[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan as usual I like to collect interesting things that you say and you said something in our free zone workshop last week that I thought M this be perfect for the podcast you said one of the things that's really important in entrepreneurship is being excited about being surprised and I thought M that a fun turn of phrase but you Rift for a little bit about there are always surprises and how you respond to those is very much key to whether or not you're a successful happy entrepreneur or not so what do you mean by being excited about being surprised well the definition of surprise is an astonishing event that you weren't expecting I love that yes that's sort of thing so to be taken by surprise means that nothing that you were preparing for or nothing that you thought was going to happen actually happened so very unexpected very unexpected yes got it totally unexpected yes and people can respond in numerous ways well the thing you have to understand there's good surprises and bad surprises okay and really successful entrepreneurs don't care which oh that's interesting they don't care which how come because you can do different things with a good surprise than you can with a bad surprise okay tell me more I need to know well first of all the one thing that surprises to they probably more clearly than almost anything else tells you what kind of person you are you and I went first hand together as team members through the covid and lockdown surprise okay and I was a little bit paralyzed I was told in Chicago that we were closing down the workshops for a quarter and I was tired I'd been coaching all week and I was going home on the plane and I was a little bit paralized by it but by the time we reached Toronto which you know all in it's about hour and a half flight I said ah zoom zoom okay we know how to use zoom because we're a three country company so we've been using Zoom backstage well we're going to have to use zoom totally backstage now we're going to have to bring the whole in-person Workshop front stage and as soon as I got up I said oh this is exciting we get to do all sorts of new things so that was a bad surprise but within a matter of a plane trip my mind had adjusted to to an entirely new possibility but it took us 3 months to work out and I was on high alert you know all my energy was there to do that give you another surprise we've written three best-selling books in The Last 5 Years and when the first one came out we had 50,000 sales in the first 30 days and I wasn't expecting that our team wasn't EXP expecting that the publisher wasn't expecting that the collaborator writer Ben Hardy that I worked with wasn't expecting that and then we said okay let's really really shift our whole marketing to take advantage of this book and our whole podcast Focus went to being invited on people who had large audiences to talk about the book and who not how that was the first book so the three books are who not how the Gap and the gain and just within the past two months 10 times is easier than two times each of them was more surprising because okay you hit it lucky one time you know with the first one but the second one the results were twice and the third one it looks like the results are twice so we were probably at 100,000 at the end of the first month and these have been surprises it's surprising that the second surprise was bigger than the first surprise and the third surprise is biggest so you could say well you were looking forward to it you were expecting I said yeah but the power that controls how successful you're going to be is not in your hands once you release the book it's the child has left home you know yeah so that was a good surprise but that's on a big scale for us that's on a big scale but we have things happening all the time on a weekly basis within the workshops backstage things that are surprises and they're bad surprises you know water M broke in front of our headquarters in Toronto went underground and just totally destroyed the whole bottom floor the basement floor where our Tech Team was and where our recording studios were where all of our paper supplies were all the books where our gym was and where our production Department was and it all got destroyed it got D I mean literally the concrete was disrupted and water was up to 3 feet destroyed everything destroyed all the drywall so I heard about it and I was talking to Babs she got the phone call from Karen Scar and said you know disaster and I said hm we get to design it all over now that's one of the things I've always appreciated Dan it's like if disaster strikes and and one of the first ones was actually the origin of our fabulous tool called The Experience Transformer which is when your laptop was stolen out of a hotel in England with a book on it with a book that hadn't been backed up no that was due and that was a good book writing experience for you and me and the team but it's like if I'm going to have to do it again if we're going to have to go to effort it needs to be 10 times better yeah and I love that so we're I've just been inconvenienced you know and I say I can't get just back to where I was before now it's got to be 10 times better just getting back what we had um nope I've been inconvenienced you know so now the result has to be a much bigger result and there's something about that that I have very much appreciated in my own life and it was really really fun during the lockdown when you and I both of our schedules got completely blown up we were pretty scheduled people and we got to like create new stuff we did Scary times we did podcasts we did videos you did a record number of new exercises by the way scary times is really good that's a little book of ours you go to strategic coach.com and just the title is scary times success manual what to do in scary times Well scary times is where you've been taken by surprise yeah but the whole idea of so that was super fun you and I were like oh we can be more creative it was perfect and our KY profiles help with this nine quick start near 10 quick start so we were like oh we get to play so it was we kind of leapt into that with both feet and had a great time despite all the chaos so there's recouping and creating new things out of hard times and also the whole 10x better like we're about to do a home renovation which is incredibly inconvenient yeah when I come back because I we have to move out this house is needs to be 10x better yeah otherwise it's not worth the pain the hassle the inconvenience as you said and then when things are pleasant surprises one of the things that strikes me is it just helps you up your ambition level in terms of what is possible is that one of the positive benefits of of good surprises it's one of the results of someone who realizes that you have very very little control over events outside of yourself that was true when you were a child that's true you know when you're in your 20s when you're in your 50s and now I'm almost 80 it's just as true today as it was when I was growing up in the 1940s so my said is this is reality that you're always going to be surprised by events in the outside world I remember I got diag osed with cancer prostate cancer in June July of 2016 and my first response to it is okay I got to handle this but I can't miss a workshop you didn't and the doctor that we had wasn't going to accommodate us so we got another doctor and he sat right down and said well let's get the schedule out he says I have my own operating room I have my own team and when would it be convenient for me to do the surgery and I said well what about November 1st because my first Workshop is December 1st and he's got it yeah good now he said I have to tell you most people are not really really energetic for their first six months and I said I realize that so I'm going to have to be energetic in my first three weeks and I was I was in high energy with the whole I said what a neat challenge what a neat challenge so what I'm pointing to here it's not the event it's not the surprise it's the mindset yeah so anyway you know I go to a lot of Technology conferences and in one way or another I've heard the phrase you know with advanced technology we will now be able to anticipate and prevent surprises and then they get surprised and I said you know this is fairy tale stuff you think you live in a fairy tale world I said the real world is there's always going to be surprises the number one bank for new startup technology the Silicon Valley Bank went belly up in three days three days okay and everybody was betting on their bet and the bank was betting up their bank and the whole Bank it went under you know it had to be rescued by government and larger Banks and everything like that and I said these are the people who are trying to make the future free from surprises so this whole mindset Dan of being excited by surprises good or bad is really kind of a cool Twist on things yeah you do one thing with one kind of surprise and you do something and I will tell you this that people who are entrepreneurial take more advantage of bad surprises than they do of good surprises and I think that's a weak in them okay because there's a Temptation when you have a good surprise oh we don't have to do anything now because the surprise has taken care of things I said no you got about 24 hours to get your mind straight and you got maybe two or three weeks to get your activity and your focus rearranged or you're going to miss the advantage with bad surprises you have no choice about how you have to respond because your survival may be at stake which are totally was when we had the co lockdown you know so that's a surprise always big surprises you know yeah cutting down the whole world's big surprise yeah the mindset here to be excited by surprise it's just the opportunity to make things better to respond in new ways to be more creative in response to a challenge if you could name it Dan what is the main thing that people in terms of how people respond to negative surprises versus good surprises is there a way to kind of contrast or sum those two up well first of all they're paralyzed and then they're angry and then they blame but they don't do anything they don't change their mindset doesn't change they feel victimized and they go into a stuper yes into a stuper and they're useless so they hate bad surprises because it makes life worse and I said well why don't you just have a mindset that every bad surprise is going to make life better just it's just a mindset you got a button and it's clicked this way and it's terrible and I'm a victim and you click it this way and says oh wow opportunity I mean you can make incredible progress in the shortterm period after a bad surprise boom first of all you're focused I mean you are totally focused you know so true you know it's like people who have near-death experience and then they come back and all of a sudden life gets really really simple and clear you know and it doesn't last that Clarity and focus you know you got a short window where you can really take advantage and then the window closes and with good surprises short window too right well the danger there it can make you more complacent right yeah you can kind of go to sleep well go to sleep well we don't have to do anything you know we just go with the tide here yeah but Tides Turn You Know M mhm and then you're going to have surprise that you'll probably interpret it being negative yeah yeah 2 by4 to the head as I like to say yeah I think there's you know if someone was in charge they said well he didn't take advantage of the good surprise let's see what he does with a bad surprise yeah pay attention D if there is a big playright you know is doing this yeah but it's so funny the whole notion that we can make the world so safe and secure and predictable that there' be no surprises you this fairy tale land these are 40 50-year-old adults who are acting like they're six years old you know so my sense surprises are just reality so what's your basic approach to reality what's your basic approach to reality I love it yeah are you okay with reality and apparently quite a few people are not no no no but I like it start even just being okay Dan like you talk about being excited so this is like welcoming them and looking forward to them you know I had a negative surprise when my flight to Chicago last week was canceled du mechanical issues and had to get super creative and resourceful on how to get there in time for my event the next day and it was definitely a surprise for I had plan a plan B I ended up on plan C I did not have a plan D so I didn't want to have to go there but it worked out and I wasn't over L fussed I mean I had resources got there on time delivered a great day kind of rubbed up to be honest so it was interesting and I felt proud of how I handled that I could have lost my mind I could have been super stressed I could have been really like a jerk on the phone to the people who were trying to help me reschedule the flight I mean I did not turn into someone who was unpleasant to deal with so that for me was was a win I'm not sure if I would say excited but it was a challenge met it I mean what do you want to do with the experience I mean we have total control over our responses we have no control over the events but we have total control of our response and that's so don't fight reality yeah yeah it always ends up bad and to your point Dan be very conscious and use it to your advantage make it better learn from the situation make it a 10x return if you're going to be inconvenienced right like there's not just settling but there's a creative like fun challenge make life even better mindset that you have towards it which I have found very useful and very inspiring yeah we had another example Babs and I especially and certain team members but we found out you know I think it was probably about four years ago five years ago I'm not quite sure that one of our big star entrepreneurs in the program was stealing and repackaging 80 we had 80 case examples of them stealing our material even though at the bottom of their annual renewal contract it says I will not use any strategic coach materials for my own purpose other than to use what I learn in strategic coach to create my own tools and he didn't do it and we sued him we sued him because he was going on the internet with it and that's a huge multiplier so we we sued him and long very expensive very gruelling two years and we have a non-disclosure agreement but I can say that I'm not unhappy with the result from the whole proceeding but I came out of it and I said we got to go really big now with that experience and just this year we've now put in by the end of the year we will have submitted 50 applications for patents we had one or two patents I said now we're going to patents and my goal is that with in a matter of 10 years or 15 years that the total value of all of our patents is equal to the total amount of revenues that we have created since we started the company and I said that'll be payback I'll feel good about and we've created a whole new program out of this and our clients we have uh50 or so clients who have billions of dollars worth of patents and it was all because I was put through the inconvenience of a dishonest schmuck in our program and now we're you know our scrutiny we've hired a company that does 24-hour surveillance on the internet that and any mention of our now we're moving it into other languages one of the things they always steal our diagram so it's an easy thing to check we got trademarks and if that hadn't happened we'd still be Ling along the way we were so I think you call it getting a PhD yeah yeah I went through an eight hour disposition you know where the opposing lawyer just pointed out all sorts of inconsistencies and everything like that I mean she couldn't deny the main charges you know and I said well the one value out of this is both she and we are being paid by the same check writer because he's going to lose but I said useful experience to go through very useful never to go through the experience again you know and all the learning I got from that eight hours and from the two hours I said I got to get a big payday now for this I was really inconvenienced about that was a bad surprise you know but look at what's good has changed our entire future yeah that mindset and that determination I love every second of it there's something so rich in that to take every experience of your life good surprise bad surprise and make just incredible use of it to me is exciting and that's why surprises are exciting that's how we started off yeah yeah it's in life actually living the Coyote and Roadrunner animated F beep beep so Wy E coyote is trying to do something bad to us surprise beep beep there's just something so totally timelessly human about this activity you know doesn't matter what you get thrown at you turn it into good fabulous thank you so much Dan thank you Shannon