Why Narcissists Thrive as Leaders but Fail as Humans: Dr. Ramani Explains

Why did you start focusing all your research and study on this particular area of narcissism?

You know, it came down to, can I curse?

Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, you say whatever you want. This is great.

You know, how many assholes can you encounter before you feel like a responsibility to do something? And what was interesting for me was I was working more in sort of healthcare delivery and I was an HIV AIDS researcher, still am for a long, long time. And what was happening was we had a research site that I operated in South Los Angeles in a neighborhood that had really been destroyed by H. And then we ran another program at my university. What was happening was the research assistants would come in tears at how badly they were treated the reception staff. And then I started paying attention at the clinics and I saw how horrifically frontline medical staff were being treated by difficult patients across the socioeconomic spectrum. I was like, what's going on here? And that led to the research that was funded by the National Institutes of Health. I said, this personality thing, nobody's talking about. We talk about depression, we talk about substance abuse, we talk about anxiety, but nobody talks about the elephant in the room, which is personality. From there in on, I couldn't unsee it. It was happening on airplanes and at hotel check in desks and at Starbucks. And I thought, oh, we have a problem. At the same time, in my private practice, and I had a very small practice at the time, people kept coming in and saying, my spouse doesn't listen. He or she doubts my reality. I feel like I'm not there. They're so deeply entitled. And I'm like. And I kept sending him these really sweet emails, like from today's session. Here's what we talked about. Then I realized I was writing the same damn email over and over again. That's what led to that book, should I stay or should I Go? But then I realized, wow, this is a problem. And that led. I was doing that work 10, 15 years ago. It led into a deep dive into narcissism. And I realized the mental health profession isn't touching this. It was the third rail of psychology and psychiatry. And I really put myself on an academic gulag at this point. Like, they're saying, nobody does this work. My own mentor said, honey, if you try to do this, no university is going to hire you. Mercifully, I had tenure so I could do what I wanted at that point. But it's really the issue that nobody in mental health wants to talk about. But I tell my students, if you understand narcissism, you understand mental health. I think what I've done, in a way no one else has done, has brought this to the awareness of the masses. And I think my frustration is if any of you know about scientific publishing, the bulk of psychological research sits in psychological journals that are so esoteric, nobody understands what the hell is going on. It's numbers and figures and nothing makes sense. And nobody takes the time to elevate that work to something that anyone in any profession or any walk of life could understand. I think it's tremendously arrogant that billions of dollars are put into research and none of that research was usable by the populace. Everything written about narcissism is like, dense. Nobody gets it. And it's all psychoanalytic.

La, la la.

Sit on the couch 20 years. I said, these people are suffering now. We need to bring something to them. And when you're an old lady who wants to bring an idea to the forefront, what do you do? You work with a millennial. And they said, doc, this is how people are learning. And I had to have as much faith in them as they did in me. And I have two gals who were once my students. And I said, okay, with no budget whatsoever, let's sit in this tiny room and figure this out. And that's how we started with YouTube. We had zero subscribers. As of this time last year, we're at almost 150,000, which isn't bad for an absolutely clueless. My kids are like, you're too old to be a YouTuber, Mom. And I'm like, I'm sort of not really a YouTuber, but that's really what it was. It was trying to take psychology and put it in the public interest.

Yeah. How long did it take you to write?

This is sort of actually sitting down and writing. I write very quickly and I love to write. So for me, once I start writing, I. I could go on 12 hour benders and just keep going. I could write 10,000 words a day. Like, it just, it kept going. So the actual writing, I would like.

You to write for me.

Okay. I love it. I love it. I mean, I guess maybe that's just being a grad student, all that, but 14 months of writing, but frankly, it was five years of research. So there was a lot of grinding going through. The academic work, the theoretical work, and then trying. What happened was the election happened in 2016, and politics aren't relevant here, but. But the word came into the public purview like it had never before. And I had to make a decided decision once the election happened, I had to decide whether I was gonna become political or try to cross both sides. I decided, you're gonna sell more books if you could sell them to both sides of the divide. So I said, cause there's a whole world of psychologists and psychiatrists that take on, is Trump a narcissist? I mean, my cat knows that Trump's a narcissist. So it's not even that interesting a conversation. But the difference was if you do, if you're the mental health person that does the Trump is a narcissist piece, you lose a lot of people who are his supporters? And I'll be frank with you, Joe, his supporters are often some of the most brutal in some of the most brutal narcissistic relationships out there. They needed my content. These are people who are often more low wage workers who can't get therapy but will watch a video about why their husband's being mean to them. And I thought, so let's depoliticize this. Now. I do mention Trump in here. And the only negative Amazon reviews I got, because my assistants are screwed, scrupulous at checking the reviews. The only negative Amazon reviews I got were from Trump supporters and from people who didn't like the fact that I did use some obscenities.

Is there any politician as a president who's not a narcissist?

I can't think of one ever in history of all time. And I'm sure, listen, we liked it. I mean, Obama got to where he got to because he was still very Machiavellian. He was willing to do what he needed to do. Nobody becomes a president without being a narcissist. I just don't see it. I think he probably had a much higher empathy quotient Obama did than your average bear. But the fact is, it's just the nature of the beast.

Yeah, yeah. The thing that your book has in your videos has made me so aware of is how much of the personal development industry, religious leaders, the people that are dispensing how to live your life advice. Follow me. The ones that have the biggest social media followings, the ones that in many cases talk about being honest and transparent, are the biggest gaslighting, bullshit, narcissistic people on the planet. And these are the ones that the world follows and takes advice from. It's a very interesting thing.

It's interesting and it's dangerous. I have a fair number of clients in my practice who are deprogramming from cults. But the reason they chose to work with me Was being in a cult is like being in a relationship with a narcissist. It's exactly the same. Top notes. So as we undo it, I will take their cult and I'll say, it did this, this and this. How did you know that, doctor? I'm like, well, because it's exactly what a narcissist does. And sometimes it is. It's Y gurus. The minute you call yourself a guru and I say this as an Indian woman, you're already in murky waters. Like, no, don't call yourself a guru. You know, so it's a. So it's just even the terming and it's the. I also think that one of the biggest issues we've seen is the forced positivity of the world. You've got to be optimistic. You need to think positive. I will never forget when a friend of mine who was surrounded by other narcissists got diagnosed with stage three cancer. And the prognosis was grim. Indian woman as well. And she pulls me aside, she just had. Had her radical mastectomy. So she's got no breasts, no hair. I mean, she's terrified. And she said, if one more of these bitches comes up to me and tells me to be fucking positive about my cancer, I'm going to hit him. I said, I'll help you. You're weak. Together we will hit them. And it's that. Be positive. It's a form of mental control, right? As though the guru can dictate that for others rather than being empathic and literally meeting a person where they're at. Grief takes time. Trauma takes time to process. Hurt needs to be processed on an individual's time. And saying be happy because I'm telling you to be happy is completely unempathic. But yet here we are.

So let me ask you to define narcissism and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths, because I think that'll help with the foundation here.

So I think the key here, number one, what is narcissism? It's a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, inability to manage any kind of disappointment. And that tends to be manifested as rage, chronic validation seeking. But all of this, envy of other people, but all of this, the core of it, and this is what gets forgotten, is that it's all based on a deep, deep insecurity. Everyone looks at the narcissist, they say they're charming, they're confident, they're successful, they're smart. That doesn't mean if you're those things, you're narcissistic. But if it's built on that core insecurity. That's why the person needs to be grandiose and entitled. Because if I was that fragile inside, my temptation would be to protect it. It's like, if you broke your arm, what do we do? We put a cast on it. Why? So the arm doesn't get broken again or the bone doesn't get agitated or moved. When you have a broken inside, you're that insecure, you're going to protect it. How do you protect it? I'm the shit. I'm the best. No one's better than me. Why should I have to wait in this line? I'm the best, after all. Everybody move out of my way so I can be the first in line. Why am I not the vip? All of that's protective. All of that is them putting this carapace around this fragile interior. So anything from the outside that cracks it. Marital breakup, somebody else beating them at what they do, getting more sales, having more money, having a bigger yacht, having a better whatever, that is going to piss them off. And that's where you see the rage and the acting out. That's narcissism, okay? There's different kinds of narcissism. There's grandiose narcissism, which is sort of textbook. Come to my, you know, come to my palace and be palacey with me. And I'm so great, and you're so lucky to be my friend, and I'm so beautiful. Thank you. That's what we classically think of narcissism. But then there's the malignant narcissist, and that is somebody who's downright dangerous. They're malevolent, they're exploitative, they're manipulative, they smell like a psychopath. But you're going to learn in a minute why a malignant narcissist isn't a psychopath. They're slightly different creatures. There are the more vexing, covert narcissists. These are people who don't look like narcissists. They look like victims. The world was never fair to me. I never got a fair shake.

And you know what?

Maybe he succeeded because he got more money to start with than me. I would have been better than him if my dad gave me money up front. You know what? I'm too good to show up to a job. Why should I do that? Like, I got all these ideas, I'm the next Steve Jobs. Like, let the world find Me. That's covert narcissism. They look so hang dog and so sad all the time that people often think they're depressed and they come to a therapist's office who thinks they're depressed and treats them for depression for three months and then wonder why they're not getting anywhere. And this person, well, the world is against me. The world is against me. The world is against me. Their grandiosity is, why doesn't the world see how great I am versus the grandiose person who says, look how great I am. And then there's even what we call noble narcissists. These are the people who do lots of charitable work and have these big rescue the elephants, rescue the world, rescue everyone kinds of profiles, but they're doing it solely for validation.

That's the same as a communal narcissist.

No, same as a communal. Same as a communal or noble narcissist. These are the people who you think like, wow, they're saving the world. They're so charitable, they're so wonderful. But then catch them behind closed doors and they treat their partners, their families, anyone, one to one, their staffs, absolutely.

Horribly.

So they only have empathy when they're on stage or they're saving an elephant.

I mean, I see so much of that, especially in the stuff that I've done in the non profit world. Yeah, it's cosmetic.

It's very cosmetic. Yes. But the work is being done in the name of seeking validation versus for the meaning and the purpose, or just the higher purpose as you will, of doing the actual work. That's narcissism. I'm sure you're wondering, what's the difference between that and narcissistic personality disorder. There was a wonderful book by Alan Francis called Twilight of American Sanity. I don't know if you've read it, but it's a fantastic book. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder only entered the world of psychiatry in the 1970s. This is a late entry. Freud wrote about it. Otto Rank was the first person who wrote about it. These were early, early analysts and obviously theoreticians, but we didn't make it a diagnosis until the 70s. Francis was one of the people who wrote about it. When Trump got elected, he wrote this book about narcissism and he's like, trump doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. Why not? Because in order for something in the dsm, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Health, mental illness, you have to, in order for it to be diagnosed, it either has to be causing the person subjective distress. Think about a depressed person. They're uncomfortable, they can't get out of bed, they feel sad all the time, they're angry. Or it has to be causing them social and occupational impairment. You look at somebody who's seems to the world a fine marriage, or at least the person thinks it's a fine marriage or relationship. They seem to have perfectly fine kids, at least to the world it looks like that. And the person thinks that. And they're not having any distress. We don't get to diagnose it. Which is why the majority of people with narcissistic traits don't get diagnosed, because nobody ever lays eyes on them. So that's why the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorders, about 1 to 5%. I'm spitballing here because we don't have the numbers. The prevalence of narcissism in the American culture is probably closer to 30%, that gap.

So 30% of.

I would guess so, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, it's one in three. But now when we go to psychopathy, we jump the rails. Narcissist insecure. Okay. When the mask gets pulled off the narcissist and he and I were talking about his program about getting people ready to go to prison, one of the things he's going to run into most, and this has come up when I've taught at jails and prisons about this to the clinicians there, is that they're so insecure now the mask is off.

Shame.

You're a bad guy. I was once supposed to do, I think an interview with Steve Madden. I was telling him for this thing on narcissism and he was actually willing to subject himself to talking to me. And then at the 11th hour, I think he had something more interesting to do. Surprise, surprise. But he acknowledged it. He said the. The thing he was most frightened of was going to jail or going to prison. And he did.

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

And so it shatters them. A psychopath is not insecure. They have no fear fear, they have no anxiety and they're completely stress resistant, which is why they make, for example, great surgeons. They make great CEOs, they make great. Anyone who needs to stay completely calm at a time of tremendous danger. Right. So nothing bothers them. That's just why they make great hired assassins. I mean, anything that requires you to be calm, cool and collected under conditions that are difficult for people to do them, they're dangerous.

I was watching a show on drug lords and. And gangsters and mob leaders and stuff, and they were talking about the brain scans and some of these people in fearful situations. For most people, it doesn't even register. It doesn't bother them at all. So is this a genetic thing?

Yeah. So the belief with psychopathy is. It's definitely biological. And the imaging studies have shown that very clearly. There's likely. The genetic piece is still being argued because think about it. Far, far more men have been diagnosed with psychopathy than women. So we don't see. There's almost no research on female psychopaths, though we see them. An interesting speculation would be someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Is she a malignant narcissist or is she a psychopath? Like, I've watched everything on her I can. Because you don't see women in these situations much. She's somewhere. I haven't talked to her, so I don't know. Right. But it's that. But the key with a psychopath is they feel no remorse. That's the issue. They feel truly no remorse. The narcissist actually does feel some remorse for anything from even smaller time stuff like infidelity to big ticket stuff. I embezzled $20 million. So a madoff type reaction, psychopathy. Okay, that's a great. Absolutely didn't register. It's like, this is really inconvenient that you're doing this to me. But no circumspect sense of how this impacted other people.

Do they fake it? As if they.

They fake it. They can fake it. They absolutely can fake it. But it really. It's like an aftermarket thing. Like about. This was about 10 hours too late. Like, this should have been what you led with another one. Was that guy Larry. God, what the hell was this? Larry Nassar. He was one of the physicians in the whole gymnastics issue. Of all the gymnasts who were sexually abused, I dug deep into that case because he felt so psychopathic. He never ever expressed remorse to the girls and young women he harmed. All he said is, basically, this is a pain in the neck. Why are you wasting so much time? You're hearing similar discourse from a gynecologist who sexually abused countless scores of girls and women over 20 years at USC. You're inconveniencing me with all these proceedings. I'm like, oh, my God, you've destroyed hundreds of lives. There's no. That doesn't register. A narcissist would show more guilt and shame under those conditions.

So a sociopath.

Sociopath. This is a less articulated condition. A lot of people incorrectly interchangeably use the term psychopath and sociopath. The psychopath is considered to be, again, that calm, cool, callous, calculated, smart person who's just able to barrel through in a remorseless way. And we have much more evidence that that is a central nervous system phenomenon. The sociopath is likely someone who was. And again, criminologists and everyone argue about this, that may be more of something that was created by the environment. Somebody who is beaten up a lot by a father or a caregiver, somebody who grew up on the streets or under conditions of tremendous, tremendous deprivation or danger. And that under different conditions, the story could have probably gone a little bit differently. They also tend to be more combative. You'll probably see a lot more sociopaths in prison than you will psychopaths. Sociopath gets into a bar fight. A psychopath would never, you know, diminish themselves in that way. They'll find a way to slowly destroy that person's life or kill them and no one will ever know the difference kind of thing. So whereas a sociopath, they'll fight, they'll get into a street fight, they'll get into a bar fight. They're less regulated, they tend to be less successful. The big difference that's been brought up in the literature is a psychopath at some level doesn't understand the function of rules. They're like, why is this a rule? She did me wrong in a drug deal. Why can't I kill her? Please help me understand this. A sociopath knows he shouldn't kill her and still will.

Interesting.

Yeah. So there's a not knowing. But that said, even though there's a not knowing in psychopathy, psychopathy cannot be used as part of the insanity defense in the United States. That has been taken off the table.

What I mean, is there any idea how many people in the United States, as an example, are North America, are sociopaths.

Psychopaths?

I would guess with psychopathy merciful, it's probably, probably under 2%. It's a pretty low frequency phenomenon. It's rare, it's terrifying. And interestingly, some of the professions, like I was reading some research on the top 10 professions that have psychopaths in them, and amongst those were Surgeon, CEO and clergy. Those are the professions that attract psychopaths.

Wow.

Wow.

So statistically speaking, if there's anything there, then there's a 30% of this audience.

A narcissist, then maybe, yeah. I mean, I mean, again, I don't.

Want to be the ones that you.

Just because I love this group has been amazing. But what you might have find in a group like this because everyone is so successful is sort of what I consider just sub threshold narcissism. Like just enough cockiness to get you into trouble. And I would love to sit with each and every one of you and find out what your close personal relationships are like, because it may very well be that that's where it's not working as well as it could be. And again, you may have also gotten lucky, Joe, because you're you. And you might have gotten 100% entrepreneurs where there's not a single narcissist in the room. Listen, is a little of it gonna make you successful in business?

Sure.

Because if her and I are vying for the same job and I'm like, oh, she's so sweet, I'm gonna give her all the intel, we're in this together. I may not get the job, but if girlfriend's like. Girlfriend's like, yeah, she's going. She's like, I'm not telling her everything that you know. Is that narcissism? I think it's probably a heavy handed use of the word. But that lack of empathy, I mean, that to me is what the whole thing sort of hinges on. And then when we talk about the origins of narcissism, I think people can self reflect. But I gotta tell you, so far, my alarms maybe have gone off one and a half times today at the most.

So, Joe, welcome back.

Thank you.

And it's great to say welcome while I'm in my own house. It feels kind of meta. It's kind of weird. Yeah. First off, thank you. Thank you for being a cool dude, being part of my group, being part of my life. And we've done some really insane, unique things together. And I mean, we can talk, we've been on fishing boats just saying the worst things that a human could possibly say to each other in a form of bonding with friends. No matter what you do business personally, it always involves relationships. And many people are not good at developing relationships. And I was not good at developing relationships growing up. And that's why I ended up now probably learning as much as one possibly could and applying it for building a connection, network and So I want to help other people build their own genius networks. I don't know if I ever told you about this. You know, I used to have Asperger's syndrome when I was a kid. I was pretty darn unaware of other people and relationship dynamics, in part because of toxic mold and a lot of early childhood trauma, birth trauma, and nothing anyone did on purpose. But what I started doing was I'd go to the Stanford campus, and there was this business networking group every Thursday night, this thing called the Stanford Barn. And I was like the fat computer hacker standing in the corner eating grapes and cheese. And I would just watch people just every Thursday for two years, because I knew business networking mattered if I wanted to succeed. And this was back. I think I was working at 3Com when I did this, which is now a dead networking company. And I just remember thinking, this is hard, but there's a pattern. And I slowly worked it out. And then I had a couple mentors who took me under the wing. Oh, this weird kid's probably. He seems really smart and he knows what he's talking about, but he's clueless. A bumbling level of clueness or cluelessness.

How bad were you?

Because that's how bad I was. I was more scared than everything else in my mind. I never asked someone out on a date. I never went to prom in high school. I was deathly afraid of not only developing relationships and approaching people, but I was completely insecure in myself. I was shy and introverted, and part of it just simply was due to my upbringing in my childhood. My mother was a former nun. I've heard every joke under the sun on that. But she left the convent because she had gotten ill, and she met my father in church. They fell in love, they got married, they had me, and I have an older brother. And my mother died of ovarian cancer when I was 4 years old. And that was in 1972. And so when that happened, my father was tormented. He was broken. He never really recovered. He lost a love of his. His life. And so every year to two years, my entire childhood, we would go to different cities in the Southwest, so different parts of Arizona, different parts of New Mexico, different parts of Texas. So I would go to these schools. It was hard for me to develop relationships with anyone. And as soon as I established some friendships, we would uproot and we would go somewhere else. So I never really quite learned. I always felt like this is all temporary. I was always going to a new school, never had a lot of money. I mean, Half my childhood, we lived in trailers. We weren't dirt poor, but we were definitely like, you know, lower middle class sort of thing. And my father was a locksmith, and he never remarried, so I never had any sort of female upbringing. The only, like, sort of relationships that I had were very fleeting, temporary, you know, brothers and sisters of my father. And I never really got to know my mother's family side that much after she died. And, yeah, so it was just this. And then I was, you know, I was basically sexually abused as a kid. And that put a. Instilled a feeling of, I'm worthless, I'm shameful, I'm dirty. And so my interaction into sexuality was abusive, and it was disgusting and it was humiliating. So any bit of self worth I had was just almost completely removed, you know, between. Between the ages of 8 to 10 years old. And then I was going to church, and there was a lot of awful things that happened in camps and different things where I would go to. And I just felt like nothing's safe in the world. So I never felt safe in the world. And I was. And I would pray to not get picked on and bullied. But I was a shy kid. And then I tried sports, and I had a sadistic little league coach that would force me to hold the baseball bat in a certain way where I could never hit the ball. And I could hit the ball fine if I just could lean the bat back and he would make me hold it straight and I could not hit the ball. So I ended up quitting the team. Then the kids on the team started picking on me, some of them beating me up because I quit the team. But I quit the team only because I couldn't play the game. And so all of a sudden I'm like, what the hell is going on? Like, nothing you can do in the world. You're just gonna, you know. And then I would pray to a God that I never really felt gave me any protection. And it was. It was kind of a messed up childhood. So I started doing drugs, you know, junior high and high school. And that became one of the ways that I did it. And let me say this too. When I talk about things that are bad about my childhood, I want to be careful and preface it with, everybody has painful, difficult things in their life. And there's a saying in recovery groups, because I've been in addiction recovery for over two decades, that you're as sick as your secrets. And if you try to fight silent battles, these are the hardest battles to fight. That's something I always try to talk about. And so I don't want this to sound like woundology. And I never want to use my story as, like, oh, poor me, because everybody has had awful stuff. There's a problem with that. Some people just love to go out there and they just pour it out, almost like bask in it. And you don't do that that I've ever seen you do. You're more just illustrating like, it was pretty bad. Yeah. But because I have an addiction recovery foundation, and I spend about half my time in that world helping people with addiction recoveries. And I don't charge for it. It's something. And it's not because I'm some philanthropic angel. It helps me in my own recovery. I mean, it really does. If you think your life sucks, there's other people that would love to have someone to sit with them, even if they're dying in a hospice center. So part of it is I do that work. It's difficult work. It's challenging work, but it's very fulfilling for what I do. And if you're going to tell your story about that, it's really dangerous to get so attached to it because there's a lot of speakers that use their signature story as a way to manipulate people. And I. And narcissistic people are really good at doing that. And I never want to come across like, oh, feel bad for me, because. And again. And I say this also not to minimize it either, because you can do the reverse too. You can say, oh, no, it was no big deal. And a lot of times it was freaking awful.

Right?

So. So everyone. So there's a balance on how to do it. I'm not sure I'm. I know the exact perfect ways to try to explain this, but I just want to point that out. Okay.

One of the things that it says we could talk about is three skills to heal any damaged business relationships.

Okay?

That can happen a lot, can't it?

I mean that it happens a lot. Like a lot of 80% of my practice. Right. Of my clients. So. So here's what happens. Think about a business relationship with co founders, right? It pretty much starts off like a marriage, right? You come together. It's lollipops and rainbows. You're going to do this better than everybody else, right? You have the honeymoon phase. You're going to set the world on fire. And then one day you wake up and you realize you can't stand them. Right? And sometimes you literally wake up and realize you can't stand them because You've been in denial. Also sounds like a marriage, right? Anyway, so what do you have to do when that relationship becomes damaged? You have to reestablish the trust. Because without trust you don't have a relationship. So before we talk about reestablishing trust, let me just tell you what you need to do to establish trust in a relationship. First question I will ask somebody is, well, are you trustworthy? You can't expect somebody to trust you if you're sort of, kind of shady, right? So be trustworthy and then be authentic. Be genuine. Most of us can smell a rat a mile away. And be respectful. So those are the keys to developing the trust. When the trust gets broken, this is what we need to do. And people don't like this when I first say this. So just everybody take a breath. Whatever created the distrust or the broken trust, think about take some personal responsibility for the situation. Even if it's only 1%. Because takes two to tango. If you think that you're going to be able to mend a relationship and reestablish trust by the other person taking 100% of the blame, you are waiting for Godot. It just won't happen. Their ego won't allow it. So take some personal responsibility that's real and acknowledge it. That's the first thing. The second thing is use the imagination like we said earlier, with empathy and put yourself in their shoes and imagine the situation from their perspective. But you have to be genuine with it. You have to be authentic. And I even have my clients, no joke, stand in front of a full length mirror and make the case of your business partner. Here's what happens with that. That's amazing, Dean. Our brain doesn't know that it's imagination and role play.

Right?

Our brain doesn't know that it's not true. Just like you got to be careful how you talk to yourself. Because your brain and it starts to create a new neural pathway.

Yes.

Right. So it ever so slightly shifts your mindset to becoming a little bit more open to re establishing the relationship.

Right.

And then finally, and I don't know, I don't know if you heard my 10 minute talk, but consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there's more than one truth. Because truth is not objective and it's not a zero sum game. Because if it is, if I'm completely right, baby, you're wrong. And we're never gonna. We're never going to heal this.

Right?

Right. So your truth is based upon your perspective of the situation. Which when a relationship is Damaged. It's very different. Right. And your life experiences, which makes it so different. So if you do those three things, that will start to heal. And that happens in marriages and that happens in business partnerships. And you need all three.

Yeah.

It really is interesting, the ability of our minds to role play in our minds without like to play things out. I read, I mentioned Jordan Peterson. He's got his book 12 Rules for Living or Life. And one of the rules that he has is treat yourself like someone you're responsible for helping. And it was a really interesting thing because it gets you to detach from yourself, do yourself with empathy. Right. And to really, you know, you do look kindly on yourself and get yourself the help that you need. But I've been thinking about that from a marketing perspective. We've been thinking about how to take that and transfer that to our prospects, to the people who we're starting a relationship with. We were able to run ads for books and generate leads and start relationships like that. And again, these are all relationships. That's what I think. When you're saying there's so many different flavors. It's the same skills of, of starting a new relationship.

Don't tell anybody.

What's that?

Don't tell anybody. It's the same skill set, platforms, of.

Course, that same thing, the same questions is, are you trustworthy? Is what we're really trying to come to. That's why when people are referred, when somebody refers somebody to Genius Network, it's always comes with a much more elevated trustworthiness because they know the person that's referred to Genius Network, they're coming in now and transferring that trust onto this mutual. Onto the community and onto Joe and the people they meet in the context of that. But when you're coming into something new and they're observing from the outside, they're coming from, you know, they were wandering in the desert and they come across this. This environment of what looks like a fun place they're coming in, but they don't have any context for what's going on. And so thinking that way of treating your prospects like someone you're responsible for helping flips the switch that primarily the people. I would say the lower EQ way of thinking about prospects is trying to find the ones that you can sell.

Or giving them what you think they want.

Right. But more importantly, focused on what you want, which is you want them to buy rather than you want them to get help.

Exactly.

That's a really. That's a different. That's a lower. I think you could really take the low EQ approach and equate it with the low income approach. Being a lot of the using low EQ strategies in lead conversion marketing, you're probably not going to have as a better, as good.

Yeah, there's a lot of wealthy people that have low EQ because, you know, maybe that's true. But, but to, but to your point about treating yourself like, you know, I tell people, don't talk to yourself the way you would never let other people talk to you. Right, Right. So you wouldn't let people call you stupid or dumb, so don't call yourself that. And from a marketing perspective, gosh, Jean Dean, it's absolutely true what you're saying. If you take the emotional intelligence perspective of meet the client where they are, give them what they want, not what you think they want, and know, like, and trust. And you're so right. When you make a referral, like, when somebody ever refers me, like, even when Cameron referred me to genius, I felt such a responsibility, like, oh my gosh, like, somebody put their trust in me. You cannot blow this. And even when Eunice asked me to give this to do this, I'm like, oh my gosh, I better show up with my A game. Because you never want to let somebody down because they put their trust in you. That's sacred. I feel it's sacred.

All right, so when you hear the term toxic person, what comes to mind? Thoughts, words, Images? Selfish? Negative. Mike Koenigs. All right, all right. So for those of you that struggle to come up with a word or idea behind this, I'm going to rephrase this a little. Can you think of somebody in your life who you choose to limit your time and attention with because they are draining and because they just, they kind of suck the life out of you? How about the Debbie and Donnie Downers of the world? The people that are negative about everything and everyone. What about an employee? I was listening to a podcast recently and the guy actually referred to a wrong fit employee as a swamp monster. Somebody that makes you want to drain the swamp to get rid of the problem. What about a business partner? Somebody who you know down in your gut that it is the wrong fit for you, but for whatever reason, you have not found a way to part ways, even though every interaction leaves your sanity tested. So that today is what we are going to call toxic people or toxic relationships. So I want to take it one step further and actually put a little spin on this. By having just one toxic relationship in your life. Think about how that productivity, how much that productivity in dollars is worth to you. That's what makes this a $250,000 idea. Because just a couple hours for most of you in this room of lost productivity is like just tossing thousands of dollars out the window. So when you think about when you're stressed out, burnt out, and not yourself, how much is that worth? How expensive is that? So today I'm going to actually share with you a very, very personal story about not only how a negative a person, a negative, toxic person can affect your life, but also three key ways that I have found that can help you free yourself of a toxic relationship. So there's a date and time that I will never forget. That date is December 11th of 2016. A mere 74 days ago, it was a call from my brother to say that our youngest sister died. Gone. Taken from us at the ripe young age of 17. She had fought a battle with cystic fibrosis her whole life. But as you can see from the outside looking in, she was a normal, healthy kid. Imagine how you would have felt in this situation. For me, my shock turned to devastation. Devastation to tears and tears to guilt. Guilt because I allowed a toxic person, a toxic situation, to take a relationship from me. And in my personal situation, it was my father. Maybe you can think of a time where you have had to deal with a toxic family member. You know, I look at it, and toxic people are takers. When you're looking at givers versus takers, toxic people take. For me, my dad took my confidence. He took my financial freedom at such a young age that no other person should have to deal with at that point in their life. So again, maybe you have been faced with a toxic family member. And if you have, you may have been faced with the most difficult but most necessary decision to have to cut them from your life. So during a time of grief, I was also faced with. With another emotion, and that was fear. I was going to have to go to this funeral and I was going to have to face my father, somebody who's caused a lot of pain and anguish in my life. And, you know, I was gearing up for this funeral and all I could think about was, okay, I need a power word. So I was literally googling power words, something to get me through this time. I was leaning towards strength or courage because those two words just seemed to make a lot of sense for. For what I was going through. And then a single solitary F word hit me in the face. And it's not the F word that we hear a lot around here. It was freedom. Freedom from toxicity, freedom from fear, and freedom from allowing anyone or anything to ever impact me negatively again. And that's what brings me to my first point that I have for you is in dealing with toxic people, it's to free yourself from the bounds that they place. Now, I'm going to piggyback on Craig, and I'm going to make everybody close their eyes. So close your eyes. And I want you to think about a toxic person or people from your life, and I want you to think about the negative emotion that comes with that. Now, I want you to imagine releasing that person from your life. You're no longer dealing with fear, frustration, anxiety, depression. You're no longer interrupted by that person or people. Now open your eyes. How does that release feel? Is it freeing? Do you feel less stressed? More sane? There's actually a quote out there. I'm not sure who wrote this. I wish I could give it credit somewhere, but it says, respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy. It's like Joe says all the time, be willing to destroy anything in your life that isn't excellent. And that brings me to my second key point here, and it's to break the cycle of toxic relationships before it starts or before it gets so out of control that you don't know how to go back. So what do they say? They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. Took me 24 years to break one. 24 years old. I found myself in a marriage where I literally cried almost every single day from verbal, emotional, and your physical abuse. And at the time, I wasn't pregnant, so I didn't have an excuse to cry every day like I do now. My poor husband. But that's where this F word comes back into play. Can you think of a time where a light bulb has gone off in your head and you're like, you know what? I am allowing something to happen in my life that is not okay. It goes against my values. And you know what? Enough is enough. That's exactly where I was at. And that's where the F word comes back into play. When I reflect back on that time in my life, it wasn't strength or courage that allowed me to leave that relationship. It was freedom. It was that feeling of freeing myself from a toxic relationship and being able to move forward. And you know what? It felt darn good. So that brings me to my third and final point in helping you to deal with toxic relationships and your life. And that is that no Matter how dark of a situation you are in and how dark the person is that you are dealing with, there is some silver lining. There is something positive for you to focus on. And by shifting your mindset, that is where the breakthroughs come in. That's where your insights come into play. Can you think of a time where you have had to free yourself from from a toxic relationship? And can you think of the consequences that came with that? Was it in the form of a lost relationship like I had with my sister? Again, a simple shift in mindset, focusing on the gains versus the losses. That is what is going to help get you through. Because you know what I gained when I left my husband and I cut my father from my life. I gained an awesome husband who is my rock. I gained a little girl who is the light of so many people's lives. That's her unicorn hair, by the way. Like, she literally tells me to put a unicorn in. I have another girl on the way. I started a business that fulfills my passions. My income more than doubled. But more than anything else, more than anything else, I gained freedom. Freedom from feeling judged in how I deal with toxic people. Freedom from allowing anybody to affect me in that negative way. Freedom to say I love you to somebody before I can't anymore. So my action for you is to decide what does your freedom look like from toxic people and toxic relationships and act on it today. Not tomorrow, not next week, next month, today. And then take the negative energy that you are applying to that situation and put it to good use. Dive into your passions. Spend time with people that give you energy and excitement for life because that's all you've got. When I walked into my sister's funeral, I'll never forget how I felt. I had decided consciously when I walked in there that no matter what, when, why, how, whatever context, I interacted with my father again because I knew it will happen in the future. It didn't matter who he was, because I was free. I knew within a couple minutes he was the same manipulative person even at his own daughter's funeral. But that was okay because I was free of that. So there was a song that played at the funeral that I'll never forget the lyrics. It said, I owned every second that this world could give. I swear I lived own every second that this life can give you. This is your life and you have the freedom to do with it or with whom you please.

Amy. I want to read something because it kind of ties into what David was saying about finding his love relationship now, you posted this and I asked Eunice, my assistant, to print this out and you titled it Stop looking for. See where it says she didn't say fuck, she put an asterisk. But I'm just going to use. Sorry for the profanity, but it's just more effective if I say it, so spoiler alert. It's not about love. You just posted this, I think yesterday. Yeah, and on Facebook. If you guys want to go get a copy, you can read it on her page. Fuck yes. Relationships are about intensity. The one, the soulmate that you'll just know I can't live without you kind of love. That's not love. It's fantasy fueled by lust. The cytokode dependency, a dad of insecure attachment and a sprinkle of love addiction. Instead of questioning, instead of questing for a fuck yes relationship, perhaps a more sustainable approach would be to cultivate one maintenance, commitment. Making an effort even when you don't have the chemical momentum of lust to motivate you. Choosing love even when you don't feel like it that day. Communicating like an adult, seeing someone as the human they are, not a projected fantasy of what you want them to be. It's not the sexy stuff motivational quotes are made of. I love that line. Because if you just look at Instagram and all of these fall in love, it's such a facade in so many ways. So I'll read that again. It's not the sexy stuff motivational quotes are made of. No. The everyday mundane choices we make show up. Sorry. As a fuck yes partner comes down to good old fashioned hard work, discipline, commitment and effort. Writer Damien Baller, hopefully I'm pronounced that right, articulates this beautifully. Life is completely composed of mediocre, mundane and difficult tasks and experiences. Yet it is the accumulation of the mundane, like preparing a garden bed from scratch, that leads to the flowering of something beautiful. The early stages, cutting the weeds, tilling the soil. None of that is actually very fun. Yet walking through an abundant garden, picking flowers and fruits and vegetables, it comes from the process of small, repeated, intentional tasks. Fuck. Maybe love. Perhaps that's a more realistic goal, the one that starts off with a slow simmer of curiosity that can eventually boil into something delicious. It isn't black or white and honors the shades of gray. It's the marathon approach versus the sprint. It's reality based, not fantasy fueled. I thought that was like amazing what you wrote, so let's speak to that. Because a lot of people, they just like, oh, it needs to be this thing and so, you know.

Yeah, I think that. Thanks for bringing that up and reading it so beautifully. I wrote that because I don't know if any of you guys have ever read Mark Manson's piece on, you know, if it's not a fuck yes, it's a fuck no. And I used to subscribe to that. And I would get into these romances that were so like in the beginning, like, oh my God, like soulmate. The one fuck yes. And they would fizzle and they would burn pretty intensely. And you know, through experience and through doing this work, I really realized that, you know, all those times I thought it was the one, it was more, it was fantasy fueled, it was, you know, codependency, it was projection. And I had this idea of what love was. Again, we talked about this earlier like that it's this intense thing, but that's not love. And so I think it's really screwing up an entire generation of people. Because when you're looking at that as your, as a standard for love, you are picking people. Especially if you have a broken chemistry compass. You're feeling chemistry with people that fuck yes. Energy with people who can subconsciously wound you in a way that you're familiar with. So instead of it being a green light when you get that oh my God, fuck yes, it's actually a sign of like your subconscious radar is picking them up and they're picking out that they can wound you and it's actually a red stop sign. And also what happens when you start off and you have a relationship and you go through life, right? I mean, Dan, I'm sure in your relationship there's been ups and there's been downs and like what happens when it's not fuck yes the whole time? Do you just abandon it? And so I think we need to, if we're going to have more fulfilled outcome in our relationships, we need to start to look at our definition of what love and relationships are. Because what a lot of us are fed and think that we think is love is not love. And I think we need to be more realistic. And this also means when I go talk about chemistry compass and rewiring, that the very first thing you want to do is you're not going to go from choosing people who are toxic and who are intense and off and on to suddenly the next person is secure and stable and reliable. Your brain is going to reject it because it's so foreign to you. You almost need to increase your tolerance to what healthy feels like. And that's why I always encourage people And I've done this on myself, too. Conduct a dating experiment. Date 10 people who are completely outside of your type. Older than you, younger than you, just different. Because you will be so surprised that when you give people a chance, you might be pleasantly surprised that you actually don't have this one type. And Dan, you mentioned it earlier, it's not a list of like, oh, you have to be this tall. You have to.

Whatever.

It's, how do I want to feel? What type of relationship do I want? That's your list. Not how much money do they make? You know, are they blonde? That's bullshit. That's what's keeping you miserable. In love. Sorry, I just ranted.

No, no, I like it. I like rants. I like when people have some energy behind it. So, Dean Jackson, holler at us. What's going through your head right now?

You know, I think as we're listening, all of these things that she's sharing are applicable to anybody. No matter what stage of a relationship they're in, they're seeking one, they're in one, they're in a happy one, they're in a troubled one. They're just going through a breakup. But the catalyst that she's chosen to get people into the conversation is that juncture of the breakup that, oh, now when people go through a breakup, they feel like, now I can seek out something, right? And what we found with stop your divorce was that all of the information in there would be even more applicable to people who are in a relationship or seeking one, but nobody. It's not on the top of anybody's to do list at that point. Right? Like, then the market for stop your divorce is bigger than or more intense than the market for improve your relationship. And that's really a thing that all the people, even though if they could get it ahead of time, that it would be so much more transforming for them. It's like as soon as somebody says, that's it, I've had enough, I want a divorce, or I'm breaking up with you. It's like the ice has, like, now crashed below them, and they would do anything just to get back on stable ground. It's like a, you know, it's like something that immediately it changes your priorities. Just like a, I'm pregnant or you've got cancer or health diagnosis or something that is acute onset with pain and urgency is. Is a catalyst.

It's.

It's fascinating, you know, but that. I think from a marketing standpoint, these things, Things the people who get this, who get the book could be the, the conveyors of the information to other people. Because I imagine that once people get the, get the information and embrace it, that they want to share it with everybody. Because now they've had a transformation and they know how things are different. And people who are struggling in a relationship or choosing the wrong guys, I bet that they're quoting Amy to their friend saying, you know what, he's an avoidant attachment guy. That's what you're, that's the problem there. Or you're, you're an anxious attacher and they're starting to diagnose people. And this kind of knowledge, you could basically take this book and 90% of it stay the same, repackage 10% of it to frame it from another, you know, from another perspective and have something that is applicable to people not going through a breakup.

You know, Dean, it's like hurt people, Hurt people. Heal people. Healed people. Right?

That's it.

As they're healing, it's like giving people, you know, this, this because what you've got is information and technologies kind of thing that can help people at any stage.

Okay, so I'm going to tell you for a minute what I'm going to talk about. I will draw back the curtains. This is what I'm going to cover. How to create the deepest possible human connections, how to create the most lucrative business, how to develop the most innovative collaborations. And also I'm going to teach you a little bit about the magic that happens here at Genius Network and really kind of the magic of Joe Polish. What is all this stuff? I'm going to pull back the curtains on all of this stuff because this is what I've been figuring out, analyzing, studying, brute force learning for the past eight months. So in September 2017, I joined Genius Network. I went to my first 25k meeting and for about a month and a half before my first meeting, I worked a ton with this guy. I was really lucky. My aunt Jane was actually a member of Genius Network for two years. And she told me when she found out that I joined. Before you go to your first meeting, sign up for a 10 minute talk, give a 10 minute talk during your first meeting and work with Joel. That's exactly what she told me. So I worked with Joel, worked with him a ton. And after my 10, this was me after my first Genius Network meeting. Actually, that's not me. That's how I felt. This is what happened. I learned a ton from Joel and also I developed a ton of what I learned about this culture. So I Learned a ton. Guy named Dre Redfern immediately helped me to make $10,000 more a month to my business. He had his whole team working with me, helped me for free. All of this stuff was crazy. And so I learned very quickly the rules of this environment, of this culture. Joe says it all the time. Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. That is the rules in this environment, and that is the rules for all of the things that I was mentioning before. Immediately I joined 100k. I said, if I have this many epiphanies and this many experiences, I'm already getting this much. What's going to happen at the next level? My only goal was be helpful. I wrote an article about it on Inc. It's called what Happened when I paid $100,000 to help someone. One of the things that really surprised me during my first 25k meeting was one of the first conversations we were having was how do you get a return on your investment? Of that 25k, I thought, that is the most weird conversation. It seems so backwards to this whole focus on being a giver and not a taker. And then there was someone who said something really brilliant. He said, here's the secret that most people don't realize. You pay someone money and then you help them. This is how you create 10x returns. By the way, that person was Jason Fladlin. He said that at, I think 100k. Or he said that at a recent 25k meeting. So here's a really interesting story.

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

I don't know who here has heard of Christina. I think it's Tosi or Tassi. Anyone heard of her? One person. That's my assistant. She happens to be one of the most famous pastry chefs in the world. People come from all over the world to come to New York to come to her place. It's called Milk Cafe in New York. It's been all over the Internet. Not the Internet, sorry. It's been all over, like the media, the news and stuff. So 10 years ago, she was working at a very fancy restaurant. No one knew who she was. She was working in the back. She was a server. She was doing dishes and stuff like that. She needed a push. Here's basically what was happening. She had a huge passion, a side love for making desserts, for making pastries. She just loved it. It was what she loved to do. And she started bringing those pastries and desserts to her co workers just because she just loved giving those things. And it blew their minds. They all, by the way, this is a very high end restaurant that she was working at and her boss was a very famous chef and he begged her for months, please let us serve your desserts at our restaurant. And she wouldn't do it. She was terrified. She was freaked out. She didn't actually see in herself what other people were experiencing. She just saw it as a passion. She enjoyed it and she loved doing it, but she didn't have the confidence in herself. Again, she needed a push. If you've ever seen the documentary Chef's Table on Netflix, please do it. It's one of the most aesthetic, beautiful shows ever. But in her boss's words, I just needed to push her off the cliff because she wouldn't do it herself. And so he one day said, you have three hours and then whatever you produce, I'm serving and you're getting credit for it. So if you produce crap, you're getting. That's you. So basically she freaked out. She took three hours and she produced a magical dessert. It was a like strawberry cheesecake. It got raving reviews. And then she started making the desserts at the restaurant and way more people started coming, even though this was already a really successful restaurant, because her desserts blew their mind. Fast forward a few years. She's one of the most famous pastry chefs in the world. So she went on to succeed and she got a gift. That's one of the core components of what I'm calling a transformational relationship, is that you receive gifts and it's something you cannot get for yourself. That's part of this environment. That's part of why you need to be a giver, and that's part of why there are so many givers in this room, is because there are certain things that you need that you can't get. You may need a push. I recently just published my first book, my first traditionally published book. Willpower Doesn't Work. I was pretty overwhelmed with the launch of a first book. I needed a push. I had a mentor who gave me an enormous gift, something I could not have given myself. So Dan Sullivan, he has defined basically what are the key components of healthy, powerful relationships, and those are the Three components that I consider the core essentials of transformational relationships. Basically, there's giving, there's gratitude, and there's growth. If you're not giving, it's not a transformational relationship. If you're not experiencing gratitude, you're not experiencing it because you're probably not giving, you're not appreciating what you're getting. If it's a transformational relationship, you are receiving abundantly and you should just be blown away. Blown away and humble. And if you're not growing, if you're not being pushed, if you're not transforming, then it's obviously not a transformational relationship. In transformational relationships, there's no keeping score, there's no tit for tat. That's purely a transactional relationship. That's what we're talking about here. And again, that's not where the most growth happens. It's just giving, being humble, being blown away and being grateful. Also, if you want to create transformational relationships, you have to be the one to initiate it. You've got to discover how to give, what people need, how to be useful. And you can't wait for others to do it for you. You just can't. So one other comment is just obviously you cannot do this on your own. There was a very famous philosopher, he once said something that really gets me every time he said, self made is an illusion. There are many people who have played divine roles in you having the life that you have today. Be sure to let them know how grateful you are. That philosopher was Michael Fishman. And that is one of the things that I have probably quoted more than anything else. Steve Sims has an entire book on how to create transformational relationships. He's called the wizard of Oz of Business because he knows how to create impossible situations. Whether that's getting his clients on stage with Journey. How does he do it? He finds out what people want, he creates a win win situation, and then he creates impossible situations. Dan Sullivan talks about impossible. He talks about going 100x. We talk about making a 10x investment or 10x return on your investment. Dan Sullivan's like way above that. He's talking about, how do you go 100x? The only way to do that is when two givers come together who are operating in their unique ability, and they come together and they create transformational collaboration. It's where the whole becomes fundamentally different from the sum of the parts. And what's freaky about transformational relationships is that you don't actually know where they're going with a Transactional relationship, you know exactly what you're getting, and if you're not getting that, you're out. With transformational relationships, there's a lot of risk because you don't actually know what the transformation is going to be. Genius Network and Strategic Coach is an amazing example. Here at Genius Network, this is basically the purpose. It's to bring a bunch of givers together in their unique ability and to create transformational relationships. Again, what are the rules? Life gives to the giver, takes from the taker. We've heard Joe say it, and it's exactly what works. So here are some questions I have for you. Have you 100x your investment? How many transformational relationships do you have? Do you initiate? Do you give? Are you radically humbled and grateful? Are you growing? How much are you actually growing? How much are you pushing and how much are you getting pushed? One of my favorite authors is Seth Godin. One of the things he said is art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter, the intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. So my question is, are you an artist? You may think of yourself as a businessman or something, but are you an artist like Tim Paulson? And by the way, he has an amazing picture on that other thing, Joe Polish. We consider Joe a marketer or a connector. In my opinion, Joe is an artist.

He.

He creates art as a personal gift that changes the recipients. Transactional relationships don't change you. They're not gifts. There's no gratitude required. There's status quo. Transformations are where artists come together in their unique ability. They give their greatest gifts extremely generous. There's growth. Here's my call to action. Create more transformational relationships, even more. You guys would not be in this room if you didn't have any. Create them more in your personal life. Create them with your clients. Give, give, give so much that it blows their minds. And then create them. Here at Genius Network, it starts with you. Again, it starts with you.

But I will say that this is unfortunate that this exists. But whoever cares the least controls the relationship.

Whoever cares the least.

Whoever cares the least controls the relationship. In a negotiation, unless you're dealing with someone that cares about you and you care about them, and there's real rapport built in, and they want to see you win, and they don't want to see you lose. And when you're dealing with real givers and people you have rapport with, you don't need to play those games. But unfortunately, we often don't have enough rapport with people and we have to play those stupid games. And you can decide that I don't even want to play that game, so I'm not even going to enter this game. But a lot of times, you know, it's the. If, if, if you really are desperate, they smell it and the. And the takers will take advantage of it. And I do talk about that in my book because it's a very. It's a tight rope. It's a dance you have to learn how to play. But yeah, I hope that helps. And if you create value in the world, use all of the negative experiences, just the raw material you need to figure out how to do it better. We need that shit. We need the obstacle course. You're in the gym right now straining your muscles so that they can grow. The same shit happens with relationships. You got to do the reps. If you don't do the reps and you don't get beat up, you don't have people take advantage. You're not going to. All you're doing is practicing for the bigger game in life.

Thanks.

Thanks, Joe.

I love.

I also want to know if there is going to be a course to getting deep into the.

Into the book platform where we can.

Do exercises and put it together. I'm working on a. I'm working on a workbook right now. Where the hell did I put it? It's like around here somewhere anyway. But I have a little workbook that we're probably going to put out that you know, just going to be a book like this that the. I would say do all of the dominoes at the end of every chapter because right now the book actually is laid out with exact things to do that is a course in print and. Or you can listen to the audio version and I might do a course at some point. But for now I just want to, you know, make sure people read the book and utilize it. And then depending on what, if there's anything that seems to be lacking, I'll create materials, of course, but. But right now I don't have a plan for. But I probably will. I mean, that's what I do. I just come up with shit.

So, yeah, I did not have good role models to show me what a great relationship could be all about. My father was very abusive emotionally and physically to my mother. I never wanted to get married.

I didn't have good role models either. My parents got divorced after 43 years of marriage because my dad was having an affair. So Even if you had bad role models like us, or if you're lucky enough to have good role models, you can have a thriving relationship. And today, Mimi and I are going to share our five keys to our thriving relationship.

So please don't take any notes. We'll have a handout for you at the end.

Number one is deep communication.

Webster's dictionary defines communication as a process by which information is exchanged.

We define it as exchanging meaningful thoughts, feelings and values through eye contact, active listening and personal touch.

We're going to give you an example of just like everyday ho hum communication. Something really not to do. Let's say I'm already home. Jim gets home, I hear him walking through the door.

Oh, hi hon.

How's it going?

Good, how are you?

Just a second, I'm texting. Oh, I'm pretty good. What's going on?

Had a good day. How about you?

Oh, it was okay.

Yeah?

Yeah.

What happened with you?

I talked to Joe. He's dating someone new.

Really?

Yeah. It'll never last.

Hey, could you feed our four legged son? For your son?

Yeah, sure, we can do that. This is a better way to have deep communication. Same thing. I get home.

Hi, honey.

How are you?

Good, how are you?

Bit of a challenging day, but you know the meditation steps that Jason Campbell gave us from last meeting? Yeah, that's been helping.

Oh, good, I'm glad.

What happened with you?

Joe's dating somebody new.

Really?

Yeah.

You know, I really like her. I hope it lasts.

You know what though?

He stays friends with all of his girlfriends.

He definitely does that. You can see the eye contact, the physical touch. It makes a big difference. It takes normal communication to deep communication.

I'm sure many of you recognize this royal couple who just got married. Well, they had to go through, yeah, several rituals prior to their ceremony. We've done the same thing to enhance our relationship. Some of the things that you hear today may not be new. But more importantly, are you implementing them.

So one ritual we came up with, we call coffee time. Sacred time. Every Saturday and Sunday, we sit together, have our coffee in a room with no tv, no distractions. We hold hands, look in each other's eyes, and we talk about things like.

What we're grateful for, some of the big life's challenges we may be having.

And our triumphs, our successes of the week.

So what can you do? Block off time each week to sit close, look in each other's eyes, share meaningful thoughts and feelings with no distractions.

Number two is novelty or playfulness. And Webster defines novelty as something New or unusual.

We define it as trying things that are new, fresh, and fun.

So one thing I came up with, we call the progressive dinner. So we'll go somewhere where there's restaurants close enough to walk between. And the great thing about the night for me is I get to pick what Mimi wears for the evening, within reason.

Okay.

I do not want that sliding, though.

Seriously.

You could dress me up if you want to.

Not like that.

Okay, bad idea. That's a bad idea. So we'll go first maybe and have an appetizer, have a nice conversation. Then we'll walk holding hands to the next restaurant and have an entree. And then maybe we'll go to a third restaurant for an after dinner drink. But we always, always go home for dessert.

One of the things that I love to do is dance. So we created a ritual called the Friday night dance party to celebrate the end of the week. John, I know you're laughing. It's really fun. To celebrate the end of the week, one of us takes turns to pick out the music, and we just dance all out for two minutes. We're going to give you an insight, and we want some of you to join us.

Are you ready?

Come on, pa.

Come on.

There you go.

Dima.

You thought it would go on.

For two minutes, right?

Another thing we do is we take turns picking a place to vacation. And this could be exotic, like Bora Bora or something like Scotland or just a weekend getaway to a beach.

So what can you do? Date your partner. You want to deliberately schedule, or if it's not going to happen, you want to. Also treat it like a first date. Put some romance into it, dress up for each other. So that means, gentlemen, don't wear your clothes that you're going to hang out in at home watching a ball game. Ladies, leave your yoga pants at home.

In other words, don't dress like these stars. J. Lo and a rod. Dress like these stars. Genius network member Kevin Donahue and his fiance, Jen.

They're such a beautiful couple. Okay. Also, when you're talking, don't discuss things about the kids, things about the business, or what you need to do around the house.

So you may not know where to start if you take out those subjects. So on the back of your handout, we have 36 questions you can ask your romantic partner that will deepen the relationship. These are questions like, what would constitute a perfect day for you? Or what's your most treasured memory number.

Three growth mindset, which was made famous by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. And what she says, the growth, mindset, love of learning and resilience. So mindset creates a love of learning and resilience. Sorry, I'm like. That is essential and great accomplishment.

We believe it's constantly growing, individually and together.

One of the things that we did is create what's called the two person book club. So most recently we read Willpower doesn't work. Where's the author?

Right over there.

Oh, there's the author.

Ben Hardy. We went over the highlights.

We also joined Genius Network together. So we share ideas and learn from all of you to grow even more.

We also enjoy listening to podcasts. I love marketing.

Dean Jackson has some good things to say. Anyway.

What can you do? Explore new hobbies and interests.

Attend the Genius Network annual event with your romantic partner.

Don't be the same person as when you met. Continue to grow.

Number four is fight fair. Because everyone argues and disagrees, but if the fighting gets out of control, somebody could get hurt. Namely me. She's got a good right cross.

We define fighting fair as resolving conflict in a healthy and safe environment.

So to do that, we created something we call the rules of engagement. Simple rules, like no cheap shots.

Can'T use the words never hate, or always.

Don'T criticize the things the other person can't change or control.

You don't want to fight when you're exhausted.

That's our four legged son right there, in case you're wondering. So here's an example of a bad way to fight. Not fighting by the rules.

I am so exhausted. I've worked all day. Nothing has been done around the house. You never help me.

I always help. And I've been working all day too. What do you expect from me always? You're always complaining about this stuff.

Quit interrupting me. I hate it when you say maybe.

You'D be happier if we were divorced.

I know plenty of divorce attorneys in town. They're great ones.

It's true. She does know a lot of divorce attorneys are done. So here's a better way to fight. Under the rules of engagement. Same problem.

Honey, I'm really exhausted. I feel like nothing's been done around the house.

I'm exhausted too, and I feel like.

I help out a lot.

What is it that you're asking of me?

All I'm asking you to do is one thing.

What's one thing I could do?

Full close.

I can do that. I can. Full close. Much better. Right? Following the rules of engagement.

Number five, the two minute hug.

So there's actually science behind this that your Brain chemistry changes when you have a long, prolonged hug and connection with someone, so you'll actually feel closer with that person after doing it. So just to be clear, I don't mean cuddling and I don't mean making out like Shawn Stevenson and his wife Mindy. What I mean is a connected, deep hug like this. Okay, we don't have two minutes, but, you know, you get the idea.

Our challenge to you is to pick one thing, start a ritual, agree to.

Fight fair, the two minute hug. And if you do any of those things, you'll find yourself having a relationship that started like this 26 years ago and is like this today.

So it was November of 2006. It was actually the day before Thanksgiving. And we're getting into our Bentley because he's talking about being rich. And, you know, we're about to drive down from Park City, Utah, to a place not so rich called Price Utah, where I'm from, little coal mining town. And as we start driving, we're going through this great canyon, Spanish Fork Canyon, just great Valley, awesome trees, awesome day. And you know what? My wife and I have our best conversations on these kind of drives. And that's how the conversation started out. She was telling me that I was an extraordinary radio show host and an extraordinary speaker, which don't judge that. That's my wife talking, right? And she just kept saying extraordinary for a few things. I'm feeling damn good at this time. And then she looks over at me and says, but you're just an ordinary husband and father. Yeah, moment of truth, right? Where have you had that? Like, have you had that in your life? You know, there's course corrections in life, and that's where you find that feather on your face and you realize something's going on and you make the shift, and then there's force corrections that hit you like a ton of bricks, which was that moment for me. All right, so here's the thing. She was saying I was extraordinary in areas where it's pretty difficult to be extraordinary for a lot of people. And within those areas, there was a success formula that was hidden to me. And I took the introspection assessment from Lifebook. So if you go to mylifebook.com there's an assessment on 12 categories of life. What I found is that I was extraordinary in 10 categories and I was ordinary in two. One was my health, and the other one was my relationship with my wife. And so rather than argue or fight, I got immediately emotional, and I decided to do something about it. And what I found Was in these other areas, there were things that I was doing on a regular basis to create success in my life that I wasn't doing in my life and in my marriage. So the first thing is I wasn't doing a weekly meeting with my wife where there's no kids around, no interruptions, no phone calls, but it was her and I sitting down and. And talking about what was going on in our life. You know, when you create a great future, like a bigger future like Dan would talk about, that's what really makes a marriage extraordinary. But a lot of people, when they get derailed and frustrated, they say it's a money problem, but the money problem gets them short sighted. It gets them off track. They're not thinking about this future that could be great. They're thinking about getting through something that's difficult, and life becomes about that conversation. And I think extraordinary relationships can come from the conversations we have. So why not set aside the time uninterrupted every single week with the person or the people you love and you go through and you have this conversation. Now, the first conversations went a lot like this couple good minutes, a couple bad minutes, like, you know, hey, you're gone too much. This is going on. And then I started thinking, well, what else do I do? Yeah, I have these meetings, but I also have people that I look up to in other areas of my life. When I was doing radio, I was going, who do I look up to? And I was learning from them. So I went out and I said, here are the people that I think have the best marriages in the world. John and Missy Butcher. Patrick and Laurie Giantempo. David and Nicole Jackson. I got Sean Stephenson. We flew out to Chicago and I declared my commitment to my wife in front of them. We had a little ceremony and I asked these guys, will you support us? See, this is a key distinction in life. We have people that are gonna be our friends, and we have people that we need to be only friendly with. And what I decided to do was anyone who didn't have an extraordinary relationship for six months, I wasn't spending any time with them. I'd be friendly, but I would decline any invitation. And I'd only accept invitations from people who had great relationships. And I started to invite those people into my life. And that's why I started this off in Chicago, which, by the way, we had a second honeymoon out there that was off the charts because we gotta stay in John and Missy's event apartment. They set up this great thing. Nice to be with rich friends that have good relationships, you know what I'm saying? There's some perks to that. Which, by the way, first call I ever had with Joe introduced me to John and Misty. So I thought that was pretty extraordinary. The second thing is I had to go through an exercise that I called the do over. Guys, look back in your life, you've probably said or done something totally stupid. Here's the one that guys do all the time. I don't know if women do this, but they say, I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this to put food on the table. That is a bunch of shit. You're not doing this just to put food on the table. In this world today, with the capacity in this room, we can put food on the table in our sleep. It is easy. We do it because we love it. But we miss out on other things we love. Because you're gonna hear from Robert Hirsch in a little while talk about making it count. And we have the wrong metrics of what matters in life. And see, in my 20s, I didn't redefine what success it was having a whole bunch of money because I came from a coal mining town. And so it was work, work, work. And when people said, what are your hobbies? I'm like, I work. Thanks for saving me from that, Babs. I appreciate that. So I had to do a do over where I went to my wife and I said, remember that time I said this? And she said, uh huh. I say, I don't know who said that, but that was absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever heard come from someone's mouth. I hope that you can forgive me. And it literally melted the walls. The next thing, when I invest in things, they tend to grow. So I started to invest in things. I invested in Dino Watt, who happens to be here. He had a program called Business and Marriage, which took me about a year to convince my wife to go to. Because it wasn't like counseling or anything, was like, hey, you have systems of success in your life, why not set them up in your business? So we hired Dino, we started spending time with him, and we had some major breakthroughs. Because he didn't care that I was his number one referrer. He still held me accountable in every single one of those meetings. So I started doing that. Spend time with the right people, choose who I'm gonna be friendly with instead of friends with, invite the friends into my life, look for people that I can learn from and get best practices from them. So one of the best practices was Date night. So I have a date night every single week with my wife. And here's the thing, it's not some like dinner and movies thing. I have like a list of great ideas so that when it comes time for date night, it's part of a system that we're gonna have an extraordinary date night because we might go to our date night pad that I got downtown that we go cook and go do something there. We might go to a concert, we might go up to the Montage at Park City, one of our favorite places, which is. That's what we did last week, hot air balloon ride, which got cancelled because I was scared as hell. So I was kind of glad. But you know, I'm trying to be romantic and shit. So the weekly meeting is critical. And you know what? I've created an agenda and I'm going to share that agenda with all of you. The other two things I'm going to share with you is an interview that John Butcher did with me after I went through this transformation. And what's great about the interview, you're not hearing it from my perspective, you're hearing my wife talk about it. And I tried to convince her early on when this was difficult. Why don't we put each other first? I know we have kids, I know we have other priorities, but let's just put each other first. And she's like, well, I can't. I got this with the kids and I got that with the kids. And our life was becoming just wrapped up in our kids. But I said, try it on for a month. And I'm telling you, it changed everything because now I'm an example to my kids what it means to be a man, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a romantic. And they can see that example. They can see that we have time for each other and it's not every little whim that they have. And then I had to convince my wife to invest in herself and have a nanny without feeling guilty so that she could take care of herself and go after purpose other than just being a mom. Right? And that brought a whole other world together for us. So here's. You know, I normally don't look at notes, but this isn't my normal talk. This is like my life I'm sharing here with you guys. You guys can go to freedomfasttrack.com marriage. There's no opt in. But it's also an interview I did with Dino with my wife, an interview I did with John with my wife. And then we Also shared kind of our agenda that we use. Don't go through the whole damn agenda every week. Don't let it become an excuse. Just go through the parts that make sense. Brian, is this helpful? When you started doing this? I know a lot of people have started to do this. So we also created some rules and structure. We have something called 1446. 14 nights internationally away from the kids, 4 nights if I'm gone more than 4 nights in any month. I'm taking days off during the week and I'm never home later than 6pm and no technology once I get home. Right. Completely changed how we operate, how we connect, I'm telling you. And it's hard in a marriage sometimes because, you know, in business you make a mistake and you get over it. In a marriage, it's like that shit can come back to haunt you for a while, right? Or they'll remind you when you're in another fight or something like that. So it's nice to have got through this, but I'm gonna end with, this is the key, this is the secret. And we've heard it from so many speakers up here, talking over and over again. You gotta have vision in your business. You gotta have a mission in your business. You gotta be clear about what you want. You know, the Rockefeller habits. You talk about JFK saying we're gonna send a man to the moon and return him safely home within this decade. Clear cut. Not something that lives nebulously in the mind, but something that lives in the heart. Have you done that for your marriage? Do you have that vision? Have you articulated that in your marriage or your key relationships? Because I have. I'm an extraordinary husband and a premier romantic. Now, I haven't rode in on a horse with my shirt off, but about anything else for my wife, I've pretty much done. And I love to baby her and I love to take her out on date night and she can have input about date night. But I'll tell you what, I want to take care of her that way and make those choices. On Mondays, though, when we do our weekly meeting, that's where we handle the finances, that's where we handle the travel. So guess what? The rest of the week is freed up for us to talk about vision. What we're excited about, positive focus, and what makes life great.

Okay?

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos, that'll be useful and awesome. Click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.