Expanding Freedom and Happiness While Growing 10X, with Dan Sullivan

You're listening to Freedom Fast Lane, presented by capitalism dot com. This is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran.

Hey.

Today I am both nervous and excited to present an interview that I did with one of my heroes, one of my mentors, the founder of strategic coach Dan Sullivan. Now, Dan has blessed me immensely. I originally got plugged into Dan when someone turned me onto his audio program called Pure Genius. I would highly recommend going out and finding an old copy of Pure Genius. Sometimes old copies float around on ebay, sometimes Amazon. I think it was put out by Nightingale Conan. So go get a copy. It's one of the things, actually. I was riding in the car once with Ryan Dice, and he says, I try and go through this once a year. It's just that kind of impact. So I would highly recommend that you go get a copy of that. It's like 60 bucks somewhere if you can find someone's copy. But Dan's work was introduced to me, and it was the first time that I felt like someone really got me as an entrepreneur. They got the things I struggled with, it got the emotions that I felt. It really nailed my personality and how to reign that in into a way that created more success for me. So I have dreamed of the day of bringing Dan to my audience. It's something that I've wanted to do for a decade. So I'm very honored and thrilled to be able to bring him onto Freedom Fastlane. And in this interview, we talk for quite a while about politics, partly because Dan and I have had conversations about this privately, and we don't always agree. But Dan has a keen eye for history, and hearing how he talks about where we are in history is very compelling. It's also very different than what most people have to say. So I find his opinion very fascinating on this, and he argues the opposite of how I feel. So there's a little bit of productive conflict between our different opinions on this topic. We also talk about a concept that absolutely revolutionized the way I look at myself and my career. It's a concept called the gap, and it is basically looking at where you are in your life and identifying what you compare yourself to and. And finding if you are giving yourself an empowering or a disempowering story. It had a very, very transformational impact on me. We cover something called unique ability, which is identifying where you truly shine and building your business around that. And we also argue about who is a better or happier entrepreneur, Richard Branson or Elon Musk. And I tried to bait Dan here and he gave me an answer that I didn't expect. Now, I'm a little bit nervous to bring this interview to you, and I almost didn't post this chat with Dan Sullivan because I didn't think he was as clear on his points as he usually is. Dan is usually incredibly clear on the point he is trying to make. And I felt like we kind of got all over the place. And I was a little bit nervous to bring this to you because I admire Dan, I respect Dan, and I wanted to give the best possible highlight of what he believes and what he stands for. And I didn't feel like we did that. So I didn't want those of you who aren't familiar with Dan, I didn't want your first experience to be a interview with him that I didn't think was the best one we've ever done. But at the same time, this is something that I have wanted to do for many years, and it would equally be a disservice if I did not bring Dan to my audience here at Freedom fast lane and capitalism.com Whenever Dan speaks, no matter what he's talking about, there is always a treasure trove of nuggets that he drops. And I have found that when I have gone to my strategic coach workshops and sat at the feet of Dan, which is the reason why I pay to go just to hear the guy talk, there's always one or two sentences that he says that is worth my trip. And I hope, and I expect the same to be true for you, that even though we're a little bit all over the place in this interview, there's.

Going to be one or two nuggets.

That are going to have a dramatic impact on you if you use them. So I hope you find at least one or two, but hopefully many of those in this chat with Dan Sullivan.

Welcome everybody to Freedom Fast lane, presented by capitalism.com I've been looking forward to.

This for a long time. I consider him the smartest entrepreneurial thinker, the maybe alive, anywhere on the planet. Dan Sullivan. Thanks for hanging out with us, Ryan.

Real pleasure. And I love talking about all the things you're interested in. So this is going to be an easy podcast.

I think we're going to have fun. And I don't know if I remember.

If you remember, but when we finally.

Met for the first time in person, I said to you. I want you to know why I joined Strategic Coach, and it's because I'm building capitalism.com and I need someone to help me think at the level I'll need in order to do it justice. Because I believe that the conversation of capitalism is one that is far too important to be overlooked. And you had. You were one of the people that, I think introduced me to the idea of the true definition of capitalism several years ago when you described it as a great number of people getting together to serve one another. Would you put that into Dan Sullivan's words?

Yeah. Well, it's actually from a book called the fatal conceit by F.A. hayek, who's very famous. He wrote the book Road to Serfdom, Nobel Prize winner in the 1940s, for this very little book, which was very, very influential. Probably Hayek's book, you know, the Road to Serfdom, and I think probably Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand were probably the two most influential thought pieces which were really swimming against the current in the 1940s because there was a belief that the whole world was going to go to socialism and that entrepreneurism would no longer be needed and that.

Capitalism was giving way to a completely socialistic rule and virtually every country, including the United States. But he said that, you know, and is very. There's lots of wonderful things in this book, but he said, he says, you know, one of the kind of tragedies about capitalism is that it was named by its enemies. And, you know, starting in the early 1800s, Marx being the most famous, and he said that actually capitalism isn't really about capital. Capital is a byproduct of capitalism. And what capitalism is actually is an ever expanding system of increasing cooperation among strangers. And so it's kind of got three points to it, that it's an expanding system and the fundamental activity is cooperation, but it's cooperation among strangers. And the great breakthrough of capitalism was that strangers could trust each other. Even today in vast amounts of the world, the only trust that you can have in all areas of life is really with family members or friends. And what capitalism does, it extended cooperation, really right around the world. And the reason is because it's a quid pro quo that if you cooperate with someone and then they don't reciprocate properly, well, you can just cut them off. And so, you know, everybody is on best behavior to cooperate. And as long as each side is winning, then it can go forever. But then there's legal structures in the best capitalist countries like the United States, mostly The English speaking world has very, very good legal systems to enforce agreements, you know, among people. And you might not even see the individual, but it's still going to be enforced under the law.

You said something on a recent podcast interview that I heard you do where you argued that you thought that progressivism, as, at least in as we think about it, is on its last legs. And I see the media in which I feel like it must be on the rise. So would you make that point?

Well, I think the media is on its last legs, so you know what I mean. So, yeah, progressivism is really political school of thought that started probably in the United States. The two outstanding members were Theodore Roosevelt, who was a Republican, and Woodrow Wilson. And this happened, you know, probably, you know, Roosevelt took over from McKinley, who was assassinated. So it was 1901, and then he was there until 1908. And then Taft came in in 1908-12, and then Woodrow Wilson was elected. And Woodrow Wilson had written as an academic because he was primarily an academic. He was the most academic president we've had up until.

Worst president we've ever had.

If I'm sharing.

He certainly would be on the scorecard for that. But his belief was at the time for constitutional legislation was now over because we were now into, you know, very, very rapidly advancing industrialization. And what was important now is to put the decision making of government in the hands of experts and not to leave it in the hands of uninformed, not well educated legislators, you know, congressmen, senators and that really experts who would be hired in charge of the departments and agencies. And the big thing was that he thought that the Constitution. He was the first probably outwardly hostile critic and really enemy of the US Constitution. And he said that it was okay for an agricultural country that had 3 or 4 million people, but certainly not for a modern industrial power. And that thought has prevailed throughout the 20th century. And, you know, at times it was sort of the dominant thought in society.

But I think it's failing now because being highly educated and being credentialed into a particular profession or something is no guarantee of performance anymore. And we're seeing more and more that predictions about society, predictions about its future, the actual administration of government programs is, you know, there's just a steady record of failure and frustration from members of the public towards these experts. And less and less are people putting their faith in experts who before were considered the authorities. And with that, progressivism can't go forward. So I think that the kind of bankruptcy of expertise, especially in areas that really aren't scientific like sociology, like psychology, political science. These are not, these are not real sciences. You know, they're, they're speculative studies, but they've taken over everything except the hard disciplines in the university. And by hard disciplines, you know, I mean, you know, chemistry, physics, math, engineering, you know, where, you know, you still have to kind of validate. Although there's a lot of now discovery of the kind of what I would say, the shoddiness of scientific method in the universities. And I think that the reason is there's a lot of people with scientific degrees who are actually political activists. They're not really scientists, they're political activists with scientific degrees. But I think there's a general bankruptcy, intellectual bankruptcy. There's certainly a moral bankruptcy of the academic left where a lot of the experts come from the media, as far as I'm concerned, as they've shown themselves certainly over the last couple years, is intellectually and morally bankrupt. And these are the real anchor pieces, the academic world and the media, plus Hollywood, which was always intellectually and morally bankrupt. You take those three and you've lost the anchors of progressivism. And I think it has to do with the growth of microchip technology. I think it is actually microchip technology was the real, from an economic and technological standpoint that has been the smartest expert in the world is not as smart as Watson, which is the AI platform for Microsoft. And we're beginning to realize that human expertise, it's certainly evident. I see expertise in the entrepreneurial world all around me, but it's not advertised expertise and it's not in the political arena. I think that the notion of experts in the political arena is a bankrupt thought.

I certainly hope that you are correct and you bring up the, the microchip often as a big turning point in the world and history. And since that time everything has has sped up, of course, and entrepreneurial opportunities are more abundant than ever because of that. But at time we are lost in a whole lot of noise. You have kind of made your living and staked your claim on helping entrepreneurs wade their way through that noise and decide what's important and to filter out what's not. Would you comment on that? Because it does seem like a catch 22, a blessing and a curse and a double edged sword.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, probably, you know, it's hard to judge, but there's, you know, in human affairs every once in a while there's just a huge game changer. You know, I think steam power, you know, when we started industrialization and the 1700s, and then, you know, really became dominant in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century. And I think we're in a. In a much bigger transition right now, where the microchip, in the form of various software programs and algorithms, with networks around the world, is bringing about a fundamental change of game, certainly in the economic world. And I think it's affecting all other worlds that it's possible now to have expert programs which are technological, not.

Human programs, and individuals can plug into these. So you don't have to develop the expertise. What you have to do is develop the skill in using these artificial intelligence systems. And I think this is a great change, but it changes really fundamentally how people are taught, how people communicate with each other, how problems are solved, how teamwork is formed. So I think every sort of relationship that takes place in the economic world, in the marketplace for any kind of product or service, is fundamentally being transformed. And it requires, because this is very complicated and it's very complex, it requires actually an ability to get very, very simple in your thinking. Ryan I've been at this. I really spotted this trend in 1973, 1974, and this is about the time when the word microchip was first being used. And it was actually fundamental in my decision to become a coach for entrepreneurs, because even early on, I said, I think the number one problem is going to be complexity. There's certainly a lot of efficiencies that microchip technology brings into personal affairs, into organizational affairs. But you have to be very, very simple for the microchip to be a friend. In other words, that you. If you're complicated at all or you're conflicted, the use of the microchip will simply magnify your level of conflict 100 times or a thousand times. So the number one skill in order to have microchip technology be a useful, increasingly useful and positive force in your life is that you have to be very, very simple in your thinking. And so what I focused on was the other side of the microchip revolution. Who do human beings have to be? You know, very quickly I saw that entrepreneurs were the, you know, the best possible individuals, because one is that they are individuals who take increasing amounts of responsibility for their. For their own life, their personal life, and also their business life. And two things that I kind of required was that someone be able to make a decision right away that they would like to work with me and use the various systems of thinking that I had created. But the other thing is they could write the Check. So there was no conferring with a committee to get approval to work with me if I worked with an organization or something. And the other thing is they could write the check on the spot. So that was my requirement. So since really the late 1970s, I've been just focused on entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are the creators of the capitalistic system because the systems of teamwork are actually created by entrepreneurs. So it's the ideal thing. I'm looking at entrepreneurism as this or capitalism as a system that. We started off the conversation with Ryan and I think it's an endless system. It just multiplies itself and it goes on and on. There is no end to capitalism understood as expanding cooperation. But I think entrepreneurs are the cutting edge of that for their own reasons.

But Dan, entrepreneurs, I would say, could be described as anything but simple creatures. I think we have a way of complicating our lives, both personally and professionally. So at Coach, would you talk a little bit about how you get entrepreneurs out of their own way so that they can be simple in their thinking?

Yeah, and I never want them to be naturally simple, Ryan, or I wouldn't have a business. You know.

I want them to be confused and complicated. When I meet them.

Sometimes my clients said, you know, they're so, so disorganized, you know, like it's a complaint. And I says, do you have a point here? I said, this is, this is where our cash, this is where our cash flow comes from, you know. No, but the, the thing is that here's my definition of all the individuals who come into Strategic Coach. Now we're, you know, we're in business for several decades, so, you know, we've really, really fine tuned who it is that we're talking to. And we very fine tuned how we screen whether individuals are appropriate for us and where appropriate for them. But they're individuals who have really above average intelligence and creativity, but they've just got way too much going on in their brain so that they have a hard time focusing on specific opportunities and specific capabilities. So it's not so much what we add to entrepreneurs lives, it's what working with them gets taken away. And you know, one of the big things is that we kind of use unusual approach and that is that we get them to actually get in touch and be very, very conscious of what their energy response is to all the different parts of their company, all the different activities that they're involved in, and certainly all the people that they're dealing with in the marketplace and judge their future plans based on their energy level, whether it's a negative energy or it's a positive energy. And you know, what I find most entrepreneurs is that they have very, very powerful, energetic things that they like and very powerful, energetic things that they don't like. And I start by taking that totally seriously. So that's really the start of it. And, you know, we've been at it for going on. It will be in 2019. It'll be 30 years that we've had the workshop program, which is really, I would say, the real start of what we did in the marketplace. So that's really my whole point. But I want to free them up, Ryan. And the reason is because they free so many other people up. Entrepreneurs as a class are the class that frees the most other people up to have bigger futures, to have feel more abundance in their lives. And so I just focus on this one type of person, and I have done so for more than 40 years. So, you know, this is my passion. This is what I love doing. Never had any thoughts of doing anything else. And, you know, at this stage, I'm really feeling that I've got a good grasp on what's needed for any entrepreneur who truly is, you know, committed to having a future that's bigger than their past.

So let's go there, because when an entrepreneur comes to you and is overworked and overwhelmed and they got into this for a better life, I mean, I don't know any entrepreneur who says, I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I wanted to hate my life. And yet many of them go on being even more stressed and more overwhelmed than the day they started the business. What do you do to unwind them?

Well, I think that the big thing is to create a standard in the center. You know, I have a good friend named Alex Epstein who has written a wonderful book called the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, you know, which is the best. And we immediately bought, you know, over 500 copies of his book. And I didn't even know him because I just thought that he had done the best job of actually presenting what the real issues are about energy on the planet as we go forward. And since then, I've gotten to know Alex, and Alex joined the program. He's in the 10 times program, and we have a podcast series now that we've started, which is called Human Flourishing. And the center of Alex's thinking, it was before I met Alex, but it's really been reinforced since I met Alex, was that it's all about freedom. The whole thing about entrepreneurism is that you become an entrepreneur. It's an individual decision that the best route that you can take in your life to constantly expand your own personal freedom is by being an entrepreneur and not working for someone else. I wholeheartedly agree with that. That's why I did it. I'm sure that's why you did it. I measure my progress by the expansion of my freedom. There's four basic areas to freedom of time. More and more, you're spending your time both in the business and outside the business in a way that's very satisfying to you, and it's getting better. Not only the quantity of time is increasing under your control, but the quality of that time. Freedom of money that you're making money in a way that has a great deal of meaning to you and a great deal of value to other people. Freedom of relationship. You're only working with people that you resonate with. That would include your team, that works for you. That would include your clientele, your personal relationships. And then the big thing is freedom of purpose. You know, that this being an entrepreneur, first of all, it's a lifetime thing, because I don't know anyone who's an entrepreneur for, you know, five to 10 years, and they're succeeding at it that would have any temptation not to be an entrepreneur. You know, if freedom were really their standard. I mean, there are some people, money is the standard, but what they find when they pursue money, they. It's at the expense of freedom. So we use freedom as the context and not, you know, it's not for every entrepreneur. You know, I mean, a lot of people say, well, that's not my big deal. They have other goals. But if you're going to work with Coach and you're going to be attracted to what we do, you have to have this passion for personal freedom. And so we start with that, and we have a very simple way of getting at it called the ABC breakthrough, because it's really a breakthrough. And I'll leave off there because I just wanted to start off by saying the very basis of our conversation with entrepreneurs when they come into the program is over. Freedom. Where are they feeling good about their freedom and where are they feeling badly? And that's an energetic response. You know, I mean, if they're irritated about where they're spending their time, that's a very negative emotion. And they'd say, you know, I don't have freedom here because I'm really irritated. I'm spending hours, perhaps days doing things that I just find very irritating. Well, that's, you've lost your freedom in that area and you have to get your freedom back.

I like that as the context of freedom, as that is the goal. And a lot of people pursue money thinking it's going to give them the freedom. And one observation that I have seen is that when I feel free, when I feel fully charged, money just kind of shows up. But if I'm pursuing money as the aim, I lose freedom and. And I lose money. And I find that I kind of have to reset that every once in a while to take inventory of the things that are de energizing for me versus energizing for me, and I have to recalibrate. But I have this idea that when I work within Strategic Coach or I.

Work with Dan, I am going to.

Suddenly arrive at this point, which I'm always in my unique abilities and I'm focused on things that I enjoy. Do you find that most people have to reset or am I the crazy one in the group?

Well, I think it's freedom, an overall freedom that expands in stages. And one of the things that we do in the program that I coach, which is the 10 times program, is that we, right off the bat, give people lots of time to make their improvements in progress. So the framework is 25 years. So when people start. How old were you when you started, Coach Ryan?

I was 28. I've been in for a year.

Yeah, 28. So talk about 25 years. You probably haven't even consciously ever experienced 25 years, you know, when you came in. But that would take you to 53. Okay. The beauty of that is, first of all, because we establish a 10 times goal for your revenues. You know, we just use revenues for it and we establish, you know, 10 times your revenues in 53 years by the time you're 53. And you know, your response and the response of virtually everybody else in Strategic Coach and say, well, you know, I'm not going to need 25 years to go 10 times. And I said, really? I said, how many years would you need? And they would say, oh, I could do it in 15 years. And I said, well, that's terrific because you get your 10 times growth and you still have 10 more years left in the 25 year framework. And the neat thing about this is people immediately feel a relaxation around time that they have more than enough time. And that's not a dominant thought in today's world. For most entrepreneurs, it's just the opposite. They feel, I just don't have enough time to do what I want. So they're Operating under this time scarcity pressure almost right from the beginning. And one of them has to do with the kind of deadlines they give to themselves for very significant breakthroughs. I always say I don't think there's an unrealistic goal that entrepreneurs can have, but there certainly are unrealistic deadlines that they apply to their goals. And so what we want to do is right off the bat, give people a lot of freedom in terms that they got a lot of time. And I said, well, how many of you are going to do something with the next 25 years anyway? And they all raised their hand and I said, well, why don't we do it this way? This is, you know, this is a really good way of doing it. And you know, and these are self impressed. You know, a lot of the scarcities that entrepreneurs have and a lot of the pressures that they feel are very self imposed. You know, they, no one forced them to think this way, they forced themselves to think this way. So we let up and immediately you can feel this relaxation. And I said, now we can take the 25 years and we can just break it into quarters. And that means you get 100 quarters over the next 25 years. So really we don't have to, you know, if you're just starting, you're in your first quarter and this is the only quarter we really have to think about because we're going to identify some real improvements that you're going to make in the next 90 days and you'll come back and we'll have a discussion and you'll measure your progress. And we'll be at a totally different level of clarity and confidence about what you're doing just as a result of making certain significant changes regarding how you're using your energy over the next 90 days. And they come back and you can see them pop up a little and they're starting to notice things that really shouldn't be in their life at all. They got into their life for one reason or another, but then they start making decisions and they start getting simpler. So that goes back to my whole thing that the key to being extraordinarily successful in the microchip age and very, very satisfied with what you're doing is that as the world gets more complex, you have to get simpler. And that simplicity shines out like a beacon to other everybody else. Because what we will do as a partnership with the entrepreneurs get their life very, very simple. So they become an inspiration to their clients and customers who are experiencing great deals of complexity. So There's a. There's an unlimited amount of a natural resource that's being created by our microchip world, and that is complexity. Complexity is almost like a raw material that each of our entrepreneurs, each in his or her own way, can take the complexity of someone else's life and actually create simplicity for that person. But you can't sell it if you don't have it. So you got. The entrepreneur has to start out by being simpler themselves.

If you will go on a journey with me, let's judge some people that we don't know the case of. I'd say Richard Branson versus Elon Musk. Both are incredibly productive, manage multiple projects, are revered for being entrepreneurs, get an incredible amount of work done. One lives on the beach and has an amazing good time and spends his time in philanthropy and seems to just love his life and be always in his dream. Genius. And that would be Branson and Elon Musk, who is clearly driving himself into the ground and I think has been very open and recently that he doesn't always feel very happy. What's the difference between the two?

Well, I've met one and I haven't met the others. So I've met Richard, but I haven't met Elon Musk. And, you know, first of all, they're playing completely different games in the entrepreneurial world. And I would say that if I understand it, and I mean, I haven't spent a great deal of time studying. Richard Branson's success formula is that he takes fairly standard, mature industries and he creates a new service model for them. I think Virgin Air, his airline, would be one. But if you take a look at where, where he's been successful and he's had enormous number of failures because he just tries a lot of things very quickly that generally speaking, he's best when there's an already existing industry. And what he does is that he'll go and say, how could we make this 10% better for customers and clients? And come in and know, how can we make it look. And it's. It's kind of an improvement with what already exists. And it's innovative in the sense that nobody else is doing that, but it's not the creation of really new things. And I think the one area where he's been most publicly not successful has been his notion that he's going to create space travel. You know, and the reason is it's not a mature industry. It's an industry that doesn't even exist. And I don't think he's good in that type of situation. You know, I mean, the promise has been out there for, you know, going on 10 years now that, you know, he sold tickets for, you know, 200, 200 some tickets and everything else. And I think the reason is, is because that's not his playground and he just got into something out of enthusiasm, I think personal enthusiasm, but it's not his model and he hasn't been successful because it's not the application of his method. Elon Musk is really, in my mind, kind of a game changer type entrepreneur. I'm saying this as being married to a new Tesla driver. So Babs, my wife, is the real car person in our family. And we're not big drivers. And I should just give, you know, we have a BMW X5, which I really like as a car, but we've had it for 12 years and it's got 55,000 miles on it. So it kind of tells you the extent of our driving habits, you know. And so she bought the Tesla SUV and she loved it. I mean, she went out for an afternoon and she just came home loving it. And I don't love technology, but I love Babs. So if Babs is happy with the technology, then I, you know, I'm really happy for in either case, I'm still a passenger, so it doesn't really matter. And anyway. But I think he's doing fundamentally new things. I mean, I think this car is a fundamentally. It's probably the most original upgrade in automobiles since the very beginning of the industry. Just so superior in so many different ways. And the other thing is the work he's doing in solar power. There's some enormous innovations that he's introducing. I think he's a terrific engineer. You know, Richard Branson doesn't have any terrific specialties as skills. I think he's a tremendous promoter. He's first of all a tremendous self promoter. And he's a great brander. He understands branding probably as well as anybody in the marketplace. You know, and these are all very, very important skills, you know, entrepreneurial skills. But I think that I would place Elon Musk back in the category of people like Edison and Westinghouse at the end of the 19th century. I think he's a real, you know, he just, you know, created the first recoverable rocket ship to make space travel. First of all, immediately, it reduces the cost of launch by about once it gets going, because they can reuse it 6, 7 times, which is one of the big costs of launching into space, which is going to be necessary to, you know, the first 20 miles above the Earth is the real problem. Once you get above the first next 20 miles, it's really. And he's done all that, you know, and now he's got the hyperlink, which is basically new form of mass transportation. You know, he's talking about neuralink, which is the beginning of using chip implants in the human brain to enhance human capabilities. So his stuff is really, really cutting edge. The only problem I have with Elon Musk, and it may be the source of his unhappiness, is that without government subsidies, none of that exists. I'm not a great believer in entrepreneurs who get in bed with government. I think it's corrupting on both sides. So that would be my caveat about. I don't know him, haven't met him, can't really imagine circumstances where I might meet him. But just from an observer, and I read history a lot about entrepreneurism, but I would place him as a, you know, when the history, this period is written from 50 years from now, he'll show up as a major entrepreneurial figure. And I don't think that Richard Branson really will.

That's interesting because I viewed it a little bit differently. And the reason I asked the question was because it seems to me that you can be incredibly productive and be really happy, or you can be incredibly productive and not be happy. And both of them have the big B next to their name for billionaire and have done amazing things in the world. It's just interesting to me to see one that has created all of this unbelievable advancement and achievement and will go down in history as one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live, but didn't seem truly fulfilled. And the other, I think, really is. And I remember hearing you say once, kind of analyzing Elon, he runs himself into the ground. He doesn't take days off. And I think you said, Elon, you're starting to say some silly things lately. Maybe you need to take a day off. And that was when he was talking about living in. In a. In a simulation. I thought you would comment on that. I was. I'm curious as to.

Yeah, yeah. Well.

This would be second or third hand because. Yeah, I think when people speculate how the future is going to be, they're on very, very shaky ground. What you can actually do. With our minds, we can see how we can most properly utilize the future that's available to us in terms of capabilities and resources. And I think that one of the mistakes we make, that people can really be geniuses in one area of things. And I think he's an engineering genius is what he is. I mean, he's certainly an engineering genius, probably superior to the level of Henry Ford or, you know, a lot of the early makers. And I think he's a real. His stuff really is beautiful, and his stuff works better than other people's stuff. So I think there's real genius at work there. And I'm sure he's got great teams of other people who, you know, are behind the scenes, but that's just part of technological progress that has to be done through teamwork. But I would say this, that first of all, I don't make any judgment on whether other people are happy or not, because I don't. I don't think one knows. And maybe when he's deep into his work, he's in high, you know, he's in blissful state. You know, he can be. And the other thing I would say about this, but when you, Mark, start making statements about things that are sort of political in nature, they're, you know, the future of the planet and everything else. I think that they're. People can say very, very silly things. I mean, you know, what's his name? The physicist, the black hole physicist, everybody. Stephen Hawking in the area of physics. He's recognized as a true genius. And, you know, people who are really, really terrific physicists say the thing. But when he starts talking about the existence of God or he starts talking about, you know, what politics is going to be on the planet and populism on the planet, I said, he's an idiot. He's just a total idiot. You know, he has no base and he's got a. It's like, you know, famous movie stars, political views, you know, I think, you know, they're idiots, you know, or baseball players or football players taking political statements. I said, you know, that's not where your specialty is, and you're an idiot. And you're just using your reputation and your celebrity status because you can influence people. But everything that comes out of their mouths, I always think they're idiots.

Fair enough.

Dan.

I was hoping we could spend some time talking about the entrepreneurial brain.

Yeah.

And you've been very open about. You have clinical add, if that's how you call it. But even going back and saying that the last four years where you discovered.

That have been the most productive of your life.

Yeah, it's actually. I told you that two years ago. So it's now six years.

Okay. And I've been hearing genius network talks about this a lot, especially with the addiction. Yeah, right. And I heard the claim that it was 90% of entrepreneurs have some sort of ADD. And I'd be curious to hear you talk about that because obviously you have harnessed that in some way and work with a lot of entrepreneurs who have similar traits. And I'm just curious if you have found kind of a method to rein that in or if you think that if all entrepreneurs should to look into medication or if there are other ways to manage that. I would just like to hear you.

Well, you know, right from the beginning, Ryan, I noticed, you know, first of all, I had to start with myself. I mean, that's where you gain knowledge, is you start with your own situation. And that I was highly distractible, you know, and I have been, you know, footing from one subject topic to another, one task to another, and a real, you know, lifetime difficulty of just sticking with anything for very, very long, especially when it really required details that had to be right, you know, especially in the area of financial details being right. But I've always had a sense of being fairly self liking, you know, I've always had a liking for the person, you know, and so I've got. I've got. I'm kind of a good friend to myself in this sense that I say, well, let's find out what he's really good at, you know, and, you know, this is my fundamental approach to everybody in the program. I said, well, don't give yourself bad marks for all the things you're not good at because I'm not interested in them. Let's just find out where you're really good at and then increase the amount of time and attention and energy that you can get to the area. And really good at means that it gives you a lot of positive energy to do this activity. And for me, it happens to be what I'm doing right now. I'm really well designed for podcasting. I just love the medium. I love the fact that this technology is available and I love doing it in partnership with someone like you, Ryan, because I am at my best when I'm responding to a conversational partner that I don't know what they're going to say next. So it actually brings out a lot of energy in me. And so I've gotten better and better personally at focusing myself and staying only within the realm where I have high energy, where I have a real passion for what I'm doing, where I can be a real hero to other people. In other words, by talking to people Conversing with them, asking them questions, making observations. I found that entrepreneurs really love the interchange that they've experienced with me. And we've put this into a system where other coaches can do it. So it's gotten much bigger than myself in the 29 years that we've had the program. But the big thing is that the better I got at being gentle with myself and sort of saying, you know, we just don't want you getting into areas where, you know, you don't have good energy and you don't enjoy it and we want to keep pushing you that I've also become more useful in helping other people do the same thing. And if there's really a simple explanation to, you know, the success of the Strategic Coach, it really lies in really coming to grips with my own add. I had real insight in how I could help other people and make them feel terrific about the part of their life when they're just, you know, what we call their unique ability and they're really in the energy center of their life and then build everything else around that. Their teamwork gets built around that. You know, what the value creation proposition is of their company. Build that around that energy, that focused, very positive energy that entrepreneurs have when they can just operate in a smaller circle and not try to do everything in a much larger circle. So that's really the, you know, if I had to describe, you know, the, the DNA of the Strategic Coach program and I had to describe the methodology and the strategy of me personally as the creator of the program, it really lies in that. Don't do things that you're not good at. Don't hold yourself responsible for doing things that are good. Don't commit yourself to activities or to that put you in non energetic, non satisfying, non rewarding activities. Just go in your center and then start looking for team members who can do everything else, but they resonate with you because you're in positive energy. And that's called the ABC model. A, you know, you have a circle that has a medium sized circle inside that circle and then you have a smaller circle. Then the big circle is A, which are irritating activities, B, which are okay activities, and C activities are fascinating and motivating activities. And the goal is to take all your time, all your activity from A and B and get it into C. And then all those A and B activities that you used to be doing are either eliminated, period, because there's no point in doing them, or they're delegated or they're automated. And so you're just Left in C. Now I combine that with the 25 year framework and 100 quarters, then every quarter more and more of A and B, time moves into C and you start seeing an explosion of energy. What you said before was an expansion of personal freedom, and money is attracted to energetic freedom. That's one thing I'm absolutely convinced of as a working principle of human progress is money is most attractive where the positive energetic focus is, but it's around freedom. Anywhere where freedom is expanding is very, very popular. And people, you know, people will invest in that. They'll buy things to be connected with energizing freedom.

Two of the most freeing thoughts that you ever gave to me were, one, the idea of what if we just made the whole business out of C, meaning that bullseye of where we're really good and that creates energy. What if we just built the business around that and then offering the idea, the thought that people, clients and customers are attracted to people who are happy and confident, and that comes from doing energizing activities. And I thought, huh, there's actually a direct ROI on my confidence and happiness, which comes out of doing the activities that are most energizing and rewarding to me and Dan. I was hoping we, we could close things out by you talking about one concept that you introduced me to. That was the thing that put me in the Dan Sullivan cult for life, and that was identifying the gap and realizing how much of my energy was spent on comparing myself to this illusion in my head versus celebrating my progress. Would you share the model of the gap?

Yeah. Well, first of all, one of the things you know, that you know and I know, Ryan, in working with entrepreneurs, is that what really distinguishes them from people who aren't is sort of the vividness of their vision of future progress. In other words, they have a. They have a picture of themselves. And this continually happens throughout their life. They have a picture of themselves in the future where they're performing at a much higher level and they're achieving at a much higher level, and they feel incredibly better about themselves in that future vision. But it's a vision, it's not a reality. But they become emotionally attached to that, you know, and it's necessary to become emotionally attached to it because that's where your commitment would become to then make specific progress, you know, change your life, change your direction, and actually move towards that vision. But it's an ideal. And ideals are there for a reason, but they're not there for measurement. And the problem is that people will make progress and will be highly motivated to make progress. And then they'll make the progress. And then at a certain point, having made the progress, they'll measure against that ideal. And it's the same as measuring against the horizon line in physical space. You can move forward miles, but if you measure against the horizon line, it's like you never started. It's like you never got anywhere. And then there's a sense of disappointment. But the other thing that goes along with this, they're measuring against a perceived future emotional experience. And this is not a measurable thing. And I was talking to Peter Diamantis, who I don't know if the listeners know, but is really a cutting edge reporter on Breakthroughs in Technology. And I have a podcast series with Peter also. And there's a program that we've jointly created which is called Abundance360, which happens every January and Beverly Hills. But Peter was, you know, really intent. He was born in 1962, and his whole childhood was about the Apollo space mission. Now growing up in, you know, 69. So it was seven years after he bought he was born that the first moon landing. And then it went on for another two or three years into the early to mid-70s, the plow program. And then it ended. But there were 12 men who walked on the surface of the moon. And Peter got to know them all personally. And, you know, and one of the features, very common features, is that sometime after they came back, they had what would be the equivalent of nervous breakdowns. And some of them very debilitated for a long period of time. And, you know, I was talking to Peter about that and immediately occurred to me when he told me that story, why did they have nervous breakdowns? And I think the thing is that that notion of being perhaps the first person or among the first people to actually walk on the moon was a long time dream of theirs. You know, that could have started, you know, when they were teenagers and, you know, they became pilots. They were all pilots. They were all jet pilots. Most of them had wartime experience, probably Korean War, you know, and then they, a lot of them became test pilots. And so there was enormous skill there. And then they went through an incredibly rigorous process of being selected as the first entrepreneurs. And, you know, this was all experimental. So enormous demands were being made on them because they didn't really know what the experience was going to be like. And I think that what settled in, in the minds that the event of actually leaving Earth, going to the moon, stepping out, being on the moon, looking backwards and seeing the Earth as this little blue gem they thought it was going to transform themselves as a human being. They would be a different human being when they came back to Earth. And probably, I mean, the first ones got to go to the White House and, you know, they got ticker tape parades down Madison Avenue in New York and they were on the television shows. By the time you get to the numbers 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, you know, it's back to the. The next day is a work day after you get back. And I can just picture one of them getting a phone call a day or two after coming back from the moon. And it's his wife. And she said, well, now that you're going to be around a little bit, could you pick up some ground beef on the way home from, you know, Brian thing? And somehow it didn't jive with the transformed human being, you know, And I think that they were measuring their progress against experiencing that transformational moment. And it didn't happen. It didn't happen. And I think it was crushing to them. And what it did is it kind of made all their progress, which was, you know, extraordinary. Literally out of this, out of this world, progress that they had made, and it diminished it and it didn't make it that important at all. And this happens in many situations. You know, it happens in the area of athletics, it happens in the area of, certainly entertainment, it happens in the area of politics. Certainly in the entrepreneurial world, it happens. So my GAP concept is use the ideal you have of the future. It's very important that you have an ideal, and I certainly do, too. But I just use it for illumination on where my goals should be. And then I make progress towards measurable goals that have deadlines. And then when I achieve the goals or I achieve progress, I turn around, look backwards, and I only measure backwards. So my basic philosophy is, for entrepreneurs, if you're going to be sane and you're going to be successfully sane and satisfied with what you're doing, never ever measure forwards against your ideals. Always measure backwards against where you started. And you'll always get a sense of pride about what you've done. You'll always get an increased boost of confidence from the progress that you made. And your motivation and your excitement of having even bigger goals will continually. And you can keep that up for a lifetime. So that's. Yeah, that's what I've discovered. And I live this, you know, I'm a very happy person. I've got big goals. We have huge goals for a coach, but that's for measurement. Sometime in the future but during the next quarter, I have some very specific areas of progress, and really, it's what's available that really is important to me. You know, I'm 72, going on 73, and, you know, feel very energized. I have a future that's bigger than any future I've ever had before. And, you know, this is the life I lead.

Well, Dan, I said it at the top of the hour. I'll say it again. I think you're one of the smartest entrepreneurial thinkers alive. I am very, very thankful that I discovered your work many years ago. And I have said many times, if Dan Sullivan said it, believe it. If he wrote it, read it, download everything he has. There's no one that I enjoy learning from more. So thank you for sharing some of your wisdom with us on Freedom Fastlane.

Well, thank you very much, Ryan. And again, I want to thank. Thank you for the opportunity because, you know, there's thousands of people who listen to your podcast that I wouldn't otherwise get the chance of meeting. So I'm just thanking you right now for the introduction.

Thanks, Dan.

My favorite part of this chat with Dan was when he talked about using freedom as the way that we keep score. Freedom and happiness as the end result as entrepreneurs were expected to create value.

In the form of money or more clients or more growth.

But what if freedom was ultimately the thing that we were going for? That's why I started Freedom Fast Lane, to have that conversation. And I needed to be reminded of that at this point in my career. I run several physical products businesses. I runcapitalism.com but really, at the end of the day, the best gift that we can give is our own freedom. Because from that place is where we create the most, is where we create the most value and where we are the happiest. So that was my takeaway from this chat with Dan. That was my golden nugget. I know we covered a lot in that, and it wasn't always in a straight line, and we kind of went all over. But if nothing else, I hope you get that the reason why you started your venture, the reason why you became an entrepreneur was because freedom was supposed to be the way that you kept score. And that's the best gift that you can give to the world. I believe your happiness, your success, and your freedom is the best possible gift you can give to the world. And that's the way that we will create all the change that we want to see. That's why I appreciate you listening to Freedom Fast Lane. I hope you'll share this with an entrepreneur who would find value in it. And I'll see you on the next episode.