Who Not How: The SECRET to Unlocking Unlimited Success | Featuring Dan Sullivan & Benjamin Hardy

Well, so how much of this is. It's interesting. I've been reading some of the comments. One of them was unique ability is a myth. And of course, that's not at all a accurate statement, because unique ability. If I had not learned about the concept of unique ability, God knows how much time I've built, literally a multimillion dollar business around interviewing people, bringing people together and connecting people. Something I do even when I don't get paid for it. I just figured out a way to do it. Secondly, how much of this is chance? How much of this is luck? How much of this is being in the right place, the right time? People will say things like, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Which is a sort of interesting statement when we talk about who, not how. And it's not even about knowing them. It's about how you utilize it. I believe this conversation will fall on.

And it has.

I mean, there's many people here that have talked about how many copies of the book they've read, they've bought, how it's changed. There was one comment about, you know, I've read 15 pages, the first 15 pages, and it completely changed my life.

Joe, can I make a statement about luck? I believe 50% of all success is luck. Okay, yeah, you're born at the right time. You're. You're born healthy, you got a good enough brain. I think that's luck. I mean, you didn't have anything. The other 50% is knowing how to take advantage of your good luck.

And so I believe people can fashion their own futures and design their futures. And certainly I deal with some people in very broken states with the work I do in addiction recovery. And I've seen people crawl out of the worst places in life ever. I mean, heck, people that know my story. When I was 18 years old, in my worst state, I weighed 105 pounds from free basing cocaine. I nearly killed myself when I was a drug addict. So people can certainly change their lot in life. And there's certain obstacles that people, you know, overcome. So what I want to be able to do is have people that are thinking like, okay, I get the concept, I understand it, but, you know, how can I actually do it? And by the way, you know, Ben Hardy wrote, willpower doesn't work. Personality isn't permanent. I mean, we got some serious brain power here from you guys being able to direct and guide people. Because between all of you, I mean, think about this. Dean Jackson in 1997, invented the squeeze page, where you enter your name and email to go to the next page. I mean, think about how many hundreds of millions of people that one idea has influenced how it. You know, so, you know, you guys have done a lot of stuff. There's a lot of people saying, well, I've not. I didn't invent the squeeze Page. I didn't create Strategic Coach. I'm not the number one writer in the world. On medium.com, these guys have some great talent that I don't have. You know, there's that sort of thing. But the truth is, you know, I know the stories between all three of you. You've had to overcome some incredible adversities. You know, dad, you were bankrupt and divorced on the same day when you were 34 years old.

Is that what, 34? Yeah, yeah. I did the divorce in the morning so I could keep my credit card for lunch before I had to give. Because when you go bankrupt, you have to give in your credit card. So two things. One is that we established a no receivables business in 1984, and I based it on the movie industry. I said, when I go to a movie, when do I pay for the movie? And I said, you don't pay for a movie on the way out. You pay for the movie on the way in. And it increases your dedication to the movie that you've already paid for it. So since 84 we go, everything's up front. Never. We never do anything. And the other thing is, I needed a great partner in both sides of my life. I needed a partner in my personal life. And on the day I was divorced, I wrote down the eight characteristics of the relationship. Not who the person had to be, but what the characteristics would be. And one year later to the date, I was at a weekend conference, and there was one seat left. I sat down and Babs was sitting next to me, and that's. And I started talking to her. And everything resonated with the sheet that I had put together about what the relationship had to be. And, you know, it's really been very magical for me to be in collaboration with Babs and Dean. You and I are great collaborators. Joe's a great collaborator. Ben's a great collaborator. And I don't ask anybody to do except the thing that they're uniquely good at and what they love at what they love doing.

Well, you said also when you met Babs, you said this one thing. You said you had made a decision that I didn't want to work on a relationship. I just wanted a relationship that worked. And that doesn't mean you were not going to put. I want to give the proper context because you are constantly working on your life, but you don't do it by, you know, bleeding to death. You don't do it by, you know, swimming against the grain, per se. I mean, you've, you've learned and created a lot of thinking tools and a lot of methodologies to take adversity and turn it into usefulness. I mean, you're one of the best. I mean, I always say this all the time. Dan's the smartest entrepreneur thinker that I've ever met. I mean, I've been Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. I've interviewed Richard probably more than anyone. I've spent six weeks on Necker Island.

He's.

And 30 minutes with Dan Sullivan is more useful than a week with Richard Branson in terms of business advice. Not that he hasn't built successful businesses, but the ability to teach and translate that to other people and that's what these guys do so well. Dean is a great simplifier. Ben's an incredible writer, Dan, with coaching all the entrepreneurs he has. So that's why I wanted to do this conversation today with everyone. So let's talk about how to get the most out of this because right now you can actually buy this book. This is almost ridiculous to say, as if I even need to sell the book here, right? It's pretty self evident. Not because he's here. Ben Hardy is truly one of the most genuine, thoughtful, caring individuals on the planet. So, Ben, why are you so damn polite and nice? Can you speak to that?

No, but I will say one quick. I will say one quick thing. And this is just my last thought on this subject for the moment. Who not how is a concept that goes beyond business? Just as one example, as many of you know, my wife and I actually adopted three kids from the foster system when I was doing my PhD and we would not have gotten our three kids if we hadn't hired the right attorney. We were bogged through the system and there was no statistical reason why we should have gotten these kids. The system was literally against us and the law was against us. But we found this attorney and I tell the story in the book. The final section of this book, by the way, it's based on Dan's four freedoms concepts. So there's four sections of this book. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and freedom of purpose. In the fourth section on this book, freedom of purpose, I think that they're probably the two best chapters on the book because they teach you how to stop competing and start collaborating. But one of the sections talks about how when you have the right who in your life, your vision for your future becomes a lot bigger and better. And we, me and my wife were screwed. We had the foster system literally take our kids away, and we then got committed to the result we wanted. And that's really what who, not how's about is when you get committed to the result you want, you stop trying to do the how and you just find the who who can get you the result. And that's when your mindset goes up to a whole new level and you figure out how to make it happen. And so we got the right attorney, this guy who knew the law back and forth, and he made the other attorneys look like idiots. And we got our kids and he literally had to change the laws in South Carolina so that foster parents could have the rights. And so because we had the right attorney, we were able to adopt our three kids. And it was that important to us. If we had not found the right who, me and my wife would have never had that huge, amazing part of our life. And so this goes way beyond just business. If you want a result, you need a whole. And if you get the right who in your life, then your ability to get the result you want becomes inevitable. And there's a lot of science, a lot of psychology that I obviously break down in the book. As far as just taking my kids, for example. My kids potential, like you as a human being, your potential to accomplish things is not innate, it's actually relational. Take my three foster kids, for example, who are no longer foster kids. Their ability to produce results and to learn was so limited in their former context. They were all like three years behind in school. They had no knowledge. You put them in our context with us, now they have access to our abilities, our knowledge, our care. We get them with tutors. All of a sudden they become amazingly capable people. It's not because they weren't capable before, it's because their context limited them. And so the relationships you have with people change your human potential. They change what you can do, they change the results you can get. And so I just want to say if you want to get better results in your life, it's about the relationships you have. It's about creating relationships with the right who's and it immediately changes everything. And so I just wanted to really strongly encourage you, please go get this book. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I've had over the last three years to learn from Dan, Dean, and Joe. And that's why I wrote this book, is because I just felt like the wisdom of these people needed to be shared. And so that's why this book exists. And I really hope you read it, because it's not a huge. Not a long book, but it's perfectly designed to help you completely change your thinking, and it will completely change your results and your freedom. It's a mindset that could literally help them get the result they want, whether it's adopting their kids, whether it's building their business, whether it's getting that book deal, whether it's saving their life. You know, one of the things, Joe, that you and I know, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is human connection. And there's actually someone even on this call, Chris Doyle. I was on Chris Doyle's podcast, who is someone who is very big in the addiction space. And my younger brother was heavily struggling with addiction, and he helped us to get him into the right treatment facility. And so, you know, if whatever the result is that you're looking for, whether it's helping a family member, creating a business, having more freedom, you need a who. And so it's the most amazing mindset. You can gift it to someone for 99 cents for the next two days.

Yeah. And let me. Let me add to that, because I'm a marketer, obviously, and this is how my brain works. So if there's someone that you've identified who is a future who or has been a who to you, what a great way of saying, you know, you've been a wonderful who to me. I wanted to share with you this book to describe how valuable you've been to me, and I hope you find this valuable. You've literally just planted a seed using a book for 99 cents that you can actually say thank you to someone, and you can set the stage for a better, deeper collaboration. So I'm literally going to send out thousands of copies of this book to people and everyone in Genius Network. You're all getting a hardcover copy this week. It's coming to all of you because we were able to get some of them before they ran out. And it's going to be in a big swag bag that we're sending to people with all the stuff, because the annual event is next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which, by the way, all of you that are not registered really should go to that and be smart. But anyway, so that is a great methodology for doing it so. So Ben and Dan and even Dean, what we can take. We can take a couple of questions. Even Dean, like is it. I want to make sure we don't have Dean's status be anywhere near as elevated as high as Dan and Ben right now because frankly they're better people than Dean. And so if we have a hierarchy of just good humans. No, I'm totally kidding. So Dean, how does someone get the most out of the conversation we've had so far in the book? Why don't we start with you?

I say literally so I would. I thought Ben was going in a different direction when he was talking about the is not just about business because I particularly like chapter four of the book and where we talk about the freedom. Time is time. And when you can have a. Who remove yourself from all the things that take up that time that you would rather have invested in other things. It's a toll freeing experience, you know. So I think that's. That's a good place to. To start. That's looking at everything that you're doing, you know.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So Dan, any suggestion if you were to say, okay, here's the best way to engage and interact with this concept that we've not talked about so far that you think would be most useful to everyone that's here with us.

Yeah, I think the big thing is just take two or three goals that have been moving slowly and say if I didn't do the houzz on these goals, then who would I immediately talk to who either had the skills that they could actually help me accomplish the goal or they would be a connector to someone else. So I say this, but it's literally true. My Rolodex, my virtual Rolodex has just one. My. Yeah. Has just one name in it and it's Joe Polish. If I want to meet anyone know about anyone who's doing something, I just called Joe Polish because I could take six months and then not find the person. But Joe, Joe would find it some way within a matter of 24 hours, you know, so. And Joe just loves doing this. I mean that's. It's no hardship for him to do Something that he loves to do. So I just, you know, I've just got to say, always ride the horse in the direction it's already going. You know, just find what people love, doing what they're really great at, and build them into your bigger future. So, you know, that's what I, what I do. I don't want anyone doing something for me that's a hardship for them, that's difficult for them, that's a sacrifice for them. I want it to be a joy. I just want to be surrounded by people joyfully expanding their skills on a new project.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, you know, I mean, I do genuinely love to connect people with solutions and capabilities because I know the pain of not having that. And when I, when I learned that, you know, this, this whole concept of time is money. It's really, relationships are money. And with the, with the right relationships, you can accomplish anything. One thing we say at Genius Network is that any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius. And what I mean by that is that's a bunch of who's, because a Genius network is a capability network. I mean, I've said it many times, people don't want to. I don't think most of you wanted to actually be here today. I think while you're here now, some of you did. There's a lot of friends, there's a lot of people we have rapport with. But you're looking for a result. And in order to get a result, you need a capability. And the who, not how is a capability. And it's capability that we wanted to not only share with you conceptually here and talk about it, but also direct you to the blueprint, which is the book who, not how, and have this part of your capability going forward so that you're not spending a lot of your time and energy doing things which other people would gladly do. I mean, I remember you saying to me, Dan, years ago that there's no bad work in the world. There's this bad work for certain people. And most people hate their jobs in the middle of a pandemic. God knows some people that hated their jobs would love to have those jobs back. Some people's businesses have increased. Other people's businesses and lives have been decimated. And there's a lot of anxiety and depression and addiction and pain in the world. And more than ever right now, really having the who, not how concept, because it's going to be many who's that are going to help with this. Could you speak to the whole Concept of work, like bad work, good work, what is that? Because I think it so much ties into who, not how.

Are you talking to me or.

Yeah, talking to you, Dan.

Yeah, yeah, the. Yeah, well, you know, it wasn't our idea to get born, you know, I mean, first of all, you have to accept that. And the other thing is that when you arrive, none of the universe was designed with you in mind, okay? So if you accept those two rules that it wasn't your idea to arrive and when you arrived, nothing was designed for you, then you, then you've got a, a reference point that's going to be true for the rest of your life. So if things are going to work, I mean, it's very useful to have great parents, you know, and it's very useful to have every bit of help. But I've known a lot of people who had every advantage in the world who never went anywhere because they thought it was supposed to be done for them. So I, you know, I'm a farm boy and I grew up on a farm that was just barely surviving. And I'm a fifth grade child and I got it real early that you had to be useful. If you weren't useful, you didn't get anything. And so my sense is that it takes a while in our world for your unique abilities. First of all, you have to recognize them. And the people who don't, don't believe in unique ability, who say unique ability is a myth, simply means they haven't identified their unique ability and matched it up with the right work. They have matched it up with the right network of who's and everything. So, you know, people who believe in unique ability believe in 100%, believe people who don't believe in unique ability absolutely refuse to accept it 100%. It's a choice and it's a courageous choice because you gotta be willing to commit to your unique ability and be courageous before you start getting results in the world. And you know, I've tried the rugged, individualist approach to entrepreneurism and to my, to my personal life and you know, I didn't need to get hit in the head more than three or four times. I said, you know, this is not, this is just a stupid way to proceed. And I've got some useful skills and my skills get more useful when I match them up with someone else's really great skills. So, you know, I'm 76 and I don't intend the next 25 years till I'm 100 or 24 years till I'm 100 to be difficult. I don't intend it to be hard. I don't. And my goals for age 100 are incredibly bigger than what we're doing right now. So, you know, I mean, try it. You know, I mean, the only way to do is take the idea and start with your personal life. You know, if there's part of your personal life where you're doing work you don't like, hire somebody or get somebody in to do it, you don't have to hire them full time and you know, maybe it's four hours a week and just see what it feels like to have somebody else who's really good at something to handle part of your life. You can do this bit by bit, but after a while you realize that your financial goals are so you can hire more who. So all my financial goals are hiring more who's skilled, who's. The greatest freedom in my life is to have better and better who's in my life. So how much is that going to cost? Whatever it takes. So my goals keep going up and I'm not hiring who's to get to my financial goals. I'm getting to my financial goals so I can hire who's.

I love that. And so you did say because freedom. Because ultimately, I mean, what I first heard the definition of an entrepreneur from you. So the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur was a French guy named John Baptiste in 1804 that said an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield, from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. So anything that is going to take you from here to here and make it better is entrepreneurial thinking. And so this is literally offering you the ability to think entrepreneurially when it comes to other people. And what are the different types of freedom, Dan? Because we have a lot of. There's a lot of bullshit related to success. I mean, many people think of success as just making a lot of money. And we all know people that are miserable, humans that fleece people that aren't very happy, that have financial, you know, they have money but. But they don't have wealth, they don't have physical wealth, they don't have relational wealth, they don't have spiritual capital. There's all kinds of other things. What does freedom, what does freedom mean to you in the context of entrepreneurship?

Yeah, well, you know, because I've coached entrepreneurs for 46 years, you know, I often notice the complete misunderstanding of entrepreneurs in the non entrepreneurial world. They just do it for money and I said, you know, it's really interesting because that's not been my experience with the 6,000 entrepreneurs that I've coached, and we had 20,000 in the program with the other coaches. And my belief is that entrepreneurs are mostly motivated by freedom. And it's freedom of freedom of vision, freedom of decision making, freedom of action. They can't do that if they follow an employment path in life. They know somebody else controls their time, somebody else controls their activities, and somebody else controls their growth and their promotion. So they choose a path, a risky path at first, to gain freedom of their time. And when you have freedom of time, as Dean said, you know, in his remarks about freedom, is that you find you have freedom of money. So the more time you control, the more you can make money that is bigger and better money than other people. You put freedom of time and money together, then you can control your relationship networks, your personal relationship networks, your work relationship. You can work just with people that it's enjoyable working with. And my sense of that, it's the growing combination of freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship. It's not an addition, it's actually a multiplication. Freedom of time multiplies. Freedom of money. The two of them together multiply. Freedom of relationship. And gradually there's a really major purpose in your life and it has to do freedom of you're free to actually create good in the world and value in the world on your own terms, and you can choose it. My sense is that it's not been really easy in most of human history to do what we're talking about here today. But I think the last 50 years in particular have really freed up entrepreneurs. I think the combination of the virtual world and entrepreneurism is a major exponential event on the planet. And I think that anyone who wants to be entrepreneurial and has good instincts about using the virtual world can really grow exponentially. But don't be doing things you don't like doing. Find the people all around the world who can do the all the hows that you don't like. And I think it's exponentially easier now if you know what your purpose is to find the who's who will assist you in your purpose. So that's, you know, and I'm, I'm experiencing that it is just incredibly easier to do what I do today than it was 10 years ago. Incredibly easier to do what I was doing 20 years ago. And I'm happy, happy, you know, I'm really, really happy. I've got, I've got my happy on so I wear my happy all the time. Yeah, but Dean, we talk about this. Dean and I have a podcast series, you know, probably every couple of weeks anyway. Right, Dean? In the course of things. It's called welcome to Cloudlandia. And we talk about the difference between the mainland, which is controlled by the laws of gravity, and virtual reality. Dean has the greatest collection of great entrepreneurial stories to talk about how people who are in their teens are producing billion dollar companies and producing billion dollars of results just because they're following who, not how, multiplied by virtual capabilities.

Yeah, and they wouldn't call it that. They. They don't know it. But we're observing this once you have a formula now, like we've got that. You can observe it and you see how that's what's at play. That's what's happening here. So that's, you know, I think that going into this who, not how era. You guys are a perfect example of that. That this really fits into what you are, what you're talking about. I don't know Brian that well. I know him. And no, he's an amazing visionary. But you would know whether he's a operator, you know, or whether that. So you look at it that you, even though you admit right in the beginning you didn't have the vision for, you didn't see what was there, but you were able to take that vision and make that happen.

As an executor, Brian is admittedly admitted, like self admittedly, and has written this in his books and on stages. Is a horrible operator.

Right.

I am a horrible visionary. I am much better at reversing. So my core purpose is helping entrepreneurs make their dreams happen.

Yeah.

When I know what an entrepreneur's goals are, I can make those happen. Brian's amazing at being the cult leader that's stirring the Kool Aid. He's amazing at being the chief energizing officer. He's amazing at pointing people in direction of vision. And he's really, really good at finding out where people may need mentoring or support. And then he's really good at like driving urgency. You know, it's always. It's a lot of like. And very good at like 80%, you know, minimum viable everything. Forget about minimum viable product, like minimum viable everything. It's just momentum creates momentum and the flywheel. Obsessing about the flywheel. So he's all good at that stuff. And he knows when to stay out of his lane. Right. Whereas I was horrible at it and finance, Brian had a better mind for details in fact, the new COO at 1,800, got junk. I've been friends with Eric Church for 34 years. We started a fraternity together in Ottawa in 1989. Eric would have been horrible as a COO. From a million to 100 million. Brian fired me at 107 million in the middle of 2007 because I was the wrong guy to go from 100 million to a billion. Wow. Even the who, not how guy there. Pretty amazing that you can see our energy together as friends today. Took a while to rebuild some of that. But I was the wrong guy to go from 100 million to the billion.

I think so much of this is self awareness too, isn't it? I mean, having your vision for what you're doing in every category you think about, what do you really want your life to look like? I look at the, you know, I talk about, I know I'm being successful when as a kind of. I use that as a shortcut for the vision, for what I want kind of thing for myself. Even though I'm clear on the bigger picture of what they all mean, having that self awareness. I think for what you're. What your perfect vision looks like, regardless of where the business is going.

I think, yeah, for your perfect vision and also for what you're really good at. You know, even if you get into the who, not how, it's really understanding your own strengths and weaknesses. And the school system, frankly, messed up 95% of us in a serious way, right? If you're in the top 5% of students who did well in all of your classes, the school system was fine. But for the other 95%, for 27 out of every 30 kids in class, for 27 of those kids, school fucked us up forever. I went to school from kindergarten until fourth year university and basically had, you know, 16, 17 years of being told that I was a C student, that I would work hard, but I'd never do well at grades, that there were other people smarter than me. So I was emotionally getting destroyed in school. What the school system should have said to me was, wow, you're really good at these three areas. You suck at these seven. Don't worry about those seven. Let's get other people to do that stuff. Why don't you do this stuff?

Right?

And nowadays, I think in business, luckily as CEOs, we can delegate everything except genius. I think what hurts a lot of us is we're trying to get better at stuff. Like, even Joe Polish told me that I had to be good at marketing. I said, no, I don't. Joe. I've had a number of debates with him on this.

Right.

Know that I need to know the people that are good at marketing, and I need to share with them what my goals and my vision are, and they need to get me there. But I need to know the tactics exist. I need to know that. I need to know that landing page optimization exists, but not how to do it. I need to know that split testing exists, but not how to do it. I need to know that copywriting exists, but not how to do it. That's what I want it. Right? So then I know that all these things exist. Then I can find the who's.

That's it.

That's. That's who it is. That's what I was kind of trying to encourage people to stay in that. What you need to know what those things are, what's possible.

But 30 years ago, that was different, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Because we didn't. We didn't have the Internet and we didn't have the ability to network. So we had to be the smartest people in the room. We had to be the best at all these things, otherwise scale. But now we just have to know them.

This is what I say. There's never been a better time than right now that virtually every capability that you could imagine is commoditized. And I mean commoditized in the good sense of the word, in that it's available for sale, that you can buy and tap into as much or as little whenever you need it. Any capability that you can imagine. And that's what's really, I think as we're going into this migration we've been calling the migration into Cloudlandia, this whole new digital world that we're living in, that the opportunities to collaborate, even from a distance in groups, is like never before. So there's no need to have everybody in the same building or everybody from your town. You can have a global network of people all working independently and collectively towards your vision, as long as everybody's clear on what the. On what the vision is. That's a.

And unfortunately, that's. That's what happens more often than not is people aren't clear on the vision, so they don't really know how they fit with everything. Right.

It is funny you mentioned about our school kind of screwing us up that I remember talked about my report card, my amalgam kind of comment of everything. My mom passed away about five or six years ago now and I found all my old report cards. I was looking back at Them and I found one from third grade and the handwritten comment in the things was Dean is able to achieve excellent results with what seems like little effort. Imagine if he applied himself all the time. Imagine if he applied himself right and you think like that's screwing you up. That somehow it's like you know, able to. It's been, that's been my. Yeah, that's been my winning formula for all through life is achieving excellent results with what seems like little effort.

Nine word emails.

Exactly.

I just sent one out today to my entire list. Another nine word email about our we're running an in person COO alliance event which no entrepreneurs are allowed to come. It's only second commands and it's all about building a world class culture which I'm like known for globally. I'm like, I'm not gonna write a long form email. It's just like I sent a very brief email if you're interested. Let's get on a call and talk about it. We're getting hit with all these responses.

Of course, so great. Yeah, I love that. But that's, you know, it's kind of like it shames you into like. I realize now looking back that a lot of those things that's kind of a workaround. I've been add from the beginning and have always found shortcuts because of my inability to get myself to focus for a long period of time or to put in that kind of.

Let me explain how I visualize a company. First off is I visualize every company. I'll show you this. I visualize every company like a jigsaw puzzle. So I see every company like a jigsaw puzzle. And the four corners of the jigsaw puzzle are your vivid vision, your core purpose, your core values and your bhag. And then I see the four sides of the jigsaw puzzle as being all the people systems. So the recruiting, interviewing, selection, training, onboarding, leadership development of people, which ties into a course that I'm launching next month around growing your leaders. And then the strategic thinking systems around strategy and goal setting and planning. And then all of your meeting rhythms which tie into your annual meetings, quarterly meetings, financial review meetings, one on one coaching meetings, daily huddles, et cetera. And then your financial systems, your culture emerges from the alignment of all of that with your people. So for me, I flip the org chart upside down where I have the CEO at the bottom supporting the leaders who are supporting the frontline staff who are supporting the customers. Everyone can see the vivid vision and you build Your business inside, your core purpose and your core values. If I think about 1-800-got-JUNK, we have the C level team supporting the managers who are supporting the employees, who are supporting the franchise partners who are supporting the customers. We all saw the vivid vision, we lived our core values and we understood our core purpose.

That's so great.

And then you break down that vivid vision into your annual goals, your quarterly goals. Right. For me, my goals are employee net promoter score first, customer net promoter score second, profit goal third, and revenue goal fourth. If my employees are super engaged and happy, they're going to take care of my customers. If my customers are super engaged and happy, then the profit comes and the revenue comes. But we're always talking about the customer, then the employees feel second rate. If we're always talking about revenue, the employees feel second rate. But if we obsess over our employees, everything is easy.

Yeah.

This is amazing. So like that whole, you could see, anybody can imagine the immense value in going away to creative place, spending some time thinking about that. How long do you encourage people to dedicate for this? Like to give themselves that process, the vivid vision process.

Yeah.

So. So let's say that you're writing a vivid vision for your business. The first step is you've got to get out of your box. You can't sit in your office and write this thing because you get distracted by how and you get distracted by who as well. You need to get away from your laptop. No technology, no iPhone, no iPad, no nothing. You take a good old fashioned notepad and a couple of pens in case one runs out. You put your earbuds in and you go somewhere where you're inspired. Somewhere around nature. You go near the ocean, you hang out in the mountains. If it's wintertime, I'll go to a big chalet and I'll hang out somewhere with a beautiful view of the mountains. And I start doing a mind map and I mind map my company. Almost as if I hopped into a time machine. Let's say that like you know the Doc and Michael J. Fox and we, and we hop into the DeLorean and we travel out to December 31, 2023. And we get out of the time machine and we look around and we're like, shit, I'm in my company. 3. And then you describe what you see.

Yeah.

You don't know how it happened in three years. You just describe it in its finished state.

Yeah.

So I want you to describe every area of your org chart. Describe operations, describe it. Describe finance, describe marketing, describe Customer service. You talk about what your customers are saying about you. You talk about what your employees are saying about you. You describe what your employees are writing on. Indeed. And Glassdoor, you talk about your culture and the buzz and the fun activities and your reward systems and your leadership team meetings. And you put three or four bullet points around every single aspect of your business that you can think about. You describe what the media is writing about you and you end up with a whole bunch of points on these mind maps that might take two, three to four hour sessions. That's it. Just enough to get out. And again, you're not worrying about how and you're not worrying about who.

Yeah.

And then you organize all your rough points into a rough draft, like a three page word document where they're all organized into rough points. And then what I would suggest you do. I don't know if Jennifer's on our call today, but Jennifer Houde, who's been a genius network member for five years. Jennifer and her team have written 250 vivid visions for clients of mine and of theirs from all over the world. They'll take the rough draft and they'll ask you more questions and pull ideas out of your mind and they'll literally make their vivid vision come to reality. I'll put some examples in the chat for you right now so you can see them. But Jennifer and her team have done a spectacular job at polishing it. And then you add design elements to it to really make it pop off the page.

Yeah.

So that's the starting point, is get away from the office, do your mind mapping, do your rough draft, and then get it to a copywriter.

That's amazing. And then the next. I think this is where a nice transition then is. Let's say that this is your solo operator right now, that you're just starting out or you're running a business, that you've got a vision like this, but it's going to require whose. And so I sense right now what's happening is that people are very excited about this idea of who, not how. They're like, wow, that sounds amazing that I can focus on what I want to do, but I'm going to need who's. And then the immediate next question that comes up as well, how do I find a who?

How do I who?

So I think that's an interesting. I joked with Dan the other day, we need to write a manual called how to who. That's how to who, the last how you'll ever need to master what it is. The Only one how you need to know is how to who.

Well, the first part of that is to remember that it needs to get done, but not by you. Yes, right. So when you realize it needs to get done, but not by me. I used to coach a woman, Suzanne Evans, that had a huge coaching program. So she coached about 600 women entrepreneurs. And I was coaching her on building her business. And Suzanne said that every Sunday she would sit down and set her goals for the week and make a list of all the core projects that she needed to do for the week. Then she would think about how many hours every project would take and then she would delegate 80% of the hours before she allowed herself to check an email or start on a project. Wow, that was fucking brilliant. Like, she delegated 80% of her work every week. So my, the way I would start with the how is again, very clear, objective on what the finished product looks and feels like. What does the project look like when it's completed? How much time and money do I want to spend on? Almost like you're doing a creative brief for an ad, right. If you can describe the project on a post it note in enough clarity, then you can turn to your network and figure out who's done this. Where I think most entrepreneurs get sloppy is they take the very first referral that comes along. And it's not that referrals are bad, but it's sometime that we're all so hardwired as humans wanting to help everybody that we refer the first person that comes to us, even though we've never used them or we're not quite sure, but we're so what we want to help, so we want to give a referral. If you're hiring a human, you do a lot of interviews to hire the person. If you're going to spend $100,000 on an ad campaign, you do a lot of thoughts about what the budget's going to be and what the results are going to be. If you're going to hire a who to do a project, please talk to two or three of their former customers and ask the tough questions. Please make sure they're clear on what you're doing. Please interview them for core values and how they respond to you as an art. Like, treat it like you're. Like you're spending 100 grand in a marketing campaign or hiring somebody. Don't get sloppy at hiring your who's.

Mm, that's abdication, right? Like jumping in, just thinking, oh, finally, yeah, you'll do. Yeah, you'll be my Who? That's really something.

Well, it's interesting. I turned to Joe about a year ago and I said, do you know anybody who's doing. And I won't say that. The area who's doing xyz? And he goes, yeah, we've got this person who's doing stuff. I'm like, how long have you been working with them? And he goes, actually, yeah, just about six weeks. He goes, give me six months and I'll let you know how they're doing. I'm like, perfect. Because Joe really wanted to help him make the intro, but he didn't have enough data to know whether the guy was really good or not. Right, right. For Jennifer, like, as an example for me with Jennifer, I was hopeful five years ago that she could write Vivid Visions because I was trying to find a writer who could help me get some of these done. And then she did a couple and she was good. Then she did a few more and she was great. Then she did a few more and she was world class. And now she and her team. No kidding. Have done more than 250 finished vivid visions for companies.

Well, they may have done more Vivid visions than anybody in the world, for sure.

By a landslide.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's great. And that's the kind of thing. That's what I mean about commoditized now is that the ability for you to get all of that experience at the. At the opportunity. It's so amazing. You know, you look at these, you know, putting it out in your network, and that's part of the real value of being a part of something like Genus Network, where you've got this. We've got so many different people in so many different areas that always were one degree of separation from usually the best people in the world at anything.

Exactly. But again, I think my call and Dean, the who, not how like your concept that then Dan and Ben Hardy wrote the book about. You're brilliant for coming up with the idea. I haven't read the book yet, but I hope the book talks about making sure that you are hiring the right who. You know, don't get lazy with that stuff, man. I had a CEO that I was coaching years ago. He's gone from 40 people up to 700 in the years I was coaching him. And at one point he said, you know, it takes about 90 days after I hire someone to know if they're the right fit. That's because your company sucks at interviewing. If you're really good at interviewing, you know everything about the person before they Join you?

Yeah.

Like, even Michelle, who, you know, bought a franchise for 1-800-got junk. She had to go through two very tough interviews to be awarded a franchise. And I'm sure she was showing up feeling like she was going to get sold all day. And those were probably two of the hardest interviews she's been through. Yeah, because we wanted to know everything about the person because we built the business and we didn't want to hurt the brand by hiring somebody that would hurt us. But when you hire the right people, then it just. It explodes, right?

Yeah, that whole thing. And I think that the not thinking about your vivid vision as like, this one thing that you only do this. You only need this skill set once every three years to do it. Because I think that the principles of what you're talking about work for any directive that you're giving to anybody. Having a vivid vision for the directive that you give to a whole to describe the what that you're hoping they're going to bring the how to complete.

Well, and it's a lot easier to get your who's. When you share your vivid vision, they want to help you make that come true. Your company is more exciting.

Yes.

Right.

When I share the vivid vision for what the COO alliance looks like, acts like, and feels like in three years, it's a lot more exciting and inspiring for people to be a want of, part of either joining or building that because they're excited about the future. Much more so than they're excited. Like, even though the current state is really good, the future is so exciting that everyone wants to be a part of making that happen.

Right.

I love it. I love it. I love it. You know, this whole, I think that, you know, the idea of creating different vivid visions for all the different areas for yourself, like, I think people starting with yourself, even if it's not organizationally starting with your vivid vision for what you want for your life so that you know that your organization that you're going to build is going to be complementary to the life that you want. So many times I see people go down the wrong road and they end up with a business that they got the vision that they wanted for the business, but it sucks for the life that they wanted.

Well, they didn't think about the life they wanted. So I'll give you a few examples of personal vivid vision and how they lock and load. First is I'll actually share with you my personal vision for what I look like, feel like, and act like in three years, Patty Ann, you'll enjoy Reading.

This because you and I have done.

Patty Ann did 52 calls with me as a therapist helping me get through my divorce and was extraordinarily powerful. She's also done work for about six of my clients as the CEO and COO and helping me them strengthen relationships. She's literally world class in that space. So Patty, I'd love you to read this now and see how I'm doing towards what you saw me at, you know, three years ago when I was falling apart. But Dean, so I'll walk you through this. The best example or one of the best examples I've seen of a personal vivid vision was Brian in 2004. And remember, I've known Brian by that point for 10 years. He was my best man. My first wedding, probably three months before I joined him. He was my best man at my wedding. By the way, there's somebody else on this call. Where's Sayda Saida Dizzlitz, who's on this call right now? There she is. Saida and I met the same year that Brian and I learned the vivid vision process back in 1998.

Wow.

Pretty crazy that she's seen me 22 years later, seen me grow companies, seen Brian. So that's how long she's. We've known each other for 22 years. So Brian in 2004 was getting a divorce and I had known Brian for years and he won't have a problem with me telling the story, but his ex had had a miscarriage and then he stayed and then she had another miscarriage and he stayed and she had seven miscarriages over a period of a few years. And I went, Brian, like, stop having sex. Like if you're trying to leave, stop having sex. Anyway, he finally gets up the courage to leave the marriage and he finds out his wife is pregnant again, but she's now at term. And he writes a letter to his wife like he's going to be getting divorced. She hates him at the time. They're very, very, very good friends today. But she hated him at the time. And he wrote a two page personal vivid vision of what their relationship would be like post divorce. Going on vacations together, being friends together, having dinners with each other, celebrating events like stuff that she is like, you are a fucking madman for even writing this down. Like you are a lunatic for thinking this. Lisa and Brian are such close personal friends. Lisa's new husband Dan built Brian's house. They go on vacations together. They've like co raised kids together. They have an incredible, extraordinary relationship together because he was so strong on what the vision for this would look like and he shared it with her, he shared it with his friends, he reread it, he focused on it. And when you conceive, believe and achieve and it's really powerful on that. On the marriage side of things, or let's say you're a family, whether you're a traditional relationship or a new relationship, two people raising kids together, why don't you get both of you to go off site for half a day and describe what your family unit looks like. What are your friends like, what's your faith like, what's your sexual preference like? What are you doing for activities, what are you doing for finance? How do you co raise the family? How do you have pink jobs and blue jobs? Both of you describe what it looks like and then come back and merge that together and have a joint family vivid vision that finally gets both partners on the same page so that you're both building towards the same goal. You know, really, really powerful stuff.

That sounds exciting. A lot of people would be scared that they would have completely different visions.

Well, if and if you do have vivid visions that are different, wouldn't you rather know that now versus three years later? It's very similar to having co owners of a business. So I used to coach a group called Nurse Next Door in Vancouver and I got Ken and John both to draw describe the vivid visions for their companies and before they started franchising, before they were doing anything, then they merged their vivid visions together and there were parts they disagreed on so they just kept them out. But all the stuff they agreed on became the real locked and loaded vivid vision for the company which then they shared with the board. And then we started franchising and then they shared with the employees and sure enough, they're this massive home healthcare company now.

So I write a lot actually. When I was 70, I said, you know, you know what a really neat project would be is to write 100 books in 100 quarters.

Okay.

And they're small books. Anyone who's seen our books, they're, you know, they're about 60 pages. And I'm just trying to think Barnes and Noble was one of the big stories. I can't think of what was the other.

Borders.

Borders. Borders had a survey of ebooks and they. So ebooks for the first time actually gave publishers a way of measuring when someone started a book, how far did they get in the book. If you bought a book.

You got.

A best selling book, but hardly anybody's read more than 10% of the book.

And.

And so what they discovered is that if a book is over 200 pages, 3% finish the book. This is nonfiction. This is not fiction. Fiction, if it's a good story, everybody finishes the book. And then if it's 100 pages, only 10% of people finish the book. But if it's less than 60 pages, 60 pages or less, 80% of the people finish the book. So I said, I'll just write books that are copywise, less than 60 pages. And a lot of people, if they have a book they've been working on for 20 years and it's got 25 chapters, they would have been better to produce 25 little books. Take a chapter, make it a book, take a chapter, make it a book. Especially for entrepreneurs, because you're not writing the books for the money. You make your money with your business. The books are a marketing strategy. So I've done that in 30 quarters. I've written 30 books. And what it does. And I didn't realize the value of doing that, but it gave when a capability like Ben came along, and I met him at my very first 100k meeting. And Ben came over and he had a break. And he said, sat down with me and he said, I noticed you write a lot of books, but you don't write for the popular market. And I said, If it's not finished in 90 days, it's not going to work with me. I don't take on any project I can't finish in 90 days. I just fall off a cliff after 90 days. And I'm sure not going to attend any meetings, and I'm sure not going to deal with a publisher. And he said, well, I, you know, I know how to do that. And he's got a great style. I mean, he just has a beautiful, beautiful public reader style, major market style. So when he sat down, something clicked in my brain and I said, I think this is good. And I think. I don't even know if it was a handshake. I don't know if you brought me.

An impact filter the next morning.

Yeah, But the way we did it, and this is a way of thinking about it 10 times, how we put the collaboration together. Because you couldn't hire Ben. There's no way of hiring Ben. Okay? You, you can't get this kind of talent by hiring them, okay? And we don't have that kind of talent inside the company. What we're looking for right here. So he knows the entire territory, and he knows all the other people who can supply the capability that he doesn't know about. I don't know any of that stuff. So what I realized is that at the level we were at operating with Ben, and then the other great collaborator on the project is Tucker Max. And Tucker, you know, Tucker is just. Tucker is the mapmaker for the publishing world. He really knows his stuff. And so originally we thought Ben's agent and publisher would be it, and that turned out to be not true. So we were at a genius network meeting and Joe had it on publishing. And Ben was there because for obvious reasons, and Tucker was there for obvious reasons, but Reed Tracy from Hay House was there. And I remember I walked into the room in Tempe. I walked into the room and Reed was sitting there and I said, hi, I'm Dan Sullivan. And he said, I know who you are. And he said, you know, he introduced himself and he said, I followed your stuff for years, but you don't write major market books. And I said, well, that might change. So Tucker and Ben took Reid out that night and they essentially had the deal by the end of dinner for one book. And then as a result of the really fast start of the first book, Tucker worked. Tucker and Ben worked with Reed. And so we have a 10 year or 10 book contract and Ben determines every year what the book is. Yeah, yeah, I think one no, but I want to tell you this. So people say, well, what's the financial deal? And I said, well, with a book, there's an advance and there's royalties. And they said, so how do you split it? And I said, well, real easy. I have a really easy split. It's called 100%. So Ben gets all the money forever, Ben gets all the money for the book. And people say, you're giving away all the money? And I says, what money? What money are you talking about? There wasn't any money until you put the collaboration together. The collaboration created the money. How do I get paid? Every once in a while somebody reads a book, signs up for the program. So far, 400. Hello, this is Joe Polish and this is Dan Sullivan.

And here we are on video on Zoom 10X Talk and Dan. So if you haven't gotten it already, Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy have a brand new book called who Not How. At least the time we're recording this. It is really well, it is the formula to achieve bigger goals through accelerating teamwork. I've read the book and I've also listened to the audio version. And the cool thing about the audio version is Ben Hardy basically interviewed you after each chapter and tells the story of who, not how. This is a concept that came from our friend Jackson, and then you, Dan, you actually took it and just really have turned it into a whole process which is now helping tens of thousands of people. Because how's the book doing right now?

Well.

We'Re four weeks since the launch, and we're just. If you take everything into consideration, ebooks, hard copies and Audible were in excess of 100,000 sales, and we made it to number two on the wall Street Journal. They're ebooks. They have a separate ranking for ebooks. So we were number two, right behind Matthew McConaughey, which I don't begrudge at all because I think he's a Hollywood superstar who I think has got his head turned on. Right. He just strikes me as he knows who he is, he knows what his job is and everything. And he doesn't purport to be an expert on world affairs or politics, which.

I find very refreshing.

Anyway, and the other thing is, we were on Zoom Call on Tuesday night with Reid Reed Tracy, the publisher of Hay House, who I only met because I know Joe Polish. And the collaboration that put the book together, Ben Hardy and Tucker Max, I only am involved with because I know Joe Polish and Dean Jackson, who originally came up with the idea of who, not how. I only know that because of Joe Polish. So I'm trying to make a point here about what I rely on Joe for.

Yeah. Which is great. I'm super happy because I love putting, you know, look, I mean, that's what Genius Network is. It's a connection network. And when you can connect smart people together, they can take their creativity, they can take their skills, they can combine their unique abilities, and they can make magic happen. And then what happens? As a byproduct of that, ideas and methodologies are put out into the world. And what it does is help who we both want to be a hero to, which is entrepreneurs. Help them build and grow their business. So, yeah, one of the things before we started recording, we were talking about my upcoming sabbatical and me and you had a few episodes. This is the first time I actually publicly announced. It was on a 10x talk podcast where I was talking about taking a sabbatical. And the idea came after a friend of mine who I've known for over 20 years, who I first heard the term elf. Easy, lucrative and fun from good friend of mine. I found out through his son that he and I just spoken with him a couple days prior. They had found him in Bed dead at the age of 59 years old. He's worth many millions of dollars and very wealthy guy, lived in another country. And something just occurred in my head saying, you know, this whole idea of I want to. I want to really, really look at how people work and how I work and this whole, I mean, I've been in strategic coach since 1997. If it was not for you, the whole concept of taking any time off would have been a foreign sort of concept to me. And so here you have been like probably the best, at least non anonymous version of Workaholics Anonymous, right? Where people go to Strategic Coach and they hear about, wow, you can actually make more money and not just grow your income and in your success, but most importantly, your engagement, your happiness, your connection in the world as a result of taking time off. And so this whole idea of a sabbatical. We have a mutual friend, David Bach, who's also been in Strategic Coach for many years. He gave a talk at one of my Genius Network annual events in 2015 on taking a sabbatical. And I already, I had it floating around in my head, but I was never able to pull the trigger until the pandemic hit and this started. And with all the work I do in addiction recovery, I started having a lot of very successful people, financially and successful in terms of well known in the world that were really struggling with addiction because I get those phone calls and it really made me think about my own life and it made me think about, I have a lot of great, wonderful, amazing things going on. And I also have a lot of relationships and things that I want to disconnect from. And I have this sign on my wall that says, be willing to just destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And I was like, yeah, you know, I think it's time. I think it's time for me to go and ponder. And you had made a comment. This is the ultimate form of who, not how. And that's what made me think. Yeah, I'd like to hear your perspective on this too, because, yeah, when I first I'll say this and then I'll have you comment on what you think about this, Dan, but I did a very long call. I think we talked for almost two hours, me, you and Babs, about my sabbatical. And I decided I'm not going to plan it until I start it. Now, what I mean by that is, of course, in my brain, I'm planning different things about it all the time. It's a great thing to say. To people, though, because for one, it's true. I'm not making any serious plans.

I'm not.

It's not like, let me go do a sabbatical so I can go travel somewhere. Because we're at the time we're recording this, we're still in the midst of pretty crazy Covid in pandemic and election chaos and all the things that are going on in the world right now. So I don't know how easy it's going to be to travel. Secondly, this is more about on the inside, less on the outside. It's not like I need to go somewhere, and I certainly will go somewhere. I will go to places I will be changing environments and whatnot. But the bigger thing is what it's going to do for my mind, what it's going to do for my health, what it's going to do for my perspective. And so you've been a great sounding board. And by telling people that, you know, I'm not planning it till I started, I don't have to give them an.

Explanation because, well, you know, I think there's so much wisdom in your approach. And I know that other, you know, other individuals like David, David Bach and Richard Rossi, who did his version of a sabbatical, you know, and it was one of his big goals when he came into strategic coach, that he could take a year off with his children and actually go around the world. And they did that. And they did it in like four months and back for a month and four months. And, you know, they. They did it. But I said, it's. It's your deal, you know, I mean, you'll do it. I mean. But I think a lot of people. I was just thinking of an analogy the way a lot of people would do it. You know, I'm going to go away for. And I'm not going to talk to anyone and I'm not going to start anything new and everything like that. And I said, it never works when people do that. But I said, it's kind of like I'm going to climb Mount Everest. And the way I'm going to learn how to climb mountains is I'm going to go to Everest and I'm just going to start climbing. And I said, you may run into some capability problems, resource problems, experience problems. If you do that, you know, you might die. And I think the way you're doing it is really great because it's entirely, you know, it's kind of. You're acquiring entirely new knowledge and there's going to be attitudes that you realize, you know, the thing that was preventing me from doing this was this attitude. And I'm noticing that another attitude's developing. So you get to compare your experience, and you can do that at a week at a time or, you know, a month at a time and just review what I've learned so far and kind of, you know, use your actual experience for new learning. That's going to propel you to the next step. And I think that's great. But on the other side of it is what's going to happen to Genius Network when you're not there. And that, that seems to be clear in your intention. And I think what that intention and the announcement that Genius Network was either going to make it or not make it through the sabbatical year, and you were totally okay with either, gave an enormous amount of freedom for other people to say, well, we're going to make sure that when Joe comes back, Genius Network is going to be in great shape. So I'd like to start there. Of how you actually get who's in your life is that you create a.

Project.

That'S an exciting project and you give them a chance to shine. I think that's how you get who's in your life. You're creating a space with you not being that Genius Network for other people to shine, and they're doing it for you, but they also want you to be proud of them when you come back.

Exactly. And that was evidenced by that we.

Just did our annual event for the.

First time virtually, because I've always been doing these in person for over a decade now. And what was great about it is at the very end, just the level of support, because I did talk at the very end. I don't actually think you were on.

At that point part, Dan.

And the outpouring of support was incredible. I mean, we actually went about 40, 50 minutes over time just having the.

Conversation about that and having people comment on it, which.

Which made me feel incredibly good.

Yeah.

Also, you know, very, very, very happy to see what, what Genius Network has become. Because I've always said I don't want Genius Network to be known for me. I want it to be known for.

The people in the group.

And I also want to say this to give Richard, Richard Rossi credit. I, you know, I've had conversations with David Bach about this. You know, this is going on a couple months ago when I first decided, yep, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take a one year sabbatical. And I talked to Richard Rossi. And he, you know, it shared what he had learned traveling around the world for a year with his family. And he was the one that said, you know, don't plan it until you start it. And I, you know, I, frankly, what I didn't realize is how much work it is to set up taking a one year sabbatical. And so, you know, there's a lot.

Of things to set in place.

Right. And so in the midst of, I didn't want to consume my time with planning, what am I going to do? I just wanted to kind of set.

Up what I needed to.

And then once I take a year, you know, I got plenty of time, right. I'm going to, I'll be able to do that. So Richard was really instrumental in helping solidify that sort of thinking. Let's dissect this a little bit. First of all, I want to set it up because you are a true master at connecting and networking with people. And so I call it genius networking because my whole thing is I think any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network, which is a group of people with skills and capabilities. In order to have a genius network, you have to do genius networking and you have to be a genius networker. So it's a be do have. And I think through that you can accomplish almost anything. Now I want to frame this with. About not just going out and connecting with people and being of value to people, but also who you really become friends with. Because the way that, you know, you know a lot of very influential leaders, I mean, Muhammad Ali was one of your best friends and you just know everybody. And the way that I determine who's going to be part of my core inner circle and who isn't is I look at people who are more powerful. How do they treat people that are less powerful than them? Do they say thank you when someone opens the door? Are they nice to servers? Or do they only kiss ass to people that are above them or that they want something from? And they treat their teams and everyone else like crap. And so I'm always observing powerful people and how courteous they are, how caring they are, and my interactions with you. You've always been very caring around people, and that's what I've always admired about you. And you've taught literally millions of people how to connect with other people. So everyone here has the ability to deepen their relationships, bond with their clients at deeper levels, develop not only business relationships, but great friendships. And you're a master at doing this stuff. So I'd like to. And you Talk. Talked about McKay, 66, right?

Perfect. It was perfect.

Yeah. So I'd love for you to talk about that. Not just business relationships, but relationships in general.

Well, let me tell another story to illustrate part of your point. You better know who's buttering your bread. Very, very, very important. And there's. There's a superstar businessman who walked into a Philadelphia restaurant, sat down, the busboy comes up with a pat of butter and a roll. And he says, I'd like another pat of butter. Busboy says, one pat of butter to a customer, sir, don't you know who I am? Said, no.

Who?

My name's Bill Bradley, graduate, number one in my class, Princeton University, first string all American basketball, first string all American academic basketball, first round draft choice, NBA elected Rhodes scholar, elected US senator. Those are very impressive credentials, Mr. Bradley. Don't you know who I am? No, who. I'm the man in charge of the butter. And to your point, there will always be someone in charge of the knives and the forks and the butter and the plates. And we have to be nice to everyone. It's important to be nice, but nice to be important. And you can't ever, ever forget that I was last night for dinner, hundred people, Paradise Valley Country Club, 15 minutes from here. Piano player, violinist, playing some music. And you know, 100 people in the room, birthday for a fellow friend of mine. And I got up in the middle and I walked over to him because I meant it sincerely. If you're not sincere, none of this counts. You must be sincere. I told them I love their music because they're playing music of the old age. People like myself a little bit younger, but I told him how much I enjoyed his music. I'll bet he sat there for the last 10 years not having anybody come up for background music, telling him, but that to me meant something because I love the music and I. Well, I'm a good singer in the shower, I'm really good. I'm big in the shower. I'm a really big singer. So back to now, then, another part of my life, major part of my life. I'm 18 years old, I go to college, got my degree, think I'm really big, know it all and so forth. And I get out of college, age 21, go to work for an envelope manufacturing company. They throw the yellow Pages at me. Yeah, good luck, kid. And just didn't have a chance. I really had problems the first six months. And interesting, interesting fellow's name was Carpenter. Came back one day and My dad asked me to find the old grizzly there. And I said, you know, ask him for advice. I said, tell me, how long do you call in a customer? And he said to me, depends on which one of us dies first. And that's again when I learned my persistence. I would never, never, never give up. So then I'm calling on 300 accounts in the Twin Cities, St. Paul, Minneapolis, at 21 years age, having a problem. And one day I just decided, hey, I'm going to humanize my selling strategy. I'm going to find out as much as I can about all 300 buyers. I'm going to come up with 66 questions and it's called the McKay 66. I want to know where the they were born, I want to know where they went to school, I want to know about the spouse, I want to know about the kids, I want to know about their names, I want to know what turns them on. I want to know what his political persuasion is, I want to know him or her, how many jobs they've had, what turns them on. And I came up with these 66 questions. And for the rest of my life, till today, even last night, I have kept the 66 basically on every single human being that I want to keep in touch with. Someday I'll read you yours. Yeah, okay, but. But that absolutely took Swim of the Sharks to 5 million copies in one year. My guys were crazy. Salesperson, how can you give this away? It's crazy. I said, look, nine out of 10 people aren't going to do it. And we're 30 years ahead of the people that are going to do it. So I'm going to share it with the world, which I in fact did do. So little aside if I can with Swim with the sharks and 5 million, being creative, I want to be the first one to say this is 30 years ago. Money back guarantee. If you don't like swim with the sharks. I'm not sure I was the first one. I don't know, I couldn't prove it. But I had a three week fight, World War Three with my publisher, William Morrow and Company. Interesting. Okay. I finally prevailed. They sold five million copies. 27 people asked for their money back. Seven of them were my best friends. I guess they wanted to keep me humble. Right? So Back to the McKaysing. You want to go deep with every relationship and what we teach at McKay Mitchell Envelope Company, which is my partner now, what we teach is, guess what? This is not just for customers, this is for suppliers. I want the best ink company in the country. I want the best box manufacturer, the best carton manufacturer. I want the best paper supplier, anyone who walks through our front door. There's no difference between a customer and a supplier. We keep 66 on everyone. And when I'm out calling and still call, making calls, of course, then that gatekeeper is really important. He or she very, very important. So keep a 66 too on the gatekeeper. And it's just real simple. That's all this is. Fabulous story. Red buttons. None of you, none of you, any of you ever heard of red buttons? Oh, my God. God, I thought the median age here is about 35.

A bunch of millennials have got here.

Anyway, red buttons. This is just brilliant. Genius. See, one of the funniest comedians ever lived. So he told this story that he's on the city, 52 circuits, you know, 52 cities. You go out and back, out and back, whole life. Every time he came back to the hotel room after having dinner or meeting some people, guess what he did? He made out his holiday card, his Christmas card. He put right in there. Their son is, Jody is so and so going to graduate. Did he get the soccer team? He wrote something from what he learned because it was fresh in his mind. And then he mailed them all at Christmas time. They thought he was a genius for 40 years. Best memory in the history of the world. But it's just again, little creative idea.

But wow, you know what? I've actually heard you say that before and that's one thing I have not yet done. And that is a freaking fabulous idea. And first off, I'm curious to see with the Internet age, even your terminology, we call on customers now you say that to a young person. I mean, this is like there's no Internet. You physically go visit them in person, you call them on the phone, you are doing manual labor in order to go and connect with people. And we now live in this day and age where people don't make phone calls, they don't go and visit people. Some do. And the ones that do have an incredible advantage. People don't use direct mail, they don't do cars, they don't do postcards. And I mean, I've said this to thousands of people. One out of a hundred every does it. But I was like, if you want to improve your connections and your network, mail out 10 postcards, letters, anything physical, I mean, even if you text or do email, it's going to be better than what most people do. But you genuinely, every day, five days a week, you don't have to do it seven days a week. It'd be 20 times a month. And if you did that for an entire year, a year from now, your network will be off the fricking charts. Your connections, your relationships, how people appreciate. And no one does this stuff.

Short notes yield huge results. I've been sending notes all my life. No one can talk me out of this thing. Nobody can. President Bush, Father Bush and Clinton, more Bush than Clinton. Never, never, never would have been president of the United States without sending out church notes. I mean, I met Bush in an airport with his roommate, who was a friend of mine. I got a note the next day. Not just a total stranger in an airport, he sent out notes his whole life. So what I do is I scan. You don't know what newspaper means, but anyway, I scan the newspaper. I listen to television. I'm looking, I'm looking to catch someone doing something right. I'm looking for someone that just became, okay, they just made an accident acquisition. Their daughter again, just did this, Their son did this. And I'm looking to write that note. I have, I'm up to now 700 people that I wish happy birthday to. So every day, you know, I've got one or two or three. Sometimes I got six, sometimes I have none. But doing that since age 21. And, boy, I want to tell you, when you remember someone's birthday and you just call them, that's all it is, just remarkable of what happens. And then we teach our sales force, they have to know the birthday of their customers, right? Yeah. Have to know the birthday of their customers. And guess why? Because they go see them with a creative gift. They don't buy their business. They come with a creative gift and they walk in and see them on their birthday. You can't believe how much our sales force writes up the business on someone's birthday. And I guarantee you, nine out of 10 competitors, they don't think about that. And just back to the book then for a minute. Up until this book, I've gone to 25 cities, all seven books. And again, lucky to be on Oprah and Larry King and Good Morning America and all the shows. But then I would go to Kansas City and I go to Sacramento and I go to all these little towns where the big hitters don't go with my 25 cities. They roll out the room, red carpet. Austin, Texas. I mean, I just remember all these book signings. So no one does book signings around the United States, you know, unless you're a major political figure, Almost nobody But I went did all that one on one. There's no substitute for one on one. I've made, tried to make five to ten. Yeah, somewhere about five to ten business deals where I get on the phone and I tell them I would like to come and see you for 300 seconds. That's all I need. And the people have said Yes, I fly 4,000 miles, 2,000 over, 2,000 back for 300 seconds. Because that 300 seconds, one on one, that if we get the order we will perform. I will be your 911. Okay? You can call me 24 7. This means a lot to us. You can say a lot in five minutes, say goodbye. I almost always get the order I've so far and this is as braggadocious as it gets and as self serving as it gets, but not intended to be. So I have never called on a person that I haven't sold my entire business career. Never assuming not, you know, little account and we can't get return on investment, anybody we wanted to sell. And my sales force, our sales force, they're way up there in the percentages too. And 80 to 90% everybody go, why McKay's 66 little things mean a lot, not true. Little things mean everything. And by doing all these little things over a period of a lifetime, that adds up to success. Incidentally, my definition of success is having a predetermined plan, successfully carrying it out over a long period of time, all right, and having a damn good time doing it. It's just simple 88 IQ stuff, but it's simple.

What do you regret in your life if you do?

If anything, yeah, I certainly have regrets. Biggest business disappointment is when I regret. I call it dig your well before you're thirsty. Another title of one of my books. But I regret coming to work and having a 12 week strike. We've only had one bad year in 50 years. 50 plus years, whatever. When they struck us for three months, that was a big huge business regret because I didn't think they were going to do it and I got a little bit cocky and confident. We never had a strike in the history of the state of Minnesota in our industry. And boy, that one really hurt. Three months of being shut down. I regret if I could come back in a second life, I would like to be a college basketball coach. I'm a basketball gym junkie. All sports. I mean I love all sports. Just again, as a brief aside to show you how addicted I am, I've been to 13 straight Olympics. Summer Olympics.

You gone to the Olympics in Japan.

I got my room already. Come on. But, but, and I have to be. I can't say yes unequivocally because I just heard yesterday that it's 95 out there every day. So I'm, I might just fly in for opening ceremony and come back. I don't know. But I go for 17 days. That's all it lasts, 17 days. I go to three to five events. I see ping pong, table tennis. I see the horses. I know nothing about. Okay, question. I go to every single sport there is. Why? Because I just happen to love competition. I mean, I love you guys, but if on the other side of that wall, two women, let's say 85 years old, were playing tennis and it's tied in the third set, I'd rather be over there watching them talking to you guys. It's a true statement. That's a true statement. I love competition. And so, and you can really learn something from it too, you know?

Okay, so what you're saying about competition, because I've had this sort of, this thought of curiosity about listening to everything you've said. Everything I've, you know, we've had, we've done interviews before, we've hung out a lot. I mean, we spent a good chunk of time together in the past Super Bowl.

It's a Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah.

What is it about? Because, you know, you love competition. You are persistent. You said you've always made sales. Why do people fail? I mean, you talk about preparation and all that, but I mean, genuinely, what is the mindset or the behavior etched, to use the word etched. It was shared with me earlier by Dr. Ramani that I've etched in my name. I'm saying names wrong. You have etched in you success and winning, and you love competition and you're wired that way. And there's a lot of people that will maybe listen to you and be like, I'm not Harvey. I can't do. I don't know how he has. I wake up every day in fear. I mean, this guy had to search his brain to figure out like a moment when I was afraid. I don't worry. And you say things like that. And I genuinely, I mean, you're a funny, happy guy. It appears most of the time. And every time I've seen you. And a lot of people may listen like, I can't do this shit. But you've trained so many people to win. I mean, you are a champion of success. So. And everyone can pontificate their self help theories and beliefs and everything like what is it about a winner and a loser? What makes the difference?

Well, first of all, I'm not trying to clone any single person in this room. I mean, a person's life equals the total sum of his or her experiences. I've had a lot of experiences. Tongue in cheek here. A little bit. My father said to me once, second is last. And of course, he was just kidding. I really liked coming second. All my life, everything I ever did, if I come in second, Are you kidding me? It'd be terrific. But let me just. Let me just add one thing. If you go ask a thousand business persons, men and women, highly successful, forget about making money. Yes. CEOs, presidents and all that, with great lives, you know, a lot of charitable work, everything. Thousand of them. How'd they make it? How'd they make it? Guess what? I'm going to give you the answer. I'm going to give you the answer. 90% of them will all say the same word. Somebody want to guess what that one word is? How about, you'll get this one? Perseverance Grit. Higher. Okay, the word is nine out of ten. Just trust me. I know I'm right on this one. Because I've spent my lifetime asking everybody, mentor. Mentor. We all had mentor. And I want you to all maybe write this down because you won't know what it means. Bass are where you find them. Repeat. Bass are where you find them. What's that mean? Well, mortgage money is where you find it. Mentors are where you find. They're out there. There are more people, believe it or not, willing to mentor you than there are people asking to be mentored. But everyone never say no. Another just aphorism of mine, never say no for the other person. Let them say no. I can't sell him. I can't sell her. He won't mentor me. She won't mentor me. Right. Get that. Never say no for the other person. Let them say no. I mean, I've got 30, 40 people in Minneapolis. People I don't know come up to me in a lifetime. And I mentored them. You know, full charge, zero. That's all changed their life. Yeah, I think so. But I said zero. I mean, you know, they just happen to be creative. Sent me one shoe. I'd like to get the other shoe in the door. I remember that one. But they become creative. They read my material. They never say no for the other person. They call up. And so everyone in this room has to practice that also. But you can't do it all by yourself. You really can't over life time. And here's another fallacy. People don't understand mentors. Everybody thinks mentors are older than you are. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've got 35 year old mentors. I mean, the best guys, they happen to be men. Well, I'm sorry, one's a woman as of two months ago. But in the whole world as to the Internet and what they know and so they can counsel me. You know, I've got a social media coach too, one of the the 20 coaches. So mentors can be younger as well as older and mentors change over a period of a lifetime. So that's very, very important. From my perspective, that's how you learn all these things that you just talked about, you know, and you want to go deep. You want to have a relationship and it's not money, money, money. You want choices, you want happiness. When you get them both, there's just no substitute. And again, I love, love, love to make money because it buys me time. That's big what money does. It buys me time.

Love it.

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