Yesterday Creates Tomorrow, The Invention of Zero, and how AI is Rewiring the Entrepreneurial Brain: 10x Live with Joe Polish, Dan Sullivan, and Special Guests - 10xTalk Episode #248

This is 10X Talk recorded live on July 6th, 2026 with Dan Sullivan and Joe Polish. The conversation they normally have with the door closed, this time with a few hundred of us in the Zoom room. It went somewhere I didn't expect. Dan compared AI to the invention of zero, a cognitive shift that took Europe 300 years to absorb. He walked through a scoring system he's run for 217 days straight, where the only job of today is to make tomorrow morning a great yesterday. Joe told the story of $2 million swipe file in his rented house that's driven $3 billion in track sales and why the one thing AI still can't do is give somebody a hug. Each of them closed with a single sentence. Dan's is the one that I'll keep repeating. Better to have happy days than unhappy days. Here's how they got there. Oh, this is 10X Live. I gotta show you something. Boy, look at this.

You know what this is?

This is an LP of the original episode of 10X Talk. Why? Because everything sounds better on vinyl. We sent this to Dan and Joe on their 10th anniversary, which was now like 3 years ago or whatnot. It's amazing how well this thing has stayed. And it's good because it's ageless wisdom. It's Dan and Joe sharing what they've learned. What they've done about it. And that's going to be the model for today. Looks like James Carroll is from the People's Republic of Portland as well. So I appreciate that, James. Way to represent. We're going to kick off this. First of all, we're going to stay within 75 minutes and we're going to close this out. They give me the keys to do this kind of thing and then they give Gina permission as well. We did that during pre-show. So she's fascinating there. I'd say stick for the whole thing. You're going to see a real theme across this and I think you'll appreciate it. We're gonna start with two quotes. Both came from Dan, always, and came from his book, Always More Ambitious. Quote number one, wisdom is knowing what the future results will be based on the choices you make. It's the ability to see long distance. Second quote is, every time you summarize your experience for yourself, you generate wisdom. I dare say if you summarize for others, you do the same, but that's where wisdom comes from. A lot of evidence of what works and what doesn't work. So I told these guys we're gonna start with the challenge. I'm a little obsessed with the topic of presentations that you weren't able to make a year ago. So, um, Joe, what is a piece of wisdom? What is something that you've seen in this space that you didn't see a year ago and why are we all better for it?

I mean, obviously I would always have to go back to AI and just the speed and efficiency of an effectiveness in order to do stuff that couldn't be done in the past. So that's accelerating a lot of stuff. So that's a good thing. The bad thing is more disconnection, more not delegating but abdicating thinking to the machine and a little bit of disabling things that, you know, people are— human connection. I see a lot of fear in a lot of things too. So the positive side is the people that are ambitious and are resourceful are finding incredible ways to do things in their business that they could not do before to leverage themselves and to grow and scale. But on the bad side, I think people are sort of suffering. And I, everything I say, of course, I'm speaking from my own experience, a bit of overwhelming decision fatigue. 'Cause when I ask people, you know, who feels overwhelmed in the entrepreneurial world, almost everybody seems to be getting crushed and getting burnt out. I see a level burnout. That's, so those are my thoughts.

What's the biggest wisdom you take home from AI over the last year? You gave us the negatives. What's, what's the thing that we can project and see in the future with it?

Well, I, for instance, today, this morning, I found some Flip videos. Remember Flip videos before iPhones had videos? I used to love Flip videos. I used to take them with me everywhere. And I've got literally thousands of videos that were recorded on Flip Videos. And I found an old Mac computer that had videos on there from, I don't know, 2000, early 2000s, a whole bunch of them. Could not open them up in my regular Mac with QuickTime. Dragged them into Claude. Can you convert these over? And at first it said, "No, there's not." Well, try harder. And then eventually it did. And I just dragged a whole bunch of videos and instantaneously it just, so as you know, I've got $2 million worth of content that I have purchased courses, everything in a house that I rent because I've got one of the most incredible marketing libraries and swipe files, which is a term that came from the marketing world when you're looking at direct mail campaigns. And I, saved all this stuff. And to the outside, it looks like I'm just a hoarder that can't throw away books and PDFs and things like that. But then I met a guy named Mark who owns a company called iMemories, and I interviewed him at a recent Genius Network meeting. And his company digitizes things not for business owners, but for consumers. So if anyone ever walks into a Walgreens today as an example, and they want film or negatives, basically digitized, it goes through what he created. So he sold the company to ancestry.com and he's digitizing thousands of cassettes, VHS tapes. I mean, they can do reel-to-reel, old photos. And the amount, not only couldn't you do this a year ago, you couldn't have done it at all had AI not been created. And now I'm going through all of my thinking and within that $2 million worth of archives that I have, It has generated well over $3 billion that we can even track, the billion with a B, for our members and clients that have used my marketing strategies and the stuff that my company has produced. And so now I'm just finding ways that we're gonna be able to distribute it and share it with other business owners. It's not the stuff, it's the thinking and the psychology behind it. And to me, it's absolutely incredible. And I want to do that in the world of addiction recovery for all the addiction recovery stuff in the world of entrepreneurship. And it's not just marketing. It's physical fitness, you know, Bill Phillips who wrote Body for Life. I mean, I've got all of the stuff that I did with Bill from 1995 to 2000 that took his company from $60 million to $200 million in revenue in an 18-month period. I then referred him to Strategic Coach. Strategic Coach helped him sell the company for $300 million in 1999 when $300 million was a lot of money. And, I've got the greatest archive of how to build and grow a fitness supplement health business. 'Cause it was the number one sports supplement company in the world at the time. And I've got all the marketing that I created with him and it's sitting there. And that is so applicable. And I shared one of the old letters I found with Bill 'cause I'm still in contact with him. And he sent me a text a week and a half ago saying, I took this letter that, you know, you helped me create back in, it was in 1998, and I just sent it out and he did $20,000 in sales in less than an hour posting a letter that was an original direct mail letter with an offer on Facebook. And he's like, the same marketing works today as it did back then is the message he sent me. And it's like, so I'm sitting on just an absolute goldmine of stuff and AI's gonna help me organize it. The downside to that, because the reason I brought up the negative is when you have 1,000 options, you don't have any options. So, part of it is not getting trapped in all of the things that you can do and just know, you know, Dan has this great analogy. If you, Dan, I want you to share when the, if you, if you go out swimming in the ocean and you get out of the ocean and what people say to you, I want you to share that story because I apply that same thing with all of the endless possibilities that we have available to us today, but how to do it with what actually matters and what really you want to give your attention to because it's so easy to give up your attention to the machine, I guess. So, Dan, maybe you could share that analogy of going swimming in the ocean and stepping out of the water and someone comes up to you and asks you about it.

I think that there's an oppressive factor in entrepreneur's life because they see endless opportunities. So I used a metaphor of going swimming in the ocean and, you know, you have a good time and you get out and people say, well, how's the water? And you say, well, the water's great, but I missed a lot of it. I missed a lot. I didn't take advantage of all the water. And I think AI is a really good example that opportunities that are being created are like the ocean, you know, like it's just vast. And so I think that it's a— AI is sort of a cognitive disruption. You know, the technology is the technology that they're using, the chips, the, you know, the systems and the processes, they've been around for a long time. So there's nothing that new about the technology, but I think what it's doing to people's brains is really something new and good and bad. I think some people are, you know, it's really the best thing that matches up with what their natural abilities are and they're just taking off and using it. And a lot of people are, are using it as an exponential way of being unhappy. You know, and it's endless. I mean, people say, you know, it's amazing what it can do. I said, we're right at the beginning of it. You know, I mean, we're 3 years in. It isn't going to get less as we go forward. So I think the most important thing is to work out what your relationship is with your own brain and come to a sense of teamwork with your own brain. And, you know, tomorrow there's going to be nor— new things available, but is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's the difference between a sugar high and a protein high, you know?

Right. You know, that's, that's actually a really good analogy is that, you know, it's real easy to get high on your own supply of endless amounts of stuff when you can. But I'll tell you, one of the things that we've been doing in the last couple of Genius Network meetings is we give all of our members 3 cards, thank you cards, and we have them handwrite, not with AI, but just thinking. First, make a list of people that you appreciate in your life or just anyone that you want to thank or acknowledge. And as simple as that sounds, everyone seems to love it and find it really valuable. And then we walk them out to the mailbox right outside of our office, Dan, and up front of our building. And have them put in the 3 cards. And one person did not even know how to address a card, had never written a card. And this is a person who was in his mid-30s. And it was so surprising. And I kept it anonymous, but the person said, "No, that was me." And they addressed— another member had seen him addressing the address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope, and they're like, "Who are you mailing?" 'Who are you addressing this to?' He's like, 'Oh, isn't the address right up there in the upper left-hand corner?' And my— and he put his own address in the middle of the card. And it was so weird for me to comprehend that there's so many people here that have— in this world right now that have never mailed a freaking card to someone. And I was like, 'Wow.' And now we've got all of our Genius Youth, young people that are doing it. And they are— they have, as you say, an unfair advantage because when you connect with people on a personal level, when everyone is becoming, you know, even though it sounds personal, 'cause you can make anything with AI appear very personal. When you have a touchpoint that's really, you know, your own thinking, there's something meditative about it. So I'm doing my best to slow down when the world is speeding up so quickly right now. And I'd say that, you know, at our annual event this year, you know, we've got Peter Diamandis, who's been a friend of mine for many years. Me and you have helped him tremendously with Abundance 360, and then Steven Kotler, who, you know, they both wrote a new book called We Are as Gods, all about AI and the future technology and robotics. And so, you know, I'm doing my event this year very focused on what is, you know, what are the things that are happening in the world right now that are very, I think, important and useful to be aware of and to learn what to do. And at the same time, I'm I mean, just being a human is the killer app is being a real human with real people and connecting at that level and then using technology in order to do it.

One of the strategic byproducts, which is one of my absolute favorite concepts inside of Strategic Coach, one of the strategic byproducts of you having to do 4 books a year is you've got to think 4 new things a year. And I really enjoyed Always More Ambitious. It's kind of the trigger for my reboot. But with that said and done, how are you working wiser that you weren't doing one year ago today?

You know, I'm not a cutting-edge guy with technology and, uh, thought technologies, my friend, thought technologies. I'm, I'm pretty focused on one thing that, uh, generally speaking, everything new that happens in there, Strategic Coach, really comes as a result of my writing something new. You know, I'm writing. So I started when I was 70, so that was 12 years ago for me. And I said, you know, I'd like to have a long-range goal that I could really stick with. I've got an audience for it, and I'm just going to write a new small book every quarter. So this is quarter number 47, and I'm writing book number 47. And usually it's some concept in coach where I just go deeper than what shows up in the workshops. And, uh, so when AI came along, I, I said, I just wonder, um, what it can do for my writing ability. And it's been terrific. It's, um, just in the, um, time that it takes to get a book idea completely structured. Used to take me about 3 weeks. Uh, I did one for the new book, took me 3 hours, so I've experienced because I'm just sticking to what I always did before AI, and I'm just adding AI to something I'm very committed to. You know, it's something that I always do, and it's actually freed up an enormous amount of time. I would say that that's the biggest thing for me. And I started with Perplexity, but Perplexity did a really interesting thing, and I think it appeared about 3 months ago. They have a dropdown You can go to Gemini, you can go to Claude. So I picked Claude 4.6, and I really like the quality of language that comes out of Claude 4.6. It's, it's just got a nice feel to it, and, uh, they ask you lots of really interesting questions and, uh, everything. So that's been a real breakthrough for me. I'm not trying to get to all the water in the ocean. I'm just, you know, having a good swim, basically.

So I've got my partner in I Love Marketing who's also— Dan, you and Dean Jackson do a podcast together also. So, and Dean, so you've heard the questions that Paul posed to us. How would you respond to those?

Well, I think, you know, you're seeing that everything is swinging back to where we really value these real-time engagements with real humans. And that's why you guys have had such a success with doing the live 10x Talks. And you and I, Joe, have done this now with I Love Marketing. We start to build this community sense where you're real people, even if we're looking on the screen, you can still look in the whites of people's eyes when you look at the, when you look at the little boxes and wave to people, it's a very qualitatively better experience than just listening to something anonymously and asynchronously. We've all shared this moment. I love how Dan's been focused on creating a better past by recognizing what goes on the permanent record is what creates yesterday. We are all at exactly 3:19 PM on this day in history sharing this moment together live. And I think there's something, I think there's something to that.

You know, we got 459 people that are here live right now, and we have relationships with a large amount of these. Some of them are Genius Network members, others are Strategic Coach members, some of them are both, some are the, uh, people that I've known for many years and have worked with. You know, it's, it's kind of a cool thing. And more and more, uh, you know, when I wanted to first start doing these live, I said, you know, to our Genius Network members, I said, when there's so much AI slop that's in the world and anyone could produce a fake video with a fake person, and, you know, it could be very valuable, but it's not the same as kind of like being there, right? And being live and not having a bunch of, you know, theatrics in order to just talk to each other. And part of it is I was like, let's do an experiment and just have conversations with people that we know, hopefully that know, like, and trust us, and just talk about things that are on our minds and topics that would be valuable to them and ask them what they would like to discuss and what they'd like to hear and what they'd like us to talk about in the process of, you know, in this particular case, you know, 10x. And same thing with what we're doing with, with I Love Marketing. And because right now everyone's trying to figure it out. You know, when Paul, you asked about some of the things I learned, you know, because it hasn't gone primetime yet, you know, I have an AICO. Everything that from team meetings and everything within my world is being fed into the AICO system that helps us with vision, that helps us with evaluating stuff. We're doing our best with our team of predominantly 10 to 12 full-time employees and then another half of those are part-time or contractors. That's just within the Genius Network world, even though I also have a ghost town and I have a company that we took public in the mining operation and I have an addiction recovery foundation. The core business, there's a lot of moving parts and we're trying to train our team members, because we do training sessions on AI every Friday with a guy named Peter Kobabe, who's one of my Genius Network members. I also have Ari Meisel, who's now on our team helping me with Genius Recovery and productivity stuff. We have a guy named Jason who is building a whole database because what's going to happen with all these AI tools is people are going to get into integration hell. And if they're not protective of their own database, they're going to be outsourcing all this shit to Claude and Gemini and ChatGPT GPT and Perplexity and Groq or whatever. And you know, so I'm, I've all, I've got 4 people that are, that know 100 times more about AI tools than I do working in my company to build certain things. And part of the psychology is let's get everything that can be done with AI that's currently being done by a human to stop being done by a human. So we're then left with being in the hospitality business, with just doing things that only a human can do so that when someone comes to Genius Network, they're greeted by, you know, until I can figure out how to have AI give somebody a hug, I want a human that's actually caring to give somebody a hug. And I want to utilize AI to do all of the thinking and all of the calculations, everything from finance to marketing to everything so that the humans can be left to do the things that only humans could do. I'd like to ask you about that, Dan and Dean. What do you think about the things that humans can do? It's very maybe similar to that question that Jeff Bezos was asked many years ago of, you know, he says that people always ask what's new, what's, you know, and he says, well, you know, the real question is what's not gonna change.

Yeah.

So how would either one of you respond to that?

I love, I heard somebody say one time that, we don't want AI to do, to make art and write songs. We want AI to do the dishes so we can make art and write songs. That's what we really want is to do the things that we can do, you know? I mean, it's not gonna match getting a hug from Gina or Eunice at Genius Network or Babs especially. How are you gonna replace a Babs hug? You know?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, so, so Babs, you can even speak, speak to this too at any point in time if you want to.

So what's not gonna change is you really need to have control of your own thoughts.

Mm-hmm.

And, and actually, you know, continue to develop your own ability to think about your thinking and come up with your breakthroughs. And then if you want to, um, outsource some of it to AI and all that, then that's, You know, up to you, but, um, but your thinking is the highest value thing as far as I'm concerned.

You four have been chatting about the strategic use of AI, which I'm not seeing online. I'm seeing what, what can I do with AI? You, you, you know, not the strategic use of it, which I think is part of wisdom, but part of it comes from this idea that, um, you know, this is brand new. We've never seen this before. And, um, Dan wrote an article recently that, that basically says, no, we, we, we have seen this before and we have something to learn from it. 'Cause wisdom is every time you summarize your experience, you generate wisdom. That's where it comes from. Evidence that works and what doesn't work. So Dan, you have spoken this idea that zero is the original AI or something like that.

We'll chat about that.

And then from there, even just to this, you know, today creates a better tomorrow. What do we learn from that and maybe how does AI help there? So I gave you a lot, but it's, Babs gave me the volley, so I just dunked it over the net.

Thank you, Babs. Yeah, one thing I'd like to direct people to, Babs and I have hosted a discussion group in Toronto for 24 years. I think this is our 96th meeting tonight and we get together, there's about a dozen people and somebody picks a book, an actual book, and, or the Audible version, and they read it, and then other people send in articles, which we just reformat to 8.5 by 11, and it is a book. You can see the book, it's here. But there was an interesting article that came in, and it was from Shannon Waller, who's key person in our company, that the hottest job in tech right now is writing and communicating, writing and communicating. And they're finding that the communicating with AI has made people very, very discerning about what's really good communication. Okay, and they're finding that writers are being hired by Netflix, for example. They They have a salary range up to $750,000 for somebody who's really good with words.

The—

I'll give you the article because you can look it up. It's, uh, the hottest job in tech is writing words, and the author is Amanda Hoover, A-M-A-N-D-A Hoover, and it's in the book, or it's in the site Business Insider. February 3rd, 2026. So anyway, uh, but what I'm noticing is that, um, um, when something new happens, uh, a lot of the people are telling you that nothing like this is ever happening before are actually, um, marketing their stock. Okay, so you have to realize when something new comes along, um, there's a scare factor to it. If you don't get on board right away and get on board with us, you're just going to be left behind or you're going to be left out, you know. So that's always part of a new technology, that there's a scare factor to do it. But actually, we've had some things in human history, and I was on a podcast with Peter Diamandis, and I like to do the history part, history part, and I said, you know, we've had things like this before. There's been great technological breakthroughs. But the one I found which is closest to what I think is happening to AI right now is the introduction of zero into mathematics. And that was invented in India thousands of years ago, but they never did anything with it. It was just philosophers getting together and they created this concept of zero and then they created the number system. You have 9 numbers and you have zero., and you can do all sorts of interesting math with it. And it didn't get to Europe until about 1200, 1200, and it was Arab traders who traded into India, and they could do really fast calculations in their head where for the Europeans it would take them a couple days to work out projections using Roman numerals and the, you know, XVII, And it changed everything, the introduction of zero. And what gave me the thought that this was like AI is that it created a cognitive change. People just thought about things differently when they had zero. You can't do double entry bookkeeping unless you have zero because you have to have minus numbers and plus numbers. And so we have some thought structures that have, been introduced into human society at a certain point and made a big difference. I mean, you, the economics just took off like a rocket once you had zero. You could do all sorts of things with mathematics and with finance once you had zero. But it wasn't so much a technology, it was just a totally different way of looking at the world. And I think that AI, it's a cognitive transformation or it's a cognitive disruption. I think it's more of what happens to your brain with this than it is any— it's not a new app, it's not a new piece of hardware, it's something changes in your brain. And we're in the early stages, it's year 3. It took 300 years for it to become widely accepted in Europe. But I, you know, and people say, well, it's not going to take 300 years for AI to become widely accepted. And I said, well, we don't know that. You know, we really don't know that. We're all guessing and betting on this. There's no certainty to AI whatsoever. It's all guesses and bets. I think the future period is just guesses and bets, and some people are better at it than others. So that's my thought about it. But it has happened before, you know, lower population, different part of the world, but humans create really interesting breakthroughs. And then other humans are, you know, very receptive to thinking about things in a new way.

Robin Pharma Farming, are you on? Share your thoughts on what we discussed because I'd love to, I'd love to hear your perspective on this because you're so immersed with AI and technology. I met Robin at Singularity University, God, what, early, I don't know, 2012. 2012. Okay. Awesome.

Yep.

And you're so immersed in the, with the medical technology and just everything. I mean, you're, you're very, very into it. What, what are your thoughts on what we've been sharing here?

So first off, technology, uh, historically has always created more jobs than it's destroyed. And so thinking that through, you know, there's no guarantee on the future, but we are seeing brand new companies, brand new positions, um, that didn't exist even 5 years ago. But yeah, with the communication side, I'm seeing that a lot. There's a way that these large language models, um, write that sounds non-human. And so people are sending me like links to $300,000 jobs, like being a communicator. And, uh, I've got a couple of clients who want to have me write like something like an 8-page white paper for $20,000. So writing absolutely is one of those things that isn't going to go away anytime soon, though it seems like it should have. Uh, second thing is events, right? People always want to be able to interact with other human beings. So both these types of events like we're doing right now, but also the in-person events. Mm-hmm. So I can foresee that, um, that's just gonna get bigger and bigger over the next 5 to 6 years.

You know, it's, it's funny too, like I, I get driven around by my Tesla, you know, in the self-driving mode, right? And while simultaneously being worried about EMFs from battery-operated cars and, um, I'm just sitting there thinking about how easy it is to lose the muscle if you don't use it, which is why I've put a heavy emphasis on handwriting more cards and letters than I used to because I don't want to lose the faculty. And I see people doing it. I mean, they've already done studies that are proving what happens to your brain if you start using AI for everything. It's not good. It is literally not good. So if people, don't work the muscle, there's a lot to be said. If you don't use it, you lose it. And so, yeah, put yourself in situations where you are away from anything except your own brain so you can keep yourself incredibly sharp. I'm worried about young people that just can't even talk to other people because everything is done behind a screen. They literally don't go and interact with and talk with humans. And my friend Ishaan Goel, who, a young guy, Dave Erickson, he was one of the, when we first did our Genius Youth Panel, I think he was like 15 or 16 years old. And he said that he has young friends that are like literally late teens, 18, 19, 20, that they cannot go up and talk to a clerk in a store or someone in a restaurant and order something like without being really nervous and fumbling around. And I'm like, What are you talking about? But he's like, it's, it's, it's true. He's, he's like, you should see how, you know, incapable some young people are with interacting at a human level with other people.

Let's speak to this today makes better tomorrow's idea, but give us, give us a couple thoughts on there. And, and Dean, Joe, Babs, give us, give us your input on, on what you think this means.

What AI is doing is giving us an opportunity to change our time sense. I have to give a pitch to a really great strategic coach member, Lior Weinstein. And, um, we had a big convention in Nashville 2 years ago, and he was, um, talking about a trip that he and his wife had taken to Africa with about 20 other couples on a safari-type event, but that was mainly to talk about being parents. And on the final night, they had a sort of campfire and everybody was talking about what they were doing so that their future, their children could have a better future. And Léor said something. He says, you know, I don't really know that much about the future and I don't really know what my children are going to do in the future. He says, my job is to give my children a better past. And it was just such a striking idea, thought of, well, of course, you know, that it's their past that's going to make the big difference in their future. And so I started playing around with the idea and I got it down to the point where the purpose of today is that tomorrow morning, this was a great yesterday. Okay, so that's when I get up in the morning and this is day 217. So I've done it for 217 days in a row. And so I get up in the morning and I said, so what do I do today that tomorrow when I look back, this has been a great yesterday. And about 20 days into it, I created a scoring system. And the scoring system used 3 numbers, 1, 5, and 10. And so I started grading experiences like brushing my teeth as a 1, having a Zoom call with Strategic Coach clients as a 10. And you just make a qualitative judgment about what the— yeah. And I started off and I was starting to get 40-point days. I was starting to get 60-point days. Yesterday was 195. And I just go along and I got a little scorecard that everything is either a 1 or 5 or a 10. But what I've noticed as I go along, I want to get a higher score. I always start the day saying, "I want this to be a really high scoring today so that tomorrow morning it was great." And it really changes your time sense. The other thing is I'm writing the quarterly book, so it'll be out in September, And the title of it is, uh, Yesterday Creates Tomorrow. And what I'm noticing that I have 217 days now where every day was a great yesterday. And so there's a real momentum. There's a real sense of confidence. There's a real sense of focus. But the other thing I noticed about it is that I'm less and less worried about tomorrow. Because I'm actually creating the ingredients today that the impact of what I do today is really going to make for a really great tomorrow. But, the other thing is it's cut off completely the thing that I think causes ADD. And, that's been a real surprise. And, this is just an idea on my part. So, I have no clinical proof of what I'm talking about, but I think ADD, is where you emotionally fall in love with a future result that does not exist. Okay, so you see something and you immediately get emotionally connected to it, but it doesn't actually exist, which would be okay if it was one thing, but it's actually 20 things. And each of those future imagined results actually compete for today's attention. That's how I experience it.

ADD.

And I notice about day 100, I don't do that anymore. I'm not connecting to that future result. And, um, and, um, in the book, I'll talk about a lot of changes I notice when you do this, but everybody I talk to is kind of interested in the idea. Uh, I talked to my main doctor today and I told them about this, about 30 days ago, he says, you know, I've been using that time system that when I get up in the morning, you know, I've got 16 hours ahead of me and I, I just think about those 16 hours and what am I going to do in those 16 hours that tomorrow morning it was a great yesterday. So anyway, I just want to share that.

Yeah.

And I noticed that, um, Dan has shifted into a greater calmness and more present and more fun. So, and that's from— and that matters, that Babson. And that matters. I think he gets points for making that up. It's made me easier to live with. Yeah. So anyway, uh, uh, but I think this is going to be a big book. So we'll get the small book out and then the publisher They're always looking for new things. Hay House, who Joe introduced us to. And, but, and I think it's happening because of AI. Technological progress is now out of control. I mean, it's so far out of control that we can't even imagine how far, because there's just millions and millions of people who are involved in improving this technology. So you can't keep up with it. You know, you can't experience all the water in the ocean now. It's too big. So you got to say, well, what part of the water do I really want to have? And what's the experience I want to have? So I think the big thing is that ADD, you know, ADD went through an explosion over the last 20 years. And I think it was just getting used to digital technology really spurred up ADD. Joe and Babs and I went to the Amen Clinic at Newport Beach, and we were talking to the psychiatrist there, and I've talked to Joe, knows Daniel Amen really well, and it's just gone through the roof, and I think it's trying to come to grips with exponential technology. Well, AI comes along, and I said, staying up with technology is now, it's gone, you know, it's just so big that we can't, so maybe we can just fall back and just enjoy today.

What exactly did you do on your 190-point day?

What I became conscious of, there's just things that I do every day. So, Babs and I, Babs has taught me all sorts of tricks from her days when she was, you know, a registered massage therapist. And it was all, you know, how you balance yourself in the morning. So, we have all sorts of routines when we get up. I mean, The alarm goes off and I get out of bed and I go downstairs, make sure all the lights are on. And, you know, it's kind of cold. It's kind of cold. We have the air conditioning on. So I have a first world solution. In order to warm up the air conditioning, I turn on the fireplaces. And, you know, so we have fireplaces, I make sure all the lights are on because it's just nice to come downstairs and it's all ready to go. And we have medicines that we take in the morning, we have supplements that we take. So there's a whole list and this is just repetitive. So after about 3 months of doing it, I figure there's a score of 80 from the end of dinner the night before till we eat breakfast, it's about 80. So I give it basically 80 points. So I have 80 points to start with. Okay, and I don't have to do that every day. I just give myself an 80, and then every 2 or 3 weeks, I just check out the list if that's the right scoring. So I'm starting at 80, and then I created a brand new thinking tool yesterday for a workshop, a Zoom workshop that I had this morning, and that was that was like 20 points right there. That was 20 points. And the other thing, I put myself on the scale and I had lost, I'd lost a pound and a half from the day before. That was worth, that was worth 10 points. Then I had a podcast with Dean Jackson. That's one of my favorite Sunday morning activities. And Dean and I are able to fill an hour very easily. So I, I got 10 points for Dean. I didn't eat lunch and that's worth 25 points if I don't eat lunch because it's, it makes sure all sorts of physical things are good. I did a Vasper ex— Vasper is an exercise machine and that's, I got 30 points for that because it's terrific exercise. Then I had a Zoom call with Jeff Madoff in the afternoon, and then I had the articles I have to read for tonight's discussion, and it added up at the end of the day, it's 195 points. That's a high. The highest I've ever had is about 250. That's a big production day. It's a workshop day and everything. But the big thing is, is that you're gamifying your daily experience. In other words, you're taking what's essentially a qualitative experience and you're quantifying it. And the brain really likes being able to count things. I think the human brain just likes to keep scores. And I have some days where I just don't feel like knocking myself out, but I pick 4 or 5 things. It gives me a lower score, but I don't really care. And, but it's funny because I've, you know, I don't have the book out yet, but everybody I talk to is very intrigued by this idea. And they actually feel more relaxed if they— the only thing you have to do is the 16 hours you have available. And also I get a score for really good sleeping too. So the overnight scores, I get really good sleeping scores. But you keep looking for things in your day that you can give yourself a score for. Now I want to tell you one thing that's really interesting, and that is where your brain goes with this, and that is bad experiences. So we've had a couple of really whopper storms in Toronto this winter. I remember in February we left, we were supposed to leave Chicago to get back to Toronto and we would have been home by about 6 o'clock. And it's a time change, so 6:30. We got home at 3 o'clock in the morning and it was just everything that could go wrong that night went wrong. And I was sitting there and I was saying, I'm really cool and calm about this because I get points for being cool and calm when things go bad. And I'm noticing more and more if I'm in situations that are unpleasant situations, I said, okay, just be really cool, just be really calm and give yourself points for being really cool and calm. So it's an interesting, interesting what it does to your brain, but this has been the best 217 days of my entire life. And, you know, I'm 82 and I'm experiencing an entirely new way to experience my daily life. The book will be out in the first week of September, so we'll have it. So the book, and the book has an audio tape, it has a videotape, and it's got a, you know, it's got a lot of nice cartoons and and everything like that. But I think that AI will drive us crazy if we try to, we gotta get every bit of opportunity out of AI. I said, you're just gonna drive yourself crazy. So why don't we just change our entire time system so that we don't do that?

Dean, what do you think of this idea that today makes a better tomorrow?

I think it's amazing. I mean, I look at what I noticed immediately was that as entrepreneurs and as idea people and creators, we definitely have the ability to see a big vision, the ocean of all the things that we could possibly do. And I know I've always been guilty of kind of living into that future of here's what we're going to do. And I've practically been thinking as soon as I understood this idea of yester— creating a yesterday, there is almost a sense of rather than having an infinite amount of time forward, the only time that you can get something, I call it on the permanent record for today is today. And so my mind has been thinking of it as being a contestant on, do you remember that old game called Supermarket Sweep where you get a fixed amount of time and you can run around and whatever you can fit in your basket, you get to keep? And that's the way that time actually is. If you imagine it, that it's crumbling right behind us, that as soon as this minute is gone, you've lost the opportunity to have done something. With that minute. So, I've been approaching the days with— and I like to gamify things just like Dan does in terms of I've been looking at the day as I have a budget of 1,000 minutes. And the timeframes that I look at is my currency for it is like, what can I do with 10 minutes? What can I do with 100 minutes, which is two 50-minute Focus Finders? And what can I do in the context of my overall budget of 1,000? Minutes for the day. And it creates a sense of urgency that every 10 minutes counts. There's, it's amazing what you can do in a little bit of time.

You know, I want to, like at the last Genius Network meeting that we did, I opened up the day with this concept from Ned Hallowell, who's the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world. He's written more books on it than anyone. I've known him for a real long time. And he— it's very short, but it's, it's finding your creative outlet. I'm going to read it. And at Genius Network, everyone, you know, I had everyone take a few minutes and write down what, what, what is the thing that they do. But that'll make sense in just a moment. But let me just go ahead and read it. Everyone really found this valuable. Finding your creative outlet. You need to find and develop an activity that really taps into your imagination. If you engage in that activity regularly, every day, If you can, I guarantee you'll be amazed by the outcome. The important thing is to stick at it for more than just a few days. The good news is you'll want to stick at it. Uh, if you pick the right outlet, your creative outlet can be anything, uh, you'd like to do as long as it allows your imagination to roam free. It could be cooking or starting your own business or composing music or dancing or building a shed from scratch in your garden. Um, to name just a few options. Create in whatever medium feels right to you. It doesn't matter what outlet you choose. What matters is that you find it and develop it. To really satisfy the itch, your creative outlet must meet two requirements. It must be challenging. If it's not, you'll get bored and people with ADHD can't tolerate boredom. It must excite you and turn you on. In other words, it must be right for you. If you put those two requirements together, you have what I call your right right difficult. So, that's what it is. So, write that down, right difficult. What is your right difficult? Finding your right difficult is almost as crucial as falling in love with the right person, almost. Finding your right difficult is huge because once you find it, you'll be using it, doing it, cursing it, loving it, hating it, and living under its spell for the rest of your life. And, I have Ari Meisel who's actually now on here. He wrote that was woodworking for me. And then Jason, who's one of my really bright tech guys, he wrote, I do oil painting, forging, dirt moving. I love sculpting dirt into a beautiful landscape with heavy equipment. Very relaxing. And so, which is funny, but the whole point is like, you know, AI is just a tool and it will be amazing and awesome like any other tools, or you can use it to consumer control your life. Not you can use it, it will use you. And most people like social media, most people don't use social media, they're used by social media. A lot of people don't use technology, they're used by technology. And I think every single one of us knows what that means. So I wanted to bring that up because part of any functioning with 10X is getting yourself into a flow state. That's why I'm really I always like doing interviews with Steven Kotler because the opposite of addiction is connection. And, the most ultimate form of connection is getting into a flow state, finding that place where you're just operating and you're enjoying it. Dan with his unique ability is getting into never-ending growing and learning and excitement with something. And so, part of that is identifying what's your kryptonite, identifying what your superpower is, and utilizing all of those people, things around us that can help enhance that. So, I'd be curious if you know what your right difficult is, post it in the chat because the thing is humans have different things. Some people, pianos for writing. Let's see what else. Right difficult using the L strategy, empathy, learning French, portrait painting, software, gardening, flying. The point is all work and play makes all of us dull. So, part of it is finding that thing that we connect with. And, what Steven Kotler has determined with getting into a flow state, it has to be just not too much, but it has to be above just a slight bit above 4% the difficulty and challenging level in order for you to get into that state of flow. So, none of this is supposed to be per se easy, but it can't be so hard you won't do it. And, and there's a real, you know, there's a real joy and a real connection that comes with earning and developing that thing. So I think, you know, everything that, that Dan has been talking about and even the wisdom, you know, you find the wisdom in that connection with life, that connection with other people.

And so I just wanted to share that because we're, we're breaking into the, the final act of this. Bab sent me a Wall Street Journal piece that really interested in this one. One-year concept. A year ago, the message for many business leaders with it was that AI was gonna wipe out jobs. For the past month or so, tech CEOs have been striking a more optimistic tone. In late May, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman— and if you don't know Sam, he is quite a character, uh, Sam Altman— who has long predicted that AI would lead to seismic shifts in the workforce, he said during a conference, we've been roughly right on technological predictions. And pretty wrong on the social and economic implications. Pretty wrong on the social and economic implications. What can your experiences, Dan and Joe, bring to this thought?

Well, I think it's so new. It's just so new. And I mean, first of all, OpenAI and Anthropic, they want to get money in. I mean, they're in fierce competition, all the big tech companies. So You know, one way is, you know, of getting people to spend money and be part of something is to scare them, you know. But the other thing is, I find the people making the most negative predictions about AI are people who aren't very good with people. They're just not very good with people. They don't like people. They'd like to not have people. And so, but there's a lot of people, Joe's an outstanding example, who really likes people. So he's going to use the technology to deepen his connections with people. But my one experience is that I think every time a human brain interacts with AI, they do something different with it. So you can't predict what humans are going to do with AI. But, you know, there's lots of experiences. Humans, you know, I don't know what the number is right now. It's gone back past half a billion, half a, yeah, 500,000 years now. You know, anthropologists are saying, you know, we have clear-cut evidence now that humans are as old as 500 million. You know, and there's new stuff being discovered all over the world. And, you know, we've developed a lot of understanding about what it means to be human. And some new trick isn't going to change what humans are really, really up to. I would say that I think some countries are going to do better with it because they put a, an emphasis on individualism. They put an emphasis on self-development. They put an emphasis on creativity and everything like that. And I think those countries are probably going to do a better job with AI than the ones who don't trust their people.

Yeah. Well, you know, to go back, I don't really know what's going to happen. I'm just sitting here. So for me to I don't want to say anything like I have any sort of real knowing. I don't know. I have my ideas, I have my thoughts on it, but I think humans will always invent other things. And I think there will be a period of time where there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of anxiety. And as, I don't know if Richard Rossi's on here, but Richard has that line, wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunities. So wherever you see anxiety in the world, that is a big sign of like, what's an opportunity here? And Dan, you created this concept of the DOS conversation many years ago, dangers, opportunities, and strengths. Every single one of us here has dangers in our lives. We have opportunities and then we have strengths. And the DOS of the marketplace, whatever market you're in, the DOS of your community your company, if you're in the educational system, there's a DOS for the educational system. If you're in politics, there's a DOS for politics. Dan and I and most of us here operate in the entrepreneurial world. So we're always looking at what are the dangers, the opportunities, and the strengths of entrepreneurs and how do we leverage that. And I think that's why everyone is joining us here today is to figure out how to reach your opportunities, deal with the things that are potential threats or dangers, obstacles, problems, challenges, and how do we reach, you know, the outcomes and the results that we want in our lives. And we, we get that. We borrow from our strengths to overcome our dangers, both physical and psychological. You know, I'm here with— you want to lean in, Shari? Come on. So Shari over here, she's a, she's a vaginal plastic surgeon, one of the top in the world. And, you know, AI is not doing surgeries yet. At least they will be. They're doing some, but not those ones.

They're trained to AI first.

Yes, exactly. But, but, you know, even if in such, you know, in such an intimate sort of type of surgery that she does, there's— it requires a real empathetic, caring human to make someone feel— I mean, Cherie's the first one she's spoken about this, that A lot of the patients that will come to her have been thinking about this for 5, 10, 20 years. But there's a fear, there's a concern. And so there's, you know, there's that human element of, of just connecting with someone on a particular level. So I think there's going to always be opportunity, like for sales. You know, if you're good at doing sales and influence and persuasion, you will always find opportunities and learning how to influence human behavior. Secondly, anything that, you know, the massive disconnect where technology happens. There's some companies that in the last month have switched to having AI, like restaurants that we would go to that are now being answered by it. It like completely changes the experience unless they dial it in right. There's one HVAC company that my COO that I had for probably like 8, 9 years ago, he learned a bunch of stuff about running a business by working for me, started his own HVAC company, and then recently sold it to a very big company that has 45 different brands. They're huge. And he was telling me about they spent 3 months just testing this AI answering system. What is the AI? Is it Maggie or Maddie or something? You call into it, it is so well executed that it just answers questions. But a lot of these systems— so before you roll out anything, I mean, obviously measure twice and cut once sort of thing before you just delegate everything to tech. But there, I, I don't, I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, and I'm, and I believe everyone has a different vantage point and a different opinion on this, but I, I'm pro-human, so I hope that humans— I was on a Zoom yesterday with former Governor Rick Perry and Alex Epstein, and there was about 10 of us on this Zoom. And Rick Perry has been one of the most instrumental people in laying the tracks for the legal use of ibogaine, which for trauma, PTSD, addiction, and he would I used to be this hardcore Republican, lock them up, throw away the keys, and then he did ibogaine, which is the most powerful psychedelic and plant medicine in the world. It's more powerful than ayahuasca. And, I was the first person in the world to have before and after brain scans of doing ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT in 2015. I did that in Mexico at a clinic and took a film crew and filmed it. Never released the footage yet. But you take plant medicines and psychedelics, there's going to be a massive opportunity for helping people with traumas and with mental illnesses and things that have never been available before. I actually even own ayahuascaintelligence.com, which is another form of AI. But that being said, I'm not going to go deeply into it other to say that there's going to be so many opportunities for jobs in that arena that you cannot outsource to AI, not in a million years could you do that. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just interesting to see. So those are my thoughts. Those are my thoughts. So Dean, you wanna say anything?

I mean, this has been a fascinating conversation. I mean, it's so, every time I see, you know, Every time I talk to Dan, I get another layer of how this works. Now I understand the points system so much better. I'm totally applying that to my thing. I've been measuring how much of my thousand-minute currency I'm actually proactively spending rather than how much is just getting spent. A visual that I've been imagining is that Time's constantly moving towards us, and the choice that we have is to approach it like a Tetris game where the pieces are just coming at random and you have to put them all in place, or to orchestrate it like a Guitar Hero game where the sheet music is coming and at the end you've played a beautiful song. So that's an interesting way of thinking at it.

I would love to have both Dan and Joe just each give me a one-sentence tip, you know, on working-wise. And, you know, let's go there first. So I'm starting a little bit for both of you to think that, but a one sentence from Dan, one sentence from Joe on working-wise.

I would say focus on buyers and subscribers when it comes to making money.

Fantastic.

Dan?

Yeah, I think it's better to have happy days than unhappy days.

Dan Babs, you'll be at the annual event?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Absolutely. So we'll, we'll see you all there. Dean, you'll be there. Robin will be there. I know. Um, I'm a good chunk of you. Um, we'll, we'll see there. That will be, um, um, fantastic. Um, will the book be out by then, Dan?

Yeah, it comes out first week of September.

For sure.

Oh, awesome. So, so, so that's the type of thing that we're doing. Yeah.

And, uh, we'll, have a, you know, we'll have 10x Talks probably in August and September. So that'll be fun. And everybody can download the ebook version of it.

Yeah, I just appreciate, you know, there's so many people here that we've had relationships with for a long time. And certainly what we're talking about on 10x Talk, the whole premise of 10x Talk is just how to be a better entrepreneur, how to build and grow your business. It's not just money, it's where you spend your time. Each person has a different area that they would like to make improvements in and stuff. And so, you know, Dan, if you just had one final piece of advice to leave everyone with on how to get the most out of the discussion that we've had here today, what would that be?

Yeah, well, you know, there are people who are simplifiers in life and there are people who are multipliers in life. So I'm an extreme simplifier. Dean Jackson's an extreme simplifier. So, you know, I just look for the one thing, you know, that comes out of discussion. I'm not looking for 10 things. But the big thing is that I know, and the reason why I, you know, I love Zoom so much is the ability to put out new ideas and get a lot of feedback right away on what it means. And that wasn't possible. Time. Always thank COVID for, you know, how it gave us so much new capability over the last 4 or 5 years. But the one thing that I'm taking it away here is to actually add just a little bit of the idea to the new book, Yesterday Creates Tomorrow, on what's happening with AI and do that in sort of the conclusion section of the book and saying, you know, it's not a function of AI, it's a function of technology. Technology period is just expanding exponentially. And it's a world that we created. It's not a world that we inherited. And so anyway, I got a lot of insight on how to put in 3 or 4 paragraphs in the conclusion.

Look at us ending this thing on time. You have been listening to 10X Talk Live with Dan Sullivan and Joe Polish and special guests. Too many to list at this point. Um, the live is awesome. The interaction's been great. We really appreciate those of you who told us what you liked about this. We will have the AI go deep into that so we can perform more of these. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you, special guests, Babs, Dean, Robin, and the rest.

Thank you.

We'll let you go. Have a great day, everybody.

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