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Summary

One of the biggest mistakes any entrepreneur can make is undervaluing and underinvesting in marketing.

Without marketing, you can’t communicate the worth of your product or service to the world at large, and if you can’t communicate the worth, how can you expect the world to pay you for whatever it is you’re peddling?

Now, this isn’t to say marketing isn’t without its faults. There are countless ways to waste your precious start-up dollars marketing yourself and your business.

However, if you take a strategic and thoughtful approach to marketing—if you teach your consumers how to make a buying decision in your industry, and dedicate your marketing to building trust and rapport with the customer above all else—then you can 5x or even 10x your business in a matter of months.

These are just a few ideas shared by the immortal Joe Polish, one of the world’s most highly regarded marketers, an undisputed networking genius, and a long-awaited guest on Making Bank.

Joe is the President of Piranha Marketing Inc., and perhaps more importantly, he is the founder of Genius Network® (aka The $25K Group), the co-founder of 10XTalk.com and ILoveMarketing.com (two highly popular podcasts on iTunes), and the founder for the $100k Group.

Get ready to hear Joe discuss his obsession with value creation—from direct marketing to simple book recommendations—as well as…

• The critical importance of a sales letter to securing funds for your business
• What it takes to overcome addition and abuse
• The danger of technology and its incessant tracking capabilities
• Why you need to come from a place of generosity and service to succeed in business
• His passion project, Artists for Addicts

And more…

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Delivering Value with Guest Joe Polish: Making Bank S2E30

Josh Felber:        Welcome to Making Bank, I am Josh Felber, where we uncover the success strategies and the secrets of the top 1%, so you can amplify and transform your business in your life today. I’m excited for today’s guest. He’s been hard to track down and really get nailed to come on this show, but I’m excited to have him here. Joe Polish is the founder and president of Piranha Marketing. He is also the founder of Genius Network, known as the 25k Group, and his new GeniusX, the 100k group. He’s also co-founder of 10X Talk, I Love Marketing, which are two highly popular iTunes podcasts that you all need to subscribe to.

Joe has been an entrepreneurial focus and value creation connection and contributor. His marketing expertise has been utilized to build thousands of businesses, which have generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients, ranging from large corporations to family small owned businesses. Joe’s passions today are continuing to develop Genius Network, GeniusX, two groups for high achieving entrepreneurs. Providing useful sales and marketing’s best strategies.

His charitable contributions, including Joe Volunteer, Artist for Addicts, and Sir Richard Branson’s foundation, Virgins Unite, which Joe has raised well over $3 million to date to help fund entrepreneurial schools and humanitarian programs.

Joe, I want to welcome you to Making Bank today.

Joe Polish:           It’s great to be here Josh, and thank you. That bio makes me sound more important than I actually am. As do all, but what can you say, you’re a marketer, right?

Josh Felber:        No problem. It’s an honor to have you on the show. I’m excited to chat with you today. I know you just got done traveling, and I really appreciate your time and everything that you’re giving today.

Joe Polish:           My pleasure.

Josh Felber:        I guess tell us a little bit about what do you do? We’ll start there.

Joe Polish:           Well, what I do is I do a lot of different things. I try to take the skill of marketing, which is really storytelling and selling, and replicate it in a way, so I can take my ambitious desires to help reduce human suffering for entrepreneurs and people that struggle with addiction, and help build a better entrepreneur with a real heavy emphasis on how to most effectively market.

What I mean by that is to enroll people, to persuade people, to influence people, to why they should pay attention to you versus other options. To help people become more effective at whatever value it is that they give to the world, to get other people to give them money for it. That involves many things that are sophisticated, and other things that are quite easy, that are often overlooked, that are more based around psychology than they are around technology.

Once you’ve got the psychology right, then all the different forms of technology that are available to deliver messages to people are simply more effective. I just help entrepreneurs, and I try to become a more conscious human being as best as I can. One thing I’m open about is that I’m real focused on helping people with addictions because I myself am an addict, and struggled with addictions most of my life, starting in my late teens. I understand a lot about what causes people to be self-destructive, and try to get them on the right path. I’m on this journey just as much as any of my clients are.

Josh Felber:        I know your background, just from us briefly chatting from here, time and time, when we’ve seen each other at your events and everything. Tell me about maybe three life defining moments that really have transformed and changed your path and your direction.

Joe Polish:           Yeah. Well, you know I guess the ones that come to mind, there’s many, but the ones that come to mind immediately are probably negative ones. My mother dying when I was four years old, and not knowing how to understand it at the time. Looking back at that from the frame of reference of an adult, I went into a really scared, frightened place, and I had to learn how to function and be resourceful even when it was beyond my abilities as a human, or a child. We moved around a lot as a kid, and I was incredibly shy and incredibly introverted and had trouble talking to people. I was very disconnected.

Then other things, it’s funny, because we’re doing a business interview, but I’ll talk about really personal stuff. Being molested as a kid, and what that did to create a frame of reference that the world is not a safe place. Then getting deeply into drugs a few years after that, as a way to cope and scratch the itch, try to numb the pain that I felt.

Because of that though, and a lot of people don’t get out of it, so I’m not trying to at all say like, “Hey, here’s the wonderful ways to turn adversity into success.” I’ve certainly done that in a lot of ways. A lot of people can’t, because they’re so hurt. Not that they can’t, they just haven’t learned how to yet, or they haven’t found tools. What it did though, is it made me incredibly aware of other people’s pain, and so I became very empathetic.

To be a really effective marketer that delivers value, because you can sell stuff to people, you can con people. You can be a real shyster and not have any care or compassion for humanity and still sell stuff and things like that. To sell and persuade and create value in a way requires you to have a deep concern for the person that you’re selling something to, for your clients. I think the very best marketers that also do good stuff in the world, are incredibly empathetic. Those moments became very empathetic to me. That was maybe a couple of things combined into the lesson, is learning empathy and learning resourcefulness.

Then as it relates to business, one of the biggest defining moments was discovering direct response marketing. Discovering that with words, you can influence people that you don’t even know, all over the world, to invest in what it is you’re selling. Be it a for-profit business, or your cause. That the difference between a one dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill is the message on the paper. There’s virtual paper today, because when I learned all of my marketing stuff, I was a dead broke carpet cleaner, living off credit cards, trying to survive. I learned marketing because I needed to eat.

I never thought I would teach marketing to other people. I never thought I would run the highest level discussion group in the world for industry transformers. I didn’t think people would consider me like this great connector. Because I was incredibly disconnected growing up, and it’s funny that today I’ve kind of flipped the switch on all of that and learned how to really build rapport, and really connect, and really create value for people.

It was the discovery though, of direct response marketing, because I was a caring, hard working person in my carpet cleaning business first starting out. Which, if you have to learn how to successfully sell something that nobody wants to buy, it actually forces you to learn about influence, to learn about how to say something, where to say it, how to say it. Because marketing is basically what you say and who you say it to. I didn’t even understand what marketing meant. I thought it was getting your name out there. I mean, there’s a bunch of stuff, and again, there was no internet when I first learned marketing, which started in 1992, is when I read my first newsletter on marketing.

When I started changing the words in my ads and in my promotions, I five times my sales in a matter of six months, without becoming better at carpet cleaning, without becoming a better person, without doing anything different. I still cleaned carpets the same way. I still provided the same level of service. I just was able to sell more of it.

People that say money can’t buy happiness, for one, they haven’t given enough of it away. Because if you’re a rich miserable human, but you’re able to give money or contribute to things that help other people and it makes them happy, you bought some happiness for them. Secondly, there’s many things that I can buy that make me happy. I like nice restaurants. I like Four Seasons hotels. I like traveling to cool places. If I want to buy material items because it makes me happy, great. If I want to go to a movie, or do whatever, money allows you to do that. That’s important.

The ability to learn how to have control over your business, versus crossing your fingers and hoping that things are going to work out, gives you walk away power. It gives you a level of freedom that cannot be gotten any other way.

When I learned marketing, it literally not only gave me a mechanism to build a grow a business, it gave me a ton of freedom, confidence, and all the byproducts that come out of that.

Josh Felber:        I find interesting, I know one of the things is you mentioned just some of the tragedy that you went through as a child, and the addiction and everything else. Even though, I know you say, “Hey, I don’t want to talk about the whole adversity into success thing.” I think other people hearing those challenges and what you went through to where you are today, I mean I think that’s a big thing, because people resonate that. Whether it’s a lesser or more, or whatever they have gone through, they’re able to reach that connection with somebody that has been there. I think that’s awesome that you’ve come that far.

Joe Polish:           No, thank you. You’re absolutely right. I guess to expand upon it. It’s through the pain of others that gives you an opportunity to really bond and connect with people in an authentic, genuine way, as long as you’re coming from a place of giving, not coming from a place of taking. There are some very smooth talking, articulate people that give the illusion of sincerity and concern and care for others, but it’s like a setup. It’s sort of, if a guy studies a ton of work on how to pick up women, and everything that comes out of his mouth is calculated and it’s about just that. That’s different than someone that’s like, “Hey, I genuinely care about that person.”

That’s not at all to say that you should not learn how to communicate or pick up women, or women meet men. It’s not about that. It’s not a moral thing. It’s just how you approach something. I genuinely go through life wanting to leave the campfire cleaner than it was before I showed up. I want my interactions with human beings, I want them to, I want anyone I interact with, I want it to hopefully, I want that person to be better off than they were before I showed up. Meaning, even if it’s a waiter or waitress in a restaurant, if I can just be sarcastic or tell a crude joke, or just do something funny and it adds a smile to their face, or make a book recommendation to someone, or whatever. I always try to do that.

In the world of business, I’m always thinking about how to be useful, how to be generous, how to be contributing to other people. Know that I’m not entitled to anything, and if I get anything in the world, financially or otherwise, I’m not entitled to it just because I want it. It requires me to create value for someone first, so that nothing’s going to come to me in my life if I do not create value for someone first.

When you take that approach, you simply produce more than you consume. Part of being a productive human is produce more than you can consume. There’s a lot of people in the world that are more parasites than they are producers. Anyone that’s watching or listening to this, if they really are a producer, and they really have the mindset of, “Hey, I want to create value.” Then the very best thing you could do for yourself, for your clients, for the world, is figure out how to most effectively enroll people into your thing. That’s why the study of marketing is one of the most important skillsets that anyone could ever learn.

I mean, every important movement in the world happened because someone made a sale. We could talk about Martin Luther King. We could talk about Gandhi. We can talk about Mother Theresa, John F. Kennedy. We can talk about all kinds of movements and individuals. Even if you like them or not. Then there’s horrible people that have used persuasion, such as Hitler, that have used it to murder people. It’s not the marketing that’s bad, it’s the application and the intention, and the end result behind it.

I’m always defending entrepreneurs, because there’s a large segment of the population that just has been trained to believe that many entrepreneurs and business owners are greedy people, that all they care about is money. Frankly, I mean, you know, you and I could probably, most of the friends that we have are great human beings trying to just run a business, do good in the world to make money. A lot of them doing incredibly wonderful things. I don’t see many of these horrible entrepreneurs at the level that the media tries to portray it as. Certainly there are those people, but they’re such a small minority. Most people are just trying to get through their life and do a good job and do better.

Like your shirt. Innovator, leader, risk taker, 2% crazy, entrepreneur. You take the term entrepreneur. The definition of an entrepreneur was coined in 1804 by a guy named Jean-Baptiste Say, who’s a French dude. He said that a entrepreneur is someone that takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level. If you just think about that definition, a lower yield to a higher yield.

Any time you take your thinking, your service, the way that you approach things, innovation, leadership, risk taking, everything that’s on your shirt. If you can increase that 5%, to be 5% more innovative, 5% a better leader, 5% a risk taker. Not risk taker like walking out into the street risk taker, but like literally the willingness to say, “Okay, I can fail. This scares me.”

Getting up in front of an audience, you know the first time I ever had to do a public speech I was scared shitless, but I also realized that whatever you’re afraid of and you don’t face controls you. Whatever you’re afraid of and you take steps to face, you can control it, or at least you can get better at it. I never could imagine that I could speak in front of an audience, and now I’ve spoken in front of groups of 5000 people. In a few months I’m going to do a presentation in front of 13,000 people for an hour. The thought of that when I was first starting out was like, there’s no way in hell am I going to do that.

As an entrepreneur, you keep adding capabilities. Like I would frame this for anyone that participates in your show and listens to you. Think of every time they hear you talk, Josh talks to this guy or this gal, or talks about this, or shares that, think of it as like you’re showing up to add capabilities to your life. The more capable you become, the better you do. It’s as simple as that. You know, school is never out for the pro, and real education starts after you get out of regular school. Because, I mean …

Josh Felber:        Right. That’s when the education starts.

Joe Polish:           Exactly. That’s my rant.

Josh Felber:        My kids like the 2% crazy.

Joe Polish:           I didn’t go there, because I didn’t know how. I’m not sure what that means to you, so I didn’t want to just assume. What the hell does 2% crazy mean?

Josh Felber:        2% crazy, so you’re willing to totally do something different that somebody else may never think of or go after. Not ready to jump off a bridge crazy, but you know.

Joe Polish:           Yeah. I’ll tell you that, if you just wanted to look at it like a survey, and someone’s looking at that shirt, the 2% crazy is the one that really is the most compelling. Because there’s the curiosity factor of, okay, am I? Of course, most people are batshit crazy, so they can, you know frankly we’re all a bunch of monkeys that drive cars. We try to run businesses and have relationships and try to act functional, when most people get up every day and they bumble their way through life.

The more you learn how to bumble your way through life in an effective way, the more fun it is, the more good that you can do. Certainly being a little weird, being a little crazy, and hanging out with people that don’t beat to the same drum as everyone else, is probably the best way to expand not only your usefulness, in terms of how you approach your business. It’s certainly the uncertainty makes it a hell of a lot of fun.

Because most people that become entrepreneurs, they despise mediocrity. They’re always looking for how something can be done better. There’s no such thing as good enough for most entrepreneurs. I mean there are aspects of a business, like look, the way that we, I own an 11,000 square foot building that we’re in right now. I’ll move this laptop around. This is the room where we do the Genius Network, 25k Group meetings and all that sort of stuff. There are certain things here, how we order paper towels and have the cleaning service, good enough is good enough there. In terms of what we can do to constantly up our game for our clients, how we can deliver value creation, I mean there’s never a ceiling on that.

I have to share this quote. There’s a guy named David Ogilvy, who wrote a book Ogilvy on Advertising, which is everyone that really immerses themselves in marketing really needs to read that book at some point. He said that if you get into the field of advertising, make sure you hire people that can thrive on demanding schedules and stuff. He said, because the field of advertising and marketing breeds anxiety.

It’s so much innovation, there’s so many different ideas, that certain personalities, it’s too much for them, and those people, they don’t make the best creative types. Anyway.

Josh Felber:        Right. There’s our 2% crazy. Actually that’s the one I always get comments on. Like you said, it creates the curiosity for sure.

Joe Polish:           Right.

Josh Felber:        Tell me a little bit, what do you think, moving forward, what is your life’s purpose and what are you really focused on?

Joe Polish:           You know, right now it is to connect people that have … It’s to curate brilliant minds to come together and share their best strategies, their elegant ideas. I mean, my purpose is to just increase my level of consciousness, to have more peace and serenity in knowing where I’m willing to trade off peace for productivity. Because I am willing to endure pain in order to get certain results, which I’m not sure that’s even a good idea, or if I’m just stupid, or not all that aware, or if I just happen to be one of these people that’s like …

You know, I’ve been getting up in front of audiences and talking about having sexual addiction, and where that leads to. To try to change the global conversation about how people view addicts and addictions with one of compassion instead of judgment. I’m putting my, I’m exposing myself for criticism, which hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will, and people that will misconstrue what it is.

Like when you say something like sexual addiction, first off it’s an intimacy disorder. Sexual addiction is not always the best way to describe it. Most people that have trouble in relationships, or have been molested, or have hired, have paid for sex with escorts, or watch internet porn, or sexual anorexia, where they can’t be sexual with their partner. Once they start talking to me and hearing about this, it makes sense. I’ve had so many people that have come up and said, “My god, thank you for talking about this. No one ever talks about this, especially in a business environment.” One of the drugs of choice for high level CEOs is escort services, as an example, paying for sex.

One of my missions is to take my marketing skills and take my new platform, which is Artists for Addicts, where we are selling art, and we’re using that to fund education and find the best forms of treatment, that has efficacy, that actually really works. From 12 step groups, to nutrition, to meditation, to plant medicines. I mean, we’re exploring everything imaginable to help people that struggle with addiction.

My life purpose is to reduce human suffering, and that’s where Joe Volunteer and Artists for Addicts, which are my passion projects, come into play. Because if I had all the money in the world, I would put it all into helping people that struggle with addictions. Because you take David Bowie, who’s in our first painting, which is called Black Star, this guy when he was 27 years old lived off cocaine and milk. Then him and Iggy Pop, for like two years, nearly died. Him and Iggy Pop went to the UK, got sober, and then David Bowie lived another 40 years making one of the biggest bodies of work the world has ever seen. From music, to paintings, to film, to writings, to you name it.

It’s like, if you take all these great humans in the world, and you can take the part of them that is self-destructing, and you can parlay that into healing, into recovery, my god, the greatest human resource we have is people. There’s a lot of people that are struggling, and so I’m just on a fight right now, because 78 people a day are dying of opioid addictions in the United States. In 2014, 49,000 people died from overdoses, and so drug overdoses has now surpassed car accidents in the United States, of how people die.

I never thought in a million years, being a guy with my new marketing book, Joe’s Marketing Book, which comes out in a few weeks, that’s all about business, I never thought I would use these skills to do causes, which is a by-product of learning how to do marketing.

For our listeners, which many probably have like, “What the hell is this guy talking about? Making Bank. What’s this have to do with Making Bank?” Once I learned how to influence people to do business with me in a carpet cleaning business, I realized that same skillset and those same strategies could be used anywhere, in any environment. For-profit, for business, and so now my life purpose is to help people with addiction and help entrepreneurs that are workaholics, that have something really good but they don’t know how to get paid for what it is they do, and teach them how to message it.

I’d love to give some takeaways, because I know we’re on limited time. You tell me. I’ll go for whatever amount of time you need, or that you have available, to provide some specific strategies that are not timely, but are timeless. That the people will have most use for.

Josh Felber:        You threw it out there, so you might as well dive into a few of those.

Joe Polish:           Okay.

Josh Felber:        Good lead in.

Joe Polish:           Okay. I’ll just keep rambling here. One of the first things I did when I had my carpet cleaning business, and I’m going to talk about carpet cleaning. If someone’s listening and they’re going, “Well I don’t sell carpet cleaning, I’m in the real estate business.” Or, “I have high end clients that buy Lamborghinis.” Or, “I sell yachts.” Or, “I’m a graphic designer.” It doesn’t matter. Insert the, think of what you sell as glop. Everybody thinks their glop is the best glop in the world. If you don’t have a way to describe why your glop is better than the other glop, then it’s just glop.

Now, people that are married to their own product, they see the world through what they live, eat and breathe. The thing is, whatever your thing is, it doesn’t matter how valuable, or how good your product or service is, or what it does, until after somebody’s given you money for it. How do you actually get someone to give you money for something? Well, there’s many ways, but one of the most effective ways that I learned how to sell is to teach people how to make a buying decision. Because the number one question in all consumers minds is, who can I trust? Your job as a business owner is to establish trust and rapport with people, so they feel comfortable with you, to where they would want to do business with you.

If you’re in a commodity business where people can get the same thing that you’re selling for a lower price, then you have to turn your products into services. If you’re in the service business, then you have to turn your services into products. What I mean by that is you can combine, like if you sell, like what is an incredibly boring, mundane thing? Let’s take like Restoration Hardware. They started out selling like bolts and shit, like Ace Hardware and Home Depot or Lowe’s or whatever, hardware store. They actually packaged them and displayed them in different ways, and now they ended up turning into a furniture store, which became a byproduct of establishing that. I don’t know if many people can remember, there was a lot of accessories.

If you’re Ace Hardware, as an example, they focus on really great service. If they’re going to sell a bolt that you can get at a dollar store or something like that. In carpet cleaning, everyone would just think, a carpet cleaner is a carpet cleaner. What I would do is I packaged my services in different ways. Instead of offering a lower price, see the worst offer you can make is no offer at all. The second worst offer you can make is a price offer. Most people that advertise on price, it’s because they don’t know how to make any other offer.

What I focus on is, let’s educate people on how to make a buying decision. You’ve heard me talk about this. One of the first things that I did was I wrote a sales letter. Anyone that’s listening, if there’s something you have that’s important for you to get out into the world, you need to think of it this way. If I had a week to write a letter that I had to sell X number of my thing, or I had to get a kidney transplant for someone, or I had to find the love of my life, if I don’t write the letter that I can put out online, or mail to someone through direct mail, or put it out to the world in audio, on video, or on paper and ink.

You start with print. I mean literally even hand writing it if you have to, because I have made millions of dollars with a pen and paper, that doesn’t require a computer. I can be anywhere. I don’t need an internet connection. I mean, I’ve sold tens of millions of dollars with words. It all starts with words.

The number one thing that all business owners need is they need a sales letter. They need something that powerfully conveys what it is that they’re doing. You teach people how to make a buying decision. What I call that is I call that ELF marketing. You can have an ELF business, which is easy, lucrative and fun, or you can have a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. I write about all this stuff in my book. That is a subtle plug for people to get the book.

Josh Felber:        I was going to say, I thought I just remembered hearing all this recently, when I was on the airplane the other day.

Joe Polish:           Yeah. I have to get myself in the mode of pimping my book, since I’m going to be doing that. Yeah, it’s called Joe’s Marketing Book. That’s what we tentatively had it titled, and we were getting feedback from all our Genius Network members. Because I crowdsource my own stuff, and say, “Okay, what do you think of this?” Most people liked the title, Joe’s Marketing Book, so we’re going to keep it as Joe’s Marketing Book, which is so contrarian against what anything that we would think of titling a book. I own the URL, JoesMarketingBook.com. Anyway.

One of the things is education based marketing. Write yourself a letter that teaches people how to make a buying decision, because this is the key. I just want to emphasize this because it’s so damn important and people miss it. One of the most effective, and ethical, and non-threatening ways to sell what it is you’re selling, is to educate people on how to make a buying decision.

It’s not the things that you think your product or service does that you think are important, it’s all the things that people don’t know that they don’t know, that you have to convey. I’ll say that again. It’s all of the things that people don’t know that they don’t know. That if you provide them with that, they will look at not only what you’re selling, but anyone that sells what it is that you’re selling in a different frame of reference.

For instance, my very first sales letter for carpet cleaning was A Consumer’s Guide to Carpet Cleaning, Read This Guide and Discover Seven Questions to Ask a Carpet Cleaner Before You Invite Him Into Your Home. Well, people didn’t know there were seven questions. How to Avoid Four Carpet Cleaning Ripoffs, people didn’t know there were four carpet cleaning ripoffs that they should avoid. Eight Questions to Ask a Carpet Cleaner, or Six Costly Misconceptions About Carpet Cleaning. They didn’t know there were those misconceptions.

You can do that as a real estate agent, Five Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a Realtor. Seven Questions to Ask a Graphic Designer Before You Hire Them. Whatever your category is, you come up with the things that people don’t know that they don’t know. I had one that said, Crawling Critters and Crud, a Guide to the Slime, Grime and Livestock That’s Seeping, Creeping and Galloping Through Your Carpet.

I would write these things and it would, instead of a brochure, instead of just a plain website, or something that says, “Opt in here.” You want to use very powerful, compelling things, so that in the mind of the consumer it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” Then if you educate them, that in and of itself is creating value. If you’re the company, or the person, that is teaching them how to make a better decision, they have trust and rapport with you.

Although I taught people how to hire a carpet cleaner, because my company was the one providing that information, they hired my company. Although with the information that I was providing, and still do … By the way, I ended up on ABC’s 20/20 back in 1999, with Barbara Walters, and millions of consumers all over the world, to this day we have like literally thousands of companies that use my education based marketing principles, pre-recorded message. It’s generated billions of dollars for my clients, directly attributable. This is not just some concept I dreamed up. We’ve been doing this shit for over 20 years. We’ve been doing it for 24 years approximately.

Basically, it works, so the question is, anyone that’s listening to this, if you’ve not written a sales letter, if you’ve not created a mechanism that you can offer people a free report, a sales letter, something that they can download. You don’t want to call it a sales letter if it’s an educational report. You don’t want to say, “Call and request your free sales letter.” I refer to it as a sales letter because the purpose of it is designed to lead people into doing business with you.

If someone is a single person, have you ever written a sales letter for getting a date? Have you ever written a sales letter for a cause? If there’s an animal shelter in town that needs funding, they need a sales letter. If there’s a dry cleaner of clothing that needs new clients, they need a sales letter. Because with the sales letter can turn into ads, it can turn into social media posts, it can turn into articles. I mean, there’s a whole variety of stuff, but it starts with the sales letter.

Josh Felber:        That was awesome. I hope everybody’s taking notes and writing down. If not, rewind and replay that. That was some awesome information. Like Joe said, I know, I’ve been reading the book.

Joe Polish:           Thank you.

Josh Felber:        I know a lot of the details are in there. That’s some phenomenal information. I know we’re going to need to wrap up here in a few minutes. Tell me, I guess what’s one piece of technology you can’t live without?

Joe Polish:           Oh boy. I mean, I would say an iPhone. I don’t know if I can live with it either, because it’s kind of a pain in the ass. We have become culturally, it is systemic how weird it is. Because as a kid, I used to walk around by myself all day long on Saturdays and Sundays, when I wasn’t in school, in Alpine, Texas, in fields, just with a BB gun. Just wandering around, I wouldn’t be able to call home. I wouldn’t have any technology, and most people can’t even go to the bathroom without their cellphones attached to them.

I love the technology of being able to record audio messages. One of the things that is to get as close to in person as possible when you’re connecting with other people. When someone wants to connect, or I want to convey a message, like I have a whole team of people. I have a variety of employees. I have over a million dollars in payroll. I have a lot of people that work for me. One of the best ways is to just record audio messages and just text them to certain groups of people, or just to send it out, or do it for my clients, which again, is an ELF marketing system. Like how do you can and clone yourself? With an iPhone, I literally can stay connected in many different ways.

Then gosh, what else could I probably share with you that is a technology that I can’t live without? I mean, I love Bluetooth headphones when I work out, when I hike mountains. It’s awesome. I still like working out with just an iPod so no one can actually call me or do anything. Because there is a way that you have to, if you want any peace and serenity in your life, you have to literally shut it off. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I meditate and do yoga multiple times a week, because I just don’t want any distractions, because we live in a very distract-able world. What else? Things like Trello for organizing all of the stuff on your list. That sort of stuff.

As far as, we do a lot of Facebook ads. We do retargeting and promotion. It’s less about the technology. Like for instance, let’s take Facebook as an example, although you could use this on any social media platform. Most people don’t utilize or use Facebook to build and grow their business, they actually, it uses them. If people have something that they want to sell in the world, they would be well served to learn how to advertise on Facebook versus spending all of their time just following their friends, or whatever click bait article sucks you in.

Because people, you take the recent elections, people actually think they have a biased viewpoint. This is the world we live in. The moment you read an article that says, “This politician is a scumbag and here’s all the reasons why.” You spend seven minutes on that article, and then you click through and watch a video on YouTube. Then you look at a friend who happens to have, either a liberal or conservative or whatever viewpoint you have, and you start liking that, or you start sharing that.

There’s all these algorithms and all this retargeting that literally is identifying what you are interested in and feeding back to you exactly what you are giving indications, by the bait that you take. What people are actually reading is a personalized news that is delivered to them based on where their interests are and everything. It’s just getting more and more deeper. That’s why when you go to Amazon and buy something, “If you like this, we recommend that.” The world that we live in, it is no longer, people are reading what is being fed to them, not what they’re “seeking out” without thinking about this. Most people are oblivious to that.

From a marketing standpoint, you want to enter the conversation that already exists in the prospect’s mind. That’s how you actually persuade people, because people are doing it to you all day long. The question is, are you using technology, or is technology using you? Most people aren’t utilizing technology or using it, it is using them. That’s just, so that being said, I just hope people today, whatever the hell I just said, whatever way it makes sense to them. Think about everything that you look at and interact with, it is tracking you. It understands your habits. It understands your behavior.

Like I talk about in the book, 25 free recorded messages that everyone should have on their business card, or if they have a service vehicle, on the side of the van. Because everyone carries around their phone. When people are driving, if there’s a, “Warning, don’t call any carpet cleaner until you listen to this free recorded message.” They’re not going to go to a website when they’re driving, but they may call and listen to 25 free recorded message. People have their phones on them all the time.

Well in the future it might be a hologram. It might be an AI system that you talk to. Just understand that if you are going to go on Facebook and you have a business, you’d be better off spending the majority of your … See, most people spend maybe 2% to 5% of their time thinking about how to effectively make an offer that people are interested in, or write very valuable things that cause a following. Most of the time they’re just gossiping, because the vast majority of human conversations is gossip.

If you actually went in and really strategically thought about, what is the outcome of using … Like if you ask yourself the question, I’m going to go online, what’s the outcome? Even if you are an ADD person that immediately, two minutes in you’ve completely forgotten your outcome and you’re sucked into the internet. If you just go into everything, meetings, everything with like, what is the outcome that I’m looking for? You’re just going to strategically use things better. I just think people ask themselves the wrong questions, or they don’t ask themselves questions at all.

Josh Felber:        I think that’s important. Definitely going into it knowing what your outcome, what you want out of it is. Like you said, I think Facebook is being under utilized. I know we’ve added a lot of different dynamic retargeting, and a lot of different really cool stuff that Facebook keeps rolling out, all these different ways to interact with people, and they’re getting better and better I think of knowing, hey, these are the right people for you, and serving that information up, like you said, with the algorithms and everything.

Joe Polish:           Let me ask you a question. What is the best way for people to get, like I’ve always loved the term, is the juice worth the squeeze? If you’re going to invest time listening to your show, as an example, what are you most, what have you learned the most out of Making Bank and what it’s provided to the listeners, what it’s provided to your clients, and what has it done for you? I’d like to actually hear that, although that sounds bizarre that I’m flipping the questions on you.

Josh Felber:        Taking over the show, huh Joe?

Joe Polish:           Yeah, exactly.

Josh Felber:        I mean, I think my whole philosophy going into this was to be able to provide the most value for people out there, through interviewing the top people, the people that you see every day, all day. Being able to extract that information and share it, and give them, hey, this might be somebody that you may never directly personally connect with, but I’m able to grab some information that you can take and implement in your life, your business, to make some transformation and allow you to move forward and be a better person, be a better husband or wife, or entrepreneur.

Joe Polish:           Gotcha. Okay, awesome. I love it. I love hearing that too, because you know what a lot of people don’t realize is to do this stuff takes a lot of work.

Josh Felber:        Oh it does.

Joe Polish:           You’ve got to coordinate schedules. You’ve got to set, I mean you’ve got to do stuff. Then you just put it out there for people to benefit from. I always like hearing other people’s outcomes.

Josh Felber:        Well cool. Thanks. Let’s see, where can people find out about you and get more information on everything? Genius or book, or whatever you want to talk about.

Joe Polish:           JoePolish.com. My name, typing that into Google is really easy to do. My podcast, you can find my podcast through JoePolish.com. My marketing one is called I Love Marketing, where people can subscribe to all of these on iTunes. 10X Talk, that I do with Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach.

Then Genius Network, which is where we take all of the brilliant people like you, that we have in the Genius Network group, and we feature their elegant ideas and their best strategies, and we put it out there. There’s just incredible wisdom. I try to put wisdom out there for free that’s better than what most people charge for. Most people that learn from my stuff never give me any money. Most of it’s just I put it out there and then a handful of people end up becoming members of the group.

Then my ArtistsforAddicts.com. Here’s what I would love, more than anything. What we’re doing right now is just selling art. Artists for Addicts Artists, with an S, for Addicts, A-D-D-I-C-T-S.com. I’d love everyone to watch the trailer, the video trailer. It’s a few minutes, and just see what we’re doing there. Anything that I can do to help inspire people to help people with addictions, or change the global conversation, is my mission. That’s what I want to do.

Josh Felber:        Awesome. We’ll have the Joe Polish link right over here, as well as the Artists for Addicts link, so people can just click right over to them while they’re watching the video.

Joe Polish:           Thank you.

Josh Felber:        Definitely. Then just one last insight, and then we’ll wrap up.

Joe Polish:           All of the books, all of the seminars, all the courses, I’ve spent several million dollars on my own education. I’ve read over 1000 books. I hang out with incredibly bright people all the time. For me, unlearning is more important than learning. It’s important to learn. You want to become capable. The shit that really screws people up is all of the beliefs that they have, the ego that controls them in negative ways, where they have to unlearn. Unlearning, so that’s one part when it comes to mental development.

The other is, I’ve always loved the proverb, he who has their health has 1000 dreams, he who does not have their health has only one. He or she, so don’t take out the, it’s not male or female, this is people. The fact that I have aspirations and goals and dreams is because I’m health, I’m not laid up in a hospital bed.

I have a dear friend right now who I was at the hospital with on Friday, who has 20 tumors in her brain for brain cancer. This is a person who went in remission from stage four cancer, and it’s come back. I believe a lot of it just has to do with stress, because both of my parents died of stress. I’ve had a lot of people in my life die, and take care of your health as best you can. Because even doing the best stuff, life happens.

The thing is, to purposely put shit food into your body, to purposely put toxic things that you drink, and sugars, and all kinds of crap. There’s plenty of that that’s sold, you’re just poisoning yourself. Everyone’s heard the saying, you are what you eat. If you really think everything that you consume becomes you, not just food, but negative people, crap that you watch online. What you put into your body and into your brain changes you.

We have this incredible mechanism, our bodies, use it. Stand up when you’re working. Get a standing desk. Get out of the office. Most productive work is not done in offices. Go to libraries. Go to coffee shops even if you don’t drink coffee, and I don’t. I rarely drink coffee. The fact is I get away. Most of my productive work is not done in my office, and I have a beautiful office. I can work here all the time, but I get most of my good work done not in an office. Move your body. Do yoga, exercise.

If you’re not used to it, hire a personal trainer. If you don’t have enough money to hire a personal trainer, then figure out how to make enough money so you can hire people, because that’s the beauty of making money. Take care of your health, and if you do that, the ripple effect of your family and everyone else. Because you know, your shirt says leader, and people that you want to persuade are not persuaded mostly by the shit you say, it’s by what it is that you do. Anyone can talk a good game.

You don’t build a great reputation by talking about what you’re going to do, you build a great reputation by actually doing it. If you’ve got a bunch of goals and aspirations, quit telling them to the world, just fucking do them. Then when you do them, you have told the world in far stronger ways than by saying, “I’m going to do this.” Or, “I’m going to do that.” That comes from using your body and taking care of yourself, and treating yourself like the million dollar racehorse.

The last thing I’ll say is, like I interviewed this lady years ago. If you had a racehorse and that horse’s job was to win races, and if that horse won it was a million dollar prize, how would you treat that horse? You wouldn’t shove fast food down its throat. You wouldn’t drive it to exhaustion. You would let it get practice. You would take care of it. You would groom that horse. You would have a great track for that horse to practice on. Because when it came time for game day, that horse would win.

Well, you’re the million dollar racehorse. I’m my million dollar racehorse. If you don’t treat yourself and take care of yourself, you ain’t going to win any races. Winners find ways, and so do losers. People that are losing in life, it doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it just means the way they go about life is not working for them. If they change that, then they’ll maybe start winning in life. A lot of times that admits walking into a 12 step group and admitting I’m an addict, I’m an alcoholic, I’m a drug addict, I’m a gambling addict, I’m a workaholic, I’m codependent. Going and seeking help.

Whatever you need to do in order to take care of the most important asset you’re ever going to have, which is your brain and your body and your mind, that’s where you need to put more of your focus. If you do that, all the other business stuff becomes a lot easier. That’s my, another rant.

Josh Felber:        100% agree, because I think that health is a major thing. Too many of us don’t take care of ourselves and wonder how we got here. Joe, it was really an honor to have you on Making Bank today. Your time, and just all your insights and valuable information. Again, thank you for coming on Making Bank.

Hey guys, when Joe’s book goes live, make sure you get out and get yourself a copy. It’s chocked full of great insights that are going to improve your self and your business. Thanks again Joe.

Joe Polish:           Yeah, we can notify people at JoesMarketingBook.com, if they want to be notified they can just opt in there and we’ll tell them when it’s available. Thank you.

Josh Felber:        No problem. I am Josh Felber, you are watching Making Bank, where we uncover the success strategies and the secrets of the top 1%. Get out and be extraordinary.