10X Is Easier Than 2X: Ambition & Agency with Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan - 10xTalk Episode #241

My ambition at 90 is to be more ambitious. And it was a very important thought because I began to realize that ambition is not a destination. Ambition is a capability.

Yep.

But the more I thought about it, it's not just a capability. Like among other capabilities, ambition is the master capability that allows you to have all the other capabilities that you had.

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Hello, this is Joe Polish and this.

Is Dan Sullivan and welcome to 10X Talk. All right, so Dan, we're in the studio in Toronto. This is our second podcast that we're doing today. Why don't you give some framing of what we're doing here? Because we started the last one. So this is a total standalone. You don't need to listen to the last episode, Al. I think you'd be well served to do that in order to get value out of this. They're two different topics. However, they're about the same thing that we're actually setting up for us. So I'll have Dan explain that and then we'll get into this.

Yeah, well, the background is that both Joe and I are authors, published authors for Hay House. And Hay House approached us about the possibility of doing what's called a audio original, which is a completely new product, which would be audio, where it's not an audio version of a book, it's actually just created in the studio. So we had a great zoom call with Hay House and I said, well, Joe and I are doing 10 times podcasts. He's here in Toronto where we got a top notch studio right next to our offices. And I said, why don't we do the 10x talk on our thinking about creating the audios, the audio originals. And I'm the great preparer. So I put together a couple scripts using one of our strategic coach tools, which is called a fast filter, which lays out a project. And then you say on the project, what's the best result you want? I read what the best result was and then there's the worst result.

I'm going to read them. And Dan did it also for the previous episode, which was on my book, what's in it for them and how these tie together. And by the way, you didn't use AI to do this. This is Dan writing this. Yeah. So it's almost funny that we have to say that these days sometimes because there's so much being done with AI. Yeah. And I even have A friend who's real AI expert teaches trainings on it and everything he says it's gonna be baked into everything three to five years from now. He believes people won't even say AI anymore. It's just gonna be built into everything. So anyway, so the project is Dan and I and. And it's transforming. 10x is easier than 2x from the standpoint of ambition and agency. That's the project. So the best result, you must break free from incremental thinking and embrace a transformative 10 times ambition that redefines what's possible. When you focus on the few high impact activities that yield disproportionate results, you gain the agency to act decisively and accelerate your progress. Achieving exponential growth means letting go of limiting habits, adopting a bold vision, and intentionally redesigning your environment and relationships to support radical growth. You hold the power to shape your path with purpose. And when you combine extraordinary drive with empowered intentionality, you unlock a framework for exceptional success. 10 times is easier than 2 times is your guide. No more waiting. Time to transform. So speak to that, Dan, if you could. And I'd love for you to define agency again. You did it on the last podcast we did, but I'd love for you to share it.

Well, first of all, my attitude, Joe, towards ambition, you know, it's very, very interesting with ambition. It's a topic that never really gets talked about. It's one of those dark entrepreneurial secrets. So when there's a deep, dark secret, I'm a bit similar to you. Let's talk about what nobody wants to talk about. It's sort of been interpreted that there's a high negative quality to ambition. First of all, that people are very unequal in ambition. Some people really have ambition, other people don't have so much ambition. And that it generally means that you're going to get what you want regardless of what it takes to get it and everything like that. So I've been coaching entrepreneurs since 1974. I started coaching entrepreneurs, direct contact with the entrepreneurs. It's over 7,000 that I've talked to. And they're all ambitious, they're attracted to what we do because they get a room full of high ambition people. And what really struck me is they're all great people. And what I really noticed about them is that they don't walk over other people, that actually they have a tremendous sense of finding out what their customers and clients need. And they're great at teamwork, they're great at collaboration, but they're confined to loneliness. They're confined to isolation. So they're ambivalent about their own ambition. So that's one thing. They're very unequal in terms of the amount of ambition they have. But the other thing about it is that they've got sort of an image in their mind, or other people have an image in their mind that ambition is like, when you're born, you're given an ambition tank. You know, it's like a gas tank. And ambition is the liquid that fills up the gas tank. And some people just get a little tank filled up, and other people get a big tank filled up. But over the course of a certain number of years, some people buy 15, some people buy 30, some people buy 50, they run out of ambition gas, and that's the end of their life. They have no more ambition. Right? And I said, that's a really cruddy metaphor. You know, it's just a shitty metaphor. Why would you think about it like this? So what? I've come because I'm ambitious myself. Right? But where it was really triggered, Joe, I was 80 last year, and I was in Nashville. We had a big conference that was partially my birthday party, but it was 80.

That was one hell of a party. I mean, I was there. It was awesome. That was literally one of the best. It was great.

Thank you. But I was very, very aware that at 80, I was a lot more ambitious than I was at 70. I was talking to this with a whole bunch of strategic coach entrepreneurs that I had never met before. They were with other coaches in our program. And somebody came up to me and said, so, what's your ambition for? You're 90 years old. And I had to think about it for a few seconds, and I said, my ambition at 90 is to be more ambitious. And it was a very important thought because I began to realize that ambition is not a destination. Ambition is a capability. But the more I thought about it, it's not just a capability. Like, among other capabilities, ambition is the master capability that allows you to have all the other capabilities that you had. Right, okay. But we've been really working with 10 times as a entrepreneurial multiplier for about 35 years. So we have a tool, it's called the 10 times mind expander. In the workshop, I'll tell two stories about it. The first one is that you say, okay, so let's pick a point in the future. And at that point, you can pick a number that you want. Revenues, you know, whatever number you want to use. But it's the most meaningful number you have measuring your success. And I says, let's just put 10 times down and the whole room freaks out, you know. And I said, okay, that's what we're going to do. But just to make this a little more gentle for you, let's go back to when you were 1/10 of where you are. Same number, you know, the same thing, you're counting. Let's go back to 1/10 of where you were. And when was that? And you know, it might be 20 years ago. And I said, now, let's just arbitrarily break that 20 year period into five jumps. Jump. Then you went here, you went here, and you here. And then let's fill it in with changes you made to your life. You know, it could be teamwork, it could be technology, could be a jump in terms of who the check writers were. I get them spending about an hour talking about how they got from 1:10 to where they are, and all of a sudden they said, gee, that's really interesting. I said, now, back when you were 1 10th, did you know how you were going to get to where you are today? And they said, no. So I said, you're here today, you're 1/10 of something in the future, but won't it look pretty much like what you've already done? And I would say it's one of the three most powerful thinking processes that.

We'Ve put together, and that is a capability expander. So you know that saying, you know, you give someone an inch, they take a mile. In this particular case, it's almost like you want to give them an inch of perspective so that they can expand it to a mile, right?

Yeah. The other one that I want to say, just to give a context for this, is that I'll say to someone, what's your revenue right now? And I said, well, let's take it 10 times. This is really funny, Joe, but the number of times they say 10 times. I can't do 10 times in three years. I said three years. I didn't say anything about three years. I said 10 times. I said, actually, I'm going to give you 25 years. And they say 25 years. I don't need 25 years to go 10 times. I say, really, how many years? And they said, 15. I said, then if you did it in 15 years, what would you do next? He Sundays, the other 10 years I go 10 times more. I said, isn't that weird? Before you were shocked by going 10 times, and now you're talking about going 100 times. So the Big thing is that what this concept does is if you give yourself enough time. I always say that entrepreneurs, they don't drive themselves crazy with their goals. They drive themselves crazy with their time frames, with their deadlines. So anyway, long story short, a lot of this is your fault, Joe, because you created a program called Genius Network, which Babs and I belong to, and then you created a group where you only charge them 25,000 a year. And then you created a group where you were charging them $100,000 a year. And my first group, a very, very good writer by the name of Ben Hardy, approaches me and he says, I notice you create a lot of little books, you know, that you self publish. Do you ever think about getting a big publishing house and doing a major market book? And I said, yeah, I'm sort of thinking about it. And he said, if you ever would like to do this, he said, I'd like to be the partner. I'm a good writer and I'll write it for you. Long story short, over a period of about five years, we produced three best selling books. And the third one, first one was who, Not How. The second one was the Gap and the Gain. And the third one was ten times as easier than two times. Of the three. The ten times is easier than two times has really taken off. I mean, we're in the hundreds of thousands of sales of the book. And that book has brought more new people into Strategic Coach than any other single marketing capability. We've coached about 25,000 entrepreneurs. And I think that any of them that have stayed with us for five or six years have certainly gone 10 times. Some people, you know, it's way more than that. But the one thing I would like to do. What did that thought do to you, Joe, when you first taught it going 10 times?

Well, I mean, the fact that we even started 10X Talk back in 2012 as a podcast, you know, my whole thing was, well, just to come back to this podcast, in the beginning, there's revenue going 10 times. There's your joy of your business 10 times. There's the expansion of the results that you can have for your clients. Go by ten times for me. I look at it through the framework of all of the different ambition projects that I have from Genius Network to Genius Recovery. I don't think I ever would have bought a ghost town. So what did it do for my thinking?

Owned a gold mine.

Yeah, exactly. We have a mining company, Silver and gold. Yeah. And it's on the, you know, we took that company public. Right. So there's so many big ambitious goals that I probably would have made excuses for doing and then therefore maybe not have done them had I not done it. But it's also opened up possibilities. It's similar to the, you know, Roger Bannister, you know, once someone runs the four minute mile, then all of a sudden it shows evidence of success that other people can do it. And I think it gives me a benchmark. It's something to shoot for. And it's not just about money. It's about reach. And I think at this stage I can definitely see in terms of my connection abilities. I've probably taken my connection abilities by a hundred times, but I keep doing it and what it's done for me. I mean, this sounds totally biased and maybe arrogant to a degree. In the quote unquote world of masterminds. I don't know any groups that do anything like what we do. I mean, how many business groups bring all the different types of people from addiction to things related to mental health, to relationships like we do? It's not about business anymore. How many groups that are entrepreneurial groups take their members to prisons before the meetings and have someone on staff that if they need an intervention. We now have Genius Youth. We're doing the first one. Literally a week from today. We do our first Genius Youth. And my ambition with that is that it will be far bigger than Genius Network, but it will be for the young people of Genius Network. And what's funny is how engaged all of our members are. Even the first one, we completely sold it out. We now have a waiting list of people that want to send their young people to Genius Youth. And so just different life skills. And so. Yeah, I mean, the concept is. Yeah.

And I would say the other thing to observe over the years, you've been always a master at interviews and you have hundreds and hundreds. I don't know what the total is of interviews. And I would say that the skill that you have of interviewing and also the quality of the people that you're interviewing has gone a hundred times. I mean, these are nationally known, internationally known people that you're interviewing now. And you're extraordinarily masterful. I actually made a suggestion that they shouldn't be allowed to speak at Genius Network unless they're being interviewed by Joe. And I said, because you keep them on track, also you keep them from turning into a sales speech. You know, they have to follow your rules. Joe wants to have a serious conversation. He doesn't want to hear a sales talk.

Right. And I'LL tell you that's often, you know, I make funny jokes about it is my job is to manage egomaniacs half the time, Right. And the people that are so used to pitching, and when I say so used to pitching, all entrepreneurs have to sell their stuff. So I'm acutely aware that everybody has a business, and when someone's ambitious about their business, they think it's great, Right? So that's fine. However, how you present it to other people, if you just demonstrate value, people will want to buy it more than if you're just trying to pitch it. Now, the caveat to that is if you're selling to a room of dreamers and they have not yet turned something into success, you're more apt to sell them the opportunity than just, hey, here's how to be a more capable entrepreneur. And sometimes people confuse that between different audiences, but for the most part. And one thing here. So I brought to the $100k meeting Jan Ikelik, who is the senior editor of the Epoch Times. This interview's on YouTube, and he talks about orgas harvesting in China. In China. $9 billion industry. And most people in that room had no idea, for one, that this was even happening, let alone a $9 billion industry where they're murdering.

Yeah, they're just killing people and taking their hearts, their other organs. And they've got customers, you know, and they're selling hearts for 50,000. They're selling pancreas, they're selling liver, they're selling kidneys. What they do is they arrest somebody, put them in prison, and then at a certain point, they're operated on and their organs are taken. And they've got buyers already ready. They already have, you know, deposits. And it's a major industry. And nobody's ever talked about this until Jan. There are protest groups that he's gotten in touch with, and he got very deep into the subject.

Right. And the reason I bring that up is so, you know, that's a way different topic than how to write a sales letter. That's a way different topic than what's your formula for. For greatness. You know what I mean? And so I'm doing interviews with things that are intense subjects that are often very sad, but there's now video evidence that this exists. So the reason I bring that up is that I recently met Mike Rowe, and he's like, I've seen you before. You know, I'm like, where have we met? He's like, I watched your interview with Jan. And then recently, Mike Rowe interviews Jan and So now it's just getting exposed. Right. Because Mike Rowe has a massive following. And that's what I love about the ripple effect and the domino effect of doing this. And so when you have something, anything that's significant, important, valuable, and you go 10x, you can do this in collaboration. It doesn't have to be you doing everything. And so I'd love to have your thoughts on going 10x where people are like, well, I can't see this as possible. How am I supposed to do that? Well, who would you align yourself with? Who do you need to have a relationship with, who already has some audience or some thing that together you could do so much more than individually? Because my philosophy is, don't just try to increase your slice of the pie 10x, try to increase the pie. There's a lot of things that. How do you put a magnifying glass on this thing? There's many ways. So you said, ambition is a capability. It's the master capability. On our previous podcast, she said, ambition is the capability to create other capabilities and then agencies. You know, the freedom to make decisions. So speak to agency.

There's a very interesting psychologist who is actually credited with creating an entire new branch of psychology, and his name is Martin Seligman. He's a professor emeritus at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And I've been following him probably for 30 years, 35 years. And he put all the emphasis on happiness and optimism. Ra than why people are pessimistic, why they're negative. And he said, all of psychology is dealing with people who aren't functioning. He says, let's find out why the ones who are functioning are actually functioning. I was reminded about this the other day because when we finished, you were in for your Free Zone workshop on Tuesday, and we were doing the debriefing afterwards, and Stephanie Son, who is the program advisor for the Free Zone, she got around her turn and she says, oh, yeah, just another eight hours of Dan fixing what works.

That's funny.

And I said, wow, it took us 36 years to get our selling proposition. You know, you've mentioned several times, Joe, that I look at people and I just see what works with people, and then I get them to recognize what works and then get rid of everything that doesn't work and just keep enlarging the thing that really works. What's your best talent? Who do you really want to be a hero to? Who are your best clients? What's the biggest check, you know, who do you need around you that does the things that you don't want to do. So we just keep taking that. So the whole aspect of this is that really in today's day and age, certainly in the countries where we are, we're in three countries. Us, Canada, in United Kingdom, and we live in a phenomenal world. You know, I mean, if you want to do a slice of the way that we live today and Compare it to 100 years ago, things are really, really good. The opportunities for entrepreneurs, especially since we entered the microchip age 50 years ago, I think that it's just a function of focusing on what really works. Taking a look at, you know, how have you been successful so far? Let's capture the essence of that. You know, who should you be hanging around with? How do you operate when you're at your best? And just keep capturing these things and just have what works in the center and then just keep building it through teamwork inside your company, collaboration with other entrepreneurs outside of your company, and then technology, you know, empowering it 10 times as easy.

Let me throw something into this conversation because I think it's relevant and it's about health and fitness. So you exercise every day. I mean, we've gone up vacation together. You're a very active guy. I know people that are in their twenties that do not exercise. And so here you are in your 80s and you put an emphasis on what you eat, what goes into your body, your exercise, your fitness. And we go to a lot of conferences where they're talking about longevity and they're thinking that a pill or medicine or whatever will fix everything, which is there certainly are things that will help advance a lot of stuff, and there's plenty of proof of that. But a lot of the people don't exercise or take care. They just did a speech on longevity and living to 120 and they're getting wasted at the bar. So it's like, okay, well, let's see. Now, the reason I bring this up, I'm not even fully done with it, but I've been reading a book called Supergut written by the author, he wrote Wheat Belly. And I didn't even realize I knew some of this because I own seed oil.com, we're getting ready to launch an app that's going to help people find seed oil free foods and restaurants, and also refined sugar and processed flours and just help them with overall what they're putting into their body. And I didn't realize the level that your microbiome and your flora affects social isolation, depression, enthusiasm, all kinds of things. And Then there's also, when a baby is born, if they go through a vaginal birth, they will pick up the mother's flora and microbiome. And my partner, who's a doctor, could obviously say this much. So I'm not a doctor here, so if I don't say this accurately, read the book. But the baby will develop a better gut. Right. And then if they're fed formula that's not as good as breast milk. So there's this incentivization for a lot of women to get C sections because they make more money. The hospitals and some doctors or whoever's delivering the baby, do they want to go through a very long labor or do they want to get home at night and go to bed? Right. So what's happening is people aren't even developing healthy microbiomes and stuff. And that leads to all kinds of ways that they behave and how they interact with other people. And if they're depressed and if they're functional. And I'm now starting to look at this through the lens of, huh, if your gut is messed up, how ambitious are you possibly going to be? Suicide, depression, all of these things they can link to the health of someone's gut, the second brain. Right. And so don't just think of this as the intellectual factors. I mean, me and you are going to do a podcast. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff, but I don't want to leave out the fact that I think so much of your ability to be healthy at 80 years old is not because you're a smart guy. You're clearly a smart guy. You're known to be one of the top. I mean, you've coached more successful people than almost anyone alive. Right. That are at a certain level of success. There's people that might reach the masses, but you're dealing with very high level entrepreneurs. You've been doing this for years. You've written. How many books have you written now?

Just about 60.

60. I mean, so you're an intellectual giant on so many levels. And you also have been actively taking care of yourself as best as possible for a long time. So I want to have you speak to that because I think it's important that people get and understand that what we do in our life, we carry around this vessel that is our body, and if you don't take care of it, you're going to burn yourself out.

Yeah. One of the things, Joe, that I've really noticed, I've been coaching entrepreneurs since 1974, so 51 years as we're talking here and something kind of confused me along the way. I would have people, let's say they're 35 years old and they really respond to the concepts, the thinking tools that we have in strategic coach. And they'll go along for 10 years, 15 years. You know, we have longevity in terms of client base. People stay a long time because it's kind of like, you know, you're taking your car in for a tune up. They're taking their entrepreneurial career in for a tune up every 90 days. And the thing that really struck is that they'll be really growing and expanding and really establishing the life. And then they stop. Then they stop and there's 50. They stop or they're 55 or 60 and they stop. And I said, you're at the top of your game, why are you stopping? And what I realized is that there's a real difference in entrepreneurs. There's what I call lifestyle entrepreneurs and there's growth entrepreneurs. And these are radically different creatures. And lifestyle entrepreneurs, when they were young, they observed certain people who had lifestyles that they really liked. They had the right house in the right part of town, they belonged to the right clubs, their kids went to the right schools. You know, they had more than one home. They had this home and that. But there was a checklist that when I make it, these are the boxes I check off. And so they were growing and growing and growing as strategic coach. So they checked off all the boxes. The moment they checked off all the boxes, they stopped. So that's one type. The other entrepreneur is they really love growing. Okay? And so they have this and they have the next stop where they're going to grow. And they grow and then they learn from the growth that they've just done. They put it together into a simpler formula and they begin realizing after a while that I have one ability, but I should have 10 abilities. So I'm going to get really great team members, we're going to use technology and we grow to that level. And then they enjoy it and they say, okay, let's the next level. And they never stop. So what we're finding now is we're getting 60, 70, we have some 80 year olds now who would have checked out just from social pressure, just from their things. They would have checked out when they're 60. Now they're doing another 20 years at the top of their game. And I said, you know, it's one thing that you're really playing at the top of the game for your purposes, but Think about how many people you're contributing to. You've got all this skill, you've got all this knowledge. They have problems that you can solve and help them solve in a matter of time. And you're playing the game and you're excited and you're alive. Then the people who checked out Lifestyle when they're 50 or 60, they're realizing that it was a mistake, right? So the reason I'm bringing this up is the health and fitness thing that you just mentioned, that we're finding a couple things in the last 10 years, especially that I'm convinced that people only die for two reasons. The first reason is too late testing. They just got tested too late. The second reason, they didn't get tested at all. And you hear about people who are, they're known for being physically fit and everything else, and so they die suddenly of pancreatic cancer, you know, they die of prostate cancer. And you find out that they're so healthy that they never got tested.

Right.

But the revolution in medical testing that's taken place, I would say over the last 10 years is just phenomenal. So Babs and I, we get completely tested top to bottom every 90 days. And then, you know, there's corrective things every 90 days. There's some correction that has to be made. A lot of supplements, you have to have supplements. But the other thing is stem cells, we're starting to get stem cells. Over the last two years I had a completely worn down non existent cartilage in my left knee and it was impeding my exercise and everything. And so we found a clinic and we've completely regrown my cartilage. There was a 50 year old injury that set me up for this and now I'm doing the tendons and the ligaments in my left knee, in my left leg. But mostly it's brain and vascular system. I'm getting stem cells. You know, the standard, they have this 19 stage cognitive test. You've probably taken it. I do it every quarter. And in the last two years my cognitive ability according to the test has increased by 50% in terms of concentration, memory, focus and everything like that. And they can now measure your biological age. So when I was 73, my biological age was determined to be 74. And that's with me exercising to take care of myself. But in the last eight years I've reduced it by 15 years down to 59, even though I'm 81 now. I'm saying that because Babs and I have really invested. We've put in the time we've put in the money to do this. But what I'm saying is that I think that this is becoming widely available for people to do it. Now, here's the catch with this. You won't do any of this if you don't have a reason in the future for doing this.

It's like you say that you're going to want to send the parts back to the factory.

Yeah. So the people who retired lifestyle, say 60 years old and everything else, and they've been 10 years, they have no reason to get better physically. There's no reason. They say, look, I got another 10 years. I'll die in 10 years.

So you have a tool called lifetime extender and strategic Coach. And there's people that if they take it seriously, and some take it seriously, and they still don't even kind of believe it, but you kind of play a trick on them in a lot of ways and you get them thinking. And I actually do believe that there is a sentence or a paragraph or a number or an insight or a formula or a process that you can present to someone, have them come up with it themselves. And if they integrate it into their thinking, it will change their life. And people underestimate the value of an idea that is taken seriously. And I have this article that I wrote with JR called meetings or Mining? And it's sort of my way of saying, are we either in a meeting or are we mining? I want to mine for gold. I don't want to just have meetings talking about mining. I want to be mining. And when you take someone through a tool like the lifetime extender, and all of a sudden they realize, wow, I can live, all of a sudden everything has a ripple effect. Right. And changes. And so there's ladder entrepreneurs that are in the growth category, and then there's treadmill entrepreneurs that just keep running and running, running. Right. And so I guess my question to you is, how do you take this 10 times and make sure you're putting yourself on the ladder and getting off the treadmill? And I don't mean the treadmill like, because if you're using a treadmill to exercise and run, that's great. Keep doing that. That's actually on the ladder. I'm using it metaphorically, where you're not going anywhere versus you're going up.

Yeah. You know, I don't know the answer why someone is a lifestyle status entrepreneur, but I think that we've arranged the program now such a way that they get sorted out really fast at the beginning and we have more and more entrepreneurs coming into the program. They say that this is a never stop growth program. So, I mean, you're 28 years in the program. Our longest is 38 that's been working with me. I've seen him every quarter for 38 years and he's 100 times, you know, income and he's in his 70s. He runs five or six marathons a year. He's in great shape. He's doing the best work of his career right now. And so we're starting to get a critical mass of people who have not followed the normal. You know, you start working when you're 20 and you know, you gotta wrap it up by the time you're 60. And they're still growing and they're doing their most exciting work, they're working with their most exciting clients now. They have the best team they've ever had. They're taking massive advantage of the extraordinary technologies that we have available. But the other thing is that they're making a huge impact with their success. You know, in communities. They're bringing their entrepreneurial skills easily. They're bringing their money to do work out in the world, but they never see themselves stopping. And I think we've made a real breakthrough in the entrepreneurial world with this mindset. You never retire. Retire means being taken out of use. Racehorses are taken out of use, Battleships are taken out of use. Do you want to be taken out of use? I think that the concept in 10 times is so, you know, you so well, express it. You can approach 10 times, it's quantitatively 10 times, but there's huge areas of your life that are qualitatively 10 times. Your relationships can be qualitatively 10 times. You know, just the way that you're enjoying your work can be qualitatively 10 times. So the numbers are important. I never get away from the numbers. I'm a big numbers guy. Somebody said words talk, numbers scream. Numbers are an indication that you're doing something real in the world. Numbers are not the game, but they are the scoreboard. So what we do is at the center of this, Joe, is our fundamental concept of unique ability. That everybody has a. They're born with something that's really, really unique. That's a unique ability. I'll ask you this question. What have you noticed different about entrepreneurs in terms of paying attention to the world, telling them what they should be?

They usually ignore it, fight against it different ways. Some people use it as fuel and they play aikido. So they use People's insults or the.

Enemy'S strength against them.

Yeah, yeah, they redirect it. Some listen to other people's advice, kind of shake their hands, but then they follow their own counsel anyway because there's something inside of them which I would say it's that ambition. It's that ambition spark. And if you have it in that belief, even if you have no idea how the hell you're going to get there, you know, you're going to navigate and figure it out. So they resource themselves in the ones that give up. Or if your success is contingent upon the validation of someone else, or you have someone in your life that if they don't approve of you, it's going to cripple you, then the only time you're ever gonna do well with that person is when they're cheering you on or you're doing well because the moment they have an issue with you, then all of a sudden they've just, you know. So don't abdicate your self worth and your ability to the opinions of somebody else. You know. Now that's different than having some really sound counsel for someone that's been there, done that. Also, you gotta question source. If someone says, Joe, you're on the wrong track. But they've never even been anywhere near a track I've been on. That's way different than someone that's like, you know, I've built something similar. Let me tell you where you're going wrong or where you could be going right. And it depends on the intention. So yeah, but most of the time they give a rat's ass.

They're just going to do what they.

Want to do anyway. You know what I want to do, Dan? Here, I want to, because there's so much good stuff here that you wrote, I want to read the worst result and then I'll have you speak to this. You'll remain stuck in incremental thinking, trapped by small uninspiring goals that limit what you believe is possible. When you scatter your efforts across many low impact tasks, you lose control and drift without clear direction, slowing any progress you might make. Trying to achieve exponential growth only means abandoning familiar habits without any guarantee, chasing unrealistic visions and forcing changes in your environment and relationship that may do more harm than good. You have little real power to shape your path. And combining a relentless effort with forced intentionality often leads to burnout rather than success. 10 times is easier than 2 times offers false hope. Better to wait. Transformation feels out of reach. So speak to that and then I'LL read the success criteria, but I want you to cover that a little bit.

I'm really good at the worst results.

Yeah, exactly.

One day there's going to be a gallery and all the walls is just going to be my best result, because I've seen the best results. But the worst results, for some reason, when you read out the worst result, it has a greater impact. Yeah, right.

I was just somewhere and it was closed. Where the hell was this? I've been to so many different cities in the last. It was the museum of failure, and it was all the things that failed. But I could see this. The museum of worst results for dad.

Entrepreneurism is a fairly recent development in human affairs. You know, the definition of entrepreneurism, 1804, that was the first time you really have someone who does it is a French economist by the name of Jean Baptiste say. And he said that an entrepreneur is someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So he was asked, well, what kind of resources? And he says, any kind of resources. You know, whatever's a resource, anything that's considered valuable. Well, it's had a certain level of productivity, you know, it's got value. And entrepreneurs take something that already exists and take it to the higher level. You know, what I said is, if that's true, then entrepreneurs are the resource. You want to take entrepreneurs from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. Now, the reason I say it's very recent, because for most of human history, these were marginal creatures. They weren't at the center of the economy. You know, they weren't cultural heroes or anything. They were minor players. Okay. What changed it, I think, is two things. One is the invention of the steam engine. It's very, very interesting that for most of human history, the only two ways you could go 10 times is to steal it. You know, still works.

Yeah.

Some places.

Yeah.

And the other one was slavery, that you could enslave people and you would have enormous amount of work power. You could get the work done. And oftentimes the wealthiest people were the people who stole things and then depended on slave power, the steam engine and the really effective steam engine. James Watt, 1776. Okay. Interesting year. It's a very interesting year because the wealth of Nations, Adam Smith's great book on capitalism, came out in 1776. And there was something else happened in 1776. What was that? Oh, yes, the United States Declaration of Independence. But America is the entrepreneurial country. You know, if you look at the structures of the Constitution and how the laws are put together, it really encourages, it supports, it protects entrepreneurism. And of course, you look at the world today, you can see that it's the impact of 200 plus years of doing it. So I've just zeroed in with Strategic Coach. I said, you know, if entrepreneurism, we're living in the country where entrepreneurism is most encouraged and you have the entrepreneurs, then if you take the entrepreneurs to a higher level of productivity, you're really doing great good in the country because the country wants this. You know, in Canada and the UK to a certain extent, not the same that we're the whole structures and the opportunities are different. And so I just create tools that take the entrepreneur and say, let's be a pure entrepreneur, let's just constantly grow, let's just constantly create new value in the marketplace. That's really great for a lot of people.

Yeah. What I think is interesting is that I will sit in rooms and often with people and I'll interview a lot of people that I. And I kind of laughed, like it's kind of funny. I'm pulling this off what goes on in my head. Like there's shit that they're saying that I do not have the skills of. They're smart as hell. And all kinds of things are happening and sometimes very rare, that I have imposter syndrome. Even though a lot of people talk about how they have imposter syndrome. The best way I can relate to it though is I will put myself in rooms with people that have infinitely more intelligence in some areas than I do in many areas by a long shot. And I don't even how to converse intelligently with some of the things that they're talking about. So I'll just kind of observe and listen or I'll just ask questions. Right. Where I gain my confidence though, is if I look around. A lot of those rooms wouldn't exist if I had not made introductions and stuff. And so I bring some of these people together. And so the point being is we all have tools in our toolbox. And to go back to unique ability, there's some people that have intellectual intelligence, but they have very poor social intelligence. They can write about stuff, they can talk about stuff, but they aren't very good with relationships. And I don't need to have the level of intelligence that they have on an intellectual level in their area of expertise. But if I can do my social intelligence thing, then it comes together. So to go back to capitalism, it's people working together collaboratively in order to produce a certain result. And some people, I've had a couple of members, you know them. That one guy ran a multi hundred million dollar company. He had never given a public talk and I wanted the person to do a 10 minute talk and he's like, what would I even talk about other than there's like a thousand things I could think of that you could talk about but realizing, wow, that's really hard for him. And what's funny is the people that don't know jack shit but can get up on stage and just like they have some sort of admiration of people that are a thousand times what I would consider more successful than them, but they don't have that one ability. And so part of it is you're helping people develop their unique abilities and where to direct their ambitions is really critical because we take for granted how hard the things that we do really well are for other people. But then they don't see in themselves that they also have magic, that they also have some ability that they could develop. Authors is an example. There are people that are successful and then there are people that are reporters of success. And I have noticed something like, you're an author, I'm an author, we're talking about what we're going to do for an audio original. And I've noticed a lot of authors that have never ran businesses, but they write about what it takes to run a business that actually think they understand how to run a whole business because they've immersed themselves so much in interviewing people, talking about it, writing about things. What's funny is there's not a lot of people that are really cranking out a lot of books that also run businesses. They're businesses writing books. Right. And then you take you, you got 60 books, you're going to have 100 by what period of time?

Yeah, it'll be about 10 years.

Yeah. And you have a really great formula.

For a great system. It's a team. We've got a whole process and a team that we put it together. I do my part, they do their part.

And you've got how many team members right now?

It's about 110.

And so in a world of AI where you got all these people that are talking about how AI is going to replace everything and it will certainly it's changing the workforce every single day. But that being said, you have a real company and you also write books and you put stuff out there. And so my point is, when you're taking advice from someone, look at the source. It doesn't Mean the advice is bad. I have a lot of people, I've learned a lot of stuff from that. Do not follow any of the advice they write books about. And they write pretty good books. But I've learned if you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar.

You don't get many messages.

Yeah. So anyway. But the point is, we all have tools. We have tools in our toolbox and we have ambition or we don't. And so what are you feeding your capabilities with? I want to read the success criteria. So I'm going to go through this and then I want to have you speak to this. So there's a list of five things that Dan wrote about. And the first one says, set transformative exponential goals. You must stop settling for small improvements. Think bigger. This book 10x is easier than 2x, challenges you to pursue 10 times greater than what you've achieved before. You unlock creativity and impact that has far exceeded typical expectations. Break free from limiting beliefs. Aim for transformative success. Nothing less. The second one is focus on high impact activities. You control your results by focusing on the few actions that truly matter. Avoid distractions and busy work. When you act decisively, you accelerate your progress. Master your agency. Choose what moves the needle. Results follow no excuses. The third is embrace bold vision and let go of the past. Let go of what's holding you back. You must embrace the bold vision that redefines what's possible. This mindset shift opens doors to breakthroughs and extraordinary achievements. You can't grow while clinging to old habits. Change everything. The fourth is redesign environment and relationships. You shape your surroundings and connections to fuel growth. Create spaces that spark creativity and accountability. Build relationships that challenge and up uplift you. This intentional redesign supports sustained high performance. You decide who and what influences you. Choose wisely. And then number five, harness extraordinary drive and intentionality. You combine a 10 times ambition with empowered agency to unlock exponential success. 10 times is easier than two shows how this synergy fuels relentless pursuit of extraordinary goals. While you shape your path with purpose. Together they create a powerful framework. Transform your life, make an impact. So what has all this done for your thinking?

Yeah, well, it makes me very ambitious. At 81 years old, our company's in great shape. I gave you a little. I just worked this out. So in 1994, ours is a workshop program for entrepreneurs. And in 1994 I did 144 workshop days. And that year we made $2 million. Okay, but boy, did I work. You know, I really There was a lot of. Lot of jet travel. There was a lot of things. So I had hit the ceiling. I'd hit the ceiling. I was selling time.

Right.

So Babs and I, we got together and we said, so we have to start getting other coaches that coach the program. And the program consists of I constantly create new thinking tools. So there's about 250 now thinking tools that we've created in the program. And I said, the growth of the company is going to depend on having other coaches and me creating new thinking tools. And these tools, they're solid, they're copyrighted, they're trademarked. We're getting a lot of patents. So we started. So that's 1994. And this is last year was 2024. So that was 144 workshop days. Last year we did 600 workshop days and I did 12 of them. Okay. So I went from 144 to 12. Our income went from 2 million to 47 million. Okay. So the whole point is, from that standpoint, we've gone 240 times now I'm allowed just to do what I do really great. And we have other great coaches who coach us and the company's grow and everything like that. But the way we look at it at this stage, this is just the beginning of the real push. This is after 36 years, we're at the big push. And I can do that simply because I'm really freed up at the age I'm freed up. And we got great team members. But it's all come from thinking of 10 times. So what takes you 10 times? What prevents you from taking 10 times? And you quarter by quarter, year by year, you just eliminate the things that get in the way of 10 times.

Yeah. So out of all the things that we've discussed and as we set up to do the audio originals, what, from your standpoint is the biggest takeaway from thinking like this, not just financial?

Well, the first thing, I think you have to realize that when you become an entrepreneur, it's a life sentence.

Yes, it is.

So you're going to put in the time? Are you going to enjoy the time? Yes.

Yeah. Meaning you're going to do it anyway. So do you want to do it with excellence or mediocrity? Do you want to be excited about it or do you want to be like, oh, we're making incremental improvement or we're making no improvement?

Yeah, yeah. And we were talking 50 years ago, incremental improvement was all that was available. You know, if you're an entrepreneur. You know, if you're getting 1% growth greater per year, that's always available. But we live in a new age. We live in a multiplier age.

Right.

Especially with what you can do with teamwork now and what you can do with technology. This is a brand new age.

And this is another thing, too. Since we talked about teamwork and collaborations, what do you look for in other people that you put on the team? And what are some indicators where you're like, I don't want this person on the team? Other than obvious things like honesty and integrity and that sort of stuff. What are some of the thoughts you can share with people listening here? That would be helpful.

Growth.

Focused on growth.

They're focused on growth. I would say growth and teamwork. They want to be on teams. In other words, they want to do their part in teamwork with others to produce a bigger result.

So you don't want lone Rangers.

I don't want lone Rangers. Teamwork inside the company. Don't want lone Rangers. Collaboration outside the company. Don't want lone Rangers. Yeah.

Awesome. Okay. So to remind our listeners, this was the way that me and Dan have approached a creation of a couple of audio originals that will be done with Hay House. If you've not read our books, we would encourage you. I'm just going to make an assumption that everyone that listens to 10x talks certainly reads my books and Dan Sullivan's book. But if you have not get copies, read the book. 10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan. What's in it for them? Joe Polish it by me. What's my name? Joe Polish. Nail polish or shoe polish? And then when the audio originals come out, we will let everyone know. And I hope you find this really valuable and useful and that you are a little bit more excited about your ambitions and that you, more importantly, put them to good work and do something awesome with it. Anything else we didn't cover?

I think we did a good afternoon's work.

All right, awesome. So great being here with you in Toronto, Dan, and everyone listening. Subscribe to 10X Talk if you are not subscribing already and share this podcast with every entrepreneur that you know, because we would like that. That's what's in it for me right there. All right, have a wonderful day. Thank you.

Thanks, Joe. Go.

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