The 80 Percent Approach with Dan Sullivan and Joe Polish -Episode #11

I'm dan sullivan.

And I'm joe polish.

And welcome to 10 times talk.

Hello, this is Joe Polish and I'm here with Dan Sullivan. And Dan, how's it going?

Well, it's summer in Toronto. You know, we don't have spring. We just go right from winter into summer. So we all live with weather. So in the north, summer is greatly appreciated. And I'm just so excited to get back in the saddle with 10 times talk Joe, because we talk so much about these ideas and it's just nice to, you know, as much as we can, just get in front of microphones and take some of our conversations. Just make sure that other people can know what we're talking about.

Yes, absolutely. Well, before we get into the topic today, which is going to be this great concept you have called the 80% approach, I think some curious minds are interested in how does Dan Sullivan live his life when he is not creating amazing thinking concepts for some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. I mean, how do you spend your time? You've talked about it, of course, in the past, but just kind of, what are some of the things you've been doing lately?

Yeah, well, Joe, you know, the central, if you want to go right to the cornerstone of strategic coach, I've got a, you know, it's a purely entrepreneurial approach to the world. And, you know, I'm almost 40 years into coaching really successful, ambitious, very talented entrepreneurs. And I've developed, you know, a very clear picture that what motivates really great entrepreneurs is not money, although money is a means, but it's actually freedom. And you know, they want greater freedom of time. And that's the number one thing they want freedom of time. Number two, they want freedom of money because you use money to buy time. And number three is freedom of relationship. More and more you can just deal with who you want to deal with. And then number four is freedom of purpose. That, you know, there's a complete congruity about what you're doing, you know, in the marketplace and how you're living your life. And what I've discovered, discovered and what I've always tried to do over the years is that to role model what I'm actually coaching, you know, so I'm not going to say anything in front of a group or, you know, in a one on one conversation with anything that I'm not already doing myself. And so Babs and I, who's my partner, who you know very, very well, and we run the company and, you know, we take lots and Lots of free time off. So I'm just gonna go with the freedom of time. And, you know, when you put it all together, it's about 22 weeks of free time a year. And, you know, we just hang out. I'm, as so often, in the case of kids who grow up on farms, I have this passion for big cities. And, you know, Toronto is a great city. You know, Phoenix is really becoming a really, really interesting city. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, London is my favorite. Just got, you know, I'm. I spend, you know, a good time, a good amount of time every year in London, and I just love cities. And then what goes along with that is that I'm a real history nut. I love reading where things come from, you know, where do ideas come from, where do trends come from, you know, where do technologies come from? So I'm, you know, just very passionate about reading histories and big fiction, thriller, murder mystery, you know, so I, you know, I generally will read about 30 or 40 murder mysteries a year. I'm a big jazz fan, you know. You know, and I just like hanging out socially. And, Joe, you're, you know. You know, of all the people who have ever been in coach, I think that you're the number one person that I've clicked with most, just on the entrepreneurial level, but also the personal level. So you and I spend a lot of time. You and Renee and Babs and me, we spend an enormous amount of time, free days and just hanging out and talking. And you're very philosophically inclined. I'm very philosophically inclined, and we spend a lot of time that. So I just like being around people who are really interesting, really stimulating. But the one common theme is I don't have anybody in my life who is not entrepreneurial or at least is related to an entrepreneur, because I have, you know, families that I know, but I just hang out with people who are taking things and making them better in the world and creating new things. And some of that is structured because you got a plan ahead, but most of it is, you know, on a particular day, we just make it up. Yeah.

Yeah, Thomas, exactly. You know, I think a big part of your success with what you've been able to do is not only designing your life the way you want and aligning yourself with people that you want to align yourself with, but not being in some guilt position where you should be doing this or you should be doing that or you should be spending time on this. I mean, I think you've freed yourself from most of that pull. If you ever, I'm sure you had it when you were younger, but I mean, you're very good about not entangling yourself with people, situations that you're not interested in that aren't the people that you want to hang out with. And I think that's more of an exception than the norm in most people that I know, including very successful people that you would think have the decision making, free freedom and ability and means to do that, but they don't.

Yeah. And you know, part of being an entrepreneur, Joe, and you know, I've known you for a long time and you've just taken huge jumps in your influence and, you know, your ability to connect great ideas and great people from around the planet. But I would say that the trigger for that has. Before you got to the, you know, the business success was that you were continually freeing yourself up on the personal level. And I think that comes first. You have to continually expand in who you are as an individual in terms of those four freedoms. And kind of the business success is what I call a strategic byproduct of that. The central activity of just gaining more and more personal freedom.

Absolutely. I mean, without a doubt. And I have a friend who you've met before, John Butcher, and he has this saying that he says a lot, which is thoughts become things and whatever you think about becomes a thing. For instance, I just recently bought a new house and I would have not bought that house if I didn't think about that house and take actions, to go look at that house and set up my life and my business. So it would make sense to buy that house, to make the money to have that house, to, you know, have the environment that I want to live in. And thoughts become things and who you spend your time with and what you think about is critical and the strategic byproducts, which is one of the most valuable things that you talk about. And I'm constantly reminding other people about that sort of thinking because I think the real juice and the real value doesn't come from just the pursuit, but all of the things that happen through the, the pursuit and the engagement in a sort of activity. And when you're talking about reading murder mysteries and all of the other things that you do, I think one of the reasons that you have such an awesome life is because you're not in a tunnel. I mean, you're really exposing yourself to a lot of different thinking and a lot of different experiences. And you give your brain the chance to rejuvenate and to, you know, just think and I do my best, you know, to do that too. And it's been a great process and that's what I think. The rest stop that you give entrepreneurs through the strategic coach is not only a rest stop from a rejuvenation standpoint, but it's also, it's refueling them in different ways with better fuel. It's not just going along, but it's really just making people better.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the work all the time, you know, I think our lives are different, you know, depending on what our age is. And I think that, you know, when you start your business and if you think back, you know, to when you were 20, Joe and me, you know, I started my business later than you did. But when you don't really know what you're doing and you don't really know the marketplace well, then you just really have to substitute hours for that. You just put in long hours and you work really, really hard because you're making a lot of mistakes and you don't know really what you're doing. So, you know, I think most 20 year olds, if you're an entrepreneur in your 20s, you're going to be working way more hours than you're going to be working a lot harder than individuals who've got 10 or 15 or 30 years, you know, experience. Because what happens with experience is that you learn how to simplify. You know, not everything is important. You know, there's a set of priorities that emerge in your mind. Well, this is important and this is important and these other eight things really aren't. And so what I've noticed, because I'm pushing, you know, I'm, you know, I'm closing in on 70 years old that, you know, it's kind of delicious having, you know, roughly 40 years in under my belt. Because there's just a few things that if I just take care of every day from a business standpoint, everything works. And it doesn't require a great deal of effort, but it requires a high degree of relaxation and energy and focus and concentration. And then it requires having a great team around you so that you can be real clear about what you want. And the 80% approach idea that we're going to talk about in just a few minutes is really about that. But if you're not relaxed and you're not allowing your mind to explore all sorts of other dimensions in life, you'll come in and everything will be urgent, everything will be important. And I said, well, nothing in the world. I've never seen a situation in my life where if you showed me 10 things, I'd say, well, this is important and more important than the other nine. But you can only have that clarity of simplicity when you're really rested and you've given your mind a chance to just play with other things. So a lot of people who don't take time off, they stress themselves out because everything is equally important and it's all urgent.

Right, Right. Can I ask you one thing? And this is a perfect setup for the 80% approach, because it really is about perfectionism and procrastination. So this is really a good discussion. The late Gary Halbert, who I learned a lot about marketing from, and it was a very interesting, colorful guy in good and bad ways. He made this statement to me once where he's like, what a lot of people think of as wisdom is as people get older is simply fatigue. What are your thoughts on that?

That guy had the greatest things to take complex matters and simplify them. But I think it's totally true and that's why they bail out. I mean, one of the things that I've. And you've been in the workshops, when I'm talking about it, I said, the thing I really find weird is that people are hitting 60 years old and they're at the top of their game. You know, I mean, skill wise, knowledge wise, experience wise, they're at the top of their game. Their reputation's never been bigger, their opportunities are never bigger. You know, they've got a much simpler notion of how things work. And right when they get to the top of the game, they say, well, you know, I better retire. And it just seems so weird to me. I said, you're at the top of your game. I said, the world will carry you now for another 20 or 30 years. You've had it made. And right when you get to the top of the hill, you say, well, that's it, you know, I'm out of here. And not me. I really believe in Ray Kurzweil. Stuff about life extension and everything like that. And he basically said that if you're in great shape and you're not over 70, which I'm not right now, as we're recording this, he says, you've got a very, very good chance of getting another 20, 30 or 40 years just because of what medical science is going to do. But you see the interesting thing about that, everybody really knocks, Ray. And they said, this is idiotic, and what's going to happen to the world if Everybody starts living 20, 30 years longer? And I said, well, they won't, because you wouldn't extend your life by that much. You wouldn't take care of yourself unless you had a passion and a purpose for having a lot of extra years. So it takes care of itself. All the people who are boring and fatigued are just going to die, but the ones who are really passionate are probably going to get another 20, 30 or 40 years or who knows how much more than that. But the fatigue simply comes from being in the same setting, doing the same thing over and over again, year after year, and with no balance, no variety, no new stuff. And that just wears out. That's not what the human brain is designed for.

Yeah, well, I'll talk to you a future episode. We'll do one about the whole concept of getting bored or being in situations where you're just completely not present. But I think this topic, the 80% approach, is really, really useful and really feeds into what you're saying. So let's talk about it now. You talk about this from taking all of your resources, not just in your work life, but in your personal life, to a higher level of productivity. And you talk about it in terms of going back to even the original definition of John Baptiste, say, and I've got a book here, that brand new thing. I think I'm the first person that's seen this, which is cool that you offer to people in Strategic coach or people looking at Strategic Coach. And you say by entrepreneurial. I go back to the original 1804 definition by French economist Jean Baptiste, who described an entrepreneur as someone who shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield. And in other words, entrepreneurially minded individuals are those who continually strive to make things more useful and valuable than they found them. And I underlined that, you know, make things more useful and valuable than they found them. So first off, before you really even talk about the 80% approach, what do you mean by being entrepreneurial? Because people hear the word entrepreneur, but there's a lot of different definitions that are thrown around. And I love the way that you define it, the way you describe it, and the way that you think about it as it applies to all areas of life, not just work.

Well, first of all, I'll just deal with a strictly entrepreneurial sector where people actually are entrepreneurs. And I've always said that there's two decisions that an individual makes that immediately makes them an entrepreneur contrasted with the part of the population that isn't. And it's a very small part, Joe, of the Population, you know, worldwide. And it doesn't seem to vary from one decade to another. It's one out of 20 individuals in the general population. And it's not too much different in Africa than it is in, you know, in North America. It just seems to be kind of like one of those universal rules. And there are individuals who decide basically that they are going to take total responsibility for their own financial security. And that means that they aren't going to have a paycheck and they're not going to depend on other people to create employment for them, but they're actually going to go out and create value in the marketplace, and they're going to get paid on the basis of the value that they create for other people. And if it's not valuable, they don't get paid. And if they don't get paid, they don't eat and their family doesn't eat. So it's that risk that most people can't imagine taking of just going out in the marketplace on your own and taking the risk. So that's the first decision. And the second decision is that you decide in life that you will never expect anyone to create an opportunity for you unless you first created value for them. So it's just the opposite of the entitlement ad attitude where people expect other people to, you know, I be an entrepreneur. You know, it's the old joke or cartoon. I want to be an entrepreneur if the government will give me a grant to get started.

Right.

You know, I mean, I said, it's absurd. I mean, you wouldn't be an entrepreneur. You'd be an employee of the government. I mean, you know, and everything like that. And so again, not many people really, you know, and they said, we're just going to make the whole population more entrepreneurial. But. And I said, yeah, and you're going to make rainwater go back up into the sky. I said, you know, there's just a reality that there's only a certain amount of people who will do it purely entrepreneurially. But then there's other individuals. For example, you know, my team, I have a large number of my team in strategic coach, and we create a structure for them and we create an opportunity. But I would say total, we have probably 25 out of our hundred individuals who, you know, their, their pay is really, really dependent upon them producing results above and beyond. And that you can increase, you know, that, that you can increase. And we're working to do that and coach. And they, they have the attitude, you know, that they're going to create greater value. And they have the attitude that a certain amount of their income is going to be based totally on their resources, on their results. So my feeling is that it's not like you come to the end and then there's this sharp cliff and then on the other side of the chasm is entrepreneurism. I think it's a spectrum of people who are not entrepreneurial in their thinking and you know, they want to be taken care of. And you know, I call them economic children. You know, they may be adults, but they want to be taken care of in the world as if they're children. And then you have real economic adults who just take total responsibility for, you know, their security and, you know, their growth out in the world. But there's a big spectrum there where people have, you know, at the 50% level, they may not be pure entrepreneurs, but they have a very entrepreneurial approach. And regardless whether they get a paycheck or not, their attitude is always, I'm going to create more value than I'm being paid.

Right, right. Well, okay, so for the 80% approach, I mean you, you talk about it that it's not just for actual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies, but for any individual, group, team or organization in the world that is entrepreneurial in thought, communication and aspirations. So I really like those three words in the way that you speak about this and you talk about this 80% approach. It's a transformative way of thinking, communicating and achieving for everyone on the planet who's entrepreneurially minded in the 21st century. So what we'll be able to do on this episode is define what the approach is, talk about it a little bit. But what I want to do on the follow up episode is go a little bit deeper with it. But I really want people to get really clear on this because seems that with this 80% approach concept that you've created, it could transform not just the lives of entrepreneurs, but anyone that has the ability to think, behave, act and respond entrepreneurially.

Yeah, well, I'm just going to make like a 10 or 15 second statement that there's two huge problems in the world that prevent people from being personally successful and personally happy. And one of them is perfectionism and the other one is procrastination. And you know, we can come back to both of those. But I think most people know what I mean when I say both of those. But the way that I've approached it, you know, and Joe, I'm a very, you know, careful observer of how individuals are successful. And I'M especially very, very observant about how the teams and organizations that entrepreneurs put together are successful. And I've noticed a radical difference that some entrepreneurs, you know, they have tremendous opportunity and they have tremendous capabilities, but they can just personally can never get their act together as an entrepreneur and they can't get their act together, you know, as a team. And it's because they approach work wrongly. And so the 80% and best way to do it is to just think of a square. You know, I'm just going to paint a picture with words here. And you have a square and I would say that the first thing you do is you take 80% of that square and you draw a line across. So there's a bottom half that's 80% and the top half is 20%. And what I'm saying is that work really goes from leadership to management. All work projects in the world go from leadership to management. And we have, you know, Shannon Waller, who runs our entire, she's created and she runs our team program, said that actually to get anything done in an entrepreneurial company, there's three things that are essential. Somebody has to make up the idea or the project or the goal, and usually that's the entrepreneur. Then you have to have, in our language, what we call project managers. And the person who makes it up defines very, very clearly what the project is and why it's so important and what the importance is and the ideal outcome and what the worst thing's going to happen if it doesn't work. And what's the best thing that's going to happen if it does work. And then what are the success criteria when we're finished? How are we going to measure success? And then that project manager takes control of the project and so they make it real. So first you have the entrepreneur who's the leader makes it up, then the project manager who manages the entire project makes it real. And then there's other team members and specialists who are required to actually, you know, get the actual work done, depending on how complex the project is and get it done. And so they, they and entrepreneurs never want to do one offs. You know, Joe, you know that with 25k, the reason why 25k works is because it's not a one off. It happens, you know, it happens, you know, quarterly and you know, and so the team makes it recur, they create a system so that having established real value with one event, you can then reproduce the event. And it gets easier and easier as you go along and all multiplier growth in the world requires three things. Make it up, make it real, and then make it recur. What I say is the very first 80% that takes up 80% of the square is just making it up. Because there aren't many people in the world who can make things up. You know, the vast majority are waiting for somebody else to make it up. You know, you know, it's the 1 out of 20 thing. One person is making it up, and 19 are waiting for somebody to make it up. And again, that's just the way the world works. But having made it up, the person who makes it up isn't necessarily the person to manage it or get it going. So we take the 20% that's at the top of the square and we divide that by 80, 20. So now there's a big 80%, there's a smaller 80%, and then there's just a little bit in the Corner which is 20%, and that's the project manager. The project manager is taking control of the second 80%. And this isn't in importance. It's just to say if that first one doesn't happen, the second one isn't going to happen. And then the third one. And I generally find that projects take at least three 80%. You take that little bit in the corner and that becomes an 80% 2. And the reason is why it's smaller is because if the first one doesn't happen, the second one doesn't happen. If the first two don't happen, the third one doesn't happen. Now, in some fields, like, you know, high tech, where they create, you know, they create chips and, you know, very, very intricate electronics or, you know, medical, where you have very, very surgeries and everything else, there actually may be six of these 80% before the patient actually, you know, is actually, you know, operated on and cured or in the chip factory that you've eliminated all the, you know, the bugs and all the, you know, the, you know, the deficiencies in the design process so that it can recur over and over again. Because all the money is just, it's not in. There's no money in creating one microchip, but there's a lot of money taking one great microchip and making a million of them. And so you need a great system that makes it recur. So what I do in Strategic Coach, I say you, as the entrepreneur, your whole role is to confine yourself to making it up and then giving superbly clear directions so that a project manager can take total control, total responsibility of the project and then identify the team that's going to, you know, actually implement it, make it complete, and then make it recur. So that's my notion, just going back to the square. The first 80% is 80%, but then when you take the second 80%, you're now at 96%, because, you know, you had 20% left over, and you've gone 80%, and you're at 96%. And then when you do the third 80%, you're at 99.2%. And I have to tell you, in the world, you know, you get to 99.2%, and most people say, well, that's. That's as good as it can be. But there are industries like surgery and high tech where they have to go way beyond that. Airline pilots have to go way, way beyond the first 80. You don't want a pilot who operates just with 80%. Folks, we got an 80% of landing. You wouldn't get on the plane. So there has to be a lot of systems, and that's the approach. And most people instinctively know that their first crack at anything, you know, has two qualities. One is, no matter how good you think the first try is, it's only 80% good. But the second thing is that there are actually a lot of things that if you just get the 80% done, you can give it to somebody else, and they can take and, you know, take the next 80%. So that's my attitude. And all the entrepreneurs that I've seen are just really, really great at making it up and then making it crystal clear and giving great measurements, and then project managers take over from there.

Yeah, what a great way to liberate people from the guilt, if they have any. And many people do. I mean, when I first learned of this approach, I immediately saw areas of my life where I just created so much unnecessary turmoil and stress and angst because of this feeling and this need that it would conjure up in me that, oh, it's as if someone is going to give me a grade on if I do 80% or if I get it 100%. So part of it is a measurement system at yourself and how many projects and how many great things that truly could create value in the world never get off the ground because of people's prison of procrastination and perfectionism, which we're going to talk about in the next episode, to go deep with this whole concept of the 80% approach. And so one of the things I'd like to recommend to our listeners is you really spelled out something really important here with, you know, make up the idea, have the project manager who makes it real and then you have your team members that make it reoccur. And so the job of the entrepreneurs confine your role to making it up clearly. And so what I'd like to encourage people that are listening to this to do is to simply make a list of all of the projects, all of the ideas, all of the things that aren't started or have kind of been started half assed or that you're keeping yourself from really doing because you're either procrastinating on them because you don't know what to do, or you're not shipping it, you're not launching it because it just isn't right and just more so just make a list of those things and then hear us go a little bit deeper on this concept. And I shouldn't say us. I'm just going to pull this out of you as best I can because it's your approach, Dan. I mean, you came up with this great model and this great concept. So what else would you recommend, if anything?

Well, I just want to give you an example where I just came up with an idea and I gave it to you and it happened so fast that I was so amazed, you know, and it would have something that would have taken me three months to do and maybe never, but you did it in about an hour and that is that I came across, you know, a video on YouTube and I just thought, you know, I'm very aware of the kind of people that you're looking for for your big event in August in New York. Every year you have this huge event and I'm really aware of the kind of ideas. And I said, I just think this would be a really great one for you. And I just sent you the, you know, I just sent you the video, you know, as soon as I, I just downloaded it and sent it off to you so that, you know, I saw it, it's about, you know, I saw about eight minutes of it, I downloaded it, I sent you an email and I sent it off. And you know, it's to a very famous writer and speaker that we both know. And I said, you know, you know, Joe, I really, really think that you ought to get in touch with this person. And you point back and said, oh, this is great, I'm going to do it. And an hour later I get an email thread and you've already in contact with the person, you've already corresponded, you're already on a first name basis. And I said, you know, maybe in my best efficiency of getting in contact with someone, I could have done that in three months. But because you have this incredible ability, you know, to make connections real, it just happened, you know, and more and more, you know, I've just relied, you know, that I'm really good at making up things, you're really good at making up things, and you'll just come up with something, but you just immediately get in touch with someone who just has a natural ability to take the next step. And boy, you just get such an explosion of multiplied opportunity and multiplied capability. And this is the way our universe, the electronic networks that are developing in the 21st century, it just is so much in favor of this approach. And there's two places where it doesn't happen. One of them is government, and the other one is in academia. Because in academia with kids, you're a lone individual in the classroom. And we can finish off with this and then we can pick up perfectionism and procrastination on the other side. But you take a kid and you put him in a classroom and he's six years old and you said you are on your own and you have to get 100% and you're not allowed to. You're not allowed to talk to anyone. You're going to be tested. You can't talk to anyone while you're testing. What I would do is I'd take six kids and say we're going to give a prize to the best six kids who master everything in the subject and get the highest grades at the end of three months. Well, those six kids would just figure out very, very quickly who's best at what and they teach each other. And guess what? At the end of three months, they'd be incredibly smarter than the lone individual who's said he has to get 100%.

Totally. Exactly. You know what's so good? And yes, we will continue going deeper with this. And I just want to say that is the value of unique teamwork. And one of the things, when we first started 10x Talk, our goal and objective was even if anyone listening to this would never give us money, they're still going to get perspective and they're going to get concepts, they're going to get strategies that will make their life and their business more useful. And that is our goal and objective of doing this. Now, having said that, if this is not evidence that finding other individuals with capabilities and linking up with them like me and you have doesn't create enhancement, I don't know any clear way of pointing that out. And your example is great. We just very much feed off of each other and we work off of each other. And when you're pursuing an entrepreneurial endeavor and you're not letting roadblocks get in the way, one of the points of 10x talk is not only give people the concepts and the strategies and thinking behind growing a company 10 times, but also pointing out the obstacles and the things that you will get in your own way with. And that's why this 80% approach concept is so important, because it will become, if you take this seriously, a very instrumental way of making sure that the tracks that you lay ahead, you even lay the tracks, because some people won't lay the tracks at all because of perfectionism and procrastination. So thank you, Dan. Very good. And for our listeners, share this with anyone that you know that has the problem of procrastination and perfectionism, which I'm sure is a lot of people around you. And join us on the next episode of 10X Talk and we'll talk about this further. And go check out the website@10xtalk.com you want more information about Dan, about Strategic Coach, about what I do with Genius Network. We have all kinds of stuff there and there's all kinds of episodes and videos that you can check out. So we will talk to you on the next episode. Thank you.