Dan Sullivan’s Strategy To Help Entrepreneurs To Get Unstuck - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #159

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Hello everyone, it's Joe Polish here at in the Toronto studio at Strategic Coach with Dean Jackson, Dan Sullivan and the magnificent jr. Today we're going to talk about some new thinking that Dan has created about choosing the future you want, deciding what part of the past gets to come along and utilizing the present to make the best possible progress. Which sounds pretty cool.

It really does.

How do we do that, Dan?

Well, In August of 2014, I'm at the 40 year mark in coaching entreprene and I've personally dealt with 6,000 individuals, all of them talented, all of them successful, and all of them ambitious. And I've gone through about 25 different forms of getting people to get a real handle on their future. And it gets simpler and simpler. You never reach the final stage of your thinking until you check out basically when you die, then that's the final version. And I play with words. And one of the things that always interest me is that people will use two different words as if it's the same thing. And the two words that I notice that people use a lot is choose and decide. And they use them interchangeably as if they're the same thing. And I feel that the reason why we have two words is because they refer to two different things. You know, I've got this massive Oxford English Dictionary that's got 20 volumes and O has like a book and a half to itself. And this is the history of words. Basically it's a dictionary, but really it gives you the complete history of when this word started being used. If it's been three or 400 years, it shows you 25 different ways that it's been used over that period of time. So I went after those two words and what came through is that choose only relates to the future. So it's related to something that hasn't happened yet and that you're going to choose it. As a matter of fact, it hasn't even been created. The act of choosing actually creates something in the future. But decide is what happens happens after you choose the future. And that is that you have to decide about not the present, but you have to decide about the past. Because when you choose a new future, some of your past is not going to be valuable to you. And so what I decided that making a decision. And actually the Latin word from which decide comes to also is the root word for homicide and suicide and infanticide. And what it means is to kill off that when you Decide something, there's something you're killing off, you're going lightweight. So essentially, if you got a bigger future, it's almost like being an immigrant. Say someone comes to North America from someplace else in the world, they have to decide what goes into suitcases and arrive here. And one of the reasons why immigrants always do better than native born people is that they start without a past because they left the past behind and it's not relevant. And so they get to operate with just a future and a present where everybody else has to drag their past along because they don't decide what to leave behind, but the immigrants have to do it. So what I did, I just came up with three phrases. And what I like to do is constantly get things to happen quicker in the thinking processes. So something that might have taken me an hour to make clear in one of the strategic coach workshops, if I can get it down to five minutes, it's got a lot more impact. So I just came up with three things. Choose the future you want. That's the first thing. Then after you've chosen the future you want, decide what part of the past gets to come along. Not the part of the past that you're going to leave behind, but what is so valuable about your past that it gets to come with you. And I give people three things that characterize their choice of a future. Three things from the past that get to come along. And then once you've done the future and you've done the past, then you get to talk about the present. So base based on what you've chosen and what is coming from the past, then you have to utilize the present to make the best possible progress. And I think that's the sequence. First the future gets graded, then you decide what comes from the past. And then only then with the future and past clear, can you actually decide what you're going to do right now.

Can I ask you about the past? There's a lot of ways that people can think about the past. Live in the past, dwell in the past, experience the past, appreciate the past, the past, be defined by the past, or use it as a catalyst for their bigger future. You have this tool which was one of the very first things when you started coaching people. You've been coaching entrepreneurs for 40 years and it's called the strategy circle. And you have a great line on the bottom of the strategy circle. This tool, this thinking tool, which is all those things that seem to oppose our goals are actually the raw material for achieving them. You have learned how to take the past and use it as raw mater. Whereas some people take the past and use it to make sure that their future constantly stays miserable. So I think of Dan Sullivan as, like, the ultimate chef for thinking that can bake anything he wants. And he can just pull all these ingredients, these little spice little bottles of, oh, do I want some misery today? Do I want some confidence? Do I want some learning? Do I want some capabilities? Yeah, exactly. And he'll sprinkle it together. And then people come to Strategic coach, and they actually learn how to be master chefs of their own. Life of their own. Enter. And this is just an example of how to take what could be an enormously complex subject and simplifying it. Here's how to think about your past, your present, and your future.

And in five minutes.

Exactly. Exactly. So what is the past?

Probably the hardest thought regarding time is that we're 7 billion people on the planet, but if you talk to each of them, you would come up with 7 billion completely different takes on time, and babies are born without it. So it's a created skill. Newborn babies don't know future. They don't know past. They don't know present. I mean, they're just getting used to air. I mean, they were in liquid before this, and now they're in air. And it takes quite a period of years, actually, before babies get a sense that there's a thing called the future, and there's a thing called the past and everything else. So we know it's a created skill, and people have better or worse experience than actually creating time. Saying is that even though we use words like future, well, everybody knows what the future is. And past. Everybody knows what the past is. And present. Everybody knows what the present is. Nobody means the same thing. So I started just talking to a lot of people, and I just saw these amazing differences between people's clarity about this or their confusion about this. And I said, okay, this is all made up. That your future is actually something that you create in your mind.

It's all a construct.

Yeah, well, yeah, we are operating within time, you know, I mean, we operate within time continuum. But people say, well, how do you create the future? I said, well, you make it up. And they said, well, how do you do that? I said, the same way you got here. You know, you've been making up the future ever since you were a baby. You've been making no, no, no. I mean, these. I said, no, you made it up. And I said, but not only that, you made up your past, too. No, these things actually Happen. I said, the events happen. But whether they're important to you, I mean, there's hundreds of things that might have been important to you that you completely disregard because you don't think they're worth remembering. And then there are certain things that you remember which seem like a small thing, but you remember it very intensely. So I said, you're the one who's telling the story here. And that's a hard thing for most people because they would like to think that the past was something that was done to them, but it wasn't. It was actually a story that they created, you know, about the actual experiences. So once you get that freedom that you actually have a creative ability that you can make as powerful as you want about making up the future and making up the past, you have this enormous freedom of thought. And then you can look at the present and you say, well, the present is real, because the present is the only place where you can actually take action. You can't take action in the future. You can't take action in the past, but you can take action. And so what you want to do is create a very powerful future and a very useful path that allows you to create a very dynamic present. And that can take years for people to wrap their mind around that. But once they wrap around it, they have this amazing freedom of thought and freedom of creativity and freedom of action. And you can just see people take off with that. This little card, which is five minutes is like going to the gym for the first time, and you're not using the muscles. But then if you do it again tomorrow, you're stronger. A month from now, you're getting a lot stronger. I think past, present, and future are like muscles. They're thinking muscles, and if you use them, you'll get stronger with them.

No, I agree. And there's a lot you said there, too. Because part of me is thinking of the person that is listening saying, man, it sounds so easy, but you don't know my situation, or I'm kind of in a really bad relationship, or I don't have financial access. And there's a lot of things that are happening to me that I'm not choosing. I always think of the word choice. Being an addict, having struggled with addictions, there were feelings, cravings, thoughts, behaviors that absolutely seemed outside of my ability to choose. And at the same time, I also know and have seen, as I've continued to develop this muscle, just how the areas that I can control and things that I can do something with. And it wasn't A matter of can't. It was a matter of I wouldn't. It's like, can you do this or you won't do this? It's that sort of conversation. And so I'm glad that you said, said this is a muscle that you continue to develop because as many years as I've been hanging out with you, Dan, and have gone through the thinking, I mean, you're just the catalyst. Anyone that's listening to this can take these questions and hear it and say, yeah, this sounds kind of interesting. And there's going to be other people that are going to literally answer them. They're going to answer the questions and they're going to think about this and they're going to develop it. And the more I've done this, the more I've continued to free myself up from my own self imposed limits. And I will go back and read the book Man's Search for Meaning every few years. I've read that book several times because I'll sit and say, well, there are situations where I feel I cannot redefine my past. And then you look at someone in the worst possible situations in a Nazi concentration camp who was able to define his own meaning. And I've not been in that situation. So I'm not saying that I wouldn't have any idea how I would respond in a situation like that. But what I do know is that there's a lot of people that you can look at and how they respond to life and how they build their lives and how they go through life that seem incredibly more productive than other people that seem to be. Be in very similar situations.

You're absolutely right. When you hear people going through experiences they've gone through together, one person comes out of it with a completely different experience of it than someone else and exactly the same event, but a different outcome. I just wanted to say about the tool, the thing that people always ask me, well, what did you learn when you went to strategic coach this last workshop at your workshop? And you realize it's very difficult to pin down. You can't say, well, this is what, what I learned. But what Dan is brilliant at doing is creating tools that you're thinking about your thinking. And 50 people in a room can go through the same thing, but get exactly what they need out of the day rather than just listening to you present something, your fixed way of thinking about something, you're giving somebody a way to think about their way of thinking about it using a tool that is universal. I mean, that's.

Yeah, well, I think that the whole purpose of being able to think at all, J.R. and I have been working on a book and we're developing ideas. One of the things is that a lot of people, the only thing they can think about is things. They can be very wealthy people. And you go to a party and you start talking to them and for about an hour they tell you about all their things and how much work it is to have all those things and how anxious they feel that somebody else has got some better things. A wealthy person has 150 foot yacht, you think that'd make them happy? No, because somebody else just bought 175 foot yacht.

Oh, yeah.

No.

But you realize they don't think about anything except their things. Life is about accumulating things. And then there's people who. Their main emphasis is people. And I think that this is what has fed the Facebook and the Twitter phenomenon, is that they used to spend all their time thinking about people. It's just now they've been able to multiply it by a hundred times. And all day, from morning till night, they're checking their iPhone and they're checking. They're being on top of all their friends and they feel almost a sensory deprivation.

Being cut off.

Being cut off. Like if the power goes down, they literally are an addict off their drug and they're starting to be diagnosed now that you have that connective addiction, it's called. Then there's people who have thoughts. And this is where it really gets lethal. Because I would say that most of the killing on the planet actually happens of people having a particular thought. You can see that in the political clashes from one end of the spectrum to the other. If they could, they would kill the other people who have a different thought. And you can see it internationally. And I would say that people get into shoving matches over things, they get into fist fights over people, but they actually murder over thoughts. And what I'm saying is that's not where your mind should be. Your mind should be up above that and actually thinking about how you're actually thinking about all that. I mean, what are the things that would really be supportive for you? Who are the people who would really be supportive? What are the thoughts that would really be supportive? Okay.

Yes.

But then you have to say, you know, I choose this. I choose this. You know, I won't have that. I'll have this, and I have that. And that's how you create a unique life out in front of you. And jr, you've been recent to the conversations with Coach Directly, this is a very simple one, but you've seen a lot, lots of the other thinking exercises. What is your sense of what this.

Does this particular tool here about choosing the future you want, deciding what part of the past gets to come along and then utilizing the present. This is like something I talk about with Joe. Sometimes I say time management by attitude. This is like time management by focusing. Because you're talking about future, you're talking about about past, you're talking about present. This is actually how to manage your time. This is the time management tool. What are you going to focus your time on and how are you going to spend. Actually spend is the wrong word. It's how are you going to invest your life? That's actually a good point. In terms of 25k and strategic coach, there's a huge difference in mindset between someone who says I'm spending, which is a very short term perspective, and someone who's thinking investing, investing, which is a long time and expecting a return. So anyways, this tool, very important for managing your life.

Dan's got a whole bunch of great quote books. I mean I've even got one of his quote books sitting here, the quotable Dan Sullivan. There's all kinds of stuff and one of my favorites is that you say the problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. You could switch that into the opportunity is not the opportunity. The opportunity is how you think about the opportunity. And there's people that are listening to us right now and I don't think they're listening to this in the same sort of listening as if they're watching a comedy movie or they're listening to a song. I mean, they're probably looking for some useful strategies or some capabilities in order to get some results in their life. It's not just because they like Dan the most, me second and Dean third. That's supposed to be funny, but it's not.

It should be funny. We're laughing on the inside.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But they have a lot of problems maybe, or they think they have a lot of problems or they're thinking of things that seem insurmountable. But now Dan has, has talked about this and they're maybe thinking of things from a different perspective. And I'd like you to go deep with that question. The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem and as it relates to what you've described here with this tool.

Yeah, I mean, I've got a variation on that. The problem isn't the problem. The problem is people don't even know how to think about the problem. People have problems. I find if people have gotten to the point where they can actually think through the problem, the solution almost gets created in the activity. And the problem is they may be afraid of actually speaking the problem. They may be actually frightened of actually writing the problem down. And, you know, anytime they get near the problem, they veer off. And there's a lot of this. I have people, you know, over the years, and it has to do with marriage breakdown, and someone will come to me and say, you know, I'm thinking about leaving my spouse. Could be man or woman. I'm thinking about leaving my spouse. And I said, oh, no, no. I said, you've already decided to le. Leave. The decision isn't the problem. You're worried about implementation. I said, you couldn't even bring the thought to your brain. I'm thinking about leaving my spouse. If you hadn't done an enormous amount of decision making up to this point. So first of all, can you just tell the truth? You've actually decided to leave, haven't you? And he said, let's say it's me. And he says, yes, I have. And I said, okay, so the problem you're having is implementation. Let's get out of strategy circle now. This is the goal, this is the result. These are the obstacles. Let's work it out. And well, I'm not really committed. And I said, so what are you doing? You're wasting my time. I mean, what were you expecting to come out of this, do you think? I was just going to have a nice conversation with you? Are you decided or not? And in some cases, they realize that they're playing around with this idea and it's doing nothing but harm because to a certain extent they've already left. And sometimes they just go back and they just really start transforming the relationship or they just make a fast decision and get on with it. But I said, don't fool around with this sort of stuff. I mean, is it yes, it's no. Yeses are wonderful. No's don't really hurt you, but maybes kill you. So what I like to do is have tools and thinking tools that move people completely out of the maybe part of their life, just into the yes and no part of their life.

Well, I love that. That also makes me think of your other quote about suffering, which is, there's two types of suffering. There's long term or short term. You decide which one.

I mean, if you go through change there's going to be suffering of some sort. I've experimented with long term suffering and for the rest of my life, I'm just going to focus on short.

Why not?

Well, you know, one of the things too, which is one of my goals in Genius Network, I just have not figured out a sexy way to use it as a marketing bullet or a headline or something, is not only do I want to teach entrepreneurs best strategies, introduce them to great relationships, improve thinking, lots of capabilities, and all that is I want to reduce software because I see a lot of really brilliant value creating awesome individuals that live a lot of tormented lives. And of course, a lot of that comes from looking at my own past and saying, where did I screw up here? Why did it take me that long to get out of this relationship? And also see areas where I made massively incredible change very quickly because I made a few key decisions or I had a few key relationships. So with this particular tool, Dan, I'd love to, with the time we have left, take it to where you can actually give some examples of three of the different areas. Because I'd love to have our listeners really not just hear this episode, but really do something with it. So you can see just how a few minutes of thinking about this and answering these questions that Dan has created can really help you produce results in your life.

Yeah. Well, I'm just going to share one of my answers to each of the three areas and so choose the future you want. And the whole core of my life is really my relationship with Bab Smith, who is my business partner and my wife. It's just a marvelously creative and supportive relationship. So the future I want is one where Babs and I grow every day within that relationship. So at the end of each day, we're stronger in some way than we were the day before. And so that's always going to be true. That's like headlights for the next 50 years. I mean, those are high beams. Decide what part of the past comes along at this stage. Our focus that we've arrived at over the last three years, that we're only interested in coaching talented and successful entrepreneurs who really have the ambition of growing 10 times while simplifying their life. Okay. And I don't want to talk to anyone else and I don't want to coach anyone else except that. And one of the great breakthroughs I had is that Strategic Coach isn't for people who need it. Strategic Coach is for people who want it. And I only want to talk to people who actually want this. I Think everybody kind of needs it. At least they need the kind of things. But I don't want to talk to people who need it. I want to talk to people who want it. And it's the difference between investment and spending. That's the big thing. So that would be something that we've arrived at after a long period of experimenting, but within the last three years. And I said, okay, for the rest of my life, then this is all I want. So that's something from the past. It gets to come along and then as far as the present goes, I would say the biggest thing right now is health, fitness and energy. I'm 70 and I gave a presentation to my team about two months ago where I said, I want to tell you how things are going to be when I'm 95 years old. I know I'm older than some of your grandparents here and I know that you don't maybe talk about it, but I bet the thought goes through your mind, I wonder, is Dan going to be around? I mean, what's the plan here? So I said, I just want you to let you know that when I'm 95, 25 years from now, I'm going to be coaching, strategic coach at some level. I don't know if it's in this room, I don't know what the price point is. I said, but I am going to be coaching. And from a standpoint of physical energy and mental sharpness and just my general approach to life, it's going to be even better than it is today at 70. Wow. And so every morning I get up and I spend about an hour just lifting, lifting weights, doing aerobic exercise. My diet is really great. I get lots of sleep, I relax a lot. So every day I've got to do something to ensure that when I'm 95, I'm as energetic and fit and healthy as I am today.

Yeah, that's awesome.

You know, you have to understand this is where I am in my life. So, you know, I mean, people say, geez, that's really big stuff. But I said, no, this is a muscle. This is where, you know, I've done this muscle building for 40 years and this is where I am right now. But just to help people out, Joe, we have an offer here regarding this exercise. So we're going to send. Joe is going to create a landing page for this and there will be a PDF. We'll show you a filled in example of this. But then you can actually just run off the PDF and do this yourself. And then you can listen to this particular episode of 10 Times Talk and go back over the logic of it. And I have to tell you, this is the first exercise that I've ever created where those of you who listen to 10 times talk or to go to get it before most of the people in Strategic Coach, which is pretty cool.

It pays to pay attention.

Yes.

One thing I realized while sitting here, why do I do this? Because a lot of people have asked us, what's your monetization strategy? And certainly we talk about our own programs. Strategic Coach, Genius Network Dean has his breakthrough blueprints and stuff. And we certainly talk about this. But we're not forcing anyone to have to give us money or have to go through a rigmarole in order to listen to this. We just put it out there. I mean, this is available. And there's a danger in that because when people pay for something, they usually pay attention versus if they just get it for free. So a smart person will realize the value of this and utilize it. And that, of course, presupposes people that don't are dumb. But anyway, what I realize why I like doing this so much is this is the workout for my brain, but in a good way, because it's nourishing, it's not requiring me a lot of effort. And I like doing these because they keep me up. Someone once walked into my office and they saw I've read over a thousand business books, spent well over a million and a half dollars on educational tools and tapes and courses and online programs, you name it. My office, I have an 11,000 square foot building that is filled with one of the greatest entrepreneurial training libraries on the planet. People ask me all the time, have you read all these books? I'm like, no, are you kidding me? I've read a lot of them. I've skimmed through a lot of them. A lot of them. I haven't even looked at them yet. But people send them to me. And I bought a lot of things and they're like, well, why do you do it? Because it keeps me up. It keeps me in a good state of mind. It keeps me motivated. I know that a lot of people that listen to 10x talk and that listen to I love marketing and come to our programs. It's just, do I 100% know what's going on in my brain? I mean, is it biochemical? Is it. I was exposed to this. Was it because I do these thinking exercises? I know it's a combination of a lot of things. And I just know that when I Go to strategic coaching as an example. I have no idea what's going to happen. All I know is when I'm done, I have more confidence, capabilities and clarity. And it's worth it. It's worth the money. It is, as J.R. said, an investment. And so do this exercise. If you're listening. Share it with people that you care about. Post your comments at 10xtalk.com, subscribe to this on a regular basis. Listen to it whenever you can while you're working out. It's just going to simply make you better. And if you are an industry transformer, if you're one of those people that really want this, like Dan talked about, then join the program because we're here for you when you're ready to take it to a deeper level. And I know that all of us have created schools for entrepreneurs that pays them to attend. It doesn't take time. It doesn't take money. If you do this, it produces time, it produces money. It simply makes you more effective. So I will shut up and let you guys have any famous last words starting with jr.

I absolutely loved this. I love Joe Polish and I just have to get that in there. And spending time with Dan Sullivan is like wisdom times ten, a million times. And Dean, you're awesome and you're so smart and everyone says the marketing buddh. It's a dream come true. I'll say this. There's an individual on YouTube, his name is Shay Carl and he has a channel called shaytards. And this guy started as a granite countertop guy and he was a DJ and then he filmed his life just every day. And now he's one of the top youtubers. He goes, you know, it's a dream of a dream I never knew I had. Sitting in this room with Dan, Joe and Dean is a dream of a dream I never knew I had. So you're awesome.

Well, there you go.

That's amazing. You know the big thing when Dan was sharing about the progression of things and people and thoughts and then ultimately thinking about your thoughts, thinking about your thinking and just that awareness is where it starts, even just recognizing the way you think about things. I just started reading a book called 10% happier by Dan Harris. Have you guys seen about it? It's pretty interesting. He's a big network news guy, but he talks about this idea of exploring meditation and exploring those. And his big awakening was the first time recognizing to think and recognize a thought for what it is. So it's never ending. You're inward. The way you Think about things. It's a wide open adventure.

I think there are crises, situations that people get into. Their life could be personal, it could be in business where they're forced to think about their thinking. But it's such an unnatural and almost like painful experience to them that as soon as the crisis is over, they retreat back into their world of just thinking about things and people and thoughts. And what I'm saying is that the best way to think about your things and people and thoughts is actually from a well developed, continually building ability to think about your thinking. And then you'll have really great things, you'll have really great people, and you'll have really great thought. But the central thing is just how you think about things. And just a plug. I have a book coming out by that name. So I wanted to implant in everybody's consciousness thinking about thinking. Dan Sullivan.

Yeah, yeah, we should just play that over and over again. We can have it edited in Subliminal Track. Right. You're even hearing it right now as I'm talking subtly in the background.

MasterChef of ideas. I love that.

Yeah. And you know, now it's true. Cause we've had people come up to us and say, you know, when you guys do your podcast, mostly me and Dan, because I like Dan more than you, Dean. And basically they'll say, I've never guessed that. Yeah, it's like a love fest. But now I just wanted to just make sure that everyone knows we can have a four person cuddle fest. Exactly. And it's really about individuals here that are collaborating. And I think one of the reasons, one of the things that people go to strategic coach for and they come to Genius Network and we hear this all the time, is there's no other room that I can come to where people aren't competitive. These are a bunch of individuals collaborating with each other. And so it's important to develop up your Genius Network filled with people that support, reinforce, enhance, and are aligned with your thinking and your bigger future. And Dan just gave you a whole map. Go to the website 10xtalk.com, download the PDF, do the exercise, share it with everyone you know, and have yourself a wonderful day and thank you all.