Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / How To HEAL From Trauma & Addiction | Joe Polish

Transcript

How To HEAL From Trauma & Addiction | Joe Polish · The Hannah Hammond Show

• 0:00
  I was raped and molested as a kid.
• 0:01
  I was paid money not to say anything about it, which wired
• 0:04
  in my head that sex is shameful and dirty unless you pay for it.
• 0:09
  That later led to sexual addiction.
• 0:11
  Can you share a little bit about your story and how you came
• 0:14
  from, you know, some of the traumatic things that happened
• 0:16
  in your childhood in the early adult years to now being such an
• 0:20
  amazingly connected person? My mother died when I was four
• 0:24
  years old. My father was really traumatized
• 0:26
  by that. And then our whole childhood,
• 0:29
  every year or two we would move to a different town.
• 0:31
  Childhood, we're moving a lot. I was real shy as really
• 0:34
  introverted, used to get picked on as a skinny kid.
• 0:37
  And then I had a period where I was getting molested.
• 0:42
  And when I, you know, was 18 years old, it was the worst
• 0:46
  state of drug addiction. When I was about 16 years old, I
• 0:49
  started smoking pot daily and I started taking speed.
• 0:54
  You know, there was this rush to it and I was super shy and
• 0:57
  introverted and it just pulled me out of my shell.
• 1:00
  The problem was I didn't have good boundaries.
• 1:02
  And so all of a sudden I just wanted to be high all the time.
• 1:04
  So I was just taking a lot of drugs.
• 1:06
  I weighed 105 lbs one week just because I've gone almost the
• 1:10
  entire week with hardly eating anything.
• 1:12
  And I was just like looking in the mirror and I look like I was
• 1:15
  looking at a skeleton. I was looking at a skeleton with
• 1:17
  skin and I was just, I was such a fucking wreck.
• 1:22
  And I was like, I, you know, I need to do something now.
• 1:25
  It didn't happen right away. I mean, it still went a few more
• 1:29
  months. So today I'm sitting here with
• 1:30
  Joe Polish, who is one of my dearest friends and has
• 1:33
  absolutely changed my life since I've just got to know him over
• 1:36
  the past year. And Joe has a story that is
• 1:40
  truly 1 of resilience and transformation.
• 1:43
  And not only did he come from a really traumatic and very, very
• 1:46
  challenging background that a lot of people probably wouldn't
• 1:49
  have survived and and became built, been able to build the
• 1:52
  empire that he's built today is now someone that they call the
• 1:56
  most connected man in the world. And I truly believe that he
• 1:59
  connected me with one of my childhood heroes who I'm now
• 2:02
  good friends with. And he's the founder and CEO of
• 2:06
  Genius Network, which is one of the most sought after
• 2:09
  entrepreneur organizations in the world.
• 2:11
  And he also has Genius Recovery, which is reshaping how the US
• 2:16
  shapes how the US thinks about addiction and recovery.
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  And also is the the author of multiple books, one of which is
• 2:24
  his newest book, What's in It for them, which is an incredible
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  book that I'm almost finished reading myself.
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  And Oh my gosh, the list goes on and on.
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  And you're an expert in marketing.
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  That's how you started. You started a carpet cleaning
• 2:37
  company and became an expert in marketing in order to sell
• 2:40
  carpet cleaning services. And you were so good at that.
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  You were featured on AB CS 2020 and then went on to found Genius
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  Network, which now has over 350 members.
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  I am one of them and I will be a member for the rest of my life,
• 2:52
  so thank. You so much First off, Hannah,
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  it's great to be here yeah. We've had a, it's been 1 hell of
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  a year, right? Yeah, it's so much stuff.
• 2:58
  And so I, I love seeing everything you're doing too and
• 3:00
  just the growth and all this. So, and by the way, if we will
• 3:04
  probably knock over these books like Domino's at some point
• 3:06
  during this, so just, we'll let the viewer know.
• 3:08
  We won't even edit that if that, if that happens, 'cause I may do
• 3:11
  it, I may hit the table, but it, no, it's great to be here.
• 3:14
  And yeah, I'm just a person who was really driven and
• 3:17
  entrepreneurial and I'm involved in all kinds of stuff.
• 3:21
  Genius Network is all about connection.
• 3:24
  Genius Recovery is about connection.
• 3:25
  Everything that I do is really about connection because growing
• 3:29
  up I was extremely disconnected. So I was shy, I was introverted.
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  If there was anything that I've done that is about connecting
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  other people, it simply was a byproduct of me so badly wanting
• 3:42
  and seeking that myself. And so I think that's what a lot
• 3:46
  of people often do is they have their biggest life issues and
• 3:50
  personal business and they figure out how to try to build a
• 3:54
  business around it. Or at least if if that's
• 3:57
  assuming you are a solution focused human and many people
• 4:02
  are not. Yeah.
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  And studies show that 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs have lived or
• 4:07
  witnessed some sort of trauma in their childhood, particularly or
• 4:11
  in their lives. And you're definitely someone
• 4:13
  who has witnessed that. So can you share a little bit
• 4:17
  about your story and how you came from, you know, some of the
• 4:19
  traumatic things that happened in your childhood in the early
• 4:22
  adult years to now being such an amazingly connected person who
• 4:27
  has some of the most amazing relationships in the world and
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  has really figured it out in all areas of life.
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  You know, from Wellness to health to relationships to
• 4:37
  finances and business. No thank you.
• 4:39
  So let me say this. I'll, I'll preface it by saying
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  that I'm still figuring things out everyday.
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  I'm friends with a singer named Alice Cooper.
• 4:49
  He's and Alice lives actually here in Arizona.
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  So Alice, me and him have the same birthdays, except he's 20
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  years older than me. So he's in his mid 70s now.
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  And he had a song I used to listen to when I was around 18
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  years old and it was called you know, I'm 18 and, and the lyrics
• 5:07
  are I'm 18. I get confused everyday.
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  I'm 18. I just don't know what to say.
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  I'm 18. I want to get away.
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  And now I also used to be a drug addict when I listen to that
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  song, which is kind of ironic because I have an interview with
• 5:20
  Alice at one of the Genius Network annual events where he's
• 5:23
  been sober for many years from alcohol.
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  And I've been sober for many years from drugs and variety of
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  other behaviors and whatnot. But it all stems from childhood
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  in the experience. And I'm happy to share my story.
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  And I also want to say to the listeners, there's a lot of
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  people that share really difficult stories and they use
• 5:46
  it to manipulate other people. And, and so I try to be very
• 5:49
  careful not to have anyone like, you know, feel sorry for me or
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  whatever, because we've all had shit.
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  And there are every day I talk to people that have had
• 5:59
  experiences. I'm like, Oh my God, how, how
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  did you even survive this, let alone you're a really amazing
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  human being. So I, I come across that all the
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  time because some people that are really hurt, really damaged,
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  their life becomes damaging other people and other people
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  somehow learn to transmute it. And, and I, it does require a
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  lot of work. But so, you know, quick version
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  is I was that that is relevant because I could spend an hour
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  just talking about, you know, crazy stories.
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  But I, my, my mother died when I was four years old.
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  So my mother was a former nun. She left the convent because the
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  story I I heard she'd she'd gotten I'll, she met my father
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  in church. They ended up getting married.
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  I have one brother who's a little over four years older
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  than me, and she died of ovarian cancer when I was four.
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  My father was really traumatized by that.
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  And then our whole childhood, every year or two, we would move
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  to a different town. He was a locksmith.
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  He didn't make a tremendous amount of money, worked really
• 7:02
  hard. He was, you know, poor guy was
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  just very traumatized. As I've gotten older, I have a
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  lot of empathy, and you're able to witness parents, including
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  ones that have done sometimes bad things weren't very good.
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  And I can always speak from my own experience because there are
• 7:22
  some people not suggesting anyone should accept abuse from
• 7:26
  anyone as if it was OK because it's not OK.
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  And at the same time, I've learned enough that, like my
• 7:32
  friend Doctor Don Wood, who's a trauma therapist, he says if you
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  understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life,
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  it would make sense why they are the way that they are.
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  So the atmospheric conditions of my life were, you know, my
• 7:43
  father, my mother dying. And so he never remarried.
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  And we would, he would go and try to establish a business,
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  which he did to a certain degree.
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  And right when it started to work, he would uproot and go
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  move to another town and have to start all over again.
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  It was some weird form of self sabotage and just chasing
• 8:03
  something that he unfortunately can never find.
• 8:05
  And so throughout my childhood, we're moving a lot.
• 8:08
  I was real shy as really introverted, used to get picked
• 8:11
  on as a skinny kid. And then I, I had a period where
• 8:15
  I was getting molested, you know, so I was raped and
• 8:18
  molested as a kid. I was paid money not to say
• 8:21
  anything about it, which wired in my head that sex is shameful
• 8:24
  and dirty unless you pay for it. That later led to sexual
• 8:29
  addiction later in life. Didn't understand that in the
• 8:31
  very beginning what that even was because you even hear the
• 8:35
  term sex addiction that conjures up like, oh, pervert someone
• 8:38
  that just wants to have sex all the time or today, like a lot of
• 8:41
  porn or whatever. But it could be sexual anorexia
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  where you're not able to be sexual with somebody very
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  similar to anorexia. There's binging and purging.
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  Almost all forms of addiction are, you know, deprivation and
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  excess. And so throughout my life, it
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  was there was no real balance, you know, in my childhood at
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  all. It was very unstable.
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  And when I, you know, was 18 years old, it was the worst
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  state of drug addiction. So my first core addiction I
• 9:12
  thought was drugs, but it was real.
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  It was really sexual addiction. The drugs just happened to be
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  the way that I escaped the reality that was never OK.
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  I never felt OK. And it was weird because when I
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  was about 16 years old, I started smoking pot in high
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  school daily. Back then, I went to a high
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  school in Mesa, AZ. I, I would hide AA bong in my
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  locker. It's hard to get away with that
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  now. They have metal detectors at
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  this high school now. But back then you're just, you
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  know, doing whatever. And I started taking speed and
• 9:49
  there, you know, there was this rush to it and I was super shy
• 9:52
  and introverted and it just pulled me out of my shell.
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  It was the most bizarre thing. I became very social and
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  actually came quite popular in high school.
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  And I was, I wasn't a jock, I wasn't academically skilled.
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  I was as a partier, but I was able to be very social.
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  And so this fear that I lived with, I was able to numb it.
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  Now that was good because I saw, huh, you know, I mean, you, you
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  can actually interact with people in ways to where before I
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  was afraid to talk to people. It, it was the most bizarre
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  thing. And all of a sudden I became
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  very social because these inhibitions lifted.
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  The problem was I didn't have really good or any good
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  boundaries around moderation there.
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  There was no such thing as moderation.
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  And so all of a sudden I just wanted to be high all the time.
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  And what I've learned now from like my friend Doctor Anna Lemke
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  who wrote Dopamine Nation, she's this great addiction doctor,
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  it's at Stanford. The biochemical aspects of it,
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  like for instance, when they do studies on rats, if you take, if
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  you eat chocolate, give them chocolate, it's 55% increase in
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  dopamine. Sex is 150% increase in
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  dopamine. Cold plunges are 200% increase
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  in dopamine. Cocaine is a 225%.
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  That's why I like cocaine because it would just like, you
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  know, the neurotransmitter dopamine, the anticipation
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  neurotransmitter, just it would, it would in the moment it's,
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  it's an intense pleasure, but it leaves you feeling depleted.
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  And then methamphetamines is 1000% increase in dopamine.
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  So I was just taking a lot of drugs.
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  And so at my worst state, you know, and I left out a lot of
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  stuff in the childhood. I'm not going to go all into it,
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  but I weighed 105 lbs one week just because I've gone almost
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  the entire week with hardly eating anything.
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  And I remember this, this. I lived in this crappy house
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  with, you know, several roommates.
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  I mean, like everyone did drugs all day.
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  Because when you're a drug addict, you hang around other
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  drug addicts. I mean, your lifestyle tends to
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  be around other people that are living that sort of lifestyle.
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  And so I was, you know, selling drugs in order to support my
• 12:03
  drug addiction. And I was kind of functional in
• 12:08
  some areas. But as I started to deteriorate
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  and get skinnier and skinnier, all of my friends and all like,
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  people were scared even when they would see me, you know,
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  friends that weren't partying all the time, they were like,
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  man, you need help, you need help.
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  And my attitude back then is screw you.
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  Well, like, it didn't even occur to me.
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  And there was a time where I actually thought that everyone
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  did drugs. I, I, it's like, how do you go
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  throughout the day? And not like, why wouldn't you
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  get high? I mean, it was, it wasn't like
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  delusional, but it was just like, I thought a hell of a lot
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  more people did drugs. Well, it's probably delusional.
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  What am I thinking? Of course it was.
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  I wasn't living in a state of like fantasy completely, but I
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  was living in a state of hoping. And in most addiction does live
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  in in in in fantasy. So it's it wasn't there all the
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  time, but it was there a lot of the time.
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  And so yeah, I ended up the quick version is if there is a
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  quick version of this is I, I was one week on average, I
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  weighed about £120. There's one week where I just
• 13:17
  was just freebasing cocaine every single day.
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  There was a 3 1/2 month period where I would freebase means
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  smoking cocaine. And I was literally 3, not a
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  single day I missed in 3 1/2 months.
• 13:29
  And I was just a rail. I mean, I was, you know, I'd
• 13:33
  wake up to get high, I'd get high to go to bed by taking
• 13:36
  Downers, drinking at night, you know, waking up and getting
• 13:39
  whatever speed and drugs that I could.
• 13:43
  And I remember finding some change literally in I had this
• 13:49
  piece of crap pickup truck that I was getting changed from.
• 13:54
  I'd found some change in the in between the seats and I went to
• 13:58
  McDonald's, which I don't recommend anyone eating at
• 14:01
  McDonald's, but and I bought Chicken Mcnuggets and I was
• 14:05
  like, oh, I'm going to go home and eat them.
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  And I get home and I was going to it was going to be like kind
• 14:10
  of a ritual because I was so broke at that, that particular
• 14:13
  period of time. I didn't have any money.
• 14:15
  And I put them on the kitchen counter and then like a friend
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  shows up with drugs and all of a sudden I didn't care about the
• 14:26
  food anymore. We spent six hours just getting
• 14:30
  high and then finally, you know, and you can't eat when you're on
• 14:34
  amphetamines, you have no appetite.
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  And so I went to the, you know, the kitchen and these things
• 14:39
  were like rigor mortis and set in it whether but I ate them and
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  I was just like looking in the mirror and I look like I was
• 14:45
  looking at a skeleton. I was looking at a skeleton with
• 14:48
  skin and I was just, I was such a fucking wreck.
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  And I was like, I, you know, I need to do something now.
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  They didn't happen right away. I mean, it still went a few more
• 14:59
  months, but there was one period of time where I was in the in
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  the living room and there was this crazy roommate we had that
• 15:08
  busted in with a can of lighter fluid.
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  And back then I had long hair. You know, I it was almost you
• 15:15
  should see all the pictures of me there.
• 15:17
  I have, I have a handful. They're they're quite, they're
• 15:19
  quite funny dyed blonde hair. I mean, my hair was more blonde
• 15:24
  than your hair was and it was spiked at the top and long in
• 15:26
  the back look like some crazy bullet.
• 15:27
  I sort of kind of look like a blonde version of Theo Bond with
• 15:32
  like longer hair in the back and more spiked.
• 15:34
  I used to use eggs, egg whites and Knox gelatin to spike the
• 15:38
  hair because the moose back then wasn't as good.
• 15:40
  I'd have a blow dryer and I'd hang upside down in order to get
• 15:43
  so I'd look like a complete freak.
• 15:45
  But this guy shows up and just screaming, I'm going to burn
• 15:50
  this freaking butt. You know, I'll try to not use
• 15:52
  too much profanity, but he was shaking like squirting lighter
• 15:56
  fluid all over the freaking living room.
• 15:58
  And it got all over my hair. And this guy's losing his mind.
• 16:02
  And he holds up a lighter and lights it.
• 16:06
  He's I'm going to fucking torch this place.
• 16:08
  And I'm like talking him down. Like put it down, put it down.
• 16:12
  And I had another friend that was there kind of in the corner
• 16:15
  freaking out, like, you know, just didn't even know what I
• 16:19
  wasn't screaming, but like, Oh my God, like, what what is
• 16:22
  going? It is a scene out of a movie.
• 16:24
  And I talked him in the turn, the lighter, you know, calm the
• 16:27
  hell down. And at that point I was like, if
• 16:29
  I don't get out of here, I'm going to die, like.
• 16:31
  And so I packed up all my shit. I moved to New Mexico and ended
• 16:36
  up living in a trailer with my father for a couple of years.
• 16:41
  And the first six months were absolutely grueling because
• 16:43
  that's when I ended up getting sober.
• 16:45
  But I didn't go to a rehab center because I'd have the
• 16:47
  money. And so I was taking Tylenol and
• 16:49
  Advil and aspirin every day just because of the, the headaches
• 16:52
  were like insane. So I, I, I had to get, you know,
• 16:56
  I had to withdraw with really not, not any real structure or
• 17:01
  support. But what ended up happening was
• 17:04
  I, I got a job working at a health club, eventually selling
• 17:08
  gym memberships, which is funny because I was like this skinny
• 17:10
  guy. So I'd always wear long sleeve
• 17:13
  shirts and everything. And it is funny that the woman
• 17:17
  that hired me, I'm still friends with her to this day.
• 17:20
  Yeah. I, I became it, it was called
• 17:22
  Tom Young's Fitness in Las Cruces, NM.
• 17:25
  And I was selling $30,000 a month worth of gym memberships,
• 17:30
  which back then, you know, we're talking, this is the late 80s,
• 17:34
  was pretty damn good. It's still pretty damn good.
• 17:37
  Yeah, I don't. Yeah.
• 17:38
  Today I'm trying to think of, like, how much, you know, gym
• 17:40
  memberships were. But that's why I first had my
• 17:43
  exposure to really sales in person, even though as a kid, I
• 17:47
  was selling newspaper subscriptions door to door.
• 17:49
  And I learned that, you know, you got to sell something.
• 17:51
  And so then I ended up getting offered a job after working at
• 17:55
  this place for about a year. One of the members ran a mental
• 17:59
  hospital and he offered me a job as a mental health tech.
• 18:03
  I'm like, what's a mental health tech?
• 18:04
  Well, you know, you come to the hospital, you'll, you know, you
• 18:07
  just observe certain people, you just do paperwork and things
• 18:09
  like that. And so one of the things they
• 18:11
  had me do was I would drive the patients that were Alcoholics or
• 18:15
  drug addicts to a, a meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous, NA
• 18:19
  meetings, Narcotics Anonymous and CA meetings, Cocaine
• 18:22
  Anonymous. And I would sit in those
• 18:24
  meetings, I drive the van with the people that were in the
• 18:28
  hospital for drug treatment. And I would drive to and sit in
• 18:33
  these 12 step meetings that were often times at churches or, you
• 18:37
  know, places that would just, you know, contribute their space
• 18:41
  for 12 step meetings. And I sat through those meetings
• 18:44
  never realizing how valuable later in my life that would
• 18:48
  become not just for my own recovery, which was not, I
• 18:52
  wasn't really doing recovery. I didn't really even understand
• 18:55
  it because, you know, I, I just had a part of me that didn't
• 19:01
  want to accept the fact that I was like an addict.
• 19:04
  And so I had become sober from doing drugs, but that's only
• 19:10
  stage 1 sobriety. Stage 2 sobriety is dealing, you
• 19:12
  know, stage stage 1. Ernie Larson wrote a book
• 19:16
  called, you know, Stage 2 Recovery years ago.
• 19:19
  And stage 1 is you quit doing the behavior or the drugs.
• 19:22
  Stage 2 is dealing with the underlying, underlying issues
• 19:25
  which cause you to use, you know, drugs in the Dick as an
• 19:28
  addictive way of coping with life or dealing with life in the
• 19:32
  1st place. And that always has to do with
• 19:34
  human relationships. So addiction is a connection
• 19:37
  disorder. I got sober but I was still very
• 19:40
  disconnected. But my life was starting to work
• 19:43
  and so I accept I had not yet dealt with the core addiction
• 19:49
  which was the sexual addiction, which all goes back to trauma
• 19:54
  from my childhood. It was so hard to most of my
• 19:58
  childhood I can't even remember. So I've, you know, obviously
• 20:02
  many moments I do remember, but huge, probably 95% of my entire
• 20:06
  childhood I have no memory of. So, you know, So what ended up
• 20:10
  happening is over the years, look, I'm in my mid 50s now and
• 20:15
  I've done a ton of work. I've done thousands of in person
• 20:20
  meetings from 12 steps to men's groups, to yoga retreats, to
• 20:26
  plant medicine journeys to EMDR, to all kinds of somatic therapy,
• 20:31
  to diet, to exercise, you name it.
• 20:34
  I'm now fortunately, you know, I have an addiction recovery
• 20:38
  foundation and it's not because I'm some Angel philanthropist or
• 20:41
  anything like that. It just helps my own recovery
• 20:44
  and the way that you, I always tell people, if you think your
• 20:47
  life sucks, spend time with someone whose life sucks, is bad
• 20:51
  or worse than yours and be helpful, be of service to that
• 20:54
  person. And it's amazing how that does
• 20:57
  wonders to make you feel better. So when someone's sitting in a
• 21:00
  12 step group, as an example, it's the much of the bond is
• 21:04
  that you're you're there with other individuals that have gone
• 21:07
  through similar mutual suffering.
• 21:09
  And when you whatever you think is most private, like I'm the
• 21:13
  only one that feels this way. I'm the only one that has the
• 21:15
  shame or this guilt or this regret or has done this stuff
• 21:18
  that I can't imagine if anyone found out, you know, that I did
• 21:22
  this, you know, I would be exposed.
• 21:25
  You know, there's so much of that.
• 21:26
  What you learn through a lot of recovery work is that that which
• 21:30
  is most private or seems most private is most public.
• 21:33
  So many humans are going through this stuff.
• 21:35
  So many people have been sexually abused.
• 21:38
  Yeah. I mean and so that I can say
• 21:42
  more, but I should probably shut up and.
• 21:44
  Thank you. I I think your story's amazing
• 21:47
  and I, you know, have a different story, but very
• 21:49
  similar and connect with you on so many levels.
• 21:51
  And I know when I met you, I was like, oh, this is like my
• 21:54
  person, you know, my people, my family.
• 21:57
  So would you say that that was the biggest rock bottom moment
• 22:00
  in your life when you realize like I'm going to die if I don't
• 22:03
  get out of here and really made. That was one of them.
• 22:05
  It it you know, there's life has a series of defining moments.
• 22:11
  I wish I you would just have one dark night of the soul or maybe
• 22:15
  none at all. But I've had quite a few.
• 22:18
  I mean, I raised a child for a year that I found out while
• 22:21
  pursuing sole custody. I was not the biological father.
• 22:24
  And that was after doing, you know, intensive recovery and
• 22:28
  doing well and going to, you know, meetings for, for sexual
• 22:33
  addiction, Sex Addicts Anonymous, you know, there's,
• 22:36
  there's several different, you know, let me say that too,
• 22:39
  because about, about sex stuff, 'cause I, I always want to
• 22:42
  preface this because if there's any addiction that has a lot of
• 22:45
  shame attached to it and tons of people, especially young people,
• 22:49
  so many young people watch porn continuously, are addicted to
• 22:53
  porn, addicted to dating apps, you know, love addiction, sex
• 22:57
  addiction very much misunderstood.
• 23:00
  Certainly it's carnal, it's, it's pleasure, it feels good.
• 23:04
  I mean, all forms of getting high and, you know, addiction
• 23:07
  could be, you know, I, I have a friend, Chris Doyle, who I, I've
• 23:13
  interviewed and he's not a famous guy.
• 23:14
  He's just so amazing interventionist.
• 23:17
  And so when a family's dealing with some really hard, you know,
• 23:21
  usually drugs, alcohol, substances often refer people to
• 23:27
  work with, with Chris and I've asked, you know, 1000 people,
• 23:32
  what's your definition of addiction?
• 23:33
  And I could rattle off all kinds of definitions of addiction, but
• 23:36
  the real simple 1, he said is 2 words can't stop, can't stop.
• 23:40
  You know, it's not about willpower, it's not about
• 23:42
  intelligence. It's not a, it's just you, you
• 23:45
  have a compulsivity. So it's doing something that you
• 23:48
  want to do or you don't want to do that has negative
• 23:53
  consequences attached to it, right?
• 23:55
  Then it can make your life unmanaged and manageable.
• 23:57
  It can destroy your life. So that could be gambling, it
• 23:59
  could be work, it could be food. Let's go back to work.
• 24:02
  You know, many of our friends are, you know, because
• 24:04
  workaholism is a respectable addiction, which is a subtitle
• 24:08
  of a book on, on, on, on workaholism.
• 24:11
  So you get status, you make money.
• 24:14
  I mean, I am surrounded by work addicts that the world admires
• 24:19
  so many influencers. You know, I always make this
• 24:21
  joke that a lot of people that are not willing to get a
• 24:24
  therapist, walk into a 12 step group, really do some intensive
• 24:28
  work. What a lot of them do instead to
• 24:31
  give the illusion they're doing the work as they start a
• 24:33
  podcast. You know, and we talked about
• 24:36
  this a lot with with mostly guys.
• 24:38
  And so there's a lot of these people that you'll see like, Oh
• 24:41
  my God, they're so amazing because they have Gaboormante on
• 24:44
  their show or they have you know who who's actually I've had in
• 24:47
  my show, you know, a couple times I've had him at my event.
• 24:49
  He's a great guy. So you know, they have these
• 24:52
  incredible minds, but that has nothing to do with actually
• 24:57
  doing the work. So, so sexual addiction has a
• 25:01
  lot of shame attached to it. And my favorite definition of
• 25:05
  intimacy, cause sexual addiction is an intimacy disorder.
• 25:09
  So, you know, you can have substances, you can have a
• 25:12
  gambling, food, sex work, gaming, you know, there's a lot
• 25:16
  of people that are addicted to gaming, but sexual addiction has
• 25:20
  a certain type of shame that's attached to it because it's what
• 25:24
  it's called sex addict. Oh, should I be scared of a sex
• 25:27
  addict? Does that mean they're pervert?
• 25:28
  Some are, you know, they're they could be dangerous.
• 25:30
  But almost every form of violence, 90% of the time drugs
• 25:38
  and alcohol were involved. If you look at the stats from
• 25:41
  sexual assault or rape, most of the time someone's under the
• 25:46
  influence of some sort of drugs. There's 2.2 million people
• 25:51
  incarcerated in the United States, 40% committed to violent
• 25:55
  crime, 60% of not. We're putting a lot of addicts
• 25:59
  in cages that haven't committed a violent crime, but they broke
• 26:02
  the law. So there, you know, there's a
• 26:04
  lot to it. So it's a connection disorder.
• 26:07
  We have AI can explain the pandemic and wars through the
• 26:10
  lens of addiction, which I'm not going to do, but we are.
• 26:13
  We live in a culture that is filled with people trying to
• 26:16
  scratch the itch. And I believe addiction is a
• 26:20
  solution. It's not a problem, it's the
• 26:23
  solution to pain, depression. Now it is a solution that comes
• 26:28
  with problems. It creates problems, it can
• 26:30
  destroy your life, it can wreck other people's lives.
• 26:32
  So all that just as a context. So it's a connection disorder,
• 26:36
  disconnected. And if you're disconnected,
• 26:37
  you're going to look for a way to try to feel a particular way
• 26:40
  biochemically, you know, in your in your brain, in your body, in
• 26:45
  your being. And so intimacy, my favorite
• 26:50
  definition was given to me by a guy who spends his life pretty
• 26:54
  much sponsoring people with sexual addictions.
• 26:56
  That 80 year old man that when he first told me this.
• 26:59
  And he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe
• 27:03
  place. Abuse is anything that takes
• 27:06
  away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to
• 27:08
  make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place.
• 27:11
  So if you don't feel safe in the world, you're going to look for
• 27:15
  a way to scratch to feel safe and you're going to you want
• 27:20
  connection. But if you're so for me in my
• 27:24
  life, when you have your introduction to sexuality with
• 27:31
  very it could be violent, it could be aggressive, it could be
• 27:37
  humiliating. And when you're a child and
• 27:41
  that's done to you, you then have created this identity about
• 27:45
  yourself and you don't feel, you know, so I actually understood
• 27:49
  what it felt like, you know, between the ages of eight to 10
• 27:52
  years old to be used like a just a piece of meat.
• 27:56
  You know, I was just an object of someone's, you know, twisted
• 28:01
  ways to whatever the hell they they needed to do whatever
• 28:05
  happened to them. That's that's the weird part
• 28:06
  about it. I mean, I know this person had
• 28:09
  bad things happen to them too to make it OK.
• 28:12
  I just understand, you know, and so so that being said, going
• 28:20
  back to the dark night of the soul hit rock bottom, you know,
• 28:23
  I had the situation where I was, you know, just doing when I was
• 28:26
  in my I became a millionaire before the age of 30, teaching
• 28:30
  other service businesses how to build and grow their business.
• 28:33
  So going back, I'll take a detour here for a moment.
• 28:37
  So I learned marketing because I needed to eat, I needed to
• 28:40
  survive. Never thought I'd write books,
• 28:41
  never thought I'd speak in front of anyone.
• 28:43
  I mean, I was afraid to give a public speech.
• 28:45
  I mean, I remember the first time I really gave a talk.
• 28:48
  I like people like, oh, the first 3 to 5 minutes, you might
• 28:52
  be nervous. I was a freaking wreck the
• 28:54
  entire day. But I still just did it because
• 28:57
  I early on, I would be like, you know, you're either either
• 29:01
  frozen scared or you're moving. Yeah, you're you're you're
• 29:08
  you're just, you're frozen stiff or you're moving scared.
• 29:12
  That's what that's that's the words I was looking for.
• 29:14
  You're either just you can't move forward or you're just
• 29:18
  moving forward inside to operate with courage as have you, right.
• 29:22
  The thing, courage never feels good.
• 29:24
  Confidence feels good. But like I guarantee you, and a
• 29:27
  lot of people will not, as you sit with certain people that
• 29:30
  you'll interview, especially if you haven't built much rapport
• 29:33
  with them or you don't know them too well.
• 29:35
  You, you show up in front of the mic, you show up every day to in
• 29:39
  some cases to go to war And and not like war, like you're going
• 29:43
  to shoot someone, But I mean, it's just fucking hard.
• 29:47
  But you keep showing up. And so part of the thing about
• 29:49
  people that achieve success in any area part is just showing up
• 29:53
  and all. And, and if you can't muster the
• 29:57
  strength, the perseverance, or just the desire used in a good
• 30:03
  way. So most people's desires are
• 30:05
  actually not used in very productive ways.
• 30:08
  They're actually used in ways that hurt themselves and others.
• 30:11
  And that's why, you know, the number one killer from
• 30:14
  substances of people in the United States is sugar first,
• 30:18
  tobacco second, alcohol 3rd, and opiates 4th.
• 30:21
  I mean, people kill themselves with substances.
• 30:23
  One of the highest causes of, of death with young people right
• 30:26
  now is suicide. You know, in a world that you
• 30:29
  would think, oh, there's all this self help, there's all this
• 30:32
  great stuff. There's so many things to do,
• 30:34
  but there's incredible disconnection.
• 30:36
  We're more, we're more connected electronically than ever before
• 30:40
  in human history, but we're more disconnected as, as humans.
• 30:43
  So for my carpet cleaning business, going back to that, I
• 30:46
  got into the business guy. I just needed, you know, I just
• 30:48
  needed a way to pay my bills. And I had a friend talk me into,
• 30:53
  you know, buying some carpet cleaning equipment with some
• 30:56
  money that I had saved delivering newspapers.
• 30:59
  And, you know, basically going to New Mexico after I had
• 31:04
  become, you know, where I was getting sober.
• 31:06
  I, when I left out of the, the going to New Mexico stores the
• 31:10
  first few months when I was getting sober, I had a job
• 31:14
  delivering newspapers and not adult paper routes, not kids on
• 31:17
  bicycles. But like literally they would
• 31:20
  have these newspapers and you'd show up around 10:30 at PM and
• 31:26
  then you deliver papers throughout the night while
• 31:29
  people were sleeping and you'd, you know, put them on doorsteps
• 31:32
  and stuff. And I was so used to staying up
• 31:34
  like all night anyway way because I was previously a drug
• 31:37
  addict. And then I ended up getting the
• 31:39
  job at the at the Tom Young's Health club and selling gym
• 31:44
  memberships. But the first few months when I
• 31:46
  was just, it was like, and it allowed me to actually make
• 31:50
  money doing the, you know, working seven days a week.
• 31:55
  And so a lot of addicts and you say entrepreneurs.
• 31:59
  I don't know. That's interesting that 90.
• 32:01
  I'm sure it's accurate that have been traumatized.
• 32:05
  The reason they work so much is it's it's also a form of that
• 32:09
  because you become pleasure deaf.
• 32:11
  If you are traumatized and you're looking for higher levels
• 32:16
  of ways to just feel OK in the world and work and activity and
• 32:20
  accomplishment is better than shooting up heroin.
• 32:23
  It's better than robbing liquor stores, right?
• 32:26
  It is though, a way of often times not facing some of the
• 32:31
  stuff in in the the complex thing about it is when does it
• 32:35
  become healthy? When is it unhealthy?
• 32:37
  Like I'm not here to say sex is good or bad.
• 32:39
  It's how you interact with it. The work work is not good or bad
• 32:42
  gambling. You pick anything.
• 32:44
  Although gambling is probably not that much of A but I'll tell
• 32:47
  you you like you take crypto as an example right now, just at
• 32:51
  the moment where there are millions of people that are
• 32:54
  crypto addicts. You know they're staring in
• 32:56
  front of computers like doing day trading.
• 32:59
  It is highly charged, high adrenaline, tons of dopamine,
• 33:03
  lots of anticipation. You know every time you look at
• 33:06
  your phone, you are giving yourself a dopamine hit.
• 33:09
  Social media addiction is huge and people that have grown up in
• 33:13
  it are oblivious often times to the fact that you are a
• 33:16
  biochemical machine that is having in tech companies with
• 33:21
  their algorithms dictating your behavior like you're a freaking
• 33:25
  puppet. And so, and if you, if you're
• 33:28
  not aware that that could be happening, you can get sucked
• 33:31
  into the matrix and, and so that sort of thing.
• 33:34
  So when I have my carpet cleaning business, I, you know,
• 33:38
  I was broke and I learned marketing because I needed to
• 33:41
  eat, I needed to survive. I turn my carpet cleaning
• 33:45
  business around. And one thing I really pride
• 33:46
  myself over all these years is somewhere along the way I had
• 33:51
  developed an ethical code. Never take advantage of people.
• 33:55
  Do not RIP people off. I, I heard this quote early on
• 33:59
  in my life. Be nice to the people you meet
• 34:01
  on the way up. They're going to be the same
• 34:02
  people you meet on the way down. And it's like, and that has so
• 34:06
  come true. I mean, I often tell young
• 34:08
  people we live in a hustle culture.
• 34:11
  There's going to be a lot of people that are going to somehow
• 34:16
  convince you that success at any cost and to just, you know,
• 34:22
  sell, sell, sell. There's nothing wrong with
• 34:25
  opportunities. It's a big difference between
• 34:28
  pursuing an opportunity versus being an opportunist and if you
• 34:32
  have to take advantage or you're in a business where someone has
• 34:35
  to lose in order for you to win, change the model or get the fuck
• 34:39
  out of the business. And if you're seeing people that
• 34:42
  are taking advantage of other people for means or money, you
• 34:46
  know, not a good thing. And I understand the draw.
• 34:50
  Like when you're young, you know, Ferraris and Lamborghinis
• 34:54
  and big houses and mansions and expensive jewelry and you know,
• 34:59
  it's, it's, it's all and that's, and there's nothing wrong with
• 35:02
  that. It's just how you interact with
• 35:05
  it. And so if the goal is status,
• 35:09
  you're going to hang around people that you know, are they
• 35:13
  going to elevate my status? You're going to view everyone
• 35:15
  through the lens of how big are their followers?
• 35:17
  How much money do they have? Who do they know?
• 35:20
  And you know, and you can get access to all kinds of stuff
• 35:23
  through fame and notoriety and all that.
• 35:26
  I have a love hate relationship with it because of course
• 35:29
  there's a part of me that wants the world to like me and think
• 35:31
  I'm really cool and all that sort of stuff.
• 35:33
  But man, it is super seductive and it can misinform you if you
• 35:37
  pursue that. So my whole thing is pursue
• 35:39
  growth, not status. And so in a world of marketers
• 35:44
  where 25%, my buddy John Carlton, who's a copywriter,
• 35:47
  last time I talked to me, he goes I think 20 and he's one of
• 35:50
  the top copywriters in the world.
• 35:52
  He's now in his 70s and he said, I think all the marketers and
• 35:56
  the influencers and stuff, yeah, I think 25% of them are
• 35:59
  psychopaths, 25% of sociopaths, 25% of narcissists and the other
• 36:04
  25% are normal people. Yeah, I think that's.
• 36:07
  Just people in general, yeah. Exactly.
• 36:09
  Yeah, I think there's fine, not that many psychopaths or
• 36:12
  sociopaths in general, but in in the business world, tons of Coos
• 36:17
  that are. I mean, like, here's the
• 36:19
  unfortunate thing, Hannah is like the people running the
• 36:21
  world at high levels now. It's shifting quite a bit, which
• 36:24
  I I like seeing. You know, I just was talking to
• 36:27
  Bobby Kennedy last night. He was a buddy of mine.
• 36:29
  He's great. He's been in recovery for 40
• 36:32
  years this year. Goes to a 12 step meeting every
• 36:35
  day. He meditates every day, works
• 36:37
  out every day. I think he's the first
• 36:38
  presidential candidate that I've ever met that's not a
• 36:41
  narcissist, and I've met a few. Yeah, I mean, you have, you have
• 36:45
  to be like most the leaders of the world, they are extremely
• 36:49
  traumatized, narcissist and. Absolutely.
• 36:52
  Well, the other thing too is Gary Halbert used to say this to
• 36:54
  me all the time. He's the guy at first learn
• 36:56
  marketing from the crazy ass copywriter who was, you know, an
• 36:59
  addict. We used to have lots of
• 37:00
  conversations back then. He died in 2006.
• 37:03
  But he said the world advances on the backs of its neurotics.
• 37:08
  So the world does indeed advance as a result of crazy people.
• 37:13
  The question is, are these crazy people destructive?
• 37:15
  And some are, you know, some are and others aren't.
• 37:19
  So, you know, my, my goal is like, keep elevating my
• 37:22
  consciousness. I always think to myself, 10
• 37:26
  years from now, I'm going to look back and I was like, I had
• 37:28
  that. I was doing that podcast with
• 37:29
  Hannah and, and boy, I said some really stupid shit and I'm just,
• 37:33
  you know, pontificating some stuff that I think is true.
• 37:36
  But boy, I wish I would have really rethought that.
• 37:38
  So always come from the state that, you know, I trying to do
• 37:41
  the best I can. You know, I'm trying to figure
• 37:43
  stuff out. I'm always seeking, I'm always
• 37:46
  learning, but you know, business is great and building a business
• 37:49
  and we can talk about any of that stuff.
• 37:50
  But the, you know, that was probably a lot more than maybe
• 37:53
  the listeners needed to, to, to hear what it what I would say,
• 37:57
  wherever you're at in your life, if you have pain, if you have
• 37:59
  struggles, if your life is unmanageable, if you find
• 38:02
  yourself hurting yourself or others, if you find yourself
• 38:04
  being taken advantage because you're a giver.
• 38:07
  I mean, I, I really care about reaching givers, You know, even
• 38:09
  my book, what's in it for them? The whole goal of that book is
• 38:13
  to is to take givers that are genuinely caring and help them
• 38:19
  better boundary themselves from takers and to also know that if
• 38:23
  you're a giver in life, it's not a matter if you're going to be
• 38:25
  taken advantage of no matter what sort of walls and, and and
• 38:29
  things you are going to get taken advantage of.
• 38:31
  But that's how you develop the the ability to smoke out and to
• 38:35
  identify and to develop your Spidey senses of who's a taker
• 38:40
  and who's a giver so that you can spend more of your life.
• 38:43
  You know, there's that great Zig Ziglar line as you can have
• 38:45
  anything you want in life if you help enough other people get
• 38:48
  what they want. But my friend Martin Howey, you
• 38:52
  know, gave me a caveat to that. That's actually not true.
• 38:55
  You can help a lot of people get what they want in life.
• 38:58
  That won't do a damn thing for you.
• 39:00
  They will take advantage of you. And some of those people will
• 39:02
  use and abuse you. And it's unfortunate.
• 39:06
  That sucks. But it's through those
• 39:08
  experiences that if you realize that you don't lose unless you
• 39:12
  lose the lesson, you're either winning or you're learning,
• 39:15
  right? So when you go through those
• 39:19
  experiences you like, oh, I ignored that red flag.
• 39:22
  The red flags were there. I just ignored them.
• 39:25
  And sometimes there's yellow flags and I didn't even know
• 39:28
  what yellow flags were in the very beginning.
• 39:30
  I didn't I didn't even you know, but now I notice all that stuff.
• 39:33
  So I do I still, you know, in in the state of trying to be
• 39:36
  helpful and, you know, I try to be accommodating to people.
• 39:40
  I don't ever want to be a jerk. I mean, one of my, you know,
• 39:44
  sometimes you have to shut people off because they're just
• 39:46
  so annoyingly persistent without any regard for how does this fit
• 39:52
  into your time and life? And they want what they want so
• 39:55
  badly that they don't consider, you know, how this comes across.
• 39:59
  That's rare. Most people are actually trying
• 40:01
  to do good stuff. But The thing is, is like, I I
• 40:04
  just want a better boundary myself.
• 40:05
  And and by the way, if anyone wants to know what someone is
• 40:08
  about if they're trying to reach a a highly.
• 40:12
  You know, influential person as an example, author speakers look
• 40:15
  at what the hell they write books about.
• 40:17
  If you want to know what someone's trying to figure out
• 40:19
  in their life, what are they writing a book about?
• 40:21
  What are they teaching the seminar about?
• 40:23
  Why are they talking about those?
• 40:24
  That's what they're interested in.
• 40:26
  So you know in in, in learn the difference between people that
• 40:29
  are truly successful and reporters of success because the
• 40:33
  world is filled with reporters of success that have not had any
• 40:37
  success. They just talk about it and they
• 40:39
  can be eloquent and people get, but like, have they made money?
• 40:42
  Have they really changed other people's lives?
• 40:45
  You know, and, and get, you know, get rid of this nonsense
• 40:48
  of like, we're going to change the world.
• 40:50
  If you, if anyone's going to change the world starts with one
• 40:53
  life 2351015 you know, do that. And then you really know if you
• 41:00
  got something you know and. And so anyway.
• 41:03
  I love that and I've, you know, I, I was on a plant medicine
• 41:07
  journey. You've been a massive part of
• 41:09
  this transformation I've been on over the past year and I joined
• 41:13
  Genius network not knowing much of anything about you or about
• 41:17
  addiction or anything. You know, my brother's struggles
• 41:19
  from addiction and has his whole life.
• 41:21
  And now I realize I do too. I didn't, I didn't really know
• 41:24
  that, but you know, I was on a plant medicine journey maybe
• 41:27
  four or five months ago and all I heard for seven hours was you
• 41:31
  saying the opposite of addiction is connection.
• 41:34
  The opposite of addiction is connection.
• 41:35
  And I just felt excruciating physical pain throughout my
• 41:38
  whole body. And that's when I realized like,
• 41:41
  oh shit, I guess I'm an addict because I'm, you know,
• 41:43
  everything from work and money and success to food has been my
• 41:48
  most difficult one. I've for a year.
• 41:50
  I mean, I was doing drugs from 14 to 23 probably, you know,
• 41:57
  very, very frequently, even though I was still a high
• 41:59
  producer, high achiever on the work days and then a complete
• 42:04
  addict on the weekends and every kind of drug in the book and
• 42:09
  relationship addiction always, never single, always
• 42:12
  relationship to relationship to relationship specifically with
• 42:15
  addicts, you know, so it's that was really big eye opener for me
• 42:21
  and realize that so many people because of you, I realize so
• 42:25
  many people struggle with addiction.
• 42:26
  They don't, they may not even know it or want to admit it.
• 42:29
  And it is a disconnection problem.
• 42:31
  And I realized how disconnected I personally was and how if I
• 42:35
  just sit there with myself with no stimulation and no company,
• 42:38
  I'm miserable. Right.
• 42:40
  Yeah, and I didn't want to live my life that way.
• 42:42
  And that's why for me, I was like, before this kind of
• 42:46
  journey, I was on a podcast and they're like, oh, what are your
• 42:49
  goals next? I'm like, oh, I just, I'm going
• 42:50
  to be a billionaire. That's my goal.
• 42:51
  But you know, and I, and then someone challenged me on that
• 42:55
  and we're like, well, why do you want to be a billionaire?
• 42:56
  I was like, well, the more money I make, the more impact I can
• 42:58
  have. And they're like, not true.
• 43:00
  Yes, you can do a lot with money, but you can impact one
• 43:03
  life at a time and money doesn't build that relationship.
• 43:08
  You can buy someone something or buy a well in Africa and help
• 43:11
  with water, like things like that.
• 43:13
  But you can also have this conversation and you can change
• 43:15
  somebody's life and save a life, can have an impact that way that
• 43:19
  has nothing to do with having more money.
• 43:21
  And so that really is what made me slow down and be like, what
• 43:24
  are my intentions? And is that just a means for me
• 43:27
  to continue to be disconnected and continue to hit dopamine
• 43:30
  hits for the rest of my life? Because obviously the likelihood
• 43:33
  of being a billionaire is a lifelong goal and probably never
• 43:36
  going to happen. And it's a way to stay
• 43:39
  disconnected forever. And it's.
• 43:42
  I didn't want to live that way. And yeah.
• 43:45
  That's a huge insight. I mean is really huge insight.
• 43:48
  And people could maybe minimize the significance of that because
• 43:52
  they're only going to see things through the lens of their life.
• 43:54
  So they can say, well, you know, you're just trying to pursue
• 43:56
  money and what is all this sort of stuff and everything like
• 43:59
  that. But ultimately, you know, this,
• 44:02
  this is our lives. I'm not here to tell anyone what
• 44:04
  success is. And it would be foolish for me
• 44:07
  to say, hey, Hannah, here's if you do this, this and this,
• 44:11
  you're going to be successful. Now there are things like if you
• 44:13
  say I want to run, you know, a marathon or I want to be in a,
• 44:19
  an Iron Man and I want to do it in this period of time.
• 44:21
  And if I do that, you know, I'll be successful.
• 44:23
  And there's, you can be specific and give strategies and diet and
• 44:27
  exercise and trainers and you could actually reach that goal
• 44:30
  and say you've had success there, but that doesn't mean
• 44:32
  you're a successful person. I mean, I, I know a lot of
• 44:35
  people that are extraordinarily wealthy that I would not
• 44:38
  consider successful at all. And I know people that, you
• 44:42
  know, make not a lot of money that are some of the most
• 44:45
  caring, compassionate, kind, connected, happy people that
• 44:50
  don't harm other people, that inspire other people that are
• 44:53
  incredible. And I know people that have more
• 44:56
  financial means that it's completely misused.
• 44:59
  And I say all of this never poo pooing money.
• 45:01
  I mean, money is a great tool. Like people that say money can't
• 45:05
  buy happiness. It's like silly.
• 45:06
  I buy happiness all the time and, and, and I also say, you
• 45:10
  know, if, if you think money can't buy happiness, you haven't
• 45:13
  given enough of it away because there you can change someone's
• 45:16
  life. They can't afford medical care.
• 45:18
  They can't, you know, support their children that, that have
• 45:21
  gotten into some really crazy life situation where they were
• 45:26
  taken advantage of again, it it could often lead to illness or
• 45:29
  just something that had nothing to do with them doing anything
• 45:32
  wrong. They could be a, you know, an
• 45:34
  innocent bystander and have had, you know, their their legs taken
• 45:38
  out from under them and you could support people in those
• 45:41
  particular cases, which is way different than going out and
• 45:44
  just giving money to everyone that wants to borrow it.
• 45:46
  When you know one of the, and you know this all right, one of
• 45:48
  the downsides of having some sort of financial success is the
• 45:53
  beggars come out of the woodworks.
• 45:56
  I mean, you live in a world where people simultaneously
• 45:58
  resenting you for being successful while also begging
• 46:02
  from you because they want your money.
• 46:03
  And you have to discern between, well, how do I use the money?
• 46:07
  What's the best way? You know, this is really
• 46:09
  interesting book called Happy Money, which you know, talks
• 46:12
  about the ways to use money in a way to make yourself happy.
• 46:16
  But I look at money in serious ways and also comical ways
• 46:20
  because it is bizarre. People will lie, cheat, steal,
• 46:25
  kill other people for money. They will do heinous crimes in
• 46:29
  order to get money. And I often look at some of
• 46:31
  these people going, my God, if you use that creativity in a
• 46:35
  more productive, ethical way, you could change the fucking
• 46:38
  world. Like what?
• 46:39
  Like how do you get so off track?
• 46:41
  And usually it's because of trauma.
• 46:42
  It's it's usually because they just haven't dealt or they had
• 46:46
  terrible mentors. Like winners find ways to win
• 46:50
  and losers find ways to lose. And people have often get really
• 46:55
  bad training. And The funny thing about doing
• 46:58
  addiction recovery for all the years that I've done and the
• 47:00
  rooms that I pursue, which dictates so much of how I view
• 47:05
  the world currently, which is in some ways good and maybe some
• 47:08
  ways not. I don't know.
• 47:10
  Like I have sat in rooms with billionaires, Academy
• 47:14
  award-winning actors and actresses because I started
• 47:17
  doing high profile groups that I would literally join thinking
• 47:22
  that was the way to do addiction recovery.
• 47:24
  Let's find the very best addiction expert in the world
• 47:27
  and hire them. And I often found myself using
• 47:30
  that as a cop out from doing real work.
• 47:33
  You know, sometimes like the cliche, go to a 12 step group in
• 47:37
  a church basement in a bad part of town.
• 47:39
  You, you may get better recovery from that than going and hiring,
• 47:44
  you know, the famous psychiatrist that wrote a book,
• 47:47
  right? So, but I've sat in plenty of
• 47:50
  rooms with people, NBA players, NFL players, politicians,
• 47:54
  clergy, famous musicians that the world admires.
• 47:58
  And if you saw the struggles and the difficulty in the challenges
• 48:03
  some of these people had, you would not want their lives.
• 48:05
  But outside of those rooms, everybody wants their life.
• 48:09
  Everybody envies them. And it's just like, you have no
• 48:12
  fucking idea, like the pain and struggle that people go through.
• 48:17
  And so I, I, I want to be a hero to entrepreneurs and I want to
• 48:21
  be a hero to people that struggle with addiction.
• 48:23
  I'm not that concerned all that much with academia, although I
• 48:26
  know a lot of people in academia that are pretty cool, but I know
• 48:29
  a lot that are complete assholes and bureaucrats and, you know,
• 48:33
  all that sort of stuff. I mean, I dabble in politics a
• 48:36
  little bit because I'm just trying to use my connection
• 48:39
  abilities to influence, you know, certain people to try to
• 48:42
  stop the tyranny. You know, that's why I've done,
• 48:45
  you know, interviews with a lot of pretty well known people in
• 48:47
  that world. But you know, for the most part,
• 48:51
  there's this ROM Das line is, you know, we're all just trying
• 48:53
  to walk each other home. You know, when I can step away
• 48:56
  from the business, when I can step away from stuff like what
• 48:58
  are we here for? You know, we're here to be
• 49:00
  connected, we're here to feel good.
• 49:02
  We're here to do good work. Sometimes that is, let's go out
• 49:04
  and make money. Go for it.
• 49:06
  I mean, if you're an ambitious person, don't waste that talent.
• 49:10
  Don't feel guilty about wanting what you know, if you want to,
• 49:13
  you know, if I, if I say that, you know, a Ferrari is just like
• 49:16
  some weird status symbol, but you really want to Ferrari, who
• 49:18
  gives a shit what I think? You know, go get your Ferrari.
• 49:21
  Go go get whatever it is you want.
• 49:22
  Just don't, you know, don't let it own.
• 49:26
  You own the things that you get. If you want the big house.
• 49:30
  And I've learned I had a big house.
• 49:33
  You've been in the house that I sold.
• 49:35
  Yeah. Beautiful.
• 49:36
  One of the nicest views of the entire town of Paradise Valley.
• 49:39
  I spent 2 1/2 years remodeling this house in the mountain and
• 49:42
  by the time I was done, I couldn't enjoy it anymore
• 49:44
  because it wasn't. This is like this is not.
• 49:47
  It drained the life out of me and I realized I never owned
• 49:49
  that house. That house owned me.
• 49:51
  How stupid, how much of like of of of time did I waste with a
• 49:56
  material item that just caused me stress, You know, it it but
• 50:01
  but that's the beauty of pain. The 1st chapter of my book.
• 50:06
  What's in it for them is be a pain detective.
• 50:08
  You know, Yeah, up to this point we've been talking about my
• 50:11
  struggles. But that's what when you can
• 50:14
  transform pain into productivity, when you can take
• 50:18
  pain and trauma and you can turn it into some sort of triumph.
• 50:22
  You know, I'm trying to find analogies that rhyme with the T
• 50:24
  word or the P word or whatever. But you know, the point is, is
• 50:28
  when you can take your your shit in your life and use it as some
• 50:33
  sort of fertilizer for yourself and others, then it all makes
• 50:37
  sense. Because I would go to 12 step
• 50:39
  meetings early on in recovery and I'd hear people be like, you
• 50:42
  know, addiction is a gift. I'm like, how, how is this a
• 50:44
  fucking gift? I hate this.
• 50:47
  I can't control my life. You know, I'm trying.
• 50:49
  I tell myself, you know, it's there was this lyric from the
• 50:52
  song called Bad Houses by this crazy ass industrial band called
• 50:57
  Big Black. And it had a line that said I
• 50:59
  tell myself I will not go even as I drive there.
• 51:02
  And I would be like, I'm not going to go to that house.
• 51:04
  I'm not going to go to that place while I'm driving to that
• 51:07
  place in that draw. It's so painful psychologically.
• 51:13
  And then you get there and you fuck up your life and you're
• 51:16
  like, why did I do this? And what I would say is, I wish,
• 51:21
  you know, what I love about you is that you're doing a lot of
• 51:24
  heavy work at A at an age. I wish I would have done that
• 51:29
  stuff because I spent a couple decades of my life being a
• 51:31
  pretty functional addict, gotten sober from drugs.
• 51:35
  But I was going out and spending money on escorts, paying for sex
• 51:38
  because I had an arousal template, which everyone does
• 51:42
  based on my first introduction, which was very maladaptive and
• 51:45
  very dysfunctional to sexuality. And I didn't.
• 51:48
  I wanted to be connected, I wanted to feel good.
• 51:51
  I wanted to have sex. I wanted to hold somebody.
• 51:55
  And I didn't know who to trust because I was betrayed.
• 51:57
  And then I would get in these relationships that they would
• 52:00
  lie to me and they would betray me.
• 52:02
  And what ends up happening, though, is all doing that to
• 52:04
  each other. You know, you find people's
• 52:06
  whose dense match your dense and relationships are messy.
• 52:09
  They they are. And then you often times in the
• 52:12
  process of trying to become a whole, you know, I mean, you're
• 52:16
  going to have maybe some soap operas, you're going to have
• 52:18
  some crazy shit and no one wants to talk about it.
• 52:21
  It's not like you know, that that's funny is, you know,
• 52:24
  social media is pretty much an advertisement for a life that
• 52:27
  nobody lives. You know, it, it really kind of
• 52:31
  is. So you got to take it as a grain
• 52:32
  of salt. You can learn stuff, you can
• 52:34
  read quotes, you can get business advice.
• 52:36
  It's entertaining, but man, don't take like even before
• 52:40
  social media people, you like media's bullshit.
• 52:42
  Putting the word social in it doesn't all of a sudden make it
• 52:45
  real. It's all bullshit, you know, and
• 52:47
  when I say it's all bullshit, that doesn't mean there's not
• 52:49
  good stuff in there. You just got to sift through it.
• 52:52
  You know, there's, there's some diamonds in, in the rough, but
• 52:56
  most people are just wanting to get attention and wanting to get
• 53:00
  views and you know, you know, everyone has a freaking
• 53:03
  microphone these days and that's fine.
• 53:06
  But just like really say, does you know, what do I, what do I
• 53:10
  want solved in my life? What do I need to make work?
• 53:13
  And what's the best ways to go about doing that?
• 53:16
  And am I willing to be committed to something that matters
• 53:20
  because everyone cares. It might not the recent one, but
• 53:26
  the annual event before I said to everyone in the audience, you
• 53:30
  know, how many of you care about your family?
• 53:33
  How many of you care about your health?
• 53:34
  How many of you care about your clients?
• 53:36
  How many of you care about your business?
• 53:37
  How many, you know, different things that I asked care and
• 53:41
  everyone raised their hand. I go, OK, but are you committed
• 53:45
  to them? Because you can say you care
• 53:47
  about your kids, but you haven't seen your kids in a long time.
• 53:49
  You spend no time, you know, you care about your health, but look
• 53:52
  at what you eat. You're not exercising at all,
• 53:54
  right? You know, are you committed?
• 53:56
  So caring and commitment are two completely different things and
• 54:00
  we can confuse one with the other so.
• 54:04
  Yeah, yeah, I, I think it's, I mean it, it, I'm the the whole
• 54:13
  like you, everything you see online and everything you hear
• 54:15
  from people. We talk about this like don't
• 54:17
  hate the messenger or what? What's the quote?
• 54:19
  You told me if if, if you judge the message by the messenger.
• 54:22
  Yeah, so, so this crazy ass, grumpy curmudgeonous marketing
• 54:27
  guy, Dan Kennedy, very smart guy.
• 54:29
  I mean, all his books are great, you know, as long as I wouldn't
• 54:34
  recommend his advice on how to deal with.
• 54:36
  There's this funny thing I had Dan speaking at one of my
• 54:39
  events. He's, I used to speak at many of
• 54:41
  his events early on in my careers in the 90s.
• 54:43
  And I used to speak at most of his events.
• 54:45
  And we used to have lunch every week when he lived in Phoenix
• 54:49
  for a couple years. And we would talk about people
• 54:52
  in the expert business in the, in the information marketers and
• 54:57
  whatnot. And it's the quote was if you
• 54:59
  ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll
• 55:02
  never read another book or attend another seminar.
• 55:05
  Yep. And yeah.
• 55:05
  And you got to take all of it with the grain of salt cause a
• 55:07
  lot of people have really great advice that don't follow it.
• 55:11
  I mean, the majority of people that write self help books are
• 55:15
  not very good at following their advice.
• 55:17
  And some are, some are amazing. So this is not like to throw a
• 55:21
  whole industry under the bus. It's not.
• 55:24
  There's just a lot to be said about that term.
• 55:26
  Those that can't teach. And I always have to, you know,
• 55:29
  you have to check yourself before you wreck yourself sort
• 55:31
  of thing. Where it's like, if I'm
• 55:33
  dispensing this advice, am I doing it as a cop out to give
• 55:37
  the illusion that I live this way?
• 55:39
  Or is it because I'm trying to live into this message that I
• 55:43
  had? And everyone I think does that
• 55:44
  to a certain degree. You know, you, you've seen James
• 55:48
  Bond movies, right? Yeah.
• 55:51
  If you go see a James Bond movie, think about it.
• 55:55
  Lots of talents can kill people, has all kinds of the coolest
• 55:59
  shit, like all the gadgets and the cars and things that you
• 56:02
  know a watch that can, you know, blow up a country.
• 56:05
  Like all that stuff always gets the the girl always saves the
• 56:10
  world, or at least parts of it. But life is not that cool.
• 56:15
  Life is mundane. Life is boring.
• 56:18
  If you were to just do a a movie of a real hour and a half or two
• 56:23
  hours of someone's life, no one would want to watch it.
• 56:27
  Except, you know, we all have those moments where that scene
• 56:30
  could have been a great movie, right?
• 56:32
  But life is mundane and boring. And so we find often times
• 56:37
  escapism into fantasy and everything's.
• 56:39
  But the point is, we wake up every day and we write a love
• 56:43
  story, we write a comedy, we write a tragedy, we write a
• 56:48
  drama. You know, we could write
• 56:50
  something magical or we can write something that's horrific.
• 56:53
  A lot of people wake up every day and their life is a horror
• 56:56
  show. It's a horror movie, You know,
• 56:58
  it's a drama, it's paint. It's just fucking soap opera.
• 57:01
  But we're the CEO of our life, and you can write whatever you
• 57:04
  want and you can start writing a different script.
• 57:07
  You can just change the ending of it.
• 57:09
  You can just change the beginning.
• 57:11
  It's a bit of a game, but you want to design A game that you
• 57:13
  actually like. Now all that being said, and for
• 57:15
  timing purposes, what I'd like to do is come back and do, which
• 57:20
  I'm happy to, if you will have me to come back and do an
• 57:25
  episode just on business strategy and how to build and
• 57:27
  grow a business and how to position yourself and how to,
• 57:30
  you know, how to add tremendous value to people.
• 57:33
  How to get, you know, how, how to go after high end clients if
• 57:35
  you want. Because I run one of the highest
• 57:36
  level groups in the world. I, you know, we've not talked
• 57:40
  about that today. And that's fine.
• 57:42
  Because I think like if, if I would say here's a book on how
• 57:47
  to make $1,000,000 or here's $1,000,000, most people would
• 57:52
  say I'll just take the $1,000,000.
• 57:53
  They don't want to do all the work over here.
• 57:55
  They don't want to read the book.
• 57:56
  They don't want to do all that sort of shit.
• 57:58
  People just think, oh, if I can just go get the money, I'm going
• 58:01
  to solve all my problems. But I'll tell you that's why the
• 58:04
  majority of lottery winners within a couple of years are
• 58:08
  more in debt than they were before they won the lottery.
• 58:10
  It's also why they changed lotteries over the years to not
• 58:13
  give them all the money upfront, but to divvy it out because they
• 58:15
  know that everyone loses it if they get a big.
• 58:18
  Because anything received free of charge is seldom valued if
• 58:22
  you don't like. There's a big difference between
• 58:24
  earning money versus inheriting it or having a lucky deal.
• 58:28
  Or worse, making money by taking advantage of some people.
• 58:32
  You like everything you freaking do.
• 58:34
  You're either making a withdrawal or you're making a
• 58:37
  deposit. And people that take more
• 58:39
  withdrawals, that take more than they give, I think it will
• 58:43
  eventually catch up with you. I'm thinking about like, I own
• 58:46
  many websites I own. I own transformation.com,
• 58:49
  hotseat.com, spaceuniversity.com, like all
• 58:53
  kinds of shit. Some I won't even rattle off,
• 58:55
  But it's like I, I have assholes finish last.
• 59:00
  My buddy Tucker Carlson. I mean, Tucker, Tucker's a
• 59:04
  friend of mine, Tucker Max, you know, he he he he wrote, you
• 59:08
  know, hope they serve beer in hell.
• 59:10
  He's he's a crazy guy, but he's a great writer and very smart
• 59:13
  when it comes to books. And he had a one of his four
• 59:17
  number one New York Times bestsellers is assholes finish
• 59:20
  first. And it's basically his like
• 59:23
  fucking ridiculous dating life. And the guys transformed quite a
• 59:26
  bit. I actually, he even told me that
• 59:29
  I, I was the impetus for him doing plant medicines years ago
• 59:34
  when I had, I'm the first person in the world to have before and
• 59:37
  after brain scans of doing ibogaine and five MEO DMT with
• 59:42
  that old venture that was done like at this stage nine years
• 59:45
  ago. But I was sharing that with
• 59:47
  Tucker and Tucker, for whatever reason, he told me he started
• 59:50
  going down the whole path of really, you know, now he's a
• 59:53
  real, he writes about it and real, real skilled expert.
• 59:56
  But you know, he wrote this book called Assholes Finish First at
• 59:59
  a stage in his life where it sold a lot of books.
• 1:00:02
  And it's funny, but I think assholes finish last.
• 1:00:06
  It it depends on where you catch them in the stage, You know,
• 1:00:10
  because you can, when someone's young and they're attractive and
• 1:00:14
  they got a lot of energy, you, you know, you can go out and.
• 1:00:17
  You know, do a lot of stuff, you can burn a lot of bridges and
• 1:00:20
  still go to the highest ranks of, of, of status and fame and
• 1:00:24
  success. But let's see those people 10
• 1:00:26
  years later. Let's see those people 20 years
• 1:00:28
  later. Did they really win?
• 1:00:30
  You know, so the, the, the way to win is not just winning the
• 1:00:35
  game, it's or winning the battle, it's winning the war.
• 1:00:39
  And, and I don't mean a war like a violent war.
• 1:00:42
  It's like his life is difficult. It just is.
• 1:00:46
  And if your life is not difficult, then you're going to
• 1:00:50
  be faced with challenges. And I'm, and I don't think life
• 1:00:53
  should be a struggle or life should be difficult all the
• 1:00:55
  time. There's going to be moments of,
• 1:00:57
  you know, connection and there's going to be moments of
• 1:00:59
  disconnection. The question is, how do you
• 1:01:02
  build your stamina? How do you build the
• 1:01:04
  relationships that you have? So for instance, my book, What's
• 1:01:08
  in it for them? It's a lot of capabilities of
• 1:01:10
  how most people want to know, how do you meet all these well
• 1:01:13
  known people? Because they look at that as
• 1:01:15
  access. They look at that, oh, I'm going
• 1:01:16
  to be more successful if I go meet all these famous people.
• 1:01:19
  So I try to sell people what they want, but give them what
• 1:01:21
  they need. What they really need is not
• 1:01:23
  capabilities. They need character.
• 1:01:25
  Because if you give capabilities as someone with shitty
• 1:01:28
  character, they do a lot of damage.
• 1:01:30
  If you take a driven entrepreneur without ethics and
• 1:01:32
  morals and without care and compassion, they will destroy
• 1:01:35
  the fucking world and they, or at least try.
• 1:01:38
  So you know, my whole thing is let's empower people that are
• 1:01:42
  givers to be better givers and to be more discerning with who
• 1:01:46
  gets their time, attention, money, effort and energy.
• 1:01:49
  And how do you find that? And people, you look for the
• 1:01:51
  pain because almost all money and opportunity comes from
• 1:01:55
  transforming other people's bad news into good news.
• 1:01:58
  And if you can transform your bad news into good news and you
• 1:02:01
  can then share that with other people, that's doing pretty damn
• 1:02:06
  good in the world. I mean, you getting in front of
• 1:02:08
  a microphone consistently and doing this just to talk to
• 1:02:12
  people and then put that out there and share that with
• 1:02:14
  people. Someone, not everyone, but
• 1:02:16
  someone's going to hear something that's going to be,
• 1:02:18
  oh, you know, that makes sense that that is planted a seed.
• 1:02:22
  And I think the best thing we can do is plant good seeds,
• 1:02:26
  water and nourish those seeds. Don't worry about the criticisms
• 1:02:30
  because you're going to get attacked.
• 1:02:31
  You probably already do. People are going to talk shit.
• 1:02:34
  But most criticism, like if a friend really cares about you
• 1:02:39
  and they know you and they know your intentions, they may say,
• 1:02:42
  hey, Hannah or Hey, Joe, you might want to do this a little
• 1:02:46
  bit different. I respect that because they have
• 1:02:48
  rapport and they know me. But someone to just talk shit
• 1:02:51
  that doesn't know your intentions or knows what you put
• 1:02:54
  into it. Most of it is just, you know,
• 1:02:57
  self hatred turned outward. That's what most criticism is
• 1:02:59
  the toxic criticism. And or they just may not like
• 1:03:02
  your political beliefs, or they might not like entrepreneurs.
• 1:03:05
  They might like your hair, you know, whatever.
• 1:03:07
  But yeah, but there's there's a lot to learn.
• 1:03:10
  So what I would say is that what is the best thing that's come
• 1:03:15
  out of you? How long have you been doing the
• 1:03:17
  podcast now? Let's see here.
• 1:03:21
  Well, I officially launched it Tuesday with Robert Kiyosaki,
• 1:03:24
  who you introduced me to. And but I've I've done 9 or 10
• 1:03:28
  episodes now, so just doing a little bit of a backlog so.
• 1:03:31
  Yeah. So what are the Well, you've
• 1:03:33
  been doing interviews and stuff for longer than that, but
• 1:03:35
  officially launching that. Yeah, this See what no one knows
• 1:03:38
  is all the setup that it required in order to do.
• 1:03:41
  It's a shit ton to set up. It is, yeah.
• 1:03:42
  People are like, oh, let's do a podcast.
• 1:03:44
  Yeah, whatever. I've been doing podcast since
• 1:03:47
  2010. And you have a new show now, a
• 1:03:48
  general show, because you run. I love marketing.
• 1:03:51
  You've been doing that for many years.
• 1:03:52
  But now Joe the Joe Polish Show. Joe Polish.
• 1:03:55
  Yeah, Joe Polish. For the longest time, I would
• 1:03:57
  not because I Remember Me and Dean Jackson trying to talk Tim
• 1:04:03
  Ferriss into doing his podcast before he even had a podcast
• 1:04:06
  when he was on our podcast. I love Mark and he was probably
• 1:04:09
  like 2012 or whatever. And he's like, no, I don't want
• 1:04:13
  to do a podcast. I don't know.
• 1:04:14
  We cannot find the the unedited recording before the show.
• 1:04:18
  We're still trying to find it because it'd be such a funny
• 1:04:20
  conversation to have. So I didn't want to do the Joe
• 1:04:23
  Paula show because there's so many whatever the Blankety Blank
• 1:04:26
  person show, even though I've been doing podcasts before,
• 1:04:29
  almost any of them because I recorded my very first podcast
• 1:04:31
  in 2005, then we officially started a consistent one in
• 1:04:35
  2010. And but The thing is there,
• 1:04:39
  there's a big setup to do it. But what are the top like one to
• 1:04:42
  three lessons that you have learned or insights that you've
• 1:04:44
  gotten so far just from doing this?
• 1:04:47
  In the podcast, preparation is key in everything in life.
• 1:04:56
  Relationships are the most important thing in life as far
• 1:05:02
  as what life is all about. And it's the most important
• 1:05:05
  thing to me. And it's what I really, really
• 1:05:07
  love. It's like if all I could do was
• 1:05:09
  this and talk to people that I look up to and respect and
• 1:05:13
  absolutely love, that's all I would do.
• 1:05:14
  I would, I would not run any of the other businesses.
• 1:05:16
  I wouldn't care so much about the the milestones or
• 1:05:19
  accomplishments. I would just be a forever
• 1:05:20
  student and forever connector. And I, I love connection and
• 1:05:26
  helping people. And then three is my biggest
• 1:05:30
  fulfillment that I find is in sharing messages and stories of
• 1:05:34
  other people and hoping to have an impact on as many people in
• 1:05:38
  the world as I can, one person at A at a time.
• 1:05:41
  And I think you know from me, I was so broken and so alone and
• 1:05:46
  so disconnected for so many years and hated myself so much
• 1:05:50
  and had had no real connection with anybody that I want to help
• 1:05:54
  people find that connection similar to what you have done.
• 1:05:58
  Because I was suicidal at 21 years old.
• 1:06:01
  And now I literally have the most amazing, incredible life
• 1:06:05
  that I could never even have fathomed could exist.
• 1:06:07
  And that has only been possible through relationships and
• 1:06:11
  connection like you. I love it.
• 1:06:13
  So let's just take this as a preparation.
• 1:06:16
  P relationships are and either T for teaching or M for messenger.
• 1:06:25
  So prepare for that. Be in relationship with people
• 1:06:29
  that you want to talk to, that you vibe with, that have shared
• 1:06:34
  interests or values, or because knowing you, you'll probably do
• 1:06:38
  this people that you completely disagree with, but you're
• 1:06:40
  curious as to why they think the way they do.
• 1:06:42
  Because I'll actually do interviews of people that I
• 1:06:44
  often times don't even like that much.
• 1:06:46
  I don't do that much of it, but I have done it because I want to
• 1:06:49
  see their their point of view. I want to understand, you know,
• 1:06:52
  it's the whole Stephen Covey thing, you know, don't seek to
• 1:06:54
  understand, don't seek to seek to understand, understand not to
• 1:06:59
  be understood, right, Because a lot of times we just want people
• 1:07:01
  to understand us when it's like, well, do we understand them?
• 1:07:04
  Are we seeking to understand? So, so relationships.
• 1:07:08
  And then you like inspiring people, you like being the
• 1:07:11
  messenger. And so, and you said, if I could
• 1:07:14
  spend all my time doing that, what I would say is design the
• 1:07:18
  game to do exactly that and hire as best you can or set up a
• 1:07:24
  model. Because some people like, I'll
• 1:07:26
  tell you like I've had hundreds of employees.
• 1:07:29
  I have equity in 35 different companies.
• 1:07:31
  My world consists of genius recovery for addiction recovery.
• 1:07:34
  So geniusrecovery.org, anyone that struggles with addiction,
• 1:07:37
  it's an educational platform which the goal is to change the
• 1:07:40
  global conversation about how people view and treat addicts
• 1:07:43
  with compassion instead of judgement and find the best
• 1:07:46
  forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the
• 1:07:48
  world. We now have physical recovery
• 1:07:50
  kits that we ate. We just started where we want to
• 1:07:52
  put a recovery kit in as many homes in in America and we have
• 1:07:55
  a goal of saving 20,000 lives a year with 100,000 plus people
• 1:07:59
  that die from opiate addictions. I've never paid myself a penny
• 1:08:02
  from that organization. It truly is designed to just put
• 1:08:06
  that out there and I'm only able to do that because I run a
• 1:08:08
  successful profitable business, which is so I have Genius
• 1:08:12
  Network, which is my entrepreneurial connection
• 1:08:14
  network. And then I have a 40 acre ghost
• 1:08:18
  town called Cleater Arizona. I also sit on the board of a
• 1:08:21
  public company currently. Not sure I'll do that for a long
• 1:08:23
  time. So we're in we're in the mining
• 1:08:26
  business, right. So I've I've a lot of stuff to
• 1:08:29
  write books. I do podcasts that you know, but
• 1:08:31
  but it ultimately my whole life is around connection and
• 1:08:34
  reducing human suffering. So everything that I do is like,
• 1:08:38
  is it elf easy, lucrative and fun, or is it half hard,
• 1:08:41
  annoying, lame and frustrating. And I have a guy who's like this
• 1:08:45
  great is a doctor of Chinese medicine, great therapist.
• 1:08:48
  He wants no employees. He doesn't want to attend to it.
• 1:08:51
  He works with high level entrepreneurs.
• 1:08:53
  His view is that they're all stressed out all the time.
• 1:08:56
  I don't want to deal with any of this bullshit.
• 1:08:57
  He has a really structured life. He doesn't work weekends.
• 1:09:00
  He's very happy. He's in great physical shape.
• 1:09:02
  He has a great marriage, you know, very insightful guy.
• 1:09:05
  And then a guy like me that wants to do all this crazy
• 1:09:07
  ambitious shit, I don't know how to do that as a single person
• 1:09:10
  operation. So I have to hire people and,
• 1:09:12
  and you, you have big ambitions. So The thing is we got to look
• 1:09:15
  at the business model we have, but we look at what do I really
• 1:09:18
  want to do and what's going to be my stupid human tricks?
• 1:09:22
  They're going to produce the result that I want.
• 1:09:24
  And there's a lot of people that do thought leadership stuff.
• 1:09:27
  I mean, you could put this podcast in the category.
• 1:09:31
  It might include it in thought leadership, but any idiot can
• 1:09:34
  come up with a thought. Thought leaders sound good.
• 1:09:38
  And there are some truly brilliant thought leaders that
• 1:09:41
  are far more intelligent than I could ever hope to be.
• 1:09:43
  What I like, though, is I like result leaders, you know,
• 1:09:46
  because you can have great thoughts, but you know, like Ted
• 1:09:49
  has this tagline ideas worth spreading.
• 1:09:52
  But I thought, you know, years ago, what what what is genius
• 1:09:55
  network? Genius network is ideas worth
• 1:09:57
  using. You know, I want people to be
• 1:09:58
  able to use the ideas, not just spread them, because who gives a
• 1:10:02
  shit if you're just spreading an idea if nothing ever becomes of
• 1:10:06
  it. So there's some really
• 1:10:07
  interesting ideas that sound good, but they're utterly wrong.
• 1:10:10
  And there's some really great ideas that are amazing that
• 1:10:13
  could lead to, you know, so it's all how you interact.
• 1:10:15
  But again, preparation, relationships in teaching.
• 1:10:20
  And, you know, I asked you that and you may refine it a bit, but
• 1:10:25
  I would say that contains, as Dan Sullivan would say, your
• 1:10:29
  unique ability. You know, you show up, you, you,
• 1:10:32
  you prep for it, you go into relationships, you find a model
• 1:10:35
  to ask questions because the beauty is you already know this.
• 1:10:39
  Questions are more important than answers.
• 1:10:41
  Most people always looking for answers, but you just need to
• 1:10:45
  ask the right questions and you need to ask the right questions
• 1:10:47
  to the right people. And then once you do record
• 1:10:49
  those questions, record video, audio, whatever, print, put it
• 1:10:54
  out into the world and then build all of this into an AI
• 1:10:57
  system. So many years from now, you
• 1:11:00
  literally are crowdsourcing all of this incredible knowledge.
• 1:11:03
  And I think that's, I think we're going to reinvent a whole
• 1:11:05
  new educational system. I mean, I just, yeah, there's
• 1:11:10
  all kinds of shit that I'm not gonna talk about it, but.
• 1:11:13
  I could talk to you forever, yeah, but, well, I know we're
• 1:11:16
  over time. So thank you so much.
• 1:11:17
  I definitely do wanna have you back.
• 1:11:19
  And I'm gonna have you on the Joe Paula show too, cuz I'm
• 1:11:22
  gonna get to a thing where I'm gonna dig into your psyche and
• 1:11:27
  what you're doing and what, what matters.
• 1:11:28
  Because for one, you know, what I've witnessed in you over
• 1:11:33
  literally a short period of time is, is really a transformation.
• 1:11:36
  One of the reasons I acquiredtransformation.com, I
• 1:11:39
  wanted that website for 20 years is it's a forcing function of
• 1:11:42
  what does transformation actually mean?
• 1:11:44
  I've had some areas where I've transformed my SO from a drug
• 1:11:47
  addict to something to being dead broke to, you know, having
• 1:11:49
  some success to doing a lot of things.
• 1:11:51
  I mean, you know, even the Maha movement with Bobby Kennedy and
• 1:11:54
  Cali means that all became, that all came out of an introduction
• 1:11:56
  I made that started Maha. Now history will tell if that
• 1:12:00
  ends up being a good thing or not.
• 1:12:01
  But you know, the, the, the fact is, I've had some transformative
• 1:12:05
  things in my life, but there's, there's others that I really
• 1:12:07
  want to transform. And unlearning is more important
• 1:12:10
  than learning. So we're always trying to learn,
• 1:12:12
  but I'm trying to unlearn a lot too.
• 1:12:13
  Yeah. Yeah, and, and I mean, you're
• 1:12:16
  just so connected and we didn't even get to get into all these
• 1:12:19
  questions, but yeah, it's your genius network.
• 1:12:21
  We got to meet Tucker Carlson, Bobby Kennedy, Jordan Peters,
• 1:12:26
  Cali Means. Have dinner with them is like a
• 1:12:28
  dream come true. And at a surprise, we didn't
• 1:12:31
  even know that. Yeah, I don't tell when people
• 1:12:34
  here who's coming next year, they're going to shit.
• 1:12:36
  Oh my gosh, Trump. I won't say anything for now,
• 1:12:41
  but yeah, we're gonna I. Want Trump on my podcast?
• 1:12:43
  Someone's like, oh, how do you get Trump on your podcast?
• 1:12:45
  I'm like, oh let me work on. Someone's actually working right
• 1:12:47
  now and setting up an an introduction with.
• 1:12:50
  We'll see what happens. We'll see.
• 1:12:52
  Hopefully I can second that. But you know, awesome.
• 1:12:55
  But Joe also has an AI clone, which is incredible.
• 1:12:57
  I think it should be. It's like priceless because of
• 1:13:00
  all the information that this guy has, but it's free.
• 1:13:03
  So ask Joe polish.com. Yeah, just go and you can.
• 1:13:06
  You can even have a Ask My AI clone if you activate your video
• 1:13:09
  on your phone what color shirt you're wearing and I will tell
• 1:13:12
  you what color shirt you want. Crazy.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah. And then he also gives out his
• 1:13:16
  book for free Life Gives to the Giver, Just Joe's freebook.com
• 1:13:20
  so you can find them all over the Internet.
• 1:13:22
  And we'll hopefully have you again on the next one.
• 1:13:24
  Yeah, look forward to it. So good luck everyone and it's
• 1:13:27
  always great being with you. Thank you.
• 1:13:28
  Thanks, Joe.