulfillment in life. And so I named the book shorten the Gap because I think, like we talked on earlier, most people are always trying to have something and you would call them goals. Right? Everyone has goals in life, or hope they do, or end states they're trying to achieve. And so, you know, we could make it pretty simple. If you're trying to achieve it, then you're not there yet. So there's a gap between you and that thing, you and that goal, you and the end state. And so if there's a gap between you and that thing you want to be, shorten the gap. And so I came up with shorten the Gap. Awesome.

Awesome. Well, very good. Thank you, Mark. I'm really curious to see where all of this goes. Like I said, I've been the catalyst for a new website that we'll see maybe sooner than later, called up and Comers, where we actually feature people that are up and comers that are going to do big shit in the world and a lot of it's going to be focused on millennials and stuff. And I always look at you as one of those resources for people that are young to get motivated and to do cool stuff and to do all that. I always love seeing young people that are kicking ass and taking names and teaching that to other people.

Thank you.

Yeah. Because it's frankly way more useful than universities and colleges for anyone that's going to live in on entrepreneurial life. And for our listeners. If you'd like to subscribe to I Love marketing, go to ilovemarketing.com, go to iTunes. We also have 10x talk that I do with Dan Sullivan and the new geniusx.com platform that will be launching very soon. So prepare yourself for that and any famous last words, Mark.

Just constantly and never endingly improve yourself. Because honestly, that's the biggest thing that's allowed me to get to where I'm at in life. So never stop improving yourself, as cliche and dumb as that might sound. And subscribe to I Love Marketing.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And to our listeners, please give us your comments. Share this interview with any person that you think would benefit from it. And I'm sure you can think of hundreds. So if every person listening just sent this merely to 100 people, then it would probably do a lot of good in the world. So thank you again, Mark. I appreciate it. And we'll talk to everybody on the next episode of I Live. Mark.

Thank you, Joe.