Why Connection Matters in Today's World Feat. Patrick Gentempo

Connection is not infection. I think that's really the central point here is that what's happened is there's been this facilitated paranoia built where suddenly now connecting with each other in varying ways that we might have been used to connecting is equated to infection and risk, et cetera. The consequences of that, I believe, are more adverse than what people might understand.

You were my very first trip. My husband would not let me on a plane, yet I drove from San Francisco to Park City to see you and what, 350 chiropractors and talk a little business? And I gotta say, it was definitely worth the trip to spend time with you and Jeff Hayes and be in your neighborhood. But I want to thank you for spending time with us today. Are you in Park City right now?

I'm in Park City right now, yes.

Okay, there might be a few jealous people in here. I know we all love Perk City, but the reason I asked you to come in is because we themed this meeting connection. And the term I use is connection matters more than anything. And you are an example of connection in many, many ways. You have your communities, you have your wife who you adore, and we all know that a million times over. And then you have connections with Jeff Hayes and creating documentaries. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that. But before that, why don't you introduce yourself to the community? A lot of people know you because you've been part of this community a long time, and you were one of the five people Joe talked to about what it would be like for him to take a sabbatical. So I know how important you are to him. And why don't you introduce yourself and then we'll get a little into what connection matters to you.

Okay. You know, short introduction. I mean, my name is Patrick Giantempo, serial entrepreneur. I started life as a chiropractor more years ago than I can count. While I was in practice, I developed diagnostic technologies. I got some patents on. I ended up going into business. I ran that company, was a diagnostic technology company for 23 years as its CEO. We sold it in 2011, formed a small holding company with my wife Lori, and we started to invest in and develop varying projects, I think. I don't know if I've really kept a good camp, but I probably started about 16 companies. They don't all work, which sometimes learn more from the ones that didn't work than the ones that did. But we've had some really good businesses that have been really fun and did really well. Right now the majority of my business activities are involved in a company called Revealed Films where we make documentary series on a variety of topics. And it's, you know, that's a, how can I put it, A lot of kind of intricate marketing that goes along with that, you know, so it's not just the production of the series, but, you know, how do we get them out into the marketplace and how do you do that profitably? And we've been doing extremely well with that company. It's about five years old. If you had asked me five years ago, or if you had said to me five years ago that my main business activities would be making documentary films, I would have said you're crazy. But because I never did anything like that before, but like many times, what happens, it started as a passion project, the first one where I partnered with Jeff Hayes, who's a documentary filmmaker. And I really wasn't expecting to make money with. I was just hoping that we can get something out in the world that I cared about. And it ended up doing really well. So we said, let's do another one and we did another one and it did really well. So we just kept going and here we are five years later or more. I live in Park City, Utah. My wife Laura, I've got one kid left at home, so three kids, 24, 20 and 17. The 17 year old's still home, the other ones are out on their own and I think that's it.

I love it. The 17 year old's lucky to get you all to themselves. So I'm wondering when you think of the word. I think so, if you think of the word connection, what comes to mind for you both in business and in family?

Here's why this is especially important right now. A big part of my activities have been in healthcare activism. Our civil liberties, our healthcare liberties. This is all being challenged in a big way right now. When you look at, as a matter of fact, we're in the midstar, just completing a docu series on Covid and it's a fairly comprehensive look at it with some extraordinarily brilliant scientists and academicians and physicians and others. And a big part of that conversation of course is around the COVID restrictions, the shutdowns, separations, etc. So I had been thinking about this for a long time because a lot of times there's a single focus right now and it's a little bit of a long answer to your question, Lee, but I think it warrants it. So there's this idea of what we're doing Right now in the form of trying to avoid infection and control Covid and control maybe the amount of cases of COVID severity, cases of COVID et cetera, through varying lockdowns and other type of isolating measures. And early on I recognized that there's a single focus on that and it's not looking at the collateral impact of what's being done and measuring that also and saying, hey, this is a concern too. Even if there is validity to masking, separation, et cetera, especially of a healthy population, we won't get that whole conversation right now because we'll be here from many, many hours. But even if you found that to be valid, you have to say, okay, so what is the impact on the psychological aspects of individuals and how might that impact them? Saying you're trying to protect them from one thing by creating other problems. So what was interesting is we came out of. I was at a genius network meeting and we ended up contemplating this, hiring the draw shop to do. I wrote a script to do a video for us, and I haven't released it yet, and I probably will soon, but the title of the video is Connection is Not Infection. I think that's really the central point here is that what's happened is there's been this facilitated paranoia built where suddenly now connecting with each other in varying ways that we might have been used to connecting is equated to infection and risk, etc. The consequences of that, I believe, are more adverse than what people might understand. We hear these horrific stories about loved ones dying in hospitals and they're dying alone because nobody's allowed to go in and see them and other such things. But in the end, when you look at what is the whole point of being alive, being a human being, being on this planet, and, and having loved ones and people that we care about and. And recognizing that, you know, in the absence of connection, I'm not just. I'm just not sure how much life is worth living that we have to, you know, understand that if we're going to modify our social behaviors around connection, that as evidenced by right now, the fact that we're all here looking at each other on the screen and connecting through this virtual approach towards life, we have to just start to, I think, give a great deal of consideration to what we. What we value in our life, how we value relationships and connections, and then what compensatory actions might we take if we decide that isolation is a good idea? So connection, you know, and I think I saw some of the things going out, you know, they Call it vitamin C, I think. Ned Hallowell, I heard you talk about that. You know, vitamin C is vitamin connection. And the importance of that. I probably don't have to get into all the data and research that's been published on the importance of human beings connecting, how that changes your hormonal balances, lowers cortisol levels, lowers your adrenaline levels, increases parasympathetic function and increases your heart rate variability parameters. The general impact of health and well being is absolutely enhanced through meaningful connection with other human beings. And converse is also true that isolation starts to create depression, increased cortisol levels, sympathetic bias, and all these other things that are very detrimental to not only your psychological health, but your physical health and well being. I happen to live in Park City, Utah. Most people spend their time outdoors here. I'm out in a mountain bike and hiking and so on, and nobody's masking around here and people are able to connect and see each other and there's generally a good vibe here. But in my travels, when I've gone like, you know, last couple of times I've been out in LA or in New York and other places, I. It was a reminder to me that there's entire populations of people living in a disconnected way and there's this, this, this undercurrent of dread that one experiences when they're in those environments. And I think if that becomes a chronic thing, that it starts to adversely affect a person's health and well being in measurable ways.

So how are you managing your connections in your family and keeping safe within your community?

So for myself personally, I don't have really concern about COVID I'm deep, deep, deep into the data and the risks and all that kind of stuff. And there are some people who should be concerned. There are people at risk. But for me, for young kids, et cetera, my children, I just don't, I don't have a concern about it. So I don't let it inhibit me from living my life the way that I want to live it. Certainly there are some life is normal.

As it was before COVID You're just living your life as regular.

Maybe some minor modifications depending on circumstance, but for the most part, the answer to that question is yes, as normal as it can be within the context of the varying restrictions that are put on people. In other words, when you're in federal areas like airports and airplanes, you're going to be masked and all that kind of stuff, but you just roll with that. But as far as my own personal behaviors and habits and interactions with the people that are closest to me and the people I love. No, there's no, I'm not really changing any of that or haven't really changed any of that.

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

Okay, so Covid aside, we'll take that out of the conversation for right now. How about the connection with your community? Because you have so many communities, you're developing movies, you have your chiropractic community, you have people that are following you. How are you connecting in a powerful and meaningful way with them right now?

Well, this is an important question because there's obviously the personal connections, but you are correct from the business side. My email list is roughly about 2 million people. And it's not a single community. There's. There's a lot of sub communities within the group and they have varying interests. Everything from our people have more. The financial interest and money revealed and some of the other finance and money oriented docuseries. We have the varying health docu series that we've done, docu series on cancer, docu series on supplements, docu series on vaccines and Covid and so on. And they even have sort of their subgroups. We did one called Christ Revealed, so that that entire community is sort of a subset as well as others. What I had done recently, which may be something of consideration for the people here, is you need to nurture these communities when you're communicating with the list. And I realized that having generic nurture content for these lists isn't really serving them properly. They signed up, you know, to watch some of our series, which means they have particular interest. And certainly you can kind of. And for a while it was okay, here's some nurture content that we're going to give to this group. And it might be a video I'd make, it might be some things that we wrote, some things that we put out there, considerations. But I realized that, wow, people came on to be a part of a community because each docuseries breeds its own community. Yet now they're getting content on something that's separate from that. And I think it becomes somewhat of a non sequitur. And so what we did about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, as I made a new hire. I brought somebody in to be a director of community content. And we created five different buckets. We were able to identify the total 2 million list, but say that each of the people on that list fall into one of five buckets. Maybe some of them fall into more than one of the five buckets. And now we started to create specific content that was based upon what bucket they're in which, which we understand their interest. And that's how we start out now with list management. And, you know, this bunny hole can run pretty deep. You start to look at when you're sending things out now, okay, is, you know, who in that list is clicking this type of an offer or this type of a content piece. And now you can create kind of sub buckets out of that. And that's. Well, I'll say this opposite. What most people do, that's below my pay grade. So, meaning I push that down to somebody who runs that for us in our company. But nonetheless, I have an understanding that we have to pay attention to such things in order to keep people engaged and to have a sense of community. And I think to your point earlier, because I know that Covid as a conversation is a very polarizing subject. So it's probably not. This isn't the forum for it. But the one thing that we can all understand is that I think Covid, no matter what your point of view is about it, should have you paying more attention to connection with your, whether it's through email list, whether it's through direct contact or what have you than the type of attention you're paying prior to Covid. So our business and our audiences were there before COVID ever existed. And I will say that the need for connection on a deeper and more meaningful level in Covid has escalated compared to what it was before COVID Brilliant.

I agree with you 100%. One of the topics we talked about earlier is what are we going to do 2022 and beyond? And we talked a little bit about health. We talked some about time management. We also talked about cryptocurrency and NFTs. When you're looking at building your Plan 2022 and beyond, what's popping up for you right now?

So here's the main thing, and it's almost a little bit counterintuitive to this conversation, but in 2022, my expectation is to be half as busy and twice as effective. And there's been, I think, over time, which is very typical of entrepreneurs, to connect, connect, connect and like, for example, traffic and Conversion, you know, big conference that's very relevant to our business happened last week, and I had a bunch of people say, hey, I'm going to see at tnc. Are you going to be there? And my answer is no. I want to turn down the noise. And yes, I could have gone there and connected with a bunch of people, but it's not the type of connecting I think that's important, important right now. And I will say that at this phase of my life and my career, my connect, the connection that's most important to me, and it's just the phase I'm in is connecting with myself. Because what happens is that when we get really busy and we're out there trying to chase opportunity, and a lot of times we're chasing that opportunity through connection, we start to connect less with ourselves. We stay busy and distracted. I believe we get much less connected spiritually, which is very important to me. So I spend a lot more time meditating than I used to, you know, so in meditation and prayer, I think, you know, so there's, there's. There's those spiritual connections, I think are very, very important. And, and in my mind, you know, we're saying no to a lot. We're being much less social. And what I'm finding is that as I start to connect deeper within myself and understand myself, my spiritual purpose in life and these things, that it reminds me. I guess the best way to summarize it is something that I wish I give proper attribution. It might be Marianne Williamson, but I'm not sure. But the quote goes something like this. Great people aren't people who do a lot. Great people are people around whom much gets done. And so for me, having to be the runaround, busy rainmaker. And in decades of my career, I was traveling 150,000 miles a year. I was lecturing for audiences all over the world. I was doing nothing but connecting constantly. But. And that was the right thing for me to do in those phases of my life. But when you start talking about what I'm doing for 2022, I'm doing a lot less. And it doesn't mean that I'm wanting to be less effective. I'm doing a lot less so that I can be more effective.

I love it. So, of course, with Joe being on sabbatical, that's been a topic here, is just even having a sabbatical. And we've had people in the room that had a sabbatical up to 10 years. Some of them who mark, they just finished the sabbatical and even Hal said he's just getting through his sabbatical right now. He started in August and he's going to take it through the end of the year. Have you ever taken a sabbatical or do you have comments or ideas about that?

Well, you know, it's. So, yes, in a sense of what I think different people define sabbatical in different ways and what that really means, you know, because I'm looking at. I thought what Joe meant by sabbatical was one thing, but I think. I think actually not observing him now since his start, Ms. Sabbatical is something different than what I thought it was going to be. And I'm in pretty good communication with him and I'm constantly entertained and I especially like to give him a hard time. But. So the answer is, it's timely, your question. We decided, for example, with revealed, that we are going to go dark as far as production for three months, December, January and February, which we're usually like, we're grinding out a lot of production on an ongoing basis. We have a full film studio. We got a staff of editors and people to keep busy and so on and so forth. And we just said, you know what, let's take three months down. And it doesn't mean that. So that wouldn't be a pure sabbatical insofar as saying we're going to do nothing related to the business, but for the most part, it's run by the people who run it. And if we're not producing, there's not much for me to do. And we're going to take that time down. And that's kind of like, I think, a step in that direction. When I sold the company that I ran for 23 years, CLA in 2011, probably six, eight months, took off to kind of just figure out what the next step was going to be or steps would be. And that was another time when we took the kind of an extended period of downtime. I never characterized them as sabbaticals, but in some respect, you can almost look at them being that way. And in that there's adventure. As far as saying, okay, I mean, to me, what I think the sabbatical idea is is saying you have a normal pattern of behavior that you've been running for some period of time and you need to step outside of that and go have new experiences that stimulate your creativity and your imagination and also maybe get some rest and recovery if that's what you need, if you've been driving hard for a while. And so to me, that's kind of what the sabbatical thing is. So I have had episodes of those. I've never done it, I don't think for a full year, but probably six to eight months is the longest. And I got a three month one coming up and I plan on doing a lot of skiing.

Oh, yeah, I figured you're in the right place for that. I want to open up for any questions in the room. We have a couple minutes and then we'll have Joel come on and wrap it up at the end. Anybody have anything they want to ask?

I'd be curious to hear his thoughts.

On having your children get vaccinated.

Okay.

In two sentences or less, do you want to share your thoughts on about. I will say I was in the airport yesterday and I was thinking to myself that kids two and under are now seeing all these faces with masks on and they connect through human faces in their first two years more than anything. So I know there's going to be repercussions in our entire society that we can't imagine right now. But Patrick, while you're there around vaccination, do you have thoughts about children and vaccinations? In two sentences.

So the idea of vaccinating children, if you're talking about the COVID vaccine is an absurdity. It's an absolute absurdity. And you watch our whole series, one of the guys interviewed is Robert Malone, who invented the MRNA vaccine technology. And so these are not just my opinions, these are the opinions of probably the most premier experts. So it's absurd, it's absurd to get even if you think the vaccine's a good idea. It was just that I'm not vaccinated, my family's not vaccinated, and I can't explain why in two sentences. But even if you think it's a good idea, it's a bad idea if you are a kid, especially because kids have almost virtually no risk. And then secondly, if you've had natural Covid, if you have natural immunity, I'm going to really, really, really encourage you not to get vaccinated. They're showing now that it erases your natural immunity. And it's something that would be really bad for your immune system because it's going to overwhelm it. So I'll just leave you with that. But so that's, that's more than two sentences, but hopefully constrictive enough. And yet next month, if you, if you watch Covid Revealed, you'll get the details.

That would be the big thing, is watch the Experts in Covid reveal that is coming out. They've been working on it for a long time. Did a lot of research. I believe in the research. I've been to the studio. I've actually been in one of the documentaries with you. And I see how professional you and the team are. It's just extraordinary work. So I want to thank you. Joel Weldon, are you there that you can come on and talk to us?

Lee, thank you.

Joel. Stick on, Patrick. Joel's going to go ahead and give us a little debrief on our conversation.

Patrick, got five quick things for you. We should always introduce you. The reason is when you introduce yourself, first of all, you're not going to give the full impact of your great genius and ability. Somebody else is, because you're a modest guy. So introductions are so important. That's why Joe has had me write all of these introductions for our speakers. Even though this was maybe a last minute thing that would help.

It wasn't.

Oh, it wasn't. Okay.

We planned it.

Now we have 10% of our audience is brand new, so they don't know anything about what's happening. So with 11 new members, that would be an important thing. You had the best eye contact to the camera, but you have a habit of wandering eyes and you're like looking for notes on the ceiling and the floor. So keep your eyes on your audience and oh, let me see. Who is that guy? If you do something like that, that's very natural. Third suggestion. Your background. I know there's five sculptors. I've sculptors. I figured out three out of the five. I'm curious about the others. It's distracting. So one of the things you need to think of is anything that can distract Will. So maybe a simpler background if you do a lot on the zoom side or the virtual side. Fourth suggestion. You had such great flow and passion and clarity of the ideas. But I didn't get the sense you were talking to me and the 120 other people on the call. I thought you were talking to Lee. So one of the things would be. So does this make sense as you're listening to this? Are my comments relevant to what you're doing or how would you have acted if that happened to you? And just dropping those in. So the audience is drawn in by that one very important word, the you factor. Because it's all about your audience. It's not about you. And then the final thing was, what's the call to action? So how about you end this by telling us based on everything we just Heard. What should we do that the answer will be from everyone that you're talking to? Well, I can do that, Dr. Patrick.

Watch the movie. Watch the movie. So, Patrick, thank you. I just want to say that's not only a gift for you, that's for all of us that speak. We hear these notes so that we know how to take those into our life and into our speeches as well. But this is one of the favorite parts of the meeting, is all of us get to learn from the presentation and how to make it even better. So I hope that's a gift for you as well. Go ahead, Patrick.

Yeah. And just for clarity, my understanding is I wasn't giving a presentation for coming, for to be interviewed or to have this fireside chat. So I didn't. I didn't. I didn't come with a prepared, you know, presentation, which I would handle very differently.

Can I just stop you. Can I just stop you right there, Patrick?

Yeah.

Anytime you're talking to a client, a customer, a prospect, or an audience, you're making a presentation. It has to start somewhere. It doesn't have to be a sales presentation, but a call to action means what do you want the audience to do or think or feel? And if you do that every time you speak, whether it's one on one on the dinner presentation, it's got to end somehow. So just think of that every time you're speaking, you are making a presentation. Now let's hear that call to action.

Yeah, I guess I didn't. Joe, I didn't show up with an agenda to say I'm calling them to an action. I don't have an agenda for a call to action. I guess so. I don't know what to call them. 2. Alex, how are you? So, did I give you a call to action? Popped in from nowhere. Yeah. So the call to action is go give Alex a hug if you're there. Yeah.

Well, what if your call to action was this based on what you've heard in this casual interview with Lee? Number one, verify the information you're getting and make sure it's accurate. That's what documentaries do, and that's what we do as a filmmaker, is try to get you the right information. You can do the same without being a documentarian, per se. Number two, based on that information you hear, decide what you're going to do about it, because all that counts is results. And make it a wonderful day. And thank you, Lee.

Okay.

It could be something as simple as that.

Well, I would agree with what you just said. I Think you just did it for me.

That was your closing. Very good. Your call to action. Lee, I want to say one thing before Alex does. This is Patrick's book, the latest book, your Stand Is yous Brand. And there's a particular testimonial back here. It's from Joe Polish. I want to read this. If you care about anything in your life, your business or your planet, read this book now. I have a hard copy of it.

It's so good. Thank you for that.

Thank you, Patrick, for that. Alex wanted to connect with you right now.

Okay. Thank you, Patrick. And I didn't expect you to be here and I'm glad you're here. I just texted Lori, your wife, and she's in Sedona, which is not far away from where we're standing right now. The question I have for you and I look this as a one person panel. I didn't look at it as a 10 minute talk. So what Joel said, in deference to him, I agree. But at the same time it was a conversation. So I just look at it differently than a 10 minute talk. So I want to be fair to you and what you expected. My question to you is overcoming adversity. I know you and we have been mastermind partners for over 15 years. We've traveled all over the world overcoming adversity. Before you got that 2 million person list. Can you just be a little vulnerable and talk about the adversity you've overcome when you thought this is over and then you overcame that? Because I was there for that. And I think some people need to hear that because we sneak away from it. How's it going? It's going great, but it's not always the case. So if you can just spend maybe 100 seconds on that, that would be great.

Well, you know, there's varying forms of adversity. Right. And thank you, Alex. That's, I think probably the most important question or one of the most important questions a person can ask is dealing. You know, we all, when, when everything's smooth sailing, you know, not too difficult to keep going. But when adversity comes, that's, that's kind of a big deal. And probably, and I've had my share of it over time, you know, as, you know, probably typical entrepreneurial adversity. Sometimes though, that adversity comes in the forms of taking a stand on some of the things that we're putting out, getting canceled off of social media, which we have been with some of our series and other such things. And to me, I think the Most important lesson I've learned when I'm dealing with circumstances that seem very compromising is to reflect and double down on purpose. A lot of times when things aren't going sideways, aren't going well, there's pressures, there's existential threats to your business or your finances. There comes a time when you start to maybe look at taking opportunity over values, meaning that you start to chase opportunities rather than reflecting on your values and not wandering off the reservation. So at times when it seems the most difficult to do it, it's to get. When I feel like things are. The wheels are coming off, it's time to reflect, to remind myself of my purpose, to reaffirm it, and then double down on it. Put everything into that purpose and let the purpose be the cause and the prosperity be the effect. And I can say that that's never failed me in my life. It's the hardest time to say no to opportunity when it's not aligned with your values and your purpose. When things aren't going well, it's. It's tough when somebody's calling you a baby, when people are posting things calling you a baby killer and a conspiracy theorist, and, you know, you're taking a lot of heat, which I have. But. But in the end, I always go reflect back onto my purpose, and I'll double down on my purpose any day to try to deal with any of that type of adversity that comes at.

Me and being resilient again. I love it. So, Patrick, I want to thank you personally for joining us. And yes, it is a Fireside Chat. I agree that it was just a conversation. I do think the entire group learns from Joel's notes. So thank you for being a part of that with us. And I want to wish you and Laurie the best in everything you do. And we will be sharing the link. Gina, right. For the movie when it's released. In the notes right now, she shared some other links to other documentaries that you've done, so people can check in on that as well.

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. Go ahead.

You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.