Why HIGH-ACHIEVERS Need TIME OFF: Joe Polish & Dr. Benjamin Hardy Explain!

What I want to do is I want to eliminate any unnecessary complexity in my life so that I can just.

I think that's what high functioning people do is they eliminate complexity. Right. It's that quote from Leonardo da Vinci. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And it even reminds me of Steve Jobs. He said innovation comes by saying no to a thousand things. And that he's more proud of what he said no to than he said yes to. Right. I think even just one last quote is if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. That's Marshall Goldsmith. So I think you're doing so many beautiful things to eliminate unneeded complexity. I think that that was your point is unnecessary complexity.

Right, right. And by doing that, I will be able to approach things in a better state of mind and I'll be way more effective with what I do for work. Hello, this is Joe Polish and I have got my dear friend Benjamin Hardy, the author of, you know, Willpower Doesn't Work. Personality is impermanent. Who not how. Amazing writer.

One day. One day we will write a book called the First Domino together, Joe.

Yes, we will. We will. So you know, Ben, this is gonna be an interesting podcast. So we're recording this for a podcast for a video on YouTube for people that know me, people that don't know me.

I'll end up flipping this into multiple articles.

Yeah, exactly. So let me frame it. So Ben is an incredible writer. So he writes for. I'm going to let Ben rattle off all the different places he writes for I don't know how many years you were the number one writer in the world on medium.com. his blogs have been read literally by millions of people. He's not just a Genius Network member, but he's a dear friend PhD, super bright guy and an incredible writer. And we've had him on podcasts before on all my different podcasts from Genius Network to I love marketing. I think he's even been a guest on 10X Talk. He's given many presentations at Genius Network. And so what we're going to do with this conversation and we wanted to document it because it might be useful for you if you're thinking about what we're going to talk about. Also he's going to be able to take what we are doing here and he'll write about it not only from the conversation here, but or from conversations that we had before we're doing this and then after. So it's a way that Ben can assemble and write which Ben, I'd like you to speak about. So what's the quick bio from your standpoint of who you are and what you do?

Yeah. Happy friend of Joe Polish. I will say one thing from the beginning is when I was in 2017, I got my first book deal for what became Willpower doesn't work. I got $225,000 for that book deal. That was the first real money I'd ever made. And the first place I went with that money was to Genius Network because I had known about Genius Network for a few years, and it had been my dream to join. And the moment I joined Genius Network, you know, my business transformed. I had already had. I was already making a ton of subscribers and stuff like that as a writer, but I didn't know how to make money, and Genius Network taught me how to do that, which I'm really grateful for. But just for some basic stats, my wife and I live in Orlando, Florida. We have six kids. We adopted three from the foster system, had some twins, and then recently had a little boy. And we're definitely done. My wife actually gave me permission to that. We're done. So that's really. I like removing decision fatigue. You know what I mean? And like, one of my favorite quotes from Michael Jordan as he said that whenever you make it, he said, whenever I made a decision, I never thought about it again. And so now I don't ever have to think about that again. My blog's been read over 100 million times, published many places, and just really, I just like learning. I love being around people like Joe. Love. I like collaboration, and I like. I like the opportunity to have conversations with people like Joe and then turning it into valuable assets which are beneficial to all parties.

Yeah. Well, you're awesome, Ben. And the fact that you're almost a couple decades younger than me, I can't wait to see how much more successful you become in all different areas than I have in my life. So we'll see. We'll see if I can.

I don't know, man. You. You help a lot of people in a lot of ways. Joe, I wouldn't be who I am or where I'm at without you.

So thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So here's the funny thing about what we're doing today. So usually I would be interviewing Ben, but in this particular case, he's going to interview me, and we're going to talk about something crazy that I'm doing. So to give some context around this, this is right before Christmas, a couple days. So tomorrow's Christmas Eve at the time we're doing this 2020. And as many people know, whenever they're watching this, even if they watch this, you know, 20 years from now. This year has been the year of the pandemic of so much political unrest, so much crazy stuff going on. It's been an intense year in my life. I run Genius Network. I have different companies, also have a foundation called Genius Recovery. And the last couple of years have been pretty intense. I mean, I have a great life. I'm very grateful. I'm fortunate in so many ways. I also work very hard. And last year was one of the most difficult years of the last decade, maybe last couple decades of my life. I was ill, I had a breakup. One of my best friends died. Several people in my life have passed away. It bled into this pandemic year. And it's been really intense. And because of the work I do with addiction recovery, I tend to be quite empathetic. And I'm talking to people all the time that are suffering and struggling and depressed with anxiety. They're losing things, they're losing their sobriety. They. They're just having difficulties. And we do a lot of work in this area. Ben's actually been quite involved and very helpful with the addiction recovery work that we do. And so I got to something happened where I decided I needed to take a sabbatical. And so I've been talking with Ben and he's going to interview me and go through some different things about the sabbatical because a lot of people are asking questions about it. I think in a lot of ways, I don't even know the degree that it's inspired people. But I from the personal feedback I get when I announced that I was doing a sabbatical and I even set up a website, joesabbatical.com where you can probably not only see this, maybe people will watch this video there if I decide to put it up after we do it. But we have other conversations even including the first one I did with Dan Sullivan, who Ben and Dan have written a book together, by the way. So once I announced, somehow gave a lot of entrepreneurs permission to really take a look at doing a sabbatical. So some people I even had share with me, I'm going to do a sabbatical this year. Other people have said I want to make it my goal. And so Ben's going to just ask me questions about this. And it's done to, for one, help him create an article about this. Not only the content here, but some other conversations he had. But on top of that, it's going to help me think through even more my sabbatical, because I. Yeah, there's ways that I've thought about this, and it starts on January 1st, and my goal is to do a one year sabbatical. I don't think I needed that much in terms of initially thinking about it, but that's what I decided because I probably do need that much. And so, Ben, I'll let you ask me whatever you want in any way you want, and I'll do my best to respond to it.

Yeah, I have so many thoughts immediately already off, just. Just off the cuff. So basically my perspective of this is Joe Polish, one of the most connected people in business, runs a very successful business, many businesses, is, you know, leaving. So I guess the first question is, Joe, how are you defining this sabbatical, like, for you? You already said January 1st of 2021. What does that actually mean for the next year? Like, what does that actually look like for you? I know that you don't know all the things you're gonna be doing during that time, but what does it actually mean to you to, like, what's different? What's gonna be different about this year for you?

I want. One of the main things I want to do is I want to eliminate obligations that on some level, I'm either biochemically attached to in the same way that you get a dopamine hit from doing certain things or activities or eating certain foods, but, you know, it's really not all that good for you. And there's a conversation that me and Dan Sullivan have had, you know, a few times on our podcast. And the line is, entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves. And I have found myself, even in the midst of all of the stuff that I do, so tightly scheduled and so many requests. And I'm a person that has a really hard time saying no, even though for what I do, I have to say no. I mean, I say no to a lot of, lot of stuff. I mean, my company gets anywhere from, you know, look, on a. On a low day, maybe five or 10 requests, but on average 50 to 200 requests, sometimes a week, sometimes every day. And leading up to this because of. I'm a very relational person. I mean, in my, on my phone, I have over 5600 contacts with people that I know personally. Now, I don't talk to all those 5,000 people. Some of these are people I haven't talked to in years. But for the most part, I'm interacting with hundreds of people almost weekly, just in some way, even if it's a quick text or whatever. We've got a couple hundred members in Genius Network. Then we have our 100k group, which you're part of. And so I have a lot of clients, but also have a lot of relationships. And then you put in the recovery work. I mean, I'm very involved in a lot of stuff. Most people are like, how the heck do you do it? For me, it's just what I do. I don't think of it like, how do I do it? It's just kind of what I do. It's kind of like going to a fish and saying, how does a fish be a fish? I mean, they're fish, right? So that's sort of what I do. A sabbatical, though there's many ways to define it. There's a book that was written many years ago called Six Months Off. There's another book that one of my members has sent me called Sabbath. You know, there's the origins of it. You can look up what a sabbatical means if you look up just a search online. Most of it's going to be related to work and taking time off. A lot to do with academia and professors where they do a sabbatical and go write a book, or they work on a different project, or they just don't work at all. And everyone I talk to has an idea of what a sabbatical is for them. And everyone thinks they're right, which is funny. So I have a lot of people trying to dispense advice to me on what a sabbatical is. But for me, it was a way for me to just sort of cut things off. And what I mean by cut things off is all the communications, all the active work things. Am I going to just sit around and do nothing? Absolutely not. I mean, I will be a busy guy, but I'm going to immerse myself to the best of my abilities in music, in art, in health, and in recovery work, because those are the things that are interesting. But I'm also going to meditate. I'm also going to ponder. I'm also going to give my brain just a lot of space to just sit and think and not be so scheduled and not have to do something. It's obligation elimination. If I could just take two words, and as you've been in this room where I'm at right now, I've got all these gaping void images behind me. There's one on the side that says Be willing to destroy anything in your life that is not excellent. And the key word is willing. There's a lot of things in my life that are great. There's a lot of things that are excellent, and there's a lot of things that suck and I don't like. And at one point in time, I allowed people, projects, beliefs, activities into my life. I felt they were important or I just, for whatever reason, I was susceptible to their seduction or their influence because it seemed like a good idea. And I just, I just want to prune, I want to edit, I want to purge, I want to minimize, I want to eliminate stuff that does not bring me joy. You know, so it's a combination of maybe like some Maria Kondo, you know.

Kind of Marie Kondo in your life for a year, right?

Well, there's part of that which has to do with maybe organizing stuff, and the other is sort of minimizing stuff, eliminating stuff. But I really want to get rid of the things that are not gold coins. And as you know, Ben, I mean, I teach people how to have an elf business, easy, lucrative and fun versus a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. And some people somehow thinks that everything in my life is always elf. Of course not. I mean, in order to have anything that is elf all the time, I mean, for one, I've never seen it happen. But you certainly can make marketing more elf people, more elf activities, more elf how you do things. And I'm also of the belief that some of the best things in life, you know, that you will value are earned. You put effort into them to get in great physical shape. You're going to have to exert effort and you're going to have to exert, you know, energy. And if your energy is drained, no matter, even if you have elf people and elf activities, it doesn't seem elf. It doesn't feel elf it because it's tiring, it's draining. And so the, you know, on a personal level, elf could be easy, liberating and fun. Half could be hard, annoying, lame and frustrating, or hard, annoying, lucrative and frustrating. So there are ways to make money, but you bleed, you make trade offs that just aren't enjoyable. And so the way that I think about the sabbaticals, I want to cut off a lot of communications. So I just don't feel obligated to have to respond to stuff. I want to rest. I got burnt out. I really got burnt out. And I think the, the business stuff is good. The addiction recovery thing, which I always quote this Subtitle from a book on workaholism, which is Workaholism is a respectable addiction. It's very seductive because you can hide behind workaholism with productivity, with making money, with people liking you, with fame. And that really feeds the ego. And the ego for anyone that publicly puts themselves out there, has to run a company, has to lead people. Deals with difficult topics, which certainly I do. I mean, I talk very openly about addiction recovery. I deal with very high level people. Some that are loved, some that are not loved. You know, I mean, I'm around that sort of world and so ego is just part of the game. But the ego could be very damaging. Ego could be very dangerous. And I want to sort of smoke out the parts of me that requires or desire external validation from other people. Everyone keeps asking me, where are you going to go? Where are you going to go? There's this video that I watched for a guy teaching breathing. And the very last way that he ended this video, he said he was talking about breath work is that some doors, the only way you can open them is from the inside. So this is not a. I have to travel somewhere. I have to go somewhere. Will I Maybe, probably. We're in the middle of a pandemic. It's not as easy to travel. I don't have this big desire, like, I have to go see something. I want to see the world through a different lens. I want to experience life in a different way. Will I remove myself from my environment? Yeah, of course. I mean, you wrote a great book. Willpower doesn't work. The environment is critical. However, I also will change the environment that I'm in, just without all of the activity. Because you can be in a great environment, but if you're staring at a phone, getting 100 text messages in a day, you could be in an ashram or you can be meditating and all of a sudden you've shifted the environment because of the introduction of something. I mean, if a dog comes into the middle of a room and poops in the middle of the room, it's kind of changed the environment. So metaphorically speaking, there's a lot of crap that people have in their environments that throw them off. And you can speak way more eloquently about that than me. So, yeah, so my thing is the sabbaticals to, as my friend David Box says. And I set up a website, joesabbatical.com like I mentioned. And I actually have that video. David gave a talk in 2015 at the Genius Network annual event. And he talked about how he took a one year sabbatical in 2013. And it was interesting because that year I introduced him to Bob Roth who taught him transcendental meditation. And, and David has told me that was one of the most, if not the most valuable thing he'd ever done to make him feel good. So he's been a very consistent meditator and he was burnt out. I mean, David, this guy has been on Oprah numerous times, he's sold a few million books, he's had numerous New York Times bestsellers. And he had just gotten burnt out. And he tells the story. It's a 10 minute talk. Everyone should just go watch it. They can type in, you know, David box sabbatical in Tenney search engine and find it. But we put it up there and he talked about he didn't just recharge his batteries, he replaced them. And so over the last few months I've been talking to people that have, who I respect, that have very good ideas with sabbatical, most people have not done it. I mean, I have a friend, Evan, who, you know, who said no one in this industry has really done this. He goes, the people that say they have, it's really, they went bankrupt. They went bankrupt and they basically call it a sabbatical. He goes, but you're the first one that I've seen that is doing something like this. You know, I'm not the first one. Maybe however you want to categorize the industry. But I'm hoping that I can just build a level of energy reserves that currently I feel depleted, that I can experience things that I don't yet know what I'm going to experience. Because I believe that no matter how much I try to plan it, you know, here's what I want, here's what I hope and we can talk about all that. You can ask me about all those because I have ideas of what I'd like. I believe that something's going to happen when I'm not looking for it that's going to be more valuable, more important, more insightful than anything. I could go into this in my current, you know, level of thinking similar to the Einstein quote. The same level of thinking that created the problem is not same level of thinking needed to solve it. So I want to change, you know, and you wrote this book, personality is impermanent. I mean, I want to, I want to become a new person. And that doesn't mean I don't like the person I am. I want to become a enhanced version, a different version I want to, you know, hopefully look back and say, wow, you know, I was doing this. I was having this conversation with Ben and I was actually saying some of that stupid, you know, like, I really believe that and, you know, some hope that I could maybe look back at this and say that was kind of idiotic, but not be, like, bothered by it. Not by, like, judging. Oh, my God. You know, I certainly, you know, I certainly want to improve myself in the same way that my company, Genius Network, is really about building a better entrepreneur and about reducing suffering, you know, and connecting. I want to be more connected with myself. I want to be more connected with, you know, music and art and recovery and health. The issues are in the tissues. I want to, you know, work on things in my body. Something like my body's been. It's been hurting in some ways, not just physical, but just, you know, there's something. And so it's. It's a feeling that's hard to express and explain, but there was a. There was a calling for it. And so anyway, I can ramble endlessly about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I have so many dang questions. So to get. So basically, I have three sets of questions. One is, what. What permanent changes do you want to see? You know what? Because obviously you don't want. I love the quote from David Bock. It's not about just recharging batteries, but it's actually, like, what. It's about resetting them, you said Replacing them. Replacing them. And so what I. So it's not about you going away for a year and then coming back and going back to how life is now. It's about having a transformational experience. And so I guess one question I have is. And I know you might not have all the answers to this, but to the extent you have answers, what permanent changes in your life do you want this to create? So that whether it be starting next week or in a year or five years, what are the permanent changes you want this sabbatical to create, moving forward? So it's not just a. You're going to go back to how things are.

Well, for one, I want to sleep better. Even though I know a lot about sleep and I'm friends with some of the best sleep experts in the world. I want to be able to sleep better. I want to be able to experience my parasympathetic nervous system in a more relaxed state. Even though I meditate, even though I exercise, even though I'm a clean eater, even though I am engaged in very positive work that I Love and helps people. And I definitely get a lot of compliments, a lot of feedback, which makes me feel really good. It's hard for me sometimes to take it in. It's almost like your body doesn't digest food because you've eaten too much. Well, too much of anything can cause opportunity in digestion. Right. And so there's a lot of that. So I need to lean things out, and I want to have more of a lean life. And I don't just mean physically, I mean mentally. And so in terms of things that will change, I think the things that are going to change the most are probably going to be something I will come up with. I will address that. Will, in my mind, will be one of the hardest things to let go. I mean, you've. We can talk about books all day long. Like the Art of War by my friend Steven Pressfield. Resistance Letting Go by David Hawkins. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. The Power and now by Eckhart Tollen. You know, I mean, these are All Breath by my new friend James Nestor. You know, there's all of these ways of thinking, experience, and being in life. But, you know, here's what's kind of.

Funny, because sounds like you're going to be letting go of a lot of attachments anyways. Keep going.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, but here's the thing, and I might ask you to do this for me a couple times, because just you asking me these questions, which is really weird, and, you know, I can ramble and go on a bunch of ways, and I usually bring it back. I'm gonna. I may ask you to ask me the question one more time.

Yeah, you would not be. You would be blown away how many questions I've recently developed just listening to you talk. So one of them is, what permanent changes do you want to get out of this? You know, just as a quick example, permanent changes do you want. Because just as a quick thought, I've written a lot to the idea of, like, for example, I have a friend who had a weight problem, you know, and he was like, ben, I'm gonna go off sugar for a year. And I'm like, okay, so what's gonna happen after that year? You're just gonna go back and he's like. He realized that he needed to make permanent changes. And so I'm just wondering, like, you know, obviously you're going to do this. You're gonna go have a transformational experience, and what are the permanent changes that you want to make? One of them, you said, is get Better sleep, which I know is very important to you, Joe. And so just so that when you come back, there's going to be a slightly different Joe. You're still going to be Joe Polished. We're all going to love you. There's aspects of you that are going to be the same, but there's aspects of you, they're going to be fundamentally different. And people shouldn't expect that you're going to go back to doing things the way you used to do them in various ways of your life and business. And I'm just wondering some of those permanent changes that you either want to get out of this or hope to get out of this.

Yeah, I want more clarity on where I put my time, attention and my energy. Right. Because you can spend time, you can spend money, you can spend energy. And I want my attention better focused on people and with things that make the most difference and really allow me to get into a flow state as much as possible. I want to learn how to, how to actually get to flow. I want to be careful about saying hack because I think a lot of people hack can also be an excuse for half assing things or thinking that you can somehow shortcut stuff. And certainly there are shortcuts. There are certainly ways to, you know, get someone quicker. I mean, if you want to cross, you know, a river and there's no bridge, you know, a bridge would be, you know, a shortcut, but it has to be built. So there are certain bridges that will get me to where I want to go that I haven't had the time in order to build. And that may be in a physical way, that may be in an intellectual way, an emotional way. I want to build my emotional resilience, which also requires my energy because it's really hard sometimes. I found myself incredibly sad and depressed at different times during this year. And in my past I've absolutely had suicidal thoughts. When I was in my worst state of being a drug addict, I didn't want to exist, but I didn't want to take my life at the same time. I would just spend hours contemplating how to cease existing, which is not a fun place to be in. It's a terrible, lonely, suffering, angst ridden place to be in. So I still have scar tissue from that. I still have remnants of just the memories that still bother me. I still have ruminating thoughts that it's kind of like fantasy recall in destructive ways from addiction. I've worked through so much of that, but when I talk to other people about it, I'm reminded how difficult life can be. And one of the most difficult things is when you have shame attached to it because you can be wealthy, you can not be someone that's lost their job, or you have a house and a roof over your head and you can still feel absolutely miserable. And when you're in a place where you're not operating on survival only, but you still don't feel good about yourself, then what is pain is a messenger. And so I want to be able to be able to pick up on what are the messages of pain when I've, you know, as you know, we've had a lot of conversations about Dr. John Sarno's work and Steve Ozanich, who wrote about.

I've had recent tms. Yeah, TMS in my knee and in my back. I've had it recently.

Yeah. Right before my sabbatical. My right side of my body has been hurting my arm. And I know it's psychosomatic, I know it's TMS tension Myel Neurosyndrome Mind Body Syndrome, you know, first originally coined by John Sarno. And there is so much physical pain in the world that's caused by repressed emotions, predominantly anger and rage that causes oxygen deprivation in the muscles, tendons, ligaments, which cause people to hurt. And even though I'm aware of what causes this and most doctors don't even understand this, I mean, I've helped so many doctors get out of physical pain by explaining there's this emotional component to it. I want to better calibrate my own body so permanently. I want to have better boundaries, I want to sleep better, I want to be able, as I get older because, you know, I'll be 53 in a couple of months, I want to be able to have a better connection with my own body, my own energy levels, so I can avoid whirlpools that my current level of thinking doesn't even see them. Want to be able to smoke out narcissists and people that are presenting themselves as genuine and authentic, but are anything but. You know, my thoughts because we've had private conversations. There's a lot of amazing great people in the, you know, personal development space, if you want to call it that.

The self help influencer world, you know, online influence.

Exactly. And I, and I sort of have, you know, I mean I've. I have some cynicism, a lot of it towards that. I don't usually express it, but there's a part of me that's like, I just. There's so many people that present themselves as authentic in the world that are just agendas and you know, frankly, takers and narcissists and they don't really care about anyone, but they present themselves like they do and it's very self serving. And as you know, I really have done my best to build Genius Network is a group of givers. And we even see people become better because they see clearly the benefits of being a useful person. And instead of using people, they utilize people. Instead of being used by things, you utilize things. Most people don't utilize social media, they're used by it. I mean, there's so much propaganda being fed into the world right now and some of it is just evil. I mean, I'm not going to go deeply into, you know, politics because I could spend an hour just. And I'm not an expert on politics. I certainly though can talk about, you know, communication and context and framing and fear and hijacking the amygdala and you know, keeping a society in a globe in a state of reaction and how people default to addiction. I mean, you know, I've had a few conversations with the pandemic of the people that have died in America from it. If you take everyone that died from sugar consumption, tobacco, alcohol, opiates, suicide and all of the things that are. The aftershock of the quake, which is the aftershock is far greater than the quake. It so far surpasses the amount of deaths related to Covid. But a lot of this is just fear and it's angst and it's pain. And so you take that to an individual level. I think about all of this stuff and when I go on sabbatical, I'm like, okay, for whatever little dent I can make in the lives of other people or anywhere. And I'm not talking about saving the world. I mean, the world's going to be fine when I'm gone. I really don't ever want my ego to be so big to actually think I'm that damn important. Right. And I also don't want to minimize the fact that I can do useful things and that I can be really helpful and I could have a really great life. And so I want to take time to step back and think about work. And I want to permanently, permanently change not only the way I feel and experience life, I want to be deeper connected because connection is really one of my biggest desires and goals. And I do my best to connect with others and try to connect with myself. And there's been a lot of things that have happened last Couple of years that have disconnected me, that had me question relationships that I held sort of sacred in a way. And they realized, huh, you know, that person really was kind of scamming. That person was really coming from a dark place. Even though everyone, you know, thinks they're right, everyone, whatever they're doing, even if it's hurting others, most of the time they're. They're justified in their thinking and can easily rationalize it, including, you know, including all of us, right? We all think we're right. And then when we have moments that say, maybe I wasn't right, and you open yourself to make amends or to apologize or to rethink it, that's growth, that's progress. And people certainly do that. However, most people think they're right, and even when they're hurting others, they can usually justify that permanently. Going back to the permanent changes of sleep. The way that I approach work, you can't see. I'd have to pull it off the wall here. But my friend Kathy Colby, one of her sayings is on the wall back here. It says the time to quit working is when working is no longer working. And I always make the analogy. If you've ever sitting there reading a book and you've read the whole page of the book and you realize you have not comprehended anything that you've just read, you've read it, but you don't. It didn't sink in. And then you keep reading the book again. You go back to it when you're exhausted, like, you're laying in bed, you're staring at a phone as an example, and you're reading something and you're delirious, but there's that draw, that magnetic pulling you to it. And because so much of my world is hanging around successful, driven entrepreneurs, I witness people, some that are making a ton of money, but their marriages are a wreck. They don't see their kids, their health is poor, they're not sleeping. You know, I mean, all these things. And I experience these things on different levels. Some of it I'm talking about exaggerated version of my own life. Although everything that I'm talking about in terms of dysfunction, I either can relate to it or have had that in different stages of my life. Most my life, Ben, even though, you know, I started making money when I was in my 20s because I was so driven, it was coming out of fear. It wasn't because, like, oh, I have a wonderful, great life and a wonderful upbringing, and I'm just going to take all of this stuff and build A wonderful. I mean, it was hard. I mean, you know, in order to get to elf, I had to go through a lot of crap. And I actually tend to appreciate people that have been through massive adversity, but they've transformed shit into fertilizer. They've actually transformed difficulties into productivity. They may have been hurt, but they don't spend their life hurting other people. You know, our friend Shawn Stevenson, who was literally, you know, one of my best friends on the planet, he died last year. That was, you know, such a shock to my system. I still haven't fully grieved that. And that's one of the things that I want to do on the sabbatical is not only Sean, but the. The. The loss of relationships that I, you know, had at some point that were important, betrayals that were. Were done, deaths of several other people that have died in the last year. I want to actually, you know, I want to actually grieve that stuff. And, you know, I would have a lot of conversations with. With Sean. And Sean was hypnotherapist. He was a doctor. He was brilliant. And he was also a guy that could have meltdowns with me, you know, if he was just losing his. Losing it. We have that level of rapport. Same. Same there. And so when you lose someone that's really important to you, it really makes you question the value of life. And grief comes in all kinds of different ways, shapes and forms. So it's combination of celebrating amazing things and grieving things and going through those stages and being able to, you know, being able to interact with it and learning how to do it. So a lot of these, I just don't know what to do with some. But I. But I also know that if you give yourself time to go back to the time to quit working is when working is no longer working. You know, we sometimes we just keep pushing. We keep pushing. And if you listen to a motivational speaker that just keeps telling you to drive, drive, drive, drive, and you believe that is how you get through everything, you know, you're going to constantly be driving, but you'll drive yourself off cliffs. You know, when people like, what are you obsessed with? You know, obsession. Is this a cute word for addiction? Not always. You know, you can be really obsessed with stuff and probably not have a negative connotation. But I'll tell you, most people that say those sort of things, if you really look at their lives and you really look at their behavior and you really look at the consequences of constant, continual obsession, you actually will see a Lot of brokenness, a lot of angst, a lot of pain. And so, you know, I got a big mission in the world. You know, my mission is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world. That requires a lot of focus and a lot of energy. And it's, it's a complex thing. So I want to be able to do that, but I don't want to sell my soul in order to do it. I want to be able to do it from a state of energy, a state of appreciation, being able to sit with pain and also still be sitting with love at the same time, as weird as that sounds. And that's why I need to take time off. That's why I need to take time off from the current way that I'm working, so I can reevaluate work. And I'm around successful. Most of my clients are millionaires or multimillionaires. The ones that pay me money. There's most people that benefit from my work. You know, we give it away for free, we put out podcasts, we put out videos, we make it available to a lot of people. And the ones that end up becoming clients, they, you know, join things that are not inexpensive, but they're investments. You know, I mean, one of the biggest difficulties for me would ever think that I sell something to someone and it's not valuable. So, I mean, I believe all money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. So I'm very much about delivering, you know, great value for anything that I charge for because I always want, you know, Genius Network to be a school that pays entrepreneurs to attend, that requires me to be the best version of me. And if we're going to tell people to be the million dollar racehorse, which is analogy we use all the time, if you owned a racehorse and every time the horse ran a race you won a million bucks, how would you treat the horse? You wouldn't shove fast food down its throat, you wouldn't over train it, you wouldn't sleep, deprive it, you wouldn't have it drinking and smoking. You would have that horse having the best trainers, the best track, the best nutrition, the best that you could provide that horse. So that is a very fit horse. And I say to people, you're the million dollar racehorse. If you're treating yourself like the hundred dollar racehorse, guess what? First off, you ain't winning a million dollar races and you're probably going to treat yourself like crap. And so even though I could say the words, like everyone can say the words, it's so much easier to deal with other people's marketing problems or business problems or life problems and dealing with your own. You know, I'm the million dollar racehorse in my own race. And so I want to pick the right races, the right trainers, the, you know, and I want to play a game that I enjoy playing. And I love a lot of the games that I play, but a lot of games that I find myself in, relationships that I'm in, people that, you know, present themselves as friends to me, but they're not really good friends, need to step away from that. So I can have conversations with the people that say, hey, let me tell you as clearly and openly, honestly how I'm experiencing this, you know, if you don't have to agree with it, but this is my experience. And do that with as much impact and as much compassion as I can. Even though I think I'm a pretty darn compassionate guy, I want to become more compassionate. I mean, the world needs compassion. You know, hope heals. False hope is very destructive. Blowing smoke up people's asses just to try to look like you're hopeful and energetic. You know, some people are going through difficulties and it's not going to get better. And you can try to, you know, pretend that's not giving them hope, that's leaving them in a worse place. So there's, I can give the argument for the positives of hope and I can give the arguments for the negatives of hope. And so I want to better understand it. And as our, you know, kind of colleague, I've interviewed him before. I know you know him, we're not great friends or anything, but he's, you know, he's written some really, I think, thoughtful books. Cal Newport, who wrote, you know, so good they Can't Ignore you was his first book, and then Deep Work was his second. Digital Minimalism was one of his more recent books. But, you know, doing Deep Work, most people don't go deep with things anymore. They go very shallow. And I, you know, before the Internet even existed, I would talk about client acquisition because I studied it. You know, I've spent a lot of, I've done my 10, 20, maybe 30,000 hours just on the, on marketing, learning marketing over the, the last 28 years of my life, because that's when I really started studying marketing. From the time we're having this conversation, it was 28 years ago, but I've had, you know, I've had my own business for over three decades and most people go very shallow with how they do stuff. And the more that we have all kinds of different options, the, you know, the more shallow people become because they're so darn distracted. And I'm a poster child for distractibility in add. I mean, my friend Gabor Mate says, you know, he wrote a book called Scattered. He believes, you know, ADD ADHD is a response to trauma. I'm also friends with Ned Hallowell, who's, you know, considered by many the top ADD ADHD psychiatrists in the world. Written many books on it. And so I've had lots of conversations about distractible entrepreneurs. And I'm around them all the time. And sometimes you just need to give yourself space, you need to give yourself solitude and you need to be. Doesn't mean you need to be sitting on a beach or under a palm tree or having a vacation doing nothing. Although that could be very valuable. It just means you need to shift kind of how you're looking at stuff. Because I'm looking right now at either the screen because we're on zoom, or I'm looking at this camera in front of me. If I turned around and just started looking that way or that way, I'm in the same spot, but I have a completely different view. And sometimes how you experience life is just which way you decide to look. And if you're in a halt state, as I've Learned in many 12 step groups over my life, which is hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you don't make good decisions. And you can be fed and still hungry. You could be having someone hold you that loves you and still be angry. You can be in a room filled with your family and feel lonely. And you could have slept, you know, 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, and still be incredibly tired. Just because you're feeding yourself doesn't mean you're digesting your food. And I'm saying that metaphorically. So I want to improve my digestion not just physically, but how I take in life. And I don't want junk food and I don't want junk thought and I don't want junk people. And when I say anything here that sounds like I'm bashing someone or talking shit about influencers and stuff like that. Part of it is for humor, part of it is for effect, part of it is because it's true. I think it's true. You know, for me, there's a lot of people that are really full of crap that, you know, say that they're not. There's a lot of people blowing smoke up people's asses. There's a lot of stuff. And there's a part of me that's grappling with that because do I want to be angry about it? Do I want to look at people as like, oh, no, you're an annoying person, you know, not really. I mean, you know me. If. So, unless someone's really hurting someone, even if they have hurt people, like I treated, you know, people in recovery as an example, that's a different context. If someone has been accused or has done damaging things, you know, I mean, I've sat with people that have done awful things to other people, and they show up for recovery. And I. You know, the only requirement for membership is a willingness to get better. So I do my best to not say that no one's incapable of help. Even though there are some people that have done pretty awful stuff, it's hard to sit with them. But I'm a guy that will sit with them, you know, assuming no one's in physical danger at that moment. So I have a lot of acceptance of people. And at the same time, there's a part of me that's like, I don't like the way some people do shit. I don't like the way some people treat things. I don't like some of the stuff that's being shared. And I'm also a big believer in freedom of speech. You know, protect free speech. You know, if speech didn't offend you, there'd be no reason to protect it. It's a point behind, you know, some of the Constitution. So anyway, I'm just.

No, no, no. It's good. You said a lot, so I'm not going to have you answer this, but I think it'd be really cool if you defined the three core outcomes you want to get out of this thing. You know, you mentioned a lot of things. Obviously, doing more deep work, a lot of emotional healing or a shift in how you approach things, a higher quality. So there's. There's a lot of things in there kind of changing directions. Joe, what scares you the most about doing this? If anything, you might not be scared at all, but I want to. I want to hear what scares you the most, because this is a very unknown thing for you. You know, this is very different from how you typically do things. You're jumping into a bunch of unknowns for a lot of different reasons. What scares you the most as you're jumping into this new thing?

Yeah, I Mean, you know, people that run around and say no fear and stuff like that. I understand it to a degree that it sounds kind of cool. But, you know, most people that have no fear are, I tend to find, kind of disconnected from reality. And if you're overly fearful, then there's some. There's something that's. That's causing you some pain.

So it could be a mix between fear and uncertainty. But what. Yeah. What's. What.

What scares me? Yeah.

What scares you about this?

Yeah. So from what I've learned from all the therapy and stuff that I've done, all the recovery work, is that the only healthy form of fear is concern. You know, when you're concerned about your family, concerned about your job, when you're terrified or worried or scared and it's debilitating to you, then that's not utilizing that feeling in a positive way. It actually can be quite disabling in the right context, because if you're. If you have a tiger chasing you, it's probably appropriate to be a little bit more than concerned, right? But if you're. If you're in that state of, you know, fight or flight all the time, even when there's no obvious threat or danger, then that can be quite debilitating to you. So what scares me is my ability to relapse addictively. But that's sort of a concern I have all the time, but I work on it, and I'm right now best state I've ever been in my entire adult life with my recovery. So I always have to put my recovery first. So there's a saying that I've said to many people in recovery, and that has been said to me many times early on, which is anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're going to lose. So if you put your business out of your recovery, you'll lose your business. You put your family ahead of your sobriety as an example, and you're an addict, you may lose your family, right? You put your money in the pursuit of it and your fame and whatever ahead of your recovery, you may not only lose, you may lose all that. Right? And you can see that happen. I mean, there's famous people that I've worked with that you see that happen because of their behavior, because of their, you know, they're damaging themselves, which then ultimately leads to damaging others. So I'm scared of the part of my voice that says, ah, you know, let's, let's. You don't need to do this. You're okay. You're, you know, let's just go back to work, that sort of thing. But I made a commitment early on, which sounds good. I mean, it'd be interesting if it was actually presented to me. I still think I'm not. I think I know right now my current state. I said it early on. I said if someone offered me $100 million to not take the sabbatical, I would not take the money. Because the moment I put any amount of money where I could be bought or there's something that's going to be an opportunity that's so good that I have to take it, you know, I've just. I've just not kept my word to myself. And so this is not about money. It's about freedom. It's about evolution. I want. You know, I'm scared of some of the subjects I'm going to really dwell into death. I want to be more connected to the ending of life my own and the ending of life of others, because I think we very much hide from death. You have how much.

How often?

I have a lot of friends that are doctors, you know, so they see people that die. They're with people that die. They, you know, they see death all the time. Medical workers, people that are, you know, firefighters and anyone in those fields. But the average American doesn't see. They can go your whole life without seeing a dead body, you know, unless you go to a funeral as an example. And some people, they see very little death. And we hide it. We don't really talk about it. And I have a couple of dear friends that their profession is helping people grieve. You know, one of my friends, you know, Tim, is a music therapist, and he's played music to people dying in hospice centers. You know, I have an incredible friend who walks people through what happens with loved ones, you know, and they've helped. They've been very helpful to me, and I'm going to go spend time with them. So I'm scared of the emotions that can come up to a degree because that shit hurts. And I. I don't want to go into those conversations. You know, it's kind of like doing a plant medicine or psychedelic journey. I mean, you can, you know, they can get very dark, they get very scary. And for someone that's never done that, it's hard to experience that. But it's closest thing that, you know, I've ever done, close to, you know, what would it be like to. I mean, you see things, you see visions, and I want to be. I want to embrace it. Not as, like, A fear. But as like, this is part of life. And how do you celebrate, you know. You know, Tibetans, from my limited understanding experiences is one of the most. You know, that is the. One of the greatest things in life is the ending of life. But how you approach it, because I. As you get older, you know, Ben, you're quite a few years younger than me. The older you get, start getting into your 40s and 50s. Look, I mean, my mother died when I was 4 years old. My father died when he was 73 years old in 2002. I was one of his primary caretakers. He was in and out of hospice the last year of his life. Very difficult. One of my dear friends, the late Dr. Janice Dorn, who was an incredible woman. I was. Me and one other woman were her primary caretakers when she was dying. And, you know, had lots of conversations about death with, you know, it's different, though, when it's you. And when I say that, I'm not saying it like I know that, right? How do I know? But that's a. That's a really crazy subject. That is. Sounds weird. Like I'm gonna go on a sabbatical and I'm gonna study or learn or think about death. It's one of the things I'm gonna do. And that freaks me out a little bit. But there's a calling to me. I mean, what. Probably should have said this early on, what the idea of doing a sabbatical came from. I have a friend named Mark. He was the guy that sat on a golf course, and I'm not really a golfer. Years ago, over 20 years ago, he was talking about running a business. Very successful guy, sold hundreds of millions of dollars of products and services. A lot on home shopping, things like that. And he was. Imagine he was worth about $300 million. And so we were talking quite a bit a few months ago, you know, a couple times a week. And he was out of the country. And before the pandemic started, he had gotten sick and he had become sort of paralyzed and couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. And he finally got back to where he was living in another country. And I was talking with him. He was always working, always working. He has a great family, couple of sons. One's 25, the other one's 30. And I get contacted from one of his sons asking if he could give me a call on WhatsApp, which I don't use that much. And I said, sure. And he called me and he let me know that they had found Mark in bed that morning, dead at 59 years old. And this is a guy worth a lot of money and a very bright guy, very positive guy. Crazy, He's a little wacky as hell, twisted sense of humor, but a very funny guy. I mean, most people that met Mark, they would just totally crack up around him. And I was like, man, does. Something clicked in my mind. Like, this is. I need to take a sabbatical. Why a sabbatical? That's just.

Would you say that that was the triggering moment when you were like, okay, I need to go take a break and I need to fix some stuff and I need to change some stuff that was at the core triggering event?

Yeah, absolutely. Because here we were with this massive shift in the world, and I cannot fathom, Ben, how much suffering. Some people that have no money, no access to medical care, elderly people that are utterly alone, people starving. I mean, you know, there. There are so many people on the planet that would do anything to trade places with me, right? And I don't ever want to lose track of that. But it's like that was the triggering moment where it's like, man, here's a guy that on this, you know, it could just end it at any point in time. And, you know, one of my favorite proverbs is, you know, he or she who has their health has a thousand dreams. He or she who does not have their health has only one. And no matter how much money you have, if you lost your health, you would do anything to get it back. And what is it about life that you could have everything but the pursuit of those things somehow puts health as a lower priority? Or your, you know, the obsessiveness to work or perform or whatever that pursuit is. You know, it's kind of more woo and less, ah, you know, when you're, when you're pursuing woo, woo, woo, but the woo is killing you. It's actually going to give you more.

Ah, it's usually driven and fueled by unhealthy additions, whether that be chemicals or loss of sleep. Like, there's. There's reasons why people push through, right? And it ends up leading to more and more unhealthy. I mean, that's why I think addiction and business go so hand in hand. It could be addiction to multiple things, but usually these things are fueled by increasingly unhealthy behaviors, which. There's this quote from Covey, and I'm interested in your thoughts on it. He talks about how private victory precedes public victory. Private victory being like, what you don't see behind the scenes, right? I mean, we can become successful, but to the extent that we have our private victory and public victory can mean a lot of different things. It doesn't have to mean just money. But what are your thoughts on that quote, Joe? Private victory precedes public victory.

I actually very much like it because if private victory in the way that you. I think it makes you more authentic. I think it's so many people that we know that are influencers, that are famous, are some of the most scared, worried, broken, desperate for attention. And I'm talking some of the biggest in the world that everyone thinks has their shit so totally together. If you really knew the fear that because they can artic. You know, I mean, people that are thousand times better articulated in public speaking and don't ramble like I do and all that sort of stuff that the world thinks are so authentic, they're anything but. And part of it is because I don't think they really have the only. They get the public victories and everyone thinks they're great. But behind the scenes, there's. It just. It's never enough. It's. It's like the Janis Joplin quote, you know, Shep Gordon, who. There was a movie that he done on him called Supermensch, and he says, you know, he made people famous. Like, I have a friend, the singer Alice Cooper, who I've, you know, interviewed and had it out at Genius Network before. And I've done a, you know, a bit of work with his foundation, which is Solid Rock foundation, to help, you know, kids play music and stuff. He just lets. It's open to. To kids that are many inner city kids where they can just go and have a place to be and connect. Shep Gordon's been his manager for, like, 50 years. They've never had a signed contract. Just like, that's a really aligned relationship. And so part of it is alignment, right? So public victory versus private victories. How aligned are you with who you are versus who you present yourself to be? You know, conversation I used to have with this marketer, Dan Kennedy, years ago. We used to go to lunch all the time when he used to live out here. And he said, remember once we were having a conversation, he's like, if you ever validate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar. And so I really. Yeah. And I really. So Shep said, in Supermensch, I've never seen anything good come out of fame. Those that rose the highest fell the farthest, right? And so the more you try to publicly put yourself out there when you fail or have a public failing, there's a lot of people in the world that will. They just love to see you fall. And if you rise to the top, stepping on people, they celebrate seeing you fall. They will go out of their way to make you fall. And you've seen that too. You know, I mean, look, I mean, you know, I don't talk about it that much, but I was asked to, you know, meet with Harvey Weinstein when he was going through his recovery stuff. And, you know, Harvey was mean to a lot of people along the way. And, you know, you karmically, even if, you know, you say you didn't do anything, if you're still a bully, people are going to come after you. And they don't, you know, there's a lot of bullies in the world, there's a lot of narcissism in the world. There's a lot of sociopaths and there's a lot of craziness. And so I've met Covey before. You know, I've always liked his line, you know, don't seek first to understand, not to be understood. Seek to, you know, have people feel understood. Right. And so I think going, you know, for one, I only want to align myself with people that are aligned with me. I want to be as authentic to my message as I possibly can. Also knowing that I'm a flawed human being. I can be really nice and generous and sweet and creative. But if I haven't eaten food for two days, I'm going to be moody, desperate for eating, and if I'm sleep deprived, I'm going to feel like crap. So part of it is I just want to, you know, I want to be able to work on the things that I can do something with. There is the serenity prayer. Even if someone doesn't believe in God, and I'm not here to tell anybody what they should believe in, you know, it's your life, you know, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, the wisdom to know the difference. And that's the difficult part, because when you're sort of an ambitious, I want to read all these books, I want to do all this stuff. I want to deal with, you know, I want to feed homeless people. I want to solve the addiction crisis in the world. I want to make sure that, you know, no one suffers in all of these hundred different ways that humans can suffer. I mean, you can't do all that and what you can do is what you can do. And so the private victory for me, I think, would be. And I say I think, because I honestly believe I'm going to be in a different state a year from now. It'd be really interesting.

You will. You'll define all of this stuff differently. You'll be a different person then.

Yeah, here's.

You'll be a totally different person by then.

Yeah, I think I'll be able to articulate in 10 minutes what I'll have to ramble through in two hours or whatever. We spend time talking.

That's all right. It's good. Beautiful. This is. This is your private journal that we're going to share publicly.

Exactly, exactly. But, you know, I'm hoping that I can just be like, yeah, you know what, Joe? You don't need to do any of this stuff except that which, you know, really matters. And I'm able to make better decisions. I'm able to be better boundaried. I don't sacrifice my. What I believe is a pretty generous spirit and person and usefulness at the altar of giving, which I recently heard someone say it along those lines. I don't have such a need for people to like me, you know, because I have low self esteem, I have low self worth. I want people to like me. I want people to applaud for me. I want people to think I'm cool. And as I say that, I don't want to want that stuff. I don't want it to be like I'm going to try to look a certain way, do a certain thing just so I can have someone compliment me. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. I'm incredibly appreciative. I've gotten some text messages today that are like, man, I mean, one nearly brought me to tears. It was so nice. And there's a part of me, it's like, man, you know how many people don't get a message like that? And if they. If they did, it would just make their day so much better. And I will sometimes get messages like that. And I cannot take it in because I'm just tired or I'm whatever. And I'm like, that's not very connected for a guy that had a movie made about him called Connected to Joe Polish Story. So I really want to, you know, I really want to be able to just feel as much as I can the beauty and the joy and the connectedness of life. And I also want to be able to feel those things when things are difficult and I want to be, you know, I want to be a contributor. I mean, you know, life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. I mean, produce more than you consume. I don't want to be a parasite, and I don't want parasites attaching themselves to me. And if there's a parasitical person that wants help and no one knows what to do or how to do it, I'd love to be able to at least know what to do in that situation, because I don't think you can punish pain out of people. It's a weird sort of way that people are like, how can you sit with, like, a Harvey Weinstein? And it's like, yeah, it's hard, but I was raped and molested as a kid. If there's anyone that you know, that's one of the ways you actually heal. My perspective, no one has to agree with me, is it's like, when you can actually really try to understand what was the atmospheric conditions, as my friend Don woods says, what was the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life that caused them to become who they became and where they went sideways. I mean, I think one of the greatest ways to learn is to learn from the mistakes of others is to. You know, I have a friend who's an incredible therapist. It's been over 30 years, and this guy makes really good money. I mean, he is constantly booked. He's brilliant. He's sat with every type of world leader you could ever possibly imagine. Famous, multiple billionaires, all kinds of stuff. And he voluntarily, for years, has gone to prisons and sat down with sex offenders and just talked with them. And I'm like, why do you do that? You don't get paid for it. You know, you're literally giving up income that you can make with people that are not. He's like, because you want to put yourself in a situation where you can see yourself in all of those people. I'm like, what do you mean like that by that? I go, you ever had the desire to. He's like, no. He goes, you can think about it. He goes, but when you're able to sit down and see that level of pain, you actually realize just what happens to someone when so much pain is caused to them, how they can cause pain to other people. And it's just. That's how you get really. You know, you're able to help people when you can help the hardest cases. And it's. If you think about business and how I will tie this together, John Baptiste say, which I learned this originally From Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach. You know, he's the first person to coined the term entrepreneur in 1804, I think was the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur. He said an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield. Another way of saying it, taking resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level productivity. So wherever you can make something better, someone has an axe, someone invents a chainsaw, you've created a more effective way of chopping down a tree, taking down a tree. But you can do that with the mind. You can apply entrepreneurial concepts to every area of life. Think about as a parent, taking resources from a lower level to a higher level. Think about a person who spent their life damaging other people and they somehow find grace, they somehow find healing, they somehow become a productive individual when in a past area of their life they have hurt others. Like our friend Andre Norman, who spent 14 years in maximum security prison, got out over 20 years ago, went to Harvard, became part of a social justice program. Now has spent so much of his life for free, in many cases speaking at schools, going to prisons, helping people in pain, doing interventions, preventing suicides, you know, crisis. I mean he deal, he's like, if it's Kumbaya, everyone's loving each other and having a picnic, don't send me. There he goes, that's not good for me. Send me to a middle of a fricking war zone. I know how to deal with that stuff. And you know, he's just transformed his life. And look at how many, I mean, even what we do, you know, because I've been working with him for a couple years now in genius. Now I know we have saved lives. We've had people tell me I would be dead if it was not for him. And you guys helping us with what we've done. If I would have said, nah, you know, he doesn't deserve anything. He, you know, he was thrown in prison for armed robbery and once he was there, you know, a couple counts of attempted murder. No, he's a horrible, awful human. I mean, if you're willing to just to write someone off entirely and look, I mean when someone is the hurt by the person, really hard to sit down with the person that hurt them. So there's a, there's a certain level of it. But all of that, all of that sort of stuff is how I approach so problems. So entrepreneurs solve problems for a profit. That's what a business does. Back here is one of Dan Sullivan's quotes where it says Right there, I'll kind of point it. Okay. It's blurry on the camera, the way I'm looking at the screen, but it says other people's bad news is your good news. So the face on the left is like eek and the face on the right is smiling. Other people's bad news there is your good news. Right, so what does that mean? If there's bad news for someone, there's an opportunity for you to make some money. If you're running a business, right? So you solve problems for a profit, you make it up and you make it real, as we say with Dan Sullivan.

Right.

And that means that if you're hungry, that's bad news. But if there's someone, you have food in the fridge, there's a restaurant, you have access to food, that's good news. You break your leg. Bad news, someone can help you. Good news, you get Covid, a doctor, Someone helps you with COVID to heal, not die. That's good news. Someone dies, it's terrible, it's bad news. Imagine if there were no mortuaries. Imagine if there was no one to help with that. It would be worse news. The planet is filled with bad news. And when you can transform someone else's bad news into good news in a better way, that's entrepreneurship. If you have someone's bad news, like they're depressed, oh, watch some porn, take this drug, drink this alcohol, eat this crappy fast food. Are you really transforming other people's bad news into good news? Or are you taking already existing bad news and making it worse under the fantasy, under the guise of, oh, just come and eat this shit and put this crap in your already sick body. It'll make you a little sicker. That's not entrepreneurship. That's not how I would frame capitalism.

How a lot of businesses are run though, right?

Absolutely. There's a ton of it. I mean, there's so much money. I mean, look at the frickin media right now. I remember when everyone used to say the media was bullshit, as if putting the word social in front of it somehow. Who would have thought that social media would have done more to take away or try to sway free speech than anything, which is what we're experiencing today. So, you know, from whatever thing that you can do in the world if you operate, transforming other people's bad news into good news, so you can do that in business, but you can also do that in life. And when you can sit down with broken, hurt people and you can hopefully make them a more valuable, more Transformed person, great. But in all of that, you first have to do it for yourself. All of this shit that I'm talking about, if I don't do this for myself, how good of a job am I going to do doing it for other people? And here's the truth, Ben. I have been very useful in some people's lives in the most broken state you could ever possibly imagine. I've had to get up on stages when I was actively addicted and do my best to try to gut my way through running a company and doing a business. When I, like Janet, I brought up Shep Gordon. Let me tie it all together. He said, those that rise to the top of fall. The father, when I was interviewing him for our podcast, Janis Joplin, he used to manage Janis Joplin, who died of an overdose and she was a singer. And she had a quote where I go out and make love to 20,000 people and I'd go back to my hotel room alone. I may not be saying it exactly like she said it, but that's the remembrance I have of reading that. And so she'd go out and perform to all these adoring fans and she'd go back to her hotel room and feel totally disconnected, totally alone. And she's a drug addict. And there's a lot of famous, well known people that no matter how much admiration, adoration, applause, money, fame, opportunity, they just don't feel it. And that has a lot to do with connection and community. That has to do with biochemicals, serotonin, dopamine, hormones. It has to do with the trauma that you have not resolved underlying. It has with to do. To do with the environment in which you live. Those are the four categories of what we look at. To give someone the highest possibility of it. And as again, my friend Don Wood says, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, you'd understand why they do the things that they do. So I am literally going on a journey of a sabbatical to absolutely change the atmospheric conditions of my current life. Current life is awesome. But I want to do something. I want to go where no one's ever gone before. What's that whole star, you know.

Yeah, you want to go. Yeah. I don't know the exact quote, but.

Yeah, yeah, we could try to quote Star Wars, Star Trek, all the different things, but, you know, I want to go.

You want to go where you've never gone before. Well, if I could sum up, and I have one more question, but I know it's for us, right now it's 3 o' clock Eastern. Should we call it after this or do you want. Do you have time for one last question?

Oh, we can talk as much as you want.

Okay, cool, cool, cool. So from what I'm hearing in synthesizing this, you are ready to change the atmospheric conditions of your life the way, you know, one of the quotes or things that I. There's a few quotes that come to mind. One is you train the world how to treat you. The other one is how you do anything is how you do everything. Yeah, like, you know, you've trained you, you've done so much good in your life, but you want to go and emotionally heal yourself at all levels and reconnect with yourself, reconnect with life so that you can do more deep work and so that you can ultimately impact the world and other people in a deeper level. And you want to do it in a way that's healthy for you, in a way that you know from the private victory, public victory perspective, you want to take yourself to a higher level so that ultimately your work can be deeper and higher and change the atmospheric conditions so that you're not constantly ping ponged by other people's agendas, but you control all that. You've reshifted the situation and you're doing deeper, more meditative, more flow based, deep work at higher levels, which is what you want to do. You love the work you do, you love the service you give and you know, you do great work, Joe, but you're ready to go and step back, change the atmospheric conditions, heal a lot of the deep internal wounds, change a lot of the systems right now that are keeping you distracted and pulling you from what you really want to do. And ultimately you want to set up new conditions where you're already a more healed person and you can engage in a much deeper level of work with different types of people and make a much bigger impact than you currently can't make. I mean, that's, that's kind of how I'm hearing it.

Yes. You summarize it very well. That's what I want to do. You never step in the same river twice. I remember a guy in a 12 step group, he talked about a recliner, like a lazy boy type recliner that was all beat up, had holes in it. He had this thing for like 20 years and he never got rid of it because he's like, well, was it the chair that's bad or was it the person who was sitting in the chair? He didn't change. He used to sit in that chair and shoot heroin. And then he got recovery and he, for some reason, I mean, it was, I think, representative to him of his own recovery. I probably would have thrown out the chair. I mean, hell, I even sold a house and moved out of a house where I would act out addictively in that house because I didn't want the memories that were attached to it. And there's a part of me that's like, I wish I would have just kind of evolved myself to have less angst to the thing that was the reminder. Kind of like if you have a breakup and you hear a song and it reminds you of a person, you.

Know, everything's just a meaning, right. It's all just a story you attach to it. Nothing's objective. It's all subjective, right?

Totally.

Everything is a meaning, Right. That couch is a meaning. That song is a meaning, right?

Yep. And we are meaning makers. And I want to be a better meaning maker in my own life. I want to make different, better meaning meanings out of things. I want to, I want to be a giver, but I don't want to over give.

Yeah. And you want to give to the right people in the right way, in the best way you can. Right. Like you want to give at the level of transforming the global conversation of addiction. Right. You want to give in certain ways and make a certain type of impact. Not just giving for the sake of giving, but the cert. A certain type of giving for a certain outcome for various people.

Right, Exactly. I mean, I just giving.

If you're not enjoying the type of giving, you know, we can all give our time and energy, but you want to give a certain type of energy at a certain level in a way that helps a certain type of person, Right?

Exactly. I want to be selective with who I give to. So it doesn't mean. And by the way, I mean who becomes a dear friend of mine or I. And you know, I've talked about this. Not here, but I've talked about it a lot with other people where I'll say, look, people always ask me, how do you connect with all these well known people? It's like for one, you know, I have a business, so I've interviewed over 900 people, so I meet a lot of people. Secondly, I mean, I've interviewed over 900 people that have that over the last 26 years. We have sent out interviews, starting with on cassette tapes, you know, way back in the day. So I've been doing interviews for a long time now. They're call podcasts and stuff. But, you know, there's. There's all of that. But in terms of. And by the way, you know, can you. I'm losing my train of thought. Sorry.

No worries, no worries, no worries.

Let me. Let me. I'll just. Okay, so now I know what I was going to say. So, in terms of giving, I ask a lot of questions, I meet a lot of people, and I have a book called Life Gives to the Giver. We give it away for free. Joe'sfreebook.com and I hope people read it because a lot of it is just my musings and my thoughts on everything from addiction and reading to building a business and marketing a business to relationships and all that. So I've met a whole variety of people, and I'm super curious and I'm super interested. I think questions are more important than answers. So I like asking people questions so that you can hear the answers. And I wrote a book that with Hay House, and it's not going to come out till not next year, but the following year, because they wanted it to come out this year, but I said, you know, I go on a sabbatical, so we can't. And so that. That book is coming out the following year. But part of that book is not just how to connect with people, because that's what everyone wants to know. Like, how do you connect with these people? How do you meet all these people? Well, I also want to teach the cautionary tale of how connecting and trying to be a giver and helping people identify what's in it for them to also be able to identify who's a narcissist, who's really going to be a taker. We tend to give attention to people. And when I say we, I'm not saying this is across the board for everybody. People seem to want what they can't have. And a lot of times, depending on how you're raised and how you're brought up, the people that don't give you the attention are the ones you desire the attention from the most. And some of those people that don't give you attention don't care about you. And you keep trying to care about them or hoping they care about you and you'll do things and you'll try to be of service. And so for me, what I've said before, which is what I was losing my train of thought on, was the people that really become my friends are. How are people that are more powerful treat people that are less powerful than them? Because in the scheme of Things. What is power? What is importance? It's what you said. It's all the meaning that you attach to it. I just actually like reciprocal people. I like people that are courteous. When someone opens the door, say thank you. You know, don't be a jerk to people. You know, if they're a jerk to you, you know, however you need to handle it, you handle it. I just think putting energy towards reciprocal, caring, awesome people produces a really good karmic consequence in life. Being a taker, being arrogant, thinking you're somehow amazing. Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, then say people you're going to meet on the way down. I've proven that over the years. You know, when I was in my twenties, I heard that quote, and you will end up running into people 10 years, 20 years, 30 years that you met many years ago. It will happen. Unless, of course, you keep yourself completely hidden from other humans. And there's no reason to leave scorched earth, you know, be a contributor. I mean, all the stuff I do with addiction recovery, meet with a lot of high profile people, never charged a penny for any of it. It's not a, it's not a business thing. It's something that I do to just try to help. And it comes back, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's ways that life rewards certain types of actions. And if life is hurting you in some ways, it might not be trying to hurt you. It might be just a way of paying attention to your gut, paying attention to your behavior. There are really caring people that get, you know, sucked into narcissistic relationships with very damaging people. There are people in the world that are seeking out kind, generous, caring people so they can rip their heart to shreds. And they get off on it. And why that happens, what happened to them? Who the hell knows? You can psychoanalyze it all day long. You can just get the hell away from the whirlpool. We all have our versions of that in different levels of severity. And the interesting thing is, when I think about my life, the greatest breakthroughs I made came out of some of the most painful things. So I'm not here to tell someone. I'm going to go on a sabbatical so that life could be sweet and wonderful all the time. I'm here to learn how to better strengthen my stamina, my resilience. And I'm also going to take care of myself in as best ways that I can. Yeah, I'm going to give myself Rest and rejuvenation and better sleep and exercise and good food and great connected human relationships. You know, maybe I'll go ride horses or, you know, train dogs or something. Who knows? I'll learn how to perfect, you know, But. But anyway. So the point is, though, what's in it for them is a great way to think about how to help other people, but not at neglecting yourself and picking the right thems. Because you know, that famous Zig Ziglar line, which I used for many years until one of my dear friends gave me a different way to look at it, was that you can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. True, in a certain context, but you can help other people get what they want that will not do a damn thing for you. So as I go on the sabbatical, Ben, I'm going to cut off a lot of relationships with people. I want to respect myself more. I want to respect my time, my talent, my energy. I don't want to throw pearls before swine. Whatever I'm offering to do, I want people to be appreciative of it. Because I really believe I come into things with a good intention. I do not want to do harm to anybody. I really want to create as much value I can in the world, and I don't want to deplete myself in the process. And I want to be the best version that I can be. And I want to be frickin feeling good about myself and I want to feel really good about life. Because the more that you can feel great about things, it's easier to weather life when you're sick, when things suck, when people die, when you have breakdowns. What's going to happen? With my company, I've got a great team right now. I mean, the best team I think we've ever had. And it's amazing when you let go a little bit, if you have people that care about you and you're doing good stuff, how they step up and take responsibility that I never would have experienced. And I realized, Jesus, I'm such an idiot in some ways.

There's a really good quote, man. It's Will Durant, he's the famous historian. He says the ability of the average person could be doubled if the situation demanded it.

Say that again. That is a really good.

Yeah, this is. This is the quote that's the basis of this book. But it's basically the ability of the average person could be doubled if it were demanded. If the situation demanded it. You know, in psychology, we call that the Pygmalion effect. But your team now demands to show up in a different way, and all of a sudden, that's going to create a different level of innovation and quality. Right, for those who really should be there, right?

Yes, absolutely. And I'm witnessing and experiencing that. And I also know that when I go away, certain things that worked in a certain way that people are used to and they, like, are not going to operate quite the same way without Joe there. And that's fine. And my Genius Network group, which is one of the most important things that we do. I mean, such good people that are in the group. You're in the group. I mean, it's going to be run. It's going to be run by the members. And so my own members that are paying to be part of my group are actually the facilitators of much of it, along with my team. And letting go there is scary. That's a freak show. Because I'm a guy that likes to get my hands in things and think that, you know, I'm so damn important here. But I've never wanted Genius Network to be known for me. I wanted it to be known for the, you know, the people that are in the group. And if there's anything I hope to inspire, you know, everyone's asked me, well, I can't wait to read the book about your sabbatical. And it's like, you know, everyone, like, just assumes there's going to be a book, or there should. And, you know, from a business standpoint, if I.

There may be. Yeah, it'll be a book about healing and transformation and deep work and all these good things. You're talking about empowering others, and there.

May be nothing at all.

Exactly, exactly.

It's not. If I go into it like I have to write the book about my.

Sabbatical, it's going to change how you approach the sabbatical. Right, Exactly.

And so the question is, like, everyone's asking, what are you going to do? Like, a lot of this. I've been dancing around a lot of stuff.

So my last question was, what the heck are you going to do? What the heck is this going to look like, Joe?

I'll try to throw out a few different viewpoints and perspectives. And then if you decide to edit all the. Or I decide I'd edit all this.

Yeah, it's all yours, not mine.

So, yeah, it's. Why I mean, at it from your standpoint is whatever you end up writing about, from all of our conversations I know you're going to write up an article and stuff about this sabbatical journey. What I hope to inspire is, first and foremost, myself. I want to bring more to my own party called My Life. There's that saying. Was it Socrates? An unexamined life is not worth. L. Yes. You know, it's the other flip side of it is unlived life is not worth examining.

Yep.

So, you know, that's. That's the way that I look at this. And so I want to live my life as best as I can. I mean, I'm. I'm blessed. I could if I was born in another. You know, a lot of stuff I've read recently is how much success someone has has a lot to do with where you're born and the time you're born. I mean, if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

A lot to do with context.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, if they were born in North Korea or communist China or something, I mean, would they be who they are? I don't know. I mean, not that they wouldn't.

Probably. They wouldn't. They could still probably do some cool things, but they would be the same person they are.

Yeah, exactly. So I want to play the cards that I've been, you know, that I've been dealt, because a lot of people have been dealt some really painful, you know, cards. And I was talking to Richard Rossi. I've had a few conversations. Dan Sullivan, David Bach, Richard. Quite a few people that have either. You know, Richard traveled around the world with his family, like, about a decade ago for a year. And he told me, he said, plan the sabbatical once you start it. So I've been taking all of this energy to set up my companies, my foundation, all of the stuff. And my God, Ben, there is, like, the amount of untangling. Yeah, yeah. Navigation, tangling, communications, people that want to talk with you, people trying to take a whack at me. I mean, I get two to 300 text messages a day. We've got hundreds of people that have requested, will you be on a podcast? I mean, I'm not an inexpensive consultant. I mean, I just finished my final last consulting I agreed to do this year. You know, I'm $6,000 an hour when I do consulting, and I do everything that you know, and I do it in half a day for 25 grand. Right. And so that's what I charge when I do consulting. I try to talk everyone out of hiring me for consulting and say, look, if you want for what I offer, Genius Network is more bang for the buck. But some people want to hire me for consulting. And so I was talking to the person who hired me for two consulting sessions and I was wrapping up the final one yesterday and there was still more that I wanted to do with this person. So even after that, I agreed to with time, I didn't even have to do an interview with him, which was my idea, not his. He wasn't asking, he was super appreciative. But I said no, I want to give you this thing. And there's that part of me that's like, like I just want to keep giving. And so I've had a lot of setup so in order to have the conditions we want in our life. And there's a lot of them, some I've talked about here, others I haven't shared because, you know, I could spend a week rambling about stuff. You got to set it up. And so the thinking I've had to go through in order to set up a sabbatical has been so useful for my team, so useful for my thinking, so useful for just the future. And so what I'm realizing more and more is that doing a sabbatical and there's all kinds of different ways to do sabbatical. Some people go on a sabbatical and they learn a new career, right? Some people write a book, some people don't work at all and they remove themselves complete for anything. Some people learn a language, some people travel, they spend time with their kids, they get out of a relationship, they get into a relationship. I mean, I think I'm going to experience all different stuff. What I'm removing myself from is the constant contact and request tons of electronic communication, which is very difficult, getting a new phone number. But knowing that my existing phone number is tied into so many things that you use, from apps to music to banking to all kinds of other stuff. And then so I'm having to untangle all of that and setting up so many people that I've known for years that I'm going to go the whole year and not talk to these people. And I love them and I care about them and they care about me and, and everyone's like, oh, am I going to be one of the people that you're going to talk to on your Sebastian? It's like I'm not going to talk to anyone.

Okay?

I will have like even like my team members. You know, I have 14 core full time people and then a whole bunch of other people that, you know, I have equity in numerous companies. I mean, I'M an advisor to a lot of different things. And all of that stopping, I mean, all of that, you know, Joe is gone and Joe's going to come back and it's going to be a different Joe. Hopefully a better version. Hopefully I will drop things that I used to, I think right now are really important. I'll realize, like, what the heck am I devoting energy to that I really want to devote energy here and I really want to develop myself in a much better way and I want to be a better version for not only my own life. Because a lot of this is self serving. I want to feel really good. And a lot of this is I want to come back and be the most useful version that I can. If there's anything that I really am intending to do is I'm going to write every day. I want to at least write down a lesson. What's the lesson? I learned. And it might be something as simple as, you know, how to cook a better waffle. Because I, you know, I have this whole little running joke. We've been doing genius waffles. We're finding the ultimate healthy waffle. You know, I shot some silly Instagram videos a few months ago where I was showing people how to make breakfast that's healthy. Could be grain free, it could be gluten free, it could be dairy free, you know, whatever, different versions. And I was doing it on my stories for how to make breakfast for a dollar or two dollars. So if you don't have a lot of money but you want to eat healthy and you want to do something simple on a $20 waffle maker, how do you do it? And it like, I cannot tell you how many people. Oh my God, I love that. That was great. So I might just do something as simple as that or I might, you know, discover something incredibly profound that I think is profound. And I'll document those lessons and stuff, but will anyone ever see them? I don't know. I don't know. But I want to learn it. I want to. I want to learn and I want to unlearn and I want to rejuvenate and I want to replace my batteries. And by the way, Ben, I just want to say I thank, I very much appreciate you taking me through this thinking process. I, I have no idea if I sound like a crazy person as I ravel this, but it shows.

And at the end of the day, it doesn't even matter if we ever publish this. I think this is a cool conversation, you know what I mean? Like, I'm Serious. Just saying this between you and me, I don't care if we publish this. I've got no attachment to it. I'm just grateful I got to sit here and listen to it. If we publish it. I think a lot of people get stuff out of it, but I think it's been awesome. I've gotten a lot of insight just listening to you, Joe.

Well, it shows what, what, you know, I don't know if you follow Jordan Peterson. I think he's a very articulate man.

He's very fascinating.

Yeah. And, you know, he references that book the Myth of Mental Illness, where, you know, was written 50 plus years ago. I've never read the book. I've only, you know, heard him talk about it. And it's, it's, it's, it's a book that I'll probably read soon. It's on my list. And he talks about complexity. What shows up as depression, anxiety, and I would argue addiction is simply complexity in people's lives.

Lives.

And if there's so much complexity, they start breaking down. And we live in a very complex world. Different people experience complexity, greater levels. I've even said this in conversations, complexity.

Is what basically shuts people down, is what we're hearing.

Yeah. Or it could show up as depression. Yeah. So if you have so much complexity. So here we are sitting there doing a. Having a conversation. If a plane flew through my building right now, in a matter of instantaneously, my life would be filled with massive complexity. If it's. Kill me if there were, you know, if all of a sudden, you know, the electricity went out, you know, boom. There's a layer of complexity. Now. You layer on political stuff, you layer on a pandemic, you layer on all of the shifts. I mean, I don't know the exact amount of numbers, but there's something like if we ran out of food in, you know, any particular country, in a matter of days, people be killing each other. Right. And so when people's lives are disrupted, it can get really scary and really weird because we are creatures of habit. And that's why this year has been so filled with people reacting when they used to be able to respond because of all this new complexity. Wearing masks in a country where that has never happened before globally. So there's so much complexity. And what I want to do is I want to eliminate any unnecessary complexity in my life.

Freaking brilliant.

You know, so, so I. Yeah. So that I can.

I think that's what high functioning people do, is they eliminate complexity. Right. It was, it's that quote from Leonardo da Vinci. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Yeah. And it even reminds me of Steve Jobs. He said innovation comes by saying no to a thousand things, and that he's more proud of what he said no to than he said yes to. Right. And so I think even just one last quote is, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. That's Marshall Goldsmith. So I think you're doing so many beautiful things to eliminate unneeded complexity. I think that that was your point is unnecessary complexity.

Right, Right. And by doing that, I will be able to approach things in a better state of mind, and I'll be way more effective with what I do for work. Because what is work? You know, nothing that Jordan Peterson says. You know, the reason we pay people to do work is because left to their own devices, they would not do it. You would, you know, like, people, they talk about, oh, God, to do this work. Yeah. That's why you get paid, because you probably wouldn't be like, there's a lot.

You weren't getting paid. You destroy yourself in some way or another. You destroy yourself faster than you are when you're not working.

Exactly. So the question is, what is the right work for you? Is there any bad work in the world, or is there only bad work for people doing certain things? And so I want to find what's the best work for Joe. What's bad work for Joe? What gets my attention that is useful, that I put more of myself and what sucks away my attention and what drains my life energy. I want to be a fountain, not a drain. I want to be around energy chargers, not energy drainers. And I want to replace my batteries, not just charge them up. And that's why I'm doing a sabbatical. And it's. And I'm not obligated to anyone to do anything. So I'm going to. I'm going to create the best version of it. I'm just not going to be doing the stuff I've been doing. And I'm going to immerse myself in something completely new. And I want different perspective. And I want to come out of this and be like, wow, you know, But I'll also tell you, no matter how much I can try to predict, fantasize, pretend, you know, intentionalize, and I certainly have visions, of course. You know, I'm not going into this blind, but I'm also going into this open. And I'm very coachable. And I'm, you know, I've never done this before. And I'm coming from beginner's mind, and I'm hoping to discover and explore and ponder. And, you know, when you're open, that's when you're able to see things that you're not. You know, when you're busy, you may not have time to smell the roses. And, you know, busyness for the sake of busyness is insanity. And we live in a pretty crazy world right now. I mean, we are. This is not just an individual like, oh, you know, calm the hell down. It's, you know, Ned Hallowell says we have cultural add. I mean, there's so many things going on that there's no one that's not impacted. Buy it. Depending on what you submerse yourself in.

You said that was ned Hallowell?

Yeah, Dr. Edward Hallowell called Ned. Okay, yeah, but Edward Hallowell. But he likes being called Ned. And most of his books say Edward Hallowell.

Gotcha. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah. He wrote Crazy Busy when I first met him years ago. Man, who would have known that? Crazy Busy. Just, you know, people aren't just saying busy, they're saying crazy busy. And that was over a decade ago. And, yeah, I mean, the world is so all that people are like, you know, yeah, I'm funding the creation of a virtual reality company. I'm just not building it. We're going to use virtual reality and technology for fantasy contamination and for doing good stuff with technology. One thing that, you know, I want people to realize is that you have. You're already worth, you know, if you don't have a million dollars in the bank, you have something in some area of your life that is worth over a million dollars. I gave this talk to a group of young people, several hundred people in an audience years ago. And I forgot that I even talked about this. And so I started talking about it recently again is I asked this group of, you know, younger entrepreneurs, how many people in the room are, you know, worth over a million dollars? And there's a few hands that went up. I said, anyone here worth over $5 million? One guy in the back raised his hand. I go, anyone here worth $10 million? The guy raised his hands, and of course they're thinking, you know, money. And I said, how many of you here would like to be worth a million dollars? Bunch of hands went up. I go, how many of you here would like me to give you a million dollars? Whole bunch of hands gave up. I said, all right, I'll make you deal. I'll give you a million dollars. How many of you would pluck out an eyeball if I gave you a million dollars? No one raised their hands. I'm like, $5 million. Don't raise their hands. $10 million. No one raised their hands. I go, anyone lop off one of your legs for 50 million? No one raised their hands. I went, interesting. So you want a million dollars, you want to be worth a million dollars, but you already have something that you wouldn't give up for a million dollars called vision. Called your eyes. One eye. I go, how many people that don't have vision would do anything to have vision, that don't have hearing, that don't have legs, that don't have their health? I mean, you have something so valuable in your life. And it's real easy for me. Can't speak for other people, real easy for me to get complaining and my life sucks or whatever, but I sometimes have to remember, like, my God, I got vision, I can talk, I can walk. I've pain and angst and stress and depression, but I can get out of it if I use the tools. If I don't get so caught up in my feeling sorry for myself or that life sucks. And when I go on sabbatical, I want to deepen that, you know? I mean, life is amazing when it's amazing and it's hard when it's hard. You know, there's that saying that you often hear in 12 step groups, which is, you know. You know, God never gives you more than you can handle. Rehab centers are filled. Hospitals are filled with people that got more than they can handle. Life does give people sometimes more than they can handle. And when you take care of yourself, I think when you get more than you can handle, whatever you can hold on to until it's the end, I mean, I think we have a lot more power and a lot more capability. Very similar to the demand quote that you stated by Durant.

Will Durant.

Yeah, yeah. Very powerful. And so I just want to develop those muscles. I want to put up better boundaries. I want to not overwork myself so that when I am working, I'm doing productive, awesome, capable work. I want to be skilled in areas that are important. I want to let go of shit that I think is, you know, and I want to better balance my biochemistry. I want to connect with love, relationships that are deep and meaningful to me and a lot more. And a lot more.

Well, cool. We may end up doing a round two, but this has been incredibly fascinating. Joe, thank you for giving us a Peek into why you're doing this, what you're looking to get out of it. I think that all of us are going to be anxious to see what the heck comes of it because I'm expecting a lot of transformation. I don't know what that looks like, and I don't even know if you know what that looks like yet, which you've kind of alluded to. But it's going to be fascinating for us to hear how you use that time, what you learn from it and what's different as a result. And I guess we'll all just be waiting to see what that looks like, but grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with you, Joe.

Yeah, thank you. And you know what, Ben, let me just say one last thing because.

Yeah, please do. Please do.

It would be silly. So people have been saying to me how I'm going to miss you. How am I going to get more? And I'm like, look, considering I teach people how to replicate themselves and how to package themselves and how to put stuff out there, and I've been doing this for many years, I still still have a ton of podcasts that people can listen to. My whole team.

Yeah, there's years and years of context.

Years of content, and I have a team that is going to continue to create it. And I have all these incredibly bright members that are going to be creating stuff that we are happy to share with the world. So if someone wants to read one of my books, the only book that's sold on Amazon because I made a deal with Hay House that until the Hay House book comes out, that I will not put any books on Amazon. And so we have the miracle morning for addiction recovery that I did with Hal Elrod and Anna David. So anyone that's struggling with addiction, great book that you can get. Also, the book Life Gives to the Giver, you can get for free@joe's freebook.com people love that book. You don't need to buy anything. You can download the electronic version of that book for free. If you want the physical version, we just ask that you pay for shipping and handling. Then we will send it to you. We're gonna most likely release my movie, the Joe Polish Story, which people really, I didn't put that movie together. Devon Patel, anonymously at first put that together. Then I found out who did it. It's a one hour movie. If you want to be on the list when we put that out, it's connectedthemovie.com the actual movie is called Connected to Joe Polish.

Story.

And then Genius Network. Genius Network will continue. And I bet you it's going to be better when I'm not around. And I hope that it is so that when I can come back, I'll be like, see, I don't want to be a guru. This is none of that crap. I mean, this is about. I want Genius Network to be known for the people in the group, not for me. I just happen to be the guy that helped start this thing and curate it. And I hope that everyone has their own Genius Network. Even when I'm on a sabbatical, I will have a Genius Network, but it will be one that I haven't yet developed. And what I mean by that, it will be a capability network. Because any problem in the world can be solved with the right Genius Network. You want to be a better parent. Who do you have that has genius or skills that can help you in that area? If you want to be in better physical shape, do you need a nutritionist? Do you need a personal trainer? Do you need a massage therapist? If you want to learn how to play an instrument, who do you want as part of that? So I'm going to create my own band, my own.

You know, anyone who wants to apply this book needs to understand the principles of the Genius Network. Right. As far as how to build essentially a growing organization of who's that are always at your disposal.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, Ben, I didn't even tie this together, but you wrote that great book who not how with Dan Sullivan and everyone that has not read it. You need to read that book. So go get who not how by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And so here's my 11 by 17, my genius network tool. You've seen this many times in Genius Network. And we have like circles where people write the names of the most important people in their life and they're in the middle. So if someone's listening to this and they're not able to see this video. So you write the names of eight people, you put their name at the top, and at the bottom you put the skill or capability they have, their genius. And then I have people transfer it to this line where it says, you know, my Genius Network, there's no problem that can't be solved by your Genius Network. And the first thing that says is who.

Yep. Oh, I saw that. I've seen you talking about this. I love it.

Yeah. So you write who. Who is the who. So who, not how. Genius or wisdom they have. And then how can I help them? Is the first thing that you identify and then how they can help you. And the way that I do relationships is I don't ask anybody to do anything for me without creating value for them first. And I think it's just a good way to live. So part of it is, you know, if you're depleted, if you're tired, if you're exhausted, I hope this conversation inspires you. Even if you thought most of what I said was just a bunch of rambling. I hope that in your own way that you are inspired to really take care of the million dollar racehorse. That it gives you some perspective and says, okay, you know, it's not what I can do while I'm working the way that I am. It's like, who do I need? What do I need to. Who do I need to become so I can be Joe 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, that sort of thing. And I hope this gives everyone an encouragement to upgrade an area of their life, to eliminate things that no longer bring you joy and to look at some of the most difficult things that you may need to drop. And if you're really exhausted, if you're really overwhelmed, if you have a lot of complexity in your life, bring some simplicity to it. Because I think the people that are going to make the most money and the most difference in the world are ones that bring simplicity to the complexity that exists not only in their own lives, but in other people's lives. And ultimately this will lead to more of an easy, lucrative and fun and an easy liberating and fun life for me. And I hope that it encourages others to do it if we decide to publish this thing. So again, thank you.

I love it.

Oh, and then joesabbatical.com everything that, like people need to contact my team or whatever, we're going to link things to joesabbatical.com and there's a couple shorter videos that if you suffered your way through all of this, then you can read the letter that I have published there and make it a great day, a great year, a great life.