In short
Episode 495 is about Joe Polish’s “non-sleazy networking” framework: how to form genuine connections that lead to real opportunities, without chasing fame or manipulating people. He argues connection is a basic human need (like breathing), and that true connection starts with being connected to yourself (sleep, nutrition, reducing screen numbness). Key claims include: most money is made by transforming others’ “bad news” into “good news,” so be a “pain detective” who listens to reduce pain; avoid “takers” (narcissists/sociopaths/psychopaths) by using boundaries and screening; and be useful, grateful, and valuable—measured by how others feel when they hear from you.
Notable examples
his childhood sexual abuse and addiction recovery shaping his views; Vietnam-vet group therapy and 12-step mutual suffering as rapport accelerators; and his ethical marketing work as a carpet cleaner, including ABC’s 20/20 undercover segment.
Guests
Joe Polish is the sole guest; Marie Forleo hosts and asks questions.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Motivation Behind the Book
0:45 to 3:07
Joe discusses the reasons for writing his book on networking and connection.
“the same way that we have to breathe and drink water.”
The Impact of Childhood and Trauma
3:07 to 6:24
Joe shares how his childhood experiences shaped his views on relationships and connection.
“This person is half, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating.”
Addiction and Recovery Insights
6:24 to 11:30
Joe opens up about his struggles with addiction and the lessons learned.
“people use it to manipulate and gaslight.”
Navigating Modern Disconnection
11:30 to 14:00
Discussion on how modern life and technology contribute to disconnection.
“And I think right now we're in the greatest addiction crisis in human history.”
The Impact of Screen Time on Well-being
14:00 to 15:00
Discover the effects of excessive screen time on health and connection.
“You might not be getting good nutrition, good sleep.”
Being a Pain Detective in Networking
15:00 to 17:55
Learn how to identify and address others' pain to foster genuine connections.
“We're going to go all the different places because this ties into actually my next question.”
The Importance of Shared Pain and Rapport
17:55 to 21:40
Understand the power of shared suffering in building deeper connections.
“And then you have control over your life that, you know, instead of chasing your passion, chase the solution of problems, develop skills that the world needs.”
The Realities of Success and Perseverance
21:40 to 27:29
Explore the relentless nature of life's challenges and the mindset needed for success.
“The latest research on years of studying 12 steps is one of the most effective ways to treat addiction.”
Being Useful, Grateful, and Valuable
27:33 to 28:00
Discuss the qualities needed for successful networking and how to embody them.
“So you share that in order to network successfully in the book, that we need to be useful, grateful, and valuable.”
Perceptions in Networking
28:00 to 29:51
Explore how others perceive you can impact networking effectiveness.
“Well, you may think you are being that way, but the real the real litmus test is are people perceiving you that way?”
Show all 20 chapters
The Value of Being Useful
29:51 to 31:04
Discuss the importance of being genuinely useful to others in networking.
“And people are not going to be grateful or find you valuable if you are making shit up along the way.”
Building a Great Reputation
31:04 to 32:53
Learn how to build a solid reputation through actions, not words.
“And the reason I say think about when you get a do it today or tomorrow, whenever you're listening or hearing this conversation with me and Marie, think of the people that are contacting you.”
Effective Learning and Sharing
32:53 to 33:59
Understand the different ways to learn and the value of teaching others.
“You know, you can you can learn what someone else is doing.”
Importance of Positive Communication
33:59 to 35:07
Discover how sincere communication can strengthen relationships.
“Oh, you do it throughout the entire book.”
Navigating Different Communication Styles
35:07 to 37:04
Explore how to adapt your communication style for better connections.
“was about getting as close to in-person as possible.”
Investing in Relationships
37:04 to 41:22
Learn the significance of investing time and energy in relationships.
“I mean, there's a time and a place and there's no perfect way to do this.”
Reflections on a Sabbatical
41:22 to 42:02
Hear about the lessons learned during a transformative sabbatical year.
“to the most valuable things I could have ever, ever experienced in my life for like just a little bit of money.”
Reflections on Loss and Purpose
42:02 to 47:26
Explore how personal losses and the pandemic influenced Joe's perspective on life and service.
“Like what was the impetus that said, now this is the time?”
The Importance of Taking a Sabbatical
47:26 to 50:48
Discover how taking a sabbatical allowed Joe to reconnect with himself and reshape his career.
“I mean, to summarize everything we talked about today, it's asking the question, what's in it for them?”
Building Meaningful Connections
50:48 to 53:52
Learn about the value of genuine relationships and how to achieve mutual support in life.
“I think I've learned a lot on how to shorten the timeline.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Marie Forleo:Joe Polish went from being a dead broke carpet cleaner to founding Genius Network, one of the highest level entrepreneurs groups in the world. Joe's also helped build thousands of businesses and generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients. He's been featured in Inc., Fortune, Forbes, Success, U.S. News and World Report, among others. Joe also hosts the top ranked business podcasts like I Love Marketing, 10X Talk, and Genius Network. His newest book is What's in it for Them? Nine Genius Networking Principles to Get What You Want by Helping Others Get What They Want. You know, in chapter four, when I was reading this, I'm going to read you some of your words and then we can unpack and talk about it.
0:42Marie Forleo:You write, on one level, connecting with other people is the something we have to do in life the same way that we have to breathe and drink water. And many of us value alone time, but nobody would say, and I'm paraphrasing, that they want to live a completely disconnected life. To live a happy and meaningful life, to be able to feel connected to others is a basic need. Tell me more about the motivation for writing this specific book and what you hope the readers will get out of it. Well, you know, oftentimes I'll hear some of my personal development friends that will say, you know, I just wrote this book because I want to share and I really want to help people and I I feel so blessed and all that sort of stuff.
1:23And to a degree, you know, yeah, that's great, right? You want to share what you do. Other people write books for money. There's certainly, why does one put words out into the world? In a lot of ways, you've probably maybe even asked or been asked the question, what would you say to your younger self? I mean, that's like a big thing these days is people ask that question. And I have thought back to my childhood. I thought back to my life. And the book is a bit of methodologies, strategies, capabilities on how to connect with people because the number one thing people ask me is, how did you meet this person?
1:57How did you meet that person? We are a culture obsessed with fame and trying to meet, quote unquote, important people. However, just having access to someone or meeting someone does not necessarily translate into opportunities or it's somehow going to make your life better. And there are way too many people that are chasing fame and chasing stars and that sort of thing. And Marie, you've met some very famous, well-known people, some that are wealthy, some that are celebrities. It's not all it's cracked up to be oftentimes. And there's a big facade that exists. I mean, I've done so much work in the addiction recovery world in my own recovery, being a former addict.
2:35And when I say former, you know, I still identify as an addict, someone that has struggled with addiction. That has taught me more about connecting. So why did I write the book? I wrote the book to protect givers of the world from the narcissists, from the sociopaths, from the psychopaths, from the takers, so that I can hopefully help empower the givers to be better boundaried givers to not become jaded when you get betrayed, when people take advantage of you. And I wrote it for myself. I wrote it to remember oftentimes the things that you forget. I wrote it as a way to sift, sort, and screen people that will come into my life, into my world, into my genius network, which is something I do for business to say, here's who I like having as a human in my life, this person is elf, easy, lucrative, and fun.
3:27This person is half, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And if it has nothing to do with business, because it's really a business book, but it's a personal book. It's a book, not just about capabilities. And I do my best to share the capabilities I've learned over the years through a lot of trial and error, through a lot of pain, through a lot of pleasure. I also, it's a book on character. It's really a capability book that's really a character book. Yeah.
3:55Marie Forleo:It's so important too, because I've been asked the question so many times. We just collect thousands and thousands of questions from our audience. And often what I do, the basis for MarieTV was me answering questions. And we get so often folks who want to connect with other people and they have this instinct, right? It's a human need. They also know that in order to grow in their career, in order to feel some sense of meaning and not be isolated. They want to connect with others, but it almost feels like as adults, it gets harder and harder. We get, you know, awkward and we're like, what do we do and how do we do it?
4:27Marie Forleo:And then you add in social media and it's just a shit show in terms of, you know, trying to understand like who's actually genuine and the folks who are genuine had to come across that way. And I've often heard, because I have so many women in my audience who feel like, oh, but I don't have anything to offer someone, let's say, of greater social stature, or that's at least the perception that they have. So I love that you wrote this book because, again, I've known you for so many years and I know how you operate behind the scenes, in front of the scenes. You're the same human. And to have all of this knowledge in one place and so easy to access and easy to use, it's a real gift.
5:06Even though I have known you for so long, I didn't know a lot of the details
5:09Marie Forleo:about your childhood. We've talked about it here and there, but I feel like in more recent years, you have become so open about sharing your specific journey and details about your childhood. And you write, all I know for sure is that I'm driven to reduce suffering. It very well may be the meaning of my life, or at least the meaning I strive to create. I'm curious how looking back now, some of those early experiences have shaped you as a man and how much that's informed, how much you value relationships and authentic and like real connections. Yeah. You know, there's that Johan Hari line where the opposite of addiction is connection.
5:52And so we live in a world that is filled with traumatized people. And it's great that trauma, like my good friend Gabor Mate does an amazing job of speaking to trauma. I believe addiction is a response to trauma. My addictions came out of trauma. And I also want to be careful not to live in woundology because when people start telling their stories and all these things that happen to you, you can really become identified with that. And I think a lot of people use it to manipulate and gaslight. And so anything that I will say, and I'll share a little bit about my childhood, I say this just with deep respect and honoring that everybody has had pain and suffering and angst and betrayals.
6:41And a lot of people, I mean, huge percentages of people that will listen to this or watch this will have been sexually abused, mentally abused, physically abused. They will have just a lot of pain. And so that it's not like my story or anyone's story is quote unquote worse than the others, even though it's easy for me to like anyone to make those sort of comparisons. My childhood was very disconnected. My mother was a former nun. She left the convent because she had gotten ill, met my father in church. They ended up falling in love, getting married. I have an older brother. My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was four.
7:19broke my father's heart. He never recovered from it. And so he spent his life just trying to find another town to live in, another place to live in. And so my father never remarried. So I never had a model of relationships being what would be healthy and happy. I only heard about the pain of it. I was sexually abused in church, outside of church. I was raped and molested as a kid. I was paid money not to say anything about it. Whatever somebody is into sexually or relationship-wise is usually based in childhood, whatever their arousal template is. So if you have a tree that has ropes tied to it and it's pulled one way, it's not going to grow straight.
8:09So how we grow up has a lot to do with the foundation, with the soil. And if it's polluted or there's a lot of toxins, you're going to have a lot of challenges. Now, out of that, you know, can rise the phoenix. So there's amazing stories. I mean, I often say that look at your adversities in your life. Look at the good things that everyone has accomplished. It usually came out of some sort of struggle and some sort of pain. It's just a matter of what you do with it. It's the raw material. Now, some people's lives are so pain and so damaged and so hurt that they oftentimes can't. They can't transform it.
8:48They cannot get out of it. However, I am optimistic enough to believe that you can fashion your own future. I have a friend named Dr. Don Wood. He's a Genius Network member that said, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they do what it is they do. If someone understood the atmospheric conditions in Marie Forleo's life, they would understand how you became you and how I became me and how anyone becomes who it is they become. And I believe we can change the atmospheric conditions of our life. So the atmospheric conditions in my childhood were quite stressful.
9:22We moved every year or two years. I was super shy. I was introverted. I felt, you know, once I was sexually abused, I felt like a piece of shit. I felt like a human that just had no worth and I was embarrassed and I felt disgusted and I never felt like I fit in. I didn't know how to talk to people. I was constantly bullied. I would pray. You know, I spent thousands of hours praying to a God that I didn't feel. And then I would still, you know, have these things happen to me. And so I numb that with drugs and alcohol and I became a pretty bad cocaine addict. And every form of addiction is deep human suffering.
10:04I mean, nobody wants to do that. And so I have this tagline that I use for genius recovery, which is now, today, I want to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world. And so I happened to learn along the way a lot about business and marketing, because in the midst of all of this, I was always a reader. I didn't have really good role models that were humans. So my role models came in the form of books. I would read and I would go into this sort of, you know, fantasy world of like, oh, could I be this person?
10:42Could I become this? And so, you know, I've read over a thousand books, but I would just, that's where I got my motivation and my inspiration. Why I think it's so important for people to look at what is the first domino. Like in my book, I talk about dominoes, you know, who is a person, a book, an event that puts you in a trajectory. Like the abuse that happened to me was a domino that led, you know, that led to addiction and it led to escapism and it led to shame and in a lot of how I felt, but there's many dominoes that led to learning how to communicate, learn how to connect. And so I'm trying to now share those connection things.
11:22So the childhood was was tough. The addiction was horrible. I mean, all addictions are real human suffering. And I think right now we're in the greatest addiction crisis in human history. So after having learned marketing, you know, the quick version is I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards. I learned marketing because I needed to eat. I needed to survive. I never thought I'd ever give a talk. I'd ever do interviews. I mean, it's funny today, you know, Marie, we have like YouTube. We have podcasts. I was doing the Joe Polish Superstar Audio Tape of the Month program back in 1996.
11:59And we used to charge$18.53 for a cassette tape. And we would send out a cassette tape of me interviewing somebody with a transcript of that. People loved it. I did it one month because I was behind on writing my monthly newsletter that we would physically mail to people. It was called the Carpet Cleaners Goldmine because I built the largest training organization in the world for carpet and upholstery cleaners. And I transformed an entire industry. I started teaching ethical advertising. I created ethical services. I did five different TV shows. Even way back in 1999, I was on ABC's 2020 with Barbara Walters and the investigative reporter at the time named Arnold Diaz.
12:41And I was like, you know, we're doing undercover busting bait and switch carpet cleaners that were using low prices and trying to high pressure people into using manipulation in order to make a livable, you know, and trying to make money. It was it was unethical. And so there was always something in me about, you know, don't be an asshole. Treat people well. You know, you don't have to manipulate. You know, marketing used, let's look at it this way. Hype used ethically is massive enthusiasm for what you're selling. Hype used unethically is lying, misleading, exaggerating, bullshitting. And the world, there's enough of that crap already.
13:20I mean, you can karmically, there's so much you can do by if you're valuable and useful, just be a decent human. And so to your question, though, what are people that are listening? What if what if they don't know how to do all this? What does that even mean? How, you know, how do I how do I do something with all of that? Well, true connection with others. I believe true connection only happens when you connect with yourself. because if you're disconnected from yourself and your body, you know, you've heard that line, the issues are in the tissues. If you have some sort of depression, some sort of anxiety, and it could be biochemical, you could just be eating the wrong foods.
14:01You might not be getting good nutrition, good sleep. You might be too jacked up on caffeine. You may be drinking too much alcohol. You may be exposed to too much staring at screens. I mean, well, you just recently gave a talk at our friend JJ's event. And I think you said the current stats are 44 years in an American's life right now spent staring at screens. That's right.
14:24Marie Forleo:So the average American currently will spend an average of 44 years of their entire life staring at screens between iPhones, laptops, desktops, Kindles, gaming devices, televisions, 44 years, Joe. And to think, to your point, issues in the tissues, to think that we're numbing ourselves in so many different ways. And sometimes to your point, biochemically, it might even be just the things that we're ingesting, right? That we have no idea how that is toxically disconnecting ourselves from our ability to feel, our ability to heal, and then of course our ability to connect with others. Sorry, I don't want to go too far off.
14:58Marie Forleo:We're having so much fun, but whatever. We're going to screw around. We're going to go all the different places because this ties into actually my next question. One of the things you've emphasized in the book early on. And I think this is so wonderful, especially for anyone listening who's like, God, I know I want to expand my network of beautiful people that I know and beautiful people that I'm connected with both in my personal life and also in my career and my business. And you say, one of the first steps is if you really want to help somebody else and you want to form that genuine connection, you need to be a root farmer, not a fruit farmer.
15:29Marie Forleo:So I want you to talk a little bit about the importance of being a pain detective and how we can kind of use that lens to start to lean into our ability to connect and serve other people. Yeah. Okay. Totally. Now think about it this way. If you, if you break it down, what do humans want? They want more woo and less, ah, woo, like, woo, I love this. Oh, I love MarieTV. Oh, I love, you know, going to the gym. I love, you know, jumping on a trampoline or I love this music. I love this. So there's a lot of things that humans pursue for woo 44 hours, 44 hours 44 years of staring at screens in some way they their dopamine is getting triggered into thinking there's going to be woo by following someone on social media or by getting fame or getting notoriety or meeting this person or having sex or doing whatever you know dancing whatever the woo is there are certain things that are ah like jumping into a cold plunge or sitting in a sauna for 30 minutes or whatever, which I do almost daily, that getting into it is, ah, but the woo that comes out of it is worth the ah, just like exercise, right?
16:40I mean, one of your early things in life was you, you were, you're a dance instructor, you would, you know, fitness all the
16:46Marie Forleo:way, baby, Nike athlete. Totally. And you, you know, you had to endure a lot of angst. I mean, to this day, you know, when you exercise and you're working out, it's, it's not that the working out part is always fun and enjoyable. It's the result of what it is that you're looking for. So being a pain detective is something I want people to really understand that almost not all, but the majority of money that is made in the world, in your career, in your business, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're working for someone, it usually comes from transforming someone's bad news into good news. So other people's bad news is your good news.
17:23And there's a lot of bad news in the world. And if you could be the type of person that actually brings solutions to that, and you can identify where the pain is, and you can provide either relief or the elimination of that pain, not only will you make people happy, and people will seek you out if you develop, as my friend Cal Newport says, skills that are rare and valuable, and you put them into the world at a level to where you then get, you know, career capital because you've become good at doing that thing. And then you have control over your life that, you know, instead of chasing your passion, chase the solution of problems, develop skills that the world needs.
18:06And those usually come out of finding where pain is because what is a business anyway? A business is solving problems for a profit. And what, you know, when you are, if you work for somebody, you are a behavior rental agreement. When I hire an employee, it is a behavior rental agreement. I'm renting someone's behavior. They're either going to make me money, save me money or reduce stress. When someone joins my genius network, they are renting my behavior. And I have trained myself to be a pain detective. I think I just hit the microphone. So that was noisy. Sorry. by the way for people that don't see this this one might sit here right you know people are like wow these podcasts so these interviews pain detective is a role that we all play consciously or unconsciously where it's always there and when you start looking for other people's pain and you start really listening to it not with the intention of manipulation not with the intention of getting something from them, but with, if there is an agenda at all, the agenda is to reduce it.
19:11The agenda is to be useful, caring, connected, and help them. What happens is you start becoming more empathetic yourself. And people that are narcissists, they will not understand anything I'm saying. People that do not like me, I mean, maybe I make this up in my own head, but I don't resonate well with takers because I call them out. I talk about it. I'm very outspoken about it. And I really like connecting truly with pain in a way that you can help it. There's true connecting and there's connecting where people try to act like they care, where they can look at you in a way to where they can say the right words.
19:52I mean, there's a lot of very articulate takers. And so being a pain detective is something I want to encourage people to look for the pain. It's one of the best ways to build rapport. And where I've learned a lot of this, Marie, is that when they would have Vietnam vets come back from Vietnam and oftentimes go to meet with a therapist, sometimes they would not get better. But when they would put them in groups with other vets, people that were in the trenches that had gone through horrendous things in war, seen their buddies, you know, killed in front of them, arms blown off, the most horrible things, when you would put them in a group with other people, it's the mutual suffering where they were able to build rapport and understand someone.
20:38And I've seen countless times, including in my own life, having gone to God knows how many 12-step programs over the last 25 years, where you are sitting in a room with other people that have dealt with the same sort of addictions. You can have, I've seen people have quicker, deeper rapport with another addict that they don't even know they just met simply because of the suffering that both of them been through and the shared feeling like this person understands my pain to where no one in their life their family members don't and so i i you know i hear people say you know 12 steps don't work you know hear that all the time 12 steps is only one part of addiction recovery by the way i know i'm intermingling this stuff with addiction recovery but there's a purpose behind it is you You know, when, you know, you would never say that gyms don't work.
21:26You know, and this is what I talked about at JJ's event, where, you know, I'll have people say, well, you know, 12 steps have a high relapse rate. And people, you know, they go to 12 steps and they don't work, which, of course, all of that is all propaganda. The latest research on years of studying 12 steps is one of the most effective ways to treat addiction. But almost everyone that bashes 12 steps have not really either been to many 12 steps or been to any 12 step groups or they've never done the steps. Because I often say it's not a step program. I mean, it's not an attendance program. It's a step program.
22:01So you go you can't go to the gym, join a gym membership and then not do the work, not lift the weights, not bench press and say gyms don't work any more than someone can't, you know, join B school. and say, you know, B-School doesn't work. It's like, that's like saying gyms don't work. Of course it works. You've got all of these people that have transformed their businesses in B-School, but they're the ones that work it. And so if you're a pain detective, you can't say, let me find their pain, ask them one question and then try to, okay, here's what I want. Let me just try to build rapport with them in some artificial way on some superficial level.
22:38So when I say be a pain detective, I talk about going deep with your own pain. And it usually starts with don't try to act like, you know, many of my male friends that are too scared to walk into a therapist's office or admit that to deal with their shit. You know what they do? They start a podcast and then they start interviewing all of these therapists and doctors. And they pretend like there's somehow these experts in all kinds of areas because they're asking people some questions. And, you know, look, you could. Questions are more important than answers. You can learn a lot. I mean, I'm constantly focused on not the answers, but asking myself the right questions.
23:18That's an important thing. But don't use that as a way to convince yourself that you're somehow doing the work. I mean, you're either communicating, connecting, or you're trying to escape. Those are the three things that humans do. They're either just talking to each other, they're communicating, or they're really connecting. And when you're really connecting, it's not just what you say. You feel it. I mean, it's an energetic exchange and you're picking up and then you're trying to escape where someone's giving you bad vibes. You're giving them bad vibes. You're you're hungry. You're tired. You know, the whole thing, you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired.
23:52Not it. It's not a good way to connect when you're in a halt state, you know, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. So that's why it's important to feed yourself, not just physically, but emotionally sleep, you know, and breathing.
24:05Marie Forleo:Oh, yeah. I mean, I took a red-eye home from the event that we were at together. And yesterday, like, I was a mess. Because I didn't get the proper amount of sleep. But I had to be home for certain reasons. And it was the only option that I could do. And I just, the thoughts that were going through my head, Joe, I was like, Marie, do not make any decisions right now. It's the worst state ever. I got to say something. Hold on. Let me interrupt that. And I know you're trying to keep me on track, too, which is always a funny thing. So you are a trooper, right? Because you would have to go into the whole details, but you told me about what you needed to do in order to get there and how there was like just a traffic jam in New York and all this crap that was going on.
24:47And here's the difference, though. You know, the treadmill of shit never ends when you become more successful. People are like, I'm going to walk outside my, you know, beach home and just, you know, I'm going to have everything's paid off. Beautiful relationship, the kids, pets, dogs, cars, houses, materialistic things, inner peace. I mean, maybe, right, if you're really freaking lucky. And it might be for like, you know, five seconds or something. But what happens is it's not that the treadmill of crap ever ends. It's just your tolerance for it, your resourcefulness, your ability to navigate it.
Read the full transcript
25:23I mean, life is a shit show. There's all kinds of things. You're going to be tired. But here's the thing that I've learned. You know, amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals do it with a headache. You're a pro. I mean, you did what you needed to do. You got it done. And oftentimes we play hurt. We play broken like all the time. Now, that is not an excuse to be a maniac, like hustle, hustle, hustle. Whenever, you know, I use this analogy, the million dollar racehorse. If you had a racehorse that was like just a million dollar racehorse, every time it ran a race and it won, you make a million dollars.
25:58How would you treat that horse? You wouldn't shove fast food down his throat all the time or maybe never. You wouldn't have it up till three in the morning watching porn, smoking cigarettes, snorting crystal meth, gambling. you know you wouldn't have it hanging around with a bunch of losers and pessimistic people you would have the best trainers the best food the best nutrition and the best track you would run the right races because you never win a race you don't want to be in and that's something my buddy nick peterson says i mean the only games in life some way you win is you don't play so you got to decide you know which games to play but when you play those games there are times you're not going to be up for it you're going to be tired you're going to be exhausted you got to take care of the kids I mean, you speak to this all the time.
26:40It's so much part of, I think, why people come to you and listen to you is you know how to give methodologies and stuff to this. I mean, just your time genius stuff that you're doing is amazing.
26:51Marie Forleo:What would a quarter million dollars do for you this year? Pay off debt? Stop stressing about money? If you want real financial freedom through your business, you need one thing, a clear, profitable offer. I built an app that creates it in 90 minutes. You enter a few details. It generates 20 plus custom offers. You pick one, it shows demand and who's buying, then it builds your pricing, sales page, bonuses, guarantee, and 7 emails ready to send. $47. One sale covers it. Everything after is profit. Go to MarieForleo.com slash 250K. That's marieforleo.com forward slash 250k. So you share that in order to network successfully in the book, that we need to be useful, grateful, and valuable.
27:46Marie Forleo:Speak to me a little bit about that. And I also think it was so awesome that you said, okay, well, how can I be more of those things? But also, how am I not being useful, grateful, and valuable to that same group of people? Yeah, well, so useful, grateful, and valuable. Well, you may think you are being that way, but the real the real litmus test is are people perceiving you that way? There's many things I talk about in the book. One is be the type of person that somebody wants to answer the phone for. So if you think of when when the phone rings, if you're one of those people that ever even talks on the phone anymore, because I know a lot of people carry around the phone and they never use it as a phone.
28:24It's just the mechanism. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's like it is a what these things really are is is digital cash registers where you can download apps and buy things and click on this and click on that. I mean, they're little dopamine receptors is what they are packaged up in a stuff. But when someone when you get a message, however, that message lands to you through social media or through text or whatever, and you get a energetic feeling of like, wow, I really like that. Why? Because that person brings woo to your life and not right. Right. So useful is based on like when I was a drug addict, a drug dealer was actually useful.
29:03And I was grateful that they were there and they were very valuable. But that's not what I'm talking about. You know, it's like when when life is expanding you, what how can you expand someone, not contract somebody with what you're selling? You can be you can it is so much easier to make money when you absolutely know you're being useful, you're being valuable, you're being grateful in the clients and the people that you're working with have the same thing for you. So part of it is attitude, how you show up, you know, because enthusiasm covers many deficiencies. So if you're not very skilled, at least be enthusiastic while you're learning the skills.
29:43Right. And that's different than bullshitting people. right? And if you really don't know what it is you are doing, it is not useful. And people are not going to be grateful or find you valuable if you are making shit up along the way. So you have to genuinely, you know, it's that word when I was recording the audio book, and I did read this whole book on audio myself, because I like it when authors read their own books. Yeah, I kept getting screwed up on the word genuinely. It was so funny.
30:10Marie Forleo:Isn't it weird how words can sometimes flip and you're like, this is an English word that I'm supposed to know and be able to pronounce. I do it all the time. I have Papa Smurf moments too, when I flip words and my team knows and I'm like, yep, I'm using a thesaurus in the moment. I'm going to say something different because I can't get that word out of my mouth. Exactly. And it's words that I will write down and then I realize when I have to say them, I can't even pronounce them. It's so funny. I'm like, well, I'm really a dummy here. So the whole thing with being useful, there are many ways to be useful.
30:40Some people, if you're pursuing growth, way better than pursuing status. You know, people that are focused on status, like look at me, climb the social ladder, which you talk about a lot, right? That is different than like, I really want to grow. I want to help this person grow. I want to grow the relationship. I tell the story of, you know, the British rowing team, you know, does this make the boat go faster? So usefulness is really in the eyes of the beholder, just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And the reason I say think about when you get a do it today or tomorrow, whenever you're listening or hearing this conversation with me and Marie, think of the people that are contacting you.
31:22The next five or ten people, how do you feel about them? And then think to yourself, why am I happy when I hear from my mom? Or why do I hate it when I hear it from my mom? Or, you know, I mean, because it could be both. You could love your family. You could hate your family. You could love them, but still hate parts of the, you know, I mean, just look at what happens in your life and what are you responding to versus what are you reacting to? When my life works, I'm responding. And when my life is not working, I'm reacting. When I was in active addiction, I was reacting to life. When I was in, when I'm in recovery, I'm, I'm responding to life, which means respond with ability.
32:01So part of being useful is also being responsible, showing up in the best way that you can in the most useful way you can. And oftentimes people are like, how do I meet this person? I don't have anything to give them.
32:13Marie Forleo:Yeah. You know, I mean, what do you, well, it's like, can you give them a compliment? A sincere one. I mean, flattery does work. I don't want to minimize the fact that you can actually connect with people by bullshitting your way through stuff, but only for a short period of time. Eventually, you're going to get found out. 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. So you can talk about stuff for a period of time, and people will think you're really cool, and you might fool a few people, and you might do it for a few years.
32:45but eventually if you keep making withdrawals without making real deposits you will end up emotionally spiritually relationally bankrupt yeah you don't want to do that so so youthfulness could be share an article it could be share a piece of information it could be share a book it could be you know three ways to learn you can learn through the school of hard knocks we just go out and you get beat up and you just figure it out and you fail a lot and make mistakes and that's going to happen no matter what you're going to make mistakes you're going to fall down The second way and more effective way to learn is you learn through the experiences of other people.
33:20You read their books. You know, everything is figureoutable. Right. I mean, think about that. Just the title of your book. Everything is figureoutable. You can figure out almost anything. You can join B-School. You know, you can you can learn what someone else is doing. That's a very effective way because you're learning through the experiences of others. But the most effective and accelerated way to learn is you teach other people what you've learned, which is different than stealing someone else's stuff, calling it your own, being a plagiarist. And no, I'm talking about really learning something, integrating it, and then sharing it.
33:53And that means oftentimes if it's not your own, you give credit. Because I will literally mention people's names for where I heard ideas that aren't even famous that are dead. And I will still credit them.
34:07Marie Forleo:Oh, you do it throughout the entire book. And I always look for that because you and I are both like lifelong learners and we're constantly, for me, I love going to events. I love reading books. I love listening to stuff that can expand my growth. And it's one of the best ways to do it. And just to this point in terms of, oh, well, what if I'm just starting out and I don't have anything to quote unquote offer that person? I think especially in the environment we're in now where things are so divisive and people are so quick to throw out criticism and hate and trying to tear somebody down. The more successful people become, and I share this in B-School, I'm like, you have to understand, the more successful someone is, that means the more shit they've had to deal with.
34:48Marie Forleo:Meaning they've had more people come after them. They've had more people try and tear them down. So if you show up just genuinely with sincere appreciation for a part of their work, or you're just continuously that positive force of good energy in their life, they will actually take notice because it's so rare these days. But I want to go to one tactic because I think this is so awesome that you shared in the book was about getting as close to in-person as possible. And you do this so well. And I'm actually, this is something that I'm going to do more of. So naturally I'm a writer, right? That's what I do.
35:23Marie Forleo:I usually try and text people in words because I have often gotten irritated when friends send me voice memos. I'm like, ugh, takes me so much longer if I'm in the middle of recording or something, right? It's a pain in the ass, right? To listen to the audio or Josh is around or whatever. But I love that you said audios and videos are often harder to ignore. Do you want to talk about that for a minute? Yeah, yeah. Well, and by the way, so part of it is funny because you sent me a video this morning, which is great. And so I was like, wow, that's a new one. Maybe I don't know if I had anything to do with that.
35:55You did. You totally did because
35:56Marie Forleo:I'm a good student. I read shit. And when there's ideas that I'm like, that is smart, I'm going to activate it right away. That's how I became me. well so look if you're with someone in person that's about as close as you can get if you're not uh you can at least look at them through video or audio and the reason is is it's it's not what you say it's often the tone of how you say it 90 of conflict is is tone of voice it's not even the con you know because i'm like marie i like you now i mean that's a completely different meaning that marie i fucking really like you marie you're awesome marie i love you Marie, I like you.
36:33You know, there, every single way that I said that now, if you just said that in text, Marie, I like you there with a smiley face, you can add that an emoji, whatever we can, you know, knowing you, I'd probably put a little poop emoji next to it or something. It'd be funny, but the, you know, cause I do like twisted humor. Love it.
36:51Marie Forleo:That's one of our bonding points. Exactly. Yeah. So whatever causes you to, to, to bond. So getting up close. So So I am annoyed when people just send me an audio message, just rambling about stuff that I don't have rapport with because they think that I just want to get videos and audios. Because if you're in the middle of something and someone sends you a five minute audio and they don't think about it socially, like or you tell them I'm going to be at an event all day and then they're sending you an audio. They're not picking up on social cues. I mean, there's a time and a place and there's no perfect way to do this.
37:24If you're such a perfectionist, you're not going to go through the learning needed in order to get social calibration to determine how to communicate to different people. And you want to understand someone's love languages as best you can. Different people have different communication styles. I mean, years ago, I was talking with Gary Chapman, who wrote The Five Love Languages. And he says, if you want to know what someone's love languages are, listen to what they complain about. And I write about that because it's like complaints are often indicators of someone saying, you know, this is what I want.
37:58So getting, you know, getting up close and personal is if you can't be with someone like right now, it is way easier to do this looking at you while we're doing this together on this with a screen. Here's how to use a mechanism of technology in order to better bond and communicate and feel like we're right with each other, even though we're completely on opposite sides of the country right now. So if you're going to communicate with someone, it's your tone of voice. It's what it's how you're saying it's showing up and being useful. And for people that said, you know, I don't have anything to offer.
38:32Well, here's the five things that I talk about in the book, even though I don't use this terminology. I just have a whole chapter on it. But I'll shorten it. It's called your Tammy, T-A-M-E-E, or it could be Tane-E with two E's. But it's Tammy. You've got your time. You've got your attention. You've got your money. You've got effort. You've got energy. So you can spend those things. And if you devote your time to give someone the time, attention or being attentive, money, oftentimes, you know, if you just want to meet somebody or you pay for it. You know, it's like, this sounds like something a business person would say that's trying to position their knowledge and their expertise is like, our best clients are the ones that give us money.
39:16You know, the people that join Genius Network are my very best clients. The ones that join B-School are your very best clients. And the fact is, even though that sounds like, you know, self-serving to a degree, it's actually true.
39:29Marie Forleo:It is the truth. If people don't pay, they don't pay attention. and they can pay with money, but oftentimes you can pay with time. You can pay with attention. You can pay with effort. You can pay with energy. And when I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards, I didn't have any money. I couldn't just like hire the people I wanted to hire. I couldn't, you know, go to seminars and everything. I just start paying for that stuff on credit cards back then. I mean, I went into debt pursuing, trying to figure out how to learn stuff, but you know what? I had a lot of time and I had a lot of energy.
39:59And even when I was depleted in energy. I did my best to resource myself. And I did that oftentimes by reading a book. But the most expensive information in the world is bad information. That's something Gary Halbert taught me. And there's a lot of free information that's out there in the world that's really bad. That's going to be the most expensive, bad free information you're ever going to get a hold of.
40:21Marie Forleo:I'm going to interrupt you for a second. The conference that I met you at, Our mega marketing magic, I know I put that on a credit card. And I was telling you this the other night. I actually had because I was so in debt when I was starting my business and I had to stay with a stranger in a hotel room. And she was perfectly sweet, but I had found her on like some message board because I couldn't afford, you know, my own room. But this notion of investing in yourself by putting yourself in environments that expose you to people who are where either you want to be or you admire the kind of things that they've created, you admire, you know, some of what they have put out into the world.
40:56Marie Forleo:Like being in those spheres is so valuable. And it's like, I know this is kind of trite, but I just do want to remind people, whether it's Joe or myself or anyone else, when you find an energetic alignment and there's an opportunity to go learn with that person virtually, in person, however you can get close to them, invest in yourself because you are your number one asset in life. And like Joe and I, our relationship, and I've watched him, for me, other relationships to the most valuable things I could have ever, ever experienced in my life for like just a little bit of money. Okay. I'm going to keep us going because only got one or two more minutes with you here.
41:34Marie Forleo:You recently took a one-year sabbatical. Now, this is so big and I want to talk about this for a second because first of all, I know how much you love what you do. You've always got so many beautiful projects happening, partnerships, parts of your business, parts of your life. You're always going on learning adventures, you know, keeping in touch with you over there. It's like, I'm over here and I'm over in this country and we're doing this and we're doing that. So you're always such an engaged person. I'm curious, A, why you wanted to do it? Like what was the impetus that said, now this is the time?
42:04Marie Forleo:B, what did you do during that time? And if there's any lessons or things that you discovered that you want to share? Yeah. Well, you know, the year prior, my best friend Sean Stevenson who you knew he died and I was with him in the hospital with his wife when he died he had an accident he went to the hospital he called me up we thought he would be okay and in the operate during the operation for his he had a head injury he he died and it was devastating. And then after that, another friend passed away. And then we go into 2020, and the pandemic starts. And I start witnessing the world. And since I spend about half my time helping people that struggle with addictions, I started seeing some very successful, very wealthy friends that were losing their shit.
43:03And I didn't realize that how many years I spent in recovery prepared me for craziness, right? Not that it ever fully prepares you. And certainly I have a really blessed life. I mean, there's a lot of people that just do not have the financial means and the relationship means and some of the things I have access to. So I took very seriously that, wow, how can I be most useful to myself? And how can I be most useful to the people I care about? And how could I be most useful to the world? And that's by not being depleted, because you can't fix the world with broken hands. I think that's in the Bible somewhere.
43:39And so I was really looking at the darkness and what was going on in the world, but I didn't quite know how to interpret it. And I have a friend named Mark Schneider, who years ago had given me the term elf for easy lucrative and fun. We're playing golf. One of the rare moments in time that I've played golf, just a handful, you know, like George Carlin used to say, I think it's a waste of real estate. But, and I say that kind of jokingly, cause I have friends that love golf, but he had told me elf, you know, back in the late nineties, easy lucrative and fun. And I said, you know, I'm going to develop that into something because I think, you know, elf marketing, how do you do things with people that are elf, easy lucrative and fun.
44:16And I was talking with him, you know, a couple of times a week. And I'd introduced him to Paul Abdul, the singer, songwriter. Paul has been involved in a bunch of things. And he was doing a project with her, which was probably going to be a pretty amazing project. And so I was talking to him pretty frequently. And he was a very wealthy guy, worth about$300 million, I estimate. And he lived in another country. And I'd known him for years. And I get a call, actually a message on Instagram, of all places from his son, who is one of his sons, who's a singer. And he said, can I, you know, are you on WhatsApp?
44:53And at the time I was. Now I don't have any social media, believe it or not, on my main phone. I have a backup phone that has that. But it's, he called me and he's like, let me know that they found Mark, his father, in bed that morning dead. And Mark was 59 years old. And I don't know where it came from, but something in my head said, take a sabbatical. I was like, here's a guy who's very successful, very wealthy, and he died. And it wasn't from COVID. It was from something else. We don't even fully know what, but he died. And I was like, I need to take a sabbatical. I really want to look at, like, I just want to step back from it all.
45:35And I'll tell you, Marie, you know, success traps are harder to get out of than failure traps. When things are working in your life, it's hard to walk away from them. But I was like, man, this world is going to get really dark. And I just had a feeling that, you know, we were in a war. We weren't yet. There wasn't like a Ukraine war. There was a cyber war. There was a technology war. There was a psychic war. There was a media war. There was a pharmaceutical war. And what is a war? A war is organized murder. And the worst war to be in is a war with yourself, a war with your own goals, your own ambitions, your own environment.
46:11And so I really wanted to step back and evaluate things. And it's really hard to make personal decisions when you're burdened by a ton of business decisions. And I had been a complete workaholic for so many years because workaholism is a respectable addiction. It's a performance addiction. You get admired, you get applauded, you get rewarded, you oftentimes can make money and you can get fame. And I needed to smoke out every bit of me as much as I could that required external validation and applause for me to feel like I'm worth something. And that's a hard thing to do because I've low self-esteem.
46:50I've low self-worth. It's higher than it's ever been in any point in my life. But I'll tell you, most of my pursuit of success did not come out of the fact that I was just joyous and ambitious. I was afraid. I was scared. I wanted to feel like I had value in the world. I wanted people to like me. I was looking for love often in the wrong places because that's what addiction is. It's looking for love in all the wrong places. And I wanted to deeper connect with myself. I wanted to really take a look what's going on in the world. And I wanted to be most useful. And I asked the question, what's in it for them?
47:22What can I do for the people? Because that is the question. I mean, to summarize everything we talked about today, it's asking the question, what's in it for them? And in order to do the best job, in order to get what I want in life, that's going to come out of helping other people get what they want. But there's that Zig Ziglar line. You can get anything you want life. You help enough other people get what they want. Not always, you know, Martin Howie, my buddy taught me this, you know, and Martin right now is struggling through cancer. You know, I mean, the guy's just been through years and just an amazing, just warrior that this guy has been, you know, you can, you know, he said, you know, you can help a lot of other people get what they want.
47:58I'm not only won't do a damn thing for you. They will abuse you. They will betray you. So my book is about not just winning friends and influencing people. It's about winning the right friends and influencing the right people. And by taking the sabbatical, I was like, who do I really want to spend my time with? Who, you know, you can only give so much of you to the world. And, and I, you know, you can't, you can't please everyone. That's way too codependent. It's way too, it's just crazy. And so on my sabbatical, I spent the first week, seven days with Joe Dispenza in my amazing, wonderful girlfriend, Cherie, who is a, she's the top vaginal plastic surgeon in Arizona.
48:37And she's one of the most amazing humans in the world. And so we spent a week meditating, then we went to Hawaii. And then I had to go through this whole unraveling process, because I am just like, you know, the Energizer bunny in terms of like activity. So it's not like I sat around on a hammock, we're in the middle of a pandemic, I spent a lot of time talking to people with addictions and struggling with addictions, did a lot of meditating, did a lot of yoga, reading, reflecting, but I didn't do my normal work. I didn't go into the office. I didn't attend any, and I have a business that's built around me.
49:14And you don't really realize how good your team or your, your staff is your, your clients until you disappear. Will they still be there? And I learned, you know, it is way more inspirational for me, not being on social media than reading inspirational quotes on social media. And so there was a lot of lessons that I learned. I even set up Joe's sabbatical.com before I went on a sabbatical. I set up Joe's sabbatical.com with a video and I did a couple of interviews, letting people know what I was going to do so that I, and letting them know I'm taking a break. And it was so fascinating to see the ones that really respected that and the people that tried to act like they can, but they were trying to get something from me.
49:52And that was, but what it allowed me to do was really give a whole much different reflection of what I wrote about in this book, because this would have been a completely different book had I not taken a one year sabbatical. And I spent two years on this book, Hay House publishes the book, and it comes out November 1. So depending on when someone's hearing this, but basically, they wanted me to publish it during 2021. And I was like, No, can't do it. And I'll give you the advance back if you want. But someone even offered me 200 grand to do a one hour podcast. I turned it down. I would have turned it down if they would offer me 100 million because it would have been a complete violation.
50:29So I knew I could not be bought. I could not be sucked into the thing. Not for other people, because I could have hidden all of that stuff. I had to do it for myself. I needed to have integrity and honoring of myself. So I took the sabbatical to take care of me, because if you take care of you, you're better able to take care of other people. And I think now, having done a one-year sabbatical, I would encourage everyone. I think I've learned a lot on how to shorten the timeline. But I'll tell you, Marie, that you can spend your whole life being busy, but that does not mean you're connected. And connection with yourself and others.
51:08And so I started doing cold plunging. I started doing saunas and I was able to really, you know, get a much deeper appreciation for the world. And I resourced myself. I didn't like my friend David Bach. He was very instrumental in making it took me. He gave a talk in 2015 at Genius Network about how he took a sabbatical. It took me many years after that to finally do it. But I didn't want to recharge my batteries. I wanted to replace them. I didn't want, you know, some relationships, I wanted to eliminate them from my life in a courteous way, in as nice a way as I could. And I wanted to really see.
51:45So that's, that's, that's what came out of it. And, uh, that's so cool.
51:49Marie Forleo:And I was so happy. I remember when I got, um, it was just one of the emails from the team that I read from your team. And it was like, Joe's unspeatical. And I just remember this feeling in my heart and being so happy for you, like so happy for you and so honoring and like just celebrating. So thank you for sharing that. Okay. So would you be willing to read the end that I sent you that video about? Because I love it so much. I think it's just the beautiful, most beautiful way to wrap up this conversation. All right. Let me see. So this is the galley that I'm reading out of. I don't even have the actual hardcover.
52:24Marie Forleo:Yeah, me neither. But I love the galley. The galley is great. So let me see here. All right. So at the very end, someone made a movie about my life called connected to joe polish story which is kind of cool we're just getting ready to release that connected the movie.com if you want to see the trailer by the way so i say what i've learned in writing this is that even if the appearance of things changes the essence stays the same people want to connect people want to feel special and cared about people want to feel appreciated people want to have their problems solved And if you're a person who cares about others and can solve their problems, someone who understands what's in it for them, there's no limit to what you can accomplish or the peace and joy you can find in your own existence.
53:11By me, Joe Polish, like nail polish.
53:13Marie Forleo:Yeah. Joe, thank you so much. Thanks for who you are. Thanks for the humongous difference that you've made in my life and continue to make. Like, I love our laughs. I love that we were like planning a super funny joke with Dr. Joe Dispenza, you know, giving him more cowbell. Like in the middle of the day, we're like, let's drive to the guitar store and find a cowbell. Like it's just you're one of my most fun friends that we get to do just wacky, crazy shit together. And I adore you for that. So I'm so excited for everyone. Go get Joe's book. It is phenomenal. So many lessons in it. And Joe, thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
53:51Yeah, and I'll just say that the website is the name of the book, what'sinitforthem.com. So I got that. And Marie, thank you, as always. And I hope all of your readers just continue to go deep with what you do and what you teach. And they go out and they help other people. And that's how you build a great life and great relationships and great connections. Connect with yourself. Connect with others. Thank you so much.
From the publisher
Networking doesn't have to feel gross - and Joe Polish is living proof. In this episode, Marie sits down with the founder of Genius Network (dubbed "the most connected man on the planet") to dig into what genuine relationship-building actually looks like. You'll learn how to be a generous giver without getting taken advantage of, how to build rapport fast, and why asking "what's in it for them?" is the key to unlocking unlimited success.
If you prefer video or want closed captions, you can watch all our episodes on YouTube → http://www.youtube.com/marieforleo
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