Master Your Time, Build Your Team, and Get More Done with Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan - 10xTalk Episode #246

I'm Joe Polish.

I'm his sidekick. I'm Tonto to the Lone Ranger here.

Thank you, Dad.

For those of you that have just joined for the first time, this is a recording live of the podcast me and Dan have been doing since 2012 called 10X Talk. And the reason we are doing this live, the goal is just to deliver value. You know, we obviously will talk about what it is we do with what I do with Genius Network, which is a connection network, and what Dan does with Strategic Coach, which is the world's best coaching program. And we want people to come to every one of these when they're able to make it live. So, you walk away with more— and these are words I got from Dan many years ago— more direction, more confidence, more capability, and more clarity that you could apply not only to your business, to your team, but also to your personal life. So, this is just as much about helping you be a better human. My goal is to build better entrepreneurs in Genius Network. We both refer each other's programs to each other. It's not an affiliate thing. Dan invests to be in Genius Network. I invest to be in Strategic Coach. We just have a great collaboration and we're really here to add value. And the reason we're doing this live, with all the AI slop that's continuously being produced by the second, right now, how do you know what's real and what isn't? We're like, let's just do it live and we can, you know, people can make the judgment if we have, if we're worth listening to and if we're sharing anything that would be valuable. So that's our whole goal with doing this. So, Dan, I got a whole list of things you sent over that I want to talk about. Me and Dan just finished a Hay House Audible original, which you call The Entrepreneur's Edge. Is there anything you want to say before I launch into the to the list of things that I want to chat about today, which you obviously know about.

You know, I'm happy that Barbara is here because I took sort of a cue from what she does with stuff. You know that people, entrepreneurs, myself included, have a lot of stuff in their life. I'm not a neat person. I've spent many years in my life trying to become a neat person. And I didn't succeed. What I discovered is that all the activities that I actually get paid for aren't in my office. What I did to unclutter was just get rid of my office. So I haven't had an office in 30 years. And those who have been to Strategic Coach headquarters, either in Chicago or Toronto, know that we have cafes. In Toronto and Chicago, we've got growing companies. And the café gives an opportunity for all the team members on a continual basis to be with the other team members, whether they're on their team or not. We break our company down into different kinds of teams. So I just got rid of my office. I said, I just don't want to have an office anymore. So I treat my office or our café like Starbucks. It's clean every night. Everything gets put back in shape every night. And if there's paper involved, I have team members that take care of my paper and file my paper and everything. So I just got rid of the office. But just to take another cue from, uh, Barbara's approach, is that there's another thing that clutters people's life up besides paper, and that they clutter it up with activities that they shouldn't be doing. And those activities have come attached with a lot of papers. So, I just went for the activity, just get rid of the activity. And so, the central concept of Strategic Coach is that everybody starts with a unique ability. And unique ability, when I say unique, I mean unique. It's one of a kind. And that I believe it's the reason that most people have chosen to be entrepreneurs is they want to create a system that supports their unique abilities. So what they call their entrepreneurial company is just a system of teamwork. And as the owner of the company, you're in the center. You actually became an entrepreneur to increase your freedom. In Coach, we have 4 freedoms that everybody works on: freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and freedom of purpose. So that's sort of the simplifying principle, Joe. Everybody's got to— you have to have a simplifying principle at the center of any system if it's going to work.

So you need to have a simplifying principle. Many people have a complexity-creating principle at work. The simplifier and the multiplier, which are terms that you use, I think I have aspects of both. I definitely lean on the multiplier side because I am constantly coming up with ideas and possibilities, an idea a minute, and then it's finding people that are aligned with that versus get overwhelmed from it. How have you learned to manage the creativity and the ambition with actually making it real? Recent program, The Entrepreneur's Edge, that we did, the Audible original, you mostly talk about ambition and I mostly talk about connection, although we cover a lot of different things. So, what are some of the best ways you've learned to identify your kryptonite and then your superpowers so you can keep it simple and effective when making it up and making it real, which is your line. You make it up, you make it real. But some people make up a love story, other people make up a horror story or a tragedy or a comedy or a drama. And so, how do we write the script and design the business life we can? That's sort of the spirit of what I want to have you identify those attributes?

Yeah, I think the ambition is really tied to your unique ability. So, there, you know, and unique ability isn't one activity. It's usually about 2 or 3 activities that you put together into like a working system just around yourself and what you do. So, there's a system. So, I'm a front stage person. I'm not a backstage person. Important thing for entrepreneurs to understand. I'm about contact with the checkwriters.

Can you frame front stage and backstage?

Well, we treat our company like a theatrical company. We have shows that we put on. You also put on shows, and it requires a lot of preparation in order to have— just like going to the theater, there's an immense amount of work that went into a play that may last 2 hours, but there might have been 200 hours that went into the, you know, getting everything ready. And there are certain performers who are on stage for the play, but there's a lot of— usually the cast backstage is quite a bit bigger than the front stage. I mean, the front stage may be a one-person show. Okay, so But the, the whole point is all your money is in what that front stage presentation is. That's where the audience comes in. And so I, I have always looked at it as theater. And the other thing that we added to it, we're in the hospitality business, so it's like going to a nice place and the food is good and you're well taken care of and everything. So, if you combine hospitality with theater, that's my image of what the best entrepreneurial companies are theatrical and you have a backstage. So, we have coaches. I'm one coach. Back when you met me, we had about 2 or 3 other coaches. But for the first, you know, my coaching career started in 1974, and I basically did house calls. I basically went to somebody else's business and I had a way of having them think through what was most important to them in terms of the next quarter, the next year. And originally, I would just have a big artist pad. I'm a trained artist, so I would just draw out using circles and arrows and stars. I would just sketch out what they would say, and then they'd have a graphic picture of what they're doing. So, I did that for 15 years when I first started, '74 to '89, but it was just me. There was no one else. And I was, you know, I was a one person. I would say this, when you talk about entrepreneurs, the vast majority of entrepreneurs are one-person shows, you know, in the world. 80 to 90% of entrepreneurs actually don't have a company. They just have themselves. And so essentially another distinction would be, except front stage, backstage, is that most entrepreneurs, if they're not in motion, if they're not in action, there's no game whatsoever. They have to be the one who's in motion. If you're really going to be successful as an entrepreneur, you got to have a company. There's got to be a team supporting you. The biggest reason is so you can just focus on what you do best, what you you love doing best?

Back then, I got a tremendous amount of stuff done. I was incredibly ambitious. I always loved the line, "If I would have known being successful was this much work, I would have stuck with being a loser," because I didn't know all the things that I did not know back then. But what I got from Strategic Coach was a framework. Definitely. And, you know, you have some core principles. And one of the things, since we're talking about unique ability, and I want to say this before I, before I go too deep into it, you, you have this line which I heard you say in 1997: if you spend a lot of your life trying to get strong at your— what you're weak at, at the end of your life, you have a lot of really strong weaknesses. And so, just focus on your strengths and either delegate or build a team around those things that you're not great with. And you had recommended to do a Kolbe process, kolbe.com. And Cathy Kolbe was a dear friend of ours. She died recently and she lived 10 minutes down the street from me. And I've got numerous interviews with Cathy online and we've interviewed her and people can listen to some of those. You know, at 10xTalk from the past, but did a Kolbe and identified, you know, I'm a low follow-through, I'm a high quick start. And so, you would also say I can get anything done that I want as long as I'm not the one that finishes it. And, you know, saying that now, it just seems obvious. But until I understood that, that was really hard to wrap my head around. And I bring it up here because I 100% know there's people that have ingrained into their brains that I suck at this thing, so therefore I got to get better at it. I got to learn how to do it. And of course, you and Ben Hardy met in Genius, and you ended up writing a book called Who Not How, which is— Dean Jackson's the first one that ever said those words, who not how. So instead of finding out, uh, I got to the pre—

I got to the printer faster than Dean did.

Of course you did, because you— yeah, yeah.

And so I told him, I said, this is the only one I'm going to do. You drop lines all the time. I said, that's a book, that's a book, that's a book. So after I did it the first time, I said, Dean, you can drop lines. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna turn every great line you have into a book. But the big thing, uh, the big thing I just want to give you a little insight in where I came up with the unique ability concept. And it wasn't in business at all. I had a friend who got elected to the Parliament in Canada. So I live in Toronto. And in 1980, the United Nations had a year for the disabled and the handicapped, for everybody in every country to look at making the life easier for people who have disabilities or handicaps. So that they can participate more fully in life, how they're able to travel and so on. You just did everything that would make their life easier so that they could fully function in society. And it was about a 2-year-long project that I did on the side while I was, you know, while I was coaching people. I was the writer of the report that went to Parliament and it was very successful. And but I interviewed— we mixed the book up with 40 interviews with individuals who had one kind of disability or handicap, or the person who was responsible for helping them. You know, because some disabilities, you can't talk, you can't hear. So we needed that. And as I was going through that creation of this report, I was thinking, you know, they're just more visibly handicapped. Okay. But I said, you know, I'm handicapped. I'm really terrible at details. Okay, I'm really terrible at following through on projects. I'm really terrible at— I know how to make money. I'm terrible at keeping money, you know. And so I said, you know, I'm only good in certain areas of my life where you can depend on me that if I say I'm going to do something, you know I'll do it. And So, I began to say that I think entrepreneurs, if they would look at themselves properly, the way they go about their life, there's only certain times during the day when they're actually operating in the way that they should. From a scheduling standpoint, that would be true, but also their environment. And I would say clutter, as Barbara would describe clutter, It's anywhere that you're involving yourself in an activity or the materials that you're just not any good at. And so, you know, I keep my unique ability very neat. I keep my unique— when I'm in my area of unique, I don't make messes. I don't create clutter. You know, I just get results. So what we want to do is get the person just to tell the truth. And we do it with activity interview. Where are you just incompetent? You're just no good, but you're doing these things and you're incompetent. Or you are competent, but it takes all your energy to do it. You know, it brings you up to average or it brings you up just a little bit above mediocre. But you can get paid. There's a lot of people get paid for just a little bit more than mediocre in this world. And then there's things that you're excellent at where you're really good. You just have a natural ability, but it doesn't give you any energy. Okay. And then there's a sweet spot where you just love doing this activity. You're great at it. You keep getting better. And we have them send 10 letters out to— you're going through the process right now, Joe, with Julia Waller of Zeroing In, and you have amazing connection capabilities. You have amazing presentation capabilities. Okay. You're probably the best interviewer on stage of anyone I've ever met in my life.

Thank you.

And now we've hit the borders.

Yeah, no, exactly.

Now we've hit the boundaries and anything else, Joe shouldn't be involved in it.

Yeah, I remember you saying, I don't know when this was, this is a few years ago, you said something along the lines of, Joe, me and you are front stage guys. We have to stay front stage and anything that takes us off that is going to drive us nuts and we're going to hate it. And then everyone on the team is going to get pissed off about it because we're not very, you know, we're not very likable if we're sucked into backstage activities and things like that.

So.

You are 100% correct.

Yeah.

So then now you see the reason for having a company, that in order to achieve larger goals— and I think inside your unique ability, you're very ambitious. You would like to do more of this. You would like the doing it to have a greater impact, um, in helping people, but also in getting paid for helping people. Okay, so you You have both of these things. And so our whole program is to create the— we call it who, not how. Again, Dean Jackson and Ben Hardy helped out of that, that you have a goal that requires real activities to achieve the goal. And my definition of a goal is actually you in the future operating at a higher level of capability, that when we have a goal, We think it's a thing, but it's not a thing. It's actually, it's you in the future and you have way more capability, you have way more impact, you're earning a great deal more than you are. And so, once you get the goal and you define it, then you come back and instead of saying, "How do I do this?" you say, "Who is it now that helps me do that?" And it's that little things like a switch in your brain. It's not you that's going to do it. It has to be done, but you're not the one to do it. So I have a question. I have 3 questions that I ask myself whenever I want to do something. And the first question is, how do I achieve this project by doing nothing? There's nothing that I've ever come across where I don't have to do something, but it lies in the area of communication. I have to communicate the project the goal to other people. And then you're looking at skills where they have great follow-through capabilities and they do it. This takes real discipline because all of us start as one-person operations. And we get hardwired that we're the only one that can do it. Actually, you know, if there aren't other people, you probably have to do it. But a lot of my messages come from that I just wouldn't do the things that other people should do. You know, I got in trouble with the tax department in Canada because I didn't want to fill in a tax, you know, tax form. And they'll find you after a while. They'll find you. They're nice. I think they're probably nicer in Canada than— and we have tax returns in the US too because we're dual. And, you know, and these things have to be handled. Now we have 16 other coaches besides me who do the work, you know, and I don't have anything to do with the management of any of that.

Well, you know, a lot of people would be like, how in the heck does that even happen? What advice would you have for everyone here based on what Dan said in order to make this up and make it real in their own companies?

So, Dan and I have a unique situation, and we've been collaborating since we met in 1982. He kind of got me by taking me through one of the main tools in Strategic Coach, which everybody learns in the first workshop called the Strategy Circle. And I was like, wow, you know, I felt completely different by the time he took me through it. And it was about what's in the way of you and your essential service to others. At that point, that was— we didn't use, or he didn't use the term unique ability, but it was kind of like your central service to others. And right now I consider that term to be kind of like your whole business has a central service to others.

You know, I think it's important for to really understand that, because if we all can look at here's our central service to other people, and by the way, people will pay us for it, and we actually enjoy doing it, because unique ability isn't just what you do well, it's what gives you continual, never-ending growth that you actually enjoy. That's the closest thing. You know, people are like, do what you love and the money will follow. It's like, well, maybe, you know, if you love playing guitar, but you know, you're not in a famous band or you don't love doing guitar lessons, you can, you know, some people love watching football all day. I don't know if I don't, but you know, I don't know how to make money doing that.

So, I just want to say that he got me with the Strategy Circle and the thing, and I have a little bit more feet on the ground with certain things than he did. But, um, and he was really good at making money, but he was no good at keeping money.

So, yeah.

And, um, when we linked up, a lot of what I do is I protect Dan's blind side. And he's grown a lot, um, in being able to pick up, like, you know, it used to be if somebody would want him to do something, he would just like, you know, He'd like their idea for them. He'd be nodding, and then they would come and say, Dan said he wanted to do this, right, with me. So anyway, transformation of that is we start a group program. And first group was 6 people, but it was great. But the value compounded because it really was people thinking about their own thinking. So it was all thinking tools. It's all thinking tools. Still today, and they keep developing. But it's people developing their own thinking and going deep and thinking about the most important things to them. And the, and the, you know, they take out their breakthroughs and they write them down on paper and they use those to transform and take next steps, basically. Um, and so their best thinking, and then They combine it with the other minds and everybody is an entrepreneur in that room. And then it expands everybody's thinking.

Yeah.

One thing, Joe, you gave me the opportunity to come and see you with your Platinum Group. I think I was there for 2 days and you very kindly let me do, I think, a thinking tool from stage. But I was just watching you on stage and I said, boy, you really need a bigger stage. You really need a greater audience to do what you're doing, you know. And, you know, whatever number of days you were doing that during the year, I said, I think you're going to want those days back. Yeah. And then it wasn't too long after that that you really formalized genius network. And sometimes it's a person from outside has a better take on what you should be doing. I find people have a much better ability to see someone else's unique ability than to see their own.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, like a metal detector, I think you're a unique ability detector because one of the things that you have a unique ability for is seeing talents that are obvious to you, but people don't always see them themselves. And there was Stacy even posted in the comments, "I give away the farm," and I wrote, "Yep, and I end up giving away the farm." So, the question is, if you see yourself giving away the farm, is the farm, whatever that means to, in this case, Stacy, or whatever the skill is, Will people pay you for that? And if you do give away the farm, will they want to then start supporting your farm? Will they want to be part of it? And so, yeah, you are really good at seeing that. And I think when you do that, it edifies people and it gives them confidence. And oftentimes, when we're by our— that's the importance of getting into a room because you can read about this. What I've learned more than anything, I think, be it Strategic Coach, be it Genius Network, be it wherever someone has a sounding board of smart people, and they have to put themselves in the position where they're not the smartest person in the room. They're in a room where everyone's getting smarter. And if you put yourself in a room where everyone's getting smarter, the sounding board and the social proof of other people, because I've seen so many people in Strategic Coach, in Genius Network, that are fully capable, great ideas, and they haven't pulled the trigger on it until they're there in the room and they share it with someone else. And the person's like, "That's good." Or, you know, or you take them through a thinking exercise, an example. And then, all of a sudden, they've never given themselves permission to do it and all of a sudden, they do that. And I've thought, "Well, why is that?" It's because oftentimes, people question and don't see what others see. And that's why oftentimes, the breakthroughs have to come from the outside. And it often doesn't even happen in your own company because I think every driven entrepreneur can be with certain types of people that they share ideas with or they share goals, ambitions, desires, bigger futures with. And certain people will be like, "Get behind it," and they love it. Like in Strategic Coach or in Genius Network. But then, if they go to their team and share the same idea, oftentimes, they'll not be rewarded with enthusiasm because the team will be like, "Oh, here's more work we have to do," or whatever. So, you got to be able to have the know-how of what to share with who. And because inspiration is perishable, which Kamal Ravikant says, if you don't act on it immediately, it will dissipate. The other thing is Inspiration shared with the right person will magnify it and multiply it. Shared with the wrong person, it could totally discourage you. So I think, you know, whatever the central service is, who you share the central service with, if you share it with a giver or someone that you can play ping pong with, it will multiply. If you share it with a taker or it's something you might get or feel exploited or discouraged. Barbara, what is your thought so far, your reflection on what we're talking about and how it applies to having a better business and a better life?

Well, I just want to follow up on what Dan said about he got rid of his clutter by getting rid of his office. And I don't want anybody to think that the only clutter I'm that I'm concerned about is paper. That's just where it started. But I define clutter as anything that prevents you from accomplishing your work and enjoying your life. That's the tagline for Productive Environment Institute that Andrea Anderson runs now. Because— and clutter can be people. It's the relationships. You know, you hire slow and fire fast. And lots of times the people that you're around are people that are not helping you. And I just love— I have to say, Dan, now that you talked about getting rid of the office, like, hmm, I have to give that some thought in my own way. I mean, it's like I've done a lot of what you've done, but it's like, wow, that's really something that I could do. And I think one of the questions I ask people is, if you left this earth tonight, what regret would you have? The answer to that question is a form of clutter because it's what's in the back of your mind that I really should do this. And in terms of the work that we do with Productive Environment Institute, the answer often is the mess I'm leaving other people. That answer comes up so many times with my business partners, with my team. We just had someone in our community die this week. Dave Erickson, who had a huge, huge business, and not hardly anybody knows how his business works. And there are little parts and pieces of equipment and things like that. I mean, he's left a horrible mess. So it's about, we call a productive environment, an intentional setting in which you can accomplish your work and enjoy your life. And so that intentional, and 80% of it is here. It's the intentional, what is in your brain about what's important.

And Dan, let me, I want, let's do a couple of questions that we have John and we have Raj that have their hands raised. Sherry posted, can Dan go back to his 3 questions that started with, how do I achieve this project by doing nothing? So, I'd love to have you speak to that. And I also want to say that, you know, years ago I helped Arianna Huffington launch her book Thrive, which, you know, ended up being a big bestseller. And I don't agree with her politically. However, The book, we did multiple interviews with Arianna. I mean, you were even in one of the rooms where we were having a brainstorm about it, Dan, back in— that was 2014. And one of the best things that came out of that whole conversation was the best way to complete a project oftentimes is to drop it. And so, there's some projects that we just— how do you complete it? You drop it. But when you're saying, how do I achieve this project by doing nothing? I know what you mean by that, but I'd like you to speak to it as it relates to your unique ability in teamwork.

It's the opposite of getting involved with everything. And the more teamwork you have, actually, it becomes true that somebody else, if you send them a note, we have particular thinking tools, Impact Filter, Fast Filter. That we send them. I had one yesterday. It has to do with making videos of Strategic Coach clients talking about how a particular Strategic Coach idea has really made a big difference. And we have about 50 of them. So I just communicated with our video manager. Keep this in mind. I gave her an entire document where certain ideas were you know, highlighted for her. And I said, "So, when you're having an interview, bring this idea up and see what they say about it." Because what I want to do is give complete social proof for every idea that's in Strategic Coach with people's actual experience. Well, that took me about 45 minutes and then the project is launched. She was very enthused about it. She said, "I can go back through our archives. I have over 200 videos." and I can just pull out what we already have. And then going forward, I'll be more deliberate. I'll be more focused on doing that. So that was gone. If you compare that with how I might have gone about it 20 years ago, I would be in there, I would be doing it, and I would be involved in the project. But here, all I had to do was communicate for 45 minutes. She was very excited about it. She's got the skills and she'll do it. And I said, we're not going to wait till we get to the end. The moment you get 2 or 3 of the videos together, we'll send them out as social media. We'll send them out, we'll get them out there. So the first question is, is there any way I can solve this with doing nothing? And there's always something I have to do, but it's the minimum that I have to do. The second question is, what is the minimum I have to do to achieve this project or solve this problem. It could be, it could be, it could be a problem or it could be a project. And then I'll just identify this, and that's what I did with, with the particular project. I just said, you just have to communicate very clearly what the video manager can do, get her agreement on doing it, and it's off and running. It took 45 minutes. The third question is, who's the person who can do the bare minimum so that I don't have to do anything. And you're right back to the first question. And you start looking at, once you get into this mood of what's the least that I can do, you start looking where you're doing too much of a lot of things. And some of it could be personal. So, in July of 2018, I was watching television one night. And I said, you know, I get nothing from watching television. You know, I get nothing from it the way it's become. And I said, I'm just not going to watch television anymore. So in July of this year, I've gone 8 years without watching any television.

Okay.

And then I calculate I'm getting 800 hours a year back. So 8 years will be like 6,400. It's like, it's like 3.5 business years of time I got back just from not watching television. I've never been on social media. I don't even know how to get onto social media. You know, I don't watch social media. I was never, I was never attracted to that particular medium.

And when I'm at Dan's house, I try to get him to watch Instagram stories and stuff, just so you'll know, but it's very rare.

Yeah, you tried, you tried. Yeah, um, I like person to person, you know, I like talking to people live and everything like that. But I keep looking at areas in my life, you know, this may have been useful for me to do this sometime in the past. It's not useful to do it. AI has been a real help. So sometimes it's giving up something, sometimes it's adding something. So I really fell in love with Perplexity when it came out, you know, the AI platform Perplexity. And I write a book a quarter, you know, a little book 40, 50-page book. And it usually takes me about 3 weeks of the quarter to get it all structured. And the other night, I structured my entire next quarter's book in 3 hours using AI. So I'm seeing both not doing it going forward, but I'm also seeing taking on another capability, you know, and I'm really quite good now after 2 years of using AI. That I can go back and forth with AI and get exactly what I want. And we're growing, you know, we're growing. The result is if Dan's available for what he does best, the company grows.

Yeah, absolutely. That's where you get the ultimate leverage. Like Johnny wrote, not to be facetious, but please clarify the purpose of the first question, doing nothing, if the second question, bare minimum, obstensibly includes it. I suspect I'm missing the point. And I'm writing back, you can get something done by teamwork and through others versus you having to do it yourself, meaning put your unique ability where you get leverage.

Yeah. Yeah. So the answer, you know, the answer, you know, there's been some situations and I think if you have a good team, you had a problem and you went away because we take, Babs and I take a lot of free days. Not working days. And sometimes a problem that I thought I would have to get involved with actually got solved while I was away. I was away. So it does happen. And it's important to realize, you know, something just happened that was great and you weren't involved with it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So there's lots of things, lots of things you can do. But I'm a minimalist. I'm very much of a minimalist. I'm sort of a simplifier minimalist as an individual. So the things that people could get me seduced by 20 years ago, I'm tightly supervised these days. I'm not allowed to get into those situations. Just how people approach me with possibilities. I know, Joe, you get approached with possibilities.

All the time.

And what they're trying to do is delegate something to you. In the scheme of things, saying no creates a simpler future than saying yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're right.

So let's do questions now.

Let's go.

John, how are you?

I'm doing great. How are you guys? Thank you for this. It's very, very good. So, Dan, when we were in Free Zone in January, you talked about for 40 days or 41 or 42 days, you were starting to write down the things that you were doing every day. And what it was doing is it was slowing down or shutting down the ADHD, and it really allowed you to get some focus. And I came away from that— I talked with you a little bit about doing sort of a vibe coding on that. I had a lot of thought around that. And then I went to Joe's event last week and had a half an hour conversation with Elko de Boer about internet fasting. And it's— everything is sort of convalescing around quieting your brain. And I put in the, um, in the comments, you both curate this environment where you shut out the distractions, that you're not texting, you're not emailing, you're not on the internet, you're not doing social media. You pose the thing that allows you to figure out what the particular thing is you want to work on, but your mind is quiet. And it's that quiet mind that you spoke about in free zone that has me captivated right now. And I realize how strongly I'm diverted when I show up at my desk in the morning, I check my email, I look at what texts came in. It is so absolutely distracting. And if I can shut that off and replicate what you guys produce on the days we show up for these events, my day is 1,000 times more productive. But even better, I feel good about it at the end of the day. I feel rested. I feel like I've made progress. The teams I work with are getting much more out of me rather than reaction. They're getting focus and direction. It really spoke to me, and I hope that you could speak to that a little bit and how that defines what you do.

Yeah. So, today is day 85. So, when I saw you, I was day 43. And the idea came from another client who was talking in a parents' conference, and they were all talking about how they wanted to create a better future for their children. And he said, "I really don't know that much about the future." really don't. This is Lior Weinstein, who's in Free Zone with you, John. Lior said, well, I don't really know that much about the future, and I really don't know what my children are going to do with their future. I consider my job to give my future a better past, a great past. Okay, and he says that I can work on. I can work on giving them a great past every day, but I don't know much about the future. And it seems like such a fundamental thought, you know, we are who we are, how we handle time. You know, I mean, you know, when you're born, you're thrown into a system where you got to work out how you're dealing with time. So I started, this was on December 2nd of last year. I said, today I'm going to use today so that tomorrow morning I say that was a great yesterday. So when I get up in the morning, my project for the day is to create a great yesterday— use today to create a great yesterday. And if I do that, I think my great yesterday will create a better tomorrow, you know. So I'm going to leave the job of creating tomorrow to the yesterday that I create today. And, um, I worked with it and I had a satisfying— just what you're talking about, John, It was kind of a satisfying feeling because when I get up in the morning, I really know what's on the schedule for today. I know, you know, there's no real surprises that are going to happen to me today. You know, I know it. So I just consciously go through the day, but I record it and I have a sort of a numbering system to give myself credit for how it is. So before I go to bed, I give myself a number and then I go to bed and I feel good. You know, I said, I just spent a great Today, creating a great yesterday. And now I've created 84 great yesterdays in a row and things are getting easier. And I just want to tell you something about the 88 days. I'm Joe and Babs and I went to the Amen Clinic and we were significantly diagnosed or diagnosed with that we're significantly ADD. And I've had no problem with ADD since I started in December. And I got a real feel of what ADD actually is over the last, you know, this is 12 weeks. What ADD is, is where right now you emotionally connect yourself with a future possibility that doesn't exist. Okay, so it's an emotional commitment to something you see in the future that doesn't exist yet. It's a possibility. It's okay if you do that with one thing, but you do it with two things, you do it with three things, you do it with four things, you do it with 10 things, and all those future possibilities that don't exist want your attention.

Yeah, the other thing, Dan, is, um, it— they didn't exist 20 years ago, you know, that the distraction levels just didn't exist. You were you know, I, I, and on my line I was working on vehicles, or you were plumbing, or you were doing something and you had a task at hand and you, you worked it, you solved it. You didn't have all those things. And it is on one hand a superpower because you can really focus in on things and get things done. On the other hand, it's so terribly distracting. Um, I, I've just really latched on to that idea of quieting my mind. Yeah, it's really wonderful. You don't have it as a tool, but you should have it.

I'll have a book. The book will be, um, available Labor Day. Labor Day. I have a— I'm working on a book that will come out in June, but this one, it's called Yesterday Creates Tomorrow, is the name of the book. And, uh, and, uh, but it's really interesting, you know, and I, I, I'm a bit, um, cautious when I do something like that. I said, is this just peculiar to me, you know? But your feedback gives me a lot of encouragement to work.

Not just mine, but also teammates have said, I can tell the days that you're on, and I tell the days you're off, what's different today? And that's helping me focus on that.

So, yeah, yeah. I mean, I saw you on stage. We were on stage together 2 weeks ago, and that is the best presentation day I've ever had in my life. What, you know, I was on stage from 8:30 to 5:30, and I got finished that day and I said, you've never been better than you were on that day. But I was just there for the day. I wasn't— my mind wasn't wandering, it wasn't being connected. You know, the future doesn't actually exist. It's just a structure in our brain. You know, the only thing that exists is what's going on right now. But we unnaturally favor entrepreneurs, I think unnaturally favor good things in the future. And we also, you know, unrealistically disfavor bad things in the past. But the past, the past is just a record of things. It's our interpretation that really matters. But I'm really noticing I'm not bothered by the future as much after 12 weeks.

I'm doing it and I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, let's do Raj.

Dan, it's an honor speaking to you and seeing you in person. Loved it. Love the session. So my question is going to be How do I find my collaborators for strategic partnership? What is the barometer do I need to use? Do I need to use revenue as a barometer or the feeling or my principles or ethics? Which would be the direction I need to focus on so that I find the right partners?

Yeah, well, it's, uh, it's got about 3 or 4 things, um, One, it is you got to be real clear what you want. In other words, you have to have a conversation with you, what it is that you actually want. And I want to differentiate want from need. Okay. Need is a different thing. You know, we need food, we need shelter, everything. But want is a picture of yourself in the future. With a much higher level of capability. And it's got to be attached. I mean, if it's a business goal, it has to be attached that I'm able to create value for other people in which I'll get paid more. I mean, that's basically what the marketplace is about. And then you have to document it. So, this is one of the tools we have in the Strategic Coach. Actually, if you go to the book, Who Not How, that tool is actually in the book. It's called the impact filter. Okay, and you just write it. So, this is my project. This is the importance of the project. You know, this is what the project will do. And when the project's finished, it'll have this result. And what's the best result if I achieve the project? And what's the worst result if I don't achieve the project? And you're just selling yourself on the project. I try to sell myself on something before I sell somebody else on it. How many of you, I mean, out there, I've had lots of experiences where I wasn't completely sold on something. So I told someone else to see if they would buy it before I needed to buy it. So I think it's not honest. I think it's not honest. Don't try to sell something that you're not sold on. And then the second thing is then put down exactly what the project looks like when it's finished, okay? When the project is finished and when the project is successful, this is true, this is true, and we got space on the impact filter for 8 different things. And then you print it up and you go to somebody and say, I'd like you to look at this. I'm looking for some help. I'm looking for some help. And would you be interested in this project? Okay. I mean, and the big thing is it's either, it's either yes it is or yes it doesn't, because they can see clearly what you're trying to achieve. And I find that almost never do people respond negatively to that.

Okay.

They'll say, no, it's not in, you know, it's not really what I'd like to do, but I know somebody who you ought to talk to. So people are very helpful if you give them a clear picture of what you're trying to achieve in the future. And that could be, I'm looking for a particular type of person who will do this for me.

Okay.

And then that could be what you present to someone that you're looking for, where you're looking for a collaboration. I'm looking for a collaborator. The collaborator will bring these skills to the project. This is the reason why it's important. This is the best result. Is the worst result. And when that person delivers, they're doing this and this and this and say, is that you? And they say, nope. Or they say, yeah, I'm really interested in that. And then you've started the conversation. There's still negotiation and everything else. But that's how I would approach it.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, most people are selling things they're not sold on.

Yeah, you know that, that I want to highlight that point. That is, um, Yeah, if people are having trouble with selling or marketing, there are obviously messaging, list selection, there's advertising, however you're reaching people. But if you haven't sold yourself on why you're doing it, it's really hard to make anything happen. It just really is. So, let's go to Johnny, then we'll go to Rob Sike, which is great to see Rob. This is cool. Johnny, what's happening?

Hey, good to see you guys. London, UK calling. So I've had a longer day, so I might be missing the point again, but Dan, it sounds like your unique ability, if I'm understanding correctly, has two sort of slightly contrasting elements. One is that you're a toolmaker, which to me sounds like a very backstage activity, and the other is that you love being front stage.

Yeah.

So am I understanding that right? And how sort of typical is it that The unique ability is a combination, a multifaceted element of things that might not necessarily seem to stack up together.

That's a really good insight. But all my ideas for my thinking tools come from front stage interactions. So I'm in a Strategic Coach workshop, virtual workshops. I do about 60 workshops a year. 12 of them are in person, and that's with the highest level of the program.. And so I have thinking tools for that particular session, but people will start saying something and somebody will say something. I said, got a tool. I got a tool. Okay. And I just keep track. The next session, I might just go to the whiteboard and I'll just draw a little diagram. Hey, somebody gave me this idea and I wonder what you think about it. And then I start testing, you know, what the, they start creating language around the idea. Yeah, I just did one this morning. It's a brand new one and it's called Competition-Free Growth. And then I say, based on what you've done so far, where have you actually grown because you're actually competition-free? And they'll brainstorm. And then I'll say, pick the top 3 things that you've already done that has already made you more or less competition-free. And then they do it. And then we play with it, and then, you know, they start putting the ideas together. This is all part of the process. And I did it on Zoom this morning, so it was a Zoom workshop, and I came up with 5 new ideas just out of the conversation. And, you know, I know at least one of those will be a new tool. So my front stage and my backstage are totally They're in the same system with each other. You know, I get an idea, come back and package it, and then I deliver it back to another. And these are immediately trademarked, they're immediately copyrighted, and they're submitted as patents. So we have 77 of our tools that have become patents. So we're in a sort of a— it's like a factory, idea factory.

For people who are looking for their unique ability, it's like remove everything that's not your unique ability.

It's sort of an energetic thing, you know. I really base it, you know, this just really energizes me when I'm doing this activity. It doesn't matter what the activity is, it energizes me.

Dan's— it's not like a front stage thing or a backstage thing. It's like in his head kind of thing. He's got a really unique brain and his form of intelligence is like impressive. All the time for me. But he's got this incredible associative network in his brain. And he brings in the information from the world, from what's going on, from, you know, all the stuff that the entrepreneurs say that they're facing. And then he's got a great historical background and context and everything. And it integrates in his brain. And he runs several threads of ideas that are gonna— but it's all in the context of what's gonna help entrepreneurs be more fully themselves and bring their own creativity out into the world. And it's endlessly fascinating. Yeah, you know, I'm a fan.

You know, we're told a lot of things when we're growing up, you know, if you want to make a lot of money, you should go into this activity. You know, I mean, there's lots of message, which are general descriptions, but they're not specific to the person's unique ability. Okay. And I think entrepreneurs are just unusual in that they haven't been harmed too much by the formal educational system. The system doesn't exist for you in person. It exists so that there's a certain number of people who are trained to take over certain activities in society. I mean, it's not designed to stop you particularly, but it's looking for what's average. It's not looking for what's unique.

Yeah.

By the way, Mike Koenigs just wrote— I just want to do a shout out to him because we did a webinar with Mike.

When was it?

Yesterday or the day before for our Genius Network members on AI, which was fantastic. He wrote, Dan has the most fascinating mind. Uh, then it disappeared. Dan has the most fascinating mind I've ever witnessed, and he's more ambitious than most people a quarter his age. Uh, well, for one, uh, Mike, if you want to say anything, please do. Secondly, Dan, do you believe that to be true? Do you find—

do you, do you—

does it occur to you as being more ambitious than most people, or is it because you have really spent your life in your unique ability? And let me say this, as I, as I want to frame this, the reason that I really resonated with Dan is I have spent over $2 million on my business education. I am the epitome of starting out a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards, trying to buy everything I could on how to better myself, going to seminars, doing all kinds of stuff. I've now met most my heroes. Many of them are not heroes once you get to meet them because you realize a lot of them were flawed and deceptive, but Dan was the most congruent to living the message that he wrote about and talked about of anyone that I had ever met at that time. And we're going back to 1997. And so, that's why I really resonated with it. But I also believe Dan is a byproduct of he is a convert of his own system. And so, I've always wanted to be a convert of my own system. I don't want to dispense advice that I do not take or I do not live, and not that anyone's perfect at doing everything the best of ways. As a matter of fact, there's lots of challenges. But I think Dan's ambition is a function of what he's talking about right now. So I wanted to see if— the question, does that occur to you that way, Dan, what Mike Koenig said, or how do you think about it?

Yeah. Well, you know, Mike's a marketer.

Of course.

And he markets his friends. Well, you know, my main comparison, I really don't compare myself too much to other people because you really don't know what's going on in someone else's head. You know, I mean, you can see by their behavior where it's leading to, but you can't really see. But I do know that I can do it by decades, that at 80, almost 82, I'm more ambitious now than I was when I was 72. And I was more ambitious at 72 than when I was 62. And I could see it just by what I was capable of doing that I've grown a lot in the last 10 years in terms of what I'm able to do. And that's what I think ambition really is. It's that it's a capability of being able to do more than you could previously. And I think anytime you compare yourself to someone else, you're in trouble. You just put yourself in trouble. So I kind of keep the one human that I pretty well know as my basis for comparison. And I know that I can do a lot of things today that I couldn't do 10 years ago. And I think I'm in better health. And Babs and I are more in love.

You're more funny too. I think I might have had something to do with that a little because you—

Yeah, you did. You were one of my role models.

Yeah, we would travel together and I would always be punking people and stuff like that. Then pretty soon Dan started messing with people and I'm like, this is hysterical. So now Dan will— yeah, I think it's great.

No, no.

Yes.

No, I can spot genius when I see it.

So, by the way, there was one plug I was going to say for Dan, which is Dan is always in a living laboratory observing and seeing a feedback loop. And then seeing where there's an opportunity to create a new tool. That's why he's the toolmaker, always making a new tool that amplifies how people ask themselves questions and get more out of their lives and their business and create more of the 4 C's. So that in itself is an amazing ambition amplifier.

No, totally. Thank you, Mike.

Rob's a visitor. We go way back.

Yeah, we sure do. Slow learner with money. Dan, your favorite client. I found your conversation around the present interesting because as entrepreneurs, I think we owe it to the people we're with to be present. I'm one of the older guys in my coach classes now starting a brand new company in what Mike is working in, which is AI. And we're about to go into the future with Peter Diamandis here in a few weeks here. And I increasingly am finding it hard to reconcile being present when there's so much static about the future and struggling as a CEO and a leader to try to figure out direction and how to harness, how to harness what's, what's coming down the pipe. With what I want to get done today. I guess what I'm saying, Dan, is I'm having— I know all the tools, I know all the stories, and I am struggling with trying to focus on what is really important today because all of the static of tomorrow is there. And we're about to go into Peter's thing, which is only going to make it worse.

We could spend a full day actually, you know, talking about how you handle your days and everything like that. So, you know, there's a lot of material that's going to be missing from what I'm going to say now. But I just got— I was so struck by Leora Weinstein's that if parents would spend all their every day making sure their children have a great past, they would be freed up from a lot of worry of what their children are going to do in the future. Okay, that's all I'm going to say. And it really struck me, the ability to be present today automatically creates a great future without you having to worry about the future. Habits you form today, the mindset, the things that you put into motion today are what's going to create the future. It's not being attached to the future. And that's what I'm discovering out of my own lab experiment.

So if I was to, you know, if I was to categorize in very broad statements, you are, you know, you are very present-focused. When I'm in a coach session with you, I feel you're there. Joe, you're very much connected-focused. You're very much relationship-focused. Peter is very kind of in the future and really hard to get Peter to focus in on the present because he's so future-oriented. And as a CEO trying to figure out how to balance all those three things out, I'm not finding it easier. I'm finding it harder.

Yeah.

Can I speak to that, Rob? First off, just even having that conversation is great because some things, you know, I've interviewed Jordan Peterson. He lives 5 minutes from me here. And he's, you know, he has this thing about questions. He's like, some questions you just can't answer right away. Some questions take take hours, some take days, some take weeks, some take months, some take lifetimes. And there are certain things we have to wrestle with here. And a lot of people, they don't even ask questions. So the fact that you even have this awareness is, is a big insight, right? That's, that's, that's part of it. Uh, second, I tried it, and again, this is just me, so I'm not at all dispensing like, here's what you should do or anything. It's just how I think about, uh, what comes to mind here. Is, as you know, I came up with the very first idea for Peter when we were helping him launch his book Abundance in 2011, 2012 for what has now become A360, Abundance 360. And had me and Dan in the beginning not promoted that, it wouldn't even exist today. So, me and Dan filled up the rooms in the beginning and now it's become like this giant sort of tech conference.

I was there for the first session with Dan.

Yeah, yeah.

So the thing is, is Peter sells scarcity, but it's called abundance. Most people go to abundance because of scarcity, not because it's FOMO, like at the highest level. And it can be extraordinarily overwhelming. And you almost have to take a vacation before or after in order to be able to— it's like a marathon of your brain, right? But I try to go into things like a 12-step group because I've been to so many 12-step groups for my own recovery. And it's like, take what you like and leave the rest. You know, I don't try to place— I'm a mixture of, like, ambition and future thinking. And I listen to The Power of Now and Eckhart Tolle all the time, just because the pain body, if it lives in ambition all the time, is like nothing's ever good enough. And Dan said about potential, we had a conversation. He's like, you know, potential just means you haven't done it yet.

Yet.

Everyone's like, "Reach your full potential." Who the hell reaches their full potential? Now, some people surpass what their idea of potential is, but people guilt themselves all the time in not keeping up. And, you know, as I sit here in this conversation, my amazing, lovely partner's in Malaysia sitting with her father who's going to die maybe today, at any point in time. And I've been having conversations with her. All, you know, she saved his life, you know, a couple months ago, but it's at the point where there's no, you know, there's, he's passing on, and just talking with her about just being present. And if anyone has ever sat with someone when they're dying, like I took care of my father in 2002, when he was dying. And, you know, that's when you really are faced with being present. And so, a lot of this stuff is cool. But there's also what's it doing for you? And do we have— I want Dan to share the story of walking out of the ocean because I think it's a great way of— can you share that real quick, Dan? Because I think this frames what Rob is saying in a great way.

Yeah. And everybody's got the experience of being at a resort with the ocean and you go swimming in the ocean and you have a good time and you come out and people say, well, how's the water? And they say, The water is great, but I miss most of it. You know, and people do that with time. You know, it's just what you're experiencing. I will tell you that your best days right now with AI— I mean, AI is forever. You know, I mean, we can see already that it's forever. After you introduced electricity, it's going to be— there's not going to be a point down in the future where AI is less than it is today. It's the new thing. It's the new power. It's the new force on the planet. And it's always going to be there. So just get better at some— your relationship with AI today and enjoy it. Because if you do it really well today, probably tomorrow is going to be better.

So many people living in fear. There's a lot of complexity. It's very new. So there's a— you can feel— if you're a person that can feel the energy and the stress and the tension of other people. There are, uh, there's a lot of people that are freaking out. And so that's why I think it's almost especially important. Look, you know more than anything, man. You're in the agriculture business. You've been there your whole life. It's like going out in nature. I mean, you know, humans need sunshine. Humans need nourishment.

Uh, they—

and if you, if you spend so much time just plugged into the machine or worrying about what the machine is doing, I mean, I often go back and listen to Dale Carnegie's book or read it. I like listening to it, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Whenever I get overly stressed out or overly overwhelmed, and I'm a master at getting myself overwhelmed. I mean, I've learned this about myself. If I feel really overwhelmed, the best way to get me out of overwhelm is to add a new project to my plate. And I don't even know that I do that to myself. And then I'm like, oh, shit, I'm aware of that. This is a dumb way of going about and dealing with it. So, just getting exercise, going out in nature, doing all of the things, doing art. Because at the end of the day, the unique ability that we started this conversation with is about what is your art? What is it that allows you to be your central service? How do you help people? And feelings are not facts because there are times where I have felt wonderful and my life was a train wreck. Because I could get really high or I could act out sexually or I could do some sort of addictive behavior and in the moment feel great while I'm destroying my life. And there's been other times where things were really hard and difficult, but I was making progress and I didn't feel good, but I was like, "Huh, my life is actually working here." So, I've learned that feelings are not facts. I mean, I think you're just— the key is to respond to life, not to react to it. And when things are I will even tell you with A360, if it gets super overwhelming, who gives a shit if you miss one of the sessions? Go get a massage instead. You know, just keep yourself in a good state. You know, not—

you don't—

it's like Dan's saying, you don't need to touch all of the ocean to feel like— because we're all missing the ocean right now. Every single person that's here listening to this, there's all these other things that you're missing because you're sitting here in this conversation.

I won't see you guys at A360. I'll be digital, but have a good time.

Rob, I just want to tell you that my impression of a lot of the tech people, you know, the super tech people, they didn't take the proper wisdom from their drug dealer. Their drug, the number one wisdom of a drug dealer is don't get high on your own supply.

Right.

They're, I think they're, they're really drugged out with their own supply of future.

Yeah. And all that being said, there's incredible stuff to learn. So, it's like we take it all in as part of the ingredients, but the beauty is we're the chefs of our own life. And if we don't like the cooking or we don't like the cooks, we have the ability to design it. And, you know, yeah, there's a lot of people here that have designed incredible things and life has its moments. You know, it does. So, thank you, Rob, for the question. And let's do one more.

One more for Aaron. Yeah.

Aaron, what's up, brother? How are you?

Very good.

It is, uh, late here, so I'm gonna have to say hello on behalf of my partner from, uh, we're in South Africa right now, so it's, uh, 10:30 at night, but didn't want to miss this opportunity to get a chance to hear some of Dan's genius. And Joe, thank you so much for, for, um, having us here. Um, my question, actually, I didn't even know that I was going to have this question, but, um, Dan, you touched on going from copyrights, trademarks, and then specifically patents. And I'd love to hear a little bit more on, um, how you take what could be looked at— not as— I mean, I don't know, when you say that you build tools, sometimes in the coaching business, if you're giving like behavioral procedures to change, uh, people's lives to have different outcomes, how is it that you actually go about turning that into a patent? And I'm asking this question because, and I noticed something that both you and Joe just did right at the beginning of this, is you actually credited the source. You did that with Dean Jackson and his thoughts. And I think in marketing and any type of emerging industry, a lot of times people like to take ideas and then make them their own. So I'm curious to hear about your process of actually getting to the point of patenting something.

Yeah, well, for, uh, first of all, uh, you know, the copyrights, trademarks, and patents are intellectual property protection, you know, that's what you do. And so right from the beginning when I met Babs and we started working together, she said, you know, the stuff that you're creating, you just, you know, you just create it every day. And that, she said, this is all very valuable if it's properly treated down the road. So I have to say that everything I'm going to say from now is Babs' influence. When I first started. It's part of her oversight of me is to make sure that stuff doesn't get stolen, but basically it doesn't get lost. It just doesn't get lost. So the way I look at IP is that trademarks and copyrights are for protection. And it's under law, it's well respected. With law and you can prove your case. Patents are a different thing. Patents are offensive. You're actually creating a market monopoly with a patent. You're actually staking out a portion of the marketplace and saying, this is our territory. And we've got legal dogs that will come and bite you if you do that. And the reason I do that and the reason I preach it in Strategic Coach, as I said, your creativity and all the people that I coach are very, very creative. They're creating unique solutions. I said, if you are afraid that your unique solutions are going to get stolen by other people and you have the experience of that happening, you're going to stop creating. The way you're going to protect you from having your creativity stolen is that you're going to stop creating. And I've seen it over and over and over again. So my whole point is I want them to be as creative as possible. So, you know, we're sort of, um, you know, we're sort of pioneers in this territory. But, uh, just to answer a question, and I'm going after another part of your question here, How can an idea be a patent? How can I— yeah, but that was a very good question because when we started, this is our 37th year since we've had the workshop program, um, you couldn't get what we do patented, okay, because it had to have a technological component. There had to be an actual physical technology. And I don't know when it was, probably about 7 or 8 years ago, the Patent Bureau And ours are all US patents. So we went right to— our IP lawyer was a patent clerk at the US Patent Bureau. So he knows the entire environment that the ideas are going into. And somehow about 7, 8 years ago, the Patent Bureau determined that the technological component was the internet. And if you're using your ideas on the internet and everybody— I mean, if you want to go do anything, you probably want to be on the internet. And they created a Class 41, and Class 41 is for entertainment and education. And so if you have an entertainment act, you can patent it. If you have an entrepreneurial thinking tool, you can patent it. Okay. And people say, well, how do I know if I have a patent? And I said, for $25,000, the Patent Bureau will tell you. Yeah, so there's a risk in it that you're spending money, but I have to tell you, it has an enormous impact on your creative confidence when you get a patent back. And we have 40 of them framed in there in our main workshop room in Toronto, and they're all sitting there, and they're patents. I said, you know, makes me feel good. You know, it's tough with entrepreneurs because you don't have a degree to be an entrepreneur. Do you have a degree to be an entrepreneur? You have no degree to be an entrepreneur except for two situations. People keep sending you checks and a check is like a diploma, right? How many of you remember your first check? It was like, yeah, it tells you you're valuable. But the other thing about it is that patents are a determination that the full strength the government of your country tells you, we're granting you exclusive property rights for this idea over the next 20 years. And that's a really great diploma. That's a really great certificate. But it has an enormous confidence impact, won't you? Because it means you take your idea seriously and you're willing to bet on it. That means it becomes a powerful idea.

They really shifted from, you know, kind of like tangible in the Patent Office to intangible, where they are— except, and they've made it possible to patent business processes too, right? And so Yeah, that's, that's a whole part of it.

Yeah, I mean, you look at the big corporations— Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA— and that, and they're, you know, they have valuations that— I think NVIDIA is the first one to cross $5 trillion. $5 trillion. 90% of that $5 trillion is determined on their ideas.

Okay, well, this is just incredible. I mean, you've brought a lot of joy to my heart because You've given me an answer that AI does not provide. They always really push that it has to be a technology. So this is really valuable information to me as a person that makes protocols. So thank you so much.

And some people may not have been on the very beginning because there's been some questions is how do we get notified of the next one? Well, first off, subscribe to 10x Talk that I've been doing with Dan Sullivan since 2012. I, I talked to Dan into the podcasting game back then because I first started podcasting with Dean Jackson in 2010, and the very first podcast I ever recorded was in 2005. And Paul Culligan, who's on here, will remember that it was for one of our piranha marketing events when no one even knew what podcasts were. And so you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You know, it could be on Apple, it could be on Spotify, YouTube. We do put these up. I put them up as also episodes. Polish.tv, like my last name, goes directly to the YouTube channel. And if you're on either my list or Dan Sullivan's list at Strategic Coach, we will notify you. And me and Dan have a new audiobook called The Entrepreneur's Edge. Buytheaudiobook.com. It is now out. It hit number 1 on business. So, I think you would find it very valuable. And if you're not on Audible, you can download it for free as a trial thing. So, get that. And if you love it, we'd appreciate it if you gave a review of it. That would be awesome. And I know some of you have already listened to that, so thank you. And then I think I covered everything else. Dan or Babs, is there any— Gina, is there any more, anything I did not mention other than the net?

We will—

we're going to do this every month, maybe sometimes twice a month. We will put them up on our podcast. You will be able to listen to them. So subscribe. And if you can ever not make one of these live, you will get the recording sent to you.. And it will all be there at 10xtalk.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. And Dan, Babs, famous last words. I'll leave it up to you. And also, Barbara Hemphill, so great to have you here, especially in lieu of the last few weeks where I've been communicating with you. So, I just wanted to do a special shout out.

I just saw Richard Viguerie.

Oh, wait, where is Richard?

Richard is there.

Oh my God, Richard is one of the greatest marketing minds on the planet and just absolutely brilliant in his 90s now. And he still probably reads. Richard, you got to say something. I mean, you are truly a legend. We have an interview online on I Love Marketing, so unmute yourself if you could. How old are you these days?

92.

92. Awesome. What are your thoughts on what we just discussed? Anything you want to share?

Oh, whenever I know you guys are up there, jointly or singly, I've got to be there. I learned so much. As God is my witness, I am writing a memo right now. Your 25,000 conservative leaders— I do it every month. This is my 60th memo, and I give them advice. Do this, don't do that. Oh, here's what I just wrote, uh, number 8 in number of pieces of advice. I have urged numerous conservative leaders to seriously consider joining Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach organization, as well as read the books he authored. Dan is the best known and best coach for entrepreneurs in the world. Becoming a student of Dan Sullivan's can be life-changing. Dan has written many books, and one of the most recent is called Who Not How. The idea behind the book is that leaders of organizations should not be focused on how you do something, but who is going to do it, i.e., who is going to be in charge of acquiring new donors, raising more money, growing the organization, acquiring more subscribers, uh, get more votes, uh, more media, etc. So anyway, I, uh, I am where I am, whatever I've accomplished, to a huge extent because of Dan Sullivan. I've 4 mentors in my life. 3 been long dead. Dan, I follow you, every word you say.

So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I love—

thank you.

I love it. Thank you, Richard. Well, that, that is so cool.

And, uh, yeah, so Dan, 25,000 conservative leaders, and I just, I urge every leader I talk to, you gotta— I did it this weekend. I was with 470 conservative leaders this week in California, and I said, Dan Sullivan, Dan Sullivan, you've got grow your organization. The best way to do it is to join Strategic Coach.

Thank you, Richard.

No, that's so great. We even had Senator Ted Budd has been on, so this is great.

Today, Dan, Ted Budd.

Was Ted on today?

He might still be. He might still be on. He was on earlier, but yeah, this is great.

Yep.

Awesome.

My last words are always be growing.

Always be growing.

And so everyone, I appreciate you all being here. Share this with other people. Make sure you subscribe and you'll get sent the replay of this if you subscribe. And we will see you next time at the live 10X Talk that I'm doing with Dan Sullivan. So have a wonderful rest of the day and see you next time. Appreciate it. Don't miss another episode of 10X Talk. Subscribe today at 10xtalk.com.

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