all of you know this man he really doesn't need an introduction what I will say about him though is that so many people in this room who they are what they do how they live how they think how they run their businesses how they run their lives has been massively influenced in positive ways as a result of Mr Dan Sullivan and so come on out dad right or left matter right okay so I've got a few questions for you and here's the thing I've been in strategic coach since 1997 me and Dan do the 10x talk podcast together hang out quite a bit over the years with Dan and Babs and even a bit there you know cottage and you know we've spent a lot of time together doing a lot of things and you have the you've taught me how to really look at things that I invest in as a cost versus an investment and you also have done extraordinarily well in genius network and what I really admire the most about you is that you're at a position where it'd be really easy for you to just constantly be the smartest guy in the room or be the quote-unquote guru and you always have a beginner's mind as you approach things and so the thing even though you've coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone in the world you are great at being a student and participating in ways and a lot of people that haven't even done 1/100 of what you have done I see a level of they start believing their own PR and they get arrogant and they think they're really cool or they swoop in to an event and as long as they're on stage that's their and then they're gone and so you're not that way at all and you're you're constantly learning and you also help other people with how to you know take that approach so I've I've written some questions that I want to make sure I ask you in the right way what's your perspective and definition of cost versus investment is the first one but if you want to say anything before that it's want to make sure we set it up right yeah I think the so my focus in any situation I that I get into is just what's my mindset going into the situation and what I try to do is to treat the past as raw material in other words you know that I'm very interested in my past but I'm only interested in my past as raw material that can be transformed into new lessons for the future so I'm constantly going back taking situations for my life and I was so impressed with your your video and I've been I've been enormously impressed with Joe ever since I first met him in spite of his best efforts when I first met him to seem like he was really odd I didn't see how odd he was I saw this incredible capability in the middle and so what I say is that one of the keys and and I guess I'm proving it more now for a lot of people it's because I over 70 but my number one rule is that you always have to make your future bigger than your past okay and yeah and that has to do with that the past is simply there for learning and the future's there for winning and so that's my basic attitude so when I walk into genius Network every time I do a little thought process before I come in and I say okay we're starting fresh so what is it that I'm actually looking for when I come to when I come to genius network and it's kind of funny because even before we started we already got two crucial pieces of information one on an an AI program that actually does wonders on your website and that was just in a chance conversation that we had dinner the night before somebody mentioned this as a bingo there's one right and then the next morning we were sitting in the restaurant here at the at the hotel and this man was sitting at the table next to us it was a hi and everything like that and then we started chatting and then we invited him over and we talked for an hour and a half and from Australia Jason Mraz Jason here anyway over there oh there he is so anyway I have a phrase that our eyes only see and our ears only hear what our brain is looking for so our number one responsibility is just to tell our brain what we're actually looking for and then your eyes and ears are out there picking up what you're doing and then so I really zeroed in on Jason and then I knew somebody and strategic coach program who would be very interested in Jason so the first thing I did when I could yesterday I introduced the two of them and I said you two have a lot to talk about and then when Bo came up I said you know it's time for me to do both scores so I went up to Bo and I said next year I'm gonna I'm gonna do your program so you know even before you know the first hour of genius had started three things that already happened that correspond to what I was looking for right ya know and you see one things that I when you showed me the impact filter that you did for the 100k group and so then joined 100k when we first started it and the the interesting thing was watching how he thinks about something before he goes into it so me and Dean Jackson and I love marketing we actually teach a model of the before during and after unit because there's three stages of your business there's the before unit what you do did before you start interacting with a client doing business then there's the during unit and then there's the after unit after somebody gives you money how do you deliver world-class service so that they love you appreciate you and repeat business and generates referral business and so as business owners it's a real simple framework to not just think of all I got to grow my business well do you have to would you want to grow if it's growing the business the before unit you want to do better in the during or the after unit because some people are really great at before but they're not very good at during some people are great at during but they're terrible at after you know they never interact with the clients after the fact so if you look at your business as having three different units but then I realized by watching Dan with any sort of learning experience it's what he does it's kind of like what Robert eldini was talking about pre suasion it's what do you do before the event so before every genius network event genius X event Dan does thinking beforehand and you don't spend a lot of time doing a hell yeah but what he does is this is great line as the juice worth the squeeze well the juice is worth the squeeze to the degree that you are able to squeeze to the degree that you're able to go into it very thoughtfully very intentionally and so fort where's alex mandossian is he in the room yet okay Alex well I wasn't at the breakfast saying how was that by the way yeah thank you and so Alex held an event called pathfinders and I went to it and before the event I read every bit of the the the program in Maine notes beforehand and a lot of times I've not done that in the past but yeah but I do that thinking about Dan because Dan goes into things you know very thoughtful and it just made a world of difference once I was there and so a lot of times people that don't do any sort of thoughtful intentional thinking before they go to something then they're waiting for that thing to impress the hell out of them when in reality it was up to them to create the experience you know because the experience you have ingenious network or here or any sort of environment as a matter of fact so it's the same thing with strategic coach but but the big big thing I want to point out though is that the cost versus investment I'd love to have you speak to that because you you've articulated better than anyone ever heard yeah so so what I see is you have a choice and I believe the more that your life going forward is a choice rather than arbors you know that things happen to you and then you as you say you react to them but just using Robert Sheldon yesterday that it struck me as Robert was talking that the best way to be a priest priests waiter of other people is actually to be a priests waiter of yourself and therefore I don't see genius Network as any kind of cost whatsoever you know because I priests weighted myself that and I can I give you some numbers I just want to tell you I did a form of thinking process that we have in strategic coach called the impact filter and it's a it's a way that I prepare my mind for any kind of situation whether I'm doing a new workshop whether I'm doing podcasts whether I'm writing a new book and I pre suede myself before what the optimum outcome is and I tell myself the breakthroughs I'm going to have even though I don't even know what the experience is and then I just sit back and I watch how these breakthroughs are coming and they never come quite the way that I've defined them but they're usually better than I've defined them and I think the reason is because I've persuaded my mind for breakthroughs yes and so I was thinking of Robert because I pre suede myself continually that I'm going to maximize or optimize any situation that that I'm in but then I just let reality present itself to me and then I I say well there's one there's another one there's another one and and it works you know but therefore I've invested a great deal to set up the situation so that the best possible thing can happen and it's always a surprise I mean it's not like it's predictable it's not pretty what's predictable is that the experience is going to be a great spirit and I'll contrast that with what I see with a lot of people and I even see it in my program I see it with people you know and we're getting big you know I've noticed a trend that as we've gotten bigger as a company we've started to attract companies that are our size are bigger right so we're about a hundred and thirty team members now we're in three countries we operate in ten cities and but I've noticed people who are incredibly successful come in but they still have a mindset that I would call a consumer mindset and I'd like to contrast the consumer mindset with what I call the transformer mindset and the consumer mindset is that the world is supposed to do it for you okay and you retain three mindsets then one mindset is a critical mindset so you retain the right to criticize what's going on and number two you retain the right to complain about what's going on and then you retain the right to blame so its credit criticize complain and blame and it's amazing to me that entrepreneurs have gotten to such a high level of success with those mindsets right but the problem is nothing's ever good enough for them nothing's not nothing never enough nothing ever matches their ideals okay so I don't have any ideal it's what I have is measurement I have pre suasion then I have measurements of how well my pre suasion has identified things I didn't even know I was looking for the opposite that's what I call the transformer mindset that you go in and you transform the actual experience that you're that you're having and there's three three mindsets there are two and the first one is that you contribute a contribution as just the magic password you're going to go in to actually create value for other people number two you're going to collaborate with other people so to the degree that teamwork is available during that period of time then you can collaborate and number three is that you create yeah just create new things and so to me I 74 I'm not trying to get anywhere yeah I'm just trying to expand my transformer mindset of contribution collaboration and creativity and so I feel that time is actually slowing down for me it's not speeding up Wow well so you what are your thoughts cuz you're big fan of Ben Hardy of course where's Ben did I mention that I'm did I mention that I'm a big fan of Ben Hardy you just did yeah you just said yeah and so so Ben you know with his book willpower doesn't work and I know he's doing a book with you who not how yes and then is a great example you know because people say you know why is it that you do certain things with certain genius not like there's some sort of click or favor ism within genius nowhere and it's like well a lot of that depends on the energy the collaboration the contributions of people it's not just like hey I'm gonna signal single out see people that I really attached to single themselves out by just exhibiting great sort of I mean you're the same way that's why me and you do so much together cuz you hear the same thing at coach about me like what you know like people that don't understand our relationship probably you know they kind of have their own story about it so so Ben writes about willpower doesn't work and he writes about the environment and creating the sort of environment and what you've always been a master at and I think from the very early stages of strategic strategic ocean a lot of way is AAA for workaholics that are super high achievers and and you you bring them in and you talk about three days in focus days and buffer days and that if you want to you know a lot of a lot of your perspectives that a entrepreneur that is too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves right and you give people freedom and a lot of entrepreneurs if you asked why are you what do you want well I want freedom but a lot of them don't have any time freedom they a lot of them don't have relationship freedom in a lot of them don't have money freedom although compared to the average person you could probably say that they do and you give them ways to think about freeing that up but you create an environment and you show them how to actually set that environment up and then you surround yourself with people that are that support you in what it is that you want to do and before I quit rambling here yeah I remember you know hearing from you if you spend a lot of time working on what your week at your weaknesses at the end of your life you have a lot of really strong weaknesses and so your whole thing is focus on your strengths and surround yourself with the unique ability team so the so you go to environments where you can tap in the capabilities so genius Network for you from my perspective is you're coming to find other people that can just you're not going to spend the time the money the energy you're just going to go and latch on to that and access it and collaborate with it and continue to build and grow yourself so but a lot of this has to do with with the environment and how you self-select that yeah and it's a skill so you know I mean everything it starts with mindset that mindset alters your behavior so when you look at people's behavior it tells you nothing unless you go back upstream and look at the mindsets that actually determine the behavior and what I reflected in my description of my first five years in genius network with Babs and by the way Babs rate your Babs Smith is my partner and and you know unless I know Babs I haven't created strategic coach I mean we actually had t-shirts last year on her birthday that said no Babs no coach and and I said my life is has two stages it's B B and a B and it's before Babs and after Babs you know if I hadn't met Babs I'm just a smart drunk worried about the rent you know and you know and I say that honestly because I really required that collaboration with the person not only who was my partner in my personal life but my partner in my business life and I had gone through a lot of setbacks and a lot of frustration until I met Babs and then bang you know there was just this huge jump and that's gone you know we're we're into our collaboration were we're really into our like 35th year going into our 36th year but when Babs and I came to genius Network the very first thing you said when we started you said you're paying twenty five thousand for this and if you don't get two hundred fifty thousand dollars of value out of it in the first year I won't let you come back and so I was sitting there and I said ten times ten times and we had done thinking exercise in coach which is called the ten times mind expander where you go back 25 years to when you were one-tenth of where you are and you talk about the stages of growth that got you to where you are and you know we just created a structure and people say amazing you know how I did that and I said now you're ten times where you were when you were one-tenth but could you have predicted how you were going to get to ten times back then and of course you couldn't and I say okay so we're going to do it again now you you I've given you proof that you're very gone ten times and now what I'm going to say is we're going to pick a date in the future when you're going to go ten times and I'm not then we're going to work on that but I came up to you after the first I said you know I'm gonna create a whole program called the ten times ambition program and it happened in the first half hour and at the first break I came up to you and I said I just got my I just got my money back and it turned out that that first insight in the first hour of my first 25k after five years had netted a 16 million dollars sixteen million which turned out to be a sixty-four times return on investment yeah and it was just bang I got that I got the idea and then so when I started a hundred cave so first five years going to be a million dollars I said we're going to get sixty four million dollars and the very first workshop I was in I met Ben and I've all my career in coach I've been looking for the writer who just he's not an inside writer but an outside writer who just totally gets what we're talking about and he's got a reputation and he's got an audience and he's got to reach and he's got an agent he's got a publisher and they have a big budget and I said bingo there's my there's my writer and and so we we have our first project you know it will be written during the next year and then we go and Ben said you know after this book can we do another book I said you bet and it would be a bad idea yeah so I sweeten the deal and I said Matt I said Ben all the money we make on these books is your money I just want the I just want the customers who come from your books right so just like that and it's going to be sixty four times so you know what would be so plus I've gotten the enormous amount else why I thought I mean I've talked to Jon Ratliff a lot over the years about his thinking about this packaging your company as if you're going to sell it and I tell you the two hours yesterday afternoon you know what it was for me is that's true that was a threshold two hours for genius Network because you're now jumping where we're not just considered talking about entrepreneurs we're really talking about entrepreneurial companies and I just felt it was like times genius Network everybody put their big-boy pants on and actually started thinking about companies and so it's really great so that's what I'm looking for I'm looking for I'm looking for a sixty four million dollars of value every time I come here which is okay so I love that for one now and you just have the intention and then you keep your eyes and ears out because you don't know where the actual opportunity is going to come from yeah well so so everyone has in their folder here that tool that says 250k ideas now part of that is is a trick in the same way that when I in you and I I don't emphasize it as much as I used to but for the first you know eight years of genius network I would say if you you're here for Newton knew people that would join the group and those of you they've been in the group for a while you've heard me say this many times where I would say if you don't get at least a ten times return on your investment I don't want you to renew for the next year and it's not that I don't want the money because I want the money I'd like the money what I want though is I want you to get a ten times return I want genius no work to be a school that pays you to attend I don't ever want it to be a cost and what I'm doing though is I'm doing a trick because of your brain asks and listens for two hundred fifty thousand dollar ideas if you are truly asking and looking for that your brain cannot avoid the question and so in a lot of ways it's it's it's a way to because there's all kinds of stuff you can focus on but if you focused on what am I gonna hear that's worth at least a quarter million to me you're gonna get a ten times return on that and the idea for the 10-minute talk was how could someone share a concept of strategy and methodology in ten minutes that if someone actually took seriously what it is and they had to have to deliver not all of them do but a lot actually do that each minute of that ten minute talk would be worth twenty-five thousand dollars if you could literally do a 250 thousand dollar idea in ten minutes that would be a pretty damn good return on investment and so we've done knit like in the membership site there's so many 10-minute talks that are worth a quarter million dollars but only to the degree that someone interacts with it that way so when you're talking about mindset when you're talk about this what would prevent someone even though you're talking about it even though you're explaining exactly what you did even though I just shared the whole idea and a lot of people are very capable of saying this is what I want and then they go about doing what is needed in order to get it what would prevent someone from being able to do that so because there would be some people in the audience here that are hearing this but it just doesn't land it just doesn't penetrate well I think there are there's a decision so there's a choice but there's an interesting distinction between the word choice because choice can only come from the inside you know in other words the choice is that you have a picture of yourself in the future and you choose that that's who you're going to be in the future and entrepreneurs I I would say probably become entrepreneurs because they have that ability to a degree that the general public doesn't that that they can see themselves a year from now or three years from now and they can actually engage intellectually intellectually with that that totally makes sense but also they emotionally commit to it you know they're committed but there's no evidence of it yet right so literally who you are as an entrepreneur constantly gets created by your vision of who you want to be in the future there's but that's the choice but the decision is that you have to give up criticism complaining and blaming for the rest of your life that once you enter onto this path you can no longer stand back and say well if it works if it doesn't work I get to I get to criticize complain and blame because you don't that's the decision and that is the real what I would say the fork in the road you know Yogi Berra said when you come to the fork in the road take it and and and my feeling is that I took this I took this the one for a long time ago and then there's all sorts of mindsets that build up around being a transformer and and also your behavior changes then your behavior becomes automatic habit and then what you notice is you start noticing other people who who have the same mindset and that's where the payoff is because our brain is not our intelligence our ability to access other people's and brains is really our intelligence and the school system starting that junior kid kindergarten now where they have proms at the end of the year they teach people to be isolated individuals who think their intelligence is inside of themselves so you get 20 years of that in the educational system and it dissing abel's you from accessing the intelligence of other people entrepreneurs by necessity and also by choice really really access the intelligence and that's really your intelligence the creativity and the contributions of other people but you don't you don't access other people's capabilities intelligence unless you give up criticizing and complaining and then blaming you can't do it anymore it's just not part of your life yeah so for people that are conditioned with self-talk that is extraordinarily negative or destructive and I of course say this from experience being an addict you usually don't wake up in the morning feeling very serene and very peaceful and very harmonious you're seeking chaos and so addicts have as the Guns & Roses 1st album Appetite for Destruction there are some entrepreneurs that are just very destructive and so there's a lot of unwinding and unlearning because I think unlearning is more important than learning and so recommendations for reconditioning yourself to not be a blame or a criticize er yeah stop doing it we should maybe just what's that Bob Newhart stop it yes we should we should you ever seen that video yes stop it it's it's it's quite funny yeah well no I mean I mmm I don't have an office so a tower to our to headquarters we have a Toronto headquarters in the Chicago headquarters and I just have a table we have a cafe and the one in Toronto we have about 50 seats in the cafe and I I just sit but I'm there all day and people are coming in and out and I'm talking to them but I have lunch sometimes with clients are in for specials so we have special one-day programs that apply a deep dive and one of his unique ability and there was a woman there from Georgia and she said you know I'm just so hard on myself and I said well stop doing that and then she'd go on and then she'd say yeah I just can't find really good people I you know I I'm always dissatisfied with the people around me I said well stop doing that and she brought up about five fins in a row and I said well stop doing that I said the reason why you you have these thoughts and your behavior is because you continue doing it and after today just stop doing it just don't do it anymore and you know it seems it seems really funny but it strikes me from the the movie your documentary by the way I can picture a situation in the future where we're all gathered here and everybody in the room has a documentary video of themselves by Nic nantan you know we it's actually a goal of mine to get even ten more people after you and David Berg and Nick actually threw in and devack the demand by the way who first of all I'd like to give another hand in dabangg because I thought that where is he yeah but des bains since he's come in to ten times program is gone at least twenty five times he's gone you know in about six or seven years so Devan is real he's a real player but what I got Nick really caught it last night was that you were deep into your drug throws and you know you had your all Duff all the time that was like a six star day of the things that you did on that one day and then you stopped it you just stopped it just stopped and then you haven't done it again for thirty years so stopping things is an incredible ability you know well and the thing with recovery I do it with a lot of support and a lot of rituals and a lot of practices and I believe that you know when just in and I'll say this in a way to so it is applicable to everyone's life here is in recovery anything you put ahead of your recovery you're gonna lose so someone is an addict and you put your business ahead of your recovery you're gonna lose your sobriety you're gonna lose your recovery if you put your relationship if you put your kids ahead of it you will lose your kids you will the worst stages and that's a really hard concept to take something like that that's so important and make it your number one thing and so I see people that are very functional addicts like there are there are several people in this room that are incredibly functional addicts that the that don't see it easily I mean they may know it but there's a real there's a really hardcore like industrial band anyone ever remember the band big black anyone the room ever heard a big black a couple of people yeah like hardcore band and there's a song called bad houses and there's a lyric in the song that says I tell myself I will not go even as I Drive there and so if you have that compulsion I'm not going to I'm not going to be online past 10:00 at night in your online past 10:00 at night or I'm not going to you know I'm not going to do this thing I'm not going to have that second drink but you have the third drink in the fourth drink you know if you have any of that I tell myself I will not go even as I Drive there and that compulsion and you can't seem to stop it well create the environment you know so let's take your office concept because this applies so you have a no office concept for me for you yeah and you've in in not saying that everyone should do this however I've heard dozens of people throughout the years they're like you know I gave up my office and man I'm just what may way more functional because as you talk about offices can often be places where entrepreneurs go to escape real work well they go to hide from opportunity most people's offices you walk in they go in there they're hiding from opportunity nothing useful can come when they go into their office they don't make their money in their office yeah they make their money through creativity in relationship and network but they go to their office and I think it's a carryover they want to see themselves as CEOs because CEOs have offices but that's not the world that we live in we live in the world of taking resources from a lower level productivity to a higher level of productivity you need an office for that I don't think so right yeah so I I just haven't had an office for 25 years you know first of all it's a messy office if I have an office and you know I've seen some people who are actually really good at office but I haven't found many of them in the entrepreneurial world yeah that's great what's your pleasure pain for useless real estate buy why do you pay for useless real estate