Your Stand Is Your Brand: Why Taking a Clear Stand Can Transform Your Business and Life with Patrick Gentempo and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #363

Burn it all down so something new and more beautiful can emerge. Because when we're attached or we're holding on to things that are no longer serving, no longer valid, no longer true, then we just start to degenerate with those things. Whereas if we can burn it down and let something more beautiful emerge, now we have a whole different and better, more effective future.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Is it time to take a stand?

Learn how your identity impacts everything from your brand to your business to your life in today's episode of I Love Marketing. In this episode, Dr. Patrick Gentempo and.

Joe Polish explore why creative destruction is.

Necessary when seeking success and purpose alignment. They'll dive into the philosophy behind pain.

Transformation, success and fulfillment and share what.

Entrepreneurs who are experiencing maximum tension need to do to create space for growth. You'll walk away with more clarity on your stand and your brand so you can rise like a phoenix and build a business that is easy, lucrative, fun and fulfilling. Hello, this is Joe Polish, and I am here with a dear friend of mine by the name of Patrick Gentempo. Dr. Patrick Gentempo. So, Patrick, we're going to talk about all kinds of stuff, especially this new book that you have called you'd Stand Is yous Brand. But we've known each other, I guess, probably 15 years or so.

Yeah, it's probably better. More. Yeah.

Our mutual friends, Dr. Nathaniel Brandon, the late Nathaniel Brandon, who was brilliant, and John and Missy Butcher. That's how we met. We're literally in the W Hotel in your suite recording this episode on my iPhone.

Amazing what technology can do nowadays, huh?

Yeah, hopefully. It's awesome. And we've got your lovely wife Lori in the background here, just kind of observing. So you can. By the way, Laurie, you can pipe in and say anything you want at any point in time. If he says something that doesn't sound. So for people that don't know you, who are you? What do you do?

And incidentally, since you mentioned my wife and you mentioned the name of the book, you Stand as your brand. She actually gave me the title.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay, there you have it. Awesome. And you're the one that actually even gave me the URL. The first domino.

That's correct.

Because that's something. I actually opened up my most recent Genius Network annual event with which I gave everyone in the audience a domino and said, who's been a first domino? What's a person, a book, a thing in a positive way that impacted your life. Or even in a negative way. And I know your book is going to be a first domino for a lot of people, which is why I want to talk about it.

Well, yeah, and I guess before we get into it, I remember clearly we were in New York City some years back, could have been as many as eight years ago or so, having a conversation. Everybody that I told talked to and how you connected people and when they talk about their outcomes, their success, what's happened in their life, the consistent story was it started with you, then all these other things started going downstream from that. And that's where I said, and I literally, I bought that URL with you in mind saying Joe Polish is the first domino. And that's why I said I went to see if it was available. It was. And that's why I got it. And you have been for so many people. I mean, you just, you're a value creator for individuals and you have been for me. And you know, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate that.

No, thank you. That means, that means a ton. And I love. Yeah, I love it and I appreciate it. And look, we just did an interview at your conference for all of your clients and many of them, almost all of them in the room were doctors. And so. Yeah. So what do you do? I mean, you're a philosopher, you do a lot of stuff.

Yeah, so it's interesting. So it's funny that you came up with that first because in my own self image, I'm first and foremost a philosopher. So my academics, I'm a chiropractor. So my quick thumbnail of my career because I've had multiple careers, is I started life as a chiropractor while I was in practice. I had a problem to solve, like entrepreneurs do, which was called how to better assess our patients for what we were trying to get done. So I ended up co developing neurodiagnostic technologies that I ended up getting patents on. Next thing you know, I'm in a business. I ran that business as its CEO for 23 years. I exited in 2011. When I exited, we probably had about 8 or 9,000 clients on six continents. So it went global and we had a lot of people who engaged what we did. But we did along the way, business training and personal development, all these things because I realized that it wasn't an individual or it wasn't the machine that we're selling that got the result. It's who the person was using the technology that got the result. So it became very identity based. So through all those experiences. And I had tons of entrepreneurial experiences. For any entrepreneur that's been in business for a lot of years. I started 16 companies. To be really, really clear, not all of them worked, and that's just a part of the game. But also at the same built multiple multimillion dollar companies that did work. So I went through this kind of arc of experience. And Laurie and I, we decided when we sold the company in 2011 that now we wanted to kind of, rather than divide and conquer, combine and conquer was the next phase of our experience together in our relationship and our marriage. And we created a holding company called Action Potential Holdings. We also, because we lived with so much structure for so many years, you know, because I managed by objectives, values based decision making, all the things that we not only taught, but live by in our own businesses, we decided at a point in time to say, let's take a step onto the magic carpet. I teach in my philosophy formula program a thing called the make let paradox. And I say that sometimes in life you have to make things happen. Sometimes in life you have to let things happen. And the master of life knows when to do which. So what I ended up doing is saying, let's do a lot more letting. Let's let some things happen, step on the magic carpet and go out into the world and see where it leads us. And I'll be damned if it didn't take us to some places that I could not have possibly imagined, one of which is now our main business activity is in a company called Revealed Films and we make docu series films. It started as a passion project, the first one, and now we've done several of them over the last few years and it's been a raging experience and success and a lot of fun, but I never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing right now.

Well, it's interesting too because you cover all kinds of different topics, some of them very controversial, taking interesting stands, even some myself, that I have to question. Some of the stands that you take, which is why it's, I think so appropriate for us to have this conversation. And I do want to mention that you recently came to my 100k group called Genius X that people invest 100 grand a year to be in and gave a talk on your stand as your brand. And it was super well received. I mean, I think this is a really important message. And as much as there's a lot of horseshit out in the world about brand, I think you have something here, not from Per Se advertising, but Just how to think about who you are, what you stand for. Putting your flag in the ground and not wavering.

Right. I think the subtitle of the book, I think, reveals the fundamental nature of it, because the subtitle is how deciding who to be, not what to do, can revolutionize your business. Because so often we're looking at trying to get to the next level, the next breakthrough, whatever it is, to scale up, to grow up. We're always saying, well, should I do this or should I do that? As a matter of fact, at the genius exit, your 100k group, we had the Q and A session after, and somebody said, well, here's my circumstances. And so now, given this, this, and this, what should I do? And I looked at the guy and I said, with compassion and with love. And I said, you're asking the wrong. Don't ask me what to do. Ask, who should you be right now, given this situation? And I saw the lights go on. Because that's really what it's all about. And it doesn't mean that do the do part of the equation is not important. But what I've come to understand through years and years, decades really, of experience, is that the jet fuel that drives everything is really your core values, your purpose, et cetera. Most people look at those as kind of corporate exercises that you do them, you put them in a drawer and say, okay, check that box. Now let's get on with whatever we do. As compared to saying no, these are literally fundamentals that can transform you. So I give many examples this in the book and by chapter, by chapter, it really starts out with what I think is the greatest barrier to entrepreneurial growth, what I call maximum tension. And that's when you have the driving forces of your life pulling you in opposing directions. What's driving you in your personal life, what's driving you in your career, what's driving you in your relationships, what's driving you in your parenting, what's driving you to health your business. You have all these different categories of your life, and if the values are. Are unaligned, it pulls you in opposing directions till you get to a point called maximum tension. And when you're at maximum tension, there's no space in your life to do anything. Because I've traveled the world many times over millions and millions of miles, giving lectures all over the world. And one of the things that I would say to an audience in the beginning, I said, how many people here know something that you could be doing that you're currently not doing that would somehow make your life or your business better. Everybody raised their hand, or most people would. And I said, anybody who doesn't raise their hand is lying. And anybody listening to my voice right now, listening to this, I'm telling you, you know something right now that you're not doing, that you could be doing that would make your life better. So the question is, why aren't you doing it? Or what? I'd ask a little bit more tongue in cheek. Why did you come here? To learn more about what you're not going to do? How many podcasts have you listened to, where you've taken notes, you've highlighted things, you've had aha moments, but it doesn't get put on the ground. Now, if you're listening to a podcast, it's because you have an intent to want to grow, to learn, to do something. But all of us have notebooks full of great ideas that we never did. Why? Because we're at maximum tension. There's no space in our life to be able to do something new. So I organized a book to put that in the beginning, saying, hey, before we even get into the core content, let's figure out how to create alignment, open up space so that the stuff you're going to learn in the next chapters you can actually put on the ground. As compared to this being another book that you're just not going to utilize, that's going to be on the shelf. You can say, hey, look how smart I am. Look at all these books I have. But nothing gets done. So that's where it starts. And then after that, and I'll tell you, this is, I think, the interesting chapter that I'm wondering how it lands. As you mentioned, we share a mentor in Nathaniel Brandon. And through Nathaniel, and a lot of my own pursuits, I studied intently philosophy, but not just abstract academic philosophy. I wanted to learn philosophy as a practical tool for success. And I'm talking about putting dollars in your pocket. Practical. And I will make and defend the statement that philosophy is the most practical thing a human being can hope to embrace. If you understand philosophy and its branches and how to organize them in your thinking to create an alignment and a focus in thinking and models for yourself, which is not as hard as it might sound, you will be amazed at where it can take you. The next chapter is a little bit more academic, in a sense. It's five branches of philosophy. Understand what they. But you're really fundamentally asking yourself three questions. What do I believe? Why do I believe it? And now what am I going to do? About it. And when you learn the nature of those three questions and you learn how to apply them to varying aspects of your life, I mean, this book is an entrepreneur book. But you can utilize this for any part of your life. It could be your relationships, it could be how you relate to finance, it could be health, it could be any part of your life. But when you learn the branches of philosophy and how to apply them, it's transformative in a way that you can never go back to where you were. It upgrades and up levels your thinking in a way like nothing else can. And the thing that I will just say to you who are listening right now, you have a philosophy, everybody's got a philosophy. The only choice is if you defined it or not. And that's what this is all about, is saying, let's clarify and define that philosophy. Why it's important comes from Ayn Rand, who was the great famous novelist and philosopher who wrote Atlas Shrugged, amongst other works. And that's who Nathaniel spent 18 years with.

Yeah, I mean, he literally had a personal relationship with him.

Yeah, that's a heck of a book that his memoirs on that. And one day, after I taught a four and a half hour class on philosophy in the branches to a group where he was sitting in the front row, he walked up to me afterwards and grabbed me by the shoulders and he said, what Rand once gave me, I now give you. Which was one of the most chilling moments of my entire life. But what Rand identified is that when you have contradictions and your basic philosophical premises, the only possible result is destruction. And the amount of destruction is relative to the level of that contradiction. And how do you find and remove contradictions is through philosophy. So when I adopted the premise about contradictions leading to destruction and I said, well, how do I clarify and remove contradictions and create more alignment, I did that through philosophy. And I still every day am developing my philosophy more and more.

Can you define philosophy just as I'll even say things just so even even though it's a word everyone's heard a million times, what does that mean to you?

So philosophy, many people use different definitions and I think they all approximate what philosophy is. If you take the word and break it down specifically Philo, love of Sophie. Wisdom. So it's the love of wisdom. That's the kind of the generic view. But saying this is the pursuit, the passionate pursuit of developing wisdom in your life. And in many respects I like that, because wisdom, I think if you're anybody that is out of survival mode or has any kind of a purpose in your life. I think wisdom is what we all want to obtain. I think that that's a reasonable but very generic definition. More probably concise definitions that are maybe a little bit more targeted would have the art of critical thinking. So where you can critically think and evaluate through these varying branches of philosophy, and there's probably many other definitions of philosophy where people try to talk about it, especially in branches like epistemology or ethics or metaphysics, what have you, where they'll say that it's the art of integrating your view of reality through metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, aesthet the five branches. So there are multiple definitions that I've seen my own view of philosophy. If I were to say how would I describe it? Maybe not define it, how would I describe it? I would say that philosophy is a system of critical thinking that is the most practical tool that a human being can embrace in their life. So that's how I look at it.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

And by the way, what I'm going to also suggest, because we're just a few minutes into this episode, is go and order this book online. I'm going to be putting this episode. It's in pre order stages right now. It's not out. So just pre order it. And even though you can listen to it on audio, you can get a Kindle version or whatever. I would actually recommend get the hardcover copy of this book and display it wherever you work because I think for one it's a cool cover and secondly, for the very low cost of this book, just having a piece of art and think of this book as like a piece of art that says your stand is your brand. As a reminder, this is actually one of these books that I recommend people display, not for others, even though they might ask what the hell is this for yourself? Because it's something that. So I think a physical version of this book is important. And this is not a. There's a lot of people I've interviewed related to marketing and business that have timely books like how to use a certain type of media or social media or something to create a campaign or whatever. But this is a timeless book. I mean, long after you and me are gone and we're in another weird planet planet sphere, wherever we go, this is a message that I think will continually live on. So I think this is a really important book. I actually even gave you a. I hope a good testimony.

You gave me a great one actually. And saying thank you for acknowledging that it really was written with the idea of it being more timeless principles as compared to a fad that can come and go. And incidentally, you mentioned your Genius network, Genius X that I spoke at, so you graciously gave me the video. So we. Now, when you buy the book, if you go to Gentempo, we have all the wholesalers or the retailers listed there or your standish-brand.com, they'll both lead to the same place. Once you put in your order, we have the bonus we're giving away is the recording, the video of my presentation at the Genius X event with the audio and the transcript.

Oh, good. Yeah. So that's perfect then, because people paid 100 grand to actually be in that room in order to watch that. So for the low price of a book, I would definitely do it. What I'd like to do as we go through this, because certainly there's things that you cover on the book, but also things that really, you can talk about why you put this together. You actually start the book out talking about being in the emergency room after being hit by a truck. You were literally hit by a truck.

Literally.

You had your leg shattered and you had some. So talk about where this. And you talked about the very first Zyn Rand book you read was Fountainhead.

Fountainhead, yeah.

So talk about, how did you come up with this philosophy? What set you on this path in a way that makes it applicable for the person? Because I actually think one of the. The reasons people listen to podcasts is there's many reasons. One of them is, oh, I think I should, because maybe it's going to make me appear like I'm smarter. If I listen to a lot of podcasts, there's others. Maybe it's guilt, like, oh, my business isn't working. I got to figure out some sort of business strategy. I actually think, though, people want results in their life, and in order to get a result, they need a capability. And so you have a lot of capabilities that you didn't just say, oh, these are the co. Capabilities I'm gonna get. Life had shit happen to you, and they kind of forced it upon you.

Right.

And so you had some discoveries and stuff. So I'd love for you to kind of tell that journey, because at the end of the day, I think this is something that can change the trajectory of how someone lives their life. You know, like my dear friends Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan, you know, they're working on a book called who, Not How. You know, so if you find the right who, they bring the how with them. Because a lot of people are buying how to books. Let me learn this. What do I do? And again, the subtitle how deciding who to be, not what to do will revolutionize your business. Now we want to hire the right who's because the who's will bring the what with them. However, if you're not even in the right who position, you could be spending your entire career trying to please your parents, trying to live up to a status in society, doing what you think you should do. And then you wonder why you're not engaged with doing the things you say you want to do, because it's not you. And so I think really, whatever smoldering flame you may have, if you're not where you want to be or you have a flame that's kind of burning out of control, I think in a lot of ways you are helping people generate the energy they have in the most resourceful, directed, applicable way to really not only make an impact, what if an impact is going to mean for some people that may be making money and maybe changing lives, but ultimately human happiness in looking in the mirror every day and being like, I'm fucking living for who I am is an awesome feeling. And hardly anyone experiences that in their lives.

Yeah, I mean, you've gone deep and thank goodness for that because that's what this is all about. What you're talking about is identity. And what's interesting, maybe even fascinating, is that how we assume identities and we get attached to certain aspects of our identity. Many times that happens through what we do. Like, you know, I, you know, so who are you? I do this, I do that, and I've gone through that and I've gone through the identity burn downs in my life, you know, where it's like literally different acts of a career might look like, but it's really different identities that emerge from me over time. And it's almost a purification process if you, if you're growing. Because some people literally, you know, when you ask those questions, I talk about what do I believe and why do I believe it. Yeah, man. When you get in and ask like, say, well, I think, you know this, and it's like, well, why do you believe that? And then they realize I don't. And then they start to think back in their life and like, you know, this happened when I was a kid and, you know, I just had that point of view and I just adopted and I mindlessly just kept it the rest of my life. And from the business example that it's, you know, let's talk about your Business and your business identity. Because your business has an identity just like you do. And if you're. If it's confused and confused minds don't buy, then you know, then you're. You know, you're. And then how do you hire the right people if the identity of the business is confused? You can see where all those things lead. But was interesting. Interesting is that. I'll ask somebody, okay, what do you believe about your pricing? Oh, our pricing is great. We have good margins. Why do you believe that? And all of a sudden they start to look and say, shit, I don't know. It's because our competitors price similarly to that. So what starts to happen is that when they start to get deep into their questions that are based in these philosophical areas, they start to recognize the fact that they're operating on premises that are maybe not well thought out, not well validated, et cetera. So what happens is that when you're talking about, in your comments about the identity and what you do, skipping to the last chapter of the book is on creative destruction. And that's the Phoenix. That's basically when you get to a point of new realizations. I think when we're knocking on the door of the mystery of life and we're getting really to the higher ground, everything becomes a paradox. And paradoxes are different than contradictions in my mind. So what happens is it's the paradox that is an opportunity to say that two things that are seemingly contradictory really aren't and something new can emerge. And that's happened for me and it's happened for my businesses over and over. And when you start to approach that, that's where you're going to burn everything down creatively. It's creative destruction. It's not wanton or negative destruction. Burn it all down. So something new and more beautiful can emerge. Because when we're attached or we're holding on to things that are no longer serving, no longer valid, no longer true, then we just start to degenerate with those things.

Things.

Whereas if we can burn it down and let something more beautiful emerge, now we have a whole different and better and more effective future in front of us.

You know, I think. Was it Schumpeter who first coined the term creative destruction?

I don't know if he was the first to coin it, but he certainly addressed it.

It's an interesting concept because there's one of my favorite quotes is be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And I remember someone making a post when someone else posted on Social media, this is several years ago and someone's like why do you have to destroy it? Why do things have to be destroyed? And they were looking for a more gentle way of how you can shift and make a change. And there's a lot to be said about the term creative destruction. And there are certain things that just, they have to be destroyed, they have to be demolished. So I'd love for you to expand on that a little.

I could see how people might recoil at the term destruction, but really it's necessary. I mean the second law of thermodynamics and physics and it's not a theory of thermodynamics, it's a law is entropy. Everything in the universe is moving towards disorganization, disintegration, disassociation. So anything that you try to hold onto to keep it the way it is is going to slowly degenerate, dissolve, disassociate, change, destruction. And creation is a cycle that is a part of our existence that is unavoidable. And you know, I saw you playing with the serenity prayer, you know, basically understanding God grant me the streng, the change of things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference. I think it's one of the most genius things ever written. We are not going to change the second law of thermodynamics. I have to accept that I can't change that. But my understanding of it and my alignment with it can start to recognize that I have to be open towards destruction and creation. Because the opposite of entropy is syntropy. If you think about it, two cells become one and then nine months later you have a fully integrated complex multi trillion cell organism that will later develop into an adult human being from the little baby. So there's not only entropy in the universe being oh, everything's going towards heat, death and into equilibrium. The unique attribute of life is the fact that it's increased organization, increased integration, et cetera. But there's this cycle of life of entropy, centropy, entropy, synthetic. That's creation, destruction, creation, destruction. So we, I believe through our consciousness and our aspirations. The fact that we have some choice, we can have values, we have a purpose, we can move toward that purpose. I think the fact that we're pain pleasure driven is bullshit, or I shouldn't say that many people are pain pleasure driven. That's only if you're in survival. Pain and pleasure in your life will come and go on an alternating basis all the time. So what's the constant companion. The constant companion is purpose. And what makes us different than other form of animal on the planet is that we can choose a purpose. A cow can't choose a purpose for its life. If it could, there be no such thing as McDonald's. A dog can't choose a purpose for its life.

I've met some very conscious cows and dogs.

Have you? I'm sure you have, in altered states of consciousness. So anyway, I think the point that I'm driving at is that we should embrace burning things down and then recreation. And I give some really great examples of this in the book of some real life stories of, of how this happened and what it led to. And I believe it's very compelling when you observe this and see how other people have done it. And then in our own lives and our own businesses, we can look at that. It doesn't mean burn the whole thing down necessarily. It might be burning down parts of it. And as you burn it down, say, hey, we've run this business for 10 years this way. These were our values. This was our purpose. It's time to come in and say, let's burn that down and see if we can come with a greater purpose, a more compelling purpose with stronger values, et cetera, create a new identity. And again, that's your stance. And that creates the brand of the business.

For a while, and I talked about it when we were, you were doing an interview with me downstairs. For the longest time, I thought, what am I trying to do here with Genius Network? I'm trying to reduce suffering for entrepreneurs. And I sell people what they want and do my best to give them what they need. You know, what they think they want is more clients, more money.

That.

And what they need is to get rid of all the bullshit that's standing in their way of doing that. And they need to take care of their health and that sort of stuff. So I, I try to smuggle it in like a Flintstone vitamin. You try to make it taste like candy so the kid will take the vitamin. Right. And so adults, there's interesting hoop jumping that we sometimes do with ourselves and certainly wanting to be helpful to people. And so I've talked about reducing suffering. But then I started thinking more and more about it lately that as an entrepreneur, you're signing up for suffering. I mean, there's no way to just. I talk about elf marketing. Easy, lucrative and fun. Have an elf business versus a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. Now on the surface, elf versus half sounds way more appealing. And at the same time, I've never seen anyone just fly right into elf. I mean, it's gonna. You don't know what the hell you're doing in the beginning. And there is suffering. You know, my buddy Dan Sullivan says there's two types of suffering in the world. There's short term and there's long term. You decide which one you want, right. And there are certain you're going to endure difficulties and challenges. And when you had your leg shattered by having run over, you were in pain and out of that you turned it into productivity. And some entrepreneurs know how to transform pain into productivity, into performance, into good things in the world. Other people, if they don't know who they are. And look, I'm not sitting there saying I know exactly. That's why a book like yours is to give direction, is to help someone get clear. Because like my friend Clay Hebert says, you can't see the label when you're inside the jar. That's why you read books, that's why you get different perspectives. That's where philosophy comes in, right?

Yes.

So the thing that I'm thinking about more and more is how to redirect suffering, not just reduce it. Because there are certain. In order to get to creative destruction, I mean, it's like in order to have a breakthrough, you got to break something. And sometimes it just needs to be a perfect storm before it transforms. You know, the Phoenix doesn't just, you know, come out from the ashes. Shit needs to be burned down. So the reason I'm rambling about this is I want to ask you your thoughts on at what point does pain like. No pain, no gain. You remember that from back? You know, it's like sometimes no pain, no pain. And I sit and look at the world and convenience and making things so easy seems to be really screwing up humanity in so many ways. I mean, we are in the most advanced stages of technology and access to things. Not in all parts of the world. I mean, certainly there are war torn parts of the world, but that are horrendous. I can't even fathom what some people are going through. And there's all these studies that abundance, you know, my buddy Peter Diamandis, he writes books on all this stuff. The levels of depression, though, the levels of unhappiness, the levels of loneliness, the trust that we have. All of those things about just being a connected human being. We're more connected electronically than ever before in human history, but we're more disconnected. And so there's a lot of suffering that isn't being redirected in useful ways. And so my question to you is, if someone's listening to this and they're in an enthusiastic state and they're ready to go and they're ambitious, great. There's other people that are like, I'm fucking overwhelmed. I don't know how to handle it all. I feel disabled, I'm feeling incongruent. There's raw material there. And that raw material can create something amazing if it can be transformed. Or it can literally just be the continuation of pain and suffering and struggle and maybe death and suicide and all the horrible parts about it. So I guess what I'm asking you is how do you transform pain and suffering into more usefulness?

It's how you respond to it, right? So I like the. I think it's more of a Buddhist orientation where they say in life, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. So. Meaning that pain will come and go on an alternating basis, as will pain, pleasure, right? Sometimes there's pleasure, sometimes there's pain. They come and go on alternate basis. Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. One of the most profound lines in the whole book was when the question was asked from one character to another, who do you think the most depraved, detestable type of human. I'm paraphrasing, type of human being there is in the world. What type of person is that? One of the heroes of the book respond, responded the man without a purpose. And that's what it's all about. See, what happens is when you have a purpose, and, and this is one of the interesting things you see, you don't get just. This is one of the importance of philosophy. You don't just get hit with a purpose stick, you know, in your life. And, and people start with a purpose. It's like, no, the purpose is born out of something. It's born out of your philosophy. So you literally, through your philosophy, and it comes out of the third branch of philosophy, ethics. So once you have a view of the nature of reality, metaphysics, your view of the nature of reality. And then in the second branch of philosophy, epistemology, once you know why you have this view, or basically what are your rules of evidence, how do you. What do you accept this proof and validation? So once you know where you are, and once you know how you know it, or that you're in this place, what you believe, then the next step is, okay, so now what do I do? That's ethics. Ethics provides a human being with a code of values and therefore will be A guide to your actions. Actions. My contention is what makes a human being different than every other form of animal on the planet is that we can choose a purpose. As I said earlier, a dog or a cow, they can't choose purposes for their lives. They are in survival. Animals in general live by survival. They'll seek pleasure, avoid pain, live in survival. Human beings can choose a purpose. So now if I have chosen a purpose and I'm not living in a subconscious human level, which most human beings do, that's why there's so much pain and suffering. Their only thing they're hoping to do is survive, and they suffer in that survival. Because of all the things that you just laid out in your preposition before the question. I think that when you have a purpose, the pain might be there. Or sometimes, as you cited, the pain might lead you to purpose. Saying, I had this thing. I mean, look at yourself with your purpose and addiction. Addiction. I mean, this is. This is profound. But what's it born out is your own pain and experience. But it's something that now you have an intimate knowing of it led you to a purpose. Imagine if you found no purpose in it and you just had this experience of addiction in the way that you've had it. You know what that would lead to if it didn't say, it's going to drive me now to do something in the world that I'm driven to do. And sometimes there's pain. And I said, I sat in the gym network room one day when there was a little bit of conversation around the fact that you're talking about addiction a lot in the room. And you explained, hey, this is my Miles Davis, which is one of the chapters in the book. This is what I am on my deepest and purest level. My Miles Davis is the language we use. And I can't apologize for it. I don't want it to be off putting to anybody. But at the same time time, I can't change it. It wouldn't be me anymore to do what I'm doing here. I admired you for the stand that you were taking at that moment. That was creating the brand that we understand as Joe Polish. And this is the whole point. Sometimes people think a brand is like a fantasy or fictional thing that you create to show outwardly into the world. But the reality is, no, you're taking a stand, and then the brand automatically emerges from the stand. And I was watching Joe Polish take a stand in front of a group of clients that pay him a lot of money to be in that room. And you didn't want to be off putting to anybody. But you certainly weren't going to change your position on it for anybody. And that's the power of your stand, is your brand. So in the end, that was born out of pain for you, but now you're turning it into purpose. And that purpose is impacting people in extraordinary ways. And I've seen you grow in this purpose now over years. Years. Your intelligence around it has improved. Your philosophy and premises around it have completely expanded. You really keep moving it up to levels. Levels. There's nothing I don't. I believe. And tell me if I'm right or wrong because this is one of the points I make in the book through the 5P expansion sequence. I believe that there's no amount of money that could buy you out of doing what you're doing right now with addiction.

Oh, no, Absolutely not. And if I had all the money in the world I would put it towards.

Right. And it's what Rand said, when you're on purpose, money becomes a means of expanding the range of the purpose. And that's what it's all about. Life isn't about avoiding pain or life isn't about just having pleasure. Life is about having values and a purpose. And in that purpose, finding fulfillment independent of the pain and the pleasure.

That's fascinating. This is really, really useful. And you just got me to actually see even. And I believe I have a pretty deep attachment to this. There are some days I say this sort of jokingly and half serious where I wish I didn't have this. Let me try to help addiction, right? Because it's a lot of fucking work and it's painful. I deal with people that have family members that have died and they're struggling and suicidal and. And not only in my current state right now, just having recently created a foundation. I've spent well over $600,000 out of my own pocket and not even selling anything. Currently the closest thing we have is a book that I wrote, the American Morning for Addiction Recovery and then some art that we did for artists for Addicts, one of our first art pieces. The money though that I've spent to create these educational platforms to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with computer instead of judgment and then find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share those with the world. We're still figuring out what's the best way that we are going to be most useful in what I'm going to do. But I currently pay money to do it. Not only can someone not pay me money to get me out of it, I'm actually paying to do this as the purpose is so important to me. I'm willing to go through, even if it takes years for that. Because what I won't sell is something that I think is bullshit. Even if I could make money. I mean, we've had rehab centers that have come to us and said, well, pay you a finder suite. We'll pay you a percentage of everyone that signs up if you will endorse our things on your Facebook group or through different forms of communication. And we're like, no, that's not what we do. Now, if I ever find a treatment center or something that I. Not that they're all bad, not that they're all good. There's certain aspects. It's a more complicated thing. But what you got me to understand, and the reason I'm telling this story is if you're someone listening to this and you find yourself either investing with deep conviction to something or meddling with something, and other people are giving you grief about it, but you can't. It keeps you up at night, it keeps you attached to that, but you find yourself not living that role. You may want to stop and take a look at why that lights you up. Because when you say drive, what you're driven to, what is drive? I mean, I want to ask, like, what. Like what is it inside a person, person that gives you that direction or where your attention goes to? Because I think a lot of people, they're not living the life of who they actually are and they don't know how to engage with it. And I think that's what you're. That's what you're here to help people do. I mean, I think your stand is to help people find their stand, to take a stand.

Exactly. You know, it's exactly what we want to see happen. Look, and I have discussed this. We want to build a community of stand takers. And it doesn't have to be grand stands on solving world hunger type. It could be very small things that are beautiful and impactful. A lot of people think that a stand has to be something that is very sensational. And I would say that, you know what? I think every day to some degree, we take small stands based on our values. So when we talk about the driving forces, it starts with knowing your values and then practicing values based decision makings. But imagine if your values are in conflict and you're driving in opposing directions. That's the whole contradiction thing. You're driving in divergent directions which stretch you, torture you, put you in pain. And normally that happens because people feel like they have a contradiction between the moral and the practical. You kind of alluded to this a little bit when you say, you know, hey, I've got this purpose I sometimes have to put money in. I'm investing in this purpose. And it almost to some people might say, well that's kind of impractical, but I know you and I know that you're going to invest in it until you find a way for this to self generate, to create a wealth and abundance so that it can do things in the world. What happens if you think about this, if there's a contradiction between the moral and the practical, saying, well, morally, this is what I'd like to do, but that's not the practical. The practical thing to do is this. Imagine if you have to choose one over the other. And this is an issue of ethics. So if you have to make a choice between the moral and the practical, basically you have one of two choices. Either you're going to be a liar or a sucker. Either you're a sucker because you're saying I'm going to starve to death because what I want to do morally is impractical, or I'm going to be a liar because what I want to do. The practical stuff I'm doing isn't really what I'm finding to be moral. What I'm saying is, and this is where philosophy helps you, is that you find alignment between the moral and the practical, that these two things have to be the same thing. And when you find that alignment and you energize an alignment alignment, you're opened up to a whole new world of experience and effectiveness in what you can achieve.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. And now I pulled out this. I'm going to. I happen to have two phones on me and I went to a photo section because I've always found this one fascinating. Now at a Genius Network annual event a couple years ago, now, people that are listening to this on audio can't see it, but here's a picture of a guy holding a picture from Einstein on letterhead of a hotel letterhead in German. It was written in Germany. German. And I often say this sort of as I'll say this, like I don't know how conscious I am because I said this earlier because I will trade pain for productivity. I mean I will suffer in order to make something happen. Now that's not saying everyone shouldn't. One of the things I want to make clear is if your stand is living a joyous life without a bunch of bullshit attached to it, you don't have to go out and do some grandiose thing where you're going to, you know, take over the world, solve world hunger. Like you said. I mean, one of your stands might be, you know what, the majority of people are doing it wrong. They're not happy, they're not enjoying their life. And I'm going to set up my life in a way that makes me fricking feel connected. And so I want to read this to you. So there were these autographed notes in which Einstein offered his thoughts on how to live a happy and fulfilling life. Sold it at Jerusalem auction house Tuesday for a combined 1.8 million. Now, this is a couple years ago, so I'll read. I'm going to skip through it says Gail Weiner, chief executive of the auction house, said the bidding on the Note began at 2000 and escalated for about 25 minutes, the associated Press reported. So one of the notes was when there's a will, there's a way. Read the other note, written on a blank sheet of paper. That note sold at the auction for 240,000 and was initially estimated to sell for a high of 6,000. But here's the one that sold for $1.56 million. And it had originally been estimated to sell for between $5,000 and $8,000, according to the Winners Auctions and Exhibition website. And this is what Einstein wrote that someone paid $1,560,000 for. And it said, a common, modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness. And it was on German. It was written in German on the hotel stationery. And I thought about, about that a lot, saying, I look at so many my life, I look at a lot of my entrepreneurial friends. A common, modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness. I often think, like, okay, I'm doing all this stuff. And what people don't understand about driven entrepreneurs, they think it's all about the money. They all got to do this. But the fact is with the addiction stuff, my life would be way more peaceful and way more easy if I didn't do it. What it wouldn't have, though, is the fact that I have these great marketing skills that I've developed over many years and there's a lot of suffering that I think I can reduce or eliminate and that I think I know we're all, we already I mean, you're already doing it. Yeah, we're doing it. I mean, we've already know we've saved a few lives. And the fact is it's like, yeah, I may have this, you know, sitting on a beach sort of thing, but that's not what the hell I'm doing it. And that's where the people that have that drive are so often misunderstood. Well, if you had all the money in the world, where would you retire? Where would you go on vacation? And most of my friends that have a purpose, that's not what they're going to do.

What are the richest people in the world doing? They're not retiring. When Microsoft went public in 1983, I think Bill Gates was worth about 300 or so million dollars. If prosperity is your only cause, and this is what we talk about in the 5P pyramid, that prosperity is the ultimate effect of who you are, not the cause. If prosperity was the cause, you retire on 300 million and you're good. But when he was worth $50 billion, it's an inconceivable amount of personal wealth. 50 billion, like you can't wrap your head around that number. Really? He was still going to work every day at Microsoft and incidentally no longer as the CEO, he's worth $50 billion. He shows up to work as what, the chief software architect. Architect. Why? There is no amount of money that could buy him out of that purpose. If $50 billion isn't going to do it, nothing's going to do it. But there's something really important about what you're talking about here insofar as it's not a matter of the drive, because the drive is there in the entrepreneurial mindset for sure. It's a matter of your personal experience around it. And this is if, if I can get personal here for a moment. And this is the whole creative destruction thing. So I went through. I have a good meditation practice. I meditate every single day. My wife is.

We were actually trained together.

We did TM meditation together. My wife in Joe Dispenza's work is. We've known Joe for years. Wonderful human being, but she's really advanced in that work. So it's a part of our household culture and about a couple of years ago, and this is really, really an interesting thing to self reflect and I hope it serves people. It's funny, I mentioned this once when I was just giving a talk and I can't believe how many people are impacted by it. So I'll mention it here just in Case it has served somebody. So I would start my meditation morning and one day when I would shut my eyes and go inward, it felt like a bonfire. Like I literally experienced almost, not quite visually like a hallucination, but I. I could sense a bonfire burning from the base of my neck to my pelvis, inside of me, my whole cavity, my abdomen, my chest was a huge fire was raging. And at first it startled me because it came out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting this, I wasn't looking for it. But when I went inward, that's what I saw. And day by day, I'd see it every single day. And I'm like. And then, and at first I think I resisted. But then I realized something is burning down inside of me that needs to burn. And what I realized is that it was my identity. The identity that I was holding onto was in the flames. And I recognized pretty quickly that I just need to sit with it and just let it burn. My experience in life through decades of being an entrepreneur and achieving what some people might view as success on some scale, where we're out there and changing lives, impacting people, having literally we calculated a multi billion dollar impact on our clients productivity, I mean it was big. But my purpose was such and my identity was such. At that time in my life I had recognized, similar to what you said, that my number one core value, when I really analyzed it, I found out it was significance. And I used to think, oh no, it's freedom or financial freedom or any of those types of things, that there's nothing right or wrong about those. But I like you, I said, wait a minute, it can't be financial freedom. I would take my fortune and mortgage it against an idea that I got passionate about. I'd be taking the risk, I would mortgage my time. So time freedom, financial freedom, no, my behaviors are showing that that's not a core value because I am behaving in a way that I could have those things, but I'm, if you will, casting them away to go after something like you're describing in, you know, in addiction. So then, you know, I get this point where there's this fire raging in me and I'm going through and I'm wondering what the hell is going on. And it took about a year and it all fell together for me. When I was in Israel and we were touring Israel and we were at the Holocaust Museum, outside of the Holocaust Museum, they have these trees planted all around it. And our guide, our tour guide that was, that was taking us through, said each of These trees represents someone who sheltered Jews during the Holocaust. They planted a tree to him. They said, over there is the Schindler's Tree. So there's some people that are famous, some people that are well known, but over here is a tree. They sheltered one Jewish child over here, maybe one Jewish man. People you never heard of, will never hear of. But they put a plaque there for them. And then they said the thing that struck me that literally I felt in my entire body brought tears to my eyes. They said, we have a Jewish proverb. And the proverb is, when you save one life, you save the whole world. And what I realized that in my own business and business activities is that with the core value, the number one core value of significance, if I wasn't doing Martin Luther King level stuff, no matter how successful we got, no matter how well we were doing, I lived in angst. I could not enjoy it. I felt like I was underperforming. I never celebrated these successes along the way. It was like, hey, we achieved this. Great. Now we gotta go to the next level. It's like. And it was somewhat maniacal. And so the way that I lived was taking. Even though I will never say that. I was always feeling like I'm doing the right thing. And it wasn't like I felt bad about myself, but I was unconscious. The blind spot was how I had angst as a constant companion, how I had a maniacal drive as a constant companion. When I heard that, and it was after a year of this bonfire burning, I realized that this idea of significance as my number one core value has to go away. And my new core value that I adopted was fulfillment. My drive, as I observe myself now has not changed. I'm still very driven. We're still very active. We're doing a lot. My experience in the drive is completely transformed. I can sit for a moment. I literally, after this, we were back home in Park City at our house, and I'm. I'm in the back porch with a cup of coffee in the morning. Like, I like to sit out there every morning in the summer, and I'm observing a drop of dew on a blade of grass, and I start getting teary in my eyes. How beautiful that was to look at. Whereas I never could have had that experience before. Doesn't mean I'm any less driven in many respects. But my experience of the drive shifts because of the core value, the identity. Burn down. The creative destruction of an old identity, identity that allowed a new identity to emerge and experience what I do in a very Very different. In my opinion, a much better way. Wow.

Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, there's. I. I have to resist the part of me that wants to make a joke and say, oh, yeah, that's nice for you. That you can look at. Do. And you can feel so serene and so connected and everything, because there's some man or woman out there that are like, I've been, like, at this for three decades of my life, and I cannot figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do. Hence the reason we're actually having this conversation. Because I hope what this does is offer some reinforcement and encouragement to people that are on the path and they're just literally, we're here to celebrate and cheer you on down that path and for. To find the people that are, even if they have success, still feel lost. They feel like. Like they're just not there. Like they're floundering. The beauty of it is, you're like, that's okay. The point is if you at least know and you can have your true north or whatever the hell analogy you want to use. So when people get this book. Because now I want to actually just make a call for someone to not just get the book. I mean, everyone that's listening to this, unless they literally can't afford the cost of the book or think, oh, I'm going to. Wait, get the. How do they engage with it? I mean, what's. Because I really don't want to. Most people that listen to my podcast buy 10 times more books than they have time to read. I really would like people to take this one seriously. That's one of the reasons I said, even if you just buy it and you display it and look at your stand as your brand, what else should your brand be? I mean, it needs to be your stand.

Right? That's right.

And so what will they get out of this?

So, first of all, as you can see, it's not a thick book. It's a fast read, which is what I guess I kind of built because that's the kind of books I like. And I don't know how to put a bunch of filler in. I say it in as clear and concise a way as I can that I think is compelling. You know, whatever it is that I have to say, I look at this book as a journey, literally. You could look at it, or you can open a chapter, read a chapter and get a lot out of it, but there's a sequence to the chapters that is very intentional. And my objective was. And we'll find out if I achieved it once it gets out there. After publication date, my objective was to take the reader on a journey that is an intellectual journey. It's a spiritual journey, for sure. And there are certainly very pragmatic pieces, like the models, like the 5P expansion sequence. I talk about the five branches of philosophy and how to organize. There's all these very pragmatic, put on the ground things. But in the end, what I'm hoping to do is to take whoever the reader is, is from where they are right now, take them on this journey, which is a tour of a parallel universe that's potentially possible for you if you're willing to engage your mind and your spirit in a process that is not very difficult. You know, like anything new, it takes a little while to learn. But once you get mastery here, you can never go back to the frequency or the level of function that you were before you adopted it. So my hope, literally, in the beginning of the book, I talk about this. I think there's two types of experience I've taught, not hundreds, thousands of seminars on six continents. What I could tell you when I start out every single one of them is that there's two things that might happen here. You're going to have either a Jacuzzi experience or a pivotal experience. The jacuzzi experience is it's going to feel good while it's happening. I think it's an enjoyable read. So you're gonna feel good while you're reading the book. But then you close the book and your life goes back to what it was. Nothing changes. That's like a Jacuzzi. You get in the Jacuzzi, and I'm against it. We have them in our house. You get into the Jacuzzi, it feels good while you're in the. In the Jacuzzi, but the next day, it has no impact on your life. The transformational, or what we call. I like to call the pivotal experience, is that experience that once you have it, your life is never the same again. That you can point to and say, ever since I did X in this case, ever since I read that book, it put me on a new path that I otherwise would never have been on. My intention for the book, which was extremely clear to me, is to give people pivotal experiences. I want them to be able to 10 years from now say, ever since I read that book, it put me on a new path and sent me in a new direction that if I didn't read it, would never have gotten me to where I am. So that's what it's there for.

I love it.

I love it.

And here's an idea that I have, too. So, like, one thing that we're doing our first version of this now. I've done contests for many years. I mean, I was hired years ago as a marketing consultant by a guy named Bill Phillips, who started these physique transformation contests, and I literally helped him. Over a million people went through the.

They're legendary.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was big. And so we're doing different challenges right now, and we're doing an elf challenge. Easy, lucrative, fun challenge just for my current Genius network members. But we'll probably ultimately roll it out to business owners at large. And one of my team members, who's my CMO, she registered elfchallenge.com and we have this whole thing. I actually am envisioning your stand is your brand challenge. So the people that read this book, there's a challenge, and you literally walk them through, and you start having a group of these people that are like, this is my stand. Here's what I'm doing. And I would love to see that happen. So. So that when people are like, why are you doing what you're doing? It's like you point to this book and say, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. Read it. I think that's how you start taking your own stand, your own philosophy, and your own reason to learn this capability. Seriously. And it's also repellent from people that are giving you shit about being who you really want to be. It's. Quit making excuses for what matters to you. Go deep with it, not go shallow. And most people, they. It's that whole saying, when you're getting ready to go on vacation, you'll spend more time planning your vacation and planning your marriage and planning your life and planning your business. And the fact is, when you now have a reason to go on vacation, you get shit done. You prepare. Right now, if you treat your own stand that way, you will literally get. You will get clear. And you may need to go through some stages before you have clarity. You may be going through the fog. And I would venture to say most people are in that fog all the time, and they never get out of it.

That's right.

And I think you sitting there, you know, looking at the dew or whatever is after years of going through that fog, you realize, wow, I actually now see something I never noticed before. And that's why I think this is so important. So what's the website where People can get all of the, like the video of you presenting at the Genius X meeting and whatever else where people can pre order it there to get that.

So here's where you go and instantly comment what you just said. You're right. Sometimes it can take a while, any number of months, even years to figure out what your stand needs to be eventually. The key is to understand and know and enjoy the process rather than having angst about, I don't know it yet, what's wrong, what's my purpose. For me it's like enjoy the process of discovery along the way. It's very trite, but it really is about the journey, not the destination. There's two URLs that will direct you to the book. One is my last name, Gentempo with a g g-e n t e m p o dot com. So people who know me, that's the easy one for them or the name of the book. Your stand is your brand dot com. If you go there then you can, you know, there's the links to the retailers, you know, it's, you know, so you order directly from them and then there's the box where once you have your order now number you can pop it in and then get the bonus that we talked about, which is my presentation at your 100k group.

As this book comes out and you start, you know, seeing all of the shifts and all of the things that it does for people, I'd be really curious to see how people are finally saying, okay, here's who I am, here's what I stand for. Because I think that's where you'll see, you're going to create an army of change makers.

We call them stand takers. Yeah. And in the epilogue to the book, we have them. Because once we get through publication, etc on your stand as your brand page, we're going to have a place for a community of stand takers to post their stand and share them. And my hope is to be able to connect them because maybe somebody's taking a stand because collaboration is really the ultimate place and the ultimate destination. So if we find a stand taker in South America that's got a similar stand to somebody in Europe and a similar stand to somebody in California that they, you know, through some intelligence that we built into the site, that they can connect with each other and collaborate on their stands together and do something bigger in the world, you know, through that collaboration. So that's a part of the vision of this thing.

Awesome. That's fantastic. All right, well, as always. Patrick Wonderful to speak with you and just banter and talk and yeah, sure. So the book is your stand is your brand how deciding who to be, not what to do will revolutionize your business and it'll revolutionize your life. Patrick Giantempo thanks brother.

Thank you so much.

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