Telling The Truth, Identifying Strengths - Episode #1

I'm Joe Polish.

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

Hello, this is Joe Polish and I'm here with Mr. Dan Sullivan in the studio at the Strategic Coach headquarters in Toronto. How you doing, Dan?

Thanks, Joe. Really great. Looking forward to our conversation today.

Yes, this will be awesome. Now, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk about quotes, and I'm going to actually make this particular recording with Dan I one of our first episodes for our podcast called 10 Times Talk. And, Dan, describe a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then I'll try to do the same for myself. And then we're going to share to all the successful entrepreneurs out there some good wisdom.

Basically, Joe, I call myself the 10 times persuader. So this is kind of a role that I've developed in life. And for the last 40 years, I've been working with really talented, ambitious, successful entrepreneurs. And what I've hit on as a great way to work with these individuals who already have so much success is to get them to think now in terms of how they would take their entrepreneurial success ten times greater. This is unique with each individual, but my greatest love and pleasure in life is just having discussions about how they would take their personal life, their business life, to 10 times greater levels of improvement and growth, progress and achievement.

And you do a fantastic job with that. I always refer to you as the smartest entrepreneurial thinker that I know on the planet. And I would probably even have to throw you into the category of probably the smartest human being that I know. And the reason I say that is not because I've been brainwashed or I've not been exposed to smart people, because I know some of the smartest people on the planet. I really make that decision and I have that belief about you based on 13 years currently of being in your program, the Strategic Coach, and also having you be in one of my programs called Genius Network Mastermind, spending a lot of time together. And you have had more discussions with successful entrepreneurs than any other human being on the planet through all the work you've done with Strategic Coach. And so you just have an insight and a perspective that very few have coupled with a lifetime of experience. And on top of that, you walk the walk and talk the talk better than anyone I know. You actually live the life that you preach and many people that are, and the how to advice, giving, mentoring, coaching, whatever you want to call it, business really don't do as good of a job as I've seen you do. So I think you're not only successful financially, but in every other way from being happy, grateful, class act. I mean, you name it. And so what I want to do today is we started going down a path of recording podcast episodes. And these are more than just podcasts, but they're recorded episodes for Genius Network and also for the Dan and Joe Show. And we stumbled on this. And when I say stumbled, it wasn't really like, oh, we discovered it. We've really been thinking through what is it that we've been communicating on all of the conversations that we've had in the past that we've not yet publicly released. We're preparing all of this to start this episode for really successful entrepreneurs and anyone that is a value creating entrepreneur. You've taken a new direction in Strategic Coach and you have a program called you times 10 where you're really helping entrepreneurs 10 times their profits, their growth, their free time, I mean, whatever they want to use as a qualifier to 10 times and multiply themselves. And we were, after having done several episodes, we thought, you know, the conversations we're having are really about, we're talking about 10 times. And so we've decided to call this 10 times talk. And we're going to take this episode and we're going to put it before all of the ones that come after it. So you're going to hear a few episodes, you know, six or seven of them, where you're hearing me and Dan say the Joe and Dan Show, Genius Network, that sort of thing. But realize it's all built around 10 times talk. And I figured, you know, the best way to get into this is to talk to you about 10 times talk and also about some quotes that you've said that I think are profound. And before we get started, my name is Joe Polish, of course, like nail polish. And I have a company called Piranha Marketing, and I'm a convert of my own system. I learned a type of marketing called direct response back in 1992 is when I first stumbled upon it. And, and I learned it because I was literally, I owned a carpet and upholstery cleaning company. And I was struggling, I was broke. And I learned marketing because I needed to survive, I needed to eat. And I ended up utilizing these direct response strategies that I now call elf marketing, which stands for easy, lucrative and fun. And I used it to not only transform my business, but I started teaching other people in that industry how to, you know, build referrals, get higher prices, convert leads, be more effective at their marketing and advertising and their messaging using very compelling copy. And since that period of time, I've sold many millions of dollars worth of how to courses, manuals, seminars, events. And today we've got clients all over the world. I run the highest level mastermind group in the world for direct response marketers. It's a $25,000 a year program called Genius Network Mastermind. And I do all kinds of amazing stuff with brilliant entrepreneurs. And the favorite person that I do this stuff with in the field of multiplying your business is Dan Sullivan. And then I also have a, a sister podcast called I love Marketing that I do with a brilliant guy by the name of Dean Jackson. And that's really focused on me and Dean talking about really unique direct response strategies@ilovemarketing.com so that's my little spiel. So, Dan, you've published a couple of books all about your quotes. The quotable Dan Sullivan never own anything that eats while you sleep. And there's a new one coming out which we'll keep that a secret for now. But basically you are really known for just saying short, wise things. And in the shortest amount of words you're really, basically you pack a lot of meaning from the fewest amount of words. And in one of your quote books you have a quote that's all progress starts by telling the truth. And I'd like you to describe that. And I'm just going to simply ask you some questions about your quotes and that'll be the way that we introduce people to 10 times talk.

First of all, like yourself, Joe, and so many other entrepreneurs, it wasn't always just a smooth upward road. A lot of us have gone through really rough periods of life. Back in the 70s, I went bankrupt, I was divorced, I was bankrupt again in the early 1980s. And you know, fundamentally it was because I didn't really have my business model together, I didn't have my marketing together. I hadn't really worked out my business cycle. And what I realized is that to the degree that I was willing just to tell the truth about wasn't working and taking full responsibility for, for it, not blaming anyone else, but just saying, okay, this isn't working. You have some things that are working. This isn't working. If you could do it all over again, how would you do it differently? And then you start doing things differently and pretty soon a lot of failure turns into success. So I find, you know, that in any area of life where people are having problems, that the only starting point for them to Turn it around is to actually tell the truth about what's actually happening without blaming. I think the big thing is that there's a tendency to blame others for why you're not succeeding. But you really have to tell the truth. The reason why things aren't working is really because you're not telling the truth about what's actually happening.

Yeah. Well, I guess as entrepreneurs, there's probably a lot of delusion in line that's taking place when their business isn't working.

Yeah. And one of the biggest areas, you know, Joe, and you've been with coach for 13 years, is just to absolutely tell the truth about what you're really good at, because a lot of entrepreneurs think they're good at everything. It's not true. A lot of entrepreneurs had the gumption to actually become entrepreneurs in the first place is because they're a really good salesperson. And the moment they become an entrepreneur, they stop selling. And that's, you know, the very thing which allows them to be successful. They start doing less of. You know, I'm a persuader. You know, I thought about that, and I'm not the greatest coach in the world, and I don't think I'm the greatest salesperson in the world, but I do think I'm the greatest persuader in the world. I'll just keep giving you different ways of looking at the way that you're looking at, and one of them's gonna click, and you'll persuade yourself doing that. So when I told myself the truth about that, then I could really create a great business model that's been very, very successful. You know, I've gone 10 times, three times in the last 20 years in terms of the success of the company. And, you know, when I first started working with you, I could zero in. I could see all the activity that you were doing, but I could see this circle right in the middle where you just seemed to just automatically shine. And I think my greatest impact is I just persuaded you more and more over the years just to take that seriously and not take the other things seriously.

Yeah. I think it is a continual, lifelong process. And the thing that I think is great about how you went about doing it is there's a lot of people that I've encountered that their method of having someone go to a new direction is like kicking them in the ass or being really hardcore about it, Whereas you are very much identifying what you call unique ability and helping them really narrow in on that and take it seriously while simultaneously giving up all the things that they hate and getting them to get rid of the frustrations, the messes, and continually fill their life with just what they're good at.

Yeah. And, you know, and just to bring it down to your example, what I saw the moment that you came into coach was that you were a phenomenal connector. I could tell just by the way you talked and the people you knew and the ideas that you were familiar with and how you would connect one thing with another. I said, geez, I've never seen anybody with this talent before and yet I saw you doing a lot of other things that just seemed to frustrate you and didn't seem to produce the real results. And you were kind of presenting yourself as all of it. And I said, you know, if you just present yourself as this one in the middle that you've got a nose for, who's a genius? You got a nose for what are genius ideas. But then once you were in that area and you just kept getting more success and more confidence, then you were off to the races. And I have to tell you, that's my greatest joy in life is just to have been influential in persuading someone just to do the things that they're really great at.

Yeah, well, and see. So part of our 10 times talk motivation here is to take you, the listener, and actually persuade you to identify what you're really great at, where the real value is, what is your unique ability, and help you better direct that into the world. Because that's where the value that me and Dan will get out of putting this out there and putting these ideas out into the world is to literally change the global conversation among the highest achieving entrepreneurs. And not just people that make the most money, just people that are really doing innovative, awesome, cool things that help people. I remember asking you, Dan, several years ago, what's your definition of selling? And you didn't even think about it. You just said, getting people intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And then I asked you, could you say that again? And you basically said it verbatim while I wrote it down. And I looked at that definition and I've read over a thousand books. I go to a lot of seminars. I'm a student of learning from smart, bright people. I love entrepreneurism. So it's usually areas of marketing and persuasion. And I've done a lot of reading and studying and application of selling and marketing. I just never heard anything quite said that way. And so I looked at that definition and the thing that really stood out for me is the word good for them. Because you can get people intellectually and emotionally engaged in a future result that isn't good for them. And I think when people are kind of down on sales and marketing, they're relating it to some bad high pressure experience where someone tried to talk them into something that wasn't really a good match, or someone went over the top and was lied or misled or just exaggerated. The stereotypical used car salesperson that's pressuring them and just trying to talk them into stuff. But when you said that definition, it really reframed the whole way that you kind of look at it. And since that time, I've created a whole little video called Selling Evil that people can actually. We'll put it up on 10 times talk. We'll put the Selling Evil video there, which all came out of that definition. But really that's what is going to happen. For those people that listen to 10 times talk, we're going to get them continually intellectually and emotionally engaged in their bigger future and it will be good for them. And we're going to give them a plan and path on how to do it and we're going to put this out there for free. Now, if they get value out of this, which we want them to, then check out Strategic Coach, we'll put all that information on 10 times talk. You can read some of Dan's books, some of the knowledge products that he produces, take a look at some of the stuff I'm doing. We're just going to really create a conversation. We want you really seriously involved. And this will be the first introductory episode for you. And then listen to all the future episodes that we do. And we're going to put them out at least to a month. Sometimes we'll put bonus ones on there. Sometimes there'll be other 10 times thinkers that me and Dan decide to interview. But this is going to be a place for you to continually be connected into the type of thinking that will help you transform your future. So Dan, what would be one of your goals and objectives with 10 times talk?

Well, the interesting thing is because I think that I like to spend a little more time on just really what ten Times really means. And one of the things that's really interesting with a lot of entrepreneurs, when I talk to them about 10 times, they're kind of single minded about it and they say, you know, I want 10 times greater revenues or I want 10 times greater profits. And I says, well, let's Take that apart a little bit. That would be a goal, but it'd actually be a means to something else. So if you had 10 times greater revenues, what would it put you in a position to actually get? And then they start naming a whole bunch of other areas in their life. And I said, well, the real goal isn't actually 10 times revenues so much as it is all these other things. And they all come down to freedom. That's one of the things I've discovered. The driving ambition for all entrepreneurs is to be successful so that they can have greater freedom in their life. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose in their life, so that more and more their life is really what they want it to be about. So what I do, I say, well, you know, probably to buy all this freedom, you're going to have to have your income 10 times greater and your profits 10 times greater. But let's really focus on what the real rewards are here. Let's really talk about the freedom rewards. But I want to go back to the thing about unique ability, because there's a great quote that I got from Oscar Wilde, who was just a. He was like a quote machine, you know, in the 1890s and 1900s. And it was just a very little quote. And I just listened to it and I said, boy, this is kind of like the wisdom of the world. And he said, be yourself because everyone else is taken. And it was kind of like, I think that virtually all the unhappiness that people experience in life is their attempt to be someone else besides themselves. We've talked over the years about addictions, that people get into addictions. And I think that a lot of addictions actually come about because people are trying to be something other than what they are. They're not proud of themselves. They want to have another self that they can be proud of. So they never really, throughout their entire life, ever look inside for where their future actually is. They're always looking outside of themselves for where the future is. And so the 10 times for me is if we can just persuade people to take seriously what it is that they're actually good at and then commit to that. So it goes back to the selling thing that you said, Joe, to get them to intellectually engage with what they're really good at and see themselves doing so much more of that in the future, and then to actually emotionally commit themselves to taking the actions to become more of what they're really, really great at in the future. And that requires teamwork with other People. And it requires networking and additional skills and knowledge and all the other things that would go into building a real entrepreneurial framework about who they really are. I mean, really, when I look at you and the organization you have now compared to the late 90s, it's just a structure that has been created around your unique ability.

Right, right. And it's a heck of a lot more productive than it was back then. And the impact we've made and the money we've made, everything about it is just improved. You know, just jumping off of what you said. One of the quotes that I have here from one of your quote books, surround yourself with people who remind you more of the future than the past. What does that mean?

Before we really become conscious, we're born where the world is happening to us. Probably for the first five or six years the world is just happening to you. And then at a certain time you start developing abilities and that where you start happening to the world. But along the lines, you develop all sorts of relationships that you didn't really choose. You're born into a family, you grow up somewhere, you go to school, you have all these relationships. And what happens with a lot of people is they become very, very emotionally attached to the relationships that they had before they were even conscious of who they were. And as they go forward and they start developing consciousness about their unique ability, all of a sudden their new consciousness conflicts with their loyalty and their emotional attachments to the people that they never chose. And so there comes this crucial point in life where you have to make a decision about the relationships you have in life. Are they the relationships that were related to your past or are they relationships that are going to be related to your future growth? And I think this is one of the most painful things that all people go through is that you realize that as you choose your life, more and more you're also going to choose a different set of relationships and that these individuals are really going to be future based and they're going to represent the future. They're not going to represent your past. You know, you can stay in touch with your past, but those individuals that you knew in the past generally are not going to be all that supportive of your future because to a certain extent you're leaving them behind. I'm a farm boy from Northern Ohio. I grew up in a big family, you know, in the 1950s, I spent 12 years with the same 55 kids going through Catholic school. And you know, I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the people, but none of them are in my life right now, except when I go back for reunions of one kind or another. You know, I go back because it's paying respect to what used to be, but it's not really part. I mean, you're more of a member of my family than any member of my family, Joe. You know, I mean, I can see us working and creating for the rest of our lives, you know, and it'll always be bigger. And we each have networks of people for whom that would be true. And that kind of represents your future family. So the support that you have around you, then make sure it's. When you think about the support you have, you can see that support getting greater and greater and more important as you go into the future and don't surround yourself where the support that you have has already been given and it's in the past.

That reminds me of another quote that you have, which is, the skills that get you out of Egypt aren't the ones that get you into the Promised Land. And you could replace the word skills with the people that get you out of Egypt aren't the ones that get you into the Promised land. Also, how do you cut ties gracefully, and maybe not so gracefully with things that are holding onto the past and not serving you at all? Because when I look around, I see a lot of people do that. And I certainly can point to times in my life where it's not served me very well to be preoccupied with the past or with even environments or relationships that once I got rid of them or changed it, progress was made.

Well, the quote, the skills that get you out of Egypt aren't the ones that get you into the Promised Land goes back to the book of Exodus. And it's, you know, that Moses who led the children of Israel out of Egypt, but he didn't take them into the Promised Land because Moses only had the skills to get them out of Egypt. Moses didn't have the skills to actually get them into the Promised Land. And he wandered. The children of Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert before someone came along who could lead them into the Promised Land. So there are people that you have relationships that were important at a certain stage in your past to get where you are, but at a certain point. And these could be, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, these could be your team members. They only grow to a certain level. They could be customers or clients that were important to you, but they're really not various other kind of supportive networks out in the marketplace. But at a certain point, if you're continuing to grow and they're not growing, then there's going to be a choice made. And to a certain extent, their decision not to grow is their decision not to go any further. So it's not just you that is making the decision. You're probably the second person to make a decision. They're the ones who made the first decision. I'm just not going to grow anymore. And oftentimes people who decide not to grow anymore also want the people with them to also make that decision not to grow anymore because they want to keep you in relationship. But if you're going to keep growing, it's going to make the relationship very uncomfortable and they don't want you making the relationship very uncomfortable, especially in our society where there's tremendous mobility. I grew up in, as I said, in a small farm community in northern Ohio. Now I live in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, but not in the United States, in Toronto, which is just, you know, I think there's 180 cranes putting up buildings right now. It's just an amazing growth place. And I operate in three countries and I have people from all over the world who are strategic coach entrepreneurs. But these relationships are all consistent with a future that I have for myself and the future of the company. And I need these relationships and they're just as emotional and important to me as any other relationships I had in the past.

So, Dan, I'm going to end this on one last quote, at least the quote questions I have for you. You have a quote that's always make your future bigger than your past. And you even wrote a book called the Laws of Lifetime Growth which really expand upon this whole idea and with 10 times talk. One of my objectives would be having everyone that listens to it having a place where they can go to our episodes and actually continually it will assist them and help them in making their future bigger than their past. What do you mean by that?

Well, you know, it's a lot like muscle. You know that everybody's born with muscle and our muscles continue to grow until we're about 30 years old. And after 30, unless you do something like resistance training, weightlifting every year, you'll have less muscle as you get older. And it's kind of like your first amount of muscle was given to you just by being born. But if you're going to have muscle after 30, let's say when you're 50 or, you know, much older, then that muscle is going to be because you created the muscle. And I think that's on the physical level, but on the intellectual and emotional and psychological level, I think children are given a future by their parents. I mean, if they grow up in good circumstances, they're given a future. Nothing much is expected of children. I mean, if you really put it down to it, there's enormous supports we have for children. We have a whole school system and there's, I think people go out of their way to help children. And so you can have a child who's doing really well. And everybody says, boy, what a future that child is going to have. But I think when they hit about 30, then our society says, well, you know, we've taken you as far as we can go. Now. If you're going to have a future, you have to create it. And some people never catch on to that. And so as they get above 30, and I've seen it, for some reason, 30 is a really interesting age. I've seen people who at 30 stop creating their future. And by 40 they have this feeling that the best part of their life is already finished. And they keep going back to experiences when they were in their teens and in their 20s. This happens a lot with people who are really, really good early in life with a particular skill, a musician, they're popular, they're good at athletics and everything else. And they had this period of rush where they were the star and everything else. And then they hit 30 and nobody cares. And so they keep trying to go back to that early experience. And so what happens is that oftentimes people who don't really do well before 30 oftentimes will be real stars after 30, because up until that time they were in the shadows of these other people who just had natural talent. But when they get to 30, the ones who were just plugging along and had to more or less create their future for them, and they learned how to create their future when they were in their teens. When they hit 30, they find they're really good at this. So every decade their future gets bigger. So, you know, I'm sitting here, I was born in 1944, and the years that lie ahead of me, Now I'm almost 70, the years that lie ahead of me are incredibly bigger in my imagination than anything I've done up until now. I'm just so excited with this 10 times persuader role. You know, just imagine the people that I'm going to persuade to think about 10 times over the next decades. You know, I mean, what a terrific thing. So there's nothing I've done previous to today that is going to compare with what I'm going to get to in the future. And that's what I mean by always creating a future that's bigger than your past.

That is awesome. Well, thank you. And we've already recorded a few episodes. I can leave people with some cliffhangers of some of the things that you're going to get by downloading 10 times talk on iTunes, which you'll be able to do and listen to it. And also 10timestalk.com, we do have the website. Please share this with any smart entrepreneurial thinkers and innovative people that you know that you think would find this useful and valuable. And we're going to have all kinds of discussions ready for you if you just stay plugged in. I asked Dan lots of questions because I can hit him with almost any entrepreneurial challenge on how to overcome challenges or how to reach opportunities, and he just understands it and knows it very well. I'll share a lot of methodologies around how to make your marketing and your sales more effective. We talk about how to manage your time, dealing with overwhelm, the difference between an abundance mindset and a scarcity mindset, Unique ability and identifying your unique abilities, managing and delegating, overcoming complexities, dealing with fears and challenges, how to handle ideas if you already are great at coming up with ideas. And a whole variety of things that entrepreneurs that operate at a very high level deal with. What are you most excited about, Dan, with 10 times talk?

Well, I think, you know, Joe, whenever we get together, I think that's what prompted us to think about this series interviews, is that we've always really spurred each other on. And as a matter of fact, the real breakthrough for me, you know, and I'd like to put in a little plug here, is when I had to rearrange my schedule for a couple of years. So Babs, my business partner, and my wife, we could actually go to your 25k, the genius network. And in the very first moments of that very first Genius Network, you said, look, you're paying us $25,000 each to be here. And here's the deal on it that if you don't get $250,000 value out of this in the first year, then I'm not going to allow you back for the second year. And it was like I sat there for the first 15 minutes and I saw my whole future in what you had said, this challenge. And I said, boy, oh boy, this is where I'm going to go next. I'm just going to organized my entire life around 10 times so you have me as a pig in mud here because just talking on this level and being able to have these discussions is just the greatest pleasure in the world. So I'm just excited and looking forward to every time we sit down to record these.

Yeah. Thank you, thank you. And so for all of our listeners, stay plugged in and we are going to continually update the website 10 times talk with what we feel will be very useful and valuable and in Dan's words to continually give 10 times multipliers and we'll refer to the top entrepreneurs as multipliers. Direction, confidence, capability and clarity so that you can continually make your future bigger than your past, reach your goals and objectives, get rid of messes and just simply become happier and wealthier along the way. And so thank you for listening to this very first episode. Love to hear your feedback and we will be talking to you on the next episode of 10 Times Talk. Thank you. Sa.