Dan Sullivan Strategic Coach: Buy Back Your Time!

Welcome to 10X Talk. Do you ever find yourself procrastinating? Does your thinking have something to do with it? Dan Sullivan shares the two biggest indicators that show where you are procrastinating and introduces the procrastination priority. A simple four step process that shows you what's holding you back and gives you more energy. Dan Sullivan is the co founder of Strategic Coach, author of over 30 publications, a visionary innovator and gifted conceptual thinker. Dan has over 35 years experience as a highly regarded speaker, consultant, strategic planner and coach to entrepreneurial individuals and groups. If you would like access to the full feature video presentation, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit 10xtalk.com117 that's 10xtalk.com117 the next.

Presenter has impacted my life in an entrepreneurial way, in a value creation way in all aspects of life. More than any other person I've ever gotten guidance, advice, anything from in mostly the area of business. Now I certainly have read over a thousand books. I go to more events and stuff than probably anyone I know. This person is the smartest entrepreneurial thinker I've ever met on the planet. And he is the top coach in the world to successful entrepreneurs. His name is Dan Sullivan. How many of you know Dan? And I'll just real quick intro on him. He's the co founder along with Bab Smith, his wife and partner, the creators of the Strategic Coach program. Since its inception in 1989, this lifetime focusing program has helped over 17,000 accomplished entrepreneurs to reach new heights of success and happiness. He's a visionary, an innovator, a gifted conceptual thinker. Dan has over 40 years experience as a highly regarded speaker, consultant, strategic planner and coach to entrepreneurial individuals and groups. He's also one of my closest friends. We do a podcast together called 10xtalk.com, which is amazing. And Dan is going to talk to you about something that will change your life. So give it up for Mr. Dan Sullivan.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. So how are you? Really, really good. Yeah. How many of you got the jitters after Peter? You know, I mean I'm really excited about this stuff. Then you had to sort of change your underpants. So anyway, I get together with Peter every quarter. We do a podcast series called Exponential Wisdom. So the big thing about it is that when you hear predictions like that, people really experience it very, very differently. And some people have brains that can really process that type of information. And one of the things I've noticed since I Started coaching. I started coaching in 1974. And one of the things I've noticed is that there's some mindsets that entrepreneurs have when they're confronted with someone who seems to be way out ahead of them, that actually kind of paralyzes them. And I'm kind of the antidote to that type of paralysis because I get people unparalyzed, regardless of where they are. So on the screen, I have a statement, and the statement is that everybody in this room right now is performing and achieving at 100%, okay? And the little addition to that of your mindset ceilings. So here's the deal. You know, I went through the school System starting in 1950, and one of the things that I really noticed is that there was sort of this manipulative message that came through from the school system. And you hear it that you're only living, you're only operating at 20% of your potential. And I've never really figured out what potential is. And what I know is that it's a way of manipulating people to think that where they are is not sufficient, that they should be someplace else. So I just reversed it, and I said, everybody here is actually operating and achieving at all times at 100% of your mindset ceiling. So what I'm going to show you is visually what I mean by this. And the graphic I'm going to show you is really what strategic coach actually is. And what we are is that we're a way of getting you to think about your thinking so that a lot of people think about things, other people think about people, other people think about thoughts. But very few people actually step back and actually observe how their thinking actually works. And I'm going to give you a little sample of this this morning. But what happens is that you have this graphic here, and this is you, and you have performance, and you have achievement, and you're operating at 100%. And that's my model for everybody on the planet. 7.3 billion people, everybody today is operating at 100% of their performing and achieving that 100%. But they're at a mindset ceiling, okay? And you've been through many mindset ceilings. If you go right back to the beginning of your career, back then, when you first started, you were operating and you were achieving that 100%, but you had mindset ceilings. And your growth as an entrepreneur has been going from one mindset ceiling to the other. And so, as a coach, I can never, ever improve someone's performance, and I can never, ever improve someone's achievement. But I can show them how to break through their mindset ceilings. Okay. And what kind of mindset ceiling that they want to break through is strictly unique to them. But there's just a way of thinking about your thinking so that you can break through. And no matter what your greatest achievement is and no matter what your greatest performance is, there's going to be another mindset ceiling. And so one of the things that I'm a great believer is that you should never, ever stop going to the next mindset ceiling. So if you think about it, you have this mindset ceiling. And then what we want to do is that we want to take you to a higher mindset ceiling. Your performance will automatically increase. Your achievement will automatically increase. And so this is an endless game. And I can take it even further. I can show you what this looks like, and this graphically is really what strategic coach does. Okay. So a lot of the things that Peter was talking about, a lot of things that Joe was talking about earlier, is that when you come to a place like this, or you come to Abundance360 or Strategic Coach, you come in at the level of performance and achievement that you're at, but then you run into mindset ceilings. And then the whole question is, how do you break through that ceiling? And so just a little background. I'm the fifth child of two fifth children. So when I grew up, I'm the one that my parents really knew how to raise. And so I was really, really happy. I had an absolutely happy childhood. My mother said she'd never seen a happier child. And when I left home, I grew up on a farm in northern Ohio. When I left home, I wanted to take my basic grasp of happiness out into the world and just keep being happy for the rest of my life. And I noticed that there were challenges thrown my way, and so I've had to think about my thinking to keep being happier and happier. But one of the things that I've noticed as a mindset ceiling that people have is this one. And it's a mindset ceiling is about procrastination. And procrastination is a very, very interesting mindset. And the reason is that it's largely secret. It's a largely secret experience that most people have, you know, so you watch Peter up here or you watch other performers over the next two days, and you'll sit there, and you have a tendency, we all have a tendency to compare what's going our insides against someone's outsides. How many of you have ever noticed that you Compare your inside, outside. So you would look at a guy like Peter or Joe, and he's up here and he's really cool and both of them are really composed and they have their act together. And you would say, that person does not procrastinate. Absolutely does not procrastinate. Okay. And I'm not sharing any secrets here, but if you interviewed them, they would say, there's enormous areas in my life where I'm just running ahead as fast as I can, but there are some areas that I'm actually procrastinating. And so what I'm going to show you, and this is just one of the things that we in strategic coach would call a mindset gateway. So I have, over the years, I've created about 100 of these. And these are general purpose thinking processes that will actually take you through a mindset ceiling. Now what we're going to actually do is I'm going to show you how to actually use your biggest procrastinations to actually be the vehicle for telling you what the most important things are that you want to do. And, and you're going to take on three of your biggest procrastinations right now where you are today. And within about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, we're going to flip them and we're going to turn them into an area of motivation, we're going to turn them into an area of energy and an energy of focus. Okay? And by doing this today, I'm hoping that you can see that you can do this on any day, that you could actually, for the rest of your life, you could actually, in thinking about what's most important tomorrow, you could actually say, well, what are the three biggest things that I'm procrastinating on? And those three biggest things that you're procrastinating on are actually your best indicator on what you should work on tomorrow. And therefore, for the rest of your life, you never have to worry about whether you're doing the right thing things, because your procrastination will actually tell you that these are the most important things. Okay? And for each of you is unique, but the general principle is actually something that we can all master. And there's a great deal of loneliness with procrastination. One of the things I notice is that generally speaking, when I talk to people about their procrastination, it's like it's a secret that's buried in the basement. But it's not just in the basement, it's in a secret room in the basement. And they actually do not Want. They said I can't talk about my procrastinations. Okay. Because the way it's set up is that procrastination is kind of like it's an indication that you're a lesser human being. You're, you're, you know, you don't have your act together. And, you know, and there's a moral failing here. Actually, it's a moral failing. You're a sub. You know, it's not very, very good. And if you only get your act together, you could live up to your potential. I don't know if any of you have ever had that. Okay, so let's talk about procrastination. First of all, how do I know if I'm procrastinating? So I'm just going to give you the two guides to know what constitutes a procrastination for you. And the first one is that it uses the word should, and it's something that you should do. So should is the giveaway. I think words are very, very important. And I think that the word should, the moment you hear the word should, you know that someone's talking about a procrastination that's should do. Or the second one is shouldn't do, should do or shouldn't do. And the should do is you should do, but you haven't done. So that's the first procrastination. And the second one is you shouldn't do, but you haven't stopped. So that pretty well covers the field. And I find that generally speaking, if you just hear, you know, listening, if someone in talking to you uses the word should, you know they're procrastinating. Okay? If you use the word should and should is a guilt word, should is a manipulation word. And it always indicates that procrastination is going on. It's just general indicator. I think it's good for 90% of the procrastinations. Two places where you can procrastinate. The first one is work, and the other one is your personal time outside of work. And just generally speaking, so I can include the whole room in the area of work. Procrastination, it would fall into these areas. First of all, planning, deciding, initiating, communicating, informing, implementing, responding, completing. Okay, so those general areas. And so when you think about your work and you think about these activities, then these activities would sort of indicate to you where you could be procrastinating. We're going to do a quick sprint, what I call sprint thinking, where I'm just going to have you brainstorm for about three minutes and Actually write down a whole bunch of procrastinations that you're doing right now. And then in your personal life, it's sort of similar, but it's informing, helping, supporting, organizing, participating, discussing, deciding, solving, and completing. Okay. And so you can think of all the different situations. As entrepreneurs, there's a particular indicator of what constitutes your biggest, biggest procrastinations. And I've got an organization. Bab Smith is here. She's my partner. We have about 120 team members. And when I'm procrastinating, I'm being a bottleneck that's preventing teamwork. And I noticed that my biggest procrastinations is where teamwork can't really be triggered using the skillful people that we have in the company. And the reason is because I'm being a bottleneck of one kind or another. And it generally falls into the category of the first line. How many of you, the rest of you, when you think of the procrastinations that really keep you awake at night or not enjoying your free time, usually is where you're kind of a bottleneck. That's pretty. Preventing teamwork. Yeah, it falls into that at home in personal life, too. Happy personal life requires enormous amounts of teamwork with other people. And so doing it. So I'm just trying to give you the general landscape of procrastination. And what I'm trying to do here is saying that this is an enormous source of potential energy for you, this enormous sense of potential motivation. But right now, it's trapped. So whatever you write down where your procrastination is, it's energy, but you don't have access to the energy. It's actually trapped energy. And how many of you have procrastinated on something for quite a long time, and then when you finally acted and broke through, there was this huge burst of energy. There was this enormous burst of energy. And so the one thing I want to get across to you here is that the time you spend procrastinated, procrastinating is never wasted time. Once you get through it. And the energy that you feel that you've wasted procrastinating is never lost. It's just not available to you right now. Okay. And this is one of those areas too, where you get manipulated around the issue of procrastination, you actually get manipulated. Okay. Being a happy person, I'm very resistant to manipulation. You know, Joe spoke about the theme of the conference. Freedom is actually freedom from being manipulated by external circumstances or external messages. So I'm very sensitive. I have you know, I have spidey sense for anything where I sense that someone is trying to manipulate me in a particular direction. And. And so I go after any thought, form or any mindset which actually seems to be a manipulative manipulation. And then I come up with a counter, an antidote to it. I counteract manipulation so that people really are free in their own minds and they can think very, very freeing thoughts. So I really, really love helping people get a real sense of freedom about their life and not being manipulated by thoughts that come from the past or in the present or possible future. And once they're freed up in that aspect of their life, then their time gets freed up, their money gets freed up, their relationships get freed up, and also their purpose in life. Your purpose in life. See, one of the things you discover when you come to Genius Network and also Abundance 360, is that there's a lot of very, very smart people in the world, okay? There's a lot of very, very smart people in the world. And so you don't want to have a goal that you want to be the smartest person in the room. Okay, Say I'm not the smartest person in the room. But for something that I've really taken a look at for 40 years, I'm probably the smartest person regarding that particular thing. And each of you has a special thing that you're working on, and in that area, you're actually the smartest person. But the vision that Peter's talking about is a lot of really smartness all being available to everybody else. Okay? So my goal from a very early age is that I just want to be in a room where everybody's getting smarter. Okay? That's all I really wanted. And therefore my best usefulness in life as a strategic coach is to just show people how their performance and their achievement can continually go up just by thinking about their mindset ceilings and then freeing themselves up from it. So this is my life work on the planet. I don't know what I've done in previous lifetimes or in future ones, but for this lifetime, this is it. So what I'm doing today is what I was put here to do. All right, Now I'm going to give you a form. We're going to go through this quite quickly. And the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to go to a first column. So if you just look at this, and I've got mine filled out.

So.

You can see what one of the forms looks like when it's all filled out. This is called the procrastination priority. Okay? It's called procrastination priority, and that is your procrastination on any day that you choose to do this. Will actually establish your priority for the next day. Will actually establish your priority for the next day. And it's really, really neat because how many of you have, you know, and just raise your hand. How many of you have generally looked at procrastination as a negative in your life, generally speaking? Me too. I mean, me too. And I want to tell you, I've got a real partner on this in the room. And it's Dean Jackson. And Dean and I have been working on this non stop for the last two and a half months. And both of us, you know, you know, if there was a big room, I would introduce myself. Hi, my name's Dan and I'm a procrastinator. And you would say, hi, Dan. Yeah, hi, Dan. I'm just. I mean, people look at me and they say, Dan, if there's one person in the world who doesn't procrastinate, it's the king of the mindsets. And I procrastinate just as much as anyone else does, okay? But we all have our unique things that. Where we get caught up. So first of all, there's general transparency. The other thing is, I'll tell you this, just because of the experience that I've had with Dean over the last couple months, is that the single most interesting conversation that'll get if you meet a total stranger and you want to talk about something and it immediately becomes interesting, is saying, do you procrastinate? And people would go, yeah, yeah, I do. I could write the book on it, you know, and what I notice is that there's 7.3 billion people on the planet who could write the book on it, are all master procrastinators, okay? There's a reason for this. The only way that you could not be a procrastinator is to simply cease having goals. That would cut it off. And if you're going to do that anyway, death is a quick way of not thinking about goals. So don't do that. So the first thing I'd like you to do very quickly, and we're just going to take three minutes and the first column, what I'm going to have you do is just write down as fast as you can, in no particular order, just write down every area where you're procrastinating, big or small, you know, and just get it out there. Because I just want you to actually write down everything that's in your mind where you know you're procrastinating, where there's a should word you should do or you shouldn't do, personal life or business life, and just write those down. Okay. And if someone will give me the timer on, well, I've got it right in front of me, so I'll keep a track on you. And don't worry about the ranking, don't worry about which comes first. All we're trying to do is get some things down on paper. How many of you have four or five and you can work with them? How many right there? Yeah, we got enough. So what I want you to do very, very quickly, then this is all emotional because procrastination is a very emotional thing. Just pick the three, which, if you got them out of the way, would give you the biggest burst of energy. Like if you got through it, this would actually give you a real burst of energy. The other thing is other people are depending upon it. I find that things where other people are depending upon me and I'm procrastinating, those are really big payoffs. If I actually take my action, Then as soon as you get them circled, just go to the next column where it says the top three priorities. And in the three boxes, 1, 2, 3, just put. Write down again what the procrastination is. Just write it down. Just write down what the procrastination is. Raise your hand. If just writing them down and ranking them, actually you can start feeling the energy. The energy is starting to come back. Yeah, because you're telling the truth. You know, you're just telling the truth. Telling the truth always has big energy boost about anything. And then once you get the three of them written down, I'd like to, very quickly, just to give a first statement of why you're procrastinating. So I've got these. For example, I made a commitment to my team when I was 70 that over the next 25 years I was going to write 100 books. 100 books and 100 quarters. And the first seven quarters I'm good so far. But I always notice that there's a period during the quarter when I get kind of frozen. Can I pull it off again? And that's one of the things I really noticed was I would procrastinate. Even though I've done it seven times before, there's always that thing. Can I pull it off again? Anyway, that's one of the ways I keep my mind alive, by the way, Is it makes me really scared about the next 25 years. And I think fear makes you young. I believe that when people start desiring a courage free future is the moment that they send a universe out. They send a message out to the universe to actually take the parts back. You know, moment you want a courage free future is the moment you start dying. So I have a motto in life, not to give death any assistance. And yeah, Peter and I are. I thought I was a big deal because I want. My goal is living to 156. And then the first podcast I did with Peter, his was 700 and I immediately felt like a lesser human being. And I began procrastinating even on things that would get me to 156. Never get into that type of sword. But now he's got swords. This is even worse. Now he's got swords. And I didn't know that. I didn't know about the sword. Anyway. Okay, so let's. I just want to do this. But how many so far? This is very, very useful. I mean, just doing this and. Yeah, and so this is one of those mindset gateways because one of those mindsets coming along that is stopping performance and achievement is actually procrastination and looking at procrastination in a negative way rather than as a source of enormous energy and direction. So I'm going to just show you. I divide basically every person who's a performer, every person who's an achiever. There are four boxes that contribute to performance achievement. And a lot of people will say, for example, you'll come to a session like these two days and you'll say, I would take action on that if I had the. If I had the confidence. How many of you, when you feel confidence, it's no problem to actually take action? Yeah. And then I'll say to them, but you probably need something else to have confidence. Because I've noticed that people are only confident when they have capability. And they said, right, when I have the capability and confidence, I would take action. I said, do you have the capability and confidence right now? And they said, no, I don't. So what? That means you're not going to take action, Right? And they said, right, when I get the capability and confidence, I'll take action. And I said, you know, it's kind of like saying, if the government would give me a loan, I would become an entrepreneur. Okay. With the proviso that if it was a failure at the end of the year, the government would forgive all my debts. Okay, that sounds Pretty reasonable, doesn't it? Yeah. So anyway. But it's that type of demand. And what I've noticed, actually, that this is not how capability and confidence actually happen. Actually, there's something that happens that has to happen first when you're up against something where you don't have the capability and confidence. And the thing is, it requires courage. Requires courage. And courage is never triggered unless you have commitment. So what a commitment actually is is where you say, I'm going to move forward toward a breakthrough, toward something bigger and better, where I don't yet have the capability and confidence. That's actually what courage is. That's what courage is. Difference between courage and confidence is that courage doesn't feel good. How many of you have noticed the sharp difference in emotion between confidence and courage? The reason why we call it courage is because it doesn't feel good. And that's one of the main reasons why we admire it so much in other people. So I had a very enjoyable army career during the 1960s. And I'm saying that, truthfully, I had one of the dream army careers that you can have. But I was drafted right when Vietnam started. Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin was 1965 in April, and I got drafted in June, July, and ended up two years as the entertainment director for about half of South Korea. Very, very enjoyable. I was actually sorry to come back. I really like the Koreans. Okay. But in basic training, basic training, for the most part, if you're reasonably fit, is just kind of boring, except for one thing. Practice with live grenades. Okay. And the army is very, very intelligent that you actually understand the seriousness. These are weapons that can turn you into hamburger in about five seconds. So they would take us out the night before and they would show us what we're going to do the next morning. And you get down into a pit with one of their instructors, and you take the pin out, and as long as you have the handle down, it won't release. But five seconds after you throw it, then it explodes, and it explodes on the other side of a big mound. They let you see this so that you'll sleep really well that night, which I did not do. And there was accidents. There was actually in the group before us, there was actually someone killed and the instructor badly injured because someone dropped the grenade in the pit. So we got out there, and the first sergeant, who was a World War II Korean War veteran, he said, anyone here scared? My hand went right up. Understanding that I'm a happy person. So, of course, course, I'm going to put My hand up. And he said, well, Sullivan's the only one I trust here because he's the only one telling the truth. And he said, I want to tell you the difference between fear and courage. He says, fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you're supposed to do with wet pants. And that's what I really, really noticed that entrepreneurism is really, you know, it really is marked by a lot of wetting your pants over, you know, at least, you know, psychologically over time and requires courage. So you cannot wait until you have capability and confidence to start upward movement. You have to start with commitment. And commitment requires that you establish a deadline when something's going to be true and you put a measurable result to it. The bigger you have a measurement to it, the better you have a measurement to it. Now this is what happens when you. So this is really what you want to do if you're leading a really great, upwardly progressing life as an entrepreneur. You want a four way system where you're continually committing to a bigger and better. You have courage. The combination of commitment and courage actually creates the new capability, which gives you a higher confidence. And then you do it again. And that's how you constantly grow. But when you are procrastinating, what happens is that all four of these disappear. It's like sensory deprivation. You're not in contact with capability, you're not in contact with confidence, you're not making any commitment, and you have no courage. And so you are in the no zone. And the no zone is no capability, no confidence, no commitment, and no courage. And you're paralyzed. You're procrastinating, and it feels like you're paralyzed and you can't move forward. How many of you have experienced that? And in some part of your life right now, you're a bit paralyzed from moving forward right now. And what I want to say is this is completely normal. Every human being on the planet does it. There's nothing wrong with procrastinating except not telling the truth that you're procrastinating. That's the only thing that's wrong with procrastinating, is not telling the truth. The moment you tell the truth, you can start the process. So what we have to do is we have to go from the no zone to the grow zone. And the way you grow is by going right back to commitment and courage and then you're back into the cycle and you'll be creating new capability and confidence and going back to our sheet. Now what I'm going To have you do. And this will take about four or five minutes. I'm going to have you take each one of your procrastinations and I'm going to have you write down what the commitment is. Remember, you have to have a deadline and you have to have a measurable result. Okay? And so I'll just take you through this. So this is real stuff for me. This is my actual. And I do this all the time. So I'm naming names here and I'm naming projects. And what I want you to do is just take each of the commitments and say what your commitment is this next Thursday. So I was totally ready for something next 30. It was a measurable result. I was totally ready and it was next Thursday. And that was it. The courage is that I had to do about four days of nose to grindstone work for about 30 hours to get ready for that interview. And I'm clinically diagnosed as add. I want you to know I'm fully medicated as I'm talking to you for this. And doing something continuous for four days requires a lot of courage on my part. How many of you in this room doing one activity continuous? Yeah, it requires a great deal of courage, but the payoff was huge. If I do that, the team gets triggered. So I'm always thinking teamwork. I'm always thinking teamwork. And so Kerry, Shannon and I are able to do our best ever first interview three weeks earlier than normal. Big gain, big breakthrough. Everyone on the team is far, far more clear, focused, and energized from start to finish with no slowdowns. And what I do day by day, the night before, I say, what am I procrastinating on? And I go through this process the next morning. And I always have my three. I'm always motivated, I'm always focused. And these procrastinations are just enabling me to make very, very rapid progress. My performance increases and my achievement. And, you know, at age 72, none of this matters. There's nothing slowing me down except not telling the truth about my procrastinations. Okay, so what I'd like you to do is go through. And actually, just for now, let's just write the first one. If you're really fast, you can do, you can do the, you can do the others. But I want all of you to get this done and you can finish this. You can finish this as we go forward because I know there's going to be some Q and A and I'd like to leave you some time. So do the first one and get it down and try to do it in about a minute. After you do the first one in a minute, you can do the next one in about 40 seconds. It's very, very fast process. Okay. But telling the truth about what the commitment is. Telling the truth about what the courage is, telling the. What's the payoff? What's the new capability if I do this? What's the higher confidence if I do this? And in this way, you can turn all of your procrastinations into raw material for much higher performance and much higher achievement. And you can go through every mindset ceiling, because every mindset ceiling is an area where you're procrastinating. And so far, we've noticed that parents can do this with children probably 8 years old, 9 years old. They can actually get to actually get them used to this. And everything consists of the four Cs. And you can use your procrastinations to actually trigger motivation, and you can move forward with it. While everybody's finishing up, Dean, could you come up to the stage? Because I'd like to actually. Wherever Dean is, is Dean here? Dean's in the lounge.

There he comes.

There he is.

My name is Dean, and I'm a procrastinator.

I got a mic. You got a mic?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. See, I didn't anticipate that I was procrastinating. Getting you all mic'd up last minute. Yeah. Does everybody know Dean? Does everybody know Dean? Everybody know Dean? Does everybody know Dan next to Dean? So, Dean, we did this at lunch one day. I brought this up as a topic. Can you just talk a little bit about.

Well, it's so funny because Dan and I often have lunch after when I'm in Toronto for my workshops. We also have these great conversations, and we've been doing this for years. And then this particular Saturday, he brings up this whole idea about procrastination and about turning it into a raw material. And I looked at him and I said, have you been holding out on me all this time for. You've known this? And he said, no, I just discovered it a few weeks ago. And I'll tell you, it's been an amazing six weeks or so since we.

Two months now.

Has it been two months?

Wow.

Time flies when you're not procrastinating. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we got talking, and Dean has a really fast way to create podcasts, which I really love the format. And so we immediately. This was a Saturday, and we said on Sunday we're going to do our first Podcast. And we. We didn't procrastinate on our procrastination. Exactly. And it's called the Joy of Procrastination. And it actually launches on Wednesday. It's called the Joy of Joy of Procrastination. Because when you realize that procrastination can actually be a very, very positive thing, it's a very joyful experience. How many of you are feeling that it could actually be a very joyful experience. And I just wanted. I do everything in teamwork. My whole life is about teamwork. So one of the things I procrastinate on is that if I'm the only one doing it because. So actually having you. Who has his own unique take on procrastination. But one of the things that, you know, I was talking about the manipulation, but Dean and I had a common experience that when our mothers died, we got all of our report cards from grades one through 12. Okay. And I can tell my story. But Dean had a very, very interesting common report that he got for all. And this was many different schools, too. Yeah, yeah.

Not many different schools. Many different teachers through all throughout the thing. But you look at. There was definitely a pattern that we noticed.

Tell them what it was.

The pattern was. And this was back when they would hand write in comments on your cards. And the comment that summed it all up, that kept repeating was, dean is able to achieve excellent results with what seems like little effort. Imagine if he applied himself. And that was really. I mean, we talked about that thought. Or that idea that I've always been kind of less than Slacker. Yeah, slacker. And your idea that we're all achieving and performing at 100% of our mindset ceiling. And it's interesting that when Joe showed earlier for the teacher, or the thing of, you know, following doing what you love is a great way to make 30k a year. And so you listen. You know, the one common element that the comment writers had in common was that they were not entrepreneurs who are, you know, achieving excellent results with what seems like little effort.

Yeah.

That's ultimately become my superpower.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is. Everybody's got a story to tell. And the thing I wanted to do was just to get this one mindset gateway out to you and then see what you can do with it, you know, But I'm totally, totally committed to actually every night when I think, what's the most important thing I should be doing tomorrow? I just say, well, what am I procrastinating on? Go down the list. And then using the criteria, pick out the three and then design it so that those are three things. And sometimes it's, you know, what people are surprised by. Maybe you're surprised here, that one thing surprised. It could be a five minute conversation with someone that's been sitting there for six months, or it could be a decision. And oftentimes you've made it into a monster in the dark, the procrastination. But when it comes right down to what would be the action that breaks you through, it's actually really quite. It's actually quite short. And I did this with my entire team, 120 of our team members. And in the 27 years that we've had the program, I've never seen one of the concepts, one of the gateways that we've created have such a profound impact. And there were tears in the room and everything else. And I just noticed this real lightness. This is about three weeks ago, this real lightness in the company since then. Because they now have a way of actually coming to grips with something that was kind of secret and shameful. It was kind of secret and shameful. And they were feeling pressure and they were feeling guilt, but now they have a way out of that. And, you know, that's a thrill to me because that's my goal, is to free people up from that kind of manipulation. So anyway, this has been neat.