[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan I work with you a lot I've spent a lot of years working with you I talk with you a lot we're in a lot of sessions together and you said something the other day that I have never heard you say before I thought oo this was surprising and new to me and I'd love to do a deeper dive into it because I was super curious you said I didn't set out to create a program for entrepreneurs I set out to create a thinking program and entrepreneurs are the ones who most took to it so I would love to know more about creating a thinking program where did that come from and also obviously it's fascinating that entrepreneurs are the ones who the most took to it so I find that fascinating it something I didn't know even after 33 years of hanging out with you well it goes back quite a long time it goes back to 1964 I attended a great grade program called outward found in Scotland so it was November and December of 1964 I was 20 and I'd always had this thing that the educational system didn't deal with the reality of people's lives and I always felt that each person can take the actual experiences of their daily life and they can develop it into knowledge so I kept a journal while I was at Outward Bound and I profited enormously from the program but I kept a journal and I would write in the journal every day what I had learned that day of the experiences and for those who don't know it that word bound is I'm not sure how they describe it but it's a Outdoors leadership program yep where you're the leader of yourself so they put you through you know for me it was quite demanding physically you know and we um climbed mountains in Scotland Ken gorm and the Strath farer mountains not Rocky Mountains but good hikes and we sailed on the North Sea and this is November so you know it's cold and it's wet and choppy you just have to really push yourself and I did so I came back and I really like the experience because they don't tell you what you're supposed to learn they just give you the challenge and then you have to meet the challenge and whatever you learn that's what you learned and I benefited enormously from that and I would say of all the learning experiences that other people created I found Outward Bound the most influential on my thinking today so my feeling is that the challenges that you have during each each day in normal life are sufficient to create a lifetime learning program and I kept playing with that and I started creating forms you know strategic coach has a lot of different forms that you write on and I think I've been doing that for 60 years one way or another and of course it's easier getting things created and produced these days than it was in the old days so what I really felt is that there's ways of thinking about your daily experience that can be a constant source of new knowledge that makes you more skillful makes you more confident that was the start of it I launched this as a company in 1974 50 years this year and I tried working with different kinds of people I had politicians that I worked with and interesting I had bureaucrats government bureaucrats who did it I learned something from that corporate people I had people work for nonprofits foundations that type of thing and I found after about three years of exploring the only people who really took to it were entrepreneurs okay took a little weeding out over a number of years but by probably five years into my coaching career it was 100% entrepreneurs and I think the reason is because entrepreneurs have to constantly be learning on a day-by-day basis and other people can get in positions where they may had learned some things to get the job but they might not have to learn too much more after they got the job it's just showing up and more or less repeating what they've already learned I think you're less able to do that today than you were 50 years ago right but it's seen as a chore that you have to learn new things and I think that entrepreneurs see it as their advantage that they can continually be learning new things so that's the reason why I ended up and we ended up with an entrepreneurial program but it's a thinking program and that entrepreneurs can make greater progress from thinking than people in most other lines of work why is that do you think well they're solving problems yeah the bigger the problem the faster the solution the bigger the check right you also said something which I find really interesting you said entrepreneurs get punished most heavily for not changing their minds so yeah they're not solving problems or they're staying locked in all ways of thinking yeah Marketplace will let them know usually the end of each month is a test what is it they have an unusually intimate relationship with the 15th and 30th of the month yeah well the 30th anyway usually 30 31st 29th there you go yeah it's interesting Dan because entrepreneurs do well first of all the ones we work with enjoy learning love learning if they're not they get a little bored and that's dangerous and so they really have taken to this thinking program and set of processes and I like what you said earlier that what the interesting thing about strategic coach Thinking Tools is you're never telling someone what they should learn from it exactly the same as out were bound right you'll give them the experience of the thinking and then what they take out of it is what's most important can you talk more about that yeah I find if you set the challenge up properly everything that people get out of it will be valuable to them personally you know and you don't have to tell them what they're getting out of it part of our teaching method is we ask people what they're learning but we don't tell them what to learn before they've learned it right that's pretty clear-cut with all of our 250 Thinking Tools just a few yeah and ways of thinking that leave you more skillful and more confident yeah yeah yeah more capable and more confident are capable thank you yeah and it's an endless process you know I mean the entrepreneurial game can go as long as you're up to the game you know I'm 80 years old you know I'm more ambitious I think I'm more capable now at 80 than I was at 60 than I was at 40 than I was at 20 I have far more ambition today than I did when I first met you that's true and way more capability too yeah and I've got all not only have my capability but all the capabilities of our team members and our clients capabilities I have access to that too yeah and I really see that that's actually what's fed your bigger ambition because your capabilities grew but so did the people around you and the capabilities of the people around you and that just means the impact can get so much bigger which is very exciting yeah and it keeps you from worrying about the future because there's whatever the future is there's always more capability and confidence around you and I I think that's unique in the way that people make their living on the planet where it always gets better in the future as a group I think the clients of strategic coach are uniquely confident feel a unique sense of capability and confidence about the future very positive about the future at a time when things are very uncertain in the world our clients tend to be very very capable and confident that they can take on anything that comes up and that was just also shown in a survey that we did they were more optimistic about the future more positive they going to live longer and live longer and they make more money and they take more free time than a comparable group of entrepreneurs it was quite striking the difference between strategic o entrepreneurs you know I had a 2hour zoom session session with about 35 this morning you know I had people there who have been in coach for 33 years someone 30 years you know and very excited about the future they're in their 60s some of them are in their 70s very excited about the future have no notion that they would ever stop doing what they're doing amazing yeah but it's all about the thinking thinking don't leave home without it one other thing that I want to bring in is you reflected on when you are creating a new thinking tool which you do a lot multiple times week you have a perspective you want to make sure that it would be relevant thousands of years before we are now and also in the future could you talk about that because it was fun how you OCC my two tests are the Roman marketplace ancient Rome in the marketplace in the year one you could be 1 BC or 1A but in the marketplace so more than 2,000 years old and the Star Wars cafe the very famous cafe scene from the movie Star Wars where there's a lot of odd-looking entrepreneurs but they're all Traders they're there you know they're Cosmic Traders yes Intergalactic Traders so I test the tool with this tool that I just created be useful to entrepreneurs in the marketplace in Rome 20 years ago would it be useful to entrepreneurs in the Star Wars cafe you know centuries in the future and I said yeah I think it would be useful and that way I know I have a Timeless tool we talk about this in terms of data information knowledge and wisdom and wisdom is timeless knowledge which to my mind is in the thinking processes that you're creating it really is generating wisdom for people they get to figure out their own wisdom that's pretty Timeless they can take this into into the future they can use it the reflections on the past are really helpful so it's almost a philosophical school that you've got here Dan it is a philosophical school yeah and I'm a philosopher you know I have expensive tastes and most schools of philosophy don't pay that much you know I'm not excessive but I like going first class with everything and I like having a lot of help around you know skilled people who do all sorts of things the other thing is it's not a school of philosophy like it's this school of philosophy or that school of philosophy it's just the wisdom of everyday living but entrepreneurs are the best because they're the only people whose very success depends upon being transformative and what I mean by that the original definition of entrepreneurism first time it was ever written down was 180 for and it was a French what we would call an economist today they didn't call them economists then his name was say John Baptist say sa sa Y and he said that an entrepreneur is someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity yeah well I'm a entrepreneur who takes a resource called an entrepreneur from a lower level of productivity to a higher level so I'm a super duper entrepreneur and what we show them is that just using their everyday experiences they can become 10 times more knowledgeable and wise about how they're conducting their business how they're conducting their life I think I'm sort of at the center of the philosophical Universe it's true Dan having studied philosophy finding you was a gem that was a really good thing because you're the most practical philosopher I've ever met yes you said that about 30 years ago and I I wasn't quite sure about 30 years later you're still saying that so I think it's true I'm glad you agree and the result of that is people get so I mean we talk about Freedom a lot but they get so expanded in their freedom we talk about the Four Freedoms time and money and relationships and ultimately purpose but they do it in such a practical way which I find it's this Jos between you know you know this way of maybe this ideal way of living but then you just get there through practical exercises and thinking tools and then you keep compounding them then then you are living this life that you've envisioned the whole time well Shannon how have you become wiser using your daily experience over the last 33 years oh there's so many ways Dan my unique ability has been huge really leaning into that it makes me less reactive and more creative with situations I think that's something I very practically appreciate all the time I think the thing that I enjoy the most is how much it's allowed me to have a positive impact on people I coach and the people I work with so that for me has just been joyful so it's wiser about what to do why is there about what not to do when to get the Who's involved which is almost all the time I get to do this with you which is a blast so it's led to enormous amounts of freedom and capability and contribution so it's wiser but with impact if that makes sense yeah thank you do you have other people in your life that would tell you that well I'll tell you that you know so I'm first in line there okay all those things you said about yourself I would say that all of them are true yeah yeah but do you have other people who would say it y especially clients my family if I'm being nice to them yeah but definit not only I think it's allowed me to be my best self right and uncluttered and I think there's the other part of it is just really looking at life I want to say realistically most people when they say realistically that means negative I don't mean it that way at all just accept it as it is deal with it coming in knowing that I can transform anything I need to there's incredible confidence that comes with that capability like my goodness and the future is positive and optimistic and bigger and bigger and much bigger so it's just like this superpower that's really the benefit and my selling point to join coach was my question can I do the program if the answer had been no I probably wouldn't be here because I didn't qualify back then and so I got to do the program so I've been in the program since July of 1991 so I'm long-standing student yeah yeah and I do it every quarter so yeah yeah one of the themes I've been working on lately is that entrepreneurs at whatever age they might be 60 or 70 are most like their 8 year-old self than almost all other human beings I think that they have a sense of themselves that they had very young and I think that's what makes them easy clients of the program is that whatever they've been building they've been building it for 20 or 30 years maybe 50 years before they have some thinking tools to actually validate and substantiate what they've always known about themselves they always had the means to think about it but they didn't have the means to talk about it yes they had the means to think about it but didn't have the means to talk about it yeah and I think our tools give them a language that they can talk to other entrepreneurs about it yeah well and you've always said this Dan like the tools everyone's experience that they put into the tool is unique to them but it allows us to talk about it in a way that just makes sense I was going to say it's equal which doesn't quite give the right flavor but it just allows us to communicate about something like oh this is my unique ability oh this is my time system oh this is my experience Transformer on this and we all understand exactly what we're talking about yeah and all the tools that we have came out of me talking to entrepreneurs about their challenges then you know how they took advantage of opportunity how they improve themselves they're kind of like processes you know if you do this you answer this question then you answer this question you put the two answers together and you create a third thing yeah gives you insights but all I'm doing is interacting with their experience and what they're telling me and when I see a common theme it's ready to get a tool and feed it back to them as a form of language that they can then communicate widely to other people who are also having the same type of experience all communities are held together by language and I think you know we're 35 years into the program and we have now quite a deep language yeah we do yeah so that we're having a big conference and we'll have people in the room who are their first year in strategic coach and we'll have some people there they've been in strategic coach for more than 30 years and you they'll be able to talk to each other it's a neat thing when coach people get together there's a very fast communication and I think part of the reason why that's critical is being an entrepreneur can be lonely it can be isolating you can be very alone with your experience because if you're the 5% of the 5% there aren't that many of you and a lot of people cannot relate to your challenges your opportunities your experiences as I said and so to find people with whom not only are also entrepreneurs but then you can talk about it that creates a deep level of community and we just got to spend time with them all of last week both at coach and somewhere else at a conference and it was just so joyful we have so much in common but we're not isolated we're not alone we're together at this point because I've been thinking in these terms for 50 years since I started coaching actually making money out of my philosophy I would say that the cause of most entrepreneurial problems is loneliness yeah yeah yeah I think they get into trouble because they're lonely and they associate with people they shouldn't be associating with in their personal life their business life because they're lonely yeah yeah I think that's a really great Point awesome so I think just by being in this community you've saved yourself a lot of trouble well we see that people you know if they've had one family they don't go on to a second one if they've had two they don't go on to a third their businesses really grow and are successful they're out of pain because they've got the right support team around them they get bigger checks because they know who to focus their talents on the word that's been coming up a lot is unlock someone just said to me oh that's a real unlock on my thinking I was like what a cool way to say it but you see these entrepreneurs unlocked and Unleashed whoa it is so fun and exciting just to be along for the ride in a good way it's like the great great country in Western Center Glenn Campbell I think he was married a lot of times maybe half a dozen times and he says yeah I've got a very predictable life about every five years I take what's left of my net worth and cut it again in half that pauses when you people join Co which is great awesome well Dan thanks for being such a phenomenal practical philosopher and for sharing this origin I had never heard you phrase the start of coach that way but you're totally right I mean you did chest on other cck writers and entrepreneurs are the ones who absolutely took to it yeah so I love that yeah just a little more of a refinement on that I was very drawn to entrepreneurism you know I knew when I became an entrepreneur yeah you don't become an entrepreneur unless you're interested in entrepreneurism you know but I did try on other kinds of people it just didn't go anywhere you know it just didn't go anywhere they would have to consult with someone whether they could do it they had to see who would pay it you know entrepreneurs make up their mind on the spot they can decide they can write the check or send the payment write then you know and they're doing it for freedom and I think that freedom the motivation for greater freedom is at the basis of all good philosophy philosophy means the love of wisdom that's right it's a great word but the translation is lover of wisdom a philosopher is someone who loves wisdom I I love wisdom I like things that last forever I love that Dan and you're great at making that happen for well thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs so I didn't actually expect this to be so much about the coach program to be perfectly honest but I feel like I need to say if you want to learn more check out strategic coach.com and also if you want to to download one of our Thinking Tools that we've made available to everyone is the impact filter brilliant way of really getting clear on the purpose importance and ideal outcome of a project that's the intellectual sale the emotional sale is what's the best result if it goes well and the wor result if you don't do it so that should be emotional you should feel that and then what are the success criteria to ensure the best and to prevent the worst so if you want to download that we'll put the link just go to Str coach.com you can download the impact filter and you can try this on for size but the best part of it doing the tool alone will be successful but it's really the community as we talked about that makes the biggest difference so Dan thank you so much for illuminating your why of Coach that's important thank you