Have you ever noticed that the world wasn't designed for you? Hi, this is Shannon Waller on the Inside Strategic Coach Podcast with Dan Sullivan. Dan, you say this a fair bit, and I really like it because to my mind, there's, I guess, humility.
There's just an openness to how the world is and not fighting reality that this statement really entails. So talk a little bit more about that. Well, I'm a real history buff.
So one of the... Testing profiles that we use in Strategic Coach, the main one is Colby. We have other testing that kind of tells who you are and how you respond and how you approach things.
Colby is just a foundation for our program. But another one that I have found extraordinarily useful is called the StrengthsFinder. And the way I show the difference between Colby and the StrengthsFinder is that Colby tells you how you...
automatically and most easily take action to get results. And there's different profiles and different characteristics, and you're a mix of a lot of different characteristics. But the Strength Finder, once you found out how you take action, the next question is, what in fact do you take action on in the world? Because you don't take action on everything. My number one is ideation.
I take action on ideas. Number two... As Maximizer, I'm only interested in ideas that maximize, and my preferred customers are maximizers who take Maximizer ideas and maximize themselves even more. So I'm not out to make average people good.
I'm out to create thinking processes, concepts, tools, structures, and process for people who are already almost great. to be even greater because I think it's a multiplier in terms of the kind of value they create. But my number three is self-assurance. And that is, I never think I can get into trouble with a new idea, okay? Because the environment will let me know right off the bat whether I should pursue an idea.
And I've got the self-assurance just to try it out. And if it doesn't work, it's no reflection on me. It's just that the idea wasn't the right idea. But number four is the one that's really interesting.
And that's Answers, a lot of people's, they have a questioning that in the Colby, I have two fact finder, and yet I know lots of facts. And it's two fact finder out of 10. Yeah, two factor out of 10. You simplify. But I know a lot of facts, and it's answered by the fourth strength I have in my strength finder, which is context.
And that is, I have a passion for knowing where things come from. Okay, so I'm a real history buff. I would say next to murder mysteries and international thrillers, in the fiction area, the only nonfiction area that I'm interested in reading, and I'm a real reader, I grew up as a passionate reader, is the historical roots. We're doing this today. Where did that start?
Where did that come from? Ideas, where did this idea come from? innovations in the world that we consider normal.
When weren't they normal? You know, what was it like before this came in? And I'm just passionate of going back and digging. Nobody said something that just struck me as totally stupid.
And the stupid statement was that half the people who have ever lived on the planet are living today. Okay, and I said, what? I said, I've been on the planet for more than 70 years, and more people have been born and were alive when I was born and have lived. And I said, there's been more people just in this century than you're talking about here.
So I started really digging with this one because it really got in my craw, this statement. I said, this has just got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, you know. And I think the big reason is that the global population has tripled since I was born, more than tripled.
I was 2.2 billion, and these are really good statistics. Now it's three and a half times bigger in the course of my lifetime. Just massive, massive growth of population for a lot of reasons.
But when you go back and you study how long humans, as we understand humans, have been, Alive, the number that most people use, it's about 100 billion, you know, a rough number, about 100 billion human beings have been born on the planet. And right now, 7.7 billion. So instead of it being half, it's about 7%. And it just struck me as being so clueless. It's so clueless.
concept. And I said, when do you think history started in 1920? I said, it was really crazy. But having said that, I began just exploring this concept. There's been 100 billion people, you know, and maybe fewer than that when I was born, but certainly in the 90 billion level that was born for me, going back, you know, thousands, tens of thousands, and now they're figuring it may be as much as 2 million years ago.
Conscious and specific tool making is one of the signs that humans were starting to be human. And then art, you know, that there's drawings, there's carvings, you know, there's marks which seem to be systematic marks. Petroglyphs, they're called petroglyphs.
And they're now discovering evidence of this that they carbon date back to possibly as long as 2 million. The humans have been developing for 2 million. And you know, we were talking about A hundred billion, that may be quite a bit greater than that.
I mean, generation after generation after generation. We know that because of children dying very young, life being violent, there being famines and everything else, that the average age has increased enormously as we've gone forward. So generations might have lasted 15, 20 years.
There was a lot of people born. I'm just saying all this. This is a strictly contextual background to say that those 100 billion, 90 billion created the planet that I was born into.
It created the society. And there's no way in the world that that society be created with me in mind. Me, individual, unique, Dan Sullivan.
None of this was created for me. It was created for me. for the people who are living at the time for their purposes. None of it had anything to do with me. Having said this, I'm noticing more and more in the news, in the films, and in the daily news, and in various social causes, this anger that the world hasn't been designed for them.
And I'm noticing more and more people are getting upset that the world isn't the way. It should be for them in particular, and they take it personally. And I said, man, you know, I mean, you're so late in the game, it's unbelievable. How could it be possibly built for you? And people say, you know, the school system is just terrible.
And I said, well, the school system, you know, it's probably 100 years old, might be 120 years old. I said, it wasn't designed for you, okay? Any institution that you're in that existed before you, there's no possibility that it could have been designed for you. And I'm talking that couldn't have been designed for you in such a way that you weren't bothered by it. The premise here is I'm like, stop feeling entitled is one and stop beating your head against reality.
We'll say it's all raw material. Yes. Okay. On the one hand, it wasn't designed for you, but you're not obligated to deal with it in the way that somebody else has dealt with it. And this is why entrepreneurs, I think, are really interesting characters because entrepreneurs say, guess what?
There's no employment that's right for me. Guess what? There's no job that's right for me.
I guess I'll just have to create some new kind of job. There's no way of making a living that was designed for me. They say, oh, well, I got...
Brains, I can see opportunities, especially the opportunity to be useful to other people. I wonder if I do this and this and this for this person, they'll write me a check for it. And you do that once, twice, by the time you do it 20 times, you're getting really smart on how to be useful. You're really getting smart on how to get paid more and more. So entrepreneurs are the least demanding of all human beings on the planet about how things are.
I love that. Least demanding. Yeah, they're the least demanding.
They're the most accepting of reality entrepreneurs because they say, gee, look at this. I talk to people and they like to have this in their life and it's not provided. I guess I'll go out and create it.
I'll test, see if somebody will pay me for this and maybe I'll link up and I'll collaborate with this person and this person and this person and we'll actually create an entirely new enterprise. and we'll create a whole new kind of product, and we'll create a whole new service, and let's see if we can get paid for doing this entirely new thing. That's interesting. So I would say that the thing that I find so refreshing about human beings is that they just accept things the way they are and said, well, the way things are, what can I do to do something new, better, different that will get me paid?
You know, probably a real bonus for... long time until other people start copying me, and then I'll create something new. So that's my whole approach.
And I find everybody else who doesn't have this attitude towards, well, if it's not the way I want it, what do I have to do to make it the way I want it? But it's all about them taking 100% responsibility and not complaining and not demanding that other people solve problems for them. So that's my basic attitude on this. Where I am right now, I'm 75 years into this lifetime, and I said, you know, none of this was designed for me. And therefore, all through my life, if I wanted something to be better, I had to take the initiative.
I had to use creativity. I had to use teamwork and everything to create things better for myself. No one forced me to do this. I did this entirely willingly, and I've created great things. Insofar as I've used my capabilities, my intelligence, and the opportunities that were available to me, I've done a fantastic job.
It's my own show. Nobody else has to do this. It's just the way that I decided to respond to a reality that was not created for me.
There's something so liberating about taking this particular approach. First of all, it's a no entitlement attitude. The word that came to mind is you just do a creative bypass. You're like, oh, I don't like it that way, so I'm going to do it a different way.
I'm going to find another way to accomplish this or to get what I want or to create the income that I'm looking for. And often there's an opportunity to transform an existing way of doing things that you may look at as being awkward or inefficient or not solving the problem that you're seeing. So you transform it with a new, better idea and teamwork to make that happen. So that's a great definition of entrepreneurship, actually. You all have another corollary to the statement.
If it does seem to happen that the world is designed for you, just treat it as a coincidence. Well, and don't bet on it, because it may be momentary bonus that you get. But it's like the weather, you know.
It may be really supportive of what you're doing today, but don't bet on it. Because the weather is not designed with you in mind. That's a perfect way to think about it.
Oh, I love that. Yeah, and you have to get skillful. I mean, first people who learned how to sail had to get really, really smart on how they could kind of get weather on their side or, you know, the use of animals.
The use of water power, use of fire and everything else. None of this stuff was designed with you in mind. You had to come to terms with it. So it's really interesting, but I see a lot of angst in modern society is that the world isn't the way it should be.
And should is always used. And should, you know right off the bat that somebody doesn't want to take any responsibility for the solution. Yeah, and they want other people to solve it, and they want to use other people's money, not their money, and they don't have to contribute anything to the solution. So this angst about the world not being designed, hey, just start off clean. You know, I'm a fifth child in a family, and I know that the family and the household, when you're number five, you know.
you're not number one, you're not number two, you're not number three, you're not number four. There's a lot of space that's already been taken up before you got here. So as a little, you know, a little fifth child, I said, you know, the only way I'm going to make any headway is just figuring out how to be useful to these bigger beings that already are occupying the space. And I think that, you know, on a personal level and within my family unit. So I never expected.
that I would be given anything because there were a lot of time, a lot of supplies, a lot of resources were already being taken up. So if I was going to kind of enjoy the life I had, then I had to look outside myself and say, I bet if I did this and this and this and I could help this. And like I, as a kid, because I was number five, grew up on a farm, the other four were out working on the crops, you know.
And there's a big separation between the person who's number four and me. So I helped my mother out in the house. And from the earliest age, I could make beds. I could wash dishes.
I could set tables. And my mother had a hard time with the stairs. She had health problems. So I would always clean up upstairs and everything else. I'd go shopping.
And I learned how to do laundry to the extent that I could get... The tank filled with hot water, I could take the washout and I could hang it up on the line with a step ladder and everything like that. But I was just sensible that I could be really useful and meaningful because none of it was designed for me. None of it was designed for me. So I've had this.
I think lifetime, I said, wow, boom, what an interesting situation here. Now, how do I come to grips with this? It's interesting. As a firstborn child, you have a much more chill way of looking at things, which I appreciate.
But let's talk about, you know, the more useful you are, you tend to be able to create the environment that best supports you. And this is actually part of the topic of our upcoming. A new book which is called Who Do You Want to Be a Hero To?
And what's kind of interesting is the more ways that you figure out to be useful to your right audience, another subject of one of our podcasts, you actually are able to create the environment around you that supports you to be your best, most contributing, creative self. Yeah. Well, I'll give you some measurements that kind of prove that my particular approach, and especially my... approach in my partnership with Babs Smith has been really successful and measurably successful. So if we go back, this is our 30th year of the Strategic Coach Program.
1990 was the first full year. So I went back and we had the records of this and I found out the dollar amount revenues that we created in the first year. And it was the best year we had ever had because it was the first year I switched over from... one-on-one coaching where it was just me doing the coaching to one person to where we would have rooms full of people, you know, workshops. So I knew that year and I knew what the dollar amount, so I measured it now in the 30th year and we're up 225 times.
The program is up 225 times. So we went 10 times, we went 100 times, and now we're on the thousand times of the first year. Basically, in 1989, we had two staff members. Now we have 140. There were no other coaches, including all of our coaches at all levels. We probably have 20 coaches.
I do 40 workshops this year. The company does 500 workshops. We're in three countries. We're in eight cities. And we have a stellar reputation in the marketplace.
And all that has happened simply because... I was 100%, Babs was 100% that we had to create whatever we wanted. But the real thing that really gets people in the first year that we did the workshop program, Babs and I took 22 weeks of free time that year. And this year we took 22 weeks of free time.
And throughout the entire 30-year period, every year we've taken 22 weeks. So we only work 210 work days a year. 155 are immediately off the calendar as free time.
And I remember, you know, in the early days, people saying, you know, if you want to grow your company, you've got to forget about free time. I said, no, no, we're going to take 22 weeks off every year going into the future. And they said, well, you can forget growing your company.
And I said, okay, why do you say that? And you say, because, you know, this is just the rule. I go to seminars, I go to conferences, and they say, if you really want to be growing your company, you've got to go big or you've got to go home and you can't be taking free time.
And I said, gee, I wonder what it would be like where you would just go 10 times, 100 times, 225 times, and take 22 weeks off every year. And they said, well, you're not a serious entrepreneur. I said, I guess, but growth is growth, and free time is free time, and they're measurable, and we're doing both.
Pretty cool. And then it became almost the center of what our company was offering. Guess what?
You can double your income, and you can double your free time. And that became the magic potion. Okay, well, we only got this as a concept that we could coach others. I don't care what the world says about growth and increased free time.
I said, we're going to think this through and figure out how we're going to do it. Our whole concept of unique ability teamwork, self-managing company, self-multiplying company, they all came about because we say, whatever it takes, we're going to. continually grow every year, and we're going to take our 22 weeks off. Well, exactly. And in fact, it turns out that it's really hard to grow your company unless you take time away from it.
You know, it's actually part of the formula with the entrepreneurial time system. You can't grow a company. You're never going to put in place the innovations that you need to or develop the team around you to actually expand. Yeah.
And the other thing is, I just recently came back from three weeks off, and I was in Southwest United States, well, Toronto was 20 degrees below zero. When I got back, I had five emails that had come in during the three weeks that I was away. And my direct support team member came in, and there were eight messages that had come in and written for him.
Four of them were thank you notes. One of them was a request for something and everything else. And I said, isn't that interesting?
You know, I have five emails. They kind of know that Dan is away, and if you don't hear from him, he's on free days. And the other thing is that everything else that might have come in for me was handled by my team.
I could go on. I probably have 10 others to say about things you can't do as an entrepreneur that I do as an entrepreneur. And the reason is because the way other people do entrepreneurism means absolutely nothing to me. I'll do entrepreneurism the way I want to do entrepreneurism. Okay.
Nobody else is paying for this. Nobody else is responsible for it. So I'm 100% responsible.
I own this and I'm going to do it the way I want to. So you've managed to, even though the world wasn't designed for you, you can design your own world. Yeah.
Perfect. I love it, Dan. Thank you.
This is enlightening and I know really useful for a lot of people. Thank you. Thank you. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please like it, please share it, make sure you subscribe, and we'll talk to you next time on Inside Strategic Coach.