The 2 Most Important Character Traits To Build Confidence As An Entrepreneur - I Love Marketing Episode #243

Hey, everybody. Dean Graziosi. I'm here with my good friend Joe Polish. But who knows where this interview's gonna go? This is gonna be the best and most fun one for me. Cause Joe's been one of my best friends for over 10 years now. We're heading on probably 12 years. Yeah. Learned so much from this guy. If you don't know who Joe Polish is, I'll just go quick and we'll go deeper in it. But Joe was a dead broke carpet cleaner that found marketing and not only turned his business around, was.

Was a dead broke carpet cleaner.

Did I say is?

You said yeah.

So did I say is? No. Was a dead broke carpet cleaner. Long found marketing and not only turned his company around, but started teaching other carpet cleaners and became the number one guy in the world. Teaching carpet cleaners, that's like getting your teeth pulled. Who wants to do carpets, right?

Exactly.

But he figured marketing with that company and with that industry, helping others to go to a whole other level. The guy's got more successful students in that world than anyone, but then just took it to a whole nother level. And the reason I met Joe is because how many years ago now you.

Started 25k going on almost 10.

Okay, so almost 10 years ago, Joe started genius network. But since it's 25,000 a year, everybody calls it 25k. And I think I was one of the first people to cut you a check for 25 grand. One of the first people I ever cut money to in my whole life. And I was like, wow. Everybody brags about this guy Joe, on how ethical he is, what a great guy he is, how he's an incredible marketer, how he bonds with his clients to build a relationship. He's not a transactional marketer, all that kind of stuff. I cut a check, and it was one of the best money I've been cutting for 10 years. I've given you about a quarter million bucks so far.

Yes, you have.

That's pretty good. And we've gone on to do some incredible things together. Not only do I respect Joe as a marketer, as a businessman, but as a human being. He's on a never ending search to be a better person and just love the guy. So thank you.

Likewise.

Not only will we have a great interview today, we will share things that we're not even sure we're going to talk about yet. But I'd say shut off your cell phones, lock the kids, put them in another room and listen to us for the next 45 or 50 minutes. And we will deliver some good stuff.

Absolutely.

Does it sound fun?

Sounds fun. And seriously, it's great to be here. And the fact that we're even doing this, one of the best ways to learn how to do something early. I mean, people that are watching a video, listening to this, however they're accessing this, you can learn anything through the school of hard knocks. Go out and get bloodied in the world. You can learn through the experience of others. Read their books, go to their seminars, immerse yourself in their teachings and trainings. And then the third way to learn, which is one of the fastest ways to accelerate learning, is to teach it to other people, because it then puts you in a position to where you have to really get it, or at least become skilled at it, because then you're going to have an audience. So one of the ways we're going to talk about confidence today, that's the subject matter of your series here. One of the best ways to gain confidence is to literally do something every day that scares you, but intelligently, not like run in front of traffic, scare you, but do something that literally challenges you.

Yeah.

And so even doing something like this, where we practice, but then we have a game that we're going to play. And so right now we're going to play a game in terms of a performance, but it's a serious one because we're going to have fun with it. Absolutely. I'll make jokes if there is a time to make jokes. But the point is, this is a demonstration of just doing something. So even as you're watching this, think about, what could I do today? Or, you know, if it's in the middle of the night that you're watching this, what can you do tomorrow that's going to allow you to put yourself out there to learn? Because both Dean and I, if there's one commonality with a lot of successful people, many of the people you've had on the series, many of who are close friends of mine, is that they're always putting themselves. They're not observers, they're players. And that's just. You can listen to stuff all day long, you can read books all day long, but there comes a point where you got to get on stage and you don't. Well, you don't have to, but if you want to be a winner, you gotta be in the game, not an observer.

And stage doesn't necessarily mean stage, but just get out there, present yourself. How many people do we meet that are just waiting to take action when. When this is Aligned, when my spouse is on board with me, when I have a little bit more money, when the book is perfect, when the product is right, and they'll win for the rest of life. Deep down, they're just full of fear. I mean, they're feared senseless or they're afraid to take action. And that's why I want to do a confidence series, because with all the people I'm lucky to meet, and so are you, you. And I just did an event in Toronto. It was 5,000 people in the audience. It was huge. You get mobbed at the end, and so many people will come up and say, oh, my God, I loved watching you up there. You know, I had this thing I've been gonna. For years, I've been gonna. And, you know, you could boil that down to a lot of things. But when I get on the phone with, you know, I got on Skype with Tony, who became a good friend. I met Tony because of you, Tony Robbins because of you. I get on the phone with Tony, I said, tony, how important is confidence? He's like, that's the number one thing. I mean, this guy, who would you give more credit to? He's helped more people than anyone on the planet, right? Guy's been doing it for 35 years. They say he's helped 50 million people, whatever that is, it's a lot of people. And he says, confidence. And when I dig in to find out, how can you give people a way to turn on confidence? And when I look back in my own life and even yours, we're not. And I'd like to share this with you, it's not that we walked around and were born with confidence. I want to get into a little bit of that, of we were introverts, we were shy, we were made fun of, we had, you know, we had all those things going against us. And the other day when we were up in Toronto, we're getting to go on stage. Joe's going first, I'm following him. And both of us are back there a little nervous with butterflies. And it's like. But what I realized, Joe, and this is what I'll talk about today, is it's not like you have to have confidence every moment. You don't have to be an extrovert. I know when I go to a party, I'm an introvert. I hide. I find one person like you, and I'll go in the corner and talk to you, and I don't want anybody else to come over.

I hear you.

But what we found and Everybody watching. If you're watching a series like this, you've already had great success in your life. You've already done incredible things. But you want another level. You wouldn't be watching us. You'd be enjoying that next level. What we're able to do is turn on the confidence when we need it. Like when I look back on my career, even when I was shit scared, ready to poop myself and soil my.

Pants, I still, I hope that doesn't happen today.

Those days are gone, but we still did it, right? And so I'd like to start off asking you that, you know, how important is confidence in your career, in your life, and what do you. I know you shared it a little bit, but let's start there. The importance of confidence. And I got some great questions I want to ask.

Okay, well, yeah, so let me get into that. First, what I want to say, since you brought up Tony Robbins as an example. You know, Tony has this great quote that the road to someday leads to the town of nowhere. And it kind of goes back to what we were saying. I learned advice early on that, you know, I mentioned do something every day that scares you. And part of it, I really took that seriously because I thought, you know, I'm introverted. When I was growing up, I mean, a lot of people would never know this about me now because I do public speaking. Not a ton of it, but I do go out in front of crowds. You know, going out in front of that crowd of 5,000 people, yeah, I'm backstage scared shitless. I mean, there's an anxiety, there's a nervousness, but also know that this is an opportunity, too. So I've trained my brain to endure certain levels of uncomfortableness. And I have a dear friend who's also your friend, too, Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach. And so how important is confidence? I mean, it's critically important. I mean, two of the most important things to protect, especially as an entrepreneur, is as someone that has to go out into the world and their ability to produce results and their efforts and is what feeds them is what's going to pay for everything, that's going to make payroll, that's going to move you and your family and your future family and all of the things that you want forward. You don't do anything really well as an entrepreneur if you do not protect your confidence. And also gratitude, because gratitude is equally important. You could have all the money in the world. You could have great relationships. You can live in a great country, which I consider we do. And Just have so much access and still be a miserable bastard if you're not grateful for what you have. So I think two of the most important emotional states and qualities and characteristics to develop and nurture and maintain our confidence and gratitude. Now, there's arrogance that can be confused with confidence. There's people that are scared shitless that act like they're really confident. So confidence, the term could be overrated in a lot of ways, depending on the context and what it means to some people. Because a lot of people say that's a really confident person. When, you know, behind closed doors, that person is just scared shit. They're just acting a certain way. The real confidence is where you have a skill based know how. Where you're not at the point where you're like, oh, am I going to second guess myself? And that doesn't come overnight. That actually requires work.

You build the muscle. That's what I wrote down. Build the confidence muscle.

Exactly. And so, you know, my thing is, I think about skills and capabilities. And Dan Sullivan has this great story. I'm probably not going to tell it exactly right, but when he was in the army going through boot camp training, he had a sergeant and they were. What do you call them, the cadets? I don't know. But anyway, he was in this training and they were getting ready to do an obstacle course where they had to go through underneath barbed wire and they were using real bullets. And soldiers going through this training had actually gotten killed in this process. And so the sergeant asked, like a group of them, and Dan Sullivan was there, a young guy at the time, and said, how many of you are scared? And Dan was the only one that raised his hand. No one else raised his hand. And he said, well, you know, Mr. Sullivan is the only one here who's telling the truth. And he said, you know, the difference between courage and confidence is. Courage is basically. No, I'm sorry, I'm saying that. Right. He said the difference between courage and being scared is. Being scared is peeing your pants. Courage is doing what you need to do with wet pants.

Exact. That's great.

And so the point is, as it relates to confidence, in the beginning, it's courage.

I know. Literally, that's the evolution.

Yeah. Nothing feels good in the middle. So when you're right in the middle of something where you're not quite there yet, you don't know if you have the confidence. I mean, the first time me and you ever did a public presentation or shot a video.

I know.

I mean, you take people that have never recorded A video before they're worried about what their voice is going to sound like, what are they going to look like? Do I still have all of these hairs? Yes, of course. But I've done it enough times to where it's, you know, no one's going to kill me if I rub my eye or whatever. I mean, so the point is, you're going to go through a stage in order to gain confidence. In most cases, if you're really working on something that's important and valuable, that is going to require you to do something that's uncomfortable. But if you keep doing it, if you develop a skill and then you're able to actually replicate that and you actually know your stuff, then it gets to a point of confidence. And when you get to a point of confidence in your career, many things happen. One, people start trusting you more. Secondly, you make more money. Third, you're able to predictably produce a result. Fourth, you feel better. You know, the reason confidence is so damn important is if you walk around the world never feeling confident about something. You know, it just. Your body can handle stress to a certain degree. Like if you go, both of us today, we were hiking at 5:45am is when I started.

It's so funny. I mean, don't forget that thought. But this morning I got up at 5, started hiking Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale at 5:45, and there's two ways up to the top of the mountain. This is no joke. We had this interview planned for today, but at 5:45, at 6:00', clock, the sun was starting to peak up. I come up one side of the mountain and I look up the other and Joe's walking up the other side. And we met.

You had two friends with you? I had two of my friends. And so I was like, you know, this is bizarre. But see, the thing is, one of the guys I was with, named Craig, is a real successful restaurant owner here. He has like 17 restaurants. He's actually hiked that mountain over the last 23 years, 3,800 times, right?

So he knows every rock, where to.

Step, how he's confident on that mountain, on that mountain, I've not done. There's a lot of stuff, so it depends on there did I have the confidence. But the point is, it's like anything else. The fact is we run into each other in the mountain because we're doing something that is extraordinarily uncomfortable. Getting up really early, going to bed early, getting on that. I mean, that's a tough climb. It's a really tough. I mean, it's hard. And the fact is that we're doing it though, and we're there because why do we do these things? Why do we push ourselves? And so if you're an achievement minded individual, you're already doing the stuff. I mean, there are so many other things that you could be doing right now other than watching a personal development video. But the thing is, you're doing that because you want to acquire a mindset, you want to acquire capability. So part of confidence starts with a mindset. Just, you know, what is the mindset of where you want to go? And then it's just what you do with your time, what you develop as a skill.

You know, it's funny, I will digress here because just something you said sparked it. But so many people ask me, hey, how'd you get so good on camera? Because I've been doing it, you know, especially I do a weekly wisdom. I've been doing that for eight years. But I go on tv, I'm on video a lot, right? So I mean, but when people ask me how to start is, I always go back to is, what the hell do you want? Right? So I know I'm gonna go back a little deep here, but I wanna take a moment here. I'll land back on confidence. But people say to me, man, I wanna do this, but I can't. I'll say, well, what do you want? And most people know what they don't want. And you should analyze this. Ask 10 people in your life. I always say this. You ask 10 people what they don't want. I don't want my wife or my husband to bitch at me anymore. I don't want this job. I don't want stress anymore. I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want. So then you go, well, what do you want? They go, that's a good question. I mean, literally 8 out of 10 will say, good question, or they'll think and not have that idea. So we're all running on the hamster wheel trying to run away from what we don't want. And all we're doing is attracting it, but we really don't know where we want to go. So for me, confidence begins with a vision and clarity. Where the hell do you want to go when someone says, I have so many emails in my inbox, or I'm distracted, or I don't know how to prioritize? It's like, no, you don't know what you want. Because when you have A clear vision. I can look and say, yeah, I'll meet Joe, but I'm not meeting this guy because it doesn't fit in my life journey of where I want to go and who I want to be a hero to. Right. So when you have a vision, it cuts out a lot of the crap. So once you know where you want to go, then what I tell people is, live less in your head and more in your heart. When I look back at what allowed me to get good on camera is when I let go of I used to think, and I'm using camera and video as an example. This could be anything. This could be walking into your boss. This could be starting a new relationship. This could be fixing a current relationship, wanting a promotion, wanting to start your own business. What we do is, I see so many people even go on stage the first time, and they'll rehearse everything perfect. They live in their head. They want to memorize the next slide and build a perfect PowerPoint. And you see that person live in their head and there's zero connection. But then you'll see somebody like both of us can do. And we have in the past, when I realized to let go of my head and just come from my heart, I know this video. I know with Joe and I talking today, there's going to be at least one thing that can make a massive shift in your life. I'm not thinking about what my hair looks, what my hands do, if I drop my water, if my phone's sitting here. What I'm thinking about is you on the other end getting something from us two that can. You can go, that you can take and just go. That little shift can make an impact that's coming from my heart. So it's easy for me to talk and have a. Now, I've been doing this forever. I get that. But when I look back, if I knew if rewinding, if you know where you want to go and you're clear on that, it all starts with passion and understanding. When you can be passionate about something, the courage goes to another level. And courage is the first step into confidence. Right. I mean, Dan Sullivan's got the best evolution of all the four Cs, right? Starts with courage and then commit to the change, get the capabilities, and then confidence comes, and that's really that evolution.

Exactly. And so there's a lot there and a lot of people, they are looking to others to tell them what path they should take. And now there's a lot to be gained by hearing perspectives of other People because it helps take jumbled thoughts or unclear things and it almost acts like windshield wipers to a degree. But there comes a point in time where you got to realize that you can listen to other people's value systems and try to model them or make them your own. But what you really need to do, almost like treat this like a 12 step group. I look at every form of what someone says, any form of book, any learning, and I take what I like and leave the rest. And I build and create my own value system because real true confidence and real lasting happiness. And I learned this from my friend Dave Kekich, who's been paralyzed from the chest down. It doesn't come from, you know, trying to consume other people's values, but creating your own values and applying them to your own life. And, you know, look, anyone that has ever had any success has gone through, in many cases, a, they have sifted through a lot of crap in order to get to the diamonds. And one of the challenges that we have in modern life, there are so many options. I mean, there are so many options to do so many great things. And like our friend Richard Rossi says, if you have a thousand options, you don't believe you have any options because it seems overwhelming. And one of the greatest threats to throwing us off track right now are there are so many data inputs, there are so many things vying for our attention that if you do not manage modern life, it will manage you. And part of it is just simply making the choice that this is what I feel. This is important to me and really focusing on your gut. I discounted my gut feelings for a long time and I would be in my head, like you mentioned, trying to think through and analyze and what's the best thing. For instance, I had a friend come over and I do pretty well in business now. So I have developed walkaway power. I don't have to do anything in business unless it really resonates with me and I feel aligned with it. But it took years in order for me to get there and I went through a shit ton of pain. And I spent a lot of my life in addictive behaviors and stuff because I was so not content with figuring out where I wanted to go and how I was going to get there and what was important to me. And I've gotten to a stage in my life and I do certain rituals, like I exercise, I do my best to get proper sleep. Sleep is so damn important. I eat clean foods, you know, hiking today, I meditate twice a day. I mean, there Are certain rituals that actually, you know, we can talk about how to think about this stuff, but you don't feel, think yourself into confidence. You actually act yourself into a certain way. You know, you can't hire someone to do your push ups for you, as Jim Rohn would say. And there are certain things that you just, if you want to be confident, you have to do activities that create and instill confidence. You don't just say, I'm confident. I'm going to just, you know, eat crappy food, not sleep, hang around toxic, negative people, be in very stressful environments and look in the mirror and do affirmations and I will be confident. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Yeah, so you have to develop these sort of rituals and stuff. But anyway, I can go on and on, but I want to make sure I stay within your questions and I'll come back to some of the points that I want to make throughout this. I mean, part of if you just sit and think about what are three things that you can do this week? Three things. Just give yourself three things that would actually give you the ability to not only feel but to actually develop and acquire confidence. What are those? Because there's a thousand options out there. There are so many different things you can do. And the problem is people want to try to do everything. And more and more when people say to me, yes, you can have it all, I'm like, well, no you can't. You know, if I want to eat a donut and I want to eat pizza, but then I want to be really lean, you know, I can't do that. And first off, why would you want it all anyway? I mean, do you really need everything in order? Like people that say you can have it all are trying to gorge themselves on opportunity. And so see, my biggest challenge is not do I, where's going to be the next opportunity for me. It's like I am drowning in opportunities. There's opportunity poisoning. What I have to do is protect myself from all that. And part of it is just simply going with your gut. I mean, like, I don't know any real strategic way to say this, but does it feel right or does it not? And really look at any time in your life, if you can look at a relationship, a person, a project, and did it resonate with you and you went against that, I can almost guarantee you in most cases.

And you know, it's so funny, I just was on stage when we were in Toronto and I was talking. No, anyway, I've been talking about gut Feelings. Yeah, it's funny. So there's two things I want to talk about. So you sparked that. I know. You know, I think your gut is, we take in all this knowledge, especially if you're watching right now, you're an absorber of knowledge. You want to get the fast track to that next level of life, or else you wouldn't be still sitting here with us right now. Right. But I think gut, like, at this phase of my life, in my mid-40s, I realized the knowledge, like a hard drive, you know, your subconscious taken in all this knowledge, and it's churned into wisdom. And your gut is the wisdom. It's the. To me, it's the instantaneous wisdom. When you say, ah, you meet someone, you go, man, I don't really want to do business with this guy. It just seems off. And you do, and it goes. But your wisdom told you, your knowledge said, on paper, he looks good, he makes money, it could help. Or vice versa. But your wisdom, your knowledge, your gut told you no. Right. And when I look back at this phase is trusting your gut is so important because your gut can guide you onto the things that feel good and the things that don't. Just what you're saying. And the part that I want to. You made me think about that. And I just. I encourage all of you to trust your gut, your subconscious. I don't know the percentage is significantly more powerful than your conscious mind. It's taken in data for years. It knows how someone acts that's not good and someone that's good. It knows a bad feeling compared to a good feeling. That's why you get those emotions. Right. But the second part, and I talk about this a lot, is one of the things that could have crippled me when I look back. And then I'm gonna get into Ned Hallowell a little bit. But one of the things that could have crippled me was I wasn't that smart in school. I was in special reading. And it doesn't mean you had to have a tough at school, you know, going through school as I did. But the reason I'm sharing that is I was always taught to work on my weaknesses. So I remember going through all of middle school, Mrs. Thompson telling me I was stupid, and I just said, I'm stupid. I can't read. But no one ever said, man, this guy's a great visual learner. I could watch somebody drive a bulldozer, and I could jump on it and drive it. When I'm older, I could watch somebody up on stage, and I Could go get on stage, I could watch somebody on video. I didn't read books because I have dyslexia for years. You know how I read books for years? He read them and then he would just give me the download and I'd know. But about seven years ago, six years ago, I started listening to books. And in the last two years, I listened to a book. Almost a week now, right? But I can listen to a book and remember every word. But what happened was in high school, especially when I still couldn't read great, I felt so insecure because I thought I had to work on my weaknesses. And thank God I found a way to say, screw my weaknesses. I'm just gonna get great at what I'm already good at. And how many people don't get that lesson they're bad at? I mean, no teacher I look at, even schooling, and this can go back, but we're taught to be alone, not talk, get our work done, and be good in everything. Is that the way the world is? If I'm good at one thing and Joe's good at the other, we just share and he does one part, I do the other. I don't have to be good at math if he's good at math. I just copy off of Joe and you copy off of me. Right? So I think so many of us feel we have to fix and get better at what we suck at or what's hard for us or gives us that shit gut feeling, like, I shouldn't be doing this. If you feel that way, you shouldn't be. If you're bad at it, stay bad at it, get great at what you're good at and pay someone to do the things wrong. And the reason I'm sharing this, and I've shared this before on stage, and maybe you've seen me share this, but it all came together. I literally just found a way to just say, no, I'm gonna ignore the things I'm not good at, and I'm gonna get great at what I'm already good at or what's comfortable for me. Talking on camera, sharing, wanting to change people's lives. So then I meet Ned Hallowell. Because of you, he's the world's number one ADD doctor. At least that's what Oprah calls him, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

He's Harvard trained, Harvard professor. Incredible dude. I met him because of Joe. I meet everybody because of Joe. So I meet Ned, and we're having this conversation. And you know, most of us crazy entrepreneurs, you feel like you have ADD Right. I remember in school I couldn't sit and read a book. I'd always be tapping my foot. So I said, ned, how do you help so many kids and people cure add? And I don't know if he told, but he told. This is what he said to me. He said, first of all, if you have add, it's like having a Ferrari with Pinto brakes. Like, you have bad brakes on a Ferrari, so you can go fast, you just can't stop. So he goes, I gotta teach.

Or like a Ferrari engine in a Pinto.

Yeah, yeah. Like you can go fast, you just don't know how to stop. But what he said is, take Johnny. He's in class and he can't read his book, and he's tapping his foot, and the teacher comes over and says, you can't get up until you read that book. Now all of a sudden he gets up, he's hyper, he's got adhd, Give him more medication. He said, what I've realized is what that did. And I want you to think about what I'm sharing here. Ned said to me, before any conversation I shared with my philosophies or he knew my past, he said, what happens when you pound on Johnny for reading or doing something he can't do? You're stripping his confidence. He gets so insecure. ADD goes through the roof and he gets hyper. He goes, how I do it with less medication or get kids off medication is I find out what Johnny's good at, and I get with his teachers, and we get with the parents, and we help Johnny get great at what he's good at. If he's good at math, let's show him how great he is at math and let's ignore English for a little bit, or reading. If he's good at sports, we help him get better at sports. And he said, all I know is the. And he said these words. The confidence he gets for being great at something trickles down. Fast forward six months and Johnny's reading the book, and it was like I had goosebumps. I mean, I have goosebumps right now when he shared that with me, because that was my life. And. And the only reason I like to share that all the time is how many kids grow into adults that never were lucky enough, where I don't even know when that shift was for me, where I said, the hell with it, I'm not good at reading. I'm not good at these certain things. I'm not good at looking at Excel spreadsheets. If I get an email that's more than one fold. I don't read it. I haven't read an email longer than one fold in five years. That's just not me. But I realized I can change so many people's lives and help over here that it flows over into that. And the only reason, again, I like to share it, is because there's people watching right now that have one part of them that they feel they suck at. And that could be the anchor stopping you from that peak confidence. You need to take your life to the next level to start that new relationship, to begin anew, start that new company, or tell your boss to go screw themselves and start fresh. I don't know what it is, but if that anchor is there, I just wanted to bring it up. Have you ever felt that in your life?

I mean, all the time, as a matter of fact. Like, if you were to take the whole world of ADD ADHD now, a lot of it is very legit. Ned's a real dear friend of mine. A lot of the reactions that are considered negative traits are actually responses to pain. And where a lot of the pain comes from is people trying to fit into places and behaviors that just aren't match for them. Meaning there's no such thing as bad work in the world. There's this bad work for certain people you can look at. You know, I've worked with a lot of cleaners, and some people be like, oh, I never want to be a janitor. I mean, I know a lot of janitors that are happy as hell. They do really good work, and it really lights them up, and they're awesome at running that sort of business. So a lot of people, they look at the world from their perspectives, and they will have assumptions about how the world actually works. And the fact is, you see the world the way you are, not the way the world is. The world is the world. And there's a lot of influences that we have that we take seriously that we shouldn't take, including, you know, when you feel a certain way. You know, the term feelings are not facts. I mean, if you feel like you're a piece of crap or you feel like you're a loser or you feel like you're not skilled, I mean, is that really true or is that particularly true in a certain area? I mean, you put me on a basketball court, I'm not going to be very good. Okay? I'm not a great skier. I mean, I don't have expansive world knowledge. I have a limited amount of knowledge in a particular area. I Always have this joke.

No, you have a lot of knowledge in a little area.

Yeah, that's.

You have a lot of knowledge in a small area.

I would say, you know, fish, little pun. When God was doling out brains, 98% of my brains went on how to develop a marketing campaign, the other 2% on how to run the rest of my life. It's something my friend Gary Halbert taught me. But it's, you know, you can look at it that way. But going back to if you spend your life trying to strengthen your weaknesses, at the end of your life, you're going to have a lot of really strong weaknesses. And that's something I learned from Dan Sullivan about the whole. What is your unique ability? What is the actual skill that you operate from? And I'll tell you, if you are spending a lot of time trying to fix or get better at stuff that frustrate you, that you suck at, not only are you probably not going to ever get really competent at it, you're probably barely going to get by, but you're going to be in a continual state of stress and frustration. And that will lead to disease, it will lead to addiction. I mean, I used to be a very bad drug addict. When I was 18 years old, in my worst state, I weighed 105 pounds from free basing cocaine. I used to take LSD. I used to snort crystal meth. I used to smoke pot every day. I mean, I was doing drugs and I felt like a bad person for doing that. I felt like a loser. I felt like, why do I have to do that? In the beginning I was like, oh, let me just get high and let me increase the dopamine levels. Because a lot of addiction is simply biochemical. And what I learned, though, is it became a coping mechanism. But it wasn't because I was a bad person. I used to think I was, and I would question it. And certainly society's view of the way they treat addicts or these are bad people and they give them a moral diagnosis. But as my friend Gabor Mate says, who's a brilliant doctor that works with addiction and ADD and all kinds, the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? And the reason people have a lot of these behaviors, a lot of these addictions, is because they're in a continual state of pain. And if you build confidence, you will actually get out of that pain, you will get out of the environments. Because the world doesn't just have all these opportunities where you can get sucked into things that cause you to question yourself. I mean, look, we're marketers, and the world of marketing puts out all kinds of messages constantly about how you're inadequate. You're not sexy enough, you're not rich enough, you're not connected enough, you don't have the right makeup, you're not wearing the right clothes, you're not drinking, the right.

You're not the phone, all of it.

It's like how inadequate we are because they want to sell people on. This is what you need. And a lot of these things are actually valuable. They will add to people's. But a lot of it is not very good at all. The question is, who's controlling your life? The fundamental shift in mindset that I had to make, and I quote Dan Sullivan a lot because for one, so have I. I do a podcast with him. I've been in his program for many years, and he's one of my dearest friends. There's two decisions that you are 100% responsible for where you're at in your life. Even if you're a victim, you don't get any power out of that. Maybe as a child, maybe at a point where someone else controlled you, you really were victimized. I mean, certainly I can tell you stories that would make most people cringe. However, if I lived my adult life as I'm a victim, and, you know, then even if it's true, and it is, there's a lot of people that are watching it that have been raped, they have been molested, they have been abandoned, they have been hurt, they have, you know, they were born with, you know, a disease, they had a child that died, they had a parent that died. I mean, there's, you know, bad things happen. And certainly there are countries where people are going through things right now that I can't even fathom. Starvation, all kinds of stuff. So there's a lot of things that are bad that are happening in the world now. If you have any opportunity where you can, you're not in prison, you're not controlled, you're not dominated. Where you can make decisions in your life, you got to, first off, I'm 100% responsible for my life. Secondly, I'm not entitled to anything because the moment you believe you're entitled to something, then you're waiting for the world to give you something. And I swear that, like, literally causes you to be weak. And I don't mean weak like strength weak. I mean, just mentally, you're going to wait for someone to come along and discover you versus, you know, there's. I always See, you know, these musicians or these artists in the starving artist mentality, where, you know, waiting to be discovered. You know, the fact of the matter is, some people do get discovered and they're lucky. But I wouldn't bank on that. If you want to get discovered, you go and make yourself get discovered. You develop this.

And if you have that victim mentality, just gonna live with that. It's time to decide to not have it.

Right.

I mean, I know that sounds simple and it's deeper. And by the way, thank you for sharing your personal stuff. Cause it makes an impact. I mean, look where you came from. And the success, you know, of course, we could measure success by millions, and you've generated lots of that in your life. But when I look at you, the success of where you came from as a person, it all blends together, you know, And I'm proud of watching. I mean, even the evolution I've watched you make in the last 10 years has been miraculous. But it's because Joe never stopped. And he doesn't have the victim mentality. Our past is. I love what Dan Sullivan said about our past. He said, treat your past like you're in a burning house and you can only fit your past in a small suitcase. Let the rest fricking burn. You know, he said that one time, or a version of that, and I've been using it, is Joe has to take the fuel from his past, the research and development, the things that can take him to another level. And he's got to let the rest burn. I mean, Joe lost his mom when he was really young. He had a dad that couldn't handle it and was barely there. I mean, it just goes on and on. I mean, we both have similar childhood stories, but we could carry that. And even if you. I mean, guys, the way I look at it is even with confidence, if we boil it back down to confidence, even if you can get to 90% confidence, it's not enough. I look at it and I shared that. If you saw my winning state of mind course is I look at confidence, it's the last 10%. Like a lot of people can get to. 90% doesn't do it. So throw the 90 out and make the last 10%. If the top is your peak, that's what you have to have. And if you carry your past, if you carry that somebody should help you, that you were a victim, if you have any bit of entitlement, that I deserve this, if you have a weakness, that you think, well, once I get better at this or Once my spouse does this or once I get support for my family, then you live at the bottom. You live at 90, 92% confidence, and you're going to stand on the sidelines. So the reason I've done these interviews, the reason I've. Joe, thank you so much for coming. And we still got more time here, is because if you don't find that way to let go of that past and start working on what you're good at, you'll live the same day over and over again for the next 20, 30, 40 years. And every day you'll say, when you said it right, every day you're like, when the world does this, that's when I'm gonna go. And that world could be your husband, your wife, your family, your kids, your income, your boss, your co workers, your employees, your employers. You know, I meet so many people that have that one thing. Screw that one thing. You have to go out not being the artist, as Joe said, waiting to be discovered. Go make yourself be discovered.

Yeah, I mean, when you did your first infomercial, you went and made yourself discovered. You went into a field that you knew nothing about. You filmed an infomercial on your front lawn with a God knows what sort of camera you had back then. You had to figure out how to go and buy the media. You know, how to get it out there. And then of course, you have tons of people that will attack you. And most critics are literally, they, you know, they just attack people that are willing to do the things that they're afraid to do, that they're afraid to do. Now, I'm talking about destructive criticism. I'm talking about someone really saying, hey, let me give you some tips and some suggestions coming from a caring place. But they just want to tear people down. It's self hatred turned outward. And a lot of the self hatred when they attack other people is they're taking all of this effort and energy that if they directed that into their own lives and realized that, you know, what this other person doing is probably not oppressing you, it's probably not hurting you. Should you really even put that attention into it? So it's. Where do you actually place your attention? Because I'll tell you, the biggest fuel that you have to build confidence, to build a business, to build better relationships is all of the painful shit that has happened to you in your life. It's like fertilizer. It's like, where do you put it? Do you just crap all over yourself with it and immerse yourself in your horrible life? And how terrible it was and you get mired in your painful past. Or do you transform pain into productivity? Do you transform it into lessons? Do you utilize it to help you? I mean, I wrote something here so I wouldn't forget it. It's something that Dan said is irritated oysters make pearls. And if you get really pissed off about something and look, there's something that irks the shit out of you. If you're one of these people that never want to show emotions or you always want to come across as pos, a lot of those people, you know what happens? They get cancer, they develop addictions. They do all of these things to avoid these emotional feelings that are eating them alive. The point is, if you actually really see the reason people run around a lot and get distracted a lot is they don't want. It just hurts to sit still. And really, if someone's watching this saying, well, you know, Dean and Joe, you don't realize, I don't know what my gut feeling is. I am not, I'm not getting those signals. They're probably not getting those signals because they have masked it and confused activity with accomplishment that they can't even allow themselves to feel what it is they want anymore. I have this tool called a fun list where I go to some really financially successful entrepreneurs because I run a really awesome high level group that you're part of that group. And we see a lot of these entrepreneurs, they have forgotten what fun is. And I have a thing called a fun list where you make a list of what is everything that you do that is fun, literally is fun. Is it going to movies? At comedy clubs? Is it. Is it doing yoga? Is it water skiing? Is it playing badminton? I mean, is it listening to music that most of your friends would make fun of you if you were listening to this music? What is it that you actually consider fun? Is it playing with your kids? Is it video games? Is it swimming? What is it that you consider fun? What are all things I like to do for fun? How often have you done this? In the last week, the last month, the last six months, the last year. Who are people that you have fun with? And some people will sit there and they just start writing it out because it gets them in touch with, this is fun. And some people sit there and they're like, as an adult, I forgot what it's like to have fun, you know? And they literally can't get in touch with it. But what it does is it allows people to see that. Man, I've been so focused on Trying to act this role, do what my parents wanted me to do, live a certain way, live up to what my boss, you know, what society, what they perceive. I mean, the reality is, if you want to know who's controlling your life, look in the mirror. Some people wake up every morning and they're like, good morning, let the stress begin. And when you're looking in the mirror, you're looking at the problem, but when you're looking in the mirror, you're also looking at the solution. So the question is, which direction are you going to go? Are you going to go the left road, which is bad or negative, or the right road? Are you going to go with your higher self? What does your higher self self need? What are the activities? What is the rest? I remember interviewing this lady named Terri Launier. Years ago, probably 20 years ago, she wrote a book called Working Solo. A couple decades ago, we're doing one of my first interview series because, you know, a good tip is if you actually want to learn from other people, interview them and just ask them questions and let them talk about themselves because they'll do that shit all day long. And so she had this analogy where we were talking about the solo entrepreneur because a lot of people watching this, they probably don't have any employees or they maybe haven't even started a business yet, but they're motivated, there's some opportunity there. And I'll tell you, that's a form of irritation. If you were happy and content and your life was working extraordinarily well, you wouldn't be reading any books, you wouldn't be watching me and Dean. You would just be hanging out in your glorious life, having a great time, right? So, you know, I'm the same way. I mean, there's many areas of my life that irritate me. So I try to say, okay, how do I, how do I fuel that and make it better? So we're talking about solo entrepreneurs.

Is it Gloria?

Terry? Yep. Terry. And it was the greatest analogy. It was like if you had a racehorse that ran races and the goal of the racehorse was to win races, and it was a million dollar racehorse, a world class racehorse, how would you actually treat that horse? Would you shove fast food down its throat? No. Would you over train it so it was constantly tied, Would you not let it get enough sleep? Would you not give it the best nutritious food? Would you not groom it and take care of it and make sure the environment that this horse was in was awesome? Would you allow it to run on racetracks with Nails and glass and barbed wire. Would you let it hang out with all kinds of sick horses?

Yeah, horses that were slow, they could beat, no problem.

Exactly how would you treat that million dollar racehorse? You would fricking take care of it. Because if that racehorse is taken care of, that horse wins million dollar races. And if it's not, the horse doesn't. Not only doesn't win, but it hates life. And it probably dies in early death. And you sit and think, how do people treat themselves? Everyone's heard the cliches. They spend more time planning their vacations than they plan their life. They spend more time taking care of their car than they do taking care of their marriage or their business or their children or whatever. And you got to get to the point where you're like, I'm number one, I'm the asset here. That's why confidence is so the fuel that is going to allow you to win the races. Confidence is the fuel that gives you an incredible mindset. Confidence gives you the ability to say no to an asshole or to a bad relationship or to something. It's not just about confidence because you want to make more money. If you think it's confidence about how to make more money, you totally don't get it yet. And so the point is, confidence is about everything. It is about how you do your life. It is about what you're choosing to pay attention to. You know, a really confident person that says, you know what? I'm going to go impact that. One of the things that I'm working on right now is helping build a platform to help people with addiction to destigmatize how I think addiction and the way we treat addicts is the modern form of human slavery. Now, in order for me to go into that world, I will get attacked. I will have people that come from the punitive world that are like, no, these are horrible individuals. They need to be imprisoned. And some addicts do horrible things. So I'm not going to go into like, everyone should be off the hook. I'm just talking about understanding where the core is. So in order to go into that, I really need to be confident in that particular area. I need to know my shit. I need to not be saying things that aren't accurate. I have to really be able to think through and I have to know who to spend my time with and how I need to fit it in. And so just like an addict will recover from an addictive behavior, it's not about what they learn, it's about what they unlearn and so in the process of building confidence, it's not only doing certain activities and learning things which they'll learn so much from listening to these, you know, all the people that you've interviewed and just hearing perspectives of other individuals and taking that in. It's really along the way of hearing all of this. You get to a point where you're like, what do I have to unlearn? What do I believe to be true that isn't serving me at all. You see, unlearning is far more important than learning.

Absolutely. Or shifting out a habit that doesn't serve you and replacing it with a new one. Right. You said something that made me think of. I think I got this word from outwitting the devil.

Yeah. Sharon Lechter. We're doing the Napoleon Hill one.

Napoleon Hill one. I just read that probably about two months ago. I totally enjoyed it.

She lives right down the street from us.

Yeah. And she quoted Napoleon Hill with hypnotic rhythm. Right. And it was a cool word. And I've kind of thought where it fits. And it fits in that case. Right. We have patterns sometimes as a hypnotic rhythm because we've been doing it so long that when something, circumstance happens, you have a hypnotic rhythm with a habit or a belief that instantly destroys your confidence. Right. And you don't even know. And you've been doing it for so long that you don't realize the phrase, the thought, the word has become. It's a physical feeling that you get. And since that book, I literally been looking for more habits that disempowered me. Habits or beliefs that rob my confidence. And I'd encourage each and every one of you listening right now. If you're listening to this or even watching, because we did this on video, look out for those this week. What are the words you use? What are the thoughts you have or the physical actions you take that rob your confidence? You know, I have to share. I was going on stage, and this is kind of digressing, but I just thought about it. So I was on stage. Joe introduces me to Tony. I listened to Tony 12 years ago. Tony Robbins had a massive impact on my life. And I just thought, someday I want to meet him. So we flew to California one day. We land, and Tony's on the COVID of Cigar Aficionado.

I think. Right.

I don't think the guy ever spoke to me.

I don't think he's ever said. It's like, let's put Tony on the COVID Yeah.

So Tony's on the COVID of Cigar Aficionado. The big cigar looked like a cigarette in his hands.

Yeah, yeah. Cause he's got like. Yeah.

So anyway, so I said to Joe, I said, you know, I want to meet him. Joe picked up the phone, we did a video. So two weeks later, I'm having lunch with Tony. We become great friends. Him and I talk twice a week, and Tony invites me to go speak on stage with him in China and Japan. So I'm getting ready to go on stage, and now I'm waiting. I'm in Shanghai, China, and there's 18,000 people, right, in a room that don't speak English. They all have headsets on, and there's a translator in the back. And an hour before I go on stage, and this is kind of a hack, so kind of a confidence hack. I'm getting ready to go on, and all of a sudden I just get sick to my stomach. I get butterflies like I had never gone on stage, but I never had an audience that big with people who didn't speak English. And here in the States, I get the benefit. I've been on TV for 15 years, right? If people didn't get involved in any of my courses, they've seen me. And I was on the mountain this morning, 15 people. I'm coming down. Dean, love your stuff. Dean, love your stuff. In China, no one knows anything about me, and I gotta follow Tony Robbins. If you ever watch Tony, the whole audience is jumping, massaging each other, screaming. And now the real estate guy or the development guy is going to come out. The success guy is going to come out, right? So I'm a nervous wreck. And I called Joe from China, and I said, joe, I'm ready to throw up. I don't know how I felt this way. And Joe just brought me back immediately with the stuff we're sharing today. He said two things. Have you ever done anything like this and failed? And did you die? Did everything go wrong? So the worst case scenario is it doesn't go right. Will you die? Will Tony stop talking to you? Will I hate you? Will they mob the stage and beat you up? And all of a sudden, in. In a second, it took away so much of the stress. And then the second thing Joe said, he said, I don't know if you remember this. He said to me, is there anybody better on the planet that could talk to them about what you know, what? You know, it might be that big fish, little pond. It might be in a small area of life, but it's about success. It's about overcoming obstacles, and it's about finding a path to a better life. Is there anybody more qualified to help them than you? And I said no. And between. No, between those two things of saying, if I totally screw up, no one dies, My kids are still okay. The audience isn't gonna beat me up. And the second part is no. I have a message that I know can help this audience. And when I got out of my head and I just went to my heart and said, no, I'm not going on stage for any other reason except to serve and come from my heart, I lost the fear and I went out and rocked the world, you know, rocked the house. Now, I'm talking about something extreme going on stage. But what about in your life? What stage do you need to go out on that you've been thinking about for years and you're thinking about the failure, really think of the worst case scenario in most cases. It's funny, you can make it comical. You're like, I'm stressing about talking to this girl at work that I've been looking at. What's the worst thing to do if I go talk to her or if I fix my relationship or if I'm honest with my spouse and tell her the things I've been dealing with, or honest that I want to quit this job or I want. It's like when you think of the downside, it's not that bad. And then when you think of the opposite side of, what if you don't let that out? What if you don't give yourself to this person or give yourself to this business or. Or invent that product you've been thinking about for years? What if you don't give that to the world? You're the person that should. So when I combine those, that's my confidence hack, and I use it all the time. I go to go on stage right before I go on stage, I'm like, what's the worst thing that can happen? And I want to help these people and serve them. And I find this hack enough confidence to go out there and do it. Right.

Yeah. I'm writing down things that you're saying that just remind me of it. Well, for one, it was true. Okay? So everything. And I very much remember that conversation. And part of it is a tool in a model that we can describe here is you actually reach out to somebody. See, Ned Hallowell talks about the three step worry plan. It doesn't have to be in any particular order, but the first thing is never worry alone, get the facts and have a plan. So Say for instance, that you have cancer. Okay. Or you think you're sick. Some people don't want to go to the doctor because they don't want to find out. Well, the problem with that is, for one, if they're trying to do it in isolation, they're going to feel horrible. And if they don't get the facts, they don't know what's up and then they can't make a plan. So a lot of people don't have that. Now, I'm of the belief that much body pain and disease and stuff is a manifestation of toxic, negative, repressed and suppressed emotions and thoughts that show up as these diseases. And there's plenty of people that would be. Will drug you and will cut you open and all kinds of things like that. So without. And again, I'm not giving medical advice here. I'm just speaking like stress will eat at the human body. Confidence is one of the greatest healings. Yeah. It truly is. Not only physically, but mentally, emotionally and just what you can do in the world. So you actually just reached out to someone and I just simply helped you remind you of what you already knew. And to redirect that because there is that. If you have these scary voices, I'll tell you that's like life's way of saying, you know what, you're about to play a big game. Let me give you this opportunity here. Are you going to shy away from it or are you going to figure out what it is you need to do? And I'm not talking about if you truly are not prepared. Just get yourself prepared. Okay. You know, but if you're at the point where you really, it's scary, but you know, what's the worst that's going to happen? There's so much to be said about the cliches of, you know, 90% of the things we worry about never happen to us. Absolutely. I mean that's, I mean, how often does that actually happen? And then there's the Wayne Gretzky quote, which is, you know, you miss 100% of the show shots you don't take. So what are the shots that are out there that if you took them? If you think of it this way, we have a friend, the late Nathaniel Brandon, who was literally the father of self esteem. And I interviewed Nathaniel a couple of times. He spoke at my conferences before he passed away. And he had these sentence stems where he would say, in this case, you know, how would my life be if I was 5% more confident as a parent? And you would list six things that what would happen if you were just 5% more confident as a parent, if you were 5% more confident in your relationship, if you were 5% more Confident with your parenting, if you're 5% more confident in your spiritual program, whatever it is, if you're 5% more confident in playing chess, I mean, pick a category, not like if I was the world's greatest, but just 5% more what would happen. And if you list out these things and try it, if you're watching this, literally pick one thing and just try it and you'll see, wow, you know, 5% confidence in this area would actually produce this. And if you start producing that, guess what's going to happen?

It's exponential.

It's going to keep going, you know, because that's what it does. And so once you start, you know, it's like energy goes where the focus goes. You know, Tony Robbins talks about this all the time. You know, wherever what you're focusing on, you give it energy. If you focus on I'm a loser, guess what, you've got this loser energy. If you focus on I'm going to get better in this particular area. So the 5% of people in the world that the whole world admires, watches, pays, talks about, gossips about, shares, videos, pictures, quotes, and everything on social media, you know, all the world people that the world admires, the 5% of people that are at the top are usually the ones that are willing to do the things that the 95% are not willing to do. And in most industries, 5% control it. The other 95% scrape around from the crumbs. And so one of the things I also wrote down, Joe Volunteer. If I'm ever in a shitty position in my life, if I feel really crappy and I'm complaining or whining, I look at my friends like Dave Kakaj, she was paralyzed in a wheelchair. How would Dave Kekich handle it? I sit and get my perspective in check. My buddy Sean Stevenson, who, we're both friends, you know, three foot tall, has never walked in his life, had over 200 breaks in his body. But this guy, in spite of the deck of cards he has been given, which I couldn't even imagine living like that, he is optimistic, he helps people, he works out every day. I mean, he has limitations that I could not even comprehend. Now I could speak at it about it from an observational standpoint, but I sit and think, what would he do? But what I do know is if ever I'm in a crappy Mood. And there are plenty of days that I am. It's like, the thing that immediately helps me is help another person. So this guy named Chip Franks has a child with down syndrome, and they would do these hug stations at nursing homes, and it would immediately make his son feel awesome. It would make the older people at a nursing home feel. Yeah, feel loved. And I was talking about there needs to be process to link people that want to volunteer with organizations and places that need it, from nursing homes to animal shelters to disaster relief, to recovery clinics, to burn units. And he literally created this nonprofit called Joe Volunteer. And right now, he's in the process of helping link people to it. Now, granted, that's a plug for Joe Volunteer, because I want people to check it out because I think it's really cool. But the point behind it is the people that he's engaging, they feel depressed. They feel like they can't do it. All of a sudden, they go and be of service to someone.

It's impossible to be depressed. When you help somebody who's less fortunate than you. They don't go together because immediate gratitude for your own life, no matter where you are.

Exactly. And it takes. Yeah, it takes you out of that mode of, oh, my God, my life sucks. I don't know what I'm doing. You know, go to someone who's in real pain and just in their presence. Just even if you're just there next to them, you know, and get that loneliness out of there. I mean, it lifts you up. I mean, you want an immediate, immediate, like, gratitude and confidence builder. Just figure out how to be helpful to someone in an area where you really care. I'm not talking about sacri. If you can barely pay your bills, if you're totally stretched, I mean, you might need someone to help volunteer with you. But the point is, if you can be of service, it doesn't take anything away from you. It actually gives you energy. And it's so counterintuitive. Most people would never imagine, you know, I'm really depressed. I need to find a therapist. I want to slice my ribs. You know, go sit down with someone who wants to slice their wrists or has sliced their wrists and is sitting in a hospital really fucked up. And you know what will happen? You will all of a sudden realize, wow, I am powerful. I am capable. Because it's sharing these human connections. It's all about connection. And so confidence is connecting you with your skills. You know, just like addiction is the opposite of addiction is connection. The reason people become bad addicts is they're disconnected from and they go back.

In the corner, and the more that they feel the pain, the more they disconnect.

Yep, exactly. So if you want to increase your confidence, what can you connect with? So let's say if you're a client of Dean's and you are learning how to be an investor in real estate, well, he's connecting you with skills and capabilities and other people that have done it. And by doing that, through that connection, what I call a genius network, what you're doing is you're literally selling yourself on this is a possibility not, oh, it worked for Dean. Oh, it might have worked for these other people, but will it work for me? That's what everyone thinks. They're like, well, you know, yeah, it works for Tony Robbins. It works for these people. But, well, you know what? You're one of those people, okay? You're a person. You're a human. Unless you are an alien. I mean, I'm not sure how many aliens actually there may be. Yeah, because, you know, hey, with technology, we're getting into far universe. But the point is, like, what do you need to connect to and more? So who needs to connect with you and what are you doing to actually make those connections? So what I'd like to do in terms of advice as we wrap this up is think about who are the relationships in your life that charge you and who are the relationships in your life that drain you and make the decision to say no to the things that don't support and serve you and make you feel good. If someone calls you on the phone and you don't want to answer the.

Phone, it's going back to the beginning of having vision. Where do you want to go if that person doesn't serve you? You've got to go.

Yeah. And you can feel it. I mean, there are some people, they call you and you immediately want to talk to them. Why? Because they do something that lifts you up and someone else drags you down. So who are that? And the thing is, me and Dean have studied the world of marketing for many, many years. Why? Because when it comes to business, nothing is more important than telling a story. What selling is influence. And what marketing is, is storytelling. And if you're more influential, you're going to persuade more people. And if you tell a better story, people understand where you're coming from. They see the vision, they see the purpose. They see the pain that will happen if they don't go in a certain direction. So we're big believers in selling. We're big Proponents of it and a lot of people poo poo marketing and poo poo selling. See people love to be sold, they hate to be pressured. Marketing makes the world work. So the sales job that you need to do from this interview and watching all the other interviews is a sales job you do on yourself. Now I want to put a plug in for a video that I recorded. It doesn't sell anything. It's just a clip of me talking where I was being filmed for a documentary and they asked me the question is selling evil? And I just go on some rant and then a company actually animated the video and if you type in is selling evil? Is selling evil. It's a three minute and 50 second video and I talk about my thoughts on selling. But what I say in that video is my favorite definition of selling is from Dan Sullivan, which is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and then getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. Now the key word is good for you. And if you look at your life, the things that are good for you, are you emotionally and intellectually committed to those things? And if you are not, what do you need to do to do that? So if you're not doing something, you just haven't sold yourself on doing it. If there's someone that is causing you to go down directions in your life, you are letting them persuade you in order to do that. So we have to do a sales job. And if you want to be good at selling and marketing, you can't hate it, you can't despise it, you can't be opposed to it. I mean, it's kind of like people, you know, that hate rich people. It's kind of like despising oxygen, but everyone needs it. Like I just hate this oxygen stuff. Well, hold your your best for three minutes and see how much the best way to help the poor is not be one of them. And secondly, all money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. So the only people that really should be despised if they have money are people that are exploiting, hurting, damaging people in order to gain their wealth. But most entrepreneurs and most successful people in achievement oriented people I know, they really care, they really care about other people, they work really hard. And you know what, if you're willing to put forth the effort, you celebrate that and you want to have confidence in earning that. And if you're hanging out with a bunch of family members that have a loser mentality that are Always poo pooing it. I mean, you can listen to it, you could entertain them, but don't take that shit seriously. The voices that you should take seriously are the ones that move you forward, not the ones that keep you where you're at. And if you want to get to a direction of where you're at here and you want to go to where you want to go, it is going to be uncomfortable. You are going to have naysayers, you are going to have those thoughts in your head that, can I really do that? People are going to try to talk you out of it. And the only thing that's going to keep you going is alignment and confidence where you can say, okay, I'm going to work through the burn. It's kind of like working out. If you're going to take on an exercise program and if you're not currently doing one, the first two to three weeks, maybe a month, you're going to be sore, your muscles are going to hurt, but you've got to work through the burn. But if you do it for like a month, all of a sudden, wow, I'm getting the hang of that. I'm feeling strength. Everything is like that. Any development of a skill is like that. And the people that are willing to work through the burn, and most people aren't, those are the ones that really position themselves to get ahead. And so the reason you listen to programs like this, the reason you invest in it, and I would say spend money, is because you're not spending money to buy Dean's program or whoever's program. You're doing it for yourself. You're asking yourself, am I worth it? Is my life worth it? Is my future worth it? And that's why you're making that investment. That's why you're making that commitment. And then once you've done that, you now have an opportunity to go as deep as you want. Or you can just say, oh, it's just one other thing. And you know, I'm going to blame something, but I hope that you are really freaking uncomfortable in some area enough to where you're like, I am sick and tired of this shit. I'm going to do something about it. I've worked hard, I care enough. I want to do good in the world, and I'm going to do what I need to do in order to do it. And I'm going to put on blinders to all of those things that vie for my attention. But there are certain things in your life, only a few. There's Only a few relationships and a few activities that are relevant and important. And the rest of it, they're all distractions. And most people, they just get distracted all the time because they don't have the vision. And the reason that they don't have the vision is they never stuck with something long enough or never really sat down and said, what really aligns with me, what people align with me, what I really want to do, and develop that confidence. So confidence is a muscle if it feels really loose and really weak. My suggestion is keep listening to this stuff. Listen to this interview, if this one helps you. I mean, you may not like my voice, whatever. Listen to one of the other interviews. But the reason you digest personal development and improvement is it keeps you in an up state when your second gap and you're questioning yourself. And if you keep listening to it, you keep listening to it, then all of a sudden you're like, wow, this makes sense. This makes sense. But don't just listen to it. You have to take action. And everyone says that, but the fact is there is an action. So at the end of this, just pick one. Pick one action that you can do. And then three things.

No, it's good. I don't want to interrupt you. I'll finish this.

No, no. And then three things this week that will improve your confidence. So one action, and then pick three areas where, you know, what can I do that's going to feed my confidence? And think about all the. Because we rattled off a whole bunch of strategies, you know, the set and stems. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that can be done. But, you know, I could say. Let me see, if I wrote. Oh, one other thing I wrote down. If you think about your best friends in your life, you know, someone that you really care about, if they screw up, versus someone that you really don't have a relationship with. Or worse, someone that you can't even stand if they screw up up. You might just never talk to them again. But if you have a person that you really care about and they fall down or they make a mistake or they say something they shouldn't have, the way you treat your best friend is you give them some slack. Okay? We usually give our best friends more slack, our children more slack, that sort of stuff. Treat yourself like your own best friend now. Don't take shit from them, from yourself. But at the same time, if you don't do it perfectly, if you've screwed up a lot in your life, if you've gone bankrupt, if you've made mistakes, if you've said things that you regret, you can either sit there and just define yourself as a loser or you can say, you know what forgiveness is? Giving up the hope that one day I'll have a better past and I'm going to move forward and I'm going to just start building my confidence and I'm going to treat myself like my own best friend. And how would you treat your best friend? You would take care of them, you would give them what they need and you would put them in situations that allowed them to feel good. And you would pursue confidence and you would pursue gratitude. And if you did that, you would be a really good friend to that friend. And you got to do that for yourself. And there are some people that are really good to other people, but they neglect themselves. They trade everything and they sacrifice themselves and they got nothing left. So you have to replenish yourself. You know, you're not going to fix the world with broken hands. And you have to take care of yourself and treat yourself like your best friend. And all of that mixes up. Some of it means you're going to use anger and irritation to direct yourself. Other times you're just going to be like, you know what? I need to give myself a perspective shift. But life is a mixed bag. But the more the goal is upward. It doesn't take any confidence to sit and watch TV and eat potato chips. It doesn't take much confidence to do things that aren't going to help people. It doesn't take much confidence to involve yourself in criminal activities versus figuring out how to assemble a successful business. It doesn't take take any confidence to treat someone like shit or to not say thank you when someone opens up the door to be a rude person. But it actually does require work to put forth the effort. But the trade off is the benefits. The reality is if you don't do this stuff, your life ain't going to work. You aren't going to be very happy, you're probably never going to make any money, and more importantly, you're not going to have anyone. That really is a true authentic relationship. And so that's why this subject matter is so important. It goes so beyond building a business and having a career. Those things are a byproduct of it.

They're a byproduct of it.

Yeah.

Well, Joe, so amazing, Seriously, so amazing. That's some of the best you put so much in the last hour of things that we've talked about for the last 10 years you put here. So I appreciate you Sharing that.

Absolutely.

And for those of you watching, I mean, first of all, applaud Joe. Go check out joepolish.com if you ever want a high level mastermind. Joe's. I'm a part of it. Been there for 10 years. It's incredible. Just tell him Dean sent you.

You know, we send him movie tickets.

Exactly. I've sent a lot of people there and my commission is. Oh, yeah, nothing.

Yeah, yeah. There's no affiliate.

It's because I love this guy and you can see his passion and how he wants to help. He's here at a phase. He's at a phase in his life where I know it's all about serving and giving back while he's building a big company, while he's helping people that need it. So it's been an honor and a pleasure and I share with everybody. Do a favor. I know we covered a lot. We're two guys that can digress. But if you notice, we digress. We pull it back in. Every single topic we brought up today was started and we looped and finished it. So if there was so much writing down that you're not sure, go back and watch it again. But I want to leave you with this. It's only going to take one of the things we share that resonated the most with you today. To start with, Joe said start with one thing and then pick three topics. Just go back. Or if you wrote something down, just that one thing can make a shift, you know. And remember, Joe said it perfectly. If you eat too much today, you're not fat tomorrow. But if you eat too much every day, you're fat down the road. If you spend too much money today, you're not broke tomorrow, but you're broke down the road. And the complete opposite exists. If you show shift out some bad habits that disempower you, that rob your confidence, stop working on your weaknesses, get more vision, get more clarity, treat yourself better, find those areas. If you make that shift today, you're not gonna notice all the confidence in the world tomorrow. It's not going to the gym. One set of bicep curls and you got big arms. You're gonna look down the road 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And this shift, when you look back a year later, you're unrecognizable from the person that you used to be. So again, take one thing today, put it in place, put it in action, and make an impact. And the thing I tell my kids every single day, I ask them if they failed at anything today, I literally ask them if they failed. And if they say no, I say, you're not pushing yourself. If you make failure a part of your success, a part of your daily routine, it becomes something you're not afraid of anymore. So thank you so much for joining us, Joe. Thank you again, man.

You are welcome.

Love you, brother. Thank you. Love you. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

Sam.