When you start to realize this, you can become anything you wanted to be Feat. Les Brown

In Michael's book, he has a book called Average Sucks. And he's a great speaker and he's a trainer and he's a coach and he's really good at many things. And in the book he talks about food. And I was using this as a metaphor towards real sincereness versus faking it.

Right.

And so the way he talks about food is there's food that is addiction. Addiction, which would be donuts and sugar and fat and just like unhealthy food. The second would be entertainment, which is what most restaurants would be. And then there's nutrition. And I look at people that way too. There's speakers and there's coaches and there's marketers that are, you know, they're not good. They're talkers. It tastes good, but it's, you know, it's kind of like a shit cake.

Can I ask you a question? Please, do you mind?

Go ahead.

Your book is entitled, what's your first name?

Average Sucks. Michael Bernhoff.

Michael. Yeah. You said Average sucks.

Yep. Not sex sucks. Yeah. Sometimes people.

I will be praying for you, Michael. Michael. Wanna ask you a question. Yeah. When you go back and look at your life, you're four or five, who's somebody that you admired that really impacted how you see yourself?

How I see myself?

Yes. Who? Somebody that you saw, that you admired, that you say, wow, they made you feel safe, made you feel. And because of their character, because of how they treated you, because of their example, they influence you in becoming the person that you are now. Who's that person?

I've had a ton of them.

I would say I'm talking about when you're around five or six.

Five or six years old?

Yeah. Who was the closest person your reference group literally had?

I was at a family event and there was a cousin. It was one time. It was a one time meeting. It was a cousin came in for a funeral and literally just said something to me. He said, you don't have to always listen to everything your parents say. You can be anything that you want to be. And I remember hearing this at a weird age. He's about eight years older than me. And he said this to me. And I remember those words to this day. I had a couple interactions with this gentleman.

Okay, hold just a minute.

Yep.

Pump your brakes. Now, I want you to listen to different ladies and gentlemen. I want you to shake someone's hand on your right and left and say, you can be anything you want to be. Do that right now, please. That's good.

You can be anything you Want to be.

Good. Ladies and gentlemen, I went to a funeral and they said, coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous. And I ran into a cousin of mine and he said that to me. He said, you can be anything that you want to be. I was going through an experience at this time trying to find my footing in life. How many of you had some moments in your life trying to make sense of and say, what is this all about? You remember those moments when you question yourself. And he affirmed me. And so I want to share with you some things I learned from my cousin. Now that's good. That goes different than average sucks. Because you're assuming that I'm average or he's average. We're not. So you're blocking a lot of people. But when you say you can be anything you want to be, Maslow said the number one thing that people want is self actualization. So now you're affirming people and things I learned from my cousin. You now are in that category. People go online to find out information. How did you get to where you are and what did you learn from your cousin? You want to create the want to that they want to know. What did you learn from your cousin? Because you got some secrets that you learned that allowed you to become the person that you are now. To die to who you were, to give birth to who you are now. And you've decided that you can be anything you want to do. His words when he spoke to you, that went to your heart and you carried it all these years. He didn't say to you, average sucks. And so the reason I ask you that question, I work with people to get what's in your heart. Average sucks. That's a head thing. You can be anything you want to be. People need to know that in the face of the pandemic, in the face of artificial intelligence, in the face of the statistics that over 350 million people that will be unemployed because of artificial intelligence, you'll say you can be anything you want to be. I'm not saying that there will be 350 million people who will lose their jobs. My cousin taught me that 350 million people didn't lose their jobs. 300 million people have been freed up so they can become entrepreneurs to control their own destiny. It was once said by one philosopher that things may happen to you and things may happen around you, but the things that really count are the things that happen in you. You can do anything you want to do. You can create your own economy. This is a new Place of accelerated change. Overwhelming, complex, Tremendous competition. You've got greatness in you. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. My cousin was right. And because of those words he spoke to me, I redefined myself. Because of what he said to me, my life was never the same again. Because of what my cousin said to me, I decided to become an ambassador in life and encourage people to pursue their dreams rather than live their fears.

Solid. Okay.

I like it.

And then I think marketing and all.

Our market research, that's a whole other conversation.

So.

But do you see what I did with that?

Yeah, I like that.

How many? Do you see the difference? Raise your hand if you see the difference in what I'm talking about. Yes.

You know, I got a funny story.

For you after this.

Well, here's just to bring it up. Andre, don't go away. So, the power of relationships. So how many years ago now was it, Andre, that Michael Bernoff and Cameron Herald and then John Rulin said, you know, to you, you need to meet this dude. I happen to be in. So do you know Andre Norman by chance?

Yes.

Okay. It's a black thing. Yeah, it's a black guy. We try to bring all the black people together, but it's something different. So, I mean, it seems to me. So we're recording this conversation, it seems to me that all these incarcerated individuals that you're in charge of this program to putting, you know, content on 650,000 tablets that are in prisons for people that are incarcerated would be very valuable for them to hear a conversation like this.

1,000%.

Yeah.

And because, you know, when you're in a position like that, the thing that incarceration does for most people is they usually don't come out better, they usually come out worse. And they now have a. They now have an identity of a convict. They have an identity that I fucked up. I'm a loser. Whatever. The interesting thing on the stats are there's 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States. We're the highest incarcerating country in the world. 25% of the world's prisoners are in the United States. And 80 to 90% of everyone arrested or thrown in jail, drugs and alcohol were involved. And 40% of people that are, you know, incarcerated committed some sort of violent crime, which is a different discussion. 60% have not. So there's a lot of addicted people that are incarcerated. And putting people into a punitive system, you can't punish pain out of people, is really damaging. And it's not just the incarcerated people to 2.2 million people. For every person incarcerated, there's a whole family unit and relationships that are attached to that person. So there's a very. There's an opportunity to change that person so that they can get out and become an Andre Norman, because many people do not. And I would have never met Andre if it wasn't for Michael or Cameron or John. So it's a relationship thing. And when I heard his story, you know, I was like, I want to be helpful to this individual. And it was supposed to be for, like, five months. It's now been five years. That's crazy. And he's saved lives, and we've done a lot of stuff. And here we are with people with skills and talents and abilities, everyone here. And through a mechanism here, he's now in a position where I think by the end of this year, there'll be like a million tablets that delivers education and content to people. And that's one of the things he's in charge of. And so. And he's an incredible speaker. If he would have not at some point figured out, I want to go and address people, I want to teach them. You don't have to go down the path. I did. It is all through speaking, just like Joel Weldon. I mean, speaking is the vehicle, it is the mechanism to getting messages and inspiration out to people. And you can make a lot of money doing it. But, you know, that conversation you have with my friend Rick is worth a lot. That guy is a multimillionaire. He is rich as hell. It wasn't about money. It was about what it did for his mindset, you know, and so the ability to speak and influence and persuade goes way beyond a business. I mean, it's what you can either, you know, Hitler was a powerful orator. You know, it's what you do with it that makes a difference.

Hitler is doing something we're witnessing now. People who have great presentation skills are able to create an experience. It's one thing to speak and people hear you. It's something else. When you speak, people feel you. That's a different dynamic. So he was a master communicator. The people that make that transformation is like Norman. It was not just the speaking. Norman died. If a man to gain his life, he must lose his life. Norman, who went to prison, he was liberated when he got out, even before they released him, because he got a new identity. Once your life has a new identity, people that we work with, the people that are part of our team, the people that we are aligning ourselves with for some social good. Once you have a different mindset, that gives your life a sense of purpose. And once your life has a sense of purpose, then that gives your life a sense of direction. So now Norman is an asset to society rather than a liability. Robert Kennedy said, if we cannot save the many that are poor, we truly cannot save the few that are rich. So when we look at the smash in grabs and all the killings that are taking place, we're watching the throes of a dying beast. Something has happened. And the only way that we can take this on, cultures of violence, cultures of other. You know, when you can put traps together and immigrants, it's one thing to talk about preventing people from coming here, but creating traps in water so they would drown in their children. That's not who we are as a country. We are the greatest country on the planet. And so that cultures are created by words. And the reason that I'm committed to training people how to communicate and to create peace, I said, I'll give you perfect peace. Whose mind is stayed on the harmony. When we have harmony with ourselves and our spirituality, our family, our relationships and the purpose of our lives and joy, stuff's going to be happening. Life would be happening. But when you have a sense of spiritual strength, you are able to handle it. You know, Jesus, he walked on water, but he went out there in a boat. And so you have to have something that when life be lifeened that you can hold on to, that allows you to say, I'm going to be all right, you know, and this is what you're doing now. And the relationships that people are building here, one goose can fly 75% further in formation with other geese than it can ever fly by itself. And so the relationships and the sharing that people have and building relationships, building a new reference group. They did this 85 year study at Harvard University and they said the people who were successful had a reference group of about five to seven people that they connected with, they identified with that they had goals and dreams and held each other accountable. The same things that you're talking about right now. This is extraordinary. This is what the Genius network is. Something that needs to be replicated all across this country and around the world. Because politicians won't do it and religious leaders won't do it. They keep us divided by politics and religion and keep us at each other's throats. What you're doing is that you have one agenda and that agenda is greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. You have the power to create peace. We have the power to turn to each other rather than turn on each other. We have the power to leave a legacy and for generations yet unborn. That's what the Genius Network is all about.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Gracias.

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 Joe's free and you can get a copy there.

I have a daughter. I have a daughter. Her name's Eloise. She's just turned 14. And I have a son. His name's Axel. He's 12. And our youngest is Lila. She's nine. We're a little worried about her. Little like her mom.

Little.

Go get her.

Right?

So 15 years ago, when my wife dawn was pregnant with our first with Eloise, 15 years ago, and our kids were all 10 pounders, right? So my wife's belly was out to there that far. And we lived in Beverly Hills at the time. So if you live in Beverly Hills and your belly's out to there, this is what happens to you. Everywhere you go in Beverly Hills, whether you go into the coffee shop or you go to have some dinner, or you go grocery shopping, every person runs up to you on the streets of Beverly Hills and points at your belly like this. And these people, everyone sprints up to us. And dawn and I are like, what? And they go, where this child going to preschool? And my wife and I were like, we don't know. We haven't even met her yet. No, no, no, no, no, no. You have to have this child in the right preschool today, because if you don't, she'll never get into the right elementary school, and she'll never go to the right college, she'll never go to the right high school. Basically, you'll be raising a loser. And my wife and I, we didn't want to raise a loser, right? So this is what we do. We get on this preschool train craziness in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Brentwood, and we start interviewing and we start going to these preschools. And the first nine preschools turn us down, and each one was more expensive than the last. And Eloise is born, right? And the 10th preschool accepted us, and we were so happy with ourselves, right? And then we meet Eloise and we're like, eloise, guess what? You're gonna be going to this preschool in four years. But we started paying for that preschool that day, right? So for four, four years, dawn and I are paying this preschool that we're not even at yet. Finally, four years goes by. Eloise is old enough to go to preschool, right? So dawn and I pull up in the car and we get Eloise out of her car seat. And a lot of you, I'm sure, have done this where you push your little boy or girl behind the other side of the gate and you watch them walk into the preschool. And dawn and I were waving and we were crying, and Eloise didn't even really seem to care. She just walked right in, right? But what I noticed about this preschool was that we were the only parents there.

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 Joe's free book and you can get a copy there.

Every other kid was being dropped off by a nanny and a town car. So, you know, if you have kids this age, I don't know what it is about kids this age, but why is it that every single weekend some kid in Eloise's preschool has a birthday? Every weekend, every weekend there's a new birthday party for us to go to with from Eloise's classmates, right? So we go and all these parties are exactly the same. They drive me a little crazy, right? We put Axel and Eloise, we put them in the car seats, right? And dawn and I, we drive to the fancy neighborhood and we park on the fancy street and we take the kids out on the fancy street and then we, we walk in, right, to the fancy house. And I say hi to the fancy family, right? And I don't know how to talk to them or anything, so I just walk straight out to the backyard. And these backyards aren't like the ones you and me grew up in. These things, like, open up, right? And remember our, like the slides and the swings that we used to play on? Remember those rusty ass chain link? They didn't have any of that. No rust. It was wood, it was sand. It was beautiful. And then you'd walk in and Madonna would be right there. And then Paul Abdul's giving dance lessons right over there. Pinatas would be unbelievable. So I don't know what to do right at these things. So I just always walk straight out to the yard, and I find a little uncomfortable spot right about here, every party, every weekend. Because every other dad who has a kid at this preschool is an entertainment agent or an entertainment lawyer. And this is what they do. They all get in a huddle right about here, and they all talk and brag about how they got their client to walk down the red carpet and on the COVID of People magazine. So I don't know how to contribute to that, right? So I just make my way right over here to my little uncomfortable spot and hang out right here. So here comes the weekend. Guess what? What a shocker. Birthday party. And we pack up the kids and we're going to go, okay? So we pack up Eloise and Axel in their car seats, drive to the fancy neighborhood, park on the fancy street. I walk in, hi to the fancy family, and I go straight out, just like I always do, passing the huddle right there, and find my little spot in the grass right about here. And I'm just looking around, watching the kids. Eloise is over there in the sand, and Axel is over here in the shrubs right now. He's got to be like two and a half at this point, right? He's covered in mud, and you can't see his face because his head is down in the shrubs like this. All you can see is his butt sticking up out of the shrubs, covered in mud. So I'm just watching Axel, watching Eloise in my little uncomfortable spot, and all of a sudden, Axel pops his head out of the shrubs and comes sprinting at me full speed with something in his hands. And this something is a little white plastic football covered in mud. And I said, okay, this is my kind of party. Finally, Axel comes running up to me and goes like this, dad. And he wants to play catch. So I say, okay, Axel, throw me the ball. So he throws me the ball, I catch it, and I throw it back to Axel. He catches it, throws it back to me, I throw it back to Axel, he catches it right back to me. Catch and throw. And on that throw, Axel dropped the ball. And I said, axel, don't let the ball touch the ground. And he said, oh. Oh, yeah, dad. Oh, yeah. He picks the ball up, and we continued to play catch. Well, right when I said that, this whole huddle did this, And they elected one of these guys to come have a little chat with me. And I could see him coming a mile away, but I pretended like I didn't see him. So I just kept playing catch with Axel like this. And here he comes. And I know exactly what he's gonna say, because we're in Santa Monica. He comes right up to my ear, and this is what he does. Excuse me. Excuse me, sir. What did you just say to that boy? I said, that boy is my son. And I told him, don't let the ball touch the ground.

Really?

And why would you say that to that boy? I said, that boy's my son. And I say that to him because that's a rule in our house. We don't let the ball touch the ground.

Really?

And why would that be a rule in your house? I said, well, that's a rule in my house, because that was a rule in my house growing up. See, my dad got me and my brother a football for every Christmas, right? And my brother had to throw me that ball a thousand times a day, and I had to catch that ball a thousand times a day. And me and my brother figured out that if that ball never touched the ground for that whole year, it would last to the next Christmas because my dad wasn't getting a new one if we ruined that one. That's why it's a rule in my house.

Really?

And how did that work out for you? I was so happy he asked that question. I said, it worked out pretty good. Me and my brother both played in the NFL. And he said, really? And as he turned around to go report back to the huddle, I say to Axel, axel, pick up that ball. We're taking it home. This family doesn't need it. And we start walking out of the backyard. Say, eloise, over here, sweetheart. Over here. We're leaving. And we go into the house. I go, and Dawn's in there. She's talking to all the moms. I said, sweetheart, guess what? We're out. Let's go. And we go right out to the car, and I load the kids up in the car and we start driving home, right? And as I'm driving home, I'm squeezing.

The.

Steering wheel like this. And my wife is next to me. She says, sweetheart. Bo, what happened? What's the matter? And I just said, we're moving. And we got home and we packed up. We moved to a section of town outside of town which was a little more accepting of excellence. I am not comfortable with my life in the hands of amateurs. I am not comfortable with my kids in the charge of people who see mediocrity is as high as you can go. We don't let the Ball touch the ground. Now, back when we first started this, when Axel was two and a half, it touched the ground all the time. Right now he's 12. Now he's 12. We can be out there for two and a half, three hours. It doesn't touch the ground. And the standard is set for all his friends, everybody who's on his team. What do you think? The kind of teams he's going to be on for the rest of his life, they have to play to the standard or they just eliminate themselves. You get me? Can we play like that here? Like with complete. Here's the problem. What if these dudes, what if these dudes right here held the standards that we have right here? What if they held the same standard that me and Axel hold? What kind of movies could you and me go to every weekend when there's nothing to go see? Why do you think that is? Why do you think you turn to your spouse and you go, sweetheart, let's go see a movie?

I love movies.

Go be inspired. Why are there none to go see? They make thousands a year. This is why. This is why. Mediocrity. They love it, they promote it. I got nothing to do with it. So can we in this room play like that for the next three days? Like we are the standard bear? Right.

Cool.

You are Talking to a 25 year old a few years ago and mentioned how you trade everything you had being the CEO of Whole Foods, all your wealth, all your success for being 25 years old again. And because it's all about the journey, what are a few life lessons you would share with the entrepreneurs here as it relates to aging, enjoying the journey and living consciously? And this is one of the questions I think would be one of the most important things I could hear from you. Just love to get your perspective.

Well, first I'm going to tell that story because I think it's interesting. So, you know, I forget where I'm at at a conference or I made a presentation and somebody who clearly really admired me, a young man came up and he said, I hope to do something like you've accomplished someday. I really admire what you've done with Whole Foods. And he says, you know, I just hope someday I can be like you. And I said, you know what? I'll trade with you. And he says, what do you mean? I said, I'll trade with you. You can be me, you can have all my money, you can have all my success, fame, all the other accoutrements that go along with that. CEO of a big business And I'll just be you. And he thought about it, he says, why would you want to do that? And I said.

You would be a.

Fool to make that trade because life is about living. It's the journey itself. People oftentimes ask me, say, aren't you so proud of what you've created? And it's like, well, A, I didn't do it by myself, we created it. But B, you know, I'm excited about the things I'm doing now. I'm excited about what I'm creating, not what's been created. It's like an artist that has done a painting. They're too busy working on the next painting or writing the next book or whatever. Their past is something maybe when they're really, really old they might look back on with some satisfaction. But the joy of it is the actual creating it. The journey itself of life is reward in and of itself. So yes, absolutely, I'd trade everything to be 25 years old again because then I could go, I'd still be on the journey of life, of adventure, of learning and growing. And that's so much fun, isn't it? I mean, how many people here think of themselves as entrepreneurs? Yeah, there ain't nothing more fun than building a business. It's hard, but it's so deeply fulfilling because you get to be creative, you get to explore, you learn about yourself. You have to grow as an individual and as a human being. It's just such a grand adventure. And I don't say I have no regrets, but I don't have any major regrets. And I absolutely would do it all over again if I could. So what are life lessons? That's one life lesson right there, love. I've talked about, I've given lots of lessons here. Everything I've said is lessons, something I've learned on my journey.

So what are some of the biggest hiring mistakes you see entrepreneurs making and how could they, or should they avoid them?

Well, there, I think some categories of mistakes that are worth mentioning. The first one is too many entrepreneurs hire people like themselves because naturally we empathize with people like ourselves and we see ourselves in them. And so we want to hire them when in fact we should be hiring people who complement us. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make, particularly once they get successful, is it goes through their head and they think they're geniuses, they think they're brilliant, and they don't have enough self awareness to understand that they need to hire people that compensate for their weaknesses. And I suppose one of my advantages in business is I've always been aware pretty well of all the things I can't do very well. And there's a huge list of them. So I always hired people. It's like they're going to compensate for my weakness in that area because I really believe in the power of the team. And you will never create anything great by yourself. It will always be a team that you will create it together. And you need a team that helps your strengths to shine forth and compensates for your weaknesses. So that's one category mistake that people make. A second mistake that people frequently make when they hire is they are afraid to hire people that are smarter and better than themselves because they're afraid their own egos can't handle the idea that someone might be better than they are. So they hire weaker people. That's such a stupid strategy. If you hire great people, they'll make you look good. They'll make you. I always say I've gotten far more credit for whole food success than I deserve. And I might add far more blame when things go bad than I deserve as well, because we've, again, it's been a team effort. So you gotta hire great people that complement you, and you gotta hire people that are smarter, better than you. And together you can do some pretty amazing things.

Yeah, you know, like, I was. I was on Richard Branson's island a couple years ago, which you helped me introduce you to. Yeah, I introduced you guys, hung out, and I asked him. Unlike you, it's hard to get Richard to say stuff that actually makes a lot of sense in terms of strategy. Now, he's a very bright guy, but he's a very intuitive entrepreneur. He doesn't like. If you ask him, how do you do it? He doesn't go really deep into it. And one thing I. The best thing he ever said to me about hiring, though. Did you want to say something?

No, go ahead.

So I said, richard, I was just joking with him. I said, when's the last time you went to a grocery store? And he looks up, he's like, I've never gone to a grocery store. And I'm like, what do you mean you've never gone to a grocery store? I go, when you, you know, Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten, they needed to buy beer for him or something, he's like, I've never been to a grocery store. And I was like, that didn't make any sense to me. I go, well, when's the last time you did laundry? And he'd like, I've never Done laundry. I'm like, what do you mean you've never done laundry? What about when you were a kid?

Did you ask him did he take it? What did he do last time he took a shit?

I didn't ask him that. I should have. I know he's taking a shit. He's actually, I've seen him piss in the ocean right when we were like during the barbecues. But basically he's like, I never, he's like, he goes, I've never done laundry. I'm like, well, you know, when you're a kid, he's like, well, my mom did my laundry. And I'm like, your mom did your laundry? And what he said, he goes, Joe, he goes, hire people to do stuff you want to do. He goes, one good hire could save you thousands, tens of thousands of hours in your life. And Richard said a lot of things. But the fact is, that's one thing he's done incredibly well is he's built a team of people around him. The reason that your perspective, I could ask a lot of people about how they think about hiring, but you have 85,000 people that work for your organization. You have been through it. I think hearing what you have to say can make all the difference in the world. It just comes with a far deeper experience than the average person. And so this question, one of the things you said is you really can't motivate anybody else. It's a lot easier to select enthusiastic people. And once you create a conscious culture, it selects for its own kind, which is interesting. A company has an immune system. And the people that don't fit into the culture, the immune system begins to select them out and get rid of them. So what should entrepreneurs look for and do in order to better select talent instead of trying to motivate people? And what can entrepreneurs do to cultivate and encourage self selecting cultures?

Cultures?

Well, of course we can inspire people. I don't want to say you can't motivate anybody. You can inspire people. But I consider it kind of like a bucket with holes in it. If people are dependent on you to fill them up with energy and it's all going to leak out. So they eventually have to be able to create their own energy. So again, I kind of talked about it already. You've got to create a culture that really allows human beings to be creative and flourish where they feel a sense of purpose, they have a sense of meaning, they have a sense of belonging, that they're cared for, people they care about, and that they can have some fun in the workplace where they can be fully human. We need to create workplaces where humans can be fully human. In a sense, their highest potential of being a human. So I've always had that perspective, and I've tried to model it. And then I try to instill the values and get the culture. I spend a lot of time thinking about the culture. I sometimes think it's like a gardener. You've got to look around. If there's a few weeds that you got to pull out, you got to pull them out, and other things you need to plant. And if you're the entrepreneur of your business, what you'll find out as your business grows, that the business begins to take on a lot of your own personality. The things that are good about you and the things that are not so good about you. And they just unconsciously model on the leader. It's just the way it works. Just like kids model on their parents and then later their peer group. That's what we are, human beings. We copy each other. So once you realize that, then you got to get your own shit together. Because one of the things that I learned in leadership is that when I got stuck somewhere in my own life, oftentimes the company got stuck, too. And when I got unstuck, that let the company move forward. So personal growth is very important. It really is. And it used to be seen as sort of narcissistic. We focused on that. Now you grow not just for yourself, you grow for your whole organization. So one of my goals is to continue to learn and grow until the day I die.

So you're very transparent about many issues, and sometimes it makes people mad or they criticize you. And the company can even become. Whole Foods can become the subject of resistance or boycotts. And so what can entrepreneurs here learn from you about handling criticism, dealing with the media, and dialoguing with people who may disagree with their perspectives?

Well, it's a tough question for me because, I mean, I tell the joke that I failed media training at Whole Foods Market three separate times. In media training, they always teach you to look, decide what you want to say, and then just whatever they ask you, just bridge to it. Just bridge to. But a person asks me a question, I try to answer it truthfully and honestly and authentically. And that gets me in trouble sometimes. And I don't even care about people attacking me personally. You're welcome to attack me. I don't care. But they attack my baby, they attack Whole Foods, and they try to hurt Whole Foods. And for those of you that are parents. You know, nothing upsets you more than having your kids attacked and beat up by bullies. So I've learned the hard way that I just cannot be as open, particularly about politics in this society as I once was. I wrote an op ed piece in the Wall street journal back in 2009 that led about Whole Foods alternative to Obamacare, and it led to massive boycotts, going to Facebook. 350,000 people signed a petition to boycott Whole Foods Market. There were petitions in our stores. There was thousands of letters that were sent to the board of directors demanding that I be fired. So we live in this incredibly interesting society now where if you say things that people don't like, they just smear you and they attack you. And it's made me, I don't want to say it's made a chilling effect, but I'm a little bit more careful about giving my, at least my political opinions in public, at least until I retire. Then I'm going to go on a rampage.

Yeah, I want to do the interview the day after you retire. That would be great.

Hello.

Well, I want to tell you a story. It's an old story, but change is coming. There's going to be new winners, there's going to be new losers. And actions have consequences, but so does inaction. And you're the hero of the story. And your job is to figure out how to get to next. In order to do that, you have to see the bigger picture, to figure out where you want to go, to figure out the plan and path to get there. And that's really what this talk is about. It's a framework to help you imagine how to scale your business and how your industry is likely to scale. Abraham Lincoln said the best way to predict the future is to create it. And that's a really cool quote. This framework that I'm about to share with you is about creating the future you desire. Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have done it incredibly well. I just saw that Tesla is approaching a trillion dollar valuation. Think about that. By the way, Tesla is so cool. I'm just curious how many people here either have a Tesla or want to buy a Tesla? If you do, just put it in the chat because I'd love to see that. But do you have a Tesla? Do you want a Tesla? It's such a cool concept, but every concept, every story, every process has a beginning, a middle, and an end. How do you think it started? What do you think came first? What capability actually prompted them to say, oh, I think there could be more.

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, 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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

The concept is Tesla started with a capability. What do you think it was? Was it the clean energy car? Was it the battery? We don't really know. But I came up with this diagnostic to help figure out how some of the greatest companies have done it. So that we can do starts with a new capability and then you start to stack those capabilities to be able to create a prototype. The prototype is the bait that lets people decide whether they're interested. And if enough people show interest, it becomes a product. And then that product. You can think of that as a way to have people you don't know doing something you do, but then the next stage is when it becomes a platform and that's where people you don't know use it for things you didn't anticipate. And each one of these is a minimum 10 times scale. So it's like 10 times times 10 times 10 times, but even bigger. And the key is to start to think about what capabilities are going to get people greedy for new capabilities. You don't have to think about the technology, you think about the business need. And so if you're Elon Musk in the beginning you have to think about constraints like drivable distance, or it has to be cool enough to get over the hassle factor. But later you're thinking about I have to have charging stations on most of the major highways so that people don't get stuck in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, the bottom line is this is a really cool way to figure out what capabilities are needed. Think of it as a roadmap. And you don't have to build the whole roadmap, but if you know what the map is, you can figure out what parts of the territory match your unique ability, your energy be so good that it requires a new name to describe what you do. Right. He did this with ludicrous. What's that? The feature that when you press it, the car goes from 0 to 60 in a ludicrous period of time. But think about how you can name a certain capability to make people want it. Gosh, he did it again with SpaceX, didn't he? SpaceX is such a great example because if you think about the capability, the prototype, the product and the platform, he's literally inventing something out of this world. It wasn't just privatized spaceships. Realize one of the constraints there was space travel was government based. There was no public technology to do this. And so in a sense nobody spent money because it was too risky. But he decided to risk money, time, energy, resources, and then he had to make the components reusable and then he had to figure out how to land humans safely. It's one thing to go on a space mission, it's another to privatize space transportation or shoot for Mars. But it's even more when you start to think about commoditizing space travel, including like cargo delivery and Internet. Amazon did this with Amazon Cloud and a bunch of their different features. Things that became or that were backstage became front stage here. They're going to have a massive industry shipping parts to all over the universe to start to build communities and space stations and stuff. And they've already lowered the cost. It's now less than one tenth of the cost per pound to bring stuff up. Why is that important? Because it sends a signal to the rest of the entrepreneurs saying, I could have a business in space. And so those are new customers. And so this is a great way of imagining what's going to happen and where you're going to fit. But people rarely try to accomplish things that they don't believe are possible. And this is the tool that helps you figure out what is possible and what your part is in it. And you don't have to predict the future, especially not about technology. And you don't even have to invent the best technology because it's not the best that wins, it's the ones that's the most adopted. So focus on the capabilities that you know people are going to want and realize that that's the magnet that attracts money, talent, resources and opportunity. Since the dawn of time, we've been confronted with radical new technologies. And even though technology changes, human nature hasn't. And so this is really about human nature and thinking about what people are going to want. And it's really simple if you understand what happens. And I'm going to show you how to do that with this framework. Stage one is something I call so what? Who cares? Even in a caveman, there's this back portion of the brain that says, if it doesn't help my survival, it's not worth it. So the question here is, does it help me do What I already do just better recognize the game you're playing, how you keep score. Most people are trying to save time, money, or win more often, right? So the metrics are probably something like that. As long as a new capability helps you do that, you go, this is cool. I want more. Hence stage two. Stage two is all about new capabilities and what's next. And instead of, does it help me do what I already do? It's what could I do or what should I do? And it means you have to start to stop doing some things to make room for the new things you're doing. You're still playing the same game, but at a whole different level, with more capabilities and better results. Stage three is game changing because it's reinvention. It's where those new capabilities, your new identity, causes you to say, I could release a new product, a service or an offering that's strategic and unique, that takes me out of that competitive red ocean of commodity into something that highly prizes what we do. But it has to be good enough that people you don't know are going to get the results. So you're refining the unique ability or the capability to something that is reproducible, scalable. And it's playing a new game because it's no longer about what you're doing, it's about distribution. So the metrics have to change. And stage four is a huge opportunity for scale. It's transformation. And I call it that because it transforms the game and the playing field for other people. They see what you're doing and they're saying, that's so cool. I'll come to you with ideas or money. Can I do it this way or that way? And it's where your core capability is so cool that it's a platform that others want to build upon. And this is what that looks like in an infographic. You're going to have that in your downloads. But this is how it looks in my company. And the reason it's important is it not only explains the past, but the constraints help me figure out what strategies come next. And understanding the scaling future helps me figure out the big rocks or planning principles so I can figure out what to call into existence. So we currently have a fund that's run 100% by autonomous AI and it's getting really great results. So great that I realized that the next stage is to have. It's simple enough that other people can multiply. And so I need to pour more money into the top for it to grow. And the way to do that is to realize I have to joint venture or collaborate with other people. And then the platform is, oh, wow. The backstage capability, the insight engine, the technology that made it possible, is no longer just the thing that lets me monetize it. It's actually the thing that people are going to want. And that's the concept of amplified intelligence. But it totally changed the way I think about my business. And I hope that this is helping you change what you think of as your business, because your imagination is your ultimate competitive advantage. And that's why I created this form for you to think about what you're going to commit to and you can do anything you commit to.

You talked about it earlier. I want to go a little deeper on it. How can people ultimately get clear on what they really want in life? And you have six steps for getting clarity. So can you kind of go through some of them?

Yeah, I mean, to me, the first piece of clarity and it's a really big deal, is again, this process of unbelieving, of looking at your life and examining why you believe what you believe, where your beliefs come from, basically. So it's an awareness of where your beliefs come from, examining a little bit about why that is, and then making a conscious choice whether to conclude to believe those things or not believe those things. Because we know that whatever you're believing is what's produced your, you know, created your actions. And now your results are the other fruit on the tree, if you will. And so recognizing that and then in the process, this is really important is letting go, is being able to learn the process of letting go. So I mean, I love when I'm. When I'm teaching to refer people to books because books are great. It's a great way to learn in your own environment. Right? My environment's usually like a hot tub. And one of the books I love is the Sedona Method. Hal Dwoskin, and he's part of the Transformational Leadership Council.

I went through Sedona Method in the early 90s.

Amazing, right? It's incredible. And when you realize that you can release stuff and you release shit and shit thoughts and all the stuff that comes out of that, you're like. So we have so much more clarity to be able to create a vision, which is the next thing you know, it's. The next step is, you know, when you have a clearer view of. Of what you believe or what you want to believe even and why you believe what you have believed, and you make a choice to maybe not believe some or unbelieve Some of those things you get to create a new vision for your life. And you know, any, any CEO, anybody that's managing or running teams knows that you have to have a big vision that other people can, can be excited about. You know, but that starts with you. You're not going to enroll anybody else in your vision until you know what your vision is.

Exactly. And you got to have one. And I mean, it doesn't need to be perfect, but there's, you know, the fact is there's so many people. If you don't create your own value system, then you spend your life adopting other people's. And a lot of.

Could you repeat that?

Yeah. If you don't develop your, your own value. You know, human happiness comes from developing your own value system, not adopting someone else's. Because if you and most people, they'll read a book and they'll try to take that author's stuff and make it their own versus taking it and applying it and developing their own value system with it. And it's, you're not ever you. If you don't develop your, your own philosophy, if you don't apply it to your own life, your own situations, your own desires, and then you end up living someone else's life. So it's develop your own value system.

I think that's powerful.

Yeah, it's worked well for me. I think about it all the time. What are some of the results you've seen people achieve after utilizing the tools that you basically teach in pivot?

That's really the coolest part of this, is that, you know, we've seen people that have created massive money, you know, success in business and things. And that's usually what people say they want. It's the first question kind of, you know, what would you, you know, what would your life be like if you had no worries about money? And then all of a sudden they're, they're happy, they're healthy, they have great relationships, you know, that kind of thing. So they're after the money and there's nothing wrong with that. So. But what I've seen seen is that in addition to people producing wealth, what they've really been able to produce is a more peaceful life, a happier life, a more on purpose life. The kind of a life we don't worry about money at all anyway. And it's not because you don't care about it. It's because money flows as, you know, is a result that flows out of the way. You're showing up differently when you're a Purpose driven person. When your intention is to serve, not to take. Money is, you know, money is a fruit that hangs on that tree, the root, you know, it's the roots that create the fruits and it's the root of that intention to serve and to help others and make the world better or to relieve pain or whatever it is that you know, you're going to be able to use your special gifts to add value.

Right.

That just produces a fruit that's called fulfillment, you know, And I love what Tony Robbins, early on when I started to read and listen to him, he'd say, you know, success without fulfillment feels like failure.

Right.

And I, you know, that was me, he was talking directly to me when I was a lawyer and I'm going, holy shit. So I've got plenty of money, you know, I've got power, authority and all that kind of stuff. And yet I'm fucking miserable. Why am I so unhappy? Well, because the key to happiness was missing from the equation, right?

Right.

So one of the great results that come from people reading a book like hopefully like Pivot, but coming to a training and being in a space, a heart centered, you know, heart centered space for their own personal development is that they're gonna, they're gonna discover the truths about themselves. And some of those truths are, will shock, you know, they'd be shocking, it would be shocking to them when they discover what they really, really want in life. And more often than not, it's not really a money driven thing.

You know what's funny is when I was dead broke, carpet cleaner living off credit cards and I would read Think and Grow Rich and the Power of Positive Thinking and many of the classic personal development books. It wasn't until I learned marketing in some strategies where I was able to actually make money. And I became a millionaire by the time I was 30. And I still, at the time I was thinking, man, if I just have the money, that will solve so much of the shit. Not realizing that money actually allows you to buy some pretty bad vices.

Money's a magnifier. I heard somebody once say, isn't it true?

It is true.

If you're a shit, more money can make you even a bigger shit.

Oh yeah, yeah. I've seen it happen at so many levels. And so what's interesting though, and again, I'm never a person to poo poo money. I mean, if you don't have money, you don't have food, you can't get medical care. I mean, when people say money can't buy Happiness, I think they're crazy because there's a lot of things that make me happy that I can buy with money. However, like Jim Rohn says, you can't hire someone to do your push ups for you. Money's not going to buy you true peace of mind or relationships. It'll give you access to things, but how you interact with it is a really important thing. So I'm never a person to poo poo money. Money's really valuable in a certain context. Taken in the wrong way though, it could lead to a lot of self destruction. That's what you see happen with lottery winners. Two years within winning the lottery, they're used in worse debt than they were before they ever won it.

Exactly. And here's one little addition to that or plus to that, which is that we dive in our training, we dive into why you want money to begin with. Because if you do truly want a lot more money, often that simple shift in that 5 degree change in your direction has to do with your motivation for money. When you, you're, you know, you brought up Jim Rohn, so he's got a great quote on this, which is the bigger the why, the easier the how. Yeah, you know, the how, the dreaded hows as Mike Dooley would call them. Right. That's the problem that stops people because they're not really, they're not solid on their why. Yeah, that's one little thing. But it's a major shift for folks.

And see the reason. It's useful. From my experience, and I can only speak from my experience, people say to me all the time, why do you still go to seminars? Why do you read all these books? I mean, because I've read over a thousand business books. I've got an incredible library. I've been to more events and things than most people that I know. The reason that I do it is not because there's something I haven't yet learned. It's just the whole process to me is kind of like working out. I mean, you don't just go and have a great workout and your health or you eat one healthy meal and all of a sudden it's handled. It's just part of life. It's just something that I do and it keeps me in an engaged state. To me it's just part of a process and you live that way. And when I live that way, life works better. It just does. So it's one of those things that I do. The thing about money is when someone is broke and they don't have their own, their financial needs, like they literally can't pay their rent as an example, or they're deeply in debt. It's very hard for them to say, hey, you know, you're going to get the peace of mind, you're going to do this, you're going to do that. I'll tell you like when I learned from Dan Sullivan that there's five different ways you get paid for something. I used to read all these books in the beginning of my career of how much is my time worth per hour? Am I spending my time, you know, making broken down to the minute, you know, how much you want to make. And I would always beat myself up because I would find myself focusing on activities that didn't always bring in the highest level of money. And some they didn't bring in any money, but they were just interesting to me. But I would always layer this compared to the stuff that I was reading about. Every minute of your working out day needs to be focused on the return. And it wasn't until my friend Dan Sullivan shared with me this thing called, called an opportunity filter where there's five ways you get paid. The first way is reward, you get paid with money. The second is appreciation. Another way you get paid is utilization. People utilize you. Another way you get paid is people refer you. And another way you get paid is people. It enhances you as a person. And until I actually realize that, for me, whenever I'm working with a person on a project, it has to, my number one criteria is the does it enhance me? Second, do people utilize me? I mean, I do not like giving advice, especially proven business strategies to someone that says they want them, could transform their business with them and they don't use it.

Don't throw your pearls to swine.

Exactly. It's the Emerson quote. You ask for a new idea when you haven't used the first one that I gave you. So when people don't utilize it, the third is people appreciate me. The fourth, do they refer me? A fifth, does they pay me? So I like getting paid. I do want money. However, that's only one way of getting rewarded. And so I go into my life now saying, okay, is this person elf easy, lucrative and fun or are they half hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? So you can have an elf business or a half business. And I really think about stuff that way. And I'll tell you, operating that way brings me a hell of a lot of peace of mind. And it keeps me out of a lot of success traps. Because when people get successful, success Traps are harder to get out of than failure traps. Because when you're down and out and all you have to do is go up, you know, I mean, you literally.

You could try anything.

Exactly. But when you have, like, built a business or a career, let's say, where you're good at it and you're making money, but it's draining the life force out of you, it's actually hard to give that shit up. It's really hard because you're not even. I mean, you're not even aware of it. So that's why. Getting perspectives from the outside. That's why I'm always saying, read a book. Read this book, if you will. It will change your perspective. It will give you strategies. The more that you're into personal development. Love it or hate it, and certainly there's a lot of shit out there. There's a ton of people that are pontificating nonsense.

There's some posers, for sure.

Yeah.

However, you know, the more you do this, the more, you know, this works for me, and this doesn't. Because some things work for some people and don't work for others. But the point is, it is. It is a journey. So let me ask you. I'm rambling here.

I just don't think there's any limit to it. So like you said, I'm a lifelong learner and constantly reading, and it really is because there's a. I believe that to be a great teacher, which, as we said, to learn something is to teach something. So here's the circle nature of this, right? In order to be a great teacher, you must be a great student. And the day you stop being a great student, you stop being a great teacher. So then you stop learning. What's the essential tools to keep evolving? So you just basically kind of shrivel up and die at that point or.

Something, or you start to suck more than you were. Like, there's a lot of authors that I know and a lot of speakers that when they were hungry and they were first starting out, I think were far better than they are. Once they got the ego, once they've got the fame, once they got the notoriety, the ones that I admire the most, I've done a whole podcast episode with Dan Kennedy, who I've worked with for many, many years, the grumpy marketer. And Dan, we would talk about. When you're first starting out in your career, you get paid for what you do, and hopefully your. What is good, like, whatever you put out into the world, it creates value for other people. It's good. And if you do a really good job at what you put out there, then you become a who, and then you start getting paid for who you are. So a lot of people that become famous, they spend more time hooing than they do what ing. And when you become a who, but your what that you're putting out there is still incredibly valuable or preferably keeps getting better and better and better. That's why a guy like my friend Tony Robbins, I mean, we're both friends with Tony. I mean, he has had incredible longevity because that freaking guy just works his ass off. He puts really good stuff out there. And so, you know, I mean, he's just, you know, he's Tony. And so the thing is, part of it is I really look at who's the what and then who's the who. And if you actually get to the point where you start resting on your laurels because you've gotten some wind in your favor, that's the time to actually even look at, okay, let's make sure I'm doubling up here, because I actually think life is. You're on track, and then you get thrown off track, and then you kind of move yourself back on track. But some people, they've got momentum, and then they just like. Because I'll look at a lot of my clients when their business was really working well and they were kicking ass and taking. Making names, and then they'll start getting into some S's. And if you simply ask them some questions, kind of what you said earlier, I mean, Socratic selling is way more valuable than layering on all kinds of benefits. Simply ask people questions. If you actually inquire into people, well, what were you doing when life was working well for you? And they'll tell you, and what are you not doing that you used to. What I've learned being in this business is a lot of times we're doing just a glorified reminder service.

No kidding.

You just. You just have to remind. Some humility right there. Remind people, you used to do this and you stopped. And, you know, there are no gurus.

I don't even. I don't know if it's not offensive to me, but I just. The word is just an interesting word to me.

Oh, yeah. I don't like. I don't like the. Because I can't imagine, like, me, you know, even thinking of myself that way.

No, because it's almost like, there you go. I know something. I know that. And I think that's. That's. That's at least one nail in the coffin when you think you know something.

Exactly, exactly. Here's.

This is something that you know. When we have a guest like you for a show like this, we put out promotional materials to tell, come to listen, and here is just a taste of what you're going to get. And we use these things we call fascinations and teasers that are going to bring people in. Now, this is the one I've been waiting to ask you. Oh, yes. How can someone become a better leader, a better influencer, and a better lover? I know this is the one everybody came here for.

So.

We get with. We've been salting the communication. We've been getting to this point, and now the big. The payoff.

Well, here's the secret that I believe, and I've been yet to be convinced that I'm wrong. You have to start backwards.

Okay?

Start first to be a better lover in your home. Be a better communicator with your loved one, whoever your partner is, your spouse, your kids. But let's just go with spouse or a partner if you can. So I believe you only have. You have only so much bandwidth in your brain. And I'm just going to go off of my experience. This is just what I felt. And how I came up with this idea was obviously I came from not just one divorce, but both of my parents have been divorced twice. And so I've seen that. Right. And so when I got into the. You asked earlier, like, kind of, what was that pivot moment? The real pivot moment for me was when I decided to get married to my wife. And we both sat down and I've known her since I was five. So we've. We've literally known each other whole lives. She saw what my parents went through and what I went through, but we sat down and said, how are we not going to do that? Right. Like, my parents taught me a lot of things not to do, which I'm so grateful for. Right. It was very traumatic as a kid. But I joke with my parents at this point all the time. I've made a ton of money off of your divorce, so thank you. Like a good thing. But I. So we sat down and we said, what are the systems, literally systems and processes we're going to put into our relationship so that doesn't happen. What are our core values that go beyond, I'll be honest with you, you know, or, you know, we love each other, so we started creating those. Well, as a entrepreneur, you've got a lot of stuff going on in Your head. You only have bandwidth for so much. We talk about frustration, overwhelm. Well, that's where it comes from. If I'm not happy in my relationship, it is the underlining factor. Everything else I do, if I had a fight with my wife in the morning, and I'm sorry, while you guys talk about this enough in Genius Network, this is a big shock, but excuse my for everybody, if I haven't had sex with my wife in over a week and we just had an argument, I go to the office and the underlying things going on in my brain that's taking up bandwidth. Even if I say, well, my office is my escape place or this is where I keep my focus, it's there. It underlines everything I do. If I'm not happy with my wife and I go to work, something small is going to piss me off with my team members. Something small is going to annoy me with a client. And so if I'm not happy there, then it affects everything else. So the opposite has to be true as well. So if I'm happy in my relationship, if I'm focused on creating a better relationship between my wife and my kids, then I'm going to not have to. That frees up so much more bandwidth to be creative, to be focused, to be in flow, to be attentive, to be present. And so if I can master that, then I can go and master this over here. And so I always start with lover. So focus on lover again. I'll go back to that saying there's nothing will no success outside the home will compensate for failure in it. My first and most important relationship is that with my spouse. Even my kids know this. Since my kids were little, I would sit them down and say, I love you, I would die for you, I do anything for you. But your mom is number one. You will never divide us. Because like now I'm an empty nester and it's just the two of us. So I needed to make sure that that was good for the rest of my life. Yeah, right. Like I go to the end with her, not you. Like you're going to find somebody else, abandon me. So that is the first piece. Then when it comes to all the other things, it makes it so much easier if you live in that space. I can in integrity walk into one of these offices and say, I am here to help you have a better relationship with yourself first then your team members and then your patients. Well, yourself includes your spouse or your loved one or your partner. And so I can walk in integrity and Say that, and they take me seriously. I talk freely about how much I enjoy and love my wife. I talk about also where I'm an idiot in my relationship, but I'm working on it. Like, we used to start off. We used to have marriage seminars that we would do that were based on. They were for hiring entrepreneurs. And I would start off every single one. I'd stand up on stage and I'd say, how many of you guys want to hear about the fight Shannon and I had last night? Or how many guys want to hear about our most recent argument? And the reason is because we're like normal people. We argue, but we understand the power of that. So if I can focus on lover, then I can focus on a relationship when it comes to my. And my influence and then leadership, it's just a backwards scenario.

That's fascinating. That's good. So then. And then you mentioned then taking that and kind of now shifting it outward to your relationship with your. With your clients, with your. Yeah.

So, yeah.

What's some.

As a leader, I. So one of the core values I have, my relationship is radical transparency. Okay. We don't have honesty. We have radical transparency. And my business ownership, I say the same thing with my business owners. So the first thing you have to be is be a hundred percent authentic with who you are, authentic with your team members, and love them enough to say no or to say goodbye. So what I mean by that is there's a lot of people that hold on to people in their businesses as employers, as employees, because they feel bad because they, you know, deep down that person's a good person.

Oh, yeah.

They've been here so long.

Yeah. However, they're not being honest and they're not being in integrity with that person. This is the test. I always say I do this from the stage. I say, doctors, if you walk in in the morning and you see Sally, and Sally walks by you and you say, good morning, Sally. And she says, good morning, doctor. And you think in your head, man, I wish you had quit. That is your cue that you're out of integrity and you need to let her go. It's not that she's doing anything wrong. Maybe Sally does want to come to work 10 minutes late. Maybe Sally does like the drama. Maybe Sally is somebody who is insubordinate. That doesn't make Sally wrong. And that's what we do as leaders, is we tend to make them wrong. But true leadership is saying, huh, you know what? They're not wrong for wanting those things. I want to help them not want those things, but they're not wrong. They're just not the right fit for our business or we're not the right fit for them. So we love them into another job and love them enough to say goodbye. That starts, that's where all leadership starts, is that authenticity of that. And then you can build upon empathy, you can build upon having a good vision and culture for your business. But if you can't be authentic and real and create that safe environment, then it's never going to work out the way you want.

When I learned marketing, there was no Internet. I had to send things via stamps and direct mail. And you take 20 years prior to that, if someone wanted to lay out a full page ad, they're using an exact mechanicals and they're using whiteout. And so the way things have changed. But see what the great, the great respect I have for marketing came from having to take words. So you're talking about copy, we're sitting there talking about copy because we both live, eat and breathe and understand. But there may be people watching us that really don't understand the value of copy. And they're like, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna pay someone $40,000 to write a letter. You know, I can write a letter, you know, in, you know, the difference between a world class marketer versus an amateur versus someone that's never even read a book on it, but they all have opinions on it. That's a funny thing about our business. You would never have if there were two brain surgeons here and someone was like, oh no, I'm thinking about hiring a brain surgeon. We're talking about. They would be glued to this video. They wouldn't be checking their, I mean, if they needed brain surgery, they would be like taking this very seriously. But we have done just as much education to learn marketing as a brain surgeon has to do. And I'm personal friends with, with a brain surgeon, you know, I mean, I know, you know, I've had conversations with him about what did it take for you to actually learn this stuff, right? And we have put a lot of time in. But the funny thing is when people look at like marketing people, everyone has an opinion on marketing. You know, you ask your, you know, you ask your family members, you ask one of your employees, you ask one of your friends, they will typically try to talk you out of doing stuff or say, oh, you need to do this, you need to do that. And it's like, well, where did, where did you learn?

Where'd you learn that?

Oh, you know, I just. I have opinion. So it's kind of like everyone has an opinion, and you have to be very careful of people that don't have the chops that have it done there.

You know, you think about Dan Kennedy. You know, he's just an interesting study, obviously, in everything that he's done and that he's kind of flipped, just like you flipped the carpet cleaning business. You know, Dan Kennedy took the whole brick and mortar business in the entire world, in a way, and just flipped that on its ear and said, you're a dentist and you don't understand marketing. You know, you're a lawyer, don't understand marketing. You know, the idea of any kind of service business. I mean, he just changed the world for those people. And the ones that chose to invest in Dan Kennedy, just like the carpet cleaners that chose to invest in you. I mean, you used to charge, I think your platinum group was like $1,000 a month. It was like 12,000 bucks a platinum. It's a lot of money for a carpet cleaner in Iowa who's, you know, maybe making, what, a hundred thousand bucks a year in carpet cleaning? He's paying $12,000 to be in Piranha Marketing. And I always used to go to your carpet cleaning conferences, and those are the people I used to spend time talking to. Them. It's like, what made you come to this besides Joe's good looks? And they would and took a chance to win a car. Used to give away a car. The guy would say, I'm gonna be so far ahead of everybody else because all my other carpet cleaner friends are getting advice from people who have no experience, no knowledge, no nothing. And there's Joe's read a thousand books on marketing. Gary Halbert is his mentor. He knows how to write a sales letter. He just gave us a book that's this thick. I've talked about that forever because I used to love your book. Sample sales letters, swipe files. You know, we talk about swipe files all the time. You have to have a swipe file of other people's work and then read them, right? And then see what the methodology is and what the mindset is. You need to read books like Breakthrough Advertising, you know, the best book ever written, not just on copy and creative, but on human behavior. So how are you going to learn that if you. If you don't even know that that exists?

Right?

And so, you know, I've watched this evolution, and I think what's happened with the Internet in particular, I don't want to sound like, you know, grandpa dinosaur here. But you know, it's so easy to get into the business. You know, the barrier to entry is so low to go market something on the Internet. But it just, it just to do it right and to do it at the highest level and to do it like you really want to not just make the most money but. But do it at the highest level.

Right.

That's why you hire people like me and you. And I'm not. I'm not. This is an advertisement for me and you. It's. It's people like me and you. Yes, because that's where you're going to make the exponential growth. That's what you talk about in your 10 time talk all the time, you know, with Dan.

Well, you know, Jay, Jay Abraham is a good friend, both of ours. And you know, Jay always talks about, you know, hidden opportunities or finding things that exist.

My favorite J. Abraham book is how to Get Everything youg Can out of Everything you've Got. Right. And it's basically these are your assets. Now what are you going to do? And you're going to leave it to yourself to do that. Like why wouldn't you, you know, look for the expert in every area? That's the other thing about hiring a good, great consultant. You know, some people would say, you know, I hire, you know, Joe or Brian, it's $25,000 for a half a day. How can I ever get that money back? You know, sort of like how could I ever get the money back from $25,000 of being at. In your. In your mastermind? Or 20,000 if they join my mastermind. And the interesting thing is, I'll tell this story. I was sitting at one of your events. I was sitting at one of your genius network masterminds. Guy, great copywriter. We both know who's in the group. Comes up to me at one of the breaks, Brian, we should be doing something together. And we start talking about what our assets are and what we've got and one thing led to another and it led to a hundred thousand dollar one day event. Yeah, right. And that wasn't magic. It wasn't like, you know, an easy button on the one hand because we had to do a lot of work once we thought of it. But it was taking the assets, you know, putting them together. And all of that experience that we talk about, and also you always talk about this too, is that when you go in and consult with somebody, it's not the tactics I'm going to give you, it's that strategy that I mentioned before. But then it's also our, I hate the word network, but it is the genius network. But it is that we've contributed to so many people in so many lives and so many businesses and we're always one phone call away from almost anything. You were telling me stories this morning about these world class people. Like, I don't want to mention names, but these are like, you know, it's, it's like people that you say I, you'd never be able to get to them and you can get to anybody with one phone call.

I'll mention them here. Yeah, yeah, that was a great story. Yeah. So the gal that runs conscious capitalism for John Mackey, you know, contacted me.

Saying the guy who started Whole Food.

Founder, Whole Foods is interested in meeting Richard Branson. And I'm, you know, Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. And I've interviewed Richard quite a bit, few times and had him, you know, I even had Richard Branson speak at a conference for carpet cleaners back in 2007. If you, I think I wasn't at that one.

You've had amazing, you've had the most amazing people speak to carpet cleaners.

No, I know it's funny, it's funny, but it's like, you know, they're contacting me in order to make a connection. Although I did actually send a personal email to both Richard and John in the past. But they now maybe it's just like the feeling of the relationship was not solid enough. So let's act because it's now they.

Have something in mind.

Right. It's another door opener. Right, exactly. And so paying the role here. So like, because there are, that's what.

You'Re paying for when you're paying for a consultant.

Yeah.

You're paying for their relationship capital. Yeah, I love that term.

Let me, let me read one thing too that I actually went to. That's a jab look on the Internet here. So here's this thing I looked up on the, I was trying to find the original story, but this is a, this is a good lesson and I'll just read parts of it because I've heard this story told a million different ways. But I love this. The claim is the bill presented by a famed Fix it man details the difference between a value of work done and the value of knowledge behind it. And so legend example, okay. And this is supposedly around 1945, Nikola Tesla visited Henry Ford at his factory, which was having some kind of difficulty. Ford asked Tesla if he, he could help identify the problem area. Tesla walked up to a wall of boilerplate and made a small X in chalk on one of the plates. Ford was thrilled and told him to send an invoice. The Bill arrived for $10,000. Ford was asked for a breakdown. Tesla sent another Invoice indicating a $1 charge for marking the wall with an X and $9,999 for knowing where to put it. Basically, it goes on to say variations. Practically anyone famous for his knowledge can be offered up as a virtuoso in this tale. Nikola Tesla, Edison, George Washington, you know, it goes on and on. Unnamed mechanics, electricians. And it goes on to say what the tool wielding specialist does to earn his fee varies depending upon his area of expertise. Masters of all things mechanical sagely put an ear up to the malfunctioning machine, where then casually chalk an X over where the problem lurks. Plumbing mavens correct a problem by banging the right pipe with a wrench. Here's the story. It's like this factory is operating and it's bringing in $100,000 an hour for every hour that's operating. And one day everything comes to a screeching halt and it just stops. And so the president of the company's freaking out. We got to call the expert. We got to get these machines back on. We're losing $100,000 every hour that this machinery isn't running. So the consultant, they get over there real quickly. He brings a briefcase, he opens it up. There's nothing in the briefcase but a hammer and some paperwork. So he pulls out a hammer, he looks at a big pipe. He just kind of looks and analyzes it and hits the pipe three times in one particular area. And the machinery turns back on and everything's working again. And so the president's like, oh my, thank God. And so the expert gives him an invoice for $10,010. That's how I heard it, right? And so the president's like looking at this, going, what the hell is $10,010? I mean, you hit a pipe three times with a hammer. He's like, what's the $10,010 for? And the expert says, well, the $10 is for hitting the pipe with a hammer, or the $10 is for hitting the pipe with a hammer. And the 10,000 is for knowing where to hit it. And that just says everything about, like, I can come into a company and if they're the right fit company for me, I mean, they're, you know, which is typically a million dollar plus company. That has an emphasis on using marketing. It's not very hard for me to identify many things in the form of a half a day consultant that they're going to pay 25 grand for that will lead to, in many cases, millions of dollars. I mean, Bill Phillips is one of my good examples because I just happened to grab some sales guys letters like, I just want to tell this story real quick.

That's the EAS stuff, right?

Yeah, yeah. Back way back when he, he wrote a book called Body for Life, EAS and he had a magazine.

He spoke to your carpet cleaners.

Oh, yeah. I was his marketing consultant on and off for like 13 years. He wrote the book Body for Life, which I honestly gave it away at the time. Don't know if this book would have existed without the consulting I did with him because I gave him an idea for him to donate money to Make a Wish foundation for a documentary. This is the VHS version which is, you know, called Body of Work, which was way. This was before Body for Life. And I gave him an idea to donate money to make a wish for the distribution of this video. So if people like the video, they would make a donation to make a wish so they would value the information. But it allowed him to become the single largest individual contributor in the history of the world to the Make a Wish Foundation. That was a marketing idea. But my very first consultation with him, I was charging $3,850 a day. And I met him at this thing in 1995 he was holding at the Bali hotel in Vegas called the no Holds Barred Bodybuilding Seminar. He was launching a supplement called Myoplex in his EAS company which he bought the company, EAS from a guy named Anthony Almada. And then he built it into the largest sports supply company in the world. In the late 90s, I met him by saying, do you know Gary Halbert? I walked up to me, he goes, you know Gary Halbert? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, do you write copy? And I go, well, you know, I mean, I hire copywriters, but I write some. He's like, you know, I need someone that can help me, you know, with writing copy. And so he's like, can you send me, you know, can you follow up with me? And I said, yeah, give me your contact info. So he gave me a fax number and a phone number. And back then that's how we communicated was fax, no emails, right. And so I sent him a proposal that, you know, I know your business, I've been reading your Magazine Muscle Media used to be called Muscle Media 2000. Back at the time, I said, yeah, you know, I'm happy to come out and consult with you for, you know, a day of consulting. I charge 3850 a day plus first class travel. And he sends back a page and a half fax, which I still have it. I mean, I collected everything that I, you know, did with him.

The origins of an amazing consulting business.

Oh, yeah, big swipe file. Swipe file is a collection. So you don't throw away that stuff. No. So basically it was a blistering facts, like bitching at me about, you know, I made $60 million last year. I paid something like 10 or 12 million in taxes. Like, I have people standing in line willing to write copy for me for free. What makes you think I'm going to, you know, pay you $4,000 to teach me how to run my company? You know, and it was like this insulting letter. But I sat and thought, you know, I know what this guy could do that could be really helpful to him because, you know, I've been studying marketing for a few years and basically I thought to myself, well, if he's going to take that time to write this letter to me bitching at me, I'm going to fight fire with fire. So I wrote back another blissing fact saying, well, congratulations on all your business success and if you made $60 million a year in business and paying me for a day of consulting is like nothing. Secondly, if you have people that are standing in line willing to work for free, then they obviously don't know very much about selling or marketing themselves, so feel free to hire them. And I go, do you go to McDonald's and say, I made $60 million last year? You know, I want, you know, free fries with my, you know, Big Mac.

Yeah.

I go, they would laugh at you. And so I wrote kind of an insulting letter back. And he wrote back, I like you, you're feisty, you know, blah, blah, blah, like really weird shit.

Yeah.

But he had wrote and said, and I still have this original letter, I.

Don'T think, I don't know today you would put up with that. You might not, depending on who it is.

But I was very young back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you wanted the business, right? Right.

Well, no.

And plus I knew I could help. Interested in fitness. I was interested in fitness and he was like one of the top in the world. Right? So. But it was just funny. It was kind of a game, you know, I mean, you're talking young guys Just freaking bantering back and forth and that, you know, look, I mean, when you're dealing with meatheads all day long, you know, and you're in that world, I mean, right? These guys are strange. And so although I'm still friends with many of them. And so basically he wrote, he sent me a, he overnighted me a check for four grand in first class travel, you know, which was more than what I was even charging for. It was 38, 50. So I fly up there. In the first hour of consulting with him, he shows me a letter. Mammoth clearance, Mammoth savings. Urgent inventory sale for a limited time of slashing up to 40% off of regular price at top. And basically what ended up the letter said, dear friend, if you've got money to burn, please throw this letter away right now. To continue reading would only be a waste of your time. However, if you like to save big money on the highest quality scientifically designed supplements in America, I urge you to take a few minutes of your valuable time. And it says, you know, here's the deal. I screwed up big time. We recently added several new supplements to the EAS line. And knowing these products are going to be big sellers, I ordered three truckloads of them from our manufacturing plant in south Southern California. Unfortunately, I overlooked the fact that we're already running at full capacity in our warehouse. A fact my warehouse manager, Rusty Anderson, just let me in on. When these three trucks pulled up through the doors. Morning. Well, he was, well, surprised. Bill, are you crazy? Where the hell do you think we're going to put this stuff? Blah, blah, blah. And then, and then, you know, has a picture of the three semi trucks right, backed up to the EAS thing. And so that's a reason for 40% off. So he, he tells me, he's like, joe, We've brought in $2 million from this letter so far and I need more copy like that and I don't have enough people. He goes, I'm the marketing department in this company, although I think he had a couple hundred employees. I said, you ever done three letter sequences? And he's like, no. I go, do you know what multi sequence mailings are? He's like, yeah, but I've never done them. I go, do you mind if I write on that letter? So he handed me the letter and I hand wrote on it and I started scribbling. I go, well, here's the deal. I go, you're going to take everyone that you mailed the letter to except the people that have ordered. You're going to Mail them the letter a second time. And if that letter works, you're going to then mail the same letter a third time to the same list. Because the time to quit going back to the well is when you put the bucket in the well and you pull it up and there's no water. So I explained sequential mainly, which is something I was doing with Dan Kennedy all the time and teaching the carpet cleaners, right? So here I got a guy who's running a big multi million dollar supplement company who has a big list, and he's like, I need a new letter. It's like, no, you just need to go back to the same people with the same let. Now this is a direct, this one strategy alone. If people are thinking, well, I don't do direct mail. Well, if you do Internet, if you do email, if you have social media, if you have any actually, if you have a list. Right, exactly. And if you don't have a list, you build a list.

You build a list, right?

Which is what another, you know, that's what a, an advisor will teach you how to do. So I basically, so I wrote a bunch of handwritten things, handwritten in the margins, circle stuff made stars. And I said, so I wrote second notice, sent this to you two weeks ago, still haven't heard from you. Third and final notice. We sent you this letter twice. So I was giving him examples of things to write. So he ended up mailing the letter two more times to the same list. He basically circle this very limited time. You know, I'm, I'm sending you this again in case you missed it the first time. I've got three trucks now. It says one product sitting here. This sale will be over any day now. You know, all throughout the whole thing, of course, it had the same order form, same urgency.

He never had. He had some urgency. He never had scarcity. He never.

Right.

You took it to the next level, which is just basic direct response that he, he hadn't been knowing.

Exactly.

Because you had seen it work.

Exactly.

And we're talking. This is already with a very sharp marketer, right.

And he's already making a lot of money. Who didn't want to spend 4,000 bucks on you.

Exactly. So what ended up happening was I thought he brought in an additional $3 million from mailing the letter two more times. But I found transcripts of us talking because I spoke at JJ Virgin, who's one of my genius network members. I spoke at her event and I dug up some this stuff to share some of the strategies on how to sell, you know, exercise, nutrition supplementation, that sort of stuff. And he actually brought in $6.5 million from that campaign because of sequencing.

And that taught you that it's time to do 4,000 against royalty.

Well, so what he started. What he started doing for then is he started paying me ten grand a day for consulting. And, you know, but here's what I didn't do is I never tied it into royalties. I sold the company for $300 million. And, like, one of the ideas I gave him when I was speaking in Australia, I saw a magazine in Australia where it had, like, some guy that had been dieting in, like, kind of like the equivalent of Time magazine's version in Australia magazine. And I ripped out the thing, and I told Bill, I said, you should basically, you should have one of your bodybuilders, like, diet and, you know, do this as an ad. So he created this ad. He actually took the idea and he implemented it. And so this was running on billboards. This is in, you know, all kinds of big magazines, you know, in the late 90s, the theory of Evolution. And, you know, this is like, you.

Know, in a way, it's almost like off the top of your head. And it's not. Because, you know, I think. I think a lot of clients, when they're hiring a consultant, they think because the consultant makes it looky, there's actually an expression. I think it's Gary Halbert or John Carlton. The whole click on a dial. Clicks on a dial, right?

Yeah. Talks about that. I mean, Kennedy, Kennedy.

So I mean, they all talk about it. So you're in. You're in with a client, they start talking about something, and boom, you know, because you put in your 10,000 hours plus, or I put in my 10,000 hours plus in direct response marketing, boom, you're doing that. I remember this. Boom. That's how it was with Dick Benson. He. Every test that I did at Boardroom, it's like, dick, I'm doing this test. I want to do price, but I also want to do this premium thing. Oh, National Geographic, 1954. We did this boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I think this is the way you should apply that. And so the click on the dial goes off, but you're paying for the experience that they've had for the 30 years. One of the things that I did, you know, because I told you I was giving away free Consulting for 34 years because they didn't have to charge for it, I was well compensated. I, you know, I had. I was in an Equity position. I just love helping people. It's just the way I am. And I still do. I have to be careful now because now I really do have to be careful with my time as well as the money. So my first couple of consulting calls, I said, you know, I don't want to jump into this consultant consulting operation. Right. This as an assignment right away, but let's get on the phone. Pay me a thousand bucks, and we'll get on the phone for an hour. I know that, you know, you'll say that's way too little to charge for an hour, but I was just trying to see what this would be like. I have to tell you, this is not bragging. I'm on the. I set up an hour phone call within 10 minutes of that hour phone call. Similar to, like the first time you walked into Bill Phillips and talked about sequential mailings. Something is going to happen, especially in those first 10 minutes, because. Because we've prepared a little bit. And it's interesting. I use something that Marty Edelston taught me, that you've actually adapted beautifully in Genius Network, where I always say, where were you? Where are you now? Where do you want to go? And I talk about those. Yeah.

Which I first heard from Ken Glickman.

Right.

And Glickman got it from Marty.

So this is a.

That. That original. Your. Your. Your. That Genius Network sheet, which I fill out. I. Hopefully I'll get to fill it out in the next couple of days again, because it changes all the time. It's like. And it's. It's like Dan Sullivan's, you know, last 90 days, present next 90 days.

Right.

So the momentum thing, so there's all kinds of exercises to do that. But you ask that. All I had to do is ask this one client to write that up. Where they've been.

Where.

Where are they now, where they want to go. Thousand dollars an hour. They had 10 times their value, probably more in the first 10 minutes, because they asked me a question. In this case, it happened to be about lists and segmentation. They had no segmentation on their house list. They were sending emails that were identical to their entire list all the time. I'm like, well, you got 10,000 names. And you know that certain people have spent this amount of money with you versus that amount of money. You know, these many people have bought two products versus one or maybe nine products versus two. We want different messaging to those people online. This is easy. To me, that was a click on a dial for them. It was like, really? You don't have to send the same message to all the people. Now I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are saying, well that's a stupid thing, Brian. I wouldn't want you for that. But you know what, you may ask me another question based on where you are now. My click on a dial from my 10,000 plus hours in direct response marketing is going to come up with something. And that's the beauty of hot seats. You know, in your mastermind group and in my mastermind group, I'm going to really focus on hot seats. You spent the whole day with me. You finally saw me do hot seats. You never saw me do them before. But at Titans I did a full day. We did 28 hot seats in 10 and a half hours. 15 minute hot seats. Boom. Rapid fire in the room. Here's the business problem. And that was exponential because now I'm not paying for one on one consulting, but in that room where we have like 40 people in the room, 35 people, and basically they lay out the problem in a minute and a half. And then for 13 and a half minutes it was like rapid fire. Basically everybody's 10,000 hours of whatever they're expert in in the room. All marketers coming into play to give this one person ideas. That's consulting on steroids. Yeah, exactly. Now some of those people, after that event, they came to me and said, I heard from a certain person in the room about radio. I don't know anything about radio. I want to take a deeper dive into radio. Now that radio person should become a one on one consultant with that person. In one case, it was for me. They came to me and said, Brian, I didn't realize you knew so much about how to craft specific messaging because I didn't see you as a copywriter. But messaging to particular lists or particular list segments, I mean I'm a list expert. I grew up in the list business. So list segmentation is, is my thing. Love segmenting the list. And I'm not a math guy either. I'm just a, I just like I'm a behavior guy.

Right?

Breakthrough advertising, baby. So I want to understand each segment of my list and how I'm going to communicate with each one. So one of the people at that event, because they heard me speak about that now wanted to take the deeper dive off my click on that dial. And that's how you. As far going back to what we were trying to, one of the things we wanted to accomplish that is how do you find a consultant? Sometimes you find them in a Bigger group, while we're kind of exploring a lot of different things. And then you see who's the person that I need to take the deep dive with.

Exactly that.

And the deep dive is where, you know, 25,000 for a half a day. It'll be a bargain, you know, in that respect. But you might not know it right off the bat. And that's why I think some people. I'm not saying people shouldn't be reluctant to spend the money, but that you should not be reluctant to do the correct research to find the right consultant for the right job. You wouldn't have hired, you know, a lawyer to hit that pipe with the wrench. Right.

Well, first off, there are questions that before someone hires me, I give them in advance because I want them to show up already having done the thinking.

Exactly what I want to.

And I structure the level of thinking that is done in advance, that alone to be worth what they're actually.

What do you do compared to like. So I did what. Where are you. Where are you going to where you want to go?

I do something very similar to that. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you want to have?

That's great.

Okay. And so I asked him a question like that. And then I have a whole series of questions. Many I got from a guy named. From way back when, named Marty Chouinard, who actually had these, these power, you know, marketing analyzer questions. And so they're everything about kind of where you're at, what are threats to your competition. So every possible thing you do, what.

They call it a SWOT analysis, but you don't want to do like that. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, traps, I guess, but. Or threats, I think to use. So, yeah, but I think that you don't want to get too strategic planning ish with them. But it sounds like I love the wave the magic wand because I'll bet you more times than not their magic wand is waived. And the thing that they want to do, you can quickly look at that and go, why do you want to do that?

Right.

When I'm looking at your assets, why would you want to do this?

Well, see, part of it too is helping people. Like the two worlds that I'm existing in right now are helping high level entrepreneurs and helping people with addiction, you know, directing people to things.

I know that's big for you.

And although I've made my living in promotions, marketing, advertising, one of the biggest groups, if you want to call it that, are organizations, which really isn't very loosely in organizations, 12 step groups yeah. And they, you know, they have created all of their membership through attraction, not promotion. They don't want to do any promotion. They shy away from any sort of TV media. It's, It's. It's written in their principles and. But I very much admire that, you know, and in the, in the world.

I didn't know what Friends of Bill W. Was, you know, when I was on a cruise.

Oh, really?

So they are there.

They're like, they hide them, right? That's part of that, right? The.

Well, you know, it's anonymous. That's why it's not, you know. Yeah, exactly.

We're not gonna, like, you know, but we. How do you help people the most?

But, but the thing that helps people with addiction is not what they have to learn. It's not about learning. It's about unlearning.

Right?

It's. It's not about, you know, thinking your way into new actions. It's about acting your way into new thinking. And they'll say that your best thinking got you here and you can sit down with an entrepreneur. You know, I make a lot of competition comparisons to addiction and successful businesses because, like, workaholism is the respectable tiny objects everywhere, right? So, I mean, tons of very successful people are obsessively and compulsive, and so they, they think they want to grow more sales. And sometimes they'll be sitting there going, you know, what the fuck are you even doing?

Yeah, exactly.

You have a lot of money. You don't have any time. Like, do you want freedom or do you want more sales? You know, it's like, Gary Halbert would tell this story. John Carlton, too, is some guy that came to one of their seminars, had something like 56 hardware stores. He was, you know, 60 pounds overweight. His cholesterol was through the roof. He was smoking, he was eating crappy food. He was, you know, terrible energy, you know, distant relationship from his children, constant fighting with his wife. You know, just like everything in his personal life was a disaster. He had 56 hardware stores, and his biggest goal was to open up his 50 hardware store. And see, that's not, you know, that's not success that is driven this. That is driving you into the wall. And so part of the time is like, you know, most of time I'm going to help people with marketing strategy, but a lot of time, if I'm like, you know, getting there, going, like, what the hell are you doing? Yeah, you know what? Like, is this really the model you want to exist in? And so in a Lot of ways I've helped a lot of speakers that the biggest complaint is I'm on the road to too much, I'm traveling too much. But they don't have any other way to monetize their skill except speaking. And so you teach them how to package that uniquely into so much great.

Stuff on the Internet. Our buddy Jeff Walker. I mean the idea that you could create a product and then just launch it online and exponentially take your speaking into a product.

Yeah.

Stop complaining about the travel, you know, do something about it. Well, you still have the skill, you still have the knowledge.

I want to give an example that to like my Genius Network member, Peter Diamandis, like when he wrote the book Abundance in Genius Network, a team of us launched Abundance. Yeah, it was powerful. So it hit New York Times. That was his first book. Amazing book. And I talked him in to joining Strategic Coach because Peter is a driven dude, smart as hell, knows all these billionaires. I mean, just a really brilliant guy. But he was just, you know, he's just a crushing schedule, which he still is. He has a crushing schedule because Peter just like takes on the world. It's that sort of personality. But I was like, you know, I got him to double his speaking fees and now what he's getting paid is even four times what he was getting paid back then today because his new book Bold came out. Fantastic book, you know, hit New York Times again working with all of these genius. But introduced him to Dan Sullivan. He wanted to shoot some videos because we needed a back end product for his book. So he had a book and he was getting paid to speak. And then all this other stuff he's doing, like co founder of Singularity University XPRIZE foundation, which he founded. He's got all these things that he's doing, but he's literally on the plane speaking at all these speaking gigs, doing corporate things. But they're one offs. So introduced him to Dan and literally he didn't want to join Strategic Coach. I literally talked him into. I'm like, dude, it will change.

This was a partnership that was. Was unbelievable. This is one of the great partnerships of all time.

Exactly. So join Strategic Coach. So he does Dan and him become, you know, good friends. Dan sees, you know, what he has.

Is Dan looks for game changers. Peter's a game changer.

Exactly. So, you know, so this is all multiplier thing. And so what Peter ends up doing is he needed a back end product. So he was originally going to shoot a video with Ray Kurzweil and him I was like, you know, like, let's get an audience and charge $5,000 for it. And then you get paid to create the product.

Right.

So he does that at Singularity University. The first one gets 50 people there at five grand a pop realizes, wow, this is pretty powerful. Last year does his first Abundance360 event. It has like 130 something people. Most of them there because of Dan Sullivan and me referred our own existing clients because we don't look at this as competitive. We recommend things to people who feel it's going to produce a better perfectly.

With what you're doing in your mastermind.

And we.

What Dan does in strategic coaching.

Exactly. So it's this all great symbiotic relationship.

Totally.

And so this year he does it again. Now he's committed to do this for 25 years because that's what Dan Sullivan talked him into. He has 250 people there at 10,000 a person. And so all of a sudden in a two day period, you bring in over $2 million in revenue when in the past you were getting paid 50 grand or 25 grand or whatever. And now he does this every year and he'll eventually turn this into a digitized sort of version. But see that one idea of doing that, it wasn't just like 10 minutes and it's done. It required a lot of work, it required a lot of setup. But in one fell swoop, he brings in more money in two days than most people in his world will bring in an entire year traveling everywhere. Like, so how much is an idea like that worth? Yeah, you know, how much is a direction of.

That starts with. Again, we go back to, you know, how do you assess hiring a consultant? Who do you want in your life to help you give this kind of advice to you? And it really is about assessing your assets. It does go back to Jay Abraham getting everything you can of everything you got. So in a way, whether the question was asked, Peter, if you could wave a magic wand, Peter, where are you? Where you. Where are, where were you? Where are you? Where do you want to go? He probably wasn't even that sure because I remember that day when he was doing, doing the Abundance book launch. He was doing a book, you know, and he had Singularity University. The guy is just a total rock star of a human being. You know, the guy wants to corral a meteor with a, I would say a meteor with like a fishnet, you know.

Well, I'm part investor in his.

Oh, that's amazing.

Planetary resources. I'm wanting to See this, too.

Yeah. $5.3 trillion worth of resources, plus, you know, he wants to end world illiteracy. Small projects, you know, Small projects.

You know, Peter doesn't have a small thing.

Yeah, it doesn't.

Very small thinker. But the interesting thing is, I think this whole thing started with you, as I'm going to call you, the consultant here. Whether you were a paid consultant or not, you were worth, you know, hundreds of thousands to Peter. And however that got compensated, who cares, Right? Yeah, we're not talking about that right this minute. But you would have been worth that because basically, you were able to assess all of the assets Peter had that he was not doing what he needed to do with them. That's something that a great marketing consultant should do first and foremost. So when I do my thing. Well, you do the magic wand thing, or I do, you know, where were you? Where are you? Where do you want to go? It really is. The thing that I always put in there is like, I want to hear all of the assets that you have available at your fingertips. How big is your list? What customers have you had? Have you written a book, whatever. Let's just get all your assets on the table. Just like we put all this junk, you know, around the table, around it, because it stimulates us. And then because we've got the hours put into all of these different marketing techniques, we're going to look and we're going to see things in those assets. There's no way that the person who's close to their own assets, they think, oh, I should write another book. I mean, we have a good friend. Again, I don't want to mention names, but we have a really good friend who is an incredible. One of the best coaches for speakers at the. At the CEO level. You attended one of her events, and I remember sitting in her apartment. It was not a consulting gig, per se. She's a really good friend of mine. She's brilliant. In fact, we're gonna see her in.

A couple of days.

Yeah.

And she's awesome. So she says to me, I gotta write a book. I gotta write a book. And she's like, so hyped up about this book, and we're talking and I said, well, you know, do you really. What do you want to write a book for? You know, I just ask questions.

Right.

I'm not her consultant, but I kind of was working that way because I love this woman. She's amazing. And she goes, well, you know, I know how. I know how people are launching books. We know our Buddy Brendon Burchard. And I said, you know, J.J. virgin, who you mentioned before, is a buddy who has launched books online. She got coached by Brendan. Why don't you talk to her first before you just are sold on this fact that you have to write a book. That partnership. And I guess, you know, I'm gonna say it's Victoria. Her name is Victoria combined with jj. The stuff that they've done together was all based on that conversation, by the way.

Oh, yeah, well, her name's Victoria labaume. And if you want to be, if you want to learn how to basically be a world class speaker and performer, because she's done.

And she's a performance artist too.

Yeah, yeah, she's phenomenal. And so I literally paid. She's one of my genius selling. You went to her event, you referred her.

Exactly.

And.

And I paid to go to her event because I like paying for stuff for skill. And I'll take it more seriously because believe me, in my world, everybody sends me shit for free.

Oh, you could do tons. You could do everything for free.

Yeah, right. But the thing is, like, people should get paid for their knowledge.

But the beauty here was that, you know, right in front of her, I mean, that started with a conversation of, I want to do a book. Brian, in a consulting role there. We'll say, I don't know if Victoria will give me credit for being her consultant. I'm just her friend. But I said, why do you want.

To do a book?

We started asking questions and then the value led to this, this and that. I mean, which. Her business has exploded not because of me, but because of all the other things that she did because she got the book off the plate because it wasn't the most important thing to do. And then the stuff that she's been doing with JJ and then JJ ended up using her as a coach. JJ's become much more of a world class speaker. She's great. She was great to begin with. She's gotten so much better because now she's paying Victoria to be coach there. I didn't expect that to be part of that relationship, but you and I connect people like that all the time. We're not getting a royalty on it. We're not doing it. But the fact that that's available from people like us, not just us, but like us who have the 10,000 hours plus in a skill set, who have the connections, who are willing to help and you know, in, in most cases you'll have to pay for it.

Yeah, exactly.

But you know, using these examples are good because, you know, Victoria wasn't paying me and Peter wasn't paying you. But it led to so many other things. I mean our lives are so much richer because of it. And we did get paid in variety of ways because of those things.

Well, they're paying me at least. Yeah, they shouldn't pay you.

They shouldn't pay me. I'm not worth it.

Yeah, you just need, you just, you just need to basically.

I know I'm gonna get you some.

Of those brass balls things.

Exactly, exactly. Well, actually at Titans you got on stage and said Brian is the director of Sales Prevention.

Right?

Sales Prevention department.

Sales department.

Yeah.

But no more. You know, it's not because I want to, I want to fleece people out of their money. You know, it's that.

Well, no, part of it. Part of it I will. Seriously. I mean part of your thing is you're just a genuinely nice person. That. And so part of it is the reason that you charge people is like I said earlier, if they don't pay, they don't pay attention. And my very best clients that have made the most money and I have a lot of great friends that I've made a lot of money that are colleagues in the marketing business that wouldn't think, oh, I'll pay Joe Polish money, they think it's when their ego gets in the way. Right, right, exactly. I have dozens and dozens of members in genius network that make 5. Far more revenue than I do that are running 100 million. I even have a billionaire in the group that make far more money than me. Some they're incredibly more talented. But where I'm talented, I'm able to help them. A lot of these people would never facilitate bringing all these other and the.

Ones that self select themselves out of the group. And I knew a few. I've been in the group long enough to know why should I Pay Joe Pollard $25,000? Well, if you don't see this value, goodbye. You know, it's like, and, and yeah, it's. It's sort of like this is the self selecting process that even in the one on one consulting that we talked about that we really have to be selective. You know, I don't think you've kicked out too many people out of 25k but at a network. But you know, I think you've actually thought about it. I know you.

And over the years I've actually got, we've gotten far better with the application process because in the beginning you, you don't really know, like, with anything, like Dan Sullivan says, you make it up, and then you make it real. And so in the process of doing it, you actually learn what works. And we have a really good selection process because we don't want people coming in that are not a right fit for the group, and we don't want people coming in that we're not a right fit for them. We want it to be a very beneficial thing. Okay.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

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