Mastering The Art of Delegation for Entrepreneurs - Episode #3

I'm Joe Polish.

I'm Dan Sullivan and welcome to 10 Times Talk.

Hello, this is Joe Polish and I've.

Got who with me, Dan Sullivan here in Toronto.

Yes, 10 times talk, here we go. So, Dan, summarize kind of your week in a 10 times thinking way for all the listeners at 10 times talk. What is a typical week of life like for Dan Sullivan?

Yeah, well, it's interesting, Joe, because over the years I've decided that my life was just going to consist of three different activities. And the first one is coaching, you know, in the Strategic coach program. So this week on Monday and Tuesday, I had two full day workshops with a lot of veteran entrepreneurs. These are individuals who've been in Strategic coach anywhere from 10 to 20 years. And then the other aspect of it is creating new material. So that consists of creating new thinking processes, new books, new videos, new audios. And so 10 times talk would qualify that. So what we're doing right now, and then I just created an entirely new, an entirely new issue of what I call the 10 times thinker, which is, comes out quarterly. So I we just put that to bed this morning and then I'll be doing some videos tomorrow which come under Creating New Materials and this. And then in most weeks I'll do some sort of marketing activity. Could be a webinar, could be a live presentation, could be a teleconference. And that's it for me that. So, you know, Sunday is for me is usually a writing day, which was true this past Sunday, and always take Saturday off. And then on Friday I'm off for a week to our cottage north of Toronto and I'll be doing that twice more during the summer. And I also take two weeks off in Cape Cod, so I take a ton of free time and when I'm working I'm just doing three things.

Well, you know, that's great. Well, I want to actually ask you about that. I mean, I guess if I had to sum up my week, I spent last week with you and Dean Jackson. I've got a 25k group starting tomorrow and the next day, which will be pretty awesome. So I've got a pretty eventful filled work week and I've got sort of a slight cold right now, which is really bizarre and weird. But we won't talk about that. We did an episode for 10 times talk on quotes and you have three fantastic quote books because one of the things about you is you always have little snippets of immense wisdom that speaking for myself, really gives me a lot of Perspective. One of your books is never own anything that eats while you sleep. Then there's the first one which was the Quotable Dan Sullivan. And then your newest one is quotable 10 times. I wanted to talk a little bit more about quotes because from the last episode that we did on quotes, it was really well received. People love it and, and I think people will love this. So I want to kind of do some 10 times talks. Keep talking about your quotes. And one of them that you have is you have to work less to make more money. And you just talked about how you're going on vacation to Cape Cod and taking free time. And I'd really like you to expand on that because in the process of someone growing their company 10 times, that sounds like, well, you know, I have to do a lot more work. But one of your things is you have to work less to make more money. And in theory it sounds good, but is that. What do you mean?

Well, you know, I've just observed, you know, I was born in one industrial and economic age and you know, I'm really, you know, enjoying my great success in a completely different age. So I was born in the 1940s at the end of the Second World War and you know, pretty well lived most of my early life, adult life in world of big corporations. I worked for a big ad agency, bbdo in Toronto for three years as a copywriter. And you know, I had other, you know, other experiences with very, very large organizations. And generally speaking, I would say right up until the microchip really started transforming the economy, the basic rule of success was that if you wanted to make a lot more money, you had to work harder, you had to work longer. And in many places that's still true. You know, they expect people to put in 60, 70 hour weeks. Big law firms, big accounting firms, and then there's lots of corporations where how much activity you do and how many hours you put in is a sign that you're a serious player. But if you look at the world that has emerged since probably around, I would say probably somewhere in the neighborhood of around 1990 is when I really started noticing this real shift that you can have individuals now because they have the ability to multiply themselves and get sort of viral results in technology based networks and systems. You can now actually live a life where you can produce something in a fairly short period of time and then have it multiplied for you automatically and you can be taking free time while it's being multiplied. And I think that this is a growing model in the world that we're no longer going to equate someone's seriousness in business with the amount of time that they put in. So my attitude is that we're now no longer in a muscle game where it's not a question of what your physical body is doing, it's how good your mind is, how sharp your mind is for producing results. And I notice that if people take really, really good free time off, where they really give their mind a break from work routines and they focus on everything, that really rejuvenates them, that when they come back they can actually get things done many times more quickly, much more easily, and they produce much better results in very, very short periods of time. And so as a result of that, they can produce big results and therefore they can move into a world that I call the results economy rather than the time and effort economy, where you just get paid for your results, regardless of how long, you know, how much time it actually takes. And this is, you know, Joe, you've been with strategic coach for 13 years and this is just one of the central planks. You know, the platforms in Strategic Coach is just to stop measuring your impact as an entrepreneur in terms of the amount of work hours you put in. Right.

Well, you know, with the time and effort economy versus the results economy for startups, is there any time or any sort of industries where you see that process? And the reason I say that is, look, I understand this inside and out. Having been in Strategic Coach and spent so much time around you and seeing the results of this, are there any industries or any situations where you see this would not apply? Because I'm asking that for the listener who might be like, well, you don't understand my industry or I'm brand new in business, it's not like I have the luxury of time and energy and I'm still trying to figure out how to produce results. How can I possibly be in the results economy if I don't put in the time and effort and go through the ranks and all that sort of stuff? I mean, how would you respond to that?

Yeah, well, first of all, I think that what you're saying is very accurate. I mean, I don't think anybody when they're just getting into business can follow this principle because, you know, just to learn what a new business is, just to kind of get a feel for the marketplace you're in, I think you just have to put in a lot of time and you got to be really prepared for 60, 70 hour weeks and you're not going to take the amount of free days. But I think that you don't want to get that hardwired. So a lot of people start off their careers, they're workaholics almost, and they can never break from that because it's almost in their mind that this is the normal thing. For me, I always saw it as abnormal that I'd have to work so hard. When I first started my business, and then I had a goal of as soon as I started becoming successful, I would start using the money to buy time back. You know, you get successful and you have surplus income and then you buy time back by start, you start taking everything that you're doing, which was necessary for you to do at the beginning of business, and then you say, well, somebody else can do that, so I can hire somebody to do that. Or there's now a new technology that can relieve anybody from doing this. So you buy, use your money for technology and, and so, but gradually you buy your freedom back. You know, you know, I, so I work, you know, I work, you know, when I work, I work hard. I probably, when I'm working, which is roughly about, I would say about 30 weeks out of the 52 in the year, I would put in 55, 60 hour weeks, no question. But then when I'm on my free days, I don't work at all. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't do email very much, period. But I don't listen to voicemail and I don't, I don't do anything that's work related. I have a lot of outside interests, personal interests, and I indulge myself completely in that world because it totally refreshes me, rejuvenates me, allows my mind to get away. So that, that's one situation. So I want to make a clear distinction that anybody starting, you know, anybody who's just starting in business or anybody who's starting a new business, you know, they may have experience, but they're starting a new business. Well, you can't do it because you just, you don't know what's involved yet. So you have to give yourself a lot of time just to get the learning curve right in the new business. So that's one exception to my role. The other one is a lot of people find themselves in very, very commoditized industries. You know, they've allowed themselves to become commoditized. And by that I simply mean that they're offering something in the form of a product or a service that actually can be matched by other people. And so the only competitive advantage that you can actually get is in terms of price competition. You know, you undersell it. I personally have avoided that. I just see that's a really, really bad, bad game for an entrepreneur to get involved in. Unless you're huge, you know, you're a huge commoditizer like Walmart or Amazon.com or, you know, any of the really big guys. But the, you know, 99% of entrepreneurs don't operate in that world. But a lot of them allow themselves to get commoditized and, you know, they can never be easy when they're not working. You know, they're at the beach, but their mind is, what are my competitors doing? And so they can never be easy. So the solution there is that you have to create some sort of unique value in the marketplace that allows you to have the sense of freedom that you can't be competed with, you can't be undercut when you're taking free days.

Yeah, that's actually a really important point because if you are constantly in a situation where competitors or your, you know, your successes at the whims of price, as an example, it's very hard to probably disconnect from that for many entrepreneurs because certainly that's, you know, that's not the world I exist in either. So used to when my business sucked and I wasn't making any Money, you know, 20 years ago, however, not that way anymore.

I'll give you an example of that, Joe, from your own world that I have been, you know, I've witnessed for 13 years that in the 25K program that you have right now and at the high levels of your, you know, your platinum plus programs, you achieve in a couple days what, 13 years ago would have taken you a month in terms of income. And that just shows the progress that you've made of getting paid for results rather than getting paid for time and effort.

Yeah, that's perfect example. It's the ability to cluster and bundle it all together and price it not based on what they can compare to something else, but that real unique value uniquely packaged and delivered. So that it's a total win for me and it's a total win for my clients.

Yeah. And you see it with Dean Jackson. We had Dean on, you know, a really great interview with Dean. And you know, I mean, when you take a look at the kind of results he gets from a financial standpoint and the actual, you know, time he puts in, it's really remarkable. I mean, you know, I mean, how much he's been Able to come, you know, to distill down into probably less than a week's time a month where he gets paid, you know, a tremendous amount because it's brain power. You know, what he's selling, his ingenuity and brain power and, you know, processes that can't be competed with in the marketplace. And, you know, I think that if somebody just spent a month watching Dean and how he operates, it would be worth more than going to Harvard for, you know, two or three years to go. In Harvard Business School. They'd learn more about business and marketing and, you know, how, just. How to just get paid for results.

Yeah, exactly. You know what, it's not just a statement. It's actually true. I mean, it's.

No, he is, he's really a master of this. Just getting paid for results and not putting in a lot of time and effort. Yeah.

He's just lucky he knows us because at least we say nice things about him.

Well, on the other, apparently, you know, on your. I love marketing, you know, the, you know. Well, there's another example. I love marketing, you know, just how much impact you have with about 75 hours of your work.

Right.

You know, I mean, you've created a worldwide brand that's, you know, that's going to keep, you know, multiplying its impact in your life and in Dean's life. And you put in, you know, I mean, you guys, you know, you really didn't put in that much more work than it actually took to record it. So you've put in 75 hours over two years and I mean, you've created an enormous result in the world.

Yeah. And the funny thing about it is that well over a million people have actually listened to it.

Ed.

I think it's pretty awesome to have that level of impact, but it's completely leverageable and everyone can do it. What's interesting is even what we're doing with 10 times talk, we just sit and look at the long term impact of this spanning out several years. It's big. I really love the whole topic of free time because it's one of the biggest obstacles for the ultra connected world we live in today. And I want to come back to being in a relaxed state. In your newest quote book, quotable 10 times, you have a statement where you say working with a 10 times goal and game plan requires that your brain is relaxed, rested and rejuvenated. And when someone is thinking about growing 10 times, I think a lot of people are going to be like, are you kidding me? I'm not going to be relaxed, rest and rejuvenated. Maybe I'll be excited, driven and operating with a sense of urgency, but relaxed, rested and rejuvenated. So I wanted to again, play devil's advocate here and say, what do you mean?

Well, first of all, I've got a line which regards my whole 10 times program at Strategic Coach. And I said, you know, growing 10 times is a lot easier than growing two times, you know, and it's kind of interesting when I first say that to people, it's a showstopper because they look at me and they say, what do you mean by that? And I said, well, first of all, I said, if you're just trying to go two times, what happens is that you have to drag your entire past. It's almost like, you know, everything that you've accumulated in your entire business career going two times is that you're having to adjust everything, you know, in terms of your experience, in terms of the organization you've put together, in terms of all the obligations, in terms of all the processes, everything you've had, you got to go through systematically and kind of change everything so that it can go two times. And, you know, it's just an incredible amount of work where if the goal is to go 10 times, you know, right off the bat, that 80% of what makes up your past can't come with you. You have to leave it behind. You know, it's almost like. It's almost like being an immigrant, you know, coming from another country. Like, you know, going two times is like being in the old country, but moving to the next town. Going 10 times is like moving from the old country across an ocean to a new country. You're going to be extraordinarily selective about what comes with you on the trip. So I always get entrepreneurs to take a 10 times jump simply because they have to make a decision about what goes forward and what has to be left behind. And right out of that, what they leave behind is probably about 80% of what they're doing right now. It doesn't make any. It may have made sense in the past, it does not make sense in the future. And so you got to make a real decision about that. And there's commitments and obligations and all sorts of connections you have that you. You simply can't do anymore. And it. It actually enormously simplifies people, you know, and I think in a complex world, Joe, and technology, the craziness of the connected technological world actually increases the amount of complications and conflicts, distractions, interruptions, that people have. And the reason is that they're trying to adjust everything that they've been doing for the last 15, 20, 30 years to this new world. My way of doing it is simply to say, well, in the future I'm only going to be doing one or two things, and I'll only use technology for certain things. And there's only a certain number of people that are really important for me to do that. So I can leave vast amounts of what used to be important behind. And that's really this whole thought process that we have around 10 times. We just get people to make an incredible number of decisions about what matters in their future and also what used to really matter in their past, but it won't matter in their future.

You know, my friend Tim Ferriss, I've had many discussions with him about the process of elimination, using the least amount of, you know, tools in order to get the job done. And he has this whole thing where he talks about, you know, eliminate before you delegate. And when someone is. Has such a, I don't know, a conditioned habits built around certain activities or certain projects, certain niches, certain industries, you know, they're, you know, I wouldn't even say they're. What used to be their best practices are now their worst practices in just letting go of something, you know, so a couple things. What are your thoughts on eliminating things? And secondly, how does a person mentally let go of stuff that they have a lot of attachment to? I mean, some, maybe some steps and recommendations on how to let go of the baggage that maybe served you at one point in time but is not going to get you to 10 times.

Yeah, well, you know, in. I don't know if it was the last one or the first one we did. In the new the 10 times talk series, Joe, we talked about the definition of selling, you know, the intellectual engagement, and we were kind of referring it to you selling someone else. But the number one sales job that all of us, if we're entrepreneurs and we want to grow as entrepreneurs in life, always has to be that we have this phenomenal ability to sell ourselves on a bigger and better future. So the first step, before you can even think about elimination, it seems to me that you have to really, really sell yourself, which means intellectually engaging with a much big and better vision of yourself in the future, within the achievable future, and then to emotionally enable yourself to commit to taking all the action and making all the decisions that would actually get you to that much bigger and better result. So that has to be put in place because you won't give up anything that you already have unless you're actually going towards something that's incredibly better. Nobody gives up anything in the present. You only give up things in relationship to the future. So you have to have a future you that starts talking to you and starts saying, you know, you're going to be much happier here. But in order to be happy, there are certain things that you're doing right now that you just can't do anymore. And that's part of the emotional commitment. And then we get into the area of elimination. And I would say delegation, because I think that there's two things here. And I consider delegation would also include delegating to someone outside of your organization. In other words, that you have commitments to certain clients and customers in the marketplace. And you would simply say, we're not going to be doing this anymore. I'm not going to be doing it at this level anymore, but I can find someone good. So you're eliminating it from your own organization, but you're doing it by delegating it to someone else's organization. Because everybody's garbage is somebody else's gold.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you've been talking quite a lot lately at Strategic Coach about finding, getting outside of your own existing company and taking advantage of the unique abilities and capabilities that are not what you're going to ever hire or delegate as an employee. But they're just other individuals that are out there. I mean, how do you. How do you think about getting people beyond your own existing organization to get you to where you want to go with Strategic Coach?

Yeah. Well, one of the things, Joe, I mean, first of all, I'll just give you a real example that my prime motivation for joining your program, 25K, and it took me a couple years to get my schedule right, you know, where, you know, it lined up with all the dates that you would have available for us was so that I could get outside of Strategic Coach, where I'm the big guy, you know, in Strategic Coach, And I would go into another world where you're the big guy, you know, so, yeah, you know, you're sitting at the table and I'm in front of the room and coach. But in 25k, I'm sitting at the table and you're. You're in front of the room. And that was very, very crucial for me because, you know, just I knew I was going to learn a lot. But not only that, it gave me a chance to really disconnect and be in an Environment that was totally different from mine. And the kinds of subjects and the type of skills and capabilities that you bring into that room is very, very different from what happens at Strategic Coach. So doing that six to eight days a year is just a tremendous disconnect. But then we started really putting a push on everybody in our company of going out and finding an expert in their area that was way above them. In other words, that, you know, we have all sorts of skill sets inside Strategic Coach. And I said to every person, I says, you know, more and more, your growth inside Strategic Coach is going to come from you finding somebody out in the world, an expert in a particular area, and you're going to start taking advantage of someone's knowledge and skill and expertise and connections that are way, way beyond what you can provide inside the company so that, you know, you're kind of forced to grow. And then we want you to bring all that new stuff back to the company. And in the process, you know, just going back to the previous conversation, what they're noticing as they do this and they go out, they're coming back, and they're eliminating a lot of their old habits and their old processes because they've just come across something that's much better on the outside.

Yeah, that's awesome. Keeping along the theme of free time and taking time off and growing 10 times, I love another quote from you, which is people who really like putting out fires are usually Arsenal. And I'd like to get your thoughts on that before we kind of wrap up this episode.

Yeah, I mean, I've just noticed that a lot of. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are drug addicts, and the drug that they're most addicted to is adrenaline, which often comes up most when people are under high stress and they're in a state of crises. So in order to get their fix of adrenaline, where they feel, you know, they kind of feel really elevated, they're energized. They, you know, they're extremely focused and everything else, they create chaos around them, and they put their company in danger just so that they can, you know, they can get a drug fix. And it's. It's kind of like someone who just loves fires and just loves, you know, the thrill of fires. So in order to be putting out fires all the time, he. He does double duty. He or she does double duty, and they start fires so that they can put them out and they can be. They can be a hero. But it's. It's devastating to the organization that they're in. It's devastating to their own psyche. It undermines relationships, it destroys their personal life and everything like that. So I tell people, I mean, you know, I mean, don't use adrenaline in your company as the way to, you know, adrenaline in relationship to negative experiences like crises and everything else. And if you, if you want to get a real good adrenaline fix, then establish a 10 times goal that's very exciting and a little bit scary and that's a, that's a kind of adrenaline that'll do you an enormous amount of good. The crises driven, putting out fires and that, that's really, really, I don't think anybody can keep at that for very, very long.

I mean, how frequently over your business career, I guess the last 20 years or so, when you really just grown and built up your organization and you've not only adopted so many valuable, useful habits and rituals, but you've shared them with the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet. How often does Dan Sullivan get into a triage situation where you're, I mean, do you ever get in over your head? Do you ever get in situations where you have to make really hard decisions and renegotiate obligations or have you really just developed yourself at a level that very few crises ever enter your field?

Yeah, I would say, I mean if you go back, let's say 15 years and I said that what I was doing back there constituted a 10, you know, in terms of getting myself into trouble, I would say today I'm at a one, you know, in other words, that it's been reduced by 90%. You know, I still get into short range, short range deadline trouble. You know, I commit myself to producing something. But this would be a topic, you know, Joe and I think I would really like to explore this. And this is the, I think pioneering work that we've done in Strategic Coach and the creation of a particular type of team member role that we call project managers. Because my observation with most entrepreneurs is that the greatest thing that they're lacking that would give their life a real sense of direction and a real sense of calm and peace is that they're lacking a particular type of person called a project manager. But it's really the subject for an entire 10 times talk. And we can both look at what we've done in our respective companies and how by adding these project managers, it's just giving us an incredible amount more freedom, but mostly peace of mind.

Yeah, well, that'll be a future episode then because I think that'd be incredibly, incredibly useful. So what we're going to do at this point, I'd like one more thing, just your recommendation, Dan, based on what we talked about, Any specific action our listeners could take after listening to this episode? And on the next episode, we're going to talk about another one of your quotes because I really like discussing these quotes with you and expanding on them because they mean a lot to me and I know they mean a lot to our listeners. I think it's just really good to hear your thoughts on it. What we're going to talk about in the next episode is you're only 20 new habits away from doubling your income. But what's an action you'd recommend that all of our listeners could take?

Well, I would just use the 10 times framework, and that is that they take the area of their company, not their whole company. So I'm not talking about necessarily revenues and profits here, but they take the area of their company that they're most excited about and they look at what they're presently doing and presently achieving in that area and they simply set a goal for doing 10 times as much in terms of actual results in this one area of their company and then put some numbers on that and put a date on it and then start to work backwards and say, you know, what are the obstacles that I have right immediately that would prevent me from actually moving in the direction of achieving this 10 times breakthrough? And all of a sudden they'll get this real burst of energy and it'll really simplify their mind because the thing that they're most excited about in their company right now is actually the future of their company. That thing is the future of their company. And the things that are not exciting to them right now in their present company is the past of their company. So the quicker that they can get to the future of their company and leave behind the past of their company, the more their life will simplify and they'll move into the results economy fully and get out of the time and effort economy.

Awesome. Love it. Love it. Okay, Dan, well, I thought this was a great episode, so thank you. And to all our listeners, we will see see you next time on 10 Times Talk. And in the meantime, if you want to check out Strategic Coach, go to strategiccoach.com if you're listening to this episode on iTunes, go to 10timestalk.com there's links where you can get more information about myself and Dan Sullivan and all the cool stuff that we're doing. And also any accompanying videos and downloadable reports and stuff are@10timestalk.com thank you very much, and we'll talk.

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Sam.