The Psychological Trick To Make People Buy from You Feat. Benjamin Hardy and Robert Cialdini

In the book Influence, I talked about what you should put into a message to increase the likelihood that people would want it, would try to acquire it, that thing that you're talking about, your offer. Pre-suasion is about what you should say or do in the moment before you deliver that message. To make people attuned to the strengths of that message, to make them inclined toward, open to, receptive to the thing about your message that is its strongest element, the thing that will make it wise for them to say yes, because that's the essence of what it is that you are offering.

Well, that is such an important concept that if someone was able to do that 5%, 10% more effectively, not just twice as good, but just little incremental things, that would make a huge shift. But if you did it 5 or 10 times more effectively, that would change your life. That would change the entire game. And so this is a way, like Joe Weldon, who is one of my friends, he's a, we had, than speaking about him previously before the cameras started rolling, is he made this comment about how to introduce a speaker, as an example. And if you're gonna go up on stage, if you have a beautiful piece of art and you duct tape it to the wall, it's gonna look a certain way. But if you put it in a nice frame, it's different. And ever since I heard that, I've always thought about, you know, how you frame anything has a lot to do with how it occurs to people, how they like it, how they buy into it. And then here you come out with Pre-Suasion, which is an entire— Mm-hmm. Study of how you frame things. And I don't, you know, I want to do it justice because it's way beyond just framing things. There's a whole lot more into it. So what I'd love to have you do is talk about the scientific research around persuasion so that people realize this is not just, you know, a really bright professor's opinion about how to, you know, set up the the sale, setting up the request. This is like, you have done some serious research on it. So I think people would really appreciate this at a much deeper level if they knew how hard you have worked on this. So if you could talk about that.

Well, there are some literatures in academic behavioral science about priming, about framing, about positioning, about anchoring, that all came together for me in terms of what they were implying about how you amplify the effect of your message. It's by what you do before you send that message, and it involves creating engagement, creating— Understanding. A focus in your audience on some aspect that they're yet to experience. They haven't encountered it yet. You just make them open and receptive to it before they ever encounter it.

Right.

That's the idea. Let me give you an example. Suppose you want to sell somebody something that's new, or you want to bring them in and you know that people hang back when they've got something that's new They haven't yet tried it. They're unfamiliar. They don't like getting out of their comfort zone.

Mm-hmm.

But you've got this thing and it's really great.

How do you—

Here's a study. Researchers went up to people on the street, said, "We have a new soft drink. It's untried. Nobody's ever encountered it before. Would you be willing "Give us your email address right now, right, and we'll send you the information that will allow you to get this new product." Now that's a risky thing to do. Somebody comes up to you unbidden, unsolicited, right, unknown, asks for your email address. That's a risky thing.

Right.

Only 30% of the people were willing to do that. Under those circumstances. Even that sounds to me like a lot, right?

Yeah.

But there are risk-takers among us, right? For another sample of people, the researcher walked up and said, "Excuse me, do you consider yourself an adventurous person?" People thought for a minute, and they went on a particular memory track for times that they were adventurous because adventure was the question that they were now engaged in. And we've all experienced— almost everybody said yes. 98% of the people said yes.

Just by planting that seed of getting them to focus on where their brain goes.

Right.

And now instead of 30% giving them their email address when they were later told about this new product, 75.6% provide that risky, chancy thing.

That's fascinating. It's almost like the study you did with Hari Krishnas in Influence where someone would go up and put the flower on their collar in airports and it was more difficult for someone to step away than reach in their pocket and pull out a dollar and give them donation, walk away and then throw the—

What do you do first?

Yeah. So, I mean, like the way that I look at that piece of information, which is again, so incredibly valuable by how you direct the brain to think about something before you then ask them for what you really want. Right. Is like, so if a single person, if a guy was, you know, afraid of going up to a woman and asking for her email or asking for her phone number, if they said, you know, are you adventurous?

Yeah.

And just plant that and say, oh, by the way, would you like to go on a date? You've just probably,— in this case tripled your chances of getting a yes.

Here's a piece of research that shows how you can increase that even more. A study done in France. Researchers had an attractive young man walk up to young women who were by themselves strolling through a shopping mall. And he stopped them and said, "I wonder if you could give me your phone number so I can call you for a date later." Another risky thing to do. Indeed, only 13.5% of the time did he get a phone number if he did that. This is an attractive guy, though. They got an actor, a matinee idol kind of looking guy.

That's part of persuasion also, right?

Right.

Even that, only 13.5% unless he asked in front of a particular kind of shop. It doubled to almost doubled to 24% success. A flower shop. In the environment of flowers, women are put in mind of romance, and now romance is more important than risk.

Wow.

Where do you put people first?

So the environment has everything to do with—

It can be a word that you use like adventurous. It can be a a setting that you arrange, or it can be an image that you provide on your website.

Right.

Wow.

Let me give you an example of the image.

You can talk about these examples for the next week, and I would love them all because they're fantastic.

A study done with an online furniture store, they sell sofas. They sent half of the visitors to their site to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper fluffy clouds. The other half they sent to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper coins, pennies.

Mm-hmm.

Now, they then track what happens to those visitors. Who were randomly sent to one or the other place with different images. The first thing they can counter is an image of clouds or an image of coins. Those who experienced the clouds rated comfort as the most important feature for them to decide on a sofa. They then searched the site for information about comfort, and they preferred to buy more comfortable sofas. Those who got pennies rated cost as the most important feature for determining their choice.

Right.

They searched for price-related information, and they preferred to buy inexpensive furniture. And not one of them recognized— they were asked afterwards, So, do you think the clouds made a difference or the co— not one of them believed that the clouds or the coins made any difference.

I'm gonna start with just showing you two quick pictures. So, I'm gonna flash a lot of things at you. You're not gonna actually be able to see a lot.

But—

then the main things I actually want you to see are actually the things in red. So 7% and 15%. So I'm going to explain those pictures in a minute. The question is how. So what I'm going to cover in this talk is how to create a frame, how to actually have the people who are watching your messages or experiencing your material, being in an environment like this, how to put the correct lenses on them. That's actually what Robert Cialdini's work is all about. And then ultimately, how to get people to make big decisions, how to make people or get people to take action. That's basically what this is all about. And I actually— Gina, I'm pretty sure that this is the wrong set of slides. [LAUGHTER] I'm pretty confident this is the wrong set of slides. Anyways, that's me and Joe practicing this. I gave this talk at 100K about a month ago, and so I decided to reshare it. Anyways, we'll start with Robert Cialdini. So here are some of the quotes. He said, "There's a critical insight for those who want to learn to be more influential. The best persuaders become so through pre-suasion, the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it. To persuade optimally, then, it is necessary to pre-suede optimally. But how? In part, the answer involves an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication. So this is the key. What we present first changes what people experience So what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next. That's the key. It's all about creating the context, and then when you create the context, you shape everything. So I'm gonna just share with you one of my favorite psychological studies. This is a really funny study. You can look it up if you want. It's called "Mind Over Milkshake." And so, as you can see in the picture, basically there was two groups. One group was given a milkshake that they were said was very healthy. Low fat, gluten-free, all those things. 104 calories. The other group was told that the milkshake that they were drinking was indulgent, totally filled with brownies, all sorts of stuff, 600 calories. The truth is that both of them were the exact same milkshake. This was all about framing. What the psychologists did is they ended up testing the people's blood and kind of the biological response of what happened after people took these milkshakes. And basically what it showed is that people had different physiological responses based on the framing of what they thought. Mm-hmm. You know, there's a lot of interesting kind of like the more stuff that Jamie Hope would understand kind of component of all that stuff. But basically the idea is that your framing not only influences your insights and your, like, your mindset, it literally influences your biology. So now I'm going to talk about how I've applied that principle to webinars recently.

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 JoePolish.com and you can get a copy there.

So this is a video that people land on when they come to my webinars, and basically what I say when people come to this video is I actually tell them that I don't want them to watch my webinar. I tell them that it would be a waste of time for them to watch my 60-minute training if they don't have the right perspective. I would rather them not consume more information. They already consume so much information online. It's gonna be a wasted 60 minutes, both my wasted 60 minutes and their wasted 60 minutes, if they do not have the right perspective. And so when they click that registration button, I say, "If you really wanna watch this webinar, I want you to watch it from the right perspective. And so I've put together a 7-minute video that's gonna help you get into the right perspective." It's one of the things that Joe says. It's one of the things that Robert Cialdini says. You have to have the right mindset and the right setting, set and setting, in order to have a transformational experience.

Mm-hmm.

That's actually true of therapy as well. Joe said it. People go to therapy not for information. They go for an experience. And so if you want people to have the right experience, they have to have the right perspective, because you've got to create the right context. And so basically what then happens is when people click the registration button, they go through this pre-webinar training. It's 7 minutes long. They watch it. And I just teach them a bunch of stuff that I'm going to already teach them in the webinar. Mm-hmm. But one of the things I do at the very end is— and I don't see a clock either on a 10-minute thing, so hopefully I'm not going too far overboard. But anyways, at the end of the training, I tell— I make an offer, essentially a tripwire offer. I offer them a $7 journaling course. And one of the things I say is, if you buy this course— you don't have to buy this course in order to watch the webinar. You've actually already registered for the webinar. But if you buy this course, two things are going to happen. You're gonna be able to go through a few exercises that are gonna help you have a much more powerful experience with the webinar. But also, by spending $7 on this thing—

we good?

Good? By spending $7 on this journaling course, you're also gonna be invested. So this is one of the things that Joe says. Let's see here. Joe Polish, PhD. Joe Polish, PhD. He says, "If they don't pay, they don't pay attention." So one of the things I actually say at the end of that 7-minute thing is I say, "Look, you don't have to buy this, but if you do buy it, you're gonna have a completely different mindset for the webinar. It's only $7 to buy this journaling course, but it's essentially like buying a ticket. And if you're more invested, you're gonna have far more commitment, and you're gonna have a different lens. And that $7 lens could be worth a lot of money to you." It's just like why we paid $25,000 to be in this room. The information we get in this room is valuable in a lot of ways because we're so invested financially. It puts on a different set of lenses and commitments. And so I just— I literally explain all this to them. And one of the things as part of the pre-suasion principles is that you're striving to align their identity with what they're trying to accomplish. And obviously you're striving to have part of that be that they're making a decision that you're trying to help them make. You're trying—

Yeah.

And so that's actually one of the things that Dan Sullivan says. That's what marketing is and selling is, that you're helping people get intellectually, you know, interested or stimulated and emotionally committed to making a decision. And so this is just all part of training their identity. And really what the context is that you're creating is their future self. You're creating a context that they already want. It's their future self, and so they're coming at it from that perspective. And so these are all just things that I say in a lot kind of quicker stream in that 7-minute video. And so over a 6— this was without it. Over a 6-month period of time, and it's a very similar funnel, I made that much money on a funnel selling a particular online course by just adding— and these are 2 separate webinars— but by adding the $7 offer. So you can see the $7 offer and then the thing down below it. I've actually sold probably— 10 times as much. 4,000 or 5,000 of the journaling course, which is $7. But what happened is that the conversion rate of the actual thing I'm selling, which is an online course between $500 and $1,000, that conversion rate almost doubled on the sales page. Because you can test the sales page. You can see how much people, when they land on a sales page— so before, the sales page conversion rate was 7%. That was the first picture I showed you. The conversion rate on the same sales page, essentially a little tweaks but not really, is now 12%— actually no, it's 15%. So the conversion rate on the sales page doubled by adding in this persuasion component, and it happened for a few reasons. One is because far more of the people who are at the webinar now actually paid to be at the webinar. Thousands of people have now paid $7 to watch the webinar that used to be free. Those people are far more likely to buy the program, but also—

Yeah.

For me, who's someone who wanted to give material that was useful, I want them to have the right perspective. I want them to have the right perspective, the right lenses, so that when they watch the webinar, it was a transformational experience, not just them consuming more information. This is the sales page. Pretty much the same thing as it was before. Another kind of very important principle that I've learned about persuasion, that this is something that has fundamentally improved the program. So I've had thousands of people go through this online program that I sell. It's a year-long experience. And one of the things that I've learned after having thousands of people go through it is that, you know, a lot of people— I actually have far lower, like, refund rates than typical. But when people join a program like mine, and even if they join Genius Network, there's a lot of new information that they have to gather in order to be successful in that new environment. So when I give them this new online course, they've— a lot of the feedback we got was that people felt overwhelmed.

Mm-hmm.

People were like, there's so much information, I don't know if I can apply it all. And so what we then did is we built an onboarding program. So my program is called AMP, and so what we did is we designed an AMP warm-up program. There's about 300 people in it right now, and actually a lot of the former people who have been in AMP for like 6 months who are floundering, we put them back in this program. And essentially what this onboarding prep program is, is there's a video at the beginning and I say— Hi. —this is after they've bought my program—I say, "You actually can't have access to my program"—or not my program, but you can't have access to AMP, what you purchased, until after you go through this prep program. This is a buffer. And essentially, I explain to them the core mindsets, the core things that they need to understand in order to be successful with the thing that they just bought. And they actually have to accomplish a few requirements in order to actually get access to what they bought. And by doing this, by creating this AMP warm-up program, And it's essentially like a buffer. It has— I mean, our refunds are so low, but people are so happy because when they walk in, they're no longer overwhelmed. Like, they can take this program at whatever pace they want. And that's one thing I tell them about. You take this at whatever pace you want. The fastest you can do it is in 2 weeks if you're like really a rock star.

Mm-hmm.

And then once people actually get into the program that they bought, they have such better results, not only because they worked for it, but because now they're ready for it. They've got the right mindset for it. For it, they've actually got— they actually know how to do it rather than just jumping onto like a rocket ship. So this is the thing that me and Joe actually have been working on. Joe filmed an onboarding process. He spent 3 hours filming some of the most amazing stuff helping people to, when they join Genius Network, prep their mindset so that once they come to these meetings, they know exactly how to execute at the highest level. So I'm now going to finish, but these are the two pictures, 7% versus 15%. The difference was persuasion.

What I'm gonna talk about today is how to use ethical influence and persuasion to get more people to say yes. And, you know, usually when I talk about this kind of stuff, most people are focused on marketing. I teach a lot of people about copywriting and marketing and sales, face-to-face sales and things like that. But one of the things I want you to know is this is not just about business, which I think is really fitting for Genius Network. These are the kinds of things that you can use in everyday life.. And, you know, a lot of times when, when I speak, I get people that, you know, they want to know the magic words. I'm an NLP guy, right? It's all about linguistics. They're like, tell me the right sentence to say for this. And, you know, this and that. It kind of reminds me of, you know, back when Eben Pagan used to do the double your dating thing. You know, I was an affiliate for his probably 20 years ago, and he would— he would get guys all the time going, tell me the pickup lines. What do I say to girls that make them like me? And he would say, I'm not going to teach you pickup lines. I'm gonna teach you how to be a better man, then you'll naturally be more attractive. And that's kind of the, you know, I thought about all the things that I could teach in, you know, 25, 30 minutes today. And that's kind of the tack that I'm gonna take is I'm gonna go a bit meta on influence and persuasion. And you'll be able to apply this to anything that you do. It's not necessarily about the individual language patterns. There are a lot of them. You can learn language patterns. This is more gonna be about how to think about how you speak to people. Yeah. In a way that will get them to say yes in every area of life, every context of life. So I'm kind of new to Genius Network. You know, my wife, Kayla, and I, we joined in January. Don't know a lot of people yet. So I'll just spend a second kind of telling you where I came from and how I got here. This is where it all started for me. Back in 1995, I started a company called LiquidMirror Software. I was what we affectionately called back in the day, a shareware author, try before you buy software. And I actually got into business for a really weird reason. I was 20 years old. I was fresh off the streets being homeless, and my girlfriend, who I'd only been dating for a few weeks, got pregnant. And I had no ambition in my life. I didn't have a high school degree. I didn't have really any skills other than the fact that I was a hobbyist programmer. And I knew I needed a career. I knew I needed to take care of this, you know, new human being that was coming into the world, who's about to turn 30, which is crazy to me. And, you know, I was a security guard making $6 an hour. which was a lot of money for me. I mean, I think minimum wage at the time was $4.50. So $6 an hour is like, wow, I was making it. And I knew I needed to do something and really programming was the only skill that I had. And this new thing had been coming out called internet programming. You didn't need a degree to get into it, but everywhere I went, I would give them my resume and they'd say, well, you don't have experience. Come back when you have experience. Nobody would hire me. And after probably 20 or 30 interviews, I was finally like, how am I going to get experience if nobody hires me? And I came up with this idea, what if I came up with my own software company? And I publish my own software title and then put that on the resume, then, then I've got experience and people will have to hire me. And I had this little program that I had written. It was called Send to Anywhere, and it was a file utility, would help you copy and move files around in Windows. And I published that out there, and really it was— the only purpose was to get it on the resume. And it took off and it did really well, and it did help me get my first job. And then that was my side gig for a number of years. And, and, um, But a year later, I started getting featured in newspapers, magazines, and I started realizing I should really figure out how to market this thing. Maybe I don't have to have a day job, you know. And so that's where I used to get these 3M floppy disks at CompUSA and duplicate them and put the stickers on them. That's where I started. That was my first website back in 1995. That was my earthlink.net free 10-page website that I had there. It was beautiful. I ended up with a better one later. Started one of the very first shareware networks. If you ever downloaded shareware software in the late '90s, or in 2000s. You probably downloaded from one of my sites called the Shareware Junction Network. Had one of the very first file hosting companies out there, SWMirr, years ago. In 1998, everything changed. I was at the county fair in Orange County, California, and my friends and I would go there every year, primarily to see the stage hypnotist, a guy named Mark Yuzik. And I think he's one of the best stage hypnotists on the planet. I was sitting there in the audience and enjoying the show like I did every year. I mean, we would go pretty much just to see him, but I didn't believe in hypnosis. I thought it was all, you know, a put-on. I thought the people on stage were drunk or idiots or just paid to be on stage or something like that. But I loved the show. But at the end of the show, he was selling these tapes and he's going, step right up, step right up, get your tapes, 3 for $20. And all I wanted— I didn't believe in hypnosis. I was super skeptical, very logical guy. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I believed the kind of hypnosis that they put out in Hollywood and cartoon, you know, cartoons where people are sort of controlling others and their eyes, you know, spin and stuff like that. But I had $20 in my pocket and I just really wanted to hear what was on these cassette tapes. So I walked up and I said, you know, I'll take it, slapped down my $20 bill. He goes, which ones do you want? I looked down in the case and the first one that jumped out at me was Quit Smoking. At that time, 1998, I was 25 years old. I was smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day and I was hopelessly addicted to cigarettes. From the time that I graduated high school and really got some freedom, you know, being out of the house a lot, I really just started smoking more and more and more. By the time I was 21, I was smoking 3 packs a day. There was a time where I actually rolled cigarettes. And I would smoke filterless cigarettes just to get even more of a rush out of it. And I tried everything I could to quit smoking. Nothing worked. And so I bought this silly little tape. About 3 weeks later at home, I popped it in and listened to it. The curiosity finally got to me. And everything changed. I woke up the next morning and never touched another cigarette again. I barely had a thought of a cigarette after that night that I literally fell asleep listening to the tape. And it was so effortless for me to quit smoking that it actually took me 3 days before I realized that something had changed. And, and it dawned on me that I hadn't had a cigarette in 72 hours. And, um, and that was the moment when I went down a rabbit hole. That I'm still going down rabbit holes. I fell in love with the subconscious mind and how it works. I started reading everything that I could find on hypnosis. That led me to neuro-linguistic programming, social psychology, and in late 1998, it really began to fuse into my marketing. And I began to play around with these ideas of things like conversational hypnosis and embedded commands and anchoring. And using these things in my marketing to such an extent that by 1999, 2000, I was actually writing copy for other people. I'd never been trained as a copywriter. I'd read some books. Of course, the Joe Sugarman book was the one that really got me started, if anybody's ever read that. If you've never read that, it's definitely one of the top books to read on copywriting, The Slippery Slide Principle.

Right.

And really helping other people as well. And it was great because working with other people, I could really see the objective change in their results just by adding a few things. Sometimes I wouldn't even rewrite their copy for them. I would just change a few things or put a little embedded command in that, that, you know, was almost already there. And, uh, I just became fascinated with this. So my— in 2000, I became certified as a hypnotherapist, 2001 NLP. Um, I ran a practice for many years. I'm still a coach today till today. We run a coaching practice. Um, but my real love, like my passion is fusing together, you know, NLP and hypnosis and psychology with marketing, because I really think it's all the same thing. And I think a lot of times people think that marketing is about creative writing, whereas in my mind, it's all about hypnosis. It's all about suggestion. It's all about really getting to the subconscious mind. So today, I'm the owner of Transform Destiny. We're the top NLP training company in North America. And also with my wife, uh, I co-own Transform Destiny, and also with my wife, I co-own Influence to Profit. And that's where we teach heart-centered business owners ethical influence and persuasion. I think the most important word of that is ethical, um, because I find that most people who are heart-centered business owners, they have something that's going to transform the world in one way or another, or at least transform a life, help a person out. And they just don't know how to get that message across. And that's what I'd love to do is to help people, number one, craft that message. And then number two, amplify it. Teach them how to get that out there.

So what has changed today? 'Cause when you said when you were growing up, everyone trusted each other. You go to the butcher. Now today, a lot of people shop and they never have any interaction with anyone. This is all, you know, socialization I think has become really damaged, you know? So again, to go back to the COVID example for clearing the skies, oh my God, think about the isolation and the loneliness and the depression and the suicide So whenever you build a plane, you create a plane, you create a plane crash. That quote from, I think, the 1800s, you build a ship, you've created shipwrecks, right?

Yeah, and nothing gets created without consequence, right? Cause and effect, right? So I would add to Dan's definition, selling is the process of intellectually converting someone to an idea that is good for them, maybe it's also valid to say that is good for them at a— is good for their soul.

Yeah, yeah.

There needs to be an internal qualifier, right? So I don't— and take climate change, which is just this thing I'm working on for March to help out, but I don't think we should be pursuing a green line at the cost of humanity.

Mm-hmm.

But we need to find the line that works where we operate together, right?

Yes.

And I think some of the things that have really shifted in sales and selling, and transparency is a really, really big deal. We are living in a world now, people used to buy products and services, right? And if you think about it, when I was growing up, I left school in 1978, you bought products, you kind of didn't buy from personalities. My world was not occupied by influencers and thought leaders, quote unquote, which I think is the most commoditized term on the planet right now today.

Thought leader?

I am actively telling people, stop calling yourself a thought leader.

I love hearing you say that, 'cause I say any idiot can come up with a thought. Result leaders I like way better than thought leaders.

Well, I've actually got a whole model and I'm kind of in the interest of time, maybe, I don't need to walk through the model, but if you think about 4 levels, right? The world of marketing once upon a time said just turn your thing into a product. Great, but you become a vendor and you're gonna be price-based. So then in order to kind of get premium, people said, oh, authority-based marketing, right? Content.

Right.

Become a thought leader. To be a thought leader, you need 2 things. You need an original thought and you need followers. If you're missing either of those, you're not a thought leader. So if you've got a LinkedIn post with 2 people looking at it, calling yourself a thought leader, like, forget it, right?

Right.

And it's because those people exist, thought leader is a commoditized term.

Yeah.

So the next level up is you become a hero to your client and your client goes, okay, I come to you for strength, right? And that's valid. But if you're gonna sell from thought leadership or being the hero, you've gotta sell on ego. I'm a thought leader, I'm a hero. So in the late '70s when I left school, no one sold on ego, they sold on product and company reputation. And it was all of that quite pressure-based, you know, insurance salesperson style thing. And, you know, so as time went on, we've kind of moved into this world where people know a lot about the thing they're buying.

Right.

They do want to find out more. But there's two things that everybody's buying and we're all actually selling the same thing. Everybody wants to win in the context of the problem they're trying to solve. Like, no one wants to buy average. Hey, I wanna buy a new car. Do you have an average car to sell me? That's nonsense, right? Like, I wanna get help with my business. Do you have an average solution to help me? I just wanna scale averagely. No, everyone wants to win. They don't wanna admit it, but they actually wanna hang around with their buddies, go, I've got the best business out of all of us. Totally, yeah. But the second thing everybody wants to buy is they wanna be made safe. And I call that buyer safety, right? And I've got a whole model around buyer safety, the 5 stages of buyer safety. In the marketing and sales funnel, right? You've got to offer 5 levels of safety and in a sequence as you move through. But the thing is, people actually don't want to have to be safe. So people want to smoke and drink and not wear personal protective equipment in industrial environments. They want to drive fast and do stupid things. They don't actually want to be safe, but they want someone or something else to make them safe.

Yeah.

And so they want the government to make them safe. I want somebody else to solve the climate problem. So that I'm okay, but I don't want to have to do anything, right? Or I want somebody else to regulate or promise me something that's going to make me safe, right? And so a big challenge for business today is the two things you're selling is I'm going to help you win and I'm going to make you safe. If you buy from us, we can guarantee that green line because we've walked hundreds, if not thousands of people along there. We know the gates to go through. And the only thing that's gonna take you off that line is if you behave your way off the line. And if you do, I'm gonna call you and go, you're not behaving on a Green Line way. And then you'll make a choice.

Yeah.

And if you don't wanna get back on the Green Line, we're probably not gonna hang out together anymore, right? Or if you jump to the Green Line and I don't see the first movements, I'm probably gonna say, I don't think you're a Green Line client. And the model once again does the heavy lifting 'cause Everyone actually knows that model is true. If you clean your teeth, you're on the green line, great teeth to the end of life. If you don't, they fall out of your head. It's just that simple. Don't maintain your car, it's going to break down. Maintain your car, it'll last for years. And so we're constantly moving through that tension. And so if I actually— but the level above hero, there's an interesting level above hero. If I can just close that loop, then I'm going to come back to company genius. Right.

Okay.

The problem with being the hero or even claiming thought leadership is you have to sell on ego.

Yeah.

I'm going to rescue you, right? And that makes your client a victim. So what's the level above hero? And Luke Skywalker had Yoda. Every hero has a sage. And the sage is often smaller and physically weaker, but they're full of wisdom. And so Yoda said to Luke, "Pick up your lightsaber and come at me." Now I'm not a Star Wars fan, but I remember this scene. And Luke picked up his lightsaber and Yoda had his lightsaber and he's kind of batting Luke away a bit and Luke's going, "But master, I'll hurt you." And Yoda goes, "No, no, just come at me." And he flicks Luke's lightsaber away a few times and eventually Luke gets angry and he's coming at him full bore and Yoda just shuts his eyes and [SOUND EFFECT] with the lightsaber and flicks it away and Luke goes, "I don't understand what happened." He goes, It's the Force, Luke. The hero has— the sage has 3 qualities. And I would challenge everybody to market and think about this as they market. The sage has this profound genius behind what they do. And I'll circle back to that company genius model and finish it in a minute. They have a level of wisdom that the client knows that they're experiencing that they haven't experienced elsewhere.. They have a way of talking about it and thinking about it that they're not hearing from other people. So they have profound genius. The sage has what I call powerful calm. When they come into the presence of this sage, so this is someone speaking from stage or one-to-one. Now, this is not about no hype, it's about the right energy. Because you can have calming energy just as much as you can have hyping energy, and they both have their place, right? Yeah. But the sage has this powerful calm. People come into their presence, they just go, "I just need to hear you talk. Like the sound of your voice, what you're talking about, just the things you say, they just make me feel safe. And I know what you're talking about is going to let me win." And then they have the ability of what I call practical simplicity. They can package the most complex things into little parcels of clarity, which I call models. I mean, if the two most important systems in a business are the system for thinking— so every business is only as good as the idea on which it's built and the quality of the thinking of the leaders in the business— and then the ability to influence people, so the system for thinking and influence. To influence staff to work hard, customers to buy from you, regulators to let you operate, suppliers to serve you and so on. Mm-hmm. And so on, banks to lend you money, investors to invest. You get those two systems right, just about everything else works out. And so I went on the search for, is there a system for thinking and influence? And then I realized it's these visual models that I draw. Because the first thing the models do is extract much deeper thinking and conversation about things, just like this silly little model with a red and a green line has extracted out of us around climate change and a whole bunch of other stuff. Right. They are frameworks for thinking that allow you to go deeper and deeper and deeper. I mean, for my Inner Circle client group, I take a business book every month and I summarize it into a model. Even if it didn't have a model in the book, it just takes the book to a deeper level. So the models, first of all, stimulate this internal aligned depth of thinking and discernment and consideration because they—

Mm-hmm.

It forces you to kind of Well, what happens if you really go up that path?

Right.

And then it leaves behind this artifact for influence that summarizes all of the thinking that went into it. I used to get hired by the government. They say, "We're gonna put 200 people in the room that are at war with each other over an issue, but they're unified in their hatred for us as government. And you got 2 hours to get them to agree on this thing." And I have a reputation for doing that, but I've realized magical things happen at the 3/4 mark. So I used to do ultra distance running until my knees blew out, like 100-kilometer runs and stuff like that.

Wow.

And most people fall out of the 42K marathon at 32K. Most people fall out of the 88K Comrades in South Africa at 63K. The performance curve is the 80/20 curve, right? Everyone says only do the 20% that gives you 80% of the result. That's a denial that the 80% was building foundation. You can't just turn up for the Olympic Games—

Right.

—for the last 20% and win the gold medal. My nephew's a 2-time Paralympian. You've got to do the 4 years of training that is the 80% just to get to go.

Right.

So the way most people talk about the 80/20 rule is fundamentally wrong. You've got to do the foundational work of the 80% to get the exponential lift that occurs in the 20%. That tipping point is the 3/4 mark. So most people step out at about the 3/4 mark 'cause they've just spent 80% of their time doing the work that's gonna give them the uplift in the last 20%. Someone else comes in, picks up a business, let's say, that someone sold. It's poised right on the exponential part of the curve and away they go, right? And they look like heroes.

And I love the way you explain that too. 'Cause I mean, I've actually seen you talk about foundation and acceleration, and what's funny is for years, I mean, I started Genius Network in 2007, and prior to that, I had my first coaching group I started in 1998, so I've been at it for a while. And I've looked at the 3-year framework, first year foundation, second year growth, third year acceleration, and a lot of people come in with the expectation that I want to fly into flying.

Yeah.

And they just don't. And so I think in what you just said, the way most people use the 80/20 model is fundamentally wrong.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of things that are fundamentally wrong. And I think what you have brought, what you bring to the table is, I mean, most people suck at marketing. I mean, like you're talking about hate. I Love Marketing, the— my I Love Marketing podcast, right, which this, this interview will go on. I originally started that when I bought the website, uh, when I registered the website I Hate Marketing. And I actually bought I Love Marketing because someone already owned it, but they were not doing anything with the name, and I turned it into the podcast. But my original thinking was, how many people hate marketing? Not because marketing's good or bad, it could be either, as you explained. It's just they don't know how to use it. They don't know. So I think a lot of the resistance to explaining anything is they, we just don't know how to explain it.

Correct.

And I mean, and as I'm going through this, it's interesting how much this evokes in me and how many, how much conversation I wanna have with you after, just with what you started here. But the beauty of that is you get people into it really quickly. You make the distinctions, you show people how to have ahas. And ultimately for me, I only wanna accelerate things that I truly feel are gonna expand humanity, not contract it. My number one, like even with all my marketing skills, my main thing is I wanna change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share it with the world. And I need to have a business and means and mechanisms and money in order to do the things there. That, and I wanna, utilize your model for explaining how complex addiction is.

Yeah.

Like addiction, I think is one of the greatest global problems on the planet.

Absolutely.

And it's very, it's complex. It's very hard to explain. And so, you know, as much as I, you know, I'll just tell you, as much as my agenda that I have here of learning about marketing and sharing it with people, there's things that I think are really damn important for me and that I wanna share with the world that I want to get out there. And a lot of them have nothing to do with money motivation. As a matter of fact, I spend money in order to spend as much time as I do away from business because I, for one, it helps me. It helps me in my own recovery. I think it really matters. And so I see incredible significance in what it is that you have learned how to do and how you explain.

Who's experienced a day like this? Total shitstorm. Joe Weldon even nodded his head, I caught that. So how do you handle a day like that? Do you hide out? Or do you choose to show up? By the end of my time here with you today, you're gonna know how your attitude, energy, and perspective can have a significant impact on your life, so that when these shitstorms happen, you can come out feeling like this. So I thought that by sharing my story with you here today, that I can help you decide how you choose to show up even on the worst of days. So imagine it's your birthday. You're 33 years old. Do you remember waking up on your 33rd birthday? If you're not quite there yet, it might go something like this. You might wake up, feel pretty good. If you've ever seen the movie "13 Going on 30," you might be channeling the movie lines, "30, flirty, and thriving." You feel fabulous. You got a significant other to flirt with on the daily. And your business is thriving. It's pretty good, right? So that's how I woke up.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I wanna 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 was getting ready for my day, my sweet 5-year-old, she walks in and she hands me this envelope. It's got Mom written in her precious, precious handwriting. So imagine that's your child. If you've ever been given an envelope from a little kid, you just never know what you're gonna get. So now imagine opening this envelope and inside of it are 2 dimes, a penny, and a broken mermaid keychain. [LAUGHTER] And you quickly realize that for a 5-year-old, these are her 4 most prized possessions, and she chose to give it to me. Has anybody ever given you all of their worldly possessions? [LAUGHTER] I would say probably not. So imagine a morning like that. It's beautiful, it's touching. You get to the office, and you walk into what can best be described as Murphy's Law. Anything that could go wrong did. That's exactly what I walked into. It was like a whirlwind of just crabby and chaos. So think about some of the worst days that you've experienced in your career and how quickly that will trump any feeling of being 30, flirty, and thriving. By the end of that day, I was literally hanging on by a thread, mentally and emotionally, Spent. Done. So the only reprieve on a day like this is when you know that you can get into your car, have a solo drive, insert desperate search for some sappy song on the radio so you can just cry it out. Like really, really hard, right?

Mm-hmm.

So despite my desire for dramatics, I decided to buck up because I was going home to my kids, my husband was working late, And I decided that, you know what, regardless of anything else, we're gonna have fun on my birthday, gosh darn it. So think about the pep talks that you've had to give yourself when you've got chaos in here, but on the outside you wanna look calm. So I walk in to my wonderful children, and my 4-and-a-half-month-old at the time decided that fabulous was nothing I was gonna feel that day. He was— so crabby, and my girls, they were starving and they needed spaghetti, like, right now, yesterday. So imagine a tiny little wolf pack just nipping at your ankles. [LAUGHTER] So I want you to imagine you're cooking dinner, you're holding a crying baby, trying to console him, you're trying to get plates on the table for these little ravages, right? To have your phone ring. That's what was going on with me. So I look down, it's my grandparents. Bless their heart, they call me every year on my birthday to sing to me. [LAUGHTER] So I'm trying to sit down, my son is bawling in my ear. I paint on this happy face, 'cause you gotta answer the phone with a smile. Paint it on, they start on their chorus, and I hear this sweet little baby burp in my ear. However, there was nothing innocent about that. Because I quickly realized there was vomit, baby puke saturating my hair. Think about how you would feel in that instant. If you have children, you've probably been puked on. It's not fun. It stinks, especially when it's in your hair. What would you do? So think about a time that you have been so exhausted that a simple task like washing your darn hair seems impossible. That's exactly where I was at. And ladies and gentlemen, let me preface this by saying, sometimes you just have to do things to save your sanity. So that's what I did. I went to bed, I shut the lights off with my puke in my hair. Morning came, every intention of washing that hair, said puke and all, and my sweet son, he had other plans for me. So think about a time where you have been watching the clock. It's hopelessly ticking by. You know that you have a day full of jam-packed meetings. You've got a huge prospect call. At that point in time, I was thinking of just rescheduling everything. It was too much. You'd probably forgive that, right?

Mm-hmm.

So after a lot of overanalyzing, I decided to go by the mantra, Hair in a bun, get shit done. [LAUGHTER] So that's what I did. I put my hair in a bun, puking all, and I went to get shit done. And you know what happened? On that day, I not only had productive meetings, but I closed my biggest prospect to date. That's what makes this a $250,000 idea, because when you choose to show up, you open doors that could have remained closed. My point in sharing this embarrassing and still all too raw story with you is that it doesn't matter how you feel. It doesn't matter what we perceive as happening to us. What matters is that you show up and you handle business, that you show up and you deliver immense value to the people in your life. The lesson, however, it doesn't stop there. So I make a living by uplifting others, right? By helping teams focus on the positive even in the worst and most difficult of times. But even the teacher fails sometimes. A simple shift in my focus could have altered the course of my day. But instead, I chose to focus on the negative versus the positive. So think about a time in your life where your focus has caused you to go off course in a really negative way. I could have held on to the fact that my daughter, who I've had part in raising to be so sweet and kind and giving, gave me everything she had to give in this broken mermaid keychain. But instead, I let the whirlwind of the business impact my day. Think about times in your life where you've allowed something bad to take over the good. Think about a time when you've been given a gift that touched your soul so much. Did you hold on to that feeling? Or was it like, "Sweet, on to the next thing"? I believe fully in being congruent to who you are, to standing true to your values. But on that day, on my birthday, I slipped. I slipped. I slipped. So think about times in your life where you've slipped, where you have maybe snapped at a spouse, at your kids, for something so trivial, so insignificant that it really doesn't matter. When you've been short with your team because you're just so stinkin' busy. Or how about like me, when you've taken a positive, positive moment and let the negative overcome it to impact your day. So my challenge in this is to figure out how you can show up, preferably without puke in your hair, because let's face it, it's gross. But show up so that you can be an even truer definition of what a leader is meant to be. You hold the title of entrepreneur. Right? But you also hold some other pretty important titles. It could be mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, son, daughter, maybe spouse. For me, not only do I hold the title of entrepreneur, but I'm a wife and I'm a mama. Mm-hmm. And let me tell you, when you come across a woman who holds those 3 titles, you better watch out, because we are committed on a whole other level. And I don't mean this. I mean that we don't have a choice but to show up in everything that we do. So show up so that your kids can see that their mom, their dad, doesn't quit. Show up so that your team can see and reflect your level of commitment. Show up and deliver the God-given talent that you were blessed with, because the bottom line is if you don't, you are doing this world a disservice. But most of all, over anything else, show up for you. You owe it to yourself. Mm-hmm. To be the best version of yourself every single day.

Which kind of steps us into a model. I don't even know where we're at time-wise on this.

No, well, do—

I'd love to leave a model for people.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because everybody could do something with this.

And then we'll wrap.

And I can do it in two ways, right? So I'd love to go back to what you're talking about in terms of a Cartier watch and things like that. I have a cousin who's a non-surgical dermal therapist. She treats acne. She's one of the best using, you know, kind of laser therapy and things like that. And she's one of the best in Australia, voted best non-surgical dermal therapist in the country 10 years in a row by her peers.

Mm-hmm.

So someone will come to her and say, can you help me, can you treat my acne? And I've taught her to say, sure I can. It's a little bit like an iceberg. I can treat your acne and it's gonna cost $360 a treatment, you're gonna need 5 of them. Like, who leads with price? And they go, oh, I've seen people online advertising this for $90 a treatment. And she says, I know you have. And that is such a shallow conversation. We could stay shallow or we could go deep. What would you like to do? So what I'd love everybody to notice is how much challenge is in these models all the way through. That you get away with 'cause you're drawing it. But if you just said, "Oh, well, that's acne, that's a shallow kind of conversation," if you weren't drawing it, that would be insulting. But you go, "Do you wanna stay shallow? We can stay shallow or we could go deep. What would you like to do?" No one's gonna go, "I'm a really kind of superficial sort of person, so let's stay shallow." They're all gonna go, "No, I wanna go deep." Right. And she goes, "Of course. Well, I have a 100% cleanup rate." 'on acne. I use all the same equipment as everybody else, but it's how I put it together that gives me this really phenomenal strike rate. It's gonna happen fast and I'm gonna give you perfect skin. How does that sound to you?' And they go, 'Wow.' And she literally writes it on there. And she goes, 'I know, right? But wow's a narcotic.' It's a drug. You give someone wow, then they're gonna need a bigger hit later on. So I'm more interested on what this would mean to you if that happened. And at that point, everyone bursts into tears. And they say, "I'd find a partner. I'd go on a trip of a lifetime. I wouldn't wear a hoodie in summer." And she changes her voice 'cause now she's slipping into sage mode. Mm-hmm. She goes, "That's right." Here's what I believe, a wonderful person like you, if you exit that hero level and become the sage, who enters the hero level? The customer. We don't ever talk about the ideal client avatar in our world, we talk about the hero client. You make the client the hero, everything shifts in the marketing strategy and the sales conversation. I believe a truly wonderful person like you, hero client label, I believe a truly wonderful person like you deserves skin you love living in. Isn't that what you really want? And they go, "Oh," which is the sound of deep internalized realization.

Right.

It is the central sound of meditation. It's the central sound of all of the prophets. Yahweh, Allah, whatever your belief system is, this, "Ah, I'm gonna win and you're gonna make me safe." And so what happened to this price point as soon as she said, "I believe you deserve skin you love living in." What happened to that price point?

It probably, they have a completely different relationship.

It probably just evaporated. And then she goes, I've got a framework that I can step you through that shows exactly how I use all that equipment to make that happen. If you're interested. Who doesn't want to see the framework?

Right.

Half of them don't. At this point they go, perfect, I'm in.

Yeah.

Because you've got a framework and I want skin that I'm loving living in. Here's the thing. No one ever goes to her and says, can you give me skin I'm going to love living in? They say, "Can you treat my acne?" And most of the rest of the market— a few things have happened in this model. She's neutralized everybody else in the market as being shallow without talking negatively about anybody. She's neutralized the whole market that's in the acne treatment industry. Then she's also— this is the level of outcome— then she's also claimed her outcomes But also, if this is transactional, she's positioned this as transformational, which other people in the market also do. And then she's also neutralized that by saying, "Yeah, it's great, but it's a narcotic. It's cosmetic." And then she's gone down to, "What does it mean to you?" And the bottom level is timeless. And it's a 3-minute model to take people from a shallow view of what they think they're asking for to I can't stop thinking about that. So you think about what you're talking about, right?

Yeah.

Expensive jewelry and watches. So that's up the top, you know, watches. Great, neutralized. And so then what, you know, what are the three? Yeah, it's a fashion statement. They're reliable. They're an investment. I mean, all the reasons you could rationalize buying a Rolex or something like that. It's an investment. I'll leave it for my generations to follow me. They're super reliable. It's a fashion statement. Great. But what does it mean to you?

Right.

What's at the base? And it'd be interesting to wonder what that is. Everybody could— I mean, we could talk about addiction, right? And you would end up with addiction at the top, Is it with two Ds?

Yeah.

Optional. You'd end up with addiction at the top. Real conversation to be had about let's unpack what the middle is. This is where the game really starts.

Yeah, and what it is there is it's connection. It's connection and it's, yeah.

Well, let me mess a bit.

Of course. Oh no, yeah, and please.

I think connection would be one of these.

Yeah, and then the byproduct of connection is—

Yeah, and then what is the other two? And then what does that mean to someone when they get that back again, right? This bottom bit is the hardest bit to find, but it's the bit that we find that a lot of people haven't taken themselves to, 'cause you're promising a much bigger thing. So the iceberg is a, it's a great tool for any, particularly small business owners, like think through the levels of the iceberg. What's the transactional known bit? What's the transformational hidden bit? And a lot of people think transformational is the ultimate level, but what is the timeless bit that is the unknown that your clients don't even know about? And that bottom bit is where we find a lot of people in business haven't even gone to the depth of thinking themselves about what is truly timeless about this. But if Karen can get people to the point where they, they have skin that they love, That is timeless. That is lifetime. And it takes everything else out of play. It takes price out of play. It takes everything out of play. And so the key question is, what does it mean to them?

Right.

It's the level of meaning that we need to be willing to actually export to that customer, not even to the world necessarily, but what does it mean to them? It's such a simple— it's just an iceberg. Yeah. You know, you can do it over the phone. Hey, picture an iceberg in your head. You know, you can add choreography to it. It doesn't matter how much wind and storm you throw at the tip of the iceberg in one direction, it's always gonna move in the direction of the base. So, you know, creams, hacks, tips, tricks, doesn't matter. Only 10% of the iceberg's above the waterline. I'd rather go to the base. Do you want to treat your acne or do you want skin you love? I mean, there's so many ways of unpacking this thing.

I love it.

I have a question I want to ask both of you guys. See if I can phrase this correctly. Where would you put ethics and ethical behavior in the world of entrepreneurship or marketing? You know, because a lot of times we think that success equates to unethical behavior, right? You always see a lot of people that are cheating and lying and so on and so forth. Whether if you're too ethical, you're out the door, right? So, and I know that you guys each have a real kind of deep take on this. Let me ask you, Dan, start off. Where do you put ethics and ethical behavior in the realm of marketing or success?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's really interesting. And I, you know, I'll join another word to ethics and that's morality, you know, The two go together. Ethics, you know, I mean, morality has to do a lot with your mindset and, you know, the values that you have. But ethics is really about your behavior, how, you know, really the— ethics is your morality in action. And— but one of the things I've noticed, I read an article once about inner-city kids. Who could be dead at 8, they could be dead at 12. South Chicago. So part of the year I live in Chicago because our main US company is right near O'Hare. And, but it's a war zone down there. You know, there's two postal zones. America is really organized. If you go to any big city, you go to the police headquarters and police police headquarters and you want to— you talk to the officer in charge of violent crime, you know, in the city, and you bring a map and you give them a marker and you say, where should I not go in this city? And they always do it by postal zones. And in Chicago, it's 2 postal zones. Isn't it interesting how Americans organize crime according to postal zones? Yeah. I mean, what a country, you know? And anyway, Uh, so those kids, um, do not have enough certainty about life that they can think more than 24 hours at a time. So when there's a possibility of stealing something, their first thought is, can I get into trouble in the next 24 hours? So what I came to is that ethics is a function of your time perspective. Okay. Ah. If on the other hand, you have a time perspective, if I do this now, what's it look like 10 years from now? The behavior that you will exhibit during the next 24 hours will be ethical. And the reason is you don't want to be doing something today that costs you 10 years from now. And so my sense is that ethics is really a function of time perspective.

Ah, very interesting. One of the things I really admire about both of you guys, Dan, is you guys both have really interesting perspectives on stuff. You know, it's not just the usual shit that you read in books, you know, like, who else would come up with that? I mean, I think you're absolutely right, you know. But over to you, Joe, what's your, what's your take on ethics in business?

Yeah, you know, it's, it's considering for even the carpet cleaning industry, which is where I started off, I created a thing called Ethical Services. And I tried to, I've always tried to use the whole concept of like, Dan, I asked Dan years ago, let me start with this and then I'll try to share several different ideas in a little riff that I'll do here. So I asked Dan, what's, you know, what's your favorite definition, what's your definition of selling? And he just blurted out, and I don't know how many years ago this was now, Dan, probably like 15 years ago or something.

Mm-hmm.

And he said, selling is 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. Now, I have that memorized because I thought about it quite a bit when he said it. Another good one. Yeah. And Dan always has these very interesting quotes that he shares. And let me just say this too. I probably should have said this early on. Do you know, between both of you, do you know how many, God knows how many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe in the millions range, that both of you have inspired, encouraged, have them show up to face incredible difficulties with, you know, maybe not in the funnest of ways, but just the ability to get through life when life is very difficult. I mean, both of you have been such incredible mentors and role models, if you've intended to be that or not. It's just what you are. I mean, by the very nature of— I mean, Jesus, just look at how many reviews The War of Bart has, right? And how much both of you impact people. And so, you know, everyone has something to sell. You know, part of it is a bigger future though, in a way to look at life. And so, when I asked Dan that definition, I started asking my clients, you know, what do you think are the most important words in the 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? People would say engage, they would say action, they would say commit. And most people didn't get the 3 words. Good for them. And I always thought you can get someone intellectually and emotionally engaged in porn and shitty food and doing something damaging. I mean, what I've liked about The War of Art is it's always about the higher self, not about the lower self. I mean, you can be a degenerate and you can get involved in vices and all that. That doesn't— As you say, resistance will give you a free pass on that sort of stuff. And so, as it relates to ethics, I always think of what's good for someone and would you sell it to your best friend? Would you sell it to your mother or your father with the assumption you like your mother and your father?

Mm-hmm.

For someone that you really care about, if you're in a situation where someone's going to go down a bad path or something that could be damaging or it could be rotten or it could be scandalous or not good for them and you cared about that person, you would try to intervene. You might use words, you might use a challenge, you might use an intervention, you might try to block them from harm's way. And so who are we in the best of terms when we care about someone? We're selling, we're being persuasive, but we're doing it with the mindset of we're trying to care for this person and we're trying to protect them. So when it comes to— I think everything in my life is about connecting. Mm-hmm. Connecting other people with ideas, with each other, with things that make them better. Not always feel good, but like, for instance, you wrote The Warrior's Ethos, which you recorded in 2011. Everyone would be very— their lives will be enhanced if you download that book and listen to Stephen read it. It's called The Warrior's Ethos. Like, I think it's less than 90 minutes, and it's great. And you talk a lot about, you know, Spartans, and you have such this deep knowledge of so much of history. But anyway, you know, there's the whole goal of making someone better is not always going to make them feel better. It's not always about happiness. Right. And we live in this culture where everyone wants to pursue feeling, you know, sweet and loving and all that sort of stuff. But the fact is human progress oftentimes takes enormous effort and in many cases sacrifice. Yeah. And so when it comes to connecting, there's true connecting, 'cause you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape. And when you are connecting with someone, you care about them. You're operating from a good place. Con-necting though is when you're conning people and making it look like connecting. So there's con-nectors that use con artistry and they con people and they blow smoke up their ass and they say, sell crap and they make promises that they have no intention of delivering on, or they're selling crap in a box and the very best thing you're going to ever see from them is their sales pitch or their marketing. But then there's real people that when they sell something to somebody or when they offer something to somebody, they actually really care about that person being better off as a human. So for me, there's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. I mean, you might tell really crude, dirty jokes to your buddies that you would, you know, were in the military with, that could be vulgar, that could be inappropriate to many people. But you might not say that to, you know, someone's grandma. Most people have drank beer, most people have gone to church, you usually don't drink beer in church, although I'm sure people drink beer in church. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. And I like people who understand the distinction and who operate that way, because we've all met people that, man, they just put on a great show. They really act like they care about you, but they're usually narcissists or sociopaths, or they have just created a value system, you know, that is different than, you know, the ones that we may adhere to. And the weird thing— and I'd like to ask you guys about this, you know, as I'm rambling here, what I'm thinking in my mind is that I think most people think they're right. It's that saying that, you know, we judge others by their actions, we judge ourselves by our intentions. And I first heard that when— I don't know if you bought— well, Dan, I know you know Harvey McKay. Do you happen to know Harvey McKay?

No.

Stephen, he wrote a book years ago. His most famous book— he's written a bunch of books— was called How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Life.

Ah, I've heard of that book, yeah.

Yeah, sold millions of copies. And he's now 90 years old and he's a dear friend of mine. And so Harvey, he was doing the small event that he invited me to. It was like kind of a brainstorm with a bunch of business owners. And one guy was, Chris Widener was talking and he said to the group, he's like, how many have ever been ripped off by someone? About half the people raised their hand. And he's like, how many of you ever ripped off anyone? And no one raised their hand. And he said, he goes, huh, he goes, that's interesting. He goes, you know why? He goes, because, you know, the reason you've been screwed by someone but you don't think you screwed anyone is we judge ourselves by our intentions, we judge others by their actions. And, and I thought about that quite a bit. And we all, like, you could intend to do the right thing, but do your actions actually show that? So I think it takes a deep level of awareness and looking at the byproduct of your behavior. And you're, you know, because all of us have times where we're loving and we're caring. And we're doing well in life, and others where we're desperate and we're self-centered and we're tired and we're exhausted and we're maybe taking advantage. And so part of it is not that there's some perfect, you know, angel human that's always operating out of you know, perfect ethics and morality. It's just being able to set up a way you operate and the way you behave and the way you conduct yourself in your character. Like, my whole book is not about capabilities, even though I share a lot of them. It's about character. My goal of my book is to not just build— you know, Hitler had enormous capabilities. I'd say it'd be really hard to say his character was a good character. I mean, look at the destruction that some of these people, you know, when Dan, you were talking earlier with Stalin and Mussolini, I mean, they all had capabilities. You don't rule a country, you don't do what these people did without capability. Some of the smartest marketers I know have enormous capabilities, but their character is kind of shit. And so, but that's my opinion because if you were to ask them their intentions, they all think their value system is their value system. So there's a lot of den of thieves. It's— I grapple with this, you know, one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. So, you know, what is it? But those are my thoughts. That's at least some of my thoughts about ethics and morality is what's the byproduct of what your life is about and where it leaves people. Does it leave the world and people and, you know, around you in a better place or does it cause destruction? Yeah.

But I think you would say, Joe, that like as a marketer or an entrepreneur, that the more, and I'm sure you would say the same thing, Dan, the more good you can do, the better it is for you, even for your own selfish interests. Would you agree with that?

I would totally agree with that. And Dan, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Again, I have more thoughts on it, but I wanna, you know, kind of share.

Well, I think the other thing is that, that there's a matter of leading a very complicated life for a simple life. And I'm a straight-ticket Republican ever since I could vote. And in Canada, I'm a straight-ticket Conservative. But one of the presidents that I admire most was Harry Truman. And after— Because he's the one that had the big decisions, you know, I mean, so many big decisions. And, you know, and I remember there's a story, it might be apocryphal, but the day after Roosevelt died, of course, he was sworn in as the president and he met with Roosevelt's cabinet and he came in and he said, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you know, here comes Harry, a hick from Missouri, and— Mm-hmm. And he said, and you're used to Roosevelt, one of the great gods of American politics. But he says, here's the facts of it. I'm as powerful as he is because I'm President of the United States. And guess what? You're still cabinet secretaries, and I can fire you just as easy as he could fire you. You know, and it just put everybody straight because it— Yeah. He knew they were going to scheme against him. He knew what they were doing because they schemed against Roosevelt. You know, they do that. But he had a great saying. He says, "Always tell the truth. It's more economical. You only have to remember one version." And I think that ethics is a form of truth. And that is you can be the same person in all situations. And I think that You know, a lot of people, they have to check out their surroundings to figure out who they're going to be in that situation, or they have to figure out who they've told what, what, make sure that, you know, they're keeping their story straight. And their story is so complicated, it's very, very hard to keep it straight. Yeah. And I said that, that all comes at the price of what you're really good at. You know, that comes all that I mean, if you do that, you're totally non-creative. You're a totally reactive human being. And I think that ethics gives you a very simple, energizing path into the future where you only have to be the same person all the time.

Yeah. I mean, another way of looking— I haven't really thought this one through. I'm going to be blathering as I say this, but another word for it, it seems to me, could be authenticity. In the sense of when you open your mouth and you speak, you're really saying what you really think and not what you think is going to create a favorable impression in somebody else's mind.

Yeah. In your current book, the book's coming out, you were talking about what your attitude has to be when you're writing. And you can't think about, oh, this is is this a great book? Is it, you know, is it, you know, am I, you know, is this really going to move people? You say, I'm going to throw myself completely in it and I'm going to finish it, you know, and get the book. And I remember Reagan, I'm kind of a Reagan type of writer. And when Reagan, you know, got to governor, I don't think so much when he was governor of California, California, but when he became president, people say, yeah, everybody laughs at me because of the movies I was in, you know, what crappy movies. And he said, well, I have to tell you, back then, they didn't tell us that the movie had to be good. They said they didn't want the movie good. They wanted the movie Tuesday.

Yeah.

And it's kind of like that. And I think that's a copywriter's attitude. In other words, you got a deadline. I mean, people say Shakespeare, you know, Shakespeare, oh, I could be like Shakespeare. I said, there's two things you have to remember. He did it for money and on deadline.

Yeah, yeah. And Dickens, like Dickens too, that was writing, you know, installments.

He did it for money. And so my feeling is that, and Joe brought it up at the beginning, Joe brought it up, or you brought it up, Stephen, that the best way to be really good in yourself is have it be for value for other people. In other words, that you have in mind who you're doing this for. And so, is it going to make a difference in that person's life? And how are they going to feel after, you know, I mean, how are they going to feel about the value that they got from you? If you have your emphasis on that, you're taken care of. You know, your friend who was in 24 that you visit with in Sundance, the actor—

Glenn Morshaw.

Glenn Morshaw. And he's a fascinating guy. And I have to say that if you looked at his life, you know, he's a Hollywood actor. He does He does TV and everything. I bet he is the most fully employed actor in the history of the United States over the last 50 years.

Wow.

And he was telling Joe, he said, well, you know, he says, you got to look at it from the standpoint of a director. He said, he says, you can't look at it from any other standpoint of the director. And the director needs 2 or 3 stars to even get on the board. He said, so I'm not a star. Okay. And then he comes down to about number 5 and he said, who am I going to put in number 5? And he says, I'm always number 5 in the directors, in the directors. And he said, I always prepared. I always show up on time. I'm always a great team member. And he said, I'm always grateful and thankful for every role I get. Yeah. And then he's employed nonstop for 50 years. Ah.

'Cause it isn't about him.

Do you know that? It isn't about him. It isn't about him that when the director gets to number 5, oh, we'll put in Glenn because that's an easy one. And my sense is the other thing is also to know your value to other people and what can they always count on you for? You know, I spend a lot of time saying—

That can be a hard one. You know?

Yeah. What can, you know, I always show up on time. I'm always prepared. I always come up with something new, you know, and my team just depends upon that. My clients.

By the way, I was going to ask you, Stephen, do you know who Glenn Morshower is?

No, no.

Yeah. So he's not like Dan said, he's not like some, you know, A-list celebrity, but he's—

No, that's why he doesn't, that's why he doesn't—

I saw his his face, I'm sure I would know.

But every director, every director everywhere knows who he is.

Yeah, let me share a story that Dan knows this one, but years ago, me and Glenn were speaking at an event in Las Vegas. And it was, I think it was 2009, 2000, yeah, I think it was around 2009, 2010. And Glenn has been in more military roles than any, living actor. And so he's— yeah, he was on every episode of 24, other than Kiefer Sutherland, who was the main star. He was on every episode of 24. And at the time, there were pictures of Kiefer Sutherland on People magazine, I believe National Enquirer, basically all the tabloid type of magazines, um, on the COVID with him drunk on the sidewalk outside of the, the, the Viper Room. In LA. And I was asking him, I said, so what's, uh, what's your story?

You were asking Glenn? Correct.

Yeah, I was asking Glenn, what's the story on Kiefer? Uh, he goes, well, now that he's been outed, he goes, you know, I can maybe, you know, say a few things. He said, um, you know, great guy, super professional, uh, shows up, does a great job, everyone likes working with him, awesome guy. And he said, at the end of, you know, at the end of his— of the day, he finds it sometimes easier to sit and hang around and, you know, drink in his trailer on set than go home to his mansion alone. That's what he said. And at this point in Kiefer's life, he goes, his fame is globally inescapable. He said there's nowhere on the planet that he could go without being recognized. And he said, you know, a single piranha won't do much damage, but a swarm of them will take down a great creature. And he said, if you get into this business, he was referring to the entertainment business, without knowing who you are, it will misinform you. That was the statement he made. Wow. And I was like, yeah. I go, that's really interesting. And when I first met him at Sundance, we were having lunch. A friend introduced us. And all these people were coming up to him asking for autographs and I said to him, I go, "Does that ever bother you?" And he said, he goes, "You know, sometimes, you know, if you have to really be somewhere in a hurry, it could sometimes be challenging." He goes, "But I am—" He goes, "I wouldn't even have a career if it wasn't for these people." He's like, "I am so appreciative that anyone likes what it is I do." He goes, "How would I even do what it is I do without these people that like what I do, like my work and appreciative?" He goes, Why on earth would I have anything other than gratitude for these individuals? And he had an incredible work ethic and he was— Mm-hmm. And I've seen him in many situations and he is always— loves his wife, is just a super caring, grateful, appreciative person. And therefore he gets roles and gets opportunities that others do not because he just comes from that place. But he also has done a tremendous amount of work on himself and he's really quite aware of, you know, don't take yourself too seriously. You know, like my dear friend, you know, Dave Kekich, who unfortunately passed away at 78 years old last year from kind of a malpractice surgery. It was horrible. And Dave wrote, you know, he was my friend who was paralyzed from the chest down for half of his life. And he had one of his credos, he had 100 credos called Kekich Credos, Kekich's Credos. He had an interesting last name. Yeah. And he said, uh, things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they're going wrong, or seldom as great as they seem when they're going well. Lighten up, you'll live longer. You know, it's just, it's just having the state of mind on how you approach things.

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If we can go back and pick up on the ethics topic. So I looked at your biography, so I looked and I got to the end of your biography. I said, "Oh, another guy who went to a university and these were all the classes he took, all the different occupations." You were in the oil fields. Mm-hmm. You were a fruit picker, you know, and you did Airbnb in your own car or somebody else's car and everything else. So lots of different kinds of people, lots of different kinds of situations, including Hollywood, you know, being in Hollywood and, you know, being in the, you know, movie writing scripts and writing books and everything else. But from the standpoint is that ethics in one area of life is the same as ethics in another area of life.

Mm-hmm. Definitely.

There isn't any industry that's more ethical than any other industry.

No. And like you were saying about the actor, your actor friend, I mean, showing up and being ready to hit your mark and say your lines and not be shafting anybody else is at least as important as talent. And because somebody will bring you back.

Somebody will bring you back, yeah.

And you will bring them back. That's really, like Joe, one of the things you've always said, and this actually comes from Dan too, that part of being an entrepreneur being an entrepreneur is not only doing what you want to do, but doing it with the people you want to do it with. And so, in order to be with those people, you have to be for them what you want them to be for you, right? You have to show up for them and deliver the goods for them and be somebody that, you know, that's ethical, right? That's not going to throw their buddies under the bus. Bus when the heat gets applied, you know? Well, I mean— I just want to say this before I forget it. You were talking about how we judge other people by their actions, but our own selves by our intentions. And that one of the axioms in screenwriting, or also in novel writing, in any kind of story writing, is that the villain never thinks he's the villain. From the villain's point of view, he's doing the right thing, right? And that's, you know, if you think of any of sort of the great villain speeches like Jack Nicholson's one in A Few Good Men, you know, where he says, you know, you can't handle the truth. And he's the guy that, you know, basically, you know, okayed the murder of this young Marine, right? Yeah. But from his point of view, he goes this wonderful, great speech that Aaron Sorkin wrote about, "We have to stand on a wall. There are bad guys on the other side of the wall. And goddamn it, you need people like me on that wall." You know?

No.

And so—

It was one of the finest movie speeches of all time, by the way.

Yeah, it's a great one.

Yeah.

But there's sort of ethics too in a crazy world.

Yeah. Oh, it is. Yeah.

I'm sure, you know, if we had Putin on the, on that show right now, he would say, "God damn it, the worst thing that ever happened was when the Soviet Union broke up. My people were crushed mentally by that and psychologically." Greatest tragedy of the 20th century. I'm going to bring the USSR back and I don't care who I have to kill or what I have to do to do it. And I'm sure that in his mind, he's a saint. And to tens of millions of Russians, he's a saint too.

Yeah.

Not to the Ukrainians, but to the Russians.

It's an interesting thing.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but it's just a thought.

No, here's, I mean, I think it's a lot to ponder about, like, what do we believe and why do we believe it? And what are we really trying to do? I mean, I don't know about you, Stephen, but I've done, you know, in other countries, I've done several ayahuasca journeys. And in one of them, Okay, I would encourage that for both of you at some point.

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