Having an Idea Versus Executing Your Plan: Which Is More Important?

Intro (00:00:09):
Welcome to innovations and breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein, talking about the evolutionary, the revolutionary, the inspiration and the perspiration and those aha moments that change everything. And now here’s your host, rich Goldstein, Richard Goldstein here.Rich (00:00:34):
Host of the innovations and breakthroughs podcast, where I featured top leaders and the path they took to create change past guests include Rex’s Ari Roland, Frasier and Howard Goetz. In this episode is brought to you by my company, Goldstein patent law, where we help you to protect your ideas and products we’ve advised and obtained patents for thousands of companies over the past 26 years. So if you’re a company that has software, a product or a design, you want protected go to Goldstein patent law.com, where there are amazing free resources for learning about the patent process. And you can email my team welcome@goldsteinpc.com to explore if it’s a match to work together. You could also check out the book I wrote for the American bar association that explains in plain English, how patents work it’s called the ABA consumer guide to obtaining a patent. I have yet today, Joe Polish, Joe is one of the most respected marketers on the planet is I love marketing podcasts that he does with Dean Jackson.Rich (00:01:27):
Not only has the best actionable marketing tips on a weekly basis, but it also has created a worldwide community of people that love marketing and want to continuously innovate in their own businesses. And that’s one, and that’s just one project of Joe’s. And it’s a great example of how everything Joe does really has two components, service and connection. In the connection realm, Joe has created an organization and the community Fox runners known as genius network that has hundreds of members and encourages them to grow and succeed. Not only as entrepreneurs in their businesses, but also as people in their lives. And while Joe is extremely well-known in marketing and entrepreneurship circles. Interestingly, outside of those arenas, he’s not exactly what you call a household name yet. He is personally connected to more household names than anyone I’ve ever encountered from business leaders and celebrities to world leaders.

Rich (00:02:17):
Joe knows everyone, but he also has a real connection with all of them. In fact, the documentary was made about Joe called connected. That features a few of Joe’s close connections. People like Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and many others in the service realm, not only does Joe care greatly about helping entrepreneurs, but Joe is also on a mission to change the conversation around addiction. There’s really so much I could say about Joe, but I’d rather just start the conversation talking with Joe. So I’m really honored to welcome you here today. Welcome Joe Polish. Thank you, rich. Great to be here with you. Absolutely.

Joe (00:02:55):
You know, I got an idea from you right from the get-go like, let’s, let’s go for it.

Joe (00:03:00):
I don’t even get ready to interview me what you were just saying about how you help people with patent protection and stuff. I’m going to actually do something here and this there’s a lesson for everyone. Listening is I’m going to go search for a URL to see if it’s available and it’s done. And so I want, and if you’re online right now, rich, maybe you can do this too, but let’s, you can go to GoDaddy or anywhere else and check and see the patent book.com is available. Let’s see if that name is available.

Rich (00:03:31):
Okay. Free patent book.

Joe (00:03:34):
Yeah. Free patent book.com. Is it available?

Rich (00:03:37):
Let’s see.

Joe (00:03:39):
How do you spell patent?

Rich (00:03:42):
P a T E N T patent book. Okay. Let’s see. Free patent book. There’s free patent books, plural.com

Joe (00:03:54):
Three patent booklets available P a T E N T

Rich (00:03:59):
A free patent book with an at the end is available,

Joe (00:04:04):
But it looks like free patent book with not PA. How do you spell patent again? P A T E N T. Oh yeah. Yeah. There

Rich (00:04:11):
It is. Free patent book is available.

Joe (00:04:14):
Okay. So now I want, before this podcast is going to be listened to, Rich’s going to own those names for free pack and free patent books. And you’re going to put together a little book on some of your advice on patents and anyone that wants information about patenting something. You can just say go to free patent book and you put information in front of them about what, you know, how you know it. And it’ll put people into your you’ll start a relationship with them, just like I do with Joe’s free book, you know, cause like our friend, Jason Fladlien, who’s in genius network with us. He says that you know, anything that you’re selling, you want to put information in front of it. And when I was a dead broke carpet, cleaner living off credit cards, you know, one of the first things I did was created a consumer’s guide to carpet cleaning to help me position.

Joe (00:05:04):
I would teach people how to choose a carpet cleaner. And since I was the one providing them with that information, they were the ones they trusted me. And this was before the internet. So, you know, before someone look into a Google search or watch a video on YouTube or, you know download something, I mean, I literally had to physically Maven nailed them a consumer’s guide. Well, in the same way, it’s, it’s it’s permission marketing. It’s you’re positioning yourself. So like from now on when people are interviewing you and they want information about, you know, patents, you’re like, well just go to free patent book.com and you can get my free book. And then all of a sudden you can start educating them about what to do. And it’s, it’s, it’s very valuable. It’s super ethical way to market, to people with the assumption that what you’re providing them is valid, useful, helpful advice. And it’s, you know, and it’s a great way. So that, that idea right there alone is just incredibly useful to someone like you and to the people that are trying to figure out about patents.

Rich (00:06:02):
Yeah, no, totally. It totally is. And, and, and I felt your pull back a little bit when you said like, it was incredibly useful from saying what I expected you to say well like that there, right there is a 250 K idea.

Joe (00:06:14):
Oh yeah, no, actually that’s a million dollar idea, but I don’t want to over-exaggerate it, but seriously, that is definitely a that is a million dollar idea there. If it is developed, it may not come right away. But if you look at the lifetime value of just that one idea that apply to a client generation I really think, you know, a guy like you can do a lot with it. And, and now the reason I said it right from the beginning, instead in, instead of like privately is I wanted to demonstrate to all of your listeners that what is it that you have that you could offer to people that is useful, that you can give to them for free, that would create enough value, that they would end up wanting to do business with you and hire you. Because at the end of the day, you know, I don’t know how to follow a pattern, right.

Joe (00:07:07):
But if I at least understood why to do it, you know, who, who would, who would be the go-to person for me? Well, the person that’s actually teaching me all the things, I don’t know that I don’t know, like no one wants are a carpet cleaner. And if people, every consumer has a system for selling for, for, for buying what it is they buy, which is called price. And if you don’t have a system isn’t as a business owner for selling what you’re selling, you’re always at the mercy of the consumer system, which is price. And if you know, the worst offer you can make is no offer at all that the second worst offer is a price offer. And so you can say, well, hire me to do patent research or follow a patent for you. Or you can say, you know, let me teach you what you need to know about patents.

Joe (00:07:51):
And you know, I’m going to do that for free and you get free patent book.com as an example. And then they go to a website, they can download it for free. If they want the physical version of it, you can say, I’ll send you a hard copy of it, just pay shipping and handling. And by the way, would you like to receive my email or subscribed to my podcast? So like for your podcast, you’re doing here can also, that can be covered. Would you like to subscribe to my podcast when they go to that landing page and boom, they click there and you’re, you’re, you’re getting, you know, I mean, you can do whatever you want. You can get you, you put YouTube videos and build YouTube subscribers, podcasts. You can put people on an email list. You can, but the main thing they’re coming there for is that one useful, valuable thing that they’re looking for in this particular case patents.

Rich (00:08:36):
Yeah. And, and so you’re giving them really, you’re giving them your best information right off the bat for free to get them indoctrinated and getting them to, to, to connect with you and feel like this is someone that could help me.

Joe (00:08:50):
Exactly. Exactly. So for their listeners, whatever your big idea is. And I know that you’re going to ask me a bunch of questions. I’m sure to go down that path. I just want to plant a seed in everyone’s head that you know, this is just one way that you can think about your offering. And by the way, I mean, I never got a degree in marketing. I actually failed owning and operating a small business in Chandler Gilbert community college. And I got a C minus in principles of marketing. We went, when I went to school, you know, in my early twenties, I’m now 52 years old, but you know, basically I’ve built a multimillion dollar business and you know, a marketing organization that’s, you know, for my clients and all the things we’ve done generated over a couple of billion dollars that we can even track.

Joe (00:09:33):
It’s probably a lot more than that. But you know, it’s, it all comes from the study an application of marketing. And I had to figure out as a dead-broke carpet cleaner when I first started out how to learn marketing so I could eat so I could survive. And I had to figure out how to sell something nobody wants to buy. And when you have to figure out how to package and position and advertise and market something nobody really wants, which is like carpet cleaning, no one wakes up and says, well, I can’t wait until the cat pees on the carpet, so I can call a carpet cleaner. You know, they you, you learn interesting ways on how to communicate and how to, how to position yourself. So I’ll share some of those things as it comes along here.

Rich (00:10:11):
Yeah. And, and, and it sounds like that, like the, the, the main thing that, that you learned there that you applied was that when you’re, when you have someone that you’re trying to reach, that’s dealing with a frustrating situation because they, you know, they don’t want to care about carpet cleaning, just like my clients. They don’t want to care about patents. They don’t really want to know that much about it. They just are frustrated by the fact that they don’t know how to pick the person who can help them to get the job done. And so you connect with them by being the person who’s willing to help and help them figure that out. And that’s what creates connection. And then that’s what really creates a client.

Joe (00:10:49):
Exactly. And I think one of the, you said the keyword there, I mean, if there’s anything that I try to do is connect people with other individuals, with ideas, with things, it will be helpful. I mean, at the end of the day, we’re selling products and services, but we’re also selling feelings. And when someone wants IP protection and I’m a guy who’s invested a lot into having, you know, trademarks in, in, in, in, in things copywritten, I’m building a VR company right now that’s with a couple of partners while I’m getting ready to go on a sabbatical for next year, which is a whole nother story. But you know, we’re, we’re going through a patent protection on the stuff we’re doing in VR. So there’s, you know, there’s a lot to be said about feeling safe. You know, why, why, why do you want protection? You want your ideas, you want your innovations, you want your business to be protected. You want to feel safe. So that the feeling of safety, the feeling of security, the feeling of certainty the patent, it just happens to be one of the mechanisms in order to do that.

Rich (00:11:48):
Yeah, absolutely. And but an interesting thing though, is like, that’s where a lot of other attorneys go, the direction they go in marketing is towards the protection side of things, like where they’re you know, where they are trying to get the other person to realize that, okay, you’re not safe. You’re not protected. You need to protect yourself. You need to not get ripped off, but kind of like the first suggestion that you had, it comes at it from a different part of the problem, which is that, okay. They probably already acknowledged the fact that they need to be protected, but they don’t know where to turn. They don’t even know how to do it. They don’t know where to start. And so you so approaching them from that, all the problem of, you know, okay, I recognize that I’m not safe, but I don’t know what to do about it.

Joe (00:12:37):
Yeah. You know, let me say this red should be, I mean, I wasn’t thinking about going down this path, but I will. I mean the let’s go back to when I was a dead broke carpet cleaner right now, I built the largest for people listening that have no clue who the heck I am. One of my many years ago, I built the largest training organization in the area of marketing for professional carpet and upholstery cleaners. And I was as a Debra carpet cleaner who learned marketing so I can survive, like I’ve mentioned. And I ended up turning the small carpet cleaning company around, and this thought went through my head like, man, what if I would have known these methodologies? When I first started my carpet cleaning business, I wouldn’t have had to gone deeply into debt. I wouldn’t have had been working the massive, you know, 10, 12, 12, 14, 16 hour days getting paid nothing and going in debt to do it, trying to figure out how to make this work.

Joe (00:13:28):
I had no clue how to, what marketing even meant. I didn’t know how to advertise. Everyone was advertising price. A lot of people were using bait and switch advertising, which I not only despised, I would never do. I mean, later I even became one of the world’s leading advocates against unethical bait and switch advertising. I even went on ABC’s 20, 20 undercover with at the time, you know, investigative reporter, Arnold Diaz, and then Barbara Walters. And that was in the late nineties where I, you know, people can still watch a video on YouTube, which is funny, but I, I literally had a whole movement of don’t do bait and switch advertising. It’s super unethical. And you know, when I was first starting out, I, you know, I didn’t know any of that stuff. I was like competing with people that are making these outlandish offers that they had no intention of honoring, like we’ll clean your whole house for $29 95 cents or six 95, or room five 95 room that, that crap is still done today.

Joe (00:14:21):
Mostly in big cities where people, you know, I, I have no problem with upselling. It’s how you do the upselling. I mean, if you exaggerate or BS or fleece people, or you use, you know, high pressure on ethical selling in order to have your, your technicians make a livable wage, I mean, it’s just, it’s just dishonest. And so here I am like, how the heck do I make this business work? And so I hired a copywriter early on to help me create my first marketing piece, which was the most marketing piece was I wrote a consumer’s guide to carpet cleaning. And it said, read this guide and discover six questions to ask a carpet cleaner before you invite them in your home seven. No, I think it was seven questions as carpet cleaner, avoiding vitamin to your home. Six costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning, eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner, crawling critters and credit guide to the slime, grime and livestock.

Joe (00:15:13):
That’s seeping creeping in gal comfier carpet, how to avoid four carpet cleaning. Ripoffs the difference between value and price you know, which method cleans best, how to get your carpet cleaner to a hundred percent guarantee your work. So all of that was on the cover of this printed guide, that before the internet was existed this is like literally 1992. When I created my first consumer’s guide to carpet cleaning. And I paid a copywriter $1,800, which I had to borrow on credit card just to hire this guy. But I had the belief that if I could create a tool like this and get it in the hands of the prospects, they would never call me and ask me, how much do you charge? They would call to request me, to send them a copy of that consumer’s guide. And then they would open up the guide.

Joe (00:15:58):
And I’ve all this remembered. As you can see, we’re on zoom right now, as we’re recording this, I’m, you know, I’m not looking at any cue cards. I have all this in my memory. And it said, dear homeowner, choosing a carpet cleaner. Isn’t easy. Why? Because you’re bombarded by confusing claims, simply bad information. They’re worthless methods, unqualified technicians. How do you ever find a qualified, competent carpet cleaner? You, you know, you start by reading the sky. So let me stop for a minute before I get to the punchline here, everyone that’s listening to this. If you’re thinking, well, I’m not in the carpet cleaning business, how does this apply to me? Well, first off you need to back up. Maybe re-listen to what I just said with rich and say, do you have seven costly or seven questions as a costly mistakes to avoid six misconception, whatever.

Joe (00:16:40):
I mean how to avoid X number of rip offs in your industry, whatever it is, what I was doing was I was educating people about how to make a buying decision. So that consumer guide went on to say, you know, choosing a carpet cleaner, isn’t easy. Why? Because all of the things I just said, and then it would say, now with this information, you can make an informed, intelligent decision. And that’s the key because the number one question in all consumer’s minds is who can I trust? And so your job as a marketer, as a business owner, if you really want to connect with people is you want to establish not just trust, but you want to establish rapport, which is trust with comfort. You want them to trust you and feel comfortable, and you want to do that robotically. You want to do that in advance.

Joe (00:17:20):
You want them to ask for that information and you want to put that information in front of them so that they can make an intelligent, informed decision. And what I learned is it’s not what people didn’t know about carpet cleaning. It’s what they get. No, that they didn’t know until I gave them seven questions, eight mistakes to avoid six costly misconceptions, how to avoid four. They didn’t know of those things. It didn’t even occur to them because they’re like, my carpet smells bad, looks bad, is unhealthy. How do I find a carpet cleaner? Let me look for whoever else, the lowest price. And whenever I would put that sort of information in front of them, they actually no longer, you know, I gave them something other than the lowest price to make a buying decision based out of. And since I was the one, providing that with them, with that information, who did they have trust with?

Joe (00:18:08):
Cause they’re like, this person is teaching me how to make a buying decision. And they’re not even asking me for any money in advance. They’re putting that information in front of me. And it worked like gangbusters. And within the span of six months, I five times the gross revenue of my carpet cleaning business using consumer awareness guides. And then I also created free recorded messages where I would have the same information in a consumer guide on a 24 hour free recorded message. And so, because some people would call me up and say, you know, they’d say how much you charge. I said, well, I’ve created this consumer guide for carpet cleaning. They’ll teach you everything you need to know about how to hire a carpet cleaner. Even if you never hire my company, it will give you the outline of what to look for. Let me mail it to you. And that worked great for, I would literally physically mail it to people, but some people would say, yeah, but I want to get my carpet cleaned tomorrow or the next day. And so I was like, well, how do I handle that one? So then I created a consumer.

Rich (00:19:01):
I was going to say, that’s when you invented the internet in order to be able to fulfill that instantly. Exactly.

Joe (00:19:07):
I spoke with Al Gordon we’ve ended the internet together. So it’s like and, and those of you that don’t know that pun light, supposedly Al Gore, which of course is fake. He said he invented the internet years ago. But the, the yeah, so that, that’s where I came up with more different ways to deliver education-based marketing to people in a robotic manner, which I now call elf marketing, which is easy, lucrative and fun because 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. So, so everything I try to do in marketing is, is it elf? Does it help people? Is it, is it that robotic? Is it

Rich (00:19:45):
Yeah. And that’s a great segue. I mean, and, and that toward the things you do for entrepreneurs, and one of the things that you’ve you’ve done is created a lot of frameworks that are really helpful to an entrepreneur to kind of get out of the kind of Whoa kind of whatever frustrating annoying situation they’re in towards something that’s more efficient, more productive that makes them happier. And that’s, that’s one right there that I think we, we should maybe slow down and look at which is really cool. It’s the difference between elf and half now elf is is easy, lucrative and fun, right? But what we’re typically is we’re stuck in half, which is all things that are hard, annoying, lazy, I’m sorry, hard.

Joe (00:20:34):
It could be lame and frustrating. It could be frustrating too, because you can actually make you could have a lucrative business, but it’s hard. It’s annoying. It’s frustrating because it’s not all money is created equal,

Rich (00:20:45):
Right. And things could all be, they could be relationships, they could be processes. They could be types of customers. Just, there are things in your business that are hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And, and the, and the key is to begin to look for things that are elf easy, lucrative, and fun. It doesn’t have to be hard to make money. You know, like we’re programmed to think that we have to work really hard at something. And it has to come at some type of personal cost or personal sacrifice for us to be successful. But there are those things out there that are health.

Joe (00:21:23):
Exactly. And I, and I think people come to that realization after they’ve spent a good enough chunk of time in half related activities or with half people, because, you know, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone in some ways, you know, people take things for granted, but also once the half has gone, you don’t know, you don’t realize, wow, I didn’t really have to work this hard in order to have success. And where I think it stems from is when we’re first starting out in business. You know, when you’re the metaphorically speaking, the chief cook and bottle washer, and you’re doing everything and you have to, you know, you’re the rugged individualists. You may not have anyone working for you. You haven’t, you know, you don’t have a team built up around you and, and you don’t have enough money to even do it.

Joe (00:22:07):
Even if you, you know, you’re, you’re trying to sell, you’re trying to manage, you’re trying to learn stuff. You’re, you’re just juggling a lot of stuff. And, you know, and I say all of this in the middle of a, you know, a pandemic when we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re having this conversation right now in a lot of people that used to have, you know maybe a functional business and all of a sudden everything in the marketplace has changed and everyone’s thrown into a, you know, kind of a fear state you know, a lot, what may have been a much easier before is now incredibly half for some people. And in, in the midst of all of those circumstances, you know, I think if you step back and say, okay, out of all of the things that I do out of all of the people, I know if I had to put them through the filtering process of which one of my relationships are the most elf, which are the techniques, the methods, the strategies, the things that I’ve done that are the most elephant, which ones are the half and make a list of what’s in what in my life is elf, what in my life is half.

Joe (00:23:11):
And what are the, you know, my friend, Dave, Kekich says, you know, an hour of effective, hard discipline and integrated thinking can be worth a month of hard work. And so, you know, and this is the guy who’s paralyzed from the chest down. He can’t use his legs. He used to be a multimillionaire in his mid thirties and you know, in the seventies when that was a lot of money and he you know, had all the trappings of wealth, you know, a house on Huntington beach convertible Mercedes beautiful girlfriend, and had a freak accident and became paralyzed. And in the span of two years of business partners, you know, stole most of his money, girlfriend left him, you know, literally lost use of his legs. The technology didn’t exist back then for them to do the surgery that would have been needed to, you know, correct his spinal cord injury.

Joe (00:24:02):
And so here he is, you know, in his seventies now you know, runs a maximum life foundation in devotes. A lot of his time to just, you know, health and everything. He’s the one that, you know, gave me that quote about a month, you know, an hour of effective, hard discipline thinking. So if all of the, you know, the listeners here were to just sit down for an hour and say, okay, I’m going to try to think in a way that is worth a month of work like in everyone. If you think about it, there’s been, I mean, rich, you can look at your own life. There’s there’s times where we spent weeks, months, sometimes a, you know, a year working on things that have panned out and been nothing but half. And there’s other things where the right person, the right idea, the right execution, the, the alignment of things, just all of a sudden it worked.

Joe (00:24:49):
And so everybody has those, but sometimes we get so caught up in the, in the fears that the difficulties, the overwhelm, the complexity of life, that we don’t often see them. And I think when you can step away from it and say, what are my, what are my stupid human tricks? What, what, like I have a company called genius network, but I believe everyone has a genius network who are the people. And what I mean by genius network is a network of individuals, ideas and connections that if access then tapped into and thought about in the right way would be like more valuable than anything else. Not about how many followers you have on social media. It’s like, literally, what are the key relationships that you have the most alignment that you resonate the most with and can help facilitate, you know, the, the obtainment of an opportunity, the reduction of a complexity, the elimination of a problem, or a challenge that’s within your genius network.

Joe (00:25:42):
And when you sit down and identify who those people are, so do yourself a giant elf in a half list, what’s elf in your life, what’s happening in your life. Who’s aligned with you, who do you want to be a hero to what drives you nuts and spend your time developing and nurturing things that are elf and eliminate things that are half in, the more you spend eliminating half, the more elf you have. And that’s just, I mean, it works. It may, it, it, to me, it’s a pretty simple process, but most people don’t do it.

Rich (00:26:10):
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s amazing. And, and, and the results you can get from it are amazing too. And, and it’s like, once you find those things, like you said, the stupid human tricks, the things that you do, the relationships you have, that, that actually are fun. And, and they make, and that make money, then you can grow more of those. You get to discover what’s the DNA that works, that works for you. And and, and, and gives you the best results and makes you make you happiest. Yeah. let’s talk a little bit about ideas and, and you know, a lot of entrepreneurs have ideas and then they seek to turn those ideas into reality. And and of course turning them into reality is marketing. What do you think is more important? Is that the idea itself, or is it the marketing is like, can you put lipstick on a pig or like, you know, what do you, what do you

Joe (00:27:07):
Actually, many people do? There’s a lot of products and services and, you know, everything from supplements to, you know, you name it that are cosmetic and that are you know, not all of that. And there’s you know, I, I think the ultimate thing is to have an amazing product that, that, or service that creates value for others. And of course, Val value is, is in the eyes of the beholder, right. You know, a big Mac to someone that just wants to eat a big Mac and have salty, fatty tasting food might be value to me, it’d be like poison, right? So there’s, you know, different people perceive value different ways. I mean, I’m looking for nutrition. Some people are looking for cotton candy, right. And so, you know, when it, when it comes to, you know, ideas and marketing, I have, it’s interesting, cause I’ve, I’ve learned so much from the world of marketing and I’ve met some amazing people and I’ve met some of the biggest con artists on the planet, in the world of marketing to where they don’t respect people’s IP, where they you know, they over-hype things.

Joe (00:28:12):
And when I say over-hype, let me make that distinction hype, you know, even though the connotation of the word hype is probably not viewed as a, is a positive thing. Let’s just pick, look at what the word hype hype used ethically. If you were to call it, that is massive enthusiasm for what you’re selling hype used unethically as lying, misleading, exaggerating, VSE promising things you, you’re not delivering upon. And that’s the wrong way to use marketing and unfortunately marketing, which is not an industry. It’s, it’s an activity in the same way that, you know, breathing, isn’t an industry. It’s just something you do. Everybody is marketing everything that, that, however you position stuff. Most people think of marketing in the world of business, but you know, there’s mother Teresa, John F. Kennedy, you know, Martin Luther King, you know, they all have their, there was all marketing, you know, you know, Hitler had his marketing.

Joe (00:29:05):
I mean, you, you can argue like between which ones were actually useful for the world in which ones were the most destructive murderous renders things. So marketing is everywhere. Think of selling is influence and think of bargaining a storytelling. If you’re more influential and persuasive, you’re going to be more effective. If you, if you tell a better story, you’re going to enroll more people, you’re going to be more compelling. So it’s not that marketing is good or bad. It’s how it’s actually being used. And, you know, utilize marketing, don’t use it to use people. And

Joe (00:29:42):
So the thing with with ideas, you can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t express it, communicate it enroll other people into it. You know, so you’ve got ideas, you’ve got marketing, you got execution. And you know, me and Dean Jackson, who is my partner on my podcast, the marketing podcast, we do you know, we, we, we, we did an episode a few years ago called ideas versus execution, which one’s more important now. I believe, you know, ideas are a dime, a dozen you know, there’s a lot of ideas out there, but if you can’t execute them then so what, and, and Dean’s whole notion on that podcast is, you know, well, the only thing that would make flawless execution better, like let’s us assume flawless execution. You could not execute the rollout of a particular idea or a campaign or the, you know, the, the manufacturing or the creation of a product or whatever, or the delivery of a service.

Joe (00:30:38):
Like you just had it across the board, as best as you can do execution, like you know, a fighter pilot flying a plane, you know, they’ve looked at all their it’s just, they can’t, they can’t mess up. It has to be executed flawlessly. So he said thing that would improve flawless execution is a better idea. If you think about it, it’s actually true, right? So ideas are valuable. Execution is valuable and you can have the greatest thing in the world, but if you don’t know how to sell it, like what I learned painfully early on in my career, and I even hate saying this, cause it’s, it’s, it’s, I wish it wasn’t this way. You know, there’s no relationship between being good and getting paid. I mean, you could be the nicest, most caring, most wonderful person on the planet that will, you know, do anything to help somebody. And that doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful. Isn’t that funny as we have this little phone here, I have my ring, my ring on my doorbell just went off and made that noise. So I apologize,

Rich (00:31:42):
A hundred percent. I mean, it’s like the correlation between the best people in any field and the most successful are, is relatively low correlation. I mean, success is a skill on its own, right. It’s yeah. So you just getting to the same thing with the ideas, like the idea can be brilliant, but without the right execution, it’s not going to go anywhere. And I think one of the things I got from what you were saying a moment ago about the only thing that helps flow this excellent execution is a better idea. It almost sounds like the execution magnifies the idea. So a good idea with great execution can be great, but a great idea with great execution can be excellent or something like that.

Joe (00:32:31):
Totally, totally. And so on. I’m going to make the assumption that many people listening to your podcast here, listening to us are entrepreneurs. And so what is an entrepreneur? So the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur was by a French guy named John baptize say in 1804 is the first time I believe the use of the word entrepreneurial was used. He coined the term entrepreneur, and it was an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield, from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So whenever you can apply entrepreneurial principles to make something better you can take, someone’s thinking from one level to another, hopefully by just sharing the idea of, you know you know, free patent book or, you know, like what we talked about with consumer awareness guides, getting someone to even think about how to position themselves and create value that is taking someone’s understanding of marketing from one level to a higher level.

Joe (00:33:29):
And so there’s a lot of business principles that can sell pornography that can sell pharmaceuticals that could sell junk food that can sell alcohol and tobacco and things that are frankly, aren’t all that good for people. I mean, of course that’s my value system, right? So you can make money with all kinds of techniques, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s helping people that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing. So I look at entrepreneurial principles is when, you know, whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re doing, leave someone in a better state than they were before you showed up. And, you know, you can be in the transaction business or you can be in the transformation business. And so I tend to really respect and appreciate achievement focused entrepreneurs that are in the transformation business. They’re not just trying to learn marketing so they could sell more crap to people.

Joe (00:34:15):
They’re looking how to use marketing, how to roll people do to really change people’s lives in good ways. And not because I’m some angel over here. I mean, I just think it’s a better way to operate. It’s like, what, what, what, what an amazing sort of business, if you have people whose lives are getting better as result of you, and they’re telling you, thank you. And they’re saying awesome. And the referring you to people and they’re continuing to buy from you. I mean, what better sort of entrepreneurial enterprise could there be? Because, you know, being an entrepreneur is solving problems for a profit and with your clients, you know, from even our conversations beforehand. Cause I’ll, I will tell you this, you know, rich obviously very much cares about the people that are listening to this podcast. Hence why, why the heck would he be doing it?

Joe (00:34:58):
You know, he gets, he gets joy out of knowing there’s a bunch of people out there with ideas they’re trying to build and grow their enterprises. And he’s sitting here, you know, trying to help guide and direct you to have more confidence and capability and direction on what to do with it. So you’ve got a bunch of idea. People, you know, they’re out there with their ideas, they’re trying to make them work. And it’s like, my friend Dan Sullivan says your job is make it up and make it real. So you have a bunch of people that are making stuff up and they’re trying to make it real. And you’re having a guy like me, come on and talk about how I did it in this environment so that we can help these other people glean, maybe direction and wisdom. And how to, and how do you deal with success? How do you deal with adversity? How do you think about your thinking and all of these things that go into it? Yeah, totally

Rich (00:35:44):
Believing that they can do it, seeing that other people have done it before them. And it’s possible for them to do it to step outside of what they’ve personally experienced and step into a new realm where they could have results that they’ve never seen before.

Joe (00:35:58):
Exactly. Exactly. And you know, it’s great. Like when we have people that are 20 years younger than us, and we can say, okay, in the last 20 years, there’s how many times I’ve gotten beat up. Here’s all the dumb mistakes I’ve made. And here’s the cool things that I’ve learned. And here’s how to think about it. So, and the people that really listen and say, okay, what can I, you know, what can I get from that? How does that apply to me? Those are the ones that are going to do the best with, with what it is, is being shared here. In that one, saying, I said, there’s no relationship between being good and getting paid. There’s a huge relationship between being good, being a good marketer and getting paid. And what I mean by being a good marketer, that’s being an ethical marketer. That’s putting information in front of people that will help them.

Joe (00:36:39):
That’s creating results in advance. That’s a hundred percent guaranteeing their work. That’s you know, teaching them how to make buying decisions you know, using emotional engaging copy because you can have more people into buying is something that David Ogilvy would say. I mean, you, you, you know, you gotta make your messaging exciting. And really rich. I don’t, I wish I didn’t have to do any of this marketing stuff. I wish that people would just do business with me because I think I’m a nice guy. And I know I offer a great, you know, I mean, I know the stuff that I sell you know, helps people and I know it’s powerful and all that, and I wish I didn’t have to, you know, use social proof and, you know, talk about, you know, the stuff that I do in a way that is, is engaging in a, in a rolling. But the fact is that’s the world we live in, you know, I mean the money fairy is not flying around just scrapping money on top of people. I mean, you have to go out and, you know, you have to put your information out in front of people. You tell the story and you need to enroll people.

Rich (00:37:35):
Yeah. And I think there’s a, there’s an interesting clarification to make about that. Like the correlation between being good and being successful is that you have to at least be good to be successful. Like you have to have, you have to be able to do whatever it is you’re selling. You need to be able to be a reasonably good marketer to succeed. Let’s say as as a marketing professional. But w th the mistake is to believe that my, my, my path toward being super successful is to get even better at my craft. And that’s not the case. It’s like, you need to have the right level of competency. You used to, you need to be reasonably good at it, but but getting better at it, like studying more about your thing, me becoming a better patent attorney, isn’t going to make me more successful. It’s getting my message out to people is going to make me successful. I, I already know I’m good at what I do, and I’m better than I’m better most let’s say, but but getting, but the, I guess the mistake is to try to believe that trying to be the most brilliant attorney is going to get me to be successful, not if I’m not connecting with

Joe (00:38:50):
No. Absolutely. And, and, and the thing is this, I mean, I say all of this with the, with the caveat that, you know, the best marketing in the world is not going to make up for a crappy product or service. It’s like the, my that’s the reason I made the distinction between hype used ethically and unethically is you need to deliver upon what it is you’re offering. I mean if you’re going to say either outlandish things about what it is you offer, make sure that that outlandishness lives up to it because too many people over-hype things. And that’s what makes people disrespect marketing. And in the long run, you’re gonna, you’re gonna shoot yourself in the foot. Anyway, if you go out and oversell you know, I, I really prefer, you know, under you know, under promise and over deliver that doesn’t mean neuter your marketing and make it boring.

Joe (00:39:41):
It just means don’t promise things. You have either a no ability or worse intention of delivering upon, make sure that you live up to what it is that you’re offering. And that’s why with really good marketing, it’s not about just writing an ad or sales letter or having a nicely edited video. It’s really understanding what is the true value that you create. I mean, like, you know, all money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And if you’re going to ethically make a lot of money and I hope you do. And I, and I, and I P I think people should, I mean, the more value you can deliver to the marketplace you know, you, you deserve to be compensated in proportion to the amount of value. I mean, there, there are people that really deserve and have earned the right to make a thousand times more money than other people, simply because they have been a thousand times more impactful in the marketplace and someone else.

Joe (00:40:36):
I mean, I don’t believe you should, everyone should just be given money or given the same exact, you know, compensation for effort. Cause you know, it’s, it’s F what does effort mean? You know, effort has to be directed in the right way to produce a result. You can work your butt off and not produce a result for somebody else. You can put, you can have, you know, you can spend 30 minutes craving something amazing and make a million dollars. I mean, it really depends on that’s the journey here of, of ingenuity resourcefulness, you know, competency. Yep.

Rich (00:41:09):
Well, and, and I think we could draw a parallel back to the carpet cleaning in that too, is that part of the value you create out there in the world is the experience that the customer had through the process. So, you know, part of the value that they obtained when they went through your process was the cleanness of their carpets, but then also part of the value they obtained was them feeling good about the buying decision, then feeling educated about it, that they made the right choice, that when someone asks them about their carpet, they enthusiastically talk about how they found the best company that helped them understand. And like, so that overall experience is part of the value they got. And it’s not just about the clean carpets.

Joe (00:41:55):
Exactly, exactly. I mean, I would, I would tell for years and I still do, I would tell my carpet cleaning clients, cause I still own that company. It’s so Purana marketing, we have a rich cleaner system and we have over 10,000 cleaning and restoration companies all over the world that have become members of that organization. And it’s, I mean, it’s helped so many people have healthier and cleaner home environments. And I would say, you know, there’s a, there’s no relationship you know, with sucking dirt out of carpet and being the best carpet cleaner and having them actually like you, I mean, you could be very impersonal. I mean, everyone’s experienced a really, probably competent doctor that had terrible bedside manners spent, you know, three minutes with them in may understand what was going on with them, but just didn’t make them feel welcomed.

Joe (00:42:42):
Didn’t make them feel cared for didn’t express empathy. And one of the things I would do with my carpet cleaners, I, the people that would follow one of the, one of the many things that I would teach cleaners because I’ve over a hundred different strategies that we would teach to the cleaning and restoration companies is to go into a home and not do what everyone else does. What most people do is free quote, free estimates. It’s like, you know, a lot of people just use service businesses to be free advisers. So we would have them go in and do a carpet audit where they would evaluate the condition of somebody’s carpet. They would capture how old the carpet was, how many pets were in the home, how many adults and children, what sort of vacuum system was being used to vacuum the carpet? I did the carpet have carpet protection on it.

Joe (00:43:25):
How often is the carpet clean? You know just different elements related you know, to the in home environment. And what I would do is we would look for traffic areas where, you know, in front of certain sofas or the high traffic areas in the living room at the hallways, and we would explain to people just like knees on blue jeans, you can throw it in a washing machine, but some areas of the fabric are going to get more wear and tear than others, which is why you would have, you know, like the knees of, of blue jeans would be more worn than, you know, the sides. And I would say, well, carpet is the same way. And so I would give the, we would do a carpet audit and we would ask the homeowner, I’d give them a, a sheet of stickers and I’d say any area that’s of concern to you. Go ahead and Mark it. So we’ll make sure we pay special attention. I would involve the home loan or in the, you know, because everyone’s kind of playing a trick in a lot of ways on, on, on th they’re going to see, does this person notice it? A lot of people have gone to massage therapist or chiropractor. Someone would say, let’s see if they can find the area of my body that hurts good. They are

Joe (00:44:38):
Exactly. So it’s like, why

Joe (00:44:40):
Put that pressure on yourself? You don’t, don’t be in the monologue business.

Joe (00:44:44):
I logged business. And so I’d give it a sheet of these stickers.

Joe (00:44:47):
And then I would go throughout the home when I was doing it myself, when I first was learning, because I never taught anything to these carpet cleaners that I didn’t do myself. It was a big difference. You know, there’s a lot of consultants that dispense advice that they themselves never take. And I literally was a convert of my own system. I transformed my own carpet, cleaning business, using my marketing methods long before I ever started selling them to somebody. I mean, I kinda got into the business accidentally. I never thought I would teach anybody marketing. I started using it cause I

Joe (00:45:17):
Like had a business I needed to build. Right. And so,

Joe (00:45:20):
And it actually worked. And then I was like, well, I’ve created all these recipes. Maybe other people could benefit from these recipes and pay me money to share these recipes with them. And that’s how I ended up building, you know, this, this, this business early on, which has now dwarfed, like what, what it is today. But the thing is, is like when, when all those stickers were now placed on people’s carpets, we would then offer a free room of carpet cleaning up to 200 square feet so that they can see the quality of the cleaning before they had anything else done. And we would do a carpet on it, along with it. And it would, it would, for one, everyone understood way more about carpet cleaning than they ever did from any other carpet cleaner. It didn’t take a lot of time in, in, we got them involved and people support what they help to create.

Joe (00:46:06):
And it’s a, it’s a really unique thing. And I’m surprised that most people don’t apply more of this, this psychology and think about it as their own business. But I mean, sometimes you’re the easiest way to sell something to somebody is just do Socratic selling, ask them what it is they’re looking for. What are your frustrations? What are your fears? What are your concerns? What are you annoyed with with the way that, you know, if you’ve hired an attorney in the past, what was the most annoying thing with the attorney or the doctor or the whatever. And so all the people with all these ideas that are out there, if your ideas will transform other people’s lives, entertain them, help them. You know, some people that are listening to this rich, you know, they, they have, you know, true medical treatments that may save lives.

Joe (00:46:47):
There’s other people that, you know, they may have a game that they just want people to play, to keep themselves from being bored. I mean, there’s, you know, it’s across the board, all the different ideas. The thing is, is like put yourself into the minds of your prospects. You know it’s the Robert Collier letter there’s a book called the Robert Collier letter book. He was a copywriter written in the fifties. I believe that book. And he says, as a marketer, as a copywriter, you want to enter a conversation that’s already existing in your prospect’s mind. So whoever your prospect is, how do you enter the conversation that’s already existing in their mind? And so if you do, then they will feel understood. People don’t buy from you because they understand what do people buy from

Joe (00:47:30):
You because they feel understood. And if you get it, I understood the mindset of the carpet cleaners. I knew what kept them up at three in the morning, stressed out of their mind. You know, I, I understood everything about them and I was there able to talk to them, speak to them, help them, service them, deliver to them what it is, and, you know, we’d built relationships with tons of them and yeah,

Rich (00:47:53):
Yeah, yeah. That’s amazing. And on the subject of, of basically serving your customers and well, let’s say serving the world and, and and making a difference in creating value for people. I mean, let, let’s talk about the other work that you do, like with genius recovery, like where you you’re, you’re helping people and you’re helping to change the conversation that has not been serving people on any end of that situation. Yeah.

Joe (00:48:21):
So here’s the dark side, I guess, of my my, my life, but not the dark side now, because it’s actually something that I’ve been able to transform it now, hopefully be really helpful to a lot of people. I was I don’t really crazy childhood and I’m not going to give the long drawn out story. And, and I also don’t want to use mine as I’ve somehow had some horrible situation relative to other people, because everybody here listening has had probably some level of, of, of adversity to full-on trauma, mental, physical, sexual, and most emotional abuse, abandonment, many people have witnessed some of the most horrendous things on you know in the world and it’s just really deeply traumatized them or have impact. And so, you know, I had a, I had a really kind of a pretty bad childhood if I had to think of what would be a good childhood.

Joe (00:49:12):
And my mother died when I was four. I you know, had a lot of sexual abuse growing up. I became a drug addict when I was 18 years old. I was trying to medicate the pain and the anxiety and the depression in my life through snorting, crystal meth you know, snorting, cocaine, freebasing, cocaine, getting high every day in a very early age when I was, you know, in my worst state, I weighed about 105 pounds from, you know, it was about three months straight that I not a single day went by where I was not smoking cocaine by freebasing it. And I was a mess. I mean, I nearly died. I would wake up every day to get high and I’d get high to go to bed. And you know, I’m just amazed how resilient the human body could be if you don’t completely destroy it.

Joe (00:49:56):
And I, I was just really in a bad place. And I ended up moving away from my environment just to remove myself from every relationship, every access to drugs, because had I not, I, I would’ve, I probably just would’ve killed myself. And it took me a long time to to really deal with the emotional trauma. I mean I, I became a millionaire before the age of 30 even in spite of having you know, business success financially. And I did it, I was a very functional attic. I mean, I delivered really good stuff to, to, to clients and things, but I always, I never dealt with the underlying sexual abuse. And so there was a lot of sexual addiction, which was an intimacy disorder. And when I was you know, raped and molested as a kid, I would I was paying money not to say anything.

Joe (00:50:44):
And it wired in my mind that sex is shameful and it’s dirty and, you know, you pay for it. And, and it, and I just had just a terrible sort of template of what you know, human connection was. So the reason I bring all that up is I was one of the most disconnected, shy, introverted, scared kids and people in teenagers. I didn’t know how to engage with people. I had friends of course, but it was always with a level of fear and terror. And the only healthy fear is concerned. You know, I mean, being terrorized or being scared, or, you know, I mean, all the different words for fear, you know, frustration is a combination of fear and anger. I wasn’t concerned I was constantly in a state of massive anxiety and worry, and even in my adult life, even as I was building my business.

Joe (00:51:34):
And so when I finally realized that even the sexual addiction, like, let me define the word intimacy. So my favorite definition of intimacy, I got from a 70 year old gay guy who I never met in person just over the phone, because a friend of mine who was, you know in, in, in recovery for sexual addiction introduced me to this person over the phone. And he said, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared, safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place and addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don’t have a safe place. So whenever you don’t feel safe in the world, you’re going to look for a way to you know, to self-medicate. And so I believe addiction is looking for love in all the wrong places. Addiction is doing something you don’t want to do, or that you do want to do that has compulsivity attached to it and leads to negative consequences.

Joe (00:52:26):
And so when I started really dealing with my addiction through everything from 12 step groups to therapy, to somatic therapy, to proper nutrition, because addiction treatment requires community it’s biochemical, serotonin, dopamine, healthy foods, fixing your health. The cause of addiction, I believe is trauma. My, my good friend, gab or Matti says, you know, the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain. And so when I started really working on what was the cause of the pain and finding other ways to, to to, to treat it it was helpful. And then the fourth is the environment putting yourself in a healthy, functional environment. That’s not triggering. Then all of a sudden I started getting better. So I spent a lot of time to, I’ve been in recovery now for 20 plus years, I’ve done a lot of stuff. And I create, I’m trying to utilize my marketing skills to help 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 those with the world.

Joe (00:53:26):
So right now I’m using my marketing skills to have a foundation we created called genius recovery, which is an educational platform. Videos, links to every type of meeting for not just chemical addictions, from drugs and alcohol, but a process addictions behavior, addictions you know, sex, gambling, gaming internet, workaholism food. You know, there’s a lot of, of addictions in the world. And a lot of entrepreneurs are addicts, a lot of very driven, cause there’s a book on workoholism with the title. Workaholism is, is a respectable addiction. So my goal is to be a hero to entrepreneurs because they’re the ones that are providing jobs and providing value and also help reduce human suffering through putting information out about recovery and people I’ve met. And the things that I’ve learned that in a very helpful for me in my recovery and now in my life, you know, it’s, I’m in the best place that I’ve ever been at in my recovery in, in, you know, addiction is real human suffering and there’s a lot of people out there that are good people, but they’re in bro.

Joe (00:54:28):
It’s not about, you know, good or bad. We associate bad behavior with badness. And no one that’s an active addiction is not mired in shame and guilt and self-loathing, and there’s a lot of good people that just had unfortunate traumas in their lives. And they, the method of how they try to scratch that itch is with addictive behavior. So like, I, I care the most about just reducing human suffering through, through addiction recovery. And so that’s why we created genius recovery. And there’s a lot of you know, if anyone’s listening to this is struggling with you know, with any form of addiction, you know, people would say, Hey, you know, what’s the best marketing strategy to build and grow a business. Oftentimes they’ll be like, you know, how is your sleep? You know, how’s your role? So it’s a connection it’s. So to go back to, if I can sum it all up, it’s a Johan Harlan.

Joe (00:55:17):
The opposite of addiction is connection. And so my goal now is to be better connected with myself, help people connect with themselves. And if you’re disconnected with yourself, it’s very hard to connect with others. And if you want to be a good marketer, if you want to be a good entrepreneur, it’s all about relationships. And if you have a terrible relationship with yourself, how hard is it going to be to have a relationship with a community, to build a community, to really genuinely care. So that’s where empathy and self care and self love and the nurturing of your health. And so out of all the stuff that people could do, I mean, it’s your health. I mean, you know, it’s that proverb, he or she, who has their health has a thousand dreams. He or she, who does not have their health has only one. So my whole thing is sell people what they want, give them what they need. I try to, you know, enroll people with marketing and make more money and build a business and grow a business. But ultimately once, once I have some rapport with them, I’m like, let’s take a look at the crazy that’s going on in your life. How do we make you a happier, more connected human being so that you respond to life, not react to life. And when you’re responding to life, you’re responsible. You know, you’re

Joe (00:56:24):
More respectful. I mean, earlier, before we started this conversation, Richard, we’re talking about IP. And one of the things that you do extremely well with looking out for your clients is instilling, you know, protection, but getting people to understand, like, you know, what sort of a person doesn’t respect someone else’s property, that’s very dismissive. It doesn’t care. That’s willing to take shortcuts. I would argue a lot of those people are mired in addictions because when you’re, when you’re in a state where all you care about is yourself, you don’t give a about someone else’s property. You don’t care about it, but when you respect yourself, you respect other people’s property. Responsibility is responding with ability. It’s, it’s really walking into the world and making sure that you do good and some, so much of the crazy stuff that’s going on in the world right now. It’s just a bunch of, out of control addict behavior, which is basically people that are traumatized, that haven’t worked on the trauma. And, and unfortunately in the worst state addicts lie, they cheat, they steal, they cause a lot of messes. And so recovery is so critically important. I don’t, I don’t think there’s anything that I could contribute to the world that I think would have more positive impact than then helping people with their, with their addictions.

Rich (00:57:35):
Yeah. It’s really interesting though. I mean, I don’t know if if, if you see this piece, but it really is. I mean, I think you might view them as a little bit separate to your addiction work. You work with say genius network, but you tied it together with connection. So when you said connection is the opposite of addiction, so it’s like the extent to which you help entrepreneurs to protect, to connect you, helping them with their addictions. Even if it’s not a distinguished addiction, like as a drug addiction or, or workaholism or something that they’ve distinguished and they’ve realized this is what’s going on now, how do I treat it? But just by having them connect by having them be in contact with other people so that, like you said, like people stealing IP are people that are struggling with their own stuff.

Rich (00:58:27):
And then on not they’re objectifying the other side, there are whoever they’re stealing from. They’re not seeing them as a person they’re focused on their own problems and they’re making themselves a victim. They have, they’re making it so that, Oh, I have to do this because of whatever compulsion to, to succeed, to have their, their own company be more successful than what, what they are trying to do to fill that dark hole. The antidote to that is to connection is connection is, is, is being able to realize who are the other people involved in that, in this, and to be able to see them as people. So it’s like the thing you do for the world is you create connection and that serves all of that.

Joe (00:59:10):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And what I found out of all, you know, vitamin C as my friend, Ned Hallowell says, he’s, you know, he’s the top add ADHD psychiatrist in the world. And he, he says, what we all is more vitamin C, which is vitamin connect. And if you, if you, if there’s anything that I, you know, I haven’t found a great way to market this, but like I’d rather reduce human suffering. And I do focus more on, I mean, I think you see this in the work that I do. I just don’t use it as like the headline on our landing pages, because no, one’s looking for, you know, high level, you know, mastermind groups to reduce some human suffering. What I try to do is I like reduce human suffering of, of, of driven entrepreneurs that are out there trying to work really hard because, you know, and, and unfortunately some of the world’s greatest contributors also live with the highest levels of pain, dissatisfaction, angsty, and trauma.

Joe (01:00:01):
And if these people can accomplish what it is they’ve done in a broken hurt state, imagine how much more value they would create in the world. If they didn’t have to carry the baggage of angst in the back. Now, some people would argue, well, if it wasn’t for my pain, I wouldn’t have accomplished all this or the comedians or the songwriters. But I mean, you look at someone like David Bowie, right? So David boy, I think when he was 27, him and Iggy pop went to England and pretty much sustain themselves on cocaine and milk for a couple of years, his total addicts and, you know, Bowie nearly died. Right. But he then recovered and he then went on to create, you know, another 40 years of art and music and, you know, changing, you know, his, his world and impacting millions of people. And, you know, a lot of other people like the Jimmy Hendrix’s and the Amy Winehouse

Rich (01:00:51):
27. Exactly. That same point they didn’t go past. Yeah.

Joe (01:00:56):
Yeah. So, I mean, w what, like, and those were talented individuals, but they, you know, Janis Joplin, she, you know there’s a quote from her. I did an interview with Shep hike and who shot pike and Nosha Gordon chef. Hiking’s another friend of mine. He actually teaches. So, which is funny how many people called chef, but chef, you know, shepherd. Yeah. But he made a movie called SuperMansion his, you know, he was Alice Cooper’s manager for 50 years in Alice Cooper. You know, it was a friend of mine also. I’ve got a great interview with Dallas, which we’ll get ready to put online, but it’s like

Rich (01:01:28):
I saw you interview Alice and you were there in the room live. Yeah. Yup. Yup.

Joe (01:01:34):
And so Janis Joplin had said, you know who died of a drug overdose, you know, I go out and make love to 20,000 people. And then I go back to my hotel room alone. And so, you know, it’s a sad state where you can go out and really just try to give your all to people, but you’re disconnected from yourself. So my whole thing with anyone listening to this, you know, you want to be a better marketer. You want to be a better entrepreneur. The issues are in the tissues there. If you’re disconnected, you know, the sun is always there, but there’s these clouds that get in the way. And, and I would almost, you know, it’s usually not what people expect to hear from a marketing guy. You know, you want to be a better person, like take a look at all of those things that are blocking you from connection.

Joe (01:02:16):
And, and what are the things that are your fears and your angst and your traumas, and, you know, like work, work through, work on those because it’s the magic of, of joy in life is getting connected by the things that are, you know, by removing the things that are disconnecting you. I mean I think unlearning is more important than learning. A lot of people come to me because they’re trying to learn stuff. I just try to smuggle in the learning cause, you know, I mean, I’ve done more by unlearning the, you know, the, the, the behaviors and the things that I would, you know, thought were, were, were supporting me. But in reality, they were the biggest detriments to my future growth and success.

Rich (01:03:01):
Yeah, absolutely. And just one final note on that too. It’s like, when people think about like, well, like my pain is so important to my art or whatever the, you know, the, this problem, this addiction, this is what I’m, this is what fuels me. But here’s the thing is like if it ceases to be a compulsion, if it ceases to be something that you don’t have choice about it’s still there to fuel you, but now you have choice. It’s like, if, if you know, you’re not going to make the pain go away, but if the pain isn’t compelling you to do something, then you, it can fuel you. You can be fueled by by it something and still have choice. And the real key is having choice to do something like, like there are people that are funny because they, they felt the compulsion to have attention. And so that’s what made them always make crack jokes. Now, once you realize that, like, that you don’t need to get that attention to feel okay, you still have all of those skills that being funny, but now you have a choice that you could either crack the joke or you could remain silent in the same situation.

Joe (01:04:19):
Right, right. No, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, looking at the, I think one way that helps me is am I reacting to life or my responding to life? And when I was mired in addiction, I was reacting. And when I’m in recovery, I’m responding. Right. And I had a yoga instructor. Who’s now my, literally my project manager. She’s been my private yoga instructor for five years and a couple months ago. She’s like, you know, I think I can be your project manager in which of course was a weird thing for me. Cause I’m like, well, what’s, you know, what do you mean? She’s like, well, I watch all that you do. And I see a lot of the stuff I can help you with. And, you know, I’ve managed 40 people at the last, you know, studio that I was running and I’ve got a business degree and a finance degree.

Joe (01:05:03):
And I, you know, so she’s very smart. And I was like, well, you know, she’d said to me, five years ago when I was going through a breakup and I was in a real grief state, she goes, if you do yoga three times a week, it’ll change your body. If you do it every day, it’ll change your life. And so I made a commitment, I would try doing yoga everyday for a month. And I did. And then I went another 80 to 83 days where I did a yoga in a 90 day period. I did 82, 83 sessions of yoga in a 90 day period. So there’s like, you know, like about a week that I missed over 90 days. And I swear, it just completely shifted my reacting to life, to responding to life, not completely, but a little bit. And you know, that’s the best you can hope.

Joe (01:05:44):
I mean, just these little small, continuous improvements, like my, you know, my friend and now my client VJ fog, you know, writes about this book, tiny habits you know, it’s it’s just tiny habits. And so everyone, you know, I, I hope that people listening to us take what we’ve, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve shared and just think, you know, what can you apply? I like treating everything like 12 step groups, take what you like and leave the rest and, you know, and be nice to the people you meet on the way up to the same people you can meet on the way down. And one thing that I talk about a lot with addiction recovery is you can’t punish pain out people, you know, to think that we’re going to throw addicts in prison and that somehow is going to rehabilitate them in now, not really.

Joe (01:06:24):
It just, it just creates the, you know, you take already traumatized people and you put them in a more traumatic environment. It doesn’t rehabilitate hardly anyone. What it does is it creates more crime. It creates more grief, it creates more eggs. And you know, and I’m not, this is not a free pass for people that have committed violent crimes. But what I’m saying is there’s, you know, 40% of people, I believe that are in jail or prison have committed a violent crime, the rest of them they’re non-violent crimes. And 80 to 90% of everyone that’s arrested is drugs and alcohol were involved. We’re not even including all the behavior addictions, we’re just talking drugs and alcohol. And the number one killers in America for substances are sugar. First tobacco, second alcohol, third, opiates, fourth. And you can’t punish pain out of people and you can’t punish pain out of yourself.

Joe (01:07:08):
So if you’re one of those entrepreneurs that beat yourself up negative, self-talk take a look at your addiction because, you know, I don’t think life is meant to be a struggle. And if you’re doing good in the world and you really have driving you, you know, and you’re applying it, you’re helping people, you, you, you, you deserve to have a good life. And you’re frankly going to be more of service to people. If you give yourself some Slack and if you treat yourself well, so as crazy as it sounds, I love teaching people, marketing strategies, but more than anything, I love to have people being connected with themselves because the more connected they are, the better they can sleep, the better parents, they are, the better they are to their community, the more empathetic. And it’s hard to be a really good marketer if you don’t have empathy and care. And if you don’t have a lot of care and respect for yourself, how the hell are you going to care and respect for others?

Rich (01:07:55):
Absolutely. Well, this is now officially the longest podcast episode I’ve done. And it’s because it’s been a great conversation. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of, a lot here, probably a lot more than anyone who tuned in to listen, expected to get, and I think that’s awesome. And

Joe (01:08:12):
You had it half of it out if you think it’s there’s

Joe (01:08:16):
Yeah,

Rich (01:08:20):
But yeah. And so I mean, first I’d love for you to come back another time and we can talk some more about some, some of this stuff and and that would be awesome if we do. But other than that I mean, first of all you’ve got the, I love marketing podcast, which is phenomenal, has got hundreds of thousands of people listened to it and it’s you, you have the best people on. So just in addition to you, you really pull from the most talented the, the pool of the most talented people to share the best marketing tips out there. So there’s that, that’s a no brainer. The, I love marketing podcast, but if people want to get in contact with you or or learn more about you and the things that we talked about, like genius, recovery and genius network, how do they do that?

Joe (01:09:08):
Yeah, and probably the best thing, cause I’m going to go on a one-year sabbatical next year. So I’m going to be off the grid from January to December, all of match the next year. So but I have my whole team, that’s going to be running genius network. And I, I put out a lot of really great, valuable content for free, which sometimes is a mistake because if people don’t pay it, sometimes they don’t pay attention, but I put out better information for free than what most people charge for. So Joe’s free book.com, J O E S Joe’s free book.com. I have a book called life gives to the giver because I believe life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. So people love that book, super short, one to three page chapters, all about my musings on life and everything from business strategy to addiction, to health, to you, name it, how to think about all kinds of stuff.

Joe (01:09:53):
So that’s a great place. If someone likes what I have to say, you don’t need to buy anything. You can just re download that book for free. If you want a physical copy, all you have to do is pay for shipping and handling. We’ll sell it, send you a physical copy, and we’re not putting people in downloads where you have to subscribe to things. Even you can, you know, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a disguise sales pitch. It literally is. It’s a genuinely good book that people love. It’s life gives to give her Joe’s free book.com. And then if anyone is struggling with addiction of or a family member that wants to just resources, genius, recovery.org, genius, recovery.org, there’s links to all kinds of different meetings, 12 steps in ones that are non 12 steps that are available for free throughout the world virtual meetings if you can’t get to a live meeting due to the pandemic and depending on where you’re at in the world, depending on what time you’re hearing this, this episode, you know, the world’s in a weird place right now, and links to videos and different podcasts and stuff.

Joe (01:10:49):
And that’s all, it’s all there. And you know, so we’re, we’re doing our best read the open letter. If someone wants to understand my views on on addiction, if you just typed in genius recovery, open letter into Google, you’ll be able to read a letter. I wrote that describes what addiction is, how to think about it. And so many people, including medical professionals. I mean, I’ve been interviewed by us news and world report. I’ve got interviews online with all kinds of amazing people. So there’s a lot

Joe (01:11:14):
Of stuff out there. And yeah, and that’s, that’s, that’s kinda how in of course my name, anyone types in Joe Polish, like nail Polish into Google, you can find all kinds of crazy,

Rich (01:11:24):
Including like a, probably a little image of Joe Polish, Joe stickers, everywhere. You’ve never encountered a Joe Polish sticker, then you haven’t lived. I think I found one on an elevator once it was like on the button, on the elevator, I’m like, Oh, there’s a Joe sticker.

Joe (01:11:44):
Oh, I gotta tell you a real quick story. So Paul Abdul, the singer songwriters, a friend of mine and Kevin Harrington from shark tank is a buddy of mine. And he sends me a video with him and Paula in New York. This was a couple of years ago and he was taking a selfie with Paula and he had my sticker on his phone and she’s like, Oh, no video. They were shooting a video. And then they then sent me a video, tell it in his policy. Oh my God, he’s sitting here taking a picture of us in a video. And I see your face. And she’s like, is that Joe Polish? Because she didn’t know that we knew each other. And it was like the funniest thing, because she also had a Joe Polish sticker on her phone because these things are like little viruses. They just like find their way, someone there’s a whole story behind it. I was never behind grading stickers in my face. Someone did it for me. Now it’s taken off of it. This ridiculous.

Rich (01:12:37):
Exactly. It’s, it’s not ego. It’s just good marketing it’s then we could leave it at that. Right.

Joe (01:12:41):
Well, that’s probably you go to low self-esteem, but no, it is. It is. But the point is, you know, like my buddy, Dave Kekich says, things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they’re going wrong or seldom as great as they seem when they’re going well, lighten up you’ll live longer. So my whole philosophy is look, life is hard. And when life is hard, it’s a real. And when life is great, it’s great, you know, lighten up, try to keep fun, enjoy it. That’s why I’m such a big believer in health. You know, hanging out with people that bring joy to you and get rid of dishonest, negative and lazy people. I mean, it just brings you down. Life is too fricking short to be dealing with crap. And so arrange your life. You know, you can fashion your own future and you can design what it is that you want to design.

Joe (01:13:23):
And, and don’t put up with crap and, you know, if there’s stuff that you’re not dealing with in your own life handle it because, you know, what’s, you know, life is the only thing with living for. And so, you know, make sure you build a great life and do good stuff for other people. Cause when you’re going through hell and you will, everybody does, you want to make sure that you have you know, people that will be there to support you and help you. And that’s why I’m a huge believer. Don’t leave scorched earth, treat people awesome. Never give anyone a reason to shortchange them. W you know, go out and hire a good IP attorney to protect yourself from all of the, you know, all of the scumbags that are out there and never be in this operate and treat people well. And, you know, and, and keep learning because that’s how, you know, that’s how you build and grow up. Not only a great business, but a great life.

Rich (01:14:08):
Awesome. Well said, I thanks much for being here, Joe,

Rich (01:14:12):
And thanks for everything that you do. And and I’m really, I’m hoping that you, you get great things out of the sabbatical and looking forward to what you create or not after it. Yeah. And I’ll come back and talk about it after I do too. So great being here. Rich. Thank you. And I wish everyone listening the very best.

Outro (01:14:29):
Thanks for listening to innovations and breakthroughs with your host, rich Goldstein. Be sure to click, subscribe, check us out on the web@innovationsandbreakthroughs.com and we’ll see you next time.