[Music] 10x is easier than 2x is the brand new book by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy discover a mindset shift most entrepreneurs are completely missing unlimited growth without working harder available now wherever you buy your books [Music] things that I've been hearing a lot about from people thinking about strategic code from our people who talk to prospects is that there's a lot of uncertainty and this is also from what I've been reading and listening to is there's so much uncertainty and there's a lot of headwinds for entrepreneurs and I couldn't wait to talk to you about that because I'm like damn we'll have some very interesting things to say and one of my takes on it is that strategic coach helps entrepreneurs get stronger especially in the face of headwinds uncertainty strange economic and political times whatever we're facing however you want to think about that so you're someone who's incredibly in tune with what's happening in the world you read voraciously we'll talk about what you watch in just a moment but I'd love to get your take what is the best way for entrepreneurs to respond with all of this stuff distracting stuff going on around us how can we be strong and powerful it's a great question and that's a periodic problem because there's upturns downturns in the market and there's world events that happen which affect things economically so I started coaching in 1974. next year it'll be 50 years that I've been coaching so essentially an entrepreneur for 50 years and I don't know the exact number but there's been like seven significant events where people lost their confidence about what was happening in the future and it affected me a couple of times and then I said well this is always going to happen so why don't you develop a skill around downturns and just as it relates to the company I have two fundamental rules about the company itself is that as the owner and the leader of the company co-owner and we have a great leadership team the number one job every day during the uncertain times is that you keep everybody's confidence really high day by day this is why we do positive focuses for everything you know every meeting everybody shares something they're excited about and at the end of the meeting they share the best thing they got out of the meeting and if you're in a meeting with Dan I can tell you you're you're doing a positive focus at the start and at the end and we did that before we started today the big thing is because we come from different worlds when we come to work and oftentimes the world we come from people are really scared they could be depressed and everything else and then you have to come into the space so I don't want any of that coach has a very confident place to be coach is a very confident place to work and it's all on winning you know where can we win today so the first one is to keep everybody's confidence up but the second rule is come out of the whatever the shaky period is with the same team you went into it with terms of numbers and also in terms of the power of your team because if you look at the larger economy you know you look at big companies big corporations they make all their gains in market share during bad times I say in our world you know the coaching world I remember before the 0809 subprime market crash subprime mortgage there were two big coaching organizations one was action coach and one was one coach and I talked to the sales people and I said who else are prospects talking about and they would mention these two coach and neither of them came out of the downturn and that was 2009 2010 at the latest and in the last 13 years I haven't heard about any coaching organizations but since 09 we've gone 10 times I mean our just Top Line we went 10 times and the profit's been last year was even greater I mean I think we had our best bottom line year ever in history and we've never had a loss here but we've had break even years I think 09 was break even and then 2020 with the covid I think that was a break even your top line was way down but we still were a profitable company and I think the same thing happened as a result of the lockdowns covid and everything and we acquired a whole new capability because first three months we had to recreate the business model because there weren't going to be any live workshops and so you and I especially we created a whole book which is called scary time success manual and I just created a I don't know it was eight points eight ten points when 9 11 happened we were going to New York to talk to all of our New York clients because they were right at Ground Zero and we said you know this is the time you're going to make market share and the way that you make market share right now is you take the emphasis off you and what's happening to you and you go out and you talk to all your clients and you give them a new future your job during uncertain times is to go out and create new futures for all of your clients and for your prospects because a lot of people their future depends upon in their mind on external factors okay and what you realize is that instead of worrying about yourself you have to give other people a chance to be clear about their future and we have a whole process which is called the Dos question and you don't go three years you go one year if it was a year from now you say this to your customer quiet and the key people who your future depends upon you go out and you renew their sense about the future you know I would just say 12 months from now if we were having this discussion and you're looking back over the Year back to now what has to happen both professionally and personally for you to feel happy with your progress and the moment you get them on that line of thinking they begin to realize there's actually lots of opportunity there's a favorite it's kind of a children's book but it's not actually it's an adult book and it's called Watership Down Watership Down and it talks about what happens to rabbits they're crossing a road and there's headlights coming and they go tharn instead of jumping back or jumping forward they just sit there and get hit you know and I said when uncertainty happens most people go tharn they lose their ability to take action so just by asking the question first of all you're getting them out of today and you're taking them a year forward well they don't want things to be worse a year from now and what do they want to say a year from now how they operate and they said oh I made progress here I made the moment you break the spell all of a sudden their imagination comes back to them their ambition comes back to them and then you say so what dangers do you have right now that need to be eliminated a year from now and cash flow is obviously an issue but you can work on new capabilities you can work on new technology you can work on new learning and then what opportunities do you have right now well they have opportunities but they've lost their will to go out and develop and immediately once you break the spell they said oh yeah I could do this I could do this I could do this and you can feel the energy coming back their excitement coming back and what it does they've given control uh to outside factors now all of our clients are entrepreneurs so a long time ago I had a client I had a great great Zoom Workshop a little mini Zoom Workshop this morning and I've got my first 50-year client I just turned 79 and he's 29 and this is my first 50 or clients with the age difference right yeah yeah and he's an entrepreneur just like I am you know and he's doing great and that's really great as a matter of fact everybody in the room was doing great so the problem is you've attached your confidence to outside factors over which you have no control so you've got to bring your confidence back and your capability back where you're totally in control and then the next thing what strengths do you have that don't depend on the outside world you know your your problem solver you're great at asking questions you're great at coming up with new strategies and all this power returns back to the person I remember with 9 11 I said how many of you from the standpoint of cash reserves you're okay if you don't make a sale for the next 90 days you know and the vast majority of our clients said yeah I do I said okay so forget about cash flow forget about sales and just go out there and breakfast lunch or dinner go out and put your best clients best customers best prospects through the one year take ahead and then looking back from a year from now back till now and just see what happens I remember some very very good financial advisors they did that and they came back in and they said you can't believe the quarter I had it was the best cash flow quarter I've ever had I said it's not that they don't have the money the money is frozen because their brain is froze and the moment you unfreeze their brain the money comes out but there's this tendency to batten down the hatches and you know cut costs and the interesting thing is Dan that what's true about the dogs conversation is it really Taps into I would say the innate resilience that entrepreneurs have I love what you said breaking the spell because it's true being frozen you know Thorn is not the Natural State I was actually talking to a great entrepreneur the other day she goes headwinds resistance uncertainty that's normal for entrepreneurs well that's where your opportunity lies right yeah it was such a great reminder she goes yeah so what else is new no that was great context and what I love about all of the including the Dos conversation all of the tools of coach just really helps people get stronger in terms of their time their money their relationships clarity about their purpose is that regardless of what the external environment is that you talked about it's about strengthening that entrepreneur well the other thing is that there's a lot of global things happening that are permanently disruptive and what I mean by that one of my favorite writers who I've followed Faithfully over the last seven or eight years is a man named Peter Zion and he's written a series of wonderful books but he has great YouTube videos and he said that what happened after the second world war is basically the United States took charge of the world the Free World not the Communist world but the Free World and they had just been through two world wars where American troops went overseas first war and second were and then they went to Korea and this wasn't for economic reasons this was for security reasons and the U.S what they said to everybody after the second World War I mean and the world was in shambles the United States represented half the world economy at the end of the second World War and what they said is here's the deal the UK is bankrupt so the pound can't be the reserve currency anymore it has to be the dollar so since 1945 they had a meeting in 1944 July and I was six weeks old so my entire life has been lived during that historical period and they said here's the second thing we will lend you massively to rebuild your economies and anything you produce you can sell into the United States and we won't have any tariffs on it and the third thing is the U.S Navy will guarantee you all shipping routes okay and the whole thing was to build a Prosperity curtain around the Communist world and we couldn't allow them to come any further than they did and then they had a series of Wars you know smaller Wars to kind of nip them in the bud but in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed without anyone's permission they just quit but the rest of the world went on as if this was the deal forever and it really didn't profit the United States that much because with the exception of Canada and Mexico the United States only trades with the rest of the world 10 percent of its GDP Americans just make things and buy things as Americans well the whole world went on and they acted as this deal was going on forever so about five presidents in a row they just kept pulling back the military things overseas for example if they hadn't done that there'd be no Ukrainian Russian war and everything else but all of a sudden this is a big war I mean this is the biggest war in Europe since the second world war and the United States will send them equipment they'll send them advisors no American troops and I don't think you'll ever see America ever sending large bodies of troops overseas again the other thing is that they're pulling an enormous amount of their manufacturing back into the United States 1.5 million jobs have been created in the last two years in factories and so it's all coming back to the United States and there's three countries there's Canada the United States it's one economic system it's called NAFTA it's the biggest economic system in the world in Mexico yeah well the Canada United States and Mexico the United States has a separate deal with those two countries but basically it's one system and the rest of the world is going to be in for amazing turmoil so I remember we did the scary times podcasts we wrote a book and that's available at strategic coach and it's how to think about scary times Well it's not scary times for two years I'm predicting it's going to be scary times for most of the world over the next 30 years maybe 40 years the United States says okay training wheels are off now you got to Pedal yourself the other thing is the baby boomer generation is disappearing from the marketplace in the United States Canada Australia this was the biggest working generation of all time and when covid happened I think two things happened people were near the end of their career and they just retired or they got bought out because they were expensive you see that with the airlines I mean they bought out their most expensive Pilots their most expensive cabin Crews their most expensive ground Crews you know everything related with the ground and the new people were reading out of the job manual to do their jobs I remember we're going to London next weekend and the last time we went 50 people on the plane didn't get their luggage okay we were there for five days and our bags arrived on day four but the reason is there's people who had tremendous knowledge on how to handle very complicated complex situations and they're all gone and the other thing is the US saying you know fight your own Wars do your own thing we're not interested anymore it's not the US declining us the U.S just coming back and so they're saying okay we're going to build American house I think the United States and the allies of the United States are going into warp drive in the U.S especially so this is a difficult period but entrepreneurs you're the one who said you wanted to take complete control of your financial future well if you're allowing external forces to control your future you're not being an entrepreneur so go back and be an entrepreneur and also Dan as you said you know talked about with 911 don't focus on you focus on your audience focus on how you can create value for them focus on what they need in their future with all of the disruption and the change new needs arrive new issues new problems need to be solved well there's new technology I mean artificial intelligence has just arrived with a boom and we have really really great coaches who are clients of ours so we're starting with one of them you know in the next quarter our entire team is going to learn how to use artificial intelligence related to their specific work okay not to learn artificial intelligence but to use the tools that are available so this is a great period of time to retool take skill levels to a higher level but as I say I've been through this seven times and you know it's like we live in Toronto and guess what summer goes away Canadian thanksgivings the second Monday in October October and that's the end of summer then it's dark so you have to switch into another gear during the cold months but I like it I love it I love the change so think of this as an economic season or a political season you know and yet you do different things during different seasons you know but you still go on playing your own game I like that Dan because I think if anything lean into being an entrepreneur you know one of your expressions of being alert curious response have been resourceful with what's in front of you and thinking about this as a different economic and I would add political season yeah it was really helpful it's a great context for what we're dealing with and lean into it if anyone's going to make a positive difference in the world it's going to be entrepreneurs right so getting back and just being fun not going to contribute to anyone or yourself is what I'm hearing well it's interesting I had 15 I mean these are really top-notch entrepreneurs on a zoom call this morning and not a single one of them brought up anything negative about what's going on in the world except new opportunities that they were developing yeah I mean I hadn't thought about it until you brought up the issue here and I find most coach workshops yeah people are saying you know you gotta have different gears there's different conditions or different states and you just switch into another gear but the big thing is take care of your company keep everybody's confidence up and then make sure that when the current period is over with your team is as strong or stronger because half your competition didn't get out of bed in the morning and the half the dead don't get out of bed sober so you know it's really easy to compete during a down period because the competition just disappears this message to me is so fun it's inspiring it's a little bit of a good fire under people to just don't be afraid of it this is kind of normal this is a different season and gear up if anything there's a lot of opportunity here you know I don't tell too many of my own personal stories from a negative side but in 19 78 it was August I had already started my company so I was five years but on August 15 1978 I got a divorce in the morning and I went bankrupt in the afternoon and I arranged the timing so I could keep my credit card to celebrate lunch you know and it wasn't a fun day I mean no there wasn't a fun period but the day after I was going for breakfast at a restaurant I noticed him nobody was unhappy because of my divorce and bankruptcy I said I'm feeling really down and nobody else seems to be affected so I just look at a extreme market research now I mean you haven't solved it until you can laugh about it and that's such a great point it's interesting Dan because the entrepreneurs that you were working with this morning are ones who have their experienced long-term entrepreneurs they've been through lots of trials and tribulations they've got what's called Cash confidence and they're now at the point of no longer competing but now they're at the point of collaborating their masters of creating new futures for their clients and customers that's what we have to do 100 yeah great new futures for your customers and clients yeah use this downturn as weight lifting so that the next time you hit something like this you're totally prepared for it fabulous coaching Dan thank you so much thank you Shannon