[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to this special edition of inside strategic coach today you're going to hear a conversation between Dan Sullivan and our long-term client as strategic coach John figworth John has been in the program for almost 20 years and together they're going to talk about some of the key Transformations and breakthroughs that he's gone through as a result of being in the program enjoy what was it about Coach the first thing that struck you that this might be a different type of program well the first thing that struck me was the entrepreneurial time system and I'd never heard of this where you you broke your time down to free days Focus days and buffer days and that was a different way of thinking I'd grown up on the idea of the rugged individualist you you wanted more you worked harder and you wanted still more you worked even harder than that and if you worked around the clock and all your weekends you really were going to be successful and Coach taught something very very different in fact coach seemed to defy gravity to me because when you follow the program your business increased and you worked less which is counterintuitive to anything you've ever heard certainly everything my parents ever told me so the most extraordinary thing to me was working less being more effective and being more profitable you said one day you said if you could Master delegation how big could you grow and I could have left coach that minute and had a full session I used to Charter a private railroad car to come to coach I'm rolling back across New Mexico and I'm thinking well if I could master delegation if I could Master delegation then I kept thinking delegating so then I said to myself well what if I challenged everything I did during the day and I challenge it to say why am I doing this do I need to do this can anyone else do this for me is it fun and then everything just changed once I got into the idea of Delegation that I didn't have to do it all myself my moral worth was not connected to doing things myself but I could still be a good human being and delegate everything thought I delegated everything I could there's a story I tell people about delegation I said I would sit in my office and I'd pull out my pen okay what am I going to do with my pen am I going to sign a document why why am I signing it why can't someone else sign it if it's not fun why am I making notes why am I writing this can someone else write it when the answer was no I would say well then I have the wrong people I have to get people that can do this for me so I'd start with a pen start with a piece of paper start looking at my office everything on my desk why is it on my desk does it need to be on my desk then later I delegated myself out of a desk I delegated myself out of an office I mean why do I need an office why do I need a desk why don't need to come in anymore ultimately I just delegated myself out of a job I still own everything but I just everything I could do I found someone to do it and it all came from that one comment of yours that one sentence if you could Master delegation how big could you grow that's it and then my president of my company a very Dynamic woman named Jennifer sent me an email John we've taking your office and giving it to someone who actually works and we've packed your stuff in boxes by the door and your drive driver can come get it and I told the story to some friends of mine and they thought I would be offended be outraged and I said no I was liberated because I was hanging on to my office for an image of having an office means you're a somebody and then I realized well I'm a somebody without an office so when I occasionally come to the office I won't even take my computer with me because that means I'm not delegated I come with a tablet and a pan and I meet and then I leave but even a computer a PC at the office means I'm not delegating means I'm doing something someone else could do but what was it specifically about you that the program was just good for this person named John figworth I'm prepared to change my identity and one of the things that happens in coach if you Embrace coach is you have to change your identity I was the person who worked weekends then I was in the person who didn't work weekends so you have to be able to have a flexible identity and my identity was connected to the result not the process if your identity is connected to the process then you're stuck because your identity is connected as the person who works 80 hours a week but mine was connected to the person who made money and accomplished things so the best way to accomplish things was my identity but it's an issue of identity some people are stuck in the fact that I only achieve moral self-worth if I'm working around the clock and I never had that I mean someone told me years ago hard work only guarantees old age the other thing I was able to do is to hire people smarter than I am a lot of people in coach resist coach they can't hire somebody smarter than they are I luxury in the fact of hiring brighter people than I am I want every person to hire to be smarter than I am if they're not smarter than I am what do I want them for well before I join coach I mean I I would work weekends I would work holidays I would forget that it was Thanksgiving coming up when I was single and so someone called me and said your parents expect you to come visit them because I believed you just had to work all the time and then the idea of a free day a focus day a buffer day I mean that's probably like the first time someone saw a light bulb or I had no concept that existed like you go to some jungle area and your bring him a light bulb what's this I mean I had no concept of that so free day when you're off your cell phone you're off your email you close the shop down for me it's go explore the desert I mean first I thought it was a bit strange a bit odd and then I thought well this Sullivan guy's been pulling this off my coach has been pulling this off I thought this is you know I'll give it a try I'm experimental and then it worked and then I wanted more of them I have so many hobbies and things that you know example let's say we have weeks with seven days in them so let's say something happened with the calendar and one day was taken out we only had six day weeks would you would you go bankrupt would you go broke you'd adjust to a six- day week okay what if you only had a 5-day week what if you had a four- day week would you go broke would you disappear so you just take days out of the week and keep them for yourself pocket them I mean if your day had 24 hours like everyone's day what if your day had 20 hours something new changes you have 20 hour days well you'd adjust to a 20-hour day so you just adjust and that forces you to delegate and become efficient so yeah I have all these Hobbies interest me and they're all financed by my business and now I have I I'm 69 years old now I have time to play with my hobbies I explore the desert I take pictures I have all these fun things to do and it's all possible by coach I couldn't do this without coach or I would feel guilty I'm taking time away from my business to waste it on a hobby so the hobby was kind of a waste of time and business was a real use of time and through coach I got rid of that whole nonsense the idea the only thing you should really be doing this working and everything else is a distraction you know like now I meet people and they're lawyers they're working 70 hours a week they're proud of that I think come on they're screw-ups what is this I'm not impressed by this you can't delegate you know or you're working for a company that drives you like a slave come on you're working these long hours what does that mean either your business is failing or you can't delegate if you were to compare how you are when you are working now compared with before what would someone who knew you back then and knew you now notice as the biggest difference well I'm much more easygoing I'm much nicer to deal with now much more pleasant I'm not as hardcore and not as driven what I am is very focused they would notice on a task at hand and that I quickly delegate it all the way I quickly find someone else to do it I think it up find someone else to do it but I'm a lot nicer person to be with than I was 20 years ago I wasn't the most pleasant person to be around sometimes was and also I was always running out of time if you can't delegate you'll always run out of time three ways in which your life is totally different from what you thought it would be I thought I'd always be working hard I didn't think I could never not be working so that's one big change that I wouldn't be working hard I thought I would never really have time for my hobbies and things until I retired and that's that retirement is the time at which you stopped creating value and You Begin consuming value and third I didn't realize business could be as much fun as it was before I joined coach I was always working for the future this point out there somewhere that I would obtain a called the future and after about five six years in coach I realized that I I was in the future now that I I always wanted to be successful I realized I was successful and that I could even be more successful and work less which to someone who's not in coach doesn't make any sense at all it's like saying I just built a lead boat and sailed across the Atlantic on it but an awful lot of coach Dan defies gravity defies what's currently thought to be gravity you you are much more productive take coach you join coach and you show up on time you don't leave early you take good notes you read your notes in a couple years you double your business that's just what happens in coach at the same time you work a lot less now to explain that to someone is I don't know how you explain that you know it's like explaining a lobster to someone who's never seen when never eaten one you're going to eat a giant insect that's what this going to be on my plate but coach defies gravity you work less the time you do work is very very focused and very very effective you're aware of all the consequences of your actions and things happen like like my favorite one is the impact filter what you determine in advance the impact of everything you're going to do what's the high side what's the low side what are you going to accomplish and it really brings into Focus why you're doing something or why you shouldn't do something I mean a lot of coach is realizing what you shouldn't be doing and my business changed I had clients we got rid of we outgrew clients I outgrew employees I outgrew processes a coach company is not the company you have now if you're joining coach a coach company is something different and you need to be prepared for change because in coach change happens pretty fast because I had said right from the beginning that it's easier to go 10 times than it is to go two times so talk about the 10 times idea well two times is taking what you got right now and pedling twice as fast so that's two times and two times isn't really hard to do in coach if you go to coach and show up and do everything right you'll probably double your business but 10 times is very interesting 10 times is really Defying Gravity because it's first off a 10 times company it's not a two times company times five it's a different company now when you have a a normal company a two times company a one times company you're a captain leading your company in the battle and you're fighting right along with your soldiers but at a 10 times company you're a general and you're directing your troops I accelerated myself doing less and less and less the faster I was in 10 the more I focus on 10 times I did less because it 10 times you can't do it you can't take your company now and get it to 10 times doing what you're doing now you don't have 10 times what you're doing doing you don't have another 50 hours in the week 100 hours in the week so 10 times first off you quickly Master delegation or you're out of the game so first thing is 10 times Master delegation it's a different company a 10 times company is not a two times company it's a completely different company with different people and sometimes in our case different clients because you have to have people with the potential for growth and again every minute you spend at work has to be so efficient and so focused because you're going to 10 times and you must be able to delegate now let's talk about the greatest Master delegation who ever existed his name was George C Marshall he was Chief of Staff of the US Army for World War II he was the top American military officer General Marshall came to the Pentagon at 8 every morning he took an hour for lunch he left at 5: he ran the War for America at home he took only two calls at night from the president of the United States the secretary of the army that man Master delegation when you read about him no one left his office without knowing exactly what they needed to do he held you accountable and didn't rescue you from your commitments you made a commitment you had to keep it so when I started going in 10 times I thought list okay I don't want to double my company I want to double my company but that's not going to get me where I want to be and five times won't work either so I'm going to go for 10 or 20 times and I got 10 times and then I quickly began changing people had to go and when I hired people I'd hire them on the basis of are these 10 times people are these people for a 10 times company you could be interviewing someone who's very very very good for two times but they're not for 10 times you can't hire that person if you hire a two times person for a 10 times company you'll get two times growth you can't take a two times person and convert them to 10 they have to be that way already you can't really convert people so you have to hire people with a 10 times mindset and then off you go the delegation that came with 10 times allowed me to delegate myself out of the business and one day I was gone once you've gone 10 times once when you start a new 10 times it's a lot faster because you know exactly what you want you begin a 10 times company you start from delegation immediately and you quickly weed out the people that aren't there for the trip that aren't there for the ride and then you get rid of those people and sometimes you have to get rid of clients who aren't 10 times clients people who drag you down but 10 times truly defies gravity you're making more money and you're working an awful lot less till at the end you might not be working much at all as my case but 10 times is a marvelous experience and when Dan first talked about it people in the room were going 10 times what what are you talking about what you do 10 times but then Dan says but it's not what you're doing times 10 it's not doubling your company times five now again two times is really really the enemy of 10 because in two you don't have to change your company you just have to Pedal faster and delegate a little bit and you can keep the same company you've got now and double it but 10 times or actually for some people 30 and 40 and 50 times is a whole new company you can no longer be the captain you got to be the general and if you can't master delegation you will never get 10 times thank you very much for listening to this special edition of inside strategic coach and hearing John's story about his transformation in the Strategic coach program