Joe Polish: Hello, this is Joe Polish.
Dan Sullivan: And this is Dan Sullivan.
Joe Polish: And here we are, Dan. 10xTalk.com
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
Joe Polish: So, we’ve talked about a lot of really great subjects in previous episodes, and today you have an idea. The last one we talked about, I think it was on “The Abundance Neighborhood.” Now we’re going to go with whatever direction you want to go in.
Dan Sullivan: Well, I was giving it a lot of thought because we’re introducing more and more strategic coach participants to your program, Joe, which is Genius Network and commonly called 25k. What I’d like to do – and probably if we can just capture in 30 minutes or 35 minutes – is just give the history of it. What’s happened that has really been very, very significant about what you’ve achieved so far, and then what is currently happening that’s giving you a great sense of energy and everybody else in the program a great sense of energy.
Then what I’d like to talk about is, things that you can see on the horizon that you can see are going to be really bigger and better for the program. Then, we’re just going to talk about five things which really have some zing to them; these are things that you know because you’re working with some of the greatest marketing, some of the greatest packaging, some of the greatest networking people on the planet, who are members of Genius Network. Just little things which most people wouldn’t think of, but can be expressed very shortly, which people can instantly get; then it triggers decisions and they’re able to get very, very actionable results out of it.
I just start off with, if you go back to the whole concept of Genius Network, because I remember when I first got know you, you were already well established with this thought because of your interview series. Where was the crossover for you to actually get the idea of just interviewing people who had really unique takes on the world, who had world changing concepts and techniques and everything else? Really take it back to the moment of the big bang for the Genius Network.
Joe Polish: Yeah, I can take it back to 1995 when I was publishing the “Piranha Marketing Letter,” which was basically teaching my clients in the service industry how to use direct response marketing in order to educate their clients and position themselves as to why someone should do business with them vs. anyone else. I would teach people how to actually communicate things other than price, because my premise was, if you don’t have a system for selling what it is you’re selling, the consumer, the prospect, the patient, the customer, has a system for buying and it’s based on price. If the only criteria you give is price, then that’s what they’re going to select. You always have tens of thousands of business owners that are frustrated because they think all people care about is price, when in reality they’ve not given them any other criteria to think about because most people lead with price.
Dan Sullivan: Joe, would you say that selling on price actually indicates an incredible lack of originality and creativity on the part of the person trying to sell something?
Joe Polish: Absolutely. It doesn’t take any genius in order to default to the same thing that everyone else does. The worst offer that you can make is no offer at all, which is what image advertising is and a lot of brand advertising; it’s just putting a name out there and hoping people are going to flock to you. The second worst offer you can make is lowest price, unless you really are in a situation where you can be competitive like a Walmart. But even Walmart offers alternative forms of service at various point of purchase and location and stuff that they can still get by with the lowest price.
But that’s not a game that most business owners ever want to play in and even if they do, they’re usually going to get squashed because it’s a bad thing. So yes, I absolutely agree; it takes no originality whatsoever and it’s really being lazy. People hate hearing that, but it’s true. Why should someone do business with you vs. anyone else?
So I was publishing the “Piranha Marketing Letter,” teaching people how to do all kinds of marketing strategies, and one month I literally did not write it in time – and I was late. I was like, huh, in order for me to sit down and produce the type of newsletter that I like – and Dan, granted this was back before the internet so it was paper and ink. I would write something and it would have to be edited, laid out, printed, stamped, dropped in the mail, so it wasn’t something where, oh, let me write me write a newsletter and I can get it to people the next day by emailing it; that did not exist yet.
What I did was, I said I’m going to interview a guy on sales and persuasion, so I recorded it on a cassette tape – because that’s what we sent out back then – and mailed all of my clients an interview that I did with a sales and persuasion expert. I did a little cover letter that said I didn’t want to sit down and write this month’s newsletter. I told them the truth-
Dan Sullivan: That’s great.
Joe Polish: -You know, I was behind and I decided to do this and send it to you instead. I hope you like it, and talk to you next month.
Dan Sullivan: Can I stop you right there, Joe? What have you found the impact of taking people back stage, “Oh, I really got caught in a situation and I’m trying to bail myself out so instead of delivering what I had promised to do, I’m delivering something else.” What does being really, really honest in the backstage do to people’s thinking when they receive that message?
Joe Polish: Well, I think what it does is it builds incredible rapport and incredible trust, unless what you’re sending them out is, you’re paying them for something and you’re sending them garbage. Assuming it’s not that, people are going to be like, wow, this is a conscientious person that really cares. The number one thing that I have found for longevity with clientele – and I’ve had clients that have been with me since the month I started my marketing company – is bond. You need to bond with people. Bonding is the most important thing.
So when you take people backstage, I think it just really allows you to bond. I can say that word over and over again and people can hear it, but I would encourage everyone to think, how bonded are you with your best clients? How bonded are you with your vendors? How bonded are you with people that introduce you and refer you to other people? How bonded are you with your community? Online, offline, in person. So taking people backstage … there’s a term in marketing strategy called a damaging admission. I think it’s a long the same lines, where if you’re really great in some areas but you’re not so great in others, instead of trying to hide it and highlight it.
When you can point out a flaw and doing it in the right way mixed in with all the great things like, “Hey, we’re the most expensive, and we can’t get you the stuff quickly but we’re extraordinarily world class and we’re very unique.” Even if you have slow service and you cannot fix it; you cannot fix it because you happen to be in a business selling something customized, as an example. A lot of people would not talk about how long it will take but some people can position it that, “Oh, it takes six months to get one of these rings made by this jeweler,” but if you really highlight the damaging admission part of it, you may a waiting list for two years.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and you know what I’ve found about your interviewing style, starting with the original Genius Network Series, is that the best interviews you’ve done is where you’ve asked the person on the other side to actually reveal something about their worst mistake, or the best recovery they’ve made from a real setback and everything like that. What I’ve noticed by listening to them, that the ones who, first of all, are receptive to you doing that are by far the most powerful interviews, and the ones who resist it come across as one dimensional. They’re only telling you what they want you to hear. They’re not really, really telling you about what actually happened.
Joe Polish: Yes, a lot of people that have a shtick, and what you want to do, some shticks are great and you can learn a lot from people’s lessons and what they have to share, and what their strategy is. People that always are super-polished and they don’t want to reveal the human side of them and the fact that most people who are successful have had days of hell, years of hell sometimes, and have had to really overcome tremendous things from idiotic, stupid, mistakes that they made themselves to betrayal, to marketplace conditions, to their office burning down.
There’s all kinds of things that happen to people, and I think that when someone’s able to share those … I’ll say it this way, people can relate because you can teach people. For instance: I know my marketing strategies work; it’s not even a question. There’s such a preponderance of proof that people that follow the system get results. That’s no doubt. Same thing with Strategic Coach; you have a preponderance of proof that anyone that goes through Strategic Proof is, in most cases, from very early on. One of your main things we’re going to teach how to double your income and take an enormous amount of free time. People would do that over and over again if they actually went through Strategic Coach, and if they actually applied what you taught. So there’s no doubt there.
The big question when it comes to obstacles in people’s minds is, not does it work for Dan, not does it work for Joe, not does it work for this person over here or this client – but will it work for me? The more that someone can actually relate as a real human being saying “Hey, I had every obstacle and I had all of these challenges, and I live in the same world as everyone else and here’s how I overcame it and here’s what I’ve done. Not only do you help people understand how to deal with it, but you also become very relatable, and that’s important.
Dan Sullivan: I’m going to talk about the impact of doing the Genius Network Series on the development of the current Genius Network. I’ve often talked about that the turning point in my life was August 15, 1978, when I was divorced in the morning and bankrupt in the afternoon. Men generally in our society have two big scorecards. One is their success with a personal relationship, and the other one is their success with money. I said I just got two failing cards on the same day. The biggest reason why that was a breakthrough is that I didn’t try to defend myself; I didn’t try to explain it away to myself. I said this is serious business and if you don’t change your ways, you’re going to keep ending up with scorecards like this for the rest of your life.
I tell people that and I said everything I’ve created in Strategic Coach comes from a series of decisions that I made about that day, August 15th, 1978, and I turned my life around. I’ve continued turning it around from that, and any time I start getting sloppy or complacent I just remember August 15, 1978. I think I find – and Joe, you can reflect on this with obviously you’ve been very forthcoming about your own life – that generally speaking, that makes it real for people, when you talk about, oh jeez, you know, poo.
I’ve had something like that, too. Everybody has that: it’s called life. It’s unpredictable; it happens to us. So, I think that you’ve got a unique ability to really zero in on that. I think you’re naturally talented but you’ve got some experience that prepared you to talk about life on that level. Just talk about the development, and how many different interviews you’ve done, because to this day you keep doing that series. Just talk about how it then formed the much larger picture of the organization that you’ve created around the idea of Genius Network.
Joe Polish: What I started doing is,, after that first initial interview that I sent out, I got a slew of letters mailed to me – and faxed letters, because people would use fax a lot then – saying, “I love this, this was so great. Please do more of these.” So, of course, anyone that’s a marketer that has your clients asking you or saying “I really liked what you did,” you should really pay attention to what people say they like or dislike because that will give you a lot of clues.
That always amazes me, too. People won’t get a response to a marketing campaign, like no one will respond. They’ll go on, they’ll put together a focus group or they’ll hire consultants and I’ll be like, “Well, did you ask anyone you made the offer to why they didn’t buy it?” I mean, you’re going to get way more valuable input. It probably won’t cost you thousands of dollars to sit around in a room with people that don’t even know … they aren’t even your own customers, trying to give you advice on why they think someone hasn’t bought. Just call people that bought, and find out why did they buy; call people that didn’t buy and find out why they didn’t buy.
That was the first clue, and I’ve always listened to what people say. There’s great feedback in your own client base and in the base of people that don’t respond at all. So I started doing it. Every month I started recording one, and it was originally called the Joe Polish Superstar Audio Tape of the Month Program, which, looking back, was comical and totally ridiculous at the same time, but it worked. I charged $18.53 per month, and it was a continuity program, one of the very first continuity programs that I had done, which was a huge ah ha. “Oh, it’s just as hard to get somebody to buy a book once, or a course once, or sign up for something once, as it is to get them to give you money over and over and over again.” If they like they’re going to continue to pay for it, the say way people pay for their cellphone. And so, I started going that.
Fast forward to today. I’ve interviewed over 400 people, amazing entrepreneurs. As soon as I joined Strategic Coach, I was really clear that this is one incredibly smart, insightful, individual – meaning you – that is saying things that I’ve not heard from anyone else, that I’ve never read from any other book. That has a very unique twist on success, and not just success financially but success in life and in abilities. So I interviewed you very early on because I wanted to bring to my audience expertise that I could not do.
One thing this required – and a lot of people will not do this – is I never wanted to be a guru. People considered me a “marketing expert” and the guy that they would go to for marketing advice in the niches I was selling to, but I was like, “Look, I’m just a guy that learned a lot about marketing.” I would downplay it. I used a lot of self-deprecating humor, because, for one, I think it’s funny. Secondly, I don’t feel that I have it altogether in all kinds of other areas, and there’s lots of areas in life that are important to have it together in – from health, to how you manage your time, to how you manage money, to how you organize and prioritize projects, to how you do all kinds of different types of marketing and advertising.
So, I would interview people that had unique wisdom, and after doing it I thought: you know, this is a wisdom network. This is really different than data; this is about bringing real wisdom. Like you were saying earlier, when you interview people about their life and you hear these unique stories. Or, I would interview book authors and I would talk about some of the stuff they would write books about, but a lot of times I would get into stuff that they never wrote about – or that they aren’t really sharing – and I would have them reveal stuff. It was very unique content.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, probably the more you do it the better you get at it. Can you talk about a little bit, I mean, at what point did you realize that you could do something that nobody else could do? I think every entrepreneur has a crossover point when they stop comparing themselves to other people, and they just say there’s something here that nobody else can pull off that I can, and I don’t think anyone else can learn it the way that I do it. Was there a moment, a particular interview, or a certain number of years in to the process when you began to grasp that?
Joe Polish: I think I got that – about three years into my business – what came very easily for me was not very easy for other people. I kind of knew it deep inside that I had a way of building rapport, asking – I was very much about speed of implementation. But I’ll tell you, in terms of having real confidence vs. just kind of an idea; I’ve thought about it really came from being Strategic Coach. When I was introduced to the concept of unique ability, that’s when it really started to make sense.
I think it really solidified itself when I first interviewed you, simply because you have a unique ability in the area of being able to point out and see skills in others that a lot of times people don’t even see in themselves. You’re an edifier, as am I. I’m an incredibly good edifier. I think, to this day, one of my greatest skills is if I see someone – be it a book, a seminar, a person, an event, anything – that I think is really incredible or world class or unique or useful, I just have a way of telling other people about it and doing it in a way where those people tend to take action. I’m persuasive. I don’t think about persuasive as, like, I don’t have a canned sales pitch. I don’t pull out technique lines. I’m sure I have riffs and things that I-
Dan Sullivan: I think the big thing is that you’re like a great jazz musician. Jazz is like stand-up comedy or improv side of comedy, where people seem to do magic on stage. They just seem to be able to make up things. You can take five musicians who are really good and put them together and they seem to actually create stuff, but they’ve done so much stuff that they’ve got what I call riffs. A rff is, it could be a three or four minute bar which just always works. You can change the key, you can change the pace, you can change everything about it, but all the really great musicians actually recognize riffs. If one guy starts a riff, they can immediately adjust themselves to it.
What I’ve noticed over the years is that you do not have a script. You do not have a prepared, but what you have is probably a 100, 150, 200 different 1 or 2 minute explanations of sometimes, or a particular way of explaining something, that always works. You’re always sitting there saying, you know, “Is it number 107, is it number 2?” You don’t even think about it, you just use them.
Joe Polish: Right, as long as you continue to develop that and you see something is working, you keep doing it. One thing I heard you say early on is, if you spend your whole life trying to strengthen the things you’re weak at, at the end of your life you have a lot of really strong weaknesses.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, you’re impressively weak. You’re overwhelmingly weak. Talk about being really good at something. You are fantastically good at something that you’re not any good at.
Joe Polish: The worst thing is, is that you’re frustrated continuously with it.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and you frustrate everyone else and they don’t invite you to parties, and then you feel picked on, and then you’re a victim, and then you ask for some sort of government grant.
Joe Polish: That is great. Basically, what I started doing is, I just kept doing it. I kept sharing it with people. When I got my first letter sent to me where someone basically made this statement that they had made over 1,000,000 dollars listening to the interviews I had done in the last year. This person had listened to something like 10 or 12 interviews and they implemented the ideas. They were taking it very seriously, and I also realized there’s a lot of people that will listen to stuff and they don’t apply it. There’s other people that will listen to it and they really take it seriously.
I like people that utilize great ideas because there’s nothing worse than throwing pearls before swine, where people just don’t do anything with it. I was going, “Wow, this is pretty impactful.” I’m not just interviewing interesting people and learning myself. The real thing, too – and I’ve said this plenty of times on my interviews – is what a great way for me to get paid to learn. I go and interview people; I charge people for interviews. Now fast forward to today, like what we’re doing with 10xTalk, we’re putting incredibly great content out into the world and we’re not even charging people.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and the whole point is, that I’ve learned more and more – and I think I’ve learned it from you more than almost any other person. Just create good in the world and don’t worry about where it shows up later. Don’t worry about the payoff.I know we have a really growing audience of individuals who are listening to 10xTalk over the world. If I could give you one thing that is absolutely at the core of what I know going on 70 years old, is create value and don’t worry about how you get paid for it.
Joe Polish: Yep, yep. If you try to choke it, it tends to not give back. There are ways to really create an enormous following, an enormous fanbase, and a tremendous amount of goodwill by simply being useful – and that’s not to say that at some point you don’t have things for sale. You literally need to make it fun and easy for people to do business with you, too. If you have that set up, if you have things that people can buy from you, you create so much reciprocity by being helpful and useful to people, that they just want to do business with you. That was the whole premise of education-based marketing.
In a lot of ways, I look at it today. My very first consumer awareness guide to the carpet cleaners that would teach people how to chose a carpet cleaning company when I was a carpet cleaner in the early 90s and transformed that business simply by using education-based marketing. Even to this day, our podcast is education-based marketing. Most of the time we don’t have any call to action; we talk about 25k Group, we talk about Strategic Coach. We hope that for people that are a right fit and resonate with what we’re saying, they will look into those programs and they will join. That would be great, that would wonderful.
We also know that the vast majority of people who listen to this are never going to join your program, are never going to join mine, but they may pick something up. They may think, “Wow, I want to learn more from Dan Sullivan so I’m going to go to Amazon and buy Dan’s books. Or I want to know more about Joe Polish and I’m going to go look at what he’s doing.” I think everyone should adopt that sort of relationship with prospects because the number one thing – and anyone who studies marketing will hear this terminology said in many different ways – you want people to know, like, and trust you. People will do business with people they know, like, and trust.
It’s one of the lines I heard you say, Dan. People don’t buy from you because they understand what you do; people buy from you because they feel understood. When you talk about your marriage, and your divorce, and your bankruptcy on the same day, anyone that has any sort of shit in their life realizes wow, here’s the guy who’s the world’s top coach of successful entrepreneurs in the world – he had a really crappy day in 1978. His life wasn’t together. When they hear that I was a former drug addict, they’re like wow, a lot of people can relate to that.
Dan Sullivan: We had a conversation not too long ago that lasted a whole afternoon, and I just asked you “Well, Joe, when you look at those really, really bad days in your life, what are some of the crucial, life-changing lessons that you learned from them,” and it filled up about 3 or 4 hours of just things that you had learned from that. There’s a really, really great writer out of New York City by the name of Lewis Schiff. Lewis Schiff wrote a huge bestseller called Middle Class Millionaires, who are average people who live in average towns and places become millionaires.
He just went down their day to day attitudes and behaviors. He just brought out another book, which is Business Brilliant, and he came to our company and actually put on an explanation of the research. He found out a very interesting thing between people who just minimally make a good income in life and people who are huge, huge, what he calls “ultra-wealthy people.” He said that there was one difference that came out of their research. It was very extensive research that they did over about a three period. They said that minimally successful people hide their mistakes and really ultra-rich people, that’s all they want to talk about, is their mistakes.
Joe Polish: Right.
Dan Sullivan: He said it’s the hiding of your mistakes which prevents you from becoming good. Not only that, you’re spending an incredible amount of energy hiding the negative so that you never actually get the energy to develop the positive in you. Multi-millionaires and billionaires, they just want to talk to other people, “Well what’s the biggest mistake you made? I’ll tell you mine and this is what I learned from it.” The wealthier the people are, the more successful – I mean there’s people who are twisted and they don’t want to talk about that – but the ones you really trust are the ones that say, “You know, I can just tell you about some incredible setbacks I had. I almost gave up here and I had some incredible time when I was just hanging on by my fingertips. I got through it.”
What that taught me was this: just do hand exercises so your fingers are really strong. He said that’s the biggest difference he noticed, is just the incredible honesty of the ultra-rich and the presenting a story that isn’t real on the part of the people that are just minimally successful. I think if you took your 400 interviews and you said, “Who was the interview that seemed to get across to most of the audience?” I think you would find the ones who tried to hide their mistakes were the least effective interviews, and the ones who really were very, very forthcoming and they were very, very honest but, not only that, they told you about the transformation that they experienced; I’m sure that those were by far the most powerful and most popular of your interview series.
Joe Polish: For sure, and definitely from people that can relate to the audience. There’s that saying that that which is most private is most public, meaning the things that you think you’re the only one going through, you’d be surprised by how many other people are going through those things. You just reminded me of something about – I don’t know, this is probably about a year ago – I have a friend who runs a foundation called Mending Kids. They actually get doctors that will due life-threatening surgeries on children and they’ll fly them to different locations to help these kids.
They had this celebrity charity event, and it was a poker event, it was pretty funny. I ended up playing poker with Jodie Foster for an hour, and it was not gambling poker – it was just a game thing – it was this fundraiser. Gene Simmons was there from the rock band KISS. What’s funny is, he’s actually become a very sharp businessman. He’s built this incredible licensing business; he’s very much a capitalist. What’s funny is he’s never had a sip of alcohol in his entire life. He’s in a rock band and he’s never drank, or done drugs. He said, “Coming to America from Israel, what is I learned about America, what’s so great about America, is no one’s trying to kill you for trying an idea. You can start anything in America.” From the perspective of, you can really screw up in America. You can make horrible mistakes and no one’s going to kill you for it since you made a mistake.
Dan Sullivan: Not only that, Americans are fascinated what you’re going to do with your setback. I think people are more fascinated with people who are really famous, not on their way up the first time, what happens is they have a huge setback. They completely collapse and they tank out, and Americans are really interested if the person can pick themselves up off the ground and actually come back stronger than ever. The comeback story in America is much, much more interesting than the original success story.
Joe Polish: Yes, totally. What ended up happening with Genius Network Interview Series is, I interview all these people and along the way I’m realizing that I like curating knowledge and expertise of other people and sharing it with people. That’s what a network is; it connects people. How am I connecting these people with a genius? So I started doing coaching programs. This started over the phone; we would do tele-conferences, and we would charge about 250 dollars a month and people would be on a monthly 75-minute phone call.
We would talk with them live and all these people along the way were also getting my interview series as part of it so I would bundle it in. It would be like a value-ad, so I started doing higher level programs. Of course, I was doing annual events and what was really great was I’d interview a lot of these people, I would then have them become speakers for my event. I learned how to use it as a marketing vehicle. If someone’s going to come speak, why don’t you interview the person and send it out to everyone that’s going to register for the seminar so that they are educated about the person in advance.
The people would show up to hear a speaker and these speakers would have an audience that knew them, and was familiar with them, and was excited to see them, much differently than most seminars that they would speak at; because a lot of the time no one that they were speaking for would be sending out a copy of their book or a special interview with them. The speakers would just love coming to my events because they would embrace a crowd that found them awesome. Then, of course, I’m recording those conferences, which I called boot camps and super-conferences, and we would then have another knowledge project we would give to our clients. We would sell to people.
I started doing high-level groups called “platinum”, and those ranged in price from 1,000 dollars a month to 17,000 dollars a year for people in the service business. I’m doing these for over a decade. I would give away cars for something I called the “Better Your Best” contest, and a lot of that name came from being a strategic coach; you had a great audio program combined with a book. People can still get it from Strategic Coach, CDs and a booklet called “How The Best Get Better.” So I sort of, well, how do you better your best instead of comparing yourself to other people, which usually will leave you in the gap and leave you in a state of …
Dan Sullivan: Envy.
Joe Polish: Yeah, not measuring up. It’s like, how do you better your best? How do you take you and just make you a better version of yourself? So I was like, well, let me start creating competitions. A guy back then, who I actually referred to Strategic Coach – and he ended up going to Strategic Coach, and it was instrumental in having him sell his company for 300,000,000 dollars back in 1999 – was my client Bill Phillips, who wrote a book called Body For Life.
I was helping him with all these physique transformation contests for people that were lifting weights and people that were taking his EAS sports supplements. Now everyone in the fitness world has in some way, shape, or form, taken stuff from the physique transformation contest and all that.
What I started doing was having these Better Your Best contests and people would compete. I would have these platinum groups, where they would meet in person 4 times a year, a day at a time. Over the years I tried different versions of 2 days/3 times a year, that sort of stuff, and then our annual event. What I had found was giving people goal-setting and giving people audio and written materials; getting them in a room in person was a far better way to get them engaged, because not only were they present, but also they’re seeing all of these other success stories of how people are applying things. That became an in-person Genius Network. I now refer to Genius Network, not just as an interview series, but I have 25k group, which is our 25,000 dollar a year group.
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think it’s your whole empire because – just an observation – I find that people who seem to be doing a lot of different things, when you really take a look at what they’re doing is that they’re actually doing the same thing but just finding new dimensions for it.
Joe Polish: Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan: For me this is kind of the perfect set up and then stage two will be when it actually materialized as probably the world’s highest level – not probably, it is the world’s highest level – mastermind group for people involved in the creation of intellectual capital, packaging intellectual capital, knowing how to use incredibly powerful technologies to distribute it, and really take advantage of the fact that the number one industry in the world is actually the educational industry – but not in the conventional sense. We’ve moved into ways in fact that the greatest education on the planet is actually taking place outside of the formal educational system.
Joe Polish: Yes, for sure. To wrap up – and I’ll continue to talk about this on the next episode – is what ended up developing, is what I ended up calling Genius Network. It became a mastermind group. On the next episode I’ll talk about how that formulated. For all of the listeners, the main key points I wanted to remind you of what I learned along the way, is one of the quickest, most effective ways to learn something is to ask other people that have a genius or immense wisdom in a particular area and record it. Whenever you start recording people tend to be more serious because other people are going to hear it and they operate at a heightened level.
By distributing it to other people, you’re taking what’s really useful for you and you’re allowing other people to eavesdrop on those conversations – which is a great way to learn, and it creates bonding, it creates content. Along the way you have this great term, “strategic byproducts.” What my life ended up becoming was I realized that every time I would do an interview, there would be a strategic byproduct that would come out of it, because it would give me an idea.
It would plant a seed and it would allow me to – not only take different directions because I would be continually learning by interviewing people – but as I shared those interviews with other people, they would develop strategic byproducts for themselves. I realized that I was basically pollinating these farms of entrepreneurs. When we started doing it in person and now today with Genius Network has become an incredible thing, so geniusnetwork.com has links to pretty much everything including the 25k group, which is our high level group.
Dan Sullivan: And all of the 400 interviews that you’ve done.
Joe Polish: Yeah, yeah. All that stuff is available and so, that’s it. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate you asking all these questions. For all of our listeners, please give us your feedback and comments. I hope you take what we’re sharing here and apply it the ways that sense for you. If you want a Genius Network you’ve got to be a genius networker and do genius networking. I believe everything you’re looking for in your future as it relates to business in your life can be found through developing a really powerful genius network. Everyone has it as long as they get it and understand that it’s there, and if you nurture it and build it, it will produce for you. So that’s it.
Dan Sullivan: Okay, that’s just stage 1 of the whole development of Genius Network. We’re going to continue on the next one with stage 2.