The Greater Game: 100x Blueprint for Exponential Growth | Joe Polish, Dan Sullivan, and John Bowen

This is 10X Talk. We have been going for 13 years now on 10X Talk. I remember when Joe Polish called and said, I'm going to do a podcast with Dan. You went in and the answer was yes. And 13 years later, I think we all can see why. These are some really solid minds. Welcome everybody coming in. Oh, we got Pacific Northwest, Portland, Oregon, the People's Republic of, which I too am broadcasting from. So good to see you guys here. We've got special guest John, who co-wrote the book with Dan. So it's going to make sense to start this out with Joe Polish. Joe, how are you doing today, buddy?

I'm doing awesome. Doing wonderful. And good to be here. And yeah, me and Dan Sullivan have been doing this for 13 years and we have a special guest, John Bowen, who will— I'll have you introduce in just a moment. And what's also exciting is they got a brand new book that just came out called The Greater Game. I'm going to talk a little bit about that and some questions for it. But I also want everyone to know that I'm going to ask John and Dan about things that— and get a perspective that's not in the book. So this as a standalone, those of you that are joining us live, welcome. And those of you that are listening on audio or video, it's going to be good. It's always, it's always good unless we screw it up. There's that, you know, we've never had a total mishap yet, but today could be that day.

And then we just delete the tape.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I saw someone from Russia, which is in Moscow, which is great. And people from all over the world. So welcome. To all of you. See a lot of friends here, a lot of Genius Network members, a lot of Strategic Coach members. And so, yeah, so whenever you're ready, Paul.

This is 10X Talk, and the concept of 10X Talk is fascinating on a lot of levels, but Dan has already written the book on that. And if you haven't picked it up, definitely pick it up. It's a solid one. I think what's interesting about 10Xing is the original concept that 10Xing is easier than 2Xing. And then look at what happened. Dan and John come out and then they dare to suggest that 100Xing is easier now than 2x and it makes more sense. They've written a book. We don't want this to be a commercial for the book because I know you're all going to buy it. So let's get the stuff that we couldn't get in the book from them. So Dan, give us a couple of minutes about the book. John, give us a couple of minutes about the book.

I had a great experience when I first came to Genius. I started at $25K as it then was. And then a moment that Joe Polish Polish introduced the whole idea of the 100 Times Group. I wanted to be the first person to sign up, and I think we did. And, uh, but at my very first meeting, um, a writer by the name of Ben Hardy approached me and he said, you write a lot of books, which I do, I write a book a quarter, but he said, you don't write them for major markets, you don't have a publisher. And he said, if you ever wanted to have a partner on a major market book. He said, I've got agents, I've got publishers. Would you do that? And I had just introduced a concept called Who Not How, which was actually an idea by Dean Jackson, which I immediately called my IP lawyer to get the name for. And we brought it out and it was, you know, it was a real success. And then we had two more. Tucker Max, actually. Tucker has been a frequent guest at Genius. He put together the deal with Reid Tracy at Hay House. So we went along and we did three in a row and they were all big hits and they've been tremendous for Ben. They've been tremendous for me. And about two years ago, John Bowen, who's— I've known him since 2009. And he said, you know, it's about time that we take two coaching companies and put it together. And John, he'll tell his own story here, but the big thing is John is the kingmaker for financial advisors who really deal with wealthy families, essentially. And all the families, for the most part, are entrepreneurial families. And so, we put it together and it's taken us about 2 years and We had a good relationship with Hay House, so we went back and they were really interested in it because there's a lot of unique aspects about this book. Besides the book, there's a whole research company that backs this up, and there's— John has designed an amazing dashboard that goes along with the book. And so we, you know, we just— and it was a great— it's been a great partnership. It's been a very easy, it's been a very enjoyable partnership. You know, there's a lot of birth pains to bringing out a book. What you start with and you think that the book is going to be, it actually changes as you go through. And but we're real happy it came out 2 days ago and we were number 1 on Amazon yesterday. So for an hour. And, and but it, but it matters. And so I've, I started coaching in 1974. So in November of this August of this year, I'll be 52 years coaching entrepreneurs. And I'm starting to get a feel for it. I'm starting to get a feel for who the people are and what they're interested in. So it's just a delight. And the great collaboration I have with Joe Polish Polish has been one of the high points of the entire history of Strategic Coach. And I think we're over 400 Strategic Coach members who really started off with Joe saying, you should go and do this program. And so, I'm a great believer in collaboration.

Joe, it's great to be with you. Old home week. I can see the collaboration collectively of the group. I think the very first meeting I was at Strategic Coach in 2009, Dan walked me over and introduced this young gentleman, Joe Polish, and joined Genius Network. I would credit an awful lot of, not only in the marketing, but strategic partnerships along the way. So thank you. And, you know, Paul and I have done some things together. I could go around the room, but there's too many people here of all the individuals I've had the privilege of working with. But we're really, I want to go back, Dan and I and Joe, you, you know, in the early, we did some research together too, but I bought 3 years ago a research company. We rebranded it CG Insights. And one of the things that we all share here, where everybody here is a successful entrepreneur, where we are very much, you know, wanting to make a bigger impact. And, you know, success means different things to different people, but we're all on this journey together. That's why we're here. And I approached Dan and I said, you know, Dan, nobody's really studying entrepreneurs. On an ongoing basis. And I said, you know, I'd love to do this. And I'd love to have you be a part of this. And Dan got back to me and I was on a ski trip in Park City with a whole bunch of 40-year-olds. And Dan and I agreed to a 25-year partnership. I think, Dan, you were 80 at the time and I was 69. And I walked down and I said, what do you guys think about this? And they all looked at me like, you guys are way too optimistic. But no, we are optimistic, but we see that there's, you know, I, one of the things I've always loved about research is research leaves subtle clues. And, uh, no, it's, it's actually, it's blindingly obvious. And we decided to dive in, uh, you know, now I think Dan and I have studied now 7,000 entrepreneurs, high net worth, ultra high net worth, very successful. Uh, a big part of that is in the, the book, The Greater Game, and What we wanted to do when we started doing the research, we saw that most successful entrepreneurs, you know, they're not failing, but they've outgrown the game that they're playing. And that's where the name The Greater Game came out. And, you know, one of the things, being an entrepreneur is challenging, and that's why we're all together. And we wanted to see if we could dissect what was the framework, uh, that separated the most successful. Ones, and we found that there's 5.4% that are hitting it out of the park. And that's really where we went. And that's what the book's about. And, you know, the framework that we see, that's a huge differentiator.

The book is called The Greater Game: Playing the Long Game Versus the Short Game. And more and more, even you look at the relationships of the, you know, several hundred people that are registered here for this today. How many of them we all know, right? And so, there's a lot to be said about relationships. And Dan has this great question, you know, who do you want to be a hero to? And he's very clear he wants to be a hero to entrepreneurs. I think we all do. And so, I just wanted to point out that people that are more and more with AI and all of the changes that are happening in the world, having real human relationships, not leaving scorched earth, And playing the long game is critical to actually going to where I think you guys are going to describe where you want to go to. I wanted to see if you wanted to say anything to that.

One of the things, Joe, I know you're a big believer in AI and I am too, but at the end of the day, people are being more alienated than ever and the relationships are really critical. And if you can use AI as a teammate or an augment in what you're doing, that's where the success is. But Dan.

First of all, I want to introduce my partner, Babs Smith. Babs is right here. If I hadn't met Babs, I met Babs 42 years ago. It's only because of my partnership with Babs that Strategic Coach even exists. But the big thing is that I got an idea. You know, I think it was probably, we started in '89 with the workshop program. This is probably around '94, '95. And what I observed is that everybody who was in our program, and we had, you know, you have to be successful before you're in the program, that had, they'd already done 10 times. And so I had an exercise where I said, when were you 1/10 of where you are today? And they could pick, they could pick wealth, they could pick revenues, a meaningful number. That where there's certainly 10 times growth. And then we have an analysis of how they took the jump from 1/10 to where they are today. So I just got everybody to know that they've already done 10 times. And I'm sure everybody on the program here, the program here today has done 10 times if you work backwards. And it's usually a series of innovations where they've come up with new solutions. And it's relationships that— it's the relationships that they formed. And suddenly there was a really big check, which sort of normalized operating at a much higher level. And then they normalized it and then they started becoming discerning about who they were dealing with. And then we took them 10 times. And one of the things when I first started doing it, somebody said, 10 times? I can't do 10 times in 3 years. And I said, "I didn't say anything about 3 years." I said, "Actually, I'm going to give you 25 years." "25 years? I don't need 25 years to go 10 times." And I said, "Really? How many years?" And they said, "I can do it in 15." And I said, "Oh, that's really great. You get 10 times in 15 and you get 10 years change. What would you do with the 10 years change?" And they said, Well, I just do it again. So I said, wait a minute, you were having a hard time with 10 times. Now you're talking about 100 times. So one of the things I'm aware of working with entrepreneurs, I've worked with about 7,000 that I've, you know, really been firsthand over the 52 years. And what I noticed is that you're operating according to a future framework. And if you have the mindset that whatever it requires for you to change as an individual and have a mindset, and then you start linking up and having teamwork, having collaborations with a lot of people who can provide capabilities that you don't have, then the growth is constant and you can feel yourself jumping from one level to the next. And it's really interesting because we're now talking to our clients who, when they look at the revenues, they're talking about a billion. So this is, you know, it's really interesting. It's becoming more and more prevalent that there are billion-dollar companies now. And some of them have been with me for 30 years. Joe Polish, 28 years. I think Joe is 28 years since you started. And but if you give yourself a big enough timeframe, it's really possible to constantly grow. I mean, my thing isn't so much the 10 times or the 100 times. It's really, really thin you can grow. But the big change, and it happened on November 30th, 2023, that now introduces a totally different question is if you use AI as a collaborator. Okay, because you have mighty forces, you have trillions of dollars of capital investment out there that are creating new capabilities, and primarily for entrepreneurs. I think entrepreneurs are going to be the main beneficiaries of these new capabilities. So we always tell people you have to have who's— that's a Dean Jackson line— but the who can now be a technological who, and that makes a big difference.

I want to frame it a little bit here. The quote As I was walking in the park, as Gord Vickman reads to me.

Yeah, which, by the way, Gord is— sorry for the interruption— Gord Vickman is on here, and at some point we're going to ask him to talk because those of you that listen to the audio version, uh, it's Gord's voice, so you'll get to—

yeah, it's not AI Gord, we can definitely tell you that. So I'm walking in the park, I'm listening to Gord, walking in the park with Gord, if you will, and Gord says to me, every system that got you here is optimized for a game that is coming to the end. Here's my question for you guys. You say that the shift is from being indispensable to building platforms that scale genius. But what do you do when the check writers are specifically buying the indispensability that you spent so much time selling? It's not a systems problem, guys. It's a positioning problem. Which do you solve first? Let's start with Dan.

The big thing, you know, it goes back to the beginning of your entrepreneurial career. It was just you out in the marketplace. So, the relationship was always you and someone. If there was a hero that was helping people do solutions, it was you. And all entrepreneurs start off that way that you're not only doing the main activity, which is selling and creating value, but you're doing everything else. So, there's two things that have to happen. Number one, you have to simplify enormously what you're doing. And we call it unique ability in Strategic Coach. And this is a learned process. And unique ability is that you're really good at what the activity is. And if you had more time and you had more attention, you would get a lot better. But you actually get enormous amount of enjoyment out of it. It's where your energy comes from doing that particular activity. That's what gave you the, you know, really gave you the confidence to become an entrepreneur in the first place. You know, very few people do it. Very few people do it successfully. But once you've done it, there's a tendency that the management of the present starts using up all your time rather than the creation of the future. Okay. So, my collaboration with Babs Smith is that Babs told everybody right from the beginning, the whole purpose of all the teamwork in Strategic Coach is to free up Dan to create new ideas for the program. And that's been enormously successful over 30— we're in our 37th year. And so, you got to have a great teamwork. And then at a certain point when you're dealing with clients and customers, You have to always show up as a team, not show up as an individual. Okay, so the big thing is that if you can't get a hold of me, you get a hold of— they know the client's situation, they know what's needed as solutions. And so more and more you habituate all your clients and customers that you have a whole team. I'll give you a little example. We started in '89 with the workshop program, and we grew and grew. We grew really quickly. And in 1994, I did 144 one-day workshops that year, and we were doing about $2.5 million. And then we started having other coaches besides Dan, and we now have 16. And last year we did 600 workshop days, and I did 12 of them. And, you know, our income is 2,000 times more than it was. So the big thing is that I'm not indispensable for the program anymore, but I am crucially important for the creation of the program that doesn't exist yet. So more and more, your role has to be created to be creating what doesn't exist yet. Like having the project with John. You know, I had to have a lot of freed up time to actually develop a new book and develop the whole marketing plan for this to negotiate with the publisher and everything like that. And this, actually, the book is a fantastic thing, but it's really what John has created with his research, the dashboard, That's the amazing capability. And I'll tell you, you know, as we go on, that I think he's created one of the most phenomenal breakthroughs for entrepreneurial growth that I've seen in my entire history as an entrepreneur. So I think that would be the big thing. Going back to your question, Paul, it may be that you're optimizing a game that's coming to an end. Well, that's happening throughout your career. You're always optimizing a game that's coming to an end, and then you create a new game. And then you, after you've done it 3 or 4 times, let's just create a permanent greater game. And that's really the thesis of the book. Over to John.

You know, I want to give credit first. You know, Dan has been teaching this for decades and the research just showed that he has it cold. And so what we've identified, this 5.4% of entrepreneurs who are just really doing that 100x. And we said, okay, what are they doing to make that happen? And we found there were 10 greater multipliers, 4 levels of success that we walk through each of us. I'm going to just walk through it real quick. I will describe it, but you can go, we're going to talk about, uh, uh, hint at it, thegreatergamedashboard.com. Get all of this and see how you do it. But you really, as entrepreneurs, we start at Level 1, and this is a foundation for freedom. Strategic Coach has taught this all along. It's, you know, really, we've got to have ambition. We got to get off the couch. That's a vision. And we got to have greater security, cash confidence. We've got to have the financial wherewithal to deal with being an entrepreneur. And And really, everybody listening is, you know, at this point we want to have that. And the next is energy for expansion. And this is that motivation, something that, you know, you get up every day, you pull the covers off. It's really powerful. But the big breakthrough is property and it's IP. And we can talk about this and this intellectual property. You know, Dan was on this very early. He's got unbelievable amount. I'm trying to catch up with it, but I don't know if I ever will. Joe Polish, certainly this has been a big thing that I learned from you as well. And then where it really takes off is where we're now, you know, the valuation is founder. From a standpoint, what we see is that most entrepreneurs are founder dependent. They do everything. They're grind, they're working really hard and everything. What we're talking about is how can we move to a platform, an ecosystem along the way. And I gotta tell you, you know, Dan and I are working on the book over the year that we wrote it. Um, CEG, my company, the, you know, we built a platform, we built the ecosystem. I gotta walk the talk. And I, I think we'll grow by 50% plus this year as well. We're all on track to do even better than that. And it's by putting this together, the big thing, and Dan and, uh, Joe Polish Polish are probably the best examples of this, is You know, the collaboration, uh, community. And, you know, when Dan and I were writing the book, there was no question in our mind who was the first person we were gonna ask for community. It was Joe Polish Polish. He is the best at curating, but, you know, you gotta have teamwork and autonomy. And this is where you're independent from the business. And the, the, where it really takes off, the exponential level 4, is you have agency. In the agency is you're creating markets now. This is that platform, that ecosystem, the commitment to make this all happen, and then the courage. And one of the things that I loved through this whole process, uh, Dan and I working on it, uh, I believe it was about 26 entrepreneurs, almost all from Strategic Coach, that I got to interview and have the backstory on. And we share that in the book and just the success. Um, you know, that people are having when they hit that 5.4. And we said, let's put it together. And Paul, going back to your question, you know, the tool is the Greater Game Dashboard. You can go in and do an assessment. Uh, both of our teams have worked on this very diligently. And what it does, it will show you exactly where you are relative to not only your peers, but to the book. And then we're, because we're surveying at a constant rate, plus all the new people coming in, you know, a minimum of 500 we've been doing every month of entrepreneurs. You're gonna see what's working, what's not. And then monthly you're gonna get the entrepreneur pulse, you know, the confidence index out of this. So this is, to me, this is a tool that I wish I had. It, it goes back to the vital few. Um, I think I learned that from you, Joe Polish Polish. The, yeah. Not focusing on too many things at once. And, you know, what are the 3 most important things that will allow you to be exponential? But Paul, yeah, definitely. When you're not walking in the park with Gord, uh, take the assessment. Takes 15 minutes, and I think you'll be blown away with what you're going to see about yourself and more importantly, what is possible on the 100X.

Walking in the Park with Gord was my favorite James Taylor song, actually. So really enjoyed that. All right. We're getting to the Q&A part and a couple have popped up. But in the framework of outlasting the game, in the framework of being smart, working on the right projects, in the framework of teaming, in the framework of unique ability, don't ask questions that are going to be answered in the book because you're buying the book and you're buying 10 of them, some of you are buying 100 of them. So don't worry about that. Ask the questions outside of the book. You know, let's write, if we can, the missing manual. So I've got this all listed. You know, we're watching chat diligently. I've got one for you that's already come in that I'm kind of excited about. It's from Evelyn Charters. Can some of the excitement and energy around the possibilities of AI be invested in the environmental impact that is happening and damaging and fixing it all? Basically, you know, what do we do about this AI thing as we make ourselves better? And some honest forward thinking could help trust amongst communities who are resisting data centers in these areas. Dan, you did a great podcast with Diamandis about this issue. People are concerned about it. Let's, let's just kill that concern, shall we?

Dan? Yeah, well, actually, I did a podcast with Peter, Peter Diamandis the day before yesterday, and it's called Exponential Wisdom. And I met Peter through Joe Polish. Joe Polish had him, you know, Joe Polish did a project that made Peter's first book a bestseller. You know, he brought all the marketing people together to help, you know, Peter really get on the map with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and everything else. And I met him in New York where Joe Polish had his annual conference. And I had read his book and I thought he had an unusually positive attitude towards the future. And you don't meet a lot of people, you know, a lot of people, you know, they sort of think with the back of their brain rather than the front of their brain. So it's the fear-based survival part of their brain. And Peter's just unusual and thinking, you know, this is all great. We've been through this before. You know, we're You know, humans have been around a long time and they've created a lot of new future over that time. But the big thing about AI is you have to understand that it's the result of 50, 60 years of technological growth, starting with the integrated circuit and the microchip. And it went to personal computers, it went to the internet and everything. So this— it's not something brand new. It's kind of a computer now that can create its own software in relation to responding to you. So you don't have to get a new software program. The technology actually creates the software in relationship to your prompts. It's really fast computing, and that's it. But we had an interesting discussion on Wednesday or on Tuesday, and I said, you know, there's been something in human history like this before, because I'm a big history buff and I like finding something that has been done before. It's not the same thing, but the way people had to respond to it— and it's the introduction of zero, the whole notion that you have 9 numbers plus a zero, and it was invented in India. Thousands of years ago, but it came to Europe through the Arab countries, North African Arab countries. And up until that time, it's around 1200, 1200, 1300, all math was still using Roman numerals. And, you know, you can understand what it's like multiplying, what it's like dividing. If you're using Roman numerals, you have to go away for days to get a result. And they noticed these traders in Sicily who could do these calculations in their head and on the spot and put them into an advantage. They could do better deals. And so they introduced the whole notion. Nobody had ever had zero before, and the moment it came in, it just transformed everything. It created economics. You can't have economics unless you got zero. You can't have double entry bookkeeping because You have to have a minus 5 on one side and a plus 5 on the other. No science was possible without zero. And it just took European civilization and it turned it on its head. And the big thing here, and I will apply it to AI, this is not a technological revolution. This is a cognitive revolution. You have to change your thinking in order to take advantage of this tool. So You have to think about your thinking. I've been using it for about 2 years now, and I just treat it as a great companion that however I'm thinking about things, I can actually look at my thinking and make changes to my thinking. And it's the main reason why on the COVID of our book, we're talking about 100 times growth right now, because if you grasp the underlying capability here, this multiplying exponential capability, then you just apply it to all your other capabilities that you're already doing that are taking a lot of time, taking a lot of effort. But I write a new book every quarter, a little book, and up until AI, it takes me about 4 weeks to get the structure of the book, and now it takes me 4 hours to get the structure of the book. And, and, you know, I'm just one person, one brain meeting with technology. There are millions of people who are taking this technology and they're just multiplying what their brain does anyway.

How do you utilize a Greater Grain Framework when you're launching a new business? You know, when you're not fixing anything, but when you're starting over again, how does this kind of model change?

The way to think of this, I'm going to do— let me go first to the AI and just the power of tools, and then we'll come to the new business because this is really important. But, um, you know, one of the things collaborating with Dan and Strategic Coach, I wanted this to be unbelievably, uh, great. And so I did a, uh, deep research report on dashboards and who are the best providers. And because of Dan's reputation, we were the number one company wanted to work with us and were only gonna charge us $50,000 a year plus consulting fees to put it together. And we had the first meeting. I've got my tech team on and they called me right after the meeting and said, these guys are making it way too hard. Why don't we just build it and we'll give it to you tomorrow? And so for those of you who are familiar with the term vibe coding, this is vibe coding. When you look at, I mean, I would, everybody should go to thegreatergamedashboard.com. It's built by Lovable, which is, I think this costs us I'm not sure, Dan, if it was over $2,000, might have been $3,000. But the ability then to not build a great one, but then to do it iterative, that we own the code and we can make that change. And this is so important for all of us as subject matter experts. Everybody here has some unique IP. The biggest thing that's happening with AI is the ability to package that. So I want to encourage everybody to really either learn it or get somebody that knows how to do it. Second thing, uh, I turned 70 in October, Paul, and, uh, of last year. And I, for my birthday present, I started 3 new companies. Uh, they're well doing millions of dollars of revenue. Okay. I know most people in their 70s don't do it, but I'm trying to catch up with Dan and, you know, he just continued. '82 type thing. So, uh, we are having a lot of fun, but the ability to use the Greater Game Framework and think through the exponential growth and use AI to brainstorm, uh, this with yourself, the ability to build this out like never before. I mean, just, you know, we're building, uh, you know, I'm in the financial services space. We work with top financial advisors, helping them build great practices. You know, we have the empirical research and applied experience, but we also, our biggest engagements are with large firms where we build out the training and what took 9 months to build. We just finished one yesterday, uh, in a week. Uh, and it's better than anything we could have done in 9 months a year ago. So this is, um, if you're going to start a new business, there's never been a better time and the framework's there in The Greater Game.

You know, Dan and John, you know, they're dealing with the oldies, you know, us farts, if you will. You know, you've got these 20-year-olds coming through your office. How are you going to teach them the greater game and what are you going to teach them the greater game?

Well, you know, part of it is in the past it would be like teach someone how to be an internet marketer or whatever. Now it's literally teach people how to live life, how to relate to people, how to— I mean, one of the main things we did at the last meetings were getting everyone to write handwritten notes. And send out between 1 to 10 handwritten postcards or cards a day because no one does that anymore. And don't use AI so you don't forget how to write with your hands, think with your brain. If you start outsourcing everything to the machine, then it's like if you don't use it, you lose it. And so, I think what's happening is one of the— like that quote from the 1800s, "If you invent a ship, you invent a a shipwreck. If you invented a plane, you invent plane crashes. Well, if you invent AI, yeah, we all love planes and boats and transportation and all the incredible things, but there's a very dark side to it also. Uh, you know, there's a lot of, uh, unscrupulous, uh, people that are using AI just to, you know, send frivolous lawsuits to people and harass them. So there, you know, there's, uh, all kinds of incredible stuff. But with Genius Youth, it's be a human. How to connect with humans on a human level. You know, Steve Jobs had that very famous line— well, famous to me, I think it was incredible— in 1997 at the Worldwide Developers Conference. He said, you know, what we do at Apple is we focus first on the user experience, then we focus on the technology. So I always think psychology is more important than technology. And when people just look at the tech, they forget the human element. And I think the killer app today is just being a human and knowing how to bond and connect and talk with people. So like, even one of the very first, uh, speakers we ever had at Genius Youth was Robert Cialdini on talking about the ethical use of influence, how to persuade and influence people. But we have them doing cold plunges and saunas and physical things and hospitality, and we brought in an Iron Chef on teach them You know, how to cook in hospitality, things that, you know, you're not gonna get at other places.

What is a finite game example? And then what is an infinite game example? So I think some people are having a hard time wrapping their minds around that. I think this will go really, really well.

This is the definition that Dan and I have in the book. You know, we, we did the research and what we found that the vast majority were optimizing, and this is a finite game, and this is the infinite where we're competing for share. We're all, you know, wallet share if you're a financial advisor, market share if you're an entrepreneur, classic. You're managing dependencies. You're worried about— you're trying to figure out how you personally can stay indispensable. You're reacting to markets, you're pivoting, pressured, you're, you know, you're trying not to be too far afraid. And, you know, the value of your practice is somewhere, you know, entrepreneur business, 3 to 5 times EBITDA. And then we're saying, why do that? Yeah, well, we've got the tools, we've got the methodology, we know what we need to do to be successful on purpose. Let's design an ecosystem. Let's multiply the unique genius that you have. Let's engineer so that we can be absent from the practice so that we have a great quality of life, but also do something that we really love in our business. Let's redefine the market. So we create a new category. Let's compound the vision. And let's run, uh, uh, toward the fear because that's the opportunity. I sold my advisory practice in the late '90s for 16 times earnings. And the reason for that was because I did this. I didn't know all this stuff. Um, we now know what this works and how it does. And this is why I've started multiple businesses and I'm going to start another one on educating young people in the financial services industry, fourth quarter, FA Institute. We already have everything lined up. It's creating the ecosystem to leverage this. So that's where you move from a finite game to an infinite game. And this is something that Dan and I are really passionate about because we've, we've seen the success that people have. And it's not that they make more money. Cause you've already, you know, a lot, if you've made it to level 3, you're already making plenty of money for most people. What you're doing is you're making a huge impact in the quality of life. I mean, Dan, you and I were talking the other day on a podcast and, you know, at 82, Dan's having more fun than ever and more ambitious. I'm at 70, soon to be 71. I am too. I mean, why not have businesses and platform to do that? So that's really the difference between—

I still wanna get an example from you because 5X EBITDA is fine, is great. You, you'll get on Shark Tank for that. So, so if you say somebody is, is, you know, only 5X, nobody's gonna criticize them for it. So give us a 5X example and then give us a, you know, give us an infinite example. And, and if it's what you're doing, great. But give us names if you can.

Yeah. Think, think of, I might go Gino Wickman. Gino is in the book. Many people know him from EOS. Dan, you know Gino even better, but I sit next to Gino every quarter for our Strategic Coach program and we compare notes. And Gino, unbelievably talented guy. I didn't know the backstory. We interviewed him for the book. And really what he did that was so amazing is that he built, worked with Dan saw what Dan was doing, knew that he had to create the operating system, talked to Dan to make sure that it was okay to do and did. And initially he delivered it and he saw very quickly that he could only go so far delivering it. And, you know, you can only work with so many people. What happened was he now has over 1,000 implementers. So think of the value of the business. Just creating the IP, great systems, making a huge impact. And Dan has done it in his business. I've done it in mine. Joe Polish has done it in his. What happens is you then move from being a founder-dependent, that IP, that you can have the systems that it works without you. So it's enterprise-dependent, it's ecosystem. And that's where a— I've been involved in 50 transactions. The reason you pay the multiple is you don't want to buy the job of the founder. You want to buy the systems and business. And that's really what we've built in this book is exactly how to do it. And Gino now has, um, instead of, you know, his whole goal was if I could ever help 10,000 companies, well, he's blown past 300,000 companies. Okay. He, by creating the systems. And creating the infinite game. And that's, he's just getting started. And then he has the free time now to build other businesses as well. And he creates the ecosystem and we can go through every one of the 5.4. That's what's happening, Paul. Awesome.

Joe, finite versus infinite.

You know, it's, it's actually funny. I'm just going to post in, uh, you got to love AI. This is where, this is what I'm warning people about. You can become lazy. I was like, give me some examples of. You know, and it's Blockbuster finite versus Netflix infinite. Blockbuster optimized late fees and store count, winning the existing game. Netflix kept changing the game itself— DVDs, then streaming, then original content. Kodak finite, Apple infinite. Kodak protected film, the game was, was already winning. Apple kept rebuilding what it even was— computers, iPod, iPhone, services. Borders finite versus Amazon infinite. Borders ran a great bookstore. Amazon used books as a starting line and never stopped expanding the field. Cloud logistics devices. Most taxi companies, Fynite versus Uber, infinite. Taxis operated medallions and routes. Uber redefined the category. And then Toys R Us, Fynite versus LEGO, infinite. Toys R Us optimized retail. LEGO invented itself into movies, games, and adult fans, a platform, not a product. So I mean, I think, you know, those are pretty interesting examples.

Like now let's say my world.

Thought leaders. Me and Dan have done podcasts on 10xTalk that are worth going back and listening to if you're new to this. Some of you have heard them where he has this great line about result leaders. You know, result leaders are way more valuable than thought leaders because today anyone could be, can sound smart with AI. I mean, look what I just did here. I sound like, you know, I didn't come up with that in 2 seconds, like AI did, right? But you posed the question.. And so if you don't have relationships and trust, I think, you know, I understand what people mean by being a thought leader. I think the most valuable thing we have is our reputation and the trust that we have with people. Because if you think you're going to make it in this future world just by sounding smart, good luck. I mean, you're not going to be able to keep up with AI at all. It is infinitely more quicker, faster, intelligent, no need for sleep. Than any human could possibly be. So what is the distinction there? I mean, even the, you know, the CEO of—

or the—

what's his name? The chief of AI at Microsoft in the Forbes article last week said, you know, basically white-collar work will be 100% eliminated by AI in 18 months. Now, I don't know if that's the case, but even if it was 10%, that alone changes the game entirely. So I think, you know, what Dan and John are writing about in this whole book is very important for a mindset shift in how to approach the future, you know, that we have in front of us, which is exciting if you're not scared and immobilized by it.

Dan, finite versus infinite.

Yeah, I can give an example from the book, and this is Paul Van Dyne, and Paul has been in coach probably for about 10 years. And the first workshop that he came to, he was, I think he was 65, 65 at that time. And he said, he said, I'm going to do this program differently. He said, I'm going to use your program for 3 years to set up my retirement. My wife and I want to create a gourmet coffee shop. That's what we're going to do. And I said, well, we've got some interesting thinking tools that you're going to do in the first workshop. So why don't we talk about it a quarter from now? You're already signed up for a year, so we'll talk about next quarter. Now, just a little backdrop for Paul. Paul was a very, very significant engineering company, especially with medical centers. He, he was, uh, you know, he engineered and constructed big medical centers, which is a growing game. And he was about 40th in the United States, which, you know, is very significant. He had about 400 members of his company. And he was, you know, $60 million, somewhere around $60 million, $70 million. And he came back the next quarter and he said, "You know, not only was I going to retire at 65, but you do an exercise where you determine how long you're going to live." That's the first hour of Strategic Coach. At what age are you going to die? And he said, "I realized I was going to die at age 75 and that didn't suit me at all." So anyway, he rechanged his thinking. He says, now, he said, I'm going to go full bore and I'm going to take us from number 40 to number 1. And he's done it in 9 years. 9 years. He's now the number 1 in his category. He's got 3,000 in his network and he did it all through M&A. M&A. He did all mergers and acquisitions. But the interesting thing about it, there was a moment about 3 years into his growth rate, he was growing. Where he said, you know, I'm no longer an engineering firm. I'm an M&A firm that specializes in engineering firms. So, he changed the whole framework of his company, freed himself up about 80% from what he was doing. And now, what he said is we'd have criteria where we just identified firms that would fit into our culture. And then I have a whole team that goes out and completes the transformation. And he's got this year-long process where, you know, you keep doing what you're doing as the owner. You're now a part owner of the General Network. And whatever culture you have, you keep your culture. And gradually, we'll just bring you in. And he now is not involved in the M&As at all. But it's just growing. He's got a whole team, M&A people all across the United States. Collaborating with them. And he said, you know, we're coming across engineering firms that you could do M&As for. They're not appropriate for us, but we'll hand them on to you. And they do the same thing. So, he's got the entire industry of M&A in the United States doing, you know, doing analysis and sending him new candidates for his culture. Okay. So, that's a really good example. And he's creating a medical center. The company is creating a medical center, and in the medical center, he's going to create a gourmet coffee shop. So, he's achieving both. He's achieving both. He now wants to keep going until he's 90, where before he was going to go to 65 and he was going to die at 75. So, the big thing is whenever you reach an obstacle, the obstacle is the way you're thinking about things. You know, and the moment that, you know, but I want to bring something up here because John has created the greatest tool in my 52 years of coaching entrepreneurs. And that is in the dashboard, you do all your numbers and you're comparing against a growing number of entrepreneurs. It's 5,000, 10,000, 100,000, and you grade yourself and then you create a game plan. The 10 multipliers. And when you put in your answers, it immediately tells you what your company is worth today for someone buying your company. And every quarter you can increase the number that your company is worth. You may not want to sell ever, but you at least know what your company is. And I think the greatest ignorance that I've found with entrepreneurs over my entire my entire coaching career is people don't know what their company's worth. And it's a very crucial piece of information. And the dashboard automatically updates what your selling price would be if you sold your company. And again, how you sell your company or what you do your company is not really the interesting point here, is that you know what it's worth. And you can say, if I make an improvement here, that improvement will increase the sellability of your company. And I've been looking for this tool for 30 years. Didn't know I was looking for it until John created it.

Absolutely fantastic. Okay, so this question came in and I wanted Delta to change it a bit because I think it could be really relevant to this and definitely in our little rule here of Outside of the Book. Dan, Joe, John, Where did you recruit your team? I know many are attendees and clients, but outside of that, where and how do you find the right people? And I'm just going to expand that to how do you find the right people for the greater game? Let's start with John.

Yeah, one of the things that's so powerful is the community. And this is the more you can be involved in mastermind groups, CEO groups. We see the most successful people are— I'm going to count Genius Network as one that I have been in for many years. Dan, you know, Strategic Coach, you're in with like-minded people and the opportunity to share what's working for specific things. And the number of people I've been introduced, both by the CEO groups I'm involved in, these masterminds, whether it's Genius Network, Dan, because it's not everybody needs to be an employee. This is one of the other big things. You can do it from collaboration. That's really the biggest opportunity because oftentimes they already have the clients as well. But the thing, and I do want to touch, it's even on the last question where we're so worried about AI. I'm, our teams are hiring about 8 people a quarter now. I saw something, Joe, that you're hiring a major player and, and, you know, Dan is too and Babs and this is where. It's going to change jobs. But if you have an exciting vision, which is a big part of the greater game, you have an exciting vision that people are going to enroll in. It's not hard at all to hire people, uh, in today's world by, through the networks you're involved. You gotta be involved in the networks. It's not, you know, putting an ad in Facebook or even LinkedIn. You know, can you get that? Yeah. But it's really creating the story, getting out there, sharing it with fellow entrepreneurs and, and your internal people that really works exceptionally well.

All right, Joe Polish.

Yeah. You know, I thank you, John, for the kind words. Appreciate it. I do almost everything through my preexisting relationships, either my existing team, like John said, or the community. I mean, even Genius Network in a lot of ways for me is I wanted to create my own school that I wanted to, you know, that people would pay to attend, but it would never cost them anything to be there because of what comes out of it and the learning. And so obviously, people that are into bettering themselves, where do they go? And that's what we look for because that's the, you know, I'm like, my whole business world is is connection. I have connection companies. I own a 40-acre ghost town. I have an addiction recovery foundation. I have Genius Network. I mean, everything that I do goes through the lens of connection. And so, we are constantly collaborating with each other. I mean, if you think of the relationship between me and Dan and John and everyone with, you know, it's the people that are sitting here. I mean, we go into our own networks. As far as running ads, I mean, the If anyone wants to see an ad that I'm running, which is rarely do we do this, I'm looking for a COO and geniusnetwork.com/integrator. That happens to be one position. But outside of that, almost everything comes from my own team or my own relationships that I have. I don't have any sophisticated major answer on hiring. As a matter of fact, I can't stand interviews myself because I suck at it.. So I have to have someone between me and, you know, like Dan, I don't think Dan is sitting down and doing interviews with people, but Babs has built a team and runs the company and has hired people that now hire people. And so there's, so I'd love to hear what Babs has to say to this also.

Okay.

Let's, let's pick up Babs.

Yeah, let's override Dan with Babs.

Well, I built the team around Dan from the beginning. That was like 36 years ago. And some of those people are still there. Are still with us, Shannon Waller. And, you know, and they're just people that, um, we had met, we knew, we, you know, it grew. And, um, Julie Cosgrave is still here after 30-something years, I think. But, um, um, where was I going with that? I don't interview people. Well, I see people, like, if they're coming in for certain positions, I'll see them after other people have basically, you know, sorted it out and showed they've gotten— they think they're that really aligned and they're really good for us. Um, and we find them all sorts of ways. We don't, um, and we're doing it in 3 countries, um, the US, the UK, and obviously Canada, right? Um, anyway, that's what, you know, I met Dan. He was trying to, he was doing everything himself. I'm like, oh my God, he's got this amazing brain. I want more people that I knew. I was an entrepreneur. I wanted more people to be able to have access to that. And so I started saying, why are you doing that? Let's get somebody else to do that. And that's been a constant process. I recommend that to everyone. For how to do it, but don't hire them yourself because you get them really excited. And so you get excited because they're excited and then you hire them and then they're not really right for the job.

I think that's one of the things we all do is I don't interview anybody either until they're getting offered the role type thing.

Right.

And even then I don't—

Right, Dan?

Yeah. All right.

You know what I love though?

I do have some insights on this subject. How many of you here are good salespeople? How many of you on the program? You're a really good salesperson. Okay. You should be the last person to ever hire someone because you treat the hiring as a sale. They said yes. Wrong person, but they said yes. They were excited. They didn't want a job. They wanted your job. You were so excited about your job. They wanted your job. The second thing is that one of the things I hear, I mean, Babs and I, we operate in big cities. We're in LA, we're in Chicago, we're in Vancouver, we're in Toronto, we're in London, England. And big cities have lots of people. But the vast majority of our clients don't come from big cities. They come, you know, they're rural, they're smaller communities. And they say, well, we don't have great people where we are. And I said, no, there's great people where you are. They're just not looking for you because you're not a great person. If you're not a great person, great people are not— don't want to get hired by someone who's not a great person. And the way that you prove that you're a great person is that you want great roles around you who free you up. And that there's constant growth. So there can be increases in income, there can be promotion, there's new roles. So that's the second thing. There's great people, but great people are looking for great people. So you have to demonstrate that you're a great person. And the third thing about it is we don't hire for jobs, we cast for roles. So we treat Strategic Coaches, if it's a theater company, Theater companies have backstage and front stage, and there's activities that they have to do just to free someone else. Anytime we hire someone, it's to free someone else who's already in the company. And there's profiles that you can do. There's Kolbe Profile. There's, you know, there's the print, there's Working Genius, and these are all very, very helpful. But the thing with our team, we say, look, we have to negotiate with each other. We're going to hire you for a certain set of activities that are going to be necessary right away. But here's the deal. We want you to get to the point where you're in a position where you love doing the work and you're great doing the work, but it's going to take some time for us to figure out what that is. But we want to get you to the point where you absolutely love what you're doing and what you're doing, we absolutely love that you're doing it. So, you know, we have 20— I think we have 25 team members who are more than 20 years. We have about 5 now who are more than 30. You're going to find a lot of good people who are in their present situation. Their present situation is going to be eliminated by AI. And so there's not going to be a lack of people in the marketplace. There's going to be a lot of people in the marketplace.

Well, after everyone gets a copy of The Greater Game, either the physical copy or the audio, if you listen to it, I'm sure we can do a future session with John as a guest and continue this conversation.

So, Gord is my podcast manager. I have 8 podcast series and Gord manages the entire process. So, when John and I wrote the book, we were in total agreement that we were not going to be the narrators for the book. You know, that I'm not going to read it and John's not going to read it. So Hay House, the publisher, they will then bring in a narrator. And they had a competition, and Babs recommended that Gord— he had an extensive background in radio. He had his own morning show. He's got a great broadcast voice and everything. And Gord competed, and he beat out the other 5 professional narrators. And, uh, and it's just a joy that, um, you know, that he did that, because we have a lot of books in the future, and I've always thought, I'm just not going to narrate a book, you know. I, uh, you know, and it's just not something that I'll sit there and actually do. And he said that. So Gord, what was the experience like? First of all, just the possibility, then the actual competition and then the actual execution.

It was a lot of fun to do, uh, the first audiobook that I had done long form. I had done a lot of television commercials and radio, but here's a little behind the scenes for everyone, uh, who would like to enjoy the audiobook. It was recorded at Noble Street Studio in Toronto using the same room and the same microphone that Drake used to record 7 tracks from his album Nothing Was the Same. Many years ago. So there's a little bit of Drake in this book if you're a fan that's a good thing. If you don't like Drake then maybe I don't know just read the book and don't listen to the audio so I think there's maybe a little bit of Hollywood magic in The Greater Game that's some trivia that you'll all leave this broadcast with today but it was a great experience I loved doing it and uh it was a pleasure Dan thank you John thank you Dan for having me do that and Joe Polish Polish as well for having me here today and a lot of fun!

And gourds on the bonus tracks with John and Dan at the end of each chapter too.

Yeah, there was a lot of gourd throughout the book. So how I describe it was I'm standing on the dock and Dan and John are in the canoe. I just give it a little kick and then they paddle around the lake and then they come back within a reasonable amount of time. And then we tee up a new question after the next chapter. I give the canoe a little kick. And then the two of them go and bounce it around. So you're going to hear— it's not a rehashing of the book itself. It's sort of the story behind the story, like the outtakes. It's really interesting. And those are spliced between each of the chapters. So that's something else for you to enjoy with the audiobook. Every system that got you here is optimized for a game that's coming to an end.

Speaking of coming to an end, we have reached— see how we did that? We've reached the end of TEDx Talk. And I'd like to end with 1 minute or less, and we'll go John, then we'll go Dan, and then we'll end with Joe Polish. But 1 minute or less, what is your next greater game move?

No, it is definitely to continue building out this ecosystem. And I just really, I wish I could communicate a little bit more effective, Paul Polish, the opportunity that everyone has here. Taking the framework that Dan and I have communicated in this book, in the dashboard, thegreatergamedashboard.com, the impact that you can make and, and, you know, certainly make money and all that. But the most important part, have a lot of fun doing it. I always like Steve Jobs' quote, you know, when he asked what he wants to do, he just wants to make a little dent in the universe. If each of us make a little dent in the universe, wow. What an impact we can have.

Next greater game, Dan?

Yeah, I think the big thing for me, well, first of all, the project that I'm, you know, that Babs and I and Coach are involved with, with John, because we framed it as 25 years, that the dashboard that he's created is just going to be the greatest marketing mechanism that we've ever that we've ever had in Coach. The whole communication world for marketing is just changing. You can tell in 3 years the impact that AI has. It's enabling certain things, but it's also cutting off what were some very, very successful ways of communicating digitally, especially. And so you have to— you always have to be on your toes in terms of how business gets done. But the other thing is the Patent Bureau in Washington in the last 7 years has changed its understanding of what constitutes a patent. And our program consists entirely of thinking tools. And these are thinking exercises where people put their experience in and then we have them compare their experiences and make decisions. Do you keep doing that experience or do another experience? And we've created 250 thinking tools. Each of them are completely unique. And starting 2, 3 years ago, right now, we've gotten 82 patents so far from the Patent Bureau. We've had none of our thinking tools rejected. We've had none of them rejected. And we have another 75 that are pending. And this is property. This is property. And these not only give you IP protection, but it's actually an asset. Every one of those patents is actually an asset. So my goal is every, you know, every month we're sending in 5 new patent applications and we've got clients, we've got hundreds of clients now who have more than 3,000 patents that have gone through and we've shown them the whole process of doing it. And that growth of intellectual property plus the asset value of it gives you your own bank, essentially, because you can borrow half the appraised value of a bank— of a patent. And so you're essentially creating your own bank, which goes to the security issue of the multiplier. Your intellectual property creates a life insurance policy for your cash flow.

That's a t-shirt right there. All right, Joe Polish, you brought us 10X Talk. You brought us these two guys. You brought many, you know, guffaws. Give us your next greater game plan and then let's close this thing off.

Well, I will just say, if anyone's not gotten a copy of the book yet, make sure you go ahead and do that. And it's— you can see links in the chat for this. So thank you, Paul Polish, for moderating this. And it's always great, John and Dan, to to talk to you guys and all our friends and clients and everything that are here. So I'm going to keep building, uh, Genius Network and Genius Youth and Genius Recovery and hopefully deal with one of the greatest, uh, problems that exist, which is human loneliness, and to, to bring people together and connect them in hopefully deep and meaningful ways. Uh, like at the annual event I'm doing this year in November, I've got Peter Diamandis and Stephen Kotler. They have a new book called We Are as Gods that just— we just did an interview with them on. And I'm going to bring Peter and both of them to the event, and we're going to have robots there. And but we're also going to have like a famous musician who's on over 300 million albums and all kinds of wild stuff. So it's just engaging people. My ADD brain could talk about a million other things that I think are greater games, but my core is Genius Network. And Dan, were you going to say something?

I saw you raised your hand. Yeah, yeah. Cleator, you, you, you didn't mention Cleator.

Well, yeah, so I own a 40-acre ghost town with a couple of friends that I bought called Cleator, Arizona. It's, uh, it was established in 1856. And because of that, uh, we were restoring a whole entire ghost town that we welcome anyone to come visit. We have over 1,000 visitors a week because we have the famous Cleator Bar and Yacht Club that happens to be there. And people can become a member of that, which is really funny. Bunch of people on ATVs. I mean, it literally is a ghost town and people do live there. You can look it up. It's— the website is cleator.us, C-L-E-A-T-O-R dot us. But ultimately, not dot com, but dot us. Someone— oh, cleatoraz.com is the, uh, another— it'll go to the website. But that being said, what happens when you start going down a path is Dan has this great line called a strategic byproduct. And whenever you pursue a goal other things reveal themselves that will not happen unless you're pursuing that goal in the first place. And so we ended up accidentally being invited into a mining operation, and now we have over 4,000 acres of gold, silver, copper, and antimony claims. And we took that company public, and it's called King Global Ventures, KingGlobal.gold, if anyone wants to check it out. But that all comes from just connecting with people and doing wild stuff like buying a freaking ghost town.. So, in the midst of all of this pursuit, be a human, connect with people. The greater game for me is spending about 3 hours a day is my goal where I'm reading, literally writing with my hand and the thumb because Dan Sullivan years ago shared with me some research that you retain 40% more memory when you actually engage your thumb. And I actually had someone do a lot of research on that. That I'm still going through to understand the connection there. So, with all of the incredible technological things where I am constantly surrounded by advanced, amazing people that are so cutting edge on stuff, I also don't want to lose the fact that being out in nature and doing cool shit in a ghost town and just, you know, having fun running an ELF business, easy, lucrative, and fun versus a HAF business, which is hard and annoying, lame and frustrating. So as much elf versus haft as possible. And so, yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of my jam. So thank you all. And I appreciate it. And Paul, I'll, we'll let you wrap this up.

Everybody, you've been listening to 10x Talk, and, uh, we've been chatting about the greater game. You can subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast. Thank you so much. You'll be hearing from us soon. Bye now.