Who Not How: The Formula For Achieving Bigger Goals With Dan Sullivan, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Joe Polish, and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #385

This is not delegation. Okay, so I want to make a sharp distinction here that who, not how is not delegation.

You know, true leaders don't tell people how to do their job. True leaders provide the vision. They provide the vision and why it's so important and detail the vision so specifically that the right who comes. That's just the power of knowing the right who's the who comes with the how.

And so whatever who's that you want to identify in your life. There's plenty of things if you just thought about it. And the book is a roadmap. That's why you need to read the book. The book actually explains what to do and how to do it.

Time is time and when you can have a who. Remove yourself from all the things that take up that time that you would rather have invested in other things. It's a toll freeing experience. I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and this is the I love marketing podc.

Achieving bigger and better goals doesn't have to mean more work, more stress or even more knowledge to get it done. Listen in as Ben Hardy, Dan Sullivan, Dean Jackson and Joe Polish share a simple formula to skyrocket your success. In this episode, Ben, Dan, Joe and Dean discuss why the question is who and not how. They share what entrepreneurs get wrong when they try to collaborate, how to experience more true freedom and why. Understanding your unique ability is key to unlocking effortless results. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network annual event, then apply today for invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply go to genusnetwork.com welcome everyone.

This is a very special I love Marketing Zoom meetup. This all started with Dave and Charlie doing these crazy Scottsdale meetup groups and then the pandemic started and here we are all gathered together and we've been doing quite a few of these and people love them. And I'm super excited about this one because you're about to hear from a couple of individuals that have been absolutely transformative and collaborative to my life. Certainly Dean Jackson and all of us. The cool thing what you're about to witness is one of the greatest collaborations between different individuals. And what we're going to share is how you can do that in your own life and your own business. I've got Dean Jackson who we've been doing I love marketing now for 10 years. I've known Dean for over 20. I've been in strategic coach, which I'll talk About in a moment who Dan Sullivan is for 23 years. And then Ben Hardy. We met a few years ago and Ben has been the number one writer in the world on medium.com and just a great guy. I'm going to do official introductions for them in just a second. Dean Jackson, you want to say anything before I officially introduce Ben and, and, and Dan.

It's all very exciting. 457 and climbing. Here we go.

Yeah, well, you were too slow. Now it's four. Let's see. As soon as it gets 460. There it is, there it is. Now 460 I can talk. Okay, so. All right, so here's the deal. There's this great book, who Not How. We're going to talk about this. You can go and buy this on Amazon. I'll have actually Ben and Dan talk about this. We're going to talk about the subject of this book, who not how, however the concept came from. Well, where it started is a conversation with Dean Jackson, you know, talking with Dan and we'll get into all that. But let me officially introduce who these guys are even though I know them very well, they're dear friends and also I work with both of them. So they're great. So Dan Sullivan is the world's foremost expert on entrepreneurship and has coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone on the planet. Anyone that I know is not at the level of entrepreneurs that he coaches. He's the one. So he's the co founder of Strategic Coach, the leading entrepreneurial coaching program in the world and author of more than 50 publications on entrepreneurial success. Over the past 30 plus years, Strategic Coach has provided teaching and training to more than 20,000 of the world's leading entrepreneurs. You saw Bab Smith, who's Dan's partner and she kind of runs the company. She's on with us also. And then Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and best selling author of Willpower Doesn't Work and Personality Isn't Permanent. His blogs have been read by over 100 million people and also featured on Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, cnbc, Cheddar and many others. He's a regular contributor to Inc. Magazine and Psychology today. And from 2015 to 2018 he was the number one writer on on medium.com he and his wife Lauren adopted three children through the foster system in February 2018 and one month later Lauren became pregnant with twins who were born in December of 2018 and they live in Orlando. Could you imagine that? I mean, I guess Ben really had to figure out this who not how thing. Five children instantly in that period of time. So welcome everybody. Really looking forward to this. I want to read something from the book who, not how, then we're going to kind of get into it because this book is incredible. Mostly incredible, because this kind of all started in genius network, our 100K group, Genius X. But there's this in the introduction on page five. It says it takes vulnerability and trust to expand your efforts and build a winning team. It takes wisdom to recognize that one, other people are more capable enough to handle much of the hows, and two, that your efforts and contribution, your hows, should be focused exclusively where your greatest passion and impact are. Your attention and energy should not be spread thin, but purposely directed where you can experience extreme flow and creativity. Results, not effort, is the name of the game. So my belief is that everyone's here because you want to get results in your life. And how do you get results? There's a lot of. Lot of ways to go about doing that. A lot of things that you can learn and who not how. I think will be one of the most incredible frameworks that you've ever heard. The book will be a roadmap on how to do it. That's why we wanted to have this conversation, because we want all of you, no matter where you're at in the world, what you're doing, if your business is doing great, or if the pandemic has caused some incredible angst and frustration and despair for your clients, family members, et cetera. I think this concept is going to be an absolute game changer in how you look and view the world, the work that you do and creating results. So, Dean Jackson, why don't you, why don't you say anything and then we'll get into talking with Dan Sullivan and Ben.

I'm excited to see it all unfold here. I mean, this is all a concept that we've been talking about for a lot of years. And to see this ultimate.

I'm going to let them explain the.

Whole collaboration, how it all came about, but just the spirit of the concept of taking anything, that's, you know, when Dan and I were doing the Joy of Procrastination podcast, one of the things we discovered out of that is that a lot of the times when we get blocked by something, it's because we don't know how to do it. And so there's so many things that came out of these conversations that will kind of unfold as we go here. But just this concept of you don't need to know how to do everything. Especially now, we've got access to all the who's in all the world. Anything that anybody can do, anywhere, you've got access to. And so it's exciting. It's hard to even pin down where to start in a conversation about it because it's such a big idea.

Totally. And we got so many Genius Network members here on the line also. So it's great to have you guys here. So thank you very much. So, you know, let me ask this question to, you know, Dan and Ben. What's the story behind your new book, who not how, which is this book right here. So what it looks like and what results can people expect when they implement, you know, the ideas that are in who not how. You want to go first, Dan?

Yeah, I'll go first. And first of all, everything in my life, except where Babs is concerned starts with Joe Polish, if you want to go back to the beginning. And I mean that. So Joe and I have really hit it off. We have been great friends for 23 years now. And I met him because Joe came into Strategic Coach. And we are not alike where we're very different, we're very different from each other, but there's just a connection that was made immediately. And, you know, we do things in very different ways. But so the history of the book, it really has to do with knowing Joe and then joining Genius. I joined in 2011 and did the 25k, and then when the 100k became possible in 2016, I jumped up to Babs and I do everything together. So we joined. But a little bit earlier, Joe had introduced me to Dean Jackson, and this was kind of like Dean and I just love talking together. So, you know, and, you know, so we see each other in our workshops, you know, Strategic Coach workshops. We see each other in Genius Network. And. But the big thing is that we get together when Dean's in town, we get together for lunch, and we have two favorite French restaurants in Toronto where we meet. And I was thinking one day, and I'll tell you the background before who, not how. First of all, Dean introduced me to who, not how, but I introduced him to Adderall. And the conversations got better very, very quickly when we were both on Adderall. We actually have better conversations. And anyway, I was just thinking about something. It was about procrastination. So it's made me very, very curious throughout my lifetime. First of all, I'm a procrastinator. My name is Dan, and I'm a procrastinator. And just As a coach to entrepreneurs, I notice every entrepreneur procrastinated and that procrastination is a guilty secret. People feel very embarrassed, they feel very shamed by the fact that they procrastinate. And yet I've never met anyone when I get talking to them that they don't procrastinate about something. So I, I'm going on the basis that there are 8 billion people on the planet and they're all procrastinators about something. And usually it's, you know, it's very different what you procrastinate by. And I began thinking about that and I say, how can something that all 8 billion humans do, how can that be shameful? Why would that be embarrassing? There must be a good reason why people procrastinate. And I was having lunch with Dean in a couple days and I said, you know, if at the end of the day you made a list of the three things that you're procrastinating, procrastinating most, you know, on personal life, business life. And you said, well, those are going to be my three projects for tomorrow. The things that I'm procrastinating on tonight are telling me what the most important things are to do tomorrow. And I started doing this for a couple weeks and then I, I had lunch with Dean and I just shared my experience with him. And Dean's first response is, have you known for this for a long time and you haven't been sharing it with me? So over, over to you, Dean?

Well, that was. I still remember the feeling I get because I kind of look at you with my mouth open saying, you know, yeah, have you known this for a while? Because it was just like immediately profound. And our discovery was that that is the most reliable built in, no note to do list required for those things. They bubble right to the surface. They're always there. We started then asking ourselves, waking up, hey, procrastinator, what have you got for me today? And always getting an answer, always an.

Answer, and always good things. I mean, really important things. So my thoughts on this is that procrastination is actually a form of wisdom. And the wisdom is in relationship to goals that you have in the future for yourself where you have a bigger result. And really my understanding of goals, it's just a picture of yourself in the future where you're more capable, you're getting bigger results, you know, your life is more enjoyable, and that's what a goal is. But by definition, since it's bigger and better than what you're doing now, you don't have the hows to do it. So Dean came in, he came in one day and he said, I've got an interesting. You actually have a little diagram that you had actually done quite a number of years before that. I think it was an old diagram. And you said, I just want to show you a diagram. What the procrastination is telling you that the goal is a good thing, but you're not the person to do the hows. And instead of asking, asking, you know, how do I do what's necessary to achieve the goal? What, what you really need to do is who is it who can actually do the hows better than I can? And all I need to do is interest them in my goal and form a collaboration with them. And I said, boom, that's great. So right up front, and we do it in the book and I. We do it on the audible book. I want to pay, you know, great compliment to Dean because Dean was the one who triggered. But it kind of fit into a lot of things that we had been doing in Strategic Coach. And Dean was in his workshop right after that Saturday when he mentioned who, not how. And I had him actually talk about it. And then I drew a diagram and that became the basis of the whole who, not how progress in Strategic Coach.

And I happen to have. There's the original drawing from my illustration of it that this is a timeline of times where you're at the top. Why are you doing something? Then you get a what could you do to meet that thing? Then the crossroads of you either go down the path of how to do something, which takes all these units of time to learn how to do it, then you still have to do it poorly and then you get to done. Whereas if you take the fork in the road and find a who, they're going to bring the how with them and you're already done and you're on to the next what. You stay up in that who and what moving, moving line, and you made a much more beautiful illustration. But if you've ever seen episode one of the Simpsons how poorly drawn and how. But the essence of it was there and now it's much more beautiful. So.

Yeah, but the thing, Dean, and we've commented on this, that the moment that you mention this, especially to entrepreneurs, because you're setting goals, achieving goals is really standard operating procedure for an entrepreneur. And the moment I say, you don't have to do the house, get other people to do the house, just find a who, who does the how. And they say, oh, oh, Geez, why didn't I know that when I was six years old? You know? So one of the things. This idea just snaps people immediately. And, you know, I've been thinking about it to talk to you about it. I think we're giving them permission to do something they've always wanted to do, but they were. They were educated out of it. My feeling is the educational system educates you out of using other who's. And actually, in most of. The. Most of the educational system, if you use a who, it's called cheating. Yep.

I've got a friend who.

By the way. By the way, where's Ben Hardy? Like, we have. We have the guy who actually wrote the book. Where's this dude?

I'm right here. How's it going, Joe?

I will say something. Hey, got a copy. I mean, you're the only doctor here, so tell everyone. Give your version of all this.

Ben, sounds great. Yeah. I'm actually literally in Dallas, Texas, right now with Dre Redfern. He's.

We're working on a launch.

We're doing. We got this, like, whiteboard full of all sorts of cool stuff. And Dre, of course, is someone I met in Genius Network. He's a who. And I recently read, reread the book Principles by Ray Dalio, and I forgot entirely that there was a deep section in that all about how the who is more important than the what. And that's kind of what I've realized, is that in your life, your results are produced by the people you're in a relationship with. And so once I started actually taking relationships more seriously, and rather than doing everything by myself, because, like. Like a lot of people, I was trained to think in terms of how I spent all my time doing how. I got really good at learning. I got really good at doing how. And I could learn very quickly, and I could produce results very quickly, but I was still very limited by my own time capacity, my own ability to take on so much. And obviously, with growing family, I needed to learn how to develop relationships. And so, yeah, a few years ago, I joined Genius Network and started, you know, literally. I met Dre, who's right here, at my first Genius Network meeting. And at the time, I was still just a young author. I had one employee, and I had never done any huge launches. But literally, within three months of meeting Dre, I did a launch that was 10 times bigger than anything I'd ever done, because he's the right who. And so that's just the power of knowing the right who's the who comes with the how. And one thing I love, just as a thought, because I've studied leadership so much, my PhD was in Organizational psychology, is that there's so much research to back everything that Dan and Dean and all you guys teach. Like, you know, true leaders don't tell people how to do their job. True leaders provide the vision. They provide the vision and why it's so important. And detail the vision so specifically that the right who comes. The right who comes. And they don't need to be micromanaged. Instead, they're just empowered to do the how. And that's what I loved about this project. So thanks to Dan for letting me write this book. And quick props to Tucker Max, because Tucker Max was really important for this book. One thing I just want to share about my side of the book. When I first heard Dan talk about this idea, I thought it was so powerful and inspiring that I wanted to do a major book on it. I had already done who, not how. I mean, I'd already done Willpower Doesn't Work. I'd already been working on other books, but I really wanted to take who, not how to another level. And I couldn't do it. I got stuck. And so ultimately, I needed Tucker Max. But one of the things that Tucker Max, aside from helping us get the book deal he helped me do is he helped me be the who. Because when I was writing this book, actually, you know, I have a lot of respect for Dan Sullivan, and I was starting to write the wrong book. I was starting to try to write a book that Dan wanted me to write. And ultimately, Tucker helped me be the who. Tucker said, ben, you're the who. You need to write the book that you would write. You're the who only. And Dan even told me the same thing. Ultimately, Tucker helped me to say, ben, you're the only person that can write this book. And Dan's the same person. Dan said the same thing. He said, ben, I'm not going to tell you how to write this book. I wouldn't tell you. I wouldn't even know how to tell you how to write this book, because you're the person who does those kind of things. And so it empowered me to take full responsibility of my how, and it helped me to become a better person. I think that's what relationships are all about.

So, you know, here's what I've noticed a lot. There's a lot of people that want to go out and meet individuals so that they can get what it is they want. And I Think all of us. And when I say all of us, I mean me, you, Ben, Dan and Dean. We're very collaborative, we're very reciprocal type individuals. And I think that is, not only has that allowed me to build so many relationships, but also it's relationships with the right people. Have I developed and been a giver to the wrong people? Certainly. I mean, you know, I, we invest time, we invest money, we invest energy. I mean all of us are, you know what, those are the things that we can spend. And I joined strategic coach 23 years ago because I wanted to get my life together. I heard, you know, Dan talking about these things called free days. And I didn't know very many entrepreneurs that took free days. And I certainly being a complete workaholic, you know, couldn't even comprehend the concept of free days. Now, you know, I'm taking next year as a sabbatical and having a company that's going to be run by a bunch of who's right because my Genius Network going to run Genius Network while I'm on a one year sabbatical. Now what I learned over the years, and this is where it's crystallized in this book. I mean I think it's taken this many years for this to really be crystallized in such an important piece of work. And Darrell Sutherland, who's actually on the line, I'm going to walk away for just a second. And Darrell 3D printed this domino. And at last year's Genius Network annual event, I gave everyone a domino and I said, write down the people, the projects, the books, the things that have been dominoes for you, where it started a whole process and I'll reference certain things at times. But this book, in this concept, I hope today is a first domino for many of you that are watching. Even if you know Dan, even if you know Ben, even if you know me and Dean, I want you to think about, you know what, how do you need to start looking at how you do work? I think the way that most people do do work doesn't work. And even though at times in my life I've had a multimillion dollar business and stuff, there's been many years where just the way I was doing it was not the right way and how much time and energy I squandered trying to learn how to do stuff, when if I just would have made a slight switch and asked myself the question, not how do I do this? But who can do this for me? And I operated with my already built in reciprocal collaborative nature. Many people aren't very collaborative. And so this is really a collaboration. And so I want to ask, like, I wrote a list.

Joe, can I quickly throw one thought in?

Yeah.

I just want to say that there's a full chapter in this book breaking down what Joe is talking about. There's a full chapter in this book about how Dan. Or, sorry, about how Joe does relationships. Because the thing that Joe always asks is what's in it for them. And so, like, when we were creating this book or when I was writing it, because I was coming at it from, like, it's not all about me. What can I. We wrote it in a way that it was a win win for everyone. You know, like, that's part of. I think collaboration is. It's not all about you. It's how can you do something so that the pie gets bigger for everyone? And so I just think that you actually teach how to do that better than anyone I know. And so that's why there's a whole chapter of this book dedicated to how you personally do relationships. And so I just want to say that that mindset going in is the reason why most people can't create collaborations is because they're always thinking about what's in it for me. And I think if you come at it in what's in it for the other person, then you can create something that's much bigger than what would have been in it for you in the first place.

Yeah. Joe, can I add something to Ben's first of all? Because I probably been looking for someone like Ben for about 25 years. So I'm a writer, and, you know, I was a copywriter at a big ad agency before I started coaching in 1974. So I'm 46 years in coaching, and over the years I've written books, but they're just for the people inside the program. And I have a particular voice that I use. And the books are quite small, not beyond 60 pages, and they have lots of cartoons in them. And we do audio, we do video on it. But I'd never done a major market book where I had real skills. Major market skills. And so it was my very first 100k meeting with. And Ben was there, and I did the who, not how diagram on the whiteboard. And he came up to me, he says, if you ever want to go major market with this book, I'd love to do it. And I said, yeah, I would. And I said, I've actually been looking for someone like you for a long time. I love your. I like. I love Your writing style. I love your psychological insights. You have. You have a lot of knowledge about, you know, testing that's been done, research that's been done, that kind of support a lot of the stuff that we're doing. And so we started, but we didn't have a publisher. And Ben's publisher and his agent, this wasn't the book they were looking for from him right off the bat. And Ben called me one day and he said, would you mind bringing someone else on the team? And it was Tucker. Max. So Tucker came in, and Tucker is a great packager of books. He's a great strategist of books. And the other thing is he's. He's got his legal degree more or less in, you know, publishing law. And so he is a good guy to have on your side of the table when you're negotiating things. Joe had a session on publishing, and so Ben was there and Tucker was there, but Reed Tracy from Hay House was there, and he talked about the business of publishing. And so I introduced myself to Reid and he says, I know who you are, but you have a reputation that you're not interested in going major market. But he said, I really like your stuff. And long story short, Ben and Tucker and Reid got together and they put together a deal for this book. Now, I should tell you, Ben talks about making that a win win. So I've got a rule, Babs and I have a rule. We only make money one way. We only make money with the Strategic Coach program. So I don't have any other businesses. I'm not invested in any other businesses, and I don't accept money from any other source because it tells our team that this is always number one. We have a. You know, right now we have a team, about 110 team members. We're in three countries. And so I'm very monogamous in relationship to my company. I don't have affairs. You know, I don't. I don't have dates or anything else. I just have one business. So I said to Ben first, and then Tucker, I said, look, all the money that this book or any other book that we do together, all the money goes to you. It goes to Reed as the publisher, and then Ben, you get all the money, and you can have anybody on the team you want, but you're going to get all the money for the book. So if it sells a million copies and you get an advance, a big advance, and you get all the royalties, all the money is yours. Because we make our money from people reading the book and signing up for a strategic coach. So to me, I want this to be a grape. And so we did that, and we talked to Tucker about it, and I said, tucker, all the money stays on your side of the line. Now, Tucker got me aside, and he said, you know, you're unusual because he says, usually people want to be an author and they need the money because they want to be where you are, but you're already there. And this is your first book, but you're already where other people want to get to by being an author and going out and talking. And so one of the things for collaboration, you have to have total cash confidence. In other words, you don't need the money, I don't need any of the money. And it looks like we got 10 books in 10 years, and this is Tucker's great value as he's been negotiating. And if they sell 10 million books and it makes $50 million, that money stays on the other side. I don't want any of that money, because if we're selling that many books, we're going to have that many signups for a strategic coach. So one of the big principles, most people aren't cash confident enough to actually collaborate. They have to think about the money. Right now, I don't have to think about any of the money. Here we know how to make money, and even in a very unusual year like this year, this year, we're fine. We're fine. We have great reserves, and we've gone virtual. So our future has opened up because of this year. So I just want to get that in Joe, that a lot of people just can't be collaborative because they don't have any cash confidence.

Yeah, totally. Totally. And I mean, what do you.

You can't do a sabbatical for a year if you didn't have cash confidence.

Exactly, Exactly. You know, in coach, you've talked about two attitudes that entrepreneurs need to have, and I think for who, not how, you know. Could you talk about those two entrepreneurial attitudes? Because I think they play into something that's really important, especially for younger, you know, entrepreneurs to get and understand this, because it'll help you forge your way through life.

Yeah, well, they're just two simple ones. So I personally, you know, since 74, I've coached 6,000 entrepreneurs where I've dealt directly with the entrepreneur. And at any given time, I'm coaching 500 to 600, you know, in a workshop program, and I really interact with a lot of people. And Zoom's actually being, you know, a big Jump for that. You can interact a lot more easily with zoom. And. But I said that when you decide to become an entrepreneur, you're making two fundamental decisions. And if you haven't made these decisions, you're not really an entrepreneur. The first one is that I will depend entirely on my own abilities for my financial security. Okay. And most people in the world can't do that. They need someone to give them a job and guarantee their financial security. Entrepreneurs depart. And I have to tell you, it's only 5% of the population, adult population in the world that ever makes that decision. And the other decision is I will expect no opportunity until I first create value. So you have to lead with value. You have to be the first one to create the value. You can't say, somebody give me an opportunity. I mean, there's an attitude among a lot of people, I would become an entrepreneur if the. The government would give me a forgivable loan.

Yeah, yeah. And there's a ton of that. So, I mean, so here's the thing, too. You said something which I've repeated a million times, I say it all the time, that early on, this is probably 22 years ago, I think I heard you say this where we're in a conversation, and you said, all money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And when it comes to developing relationships and finding who's. If you want to have a lot of who's in your life, just be really useful. Just be really grateful, be generous and be helpful. And if you can produce a result for somebody, produce the result. Don't talk about producing the result. You don't build a great reputation by talking about what you're going to do. You build a great reputation by actually doing stuff. And so I'm the highest referring person in the world to Strategic Coach. And I don't do it because I have some sort of affiliate arrangement with Dan, because we don't. I do it because it's a really good program and it helps people. And the same way that Dan's the highest referring person to Genius Network, and this is. That's what a collaboration is. Whereas in my experience, a lot of people, they think that there's like this limited supply of usefulness that they have, and they're the ones that are that hold it, and God forbid, don't tell someone else about someone else's useful, you know, book or program or whatever. I mean, yeah, we are, we are telling you to go buy this book and read it and share it, because I know that this book will be helpful to the entrepreneurs that actually do read it and utilize it. And so a lot of people use people, other people utilize people. That's what I think collaborations really are. And so I want to.

Joe, can you give the little two step. When somebody can't decide between Genius Network or Strategic Coach, we have a little two step routine that we do.

Yeah, yeah, both of us. So someone asked me, which program should I join? Should it be a Genius Network or Strategic Coach? Now the real answer is you should do both because they both, you know, reinforce each other. But I always say join Strategic Coach because I don't want to be in a position where I'm ever having to pit one thing against the other because they're all really useful. Because I know if people go to Strategic Coach, they're going to bring back a really good Genius Network member to me. Because Strategic Coach does a great job with helping people identify their unique abilities, getting their skills and life together, building a unique ability team, creating a self managing company. And so whenever I can send people or my clients into something that's going to make them a better client, they're not a better person, they're going to come back to me as a better client. Now will every one of them? No, but that's the way it works and that's that. And Dan does the same again.

Yeah. Well, I say, well, first of all, you're probably just a really good salesperson, but you're not a great marketer. And you have to be a great marketer to even have a sale these days. So go, go and spend time with Joe and become a greater marketer. And therefore. And after that, the price of Strategic Coach will just be an instant decision, you know, then you'll come in and you'll. Because a lot of, a lot of entrepreneurs are really, really good salespeople. But the world, the way it is, it's getting harder and harder to be in front of someone to actually sell. And that requires marketing. It's a whole other, it's a whole other skill in the marketplace is marketing, you know. Yeah, you can sell when you're in front of someone, but can you get in front of someone?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so what I hope will come out of who not how is really a tremendous amount of time freed up so that you can spend your energy on the most important activities that produce results. And you'll be a happier person because you can learn a billion different business strategies. But which ones are going to move the needle? I mean, in Genius Network, we Talk about elegant ideas where one elegant idea is worth more than 1000 semi good ideas. One elegant solution is worth a thousand semi good solutions. And so Dean, why is who not how an elegant idea and an elegant solution applied? I want to hear your perspective on this and I want to hear Ben Hardy's perspective on it. Because I really think Ben has just having to written this book. It's not about just writing, it's about a deep dive into this particular subject. And so that's what Ben does.

Yeah, well, part of the most elegant thing is that who, not how ultimately allows you to escape gravity. It allows you to get out of the gravity of linear doing anything. Remember when I showed that picture and I showed the time units that it takes to do things? Time is a linear thing that you have to be established and it has to be experienced and in real time. So the only way to learn how to do anything is to invest the time that it takes to learn how to do it. Now when you're doing that, when you're faced with this, I want a what? I want to do this thing, but I don't know how to do it. So you have to go down this path now. And you're writing what I call this blank check for the only non renewable asset that you have, which is time to do something that you're not even sure you're going to be able to learn how to do well or how long it's going to take you to do it. And so you go down that path and then once you learn how to do it, you're still not done. Because now you just get to the point where you could actually attempt to do the thing that some units of time ago you didn't know how to do. And of course, like anything, the first time you do anything, you're probably going to do it poorly and slowly and probably with mistakes. So you have to redo the thing that you did and all these units of time that are taking up your prize jewel, which is your attention, your focused attention on something, is gone. Now if you take the who path and you find somebody who knows how to do whatever it is, they're going to bring the how with them. And you immediately get this fast pass to the end of that line. They don't have to, first of all, they don't have to know how to do it, they don't have to figure out how to do it. They've got the knowledge, so now they just need to do it. And because it's what they do, they're going to be able to do it much faster than you would be able to do it at their expert level of getting it done. And you get a predictable outcome because they're presenting themselves as a reliable someone who can do that. Now, once you've got this capability stack, once you've got this. Dan mentioned the words cash confidence. The next level of this is capability confidence. If you've got now the capability to do anything that anybody knows how to do, it changes your vision. Right now, you don't have to limit your vision to what I was just contemplating on this in my journal over the weekend, that I don't have to limit my vision to what I know how to do. I can expand my vision to what the world knows how to do. Because now I've got access through Cloudlandia to every capability in the world. And it's a multiplier. And that's what's really where we're talking about this. That's the biggest thing that we're doing now is this migration as a society to Cloudlandia, where the rules are different. It's not a linear. We're in a digital and a multiplier kind of a atmosphere. The atmosphere is different. Right. So you get to move about that faster. The pull of gravity is different. Just like when you go to the moon or you go to Mars, the pull of gravity is less. So you don't. It takes less work to do things. That's what we get now if we embrace this who, not how setup equip ourselves with finding who's. That's where something like a. Like genius network is a way to expose yourself to who's who know how to do stuff and to expose yourself to ideas. What's.

Yep. Well, you know, that's. That's the way that I. You know what, Dean? I think of what are the connections? Because if there's anything that really is about. What I attempt to do is I connect people. I want to connect people with the right ideas, the right methodologies. I want to disconnect them from the things that cause them suffering, which is why I do so much work in the addiction recovery world. And I want to connect them with the right who's. So Genius network is like a giant who network. And I think that's why many people invest to come to Genius Network is so they don't have to go find these who's. The who's are there, and I assemble them. So the question becomes, how do we access them? I've read through some of the comments and certainly there's so many, I can't read through them and stay focused at the same time. I pop in and look at a few of them. There was one early on along the lines of, you know, but aren't the who's really expensive? And finding the right who's. And so I have a couple thoughts I want to ask you guys about. And when I say you guys, I mean Dan and Ben and Eudean, where there's that one line which is hire the best and only cry once. Right. Versus, you know, don't hire the best and cry many times. So that's one thing. The other is a lot of who's don't require money. I mean, if you actually, you know, I have a tool and Eunice, who's up in the room, can you get grab at some point? I'll bring it up. My genius. Don't worry. Can you grab me that tool, please? Thank you. And so, you know, like, who for me is my assistant, Eunice. I mean, she's been with me for 25. Is it 25 years or, you know, 26 years? 25 years, yeah. She's going to. After 26, she's probably done. No, but the. So the thing is, like, if you just simply are helpful to people, a lot of who's you already know, but you haven't thought of them. Thank you so much. Like, I have a tool in Genius Network called my Genius Network, and we have people write down who it's for. And then I have these, you know, these circles, which I started this as one of the first tools in Genius Network where it's like, you in the middle, see this little. Can you see it? Okay, little red person. And then there's these circles. And I would have people write the name of, like, if you think of the eight most important people in your life, who would you put? And then you put the skill or capability underneath. That's one way to use it to identify who's your genius Network. Another way is say you want to get in better physical shape. Who are people that you know that are geniuses at eating and exercise and nutrition? Maybe a yoga instructor, maybe, you know, a massage therapist that can help you in health. Any type of trainer, if you want to write a book, who are the right who's. So what happened in Genius Network? Tucker, Max Reed, Tracy, Ben, Hardy, Scott. You know, I mean, there's different individuals that allowed this who, not how book to happen, but the way it works is then I have people transfer the name of. Who are they? See it says right here. It says who, right? I've been doing this for 15 years. Genius or wisdom they have. What's the genius of wisdom? How can I help them? And then how can they help me? And that's where everyone that is not a collaborator messes it up. When working with whose is they always think about, oh, I want to meet this person so I can get something from me. Instead of what does this person actually, how can I help them? And there's this wonderful thing that my dear buddy Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence, has been writing about for 30 years called Reciprocity. And you know, when you are helpful to people, they naturally want to help you back. And so whatever who's that you want to identify in your life? There's plenty of things if you just thought about it. And the book is a roadmap. That's why you need to read the book. The book actually explains what to do and how to do it. You can literally develop the skills of making yourself such an incredible asset. So you're a who for many people. I mean, how many of you know that you're somebody's who? Raise your hand. Yeah, okay. And there's a lot of stuff that I suck at that I have no clue how to do and that I could learn how to do it, or I could just find someone that already knows it, because Ben and Dan and Dean have said it already. You know, if you find the right who, they bring the how with them. And I can't imagine how much of my time I wasted trying to learn things that if I just would ask the question, which is early on in the book, Ben actually lays out. Here's the distinction between two different questions you ask yourself. Not how do I do something? But who and really take that seriously. And then if you operate from a standpoint of not a taker, but a genuine giver, not even with an agenda. I mean, most of the things that come to me, it's not, you know, I'm the same person to someone that's holding the door open for me that I don't know, or if I'm at a restaurant and someone is serving me something, I mean, I've said this before, who becomes my true friends? Or I look at people that are more powerful, how do they treat people that are less powerful than them? You know, I'm going to be helpful and courteous to a lot of people when it comes to your time, your energy, your effort, and your unique ability, if you direct that in the right ways and you find the right who's to do everything else. Not only do I think will your income dramatically multiply, your free time will dramatically increase if that's what you want, but your happiness will be much bigger. So Dave Streen, who I mentioned earlier, he's the one with Charlie who was doing the meetup groups, he had a question about Dave, can you unmute yourself and ask Dan that question that you private messaged me? Yeah.

First off, I wanted to say real quick that I'm the perfect example of you and Gina. You know, I asked you, should I join Genius Network first or see to coach? And about a year and a half ago, you told me strategic coach, and I'm so glad you did. I just signed up for my second year, and I told Dan at the morning buffet that the first, before the first meeting even started, that I already got my money back tenfold on it because the prep work changed my thinking already so much that it's just been phenomenal. And so, yeah, I'm a living story of that reciprocity back and forth between you two. So, Dan, my question was if you can touch on a little bit about your concept of unique ability and how that applies to finding the right who.

Yeah, I think that. And this is just my experience now. I have, you know, kind of a different kind of experience because for the last 46 years, virtually all my focus, my relationships, you know, my productivity has been geared just to people who are really outliers. You know, they're not normal people. And entrepreneurs are really outside the norm because most people don't choose to earn their income that way. They're not willing to take the risks, and it's lonely. The other thing is, the biggest single problem of entrepreneurism is loneliness. If they're addicted to something, it's because they're lonely. If they're, you know, they're. They're unsuccessful in their personal life, it's because of loneliness. And if they get blocked in their business, it's because they don't have anyone to talk to who gets them. You know, they just don't have anyone to talk to them. So what I say is every human being has a unique ability, and it has two features. One is it comes to you effortlessly. It's a thing that's so easy for you, you can't understand why other people don't do it. Okay, in other words. Well, that's really simple. You just do this, this and this and this. And that tells you it's a unique ability. And the other thing is, it's actually very enjoyable to. I mean, you like being in this activity, but you don't take it seriously because it's easy. And you've been told that if there's no pain, there's no gain. If it doesn't take a long time, if it isn't hard, it won't be valuable to you. And my sense is, well, first of all, that may have been true 100 years ago. It may have been true. But once you have the Internet and once you have, as Dean talks about quadlandia, all the rules of the world change. They change. If it isn't easy for you, then you know it's easy for someone else. So just find out the person who it's easy for and you know right off the bat that if you ask them to do it, they'll love doing it. And Dave, I just like to get across a distinction here because you're in your second, you know, you're in your second year of coach. Who's your, who's your coach, by the way?

Chad Johnson.

Oh, yeah, Chad's a wonderful person by the way. He has 11 children and they're all homeschooled, they're all home schooled. So anyway, the thing about it is this is not delegation, okay? So I want to make a sharp distinction here that who not hows is not delegation. And a lot of entrepreneurs really hate delegation. And the reason is because the person they're delegating to, they think is not as good as them. They're maybe 80% as good. And then they're going to have to train that person, which they don't really, really like doing. And then once the person does it, they're going to have to manage that person which they really don't like doing. And then if it's a failure, then you got to start all over again. So the distinction, I like who not how is that you're going to someone who's way better than you. You're not going to someone who. And you don't have to train them in anything. You don't have to manage them at all. What they like is that you're using their skills to achieve your goal. And if you utilize people's skills in an exciting project, they'll even do it for free. They'll even do it for free because the world doesn't give them many opportunities to use their skill. And you're giving them a skill. And so I just want to point out that the biggest who not how of my life is Bab Smith, who's My partner. So we've been together for 38 years. And just to give you a test of how good this collaboration is, when the COVID started and the pandemic started, our way of making money was completely ended because we do in person workshops. Okay. And so within two days, the whole company switched from in person backstage to virtual. And within 10 days, we had gone virtual with our offering and all of our workshops are in person. And now we're starting virtual only workshops so people will only. And we just had our first 60 people and they come from 21 countries. So my feeling is that being forced to go virtual will take us 10 times in about the next 10 years, just because our market expanded by now 100 times with that. But I will tell you this. This is seven months. We did the transition, and I didn't spend one hour on that transition. I didn't spend one hour. Babs and the team and our tech department and everybody else, they did the whole transition. I didn't do anything. So I was completely free just to go on working with Ben, creating new workshops the way normally my life was. Not changed at all. I didn't change. And because Babs runs the company and she's my. Who. Who runs the company, and I'm just responsible for what's presented new in the workshop. So, you know, I mean, and the first time I met her, I showed her my thinking and she. I used her company. I took her through my company, through my thinking process, and she says, this is going to be really big. And I said, oh, you think your company is going to grow? She said, no, no, your process is going to be really big. And about two years later, she said, forget my company. I want to run your company. So that's. Yeah. And she's really. Babs is so magical, she doesn't even know what the magic trick is. I mean, she just has a phenomenal ability of putting teams together of people and, you know, she's created the whole company. I often say, if I hadn't met Babs, I'm just a smart drunk worried about the rent.

Well, so how much of this is. It's interesting. I've been reading some of the comments. One of them was unique ability is a myth. And of course, that's not at all a accurate statement, because unique ability. If I had not learned about the concept of unique ability, God knows how much time I've built, literally a multimillion dollar business around interviewing people, bringing people together and connecting people. Something I do even when I don't get paid for it. I just figured out a way to do it. Secondly, how much of this is chance? How much of this is luck? How much of this is being in the right place, the right time? People will say things like, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Which is a sort of interesting statement when we talk about who, not how. And it's not even about knowing them. It's about how you utilize it. I believe this conversation will fall on. And it has. I mean, there's many people here that have talked about how many copies of the book they've read, they've bought, how it. How it's changed. There was one comment about, you know, I've read 15 page, the first 15 pages, and it completely changed my life.

Joe, can I make a statement about luck? I believe 50% of all success is luck. Okay, yeah. You're born at the right time. You're. You're born healthy. You got a good enough brain. I think that's luck. I mean, you didn't have anything. The other 50% is knowing how to take advantage of your good luck.

And so I believe people can fashion their own futures and design their futures. And certainly I deal with some people in very broken states with the work I do in addiction recovery. And I've seen people crawl out of the worst places in life ever. I mean, heck, people that know my story, when I was 18 years old and my worst state, I weighed 105 pounds from freebasing cocaine. I nearly killed myself when I was a drug addict. So people can certainly change their lot in life, and there's certain obstacles that people overcome. So what I want to be able to do is have people that are thinking like, okay, I get the concept. I understand it, but how can I actually do it? And by the way, Ben Hardy wrote, willpower doesn't work. Personality isn't permanent. I mean, we got some serious brain power here from you guys being able to direct and guide people. Because between all of you, I mean, think about this. Dean Jackson in 1997, invented the squeeze page, where you enter your name and email to go to the next page. I mean, think about how many hundreds of millions of people that one idea has influenced how it, you know, so, you know, you guys have done a lot of stuff. There's a lot of people saying, well, I've not. I didn't invent the squeeze page. I didn't create Strategic Coach. I'm not the number one writer in the world on medium.com. these guys have some great talent that I Don't have, you know, there's that sort of thing. But the truth is, you know, I know the stories between all three of you. You've had to overcome some incredible adversities. You know, dad, you were bankrupt and divorced on the same day when you were 34 years old.

Is that what, 35? Yeah. I did the divorce in the morning so I could keep my credit card for lunch before I had to give. Because when you go bankrupt, you have to give in your credit card. So two things. One is that we established a no receivables business in 1984, and I based it on the movie industry. I said, when I go to a movie, when do I pay for the movie? And I said, you don't pay for a movie on the way out. You pay for the movie on the way in. And it increases your dedication to the movie that you've already paid for it. So since 84, we go, everything's up front. We never do anything. And the other thing is, I needed a great partner in both sides of my life. I needed a partner in my personal life. And on the day I was divorced, I wrote down the eight characteristics of the relationship. Not who the person had to be, but what the characteristics would be. And one year later to the date, I was at a weekend conference and there was one seat left. I sat down and Babs was sitting next to me, and that's. And I started talking to her. And everything resonated with the sheet that I had put together about what the relationship had to be. And, you know, it's really been very magical for me to be in collaboration with Babs and Dean. You and I are great collaborators. Joe's a great collaborator. Ben's a great collaborator. And I don't ask anybody to do except the thing that they're uniquely good at and what they love at what they love doing.

Well, you said also when you met Babs, you said this one thing. You said you had made a decision that I didn't want to work on a relationship. I just wanted a relationship that worked. And that doesn't mean you were not going to put, you know, I want to give the proper context because, you know, you are constantly working on your life, but you don't do it by, you know, bleeding to death. You don't do it by, you know, swimming against the grain, per se. I mean, you've. You've learned and created a lot of thinking tools and a lot of methodologies to take adversity and turn it into usefulness. I mean, you're one of the best. I mean, I always say this all the time. Dan's the smartest entrepreneur thinker that I've ever met. I mean, I've been Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. I've interviewed Richard probably more than anyone. I've spent six weeks on Necker island and 30 minutes with Dan Sullivan is more useful than a week with Richard Branson in terms of business advice. Not that he hasn't built successful businesses, but the ability to teach and translate that to other people and that's what these guys do so well. Dean is a great simplifier. Ben's an incredible writer. You know Dan with, you know, coaching all the entrepreneurs he has. So that's why I wanted to, you know, do this, do this conversation today with everyone. So let's talk about how to get the most out of this because right now you can actually buy this book. This is almost ridiculous to say, as if I even need to sell the book here, right? It's pretty self evident. Not because he's here. Ben Hardy is truly one of the most genuine, thoughtful, caring individuals on the planet. So Ben, why are you so damn polite and nice? Can you speak to that?

No, but I will say one quick, I will say one quick thing. And this is just my last thought on this subject for the moment. Who not how is a concept that goes beyond business? Just as one example, as many of you know, my wife and I actually adopted three kids from the foster system when I was doing my PhD and we would not have gotten our three kids if we hadn't hired the right attorney. We were bogged through the, through the system. And we, there was no statistical reason why we should have gotten these kids. The system was literally against us and the law was against us. But we found this attorney and I tell the story in the book. The final section of this book, by the way, it's based on Dan's four freedoms concepts. So there's four sections of this book. Freedom of Time, Freedom of Money, Freedom of Relationship, and Freedom of Purpose. In the fourth section on this book, Freedom of Purpose, I think that they're probably the two best chapters on the book because they teach you how to stop competing and start collaborating. But one of the sections talks about how when you have the right who in your life, your vision for your future becomes a lot bigger and better. And we, me and my wife were screwed. We were, we had the foster system literally take our kids away and we then got committed to the result we wanted. And that's really what who, not how's about is when you get committed to the result you want, you stop trying to do the how and you just find the who who can get you the result. That's when your mindset goes up to a whole new level and you figure out how to make it happen. And so we got the right attorney, this guy who knew the law back and forth and he made the other attorneys look like idiots. And we got our kids and he literally had to change the laws in South Carolina so that foster parents could have the right, the rights. And so because we had the right attorney, we were able to adopt our three kids. And it was that important to us. If we had not found the right who, me and my wife would have never had that huge, amazing part of our life. And so this goes way beyond just business. If you want a result, you need a who. And if you get the right who in your life, then your ability to get the result you want becomes inevitable. And there's a lot of science, a lot of psychology that I obviously break down in the book. As far as just taking my kids, for example. My kids potential. Like you as a human being, your potential to accomplish things is not innate, it's actually relational. Take my three foster kids, for example, who are no longer foster kids. Their ability to produce results and to learn was so limited in their former context. They were all like three years behind in school. They had no knowledge. You put them in our context with us, now they have access to our abilities, our knowledge, our care. We get them with tutors. All of a sudden they become amazingly capable people. It's not because they weren't capable before, it's because their context limited them. And so the relationships you have with people change your human potential. They change what you can do, they change the results you can get. So I just want to say, if you want to get better results in your life, it's about the relationships you have. It's about creating relationships with the right who's. And it immediately changes everything. And so I just wanted to really strongly encourage you, please go get this book. I'm grateful for the opportunity I've had over the last three years to learn from Dan, Dean and Joe. And that's why I wrote this book, is because I just felt like the wisdom of these people needed to be shared. And so that's why this book exists. And I really hope you read it because it's not a huge, not a long book, but it's perfectly designed to help you completely change your thinking and it will completely change your results. And your freedom. It's a mindset that could literally help them get the result they want, whether it's adopting their kids, whether it's building their business, whether it's getting that book deal, whether it's saving their life. You know, one of the things, Joe, that you and I know, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is human connection. And there's actually someone even on this call, Chris Doyle. I was on Chris Doyle's podcast, who is someone who is very big in the addiction space space. And my younger brother was heavily struggling with addiction, and he helped us to get him into the right treatment facility. And so, you know, if whatever the result is that you're looking for, whether it's helping a family member, creating a business, having more freedom, you need a who. And so it's the most amazing mindset. You can gift it to someone for 99 cents for the next two days.

Yeah. And let me. Let me add to that, because I'm a marketer, obviously, and this is how my brain works. So if there's someone that you've identified who is a future who or has been a who to you, what a great way of saying, you know, you've been a wonderful who to me. I wanted to share with you this book to describe how valuable you've been to me, and I hope you find this valuable. You've literally just planted a seed using a book for 99 cents that you can actually say thank you to someone, and you could set the stage for a better, deeper collaboration. So I'm literally going to send out thousands of copies, this book to people and everyone in Genius Network. You're all getting a hardcover copy this week. It's coming to all of you because we were able to get some of them before they ran out. And it's going to be in a big swag bag that we're sending to people with all the stuff, because the annual event is next Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which, by the way, all of you that are not registered really should go to that and be smart. But anyway, so that is a great methodology for doing it. So. So Ben and Dan and even Dean, what we can take, we can take a couple of questions. Even Dean, like, is it. I want to make sure we don't have Dean's status be anywhere near as elevated, as high as Dan and Ben right now, because, frankly, they're better people than Dean. And so if we have a hierarchy of just good humans. No, I'm totally kidding. So, Dean, how does someone get the Most out of the conversation we've had so far in the book. Why don't we start with you?

I'll say literally so I would. I thought Ben was going in a different direction when he was talking about the. Is not just about business because I particularly like chapter four of the book and where we talk about the freedom. Time is time. And when you can have a. Who remove yourself from all the things that take up that time that you would rather have invested in other things. It's. It's a toll freeing experience, you know, So I think that's, that's a good place to, to start. That's looking at everything that you're doing, you know, so.

So Dan, any, any suggestion if you were to say, okay, here's the best way to engage and interact with this concept that we've not talked about so far that you think would be most useful to everyone that's here with us.

Yeah, I think the big thing is just take two or three goals that have been moving slowly and say if I didn't do the house on these goals, then who would I immediately talk to who either had the skills that they could actually help me accomplish the goal or they would be a connector to someone else. So I say this, but it's literally true. My Rolodex, my virtual Rolodex has just one. Yeah, has just one name in it, and it's Joe Polish. If I want to meet anyone know about anyone who's doing something, I just call Joe Polish. Because I could take six months and then not find the person, but Joe, Joe would find it some way within a matter of 24 hours. You know, so. And Joe just loves doing this. I mean that's, it's no hardship for him to do something that he loves to do. So I just, you know, I've just got to say always ride the horse in the direction it's already going. You know, just find what people love doing, what they're really great at, and build them into your bigger future. So, you know, that's what I, what I do. I don't want anyone doing something for me that's a hardship for them, that's difficult for them, that's a sacrifice for them. I want it to be a joy. I just want to be surrounded by people joyfully expanding their skills on a new project. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. Well, you know, I mean, I do genuinely love to connect people with solutions and capabilities because I know the pain not having that. And when I learned that this whole concept of time is money, it's really relationships or money. And with the right relationships, you can accomplish anything. One thing we say at Genius Network is that any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. And what I mean by that is that's a bunch of who's. Because a Genius Network is a capability network. I mean, I've said it many times, people don't want to. I don't think most of you wanted to actually be here today. I think while you're here now, some of you did. There's a lot of friends, there's a lot of people we have rapport with. But you're looking for a result. And in order to get a result, you need a capability. And the who, not how is a capability. And it's capability that we wanted to not only share with you conceptually here and talk about it, but also direct you to the blueprint, which is the book who, not how, and have this part of your capability going forward so that you're not spending a lot of your time and energy doing things which other people would gladly do. I mean, I remember you saying to me, Dan, years ago that there's no bad work in the world. There's this bad work for certain people. And most people hate their jobs in the middle of a pandemic. God knows some people that hated their jobs would love to have those jobs back. Some people's businesses have increased, other people's businesses and lives have been, you know, decimated. And there's a lot of anxiety and depression and addiction and pain in the world. And more than ever right now, really having the who, not how concept. Because it's going to be many who's that are going to help with this. Could you speak to the whole concept of work, like bad work, good work, what is that? Because I think it's so much ties into who, not how.

Are you talking to me or.

Yeah, talking to you, Dan?

Yeah, yeah, the. Yeah, well, you know, it wasn't our idea to get born, you know, I mean, first of all, you have to accept that. And the other thing is that when you arrive, none of the universe was designed with you in mind. Okay? So if you accept those two rules that it wasn't your idea to arrive, and when you arrive, nothing was designed for you, then you've got a reference point that's going to be true for the rest of your life. So if things are going to work, I mean, it's very useful to have great parents, you know, and it's very useful to have every bit of help. But I'VE known a lot of people who had every advantage in the world who never went anywhere because they thought it was supposed to be done for them. So I, you know, I'm a farm boy, and I grew up on a farm that was just barely surviving. And I'm a fifth child, and I got it real early that you had to be useful. If you weren't useful, you didn't get anything. And so my sense is that it takes a while in our world for your unique abilities. First of all, you have to recognize them. And the people who don't. Don't believe in unique ability, who say unique ability is a myth, simply means they haven't identified their unique ability and matched it up with the right work. They have matched it up with the right network of who's and everything. So, you know, people who believe in unique ability believe in 100%. Believe people who don't believe in unique ability absolutely refuse to accept it 100%. It's a choice, and it's a courageous choice because you got to be willing to commit to your unique ability and be courageous before you start getting results in the world. And, you know, I've tried the rugged, individualist approach to entrepreneurism and to my personal life. And, you know, I didn't need to get hit in the head more than three or four times. I said, you know, this is not. This is just a stupid way to proceed. And I've got some useful skills, and my skills get more useful when I match them up with someone else's really great skills. So, yeah, I'm 76, and I don't intend the next 25 years till I'm 100 or 24 years till I'm 100 to be difficult. I don't intend it to be hard. And my goals for age 100 are incredibly bigger than what we're doing right now. So, you know, I mean, try it. You know, I mean, the only way to do is take the idea and start with your personal life. You know, if there's part of your personal life where you're doing work, you don't like, hire somebody or get somebody in to do it, you don't have to hire them full time and, you know, maybe it's four hours a week and just see what it feels like to have somebody else who's really good at something to handle part of your life. You can do this bit by bit. But after a while, you realize that your financial goals are so you can hire more who. So all my financial goals are hiring more who's skilled. Who's the greatest freedom in my life is to have better and better who's in my life. So how much is that going to cost? Whatever it takes. So my goals keep going up and I'm not hiring who's to get to my financial goals. I'm getting to my financial goals so I can hire who's.

I love that. And so you did say because freedom. Because ultimately, I mean, what I first heard the definition of an entrepreneur from you. So the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur was a French guy named John Baptiste in 1804 that said an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield, from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So anything that is going to take you from here to here and make it better is entrepreneurial thinking. And so this is literally offering you the ability to think entrepreneurially when it comes to other people. And what are the different types of freedom, Dan? Because we have a lot of. There's a lot of bullshit related to success. I mean, many people think of success as just making a lot of money. And we all know people that are miserable humans that fleece people that aren't very happy, that have financial, you know, they have money but, but they don't have wealth, they don't have physical wealth, they don't have relational wealth, they don't have spiritual capital. There's all kinds of other things. What does freedom, what does freedom mean to you in the context of entrepreneurship?

Yeah, well, you know, because I've coached entrepreneurs for 46 years, you know, I often notice the complete misunderstanding of entrepreneurs in the non entrepreneurial world. They just do it for money. And I said, you know, it's really interesting because that's not been my experience with the 6,000 entrepreneurs that I've coached. And we had 20,000 in the program with the other coaches. And my belief is that entrepreneurs are mostly motivated by freedom. And it's freedom of freedom of vision, freedom of decision making, freedom of action. They can't do that if they follow an employment path in life. They know somebody else controls their time, somebody else controls their activities, and somebody else controls their growth and their promotion. So they choose a path, a risky path at first to gain freedom of their time. And when you have freedom of time, as Dean said in his remarks about freedom, is that you find you have freedom of money. So the more time you control, the more you can make money that is bigger and better money than other people. You put freedom of time and money together, then you can control your relationship networks, your personal relationship networks, your work relationship. You can work just with people that it's enjoyable working with. And my sense of that, it's the growing combination of freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship. It's not an addition, it's actually a multiplication. Freedom of time multiplies. Freedom of money. The two of them together multiply. Freedom of relationship. And gradually there's a really major purpose in your life and it has to do. Freedom of you're free to actually create good in the world and value in the world on your own terms, and you can choose it. My sense is that it's not been really easy in most of human history to do what we're talking about here today. But I think the last 50 years in particular have really freed up entrepreneurs. I think the combination of the virtual world and entrepreneurism is a major exponential event on the planet. And I think that anyone who wants to be entrepreneurial and has good instincts about using the virtual world can really grow exponentially. But don't be doing things you don't like doing. Find the people all around the world who can do the all the hows that you don't like. And I think it's exponentially easier now if you know what your purpose is to find the who's who will assist you in your purpose. So that's, you know, and I'm experiencing that it is just incredibly easier to do what I do today than it was 10 years ago. Incredibly easier to do what I was doing 20 years ago. And I'm happy it happy, you know, I'm really, really happy. I've got. I've got my happy on. So I wear my happy all the time. Yeah, but Dean, we talk about this. Dean and I have a podcast series, you know, probably every couple of weeks anyway. Right, Dean? In the course of things, it's called welcome to Cloudlandia. And we talk about the difference between the mainland, which is controlled by the laws of gravity, and virtual reality. Dean has the greatest collection of great entrepreneurial stories to talk about how people who are in their teens are producing billion dollar companies and producing billion dollars of results just because they're following who, not how, multiplied by virtual capabilities.

Yeah, and they wouldn't call it that. They don't know it. But I'm observing this once you have a formula now, like we've got that. You can observe it and you see how that's what's at play. That's what's happening here.

You know, let me mention this too. Okay, so some of you, we've got some new people here that I've not seen before and a whole bunch of people that we've seen many times, many that have been long time listeners to I love marketing, which is great. This will be also on YouTube as a video if you want to rewatch it. This will also be put out as an I love marketing podcast. So if you currently don't subscribe to our podcast, I love marketing. Wherever you listen to podcasts, go and subscribe to it. Also like Dean and Dan just mentioned, welcome to Cloudlandia is the podcast that Dean and Dan do together. They also did one called the Joy of Procrastination, which you could also listen to that and subscribe where wherever you listen to podcasts. And I also do a podcast with Dan called 10X Talk. It was the first podcast that Dan started doing and it's fantastic. There's so many great episodes on everything related to business. We also have an interview on there with Ben and Dan.

Just want to thank you, Joe, for this. It's fantastic.

Absolutely. I mean, I want everyone to go and buy copies of this book. I want you to read it and I want you to give us your comments when we do future meetings. And I will. And after everyone like reads through the book, we will be happy to have Dan and Ben and Dean, of course, because when I go on my sabbatical next year, I'm literally I'm not around. So this is going to be, this is going to be happening with all of the different. Dean, by the way, is going to be taking our genius network members through a whole training on how to utilize email marketing and offers and everything. And so when it comes to finding a who, what is. I'd like, what is the next step now, Dan or Ben, what's the first thing? If you ran everyone's life and would wave a magic wand, what's the next action you recommend people take? You've already talked about some by finding some goals, some things that you want. Anything else you want to speak to on that?

Well, I just do a quick thing because Ben built this into the book and that is that in Coach we have a main tool which is called an impact filter, where you identify what you want in such a way that other people can really get it. And that's actually included in the book. But what it does, it simply says that you have a project in mind and you say what you want to achieve, the importance of it to you, and then the ideal result you're looking for, then there's a section where you say, this is the best possible result. So you say it's done and it's fantastic. And you say, on the day this is done, what does this look like? And you identify up to 8 measurable results when the project is done. And once you're finished with that, you go and say, what's the worst result if I don't move forward on this? Because when you get engaged with a goal and you're emotionally committed with it and you don't act on it, you've set yourself backwards. It'll be harder for you in the future to actually have a bigger and better goal that you act on. So when you commit to visualizing the goal and writing it down, it's serious business because your brain takes it seriously and it wants and wants to know why you're not moving forward on it. And then I take, I type this up, it's a writable PDF, or you can write it in purpose. And I run my life with impact builders. And then what I do, I said, now who can I send this impact builder out to and talk to them about my project? And invariably, within a matter of if I send it out to 10 people within about two or three days, I've got the entire team put together and my job is just to maintain the focus on the goal and other people are actually doing the goal. So I write a book every quarter, But I have 10 people on my team and it takes me roughly 25 to 30 hours to write a brand new book every quarter because everything else is handled by a 9, 10 person team. And so people, how can you write a book every quarter? And I said, don't do much of the work. Don't do much of the work. Don't do much of the work. You know, and so. Well, I would say that Ben and I creating the who, not how book over the past year has cost me 50 hours.

Which.

And think about what that return. Well, here's the thing. Okay.

I want to say something too though, that if we really go back to the thing, I think I've pulled off the ultimate who, not how. Here I got a concept out into the world, I do any of the work.

Yeah. And you're the first one mentioned in the book. That's right, you're the first one. And I always say, this is not my idea, this is Dean Jackson's idea. Yeah. You know, and so, you know, but to me, that's collaboration, Dean, I look to you for simplification of ideas, you.

Know, and an idea. This Is part of my thing is an idea like that is not diminished by someone taking and expanding on it. It's multiplied.

Yeah.

And it doesn't take anything. People are so guarded and precious around their ideas.

Well. And people don't mention where they get their ideas from. I said that's part of my collaboration. You know, where I get my ideas from. And I get my ideas from a lot of different places. But you're. You tend to be a very, very good place.

A gusher.

You're a gusher. You are a gusher, Dean. Yes.

Well, you know, I've always liked the most expensive information in the world is bad information. Right. And so the most valuable information is things that. That's an investment. Everyone here is going to invest their time, their money, their energy. And so I hope that this concept helps make you a lot of money. I hope it makes your life incredibly more valuable. And what is the value of an elegant idea that changes the trajectory of your life? And so I'm going to demonstrate a way that, like right now. So some people needed to run, but we still got a lot of people on. I'd like you to write in the chat the aha that you got or the insight. And so I'd like you to start with either aha, aha or insight dash. And I'd like you to put in the chat because I want Dan and I want Ben to be able to read what this concept means to you. What have you gotten out of this? What does who, not how mean to you? What have you learned? What have you discovered? How has this changed your perspective? Let's take a minute and write that into the chat. Right now. What's your aha or your insight? Start with aha or insight dash and go ahead. Let's take a minute to have everyone write it down.

It's a good example of who, not how. Joe.

Yeah, this is good.

That's my point. You're all the who's right now helping us see what you got out of this.

Yeah, That's great.

Yeah. Look at all this. It's great.

Perhaps it's going to have to do a head check on me after this.

Whenever comments that it takes courage to express one's ideal. Yeah. There's so many good ones here. Who is not delegation.

Yeah.

Value before opportunity. I need to trust others. How to integrate who, not how into our marketplace software. The context changes relationships. Business is creative. And Monica, you sent it personally to me. If you want to post it to the whole. To the whole group, just take your awesome Comment and repost it. Yeah. See what I'm demonstrating here? This is who, not how. And for the last several months, I've been asking my Genius network members, what needs solved? What are your biggest challenges? What are your biggest opportunities? What do you want to learn? What do you want to discover? Who, not how, is an ELF way to actually do business? Right. To not do that is hard, annoying, sometimes lucrative, and frustrating because not all money is created equal. Some money is painful, and you can make a lot of money, but if you have to do it in a hard, annoying, frustrating way, it's not as good as the easy, lucrative, and fun way. And ELF doesn't just apply to business. It could be easy, liberating, and fun. And so in your own life, I mean, crowdsource genius, crowdsource concepts, crowdsource feedback. I mean, look at how many hundreds of comments we just got in the last three minutes. So there you go. That's a who, not how demonstration. All right, what else should we share before we call it a wrap for today? Should we take any questions or anything? Dan?

Yeah, it was sort of funny. And, you know, you know, Ben really, you know, I mean, Ben did the, you know, the work on this book. There isn't a. There's not a word in the book that was written by me. You know, this is entirely Ben. And so Ben was telling me this was when we were getting near the end. He says, you know, I really went through some sleepless nights. He said, I really had some sleepless nights with this. This book. And I said, well, Ben, of the two, one of us had to be worried about it.

Exactly.

I said I wasn't worried. I wasn't worried. I was completely confident. I was feeling cool, you know.

Yep.

But I could never have written the book. I have to tell you, I read the book, and I said, I couldn't have written this book. It's just not within my bandwidth to, you know, to make this so applicable to everybody who reads the book. I said, I don't. I don't have the ability to do that. And that's the reason why I've never done it.

Yeah, totally, totally. So we'll take one question. If someone has a burning question that you want to ask Dan, go ahead and blurt it out.

Why don't we have Denise? Because Denise was talking when I. When I first came on. So, Denise, always a pleasure to see you. Good to see you, too. You know, I always like to hear, even though I read it, I've got the book. It's always Nice to hear out of your mouth. And, Dean, I didn't know at the.

Time that we were first talking about.

This concept that it started from your conversations together. So that's really cool. We'll have to talk more just because.

I see her on here. Cindy Cashman, she wrote. It's the best business book I have ever read. And I got to tell you the story about Cindy. I don't know, many of you may remember this. So years ago, Cindy created a book written by a Cindy. Are you on? Do you want to tell the story? The quick version of it. So she wrote a book, if you even want to call it writing. It was a headline called Everything Men Know about Women. And when you open the book, all of the pages are blank. And she made millions of dollars off of a blank book because she picked the right headline. And she went to, like. She didn't go to, like, traditional bookstores because in the beginning, they wouldn't care. So I think she would go to hair and nail salons, clothing stores, and she would only sell them boxes of it, and they would do point of purchase things. I remember years ago, when I was in my early 20s, I saw it sitting on it, finally got into bookstores, and I wanted it because I bought the book without even opening it up. And I got to my car to, like, read it. It's like, oh, my God, this is, like the best joke ever. This is awesome. But are you there?

I'm here, Joe.

Did I. Did I explain it? Well, I mean, how.

What?

I mean, it was so good, the concept that you came up with that. But yeah, Cindy, I don't know. It's probably like eight or nine years ago, you came to Genius Network and you gave a talk and you told us.

I think it was 2015, I think five years ago. Yeah, I've been out traveling and exploring the last five years, and I actually bought this. Who, not how, the day it was released.

And.

And it is probably the best business book I have ever read. And I thank you so much, and I'm looking forward to seeing you when I'm in Arizona next month.

Awesome.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. And there's a lot of truth to what you wrote on those pages, Cindy.

I did it as a joke, and I went to just. I had fun. So I guess my unique ability is I love talking to anybody. I love having fun and prove that I could do something that nobody said I could do.

How many copies of that book were ever sold?

Oh, gosh, I don't know. How many millions? Now I know when I sold out in 1995 to Andrews McNeil Publishing, I had personally sold 1.3 million copies myself.

Out of my garage. Wow.

That's so amazing. So amazing. Well, there you go. I mean, there's so much creativity in the world. You just need to identify what you have, what's your skill, who you're the right who for, who can be a who for you. And so I hope all of you leave this. This conversation with a. With a great new perspective, great new insight. I do want to thank my team. We have. There's a lot of people that register for this. There's a lot of Q and A. There's a lot that will come after the fact. I want to thank Tim for always getting on in emceen these beforehand. And Tarna and Denise and Jordan and Chelsea and Gina and Eunice and whoever else in my team, Rakim, that's been directly involved with. With helping with all this. If I. If I left anyone out, then I apologize. Giselle, who's become my new project manager, a whole, whole team of who's behind making this stuff happen.

Who's down in Whoville. You know, you're. You're the connector. So this is. You know, we don't get to connect with these people unless we go through Joe. And so that's tremendous, unique ability. So I just totally appreciate. We appreciate everything you do. And, you know, it's a big future. If it's just about more and more who's that you do. Collaboration with the future always gets bigger than your past with collaboration. And so it's been really great. Cindy, I just want to say one last thing. I bet all 1.3 million books that were purchased were sent to someone else.

I have so many stories I can be sharing about.

You know something, you ought to write a book about the book.

You know, that's a good idea because I do have great stories. A lot of them really, really funny.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yes.

You know, I want to do this too, because, boy, this would be a, like, a really silly thing for me to forget about. I would love whatever you got value out of this. If you could go onto whatever social media you use and if you could talk about this, you know, this book I would love for you. And my Instagram is at Joe Polish. Strategic coaches at Strategic Coach. Dean Jackson is at that. Dean Jackson, Right. It's that Dean Jackson. And I would like to ask Gina or someone on my team to put in his Ben Hardy. Benjamin Hardy, PhD. I think that's his. So if you guys could could go ahead and post on social media about this book because obviously this is such an important concept and we wish you and everyone a wonderful rest of the day or evening, whatever part of the world you're in. And Dan and Ben and Dean, you guys are awesome. So we will see everyone next time.

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