
Ep265: Being Admired vs Useful
From More Cheese Less Whiskers by Dean Jackson
September 14, 2025 · 1h 31m
About this episode
The episode discusses the distinction between being admired and being useful in event marketing, featuring insights from Joe Polish.
When you're running events, the difference between manipulation and value creation determines everything. Today on More Cheese Less Whiskers, we're talking with Joe Polish for an incredible conversation about what really makes events work. Joe's been running Genius Network for years and he shared exactly how he thinks about creating what he calls " happy client experiences ", where people walk away with more direction, confidence, capability, and clarity. We traced the evolution from those early Tony Robbins events we both attended in the '90s to Joe bringing billionaires like Richard Branson to his events, and most interestingly, why he didn't advertise Bobby Kennedy, Jordan Peterson, and Tucker Carlson at last year's annual event even though they were speaking. We talk about Joe's framework of great food, great location, great people, and great conversations - but the real insight was his distinction between being admired versus being useful. What really stood out was Joe's observation that success traps are harder to escape than failure traps, and how he uses my " compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument " principle to think about every aspect of…
People in this episode
Host: Dean Jackson
Guest: Joe Polish
Topics covered
- event marketing
- value creation
- client experiences
- success traps
- high-ticket events
Keywords
- event marketing
- value creation
- client experiences
- success traps
- high-ticket events
- Genius Network
- Tony Robbins
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Genius Network, Tony Robbins
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- Ep266: Protecting What Matters Most · December 14, 2025 · 1h 6m
- Ep264: Create Compelling 'Cheese' · July 13, 2025 · 1h 2m
- Ep262: Capabilities multiplied by Reach · April 13, 2025 · 59 min
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