The 6 Deadly Negotiation Mistakes You’re Probably Making (Former FBI Expert Explains) Ft. Chris Voss

How would you even define negotiating?

Communicating to accomplish results, in real broad terms. Information gathering is part of it. Herb Cohen wrote a book a long time ago called You Can Negotiate Anything. And he defined negotiation as a use of power and information in a web of tension. Now, a web of tension would be emotions. And the only tweak I think that we made on our definition is we don't just use information, we gather it and use it. Because if you're saying the use of information, you're assuming you're coming to the table and you should have gathered all the information before you come to the table. The table's the best place to gather information.

OK.

And a lot of people will hold themselves back from going to the table because you want to be prepared. You don't want to be caught off guard. About a third of you in the room are horrified at getting caught off guard at the table. And that's holding you back.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so in terms of the mistakes, do people— like, what are some common ones that are easy to fix? Like, you have a whole way of start with about no as an example. I love the way that you— most people want to get a yes. Maybe we can talk about how yes could possibly not be the first thing you want to hear out of someone's mouth. Because everyone here is like, you know, wanting to sell stuff, and you got a lot of the world's greatest marketers. And I've always had the conversation with Dan Sullivan that nos are great, yeses are great, maybes are what kill you. If someone says no, you at least know where they stand and you can either, it's done, or you can now knowing what you know, that's actually a starting point. But maybe is where someone's like, oh, I'll call you back or whatever. And so I'd love to have you talk about just the languaging and what to pursue and how to actually start the whole process of getting to— something favorable and the result that you want?

Yeah, sure. All right, so yes is a useless word. There is no more useless word. And the majority of you are probably yes addicts. And recognizing that is one thing. Getting out of it is even harder. 'Cause you're hardwired. If you're hardwired to hear yes, breaking out of that dynamic is really, really hard. But it could be one of the biggest issues. And if you're hardwired for yes, of course you're horrified No. But in any important negotiation, I don't bother with yes at all. And I'll give you an example. We ran a training in New York a few months back. And I had recently run across Robert Herjavec. Wonderful guy. I mean, generous. On the strength of just an introduction from one person, I'm sitting down with this guy for lunch for 90 minutes. And he's talking to me for 90 minutes. And he's buying. I mean, what else do you want, right? So through the course of the conversation, I tell him we got this training going on, and I offer him, you know, give you a free ticket. And he says, how many can I buy? Like, wow, even better. What an even more gracious guy. He loves so much we're talking about, he's willing to pay too. So we're going back and forth on the tickets, how many he's going to buy, and the window's closing. It's going to slam shut, and he's not going to get in. And my people are bugging me. They're mad at me because I'm giving away tickets for free that we'd be selling otherwise. So I'm in a doghouse already anyway. So it's— I'm in Los Angeles. My team is in New York, East Coast. We're a 3-hour handicap in LA. And they're screaming at me. And he hasn't pulled the trigger on the tickets. So I sent him an email. Are you against committing for 3 tickets now?

Yeah.

Are you against paying for those tickets before the start of business tomorrow? Because we're going to be 3 hours behind the clock. If they wait till tomorrow morning, they're going to be gone. And then I'm going to be embarrassed. I get an email back in less than 30 minutes. We'll commit to 3 now. We'll pay for them. And they paid for them within the hour. After 5 o'clock in Los Angeles. So every time, it's really— I mean, we don't bother with yes. You can flip any kind of question, any kind of commitment question, from a yes to a no, and you'd be shocked at what people will say no to. I mean, friggin shocked.

Shocked.

And yes is commitment. Yes is hesitation. Yes is concern. That's why people are really good at the false yes.

Yeah, we'll talk about the falsity of, you know, versus that's right versus you're right. Yeah, this is a really good distinction and real, you know, something I never knew or realized until I learned it.

That's what Tim was talking to me about that one time when we met.

Exactly, yeah. Oh, by the way, I should say that too. When I first met Chris, it was a couple years ago, and Tim Larkin, who many of you know, he's been in Genius Network for, you know, I've known Tim for 20 years, And he, Tim actually is, he's been on the COVID of Black Belt magazine. He's trained lots of Navy SEALs, MMA fighters, everyday people, men and women. And he, his book, The Science of Violence, is that the title of his book? And he has this great—

Violence Is the Answer.

Violence Is the Answer, yeah. And I've interviewed him on it. You'd think I would know this stuff. And when, you know, Tim is, he's a badass and he's a great guy. He said that violence is never an option unless it's the only option. What do you do in a situation where someone is going to hurt or kill you? And when Brian Kurtz actually organized a dinner and invited Chris to it, and Tim— I sat next to Chris, and Tim was there. And it was a small group. There was maybe like, I don't know, 10 of us or something. And Tim said, He's like, I don't mean to be a total fanboy, but I love your book. And Tim said this is the best book on negotiation he's ever read. And so right from the get-go, I was like, wow, this is an important guy. And so, yeah, so there's lots of little things that most people would have no idea about. But you identify those, and you teach people how to actually use them. So let's talk about the false yeses and what you really want to accomplish to know that you are Successfully, I guess, negotiating.

Right, right. All right, so, and the thing that Tim talked about to me about that one time too, somebody tells you you're right, what are they telling you?

They're right.

No, they're telling you to shut up and go away. I want to maintain a relationship with you. I still like you, either because I want to or I have to, but I'm really— this is— it's designed to preserve the relationship, but please, please stop talking and please go away. And we might like your right more than we like yes, because we think we have to make a case. You think you got to make a case. You think to negotiate, you got to make an argument. You got to make a compelling case. You got to give your value proposition to the other person. And you think you scored when they look at you and they go, you're right. And what happens is you get real happy and you shut up. And you probably walk out of the office. You probably walk away. Or, you know, you think you made the point with your significant other or whoever it may And Tim sits down next to me. He goes, you saved me so much money because I was— he was on a rant with his senior team. And he'd read the book. And he's trying to get everybody on the same sheet of music. This is the direction we're going. And he says one of his executives said, Tim, you're right. And he said, holy cow, if I'm so far off track with my guys that they're trying to politely get me to shut up, I need to stop the meeting right now. I need to back up. I need to find out where I'm off track. And then I need to go to everybody and get myself corrected, which it kind of blew me away that he was that enlightened about it. And that's what he did. He stopped the meeting. He went back. He talked to everybody, found out where he was wrong. Because if people are telling you, look, shut up, you're probably off track. A 2-millimeter difference is To use a Tony Robbins phrase, right?

Yeah.

I love the 2-millimeter difference. You want to get people to say, that's right. Because that's right's what you say when you hear the complete and total truth. You agree 1,000%. No matter which side of the political aisle you're on, the last presidential election, the last presidential debate, whichever candidate that you loved, when they said something that you loved, you didn't look at the TV and go, you're right. You looked at the TV and you said, that's right. And that's right with people when they say when they're all in. And what they had just heard is a complete truth. Now, the invisible fairy dust magic to that is they feel incredibly bonded to you in that moment. They don't know that. That's the other thing that's really powerful about it. Somebody once told me, that's somebody saying to you that they feel empathy from you. And that's so powerful.

Right.

For example, the greatest practitioners of this in the world are actually sociopaths. They're also vulnerable to it, interestingly enough. The idea that sociopaths either can't feel it or use empathy, they do feel it and they do use it. But if you were willing to accept this premise, this outlandish idea that sociopaths are good at empathy, you should ask yourself why. Why is because it's quick and it's sustainable and they're lazy. And it's a way that they maintain really solid relationships with very little maintenance from them. So empathy saves time. You put less money— less time into relationships to keep them strong once you've established empathy bridge. And you've established it when somebody looks at you and says—

I'm sorry.

That's right. What I really was was an international negotiation coach. I coached negotiations in every culture on the planet. And they didn't— they weren't asking for ransom for the American. They were asking for war damages for 500 years of oppression. From the Spanish to Japanese to the Americans, violations under Black Jack Pershing, all this sort of nonsense. This is another story that you should be tuning out right now because you were never in an argument with someone where they were bringing up stuff from the past that didn't matter anymore.

Yeah.

Where are you? So we, you know, we tried all sorts of logic, all sorts of in and out, you know, tried to be clever. I thought I knew terrorism. I thought I knew Islam and thought I knew all this stuff. And finally one day we just said, we're going to get a that's right out of the guy on the other side, the sociopath. And make no mistake, a raping serial killer. Chopped lots of heads off personally, was proud of it, and no shortage of rapes to his credit. And I coached my guy to get on the phone, and you just keep— make their case. It's the Stephen Covey advice. Instead of seek first to understand, then be understood, demonstrate understanding. You got to make their case, not your case. But you just just recognize it. Don't agree with it. Just but lay it out the way they see it. Lay out everything that this sociopathic terrorist has been laying out of all the nonsense of why ten million dollars is a bargain basement price for five hundred years of war damages. And he laid it out, and he laid it out, and he laid it out, and he laid it out. I said, "And if you're not laying it on thick, you're not laying it on thick enough." And he my guy finished it. And there was a short silence on the other end of the line, and the terrorist said, that's right. And we said, okay, let's talk again in a couple of days. And the $10 million ransom demand went away. They never brought it up again, ever. It went away. It was gone. It was completely gone. A couple of months later, the American walks away. We had done a number of things. We'd gotten them disorganized. We completely disorganized them. They didn't know we did it to them. Through our communication techniques, American walks away. A couple of months later, military picks him up, flies him out. We take him back to the U.S. I'm back in the Philippines about three weeks after this on another case, and the guy that I coach says, "You're not going to believe who called me on the phone." I'm like, "I don't know who called you on the phone." The terrorist. Guy's name was Sabina. Sabaya still knew his undercover name, still had his undercover phone number, was smart enough to know that he had to either be with the police or the military, but didn't know and didn't care. Called him on the phone and said, have you been promoted yet? I have no idea what you said to me on the phone.

You're really good at it.

They should promote you.

Hmm.

And also think about what he's saying. Because would he deal with him again? What was he really saying when he made that call? I respect you. I'd deal with you again. So it's an example.

With all the raping.

Who would imagine that you can get to somebody like that?

Yep.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out. And if you'd like to get it absolutely free, There's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So you, you talk about 3 voice tones negotiators can use. What are they? And on a related topic, what is an example of mirroring and how is that important?

All right, the 3 voices are the 3 default types, you know, in our way of thinking. Everybody on the entire planet, regardless of gender, regardless of ethnicity, either falls into fight, flight, make friends. Some people would call that fight, flight, mate. But it's the caveman that survived from the caveman days. We saw a threat on a jungle path, we ran from it, we fought it, we made friends with it. And my Harvard brothers and sisters subscribe to the same philosophy. We've tested somewhere north of 2,000 people in all countries, and we believe that to be true. So the 3 voices are what your natural voices are. And I'm not going to make any political statements in any way, shape, or form. But the assertive, the fight type, direct and honest, that's my natural born type, Donald Trump. And if I were to talk to you, we do an exercise called 60 seconds or she dies. And I do all 3 voices in the exercise. And if you were volunteering, I'd look at you and I'd start out with the assertive voice and I'd just go, I need a car in 60 seconds or she dies. If you think of yourself as direct and honest, you're an assertive. You've got a tone of voice that's combative. It causes problems. There's no way around it. It's not a good voice. My natural-born type. I once had a hostage negotiator say to me, dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick. And I didn't take that as a compliment. But that's my natural voice. So that's voice 1. Voice 2 is the accommodator's voice. About a third of us are just relationship-oriented. We naturally smile. We're naturally very happy. It's actually ridiculously strategically smart. You're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. If you're smiling, you're hardwiring your mood. You're making yourself smarter. Everybody has something called mirror neurons. If I smile at you, your mirror neurons trigger. Even if you fire it, you started to smile back. It's an involuntary response. There are chemical changes in your brain. You're smarter too. That's a smart move. It's one of the reasons why naturally gregarious people make lots of deals. 'Cause people, and they're not always the best deal, but they're probably pretty good.

But you, okay, so you just said you're 31% smarter when you're in a positive state of mind. So if you can flip yourself into that, and become 31% more effective and smarter, that seems to be a pretty good advantage.

It's huge.

Yeah, so.

And it is actually a hardwired connection. If you force a smile on your face when you feel lousy, the chemical changes still take place.

Interesting.

You can override it. And then the third type is what we call the late-night FM DJ. That's a hostage negotiator's natural tone of voice. I mean, we, we learn that. We drill it over and over and over and over again because it hits the mirror neurons. It triggers a chemical change, and it slows the other side's brain down.

Mm-hmm.

Now, while we use that about 10% of the time, if we have a term in a contract that's completely unacceptable, that term would often be work for hire. I will not sign a contract that has a work for hire clause. Well, I would, but it has to be for $5 billion. Not kidding around. Because work for hire takes our intellectual property. I just don't say take it away. I'll sit down at the table, and I'll look you in the eye, and I'll say, we don't do work for hire. Late night FM DJ voice. You will feel that that's an immovable term. What I say, what you hear. If I say, that's an immovable term, you're going to get mad and want to fight me on it.

Mm.

And I don't need that. So I will just take the term, and I will lay it out like that. Your brain will slow down. It'll stop. When you recover, you'll come up with the answer for me. I also won't say, I need you to take that clause out. I need you to volunteer that idea.

That's great. So I heard you say before that when someone says, let's make a win-win situation, they're usually going to try to— that's an indicator that they're going to probably either try to take advantage of you or whatever. And I found it very interesting because I have used that term. I'm willing to be seen that I'm delusional here. I have said it in ways where I really do look out for other— I want it to be a win-win situation, not use it as terminology to hide dishonesty or hide attempting to be— and I know the whole thing of a lot of people that brag about how their integrity is and how great they are and how they want you to win, a lot of times they're the most full of shit. I also know that some people that are the most smooth talking are sometimes wolves in sheep's clothing sort of thing. And when I heard that, though, it really struck me as like going, huh. So what do you do when you're really genuinely wanting to create a value-for-value deal, you're not trying to overly negotiate, if that's the right way to call it, or you're not trying to scam somebody, but you're giving too much of it away, or you're letting people steamroll over you? I guess what are some—

Yeah.

Without making this a confusing question, what are some indicators that should be red flags or warning signs that if someone says this, be careful? And what's the caveat to that? How could I better, you know, describe things? Because I do want things to be a win-win situation for someone. I mean, like everyone here, you know, they invest a lot of money to be in this group. I want them to get a hell of a lot out of it. I genuinely care about my clients.

Right.

You know, and at the same time, I have some people that will try to take advantage of me and they ask for too much. They're just very demanding. And so what are words that are indicators? And so I'm asking you 2 things. One, what are warning signs that when you hear them, antennas go up, this is something? And then on the other side, how do you protect yourself from getting taken advantage of?

Right, right.

All right, so context. Let's throw context on this. And contextual intelligence is, of course, a part of emotional intelligence. That's really what we're talking about here. We're talking about military-grade emotional intelligence. Weapons-grade empathy. How do you like that, huh?

That's actually good.

All right, so context. You should have a win-win mindset. If you're in a win-lose mindset, that's actually stupid. Because if the other side loses, why are they ever going to want to make a deal with you again? That's kind of dumb. But a lot of people don't realize that in business negotiation. Most people's business stories are like, I had them over a barrel, and they knew I beat them. Every time I hear somebody talk like that, I just shake my head. I think, like, you know, you are losing so many deals.

No, absolutely. There's people that are in the transaction business versus the relationship business.

Right, right. So now more context on win-win. If somebody articulates it right up front, that's the tell. They're trying to cut your throat. And we talked about this a little bit also. Joe doesn't show up and go like, hey, happy to see you. Let's do a win-win deal.

Yeah.

You know, you start talking about it further down into the conversation, or you feel it, or you try to live it. That's completely different than what we've seen over and over and over again. Nearly every single person that right off the bat we've been in a negotiation with them, and if they've articulated, let's do a win-win deal, in the first 3 minutes, I know they want to get our stuff for nothing. And now I'm already headed for the door. So what are the tells? Actually, there's 2 tells. You've got to watch out for people that are trying to cut your throat. What's worse is the people that are trying to pump you for information and never do the deal with you at all. One of the things that is not in the book, which is actually probably going to be much more the focus of the book that we're talking about now, we call proof of life of the deal. And salespeople have a saying, it's not wrong to not get the agreement. It's wrong to take a long time to not get the agreement. That's what's killing you. That's what kills more people and more business. And we shift what we refer to as proof of life right up front. And then we walk away, which is— it's also— It's been expressed a couple times here, play the long game. Play the long game, that's when you start being willing to walk away from stuff. Or also play the percentages game. Like if— or half.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I'm in a conversation with a potentially extremely lucrative client 2 days ago. I get coached. Because I was on the phone by myself, and normally we like to negotiate in teams. But I got off the phone and I called one of our coaches and I said, this is my read. They failed the proof of life test. They did some other stuff. I think I need to email this guy back and tell him we're not interested. He's waving a billion, a company that's going to grow to $1 billion. They want to change their culture. They've got all these problems. He outlined all these problems. I know we have answers. I know they can benefit from us, but I strongly feel like they want us to create a program for us. And then they're either going to implement it without us. Or they're going to go to who they want to go with in the first place, and they're going to tell them to do our stuff. And I know there's a lot of people out there that are telling their favorite vendors to do what we do. It's been directly reported back to me. So we get out of those really early on. Who are going to be the time wasters? Long way around, though, on— you know what? You get taken advantage of occasionally, and look at how well you do.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean— Be willing to be taken advantage of occasionally.

Yeah, that's one thing that I say to people all the time. Like, well, I try to help someone. Yeah, it's like it's par for the course. I mean, what I try to do is align myself with people that are aligned with me. And when I start seeing disalignment, even though I extend myself, even though I try, and they just keep at it, they keep complaining and that sort of stuff, it's like after a point, you just like— We're just not aligned. I mean, you just see the world different than I do. But yeah, it's really good to have indicators early up front and be able to bail on it, because there's always signs.

Yeah.

What are you looking for?

If you're able to sniff it out and smoke it out early enough in advance.

So I'm going to tell you for a minute what I'm going to talk about. I will draw back the curtains. This is what I'm going to cover. How to create the deepest possible human connections, how to create the most lucrative business, how to develop the most innovative collaborations. And also, I'm going to teach you a little bit about the magic that happens here at Genius Network, and really kind of the magic of Joe Polish. What is all this stuff? I'm going to pull back the curtains on all of this stuff because this is what I've been figuring out, analyzing, studying. Brute force learning for the past 8 months. So in September 2017, I joined Genius Network. I went to my first $25K meeting, and for about a month and a half before my first meeting, I worked a ton with this guy. I was really lucky. My Aunt Jane was actually a member of Genius Network for 2 years, and she told me when she found out that I joined, before you go to your first meeting, sign up for a 10-minute talk. Give a 10-minute talk during your first meeting. and work with Joel. That's exactly what she told me. So I worked with Joel, worked with him a ton, and after my 10— this was me after my first Genius Network meeting. Actually, that's not me. That's how I felt. This is what happened. I learned a ton from Joel, and also I developed a ton of what I learned about this culture. So I learned a ton. A guy named Dre Redfern immediately helped me to make $10,000 more a month. to my business. He had his whole team working with me, helped me for free. All of this stuff was crazy. And so I learned very quickly the rules of this environment, of this culture. Joe says it all the time, life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. That is the rules in this environment. And that is the rules for all of the things that I was mentioning before. Immediately I joined $100K. I said, if I have this many epiphanies and this many experiences, I'm already getting this much. What's going to happen at the next level? My only goal was be helpful. I wrote an article about it on Inc. It's called What Happened When I Paid $100,000 to Help Someone. One of the things that really surprised me during my first $25K meeting was one of the first conversations we were having was, how do you get a return on your investment of that $25K? I thought, that is the most weird conversation. It seems so backwards to this whole focus on being a giver and not a taker. And then there was someone who said something really brilliant. He said, here's the secret that most people don't realize. You pay someone money and then you help them. This is how you create 10x returns. By the way, that person was Jason Fladlin. He said that at, I think, $100K, or he said that at a recent $25K meeting. So here's a really interesting story.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, There's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I don't know who here has heard of Christina Tosi. I think it's Tosi or Tosi. Anyone heard of her? One person. That's my assistant. She happens to be one of the most famous pastry chefs in the world. People come from all over the world to come to New York to come to her place. It's called Milk Cafe in New York. It's been all over the internet. Not the internet, sorry. It's been all over like the media, the news and stuff. So 10 years ago, she was working at a very fancy restaurant. No one knew who she was. She was working in the back. She was a server. She was doing dishes and stuff like that. She needed a push. Here's basically what was happening. She had a huge passion, a side love for making desserts, for making pastries. She just loved it. It was what she loved to do. And she started bringing those pastries and desserts to her coworkers. Just because she just loved giving those things, and it blew their minds. They all— by the way, this is a very high-end restaurant that she was working at, and her boss was a very famous chef, and he begged her for months, please let us serve your desserts at our restaurant, and she wouldn't do it. She was terrified. She was freaked out. She didn't actually see in herself what other people were experiencing. She just saw it as a passion. She enjoyed it, and she loved doing it, but she didn't have the confidence in herself. Again, she needed a push. If you've ever seen the documentary Chef's Table on Netflix, please do it. It's one of the most aesthetic, beautiful shows ever. But in her boss's words, I just needed to push her off the cliff because she wouldn't do it herself. And so he one day said, you have 3 hours, and then whatever you produce, I'm serving, and you're getting credit for it. So if you produce crap, you're getting— that's you. So basically she freaked out, she took 3 hours, and she produced a magical dessert. It was a strawberry cheesecake, it got raving reviews, and then she started making the desserts at the restaurant and way more people started coming, even though this was already a really successful restaurant, because her desserts blew their mind. Fast forward a few years, she's one of the most famous pastry chefs in the world. So she went on to succeed and she got a gift. That's one of the core components of what I'm calling a transformational relationship. is that you receive gifts, and it's something you cannot get for yourself. That's part of this environment. That's part of why you need to be a giver, and that's part of why there are so many givers in this room, is because there's certain things that you need that you can't get. You may need a push. I recently just published my first book, my first traditionally published book, Willpower Doesn't Work. I was pretty overwhelmed with the launch of a first book. I needed a push. I had a mentor. Who gave me an enormous gift, something I could not have given myself. So Dan Sullivan, he has defined basically what are the key components of healthy, powerful relationships. And those are the 3 components that I consider the core essentials of transformational relationships. Basically, there's giving, there's gratitude, and there's growth. If you're not giving, it's not a transformational relationship. If you're not experiencing gratitude, you're not experiencing it because you're probably not giving. You're not appreciating what you're getting. If it's a transformational relationship, you are receiving abundantly, and you should just be blown away, blown away and humble. And if you're not growing, if you're not being pushed, if you're not transforming, then it's obviously not a transformational relationship. In transformational relationships, there's no keeping score. There's no tit-for-tat. That's purely a transactional relationship. That's what we're talking about here. And again, that's not where the most growth happens. It's just giving, being humble, being blown away, And being grateful. Also, if you want to create transformational relationships, you have to be the one to initiate it. You've got to discover how to give, what people need, how to be useful, and you can't wait for others to do it for you. You just can't. So one other comment is just obviously you cannot do this on your own. There was a very famous philosopher, he once said something that really gets me every time. He said, self-made is an illusion. There are many people who have played divine roles in you having the life that you have today. Be sure to let them know how grateful you are. That philosopher was Michael Fishman, and that is one of the things that I have probably quoted more than anything else. Steve Sims has an entire book on how to create transformational relationships. He's called the Wizard of Oz of business because he knows how to create impossible situations Whether that's getting his clients on stage with Journey. How does he do it? He finds out what people want, he creates a win-win situation, and then he creates impossible situations. Dan Sullivan talks about impossible. He talks about going 100x. We talk about making a 10x investment or 10x return on your investment. Dan Sullivan's like way above that. He's talking about how do you go 100x? The only way to do that is when 2 givers come together who are operating in their unique ability and And they come together and they create transformational collaboration. It's where the whole becomes fundamentally different from the sum of the parts. And what's freaky about transformational relationships is that you don't actually know where they're going. With a transactional relationship, you know exactly what you're getting. And if you're not getting that, you're out. With transformational relationships, there's a lot of risk because you don't actually know what the transformation is going to be. Genius Network and Strategic Coach is an amazing example. Here at Genius Network, this is basically the purpose. It's to bring a bunch of givers together in their unique ability and to create transformational relationships. Again, what are the rules? Life gives to the giver, takes from the taker. We've heard Joe say it, and it's exactly what works. So here are some questions I have for you. Have you 100x'd your investment? How many transformational relationships do you have? Do you initiate? Do you give? Are you radically humbled and grateful? Are you growing? How much are you actually growing? How much are you pushing and how much are you getting pushed? One of my favorite authors is Seth Godin. One of the things he said is, art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter, the intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. So my question is, are you an artist? You may think of yourself as a businessman or something, but are you an artist like Tim Paulson? And by the way, he has an amazing picture on that other thing. Joe Polish, we consider Joe a marketer or a connector. In my opinion, Joe is an artist. He creates art as a personal gift that changes the recipients. Transactional relationships don't change you. They're not gifts. There's no gratitude required. They're status quo. Transformations are where artists come together in their unique ability They give their greatest gifts, extremely generous, there's growth. Here's my call to action. Create more transformational relationships, even more. You guys would not be in this room if you didn't have any. Create them more in your personal life, create them with your clients. Give, give, give so much that it blows their minds. And then create them here at Genius Network. It starts with you. Again, it starts with you.

The biggest reason I wanted to have the lights on for everybody today is this is gonna be interactive what we're about to do, so look with me, but also Also, I want you to pay attention inside of yourself, what it is that you feel that I'm going to share with you. So, the coolest part about this is it's a pickup from a presentation that I did about a year ago. And about a year ago, I shared that there are rooms just like this. And everybody understands this wholeheartedly. We talk about it a lot. There's rooms just like this that major corporations get very, very intelligent people like us in. And they sit down and they go, how do we win what it is we're about to do? These are companies like Meta, Fox, NBC, CNN, and they're thinking these are people that are On the other side of these keyboards, there's people out there. How do we get across to them, and how do we get them to respond the way we'd like them to respond? So my outcome for the next, let's just say, 9 minutes and 13 seconds is to make certain every single one of you walks out of here with 3 to 4 things that you can do to start winning more in what it is that you're doing. So we had an opportunity yesterday to hear about words, and we talked about the power of how words work. Yet I also want to tell you Most of us have no idea of who we're actually talking with and what our objective is to work with. So let me ask you this, how many of you would love to be better with the people in your life? How many of you would love to be better? How many of you would love your team to be less annoying? How many of you would love your kids to need you less and do things on their own? How many of you like that?

Yes.

Okay, so a lot of what I'm about to share is going to assist you with this. So from this moment forward, a lot of us, we look at people, and I know we see it here in this room, and tell me if you've experienced this before. You see someone do something incredibly well. We talked about the Olympics yesterday. How many of you watch something before and go, how the hell do they do that? How many of you have said that? Or, that is amazing. Or, that would be just— that is incredible. How many of you have said that before? Like, dude, that marketing is incredible. How many of you understand that?

Mm-hmm.

And what we do is in that moment, we say this, and this is where we screw up events like this. We look at Joe and go, how does he do it? How does he put such great people in this room? And I got to tell you, in those words, you are limiting your ability to get what it is you want. I'm going to share with you a rephrase today that you will begin to say and train your team to say. So instead of saying, how do they do it? The real question is, how do I do that?

Hmm.

So I want you to think about that for a second. All of us are studying how do we market to others, how do we win, how do we win, how do we win. And I'm going to throw 3 words at you which Joe will love that I'm going to say because it's the part of the conversation. Most of us in life want to win, and the biggest reason we want to win is we were never given an additional option. So I'm going to draw this out for you so all of you can see it. Most children are winning in life. So when you're dealing with somebody, all we are seeing in a 65-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman, whoever it is we're dealing with, doesn't matter who they are, all we're seeing is a little kid that now has big people clothes on. The reason they want to win so bad is they were 7 years old at one point and their life was working and they were winning in life and things were good. And one day Mommy and Daddy did something like this. packed a tuna fish sandwich for them for lunch. How many of you ever had that happen? And if you haven't, it's just me. Okay? And what happens is you look out there, or maybe you went up to like wiffle ball or something, like, I can't hit the freaking ball. They went from like putting it on the, the thing to hitting the ball, and immediately you said to yourself, I was doing good, but what's going on? Like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure what's happening. And we're like, I wish it didn't work this way. And in that moment, the inner child Built something called the inner hero inside that said, if I could ever be in that situation again, here's how I would do something different next time. Now, I want you to pay attention to that because as we're marketing, selling, and talking, every single one of us to ourselves and others has an inner child and an inner hero that lives inside of every single one of us. I'm going to show you how to stimulate it, and I'm also going to tell you most of you have been screwing up the people in your lives because the way that you actually talk with them. Give you an example real quick. Brian yesterday said something. Man, I got in this room and I said to myself, you know, I don't feel like I, I don't belong. And amazingly, we think we're being so sweet and we say, no, no, you belong and you're great and you're awesome. And we stimulate their inner child and we say, you're gonna be okay and everything's gonna be good and that's gonna be fine. And we think we're giving them what they want— validation. How many of you realize validation alone does not make people stronger or better? Validation alone is a freaking Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. How many of you understand that? And why I'm saying this, we think we're being nice parents. So if someone said that to me, I feel like I don't belong, I've got 2 things that all of you can use to actually make someone instantly become a hero. And you're gonna want to write these things down because I believe they'll be able to help you. Now you could say this, I would say, up till now, Brian, it might not have felt that you—

Hmm.

Or someone belonged. And the reason I use the words up till now is those of you that understand neuroscience, it creates a timeline inside someone's mind. So when someone says, I'm not good at tennis, let's stop right there. Up till what, folks?

Now.

That means you say, I'm not good at it, you're fucked for the rest of your life. And yes, I cursed, Joel. Now the point is, you're not going to win. But if you say, up till now, instantaneously the brain goes, got it, that is an opportunity that I could get what, folks? Better. Second thing is, this is powerful. I shared this the other day.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Most of us need our inner child pet and told it's okay so we can stimulate the inner hero. So what I do with these people is when someone says, I don't know if I did a good job or not, I'll tell you did a good job. Of course you did a good job. I just said it. You didn't need to hear that. Did you guys hear what I just said? You didn't need to hear it. But what's more important is how do we feel more confident more often? So, why I'm bringing this up is our natural tendency with people is to want to make them feel good versus empower them. So, imagine we have the ability to empower somebody. Like, we teach this at one of my events because people years ago like, Michael, what do you do? And years ago, I would have said, I'm a coach. I'm a speaker. I'm a trainer. I'm a guy obsessed. With how language empowers other people and gets people to do the things that they want to do in their lives and allow them to win at the things that they're doing. So I'll give you an analogy that'll be able to assist all of you. Who here has ever had anybody say to them, man, I just closed a big deal and I just— it was awesome, I just did $10 million? Like, a lot of you are meeting people and you're like, I did $15 million last year, I did $8 million, I did $10 million. What is our typical response to somebody when they tell us They did something great. What do we usually say?

Congratulations!

Great!

Congratulations! And we pet their inner child and we're like, it's okay, and good job, and that's great, and that's wonderful. What if you were to say this to them? Instead of saying to them, good job, or hey, that's great, or that's awesome, or even I'm proud of you, what if you were to say, of course you did, because that's what someone like you does. See, most of us were waiting when we were a kid To realize we're capable of more. But a lot of us, we're talking with people and we're actually helping them win. Now, when you think about the word win for a second, I'm going to throw a word at you. Do people really want to win? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But the reason we want to win is we think winning is going to be like, if I win, I'm going to do better than what it was that I was doing. Or you look at yourself and go, man, I won. Like you'll watch somebody that wins the Super Bowl, they win something and they're proud of what it is they did. They're super, this is great, I won! But at the end of the day, we want people to feel what it's like to be winning in life. See, winning is something very different than to have won. So, when somebody does a great job, instead of telling them, hey, you know, great job, you're awesome, you're great, I want to make you feel good. What I want to do is stimulate that part of you like, of course I did something like that. I'm not shocked by what happened. So I'll give you the words one more time, and it's very, very simple so you can write it down and tattoo it permanently inside of your brain. Somebody says they did something great, instantaneously you're going to say, of course you did, that's what someone like you does. I even watched as we were doing this exercise a minute ago, and again, I put the talk together here, and the reason I do the way I do it is because I wanted to make sure it was relevant to what's going on. The next time you come back to Genius, a lot of times we're going to do these hot seats. Typically, Joe, People will say, what's our problem that we have? And we walk into this and we tell everyone we have a problem. And what's amazing is when you walk up to your teammates and you say to them, man, I got a problem, I got something wrong, I love all of you, but I don't want to hear about your freaking problem. How many of you understand that?

Mm-hmm.

You don't. And if you do, it's you're stimulating the part of me that wants to fix what it is that we're doing. But imagine you walked up to the group and said, here's something I'm very excited about solving. How many of you take all the pressure off? Think about that. Imagine training your team. Here's something that I'm excited about solving. So when we look at people, we've got to ask ourselves, what is our definition of winning? And my definition of winning is not to actually make somebody feel good. It's to actually leave people better than the way that I found them. So my challenge for you is one thing. Who's going to be communicating with people? Your inner child that wants to walk around the world healing and helping people, or is it the people that really want to leave people better than how you found them? So the question you're going to ask is, do I want to give them a win? Do you want to feel like they won, or do we want them to feel like they're winning? Because I challenge you to know that when you get around people and they say to you, man, I love being around John, I love being around Brian, because every time I get around them, I I feel like I'm winning in life. And the reason I bring that up to all of you today is when you look at folks and you look them in the eyes, I want you to realize you see a little kid. Our job is to, A, quickly heal if we need, or be a hero maker. And I'm telling you, if you become a hero maker for people and you get people to believe that they could become their own hero in life, their own hero of what's possible, we do that with our words and we don't tell them you're great or you did a good job. We let them know winning is possible. And the fastest way to do that is to let them know I see what you're capable of. So when somebody corrects our language or shifts what it is that we do, that's when the winning begins.

Were you here in the room when I did the interview with— this is one of the coolest moments because I did an interview with Robert Cialdini, top influence psychologist in the world. BJ Fogg runs the behavior lab at Stanford.

Love BJ Fogg.

Top habit guy, behavior guy in the world. Chris Voss, now the top negotiation expert in the world. And then we had a cameo from Gino Wickman who was here. But it was the 3 of us and then we brought Gino up for a few minutes. So I did an interview with all of them. And the segment in there, it was about the ethical use of influence, negotiation, and Yeah. Because that's one of the reasons me and Bob have had such a really great relationship where you share very common values on, you know, don't exploit people with the use of these. These are powers.

These are true superpowers.

100%. So one of the things with everything you're saying, as we're talking about fear and stuff, if someone is not a right-fit client, like they are broke, they don't have any money, and you are Let's call like these boiler rooms that like, let's call your credit card company and extend the limit so you can buy. I mean, you are hurting people to do that. So to your point earlier, you're saying all this with the caveat that you qualify right fit and wrong fit people that you're trying to sell to because they're, you know, no matter how— like if I had Jason Fladlin pitching all of my— and we have done that before. We've actually, me and you did—

We did those calls, yeah.

Yeah, it was fantastic. And we learned a lot. And so this is not for everyone. You got to make a million bucks a year, I mean, from just an income.

Yeah.

And then what are the other things that we do in Genius Network? We look at reputation. We look at a lot of stuff before we say, is this person the right fit client? We tell people to go to other groups when we know that what they're really after is not really what we're going to provide here. So I just wanted to throw that in there so that— because I'm to the point of I don't ever want— because you are masterful at this, and I don't want someone to interpret like whenever, you know, you can sell anything to anybody because you really— even if you could, you shouldn't do it, right? So yeah.

Yeah, so that's a great point, and this is why I'm so prone to information because if you empower a consumer to make a better decision, then that's a great service, and if that better decision is to say no to you, fantastic.

Fantastic.

You should love that. But informed consumers make better decisions, so let's do a better job of informing our consumers. Most of you have an I Have a Dream speech inside of you that your audience has never heard. So how can you expect them to really truly value what you can offer to them if you're not articulating it to them? And that's a problem because they will go to a second-rate or a third-rate competitor who will do half as good a job And then the smart people get so frustrated because they're like, why is that happening?

Well, because you just haven't built that capability.

You are not willing to do the things that you consider beneath you or that you find uncomfortable, and those are the very things that would unlock more audiences for you to serve at a higher degree. And this is why I'm so passionate about this, right? So, so if I was someone who That's was just sitting back and watching this, I would dealing say, well, you know, with a client. What was the objection that you gave earlier, Michael?

They don't think they could do it.

They don't think that they can do it, right? You should know several different ways in order to serve somebody with that question because the more perspectives you can give somebody to see a problem, the more insight they can get to that problem. If they only look at it this way, they get one perspective. If they look at it this way and this way, they get another perspective. You got to look at selling to your audience like picking a lock. Let's try this combination. If it doesn't work, let's try this combination. Qualified, of course, that they're the right fit and that buying from you is cheaper than not buying from you. Okay? So you should always make saying no more expensive than saying yes. And then everybody that is a right fit for you will say yes. And so, well, sorry, what was it again, Michael? What was the, was the objection? Uh, they don't think they could do it. They don't think they can do it. Okay, so there's a simple formula that I do for that. The number one thing you can do with somebody to serve them, the easiest thing I could teach you is to first just agree with them. Yeah, of course you can't do it. You're right. You're totally— you can't do it at all. And as you fail to do it, what is the first and second and third steps that you need to do so you can fail in a way that will make you better tomorrow than you are today? Because you can't do it. You are totally right. It's impossible for you to do it. Knowing that it's impossible What should we do about it?

Right?

And that's one of the ways in which you can help somebody get past something that they're stuck with right now.

Takeaway.

Your first thing was like, just sail away from them.

And I mean, and so again, you got to remember that's one of several different ways in which I can go to that specific issue. I could do it the other way too. Sorry, again, what was the objection?

They don't think they could do it.

They don't think that they can do it. How much of a percentage of belief that you can actually do it would you need to move forward? Is it 7%? Is it 3%? Is it 9.6728%? What would you need to know to be true so you can think you could do enough of it to feel confident to say yes today, right? And that's a different way of doing it, is you chunk it down. You take this big scary I can't do it, which is a binary term, it's either yes or no, and we turn it to in what situation would it be possible for you to do with it. And we try to chunk it down to what percentage specifically, right? Howard Getz and son one day, Zach, right?

Uh-huh.

We're at a $100K dinner. I don't remember where we were at, but it was pretty cool. And he says, I got a productivity problem, Jason. And he says, I can't work past a certain point and it's really bothering me. And I said, hey, Zach, I need to be you for a day. I need to fill in for you and I want to do the best job possible. So how will I know when to be unproductive? That's the question that I asked him. And so this is a good close structure, right? This is when you assume what I call utility. To me, there is never anything that is negative. There is, does it have use or does it not have use and how can we make it have use? So I said, I'm using this as a skill. Teach me the skill of how to be unproductive. I want to learn. And what we learn is when the clock hits 4:01 PM for Zach, he can't get past it. So I got him to agree with me that if he could just work to 4:02 PM, He would consider that productive. Now, does that make sense? No, it makes zero fucking sense in the world. Excuse my French. I lived in France earlier this year. Don't recommend it, by the way. Right. Long story. No time to get into it. It doesn't make sense. But all objections are sticking points where people can't move past them. And when they're stuck, They don't get any results. So our goal is to unstick them, to get them to move where they can't move forward right now. And again, caveat, only to people that are qualified who should buy, that not buying is more expensive than buying. Uh, and so these are techniques that we use. Uh, and I'll tell you what really crystallized this for me, what really made the impact on me where this really became true. Most people will not tell you what's really holding them back until you've earned the right to know that information. information.

Mm-hmm.

And one of the best ways you can earn the right to know that information is to stay with them longer and show the sincerity in your heart that you want to help them. So I'm on a call one day with many, many, many people, hundreds of people, and there's a woman that— it's about 3 or 4 hours into this call, and she says, here's what's stopping me. I don't know if I should do this or not. And she says, I, I was in an abusive relationship. And I got out of it, and then I went to these women's homes, and my ex-husband followed me around and always found me. And he would terrorize me, and he would hurt me, and he would beat me. And I was broken. And I've just— it's been 9 months since I've finally gotten free from him, and I'm just feeling like I can stand on my own 2 feet again. Would it be irresponsible of me, now that I'm just getting back on my feet, to take on this new challenge? It was a business thing. thing, right? Should I be starting a business right now? And my answer isn't yes or no to that. My answer is I got to find out more facts first. And so I asked some questions for her. And what she really just needed is somebody in her corner because she hadn't had that before. That was the game changer for her.

Mm-hmm.

And, and of course we can provide that because the real selling happens after the product is purchased. That's where the real selling occurs is in the fulfillment. That's more important But most of you spend so much time on what's in the package and not enough time on the gift wrap. So people are like, yeah, that's not that good.

Okay, so yeah, this reminds me of— remember the call we had with the individual that had brain cancer?

I told this story the other day to my client. Yeah, and Joe did the very best thing he could, and I was so proud of him in that moment. So Joe and I are on the call selling people on Genius, 10,000 pods Get in there, right? Fun, really fun.

Let me, let me context. So this is the annual event. This is probably what, 5 years ago?

Yeah.

And I had taken the very first Gary Halbert newsletter where there was this criteria, and I was like, let's create a criteria. Let's send a letter out to everyone and invite them on to a— and I'd never done anything like this before where I actually get on. And I hired Jason, you know, Basically for moral support because I think I was doing most of the talking in those calls.

You did.

But he's masterful. So I was like, let's design this selling to the affluent because there's all these books written about how to sell to the affluent and everything, but they're mostly written by people that don't sell to the affluent. And I'm like, my clients are affluent, right? If there's like— and let's actually do some selling and we'll record it and we'll document these conversations, what we say and we don't say. And so we start booking these calls where they can schedule a 30-minute call and talk to me and Jason. And we're telling them, we're gonna see if you're a right fit for Genius Network and you're gonna have an opportunity to talk with us. And so it is a sales call and we're telling the people in advance this is being recorded, right?

Yeah.

So they're agreeing to this, right? So we, we're doing these calls and we are literally closing almost every one of them because of the pre-suasion. It's what we did in advance That actually set the stage, and then I'll turn it over to you. So this one guy, he has—

And we could probably dig it up, producer versus parasite units, that whole funnel and everything. And yeah, Joe and I were just closing the lights out. What I love about Joe is Joe can't get out of his own way, so he's still got to be there. So he's like, you go on and close them, and then I sat back and you did all the closing on every client, right? It's the same thing I do, right? You send me out. out to do your work. I do your work, you do my work. Somehow it nets out positive, right?

Yeah.

So we get on the call with this guy, and I thought I was going to have to step in and do it. And Joe is like one of the few people in the world that understood this because he understands it at an intuitive level now because service is in his heart. So technique is not required when service is in the heart. We use technique until we get to service in the heart. And the guy says, I've just been diagnosed with brain cancer, and I haven't been given Much longer to live. And so we're having this sales call with this guy, uh, and we're walking him through and we're just talking what it's like. And most of the time we just spent on just dealing with this big issue of him having this and just being there for him and feeling empathetic towards him and seeing whatever can we do to support him. And then after this conversation, we've had zero selling, 27 minutes of just being like, this is tough. This is a tough conversation, right? Uh, really connecting with them. Uh, we get ready to wrap up. And Joe says, well, with all that said, would you still like to come to the annual event? Which is the perfect question you can say to somebody in that situation.

Let me— with the caveat, I said that what turned it is I immediately said, well, you can't come to this event. I mean, I like— and I was sincere. It's like, we— like, I can't, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and try to sell you this event. And he— so we just talked to him.

Yeah.

And he just was like, he so badly wanted to come to this thing. I mean, he was like, And I'm like thinking, I can't have this guy come to the event, go and spend the time, but in lieu of what he said, that's what—

yeah.

So like at the end, and the guy said, yeah, and I've thought about this call hundreds of times because he needed to enroll in a future of optimism. He needed to enroll in something that he could have purpose with for whatever remainder of his life occurred. And if we didn't grant him the opportunity to say yes, we would would have deprived that from him.

And so he came to the event and at the very end he got up to the mic and he was just so stoked. He was like, I'm so happy that some of you were there. And it was powerful.

And he became a 25K member and unfortunately he didn't make it for the full year. He passed away. As we all will one day, spoiler alert, right?

He wanted the community though. And it really— there's that The definition of selling from Dan Sullivan, I asked him years ago. I said, Dan, what's your favorite— how would you define selling? And he's like— and it's become my favorite definition— getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. So if you get someone intellectually engaged in a future result and then get them to emotionally commit, if it's not good for them, you're not using selling in a caring, ethical way. But if it is good for them, as long as it's legal, moral, and ethical, do what you need to do in order to get them to the bigger future that is good for them and they want to go for. So from that context, he wanted to be there and it was—

He needed that. He needed that. And I remember this from many years ago where I learned this close in an old Zig Ziglar book, Secrets of Closing the Sales. And there was this example that he gives of this This guy sits down and he was selling like fire alarms, I think it was. And he says, you know, he starts the sales presentation and the guy says, well, I don't know if you know about me, but, you know, this terrible thing happened to me and this terrible thing happened to me. And then when I was getting on my feet again, my car rolled over and it wrecked and I'm wiped out like financially and physically. I'm in pain and I've had all these surgeries. And he goes on and on and on for 45 minutes. And then the sales guy says to him after he's all said and done, he goes, Okay, and would you like to have your house burned down on top of that? And the guy says, you make a good point, and he signs up and he gets the fire alarm, right? So, the real lesson for that is don't tell your customers how to spend their money. Who are you to tell your audience what they should and shouldn't do and what they should and shouldn't value and how they should and shouldn't spend their money? spend their money. Now, most people do it the opposite. You assume that people shouldn't invest in things that they want to invest in, and then you don't allow them to invest with you, and they go to second-rate people. They go to people that aren't as good as you. And it just frustrates me so much. The best customers I have ever got are the ones that have been the most resistant initially to the change. And the reason the resistance is there is because— what's the old— Fear of change. Quote, we fear not. It's a Marianne Williamson quote.

The one.

Yeah, it's it's not is we don't fear our inadequacies. We fear our. Yeah, we fear our full potential more than we fear our weaknesses. And so this is so often the case with selling to the best clients, right? So if you can help that person. that nobody else can help, you will win a larger book of business than you could ever think possible. So I'm selling 22-year-old kids on YouTube Live. I could do better selling in a crack house, okay, right? The conditions would be more favorable. So we have 54,000 people on this YouTube Live and they're younger kids, you know, memeing and all of that kind of stuff. And it's not going very good because Iman, like the script that we had for day 1, which I didn't have a chance because they brought me in at the end to really work the magic that I could try to work, and the pacing wasn't quite right and it went a little bit long and people were getting agitated and they're like, get to the point, get to the point, get to the point. And then they bring me on to face the unruly mob of 54,000 mostly young kids, right? And I'm supposed to sell them and I— This is day 1. I don't have a product to sell. I just have an idea to sell. I said to the group of kids, I say, there was a Stanford experiment that was done many years ago. It's the marshmallow experiment. You've probably heard of it, right? Put a marshmallow in front of a kid and says, if you eat it right now, that's all you get. Wait 15 minutes, you get 2. Then they measured the kids, the ones that ate the marshmallow right away, and they measured the ones that didn't. They measured them all through life. What they found many years later is the The kids that could delay gratification for a short period of time were much more successful than the ones who could not. And then I said they wondered if they could teach it. So they went to the kids that couldn't delay gratification, they taught them how to delay gratification. Turns out they were just as successful in life as the kids that could naturally delay gratification. So this is the first thing that I say to the audience. This is pre-suasion, right? We're setting them in the state of mind to be most Receptive to the message. The state in which you hear the message is more important than the message itself. So write that down, right? So you put them in that state of mind to be the most receptive to hear the message they need to hear. So this is what I say to the young audiences. And then I say, listen, I want to get to the end just as fast as anybody does, but if I skip to the last 5 minutes of my favorite movie the first time I watch it, would it still be my favorite movie or would it not be? It wouldn't.

Right?

And if I get 9 women pregnant, I don't get a baby in a month, right? I didn't say that one, right? I didn't say that one. But then I asked the audience— see, this is state management, right? This is me just showing off at this point, right? I asked the audience, I say, you have to wonder how that serves you if you have that attitude. You have to wonder how that will show up in your life if this is the attitude that you take. And now this is what they do on YouTube. I didn't get this until I was live in front of an audience of a crazy bunch of people. They would put L's in the chat if they didn't like it. One person would start with an L and then a whole social media experiment of people, social proof to the max.

L da da da da da da.

I dropped that bomb on them and all the L's turned to W's. W's, W W's. And I'm like, all right, cool. Now I can actually get through to this audience. Okay. So here's what we did because we didn't know what would happen. Our main broadcast platform was YouTube, and when a video drops, in 24 hours it reached half a million people if the algorithm plays nice. Now, we didn't know if a 4.5, 5-hour YouTube Live video would suppress distribution in the algorithm, and this was a test. So we came up with the idea of my closes would be cut out of the YouTube replay. So it would only be an hour and 10 minutes of Iman's presentation, which was wonderful. And it was masterful. And then all the closing that I was doing got cut out. And that was true for the 5 days. We did 5 days of this, right? The amount of people who were there live that went to watch the recording on YouTube, and when they found they couldn't watch me close them for 15 hours worth of closes, the amount of anger that was created from that was greater than any anger I've ever seen from closing too hard or selling too much. They were so disappointed that they couldn't watch me sell them again, even after they bought. And that is the final lesson that I want to leave you with. This is what it looks like when it's done right.

You're selling.

When it's done right, the selling experience is so transformative that the selling is as valuable as any other piece of content that you can put in front of your audience. So hopefully that inspires you. And let me know how it works out for you.

I want to ask you about what are some things that everyone here could do to frame their message in a way— and now, you've already, you're already talking about it.

I mean, we're right in the middle of having a whole conversation.

All of this is about framing, right? But I want you to really speak and elaborate a little bit more on that because I think it's so important for people to get that context.

Well, let's just pick the subject that, you know, this podcast is about, about marketing. So just imagine this was your presentation and you're going to talk to the audience that we have tonight about the 3 most important things they need to know about marketing.

Okay.

So remember what Ben said. When I started working with Ben 3 years ago, he had so much information. He had so many great ideas. But we narrowed it down to 3 things, just 3 things. So it was easy to follow. And I think that's one of the best ways to frame it is since we're here to talk about marketing and all of these books and seminars that have been done and all the years, Joe, that you've studied these things, I boiled it down to the 3 most important things. that you need to know. So let's start off with number 1. And then we talk about number 1. And one other suggestion is, especially when you're doing an interactive thing like we are, is just like you're interrupting me— not interrupting, but adding things or asking questions.

No, I'm interrupting you.

No, you're not interrupting. We're having a discussion. When you have a conversation, it's a 2-way street, even though we have hundreds of people listening to us, they can still text in. And I'm sure we'll have some other questions coming up. But when we have this back and forth discussion, it's important before we go on to idea number 2, does anybody have any questions about what we covered on idea number 1? Because this is a tool in our Ultimate Speaking System. Don't continue with point 2. If somebody's brain is stuck on point 1 and they have something that's holding them back. So let's get any questions out.

Good.

Okay. Now let's go to idea number 2, idea number 3. And since we're talking about structuring a message, we know we have to have an opening, something that grabs them. Then we have to have our content. And then we have, and this is where people get confused. They confuse a closing and a call to action. And they're completely different things. The call to action, in my experience and opinion, should never be the close. The call to action should precede the close. And the closing is like the bow on a package. It's an impacting story. It's an emotional connection. It's a reinforcement of a key point. It's something that leaves the audience with a wow. Not a call to action. Sign up for my course. Get my book. No. So let's just say that Ben was going to make a presentation on his book. And he said, you know, you can go to Audible, you can get the book here, you can go to Amazon. Okay. That's his call to action. Then what if he said on page 116, I tell a story about this man and his wife, and then he uses something from that book as a story to drive home the point? And of course, I'm making this up. I don't know what's on that page, if there's a story about a man or woman in the book, but— And then if he said, and that man or that woman could be you. Your personality isn't permanent.

Hmm.

Your personality isn't permanent. Now go out and make it a great day. That's a closing. That's a wrapping up. of his message that he would have given to us if we had more time and we could understand what he was saying in the middle of nowhere. But that's one of the ways to structure it, is to make sure you're very clear in your mind. And one of the things Earl Nightingale taught me in the 3 years we spent together, the last 3 years on our planet, that he passed on in 1989. So he moved here in 1986. And I took him fishing a number of times. He was up on our houseboat at Lake Powell, was he described the idea of moving a message from your mind to the mind of the audience. And if you numbered all of the pieces in your mind and could move them like blocks of a building to the mind of your audience, when you got finished, they would see the same picture. that you see in their mind. And that's what you can do to be an even better communicator. Get a clear picture in your mind what your message is and what picture do you want this to create for your listeners. And my picture for you as you've tuned in to this I Love Marketing meetup is what Joe started with. I had no idea what he was going to say to me, but that speaking is a learned skill. And it is not about you. It's all about your audience. And it's being you. It's being who you are, not a performance. And, you know, so many times people think when they're going to hire a speech coach, he's going to talk about how to make gestures and how to use your voice. How do you use your eyes? It's ridiculous. I mean, most of the people that are listening to this are over 30 years old. You've spent 30 years being you.

Why would you want to be somebody else?

And then if somebody sees you in your business, off the stage or off a video, they think, well, who are you? You're not the guy that I talked to or listened to or connected to. And that's what, again, about Dean and Joe. All the time I see you both speaking, you are always the same. You're Joe and Dean. What you see is what you get, and that's so wonderful. And every one of you has that. You have your own you. Just be you.

I think it's important to make this distinction too, that when people think about speaking, that they may think, well, I'm not going to do any public speaking, or I don't speak to Audiences or get up on stage and speak, but everything that you're talking about in terms of all the skills that you share with people, the structure, the formatting of your message, the gathering your thoughts of how to convey it, even words like thinking about those building blocks that no matter what, whether you're speaking in front of a crowd or you're speaking in the boardroom at your company. or you're speaking one-on-one in a sales, uh, presentation or conversation with somebody, the better you are at being able to organize your thoughts and present them in a way that conveys the real communication to the person that— the only one that matters, the one person that you're talking to. That's really the bigger picture of what it is that you're helping people do.

Yeah, but could I call on one of our members to add to what you just said? Because when you said, I thought of Jennifer Carroll and, and how the message that she created, uh, about prostate cancer, uh, from her husband. And I hope Jennifer is still here. I saw her earlier. Jen, are you still on?

Um, hi, Joe.

Hi.

Well, first of all, Jen and I go way back, and she was one of my first coaching clients that I've worked with over these, what, 15 years maybe?

Plus, plus.

And when you lost your husband to prostate cancer and you wanted to get onto this movement, we worked on this presentation of yours and how it's not all about pill. It's about them. And just in a short version about getting checked and the coach up in Canada, the hockey coach. So could you share how you were able to do what Dean was saying about structuring and organizing your ideas? Because Jennifer Carroll is a ball of energy. She's going in all different directions. And you found out very quickly that doesn't work in speaking, that your audience needs to be able to follow your message. And that's what you've done with your talk. So take over, Jen.

Definitely resonated with me when you said, you know, you want to have your close, have your wow story after your close. And you helped me—

After the call to action. After the call to action.

Yes.

The story that I had that I shared with you, and we left it to the very end, was that I went to visit my son and I'm trying— my son, my husband passed away of prostate cancer. So I was speaking to people all over the world about having health number one and treating health number one and getting checked. That was my bit on bum and that was my call to action. It's just go get checked. And so I talked, told the story about how I went to visit my son who plays professional hockey up in Canada. And as I was there, my late husband was very sick at the time and I was just going up to see Austin and, and bring him home. to see his father for what ended up being the last time. And while I was there, one of his coaches came up to me after one of the games, and he said to me, hi, Jen, you know, give me condolences. I hope your husband's doing well. And by the way, what does he have? And I said, prostate cancer. And he said, whoa, prostate cancer? Really? I'm sorry. I thought he was fighting for his life. And I thought everyone survived prostate cancer. And I said, well, yeah, if you get checked, you can be one of the 97% of the men in the world that survive prostate cancer. But Phil, he wasn't that guy. He didn't really believe in going to the doctor. You know, he didn't like to, you know, he didn't, you know, go in there. He didn't want to go and get checked. And he looked at me and he said, oh, I'm sorry. And I went home and I took Austin home. And he said goodbye to his dad, and sadly Phil passed away shortly after. And fast forward a couple months, I was back in, in Canada, and I was watching my son play another hockey game, and up comes Coach Jeff, and he gave me his condolences. He said, I'm sorry to hear that your husband passed away. It's very tragic. And he said, but I want you to know, I went in and I got checked. And you know what?

Me.

And you told me to not be afraid, and you told me that you didn't care if I was afraid, and you didn't care if you didn't want to go, and you didn't care about all those things, that you wanted me to have the opportunity to watch my son live out his dream and walk my daughter down the aisle, and that you— my husband wasn't going to have the chance because he was home and he was dying. And then you looked at me and you pointed your finger in my face and you said, you go in. And you bend over and you take it like a man. He said, it woke me up and I went in and I went in and I saw the doctor and I bent over and I took it like a man. And I need to tell you that today. And you know what? When I was in there and the doctor was putting on my glove, I said, Doc, I'm doing this for a woman and it's not my wife.

Mmm.

And it engaged people in laughter, which of course, it's a tough subject matter. And I, and I'll tell you, you ask anyone at Genius Network, if I stand up, I'm the bend over and take it like a man gal. And it's not maybe what I thought my legacy would be, but it's okay as long as it gets men bending over and taking it like a man and hopefully save some lives through this shared song. But thank you.

Can you see the impact of that closing to put The rapture on this message about prostate cancer and getting checked. You know, it's one thing to say how important it is, but putting it in a story after the call to action is what made Jennifer's closing so powerful. So thank you, sweet lady, for sharing that. And, um, we will talk again.

One of the things you need to think of, should you be giving a 10-minute talk? And we're going to talk about simple ideas on why you should do it, what you should say, how to do it, and when you do it. So let's start with the why.

The why.

Why should you do it? Well, you're smart. You're a genius. You're part of this group. You know great things, and you have wonderful ideas that can help your fellow members. And because of that, you're going to become better known. When you give a 10-minute talk, you get exposure to the group and you get connections, which is the whole purpose of being here. Plus, you're going to learn a new skill. This is very different than the kind of speaking that you've probably done. So what do you talk about? Well, this is the challenge people have because you have so much information. So I came up with 6 criteria And as Joe said, I'm not part of Genius Network other than a member. So this is not official policy, a suggestion. Number 1, it should be relevant to the audience, which are your fellow members. It should be helpful to them. It should be something of interest and interesting, timely. And what— Gordy, is this a timely subject in what he's talking about? What's happening around the world with our money? It should be challenging. And it should be valuable. Joe says $250,000 idea. I would suggest if you meet 4 of those 6 words, you've got a 10-minute talk. Relevant, helpful, interesting, timely, challenging, and valuable. So how do you do it? I mean, you got 10 minutes. When you think of 10 minutes, I said yesterday 6 words when I was virtual. These are words you'll never hear. These words you will never hear. And what are those words? Talk as long as you want. No one— I've been speaking since 1974 professionally, 3,000 paid talks. Nobody ever said, talk as long as you want. You got an hour, a half hour. So let's put 10 minutes into perspective for you. Super Bowl commercial time. How many watch the Super Bowl?

All right.

60-second commercial sold for $6.5 million. Times that by 20, that means a 10-minute talk is $130 million of airtime during the Super Bowl. What could you say in $130 million? And the average speaker speaks 142 words a minute. So do the math. Now, where's my math guy here? Okay, Neil, you've been talking about numbers all day. Quickly. Calculator.

All right.

That's 1,420 words. Did anybody say the Lord's Prayer this morning? It's 66 words. The Lord's Prayer. Gettysburg Address, 272. John F. Kennedy's famous inaugural address that's still used since 1961. Under that number, 1,300-plus words. And we still use that today as an example of a great presentation. So you need a single point. You need something that can be summed up in 1, 2, 3, or 4 words. Short and snappy. Then I call it the golden thread. What are you going to talk about? In one sentence. And then you could support that with many other sub-points. You could have 3 points or 5 points. You could have 10 points, but one main golden thread. So you got into it by giving up your legs for $100 million. We're starting a— we're gonna do a funding and we'll see if we can come up with the money. And next we'll do the operation right here. I mean, that would be terrific. All right, but let's say if that's the talk, I gave up my legs for $100 million, that would be the golden thread. So you can talk about that. Ask me what makes a great talk, 10-minute talk. What makes a great 10-minute— that's a great question. And as you're listening, one word.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, There's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Results. Was Gordy's a great talk?

Sure.

I don't know. What are you going to do about your financial well-being if we go into a worldwide global recession? If you do nothing, It doesn't matter how good his visuals were. It doesn't matter how impacting his stories were. If you don't do anything about it, it doesn't mean anything. James, when you gave that talk, which was terrific, does this bring you joy? That was the first thing people were talking about when I was down this morning at breakfast. That's a result. So that's what works. What will the audience do based on your call to action? Every message needs a call to action. And there's 3 things in a call to action: what you will do, what you will think, or what you will feel. Or it could be all 3 of them. So I went through just recently some memorable examples of 10-minute talks that had a single focus. Eunice likes it to be very clear. And also memorable. So just going back one year, John Cheki, I know you're on the screen, but yours is one of them because what John talked about was ice baths and Wim Hof. And as a result, over this time, so many people have been doing this. Sashin Patel, Dr. Sashin, Do you remember that talk that you are your own doctor? How you can be your own doctor, how you can heal yourself. As a result of that talk, people have been doing it. We had another book today with Susan talking about a book. Alinka talked about the book too, how to get a best-selling book. Just some examples from last year. There's 48 talks a year. We got 8 meetings, 6 talks, 48. You should be in that 48. Let's talk about some this year. Steve Sims. Do you remember that talk and talking about the Statue of David? And his call to action was 2 words.

Just ask.

What was that?

Just ask.

Just ask. How did that happen? Because it was such a clear, simple message. 2 words, just ask. That's what you need in your talk. Rajan talked about what? Anybody remember?

Flying privately.

Flying privately. 2 words. Mark talked about raw land. Simple thing, the value of raw land. And this man, that is you right there. What were those 5 words? Does this bring you joy? Clear, simple. Joe, I don't know if you remember this speaker, Cherie, talked about speed healing and how you can accelerate that. Yesterday, Scott, you talked about one word.

Onboarding.

Onboarding. Simple, clear, simple. And then he came up with those 3 words: stay, pay, and refer. What, what do you want to be happening? He then gave you 3 other words that all had a similar expression in them based on this spelling. Simple, clear, and powerful. Very powerful call to action we saw yesterday. When you get to the close and you're telling people what you want them to do, the mindset should be of your audience, I can do that. Did Gordy say something that your mindset, well, I can do that. Did Susan Gilbert say that today in the book? I can do that. Daniel talked about that, about how we can embrace discomfort. And then he gave us some of the secrets that he used that helped him do that. And he told you about the butterflies. He told you about coaching yourself. And then the one that developed the most discussion I saw online and in the room was that somebody believed in me. And there was lots of discussion of that. And after his talk, those things started to appear in there. And this young lady sitting over here, right in front of me, talked about the rabbit hole, which we've been using today, just before my presentation. So I think it's important. You spoke to us, you knew where we were, and as a result, it was so clear. And then she said, now what? Now what? A 10-minute talk can be a domino for you. A domino. We know what that is. Once it starts, it continues. Ben Hardy, would you please stand up? Oh, there you are. I was like, look at the boy. Come on over here. Ben Hardy came to his first meeting. He was 29 years old. He was 2 years into his doctorate program. He was still in school. And you came here in September?

Yes.

Is that right? In 2017?

Yes.

And 2 months later, he was on the main stage at the annual event. And the dominoes began falling. He already had joined the 100K club right after the 25K. He has written— how many books did you tell us yesterday?

7 or 8.

7 or 8 books. A member of this, all because of that one talk. He hadn't even come to a meeting when we got on the phone and talked about that wonderful message. And I told I should be at the annual event. And you know, I've got 100 people wanting to get in. There's no way. Don't even think about it. Why did you put him on the annual event? Because of that 10-minute talk.

And because of you.

No, because of him, not because of me. So, so think about that. What are you going to do?

When?

That's the last word. How about right now? Be that domino. Decide to give your 10-minute talk and then become Ben Hardy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome, Click here. Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now.

Come on. Thank you.

Watch 'em.