hi everyone Shannon Waller here with Dan Sullivan and today we're going to talk about something that's come up recently in the workshops due to a very particular circumstance that we've had about making team members Irreplaceable so danam we've had an interesting teamwork situation come up with one of our key people with regard to putting on the quarterly books would you like to kick off our conversation just share with everyone what happened and what your response to people's questions have been about it because it's a pretty interesting circumstance I think a lot of other people would respond differently yeah well I've had a project going on two years now where I'm producing a brand new small book every quarter and I've committed to do this for 25 years which is a 100 quarters so 100 small books in 100 quarters one of the things that I had been experimenting with prior to this was the use of cartoons as an added Dimension so you have the text in the book and then there's a section in each chapter where you have cartoons which tell the whole story in visual form and I've developed a terrific relationship over the years teamwork relationship with HH McDonald who has been with us for 17 years he's a terrific writer but along the way we discovered that he had this other skill which was cartooning and periodically he would do things just to illustrate some of the coach Concepts that we were doing and I was so knocked out by one his talent but the other thing is just the impact that cartoons had so we agreed right from the beginning that the books would be fully Illustrated with cartoons so we completed seven books on schedule seven books in seven quarters but then at the beginning of the last period which would produce the eighth book HH was experimenting with writing by bicycle again and got into an unfortunate accident in busy traffic morning traffic coming to the office and went over the handlebars and he broke both of his wrists and his right arm he's right-handed so this is very very inconsistent with cartooning so I've had a lot of Orthopedic injuries myself breaks and such not Achilles tendon injuries and I know that the healing period perod for a break is 3 months anyway if you get a good surgery then you get 3 months after that and I was just faced with the fact that we had to come up with a different solution for the next 90 days which we actually did we did all the writing we did the recording the normal audio recording for the little books but then we took it further just to sort of recover from the setback and we created an ebook version of the book so so even though we couldn't deliver a physical book for the next quarter the book is the self-managing company what we were able to do is create a complete ebook version so it's the exact text that we would have had if it was a physical book we did a very very good 2-hour audio recording and then in addition to that I went into the video studio and I did a 50-minute walkth through so that extended the value of our little books series by adding an ebook which people would get the actual book they'd read it but they could send the text to many some people send it to dozens of people and I suspect probably we'll see people who send it to hundreds of people and that's terrific for us because it spreads the word widely the other thing was to do the video and I Ed this example in the workshop is how do you recover we have a thinking process in strategic coach called The Experience Transformer and I just walked the whole workshops in the past quarter through our setback it was sort of a breakdown and how we translated it one of the points I make about HH in the experience Transformer is that I couldn't have replaced him as a Cartoonist the ability is too unique the teamwork that we have is too unique I think several clients in the course of the quarter said to me he kind of holds you hostage with his capability why do you allow yourself to be in a situation where someone is irreplaceable and I said well that's a very interesting word that you're using Irreplaceable and I said I actually want as many of my team members that I have around me and all areas of the business I actually want them to be Irreplaceable and other words I want them to be so good at what they do that they're capable of producing very very unique results and that's exactly what I'm aiming toward so the reason why he's Irreplaceable is because that's my goal now for most people the idea of having Irreplaceable team members is actually terrifying it's not exciting and it runs counter to a lot of business thinking that's out there as I was thinking about this podcast before we came on Shannon I was thinking why am I so passionate about having Irreplaceable people where with a lot of entrepreneurs who were very successful entrepreneurs their objective would be just the opposite that they would never be in a situation where they were that dependent on someone's skill and I said I think it has to do with what the endgame is for why you're being an entrepreneur my feeling is I see a real fork in the road between entrepreneurs here and more so as we've gotten into the gamechanging idea when an entrepreneur becomes a game changer what I mean by that that they are doing something so different in their Marketplace in their industry that all their competitors come to them and want to be students they want to be clients and customers of what somebody you know a competitive colleague in the market is actually doing they think very very differently about their future and who they have around them than someone who just wants to make a lot of money and is aiming towards retirement is aiming towards a really great lifestyle and whose measurements is really a lot in Social Status so that person would be very fearful of having Irreplaceable people and this distinction of that sort of person from who I think I am and more and more this is who were attracting as game changers in the program they don't really have having goals in other words it's not about what they own and what their social status is it's actually about a certain activity in the future that is increasingly fascinating and motivating to them and there's no retirement in their mind whatsoever they just see themselves growing and growing and growing until you know the lights go out and the only thing that stops them is death and that would certainly be my motivation you know that whether I'm thinking 10 years ahead or 25 years ahead I'm still doing what I'm doing but at a much higher level and what's allowing me to operate at a much higher level is the fact that I'm surrounded by a vast team an expanding team of Irreplaceable people so it's a different game and my feeling is that this is entirely mindset about what your ultimate objective is in being an entrepreneur so I can see very well that people who are just using their business as a vehicle for a personal life where they have great status in the community and they want to work as little as possible or actually sell their company or be retired from their company they would not be interested in this Irreplaceable team member idea at all you know which is a very interesting distinction and so often why when I'm invited to what I would call conventional business networks you know where you have associate of businessmen and I've always found that my message doesn't go over really big with these associations and I think the reason is that I'm a being entrepreneur and I'm talking to a bunch of having entrepreneurs and it makes a big difference and what I'm talking about just doesn't connect with the audience and I often wondered about that why doesn't it and they don't have the goal of being something bigger and better than they are right now and it seems to me they're also measuring themselves against other people's standards comparison it's very much of a comparison Driven Life they're married to someone who is a comparison driven person probably satisfies some childhood goals how they grew up and and everything like that and you know I have a great lifestyle and we have beautiful surroundings and everything else but none of those things were ever a goal it comes with the success it's kind of a byproduct and mine has always been taking a look at myself within my unique ability and this is another crucial difference Shannon is the fact of our Central philosophy and strategic coach that the entrepreneur should be totally in his or her unique ability and then as surrounded by team members each of whom is also in his or her unique ability and it's that getting to the unique ability on everybody's part and then spending a lot of time there and having phenomenal teamwork with each other that's what creates the irreplaceability I look at you and how you've grown over 25 years in strategic coach and I said you know she's absolutely Irreplaceable I mean there's no way we you know if something were to happen to you and you're not here anymore I mean there's just no I wouldn't give it a moment's thought of replacing you because I think it's impossible thank you I feel the same way about you you've also talked Dan about there's a different reward system system that goes with people as you want if you want to develop their unique ability and develop them to be Irreplaceable and I think the distinction of being a having versus a being entrepreneur is quite profound because as a being entrepreneur you have to be willing to share certain things that other people are not can you talk about what those two things are yeah one of the things I found in my teamwork and you know this would go for heish McDonald my cartoonist is that I want to give him bigger and bigger responsibility with every quarter as we go forward but at the same time what I want to do is make him enthusiastic about the greater responsibility by giving him greater power one of those is just decision making about I mean I offer him suggestions on what the cartoon should look like but ultimately it's his judgment he's the cartoonist I'm not the cartoonist so I can talk about impact I can talk about which copy points to emphasize with the cartoons and what the overall message should be but it's strictly up to him decision making and I don't second guess him I mean there's tweaks here and there but usually it's about a 10% we could do this over here we could do this over here it's nothing major but more and more he defines the cartoons and you know if I lost him I don't think I'd replace him because it was a unique relationship we' do something else so we came close and so I just measured my thinking as we were going through it you know and there was never in my thought that we would seek backup or anything else we'd do something else we'd come up with another solution maybe we would go much more into video and maybe we do interviews to emphasize the books but we wouldn't be going in that direction again the term that popped into my mind as you were talking about how you work with him it's really is a creative collaboration yes and it's a partnership it's not you're the b and he's the peon just delivering on the work I think the other aspect of this which I find so fascinating is how it helps develop people you know and the other system and the traditional you know slot yourself into where we need you is that we tend to treat people as though they're machines it's very depersonalizing it's very dehumanizing but this actually brings out the very essence in what is most human and creative about people and what they end up producing is completely unique yeah I think that we're kind of in a discussion in modern times in the 21st century and I have great interest in technology and what I notice is kind of a narrative that's coming out of the technological people that you know ultimately intelligent machines are going to completely replace people people are going to become Obsolete and they say this with a certain sense of Glee not realizing that one of the intelligent machines is going to replace them and it almost seems like a suicidal thought or it's a Humanity hating thought and I'm noticing more and more this hatred of humanity that comes out of the technological circles and I often wonder what it is the interesting thing about it is and I've haven't sent this out as a tweet yet but the basic thinking of the message is in order to make machines as intelligent as humans you have to make humans as stupid as machines and one of the ways to make a human being stupid is to actually make them replaceable treat them like their replaceable Parts because they will shut down on their originality they will shut down on their creativity they will shut down on their engagement level and they'll simply show up as operating Parts because they're being dehumanized but it's the humanity that makes things special and our life it's the fullest expression of individual uniqueness and Humanity which actually makes life meaningful and gives life enormous emotional and psychological rewards and along the lines of this Irreplaceable discussion they said well if you make them Irreplaceable they're going to hold you hostage and I said not really I said if anything we're going to mutually hold each other hostage because I'm giving them power and freedom to operate within their best abilities and as far as I'm concerned they can do that for a lifetime and I have to say that I've created for them a situation or our company has because we take this attitude towards the whole company that we're creating a situation for our best people that in their life is absolutely Irreplaceable if they lost their position with strategic coach there's no way they could ever find it or create it in another setting so the irreplaceability goes on both sides but I'm going to commit myself to 100% on my side because my future Freedom as an entrepreneur depends upon the growth of this Irreplaceable unique ability teamwork I love it Dan thank you well next time let's dive more into how to create that successful teamwork and how to stay on your side of the line so thank you this is fascinating and I can't wait to take it further