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8 IS GENIUS NETWORK A SCAM? "I WALKED AWAY WITH IDEAS THAT COULD 10X IF NOT 100X MY BUSINESS AND THE NUMBERS OF SOME PEOPLE WHO’D ALREADY DONE IT THEMSELVES." food being served and never had to worry about having to speak in front of this intimidating group. Or so I thought. “Why don’t we hear Anna’s thoughts?” They were the most terrifying six words I’d ever heard and they were coming from Polish’s mouth roughly a half hour into the meeting. I ran upstairs, heart palpitating, to share my new career insights, pretending I wasn’t speaking to the largest group of successful people I’d ever come across. It was like being temporarily promoted from the kids’ table to the adults one if the adult table had 50 people at it all smiling at me as I held a mic and explained my epiphanies. By the time I came upstairs to share, I’d realized that this was no scam. Just hearing one longtime Genius Network attendee mention that the best way to get the most out of the experience was to not let one connection go by, I saw that I could spend decades pursuing connections to people like this, untold sums of money and still end up not knowing them. Time check: 15 minutes in. After a brain dump (an exercise where we spent two minutes writing about everything that was taking up mental space) and a diversion into the benefits of blue-blocking glasses—entrepreneur coach Alex Charfen, who would occasionally duck downstairs to shoot Facebook Live videos, swore they allowed him to sleep less and be more productive—we got into the intros. Joel Weldon, an ever-smiling dead ringer for director Garry Marshall, described his speaker coaching business. Lee Richter GENIUSNETWORK.COM talked about her marketing company, Annie Hyman-Pratt her experience as CEO of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (she, for the record, 10X’d that business). And so on. But rather than just leaving the rest of the attendees with a notion of who they were, everyone had to clarify where they needed help. Some of the requests were fairly general (“I’m trying to create more strategic alliances”) while others were as specific as specific gets: take Bedros Keuilian, the founder of Fit Body Bootcamp, who said he’d like help getting 50,000 copies of his book into the hands of entrepreneurs. And then we moved into our first presentation. It was about how to have the perfect day and it came from Canadian personal development guru Craig Ballantyne. Ballantyne’s speech was undeniably effective even before he explained that he developed these methods after suffering from crippling anxiety attacks. And yet the most illuminating part of the talk was what followed—when Joel Weldon provided feedback. Because Ballantyne’s presentation focused just as much on personal success as on career success, Weldon suggested that instead of asking people to simply picture their life with the partner, telling them to imagine waking up with warm feet next to them in bed. In an instant, the audience is emotionally connected. More worksheets followed—sheets where we filled out where we are and where we want to go, “Elegant Ideas” sheets where we jotted down new concepts occurring to us and then one called “Write Yourself a Swimming Pool,” which had the following Paul McCartney quote printed at the top: “Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic. That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’” To me, the Swimming Pool sheet embodied the philosophy of this group: essentially, that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. While the overly PC would surely balk at this notion and run out of the room shrieking “Capitalists!” the irony the capitalist-shriekers probably wouldn’t see is that the single most significant focus of this group is on helping others. In 12-step terms, members learn that it’s in being of service to others that they most help themselves. And, like magic, that pays off 10-fold—in turn transforming a blow up plastic pool into an infinity one. More exercises and talks followed—one from a seven-months-pregnant wealth planning firm COO named Brittany Anderson about how to eliminate toxic people from your life being a highlight— and arguably the most exhausting day of my life came to a close. Fortified by sleep, an epic massage, more gluten free muffins and Bulletproof coffee, I was ready for day two. By now, the 25K-ers felt somewhere between old friends and people with whom I’d survived a natural disaster. I’d learned about Kevin Thompson’s desire to find entrepreneur affiliates, real estate guru Rick Harmon’s spiritual practice and Joe Foley’s printing business, among many other bits. But nothing could have prepared me for the day’s first talk: a life-changing presentation by real estate investor and infomercial king Dean Graziosi. (Graziosi is Polish’s partner in Genius Network’s 100K group.) True confession: I’d always considered infomercials a bit cheesy. True confession number two: I’m actually in an infomercial for Leeza Gibbons’ Sheer