Game Changer Part 2 - I Love Marketing Episode #218

Hello, this is Joe Polish and welcome to I Love Marketing. And this will be a follow up to the previous episode with my conversation with Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach. And you always hear me and Dean Jackson talk about Dan Sullivan. And this is why we wanted to share these episodes with you. Now what you're about to hear is actually a conversation that I had with Dan on my other podcast, which is called 10x talk that I do with Dan. But I think the content is so valuable that you're going to find it very applicable to your business and the whole mindset of growing 10 times. Plus, there is a workshop that is coming up that we talk about on the podcast that you may want to attend. So listen to it and enjoy.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and.

This is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Hello everyone, it's Joe Polish and this is Dan Sullivan.

And here we are. This is a continuation, part two of the episodes that we've been doing on the Game Changer. Changing your game, being permanently out in front of everyone else. On the last episode, if you've not listened to it, we highly recommend you do. You can listen to this episode here. But it would be great if you listen to both of them because they go together. On the last episode, Dan talked about this whole Game Changer mindset and how you thought about it. And you've got this workshop coming up, the Game Changer Charity workshop. It's a one day event that you're doing and it's for Strategic Coach members and for Genius Network members. You've approved to let people that come in through me and through 10x talk, if they qualify, if they're a high level entrepreneur. And of course your team can let them know that if they're interested. I'll give out contact information for people that are listening to this, if they're interested in it. What we're doing here though is we're just simply explaining what being a game changer is all about and how it relates to growing and building a business 10 times. So I'm going to ask you some questions about where we left off. Is there anything you want to say to kind of set the stage?

Well, you know, I was going to ask you a question, Joe, because we had a half hour in the first podcast on this. How do you see yourself? I've known you for 17 years and the game that you were largely playing when I first met you was as the best marketing expert in the world for carpet cleaners and things related to carpet cleaning that go along with maintaining and recovering people who've had floods or they've had fires or anything like that. And that was your niche, and you actually created the niche. You were the first person who just turned the marketing of carpet cleaning into a very, very high level professional structure and process with measurable results and predictable results doing that. So would you have seen that just taking a look at the mindsets that I've created here, and also the scoring system, would you have considered that a game changer in itself before you went much further after that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I completely changed that whole industry. Turned it upside down, as a matter of fact. And one way that I know that is because all the people that were entrenched in certain mindsets and thinking about how to run a business, from everyone that was speaking to that industry that was holding themselves out as the expert, I basically came in with a new innovation where everyone was like using an axe to chop down trees. I showed up with a chainsaw and what I was utilizing was way more effective. And it was simply methodologies that I had first developed, tested and proven within my own small cleaning company and with a few others before I ever went out to the industry and started selling those strategies and those methodologies. So it wasn't like just this idea. And I think this may work. I mean, I actually had proven methodologies, but I leveraged it by getting it into the hands of other professional cleaning companies to the tune of over 7,800 cleaning companies throughout the world that had become members. But it changed the way that they advertised, it changed the way that they presented themselves. It got many of them out of utilizing what most people default to sell themselves, which is price, which is the worst thing. The only thing worse than no offer is a price offer, because you're going to get people where the only decision criteria that they're using is price, which has nothing to do with the best quality, but the people didn't know how to communicate it. So not only did I change that industry, I then licensed my marketing strategies to heating, air conditioning, pest control, jewelers, printers, painters, auto sales, and so a whole variety of service businesses and literally millions of dollars generated and well over $2 billion in revenue created for clients of mine that were using my ads and promotions and campaigns. And it just led to massive breakthroughs. And to this day, we're still got so many service businesses that utilize the strategies. But that was stage one. And what was the big breakthrough though, which I have to mention this was I joined strategic coach in 1997, and here I was this young hotshot doing a lot of stuff in the industry. Unbeknownst to me, I was getting ready to go through some very serious personal crisis in terms of relationships and things. And had I not joined Strategic Coach and had that as a sounding board and had that sort of environment to keep me where outside of that room, most people that I would encounter wouldn't understand me. They wouldn't be supportive of it. They would be scared of my innovative ideas. And then you come to a room like Strategic Coach, where do you meet people that are this inspired, this encouraged, this amazing where outside of that room the world views them as crazy, or that room views them as radicals, or that room view them, views them as whatever, whatever they conjure up as their perception. So it gave me a really good sounding board to realize that my ideas were powerful and they were game changing.

Yeah. Well, there are three points that you made, Joe, that I think I'd like to point out to everybody. Number one is that you transformed yourself before you tried to transform anyone else. And this is what a game changer. The initial game change that really happens is actually that you as a person, you actually transform. You were able with confidence to tell people this really works. And the reason is because you had proven it for yourself and that your personal example was really great. The other thing was that you made everything that you had learned available to everyone else. And I used to be absolutely amazed at just the richness and the wealth of techniques and methods and ready made. All they had to do was basically fill in their name and their marketing success would jump by double or triple, some of them 10 times. And you made this totally available. And you weren't looking for their money and you weren't looking for a piece of the action. You just wanted everybody to jump to a higher level. So that's the second. First one is you transform yourself and. And then you just wanted everybody to help everybody transform themselves. The third thing is, I'll make two points about this, is that the reason why you had been able to transform yourself and transform an entire industry is that you weren't drawing your marketing information from inside the industry. You were going out to the greatest marketing experts, period in the world, not people who were at all related to carpet cleaning. You're saying, I just want the best thinking about marketing in the world. And you mastered that for yourself and then translated it all that wisdom so that people who were in a carpet cleaning industry could understand it. But the other thing is that by joining Coach, you got in a room where There was literally nobody in carpet cleaning. I mean, they were in every other kind of industry.

And.

And you began to see that what you had done with one industry could be applied to dozens, hundreds of other industries. And I think that's the real jump that I see going into Genius Network in terms of the 25k model. But now you're jumping even higher with the 100k model, which I'm second in line to join up. Dean Graziosi has to be first, but I'll be the second person to join that because I think that's going to be such a spectacular environment when we're operating at that higher level. So, I mean, there's a whole number of factors. You could look at Joe and you could tell his history, but I think that there's some crucial multipliers that happen in your whole transition since 1998.

Totally. And I even wrote down what you just said, because I was like, oh, okay, let me. Because what's great about you is the ability to actually just hear what I said and then break it down into what I actually did and give me even different ways to think about it. And the reason I want to bring that up is that that's why it's so important to immerse yourself in the type of thinking and the type of places where you want to get to and to have that sounding board and to get that feedback. And one thing that I think has been one of my greatest attributes that has allowed me to have whatever success I've had is that I'm incredibly curious, for one. And secondly, I'm coachable. It always amazes me when I run across people that want to have high level groups. Kind of like what me and you do. Hang around really successful entrepreneurs and have great discussions and help give them direction, confidence, capability, clarity. I mean, all of these things that come out of Strategic Coach and come out of Genius Network is they want to be a coach. They want to be a quote unquote guru, which I have mixed feelings about that word. And they themselves don't invest in going to those programs. It's like, oh, I want to be a great coach. I want to be a personal trainer, but I don't work out. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And I've always approached it well, if you want to be a game changer, then where are all the game changers? And that's why I say, well, okay, Dan's going to have this charity workshop on September 15, 2015. If you're already a successful person and you want to just become a better version of that. Would it not make sense to seek out and go to anything that's going to give you that sort of immersion in it and just help you become better? And if someone can't immediately see that, it's kind of like what our friend Jerry says, for those that get it, no explanation is needed, and for those that don't, no explanation will do. And so part of it is some people kind of get this and they're like, yeah, I'm into it. They're enrolled already. They don't need to be sold on it. They're just already going in that direction. Because I remember one of the things that got me into Strategic Coach is in the very beginning, I heard a cassette tape you were on. It was along the lines of saying, are you ready? You've already been looking for this, but you just didn't know it existed anywhere. You're already on that path. And. And I just resonated with that because it's like, yeah, you know, I am looking for this. I mean, this is not a person who trying to sell me into Strategic Coach. I'm like, this is just saying, hey, we actually have this thing and it exists and you're already looking for this. And, you know, until now, you may not have known that this existed. And I immediately signed up because, yeah, that's exactly where I want to go. And I've never looked back because it's been incredible. But so much of that had to do with me being a game changer. But I've become a better game changer because of it. And that's the point I want to make.

I mean, it's an interesting thing, Joe, because on the way one hand, the game changer has two meanings. On the one hand is that you have a real idea in your mind how a game out in the world can be changed in a much better way that will be better for everybody else in that game, or at least the players in the game. But on the other hand, you're willing to have your own game change by putting it in an environment where there's people who in their own world are just as smart as you. The distinction between a guru and a game changer. A guru is a person who always makes sure that they're the smartest person in the world. A game changer is someone who always wants to be in a room where everybody is smart. They don't want to necessarily be the smartest person in the world. They just want to be in a room where Everybody's getting smarter. That's a game changer. Gurus aren't game changers. Gurus are kind of like statues on a pedestal. They want to be worshiped. Game changers have no interest in being worshiped. They just want to see a lot of creative breakthroughs in activities. And I've been watching the personal, if you want to call it the personal development market for 40 years. And I'm always struck by the people who want to take your information, but they don't want to give you any information. In other words, they will sit there and ask you questions and they'll suck you dry, but they won't give anything in return. It can happen to you once, but you never allow yourself to be in that person's presence again because they're not getting what the whole nature of the game is. It's an interchange between really great ideas. And you have to make it available to everybody if you're going to grow. Everybody can name the gurus that they know and they take, but they don't give.

Right? And there's such a good point. And it's a giant ego thing which can get some people to a certain level. But in terms of true relationships, I mean, you can have a lot of people that have been influenced from a distance, but you can have a lot of people very close to you that you just annoy the or create resentment because you're just a taker. I heard this line years ago and I always have strove to be that way and to never let my ego interfere with my ability to be the best facilitator of a room of incredibly smart people as I can. And it totally describes how you operate, which is don't be a sage from the stage, be a guide on the side. I just thought that was just a great line because, you know, some people, they just want to go up on stage and they're the smartest person and God forbid anyone is going to make them look like they're not the most intelligent because it threatens them. And you know, a really confident, successful, helpful person is like, hey, the more that we can bring in a collaborative effort here with bright people, we're just all going to grow better. So let me go through some of these game changer changing your game mindsets. And I want to remind everyone that we have this on 10xtalk.com, where this episode and the previous episode is. You can download this sheet that I'm going to be speaking off of, but I'm just going to kind of go through Some of them in the time we have available. Dan. One of them is stockpile resources. And I want to have you define that and then describe what are the areas where game changers look for resources.

Yeah. One of the things that I've really analyzed over the years, Joe, is how do I get paid? What I've noticed is that people whose only answer to that question is money or cash, I'll just call it cash right here, are never game changers. If the only way you can get paid is with cash, then you're not a game changer. So what I've done is that I've created a list of six ways you can get paid. I call them multipliers, because when you get paid and these things, they actually multiply you and cash is actually number six. And the first thing that I want to get paid in is a new capability. Therefore, I gotta bring something to the table. If I want to be paid in capability, I have to bring capability to the table. So just take the workshop on the 15th. I'd like to get paid $1,500 because we want to pay our expenses. And I'd like to write a big check to Phil Randazzo for American Dream University. So that's the cash part of it. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you an incredible mindset capability that will allow you to literally actually identify exactly where you are in your business, in your marketplace, what your relationship is to your clients. It's on one sheet of paper. There's a scoring system attached to it. What I'm going to bring to the table is capability. And then we're going to have an amazing discussion in the course of the day, because I have about 10 game changers in the room, and I'm going to have them talk about the way they're changing their game. So I'm going to bring creativity. There's going to be a high degree of credibility in the room, Joe. You just have massive credibility. We're going to have Matt Lair there. You know, Matt Lair is just one of the most amazing manufacturers in the world. So many of the people that you know, that I've met through you are going to be there. So there's going to be massive credibility, connections, and confidence. So if you're going to be a game changer, make cash the number 6 way you get paid and get paid 5 other ways before you do that. This just really shifts people's notion because they largely ignore the other payments. And yet what I find is if I take care of the first five payments of capability, creativity, credibility, connections and confidence. The cash just shows up. I don't even have to get all twisted out of shape about it. I just get the money in the end. You create such massive value in a situation that the money just shows up. So that's one of the mindsets for being a game changer, is that you have to shift your whole notion of how you get paid, where you lead with something first and don't demand that cash comes back as the first payment. Right, right.

And what's great is when someone goes to 10xtalk.com and they go through the worksheet, they have a list of all the different ways that you get paid there as part of the column. So go ahead and check that out. So let me go to the next ones. Now you touched on in the last episode how freedom, expanding your freedom works for game changers. And then secondly, how can game changers multiply with project management? I want you to speak to that because when people hear the word project management, I don't think most people think of it the way that you think of it.

Yeah, well, I have to tell you, in terms of the impact of strategic coach on the whole science and craft of management, there's just one distinction that we have which I think totally changes whether an organization is going to be a game changing organization or it's going to just be a conventional organization like everybody else. And it has to do with a distinction between employees that you have who are project managers or process managers. You know, I've personally coached 6,000 entrepreneurs and there's a high level of unhappiness with the vast majority of people I've ever coached with their organizations. And it comes down to this, that I've got really great new ideas. And I take my idea to my employees and they just shut me down. They don't want to hear my new ideas. And there's this anger I notice among entrepreneurs about the fact that their employees just aren't open to their new ideas. And I said, well, was the person you told a project manager or a process manager? And they said, what do you mean? And I says, well, your business, in order to continue, has to have people who manage existing processes, so the cash flow keeps coming in. Do you not have those kind of people? And they said, yeah, absolutely, they're crucial. And I said, well, they're process managers. They don't have room in their head for your new ideas because they don't get paid for your new ideas. They only get Paid for bringing in the cash that's already available. You need somebody else who actually is intensely interested in your new projects. And they live. They go to bed at night and they get up in the morning living that you're going to give them a new idea to work on, because that's what they do. They take your new ideas and they turn it into a project. And where it's only an idea in your head, they actually make it real. They actually go through the steps and actually set up the idea. Not only that, but they'll train other people to turn it into a process when it turns out it works. Now, how many of those. Well, I don't have anybody like that. And I said, no, you don't. And that's why you're so angry about your. I said, you're asking people to be project managers who are process managers. And so I'm going to talk about this, and I'm just surrounded by them. And generally speaking, if you're a real idea person and you're good at coming up with ideas, you probably shouldn't even be talking to process managers. You should just be talking to project managers. The project managers will talk to the process managers. They can talk to anybody. But you can't. And so, Joe, you know, the people that you see in Strategic Coach and your workshops at Genius Network are filled with them, and they have almost like a negative attitude towards their teams. And it's just because they never understood this fundamental distinction. And the project manager breakthrough is so important because those new ideas that will change the game are never, ever going to become reality unless you line yourself up with the proper people to take your ideas and turn them into realistic projects that actually take the vision that you have in your mind and turn it into a reality.

Yeah, absolutely. And you said a line just now that I want to point out as it applies to just becoming better and learning capabilities, because you're always seeking out and stockpiling capabilities. When you're hiring people, you're hiring capabilities, and you have a great thought about staying within your own boundaries and knowing that there's incredible talent out there in the world. And yeah, we run across people all the time that come into our programs, and the ones that are the worst never even show up in our programs at all. They're too busy screaming and hating life and having incredible disdain for their people that work for them. We'll come across people that. They have this perception of not really having joy, respect, appreciation towards people that work for them. And they come to programs like Strategic Coach and Genius Network and they want to get better. That's why they're coming there. I had a meeting with a strategic coach client and a Genius Network member. He's in both of our programs named Christian Cattuccini.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Really nice guy. Great guy.

Christian was just in for his workshop two weeks ago. What a great guy.

Oh yeah, yeah. Such a super nice guy and everything. We're having lunch in Vancouver. We were talking about core values, like company core values. And I did an episode with him on my other podcast, I love Marketing, about core values. And we were talking at lunch about meetings. He goes, you know, if there were no problems in business, there'd really be no reason to have a meeting. He's like, the reason that you have meetings is because there's problems and there's things that need to be figured out. And he goes, and once you understand that you're having a meeting so that you can solve problems, then that's great. But if the whole purpose of a meeting is just bitch and complain and whatever and you never come up with a solution, it's just not a very good problem solving meeting. It was such a simple statement. But it's the same thing about if you are having problems in business and everyone does, where are you going to go to get it figured out? If you have ambitions that you've not made real, where are you going to go to figure out how to make them real? And that's what things like this Game Changer workshop are exists for, for existing clients. That's what Strategic Coach exists for. That's what Genius Network exists for. So we want people to show up with all kinds of problems. We want you to show up messy because that's the place we figured out. Now of course the caveat is we have conversations with everyone because we want people that are givers, not people that are takers. We want people that are aligned with our value systems. We want people that have a good reputation. We want people that literally create value. I mean, so that of course we have a criteria. We don't just let anyone into the programs. But, but the point is this is how you get your act together. You actually get together with other people and you figure it out. You become solution focused. And so if you want to be a game changer, using this criteria is so great. So can I then jump from my. Whatever you called my little tangent there to self managing? I mean, you have this whole concept of a self managing company. And so I wanted to have you describe what does a self managing company look like for a game changer?

It's kind of funny, Joe, because I have this really fascinating experience. I'll go to a whole room of prospects for a strategic coach. In other words, I might have 150 or 200 people who are just coming to check us out. And I go up to the whiteboard and I'll just write down self managing company. And I draw a big circle around it and I say, now you don't know what I mean by these words. I just wrote down self managing company. But how many of you totally want one of these? And every hand in the room goes up. And part of the reason is the vast majority of entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, are not actually managers, they're actually salespeople. What they want to do is they want to be selling, they don't actually want to be managing. There's some that are really good managers. But what gave you the confidence to actually go out into the marketplace on your own was the fact that you knew that once you got out there, you could actually sell something and bring home some cash and then you could hire managers. But ultimately, when you're at a game changer stage, you have so empowered both the project managers and the process managers in your company that basically they manage your company for you. And all they want you to do is go out and expand the future. They want you to go out and expand the future with new ideas, with new capabilities, with new connections, with new creativity. This is all they really, really care about. The deal is that they'll take care of everything back at the office as it exists and they'll improve everything in the company. But you go out there and create future for them because if they're really happy with you, they would like to be happy with you forever. So why don't you just go out there and create a future that's going to give them that kind of reassurance. And that's what I try to do in strategic coach. You know, I'm always out there and I'm always looking at what the big future is for a strategic coach. And that's really what a self managing company is. And we have a whole series of structures and processes. Now we won't be doing all this on the day, but we'll get people to talk about what it looks like. And we have the scoring criteria so you can see where you are in relationship to this. But it's really huge. We want to be freed up as entrepreneurs to create the future. We don't want to be managing the past. Right, right.

Which is so true. One of the things that I want to also tie into what I said about going to a group and bringing problems and issues there. One of the things that always struck me as people that don't have the right mindset is like, well, I can't join a program until I'm ready. I gotta get some other things in order. I got a lot of. And the funny thing about that is those people typically never get it in order. They're always getting ready to get ready. And the most important thing I believe about being a game changer is the mindset. You have the mindset before you have the conditions that exist as being a game changer before you have Uber, the guy that was the founder of Uber had the mindset. Take any company where people look at these unicorns that seem to just prop up and have these billion dollar companies. I mean if they look, in many cases it took years for these people to get somewhere, but they always had and developed and worked on developing that mindset. In spite of the opposition that would come from others, they still just stuck with it. And the more that you can then put yourself in a position to meet other game changers, that's what's going to solidify, that's what's going to help you bring the growth. So for everyone listening, go to 10xtalk.com, look at the worksheet, check out the 25 year dominance, which we didn't talk about today. Check out the game changer community if you want to speak to anything about those. In a moment, Dan, go ahead and do that. Before we wrap up, what I do want to say is that this will be the last opportunity for someone to hear about this based on how we're going to publish this podcast. So if you listen to this in time, The Game Changer one day workshop is going to be September 15, 2015. It's $1,500 investment US which is nothing. I mean this is like the profits of that are going to Phil Randazzo's program for us veterans who want to be entrepreneurs. It's called American Dream. You. So Dan's literally doing this to create a contribution, but also bring together a room full of game changers. It's for Strategic Coach clients and for Genius network members. However, if you feel you qualify, if you feel that you have the mindset of being a game changer, you have high integrity, you create value in the world and you just want to meet some of the best people, then you can email strategiccoach for more infoharitytrategiccoach.com the word charity c h a r I t y charityrategiccoach.com or call the phone number 416-531-7399 and I'll also. We'll put a PDF about the workshop up on 10. Xtalk. Com. So I thought the last two episodes we did, Dan, were fantastic. Is there anything, El you'd like to say in this subject about Game Changers?

Yeah, the only thing I would say is that the scorecards. I'm creating the next level of Strategic Coach. The first level is called the foundation level. The second level is called the 10x ambition level. And the third level is called the Game Changer. And I'm just in the process of creating this. So actually the workshop on September 15 is one of my stages of actually creating this whole next level of Strategic Coach. I'm very committed to doing it and I want you to know that as I look forward to September 15th, I'm a little bit scared. It's always good for me to be scared. And you know the feeling too, Joe, that when you're doing something new, you can't mail in the presentation because it's not something that you've rehearsed before. It's not scripted. So there's going to be a lot of magic that actually happens on that day that we won't know what it is until we actually get into the structure. But that's the name of the game. And I'm sure with our two combined groups and then some special people who come out of the 10 times listening audience, we're going to have a fabulous day. And Joe, you've got your project and you know, I'm committed to helping you put the 100k group into place. I have a lot of people that are just producing really amazing new. They're almost like the introduction to whole new marketplaces and whole new industries. And I'm just so excited about this. This is kind of a neat way to actually introduce just a lot of thinking. I've done a lot of experimentation, but I get to package it in one day. So I'm very, very excited about doing this.

I love it. It's going to be such a great day. And I also. What you said about being scared, what I have learned is that you can either be moving scared or frozen stiff. And a lot of people, they're frozen stiff. They're so scared, they're immobilized. But people that really live in reality are like, you know what? Yeah, I have this fear, but I'm gonna push forward anyway. That's what you've always done, and that's why you keep accelerating and why your future is always bigger than your past. And that's why so many people that you have taught to make their futures bigger than their past is they're moving scared a lot of the time, and that's a good thing. And there's nothing wrong with having those feelings. Are you progressing or are you just sitting there being all bummed out and depressed like, oh, why can't I get where I want to in life? Well, you can. You just got to make certain movements in a certain direction and there you go. So thank you, Dan, as always. It's a great conversation and I look Forward to the September 15th workshop. And for everyone listening, we hope to see you there. Listen to the previous episode if you've not already. Go to 10xtalk.com and download the scorecards. And again, if you are interested in the workshop, this will be your last opportunity. And do it immediately because this thing will be sold out. You can email charityrategiccoach.com or check out the PDF on 10xtalk.com, where all the details will be there. And we will talk to you on the next episode of 10X Talk. And subscribe on itunes. So you get these downloaded to whatever device you you use every time that we put a new one out. And thank you.