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  • Reading Predators and Becoming an Impossible Target with Tim Larkin and Joe Polish

    Reading Predators and Becoming an Impossible Target with Tim Larkin and Joe Polish
    2026/08/28
    Tim Larkin has spent more than three decades studying predators and teaching everyday people how to avoid ever needing to fight one. In this episode, he joins Joe Polish to explain why violence is rarely the answer, but when it is, it's the only answer, and how understanding the subject changes everything about how you move through the world. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: Why Tim held up a single car wash ticket to convince a Vegas entertainer worth $55 million that his elaborate "special forces" home invasion drill missed the real threat sitting in his wife's glove compartment. The difference between antisocial aggression (two silverback gorillas posturing for dominance) and asocial violence (a lioness in tall grass), and why confusing the two gets people hurt. Why Tim tells clients the best home security device is not a Rottweiler or a firearm, but a small dog that won't stop barking (and what a gang's own hand-drawn map of a neighborhood proved). Inside Tim's interviews with prison gang leaders from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Mexican Mafia, and the moment prison guards were caught betting on the riots they had engineered themselves. The story of a woman stalked for four days along a Phoenix canal, and the single split-second decision that saved her life when her stalker finally struck. Why Tim, a former special operations trainer, believes AI-driven job displacement may be a bigger threat to society than any physical predator, and what he just proved for $50 in AI tokens. If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network Event or want to learn more about Genius Network, go to www.GeniusNetworkEvents.com. Show Notes Why the Pentagon's Name Change Is a Lesson in Clarity Tim explains why the shift from Department of Defense back to Department of War is not about machismo. It's about mission clarity.He argues the original 1947 rename opened the door to using the military for jobs it was never built for, comparing it to using a stick of dynamite to open a car door.Tim connects the same principle to vague LinkedIn job descriptions, where unclear language creates the same kind of dangerous confusion he sees around violence. A Boyhood Boxing Lesson From an Irish-Boston Grandfather Tim traces his fascination with violence back to his grandfather's basement in Massachusetts, where he learned to box alongside his cousins.His grandfather, whose own father had run liquor with Joe Kennedy, drew a hard line between the rules of the ring and what happens outside it.That single distinction, sport versus real injury to the human body, becomes the foundation of everything Tim later builds into Target Focus Training. The 800-Pound Gorilla Nobody Wants to Look At Tim says violence is the subject almost nobody studies until it's already too late to matter.He asks the room a simple question: who has felt the potential for violence in just the last five days? The answers surprise almost everyone.Women, he notes, pick up on danger cues in places like elevators far faster than men do, because the background threat assessment runs constantly whether people admit it or not. Antisocial Aggression vs. Asocial Violence Tim draws a hard line between antisocial aggression (the ego-driven posturing that looks like two silverback gorillas bluffing for dominance) and asocial violence (the silent predatory strike of a lioness in tall grass).Confusing the two, he says, is exactly how untrained people get hurt reacting to the wrong kind of threat.A true predator gives almost no warning and goes straight for the areas of the body that end a confrontation immediately. The Currency of Violence: What the Mafia Understands About Power Tim describes his interviews with Sammy Gravano and explains why the mob's real currency was never cash. It was the credible threat of violence.He walks through how Gravano moved from eliminating rivals during the Gotti takeover to protecting the organization's ability to make money once control was secured.Tim argues nations operate the same way, and that understanding this currency changes how you read power in any room. Inside the Minds of Prison Gang Leaders Tim has interviewed leaders from the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, and the Black Guerrilla Family, and says their sophistication would unsettle most executives.He describes a gang leader locked up 23 hours a day who still runs an estimated $1 to $2 billion drug operation through nothing but disciplined communication structure.Tim tells the story of Michael Thompson, an Aryan Brotherhood founder, discovering that Folsom Prison guards were secretly betting on the riots they had engineered between rival gangs. The Vegas Entertainer's $55 Million House and a Car Wash Ticket A well-known entertainer with the most expensive house in Las Vegas once asked Tim to run a full nighttime home invasion drill with special operations veterans.Tim instead held up a small ticket from the community's car ...
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    57 分
  • Why The Epoch Times Exists: Truth, Tyranny, and the Price of Telling It With Joe Polish, Rob Schneider, and Jan Jekielek

    Why The Epoch Times Exists: Truth, Tyranny, and the Price of Telling It With Joe Polish, Rob Schneider, and Jan Jekielek
    2026/08/14
    Joe Polish sits down with actor and comedian Rob Schneider and Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek for a wide-ranging conversation about how ordinary people get talked into accepting things they know are wrong. Rob and Jan trace the warning signs of propaganda, the price of telling the truth, and what it takes for a free society to hold itself together. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: Why Jan Jekielek says the best slaves are the ones who don't know they're enslaved, and how Communist China's decades-old playbook for creating "class enemies" explains what happened to unvaccinated Americans during COVID.The eerie Epoch Times experiment Jan describes: five simulated towns run entirely by Google, OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic's AI, where one town collapsed into total anarchy in four days and one resident voted for her own deletion.Why Rob Schneider says attention spans have collapsed from nine seconds to 1.7 seconds in twelve years, and the half-joking advice he has for anyone worried about AI reading their eyes.What Dr. David Martin's 40/30/30 breakdown of COVID compliance reveals about mass psychology, and why Jan says the 30% who refused the shot were enough on their own to end the mandates.How Rob turns one of the most abhorrent subjects imaginable, organ harvesting in China, into a joke that actually lands (and why it only works at an Epoch Times fundraiser).What Jan learned interviewing the leaders of Poland's Solidarity movement about the exact two week window when a totalitarian regime realized it was already over. If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at https://geniusnetwork.com. Show Notes: Mass Formation and the COVID Wake-Up Jan points to Mattias Desmet's concept of "mass formation," popularly known as mass formation psychosis, to explain how a mob mentality let large parts of the population get swept into a government and media propaganda campaign without realizing it.Referencing Dr. David Martin's breakdown, Jan lays out a rough 40/30/30 split during COVID: 15% wildly in support of lockdowns and mandates, 15% supportive but less zealous, 40% who just wanted the path of least resistance, and 30%, roughly 80 million Americans, who refused the shot outright.Jan argues that 30% refusal was enough on its own to end COVID mandates, and asks the room what let some people avoid the psychosis when so many others did not. The Scapegoating Playbook Jan traces a pattern from decades of watching Communist China: totalitarian regimes pick a group, such as landowners, and use control of the media to paint them as dangerous and worthy of contempt before seizing their property.He connects this directly to COVID, where dehumanizing language against "anti-vaxxers" followed the same script used against class enemies in China's Cultural Revolution.Jan's rule of thumb: whenever a group of people gets labeled as lesser than everyone else and worthy of contempt, that is a massive red flag that a psychological operation is underway.Rob adds that communist systems cannot admit the system itself has failed, so when the promised utopia never arrives, someone else has to be blamed, first an external enemy, then an internal one. Rising Antisemitism and October 7th Rob connects the current wave of antisemitism to Holocaust survivors passing away, arguing it is no coincidence that hatred is resurfacing as the generation that remembers it firsthand disappears.He walks through the math: if the percentage of Israelis killed on October 7th were applied to the US population, it would be the equivalent of roughly 30,000 Americans killed in 48 hours, a scale he says would provoke total retaliation if it happened here.Rob argues that no army works harder than Israel's to minimize civilian casualties, yet Israel is treated as the aggressor, a pattern he traces back centuries through recurring European pogroms. Attention Spans, AI, and the Addiction Economy Rob and Jan open by noting that the average attention span has reportedly dropped from nine seconds twelve years ago to about 1.7 seconds today, roughly that of a goldfish.Jan points out that despite this, people are still willing to sit through hour-plus, deep conversation podcasts, which he reads as a sign of real hunger for truth-seeking in a culture full of performative fakery.Rob raises a newer concern: AI systems are now reportedly trained to read eye movement to learn what holds someone's attention, and only half-jokingly suggests putting tape over the camera. Inside the Epoch Times AI Town Experiment Jan recounts an Epoch Times piece describing a May 2026 experiment where researchers built five identical simulated towns and let a different AI system, Google's Gemini, OpenAI's GPT, xAI's Grok, and Anthropic's Claude, run each one on its own for 15 days.The Grok-run town collapsed within four days as small incidents escalated into theft, violence, and ...
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Overdeliver: What Still Works When Everyone Has AI with Joe Polish and Brian Kurtz

    Overdeliver: What Still Works When Everyone Has AI with Joe Polish and Brian Kurtz
    2026/07/31
    Joe Polish sits down with his dear friend of over three decades, Brian Kurtz, the direct response marketer who oversaw nearly 2 billion pieces of direct mail during his 40 years at Boardroom Inc. Brian breaks down where the next million dollars in your business is actually hiding. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: Why "narrow to wide" beats trying to be everything to everyone, and how owning a niche can quietly make you wealthier than chasing mass fameThe real difference between selling and marketing. Selling is the transaction. Marketing is everything that creates the transactionThe 40-40-20 rule and Brian's tweak to 41-39-20. Why the audience is slightly more important than the offer, and why the right list with an average offer can still outperform a brilliant offer in front of the wrong peopleWhy paying postage made him a better marketer. When you have to spend real money to mail, you think harder, test smarter, and respect fundamentalsLifetime Value and RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary). The unsexy math that separates amateurs from professionalsWhy cold traffic is always harder than selling to the people who already know you, and how most businesses ignore the gold sitting in their own databaseThe "million dollars in six months" challenge, and why the first move is not running ads but inventorying the assets you already have, including your l____, r_______, c_______, and p____ b______What happens when AI can write "great copy" for everyone, and why the last 10 percent of insight, positioning, and audience selection becomes the only thing that mattersThe thin line between aggressive marketing and criminal behavior. What Brian learned watching marketers cross it, and how to use powerful mechanics without losing your integrityCredibility versus believability, and why some people with terrible products become believable while ethical entrepreneurs stay invisible, and what to do about itWhy you should write the acknowledgements section of your book even if you never publish it, and how gratitude can unlock opportunity you did not know you had If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network Event or want to learn more about Genius Network, go to www.GeniusNetwork.com. Show Notes: Narrow to Wide: The Power of Owning a Niche Brian says the marketers who own a country, or a tightly defined niche, beat the ones trying to be all things to all people.He points to Joe's carpet cleaning conferences as proof: narrow to wide is always better than a mile wide and an inch deep.Teaching a struggling business to change its offer, pricing, or guarantee can completely shift how the owner sees themselves.A low barrier to entry industry like carpet cleaning often leaves owners feeling like they're not real business owners until they win. Assess Your Assets Before You Chase Anything New When Joe asks how to find an extra million dollars in any business, Brian's starting point is always the same: assess your assets.That means looking hard at everything the business already has before adding new tactics or hiring the best copywriter in the world.Brian ties this directly to Jay Abraham's book, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got.Once you know your existing Customers and their purchase data, you can go find a bigger universe of people who share those same characteristics. Being a Convert of Your Own System Brian says the best teachers are converts of their own system, not people who fake having done it themselves.He describes walking carpet cleaners through the exact 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling pain of a struggling business owner.Understanding that pain at a deep level is what let him speak directly to an entire industry's fears.Jay Abraham told him early on, if you did it, you have a moral obligation to teach it, a line that shaped Brian's whole career. The Chet Holmes Story: Collaboration Over Status Chet Holmes once called Brian to demand he promote a $10,000 event to his entire list, arrogantly assuming Brian would say yes.Brian refused on the spot, telling him to go ahead and market it without him.Two years later at a house in the middle of nowhere in Texas, Chet apologized and admitted the event flopped exactly as Brian predicted.Brian's takeaway: approach people with genuine collaboration, not a status play, or you'll lose the room. Why Over Deliver Almost Had a Different Title Brian pitched the title Overdeliver to his mastermind and two major marketers told him it was a terrible idea.Their argument: once you over deliver, how do you ever top it without eventually disappointing people?Brian pushed forward anyway, deciding he'd rather err on the side of over delivering than hold back.He also liked the idea of owning a word in marketing, the same way Jeff Walker owns the word launch. The Danger of One Stop Shopping in Marketing Even decades ago, when advertising options were finite, Brian says one stop shopping in marketing was already a ...
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    1 時間
  • Everyday Meaning: An Addiction and Recovery Conversation with Ken Wells and Joe Polish

    Everyday Meaning: An Addiction and Recovery Conversation with Ken Wells and Joe Polish
    2026/07/02
    Joe Polish sits down with addiction therapist and Author Ken Wells for a raw conversation about what happens when the drive to achieve becomes toxic. Ken has spent more than 30 years sitting with some of the world's most successful and most broken people, and what he has learned about sex addiction, shame, and the brilliance hiding in ordinary moments is something every driven Entrepreneur needs to hear. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: What to do when your obsession for achievement feels contracting and becomes toxic and negative.How to make sure seeking success through your work doesn't consume your ability to find happiness.What sex addiction really is and what someone is seeking when trying to chase that high.Discover the meaningfulness and brilliance in everydayness (handling the average and commonplace).How to increase your purpose, your focus, and acceptance of life and the human condition.Transforming shame into greater compassion for yourself and for the world around you.How to go through insurmountable grief, reduce human suffering, and heal your life. If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at https://geniusnetwork.com. Show Notes: When Achievement Becomes Toxic The difference between achievement that expands your life and achievement that contracts it is knowing how to make meaning in the moments when you are not succeeding.If you do not know how to handle failure and ordinary moments, you will not be truly fulfilled when you do achieve, because achievement becomes your entire identity rather than just one thing you can do. Dare to Be Average: The Real Meaning The book is not about being half-hearted or mediocre. It is about finding meaningfulness in the commonplace, everyday experiences of life.Mickey Mantle struck out 1,700 times and walked 1,800 times in his career, accounting for roughly seven years of never touching the ball. He still learned how to make meaning from failure, and that is where Ken's thesis lives. Achievement vs. Identity "It's not who I am, it's just what I can do" is the shift that makes achievement meaningful rather than consuming.When achievement becomes your identity, failure stops being a data point and starts feeling like annihilation. The Swiss Cheese Model of Unmet Needs Every person carries unmet developmental needs from childhood. Think of them as holes in a block of Swiss cheese.Addiction is the attempt to fill those holes from the outside with a cocktail of experiences. The real work, as Ken puts it, is an inside job, and it requires being willing to embrace what hurts. What Sex Addiction Actually Is Sex addiction is, at its core, an intimacy disorder and a connection disorder. Ken treats all addictions through that lens.Joe describes moving from drug addiction to workaholism to sex addiction because he never addressed the underlying pain driving all three. Getting sober from drugs without doing the inner work simply moved the addiction, not healed it. The Shame Spiral and How to Break It Shame applied to who you are is paralyzing. Shame redirected to a specific behavior is workable. The difference between "I am a piece of crap" and "I did something I regret" is the distance between stuckness and growth.Separating identity from behavior is how you build compassion for yourself and, eventually, for the world around you. Scrubbing the Wound No one wants to sign up to have the wound scrubbed. But if you don't, it gets infected and spreads into other areas of life.Recovery is not a one-time event. It is a lifelong practice of leaning into what hurts and sitting with the parts of yourself you don't like. Meetings vs. Steps 12-step programs get a bad reputation from people who attended meetings but never worked the steps. A meeting without doing the steps is like a gym membership where you sit on the bench.Joe describes going to a meeting and then driving straight to a massage parlor, repeatedly, until he finally understood: these are step meetings, not attendance meetings. The work is the work. Joe's Personal Story Joe was high all the time in high school, running from anxiety and fear. He got sober from drugs and alcohol but never addressed the underlying intimacy disorder driving all of it.He became a millionaire before 30, ran powerful events where people would cry, and then would return to hotel rooms and hire escorts. The adrenaline crash after intense achievement left him exposed to the pain he had never faced. Why Joe Talks About It Publicly There is a self-serving purpose to running a recovery foundation and speaking openly about addiction. Accountability is built in. It is way harder to act out when you are publicly on the record as someone doing the work."You can't keep it if you don't give it away." Going to find someone else who is hurting and simply being present with them is one of the most powerful things a person in recovery ...
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    25 分
  • Sacrifice Everything: Joe Polish Interviews Rob Schneider on What Freedom Actually Costs

    Sacrifice Everything: Joe Polish Interviews Rob Schneider on What Freedom Actually Costs
    2026/06/19
    Joe Polish sits down with actor and comedian Rob Schneider to discuss his willingness to risk his career and face public backlash in defense of his beliefs. Rob shares his thoughts on the current political climate, the consequences of "cancel culture," and his new venture in a ghost town gold and silver mine. The conversation explores the shifting values of younger generations, the importance of free speech in comedy, and why Rob advocates for a return to traditional American values. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: The financial and professional cost Rob has actually paid for speaking out, and why he says it was the right sacrifice.Why Rob proposed reinstating the military draft with no exceptions.The backstage confrontation with Robert De Niro at Saturday Night Live, and the three words Rob said that ended it.What drew Rob to a genuine Arizona ghost town as the site of his most unlikely business venture with Joe Polish. If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at geniusnetwork.com. Show Notes: King Global and the Arizona Ghost Town Rob and Joe have partnered on King Global Ventures, a publicly traded gold and silver mining company operating in Arizona, centered on an actual ghost town.Rob describes donning a construction helmet and ducking into mine shafts where prospectors worked generations ago. "These people are all dust themselves," he says, and extending their dream is something he never expected to be doing.For Rob, King Global represents a broader shift: a decision to say yes to things he never would have considered before. The Cost of Speaking Out Rob says the financial cost has been real: studio deals gone, film opportunities dried up, death threats extended to people he loves.He frames it against the American founders. John Stockton of New Jersey, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, gave up everything, watched his wife imprisoned, and died in poverty.A third of Americans were loyalists who stayed safe. A third were ambivalent. A third got involved, and it was enough to defeat the greatest superpower the world had ever known.His conclusion: "You have to make a sacrifice. You have to be willing to risk everything." Charlie Kirk, His Murder, and the 22.5% Shift Rob describes his initial suspicion of the young activist. "What is this kid? What's the angle?" What he found was a man motivated by genuine Christian faith and love of country.Kirk's campus debate work produced a 22.5% increase in young people identifying as conservative at the university level, something Rob calls unprecedented in American history.His teenage daughter asked him, "Are they going to kill you like Charlie Kirk?" Rob told her there are things worth dying for. Free Speech and the FIRE Survey Rob cites a FIRE survey: a decade ago, 99.9% of young people said violence to silence speech was unacceptable. Now 36% say it is acceptable.He describes the phenomenon not as grassroots anger but as a "forever revolution" designed to keep institutions permanently destabilized.His model for responding: Lincoln writing furious letters to General McClellan at night, then writing "not sent," waiting until morning, and writing the letter that actually served the goal. The De Niro Confrontation Robert De Niro confronted Rob backstage at Saturday Night Live over Rob's public criticism of wealthy entertainers who advocate open borders from behind security gates and private jets.Rob held De Niro's arm, looked at him, and said, "I love you." Repeated it. De Niro backed down.Rob's takeaway: you cannot win cancel culture by canceling back. "It's going to have to be through love." The Draft Proposal and National Service Rob publicly called for reinstating conscription, with no exceptions based on profession, and with national service alternatives including humanitarian work abroad and eldercare.The backlash came from both sides. Libertarians, he says, were the most furious. "I said, I'm not on your side. I'm not on anybody's side. I'm on America's side."His argument: pull young people out of universities where they are being manipulated, put them in service together, and in the foxhole there are no ideological divisions. Launching His First Solo Podcast The conversation was recorded the day after Rob launched his first solo podcast, with Andrew Doyle as his inaugural guest. Joe Polish encouraged him to start it.Rob applied Joe's interview rule immediately: open with what you are most afraid to say. His opening topic was his daughter's question about Charlie Kirk.The podcast arrives as Rob reorients his public work away from film and toward culture. Hollywood's Reach and Responsibility In the 1990s, Hollywood controlled 92% of worldwide film distribution. Rob was inside that machine. He now describes late-night TV as "political indoctrination by comedic imposition": audiences aren't laughing, they are applauding an echo ...
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    1 時間 3 分
  • Building, Scaling, and Selling: 35 Years of Lessons from Three Exits With Joe Polish Featuring Mark Rukavina

    Building, Scaling, and Selling: 35 Years of Lessons from Three Exits With Joe Polish Featuring Mark Rukavina
    2026/06/05
    Mark Rukavina has spent 35 years building and selling technology companies. iMemories is the third, and the one he loves the most. Joe Polish sits down with him at Genius Network to break down how a guy in a spare bedroom turned a fragmented cottage industry into a 250-employee, 24/7, almost fully automated operation that just sold to Ancestry, and what the playbook actually looks like for any Entrepreneur trying to build something big and sellable from the ground up. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: Why Mark calls iMemories "The Netflix of home movies", and the 1,000-decks-to-one-operator ratio that makes the math actually work.The Lek-commissioned study that found 8 billion home movie tapes and over a trillion photos sitting in American boxes right now, and the hundred-year-runway TAM Mark just plugged into Ancestry.The hiring mistake that quietly burned through real money when Mark's Team kept bringing in senior leaders out of Apple and Hewlett Packard, and the one trait he now screens for instead.The four-year Walgreens deal Mark landed by replacing the incumbent across 8,000 stores (and the surprising reason that partnership is now only 5% of his business).Why every company Mark builds starts with the same question on the whiteboard before any code is written: in 5 to 10 years, who would buy this?The Angela Duckworth idea that finally gave Mark a name for the one trait he says separates the people who finish from the people who do not, after 35 years of quietly doing it without knowing what to call it. If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at https://geniusnetwork.com. Show Notes: The Business: iMemories and the "Netflix of Home Movies" iMemories digitizes the priceless analog media sitting in roughly every American household: VHS, Super 8, 8mm and MiniDV tapes, photos, slides, negatives, audio cassettes, and DVDs.Mark calls it the Netflix of home movies. Once your order is finished, every clip and photo streams from the iMemories app on iPhone, iPad, Android, PC, Mac, Apple TV, Google TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and every major Smart TV brand.Every long tape is scene-edited so you can browse a thumbnail of every moment instead of scrubbing through two hours of birthday parties and blank tape, and clips can be shared instantly with family by text or email. The TAM: 8 Billion Tapes and 1 Trillion Photos Mark commissioned a study from research firm Lek to size the analog-media market. They found roughly 8 billion home movie tapes and more than a trillion photos sitting in American boxes right now.Across the 115 million U.S. households, almost every home has a box of media that is truly priceless to the owner and would be the first thing they'd grab in a fire.The market never runs out in Mark's lifetime, his kids' lifetime, or his customers' lifetimes. That is what made Ancestry move. The Automation Engine (and What It Took to Build It) iMemories runs 1,000 video decks per operator, with barcodes, grid-based processing, and Las-Vegas-level surveillance on every box that comes in the door.The system handles over 100 years of legacy media formats and tracks every single asset from inbox to streaming cloud in roughly one week. Boxes are kept for weeks after digitization in case a single slide got missed.Building this took more than 10 years and over 20 million dollars in pure R&D before the product felt satisfying. Mark's framing: the first decade was the price of admission to the next two. AI Enhancement: From VHS to HD iMemories has rolled out AI image and video enhancement that upscales standard-definition VHS (480 lines) to true HD, with cleaner faces and sharper detail. 4K is still a mountain because a VHS source does not carry enough information for AI to paint a face perfectly.Scene editing is the next AI target. A scene-detection tool exists but gets it wrong 50% of the time, so iMemories still uses human operators for every cut. Mark estimates AI-assisted editing will eliminate roughly 500,000 dollars of annual labor while keeping a human reviewer in the loop.Mark is also eyeing AI music videos. Twenty years ago the team abandoned music-video editing as too labor-intensive at 600 dollars a pop. With AI he believes the unit economics finally work, with a 2027 launch in the hopper. The Walgreens Deal (and Why It Is Now Only 5% of the Business) Walgreens has roughly 8,000 stores. iMemories took four years to land the deal, replacing an entrenched incumbent that also did the back-end for Walmart, CVS, and Best Buy. iMemories had already won Best Buy, Kodak, and Costco before locking in Walgreens.Year one was huge. Then COVID changed the photo-lab category, and Walgreens is now roughly 5% of total revenue. The rest is direct-to-consumer e-commerce.Lesson for any operator looking at a big retail deal: it can validate the brand and pay for itself in year one, but the long term lives in ...
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    50 分
  • From Spiritually Bankrupt to Joy as a Baseline: A Conversation with Omani Carson and Joe Polish

    From Spiritually Bankrupt to Joy as a Baseline: A Conversation with Omani Carson and Joe Polish
    2026/05/22
    If you have ever built something successful and still felt like something was off, this conversation is for you. Joe Polish sits down with Omani Carson, the founder and chairman of Carson Group (a national wealth platform managing over 50 billion dollars in assets), the founder of Omya, and the co-founder of the Dreamweaver Foundation. What makes this episode different is not what Omani has built. It is what he has been willing to question. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: Why Omani says he was "spiritually bankrupt" while everyone else thought he had the most amazing life on the planet.The exact moment he realized no number in his bank account was ever going to make him feel safe, and the moment he finally stopped sprinting toward the next one.The eleven-year-ago turning point that finally cracked open the only operating system he had ever known.The three-year separation from his wife Jeannie that nearly ended a 44 year marriage, and the work they each did to come back together.Why the medicine is never the medicine, and the post-experience work that most people skip and then complain that nothing changed.The bag of ingredients practice Omani uses to decide what he carries forward in life and what he gives grace to and leaves behind.Why he says joy is now a baseline, not a peak experience, and what that has actually done for his ability to run a multi-billion-dollar firm.Why the last 60 days of business at Carson Group produced more than the first 30 years of the company combined, and what that has to do with frequency.The Bert Weiss trick that has saved Omani thousands of yes decisions he would have later regretted (PLUS: the f*** yes or f*** no filter he and Jeannie run on everything).The Six Most Vital Ones discipline and the 30 year goal blueprint that gives you the ability to act when motivation is not present.The Dreamweaver Foundation, the 1.6 million seniors it has already served, and why end-of-life dreams might be the highest-leverage charity work there is.Wu Wei, the Tao Te Ching idea of flow not force, and what it actually looks like to run a multi-billion-dollar operation on it. If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at https://geniusnetwork.com. Show Notes Becoming Tate Omani (The Name Change Behind the Conversation) Ron Carson, now Omani Carson, took the Lakota name Tate Omani from indigenous chiefs he hosted at his Nebraska healing ranch. The translation is "walking into a stiff wind."The part he was afraid he would lose by killing off the old identity was his drive. What he discovered is that the drive moderated, but did not disappear, and a whole new world opened up on the other side of it.Omani now lives in what he calls "creator mode," outside the savior-victim-perpetrator drama triangle, and treats every choice as an ingredient he decides whether or not to carry forward. The Money Treadmill: $10,000 to $100,000 to $1,000,000 to Nothing Omani grew up on a Nebraska farm during the farm crisis. He watched his father cry for the only time in his life when the family went broke. He decided on the spot he was never going to be poor.First it was 10,000 dollars in the bank. He got there. He felt the same. Then 100,000 (he still remembers the exact balance, down to the cents). Then a million. Each number arrived, and each number meant nothing.He kept sprinting anyway. He was in the office at 4:00 or 4:30 am. He worked seven days a week. He told himself he was doing it for the family. Jeannie tells him now: that was not the truth. The Loss That Cracked the Old Operating System Open Eleven years ago, Omani's mother died. She was the one person whose love he believed he could not lose no matter what he did.When she was gone, the floor went out from under everything that had been keeping him propped up. The marriage couldn't hold the weight of it. He and Jeannie separated for three years.Both of them, separately, did the work. They worked with the same therapist out of Chicago, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and reentered the marriage as different people. Karosh, the First Medicine Journey, and the Chocolate Bar on New Year's Eve Dr. Laura referred Omani to a man named Karosh in Venice, California, for a week of unplugged, no-phone, no-business inner work. On the way out the door on day five, Omani asked Karosh whether he would be a candidate for plant medicine. Karosh's answer: "The medicine will call you when it is ready for you."On New Year's Eve, the doctor sent Omani a psilocybin chocolate bar to try in a quiet moment. Omani ate the whole bar, then asked the doctor whether that was right. It was not. He spent the next hour with his fist down his throat trying to throw it up while his wife drove him to Walgreens looking for ipecac.His first formal journey in January: 14 grams of mushrooms, 120 milligrams of MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT. He walked out lighter than he had felt in his entire ...
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    1 時間
  • Storyteller Overland: An Adventurous Conversation with Jeffrey Hunter and Joe Polish

    Storyteller Overland: An Adventurous Conversation with Jeffrey Hunter and Joe Polish
    2026/05/08
    Jeffrey Hunter built Storyteller Overland from a blank slate in November 2018 to over 200 million dollars in revenue in just four years, on Mercedes Sprinter and Ford Transit platforms, with what may be the most rabid customer community in the recreational vehicle industry. He sits down with Joe Polish at Genius Network to break it all down, from the origin story to the build philosophy to what the van life is really doing for the people who choose it. Here's what you're about to discover in this conversation: The story behind Storyteller Overland and why Jeffrey started his adventure van companyWhat the van life is all about (PLUS: How Jeffrey engages with his adventure-loving customers)How to create an even more E.L.F. (Easy, Lucrative and Fun) life with an Overland StorytellerThe role of storytelling in the world of Overlanding and inspiring stories Jeffrey has heardWhy the van life is not about "what you drive" but about embracing "what's driving you"How to integrate running a business and having outdoor adventures (Advice for striking a balance)Jeffrey shares the 4 elements that helped Overland Storyteller grow and scale so fastHow Storyteller Overland is different, unique, and special from other recreational vehiclesThe most surprising thing Jeffrey learned as he was building Overland Storyteller If you'd like to join world-renowned Entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network® Event, apply today for your invitation to attend at https://geniusnetwork.com. Show Notes The Origin Story Behind Storyteller Overland Jeffrey and his partners spent 15 years in the second-stage automotive custom industry building luxury Sprinter products. He calls it successful, but not particularly satisfying. There was conspicuous consumption baked into the previous business that he wanted to leave behindPrivate equity bought out the previous partnership, the rest of the founders went on a journey that eventually sold to Fox, and Jeffrey was free to chase the Van Life and Overland community he had been quietly watching emergeStoryteller launched in November 2018. By March of 2019 the team had three provisional patents (later granted both nationally and internationally), a focused floor plan and feature set, and two production-ready prototypes that they took live at the RVIA gathering. The press release went out the same day they walked the floor How Joe Got Pulled Into the Van World It started with Ben Altadonna telling Joe he gets more done in his Sprinter van in a Whole Foods parking lot than in his 11,500 square foot building. Ben is now on his third one and lives in it most of the time, even when conferences offer to put him up at a hotelJoe rented a Sprinter from Outdoorsy (the Airbnb for Sprinter vans, now over 2 billion in revenue) to take to his ghost town of Cleator, Arizona, then went to Overland Expo to scout in personAt a Mercedes booth, Joe asked one photographer who has been around the whole space which van company was best. The answer was Storyteller, and the reason was the community. That single conversation set up the meeting with Jeffrey and the eventual two-hour Zoom that led to this podcast Van Life vs. Overland (and Why Storyteller Sits in the Middle of the Venn Diagram) Van Life became the catch-all hashtag on Instagram for nomadic, free-spirited people with portable skill sets. Many of Storyteller's customers are high-income coders from the Bay Area doing income arbitrage. As Jeffrey puts it, it is not how much you make, it is how much you keepOverland is the more rugged, more disciplined community. Jeffrey calls them the philosopher kings and queens of off-roading. The technical definition is self-contained, self-directed, vehicle-assisted (or vehicle-reliant) travelStoryteller intentionally sits in the Venn diagram overlap. They bring the warmth and hominess of Van Life and the ruggedness, capability, and self-contained sustainability of the Overland community into one platform Why It's Called Storyteller (and the Story Behind the Name) The team led with "what's the point?" instead of "what's the product?" The point was helping people become the heroes of their own story for the benefit of themselves, their families, and the world around them. The name became inevitableJeffrey's wife Lisa was not initially sold on starting another company. But she had a recurring phrase she used with their niece McKaylen, "shut your storyteller," and the moment Jeffrey suggested the name, Lisa took ownership of it. Her fingerprints are on the company from the first sentence The Four Disciplines That Helped Storyteller Scale So Fast Listen longer than anyone else. Jeffrey credits the entire ramp to hyper-focused listening to what the market and the community were actually saying, instead of guessingSolve at scale instead of one-off. The team realized that everything they would want in their own van could be solved at scale if they built a van company instead of a van. That single shift changed the business ...
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