Transforming COVID-19 Chaos into Calm, Cash and Connections: How Entrepreneurs Can Mentally and Emotionally Navigate The COVID-19 Chaos with Craig Duswalt and Joe Polish - Genius Network Episode #147

You're either in communication or you're trying to escape. That's what happens with people. Either you're connected with someone or you're trying to escape. So part of my magic rapport formula is you gotta be willing to invest time, money and energy into relationships.

How do you cut through the distancing to really connect? Learn how to navigate COVID 19 with sage calmness, powerful connections while still making money in today's episode of the Genius Network podcast. In this episode, Joe Polish is interviewed by Craig Deswalt, a keynote speaker, author, podcaster and creator of Rockstar Marketing and Rock youk Life. They break down how to transform bad news into good news and why now's the time for building and reinvention. Craig and Joe will also discuss how to preserve yourself mentally and emotionally through the chaos so you can clearly see opportunity jump on it and and become a stronger human being in the process. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to geniusnetwork.com the lyrics for.

This song are just amazing. When the demon that's inside you is ready to begin and it feels like it's a battle that you will never win when you're aching for the fire and begging for your sin when there's nothing left inside there's still a reason to fight and it ends with I'll be your reason to fight Give you a reason to fight. This is all about addiction. When the demon that's inside you is ready to begin when you're going to take that drink again or whatever that drug and it feels like it's a battle that you're never going to win when you're aching for the fire and begging for your sin when there's nothing left inside there's still a reason to fight and it's so powerful watching this in concert because they bring people up on stage that have beaten their addictions and it's just a celebration. It's amazing. And it's the perfect segue into. You're blowing me away right now, my friend. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing this. I love you. And now I love you more.

Thank you, brother. Appreciate it.

How are you, bud?

I'm doing great. How are you doing? How's everything going?

It's going actually really, really good. Thank you.

Really, really good.

Thank you. Awesome people. And you're just adding to it with what's going on in the world right now. You know, there's people that are hurting, and we are blessed. You're blessed with your business. I'm blessed with my business. A lot of people are blessed with their businesses, but a lot of people are living in fear right now and not wanting to spend any money, take any chances, do anything, because they're just waiting for everything to get better. They're living in fear. And maybe even talk about just entrepreneurship in general, why it's great to be an entrepreneur right now during this time, especially everyone's hurting. But right now, I feel it's a perfect opportunity to grow your business, build the foundation. We've kind of been talking about that and maybe even talk about the Genius Network and why you. I never see, and maybe I'm totally wrong, but I never see you actually advertise that. Yet people join every year. People come every year. And it's just because of what you offer and what you give back. And I started a foundation recently, and as soon as I started that foundation, my numbers started going through the roof. And maybe you could talk from that. I know you have this addiction, passion, and the things that you're doing with that. So all that. Do all that.

Okay, cool. Cool. First off, great to be here. Well, I would say, based on what you said.

Yeah.

There's certainly all kinds of different levels of pain, anxiety, stress. Everyone in their own way, has their own version of a shit show. Right. And some people are struggling worse than others. Many people, not most, but many people are using this as a catalyst to reinvent themselves, look at relationships, their business, how they solve problems, rituals that they do, how they connect with people in ways that they haven't done before. I don't think I've ever worked harder in my life than I've been in the last month. So on one hand, in normal times, I teach and preach for business owners. Having an elf business do things that are easy, lucrative, and fun versus a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And I certainly have not been living elf. But what I do try for the last month. But what I do do is my best to associate with people that are easy, lucrative, and fun. Because I only want to have relationships with people that I'm aligned with. And so it's really caused me to take a deep look at my time, my attention. What can I do right now? What's the highest and best use of my time? And also really looking at how frenetic so much of the world is and how it's so Easy to get caught up into staring at screens all day, being stressed out. I mean, everyone's rituals have been kind of thrown out of whack. And if there's anything that I stand for, it's connection. You know, the Johann Hari line. The opposite of addiction is connection. And so I spend about half my time helping entrepreneurs and business owners and the other half of my time, people that struggle with addiction, because I'm very involved in addiction recovery. So I started Genius Recovery foundation, which I don't make any money off of that. As a matter of fact, I spend money to do it. And it's my passion project because I want to, you know, my goal is to 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 those with the world and using my marketing skills in order to do that. So what I'd like to talk about, I guess, today, many, many years ago, I was doing an interview with a woman named Terri Launier. And for people that don't know me, I started out as Deborah Carpet cleaner in the early 90s. There's kind of a recession during that time. And I decided to get into this business accidentally. I mean, I, you know, didn't really say, oh, I want to be a carpet cleaner when I grow up. And I was in my early 20s. I had a friend I went to high school with that talked me into getting into this carpet cleaning business. And for two years, I just struggled. I lived off credit cards. I went about $30,000 in debt. I was working hard every day. I just had no clue how to generate business. And so one of the things that I did is I learned marketing and never thinking I would teach it to other people like I do today and have done for many, many years. I started my marketing company in 1995. So I've been at this for a long time. I just learned marketing out of necessity. And the thing that I started doing is I transformed the small carpet cleaning business I had from 1992 to 1994, I went from grossing about $2,300 a month was my average gross, to over 12,000 month, literally in a span of six months, simply because I learned how to change the words in my advertisements. And there was no Internet back then, so we're talking direct mail and postcards and things like that. After I turned my small company around, I started teaching other people to do the same exact things that I had learned. And I discovered there's success recipes in life. It could be advertising, it could be fitness, it could be health, it could be relationships, whatever. And I started just sharing this with people. And I found one of the fastest ways to learn is teaching other people. Because the most ineffective way to learn something is just go and get beat up in the business world and go through the school of hard knocks. The second more effective way to learn is read people's books, attend their seminars, take in their knowledge, and learn from other people. And then the way to accelerate that is to then whatever you learn, teach other people. That's what I picked up on in my 20s and have been doing that ever since. And I always start with a beginner's mind. I started doing these interviews. One of the ways that I wanted to learn is to interview people and then share those interviews. Now today, people do podcasts. I've had the I Love marketing podcast since 2010. I recorded my very first podcast in 2005 when no one even knew what the hell podcasts were. Back then we used to do cassette tapes and send them to people. So there's this lady named Terry Lonier. She had written a book called Working Solo for people that had single person operations. And we talked about this concept of a million dollar racehorse, and it's really applicable today, especially with the pandemic and everything that's going on. The whole point behind a million dollar racehorse is if you owned a racehorse and the racehorse, every time it ran a race and won, you'd win a million dollars. How would you treat that horse? You wouldn't shove fast food down its throat. You wouldn't have it drinking and smoking all night, probably at all. You wouldn't run the horse to exhaustion. You'd have the best coaches, the best nutrition, the best trainers, the best environment. You would do everything that you could to take care of that horse. Because if you took care of that horse, that horse would perform and produce for you. What I'm always telling my entrepreneurial clients is you're the million dollar racehorse and how are you taking care of yourself? Who's looking out for you? And one of the challenges that I'm finding from some of my different friends and relationships are some people are taking this time to meditate, be reflective, do the best they can in whatever environment that they're in. Some have had their businesses decimated and have lost everything and are very fearful. Others are in an okay situation. They're just trying to navigate all the things going on socially. There's some people that are introverts, they love this. Other people are extroverts Some people are empaths and they take on the social energy and the pain of other people. And some are just working themselves to utter exhaustion. And I can find myself if I am not careful, which is why I'm even talking about this, to be in that camp, because I just see all. I mean, it pains me to see people that are hurting and I feel like this, oh, I got to do something. I got to do something about this. And so I'm really trying to pace myself even this weekend. This will be one of the first times I just take a day off in 30 days, which is not something I typically advise people. However, these are weird times that I've certainly never experienced anything like this. I think most people haven't either. The million dollar racehorse analogy to me is really, really important and something I want to convey to people. I mean, I certainly could talk about marketing strategies, I can talk about goals and aspirations, but more than anything, I'd like people to whatever they've already heard today. Craig and through with you, all the additional things you're going to hear is think of how do you solve one problem that solves 10 problems or solves 50 problems, or solves 100 problems? As an example, meaning if your sleep is terrible and you improved your sleep 5 or 10%, or you just got an extra hour, two hours of sleep, if you're not sleeping adequately, there's about 10 or 20 or sometimes 100 problems in your life that would disappear if you just solve that one problem. Right now I'm looking for how do I solve one thing. But if I solve that one thing, there's all kinds of other things that get better in my life. Who do I really want to spend my time with and how do I best take care of me? Because you can't fix the world with broken hands. You got to make sure that you're not in a broken state. And no matter what level of stress and anxiety and fear you may be under, there are people that are in a worse position and you will probably be able to help them, even if it's being nothing other than just a companion and listening to them and talking to them or just letting them know you care. So, you know, early on I heard something in my early 20s that I've always tried to remember, which is be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. And more than anything, I really find who my most important relationships and friends are in times like these because some people are reaching out because they genuinely care. There's other people that are reaching out, acting like they really care, but they're looking for something. And I haven't heard from them in a long time. And there's other people that need help and are looking for something, but there are also people that have always shown and exhibited care and concern for me along the way.

And.

And so it's really an interesting exercise and just witnessing who I'm connected with, who I'm not, who really cares. People's agendas, fear, desperation, excitement, enthusiasm. I mean, it's a whole mixed bag of stuff. And something you had said, Craig, that makes me think of entrepreneurs. Like the original definition of an entrepreneur. The term was first used in 1804 by a French guy named John Baptiste, say, and he said that an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield, from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. And so whenever we can take our thinking innovations to a higher level, that's entrepreneurship. And so this is where the true definition of an entrepreneur is someone that makes things better. It doesn't mean someone that exploits someone or a snake oil salesperson or someone that looks at a terrible situation and tries to exploit it. I mean, it's people that simply make things better. And behind me, there's all these culture wall sayings and try to point to it, you might not be able to read it from there, but what that one says with those two little smiley faces I'm pointing at, it says, other people's bad news is your good news. And I first heard that from my friend Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach. And what entrepreneurs do is they solve problems for a profit. Other people's bad news is your good news if you're able to transform other people's bad news into good news. And I never in a million years thought this analogy would come true. But back in 2004, I did a program called Piranha, the seven success multiplying factors to dominate any market that you enter. And it was one of my companies is Piranha Marketing. And I would just simply teach people marketing techniques and methods and processes and strategies. And it was the number one selling marketing program of all time for Nightingale Conant. And they produced everything from Seth Godin tapes to Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Dan Kennedy, all kinds of different stuff. And we just did this great program. And I used this analogy about marketing where I said, if the world supply toilet paper ran out tomorrow and you have people in the world that want toilet paper, you don't need to be a great marketer like today. You don't need a social media following, you don't need a great ad, you don't need a webinar. You simply just need to have toilet paper and more people want it. You could put a cardboard sign up and put it out in your front yard and say, I got toilet paper, here's how much I want to roll and you'll sell out of it. Who would have ever known this should actually happen? No pun intended. When you have supply and demand on your side of your ability to provide people with a solution to their bad news, or you can transform someone's bad news into good news, then not only are you creating value, but people will pay you for it. And, and that's what I would focus on right now. I mean, to whatever degree, wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity and there is a lot of anxiety right now. And I mean my focus right now is on serving, not on selling. I'm in a fortunate situation where I've spent many years building a business and doing the best I can to save money and all that sort of stuff. But I'll tell you, I mean, I've had. When I was 18 years old, I was my worst state. I weighed 105 pounds from free basing cocaine and I was nearly dead as a drug addict. And many years in my adult life was tormented, wanted to commit suicide, just stressed out of my mind, had not dealt with the underlying trauma. And thank God there were people that could help me with that, to help me take that bad news and turn it into good news. That's not a motivational speech for anyone. It's simply a way to frame how to look at what's going on and how resourceful are you in your ability to, to tap into your network. I call my company Genius Network. But a Genius Network to me is a group of individuals or people that have skills, they have capabilities, and they can solve things. If you wanted to be a better parent, who are the top people that you would want to talk to? If you're worried about your health, who would be on your Genius Network? I encourage people to think of who are the most important relationships that you have in your life. How can you help them get what they want so that you always lead with never asking anyone to do anything for you without creating value first? And I can get almost anything that I want done in my life just by helping other people get what they want with the discretion of picking the right people. Because many, you know, there's that famous Zig Ziglar saying, you can have anything you want in life. You help enough other people get what they want. Well, part of it's not true because you can work your ass off helping other people that they won't do a damn thing for you. So, you know, be. Be selective in how much you give of your. And again, I say this not with an agenda. I'm not a tit for tat sort of person. I just want to help people as much as I can. A lot of it. I want nothing in return. I just get value out of it. There is a point, though, where you can sacrifice your time, your talent, your abilities, your care, your concern for people that simply, they just take, take, take, take. And so, you know, you don't want to be the person rowing the boat 90% of the time when someone's only rowing it 10% all the time. You know, I mean, life is a series of. Sometimes you're on top of the world, other times you're struggling and you're desperate. And so anyway, I could go on and on, but I don't think I took a breath during that entire rant.

That I had for two and a half days. I never take a breath. Let me ask you a question, Joe. Your Genius Network's been around since when. When did you start Genius Network?

Well, you know, Genius Network started out of the Genius Network interview series, which, boy, when did I call it that it started out of a. An interview series because I've interviewed over 900 people, all kinds of famous people, all kinds of just great business people, everything. Therapists, you name it, interviews with you, you know, things like that. Genius Network as a discussion group, as a mastermind group, was started in 2007.

Let me ask you this. It was always successful. I know in 2007 you had amazing people right away, but did you find. Because I think a few years ago you started this whole addiction thing. Did your business grow even higher as soon as you entered into the world of nonprofit and giving back on a more out there basis instead of just personally giving back? But like, I have band together foundation. As soon as I started this foundation, my business started growing more. Did that happen to you too as soon as you entered this world of addiction in a more public forum?

Well, you know, not right away, because here, what was interesting, it was back in 2016 where I, you know, had John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, who was in the audience that I had interviewed and, you know, a bunch of famous people there. I had about 400 people in the audience. And I got up on stage. I was there. Yeah, yeah. And I literally talked about being a drug addict, but also talked about sexual addiction, how I was raped and molested as a kid. And that led into a lot of shameful things, paying for sex and all kinds of different stuff that I never had talked about. But, you know, shame is a prerequisite to addiction. You know, addiction thrives in shame. And you're as sick as your secrets. And I just got to a point where, like, there's so many entrepreneurs, you know, because workaholism is a respectable addiction. And so I want, you know, so I just wanted to just. I don't know, to share it, because I felt no one's talking about this stuff that has a platform like me. And I think there's a link between these entrepreneurs and these addicts. And of course, Craig, in your world, you've seen tons of this stuff. And so I talked about it, and it was a mixed bag at first. Some people, like, I think it was so close for some people that, you know, they didn't want. I mean, they were addicts. And when someone's up there talking about, it's like, holy shit, now I have this guy who's bringing it right to my face. And I wasn't looking for this. And other people were coming up and hugging me and crying and thanking me. And so it took about a couple of years. Now people actually join my group because I'm so open about just building a better entrepreneur. My thing is I sell people what they want, which is usually more clients, more business, and, you know, New York Times best sellers. Learn how to do all these marketing strategies. But I do my best to give them what they need, which is, you know, take care of your physical and mental health. Don't just make money, but save money and work on things that are elf. You know, build a better entrepreneur. And in order to build a better entrepreneur, it's not just about learning a marketing technique. It's about all of this other stuff that you do. It's about who you hang out with. But I'll tell you now, I've been able to bridge both of them, and people seek me out. They look for helps people. I mean, you know, I fund a guy who spent 14 years in maximum security prison, two years in solitary confinement for, you know, attempted armed robbery. What got him into prison, and then two counts of attempted murder while I was there. And this guy transformed himself. His name's Andre Norman. You know, Andre Norman Dot com. If you want to look him up, he'll go out and people that are suicidal interventions. And I mean, we've, you know, we've saved a few people's lives in the last year just with him going out and meeting with people. So there's a lot of different. Steadman Graham, Oprah's partner, they're putting a lot of genius recovery and genius network things into prisons, into schools. And so we're starting to go into that. I think it's genuinely helpful, but I've never used it as a, oh, here's how to try to generate business. I think it's just a byproduct.

I agree. It's just a byproduct. If you go into it, everyone out there, if you go into starting a nonprofit to make sure that you make more money in your business, that's not going to work. You got to do it because you're passionate about it. And believe me when I say this, Joe is very passionate about this. Joe, I have an interesting question. I don't even know how to word this question, so I'm going to just give it a shot. I toured with Guns N Roses, Axl Rose, and a lot of people in my world want to start a community, but they want to bring in really cool people into their community, but they don't know how to get to them. Like, how do you get to Axl Rose, Craig? Well, you don't. You don't just get to them. You've had Tony Robbins on your stage, Dan Sullivan, all these amazing people because you are the connector. So, yeah, explain the process of how a regular entrepreneur that's not Joe Pollis or someone that knows Axl Rose, to get connected with these type of people. How do they go about doing that? Because they want to aspire to be like that, but they can't get to a person like that without whatever. They don't know how to do it. Can you dabble in that a little?

Yeah. And let me say this because, like, you know, something that I've been doing for 20 years, really hard to give a sound bite that will give you the whole strategy. But there's been articles written about people that have interviewed me. If someone types in Joe Polish magic, rapport, formula, there's a process where I literally lay out sort of the steps on how to connect with people in ways that anyone can do it. I mean, there's great books, you know, even, like, still how to Win Friends and Influence People by dale Carnegie, written 80 years ago. It's still a great book that Everyone should read. And my next book that I'm going to do with Hay House is going to be all on connecting with people. What I will say, though, is that I'm an introvert that grew up incredibly shy, scared. People think, like, I'm this extroverted guy that likes going to cocktail parties and schmoozing. Not only do I dislike that, it makes me uncomfortable and I don't feel all that good about it. And sometimes I get kind of worried, you know, it's like, oh, God, what am I going to say? And at the same time, you know, I'm Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. You know, if you go around my office, I've got pictures of me with everybody. And I say it as a joke, too. I got this one sign that says, you know, welcome to Population 6 billion. Welcome to Nobody Cares, Population 6 billion. And I make it a joke because there's, as you know. Craig, is it okay if I cuss or am I not allowed to cuss here?

No, you're allowed to cuss.

Okay. So there's a lot of star fuckers in the world and they want to just be around famous people because they somehow think because someone's well known, that somehow translates into opening a door or some opportunity. So you got to understand what's the objective of. Of why you want to meet someone that's well known or has whatever, be it famous or has something, what's your objective and what can you do for them if you really do want to meet them and you're really clear on why you want to meet them, if it's just because you think they have the magic secret. The truth is, all human beings, billionaires, no matter who they are, there's some area of their life where they're all screwed up, some dark secret. And if you can bring the reduction of suffering to that area that causes them pain, that's the greatest entry point in order to meet people. Because when you're either in communication or you're trying to escape, that's what happens with people. Either you're connected with someone or you're trying to escape. So part of my magic rapport formula is you got to be willing to invest time, money and energy into relationships. When I didn't have any money, which was many years of my early career, I had time. If I read a book, and I really found it to be profound and life changing, I don't know if you can see it. Yeah, you can see that domino back there. That's a 3D printed domino. I Opened up my last genius network meeting with the first domino. And I gave everyone in the audience they had a domino on their table. And I said, I created a tool where it's like write down the first book, person, or situation that was a domino for you. It. It changed the trajectory of your life. Everyone's read a book that absolutely changed the course of their life. There's negative dominoes. Being molested as a kid put me into a trajectory that led to later in life. Addiction and trauma and disconnection. I was the most disconnected kid and guy growing up. It's funny that I built one of the biggest connection networks that people know of me, but it was simply because I just. I just felt pain and I wanted to feel like I belong somewhere. I'm just curious, like, how do you make life better? If people want to meet somebody, what's the result that they would be ecstatic or excited to get from you? Sometimes the easiest way to meet people is read a book, research. It's so easy to do now on the Internet and simply send them or someone that can get to them, and a genuine letter either offering advice or a connection or a contact or a strategy. And if you don't have any of those things, just a sincere letter of appreciation thanking them for whatever contribution or whatever output they've put into the world. Their music, their songs, their art, their business strategy, whatever their thing is, and acknowledging them. Because unless someone's a complete narcissist that believes they're God's gift to God, and there are a lot of those, that's one thing too. There's a lot of famous people that are just narcissistic assholes, and they present themselves as these wonderful humans. But once you get to know them, you realize it's all an act, it's a performance. All you give a shit is about yourself. But that's good to know that early on. I've spent a lot of time painfully being the recipient of the toxic behavior of toxic narcissists before I realized just because someone's really smooth talking and presents themselves a certain way does not necessarily mean they are that way. And so sincerity and genuine compliments and showing concern and contribution, being a giver will attract other givers. So I guess my advice would be treat people the way you want to be treated. Be fun and memorable, not boring. You can tell how valuable most relationships are by how often they laugh. I use a lot of jokes. I use a lot of humor. If I can't offer anything to a server in a restaurant, when we're, you know, able to go to restaurants, I tell them a joke. I just try to be, you know, people have a lot of pain in their life, and if you can remove some of it, you can take some of it away, they will want to get to know you because it's like depreciation in the economic world. Well, you need to appreciate people, and if you appreciate them, they will appreciate you. That's how you build a network. Give value on the spot. You'll see people that'll be like, you know, we should go out to lunch sometime or we should talk sometime. It's like, why don't we talk now? Because if you can. Because, like, people put things off. And I think more than anything right now, you know, you realize if you love someone, call them up and tell them you love them, if you admire them, if they did something for you, you know, do that. I mean, send letters, text messages. I've told people this for years. If you physically mailed 10 postcards, handwritten five days a week, a thank you, an acknowledgement to a network of people, and you did that for an entire year, everyone can agree it's a good idea, but hardly anyone does it. If you did that for a year, your level of connections and relationships will be off the charts. That's what I did in the very beginning, and I still do. If you type in Joe Polish, Happy birthday in YouTube, every year, I get a person that I'll do a happy birthday greeting from and every single day on Facebook for six years to people that I don't even know. I personally go in and wish people a happy birthday. Sometimes I question, why the hell am I doing it? It takes me five or ten minutes. I'm not a cheap consultant. I'm six grand an hour, and I still take that time to do it because people are so appreciative of it. And they're people that are not ever going to buy anything from me. Some of them, but, man, they like me and they think I'm cool and it just makes me feel good. Because if you make people feel good, they're going to want to get to know you. So those are some of the things. But if people want more advice, I did a whole podcast on I Love Marketing Episode 29 on the Magic Rapport formula. I go through the whole process of how to meet famous people, how to connect with them, what to do, what not to do. If anyone wants to do that sort.

Of research, I just want to say to you publicly, thank you for giving me time on Your stage at the Genius Network. When I did that, that 10 minutes was. Your 10 minute talks are amazing all the time over the years, all the years. But it was such a great time for me to do it. And Garrett Gunderson and I just talked about it just before you came on as well.

You were fantastic. I mean, some of your ideas are just great, and a lot of people implemented that. Let me say something about 10 minutes. So I have a friend named Keith Cunningham, who is the guy that taught. Do you know Keith very well? Yep. Yeah. So Keith has become a real dear friend of mine. And he, you know, he's the guy that was the rich dad for Robert Kiyosaki. Because Robert told me years ago, like, you know, I asked him, you know, who was your rich dad? He's like, well, there's two people. One was, you know, this. This crazy guy in Hawaii that owned a bunch of businesses. And then Keith Cunningham, who taught Robert the stuff that ended up becoming, you know, rich dad, poor dad. He wrote a book called the Road Less Stupid. He's written a bunch of books, but he teaches a process called thinking time, where you literally write out a question and you just sit and handwrite it. You don't type it, you hand write it. I've been doing every day 10 minutes of thinking time with my assistant Eunice, who's been my assistant for 25 years. And with my 10 minute talks, I would have people share a best practice or strategy in 10 minutes that's been worth at least $250,000 or more to their business, and they have 10 minutes to share it in. And if they could do that, each minute would be worth 25 grand. And I wanted to be like, that'd be pretty great if you could focus someone's resourcefulness in that level. I've been doing thinking time for 45 minutes an hour, but I find myself not doing it as frequently as I'd like. I said to Eunice about a week ago, I go, let's do it 10 minutes every day. And then me and you talk about it. We're on day seven, six today. We've been doing it every day now. And I'm like, it is amazing what the hell you can come up with in 10 minutes if you just sit down and write stuff. People don't realize how resourceful they actually are if they just trigger themselves to be resourceful. So I started a thing called Genius Youth for Young People. And we did it at our first meeting. And so this kid Ishan, I was talking to him yesterday, he's 21 years old. He's the one that runs Genius Youth for me. And I said, Look, I'm 52 years old. I turned 52 this year. And I said, if I could go back to your age, I would write. And I'm doing this. I started yesterday. Every day, I said I would write down a lesson I learned for the day, every day. Just write it down. It could be a sentence, it could be a paragraph, it could be a page, and write it every single day. And at the end of a year, you've got 365 lessons. You got a book, you got a course, you got a training. And that is so much more useful than all, you know, because his girlfriend Karen has millions of followers online. I was talking with both of them yesterday. You know, they make money as influencers. I mean, this kid was working for Mark Cuban when he was 15 years old. So, I mean, he consults with big companies, and, you know, and I've been mentoring him, right? And so I said, write a lesson every day of what you learn. And I've been thinking right now, there are so many lessons we are getting out of this shit. Like, you know, what did we learn? Like, I learned that I get caught up in looking at Zoom meetings all day, and I stop at the end of the day, and I keep looking at my phone, and then I'm frenetic, and my brain feels completely scrambled, and I can't sleep at night, and I feel like I need to escape by watching porn or drinking or eating shitty food or whatever people do when they're not expanding but they're contracting. That's a lesson. Look at the good things and the bad things and keep track of them. And. Because I'll tell you those, and you can do this in a matter of a minute or 10 minutes. The lessons I'm coming up with with just doing 10 minutes of thinking time every day, I'm like, oh, my God. I mean, because my friend Dave Keckage, who you've met before in the wheelchair, he's been paralyzed half his life. He's a multimillionaire in his 30s. All the trappings of external wealth. Convertible Mercedes, house on the beach in Huntington beach, beautiful girlfriend, multimillion dollar business, got into a freak accident. Lost. He became paralyzed from the chest down. Business partners stole millions of dollars from him. Girlfriend left him, lost everything. He's never been able to have sex since then. He's never been. I mean, the guy just takes an hour to two hours for him just to get out of bed. He's in his late 70s now. He's one of my best friends. But he wrote these credos of all of these lessons that he learned after he traveled the world for two years. Being bitter and being angry and, like, everything was taken away from him. And he's like, this guy built himself into this incredible mind. And now he runs Maximum Life foundation to extend aging. He has this credo that says an hour of disciplined, precise, integrated thinking can be worth a month of hard work. 10 minutes directed could be worth a month of hard work. And everyone that's at home stuck somewhere can't go out to what you're used. You don't know what you got until it's gone right? People are realizing that right now. But you don't know what you got until you use it in the right way. Because what you got is the ability to do incredible stuff and help transform yourself. Because I doubt there's any person on this zoom meeting right now that if you really look at the greatest things that came out of your life, the greatest breakthroughs, they were precipitated by breakups, death, dying, suffering, struggle, rejection. I mean, you have to break something in order to have a breakthrough. And right now, a lot of this is being forced. And so, I mean, adversity sucks. I'm not trying to, you know, again, I'm not one of these people that like, let's blow smoke up everyone's ass and try to say, be motivated when some people can't even, you know, feed their children right now. I mean, there's a lot of struggle. What I'm saying, though, is it's through that adversity where you forge yourself. That's where the magic is. And if you could direct your mind in a few minutes, you can accomplish a lot. And you can pull yourself out of a lot of very difficult situations. And if you have more than you can handle, there's this misnomer in 12 step groups where it says, doesn't really matter what anyone's religious beliefs are, spiritual beliefs, because I'm not really a religious person. Where it says, God never gives you more than you can handle. Even if you're an atheist, this still makes sense, you know, God never gives you more than you can handle. That's actually not true. Rehab centers and hospitals are filled with people that got more than they can handle. And if you're in a situation where you got more than you can handle, that's where you ask for help. Because the hardest battles to fight are silent battles where you're not. I mean, you look at how many rock stars died at 27. Look at, you know, Chester from. Oh, Lincoln Park. Yes, Lincoln Park. That's the first time I ever forgot that. You know, you got people like, you know, Prince, you know, millions of people admire them, love them, money. They still have these silent battles that they didn't know how to talk to anyone. And they take their own lives. And so this happens to everybody. It has no economic, socioeconomic thing. Rich, poor, different things. The fact is you can utilize your brain, your resources to do so much. And if you find yourself in over your head, step back, drink water, get exercise, take a breather. Don't drive the million dollar racehorse so hard that all of a sudden the racehorse is running off a cliff.

Anyway, yeah, you were Talking about the 10 minute talks and then you merged into the one lesson a day. One of the things in my 10 minute talks on your stage, coincidentally, is writing a quote book and just doing stuff like that. But I love this. Way better is all you now. And one year goes fast. I mean, come on, one year goes fast. You write one lesson a day. One. It could be like Joe said, it could be three words, it could be a sentence, could be a paragraph or whatever. And then you have a book after a year, a 365 day book of 365 lessons. And if you want to crank it out faster, you can do 100 days or whatever, but that's just writing one a day. And it goes so fast. And then the year's gone and you're like, oh my God, I have a huge book.

Exactly.

I don't understand why people don't do that. Like why people don't write these quote books just to get your picture on the front cover of a book and just hand them out instead of business cards. But this is a great way because it's like lessons, life lessons and just easy, easy way to write. I tell people, write a blog every day and then turn that into a book. This is way easier.

I have one book that's not even out yet. We just started giving her book.

I want to talk about.

Well, yeah, so this is called Life Gives to the Giver. And it's like a bunch of my musings on wellness, success, marketing, being an entrepreneur, addiction. And I literally write three emails a week where people, you know, can subscribe. And we literally. It's just stuff that we send. And my friend Anna David, who I wrote, the only recovery book I wrote is the Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery. And I did that with Hal Elrod and Anna David. And Anna, who's a great writer, she's written a bunch of books, she's been a New York Times best selling author. So she took my three a week emails and compiled them into this book. People can get it for free. You don't have to buy anything. It doesn't upsell people into anything. It's just downloadable for free on Joe's free book dot com. And it's just ideas, right? You can get the physical version if you pay shipping and handling. But literally I don't try to upsell people right now into anything. It's just, you know, here's a damn book. What I realized is like, I just take the same stuff I'm writing anyway. And after you write a few of them, you got a book and the same thing with a lesson a day. And I'll tell you, people will put that much time or more every single day making a Facebook post, an Instagram post, a TikTok post, and you know, whatever, LinkedIn, whatever, Twitter, like put it into something that lives forever. Put it into something you can share with your kids. Put it in. And don't do it just because you want to earn. You know, whenever we're doing something, you're either doing it like my buddy Pedro says, you're either doing it for earning or you're doing it for learning. And I'm writing the lessons today not just because I can repurpose them and repackage them and share them in the future. It's what it does for me. I want to like really be thoughtful about what the hell is happening to me every day that's worse collecting. Because I will forget. And if I don't, you know, if you know, it's like the reason people have sponsors in 12 step groups and the reason people sponsor somebody is when you're sponsoring someone, when you're doing service work, you're saying to somebody, you're sharing experience, strength and hope to use a 12 step thing right with someone that's struggling with addiction. And there will be a point in time when the sponsor forgets everything that they've been telling the sponsors so they can call them up and say, I'm feeling triggered. What the hell was I telling you to do when you were feeling triggered? And then all of a sudden it comes back to you. So when you start recording your life lessons and stuff, it's like writing a letter to yourself. One of the things that I would always tell people to do is if you feel so terrible, you're in A depression. You feel like life sucks. Write a letter to yourself and mail it to yourself so you can actually open it up a few days later and. And read the. Because sometimes you don't have anyone to give you encouragement and you have to be your own best friend. I mean, you literally, sometimes you feel so utterly alone that you just have to be that voice. Like Michael Singer, who wrote a great book called the Untethered Soul. He has this lecture series and he talks about, could you imagine having headphones on your head? And it was like saying, you're a piece of shit, you're a loser. You don't measure up, you're not going to be able to make it. You should be scared. Oh, my God, this is horrible. He goes, if you had headphones on, feeding you those messages all day long, he goes, but you actually don't need the headphones because you have a mind. And that's what your mind does to you. Your mind all day long tells you, you can't do this. Someone's better than you. You're too old, you're too young, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're ugly, whatever. And it's like, this is this thing that Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual practice, he says, here's a spiritual practice for you. Don't take your thoughts so seriously. And so when you're looking in the mirror, you're looking at the problem, but you're also looking in the solution, totally based on how you direct your mind. So the mind is very directable with the right question. And if you say, what's the lesson I learned today that is most valuable, that will help me in the future versus what's the lesson today that proves I'm a loser? I mean, there are different. It's all how you ask it. And so if you say, what's the lesson today that I want to remember, I want to share to someone in the future that I want to. I mean, you'll come up with amazing stuff, and every single person here could do that. It doesn't take a lot of time. And it's easy to do. Frankly, anything that's really difficult to do, people are not going to do it. So it has to be easy in the beginning.

Joe, I love what you just said. This write your letter to yourself thing, I love that because we're in that moment right now. So if you're depressed or whatever, and you're in that moment and you write a letter to yourself three days later, like the next day, it probably changed Right. The next day. But if you get it three days later, you can then reflect on, oh, my God, I can't believe that was me three days ago. Because so much has changed. And if we can just convince people that want to commit suicide, just hold on one more day, tomorrow, it's going to be better. This is a great tool to let them just do that and then give it three days. You know what I mean? I think that's brilliant.

Yeah. What you said, Craig, about, like, right now we are on the cusp of the greatest mental health crisis I think we'll ever see in, you know, modern history here. Suicides are up. Depression, anxiety, child abuse, spousal abuse, animal neglect, vices of all kinds. Drinking, drugs, gambling, gaming, porn, you know, eating. I mean, every sort of addiction under the sun. Internet addiction, you know, obviously. So there's a lot of people in a lot of pain. And you have the ability, if you think of, like, Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I mean, in the worst of circumstances, you do have the ability to be incredibly resourceful. And in those moments where it feels like life sucks, life is terrible. The things to protect as an entrepreneur are your gratitude, your attention, and your confidence. Because we don't do anything well in life if we're continually lacking confidence. But confidence feels good, Courage doesn't feel good. And sometimes you just have to operate with courage. Nothing feels good in the middle. And when you're in the middle of an argument, the middle of a breakup, the middle of, like, I don't know what to do, sometimes it can feel eternal. Like, life is just terrible and it's never going to get any better. But every person here can think of when they felt their absolute worst and sometimes when they felt their absolute best. Going back to my friend Dave Kekich again, who's been paralyzed from the chest down, he says life is never as difficult as it seems when it's going bad or as well as it seems when it's going well. Lighten up, you'll live longer. And so we need to bring a certain level of levity and humor, which I think it's really important. You could be staring at the news all day long, but I'll tell you, watch comedies, watch things that make you laugh, go out in nature, sit in silence, don't look at screens, drink water, meditate to the best of your ability, even if you're sitting silent and your monkey mind is going crazy, giving yourself freaking space because it never lasts. It's like, this too shall pass, and it Always does. And it's in those moments of pain and suffering that if you can sit with it, you build up that eternal reserve. I mean, believe me, and I say this as a guy, that I could not handle uncomfortable feelings if I felt uncomfortable. Do drugs, take a drink, escape, hire a hooker. I mean, do you know, whatever crazy shit my brain that could not handle that uncomfortableness, even physical pain. Most physical pain is mostly not structural, but it's psychological. It's repressed emotions, predominantly anger and rage, that cause oxygen deprivation in the muscles, tendons, ligaments. And that's where most pain comes from, called TMS, first discovered by Dr. John Sarno, who's brilliant. You can read anything about this by looking up. He's now passed away. But Dr. John Sarno, or a guy named Steve Ozanich, who's carried on his work that wrote a book called the Great Pain Deception. People hurt. I can guarantee you there are people that are watching us right now.

They're saying it right now. I'm reading the chats, Joe, and I know you can't read them because you're focused on the audience. Man, you're hitting a nerve here. You're definitely hitting a nerve. Numerous people have said I attempted suicide. I mean, there's a lot of pain out there.

Yeah, totally. And so the thing is, there's a famous philosopher, can't remember his name. He said something like, the last thing that a human being ever gives up is their suffering. And when you take on the pain of the world around you and you're witnessing all this suffering, some people have a hard time feeling like they could even be grateful or they can even have fun. And the fact is, this is where even if you're an atheist, you say your version of the serenity prayer. Grant me the serenity, God. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I mean, that's the hard part. The wisdom to know the difference. Because I'll tell you, I try to take on other people's stuff as if it's my own. And that's what codependency is. Codependency is trying to control other people's feelings as if you're fucking in charge of it and you're not. I mean, that doesn't mean don't be kind. That doesn't mean don't be caring. Just don't kill yourself in the process. And sometimes, you know, it's not a sign of weakness to cry. It's Not a sign of weakness to ask for help. And, you know, and if you. The more you can allow yourself to do that, the more other people. You won't feel weirded out if people are crying in front of you or having a breakdown because, you know, people need to process their pain.

You know, I would like to, you know, help as much as I can with my audience and everything. So I don't even know. We haven't even discussed this. I don't even know if there's a link or anything. Is there something that we can link or something where we can donate any amount of money to the Genius Recovery thing?

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I appreciate it. I have a website called Genius Recovery and we have Genius Recovery Foundation. Again, the goal is to change the global conversation. And again, I'm not doing this by myself. There's. I'm just trying to put the information out there and be a catalyst to whatever degree I can to 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 those with the world. That's at geniusrecovery.org on genius recovery, there's links to every type of meeting that is free. Nothing's being sold there. If someone would like to donate, we have a 501 that we recently set up and we're utilizing that money to build. I've spent about 600,000 out of my own pocket in the last four years building genius Recovery, building artists for addicts, which is another platform that we have to use art as a force for good. On Genius Recovery, there's videos, there's links to podcasts, there's resources of every type of group under the sun. There's a lot of virtual meetings that are going on right now by all the different types of 12 step meetings. And if someone's an anti 12 step person, because 12 steps is not the only tool of recovery. There's many things. We list a lot of resources there for people to understand my perspective. There's a very short letter that I wrote on Genius Recovery and you can Google Genius Recovery open letter and you can read my letter, which gives my perspective for family members, for addicts, what addiction is. I believe addiction is a response to trauma. And if anyone would like to donate, of course we'd be incredibly grateful because that's how I'm able to continue to build and do this stuff. But, yeah, but we put it out there. Just.

I usually raise money for my foundation, band together, but I am so Appreciative that for people that don't know who Joe is, he's one of the busiest people I know. And for you to spend an hour with me on my thing, I just want to give back to you because I really appreciate what you're doing, number one. And personally just coming on my stage. So I honor you and I respect you. So instead of asking money for donating to my band together, because we do that all the time, I would like to ask my audience and my mastermind to go to geniusrecovery.org $5. $10. Even if we have 890 people that will see this, at least if everyone gets $10, that's pretty good. If you could give more, that would be great. I'm not trying to get a lot of money right now because of the pandemic, but if you have something, just anything, I just want to get it out there that I just want to acknowledge that this thing does exist because addiction is real. Joe, do you know that song by Disturbed, A Reason to Fight that I played?

You know what? I've heard it, but I never really thought about it as deeply as you broke it down, which is really.

That's your song, man. That's a song for Genius Recovery or the addiction thing, man. It is. And what they do in concert is just amazing. You should go to. I forget what the website is, but Google or YouTube. Disturbed, a reason to Fight. And the stories that they bring on stage and the crying in the audience. Now picture this, heavy metal concerts. Joe just talked about not being afraid to die. Picture this heavy metal concert. Tattooed, big, gigantic guys. The tattoos here, just like in ripped jeans and T shirts that are ripped. Crying their eyes out because of what's going on stage. That somebody is sharing their story because they wrote a letter to the lead singer of Disturbed and they brought him on stage to congratulate them during. And they sing the song, A Reason to Fight to them on stage. It is the most powerful thing I've ever seen in the concert. And I've seen everybody. And so, man, Joe, you would. I actually know these guys. I'd actually like to hook you up with them.

Oh, no, that would be wonderful. That'd be great. You know, I'm gonna put out my interview with Alice Cooper, you know, who's a buddy of mine. And Alice has been sober for 35 years. And we did a great interview with him and his wife Cheryl on stage at my last event. And, you know, we talked about addiction and everything. And what's great is when people that are in the position of music, especially like what you described, heavy metal and stuff, being able to use their platform, their influence to connect people is incredible because music is an incredible mechanism of just literally. My buddy Tim Ringgold, who runs Sonic Recovery, uses music. He used to be lead singer in a heavy metal band, and now he plays music at hospice centers for people that are dying and does grief workshops and stuff. So I love it when people are able to do things like that to. What I consider the modern form of human slavery is how we treat addicts. Because right now, the criminal justice system is treating addiction when it needs to be a more compassionate industry. And you simply cannot punish the pain out of people. And people are still so shameful to talk about their embarrassments, their hurts, the things that they did that they regret, the things that happened to them, the things they've done to other people. And I'll tell you, if you don't process that stuff, it will fester, it will make your life miserable, it will cause pain, it will cause dysfunction. And so, yeah, I'm really glad that you're even talking about that. And so, yeah, disturbed reason to fight, that's all. See that over there? It says addiction is looking for love in all the wrong places.

Oh, there you go.

That's what it is. People are looking for love in all the wrong places.

Joe, tell us. I know who it is, but tell us who your artist is that does all that, because you're pretty well known for that art. Who's that guy again?

Yeah, yeah. His name's Hugh McLeod. And their website is Gaping Void. And Jason Corman is one of my genius network members. And that's called the culture wall. Like, one says, don't react. It says, respond where you see, like, the little bomb in the pen. And I had a. In 2000, I guess it's probably 2016, I had broken up with a relationship I had, and it just. It caused me a tremendous amount of grief. I was just like. It opened up some sort of mother wound because my mother died when I was 4, and I had a pretty awful childhood as a scared kid. I don't remember hardly anything in my childhood that was all that enjoyable. I spent a lot of years doing therapy over that stuff. I hired this private yoga instructor named Giselle, and she. She made this comment to me that I'd heard before, but I never really took it that seriously. She said, if you do yoga three times a week, it'll change your body. If you do it every day, it'll change your life. I Thought, huh, I wonder what would happen if I did yoga every day. So I committed that I'll do yoga every day for like a month. And I'm a busy guy, travel a lot and so at the time I'm flying everywhere and so not a 20 minute on YouTube video every day, doing a one hour to a 90 minute yoga class, either in a studio or with an instructor. Now I do this stuff online. There's a lot of really good sites and things that you can, it's easy to find yoga right now. For 31 days I did yoga 31 days straight. Then I took a day off. But over a 90 day period, I did yoga 82 or 83 different times. I swear to God, it just wrung so much of the grief out of my body because the issues are in the tissues and you need to have a physical sort of engagement practice when you're going through pain and angst and so react, don't respond. So all these little things up here, take responsibility. The time to quit working is when working is no longer working. Only connect. If in doubt, refer to number one. It's just a bunch of things. Bond with clients. Reduce suffering, take responsibility. There's elf easy, lucrative and fun. Like result leader, not thought leader. I like this one because there's a lot of talk about thought leaders. I mean, I'm sure me and you get referred to as thought leaders a lot. And my thinking is, you know, any asshole can come up with a thought. I want to be a result leader. So whatever you do to produce a result, do that. And so these are just things to remind me of stuff. But I'll tell you, going back to the lesson a day, once you identify the lessons that are useful, put them on post it notes, put them on three by five cards, have them put into a visual communication and remind you because every one of these things up here are lessons that came.

Oh, you know what? I just saw a picture of Shawn Stevenson. Shawn Stevenson. If you all don't know Shawn, he was an amazing speaker. He was born. What was he born with?

He was like, well, it's a brittle bone condition. Osteo. Oh boy. How do you pronounce it? Yeah, it's. Well, it's basically it's a brittle bone condition where his bone, he could sneeze and break a collarbone and he, he died at 40 years old. He was my best friend. He fell out of his wheelchair and hit his head. He went to the hospital. He FaceTimed me with his wife in the parking lot saying, can you come Meet me down there. We thought he'd be okay, that he just, you know, had hit his head and had to, you know, see if he was going to be all right. And we go to the hospital, and he had hematomin on his brain. And during surgery, when they had to go in and open him up, the pressure had exploded, his blood pressure dropped, and he coded, and he died. First time in 30 years that this neurosurgeon had somebody die on the operating table. And it was just shocking. And last year was a very difficult year. And, Sean, here's what's interesting about him. For one, this guy who had over 200 broken bones before the age of 18, endured so much physical pain growing up, still developed himself, like, never walked a day in his life and was such a positive, incredible guy. Shawn. Yeah. Osteogenesis imperfecta. I just looked it up. Yeah, so just look him up. Three Foot Giant. They hadid a TV show on him. Millions of people watched him online. He moved out to Arizona to be close to me. And when he was the last state that I saw him in the hospital where he was, you know, they had to give him pain pills, and he was starting to get really, you know, loopy and drowsy. He said to me, he goes, you know, this is happening for me. And I'm like, what? He goes, this is not happening to me. This is happening for me. And I've heard that before, but coming from him at that moment, his last words were, this is not happening to him. It's happening for him. And then a, you know, a couple hours later, he was. He had died.

And just when I saw that, I was, like, in shock. We became pretty close through you, through your Genius Network. It hit me so hard, that one. And I'm not even remotely as close to him as you were, so I can't even imagine how it hit you. But he was a light. He was just this. Oh, my gosh, all of a sudden, I remember him doing mic drops at the Genius network. He would tell people, you're idiots for not signing up for the Genius network. My job, you know, he.

The guy says, if you type in my name and Sean Stephenson, you will see some of the funny ass videos with this dude online. If you just type in Joe Polish, like, nail polish. Sean Stephenson, he was incredible. And his parents, like, they're incredible. Also Greg and Gloria, I've had them out to my last event. I invite him onto my things. His wife Mindy's a dear friend of mine. They just put out his. The podcast of all these recordings that were never released when Sean was alive. Just incredible guy. But you know, it's like when I feel like my life sucks, I ask myself, what would Shawn Stevenson do? What would Dave Keckage do? Because you know, it's. If there's any comparison to make. Because, you know, one way to be miserable is to compare yourself to other people. So if you're going to get into the comparison, compare yourself to like where you're at and people that are just, you know, what the hell would they do? And I swear that's a good way to realize that you, you know, you can get through most things because look, you're alive. Everything that's ever happened to you. Anthony Greenback wrote a book called the Book of Survival. And there's a quote in there that says to get through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do. Whenever we feel like we're an impossible situation, you don't have to be a superhero. You just need to know what to do. And if you don't know what to do, find someone that knows what to do. That's what your genius network is. A genius network is not just a bunch of friends on social media. It's a group of people that have skills and capabilities. Everyone would be well served to have a genius network if you feel like you don't know what to do. Everyone here has had times where it's like, I don't know, I'm completely friggin lost. And you know what? It works itself out almost all the time. You wouldn't be here if it didn't. So even if you think I don't know what I'm going to do, it's going to work itself out as long as you don't completely lose your shit and self destruct. And so even when you're in the midst of what you consider just an incredibly difficult time, there are a ton of people out there that would love your advice and would love your help and for whatever entrepreneurial skills and endeavors that they are learning today through you. Craig, anything that I've possibly said just redirect that at problems that need to be solved, people that you can help and if you're able to create a result for somebody, you can charge them money, you can ask to get paid for what it is you do. Don't feel like you, you're not allowed to continue to earn a living because there's a certain level of sensitivity around that. A lot of people are really tone deaf. What's funny is I don't even try to build a social media following. David Bach, who's an author that wrote a bunch of books on financial stuff, who I've known forever, he's smart, women finish rich and his latest book is the Latte Factor. He sent me a screenshot of YouTube with all these famous influencers and I was number one on the list of how much my YouTube channel has grown. And again, I don't put a lot of attention on him. There are people that have a thousand times greater following than I do and he was like on the bottom. And what it's funny is that she was showing all of these well known famous influencers and authors and their YouTube subscriber base was dropping because they're still saying the same shit. They're tone deaf. They're out there trying to go to the next level, start a mastermind, do all this sort of stuff and it's like, and there's nothing wrong with that if you do it in a way that connects with where the person is at. But they just are trying to, you know, say the same thing and what you know. Our friend Dan Sullivan has this, it's called a DOS conversation and I think this may be useful for, for everyone. It's, it stands for dangers, opportunities and strengths. DOS Dangers, Opportunities and strengths. And the way that it goes is, is you say to someone, if we were to meet a year from today, what needs to happen both personally and professionally for you to feel happy with your progress? So you simply ask someone to look into the future if we were to meet, what needs to happen both personally and professionally for you to feel happy with your progress. Now that's the normal variation of the R factor question, the relationship question, to see if people want to have a relationship with you. But then you follow it up with thinking about the client's dos, which stands again for dangers, opportunities and strengths. And what I do is even though COVID 19 pandemic all of this has happened, people still have dangers, they've just changed. People still have opportunities, their opportunities have changed. It might have been grow and build a business three months ago. Now it's survive and then there's strengths. And we don't as humans reach our opportunities if we don't eliminate our dangers. And there's real dangers like, you know, you, you physically could be hurt. You know, you want to play professional basketball and you're five foot tall and you're 60 years old, you're not going to play professional basketball unless you maybe by the team. But there's most dangers for people are psychological. Like I can't learn marketing or I can't get through this, or I don't know how to write a sales letter. I don't know how to have a better relationship. You know, I don't know how to be a better parent. You know, whatever. A lot of the dangers we have are psychological. So there's real dangers and psychological dangers. And until you eliminate your dangers, real or psychological, you don't reach your opportunities. And the way that you overcome your dangers is you borrow the strengths from your strengths. So, like, I'm a great parent, I'm a good copywriter. I have an incredible skill or capability that people can pay me for. I'm a good cook. You know what, whatever your strengths are as a human, you want to borrow those strengths to overcome your dangers and reach your opportunities. So how do you go out and sell things to people in the marketplace right now? Well, there's a lot of people out there that have dangers, and there's a lot of people that have opportunities. And if you had a conversation with them, of ask them what's causing you fear? What's keeping you up at night? What are you struggling with? What do you want to accomplish? Where are you right now? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? Which is a tool I've been teaching people for 20 years, years from my friend Ken Glickman, and say, what are your strengths? What makes you awesome? For you, Craig, you have a tremendous amount of strengths. You have opportunities and you have dangers. Right now, what people are witnessing right now is you taking your skills, connections you have in relationships with people that you're bringing on as guests, what you're teaching people about, what you know about business and entrepreneurship, all the things you learned in your really crazy career hanging around rock stars and musicians and all of these things, those are all strengths. And you're bringing them together. You're leveraging a platform and you're inviting a whole bunch of people on here that hundreds of people are going to get inspired. They're going to get direction, confidence, and capability by your putting it all together. And if people just think about how they need to uniquely package their strengths and present them to people so that those people can overcome their dangers and reach their opportunities, that's what you do with building a business. You make it up and make it real. That's what entrepreneurs do. They just make shit up and they make it real by putting it all together. And yeah, you make mistakes and yeah, you make errors and yeah, you try to figure out what to do. But that's why you're watching us right now. You're just looking for different things of what can you hear from someone? And everyone has that ability to do that if they apply, apply themselves to it.

Wow, what a great end note. Because Dan Sullivan, one of my favorite people at Joe's event, I remember when I was on stage, he was in the front row. And this is Dan Sullivan. He's like the ultimate entrepreneur and psychology guy, was cracking up during my time and I totally. I still remember him in the front row and just going, wow, I made Dan Sullivan laugh. Of all people. But what you just said, Joe, is exactly. We all have these strengths. Just package it. Put it into a nice package. Look, I made a mistake yesterday when I started this event. I couldn't get one of the speakers on one of my sponsors. I didn't know what button to hit. But you know what? And this was nerve wracking for me. I have never done webinars. I'm doing meetings in my group, but it's my mastermind. So even if I mess up, they don't care because. But now I have a lot of people on. And yesterday when I first started, it didn't go perfectly. And I said to myself, I'm okay with this because tomorrow, today I'm going to fix what I did yesterday. And it went smooth today. The next time I do it, the better. But so many people have failure to launch just to get started. They don't know how to package their strengths into something. And that's where masterminds come into play. I already had this business going before I met you, but trust me, man, I have taken it to a whole other level because of all these books that I have here and go into your stuff because I realized, wow, there's a whole other level. I haven't even seen that yet. And just being inspired by Brendan Bouchard and Lisa Satsovich and the people that you have in the room that are very, very successful. Where I want to be. The strength thing is key. And what a great note to end on because we all have this. We all have something that we can share. But how do you package it? How do you put it into a nice tiny package? How do you get all this and put it together? And that's where Joe Polish comes in. And Genius Network, my rockstar mastermind, things like that. You got to have people that can help you do these things.

Yes, exactly. If you don't seek out those groups and become part of it, then you're just missing a great opportunity to. To connect and collaborate. Yeah.

Joe, once again, man, I don't even know what to say. I know you charge like $6,000 an hour, so I owe you like $9,000. But the beauty thing is you said you're doing this for free.

My friend, I'm happy to help. And it's. And I hope, I hope everything that I was able to talk about, I hope some of it was useful and helpful to some people.

And I wrote down a lot of stuff.

Yeah. And again, if anyone wants to read any more of my ramblings, you can get joe'sfreebook.com and I think most people, well, people really like this book. It's very useful and I think it'll give people a good format. What you said about packaging, that's what marketing is. It's unique packaging. And it's how you. It's one thing to communicate something, it's another thing for people to comprehend it. People say content is king, content is valuable, but context is king. And so in the context of everything that's going on, it's new world in many ways. And you have such a great opportunity here. And so I'm glad that everyone is participating here. And of course, my pleasure, Craig, to be on here with you. And I appreciate it.

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