3 Secrets to Perfect Mastermind Experiences

Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. And today Mike Koeninks and I on the Capability Amplifier podcast are going to explore a subject that we really haven't touched on. And it's the.

Sudden, what I think in the last two years, sudden tremendous. Both the importance and also the enormous opportunity of group engage.

Mastermind setting. And.

What I've been giving a lot of thought to, and Mike has too, about are there actually rules? Are there actually kind of formulas to this? So we're going. We don't have the answers, but we have all the questions. So we're going to explore the questions today.

And here's what I'll tell you what you can expect. First of all, Dan really reveals some of the deepest thinking I've witnessed in a long time. There's always great stuff. He's going to share his four types of thinking, some of his most powerful questions that get people to experience a different version of their future, and also what it takes to put together great groups that are super successful. So you can expect all that and more in this episode of Capability Amplifier. Thanks for being here.

So here we are, Dan. We've been talking about something that I'm really interested in, and it is about group engagement and how to create really awesome group masterminds where people get a tremendous amount of value out of it. And I'm going to set this up for a couple things. First of all, I want to talk about specifically at Strategic Coach, you are an absolute master and you really, really figured it out. During Zoom, you adapted super quickly or using Zoom during the pandemic, and it's creating super high engaging experiences and events and doing a lot of them. And I think there's some great takeaways, but also in a traditional group environment, keeping people active, engaged, focused, and providing huge results and transformations. And my selfish reason for setting this up is, as you know, not long ago I did one of these trips where I got a bunch of people together and we went fishing in Mexico. And it was right during the middle of all of the hoo ha going on, but we still got people together. They're like, I gotta get out of wherever I am. We went fishing, but we created these deep, meaningful connections where folks did exercises. They created relationships, both strong personal relationships, but also there were some business deals. One of them turned out to be an estimated half a billion. Another one were in the millions. And some other people started working together. Now, it turns out in a short period of time, I'm doing a wine mastermind in Guadalupe Valley, Mexico. I wish you were Going to be there because the wine down there, there's 300 wineries in this region up just two hours south of San Diego. But once again, I'll be doing mastermind style groups intended to create deep connections, business deals and collaborations. So I'll share a couple of the strategies I found has worked for us. But I'm curious through your lens, both virtually and in person, what are some of the best group engagement exercises and resources you can share?

Yeah, I think just two rules that I think are true for either in person or digital virtual, and that is that the purpose has to be curated by one person.

Explain that. What does that mean?

Well, first of all, somebody calls the meeting, the person who calls the meeting states clearly what the purpose of the meeting is. Okay.

As opposed to, hey, we're going to have a meeting, we're going to get together some really bright people and you know how these things turn out. You know, there's always some amazing new ideas that come to the surface when you have that. That's not a curated purpose. That's not a curated purpose. Okay. The other thing is that one person curates the membership.

And in other words, what we're going to talk about, that this is my. I'm telling you what we're going to talk about. And secondly, who gets to be there? I'm deciding who gets to be. I'm doing the invitations.

Got it.

I. Yeah, and those are my. So. So the bottom line is, because I've always kicked myself afterwards every time I didn't do that.

And I'm just going to repeat what I hear. The first one is there needs to be one person deciding what the purpose of this is. And the second is curating who's in the room.

Got. Got it. Well, I like to say in the harsh terms of a little bit of Minnesota, lay it down there is just, it just takes one turd in the punch bowl and everyone gets sick. So that's true. You know, you could think of those meetings just like you say, the biggest regrets we have is just like, who the hell let that jackass in the room? And no one ever wants to come back because for whatever the reason is. So, okay, so let's say we've stated the purpose, we've got the right people in the room.

How do we create an exceptional experience where people feel as though they have experienced a transformation during and after? And I know one of the things.

That.

You talk about is people always walking away happy. But if you kind of, if you start from the end and then move backwards I'm curious what your Tarantino version of this story should be.

Yeah, well, you know, I'm very much into structured.

Methods. In other words, that the way we talk about things, there's going to be some rules to it. Okay. And the first, first thing is that what we're going to talk about is going to be driven by a question. Okay. So it's not going to be a presentation about some thoughts that I have. I'm just going to have a question. And the question relates directly to the purpose. And you have been chosen because you've proven in the past to take questions and really create some great answers, you know, that everybody can benefit from. Okay. And a certain amount, you know, and, you know, you. In a previous. In a previous podcast, we talked about.

Dinner at Babs and day and the night before workshop days. And we have 10, 12 people who are going to be in the workshops the next day, next two days. And we come in, we have drinks at 6, and then around 6:30 or so, we go to the dinner table. And we spend a couple hours at the dinner table. And we have a method. We go around and said, first of all, everybody just talk about something that really was great progress during the last 90 days. Now, this is dinner. This is not a mastermind group. This is dinner. And everybody does that. And then.

There'S someone who keeps the process. If someone goes on a little too late, you say, okay, let's go on. You know, that that was Stephen. Now we're going to have Mike. Mike, you talk about it, and that'll be Babs or it'll be me, you know, at the dinner. But there has to be some rules, because rules protect group engagement. Not everything can happen. You know, one person cannot dominate, Another person can't go off track. You know, in other words, you know, there's some policing that is done and everything like that. But when I do group engagement in a workshop format at Coach, and it's either a total of six hours with lunch in there, or it's a total of two hours. And those are my two formats.

But my biggest thing is that people can very quickly think about their thinking. So to me.

The power of the group engagement is how people are able to think about their thinking in a new way.

As a result of the focus question. And then you are able to, in some ways, write down some of your thinking about your thinking, your insights. Okay? And.

This. I don't want to go off on a long sidetrack here, but there's essentially four types of thinking that people do in the world? They. They think about things. Okay.

Yeah. You know, people think about what kind of things? Hundreds of different kinds of things. They think about cars, they think about houses, they think, you know, they think about them. Okay. When you are in conversation with someone who's only capable of thinking about things, it's a short conversation because it really gets boring really, really fast. Okay. Then there's people who think about people. Okay. Okay. And mark Zuckerberg.

Got3.3 billion Facebook users because 3 billion people think about people. And they, you know, they talk to people and they think about people. Again, not my.

I'm pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg thinks people are things, though, but keep on going.

Yeah, but not my fav. You know, at interesting, but not. Not a main course. And then there's people who think about thoughts, but not their thoughts. They think about other people's thoughts. Okay. And we would have no universities if we didn't have people who thought about other people's thoughts. Now, I would say 99% of all, you know, discussion or that goes on in the world is about either focused on things, focused on people, or focused on thoughts, or mixing all three up. What never happens is where people actually think about their thinking about what's going on in the discussion. So this is why the curation of purpose and the curation of membership and having rules is so important, because it takes a lot of protection for people just to sit there and think, wow, I've never thought about that before. Wow. I'm seeing all sorts of things here. Okay. And then giving them a chance to kind of break from a main group and get in a smaller group and think about their, you know, what I'm seeing here and what everything else, you know, wow. You know, this is really, really interesting. And, you know, one of the things. I got to make a really big decision here immediately. I didn't see it until we had this discussion, but there's a decision I have to make, and I am just wasting a lot of time on something that isn't going to allow us to do that. So that's when people talk that way, you know, they've been thinking about their thinking, you know, and they said, you know, I've just made a breakthrough in the last 90 days. I didn't even see before we had this discussion. And this is really amazing. I'm glad we. I'm glad I came here. And there's an appreciation for what was going on in their head. And to me, that's the. And whatever it is doesn't Matter just so people get in touch with. Because I find people are at their most critical, they're at their most decisive and they're at their most useful to other people when they're thinking about their thinking. But it happens very rarely in a world that's cluttered with thinking about things and thinking about people and thinking about thoughts. So that's my little dissertation on.

Well, I'm going to tell you what I heard here because I'm going to summarize it. It all sounded like blah, blah, blah, blah blah, drinks at six. So I think the big takeaway is just add liquor. No, I'm just kidding, Dan.

Oh, ye. Yeah. 10 times the guaranteed 10 times amplifier.

$1, $1 of alcohol get you a 10, 10 times result. Even if it's an unpredictable result that gets you 10 times right. All right.

Red wine and a little bit of tequila. All right, so here's, here's some of the things that I got. One of them is the structured methods, which is talking about things with rules and the things meaning the four types of thinking, but then questions.

Mainly it's question driven. Right.

Is driving. You know, what we're talking about is driven by a question. And we're going to get into some of the specific.

Can I tell you my next question too?

It can be not yet. I want to do it after I summarize. I'm going to make a point and then I want your questions. So don't forget because I want to kind of package those up. The next one we have is rules. Protect group engagement. And again, you use some examples like not going off track, nobody dominating the four types of thinking, which is things, people, other people's thoughts or thinking about your thinking and what goes on inside the discussion, which is as freaking nuanced as you can get here. It's another non obvious Danism. It takes your brain, your simplifier brain to really nail that. Now I'll tell you just on a functional level, I want you to share some questions, but I'm going to give you a couple that I use and then I want to get your parade of them because this is the fun part of the show. So one of the things that I open up every one of my meetings with is on a scale 1 to 10, how can we make this experience an 11? And what do you want to walk away with when it's done? And I really pay close attention, I take notes. And I think I told you this in another episode, but one of the best I ever got is Charlie Epstein was at One of our last experiences at the fishing trip and I got a whole new group coming to this next one. None of them know each other, completely different audience, but everyone was like, I want, I want, I want. And Charlie said what I would love to do is see if there's something we could all create together collaboratively. And that one thing really rocked me, thinking about reframing the question and asking it a different way, which is the collaborative mindset right from the start, the onset. And that was a non obvious answer, but I loved that. And then the second one is the theme of this next mastermind I'm doing in Guadalupe Valley. So I've got a sommelier, we're staying in the nicest resort in the valley, and I've got a. And the food there is spectacular. It's just breathtaking. And so the theme is highest purpose is one thing I've been noticing lately amongst a lot of business owners, founders, entrepreneurs, is they hit a brass ring and they realize they feel lonely and.

Like they are not.

Valued. And part of that's when they have a really successful business and they've worked themselves out of a job, they find that they've got to motivate themselves in different ways and they get stuck for a little while because they maybe spent 30 years getting great at the stuff and now that they're really great at it, it's like, oops, I just worked myself out of a job. Now what? They are asking the now what question and it often happens around the 50s. So with that, I want to pass the baton to you. And what are some of the best questions that get things rolling?

Well, this is going to be based on a podcast or a couple podcasts that we actually had where I said, Mike, one of the things over the last podcast, you were able to identify that there six moves that you've made from the very beginning back on the farm. And they were all enabled by improvements in technology. So you've had basically six companies. And the question that I'd like to ask you about the six companies is.

When you start a new company, what's always true? What's always true that you feel very, very combined, that it can't be the company I had, it's got to be a new company. That's the first question. The second question is, when do you know that an old company has served its purpose and now you got to invent a new company. Now, first of all, I'm basing that on a conversation that we both know and we both talked about it. So there's common ground right off of that. But the other thing is only you know the answer to those two questions. I have the foggiest idea what goes through your mind. And so you're the expert. You know, one thing you have to find. Always talk about people's experience, because instantly you've got a very real expert, the only expert in the world on that person's experience.

But they've never been given the opportunity to show just how expert they are about their own experience, you know, and that. I just think that is extraordinarily valuable to people to be able to be given the spotlight to talk about their experience and then to actually discover something new about their experience that they didn't realize. Because no one. You couldn't talk about it in this way before. So I'm really big and, you know.

I do this if.

Someone is.

A monologist. If you have someone who just goes on monologues and they just gotta go. Can I ask you a question about what you said here? You know, you talked about, you know, something. I remember it happened about 15 years ago, and I say, this was the experience, and now you just had a quarter when you had a real breakthrough. So can I ask you a question? The three things that are so radically different that you're feeling right now from the way you were feeling 15 years ago, never have they never thought about before. No one asked them. It's entirely new territory. But they're the only expert.

And even when you're working with a monologuer, you pin them down with something specific and you say, I want three.

Yeah, well, monologuers are scripted. They've got. They've got a. They've got a routine that they've memorized. And if they wear out one theater in one town, they just find themselves a new town. And I won't let them get going on their script.

That's. That. That. I love that. So.

So here's what I got out of it so far. So first of all, your questions. In your case, you gave these two. You always talk about someone's experience. You're going to ask them a question that they haven't had a chance to communicate, spotlight the experience, and then help them discover something new. In your case, what you just said is, can you tell me the three things you learned or take away? And they can only be their own.

Expert, and they have to be graded on the spot. So there's an act of creativity because they've never given us any thought before, but they're the only ones who have the information. They're the only ones who have the experience. And.

As the questioner, I feel I'm really doing good for the person by doing this. You know, that learning something about, valuable about their experience, I think is.

Just a good thing to do for another person.

Yeah.

And they instantly feel that this is a very, very special occasion.

Yeah.

I've never been allowed to think these thoughts about my experience except, you know, when I'm with Mike and when we're, we're in a situation like that and. Yeah. So anyway, it's, it's interesting, but the thing is that as the questioner.

You'Ve got a role to play. And your role is to be useful to the people in the group.

It's not to sell your purpose or anything at all. You're just, I want them to get maximum value. And if they learn uniquely new things and good things about their own experience, I gotta believe that's a powerful reward that they probably won't get anywhere else.

Yeah, I think one of the things that I've noticed.

I probably run masterminds for the better share of 30 years now, 25 for sure. And what this is doing, and probably the biggest and most valuable thing that I see is when you give people a sense that they've been given a platform. And what's great about this is it works even when you break people down into small groups, which you're great at doing. You know, it's like when we're doing a strategic coach exercise. You open up with a simple concept that's a tool designed to help you think about your thinking, create insights. So it's a self.

Interview tool. And then we break into groups and discuss it. And then you curate from that and you pick people and say, what was your biggest takeaway? What was something that you realized? What was an insight that you gathered? And I think this is an insight machine that feels like you've been granted a platform. So why don't you talk a little bit about the power of.

Well, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. And it was with an actor that you were on a plane with and you wanted to engage with this actor. And.

Can I say who it is or is this a punchline?

It's up to you.

Oh, it's fine. It's Richard Dreyfus.

Yeah, yeah, it's your Dreyfus. And you simply said.

Did you say Mr. Dreyfus or Richard? I don't know what you said.

Yes. I didn't know if I could call him. Richard yet. So I said, Mr. Dreyfus, Mr. Dreyfus.

I've got an idea, a really great idea for money for your foundation. Well, you know, and then.

You know, let's say that's the plane ride and now you've got a meeting with them. You say, yeah. And he said, first of all, you know, make sure you've done your research on the person's foundation. And you just say, I've noticed there's been like three different developments to your foundation. And I just wonder and can I tell you what I think? The three developments of your foundation? Well, of course. He wants to know what you think. And even if you're wrong, it doesn't matter who else is thinking about the three developments of his foundation. And then you say, so can I ask you a question? That where you are right now, your purpose was this big when you started, but it's like this right now. Okay. And that may seem that it's not as important, but from a marketing standpoint, it's 10 times more important. Okay. And here's what I think you can do now with your foundation that you can do back then. Well, geez, you know, I mean.

Yeah.

You know, I, I mean, I mean, what's he going to say? He says, I mean, first of all, it's been six months that he since he's had an intelligent conversation with anyone in his world. Okay. You know, so wow.

You know, and everything I had very interesting. I. There's an outlying city that I had when I was a one on one coach and I was on the train to go to this city, but one of the towns that it passed through is Stratford, Ontario. And Stratford, Ontario is the Shakespeare Festival. So Stratford England, Stratford. And they have a river that goes through and it's the Avon river. And they have a river that goes through, that's the Avon River. And so I was sitting there and a person sits right next to me. It's Maggie Smith, you know, who, you know.

She'S only been acting for 70 years, you know, and everything. And I said hi, you're. Are you going to Stratford? And she said yeah. And I just said, can I, can I ask you, like Stratford, England is like the, you know, it's like the, the center of this in the world. And now you have, you know, there's Stratford, Connecticut and there's Stratford Ontario. So if someone like you, who you know are, you know, you know, are famous for your work at Stratford the uk.

What different experience do you get when you come to one of the other theaters Like Stratford, Ontario. And I had her going for an hour and a half. I had her going for an hour and a half. You know, it was an hour and a half thing. And she'd answer one question, then I'd ask her another question about her. And when I got. She got up to leave and I said, it's really been a pleasure. She said, this was one of the nicest train rides I've ever had in my life, you know, and everything. And, you know, she's busy and she's got fans and everything like that. And one of the things was that it was entirely about her. And I knew she hadn't thought about any of these things.

And that's why I don't remember who I said. Well, there's two. One of them is.

Always talk about the other person's favorite subject in the whole wide world, which is more about them. But one of the things that Vivian always said to me, she's a great interviewer. When I first met Vivian, she just asked questions and questions and questions, and she said, the best way to be interesting is to be interested.

Yeah.

And it's so simple. But I think from a formulaic point of view, and I've watched you do this over the years.

There is a high degree of improvisation to be a great interviewer. And the one thing that you can be guaranteed of is. And what you really leverage is how have things changed? Okay, the one.

Have you looked? What have you learned? How have things changed? You know, and here's the thing that where all of us, you, me, and everybody else in the world is that it's easier, frequently for other people to have an overview of our experience than it is for us, okay? Because they have no emotions attached to the experience. We're, you know, ours is not just jelly, it's peanut butter. It's mayonnaise. I mean, there's. There's a complete mix of things. And we don't see things as clearly as other people do from the outside. You know, they can have a very astute observation about something because first of all, they're kind of interested in you. So, you know, that's a great thing. Someone is an observer, but they're an intelligent observer, and they're observing not things to complain about or criticize or, you know, to manipulate or anything. They're just observing. You know, you've had, you know. Yeah. No, and I think I said, you know, you know, I've, you know, followed you from your, you know, over decades, you know, and this was the 19. This was 1980s I was talking about, you know, and she's in her 80s right now.

She's 86. I looked her up. Yeah, she's. She's. She's. Dame Maggie Smith. She's a dame.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know what makes someone a.

Dame, but, well, dame is like, sir, it's knighthood for women.

All right.

It's knighthood for women.

It sounded at first like the way I'd interpret it is sort of like, hey, do you check out the gams on that dame over there? You know, it doesn't sound like. I thought it was maybe a little bit of a. But all right, well, I'm gonna have to use that. I'm gonna call my wife Dame.

Yeah.

I just want to know one quick question.

You don't have a queen between you and your wife. To make it official, it might be misinterpreted.

All right, well, that's. All right. Yeah, that's. That's smart. Like, I call her the queen, But. And I want to have one other important clarifying question. Did you imply that you mix jelly, peanut butter, and mayonnaise or were you just using those?

No, I'm just saying that our lives are not neatly packed.

I'm giving you a hard time.

Yeah, no, no, it's. It's funny because, you know, the, you know, the, the people that.

Make sense to have in your life are people who help us make sense out of our own life. You know, I mean, you know, and the, the other thing about it is.

I, I'm not doing this to be a, you know, just to be a master questioner or master thing. That is my intent. All my material for new content and coach program comes from these unique experiences that. So I'm deeply interested in how this person, you know, is feeling change and is learning things. And this adds to my knowledge because I have to, you know, I have to create new things. You know, you know, there's some oldie goldies, like the moving future that you can throw in every workshop, but you can't. You can't have two oldie goldies in a workshop. You got to have new material. And, you know, and so, yeah, I'm just deeply interested. I'm. And I'm only interested in entrepreneurs. I'm not interested. If a CEO, I'd be dead. Dead to a CEO. Like, if a CEO, I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to talk to that person about. You know, I have the foggiest idea how life operates in a corporation and what's More, I don't really care.

No, I think one thing that you and I for sure have in common, which is if it involves getting permission from other people to invest in what you want to invest in, that's a crappy deal all along. Eels kill deals, and a CEO's life is filled with eels.

And what you were just talking about. I don't remember who first told me, but the best thing a creative entrepreneur can have is a living laboratory filled with paying customers anxious and excited about the next new thing. And what you've done is you've really trained an audience to expect and behave a certain way within a context, which makes you've got. You have to teach people to consume the problem.

That's right. Very interesting because as a result of Tucker recommending that, we do a joint book, you know, the Big Book Payoffs, because I had the little book, you know, the book Breakthrough. And then Tucker had, you know, he had the opus, you know, and he felt, I felt, always felt mine was too short and he felt his was too long. And he says, why don't we put them together? He said, I'll write the book, we'll publish the book and everything else, and we'll get them out to all your clients. I said, well, if you're going to do that, why, I'll build a workshop to, you know, everybody gets the book and then they can come to a workshop and you can actually coach people. You know how they would get a book started? Well, you know, we're. We started in January and we've done three workshops. And you know, he's got like 80 people have signed up for book projects. You know, you know, this is more than a million dollars in revenues so far this year. But he says, very, very interesting. He says, he talks to his team, you know, his, he's got vast network of freelancer parts of the book process, but he has a central team that, you know, manage and oversee all the, all the, you know, the progress of the customers who, who sign up for his various parts of his program. And he said they came to him and they said, I know it's hard to do right now, but in the future can we only have strategic coach customers?

He said, they know what they want.

They're very easy to deal with. They're very coachable. They like having a game plan that they can make progress on as long as they can report back and get insight by the progress. And he said.

All your people, they're fit for a company. He said, they're fit and everything. I Said, well, I said, some have 20, 20 years where there's rules, they come in and there's rules, you know, and some of the rules are explicit, and some of the rules.

You know, you just say, you know, that doesn't work in here. You know, what you're doing doesn't work, you know, and it's not anything that ever got said, but it's just, you know, it's. It's a form of politeness or it's a form of etiquette. There's a coach etiquette, you know, and, you know, you. You don't brag because you're all great. If you're great, you don't have to brag.

And if you're vague, people think you're a phony.

Yes. Yeah. If you talk about something, talk precisely about what it is. If you're vague about it, they say something wrong here.

There's no reason for an entrepreneur to be vague with other entrepreneurs unless you're, you know. That was kind of interesting. I watched over the weekend.

I do watch videos, but not movies on the Internet, but I was watching three different ones on Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. Yeah.

Yes.

And one of the things, Very fascinating. One of the things that the reporter who is a real, real hero. This guy is a real hero. Hero. Because everybody wanted this to work. Every. Everybody wanted Theranos to work. I mean, that was part of her trick, is that she just want. The whole world wanted this to work.

It was a great offer. A great offer.

Yeah. And everything. And, and the. John Cariou, I think his name is Wall Street Journal investigative writer for. For the Journal. And the Journal really has great investigative journals, journalists. And he said she was never specific.

He said you'd look at her things. It was very vague. It was very metaphorical.

And she talked in the images, but there was never anything specific. And he says, I'm an investigative reporter and bing, bing, bing, bing isn't specific. He said, people with real stuff are very, very specific, you know, and everything like that. But it was just interesting. And.

You know, she patterned herself on Steve Jobs. You know, she dressed like Steve Jobs. Her calendar every week was Steve Jobs calendar, you know, and if he did something only on Wednesdays, she did it all on Wednesday. And then she took voice training to drop her voice. So here's this, you know, this, you know.

Great looking, you know, great looking woman, and she's got this.

Clint Eastwood, you know.

Man'S got to know his limitations, you know, and everything like that, you know, and everything like that. But it was just so fascinating to me. She had, she had George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, General Mattis, Rupert Murdoch, the Walmart family, Walgreen, the CFO from all. She had them all wrapped around. But there wasn't one medical person on her board of directors, not one medical person said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, anybody with any lab experience, they didn't get near her, you know, anybody like that. But it just shows that the desire for something to be true is. Yeah, it's a very powerful force. And she was good, you know, she's good at it.

Just sell a little hope. Hope's a.

A compelling offer is much more, you know, Dean Jackson, he says a compelling officer, a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Well, so what have you got, Mike? So what, what was new? What was confirmational, you know, about. Because obviously you're doing something really right with the, you know, the first ones that you've had. And you had another one where you went to Omaha for the, you know, for the, for Warren Buffett and everything like that. So you've done other things like. Well, ever since I've known you, it seems to me that you're putting together special events, masterminds and discussion groups. So where are you with this now? This is a bit, you know, the next one is probably a step up in terms of, you know, the setting, the, you know, the atmosphere and the environment. So what has our conversation added to your thinking?

That's a fantastic question to help me think about my thinking. So here's what. First of all, I'm going to get much more structured in this experience. And I do have one more question that I'm going to ask you, but I'll answer the question, which is.

I do this because I really am fascinated now by collaboration more than ever. If there's one thing that I got out of Free Zone, it's thinking about.

The distinction between 10x and 100 or a thousand times is.

I really understand why you're so fascinated with that thinking. Okay, I really had a grok moment and I thought, why limit yourself? 10x isn't enough. And the only way to create.

Much bigger.

Opportunities is by putting a bunch of really smart people in a room who have shared values and mindsets.

So they by nature will have commonality. I've also found that quick starts of like 8 through 10 are the perfect kind of people to put in a room like that. And.

So I get that kind of thinker and they all have to have a history of being belongers and coachable. Okay, so those are some of the real common patterns. And another thing that I found is they are platform minded. Now that can either be that they've created or want to create their own platform. They've been media trained, know how to communicate and speak, but also they think of their business as a platform. And so when you get those mindsets in a room, you have an explosion of not just ideas, but implementation, you know, like that and the abundance that comes out of it. And these are not people who are like, oh, I need an NDA before I can talk to you about it. They know that an idea, an unimplemented idea, has no value.

And so that's what I've learned is I didn't think about collaboration through a lens of rules until fairly recently, or they were. I had it around me, but I didn't see what the components were, nor was I fussy enough. So getting back to what you talked about, about the curation, I would let, I'd let a stinker through the gate. And for whatever reason, either I didn't choose to say no, even though instinctively I just knew blech. And I think the last part of this is I really, really trust my gut now. If I feel any kind of a physical yuck when I'm around someone, it's sort of like I've noticed that with food now, I don't even need to eat it. No, my body won't like it. I kind of feel sort of weird thinking about it and I'm like, nope, not going to eat that thing. Same thing about people. If I just get just a little bit of skeevy, I know they're the wrong fit. It doesn't matter what it appears they can offer or how wealthy or successful they are, that isn't what matters. So that would be as good of.

An answer as you can. I would say that one of the.

Kind of sensor warnings that I look for is any indication that they are lacking cash confidence.

In other words, they came to get an idea they can make money on right away. And I said, no, no, no, no, you, you already know how to make money. You didn't come down here to find out about money making. You know, I mean, and, and you know, I'm in that position, you know, I mean, we went through the entire, you know, we went through the entire Covid thing and you know, and we took advantage. The Canadian government had.

Might as well take the free money.

I mean, first of all, it's our money anyway, better used, you know. You know, if the government gives me my own money back, I'll use it better than what they were planning to do. And anyway, so I have no problem with that at all.

I know you love booze and dancing girls, Dan.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it was useful and everything else, but Babs and I have done a really marvelous job of creating our own bank, you know, and you know, and it was sitting there and we've been building it for 30 years, you know, and you know, and we were, and we, we were able to tell the team, look, be relaxed. This is handled. There is no danger whatsoever. Everything, we're going to take a real hit this year. But you know, I mean, we took a, you know, just trying to think here.

Yeah, we took like a third hit from the year before on revenues, but we were still reasonably, I mean, we were still in the black, you know, we were still in the, still, still in the black with that. And, and you know, we're back up to, you know, will be back up to 80% this year. And the, the emergence of the Zoom.

Global Global Workshop program is worth 10 times down the road. So I, I, I said, I, I told our team, I said, yeah, the money, it wasn't in 2020 what it was the year before and it won't be this year, but just consider it a down payment on a much faster 10 times future. And I said, we just invested in an entirely new way to think about the future of our business and it's already proving itself. And I said that's what it is. And yeah, everything's great. And I think that the people you want at the table.

Aren'T making phone calls to check up on cash flow.

Oh yeah, no, I have a saying that it may sound harsh at first, but it's, I never, never make your business.

About working with the broken. The broken. That's what charity's for. So your job is to work with the highest value, highest end person. Because if you work with the broken, broken, you're going to resent your business, you're going to resent your customers, and you'll wind up broken. Broken too.

Yeah.

So, and that, that again, just like you got to be careful about letting the right ones in and knowing what that distinction is, which is this does not mean don't be charitable and don't be philanthropic. Your philanthropy, your philanthropy is what you do by being focused on the right ones.

Yeah. Yeah. And you don't want anyone to get the feeling that someone has a Receivable. That's more important than what everybody else is getting out of the conference.

Yeah. And desperate people expect something for nothing. The list goes on and on. Anyone who's ever run a business long enough knows that if you look at your 80, 20, 80% of your problems come from 20% of your clients. And the first thing I do when I work with someone is I tell them give someone, not you, the right to fire all of the lowest 20%. First of all, it's the greatest way to create confidence and trust in the organization. And also you'll learn things that you might not know about what's really going on and how people have been accommodating bad. All kinds of bad things. And that 20% that you open up creates a 40 to 60% energetic and spiritual opening for more of the right fit people. It's the fastest way to probably increase your revenue by 40%, 20% for sure. No brainer. But it's usually more and it'll reduce the size of your support team.

Yeah. You're betting your future on people who are shorting yours.

Yeah, yeah. So I have one final question before we wrap this one up, which is.

When you help people realize the fulfillment, value, outcome transformation, the transformation language, if you were to describe a question you love to ask other than what have you learned or how have things changed that they experience that results in advance that transformation, the realization, the aha. But also walk away going, my God.

That was the best strategic coach meeting I think I've been to. I don't know how Dan does it or whatever the big takeaway is. What's something that just consistently creates that sense of value?

Well, I think since this isn't.

The event that you're talking about in the events isn't part of a regularly revisited. You know, it's a one of a kind.

I wouldn't, you know, when I know I'm going to see them at the longest 90 days from now. And we'll probably see them a couple times during the next. I can simply zero in on. I say, what's the biggest achievable takeaway that can go right into action and be achieved before your next workshop? And then I go around the room and what they talk about. But in your case, I would have a longer range question and I would say, okay, it's kind of like the DOS question. And you're saying, okay, it's a year from now. Okay. And we're talking a year from now. And looking back from a year from now, what can you Already, see is the biggest breakthrough decision you've made as a result of your thinking through here. Yeah.

So it's another future paced question. It's a variation of the Dan Sullivan question.

Yeah. And the thing is that people that you're inviting have the ability to put themselves in the future. I mean, that's the reason why you curated them and invited them, is that they're people who are able to put themselves into the future. And one of the things I've discovered is.

And I haven't really articulated this in any kind of concept or anything, but it's just, you know, kind of something that seems so clear to me. People will come into a workshop and say, you know, I got to make a decision between this and this and this and this. And it's driving me crazy. And I said, well, you know, impossible to make a decision in the present.

I said, you have to go, let's go three years. So I said, it's three years from now. And based on where you want to be three years from now, which of the three things that are.

You know, you're dealing with right now is the one that most has to be solved right away.

And which one three years from now. It wouldn't even matter to you three years from now that this is a problem.

And then immediately they go there. There's a number one. One of them gets eliminated. And the other one said, I can just take the second one and make it part of the first. But they couldn't do that if they were just looking right now, this today, tomorrow, the next week, there's just too much going on. But three years out, you know, it sorts things out. So, you know, there was a great, you know, talk about great thinkers. Lincoln in before he became president. So this would have been before he was elected president. Gave a. His speeches were very short. I mean, his speeches were 10 minutes, 15 minutes. He had very short speeches. But he gave one to a educational institution in New York City. Educational, artistic, community. It's called the Cooper Union, still exist. And it was called the Cooper Union address, where in 1860, he predicted the United States in 1960. Okay. And he says it's going to be the greatest economy in the world. And he went on, he had five or six predictions.

And then he said, but none of this is going to happen in the future if we don't settle this issue right now.

Mm.

Oh, that's, that's brilliant.

And that, you know, I mean, and the Southerners, you know, they seceded because they know a serious man had just become President of the United States. And they knew that there was no negotiating, there was no bargaining. And, you know, he.

It wasn't so much slavery, non slavery with them. There can only be one country. You can't have two countries.

Yeah, that's.

You know, can I say we can wrap this up? Because I've gotten a lot out of this.

Yeah, this has been a great.

I've gotten a lot out of this. And, you know, and here's the thing that I think why this is so important for us to talk about this right now is that I think this type of structured conversation, structured mastermind, is 100 times more possible today than it was two years ago. And I think people take it more seriously now than they took it two years ago. I think it was part of their lifestyle two years ago. This isn't lifestyle stuff.

And why do you think that other than you're talking separate from the pandemic and the zoom world we live in? Like, what's the distinction?

No, no, I mean, because of that. I think that the world has.

I think the world is divided into.

The seriously excited part of the world and the.

The maliciously stupid.

No, the frivolously endangered part of the world. Okay.

Ah, yes. Okay.

You know, there's a very good chance that President Z will not be president of China in 90 days because of this ever grand. This evergrande. This is $300 billion and it's tied to every part of the Chinese economy. And there's no bailout. There's no bailout. You can't bail it out. 1.5 Chinese are going to get totally screwed within the next two or three days. And these are not peasants.

Peasants behind the cow. These are people who have bet 5. This is their fifth mortgage.

Whoops.

This is like. This is like Chernobyl. This is like Chernobyl. Yeah, yeah. I tell people things can really happen fast in this world.

Oh, yeah. No, the network effect and the.

You know what set this up in a very weird way was that super, super tanker getting stuck in the Suez Canal for six days. It just killed the global supply chains. It just. I mean, it was one thing that multiplied out in 6 million directions of late. This was late. That was late. This company went under because they couldn't make their payment to do this and everything just because this tanker got. And that's how interconnected, independent everything is. And right in the middle of it all is this massive Chinese debt. They've got the greatest debt in the history of the world.

That is a topic for another Episode that I am really, really interested in is.

The notion of wealth. And what is wealth now and what is leveraged wealth and network based wealth versus what has historically been wealth, meaning simple wealth, like a stack of gold, for example.

And then by the way, that's still good.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

I have to tell you, a stack of gold is still good.

I think as part of everybody's diversified investment, you should have a stack of gold.

Yeah. My only problem with gold is there was a period of time I bought a bunch of gold and silver and I realized as I put it in my pockets that if I had a pocket full of gold or silver and there were the tigers came in town or the zombies showed up, whoever has the most gold is going to be eaten the first.

You'd be slow. Yeah, exactly.

It was a horrible idea. That's when I decided I got to find some other options.

Well, I agree. I think this has been one of the more fascinating episodes.

We've done well and I think it's the first layer. I think there's more layers to this one. You know, I think, I think it's a continual learning. I mean, my notion of what can occur in a workshop, you know, a strategic coach workshop this year compared to two years ago is.

I mean, it's much broader. I see much more possibilities than I did, you know, and it's just fascinating. I mean, you know, you know.

There'S nowhere else I'm trying to get to.

Yes. And there's so many more ways to create value in a shorter period of time with less effort. And I think again, this is in some ways has been some of the worst of times for certain people. I know for you and me, it's been some of the best of times. I feel better equipped than ever before. Truth is, I've had great years.

And found a whole bunch of ways to simplify and have a lot more thinking time, a lot more time off and the quality of my family is better.

And I have fewer people around me. The ones I didn't want around me showed me exactly who I didn't want to be around.

It made the conversations and the separations that much easier.

This was fantastic. And what I'll do to reach out to you. Listening. If there's a topic or an idea you want Dan and I to cover, head over to capabilityamplifier.com, leave a message for us. Hit the website. There's also a form where you can submit any kinds of concepts, ideas that you'd like to share with us. And I'll put it in front of Dan because we love going deep on deep conversations. If there's something we miss, let us know. And we'd love to take on some big ideas if you got one out there. Anything else you want to add, Dan?

No, I would just say that I think that.

Being entrepreneurs, that.

We have a degree of.

Freedom.

To explore things, discuss things, that I think that people who are tied up in dependent systems really don't. You know that the CEOs of major corporations cannot have the type of discussion that we just had, you know, for the half hour or the kind of event that you're planning in Mexico. They couldn't possibly go on an event like that. And you know that they're, you know, that their security, their future and everything is not within their control. Draw.

So true. All right, well, thanks again for another great episode. See you in the next one, Dan.