The $1,000 Cup of Coffee: Why Charging More Creates More Value with Joe Polish

How many of you know who Ron lynch is? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So he talked about the thousand dollar cup of coffee whenever you are. Like, if someone says, hey, you know, I'd like to get coffee with you, let's get, get a cup of coffee. And so he got so much of this that he one day said, you know, almost everyone that I have coffee with, I share some of my best ideas. They never do anything with it and they never hire me. And if they ever want to hire me, they always become a pain in the ass. There's something wrong with the positioning here. So when he started doing a thousand dollar cup of whenever someone would say, you know, I'd like to, can we grab a cup of coffee? He's like, yeah, it's $1,000. They'd be like, what? He's like, well, if you want me to talk about, if you just want to hang out and have coffee, that's one thing. But if you want to pick my brain and you want to talk about any business stuff, if you're not willing to invest, you know, a thousand dollars to hear me share some of my best ideas on business, you're certainly never going to pay me money for anything else. So he started doing a thousand dollar cup of coffee. And it completely shifted everything with how serious people took. How can you be a dom someone else? The Joe Polish show. Any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. So Evan continuously has people that will reach out and say, you know, can I, you know, set up a time to talk to you? And everything. He I'll let you speak to this. So he'll, he'll contribute certain days. But what happens is there's so many people that want like I could, if he would even like, he refuses to take money when I'm like, just charge a big. So he's several times has done jam sessions for $5,000 donation to Genius Recovery. And just I've seen him do it to so many people that it just changed the whole trajectory of their life. I mean, my friend John Farrell, who's an attorney, he's the number two IP attorney in Silicon Valley, the guy that did all the original legal work for Facebook and was outside counsel for Steve Jobs for 10 years at Apple, he had 7,000 subscribers to his YouTube page, did a session with Evan, it's like now over a million. He's got over a million. He's making a for. He's already a very successful attorney. We did one with Lance Armstrong and Lance's main guy blew him away. Like, here's how to build your YouTube channel. But he will. I don't want to over. So people will reach out to him, and he'll always say, is this person in good standing with Genius Network? Do you want me to say yes or no to them? And that sort of stuff. Because it's funny. Because people are like, evan, will you do a session with my stepbrother's best friend who has a landscape business? He's like, no, I can't do that. How do people best get value out of learning how to do what it is you do? Because we have a bunch of videos on the membership site that you done. And what else? Because I know you kind of divert, sort of like you will devote time on Fridays once in a while to do a jam session with people. You sure you're not going to talk?

What's the question?

The question is, how can we best get your brain without overwhelming you with personal requests to set up, like, private meetings and stuff? Oh, here.

I mean, how about now, Right? Yeah. You know, people say, like, can I book a time with you? Well, how about right now?

What if we do this? Why don't we get. We've got, you know, we're doing a lot of remodeling here. Why don't we get a. Why don't we get an Evan Carmichael Jacuzzi in the back room? Big one. So we can fit, like, 30 people in it at a time? You sit in a Jacuzzi and just. You can pontificate bullshit about how to build a YouTube channel. What do you think? Good idea. A trampoline? Yeah.

Have it right now. Yeah.

You know what? You do make a good point, which I'm actually gonna. I'm gonna riff on this for a minute. Rant. Riff, whatever you call it. What did I say at the annual event where it's like, where everyone strap on. Strap on. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up.

So.

How many of you have actually read. How many of you have read my book? What's in it for Them? Okay, so there's a thing where I talk about people like, yeah, we should get together and meet up, or we should do lunch. And it's like, well, if you really want to do lunch with the person, just say, well, you know, when can we do. We should get together and talk sometime. Well, how about we talk right now? Kind of like what, you know. So Evan said, I'm here. If you have a YouTube question, ask him while he's here. So that's one thing. The other is if you don't want to really meet up with the person, how many of you are so kind? Or you don't want to come across as a jerk? Maybe you're not so kind, but you're just like. Someone requests something and in the moment, you don't really want to do it, but you're not quite sure. And you don't also want to be rude. So it puts you in an awkward situation that has gotten you into obligations before. And then you're like, how did this happen? How many of you experienced that? Yeah. So I would love to hear just a couple examples of someone who's really good at how to handle that, because I'm. Okay. What I've learned, though, is that if I even so much as say, like, even gesture in a certain way, people will often take that as, oh, yeah, you're going to go run, build my business for me. You know, not even. We're going to do lunch and so anyway. And we're going to come.

Yeah, so I wasn't thinking about that, but I do have.

Yeah. Okay, good. I want to hear both. And then we will tie it into the. What? Where I'm going with this.

Yeah. Okay.

Richard Robbins Mines is not answering your question. Mine's about Evan Carmichael.

Okay.

That guy, I'm serious. Is one of the kind.

Look at you.

He doesn't even like when you do this. He can't stand it. Look at it.

No, no.

He's shaking his head. Don't do this, Rich.

That's the question.

Please. No, because I want to talk before you ask the question. Honestly, you know, if you get to know Evan, he is one of the kindest, most giving people I've honestly ever met. Amazing. We had the good fortune sitting on a plane together, going back and forth from Toronto a couple times, which was just a fluke. We just happened to be sitting beside each other, and I discovered that I drink more red wine than he does because I drank his. But anyway, that's another story.

But.

Just kidding you. But anyway, we get on. He's on his computer. He's showing me about YouTube. And he's done so much, you know, for myself, my company, and since then. So I just wanted, you know, just a shout out to a great genius member right there. He's just a. He's a gem of a human being.

No, he is. Yeah. Thank you. So how do you. How do you take. How do you take in these confluences? Let's talk. Let's go deep into your soul. No, because look, you've done enough therapy in psychology, you get to the point that the question that most humans has is, am I lovable? So I just really wanted to. How lovable are you?

I'm Canadian.

Okay, so here's the thing. So if someone does not pay, they don't pay attention, right? So that's one aspect of it. And so how many of you charge a lot of money for what it is that you offer to people? Okay. How much is what you sell in your business? How much of what? Well, let me ask it this way. For what it is that you do. Whatever it is you sell, you as the person. It also includes your personal time. Like it comes bundled in with you in either form of consulting or time spent. Right. Okay. So the. The interesting thing is I live in this world of where I have an addiction recovery foundation, and I have never taken a penny out. I don't pay myself for it. I do a lot of volunteer work. Takes a lot of time. And then I have another side of me where I. If I do consulting, I charge $6,000 an hour for consulting. And then I have clearly overpriced, egotistical groups called genius network at 100k. Right? So there's these two different worlds where there's stuff that we just provide for free, and then stuff over here we actually have an investment in. Now, I would love to give Genius Network away for free because it's awesome, but that would ruin the whole mix of it, because the pain and the investment of the money is part of the skin in the game. I mean, part of what someone gets out of this. And all of, you know, this is, you know, your investment in it. It's rare that anyone ever heard say, you know, my very best clients are the ones that pay the least amount of money, and my worst clients are the ones that pay the most amount of money. It's almost always the reverse. The people that invest the most money, usually for whatever reason, seem to be the most committed to it. Right. Because commitment is not just time, but it's money, and it's all kinds of things. And so I was doing an interview with Ron lynch, really bright guy. And we're gonna turn that into like a YouTube video or something, because I think we just need to put it out there. It's really good. It was. It was a couple years ago. And so Ron, he produces movies and infomercials and all kinds of stuff over the years. Super sharp dude. How many of you know who Ron lynch is? You know, I'm talking about. Yeah, so he talked about the thousand dollar cup of coffee whenever you are. Like, if someone says, you know, I'd like to get coffee with you, let's get, get a cup of coffee. And so he got so much of this that he one day said, you know, almost everyone that I have coffee with, I share some of my best ideas. They never do anything with it and they never hire me. And if they ever want to hire me, they always become a pain in the ass. There's something wrong with the positioning here. So he started doing a thousand dollar cup of coffee. Whenever someone would say, you know, I'd like to, can we grab a cup of coffee? He's like, yeah, it's a thousand dollars. And they'd be like, what? He's like, well, if you want me to talk about, if you just want to hang out and have coffee, that's one thing. But if you want to pick my brain and you want to talk about any business stuff, if you're not willing to invest $1,000 to hear me share some of my best ideas on business, you're certainly never going to pay me money for anything else. So he started doing a thousand dollar cup of coffee. And it completely shifted everything with how serious people took. So with heaven, if someone does a free YouTube session with Evan and he just does it to be nice, I mean, most people in Genius Network, see, that's why I don't want pitching at Genius Network unless someone's a sponsor. That's the way it's like, hey, you know, we keep thinking of different ways to do the marketplace sort of stuff, but I don't want. You're already investing $35,000 a year or 100 grand a year to be in this group. That is a lot of money. So I like, I want things to happen. That being said, though, if someone wants additional stuff or there's going to take additional time, it's like, well, how do you treat that? You know, what's the way to be nice to a client versus how do you, you know, how do you not put yourself in a position where you're sharing your best stuff and you're not getting paid? So the psychology of it, though, if you are going to spend an hour with someone and they're going to give you $1,000 to have that hour, I guarantee they're going to take everything that happens in that hour way differently than if they do not. And if someone puts a $5,000 investment into Genius Recovery donation, then they do a one hour session with Evan Carmichael, they take that Shit way more seriously than someone that says, hey, let's just hop on a Zoom call and I'll walk you through Genius Network. So we had a really great session on this. And of course, Mike, he will take an idea and then he will implement it. So we've had some great results from the I Love Marketing sort of sessions that I've been doing with Dean Jackson. And I'm. Here's the funny thing. Dean is already in the group. Dean would just do these because I would ask him to do it. Me and Dean have been friends for almost 30 years, and we've been doing the I Love marketing podcast since 2010. If I say, is Dean even on Zoom right now? Because I can let him speak to this if he is. Because he said he was going to join in the afternoon. He said, okay, great. So Dean, I want you to even. I'm going to ask you to come on in a minute. So Dean, he would do these Zoom sessions on marketing that we've been doing every month. Even if I just asked him to do it. He actually likes teaching people stuff, as do I. How many of you find yourself giving consulting advice to servers at restaurants that didn't even ask you because you just want to help people? Like, when you know the shit that you know, you want to tell other people about it. You're like, I used to be a server. Let me save this person, right? So, but what you learn is, like, you could say, read this book. Read this book. And you're telling. And they never write it down. But the ones that do write it down, like, at least if someone's like, hey, I heard this. Oh, what's the name of that? Who's the author that shows a completely. You know, if someone will go and pay $10 for a book or $20 for a book or $30 for a book that they paid the money for the book, that one little act of paying for it is way different than if you give the person your book. I mean, there's something about someone doing it. So Dean to do these sessions. I pay Dean to do these sessions. Why? He would do it anyway. But the fact that I'm paying him is he actually shows up knowing that the fucker's getting paid by me. So you better just be there, right? And I still think it would be great. It's always great with Dean, even, like, if I pay him or not. But the thing is, there's something about when you. There's a time where you actually pay for it, where you take it more seriously, and you know who takes it more seriously? I take it more seriously because I'm frickin paying for it. And so it sounds like you're doing a trick on people when you're trying to quote, unquote, explain why you're charging a higher price. But I guarantee you, if you want to help yourself and you want to help certain people know the difference of when to charge a fee and when to give something away for free. I've not, and it might be my own hang up. I've not been able to figure out how to do it as easily with recovery stuff as I do with business, because it's like so much of what I want to do in the recovery world is I want to give stuff away for free. And we took one guy, Dr. Jason Giles, to the Houston prison when we went and he said he's been working with addicts for 15 years. He's like, he was telling me it was really sort of like a paradigm shift. He said, I have tried for all different ways to give away treatment to people for free. And when we don't charge for just doesn't seem to work long term. And he's like. And it just doesn't. And I'm like, man. So I've been thinking about that a lot since that happened. So anyway, going to you, Mike, you heard this thing and I want you to describe what you did. Because you didn't just do the thousand dollar cup of coffee, you came up with a thousand dollar virtual cup of coffee. And then he did a campaign. And like Mike does, he puts a fucking QR code on everything. But it's smart the way he does it. And I have to of course say that because it just goes with the theme of making him the bad guy. I know, I know.

It's like a hug to me now.

Yeah, yeah. So explain a couple things that y. Yeah.

So we were at Strategic Coach a few weeks ago. It was you and Gary Clabin and I were sitting together and I was describing the challenge I have in my core business, which is high ticket and it's a press the flesh type of business. And you just interrupted me and said, you gotta do a thousand dollar cup of coffee. You know, Ron Lynch. I'm like, I do. He goes, I did this interview with him. Let me have Eunice send you the interview. And Gary said, shit, I'd pay 2,500 bucks right now for an hour of your time. I'm not going to write out a check for $150,000. And you said, well, see so what I did is unice sent the video, transcribed it and while we were sitting there, I wrote the campaign at coach and probably 50 minutes later I sent it to my copywriter, I went home, shot the video and we rolled it out about four days later. So the summary is it's a thousand dollar cup of coffee, sit down, ask me anything. And we aifi a lot of it. So it's high value. And what naturally happens is they're like, well, how do I make this happen? So we had two multi six figure deals in one week that started with a thousand dollar cup of coffee. And right now two thirds of them convert into high ticket.

Yeah. And it was one of the best.

Pieces of advices you've ever given me. And thank you.

No, and you took action on it though because it's like. So you sent that and it's a 30 minute virtual cup of coffee, right? Or is it an hour?

Yeah. Well, here's what I promise is we say less than an hour. So the promise is 30 minutes. I actually book out an hour and then from there I have, you know, you know, right away if it's going to turn into something more. And yeah, it's about 50 minutes and if it's really, really good, it'll be 90 minutes to a full enrollment. And they are literally a one call close. And I would say it's. There's a few campaigns that have been breathtaking and that's one of them. The four day cash machine that Frank Kern created from Bob Sterling 20 years ago. And then anyone who's seen my golden envelope campaign, that's always a great moneymaker. Yeah, that's an intimacy creator. And that's the thing is people want to feel with you and what you were saying, I want to just punctuate. Audiobooks are the most intimate form of getting into someone's bedroom, bathroom and in their workouts. And if someone listens to your book, they feel like they have a relationship and they will naturally enroll. You just have to get past that 90 minutes or so of comfort. But thank you, Joe.

No, thank you. And I'll tell you anything that you have that's. And it's really, I have a tendency to think that I can bypass to get someone else to a place that I didn't bypass in order to get there myself. Like, you know, Jim Rohn has that great line is you can't pay someone to do your push ups for you. And if someone wants the results but they're not willing to do the push ups, why are you Going to spend your time giving them any sort of advanced training if they won't even do the basic stuff. So that's why a book or a podcast or a video or anything that you can put in front of somebody in advance is going to help them be well positioned, because that's what marketing is, that you want to position yourself so that you're. By the time they talk to you, they're pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified, and predisposed to do business with you. And then if they pay you in order to have information or you talking to them in front of them based on how you position it and based on what you even give them for that money, then it just leads to their absorption of it way differently, because people digest things differently that they pay for. Charles, we with Lee and God, who was with me, Scott Donnell, and we went to the French Laundry. And the weirdest thing was I mentioned Mark Tarbell's name. I showed you Thomas. What's Thomas's last name? Thomas Kelly. Thomas Kelly, yeah. So I said, do you know? Is Thomas here? They're like, yeah. I go, can you let him know I'm a friend of Mark Tarbell's? I literally. Name dropped in order to, like, create positioning with Thomas. He comes out, literally shave. I have a video of him shaving truffles on my food and stuff like that. And that meal for two of us. I'm trying to think who the hell I was with. It was me. Oh, it was you. Oh, okay. Oh, thank you. No, I was like, thinking, where's Cherie at? Where's my partner Cherie? She down right there. Lovely. So I don't want it to sound like I was with some other day, because I wasn't.

It was like.

Okay, so the fricking meal for me and Eunice was $1,400. True story. So. Because those damn truffles cost a fortune. Would you add them on to. Yeah. So then we leave. I'm sorry, what? I said, see what my name got you. Yeah, exactly. You got to know how to strategically name drop. I'm not kidding. Part of marketing is positioning yourself at the top of other people's agendas. Seriously, if you're not positioning yourself at the top of the agendas of people you want doing business with, you then figure out how to do that. And that comes with what's in it for them. So then we, you know, we do a tour of the. Like, it's this whole tour. So the whole thing is like. So a couple hours later, and then we have to go to the airport. We're flying back that night and we're driving there and I'm like, I am freaking hungry again. And everyone in the car, there's like four of us. It's me, you, Scott. I can't remember who else was with.

No, no.

But we're in the car with Scott that when we went to. Did she go, really?

Okay, okay.

And we're driving and we have to get to the airport, but we have a little bit. And we see In N Out Burger. Okay. The only fast food that I would ever eat because I watched the movie Fast Food Nation years ago. You ever read the book Fast Food Nation? So back in the day, DVDs or VHS tapes had bonus sections. That's what sucks. Like the newer movies when they're on net, they don't have the bonus sections like they used to. And so there were bonus interviews. And the guy was being interviewed that wrote Fast Food Nation and the guy said that they made the movie about. He's like, do you ever eat fast food? He's like, no, not really. He goes, well, if you did, what is the healthiest fast food? And he goes, well, none of them are really the healthiest. He goes, but the very best for quality of the meat and the oils, and they cut their own french fries and bake their own bread is In N Out Burger. And so that became my rationalization why it's okay to eat it In Out Burger, right? And by the way, like, Evan loves the Chuckbox, but I think In N Out Burger. So anyway, so we freaking go to. We go to In N Out Burger and we order like, you know, we order burger and we like eat fricking food before we have to drive to the airport. The bill is like $14. And I was like going, how bizarre that we just paid 1,400 for a meal and we paid 100 times more money to go to the French laundry and eat than we just did here. And the hunger was satiated. What were we paying for? You know, so what? People pay for something. And why do most people eat not the healthiest food? Because it's fricking cheaper to eat cheap fast food. And pre pandemic, it was something like 10% of all meals eaten in America were eaten in a car. Who knows what it is now, you know, so the point is people will pay a low price for a commodity. How many of you go to grocery stores and you shop for food versus have it delivered? You actually like going and shopping in. Yeah. Do you know that 80% of all, all products and services and groceries and drugs and clothes and everything that are still bought in America, what do you think the percentage is that is bought retail versus online?

80%.

You knew the answer.

You told us the answer when you just said, you know, 80%.

I did say that. God, I gotta go back and watch a video and see where the chip went off. The chip in my brain.

Is this an active listening test that.

We'Re giving us here? Well, I guess the flashbacks from all the LSD I used to take are just working like a charm. All right, so yeah, 80%. So, so much for that. So I'm still like my. Like I said, like, really? So, yeah, 80% of things are still purchased via retail. So if you ever go to a. I always like this example because I find myself doing it where you'll like, should I buy a five pound bag of potatoes for like, you know, $4 or should I buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes for $6? Cause it's gonna be. And I will sit there and I'm like, when I do the time of how much my time is worth, if I charge six grand an hour, then how much is every minute of my time worth? I'll sit there for like two minutes for something that is like not worth $2. And I'll be like, but then if you go on vacation, you'll spend like $742 for a frickin skinny margarita. You know, it's like ridiculous. Because why? Because people will pay for an experience, but when they look at a commodity, they look at it. So pricing has everything to do with how it's perceived. And so that's why Dean Jackson's line, a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. All right, so what are you going to say then? I want to bring Dean Jackson on to have him give some commentary on what we just talked about. So, Evan, go ahead.

I was at lunch at Chuckbox, of course, yesterday.

He loves this place called Chuckbox in Tempe.

Great place. Best hamburgers in America.

The oldest grill in the world.

Well, there you go. You should check it out.

It really is. That grill is greased up. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's like, yeah. They've actually been in business, I think 50, 53 years. We used to say when I used to eat that stuff, it was like that was 40 to 50 years old.

I'm trying to get Joe to invest years ago.

I think we should buy one.

Yeah, well, no, no, no, no. You can't buy one. There is one. There's no, you're gonna buy the one. There's just the Chuck box. Yeah, that's it.

Anyway, go there tonight. He loves it. He eats there every day.

True. I have my wife with me now on this trip, so we probably won't go there. But we went yesterday, so. But otherwise, yeah, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and my chuckbox. Anyway, I was there yesterday with Hannah from 100K. We did her podcast and then we went to celebrate the podcast with lunch at Chuckbox.

Did she eat a big one or the great big one?

Let's not talk about it.

A little one. That's a whole little ones. Big ones. Great big ones. Couple great big ones.

Yeah, that's. I try to forget what happened with her order yesterday. It's. It's fine, it's fine. That's not the point of this story.

I got the little old lady one.

And we got to Genius. Like, what's. How long you been a genius? And what's the. She's a new 100k member. And what's. What the value have you gotten out of genius? And I said, well, it's the relationships, because we're supposed to be here solving our biggest problems. And so we all have our stuff to sell. I have programs you could join, my YouTube stuff. I never talk about it. I'd rather do a 5k donation to genius Network or Genius Recovery or whatever. Just help people because I don't need anybody here to buy the thing I'm selling because I'm trying to solve a much bigger problem. And so talking with Shannon here, it's her first time coming, which I always love, meeting the first time members and like, see if we can get a win if she can come out of the first meeting thinking I just completely reorganized my business and like, here's an awesome opportunity that's so much more valuable than coming here trying to. I need to sell a retreat to somebody here to make my 35k investment back. Yeah. And so just a mindset shift of like, why are you here? Could you sell some of your stuff? Cool. But if you're coming here, I mean, you had the 10 times investment, so it's like, it's a. What's the $350,000 idea or quarter million dollar idea or Gary's trying to solve it, you know, have a billion people find their why, like we're supposed to be here trying to solve these big problems. And that will come through the relationships that you built. And part of why I wanted Shannon to stand up, besides putting a new member on the Spot and sharing return on Genius is now everybody knows what she's trying to do. Like, that's how it's a connection network. It's not a pitch network. So anyway, I was trying to explain. Hannah asked me that. And so I think I'm more articulate today than I was yesterday. But it's really just the relationships here. And if you come in with that approach, it's like, hey, that exercise that you guys often do on what problem I trying to solve and like, how am I going to solve? Yeah, but the fourth box is like, who's going to help me? I always put someone here. Like someone in this room is going to help me solve the big problem, not solve the how do I make $35,000 from somebody buying my thing in this room?

Exactly. If you're coming in hunting for people to sell stuff to versus coming in to learn, you have a completely different experience. And I want to create the energy and the culture in this room so that you can sniff that out, because I want everyone to help reach their opportunities. But there's a difference between being an opportunist versus pursuing an opportunity. And so when there's opportunist energy, and we all have been there, where I think there's times when you're desperate or you really need to make a deal or you really need to make a sale. And how many of you coming up into sales, how many of you have done any sort of sales training you literally have got? And what do they typically do? Here's what to say, here's how to overcome objections, here's how to build rapport, here's how to do all kinds of fake flattery, here's how to NLP and mirror people so they can actually think you give a shit about them. You know, that sort of stuff. And although all of it intention wise, can be very good, because it's not the technique or the method, it's the intention and how you do it. There's nothing wrong with selling, it's how you sell. Like with carpet cleaners. I created this thing called ethical services. Like we want to upsell people, but it's how you do it. If you upsell people doing bait and switch, that's different than upselling people by using education based marketing or presenting a powerful, compelling offer. So let's bring on Dean Jackson because he's heard this riff. And Dean, I'm sure we'll have plenty to say about this. So Dean, you've got approximately 37 seconds to say something brilliant.

Okay, there we go. And that's how time travel is possible. Oh, was my mic not on?

Mic is on. We can hear you.

You missed my whole explanation of time travel.

No, no, I thought it was very good.

Thank you.

So what do you want to know? Well, out of all the different ways that people could get others to comply with what it is that they want, what is the best way to set up, you know our friend Robert Cialdini? Who. I was just at Charles Byrd's event the other day, and then I got together with him and Bobette. You know, he studied compliance. All the compliance industries, everything from televangelists to con artists to salespeople to universities enrolling people, all the different. So everyone here is in the compliance business. In order for their business to work, they have to influence people to do what they want them to do.

Okay, I see where you're going.

Yeah. So there's some psychology to doing this. And you have figured out and orchestrated many ways, as have I, to help people do that. So what are some of the best advice and recommendations you would have for people on how to think about this?

Well.

Tell me.

So it all starts as a foundational thing. There's a little concept that I like to follow called what's in it for them? And so what you do is, instead of thinking about your own selfish needs, primarily think about what's in it for them. And you're part of this thing. What I'm such an advocate for, and I'm always texting you at the meetings, and having people recognize and share their return on genius moments, because the recognizing of it internally, individually, for yourself, puts a responsibility on yourself that it's your duty to drive your return on genius, and it's your duty to define what that means to you. It may not be like what Evan was just saying. It may not be about money. It may not be about, you know, selling somebody your thing. Your return on genius.

What?

What? The purpose that it's sooth serving for you is. Is unique. It's. Wait, it's up to you.

One of the speakers. One of the speakers, she's coming out of this side. Oh, interesting. Well, just.

Then just turn it up. We can hear.

Just turn up a little bit. Go ahead, Dean. I might ask you to project a little. Sorry, it's not. Nothing you're doing. Okay.

Okay, no problem. So it's very. It's really good to hear people sharing their return on genius because that's going to help people recognize the other people are getting a return on genius. And I think that part of it is thinking both individually but thinking collaboratively to recognize who in the group. The whole purpose of having a genius network is to have access to all of the other vision capabilities and reach of the people in the room. Any kind of return or any kind of advancement that you're going to get is going to be either an idea that you hear that somebody did a solution for a problem. That's why I love that exercise of, you know, it's if impossible unless just recognizing what the, you know, recognizing what the obstacles are, sharing them in a group. And somebody may be having an experience or a solution that solves your what you know with your knowledge and perspective on it may be an impossible situation. So everybody in this room has lots of vision things that you know how to do. The other thing that's going to maybe drive return on genius for people is introduction to a capability. Somebody who can do something that is going to solve one of the problems that you're trying to solve or provide an outcome that you're trying to create or introduce you to a service provider who can be a who for what you need to do so you don't have to learn how to do something. You've got connection to an entire genius network of who's. Every one of you is a who for the rest of the who.

By the way, what's that? It's a who house. That's what genius network is.

It's a who house. That's exactly. It's not just a who house. It's the greatest little who house in the world.

That is true. And by the way, he came up with the term who, not how that Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan wrote the book about. That was originally. That all came from Dean.

Yeah. And then the other thing that might happen is what we call a reach asset. So I'm always looking the VCR formula, vision capabilities and reach and being able to recognize them and being able to understand your own vision capability and reach assets. And reach may be as simple as an introduction to one person. If you know somebody who you can. You have access to that, you can introduce somebody to that's reach. But reach also may be access to your 1,000,000 subscribers on something or, you know, your. Your access to millions of people as an audience, that somebody's capability might be perfectly suited for that audience. And that may suck. You know how many times if you look at Oprah as an example, Oprah has the most amazing reach asset. And in her day, if you had a capability, you created an amazing product. If you got on Oprah's favorite things list, or you get on Oprah's book list or Reese Witherspoon's book list, and they expose your capability to their reach, that's an immediate explosion for your business. So in most cases, if you have a solid capability, you may be only one reach asset away from all of your dreams coming true. You know, that's the kind of a. That's the way I think about these things, Joe, and I'm really trying. Imagine if you create, like, if you look at the. The I call them abundance neighborhoods that many of us hang out in, right? Like, there's a lot of overlap. If we say that if we take Strategic coach, we take Genius Network, we take Abundance360, the intersection of those Abundance neighborhood neighborhoods is really probably pretty high in this room that there's a lot of people who are part of all of those communities, right? And if we can get everybody in those communities kind of thinking in that same way, everybody thinking contextually about what's in it for them as the driving thing that we're constantly on the lookout and aware of being a giver and looking to solve people's vision capability and reach problems that they've identified or spotting their vision capability and reach opportunities and willing to give. You know, like, I. I've been, you know, amazed in amazing conversations with people that sometimes we see things that you might not see if you sit with Evan. For instance, all the. All the insight and knowledge and experiments and understanding and shortcuts and vision assets that Evan CarMichael has about YouTube channels applied to your situation, just knowing the things that he could tell you, don't do that, do this, or did you think about this or separate this. Those are all multipliers in the right situation. I love to see Evan get so excited about sharing them, you know, and I love, even. I love being in the breakouts and in the room with people and seeing opportunities that people have. Maybe a different way to think about something, but collectively being in these rooms and having access to everybody's wisdom that way, just having language around understanding of common terms like return on genius that we're looking, that that's our purpose, is to drive our own return on genius and contribute to the return on genius of others, that's really the big thing. And knowing that the way that we're going to do that is by understanding, recognizing, and thinking in a way that helps us identify vision capability and reach assets or opportunities. So I'm trying to drive that kind of common language through all the communities that I'm Part of. But I think especially those three are a big. I think that's a really great context for us.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Just everything.

Exactly what he said is what I was going to say if he had not said it. This video that recently, when you take Vision, capability and reach, the VCR formula. Write that down. VCR formula. Dean Jackson. PM Dean Jackson. Vision, capability, reach. So everyone here has a vision and it's impossible unless whatever your vision is, what's your capability? Do you need a capability? Can you hire a capability? Can you borrow a capability? And how do you reach them? So I remember watching a video with Rogan and Mr. Beast and he had, I think they were talking about. I think it was on that interview where being on someone else's platform, what happens? And he had made a comment along the lines of, well, if I would have. Even as big as he is now, as many followers, he's like, if I just tried to create my own platform now instead of YouTube, I'd be lucky if I had something like between 2 to 5% of everyone that would even come along. It's already there. Why would I want. You know. So it was the counter argument to, like, own your. Well, I think you should own your own email list. I think you use other ways to reach people and then you get them on your list or however you have the ability to reach them. But that. So what Evan is always talking about YouTube and same with Andrew, is because it's about reaching people. I mean, he has a message. Believe that's his thing. Right. Mine is connection. Right. How do you reach people? So I've always loved the thing with Dan Sullivan and we did a podcast on this one where I'm a blank with a specialty in blank. And blank is one of my distribution systems or centers. So I'm an entrepreneur with a specialty in marketing and Genius Network is one of my distribution centers. Books, the I Love Marketing podcast, the Joe Polish show, webinars, Genius Recovery. All of the different things are ways to distribute what it is that I know, what it is that I sell and how to reach people. And so with Gary, to go to your example of how to reach a billion people, well, who knows how to create the reach? Who already has access to them? And so you take this video that I was just interviewed by Peter Santinello. I didn't seek out Peter Santinello. I have a friend named Aaron Lewis who loves our ghost town and loves this guy's YouTube show. And he literally sends me a phone Screenshot of an audio message that he had just gotten from Peter Santinello. And he had reached out to this guy on Instagram. Didn't ask me about it, just said, hey, it looks like you're in Arizona. I have a friend that owns the ghost town Cleader, Arizona. With what it is that you do, maybe you'd want to do an interview with him at this ghost town. And Peter then responds back to him with an undermined message saying, yes, I'm in Arizona. I'm only going to be here for the next, like, 13 days. And if he can do it, this is before, between, like, Christmas and New Year's that we went up there. And he's like, if there's any way, I would love to. So if you can track him down. Then all of a sudden, I'm positioned with this Peter guy. Like, I'd really like to do an interview with, like. And I had no idea. So I quickly watch one of his videos. And they're not short videos. They're like hour. They're like 45 minutes to hour and 30 minutes. And all of his videos get between a million to 30 million views. Like, it's high. And I'm like, wow. And it's just really fascinating stuff. So we go and spend all day in my ghost town. And usually Peter, he's like, you know, I said, I can introduce you to this person. He goes, it's usually just me and one guy, maybe one other person, but it's not groups of people. So he goes, you're going to be the main guy, so you don't have to. But, like, I'm a super collaborative person. Like, I'm always trying to involve fucking everybody in everything that I do. You ever ask me an invite to dinner, it might end up with 30 people in 45 minutes. But poor Cherie, she sees this all the time. Right, sweetie? Would you like to go to a romantic dinner? And there's like, you know, with 17 of my friends, so. But they're all her friends, too, so it works out quite well. So we go to. But if you ever watch this video, like, all of a sudden I've got Ray the Artist. I've got Jason Campbell. We're going through our minds, you know, like, deep into the mines. Like, they're talking to the townspeople. Like, it. I still figured out how to involve all these other people. And I was just a small part of that video, but it became a very. But now that video has gotten more reach for Cleader than any. It's the Best PR cletr's ever done. And now all of these other things are happening. And so what Dean is saying, it literally is true. So if you can take away anything from this meeting with getting exposure, vision, capability and reach, if you just think about that and say, okay. And that was an accidental one, that wasn't even that strategic. But it's now made me think like, wow, there's a lot of people out there that I could do something just like that. And it's really cool. And everyone here has the same thing. So there's no major complicated strategy here. It's just really understanding it, thinking about it and then positioning yourself well, because Aaron positioned me really well. But with a guy that he like, because he basically. This is. That's his favorite YouTube channel. So he reached out to the guy. This is my favorite YouTube channel. I happen to know a guy that owns this town. It looks like you're in Arizona. Do you think, you know, so just being able. So it's all connections. Everything comes with connections. And there is a first domino to everything. And so that's, you know, that's how I'm seeing it right now. So like for instance, with Jeff Hayes, I'm gonna co produce the four Maha films. So there's Maha on addiction because there is no Make America Healthy without addressing addiction. There's one on food and nutrition and longevity and medicine. And so part of it, I have no idea how those films will do. It depends on how good they are. They could be a massive reach. And then all the stuff I want to do with health and addiction, we can find. But Maha, four years from now, it might just be a meme. Will it last for 20 years? I have no idea. But what will last is valuable stuff. And if you can connect with someone. Because when did you start your YouTube channel?

2009 was the first video.

How many subscribers did you have the first year?

25.

Literally only 25. The first year?

Yeah, something like that.

What about year five?

How many were up to 2,000 something.

Okay, now how many do you have?

Four million.

Four million. So at what point did you hit the hockey stick? How many years?

2014. I asked for help and I also married my wife.

Uh huh. And what the hell, how did that help the YouTube job?

That's a whole story. If you want you can get into it. But both, like the fixing or getting the support I needed on the personal side and professional side in the same year started to see a big growth.

Yeah, you know what, there's a great point. Like I always like the thing. If having access to knowledge is what made people successful, every reference librarian on the planet would be a multimillionaire. You know, it has nothing to do with the access to the knowledge. It has to do with the application of it and putting it into putting the ball in the game and playing the game and doing it and being committed to it. So. But the point is, you've been committed to this for a long time. Don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulish show. Subscribe today@thejopolishow.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit thejopolishow.com 23.