[Music] welcome to the inside strategic coach podcast my name is gour vicman in for Shannon Waller today here as always with Dan Sullivan Dan welcome to the next episode it's an exciting one today because we're going to be talking about an interesting observation that you had you shared with Shannon she shared with me about the free zone Frontier program and the members of that program but for those who aren't familiar with the structure of strategic coach there's three levels signature 10x and Free Zone and there's a unique collaboration you have with the members in the Free Zone Program but just for those who aren't familiar with the levels if we could go through and explain the structure of strategic coach and then we'll get to how the collaboration with the highest level entrepreneurs goes so if you could just run us through those levels yeah well first of all we started strategic coach as a entrepreneurial Workshop program in 1989 we started with smaller groups up to 20 but by the end of the first year we had like 180 clients and I have a goal that every time they renew so the way it works is you sign up for a year there all the money's up front there are four workshops scheduled at a quarterly basis you know my background was entertainment I was in theater in my early 20s and then I was in advertising in my late 20s and the one thing about I've discovered both about entertainment there are some oldies but goodies that people want they want Paul McCartney to sing yesterday but they'd like to get some new stuff too so we have certain things which are forever tools and I should explain a thinking tool it's technically an algorithm okay so I'll have to Define what an algorithm is it's a structured thinking it starts with a question and then people get an answer and then we ask them to think about their answer so step one is you answer the question for yourself it usually relates to your past experience and then you say now what was the best experience what was the most negative experience and the next step is where you are now what can you see let's say a year from now and you answer that question and then you break that down but it's always a sequence of thinking steps and it all is about the entrepreneurs thinking about their thinking okay we had one or two to start the program in 1989 and now we have 240 trademarked Thinking Tools and by this time next year we'll have 50 patents they're all copyrighted trademark patents these are government registration so the government has given us Monopoly status for these ideas so I just started in the first six years where I was the only coach and I was creating a workshop every quarter the number of workshops just before we got our first coach in 1995 I did 144 full day workshops that year we hit the ceiling I mean there's only so much time but I've been creating new stuff all along and now we have 16 other coaches the other thing that happens gourd is in every group of let's say pick a number of 40 if you have 40 people there are 40 who are just fine with you know the way things are going and they'll keep coming back and they'll keep coming there will be new tools and everything but in every 40 there's a 20% and that would be eight they want a higher level they want to bond to a higher Club so after a certain while we just had one program and then we created another program which was called 10 times and then the first program then we Look Backwards what do you do during the first one and you say you create a self-managing company company so the entrepreneur has team members who manage what already exists and the entrepreneur is the one who creates what's higher what's better what's bigger frees up your entire time so the first level is self-managing company then you go to 10 times which is the next level and now it's a self- multiplying company it's where the individual team members are now creating new things they're now creating new productivity creativity and profitability in the world and the number of coaches increases and I'm freed up because I'm creating a lot more tools and I just have the lead dogs and then the 10 times went for you know about six or seven years and there's a 20% now that want to go somewhere else so I create a hire Club but the new tools are being created for the lower level by other people in the company new tools are being created at the tent time level by other people in the company and I'm creating the third level which is called the free zone and the free zone is the collaboration what you're doing by collaborating with other entrepreneurs is so unique in the marketplace it's such a higher level of value creation that you have no competition as a matter of fact your competition wants to be your customers okay like that so that's the three then there'll be famous people who are World beaters who wanted join our program and they said but we'd like to join at the free zone level and I said no you got to start at the signature level I Was A Boy Scout you know Tenderfoot second class first class star life and Eagle you need merit badges you have no merit badges you got to get your merit badges you know and you have to be trustworthy loyal friendly helpful courteous kind obedient cheerful Thrifty Brave clean and Reverend you know that's the constant flow down the middle but you're learning how to tie knots and you're learning how to do all sorts of other things you know and same thing with the Strategic coach program now there's a constant in all of that and I call it the 5050 partnership and what it is Gord is that I only consider that I'm 50% of the creative team when I have a new tool so I have enough to make a decent presentation of a new tool and then I just watch how they modify my tool okay so they're the other 50% the entrepreneurs are the other 50% because I you know I was inside my own head and now I've got my workshops tend to have 30 or 40 entrepreneurs in it and I'm presenting the idea to 30 or 40 other brains Each of which is unique and they come up with all twists and turns and we take their modifications and we pack it into the tool how much modification are you expecting from members of free zone because this is is the highest level of Coach so just to recap we have signature is where you start and then you bump up to 10x and then free zone is the highest level of strategic coach these are entrepreneurs who are transforming Industries and it's all about collaboration so that's just as a little tour guide through the program these are the highest level entrepreneurs and strategic coach when you're creating tools and you present it to this group first because I'm pretty sure that's how it goes it doesn't go anywhere but free zone first how much fiddling with it do you think they're going to do how much do you expect and how much do you want because eventually it gets fiddled with so much that it would change the essence of the tool but you go into this fully expecting that they're going to put their own stamp on it to some respect yeah it's unpredictable I've had one that I nailed it on the first try and I've have some that they're in their 10th version I can't predict how they're going to respond to anything but I get better and my partners get better but I had one I was just introduced I had one two three four new ones this was on Tuesday we're recording on Thursday all four of them just work like but I've been at this for a long time I mean great musicians can riff and it's right the first time you know the most famous jazz record in history is called kind of blue it's an album by Miles Davis and he got I think six other who who in the Jazz world for 30 or 40 years experience and he invited him to a New York studio and I think it was a weekend I think it was a Saturday and Sunday he had no script or anything but he had a diagram that it had nine movements nine different songs he would just nod to people they all had the diagram he just nod to the sax player would come in the bass player would come in and everything but they were so gifted you know and jazz is more of an impr improvisational music form you can't do that with classical musicians but you can do it with jazz mus matter of fact it's their joy to be able to do it and entrepreneurism is jazz business compared to corporate life corporate life is classical music you know entrepreneurism is jazz you know it gets made up sometimes your mistakes are your biggest breakthroughs I've never heard it put that way before but corporate is classical music here's the sheet music play it don't change anything because the trumpet behind you is going to get all screwed up if you start improvising so the free zone highest level entrepreneurs that's free jazz to you but the other one these people are cash confident they can explore new ideas and they've got the time to do it they've got the team to do it they can just for the hell of it put new things together to create a new third thing and they reach their own agreement like Ben Hardy Ben Hardy is a great writer okay Ben Hardy is just a really great writer he's a better writer than I am and he's got a psychological background which you know he's a PhD in Psychology I don't have that but he brought this whole Realto well I'm not going to tell him how to do what he does but the ideas are unique there's nothing like our ideas out in the world and the reason is I don't get my ideas anywhere except with with the ongoing experimentation with entrepreneurs you know and they're all outliers I mean Ben one time said you got the most unique source of information in the world he says they're strange they're weird they're creative he says you can't even predict how they're going to respond to your newest idea and I said yeah I like that I'm weird I'm strange I feel at home so somebody said are there entrepreneurs you just don't click with and I said yeah there's only one kind and he says cuz there's a Wild Bunch people said God there are some wild people in this room and I said you know I never have trouble with the ones who can walk up the wall across the ceiling and down the other side I said I feed on that type of individual I said the ones I can't stand is that they've paid first class Fair they're paying me you know in the tens of thousands of dollars to be in the program and they come and sit in the back of the room and they go like this I don't think so and then they talk to the person next to them and they say you know and I got to wipe that out really fast and I'll say to them I says don't spend because it's about 8 days of their time if you think of the coming and going they fly first class they live first class when they get here and they're paying me T of thousand dollar to prove that I'm wrong and I said this is not good use of your time this is not good use of my time so we weed them out really fast when they do that they can do that at Starbucks just cozy up to a booth and criticize the Barista about how many shots of sauce they're putting in it's a lot cheaper than spending tens of thousands of dollars yeah I guess some people love complaining yeah but not in my space and not on my time but Dan there's a lot of people who think they're pretty good at helping entrepreneurs and they have visions and they have output and they have I'm thinking of the gurus so how does that approach a full 50/50 collaborative free jazz with the free zones how have you steered that to be different than what what else is out there and I know we don't pay much attention if any to the competition but was that a conscious choice you made where you're saying I any attention to what anybody else was doing yeah because they weren't playing this game the other thing is I don't read business books I don't read I don't know what you would call the genre of book but it's sort of the self-improvement books I never read self-improvement books books on entrepreneurism I read geopolitics I read history I read about Trends in society I read about economic changes I read about that when I'm reading but that doesn't really play that much part in you know what I do what I'm responding to is a conversation that's going on a constant Dynamic moving conversation that's going on the other thing is I don't know because I've never been to any of the other coaches workshops they've got two problems they can't create a teamwork system around them because they're a personality based business okay and you can't send a wannabe copy of the personality out and have them be a credible coach because people just want the personality ours is almost like a geometric system it's a form of mathematics that the more Thinking Tools you have the more more you're a flexible entrepreneur a creative productive regardless of changing circumstances that's the only game I've ever been playing I've been playing it since 1974 so it'll be 50 years and I'm a good free form Jazz coordinator but I create a structure I create a structure so that people can be creative around me I'll tell you the US government and Canadian government and UK government will tell you that we're really different because we're in real patent stage now patents are the nuclear arms of intellectual property because they have an asset value copyrights don't really have an asset they're protection but they don't really have an asset value trademarks have um a value but not until you sell the trademark okay a patent has a buildin asset value like your home has once you have it you have it so when we started the process and we have 50 and this year we'll have 50 of our thinking to Tools in for patents this year but before we did this our patent attorney who's in our Free Zone Program Keegan Caldwell amazing amazing intellectual property lawyer and he got his law degree without going to law school he just figured out the test and he took the test and he became a lawyer anyway he says you know what you're doing is so unique he says it's hard to get a handle on it and he says but what I did is I checked all the other coaches in the world the famous coaches you know who are much more famous than I am because they want to be more famous and he said I've come to a startling Discovery none of them have any intellectual property he says yours is going to be the only intellectual property out there and I said that sounds like a free zone and he asked me what my take on that was and I said not to point fingers or name names but you can't register stolen property M and they steal from each other they borrow from each I don't steal from anybody I don't borrow from anybody people attempt to steal from us and we send out 11 season assist letters we have very very good IP component of strategic coach and on average we're sending out 11 ceas and desist and there's a four stage and 90% they say oh I'm sorry I just stopped and about 5% they were doing for some tight cash flow reason they weren't going to do this permanently but they needed to use our ideas to make some quick cash and 5% is just their business stealing is their business model and everything else and those are the ones we save the big guns for mhm imitation is the sincerest form of flattery until imitation becomes copyright infringement yeah and IP copyrights trademarks and patents are backed up by major governments and so if you go into a fight with me I'm just saying you have your lawyer on your side and I have the US government on my side it's a lot of Firepower yeah the American patents are the world except for certain places that we won't name here but they don't get to play in the game if they don't respect patent law but the big thing about it is that we've established this free form Jazz thing over even when I was a one-on-one coach I was still doing it but we're good at the game we're at the top of our game and the top is getting higher Dan what's the future of the Free Zone Program So I'm 79 and so my goal for when I'm 100 and by the way I was looking back I've created and produced more since I was 70 than I did before I was 70 okay so my goal is from 80 to 90 I will create more and produce now I'm telling you vast teamwork networks here vast collaboration networks that I have here so I've got you know when I say I will create I'm talking my part of the creation and my part of the productivity but my part of the company will create more and produce more from ages 80 to 90 for me than I create before 80 and then 90 to 100 will'll be the same thing I'll create more and produce more from 90 to 100 than I have created before age 9 that's good mod and that's a thinking tool in strategic coach you know and that'll be a pattern create it in the moment yeah yeah but Gord you have the extensive experience in the broadcast World radio you were backstage you were front stage in the radio world and you know the difference between people who they have to be totally scripted nothing can change that they haven't structure beforehand and others people can just do it off the top which ones are the most popular the the people who are not scripted when I hear a little radio slang so radio DJs they call in the industry they call them jocks why I don't know and a liner is something that you get printed off and handed to you that for people who do different day Parts they have to read and it's sponsorship messages it's WEA it's things that are going on around the station so the worst thing sacrilege that you want to be called in terrestrial radio is a liner jock which means someone who just reads off the liner nothing original Oh how's this guy oh just a liner jock oh then the the air just gets sucked out of the room you do not want to be a liner jock very pleased to say that I was never a liner jock and no one on any show that I was involved in was but if you really want to get under the skin of a radio DJ call them a liner jock yeah they won't like it very much yeah D what I got out of the episode today I thought it was really neat because I had never heard you describe the atmosphere in the free zone and I've been to four down in Chicago of the first free zone group and to describe it as free jazz where I can just picture all the members just you know jamming in the room and you could sort of step back if you wanted to because that instrument could just take a water break take a bio break take a bathroom break and then you know pop back in wherever the Riff fits you but in the corporate world in the machine bureaucracy we have classical music and if there's no conductor everyone just sits around staring at each other because they can't really riff without that stick waving in they can't RI they can't RI they need the waving stick no they need the line they're liners they're liner jocks yeah and I have a great favorite actor all my life and it was Richard Burton who was famous of course for his off and on relationship with Elizabeth Taylor but I was heading towards theater in my early 20s and he was starring on Broadway and it was either camel at the musical or was Hamlet which was Shakespeare play that he did and he was the first actor who ever got a million dooll contract for just a run of I think it was Hamlet phenomenal voice just one of the most amazing voices so I wrote him a letter when I was about 20 years old 19 years old 20 years old and I asked him all sorts of question about becoming an actor because I do have acting skills and you know just send it off and about 3 weeks later I get a three-page handwritten letter with cross outs and everything and he answered all my questions and then he said but you know the big decision you have to make is whether you want to be an actor or whether you want to be a star and he says because if you want to be an actor go to the finest acting school that you can and do you know proceed through the grades and master all the skills of acting and then they'll probably put you in touch with acting companies where you can first of all just be an extra and then gradually you learn how to get there and then gradually you start getting into starting roles and he said or you can find the smallest church group or local community group that has a theater company and immediately be the star okay and then when you outgrow that go from City to county or County to State you know he just says a progression but always be the star he says never be an extra always be the star and his last line it's like the punch line he says by the way I never wanted to be an actor and he was a star great great star you phenomenal voice just a phenomenal voice anyway so if I was in acting now I'd be unemployed 90% of the time and I twist myself out of shape to get a role and everything else but when I think about strategic coach I have my own theater it's all our plays I'm the producer I'm the director I'm an actor you know major actor and so my early theater instincts were serious instincts but not in the form that conventionally other people would pursue I had to create my own theater with my own plays but in order to do that we've got to have an improv company where the other members are making up and I do that with our team I our team comes up with so good that's good let's go there it's all free form Jazz and everyone even expecting to be in the audience might get pulled in and who knows you might be the star of the show in that instance any final thoughts today Dan oh this was a great one i' never talked about this before and this is a little bit of Backstage strategic coach sauce that you've revealed here you know but I think that free form and improv and off the toop as we go along in our economy gets paid for more highly than liner people liner jocks yeah don't be a liner jock freeform jocks you know it's bigger risk but the rewards are bigger too yeah and as we move further deeper into automation it's those who are truly original and those who can join the jam that are going to and I'm just treating AI as another mhm so join the production join the music Jump On In the water is warm thanks so much Dan appreciate it thank you g