EP081: Unleashing Your Marketing Genius with Joe Polish and Sachin Patel from Perfect Practice LIVE 2020

Welcome to the Perfect Practice podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel is a functional medicine and success coach, international speaker, and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

And we're back, baby. Joe Polish is here.

What's happening? What's up, dude?

Good to see you.

You too.

Welcome, welcome, welcome back, everybody. We're on the second half of the first day and it's been so extraordinary. Sachin's here, Joe is here, and we're about to get a little look at a interview on some cutting edge marketing strategies. Joe Polish is a living legend. We are very lucky he's here. Joe, where are you right now?

I'm literally tucked away in one area of my house in Scottsdale, Arizona. Beautiful. Yeah. Phoenix area for people that don't know where Scottsdale is.

And today was the one year passing of our dear friend Sean. I saw you posting about it today. Another living legend who lives on in our hearts.

Yeah.

All right, without further ado. You ready, Sachin? All right. I'm so excited for all of you who have never met Joe Polish before. This is going to be extraordinary. Joe Polish is the the founder of Genius Network. He's one of the highest. This is one of the highest level groups in the world for entrepreneurs. He curates the annual Genius Network event, the Genius Network 25K group, that's $25,000 US and the Genius X the $100,000 group. All three groups being home to some of the most successful entrepreneurs alive and is considered one of the most influential connectors in the world. Joe has also helped build thousands of businesses and generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients. He's been featured in Inc. Fortune, Forbes, Success, US News and World Reports, among others, and has spoken at Stanford University. Joe also hosts three of the top ranked marketing and business podcasts on itunes including I love marketing. That's with a lowercase I and a capital L and a capital M. I Love Marketing, 10X Talk and Genius Network. Those are three podcasts. He's also changed the lives of many others through his charitable causes, including the Make a Wish Foundation. Artist for addicts, genius recovery joe volunteer.com as well as being the single largest contributor to Sir Richard Branson's charity Virgin Unite. His documentary the Joe Polish Story premiered at the historic TCL Chinese Theater, formerly Man's Chinese Theater. And his documentary Black Star won the audience choice award at the Sedona Film Festival. Zhou's mission with Entrepreneurs and Genius Network is to build a better entrepreneur. And his mission with Genius Recovery is to change the global conversation of how people view and treat addicts with compassion and instead of judgment and to find the best forms of treatment that has efficacy and share those with the world. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome Joe Polish.

Thank you guys.

Hey, Joe. Thanks for being here today. Thank you, Majeed, for the amazing introduction. Welcome to Perfect Practice, my friend. It's such an honor to have you here today and to share you with our community. I've had the blessings of working under your tutelage for the last few years. You've built an amazing organization. You're an amazing human being. And one of the things we talked about early on today is working with people who share the same values as you and bringing those people into your networks because those people are going to fit like a hand in a glove. And I think you're going to fit into our community super, super well because you, A, value your health and B, you value entrepreneurship and what entrepreneurship can do for the world, what it can do for local communities, and what it can do for the individual entrepreneur themselves. And of course, with the work that you're doing with artists for addicts, you're very philanthropical with your endeavors, and you're always looking to work, make the world a better place. And I've learned a lot about generosity from you. If there's one thing that I can take away from our relationship, you're obviously brilliant at marketing, brilliant at helping entrepreneurs, but it's the generosity that really resonates with me quite a bit. So thank you for being and leading with that as one of your highest values. I appreciate you and welcome to our community.

Thank you so much. Thank you for the kind words. Appreciate it. You're awesome. And yeah, let's be as helpful and as useful as I possibly can be to everyone.

Okay, awesome. So let's start off with a working definition. What's the definition of a genius in your mind?

Well, I have a different definition. I mean, the dictionary would say someone with exceptional intellect or someone that's super creative or has a natural ability. I believe is the. I've read different definitions in the dictionary and on Google over The years. To me, a genius is someone that just has capabilities that can be applied in a way that produces a result. I mean, with my group, Genius Network, I think of it as a group of individuals with unique abilities, which is a strategic coach term, my buddy Dan Sullivan, and capabilities that they collaborate with others. I take genius to the level of. I think everyone has genius in some area. Some people it's intellectual, Some people it's spiritual. Some people it's emotional. Some people it's physical. The ability to integrate related capabilities and skills to produce a result is very important. I have a saying, which you've heard me say a million times, that any problem in the world can be solved at the Genius Network. Even though I have a group and a company called Genius Network, I believe anyone that is producing results in the world with collaborations of other individuals, it's because of genius. When you're bringing, like today, I would say you're bringing together a genius network. You're taking people with skills, you're putting them together, everyone's sharing, they're learning, and hopefully they're becoming better as a result of it. So in order to have a genius Network, you have to be a genius networker and you have to do genius networking, right? So it's the be do have sort of thing. I mean, I take all levels of genius and so skills and capabilities. And one other thing I'll say too is there's a lot of incredibly smart people that are really capable, and they don't have a capability problem. They have a character problem. You can be driven, you can be skilled, you can be persuasive, you can be an amazing marketer and simultaneously be selling crap to people, exploiting people, being an opportunist, that, you know, you're the one that wins, but other people lose. You can be disguising yourself as a, you know, a social entrepreneur, but really it's just to get applause. It's just to, you know, cosmetically disguise yourself as a good doer. In reality, are you really doing good? So I always take a look at. Even with any causes and stuff, what's the end result? I mean, there's a lot of nonprofits and charities that they focus on awareness, and they say words like impact and research. But does the awareness, the impact research, does it ever create an actual result? So I'm genius for people that can create results, and I can even say more about it, but I think that'll suffice for now.

Well, in many networks or in many professions, there is the view that your colleagues can be competition for you. How can we intellectually and emotionally kind of get around that? Where we're not afraid of people taking our ideas or we're not afraid of the practitioner down the street, we might view as competition and move more into a collaborative state. Have you found any tools that are. Or ways of thinking or books or resources that can really help us with that? Because I feel like if we can collaborate together, we can make so much more of an impact.

Yeah, you know, there is a boy. That's a good question. And when it comes to books, there's a book written years ago in the 70s by a guy named Robert Ringer. I've not spoken with him in many years. He's an old guy now, but nonetheless, it was called Winning through Intimidation and it was written about. He was in the real estate business. Although the book is not about real estate. He uses real estate as an example. But there's one chapter, and I'm doing this from memory, it's been a while, where he talked about my undergraduate days at screw you, screw you University. And he said there's three types of professors in the business world. And he used the analogy of poker where, you know, Professor 1 or Professor A, I can't remember if it's type. I think it's type 1, type 2, type 3, not diabetes. But professors were. The first one was they want your chips and they tell you that they want your chips, meaning money. And they come across as being very hardcore and kind of ruthless. But, you know, they're up front, I'm here to make money. The second professor is they say they don't want your chips, they want you to have everything that's coming to you, but they're lying to you, they're deceptive, and they end up trying to take your chips. And then type three is similar to type two, where they tell you they want you to have everything that's coming to you. And in the moment, they actually believe it, but the moment money shows up, they try to take your chips. So the first ones are hardcore, but they're just probably the most honest because they're just, I'm here for money. Second is they're liars, they're deceivers, and there's a lot of those sort of people around. And then the third is they actually are just delusional. I mean, they actually think that, oh, yeah, maybe play Mr. Nice Nice Guy or Nice Gal, and they end up trying to take from me. And he's. And he said this is not his belief. This is the I'm sorry, this is not just his opinion, this is his experience that in the reality of the business world, nobody does anything for nothing. Somebody always wants something. He says the only exception to that role is that is where you only win if the other person wins and where it's truly a win win situation. And when I read that book years ago, because I read over a thousand books and that was one of the most impactful things, and I read that in my early 20s and I made a decision that I will never be in a business that requires somebody to lose in order for me to win. And so some games in life, the only way you win is you don't play. And so one of the ways to not get screwed is, for one, don't be a person that screws other people. Because I believe in karma, as do I believe you, you know, in terms of just the way I've always seen you operate. I mean, you genuinely are about, you know, helping other individuals and some people aren't. And there's a lot of narcissists out there. And so that being said, you know, be being very collaborative, creating results, developing a reputation, being nice to the people you meet on the way up, they're the same people you meet on the way down. And knowing that no matter how well you adhere to being useful, being valuable, being caring, you're going to have, you're going to be a target for some people. And if you're genuinely nice, you're going to have people copy you if you do good stuff in the world and you're going to have people knock you off. And on the flip side, being that way, you're also going to attract, you know, because the thing is, if you are an attractive individual in terms of the way you conduct yourself and the way you deliver products and services, I mean, it takes years to build a great reputation and a moment of stupidity to destroy it. You've heard that before. I found that to be quite true. So how, you know, how you do business, there's no such thing as a good business deal with a bad partner. So it's not the red flags that we have to be careful of. My buddy Patrick Giantempo, he wrote a book called stand is your brand or your brand is your stand. And he said it's really the yellow flags when you start noticing the yellow flags. So cut all ties with dishonest, negative and lazy people and pay attention to who you do stuff with. And in the best of ways, I think, just demonstrating how you want to be treated. People treat Us, the way we train them to treat them. And sometimes that's subconscious, you know, if we don't do a lot of the personal work, the codependency issues from childhood, the underlying trauma things, all the crazy things, you know, people that are in toxic relationships, and I've been in those in my life. I didn't realize at the time I was toxic. You know, I didn't, I didn't really deal with some of the issues and I was attracting broken people because I myself was broken. I mean, we find people whose dents match our dents, right? Yeah. So there's a lot to be said in the business world. So I don't think there's a way to totally immune yourself from that sort of thing. But you know, if you're awesome and you do a great work, you're going to attract a lot of awesome people and occasionally you're going to have knock you off. But I try to look at those things today saying, okay, what is this? What's the lesson here? You're either winning or you're learning. And if you're not winning, what can you learn from it? And how do you protect yourself in the future? And as you get better in life and business, the stuff that would have killed you early on, you just build a tolerance to all the bullshit that happens because business is a continual amount of problems happening every day. They're never going to go away, it's never going to be completely free of that sort of stuff. But what happens is your capabilities and your skills and your ability to be resourceful and navigate it dramatically improve. So I think a lot of business success is just building up a tolerance if you're, if you're a growth minded entrepreneur, you know, some people are, you know, they're, there's lifestyle entrepreneurs, they want things to be smooth and easy and you know, not. But I'm into achievement, I'm into growth minded entrepreneurs. And with that, you know, it comes with the territory, but like building a muscle, you know, it's a, you keep working at it and the stronger you get, the less people mess with you.

I like that. I know there's a lot that you packed into that and I want people to go back and listen to this because when you can unpack what Joe says, each sentence you can sit with as a meditation and observe it and see how it's showing up in your life. And I love that you're kind of echoing this idea that there's nothing smooth in nature. So we can't expect our lives to Be perfectly smooth. And that's what I think sometimes people expect. Even if you have the systems, things aren't always going to go as smoothly as we might anticipate. And that can create disappointment for people. It can create frustration when our reality doesn't match our expectations. And that gap that people have is something that can hold them back. Right. And you probably see this at varying scales. I know people that work with you usually have a seven figure business or more. What are the things that some of the challenges and obstacles that you find practitioners or any business has to overcome to get to that point? Like what are. I know the challenges change, but most of the practitioners who are listening to this are probably in that zero to million mark. What are some of the things that they need to be paying attention for?

Well, you know, since I teach marketing and I always caution people, you know, whenever you're a hammer, everything's nailed. I mean, you've heard that a million times before. If you want to integrative doc, a functional medicine doc, a medical doctor, you know, naturopath. I mean, everybody has their own methodologies when it comes to treating as you know, there's a lot of people whose method is, you know, everything's a pill for an ill. Right. That doesn't matter what sort of doctor they are based on their monetization model, how they sell, what they sell, how they sell and genuinely, you know, just caring for people and delivering, you know, the best value you can is valuable. Now I come from the world of marketing and I was, you know, I started as dead broke carpet cleaner, living off credit cards. I never learned marketing thinking I would teach it to anyone, do seminars. I mean it was massively shy and introverted growing up. I, you know, the thought of doing a public speech. I was a drug addict early in life because I was dealing with the underlying trauma that what happened to me is in my childhood. And so, you know, I remember even being in a psychology class. This is how crazy I was. And there's, there's a reason I'm explaining all this and I'll tie it all together where I had to give a talk about, you know, anything. So I picked doing a talk on the dangers of thc and I got stoned in order to present a, you know, a talk because I was so scared of speaking in class. I literally got stoned in order to try to help me with my nervousness and talk about the danger of thc. I mean, talk about a hypocritical sort of thing. But that was in high school. And it was sort of, you know, this crazy environment. And then I got into a business that, you know, was accidental. I stumbled into this carpet cleaning business and I ended up having to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy, which is carpet clean. I mean, there's not a single person on here that's like, man, I can't wait till the cat pees in the corner. Or, you know, the husband, you know, spills crap all over the carpet of the upholstery. And so we can call it carpet cleaner. I mean, nobody wants to call a carpet cleaner. But I had to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. And so I started studying persuasion, I started studying marketing, and I ended up becoming falling in love with the fact that you can change the words on paper and it would massively alter the response. Because there was no Internet back then. I mean, in the, in the, you know, early 90s, I didn't have my first website till 1996. But, you know, it was just a website. I mean, people really weren't going to websites to try to find businesses. But I got one early on and what I, you know, what I learned is that with marketing, you can be the best person in the world. There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. And that's a hard thing for people to accept. You can be a great doctor, you can really care, you can be honest, you could have your credentials, you can, you know, help people live and survive and thrive. And that does not necessarily mean you're going to be making money or you're going to be successful. So there's, there's a big difference between believability and credibility. You can be credible as heck and completely broke, or you can be believable in a con artist and be making money temporarily. I personally think all of it catches up with you. And if you can go to bed at night knowing that that's what you're doing, that's a whole, that's a whole different topic we can discuss if you want. But people under estimate the importance of marketing. So the big point behind all of this, I want to say one of the biggest problems that people have with growing is they hear marketing, but they treat it like a line item on a bunch of other things in the business. And the marketing is the oxygen that makes your business work. And so if an organism is gasping for air and a business is gasping for business, there's an oxygen problem. It needs to breathe, it needs to inhale, it needs to exhale, it needs to attract, it needs to attract the right type of person and it needs to repel the wrong fit clients. And so a lot of really effective marketing isn't just getting more business, it's getting the right type of business. It's being able to select the target market that best matches the value creation that you can provide. And so one of the biggest mistakes when I see people growing is they just don't have a system for enrolling, attracting people into their business, for positioning their companies for, for just having a mechanism that doesn't require a lot of manual labor in order to generate business. And so I'm the guy that, you know, I mean, I created elf, right? Easy, lucrative and fun. You can have an ELF business, which is easy, lucrative and fun, or you can have a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. It could be hard, annoying, lucrative and frustrating. But not all money is created equal. So elf marketing systems are things that bring in clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week, robotic, automated. And in order to have an ELF business, you don't just fall into elf, you have to, in order to have the conditions. You know, if you want to have a million dollar business as an example, or a $5 million business or $10 million business, your capabilities, you need to have million dollar capabilities. You can't build a million dollar business on $100,000 capabilities. And so part of the growth in the building is what are all of the capabilities that one needs in order to get to a million dollars? It could be, you know, database capabilities, it could be marketing capabilities, it could be, you know, financial management, it could be the management of people, it could be hiring the right sort of people. So I tend to look at what are the capabilities that are needed in order to build and grow a business. And so the one thing that did it for me, that took me from a dead broke carpet cleaner to, you know, literally I went five times the gross revenue of my company in a six month period. Once I learned how to create an offer and present it to my prospects. Didn't learn anything more about the technical skills of the business I was in. I just simply learned how to better communicate and better advertise and market. And then I built up my business and I literally got completely out of debt because I was, you know, $30,000 in debt on credit cards. I had this entrepreneurial fantasy early on that, damn it, I need to make a business work. And I was paying money to be in business. I mean, there's many ways to go broke, but one of the dumbest ways to go broke is cleaning carpets 10, 12, 14 hours a day, doing hard manual labor and then paying money to do that.

In Arizona.

In Arizona? Oh yeah, Like I remember, like in summer I was lugging portable Steam Cleaners up 3 story apartment complexes because that's the only consistent work that I could get because I had not yet learned how to generate business. And it's, you know, you've been in Arizona in summer. I mean it's like, it's literally like being in hell. I mean, not that I know what hell's like, but if I had to imagine it would probably be, you know, August, you know, in Arizona, outside in apartment complexes. And I'm allergic to cats, so I would sometimes, you know, have to clean these, these cat urine infested apartments. And it was like literally doing manual labor in a sauna when you're wheezing because I was allergic to cats and it was miserable. And I would do that 10, 12, 14 hour and I would literally go home broke, you know, and I was barely survived. It wasn't for credit cards. There's no way I could have sustained myself or even paid for food. So. And I even hired my first marketing consultant and got him to write my first, the first sales letter was A Consumer's guide to Carpet Cleaning. Again, there was no Internet back then, so it was direct mail postcards. You know, there's, let me define this too since I'm talking about it. So selling is what you do when you're on the phone or face to face with somebody. Marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you properly positioned. So by the time you're talking to them, they're pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to give you money. And so I didn't have anything to sell my services because if you don't have a system for selling what it is you're selling, you're at the mercy of the consumer. System for buying. All consumers have a system for buying and it's called price. That's why when people ask how much do you charge? It's because they're, they don't have any other criteria to make a buying decision off of if they don't know you. And so the number one question in all consumers minds is who can I trust? And so your job as a marketer, as a physician, as a practitioner is to establish trust and rapport. And you don't want people to just trust you, you want them to feel comfortable with you. So rapport is trust with comfort. That's the ultimate form of rapport is where someone trusts you, they feel comfortable with you. And the way that you get someone that doesn't know you at all and has never experienced you whatsoever is like our friend Jason Fladlin says, he's in our, you know, genius network group. He says anything that you're selling, whatever it is, you want to put information in front of it. You know, so if you're a doctor, you want to put information in front of it. So I was a carpet cleaner. Now think about this. So nobody wants to hire a carpet cleaner. Most carpet cleaners are advertising price. The, you know, the, the only thing worse than a price offer is no offer whatsoever. Just say, I'm a doctor, I'm a carpet cleaner. I'm a, you know, pool service person. I'm a web designer. Okay, great. You know, unless they just. I mean, there's some conditions where you can use one word ads. I mean, I remember those classified ads that would say warts or corns, you know, things related to like feet in the skin or hemorrhoids. You know, where it's like, you know, if someone's just in paid and they need that. Yeah. Then, then you might be able to pull that off. But so I, you know, I hired a copywriter and I had him create a. And this is formulaic. So as I'm saying this, this is extraordinary. Worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to whoever's watching if they actually get what I'm about to say and utilize it. It's not going to happen overnight. Yes, you're going to have to have this created. Yeah, you're going to have to think about learning, writing copy. But it's just a formulaic thing that literally was the starting point for me to can and clone myself, to actually have a way to replicate myself. Because the best salesperson in the world is limited by the clock. You can only talk to so many people in a given day, even if you have a salesforce. So if you have salespeople that work for you and anyone that's an entrepreneur, when they're first starting out, guess who the salesperson is. It's them, right? I mean, you're the number one salesperson. I was the first salesperson. You were the first salesperson. So no matter how, how effective you are at presenting your services, you're limited by the clock. So how do you can and clone yourself? So I hired a copywriter and I spent a month teaching him about carpet cleaning. And I created A Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning. And it basically, see, everyone was advertising, you know, you know, name, rank, serial number, here's who I am, here's what I do, here's our phone number. Now it's, here's my website, here's our social media. You know, I mean, it's same, same stuff you see today, just different delivery systems. And people get all gaga over technology, over websites. I mean, hell, I'm even mapping my entire office right now to become a virtual reality museum. I'm literally creating training through VR. I understand to a degree how to utilize tech in order to position things. That being said, Steve Jobs said It was in 1997 at the Worldwide Developers Conference that we focus first on the user experience, then we focus on the technology. So technology is important, but psychology is infinitely more important. And so with all the available ways to deliver a message to people, if you don't get the psychology, because that's what marketing is, it's literally applied psychology. And if you are averse to the word marketing, think of it this way. It took me 20 years to figure this out. I'm talking about sales and marketing. And some people, like, I hate sales and marketing. I was taken advantage of by, you know, of course, you know, there's a lot of scummy marketers out there. There's a lot of people that utilize sales and ways to exploit. However, you know, I'm not aware of any business, any movement, any cause for profit, nonprofit, whatever, where sales was not involved. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, you can, you can dis. It's funny, my doorbell's ringing. You can dislike it. Maybe it's Amazon delivering me a package. I have no idea.

Opportunity.

I'll ignore it, right? So basically, I hired a copywriter and I wanted him to create, you know, my first sales letter. So think of selling as influence and think of marketing to storytelling. If you're more influential, if you're more persuasive, you're going to obviously be more effective. And if you tell a better story, you can enroll people. And marketing is selling in advance. How do you sell in advance? So when I say put information in front of, front of whatever it is you're selling, how do you sell what it is you're selling? How do you position yourself in advance? So the first thing I had was a Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning. It said, read this guide. So think about this, you know, Consumer's Guide to Functional Medicine or a Consumer's guide to, you know, pick the category of whatever it is. You know, skin, you know, vision, you know, bad breath, whatever. I mean, it could be whatever. The thing is that the person's working on Lyme disease, you know, whatever. And it doesn't necessarily need to be consumer's guide. It could be a report. You can call it whatever the title is. But I had A Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning and it said, read this guide and discover. Seven questions ask a carpet cleaner before invite him into your home. See, they didn't know there were seven questions asked. Eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. Crawling, critters and crud. A guide to the slime, grime and livestock that's seeping, creeping and galloping through your carpet. How to avoid 4 Carpet Cleaning RIP offs. The difference between value and price. How to get your carpet cleaner to 100% guarantee their work. You know, stuff like that. And then they would open it up and it said, dear homeowner, choosing a carpet cleaner isn't easy. Why? Because you're bombarded by confusing claims, simply bad information, near worthless methods, unqualified technicians. How do you ever find a qualified, competent carpet cleaner? You start by reading this guide, blah, blah, blah. Now, with this information, you can make an informed, intelligent decision. Because nobody wants to make an uninformed, idiotic decision. They want to make an informed, intelligent decision. And so my advertising was actually valuable because what I learned is when it came to selling what I was selling, it wasn't what people knew, you know, it's what they didn't know that they didn't know. So they didn't know there were seven questions asked a carpet cleaner. They didn't know there were six costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning they didn't know about. Eight mistakes to avoid. So whatever it is, you literally sit down and you see everyone that's listening and watching, they're already doing this. You're already talking to people every day. You've already invested a tremendous amount of time, money and energy to learn your craft, to learn your skill. Now, how do you convey it in a useful way in advance to people that could potentially become patients, that can become clients, they can become the benefactors of what it is that you do. Now, I say all of this with the caveat that, you know, obviously you got to be good. If you suck, don't promote things that you know because you're going to get found out really quickly. That's one of the beauties of reviews and things online, is if someone's really, you know, got bad bedside manners, or they're not very conscientious, or they're not caring or they don't produce results. You know, you're. Some people may tell others about that, but if you're amazing, then spread the amazingness. I read on a sugar packet, which no one here, I think would probably ever consume sugar, right? It was like this little sugar packet and it had a cat. It said advertising. And my brain is weird. I have the weirdest memory. I remember dirty jokes and quotes. I mean, it's like bizarre. So if I rattle off quotes, all this stuff's from memory. But if you ask me to describe a movie I saw last night, it'd be be hard to do. But the sugar packet said, he who has something to sell and whispers in a well is not as apt to make the shiny dollar as the guy that climbs the tree and hollers. And then the caption was advertised and it's like, yeah, so if you got something to sell, you got to tell the world about it. But how you tell the world about it, how you position it, you can do it in a very effective, powerful way that could explode your business, or you can gas for air. I mean, it totally depends on how you do it. So what I described as a consumer awareness guide ended up becoming the first thing. And so I no longer started advertising anything related to price. I started advertising things like, you know, you know, free consumer guide, you know, for carpet cleaning. Warning, don't call any carpet cleaner till you listen to this free recorded message. Call anytime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you know, and I started using consumer guides. That's elf marketing. It worked for me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Before the Internet even existed, I was using robotic methods. And now with YouTube and now with all the different ways that you can promote stuff, you can just take education based marketing and you put it out in different ways. The most important thing is the target audience. So it's the, it's. The list is first, the offer, second, the copy third. That's the criteria of how in most cases I would position things. And unless you just happen to be the only person in the world or in town that's offering what it is you're offering, and there's a whole bunch of people that want it, then you don't need to be a great marketer, you just need to have the goods.

No, I love that. So I want to highlight a couple things that you said that I think will be really relevant to practitioners so one of the, the first time I actually saw you speak live was in Toronto. This was many, many years ago. And then it was a Tony Robbins event. And the person that I was actually most excited to hear speak was you, because I had, you know, you had, you were already pre framed in my mind as the go to person in marketing. And after the event was over, I ran to the back and there was an offer that you made and I purchased it. And the training that you offered was how to create that guide. So I literally sat down and it was a digital course. I literally sat down with it. I believe there's a binder too that we got at the back of the room. And I created that consumer's guide. For the last few years I've been using that. And it's an amazing educational tool so that people know what questions to ask. Because if they ask the right questions, then it eliminates a lot of the potential competition. Because as soon as they ask the competition or the practitioner down the street that question, then they stop shopping on price and you're creating a more educated buyer. So you're actually holding your profession to a much higher standard. And I think that that's really important to note is that you're not doing this to take business out of somebody else's pocket, but you're actually doing it to hold your profession to a higher standard so that when people go see somebody who isn't, you know, a highly ethical practitioner or somebody who isn't looking out for the best interests of the consumer, they can spot that person out. And I think that we would all agree, and everyone on this call would agree that those people should not be in business or should not be successful at business. And the people that are doing things the most ethical way, who are looking for a win, win, win scenario, those are the people that should be successful. But we don't compete on price. We compete on values and creating an educated consumer so they know how to make an informed decision. And clearly, if you're the one writing the guide and they're reading it, you hopefully become the more obvious choice and you're able to communicate the value that you add to people in a way that nobody else can. So I love that. And one thing that you said that I want to touch on is marketing methods have changed. So before there was direct mail, so you'd get mail in your mailbox. Right now, people's mailboxes are empty and their inboxes are full. I know one of our mutual friends, Cameron Herold, who's in your genius network as well. That's how I met him. He talks about that and he's like, man, in Canada right now. Which is, I'm in Canada. Our mailboxes are completely empty. So what's your thoughts on direct mail right now and how do you see that perhaps fitting in for healthcare practitioners? Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm a little biased because I actually learned marketing through direct mail. I learned marketing because I was studying people that had the liver die by putting a stamp with words on paper and mail it to people that they'd never met and try to get these people to do business with them. I mean, if you have the advantage of talking to someone over a webinar or over a live cast, they get to hear your voice, they get to see your face, or if you're face to face with them, I mean, you have much greater positioning with them than direct mail. But when, if you can learn how to make direct mail work, I mean, it's a whole nother ball game. So to your point, there's less noise in people's mailboxes than ever before because it's human nature to get all gaga over the bright, shiny object. And so right now it's all of these, you know, be an influencer and build a social media following and all this sort of stuff, which, you know, I have. And I mean, you know, my company makes a few million dollars a year on, you know, social media and using online marketing and stuff. However, if I could only use one method of marketing and only one, and I had to pick one, I mean, anything, you know, tv, radio, Internet, you know, direct mail, I pick direct mail. And the reason is, is, is it's. There's such little competition for it right now. So few people rely on it. You can categorically pick target markets and list. And most people don't know how to use it, and most people won't take the time to do it. And so there's so, you know, there's so many advantages that come with using direct mail. So I just, you know, you can attach anything to the top of. I mean, there's so many little things related to health that you can attach as a grabber. What I would suggest, you know, because of time, I did a great. You can find it on YouTube. It's free. Me and Dean Jackson, who, you know, you, you know, who we do I Love Martin podcast with. We did an episode years ago. We went to a dollar store. I bought a whole bunch of crap from like leis that you put on your head those Hawaiian leis, to little umbrella things that you put in drinks to balloons, to toys. You can get little. What do you call them? Stethoscopes, right. The doctor would wear. I remember buying, like little dollar packages, these little medical things, a little, little outfits for doctors and stuff, toys, and using them as grabbers on the top of letters. So you want to grab someone's attention. So the reason I like direct mail is there's theater. You know, carpet cleaners would come to me and say, I want. You know, I've been trying to do these bids to get commercial jobs in buildings. And I never get a call back. And I don't like the bidding process because everything's. But I can't get through the gatekeeper. I can't get through to, you know, the top person. I. I had a friend named Brad Anton years ago that had a technique that they were getting people to return their calls. And again, this is before the Internet existed. And so what you do, if you ever want to meet, like a big wig, and you can't for whatever you would find out who this person is. If you could tie in a birthday and anniversary of their business, a holiday, you call the, you know, or email the assistant, whoever that is, the gatekeeper, and say, you know, I want to get Mr. And Mrs. Bigwig a gift. What's their shoe size? And so you find their shoe size. You buy like $100 pair of Nikes or what? Nikes or whatever. And you have a letter that basically. And I've taught this to people. It always works. It always works. I'll share it. You know, for every, you know, hundred or a thousand people I'll share it with, one or two people will do it. The rest of them will be like, oh, that's a great idea. But they never do it. But it. We've made so much money with this technique is you basically buy a pair of shoes and then you take a letter and you say, Dear Mr. Mrs. So and so, I have something really valuable that I wanted to share with you. I needed a way to get. To get my foot in the door. So this is why I'm sending you one shoe. Let me know when you can meet up. And when we meet, I'll bring the other shoe. And so you send a single shoe by uniform courier. So they have to sign for it. So if you send it FedEx, which you should, or however you send it, they have to sign for it. And, you know, when you send something like that to an entrepreneur, they don't have anyone in their company that is creative like that. They're like, first off, they're like, who does something like this? I want to meet that person. And no matter how much money they have, I've always found they want that other damn shoe. I mean, they do. And it just, they get. So if you say you spend 10001500 bucks mailing 10 pairs of shoes to 10 important people you either want to collaborate with or want them to do business with you, or just want to promote whatever your offer is, you'll get two or three phone calls and you will get those appointments. And I've had literally cleaners that have spent two or three years trying to submit bids to commercial establishments that they can't get through, and they send a damn shoe to the person, they get the appointment, they get a multi thousand dollar job. And so. And yeah, and I mean, hell, even with direct mail, by the late 90s and I first started selling stuff to carpet cleaners in 1994, 1995, that we could even loosely track, you know, Dan Kennedy, I was doing a lot of work with him back then with all these different service businesses. And it, you know, Even the late 90s, we attract $800 million that were generated just from the direct mail campaigns and the consumer guides and all the things that I was teaching people. Now it's, you know, several billion dollars have been generated with, you know, directly from my marketing strategies to, you know, people that use them and stuff. But it's, yeah, this stuff works. It's not a, it's not like an opinion. I mean, this works. You just gotta, gotta apply it, you.

Know, that's, that's brilliant. So I would imagine that you're probably gonna get a bunch of shoes in the mail.

Size 10 and a half. No, actually, so I, well, here's the funny thing. I'm gonna take a sabbatical next year. Like, I'm gonna take the whole year as a sabbatical. So even if people send me stuff, I, you know, they might get a nice card from my assistant, but they get any appointments with me, so we'll see.

I'm so happy to hear that. I'm so happy to hear that, man, I'm so proud of you. I know that's not an easy thing to do, so well deserved. You've been working your butt off for quite some time. And you know, in the times that we get to hang out, I see how much you care. I see how much your clients mean to you, I see how much your relationships mean to you, anytime I send you a text, you're very responsive to it. A lot of times they get a beautiful video response from you. So you've definitely got a lot of deep, meaningful, personalized ways of connecting with people, which I really value. And there's a lot to be said about that, especially when it comes to marketing. Right? Because a lot of times when people think about marketing, they don't think about the personalization aspect of it. So you're a very personable person. And sometimes, like, when it comes to marketing, we kind of think of marketing as hands off. Oh, this ad is going to do all the work for me. But no, when people call you and people connect with you, when they become clients and develop a relationship with you, the marketing is not going to do that stuff for you. The marketing starts and initiates the relationship and gets people interested in what you do, but then you've got to still maintain the relationship with people. And one thing that I really clearly remember when we first met and we had a chance to spend more time together was through Charles Poliquin. And after the event that I was speaking at, you and Eunice were so graceful and took us out for lunch. So generous. Again, totally. Like, I didn't even really know you that well at that point, but it just made me want to be a better entrepreneur. So you really inspired that inside of me, so I thank you for that. And you gave me access to the Genius network recordings. And you're a giver first, right? And you always say that life gives to the giver and takes from the taker, and that really sticks with me. And I try to apply those principles into my business, into my personal life, into all the relationships that I have in my life. And you're partly to thank for that. So thank you for leading by example. We really, really appreciate that. I wanted to touch on one thing and not one more thing. We'll talk about a few more things. But one thing that I really wanted to stress here is marketing is like the M word for doctors. So it's like a swear word. Because people don't want to be. They don't like to be pushy. So people will tell me, I hate marketing. I don't like to be pushy. Well, if you're having to be pushy, then you're not doing the marketing, right? Because the persuasion is the sales part of it. And if you get the marketing and the messaging and the authority and the relationship and the rapport, right? And you play the long game, then you're not having to do that and people want to work with you. They're hoping that you take on their case, or they're hoping that you take them on as a client versus the opposite, where you're hoping that they want to join your practice as a client. So maybe you could talk to that a little bit as well.

Yeah. Well, here's what I would say. You know, there is a caveat. There's a lot of marketers that hype marketing use ethically is massive enthusiasm for what it is you're offering. Marketing used unethically is literally exaggerating, lying, BSing, promising things that aren't true. I mean, there are ways to utilize marketing in very effective, very ethical ways. I mean, my buddy, you know, Robert Cialdini, who's the father of influence, I mean, he so stresses the ethical use of marketing and everyone has ran across some unethical marketer. And I will also say that I know a lot of doctors. I have a lot of health people in Genius Network. I mean, you know, everything from psychologists to psychiatrists to everybody type of health practitioner. I mean, you name it. And I've seen a lot of people that were really good doctors, and then they got an ego and they want to become celebrity doctors. And they used to be really good in caring, and then they started to care more about their image and about their reputation and about being famous, and they started to suck. And I've seen some that I thought were pretty good, some that were amazing, and some that just get sucked up into this celebrity doctor thing. So how do you build and grow your brand? How do you build and grow yourself? But at the same time, don't lose the value of what it is you do. And so people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. So you are absolutely right when you say that. So my partner in I Love Marketing our podcast, Dean Jackson, he's the guy that invented the squeeze page back in 1997 where someone puts their name and email and they go to the next page. Now, obviously, that developed into the opt in page, which so many people use today. It's a lead generating mechanism. It's, you know, only the hungriest fish are going to snap at the crappiest bait is something that the copywriter, Gary Halbert, would say. And so when it comes to Dean says, and this is worth writing down, a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. A compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. The reason that people are getting resistance is they have not yet figured out how to convey a Compelling offer. And they're trying to convince people. And if they're trying to convince people by being pushy, then they're like, oh, I hate marketing because I have to do all. No, you don't. I mean, if you're being enrolled into something that you're interested in that's really helpful and really valuable to you, you don't even perceive it as being selling. You know, it's exciting, it's attractive. So some. Some things you buy, people go buy food. You know, before the pandemic, they'd go to movies, they'd go to concerts, Other things. You have to sell that stuff.

Right?

You know, no one's waking up saying, you know, I really need to join a $25,000 a person or $100,000 a person, you know, mastermind group or a discussion group, which is the stuff that I sell. Right. We have to sell those things. But it's not like we just say, hey, by the way, you know, I got 20, you got 25 grand laying around letting me come buy my stuff. So. And we position it. I mean, we actually have. People have to fill out an application. We got to make sure that they're going to be a right fit client. Our job is to curate the right thing. But it's a process. So selling rarely is an event. It is a process. And if you don't set the certain tracks down, you know, if you don't like the clients that you are getting, it's kind of like saying, if you don't like the fish that you're catching, first off, where are you fishing? What are you fishing with? And what's the bait? And if you don't like your clients and you're finding yourself in these positions, you got to look at the messaging. You know, you hear people talk about content is king. You've heard that a million times, right? People like, put out great. Yes, of course, that's it. That's a given. Content is king. But, you know, maybe I actually don't think content is always king. Content is only king when you understand context. Context is king. And if you understand the context, the framing of it. And then it's one thing to communicate like we're communicating to people. We're communicating. Well, are they comprehending? You can communicate the very best thing in the world all day long, but are they comprehending it? You know, the best message in the world is useless if you shout it to deaf ears is one way to look at it. The other is the only thing worse than singing the wrong note is Singing it louder. So some people just, they think selling is yelling and that doesn't work either. So there is a art and a science to understanding what to say and how to say it to your clientele. And that really requires understanding them. What is it that they want? What is the pain that they're looking for? I mean, as entrepreneurs we solve problems for a profit. That's what you do and your ability. Other people's bad news is your good news. Which is a conversation I've had with Dan Sullivan multiple times. Like most of us will make money transforming other people's bad news into good news. If you are an ethical value creating entrepreneur, that's what you do. But there's a lot of people that are selling shitty food, tobacco, drink this alcohol, watch this porn, make a lot of money off of it. But are they transforming other people's good news into bad news? Are they taking people's already pain and just giving them a way to try to satiate it in the moment? That just makes them worse. I mean all the people that are here dealing with health related issues for people are dealing with the consequences of these humans consumption, mentally, physically, emotionally, choices in other areas. And now you're trying to unfuck all these people that got all fucked up along the way. So the fact is if you know, if you can transform other, sorry, if I don't, if profanity is not allowed, I just violated that. But if you can, you know, if you are truly able to transform someone else's, you know, bad news into good news, is that something to be ashamed of? I mean like you should do whatever is legal, moral and ethical in order to engage them with what it is you're doing. And the beauty of this though, Sachin, is that, you know, it's really hard in the beginning sometimes to figure out what that offer is. You have to sometimes kiss a lot of frogs. In the real world it's called failure. In the marketing world it's called testing. You know, you have to be willing to test. But once you actually get it down and people start responding, that's when I've seen the light bulb goes off. People hate marketing until they actually have it work for them. And then they're like, oh my God, this is the great. Because the only way I know how to leverage yourself in business two ways is you do it through hiring other people to get the efforts and skills and capabilities of others that you hire. And you know, I mean I have, you know, my payroll in my company, I have equity in 21 different companies. I have several of my own companies that have a foundation. I have, you know, millions of dollars a year in payroll. It's an investment. I don't ever look at an employee as a team member as a cost. If you look at it as a cost, you will probably set it up to fail. I look at it as an investment. It's never a cost. Have I made bad investments? Absolutely. Have I not watched those investments? Have I hired people that were not good? Absolutely. Of course. But I look at it as an investment. So you can leverage yourself through hiring other people. The other way you leverage yourself is through marketing, because marketing is the ultimate leverage. You can can and clone yourself. You can replicate yourself robotically. And that's why it's really important to take a portion of the time that you spend in building, growing your business, learning how to position, how to package it, how to present it to people. And I say this, wishing I didn't have to do any of this marketing stuff. I wish people would, you know, that the money fairy would just show up and say, this is a really good person. Let's drop a bunch of money on their head. Life doesn't work that way. I mean, you're going to have competitors, you're going to have a lot of confusing things that people, you know, you're going to have, you know, a thousand different diets that are out there. You're going to have conflicting things. The best thing that I would suggest is one lays down the tracks and builds their businesses for people that are relatively new is be collaborative, be caring, do the very best you can. Know that not everyone's going to be a right fit client. Put information in front of anything that it is you're selling. Learn and study great marketing. Look at people that are having success. What are they doing? How are they doing it? But more importantly, you know, doing things right versus doing the right thing. You know, there's two different things. You know, one of my favorite books is by Jim Lore is called the Only Way to Win. And it's really a book about character. You know, one thing, I've been in a world of marketers, and there's a lot of scummy marketers in there. And I've somehow managed to go through this for over two decades now, relatively unscathed, because I never sold anything to anybody that they would ever have a reason to say that I sold them crap in the box or I didn't care if anyone's ever been unhappy, they get their money back, you know, and I don't Sell stuff that I would not sell to my best friend, to the people that I care about the most. And that's just the way to treat people. I mean, I really believe it's a. You know, so I'm all, I'm a big fan. Make as much money as you want to make grow. You know, whatever your desires and aspirations are, go for them. Just do it in a way to where you never give anybody a reason to say, this person, you know, use scummy marketing. This person, you know, I mean, there's so many ways to tell an ethical story, you know, I mean, even what we're talking about is make your advertising valuable. I mean, your consumer guides, you're teaching people how to make a buying decision. I mean, even if someone never hired me as a carpet cleaner way back in the day, you know, they actually learned how to make a buying decision. So I literally put out information to help people. I mean, my podcast, we don't charge for them. We put out information constantly. You know, my book, Life Gives to the Giver, I give it away for free. You know, that people can download it if they want the physical version. They could, you know, pay for shipping and handling. And I don't enroll them into an upsell program. I mean, you know, I could, but currently I don't. And so part of it is by doing that. Most people that benefit from what I do have never paid me anything, and they won't pay me anything, but a handful will. Because my sense is when you put out good stuff into the world, your very best stuff, your very best ideas, the best things, you know, like some people, like, oh, I can't tell, you know, I got to get paid for everything. Well, I've actually found the more that you give out into the world, as counterintuitive as it is, the more people just give back to you. They just do. I mean, I've had many people that just end up joining. Like, I don't have fancy marketing for Genius Network. I just am really useful, and I put out a bunch of useful stuff, and people are like, huh? And then most of my clients come from referrals. And that's a really good indicator. See, if the people listening. If you are not getting people referring you, you have to really say why. You know, Walt Disney said, you know, we want Disneyland to be so amazing that people could not not tell other people about it. Like, they go to Disneyland. That was his original goal. Someone's gonna go to Disneyland. They're gonna have such an amazing time. They cannot not tell other people about Disneyland. And so what is your version of Disneyland? You know, what are you doing? And I say all of this with, like, the main thing that I care about now in my life. I spend 50% of my time helping people with addiction because my main goal is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world. So that requires telling, you know, reframing how people think of addiction, because addiction is a connection disorder. Like Johann Hari says, the opposite of addiction is connection. And so we're really in the connection business. If there's anything I ultimately want to do for people is I want to connect them with ideas, connect them with skills, connect them with capabilities. And I want to help people that are disconnected to reduce suffering or eliminate suffering. Because I spent most of my life in mental pain, mental anguish, craving, fear, nearly killed myself with drugs. I had sexual addiction in my life because I was raped and molested as a kid. I became a millionaire and I would still hire escorts and pay for sex because I was paid money when I was a child to not say anything about being, you know, sexually abused. And it wired in my head that, you know, I didn't. You know, it's funny, I was the most disconnected person growing up and that I ended up. Today, my main focus is on connection. And so if there's any way to summarize the way I think about it, it's like you're either connecting with people or you're not. You're either in communication with somebody or you're trying to escape. And you can do a really, you know, if you have the best treatments, the best therapies, the best methodologies, the best lifestyle advice, or, you know, doesn't need to be the best. It just needs to be effective and it needs to work. It's only useful to the degree that you can communicate to other people in a way that they make it part of their life and it adds value to their life. But, you know, to me, I have a bigger mission. I mean, everything that I'm doing is really on the framework of dealing with one of the, you know, greatest health crisis in human history. I mean, we're right in the beginning stages of what I think is going to be the biggest, you know, mental health crisis in human history with the, the, you know, the aftershocks are going to be far worse than the quake. And, you know, and that was a discussion I had with Mansoor Muhammad, who you introduced Me to.

Yeah.

And so you got all these people here that there's no one here really at a loss for people that need their help. So anyone that's part of this, you know, if you've got something of value and you can help people, it's not like these people are not out there. There's more clientele and there's more business and there's more money and there's more need than you could ever possibly imagine. You just need to set up your life and your business in a way to make yourself attractive, convey what it is you do. And I know it can be overwhelming. I know there's a lot of stuff to do and that's okay. I mean, you know, there's, there's. The very best thing is, I mean, one of the reasons I admire you so much and I tell this to a lot of people I've referred to you is like, just look at the guy. He lives, he walks the walk, he talks the talk, he's in good physical shape. He does what he preaches. I mean, how many doctors and practitioners. You know, it's funny, I've gone to so many of these health conferences and I see all these health experts getting wasted every night, you know, and doing. I was like, are you kidding me? I mean, like, okay, look, I understand, you know, but you know, if they're doing it in that environment, they're like, you know, so that it's funny. It's like the spa director of a spa is always stressed out. You know what I mean? So whatever you're doing to the best of your ability, be congruent and live the message, you know, because people are like, you know, what's the most important thing to growing and building a business? Maintain your health. You know, I use the million dollar racehours. If you had a, you know, million dollar racehorse, you would not shove fast food down its throat, you know, have it up all night drinking and smoking. You'd have the best trainers, the best track, the best food, the best nutrition. Because if you did, that horse would win million dollar races. And the bottom line is you're the million dollar racehorse. Treat yourself like that. First, all this other stuff, then if you do that, you'll have the mental energy, the physical energy to do this stuff. And so, so I did I babble endlessly. Sachin, you can always cut me off at any point.

Oh man. Hey, I'm soaking it all in, my friend. I'm so excited that we get to share you, even if it's for just an hour. We get to share you with our community. You've added so much value. There's been a lot of conversation in the chat going on, people quoting you and documenting all the amazing insights that you provided today. I'm looking forward to. There's so much to look forward to. And I know Genius Network is going to be a virtual summit this year, which I'm super stoked about. And I know you guys are always innovating like, you know, in the Genius Network headquarters. That place is, like, decked out with all kinds of technology. And I'm just so thrilled to see what you guys are going to bring to the table. One thing that's funny is that every or interesting, rather, and expected now that, of course, with my understanding of the way things work is so many of the ideas that you brought up today. I'm like, I hope Joe talks about that today. I hope Joe talks about that today. Because people really need to hear it. And sometimes if they hear it from me, it's different than hearing it from someone like yourself. And sometimes we need to hear it multiple times from different sources for it to really sink in. So you provided a ton of value, reinforced the behaviors that we want to, you know, the behaviors that we want our practitioners to take, lead by example, be role models in their community, and then they can stand in the highest integrity in their message. And that's. I think that is probably one of the best ways that we can market ourselves, because what we do is so visibly obvious to other people. So carry yourselves well, take really good care of your health. Your health can't grow. Your business can't grow bigger than you. Right? So keep growing ourselves each and every single day. And I am so glad that the growth trajectory that we have had has allowed our paths to cross. And I look forward to deepening our friendship and relationship together. So thank you, Joe. I appreciate it.

You are welcome. Thank you. And I wish everyone else the very best. For anyone struggling with addiction, look up Genius Recovery. It's all free. Then sell anything. And James, who I know is coming on next, hopefully he's funnier than me. What's up, brother? And I wish.

And before. Before Joe jumps off, I want everyone just at the. The. There's a button right underneath this video where you can grab Joe's book. And he's graciously provided it to us. I actually have a physical copy of it. It's a fantastic book. Lots of little nuggets in there. It's one of those books you can pick up at any page and learn something valuable and transformational. So thank you again for putting out again your best content. The stuff that you shared here today is a lot of it is what you would be sharing at a 25k meeting. But the difference is we're not in that room with that network. Right? So information and experience are two different things. So don't be afraid to give out your best information and then create a curated experience for people so that you can build that network and relationship with them. Thanks again, Joe. I appreciate you.

Thank you guys so much. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

Bye. Bye. Love you, man.

Love you too.