Ambition Is a Capability: LIVE 10x Talk with Joe Polish, Dan Sullivan, and Babs Smith - 10xTalk Episode #244

My name is Joe Polish. I'm the founder of Genius Network, and I'm here with Dan Sullivan. And normally the way that we do this, Dan, is let's just do it live right now, and then I'll kind of give some context. So my name is Joe Polish.

And I'm Dan Sullivan.

And welcome to 10X Talk. So we have been doing the 10X Talk podcast since 2012, and we've done hundreds of episodes. We've had a few million downloads. Dan has a variety of podcasts because all of a sudden, once he was introduced to podcasting, He absolutely loved it. I'm here in a side office in my office headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. So we're doing a test right now. We're gonna talk about ambition. We're gonna have a conversation just like we normally would whenever me and Dan record podcasts, but we decided let's do it with an audience and with some of our friends and clients and some people that have been subscribers to our mutual lists that may have never had an opportunity to interact with us. And so I ran it by Dan and said, you know, Dan, I heard you years ago say that you really like live shows and Broadway plays and stuff. And I said, what do you like better, movies or do you like live? And he said, I like live because they're on a tightrope. And when someone's on a tightrope, you can see how talented they are. They could fall down, they could screw up, right? And so there's so much AI slop in the world and it's just getting worse and worse. And people can put together videos, but it's really hard to replicate stuff like this. So we're gonna talk about ambition because Dan has a book, he has many books, but this one is Always More Ambitious. And he talks about how ambition is a capability. And so we want to provide everyone here today with the capability that you already have, but that can enhance it. And we're just going to have a dialogue about it, and we'll do that for a little bit. And then throughout, I will ask for some comments. We may do some Q&A, either live, and I'll ask you to ask your question, or post it in the chat. And I just want to say in advance, there may be background noise. Someone may come on that Gina has to track down and, you know, mute them. We expect to have some technical mistakes, and so if they happen, that's part of the first time we're doing this. And if this goes well, we're going to invite you to come back to future ones. And if you don't currently subscribe to 10xTalk, you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And there is no sneaky sales pitch or anything here. We don't have an agenda where we're going to try to enroll you in anything. Dan and I both have great programs. Got Bab Smith, who's Dan's life partner and Dave Erickson, the CEO of Strategic Coach. They've been doing it for many years. They have many books. Of course, I'm a client. That's how I started in Strategic Coach. I've been a member since 1997. It's an amazing program. So if you're a high-level entrepreneur and you want a great coaching program, they're the best in the world at what it is they do. And saying that, we're not going to do a sales pitch as to, oh, you need to sign up, you need to do that. We're literally going to just do our best to provide a valuable conversation that will be helpful to all of you. And this all came out of the fact that for the last few months, Dan and I have gotten together a few times and we've been recording The Entrepreneur's Edge. You can preorder it on Amazon, Turning Purpose into Profit and Fulfillment. And so we talked the whole time about ambition, and Dan's been writing about and talking about ambition this whole year. And as we go into a new year, I don't think there's a better subject to have a discussion about than ambition. And so that's the purpose of this is we're going to set you up for 2026. And so, Dan, I've been doing enough babbling here, so I'll turn it over to you. Dan, for people that don't know who you are, give them a quick background of who you are, and then we'll get into some discussion.

I started coaching in 1971. So I was a copywriter with a big ad agency in Toronto. I'm from Ohio, farm boy from Ohio originally. I just had a lucky meeting one Christmas in Toronto where the head of the second biggest ad agency, BBDO, is a big global agency. And this was the Toronto version of it. So I moved. I went to college late, so I didn't graduate from college till I was 27, 1971. But previous Christmas, I had been in Toronto visiting with a friend, and I went to a party. And you know, you go to a party, you don't talk to everybody. And this one person, I really hit it off. And he turned out to be the— he was the half owner and creative director of the agency. So I moved up. And I like copywriting. I've got enough skill that I could make a career out of it, but it wasn't really what I loved doing. I'll tell you a little story as we're going through, but my mother, when she was 75, finally figured out what her son Dan was up to in life. And I kind of explained, you know, what coaching entrepreneurs was all about. And she said, you know, you were kind of doing that when you were 8 years old. And I find entrepreneurs, what they end up doing, it really started early. I'll say, you know, when did you kind of know that you were different? You're always wondering what should be under your logo, you know, what should be the wording. And I had a session yesterday, it was a Zoom call. Terry Browder was on, he's here today, and Paul Culligan was there. People were saying, you know, what we love about Coach and Genius Network is that you can have conversations that you can't have in normal circumstances, you know. I said, yep, Strategic Coach, where the weird go to get wired. I said, you know, you know, I kind of like that. Took me 36 years to finally come up with an accurate description of what we do. But the big differentiating factor with entrepreneurs is that they have a kind of different ambition. I've been playing around with that for 50 years. So this is my 51st year. I think I'm a coach for 50 years.

Dan?

Yeah.

Actually, in the whole ambition frame, you started when you were like 8 years old when the planes were flying over. Do you remember that one? Yeah. I wonder.

Yeah, I was actually 11 years old and it was one of those really crisp winter days. I think probably February. And we had a produce farm, so we had a lot of corn, sweet corn. And but during the winter, it's all broken down. All the stalks are down. There's sort of a snow that's sort of a crunchy snow is 5 o'clock in the afternoon, you know, sun was going down, clear sky, and a plane flew over. And I knew all the airplanes back then. This was a DC-6, so it was pre-jet days, flying from New York to Chicago or Cleveland to Chicago, you know, sort of the route. And the plane flew over, and I had sort of this kind of like a religious experience. I just got this sort of whack, and the question came into my mind, I wonder how far I can go. And I I would say that that's been my life, that I've been sort of answering the question, how far can I go? And when I get to one level of achievement, you know, we've grown a lot as a company over 36 years. We've had the Strategic Coach program. You know, we're way above where we were then. But anytime we get to the next level, I say, now I wonder how far I can go. So I've been with this ambition thing now for you know, going on 70 years that I've been very ambitious. I'm always intrigued when entrepreneurs stop, you know, when they, they've had enough and they retire. You've met them, Joe. You've met people who retire and they're never very happy with it. I've never found a really happily retired entrepreneur because if they created a company— because a lot of entrepreneurs only created a job, they didn't really create a company, but your company really keeps you sort of young. One, it gives you a structure. One of the big things that keeps you young is deadlines. If you retire, you just have one big deadline. So I like keeping a lot of deadlines between me and the big deadline.

And yeah, you know what I was gonna say, like, that brings to mind, Dan, that I think in a lot of ways, and I've had enough conversations with entrepreneurs because that's the bit of our job is to have conversations with entrepreneurs. And the analogy you were making earlier, I think our clients are like the characters in the Star Wars bar, but weirdos, right? And they're all coming in from different planets and they're all sitting around looking at, you know, who's going to make the first move. And then it might be a little dangerous and that sort of stuff. But the thing with ambition and working, it's an identity. And if people lose their identity or they have a great sort of stressful, in some cases, deadlines, and they're trying to achieve something. There's the anxiety that often comes with it, sometimes the overwhelm that comes with it. But we've seen this time and time again that if someone just gives it up or tries to retire or sells their company, in most cases, they're not happier. They've lost a place to take that energy, which of course we're calling and referring to as ambition. And I'd be curious if you could put in the chat, the people that are around you in the world, are you more ambitious than most of the people you hang out with or are you less ambitious? So I'm just curious, post more or less. Okay, more, more, more, more, more, more, much more, more. Look at that, more, more, more, right? And then there's other lines that I'll have to go back and maybe equal. Someone wrote equal, way more, significantly more, unfortunately more. So, Isn't that interesting? More, more. Yeah. So more ambitious. That's why people join Strategic Coach. That's why people go to Genius Network. That's why you are listening to podcasts. That's why you buy books. That's why you're sitting here today, because you have this drive, this energy, this desire, and you're trying to find a place to put it. And that, I would say, is an amazing thing. Also, my buddy Dave Erickson, who spent half his life in a wheelchair, He said that, you know, the world's highest achievers live with the highest levels of dissatisfaction. And what caused me to gravitate towards Dan in the very beginning is, for one, I had been a very avid reader. I mean, I'm the epitome of a seminar junkie, I guess, from an early age. I was always trying to find ways to better myself. And I would buy books that— in the beginning, I couldn't buy the books. I had to go to the library and get books. You remember those things, libraries? Some people don't, because I'm 57 years old now. But I would literally just consume, consume, consume, consume information trying to get better. And I would, I eventually started meeting a lot of the authors that I would read their books and I was usually let down. And there was a lot to be said about, you know, don't meet your mentors, don't meet your teachers. 'Cause oftentimes you will meet someone who is not the person that writes the books or does the speech. Even so much where I would talk to Dan Kennedy years ago about if you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar. And when I met Dan and Babs, the first time I met someone that was so congruent with what he taught, what they did, and that's how I ended up becoming a member of Strategic Coach. And I think, be careful who you take advice from. And no one's perfect, everyone's flawed. I mean, I'm certainly, I'm very flawed. I have an addiction recovery foundation to help me with my own addiction recovery. But the point is, that's how I came across Dan. But I sat in rooms with a lot of people that were overworked, overwhelmed. And Dan had this concept called unique ability, which is what is your superpower? What is your skill, which you're not only excellent at, but it gives you never-ending energy. And the more you do it, the more you get better. And what a great way to spend skill. And then Dan had this line that said, if you spend your life strengthening what you're weak at, at the end of your life, you're going to have a lot of really strong weaknesses. Then it became like, well, don't spend time with activities and projects where you suck at it because you might get a little bit better, but you might just spend your life doing a lot of stuff that really frustrates you. So most entrepreneurs that are very driven and ambitious, you know, they certainly have a lot of frustration. They have a lot of excess energy. Most people cannot keep up with them. They often feel completely misunderstood. And then when you come to a group like this, you'll have a bunch of other people that are feeling very similar. And that alone is helpful to know that you're with other people that feel that way. But what's even more helpful is if you can direct that ambition and that energy into productivity and it makes you more money, it makes you feel better. And the other is where you actually learn how to temper it so you can have free days, you know, 'cause workaholism is the respectable addiction. And I also witnessed Dan and Babs, they actually took time off Dan said, you know, if it— he had this program, it was a CD, it started on cassette tape, but it was, uh, Going Against Gravity for the, I think, the Personal Economic System. And you made this comment that if it takes you more than 250 days in a year to get the amount of work you need done, you're probably not being a very effective entrepreneur. And I, I thought about that a lot. It wasn't like some profound quote or anything, it was just a statement that Dan said. It's like, okay, If you never shut the ambition, you know, driving, if you like driving 120 miles an hour, yeah, cool, that's awesome. I'm saying this metaphorically. I'm not suggesting anyone go out and drive 120 miles an hour all the time, even though I'm looking at some of you here, I know you do. But if you're driving 150, 180, then you're going off cliffs, you're crashing, and you're really messing up your life. You're neglecting your health. You may have a really strained relationship. And so I, you know, I meet a couple, Dan and Babs, who have this loving relationship, very much honoring each other. They put themselves ahead of work. They have prime directives that they have, which would actually be, you know, I'm gonna ask, what the hell? I wasn't even planning on this one. Share the prime directives that you and Babs have in your relationship and how that relates to work, because I think it's a rule of engagement with how you do ambition, and I think it'll be instructional for everyone here.

Yeah. Babs, do you want to take a crack at it?

Sure, I'll start. You know, our prime directives we developed sort of as a work thing because, you know, we're together all the time, and there were people who were trying to, you know, get in between us so they could have Dan to themselves or what have you. You know, it just made sense for us that everything that we do needs to strengthen and enhance our teamwork and intimacy.

Yeah.

Okay. So that's the master one. That's the prime directive number one. And then the other ones are kind of like corollaries, and that we always retain the forward forces of our own progress. So we wouldn't outsource sales to some other, you know, entity, or even our marketing to some other entity, because we want to maintain the forward forces of our own progress. We would never go public. And these sort of things. Independence is a big deal for us. And then we only align ourselves, align ourselves with people who are aligned with us. So, you know, somebody comes up with this brilliant money-making thing, but they're not aligned with us. We're like, no thank you. And so that makes a lot of things easy.

Yeah, I should tell a background story to that. I had a practice marriage. How many of you have had a practice marriage? You know, it's official when the divorce papers come through. The day that I got divorced, this was in Toronto, so the rules on divorce in Toronto in 1978 were that you had to be separated for 3 years, you know, not living together before the divorce came through. And, you know, that's an old tradition. Part of it's religious, and I think part of it was just a recognition that if you could hold marriages together, it would probably be a good thing. But I went out after the divorce papers came and I went to a bar. I had a drink. It was worth drinking. Anyway, I said, you know, I'm never going to get divorced again, but I am going to get married again. And I really needed a partner. I wanted a partner 360. I didn't want someone that was sort of adversarial what I was doing for a living. So I wrote down 8 things that the next relationship had to have. Not who the person was. I didn't think it was good to kind of say what kind of person it's going to be, but what the relationship had to be. And the top one was— I can tell you it was August 13th, 1981, when I was divorced. I put down, I don't want to have a relationship you have to work at. I just want a relationship that works. Okay, so it shouldn't have a lot of drama, it shouldn't have a lot of struggle. Everything, because I had done that for 5 years, and it was bad on the nervous system. One year to the date I met Babs, one year to the date, and I had this checklist. I never told her about my checklist until much later, but we just got to know each other, and we were sort of friends first, and we hung out, and it just worked. I'd go check, check, check, check, check, and everything like that. And so my sense is one of the things about The prime directives that Babz just mentioned, one, it's we don't let anything get in between us. Nothing, no issue, no opportunity can get in between us. The other thing is that we're in control of the forward progress. So we own the progress of the company. And the third one is that we have to be aligned with people who are aligned with us. We don't try to get along with difficult people. We don't try to work things out with difficult people. We just find people who are easy to work with. And I think that has a lot to do with how ambitious you can be in life, is that you've got to constantly define the conditions that are good for you to grow as an entrepreneur. So those are the prime directives, Joe.

No, I love it. And I like the part about— first of all, I like all of it, but I really like the alignment thinking. And I think it's so critical because if you—

I think it was why we hang out together, that the alignment was there right from the start.

Totally.

Yeah.

I mean, and two totally different people. I mean, Joe and I really, really govern separate planets in the planetary system, you know?

No, exactly. We've had this great collaboration now for, oh God, so many years since, you know, over 25 years. And let me speak to that too. So two things, alignment and then collaboration. So I have a concept called ELF and it started just with marketing concepts. Easy, lucrative, and fun is what ELF stands for. And you can have an ELF business or you can have a HALF business, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And I used to think of, well, is this ELF or is this HALF? And if I'm trying to generate business, how do I do it in the most ELF way? And instead of self-help, I want ELF help, right? So I want help that's gonna be easy, lucrative, and fun. And I don't want people or projects or things that are hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. In the beginning though, I didn't think of people though. I didn't think of even projects. I just thought of like a marketing technique.. And then I've expanded it now, so it's become a filter of how I evaluate things. And I only want to be aligned with people that are aligned with me. And that's your philosophy, Dan. That's Dave Erickson's philosophy. And we definitely want to be aligned with each other because we are useful and valuable. We utilize each other. We don't use each other, right? So everybody here wants something. I want something. When I go to Strategic Coach, I'm a member of the program because I want something. I want my business to get better. I want my life to get better. I want to come out of there with a lot of, you know, better and I wanna do things that I feel really good about also, like psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. There's lots of ways to make money that are hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating also. And not all money's created equal. And I used to study all of these books and courses and go to seminars on time management and on marketing. And I would evaluate how much is an hour of my time worth? How much is a minute of my time worth? And I would, constantly find myself being interested in things that weren't making me the most money. And I thought I was just such a bad person at time management because I'm ADD or I'm distractible and I'm curious and all these other ways that I could label myself or the world could label me. And what I realized is my brain gravitates towards things that I just find interesting and that I'm aligned with, even if it makes money or not. And I really started making a hell of a lot more money after I quit spending so much time looking at how much a minute of my time is worth and studying a bunch of stuff on how to make money. I actually started looking at, oh, how do I solve one problem that solves 50 problems? You know, a great time management technique for some people that, that are sleep deprived is to get more sleep. You know, you're going to be a lot more productive, right? Stephen Kotler, who we've had out at our Genius Network a few times, when you're in a flow state, you're 5 times more productive. And it's really hard to be productive if you're doing stuff you hate, if your ambitions are going towards things that drive you nuts and you're not aligned with. And one of the greatest time sucks and energy sucks, because there is no time management, it's really energy management, is to be with people that are constantly not collaborative. And so, you know, Dan and I pay to go to his program. He pays to go to mine. I refer a lot of people in the Strategic Coach. They refer a lot of people in the Genius Network. We just have a great collaboration. But we also have gone on vacation together. We've done all kinds of stuff because we have a friendship. We have, we have a relationship. And so with communication and connection, the things that that I observe is that for myself first and then in others is we're either communicating with each other, we're connecting, or we're trying to escape. Those are the experiences that people have. And so as you go throughout your day and you're talking to people in person, on the phone, on Zoom, text, however you're communicating, you're either talking to them, you're either connected to them, or you're trying to escape. And when I'm in a social event, there are certain environments like I just want to get the hell out of there. I don't like cocktail parties. People think of me as this connector guy, which means I like go out and network and schmooze all the time. That's not quite the way it works. I like going out and talking to people that I like if I'm connected with them. But if I'm just talking, I hate small talk. I mean, when I was a drug addict, I liked going to parties because I was inebriated all the time. But that was, you know, years and years ago. But the thing is, like, I like being connected to things. A collaboration is not a joint venture. It's not pitching someone else's stuff. It's creating something together that could not exist without the other person. And Dan and I are very collaborative, and there are a lot of people that are competitive. No matter what, they just have to win, even if they hurt you in the process. So that's kind of the way I think about it. And that's where people's ambitions, I think, are not serving them the best. They may be getting the money, but they're not getting them a great life. So, Dan—

Can I ask a question? Well, Dan, can you talk about ambition as a capability?

Yeah. We have our workshops in coach, and we do a lot of days, and we have 15 other coaches. But we've never put together a big annual conference where large numbers of people can come. And we did one last year. 2024 in Nashville. Nashville is a great place to have a conference. We were at the Music City Center, a tremendous venue. There were a lot of clients there who'd been in Strategic Coach for many, many years. One came up and talked to me, and he had been in Coach for 25 years, but it's the first time I've actually talked to him because he went to another city, did his workshop in Los Angeles, I think. He had another coach, and so, you know, we just never met. He said, you know, you seem ambitious. It was my birthday too, it was my 80th birthday last year. So he said, you seem very, very ambitious at 80. And he said, when you're 90, what are you going to be ambitious about? And I said, my ambition for when I'm 90 is that I'm more ambitious. And he said, well, ambitious about what? And I said, well, whatever's going on then. I had never said that before. And it kind of struck me. I said, where'd that come from? Then I really thought about it afterwards. You know, we chatted and then we parted. But I really thought about it afterwards. And I said, I think you're onto something there with that answer. I've spent a year thinking about it and it suddenly came to me. And I was writing this book. Yeah, just go to strategiccoach.com/go/ambition and we'll send you the ebook version of it. So I was writing this book because I got really interested in the subject. And I said, you know, I think that most people look at ambition in a way that means that they're going to run out of ambition. And it's that they see ambition as sort of a gas tank. And it's unequally distributed. So when you're born, some people get a big gas tank, some people get a little gas tank, and it's all filled up. It's filled up with ambition at birth. But even if you got a big ambition tank, you have this, this kind of a worry and an anxiety that at a certain point you're going to run dry. There's not going to be any more ambition in the tank. And most people figure out, you know, it's around 50 or 60 65. I said, I think it's the wrong way to look at ambition. And what the answer that I gave to that person, that I'm going to be more ambitious, my ambition is to be more ambitious, actually nails it. And that is that ambition is a capability. Okay, so it's something that you can develop and develop and develop, grow and grow and grow. Uh, your ambition. Then I started going deeper into it and I said, I think ambition is the capability that creates all other capabilities. AI is a really good example. Last 3 years, uh, there's this brand new capability that's come into our lives and everybody is now, almost all entrepreneurs that I've talked to about it, they're doing something with AI and they're doing it for a particular reason. They have some from part of their existing productivity that they're looking at. But ambition encourages you and directs you towards gaining a new capability, which takes work, which takes risk because you don't know if you're going to pull it off. But you get the new capability, that immediately comes back and it grows your ambition even more. So there's a loop between new capability back to ambition, the ambition becomes bigger and go for a new capability? And I said, it's like a flywheel. And as long as you see it as a capability that you're constantly developing, there's no endpoint to your ambition. There's no gas tank to run out of ambition fuel. You just keep going. At 81 now, I'm way more ambitious than I was at 51. I mean, what lies into the future, you know, as far as me personally, what I'm working on, but also the company. It's way, way bigger. The things that we're working on are the biggest projects that we've ever worked at. And my part of it, it's the biggest thing that I've personally taken on. So to see ambition as a capability that constantly grows is radically different than something that runs out at a certain time. So that's my take on that. And I think this is a fundamentally different view than most people have of ambition. I think most people say, you know, I'm going to become less ambitious as I get older. And I said, because you're not seeing it as a capability, right?

And a lot of people, they will look at hustle and they will look at drive and they will look at just the killer instinct as somehow being ambitious. But I mean, that's not necessarily how it manifests itself. I mean, you're not running around like a wild person and you're incredibly productive and you're very engaged. You know, it was really funny. You said to me once, Dan, you're like, you know, I love looking at some of these older people. They're like easy picking.

They just—

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you're gonna compete, compete with them after they're 70. It's pretty easy.

Yeah.

Not much work competing with 70-year-olds. Most 70-year-olds, you know. Yeah. Not you, not you. But I never competed with you. So it's not something I do.

Yeah.

Joe, when we met, '87, I think, or was it '97? '97, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have wanted to know you in 1987.

Oh no, I was recently— yeah, '80, 1986 was the worst year my, my community.

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you cleaned up before you met me anyway. But where would you say you were at in your life back then? Where were you from an ambition standpoint?

Oh well, I, I was definitely ambitious, but it was very all over the place, right? So I was just trying to find my footing in it, and my life was a bit of a roller coaster. I didn't have any framework or structure other than everyone that I was studying in the business world was work harder, work harder, work harder, under the guise of, you know, make more money but have like weekends off. It's easy to say in a sales pitch, but if you don't have a structure for that, what the hell do you do with all the energy, right? And so recently I had been a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards from 1990 to 1994. And then I discovered direct response marketing. I started learning about how to make offers, and I didn't even understand what marketing was. And, you know, marketing is anything you put in front of somebody is marketing. But if you don't know how to put good stuff in front of people, then, you know, it's like only the hungriest fish will snap at the crappiest bait. So I didn't know what I was doing. And once I learned how to write a headline, And it's funny, cuz I say this today where you could, like, AI can do all the stuff that took months to do with the knowledge I have today can do in 10 minutes. But back then, you know, I would construct an ad, I would construct an offer. I didn't want to compete on price. And I learned that selling is what you do when you're on the phone or face-to-face with somebody. And marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face-to-face with you properly positioned. So by the time you're talking to them, they're, pre-interested, pre-qualified, pre-motivated, predisposed to do business with you. And so this is marketing schtick that anyone that knows me has heard me say that before. But I was there with all of this knowledge about marketing and I was doing well. So when I joined Strategic Coach, I was making money. I had recently, you know, sold my carpet cleaning business in 1995 and I went full-time into teaching other carpet and upholstery cleaners how to build and market their businesses. And I was really good. And that same year I'd been chosen Person of the Year for a magazine called Cleanfax, which is the largest trade magazine in the, in the world in the carpet cleaning industry. And it wasn't a pay-for-play sort of thing. I genuinely was— it surprised the heck out of me that there were, you know, a bunch of people that voted as I had made the most impact on the industry that year. And you had a term for it called industry transformers. So here I was, relatively new, and I was making money, but my personal life was a train wreck, to say the least. I was in a very dysfunctional relationship because I myself was dysfunctional. I had not yet done the trauma work that led to me being an addict to begin with. And, you know, I had a bad childhood. I had a lot of, you know, physical, sexual, mental abuse. I was a drug addict. And, you know, I got through the sobriety of drugs, but I had not yet dealt with those underlying issues. And I've said this to you many times, Dan, when I joined Strategic Coach, I thought it was to help me build and grow a business, but it was really help me get my freaking life together in a lot of ways. And I did a lot of, I've done a lot of therapy, I've done more personal development than most people that I know. So I've always utilized ways to try to make myself better. But what I needed though, is I needed to calm the fuck down in some areas, right? I was just like, oh my God. And I had long hair in a ponytail and I had sort of a defense shtick set up because I was young and I really worked hard to learn a lot about a particular skillset that other people didn't know. And I had evidence of success 'cause I was transforming the lives of many people in service businesses. So for, you know, at that time in my life, I was a marketer that was selling lots of programs and licensing my materials to other industries. You know, like I said, I was Person of the Year, which never got me dates in bars or anything, being the Cleanfax Person of the Year, but it definitely helped my business. And so I was helping people with their marketing, but I, you know, I really needed to get some structure. And when I learned, you know, free days, focus days, buffer days, which is something that is taught in Strategic Coach, it gave me some scaffolding that I never had before. When I learned about unique ability, I started evaluating why am I spending my energy here with this person? You have an exercise called the Lifetime Extender where you ask people how old they're going to be when they die. And most people have a number in their mind. And then you ask people, well, what are you going to— let's kind of do that exercise with everyone here. Think about it just— and I'll probably, since this is really Dan's material, not mine, even though I know it inside and out. You know, Dan asks everyone in coach, you know, how old are you gonna be when you die? How old do you think you're gonna be? And he would have everyone write down the number and everyone does have a number. And so people write it down and then Dan will, you know, say, well, what do you think you're gonna be doing right before you die? And then people—

Yeah, well, actually, you know, like somebody gives you the number 85 and I said, good. And then there's a place to write down 85, but there's a box before it. And I say, let's talk about 84. How are you going to be physically at 84? Okay. And everybody, great, great shape. Mentally sharp. Financially terrific. Everything's handled, you know, no worries, no anxieties. Relationships, how do you— what about your— a lot of warm relationships, a lot of relationships, good relationships. And then I said, then your assessment, uh, first 84 years of your life, what do you want to say about it? Oh, did everything Really satisfied, really happy.

And then I—

first of all, everybody gives the same answer. I've never come across anyone who doesn't get the same answer. So I'll ask one person, you know, we got a workshop full of people, maybe there's 40 or 50 in the workshop, and I say, okay, so let me get this straight physically. And I repeat their 5 answers. So I said, if you were that way at 84, What do you think the chances are you would die at 85? Oh, well, no, no, I don't think I would if I was that way at 84. And I said, so if you were that way at 84, how much longer than 85 do you think you'd, you'd live? And they'd say, I don't know, 20, 25 years. And I say, which, 20 or 25? And they always answer 25. And I said, well, here you are, 'Here you are.' And this is the first exercise when you come to Strategic Coach, the first hour that you come, we get this handled. Let's just find out what kind of lifetime we're working with here. Let's say the person was 85 and now it's 110. And I said, 'So here you are, you've been here for an hour and I just gave you 25 years.' And I said, 'The reason is you had a number.' you know, comes from family history, comes from, you know, too much time with actuarial tables or whatever it is. But you just change your number and it's going to change every thought in your brain. And we can see it 90 days later when they come back for their second workshop. There's so much weight that's been lost in the room, it adds up to 3 people not being there, you know. And all of a sudden they're starting to clean up their life because they just added another 25 years And the ambition goes up, the ambition goes through the roof, you know, because they were figuring out when they're going to start winding down. And even if they're going to wind down now, they're going to start winding down when they're 90, not when they're 60 or 50 or 40. But the big thing is that this is thinking about your thinking. So we've had this exercise for 32 years now, and I'm starting to see the impact In fact, you know, they were planning how long they were going to live. Generally, this in the 65, 70 area that they were going to work. And now I'm seeing people in their late 70s, I'm seeing in their 80s, and they're still thriving, they're still working and everything. So it's very, very interesting how much life extension— I mean, there's physical factors, but we've entered an age in the last 10 years, especially when the ability physically to live a long time is being extended scientifically and medically and everything like that. So it's an interesting thing, but this is a tool for extending your ambition. Just give yourself 25 more years. Mine's 156. My goal is 156. So I'm, you know, I'm sitting here at 81, but I got 75 more years. And I've had this goal since 1987, so it's 38 years that I've been thinking that I'm going to live to 156. About 3 years after I began thinking it, it's become normal. Anytime I think of my lifetime, it just goes 156. And people say, well, do you actually think? I say, well, it's not about what I think. It tells me I've got a lot of time. Okay. And the other thing is that it tells me is that any big project I want to take on at 81 years old, I got all the time in the world to get it done. Most people are really I mean, I think that gas tank version of ambition is they say, I have to hustle and hustle and get things done because I'm going to run out of ambition. I think it's the biggest fear that entrepreneurs have is that they're going to run out of ambition. But my sense is they're just looking at it in the wrong way.

Yeah, I totally agree. And so to answer the question, you know, what it did for me is it gave me perspective. It gave me a— a different worldview. And when you are given a different way to think about life, because we're all meaning makers, right? And I think the most expensive information in the world is bad information. So even if you get it for free, if it's bad information, it could send you in a trajectory. So I have a concept that I write about in my book, What's in It for Them? And it's a domino. What's the first domino? And so So, I look for dominoes and whenever I hear someone talk, I like, "Oh, that could work for me, that idea, that strategy, that method." So, there could be negative dominoes or positive dominoes. And so, the Lifetime Extender gives someone a way to think about life and it also helped me grapple with mistakes. I think that pain is a messenger and I had a lot of pain in my life. Someone sent me a private message. I won't mention the person's name, but it said, "Joe, I'm impressed with your openness about your past addictions. I'm in recovery." and have been for 40+ years. I'm very private with this very significant part of my life for folks outside of recovery. And I wrote back to this person, you know, that I have GeniusRecovery.org, which, you know, we don't sell anything. It's an educational platform to help people with addiction. I don't pay myself a penny for Genius Recovery. I do it because it helps me with my own recovery, and I feel good about helping people. And if you replace the word addiction with pain, it often makes more sense. You know, it's like, okay, why is that person addicted to porn? Well, there in pain or they're in angst and it makes them feel better. Why do they drink the alcohol or what's the deal? 'Cause, you know, Dan, we've seen a million deal addicts, right? I mean, they're just like workaholics. And I certainly am wired that way. Every type of behavioral addiction in some way, shape, or form I've skirted with, right? And the thing is though, it's just a person in pain. When I'm able to see a path out of it, my life works better. And so I was very more reacting to life than responding.. And you know, you can respond or you can react. And responding is like responsibility. It's responding with ability. And when you give someone a capability, like the way you defined ambition is it is a capability. If you frame it that way, you interact with life in a different way. So I learned how to better harness the ambition. And I also wanna say this too. I mean, I use a lot of self-deprecating humor. And also, I still wrestle with, you know, I don't often feel good about myself. I'm not one of these people that wakes up and I'm like super happy. My assistant, Eunice, she seems to wake up way happier than I do. I have to work at it. But when I read books or when I'm around certain people, it really helps guide and direct me. But I've also learned a lot through Strategic Coach is that the things in life that don't work are where you actually have the raw material. Like, Dan has a, a tool called the Strategy Circle, and it says on the bottom of the Strategy Circle is all those things that oppose our goals are actually the raw material for achieving them. And so I've learned to look at problems not as a bad thing, but as life's way of giving us opportunity, because what a successful business is most of the time is solving problems for a profit. And if you can solve problems and you can do it in a way that is, you know, some businesses actually create problems for a profit and they make people's lives worse. You know, there's certain businesses I would never be in because I don't think you're enhancing people. I think you're hurting people. You know, some of the toxic foods, you know, I wouldn't be in the cigarette business. I mean, they sell a product that kills people, but I also know why people smoke because smoking nicotine. If you're anxious or in pain and you take a deep breath and it's meditative and it's got nicotine, you know, it's not good for you. However, it makes you feel a particular way. It pulls you out of that pain state. So I've learned to be a much better pain detective for other people and for myself. And when I get in too much pain, I realize, okay, this is life's way of saying pay attention. Because I ultimately think transforming suffering and transcending suffering and helping other people with it, this is only my perspective. I'm I'm not trying to sell anyone on this. It's my perspective. I think that's just a better way to get through life. And I feel better when I'm doing that. Everyone here has ambition. It's just, what the hell are you doing with it? And Dan, can I ask you, 'cause I wrote some questions here, but I didn't ask you. You kind of answered this. What's the single biggest reason entrepreneurs lose their ambition and how can they get it back? So I'd love to have you speak to the getting it back part. 'Cause there are some people here that have been burned. They've been betrayed. Businesses that have failed, you know, they've gotten older. I mean, there's a variety of reasons, but I'd love to get, at 81 years old and all the shit that you have been through, I'd love to get your perspective on. Yeah.

This is just something that I've thought about recently, but I think that there's a certain tiredness that comes into people's life where they think that courage is a bad thing. In other words, that they, They want to get to the point where no more courage is involved. Courage is not required to get to where they're going. My sense about this is that the other side of the coin of courage is excitement, that if you give up courage, you also give up excitement. The price of not having any more courage required in your life is that you have to give up all excitement. And I think it's the ending of excitement puts them in a rut. You know, I mean, if it's not exciting, why are you doing it? It. And they do other things that are more exciting, but it's not the main focus of their lives. It's very, very interesting. This is a different topic, but everybody's going to pay attention to me because it's about Jeffrey Epstein. Okay, there's two words that will get everybody's attention: Jeffrey and Epstein. But I was watching an NPR— I usually don't watch NPR, it's not my It wasn't, it wasn't NPR watching. I was just watching a YouTube replay of NPR, and they had Bill Gates on. And, and, you know, and it was a softball interview, as you might expect. They're talking about the Gates Foundation and all the good they were. But right in the middle of the interview, the interviewer said, so what's all this about you having dinners and, you know, hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein? And it was Bill Gates just unraveled. He just unraveled. I mean, if you can imagine Bill Gates unraveling. The police have a term that when they bring a suspect in, there's a certain question they ask him where the, the, you know, he's really a criminal but hasn't really admitted to it yet, where they unravel. They just go unnatural. And Bill Gates said, well, you know, I'm in the foundation business and, uh, I'm looking for people who give money to my found— and it wasn't plausible, you And they said, yeah, but, you know, he had already been to prison. So why were you— just from a reputation standpoint, why were you hanging out with somebody who was, you know, he's already got a really bad reputation. So the interview went on for a while. And Bill Gates says, well, what's it matter? He's dead. And I said, yeah, and that brings up another question. You know, take a ticket and stand in line. I mean, anyway, but I was beginning to think, I said, here's a billionaire and he's a multibillionaire. And you can imagine that in his 20s when he was putting Microsoft together, you know, there's a lot of risk that required an enormous amount of courage. And it was a real adrenaline hit. You know, I mean, there was this huge adrenaline hit that he had in his 20s in putting his entrepreneurial company together. And then Windows, of course, was a phenomenal breakthrough. He had 95% of the operating system in the world. You know, it was a big deal. And then he has billions and billions and billions of dollars. And, you know, how does Bill Gates at his age take a risk to get that old adrenaline feeling back? And he can't do it financially. He could lose $10 billion and you can't even round off with it, you know. So all the things that where he could get the adrenaline rush before, he can't do it anymore. In a business way, but he can do it in a moral way. You know, he can take moral risk and everything else. So there's, there's different ways of looking at Jeffrey Epstein and what he was offering. But I think for a lot of people who couldn't take a risk in any other way, he gave them a new way to take a risk. And then he was probably blackmailed. So that's another risk. And I think that's what happens to entrepreneurs. Now, I don't want to connect the story with the people in our audience today. But there's a point where you're not taking risks anymore. It's really good. You're making lots of money. You got the lifestyle you want. You have status the way you want it. And there's no more risk. There's no more risk. And then your ambition gas tank is empty, you know. But if you looked at it as a capability all the way along, then you would just be getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And I still take risks every quarter. I create a brand new workshop every quarter. I write a brand new book every quarter. There's a real risk. Is this the quarter that I don't pull it off? And then I do pull it off and there's this constant buildup from quarter to quarter that I feel. But the big thing about is you have to get the excitement back in your life.

Right. You know, if someone is in pain, if they're depressed or lonely or sad or anxious, there's nothing wrong with wanting to feel better, wanting those uncomfortable feelings to go away. It's just how you choose to scratch the itch. And, you know, one of, uh, our Genius Network members is Doug Brackmann. You know, he's got a couple PhDs, I believe. Doug wrote the book Driven. And if you take a driven person without, you know, morals that crosses the line, you create the tyrants of the world. If you take a driven person and give them structure and and channel their energies in a value-creating way, those are the people that do enormously good things and I think impact people in tremendous ways and live a good life. And I mean, I think that's always been one of the areas that you focused on, Dan, is when you walk into certain rooms, you can kind of tell who's got taker energy and who's got giver energy. And there's a point where people— people, you know, they get their energy by depleting. And I say that you can be a connector or you can be a connector, where you connect people by conning them. And there are some people that are really good at connecting people, but they're not really all that concerned with them. And those are the sociopaths and the psychopaths and, you know, the extreme narcissists in the world. And I would definitely put Bill Gates in that category. I mean, I've met him twice and I used to admire him, which I don't anymore. I mean, if anyone ever read the book The Real Anthony Fauci, I think it'd be hard to state, you know, that this is a good person. But that's my personal opinion. I mean, you know, you guys can do your own research on that and come to your own conclusion, which is the beauty about being human. So here's what I'd like to do at this point. Uh, we're going to wrap up in a few minutes, but I want to see if anyone has a burning question that they would like to ask, uh, either Dan or myself, and we can take a couple of questions and we can speak to those. And, and by the way, let me say, on a scale of 1 to 1 being useless and 10 being valuable and useful. How would you rate today's session that we did live here for the first time? Okay, 10, 11, 11.

Awesome.

Thank you. This is great. All right, we'll see. Couple of 7s. They probably didn't like the Epstein comment. 10, 10, 9.

Awesome.

Thank you. We'll do these again. If everyone likes this, we'll do it again. And someone had actually posted that they wanted to Um, let's do Q&A. Yeah, so here's what I was going to say. Someone asked, are we going to share the recording of this? Yes, we're actually recording a podcast. This is a podcast recording, so just subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe to 10xTalk, which is the name of Dan and I's podcast. The number 10, 1-0, xtalk.com is also the website, and we have so many amazing episodes that we have done on TEDx Talks.

So if you want to shout out to Paul Culligan, because he's the one that got me involved. Cool.

Yeah, thank you. And so who has it, Gina? I'll let you pick whoever has the question, or would you prefer if I just ask people to post it in the chat?

Well, I have one from the chat from earlier. Nick, your question on courage and ambition. Are you still on, Nick? Would you like to ask it? You can come on, and if you come off mute, just say hello. Jonathan, if you are off mute, did you have a question you want to go next?

I'm Jonathan Ross. I'm in Atlanta, Georgia. My business name is The Facilitator, and I've read all three of Dan's and, uh, Dan Hardy, all three books. The impact filter is the greatest device I've learned from in what you guys are doing. And I stopped having birthdays. I was born June 11, 1949. I'm 39. I have anniversaries. So none of that stuff you talked about, birthday, have no effect on me whatsoever. I renew every day. And the thing about excitement is the Creator put two energies on the planet, a positive and a negative. And we always have things to do as long as you're on the positive side of the planet. It ain't located. None of it is. And that's how I see it. And that's why I see what you guys have done, Dave Erickson, so powerful. And I'm leveraging that concept with my business. I'm in real estate. That's one of the businesses I'm in with eXp Realty. And that company has one of the greatest systems for real estate. So mine and my wife's objective is to leverage that system for people that want to do what they want to do because there are none no better. It ain't duplicate. And then you guys went and wrote a book and still charge a quarter million dollars to be a member. Why would I do that, man? I ain't figured that out yet. I'm going to be able to pay that quarter million. I ain't able today, but I admire what you guys have done. Just keep on doing it. That's what I'm going to say. And keep having these calls because it's critical for people with the mindset we have. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, just because you've really shared your experience here, I'm discounting from a quarter million down to $50,000.

Well, I'm gonna say okay, but I'm looking forward to be able to pay the quarter million. So once I can pay 50, now I can take the other 250 and do better things for the planet with. See, work with the willingness is not complicated.

Yep. I think the real thing that I noticed that I think Joe's book is really the indicator. There's a point where you're doing your entrepreneurship for yourself, and then there's a crossover point where you have to change gears and it has to be about them. Them. And if you're constantly creating new value for other people, that keeps you totally engaged. My father was a landscaper and he was very strong. He started off as a farmer, complete failure when he was 45 years old, retrained himself to become a landscaper, and he had his best year when he was 81 years old. Okay, got to his 82nd birthday and he said, that's enough. And he died 9 months later. And my sense is that he shouldn't have quit. He shouldn't have quit.

I agree with you.

Yeah. And my sense is that when my father, the first day he didn't go to work after his 82nd birthday, he didn't know who he was. And to be 82 and on the planet and you don't know who you are, you want to get off the planet real quick.

If you're familiar with Dr. Joseph Dave Erickson, and he teaches a lot about your subconscious and that God is inside of every person and he lives in that subconscious space. I was introduced to Dr. Murphy about, I guess, 6, 8 weeks ago. He's passed, but learning how to think like God and God is in you, you always got plenty to do. It ain't complicated.

That's true.

So I would never ever hit that spot as long as he was on the planet. I got— I see, I'm gonna help God out because he needs someone down here helping bit, so I'm volunteering. That's how I'll be right here making it happen. And leaders like what you guys have put together make that easy. We got a blueprint to follow. It ain't complicated no more.

Yeah.

Well, thank you, Jonathan, and happy holidays.

Happy holidays to everybody here, and thank you very much.

'Tis the season to be ambitious. So let's take this question, Dan, and then we'll wrap up here in a few minutes. This is from Dan Gibbons. Question, with AI changing everything, what impact will AI have on blue collar middle class and what can they do to prepare for it now? If you want to go first, you can do that or I can, Dan, what do you prefer?

Go ahead.

Yeah, here's the thing. To respond to that, I don't even know. I have perspectives on stuff. I'll find the book that I have been reading. Why I can't think of the title of it at the moment. It's mind-blowing. I've met this individual before at, um, at Abundance 360, but, uh, let me see if I can find the exact title. I think there's going to be a massive amount of people that are out of work that are replaced by AI. And already I think the US is, uh, underreporting unemployment numbers, and it's going to be a bloodbath, perhaps. I hope it's not, but it may be. The book I'm reading lately is The Last Economy: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics, uh, by Emad Mostaque, M-O-S-T-A-Q-U-E. What I would say is that I talk to all kinds of, uh, very smart people, way smarter than me in this particular category. I— a lot of entrepreneurs that are in Genius Network are utilizing AI in incredible ways. And I also have an addiction recovery foundation. And so I tend to look at what it's going to do to the mental health impact to people. I think it's incredible, but like airplanes are incredible, ships are incredible. Now, I always think of this line from the 1800s with is, if you invent a ship, you've invented a shipwreck. And so, you know, there's going to be AI addictions. There already are. There's going to be, you know, all kinds of things cognitively. But in terms of medical, in terms of cognitive abilities. What I'm able to do today as a result with AI to help my business is mind-boggling. And we are, you know, currently, like, I have, uh, I'm right in the midst of having an AI COO that we've not really shared yet with our members, but I'm using it behind the scenes and it's unbelievably awesome. So what I think is going to happen with that, I don't know. I just think like any, any other It's gonna change the world on all kinds of levels and already is by the minute. But I've been having a dialogue in Grok and in ChatGPT, and I do this once a week on average. What can AI do that humans cannot? What can humans do right now that AI cannot? And I just dialogue with that and it gives me some perspective to think about where to put my talents, what I call it, my TAMI, my time, attention, money, effort, and energy. So I don't know if I articulated that as well as I would've liked to, but those are some of my thoughts. Dan, what do you think?

Well, you know, I have my own experience with AI. You know, I'm not a cutting-edge guy technologically, but I sort of observe, first of all, where do I want to use it? I mean, I treat technology as another helper, you know, so where do I need help? And I just have one, you know, thing that I work with, which is Perplexity. I've never done ChatGPT, but Perplexity's got a nice feel to it. I would say that my speed of writing has gone up by 4 times in 18 months of just getting a structure together. You know, I write a book a quarter, small book, and I'm able to get it scoped out in about 3 hours where it used to take me 3 weeks to get the book scoped. So I love it. Quarter by quarter, it just keeps getting better and better. And I'm a writer. A lot of my contribution to our company is really coming out with new ideas, new books, and that's it. But I wanna give two examples. I was in our Toronto office last week. There were a whole bunch of workshops. None of 'em were mine. What I do if I'm in the office on a workshop day, I have lunch. We have cafes. We have a big cafe here in Chicago where I am today. We have Big Cafe in Toronto. I just let the word out to the team that if people want to come and spend lunch with me, they can. It fills up real fast. I got room for about 10 people at the table, so 9 people come. And this one woman said, is there any way that I can think about AI that's sort of just a general principle that is sort of keep me where it's productive for me, but I'm not getting distracted by a lot of things. And I said, well, it's actually a term that's created by the Four Seasons Hotel, which started in Toronto 50 years ago. Their term is systematize the predictable so that you can humanize the exceptional. That's a great line. I'll say it again. Systematize the predictable part of your business so that you can humanize the exceptional. So I had an example of this. We were staying at a resort in Arizona, actually, where they had a really nice tradition. They still had newspapers and I'm a big news junkie, so I liked it. And in the morning you can go and get coffee and you get the newspaper and I'm a Wall Street Journal. I like the Wall Street Journal. But last time I went up to get the paper and they said, no, no, it's a QR code now. It's right on the coffee table. Just go to the and you can get it digitally. And I said, you know, that's a mistake. That's a real mistake. Because I would talk to the bellman, it was at the bell desk. I would talk to the bellman, we'd chat and everything. I'd get my coffee, I'd get my paper, and we'd come back. And you've just taken that experience for a guest off the table. Now I have to go back and look at a QR code. You know, I like the newspaper. I like to feel the paper. I like to go from page to page and everything like that. And what they've done is that they've lessened the human reaction, the interaction that was part of my experience of being at the resort. And that was a bad mistake. They have technologized the front stage rather than making it a human part of the front stage. They've technologized it. And we don't like technologized front stage. I don't like going to a restaurant and have to look at my cell phone to see what's on the menu. Menu, or they give you little iPads. I don't like that. I want the menu. I want the physical menu. So that's a bad example. But Babs had a really great example. We were in Buenos Aires for medical. We go for a particular medical procedure in Buenos Aires. When we came back, I packed quickly and I left the power cord for my CPAP machine there, and it causes problems immediately. It's going to cause a problem at night because both of us are awake. I'm not sleeping, and Babs is not sleeping because I'm not sleeping because my CPAP. So she phones the supply company that provides, you know, power cords, and she gets a human. She gets a human, which, you know, isn't always the case. He informs her that to get it to us, it'll be 6 to 10 days to get the power cord, and that's 6 to 10 bad nights. Babs says, are you interested in being a 'Yes,' he says. 'Can you get it to us quicker?' And we got it the next day. And the reason was his job description says, tell them 6 to 10 days, but she gave him a role which allowed him to be a hero. And being a hero is a human activity. Okay. So what I'm doing is one situation took the human away from us and the other one gave us more of a human. And I think that's got to be the thing. Make sure you humanize your front stage. Stage. Keep the technology in the backstage. So that's my attitude.

Love it.

Love it.

You know, also what I want to say, Dan, with some of the things, because we're all, uh, both of us are working on continual projects, which we share when we do our podcasts. And I just posted, if you want to subscribe to our podcast and be invited onto more of these, 10xtalk.com is where you can subscribe, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can subscribe to this. There's no charge for it. We recently started Genius Youth last year because I think a lot with AI is like, okay, who's smarter than me that I could help curate and facilitate bringing people together? And that's how we learn things. And I think for both Dan and I, one of our favorite ways to learn, because people always ask us, what books are you reading? What do you watch? What do you listen to? Well, we also have discussions. We have discussions with other humans. And I think, uh, with so much of AI, the human connection is going to be so important. I mean, AI is utilized for a lot of mental health right now. Even people are rating that they are getting better results from AI with therapy than even actual therapists right now. But again, that depends on the quality of the therapist. But you're never going to replace a human, but a human that is utilizing, you know, the tools of the trade in the best way. And I also just look at, uh, we have a friend Richard Rossi who says wherever there's anxiety there's opportunity. And whenever there's anxiety being created in the world, or fear, or uncertainty, if you know how to bring simplicity to the complexity that's existing in other people's lives, you have a good opportunity to not only, uh, make a much greater impact but also make a lot of money with it. So here's what I think we should do, Dan, because I think we could go another hour, which we're not going to to do. What I'd like is, if me and Dan do this again, what are some questions that you would like to ask? And we'll take a look at it and we'll answer some of these on the next one that we do. And we will— Dan, what are your thoughts? You want to do this again?

Oh yeah, it involves talking. I'm always up to talking.

Okay, good. So if there's a question that you have or something that we did not answer, go ahead and put it in there and we'll take a look at the best things And then Babs, what advice would you give for making the most out of 2026? I mean, you have been coaching so many entrepreneurs and Strategic Coach for decades and we're going into a new year. You know, we're in the middle of the holidays here. So what would you suggest is if you could only give 1 or 2 pieces of advice on how to make the next year the best year ever, what would you say?

Aside from signing up for Strategic Coach?

I'm just kidding.

But, but set really big goals and then figure out what the obstacles are. And the obstacles are the raw material for reaching your goal. But always book off your free days first, okay? So take time off from work and go and do anything but work, and ideally things that you love to do with people you love.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll ask you to do the same thing. I'll give my suggestion, uh, which people have heard me say this before that know me. I've always liked the million-dollar racehorse analogy. If you had a million-dollar racehorse and every time that horse ran away a race, you'd make a million dollars, then the question is, how would you treat that horse? You would have the best trainers, uh, the best food, the best nutrition. You wouldn't have that horse up at 3 in the morning, uh, watching porn, snorting crystal meth, or gambling. You give that horse proper exercise, nutrition, and rest. You would not have the horse hanging out with other loser horses. And more importantly, you would have the horse in the right races, because you don't win a race you don't want to be in. And you, you could be really capable and skilled, but you could be in the wrong races with the wrong people. So I think going into 2026, the punchline is you're the million-dollar racehorse. And are you treating yourself like a million-dollar racehorse? Do you have the best trainer that you can— you have access to? Are you exercising your body? I know a lot we've talked about is about, you know, the mind and about mindset, but someone had posted a comment about hormones and Babs has been responding about functional medicine. And I posted privately to this individual, I have an interview with Jeffrey Bland, who's the founder of functional medicine. He's the one that invented it, that trained people like Mark Hyman and different functional medicine docs. So the issues are in the tissues. Dan and Babs are very focused on health. You know, part of living longer is also, you know, they don't eat fast food. They're very careful what they put into their body. Their bodies, they exercise on a regular basis. And so, yeah, this is not an intellectual thing. It's also a physical thing and it's what you're connected to too. So treat yourself as the million-dollar racehorse and cut all ties with dishonest, negative, and lazy people. And if you're trying to do something that you're no longer engaged in, then put that T.A.M.M.I.E., your time, attention, money, effort, and energy towards something that's going to fulfill you. And so, Dan, I'll leave the final thing with you and then we will wrap up how to get the most out of 2026 according to Dan Sullivan.

Yeah, I'll just share something. Um, it was in July of 2018, I was watching television one night and I said, you know, this is kind of a waste of my time watching television. And so I said, um, I'm going to get to Labor Day and I'm not going to watch any television. I got to Labor Day and I know noticed a real impact on my life. I was getting to bed earlier. I wasn't frazzled, you know, by the— they're controlling your time on television. They're sort of controlling your time, and I don't like having my time controlled by other forces. So I stopped, and it's 7 and a half years now I haven't watched any television at all. And I'm a big sports nut, so I haven't watched any television. So after about 3 years, I figured I'd gotten 800 hours back. So one of the big about having bigger ambitions is that you have to have more control over your time. So I've done that and I've never been on social media. I've never connected. And the averages are that a lot of people are 3 hours a day. That's another 1,000 hours being on social media. It's not productive work for the most part. So I've got 1,800 hours a year by not watching television and not being on social media. Allows me a lot of thinking time, a lot of rejuvenation time. You know, there's a phrase that if they're offering you something free on television or they're offering you something free on social media, you're the product. Yep. You're the product that's being sold to other people. So I would say, you know, get time back. Just look at how you could get time back just for yourself. Babs mentioned free days. We treat free days like savings when you're doing financial planning. In order to save money in the year, where does savings have to go? It has to go first, and then you make the money that you need to get the savings. It's the same thing with free days. They come first. So Babs always plans our free days at the beginning of each year, and we take a ton, and that's what comes first. If free days come last, you're not going to take any free days. So the big thing I would say is between now and next December, make a big jump, and I would set a goal goal of getting, let's say, get a month's worth of days back that are now being tied up with other things. Just get a month back and spend it as free time reading, you know, whatever your favorite free time activity is and do that. So anyway, you know, entrepreneurism is just the most marvelous way to spend one's life. But to be an unhappy entrepreneur is a double penalty.

All day.

You know, if you want to lead an unhappy life, being an unhappy entrepreneur is just about the worst.

Ain't that the truth? Yeah. So, well, thank you, Dan. And everyone, I really hope you found this valuable. And those of you that stuck with us and were, yeah, this was a test. So thank you for participating in this. I think we like it. We're going to definitely do it again. If you want to post any final things in the comments, please do. And I'll post our book one more time. If you want to preorder, you can get it for free, and it's called The Entrepreneur's Edge: Turning Purpose into Profit and Fulfillment. And if you do want a copy of this episode, we will upload it to 10xtalk.com. So wherever you listen to podcasts, and Paul Colligan helps us with that, he's the podcast master, he's there. Paul, you want to say anything about podcasting? Why don't you tell everyone they need to —go give a positive review at 10xTalk because now that they've listened to this episode, if they've never done it before, this seems to be the perfect time. Exactly. Yeah, what Joe said, best place to give a report is Apple. All the search engines kind of filter through Apple to figure out what's going on. So yeah, just go to Apple Podcast, type in 10xTalk, and give a review. And if you're— well, I'm an Android person, um, you can actually do the web version of Apple now and, uh, give your reviews there. So, um, give them a review, bring these guys up to the top. I love it. Thank you. Thank you, Paul and Babs. Thank you, Dan. And on behalf of all of us, we want to wish all of you a very happy holidays, happy New Year, and we will see you on the next episode of 10xTalk. Thank you. Have a great day. Don't miss another episode of 10xTalk. Subscribe today at 10xtalk.com/subscribe. If you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit 10xtalk.com/244.