[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan we got a phenomenal email from a client the other day and I had the pleasure of talking to him on the weekly planning call his name is Connor Gallagher and he raised a point that you found very insightful as did I he made a distinction by the fact that there is Simplicity on the near side of complexity in other words before you knew about something so he was talking about before he started coach and then there is Simplicity on the far side of complexity and I just thought there would be a great conversation to have because I think you know before you experience something you think you know how it's going to play out but then afterwards you have a very different experience after going through it so I'd love to get your take on Simplicity on the near side of complexity versus the Simplicity on the far side of complexity yeah well the term complexity in our age is always associated with new technology right in other words that life has become complex life has become confusing life has become complicated and the reason is because there's been a rapid in increase in the acceleration of new technology the rate of new technology being introduced into every area of human activity now has a growing technological component and the people who design the technology often times are very very ignorant of the impact on the lives and the thinking and the adjustment of people who are using the technology or who will be impacted by the technology okay one of our most recent examples of this has been in customs and immigration because we travel between two countries on a regular basis between Canada and the United States you have it I have it and a lot of our people have what's called Nexus which is really really quite simple technology going from Canada to the United States you just put your passport into a machine and they do a picture identification of your face and out comes your piece of paper that gets you through the custom SL I found really really good going out but coming back in from the United States to Canada it's really complicated the machine is really complicated and it asks if you're traveling as a tusum then you have to have a special card and you have to do the card and then they have a camera that goes up and down and Views your face whereas in the way out you just look at a place and it doesn't have to move you don't have have to adjust yourself and then when that's all done you still have to wait in line for uh human to ask you all sorts of questions and it's related to the technology and it's also related to the unusual complexity that came about because of covid and the lockdowns of covid there will be a point I mean it was really simple before Co then it got really complicated during Co and now gradually years so they'll have the technology worked out and it'll be much simpler and if they don't change it for the next five years then it'll get simpler and simpler so one of the things is why things are simple before complexity kicks in is that people have gotten used to a routine or they've gotten used to a way of doing things and it's very simple for them and it hasn't changed but then when a new technology is introduced they're back to the square one and it's really difficult and then they get to the point where they adjust to the new technology and instead of being complicated it's easy instead of being confusing it's clear and instead of being complex it's simple and you hope that they just hit upon a technology that once they're through with this that they can just live with for five years or so and if you're dealing with government the reason for the change in technology has nothing to do with you it has to do with what they want to know about you true okay so all technologies that are related to government and even big corporations I think big corporations who aren't especially connected to their customers they make all sorts of technological changes that have no benefit whatsoever to the individuals that they're impacting so I think this is the reason now the real trick with this simple complex simple is have simple before complexity simple during complexity and simple after complexity interesting and I think that's what we've pulled off in coach I think we were confronted where all of our business was taken away because of the lockdowns okay we're a company that totally depended on people traveling and sitting in a physical room at a workshop and in a matter of a a weekend that was all taken away from us our entire way of making a business well that introduces certain complexities into a business environment yeah yeah a little stressful few stressful ones and then once we just discovered Zoom it got very simple as you said we took a coffee break which I think is a great example and really did figure out how to do so much of what we were doing stayed the same which was really cool it simply was a different as you like to call Zoom a different transportation system and then it got really simple you know as long as we can get people in a zoom room and do our breakouts we were golden so we were able to do that I find it really fascinating that this is people's experience of the program when they come in to like as you said they've really gotten used to a certain way of doing things then when they hit something like the entrepreneural time system a free focus and buffer days or unique ability it's a whole other thing to master and it sounds simple not necessarily easy to do at the beginning because there's so many habits that have to change and then once someone has really as our friend Connor said surrendered to to the concepts and tools then it really does become simple again and I just found that such an interesting explanation of even the experience of going through coach tools which are thinking technology more so necessarily than you know technology technology but what are your thoughts on that yeah well I got really interested in this in the 1960s in 1970s and I I think especially when all the biggest breakthrough that was happening on the technological front was simplified down to one new understanding of how the world was going to be and the Word was microchip okay and that started being used 1972 73 they called it integrated circuits they have all sorts of names but it had taken a particular physical form of a chip you know it was a little like this and it had all sorts of interesting designs on it they were actually beautiful I mean I've seen Gallery shows where they're just blown up pictures in color of microchips from the early 1970s 1980s and their works of art they're spectacularly beautiful anyway but the microchip promised to do two things that it could be applied to every existing invention in the world think of the kitchen tools that you had 30 years ago and the ones that are now powered by microchips you know just everything in your house that is now microchip driven and then every other part of your life your work life and everything everything is increasingly powered and enabled by microchips so a particular article I read at that time and I ReRe it about 20 times from The New York Times in 1973 said this is going to be the greatest invention so far and the reason is it can be used to improve every other single invention that we have and the invention itself can be used on itself so one particularly powerful microchip can be used to create even more powerful microchips and then those new microchips are applied to everything else and beyond that it also creates entirely new inventions and creates entirely new tools we're doing our this particular podcast on a technology a computer that did not exist in 1973 there were no personal computers in 1973 and probably the best of the personal computers which is Apple and the amazing software that's been created and then the internet was created and then Zoom was created and all that has happened okay but what I began to see is life is going to be become incredibly disruptive it's going to become complicated conflicted confusing complex for people who don't have any way of thinking about this and they don't develop new ways of adjusting to it and taking advantage of it so if you want to really get a sense of how this relates to strategic coach strategic coach is a way of thinking about a world of increasing technology in a way that it never gets more complicated for you so as complicated as it gets for everyone else and complex for everyone else it always stays simple for people who are in strategic coach and actually their Great Value to the complicated world is that they are a source of Simplicity in every business and industry in the world where everything's getting more complicated because of Technology but for strategic coach clients it's always simple wow Dan that's amazing I just realized what I've been up to for the last 40 years no kidding you know basically coaches how to stay simple in an increasingly complicated world yeah I can listen to all the profits of how technology is going to change over the next 25 years and I'm deeply interested in it but the one thing I know for strategic coach entrepreneurs it's just going to be as simple when it's 20 times more complicated for the world it'll just stay the same as it is today that is such a cool thought it's actually a capability to stay simple to stay focused well it's the number one capability in the world regardless of how disruptive and unpredictable and complicated the world gets for everybody else it always stays completely simple and clear for you I think that's the the greatest human advantage that there is no kidding and I love your foresight Dan from back reading that article in 1973 and it was when you part of what you included in the great crossovers you saw the shift of bureaucracies collapsing and new networks emerging I mean you've been talking about this for 30 plus years which is really exciting and I also love how coach part of how it does this and you've said this before is you help people unclutter their minds right it's like there's so much stuff they have to sort through and you're so clear that if people can just think clearly about themselves their experience their Futures they have the answers but they just don't have the way to to get things simple enough to be able to have those thoughts yeah I've got a test that I do with any new thinking tool that we do and we have hundreds of Thinking Tools in coach but I have a 100 years back test and I have a 100 years forward test so it's 20 22 as we're doing this podcast and I'm creating some tools this afternoon I've come up with some new ideas so I have some new Thinking Tools that I'm creating when I'm doing the new tool I go back to 100 years to 1922 and I say would this have been valuable and useful and understandable in 1922 and I've gotten to the point where the answer is always yes okay and then I go to 2120 to I go 100 years into the future and I said would this just be as clear and simple to use 100 years from now and the answer is always yes they're Timeless all the tools are Timeless which means that regardless of what happens the people who are skilled at using the Thinking Tools it'll always be simple what a great test to do Dan like back a hundred years forward 100 years that's something that I'm going to take away from this conversation because is this a good idea just for right now will it be good in you know an hour or two from now a week or two a month years but 100 years really does take you out of just that transactional experience to actually something that is in fact Timeless yeah and we have some growing proof of this we're starting to get returnees to the program who haven't been here for 25 years they haven't been in the program and they come in they're first they said it feels exactly the same what we're doing is exactly the same it was great great back then and it's really great now how is it that you didn't change and I said once you grasp these Thinking Tools life doesn't change I mean it changes for the good I mean you you got bigger opportunities you got bigger capabilities you got bigger results bigger success but that's qualitative change that's not quantitative change danam part of why I love this is because I think we talk about this with 10x a lot a lot of people as they think about growth and they think about having a bigger future it looks like 10 times complexity which no sane person would sign up for just saying you know but 10 times Simplicity you know if you know that your life will be as simple or more simple when you personally are 10x be that free time or revenue or cash flow that's so confidence inspiring you know people are like okay sign me up but a lot of people are very hesitant if they don't have the capability of simplifying or to have the principles that you're talking about because that just looks like chaos MH I love that they're really cool so this is such a great description Dan I didn't know where it was going to go sure enough it went somewhere different than I thought but when someone first looks at something you know that the whole idea of Simplicity on the near side versus The Far Side of complexity you know what you've just described with people coming back to the program after 25 years it really is that Simplicity on the far side of complexity you know they come back it feels the same thinking processes get them to a really clear place they know exactly what to do after the workshop to take action so I love knowing that that's what we're doing at coach that's exciting yeah and I find that one of the reasons why they come back is that the only thing that stayed simple during the complexity while they were out of the program was what they learned in the program and they come back and they say you know the stuff I learned 25 years ago is even more valuable to me now and a lot of these individuals came back during the co lockdown it was a double dose of uncertainty and unpredictability yeah yeah but I think always staying simple is it's right up there at the top of really good human skills I agree it's becoming more challenging because of the external influences of technology and the microchip as you said the irony of what you're saying I just got an email this morning from a 20 plus year client he says I use coach principles every single day I use the tools every single day and it's you know unique ability entreprene time system free focus and buffer days impact filters strategy circles all of these things are so Timeless and true regardless of what's happening on the outside world so I love what you and we have created thank you Dan thank you Shan